blasé: Storytelling, Producing, Programming and how they relate to God | #29 - The Drive Program

Episode Transcript
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Tom (00:00):
Hello everyone, my name is Tom Driver, and welcome to
another episode of the DriveProgram.
We have an extra specialepisode today, and it is also
extra long, so sit tight.
My guest is Blase.
He's been on the show before,and one of the reasons it is
extra special is that heactually was on a vacation in

(00:20):
Florida.
So if you've noticed recently,I've had to do almost all of my
episodes online.
Most of my network is stillback in Virginia, and I'm really
dedicated to doing one episodea week.
So in order to kind of meetthose requirements, I'm just
been hopping on a lot of Zoomcalls, catching up with people,
and it's been going surprisinglywell.

(00:41):
But I can't hide the fact thatI really, really do love the
in-person interviews.
It's just great to see one ofmy friends sit down, connect
with them, and you know, theflow of conversation is just
always really fun and excitingwhen I'm in person with
somebody.
So because I haven't done manyin-person episodes, and I

(01:02):
actually this was recorded acouple months ago.
So I hadn't done an episode ina long time.
I came in super hot and heavy,just very, very excited to sit
down and talk with someone, andBlase and I talked for hours and
hours and hours.
This is actually a cut-downversion from maybe a five or six
hour long hangout.
Yeah, man, we just had a greattime.

(01:23):
We talked about storytelling,we talked a lot about religion,
we talked about NFTs and howthose can be used in the music
industry.
We talked about a festival thathe has been working on and I
think is going to air sometimethis summer.
And a lot of other reallyinteresting, cool topics.

(01:44):
We actually talked about my apptoo um a bunch at the very end.
So I had a great time talkingand hanging out with him.
I was so happy to see him herein Florida.
I usually really listen a lotand and try to let my guests
talk a lot.
And as I mentioned, it was hissecond time on the show, and I
hadn't done a podcast in awhile, so I actually just talked

(02:04):
my mouth off the whole time.
I was talking so much.
I feel a little bit bad as Ilisten back to it.
But um yeah, since it is hissecond time, if you guys are
wanting more blase, uh you cango listen to our first episode
actually either before or afterthis, especially if you have not
heard it.
Because we do elaborate on alot of the ideas from that first
episode.
You can watch them in eitherorder, but there's definitely

(02:25):
obviously a lot of connectingthreads between those two
episodes and Blase.
It's kind of more of hisintroduction in that first
episode.
I am a huge fan of Blase'smusic.
I think he's an amazing artist.
So please go check out hismusic.
I will provide the links to allof his music in the description
along with his social mediaaccounts.

(02:46):
So go follow him and go listento his music, guys.
I don't have any other realupdates except for just share
the podcast with your friendsand let me know if you have any
friends that would make goodguests on the show because I'm
starting to do an episode everyweek, so I'm pretty much open to
interviewing a lot of differentpeople on a lot of different

(03:06):
topics.
Also, since this is an extralong episode, be sure to check
out the outline in the shownotes.
So I'm gonna put timestampswith different sections of just
different topics that we talkabout throughout the episode.
That way, if you don't havetime to listen to the entire
thing, you can just go check outmaybe one of the sections
you're interested in.

(03:27):
Personally, I do feel like themiddle part of this podcast is
the most interesting.
I hope you guys enjoy theepisode, and here's a quick word
from our sponsors.
This episode is sponsored byMama Bama and the Mod Canna.
They sell C B D products onlineand are offering a 15% discount
to listeners of the podcast.
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(04:12):
and receive a 15% discount.
I'm going to provide someeducational resources about C B
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consuming CBD, please consultwith your doctor.
Thanks everyone.
This is episode 29 of the Driveprogram with guest Blase.

blasé (04:53):
I have.

Tom (04:54):
Okay, with Jerry Seinfeld.

blasé (04:56):
I yeah, so I know exactly what you're talking about.
I purposely turned it on tohave in the background, but I
cannot say I've actively paidattention to what's happening in
the show.

Tom (05:05):
Do you know do you know why I'm bringing it up?

blasé (05:06):
No.

Tom (05:07):
Okay, so for listeners at home, Blase, I just picked him
up, right?
And we've been in the car forlike an hour and a half, and
we've just had all sorts of coolconversations in the car.
And I feel like it's gonna beactually a good legway into the
podcast, but it's been remindingme of that show because every
episode, Jerry Seinfield gets anew car and he goes and picks up
a comedian from their house,and then they drive to the
coffee shop and they do littlecutscenes of them in the car,

(05:29):
and then some like cutscenes ofthem in the coffee shop.
It's kind of like a podcastthat that happens like halfway,
half in the car, half in acoffee shop, and then they edit
it down to like 30 minutes.
The day we're having, I justfeel like Jerry Seinfield.
I picked you up.
We're having cool conversationsleading into the podcast.
I don't know, it just feelsexactly like that show to me.
I wish we had a camera in thecar and we could have recorded

(05:49):
that part.

blasé (05:50):
Like a GoPro or whatever.
Because in the front, yeah.

Tom (05:52):
We would end up with like six hours of content because
like I'm gonna have to drive youhome too.
If there was a camera and micsin the car, that would be so
cool.

blasé (05:58):
You know, like a decompress section of the
podcast at the end.
Yeah, that's funny.
Yeah, no, I definitely, nowthat you mention it, that is
that seems like pretty much whatthe last like what two or three
hours were.
So that's what's up.

Tom (06:10):
Yeah, there's so many different ways I've thought of
you could record a podcast.
In the car is one.
Me and my friend were alsotalking, what if you recorded a
podcast while like a movie wasplaying, but you didn't play the
sound of the movie, and you andthe person talk about why you
like each scene in the movie andstuff like that.
Like you talk over the movie,but you don't talk with the
sound on.
But you pick a movie likeTitanic that everyone's seen, or

(06:31):
Wolf on Wall Street, or youknow, The Lion King.
You let the movie influence theconversation, but not quite
take over the conversation.
Obviously, you can have sideconversations, but you can put
it on YouTube with the movieplaying on top of the podcast.
Just like certain ideas likethat, I don't know if I'll ever
mess around with, but likethere's so many, there's so many
options you could do as far asjust like recording a
conversation, you know?

blasé (06:51):
That seems a lot like the the format that YouTubers take.
Yeah, I don't know if you'veseen like the Spider-Man No Way
Home.
That's how they analyze allthose, all the footage.
They go frame by frame.
It's not even playing the soundin the background, but they're
paying attention to like thevisual stuff, and then it brings
up a bunch of sideconversation.
I like that format a lot,actually.
It's pretty cool.

Tom (07:10):
The new way of making content is just like reaction
videos.
Everyone's reacting toeveryone's videos online.
As long as you put your facenext to someone else's content
and like talk about how you feelabout it, all of a sudden it's
your content now.
There's so many reactionaccounts that have gone up.
We were talking about thisright before we pressed play,
but I was showing you some MacMiller songs.
I was telling you, I almostmade a Mac Miller podcast,

(07:30):
right?
And I spent a whole weekendbasically sitting down and
reacting to every single one ofhis songs.
I was going through the lyricson Genius, and then I would go
and I would look at the samplesbecause sometimes samples give
you like a deeper meaning to themusic.
And so I sat there and I likekind of reviewed it and kind of
reacted to it.
And I have over a hundred hoursof content of me going through
like half of his discography andexplaining like what every song

(07:53):
means and why I like it andstuff like that.
And then at the end of theweekend, I was like, bro, this
is way too much content to edit.
And I was like, I need to justfocus on my podcast, you know,
because I was rebranding and Iwas just messing around with
ideas, you know.
I knew I was probably justgonna change the name a little
bit and keep it basically thesame, but I was like, I don't
want to feel tied to the fitnessstuff.
Let me just give this otheridea a try.

(08:13):
I created a YouTube channelcalled Mac Miller Fan Podcast,
and I like tried it out for theweekend, and I was like, nah,
it's not the right vibe.
But I actually went down thatpath for a minute and like
almost almost did it kind ofweird, right?

blasé (08:24):
Yeah, I mean it I think it's cool that you tried it.
I'm definitely guilty of one ofthose people that like watching
the reaction videos.
And a part of it is probablyyou get some sort of affirmation
for whatever your own beliefis, I guess.

Tom (08:36):
It's so interesting.
I don't know why they're sopopular, but I that that's why I
did it because when Faces cameout, the album I was telling you
that it used to be released in2014.
I wanted to feel like I hadlistened to it for the first
time.
And so I spent that weekendwatching tens of 20 of reaction
videos to this to this album.
I would watch them like 40minutes, an hour, like almost

(08:56):
the whole album, like watchingthese people react to it.
It makes you feel like it's thefirst time.
I don't know why, but it's soit's so special to see someone
experience your favoritecontent.

blasé (09:06):
I think you're right.
I think that that is kind ofthe feeling.
I wasn't sure until you justsaid it out loud why maybe I
liked it.
I think that might be it.
You know, like that feelingwhen you like show someone a new
song and I was just aboutsaying the reaction, it's like
the same thing, but there's likethousands of videos.

Tom (09:21):
You must know the feeling of when you show someone a new
song, like the first time youshowed your best friend red
dress, and you're like, hey, Ijust finished this.
When you're creating something,you get so close to the
details.
When I'm editing a podcast orwhen you're putting together a
song, you get so worked up inlike this one lyric or this one
like hi-hat or this one justsound, or it's like one percent
of the whole song, and like youget worked up in it, and then

(09:43):
you can't really see you losetrack of the big picture.
You're like, I don't know ifthis song is even good anymore
because I I didn't like thistiny part, but uh, I don't know.
And then you show someone elsethey're vibe into it, and you're
like, it is it like reaffirms,you're like, Oh shit, it is
good, it is good, it is good.
I just fucking I got too workedup about this this one part,
you know.
It's kind of hard to see itclearly, you know.

blasé (10:01):
For sure.
I mean, there that exactly whatyou described happens all the
time.
And like sometimes I needed forpeople to confirm what I
already thought was good isgood, and sometimes I feel like
something's bad, but I need toput it in front of other people
to see if they notice it assomething bad or just different,
you know what I mean?
I feel like that goes into alot of things.
I've had this conversation witha lot of people where they kind
of when they're working onwhatever the craft is, it

(10:23):
doesn't necessarily have to bemusic, but they're they've been
looking at it for days, months,weeks, whatever, and they know
every flaw in it because they'rethe ones producing it at the
end of the day.
The perfect example is the songI'm working on right now.
There's like 16 versions of it.
Like what you were saying, oh,like maybe the hiat needs to be
louder here, maybe the vocalneeds to be louder here,

(10:44):
whatever.
Somehow we managed to pump out16 versions, and I'll show it to
people like my brother, who'snot musically savvy to the point
where he cares about thosenuances, but I just wanted to
show them to him and see whichone he liked better.
And at the end of it, he justthought I was playing the same
recording on repeat.
He didn't realize I wasshuffling between different
versions.

Tom (11:04):
So for like he didn't even know.
He didn't know.

blasé (11:06):
He was like, Why do you keep playing it over and over?
I was like, I was trying tolike see which one you liked
better, but depending on theneed, I feel like you can get
that first reaction responsefrom someone and turn it into
something destructive.
As a fan of music, seeing otherpeople appreciate what you
already appreciate is a bigdeal.
But in my specific context, Iuse it as a way to vet whether
I'm in my head too much aboutsomething or not.

(11:28):
And you know, so I definitelysee the value going both ways.

Tom (11:32):
Fun fact.
I'm sorry if I just randomlyrip out fun Mac Miller facts,
but like I said, I spent I spenttoo much time that one weekend
redoing all this research, and Idon't talk to many musicians,
so I might as well put thesefacts out while I while I'm
talking to you, which is inSwimming, the opener song Come
Back to Earth, Mac rewrote thatsong 17 times, and then he said

(11:52):
he used the original version.

blasé (11:54):
It happened.

Tom (11:55):
And so that was like really close to like the amount of
iterations you had on that onesong.
Um, I wonder if that's a sweetspot number, like 15 to 20,
where you're like, okay, I can'tmake 30 more versions of this,
you know.

blasé (12:05):
Well, sometimes this is happening currently, is where
I'm at with the track I wasreferring to before.
I'm very happy with where itis, but I'm like, I'm not in a
rush.
I'd rather get it done right.
So I keep asking, because I I'mworking with um Mike, who I've
mentioned before, who I do a lotof like the at least the
engineering mixing stuff with.
If we're not actually on thesong together, I kind of you

(12:26):
know call on him to help me outwith the sound design of things.
Make a version where we trythis, make a version where we
try this, and so on and soforth.
And then at the end of the day,we have we we started with
something I was alreadycomfortable releasing, but then
I have these extras just toexperiment a little further.
So sometimes it's just for thesake of feeling out a vibe if
you felt it.
I've definitely had situationswhere I tried something, it

(12:48):
didn't work, and I'm like, I'mglad I kept a copy of the
original and you can roll withthat.
So I don't know about MacMiller's case specifically, but
I hear stories like that all thetime.
I think when you're doing it asyour full-time job, you have
nothing better to do than tolike ask what if for like every
little thing, you know.
So if you have the opportunityto experiment with that, you
might as well.

Tom (13:08):
So this is kind of um a marketing thing I did, but it
ties in.
I made about 90 to 100iterations of the new podcast
art cover.
So uh the podcast used to belike red, and then I put a bunch
of iPhones on it for seasontwo.
I don't know if I'm even gonnado seasons, but this is gonna be
the third year that I've hadthe podcast, and I've switched

(13:28):
over to like the blue cover art,and I've changed the name and
stuff like that.
And it's pretty simple, but Idid so many versions of that,
and it got to the point where Iwas like, bro, I don't know.
But you go down these weirdpaths, it's almost like you're
in a hallway, you turn left orright, you're like blue or red,
and then you go blue, you turnright.
Okay, font, white or black, yougo white, and you then you turn
another hallway.
Then you go back to red though,and do I want white or black

(13:50):
font?
And then you go black, and thennow there's all these hallways
that you're going down, and theneventually you have to be like
fuck.
Then you gotta close each dooron the way back in to like
figuring out what the bestversion of it is.
It's almost like a family treeor network of different
iterations, and and none of themare necessarily better or
worse, and like you can't eventell, and then you just have to
pick a couple of them and go tosomeone else because you're
crazy, you've been working on itfor a hundred hours, and you're
like, which one of these isbetter?

(14:10):
And they're like, Oh, obviouslyblue, and you're like, Okay,
like you're like, I didn't know,I just tried too many things
and I got confused.

blasé (14:17):
Yeah, I definitely know ex exactly what you're talking
about, and part of it for me isa fear of losing past work.
I'm obsessed with versioncontrol, I back up things
aggressively.
So if anything tampers withthat process, I get very antsy
because what if I did like theold one?
Now I don't have that to goback to.
Someone told me once if youdidn't have a problem with it
originally, roll with it andkeep going.

(14:38):
That's something I'm activelyworking on.
You know, when you're like ayoung creator and you're just
trying to put yourself in frontof as many people as you can
with like quality work orwhatever, sometimes you can't
afford the constant back andforth between versions like
that.
As a creative, you're prone tokeeping all those versions.
Have you ever done this thingwhere you're like, I'm gonna
screenshot this and look back atit later kind of thing?
So it's like it's sort of likethat.

(15:00):
You do it to be safe.
I don't think there's anythingwrong with that, but in terms of
aiding your indecisiveness, Ithink it's a terrible habit to
have.
It's kind of a balance.

Tom (15:08):
No, but I feel like there's some happy medium though, and
it it depends on the art, right?
But I feel like there is a wayto actually build in public and
redesign in front of everybodywhile you're doing it.
I think this kind of startedwith coding, right?
We we talked about uh coding inour last episode.
Back in the day, you wouldrelease like a picture, it'd be
like this artwork, and then it'slike it's done, right?

(15:31):
And and if you think about theapps we're currently using, like
mobile apps, as being likethese pictures, let's just pick
like Instagram, right?
Over a decade, that picture itchanged in our hand, right?
It's like its own piece of art,all of a sudden the buttons
change, and like they had adiscover page, and then all of a
sudden you can do stories, andthen all of a sudden you can do
reels and IGTV, it's everevolving right in front of us.
And I feel like that versioncontrol, you know, GitHub, the

(15:53):
way that that coders actuallydevelop allows a system for
almost all art to work this way.
Kanye West actually did thiswith his album, Life of Pablo.
He released it and then heupdated it and updated it.
By the end, he was making verysmall changes, but almost for an
entire year after it was out,he was continuing to update it,
including adding like anothersong.
For my podcast, I can actuallygo back and update the files and

(16:14):
things like that.
There's some podcasts I toldyou I split into two parts, and
then a year later I went andmade them one part, or there's
some podcasts where I havere-edited it and put it back in,
or taken it down.
Certain ones had certain albumarts, then I put a different one
in.
I could also go back and changethe theme music for the podcast
that we did two years ago withthe new music if I felt like it.
I could redo the intro.

(16:34):
Kayla, uh, she got marriedsince one of the episodes, so I
went and updated her name.
Podcasts are very updatable,you know what I'm saying?
Music's a little bit differentbecause people get really
fixated on a song they like, andif you change it, then it
upsets them.
But on the album level, I feellike you can add more songs
later or or subtract them, youknow, like a deluxe version
would be a version of an updatedartwork, you know.

blasé (16:55):
So what I was gonna ask, and you know, specifically on
Spotify or Apple Music orwhatever, whenever I've released
music, I get stats associatedwith each song.
Not that the numbers is likethe defining characteristic of
you know what I care about, butI like looking at the numbers.
If I had to like replace onetrack with an updated version,
there's a risk of me losing thestats, unless you like, you

(17:17):
know, work with Spotify to syncup the stuff.
With your podcast, do you havethat issue where you had stats,
you replaced the up or you likemake updates to an episode.
Does it keep the stats that youhad before?

Tom (17:28):
Yeah.

blasé (17:28):
So is it directly from Spotify or whatever distributor
service are they keeping trackof it?

Tom (17:33):
Buzz Sprout is keeping track of it, yeah.
As long as Buzz Sprout shootsout to all the podcast platforms
and say, like, hey, this isthis is episode two released on
this date, put a placeholderright there, right?
Then Spotify is like, okay, andit keeps track of that episode.
I can go in and I can changethe title, the description, I
can change the file, the audiofile itself, you know what I'm
saying?
So I can change anything aboutthe conversation.

(17:55):
But the thing is, sometimes ithappens with the order.
It basically just keeps trackof the date you posted it,
right?
So I remember one time I waslooking at the order at my
podcast, and I had released asolo episode where I reviewed
Leonardo da Vinci that Iactually I took it off so no one
could listen to it anymore.
Talk of talk about editingthings, and I had one with
Frank, right?
And the one with Frank, we justtalked about like goofy stuff,

(18:17):
um, and we just kind of had afun time.
I mean, cool stuff, but goofystuff, and I wanted to pull it
back in the track list, and so II actually switched these two
everything.
Say Frank's episode had 30views, the solo one had 10
views.
I switched the titles and Iswitched the audio files and I
switched the description andeverything so that one looked
like it was posted before theother one.

(18:37):
And what that did on the backend, it messed up my stats
because now I don't really knowhow many times people have
listened to all each of thosetwo.

blasé (18:43):
That's my that's the thing I get scared of.
When you release music, theygenerate like unique IDs for
every track.
I actually had a friendrecently, he found out there was
like some sample not cleared inone of the things he put out,
and he took it down, and Ireached out to him because I was
like, hey, like I don't know ifyou noticed this, but the song
I usually go to to listen to forthis artist just was like

(19:04):
missing all of a sudden, and itwas like one of his biggest
songs.
Kind of out of concern, I wasreaching out, and he was like,
Yeah, I had to like take itdown, and I'm in the process of
uploading a new version, and Iwas like, Oh, that's kind of
scary.
Like I said, it was one of hisbest performing songs, and you
know, is everything gonna beokay with it, or do you have to
start a st start from scratch?
But then I remembered there aresome scenarios where if you

(19:24):
just re-upload the new one withthat same unique ID as the
original, then it just syncs itup by itself.
I have clean and explicitversions of certain tracks, and
I upload them as two independenttracks, and Spotify or like
whatever service you're usingkind of know to put them
together.
And I think that's just like acombination of the right
metadata, whether that's likethe artist's names, the titles,
or whatever it is.

(19:45):
I think that's kind of how theyfigure it out.
The podcast thing, they shouldhave a system to allow you to
make those updates, but I feellike it it does get a little
questionable at times.
Which I mean, clearly, if ifyou've had run into that problem
before, then you know, you knowwhere I'm coming from to some
extent with that.
But I guess it it it depends.
If if the stats matter to you,that's like a big deal.
But if if you're just doing itto get the content out there,

(20:07):
you know, it's a it's a give ortake thing.

Tom (20:10):
Yeah, in this scenario, I think it depends if you nip it
in the butt early on.
If you release it and then aweek later you're like, crap, I
want to change something, thenit doesn't matter.
But if it's a song that's beenout for a while, I feel like you
shouldn't mess with the statsat that point because that
version got that many stats, notthis version.
But yo, this actually seguesperfectly into the NFT about
music conversation that I wantedto have.

(20:30):
And we talked about a bunch ofcool shit in the car.
This is one that we startedtalking about it, and I was
like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we needto stop.
We need to we need to hold onto this one for sure.
And obviously, all these web 3technologies uh using the
blockchain are like brand new,and so no one fully understands
what's about to happen.
And I'm just now finding outhow it all works.
But please correct me if I'mwrong because I feel like you

(20:52):
kind of know how it works, Ikind of know how it works.
We're gonna have a conversationabout it.
I'm not the expert onblockchain.
I have some interviews lined upin the future where I'm gonna
learn about it.
So this is a little bit cuttingsome corners for me, but I do
want to have a big conversationabout how it could be applied to
things, including music, right?
Sure.
Since you're you're a tech guy,you're a music guy.
So I'm gonna explain how Ithink blockchains with music

(21:13):
could work, and then correct meif you think it's something
else, or just like we'll bouncesome ideas back.
But if I say anything thatyou're like, that's technically
not possible, let me know,right?

blasé (21:22):
Say uh right back at you.

Tom (21:24):
So obviously, with the new NFTs, it's like a digital image,
right?
The most popular NFTs are abunch of different iterations of
the same thing.
My friend's in like a snake NFTclub, basically, where there's
a hundred different versions ofthis same snake, and they all
have different colors and hatsand things like that, you know?
So they're kind of a collectiontogether.
And if you own one, I feel likeI I think it might work like

(21:46):
this where you own the onlyversion of that one, right?
And using the blockchain, itcan um validate that this is
your like you're the only onethat owns this digital file,
right?
And so for the first time eversince Web 2, you can just own a
domain name.
Now you can.
Using tokens, you can own anydigital asset online as long as
it's it's on the blockchain, ithas a digital token, no one else

(22:08):
can technically own it, right?
So people are making all sortsof money just off these
literally JPEGs because it'slike an investment.
The same people that weregetting into crypto and they
were they were trying to findthese shitty crypto coins
because maybe those coins willblow up, they've attached that
logic to like JPEGs, right?
And people have made millionsof dollars.
If you bought one of thosefirst 100 snakes, you're rich

(22:29):
now.
For finance guys, they'rereally into this just from the
investment perspective.
So from moving forward, thistechnology can be applied to
anything.
There's this guy named Gary Von TikTok who really thinks
music is gonna be the next bigthing.
So I'm hoping maybe sinceyou're technical, maybe we can
come up with some ideas todayand you can actually implement
this, right?
But here's what I'm thinkinglike you know how you said you

(22:50):
had 16 versions of that song andthey're all a little bit
different.
Yeah.
So imagine you have the fileson your computer called version
one, version two, all the way to16, and you you picked your
favorite one, you put that oneon Spotify, right?
Then you had an auction and yousold the other 17 files, like
the dot MP3 player withblockchain technology on it,

(23:11):
right?
And these 17 fans of yours backwhen you're a small artist,
they buy those files, right?
And it's they're all differentvariations.
Then on Spotify, the main oneblows up.
Everyone likes that song.
They all bought it for 10bucks, but now all those files
are worth millions of dollars.
Like imagine if we'll do OliviaRodrigo because she just blew

(23:31):
up.
Imagine with if Olivia Rodrigomade 10 different versions of
driver's license and she didn'tknow which one to actually pick,
and you were the owner ofversion five, and then she blew
up, bro.
You would have so much money.
And because not a lot of peopleare making their music files
into NFTs, you're gonna get allthese finance bros just buying
them because they're hoping thatthey're gonna get big.

(23:52):
So you're gonna be able to makea bunch of money all of a
sudden.
Like, no longer do you have toeven go through Spotify to make
money.

blasé (23:58):
Yeah, so I mean, kind of to go off of that, it is
definitely something I've lookedinto.
And actually, a few friends ofmine who are also musicians have
looked into it, at least from amusic perspective, it's sort of
like an incentive to keep fansengaged.
The biggest fans are the oneswho somehow were able to like
make your, you know, your art apart of their life story.
If they can get a chunk of thatsomehow, you know, it becomes

(24:20):
priceless.
It's like collecting baseballcards.
There's like like a pristine,original version of whatever
player baseball card can beworth a lot of money down the
line, you know, the rarer itgets.
And I feel like it's sort ofthat same notion.
My understanding isblockchaining is just immutable
transaction history.
You know, like when you applyfor like loans and stuff, you
don't need to bring a bill toprove that this is your address

(24:41):
and you pay this bill at thisaddress, and you don't you don't
need to show like governmentID.
You don't have to proveyourself.
It's already there and it'salready set in stone.
That's basically how I'minterpreting it.
The NFT is the perfect way tolike monetize, you know,
whatever you know, creative workyou want to using that
technology.
A lot of people have said like,even do it with artwork, even
do it with like any digitalasset that comes to mind.

(25:02):
The one thing I don'tunderstand about NFTs is how
they increase in value overtime.
Because, like what you weresaying, what if you have 16
versions and one of them blowsup?
Technically, at that oneversion, that one master that is
bringing in the revenue.
I don't know what that meansfor like those other versions.
Like, how did they get moneyfrom it aside from it being rare
and maybe down the line?

(25:22):
You know, like some people likesteal hair from an artist at a
show or something and they sellthe hair online.
I feel like that's the only waypeople can bring value, like in
that specific example you gaveme.
I don't know if you have anyother insight on that.
I personally don't.

Tom (25:35):
It's exactly the way it used to work when people would
sell art back in the day.
In fact, this is another seguewe'll jump on later, but you
know, they say the story behindthe art is more important than
the art itself.
I always go back to him, butKanye is a perfect example of
someone who creates a storyaround his albums, like in the
public eye, and that makes hisalbums more exciting, right?
So back in the day, most of theartists would actually die

(25:58):
broke, right?
And then after their death,their art would get infamous,
you know.
So it really depends.
It could go down in value,right?
You could lose money on an NFTfor sure.
But let's say that you buy myfirst NFT and it's shitty.
And then 10 years from now,though, I I practice my artwork
and I'm all of a sudden anamazing artist, and I draw
something that no one's everdrawn before, and someone's

(26:20):
like, Whoa, I'll give you amillion dollars for that.
Then your first one that youbought a mine that sucks is now
gonna go up in value because ofthe artist itself.
You know what I'm saying?

blasé (26:29):
So does like the market kind of dictate that value?
That's kind of what I don'tunderstand.
Who decides what how like howdo you decide that the value for
an NFT goes up?

Tom (26:37):
That's when the blockchain comes in handy.
So let's say I um an artistover those 10 years, I made a
hundred NFTs or JPEGs orwhatever, right?
And you bought number one,right?
And when I made my second onethat was better, it made the
number one go up in value, andthen you sold it to somebody,
and then I made the third oneand she sold it to someone for a
little bit more.
And every time I made anotherpitcher, whoever owned my

(27:01):
current one sold it because theyhad a chance to make some
money, right?
Then the blockchain will show ahistory of it sold for one
dollar, two dollars, threedollars, four dollars, five
dollars, six dollars.
And so, because of that,whenever the guy who comes along
who wants to buy for sevendollars, he's like, is this
really worth seven dollars?
He can look at the blockchainand say, Well, six different
people all bought it.
Like, I can see that there wassix other people who thought

(27:23):
that this wasn't a worth theirinvestment and their money.
So I'm gonna have faith, youknow.
And if you have a piece of artthat's been sold a hundred
thousand times, then the nextguy who comes along is like, oh
shit, this has value.
And that's kind of the wholeidea behind crypto and web three
is things have value if weassign them value.
Money, we don't print, we don'tback it in gold, right?
There's there's no more printedmoney.
That's the whole like ideabehind Bitcoin, is that money is

(27:45):
not tangible anymore, so it'sjust an idea.
Therefore, you could say thesame thing about the American
dollar.
Why does that have value?
Well, because we all agreed asa society that it has value, you
know.
And that's the only fuckingreason, you know?
And so the same thing goes withthese damn JPEGs.
Everyone's like, why are theseJPEGs worth so much?
Because we decided they are.
That's it.
We literally decided that if ifyour JPEG is attached to the

(28:05):
blockchain, it is more valuablethan the one that just was
copied on someone's computer.
And if we all agree on that,then it's a thing now.
And they're predicting musicfiles are gonna be the next big
wave.
I'm telling you, a year fromnow, you're gonna have a bunch
of finance bros trying to buyrandom artists like yours music
files in hopes that you blow uplater and that they made a big
score off an investment.
They're investing in you, youknow what I'm saying?

(28:26):
If you're attached to thisblockchain and it it's certified
that you made this song, thenthey're investing in you as a
person.
And you will, if you do well inlife, then you'll bring the
value of all your art up.

blasé (28:39):
That's interesting that you mentioned that because I
have like terabytes of unusedversions of things.
And this and I wonder, I wonderhow valuable that could be.
Another thing I'm wondering,not just for like the general
population consumption, but likefor other producers or
musicians, I wonder how muchvalue it'd be to have the
individual tracks for a song,too.
Yeah.
Part of the art of it is takinga bunch of separate instruments

(29:01):
and vocals or whatever andputting it into one.
Myself included, I feel like alot of producers specifically
are just desperate to get the acappella of some hip-hop track
or like just the 808 or the drumsample for some other song or
whatever.
Not even to like use it,because you know there's some
copyright issues with that, butjust to like learn how that

(29:22):
specific artist did something,those individual tracks are
super, super valuable.
I mentioned Mike before, theway he learns things is he
screenshots when these artistsare on live or like post a
picture in a studio, he zooms inon the audio outboard gear and
he mimics the settings onhardware, and that's how he
learns things.
So, like having something likean NFT to kind of be like an

(29:44):
olive branch where like everyonecan make some money out of it,
I feel like that would be kindof cool.

Tom (29:48):
I mean, first of all, yeah, isn't it cool that the problem
you were saying with those 16versions actually segues in it's
the solution to your problem ismaking money off of them
through NFTs, and then you feellike, oh, at least someone's
appreciating each version of thesong, right?
That's good.

blasé (30:02):
That's a cool idea.

Tom (30:03):
It fixes that uneasiness you have about they're just
sitting on my computer.
Well, now at least one guy ownsit and he thinks it's an
investment, whether it is ornot.
Someone is appreciating version12, you know what I'm saying?
At least, but and I I didn'teven think about the different
versions until you brought thatup.
I was just thinking of oneversion, but then I realized, oh
shit, all your differentversions are very close to these
groups that have been formingaround different variations of

(30:25):
images, right?
But then the whole educationalthing, I feel like that ties
back into coding because thetech industry has just been
exploding with innovationbecause everyone puts their code
on GitHub, everyone learns fromeveryone.
That's why you they sayeveryone should learn how to
code because it's not likeyou're in a test, right?
You always have the internet,you can always Google it.
As long as you learn the basicprinciples, you know that all
the code that was ever writtenis on the internet for free for

(30:47):
everyone.
The hardest thing you couldjust Google, as long as you know
what it's called, you can findit, right?
And so that allows for thecoding community and like
overall the tech industryknowledge base to just be it
evolving so fastly.
Well, that technology, eventhough it's it's different than
code, it can be applied toeverything, including music,
including art and things likethat.

(31:08):
So, yeah, your your friend canactually buy, like if all these
music files are online andpeople are purchasing them and
stuff and selling them liketheir art, you could at least
view it and like see how it'sdone.
And if you wanted to purchaseit and really download it on
your computer and mess aroundwith it, there's not just one of
them.
So you could actually put out ahundred copies of version one,

(31:29):
a hundred copies of version two,a hundred copies of version
three, and so there could be athousand people running around
with your different iteratebecause there's no limit to how
it can scale.
You could also do a million,and like this is where some of
these cryptos they differ.
One crypto will say we print athousand coins every day, and
then the next one says we put acap, you can only have a hundred
coins every day.
Those kind of things change themarket, it changes the
volatility of coins.
And that's why people make funof the US dollar, because we're

(31:51):
just printing more and more ofthis stuff, it's worthless.
But as long as you put some capon it, then it becomes
valuable.
You can actually scale this outand just release thousands of
versions, and that's the kind ofthing that the blockchain
allows you to do.
So now if Kanye put out everysong on Donda version, and he
had five versions of each, andhe made 10,000 copies of each

(32:12):
version, just put them on themarket for people to buy, and
people like you can actuallydownload the full file and start
learning.
Like, how did this guy makemake this song?
Bro, so much value is gonna betransferred.
And that's why you were like,Well, what is the value in it?
That may that maybe that is,you know what I'm saying?

blasé (32:27):
I was trying to think if I knew anyone relatively
mainstream who did that.
I think Tori Lane's made like amillion in a fraction of a
minute because he's goingthrough some of his own random
drama because of the Megan theestallion thing.

Tom (32:38):
That's the story behind the art, right?

blasé (32:40):
Story behind the art.
So, like, you know, whether ornot you like his music, having a
copy of it is being a part ofthat history, I guess.
Yeah, I'm personally not intothat kind of hype, I guess, but
like making a million dollarsfrom one album, even the best
artists, it takes them like afew weeks, if not months, if not
years, to see the return ofinvestment for those type of

(33:02):
projects.
And he just did it with a clickof a button.
So I was like, that's crazy howhe did that.
But like the the the thedifference is like there's like
a finality to it, I guess.
As long as you set yourself upand value it appropriately up
front, you know, you can justcould do that repeatedly.
And and I I definitely see thevalue in it.
And I was trying to think howcould I apply it to myself, but

(33:22):
this version thing that wetalked about, bro.

Tom (33:24):
You can see it, right?

blasé (33:25):
A lot of things just fired in my head at once just
now.

Tom (33:28):
Bro, so think about this.
First of all, yeah, Tori Lane'sI think each of his each of his
NFT versions of his songs areworth like $30,000 now.
There might not just be oneversion out there, like I don't
know what's the cap he put onhim, but he could decide.
And so it could be a hundredfiles out there that are worth
$30,000.
That's a lot of fucking money.
And then the thing is, it's itcould be Tori Lane's fans that

(33:49):
maybe bought, you know, thefirst couple, but for the most
part, especially with theseJPEGs, it's not music lovers or
art lovers that are going to it.
It's these finance bros thatknow that it's an investment,
you know what I'm saying?
And so since not many peopleare doing NFT songs, if you just
start making some, people willstart buying yours for like
10-20 bucks.

(34:10):
Not a lot, but I'm just sayingpeople want to own NFTs because
they don't know what's the nextthing to blow up.
They just don't know.
So finance bros with a lot ofmoney just buying random shit.
Like the they'll they'll buythe ugliest art or the lamest
thing, as long as it's it'sconnected to the blockchain
right now because they don'tknow, they just don't know, you
know what I'm saying?
And so you have just enoughfollowers, I feel like on
Spotify, where you're gonna beable to like sell them for like

(34:32):
10, 20 bucks.
And if those for some reason goup in value, well then you then
you're gonna start making moreand more money.
You could literally be bad atmaking music, and we both know
you're good at making music.
You just have to know how toput it all together because
people are still figuring thisshit out, you know.

blasé (34:44):
I was just sort of thinking about it.
I feel like the NFT approach isalso more accessible.
A big reason why I'veunderstood artists are using
NFTs is again, so fans can be apart of that.
It can include the the artistin their story somehow, and vice
versa.
The way I've been doing it, andlike a few of my friends have
been doing it, is by sellingmerch to people.
Especially over the last yearor two, I've I've got a lot of

(35:06):
fans that kind of pop up in likethe parts of the world that I
do like advertising in.
And a lot of those arecountries where it's more
expensive for for me to ship itthere than it is for the item
itself.
So I just don't open up sellingmerch in those areas, but I
always feel bad because some ofthose people are the most loyal
fans I have.
They'll message me every daybeing like, Thank you for

(35:26):
putting out the hangover, thankyou for putting out red dress.
Now I feel shitty because everytime I put out do like a merch
giveaway or something, I know Isort of have to exclude them
because the cost of shippingstuff over there is very
difficult.
For me on my budget at least.
Like other artists, you know,that's probably not an issue.
But like the NFT thing is likeanother cool way to kind of
reach more people thatpreviously were kind of ready

(35:47):
and willing to jump on theopportunities like that, but
there's just no accessible wayfor me to give that opportunity
out.

Tom (35:53):
No, so yeah, the merchandise was kind of the the
way artists could make extramoney by their music, right?

Tom and blasé (35:59):
And I think that's like the main way.
The main way, yeah.

Tom (36:02):
And and that's actually part of the problem is that
merchandise also has to be goodquality.
It also has to feel good, italso has to be something you
want to wear.
I bought these sweatshirts withmy logo on them for cheap or
t-shirts.
I don't like the way they fthey rub against my chest
because I went cheap on them andthey suck, you know what I'm
saying?
So you have to actually dohigh-quality shit.
That's why someone like Kanyeis able to actually make money

(36:23):
on those shoes because he spentthe time partnering with someone
like Adidas and put togetherreally good shoes.
They're also made by yourfavorite artist, but they're
actually really good quality andthey're done really well.
And what they do is they'll, ifyou notice, he'll release
10,000 pairs of this one redshoe, and then three months
later, he'll release 10,000pairs of the same shoe, but
it'll be blue.

(36:43):
Instead of just releasingmillions and millions of shoes,
he'll put a certain cap on it,and that's and that's what we
were saying.
That's what assigns value isthe limitation to it.
So there's all these variationsof a certain shoe, and you're
like, oh, I have the red one,oh, I have the shiny red one, or
whatever your thing is.
Yeah, except for shoesdepreciating value, just like
every other real asset.

(37:04):
But NFTs, they'll never be wornout, they'll never be lost,
they'll never, you can't lose itreally.
It can't start falling apart,you know, if you wear it too
much or listen to it too much.
It's such a better investmentthan than anything in the real
world, actually.

blasé (37:16):
Yeah, I mean, you brought up the concept of limitation in
general.
I feel like that's actually ahuge obstacle for people.
I'm speaking strictly in themusic industry.
One, because it's such in andout with the trends sort of
industry, I guess.
It might feel good in thatmoment, but like a shoe, it
could wear out over time.
You could get bored of it andthen just kind of toss it away.
So, like having somethingthat's a little more sustainable
is always a good thing.

(37:37):
Specifically, again, on thatlimitation theme, I've noticed
even things like merchgiveaways, if you have them
regularly, people don't valuethem as much.
But if you like strategicallyplace them, kind of like what
you were saying with the Kanyething, he doesn't just have a
million from the get-go ready tolike ship or whatever, he does
them in little chunks and makesthe proper changes that he knows
people will kind of like engagewith properly and like really

(37:58):
invest in.
And you know, especially overthe pandemic, I think we talked
about it last time, but I usethe pandemic time to kind of
test the waters on a bunch ofdifferent ideas and what people
would be more responsive toversus not, and that was like
one of them.
You have to play your cardsright as far as supply and
demand is concerned.
Otherwise, tipping the scalesin one direction or the other
too much doesn't really benefityou or who you're trying to

(38:20):
appeal to, which is in my casethe listener.
The NFT stuff we're talkingabout seems like a very good,
happy medium for all of thatstuff.
And like you said, it's it'sit's digital, so it doesn't
degrade over time, unless youlike lose your laptop that it's
saved on or whatever.
That's not really an issue intoday's day and age, I feel
like.
But yeah, that's I mean, it'svery cool stuff.
I I definitely need to do myresearch now because this just

(38:41):
got a lot of gears, gearsturning for me.

Tom (38:44):
Yeah, man.
We could definitely talk aboutNFTs for three hours.
I feel like I need to get downwith some experts who know NFTs,
but maybe if you go and youlook into this and maybe work on
this and you come back and youactually own one, that would be
a crazy next podcast to do,right?

blasé (38:57):
I have I have a handful of people that I already know of
are doing it.
I'll reach out to them and I'llbe ready.
I'll be ready for the next one.

Tom (39:04):
The cool thing is like I feel like it's gonna actually
happen for you.
It probably is not gonna be toohard for you to figure it out.
I know you're technical, I knowyou have some friends who could
help you with it.
You already like making music,you already like trying to bring
those two worlds together asmuch as possible.
So I have faith you're gonnaput it together.
I'll end this topic by sayingif you put out an NFT version of
Red Dress, I'll buy it for like10 or 20 bucks, which is crazy

(39:25):
because I already have it forfree, right?
That's what's uh and especiallyif you put out an extended
version that only I owned, Iwould buy it for like 50 bucks
or something.

blasé (39:32):
I can get you.
I'm I need to talk to Mike.
I've been telling him to like,like I said, I'm big into
backing things up and all thatfun stuff.
I need to get the backups fromhim because he's the one backing
them up right now, even givingyou like the individual pieces
that make up the whole.
Currently, that sounds veryappealing to me.

Tom (39:49):
I don't even care about it, but guess what?
If I think, and I do thinkthis, that you're gonna at least
get more popular than you aretoday, you know, in the future,
somewhat more popular, I thinkyou have a lot of potential.
But like, I'm confident you'reat least gonna have more
followers 10 years from now, ormore listeners, right?
I would have five years fromnow.
So I don't even know what Iwould do with that file, but I
would just from a financialinvestment, I'm confident in who

(40:12):
you are, but you told me abouthow it'd be useful to someone
else.
I could buy those files and andI know that that song's good,
that it's like underrated.
So then I could buy those filesand you'd be like, You sure you
want to buy this for 50 bucks?
I'll say yes, because I know Ican sell it for five grand a
couple years from now.

blasé (40:28):
I guess that's like the same concept of buying stocks
too.
Exactly.
You have to like kind of noticethe trends before they get
really big and peak.
Exactly.
And then you know, act on it.
So that makes sense.

Tom (40:38):
They say crypto made everyone their own bank, and
NFTs for music will makeeveryone their own label.

blasé (40:43):
It's going that way.
And you know, I talked about myown label in the last thing.
It the idea is to be like astepping stone into like aiding
your own individual labelentity, I guess.
You know, the world is going inthat direction, so it's kind of
dumb to not also go along withit for the ride.

Tom (40:59):
You know, so let's segue into your label then, because
you last time we talked, we'retrying to put together like a
label in the old sense of theworld, not with this new NFT
idea, right?
So tell me about how that'sgoing and and what you guys have
been working on.

blasé (41:12):
So when we last spoke, I was trying to not in a
traditional sense of recordlabel, but I was trying to build
in the form of like asubscription service where you
know you pay some minimum feeand we'll basically create a
structure for you to build offof.
We're not like loading moneyout to people and saying, make
us the money back with the moneywe loaned you or you owe us.

(41:32):
It wasn't meant to be likethat.
It was more like we'll give youguidelines, we'll give you
deadlines to help you release ona more regular schedule.
Like in today's day and age,anyone can do anything.
Like you said, if you justGoogle it or YouTube, it all
that information is available toyou.
The problem is the lack ofstructure.
So we were like, let's providethat form of structure for
people.
The problem is people don'tlike being told what to do.

(41:54):
We gave it a shot and it workedfor one person.
We did like a trial run for agroup, and they really liked it.
We checked everything on thechecklist, it worked according
to plan.
We had a successful release forthat artist, but it was a
trial, and then when we toldthem we wanted to start
charging, it was like somethingsmall, like $10 a month or
something.
No more than like a Netflixsubscription, you know.

(42:15):
But they were like super notinto it.
And we had we even tried tothrow in a bunch of options to
make it more affordable forthem.
I guess that's sort of whatthey say about like college
these days.
You have so many options thatyou almost don't know what to do
now because you have too manyoptions, and then people get
intimidated by that and justback out.
So I think I mentioned thislast time.
The two basic services weprovide for people are like

(42:36):
helping them with the finalmixing and mastering of their
songs, and then the other sideis the marketing side of their
music.
So, what's actually beenhappening the most since we last
spoke is the marketing side ofthings.
So now I actually do have apretty decent rotation of
anywhere between five and ten,five to ten artists that like
continuously come back to me forpromoting whenever they have a

(42:58):
new project out.
And that's kind of where thelabel itself is making most of
their money.
The next big thing for thelabel is a festival that we have
coming.
And when I say label, it's morelike I'm running the logistics
and financial stuff for it forthis festival.
For legal and tax purposes, I'mrunning it through the label.
But that's kind of where theefforts are at right now, as far

(43:18):
as the label is concerned.

Tom (43:20):
Yo, what you just said gave me another NFT idea.
I have to I have to share it.
And then don't let me forget,we're gonna return to the
festival.
Okay.
So the idea was you said thatpeople didn't know, they didn't
want to pay, right?
They didn't know what option topick, things like that.
And and usually it's artiststhat aren't making money that
need your help, right?
So to bring it back to the NFTidea, I can't let it go, which

(43:40):
is part of what makes NFTs inblockchain really cool is these
smart contracts, right?
So if you figured out how toNFT your music, then with your
label, one of the services youcould offer it could be we'll
mix and master it and we'llmarket it and we'll attach it to
the blockchain for you.
I'm sure once you figure outhow to do it, it won't.
Be very hard, so you can justset up a smart contract and

(44:03):
attach their song to ablockchain, right?
So it'll go out to Spotify, andthen one version will go to
this NFT blockchain, and you canput a smart contract in there
that says every time this fileis sold, my label gets 10% of
the revenue.
So let's say you have a hundredclients, and 99 of them no one

(44:28):
wants to buy their their songson the blockchain, but randomly
one of them does, and it becomesone of those gifts or PNG files
that are worth millions ofdollars, your label will get 10%
of those royalties, right?
And that's how you could makemoney, you know what I'm saying?
Because no one's gonna want topay you up front.
But as long as you had one NFTsong that blows up every once in

(44:49):
a while, then that's how youget paid, right?
And that's kind of how labelsdo it now, but they'll they'll
take 40% or something crazy oreven more, right?
Because they gave youeverything.
But in a future label, right,like we were talking about, you
can put a smart contracttogether that says you just get
1% of every time it's sold, youknow what I'm saying?
Or three, whatever the contractis, depending on how popular
you are and how popular theartist is, right?

(45:11):
You can put that into the NFT,and that's that's part of the
power with it as well.

blasé (45:15):
To to speak on what you literally just said, that was
one of the options I was talkingabout, minus the NFT part.
The NFT part I think kind ofdefines the value of whatever
you're you're putting out there,which we wouldn't have if we
were just doing it on Spotify.
But one of the options was youdon't have to pay us anything up
front, we're just gonna take apercentage on the back end.
You know, we were sort oftalking about it with the
podcast in the song.
You have to upload it to adistributor, that costs money.

(45:38):
And depending on whichdistributor you're using, it's
either a subscription fee there,which is what scares some
people, but then there's anotherone where you just pay an
annual fee for every singlerelease, which also scares
people because if you're thetype to release a lot of music,
say you release 10 songs in oneyear, you're gonna have to pay a
hundred dollars every singleyear consecutively to keep that

(46:01):
release up.
That just introduced anotherlevel of options that people
have to worry about.
So our offer was like, we willdeal with all that mess for you,
but we need X percentage basedon whatever services you asked
us for.
You know, like if you asked forone, we'll take 10%, if you ask
for two, we'll take 20%,whatever it is.
The reason why this particulargroup didn't like that is
because they wanted ownership ofit.

(46:22):
They didn't want to pay, theywanted to own everything, and
that's totally understandable.
And I'm in that position too,but it's one of those things to
get to that place, you have toeither be able to put in a lot
of work or a lot of time.
And if you can't do both,you're stuck with no options at
that point.
The NFT thing I think is moreincentivizing because of the
value it could bring down theline.

(46:42):
Yeah.
But I think like we've kind ofglossed over here and there,
it's it's very new in the grandscheme of things, and I think
it's gonna take a while for likethe general population to buy
into it as much.
I know there's a lot of people,especially in the tech
environment and like you know,business surrounding um
industries that are very hip toit, and that's why they're gonna

(47:05):
come out on top, to be honest.
In terms of incentivizing youreveryday college student to do
something like that, I feel likeit's a little harder,
especially when you're strappedfor cash.

Tom (47:15):
The reason I don't think that they want to share any of
the ownership with you isbecause they get a small cut off
of Spotify, right?
They're already basicallygetting screwed over by these
scre streaming services, so theymight not want to give you a
cut of any of the streamingrevenue, but you you, right, who
knows based on things I'mtelling you and other people are
telling you that NFTs are gonnaget really big over the next

(47:36):
couple years, you can say, fine,like you get all the streaming
revenue and and we just get 10%on any NFT sale.
And they're you know I'm sayingthey're gonna be like, okay,
why would anyone buy my.mp3 fileonline, and you're like, Well,
we just we just think that itmight happen.
So we get 10 or 20%, andthey're gonna be like, okay,
fine, no one's gonna buy my shitonline, you know what I'm
saying?

(47:56):
And you're setting yourself up.
You might not make money off ofthe first 10 artists, but I
feel like you would be settingyourself up to like get into
this new market of music, youknow?

blasé (48:04):
You're setting yourself up for it to be more likely.
So I mean it makes sense to me.
I I have to get on the wave tobe honest.

Tom (48:10):
Most of these artists won't even understand what you're
talking about.
They're like, okay, sure, putit on the okay.

blasé (48:14):
Yeah, for sure.
It really does matter whatplatform we're talking about.
NFTs is that solely, I feellike, could change the game as
far as whether people think it'sworth their while or not.
The reason why we were we weredoing the percentage things at
all to begin with is because I'mlike, without us, you might end
up with a crappier mix, right?
So we're bringing the value oflike a like a better mix.

(48:34):
So it sounds more professionalgrade.
These days, people, even thatpeople don't care about as much
as they used to.
That's like where the murkywaters are.
I totally agree with you as faras like they might not care as
much, they might not understandit, they might not even believe
in it.
But for you to kind of put thatdown on paper in like one of
the smart contracts, as you weresaying, one helps them in the

(48:54):
long run in case it works out,and two helps you because you
had the idea and took theinitiative to set it up.
So I I see the value, but interms of convincing them, I feel
like there's so many differentlayers to like why they're
reluctant to do it.
And I'm hoping what you'resaying kind of like pulls them
out of it and and at least letsthem see the vision a little bit

(49:15):
more clearly.

Tom (49:16):
Whether the current people you're working with or not will
understand it, if you learn howto do that to your songs, you'll
attract new customers that arethere for that reason, and then
the just the mixing and stuffwill be the bonus.
Based on the way things aretreading, I think that would
suddenly turn into your corefeature that you're offering.
I know that mixing and stuff isis important, like you're

(49:37):
saying, but when if if you justhave some financial guy who's
just trying to make some moneyoff of the NFT stuff, there's
gonna be a lot of people I thinkthat need that service.
I feel like it's gonna bepretty easy to figure out.
Remember you asking me, like,do you put it on Twitter or
Instagram?
I'm like, everywhere, why not?
It's gonna be the type of thinglike might as well put my song
as an NFT.
It's gonna be not that, it'snot that hard, so it's gonna be
pretty simple to go to someonelike you who just say, Yeah,

(49:58):
I'll put it on the blockchain,copy and paste some code from
you know how coding works.
It's so easy just to once youfigure out one uh the solution
to one problem, just to likereplicate it a bunch of times.
So it's gonna be pretty simple,I feel like, for technically
inclined people.

blasé (50:12):
Sort of off that logic.
I mean, what I was sayingbefore, we offer the mixing
thing, that's not our mostpopular service.
People come to the marketing,and the reason is because
they've seen what it's done forme, and they're like, I want
some of that.
So, to that, to that sameeffect, if I I think if I
figured out how to do it myself,it worked for me, and I'll try
and make it work for you too.

(50:32):
So they're I think that's wherethe value is.
You know, that's why anycompany hires you is because
they're like, we've seen thatyou can do this over and over
again.
We want you to do it for usnow, and that's kind of that's
how any business works, I guess,to some extent.
When you're like hiring people,that's how life works, bro.

Tom (50:47):
Yeah, so it's the name of the game.

blasé (50:48):
So again, yeah, like why why go against the grain on
something that you know it'slike always the common sense
things you just need to like beable to identify it in in the
newer context, I guess.
So yeah, that makes sense.

Tom (50:59):
Okay, don't let me go back to that topic anymore.
I feel I there's like so manyother things I want to talk
about.
So we we gotta push forward.
Um the festival, why okay?
So you you kind of said it tiedinto like this is how you're
gonna make money now, becauseyou know all these artists, they
don't necessarily want to paythat much for your services.
It felt like, okay, but if weput together this festival every
year, that'll allow everyone tosell merch and promote each
other, collaboration and allthat stuff, and just maybe be a

(51:22):
center point for your label tocongregate around and all the
the artists that you work with,I guess.

blasé (51:27):
Yeah, so I mean to speak as to why we started it in the
first place had nothing to dowith the fact that the mixing
wasn't cutting it for us.
Like we always knew it wasgonna be like a slow burn type
of service, anyways.
The mark, like I said, themarketing is kind of where it
is, anyways.
But the reason we did thefestival is one because I I
don't know if I told you lasttime, but like we had for our

(51:48):
album, which came out lastsummer, we had plans for a
release party that got screwedbecause of all the COVID stuff.
And just like as a joke, I waslike, I was talking to Mike, I
was like, what if we justplanned a festival and just you
know got it got it out of oursystem that way?
And he was like, Yeah, I likethat idea.
So then on social media, I justkind of like posted about that.

(52:09):
I was like, yo, I'm kind ofsalty because we didn't get to
do our live show.
How would you guys feel aboutus during a local festival?
And a lot of people respondedreally well to it.
And one of those people, shewas like, Hey, I'm like a
designer, I'd be interested inhelping you plan this event.
Two or three people like thatmessaged me directly about it,
and one of them took it to thesame level of seriousness that I

(52:29):
usually take anything in life,even the music stuff.
A lot of people will treat itlike a hobby until they realize
that you are taking itseriously, and that's like the
first step into like you know,taking anything seriously.
You have to prove to yourselfthat it's something you actually
want to take to the next level,and so that's sort of what we
did with the festival.
It turned it turned from like ajoke to something that like we
realized, hey, we actually havea small group of people that are

(52:52):
down to put time aside to workon it.
And so it kind of snowballedinto like three of us, meaning
me, Mike, and my other friendSana.
Shout out Sana, if she seesthis, but um it was just the
three of us.
We were like, all right, we'llput money down, we'll get a
venue.
Collectively, we know so manylocal artists, you know, just
from the album we worked on, andthen we know a good bit to like

(53:13):
run an audition process, weknow how to talk to like venues
for rent and stuff, becausewe've done that sort of thing to
like do like shows here andthere.
And now our team is like a teamof five, and we actually have
people coming to us now sayingthey want to work for us and be
involved.
And so it kind of justsnowballed into this like entity
that naturally is communityengaging, which was like a big

(53:35):
thing for us.
It's like a cross-pollinationengine of sorts where like my
music stuff gets to be thrown init, obviously, but my like
interest in business gets throwna bit, my interest in legal
pursuits as far as likeperformance and creativity is
concerned get thrown into themix.
I get to like talk to vendorsand sponsors and form
partnerships with all thesedifferent local and bigger

(53:58):
organizations.
So, like one of the things wedid is partner with a charity,
and that's been interesting.
Just seeing how the mechanicsof all that work are very
interesting to me.
So, like, I'm currentlytechnically the logistics
director for this festival, thatallows me to kind of dip my
fingers in all sorts of you knowpools that kind of bring the
whole thing together.
So that's something I reallyenjoy.

(54:18):
So I realized, hey, if we'regoing to put this much time into
it, I feel like whoever'sinvolved should get paid.
And if we're doing this for theartist, by the artist, because
we're all like musicians on tosome level, or like at least
artist in some format, I waslike, we should make sure the
artists are getting paid too.
So that's why we started likelooking at sponsors and we're

(54:39):
setting up a GoFundMe and eventto kind of like make sure it's
being valued to the same levelof seriousness that we are
taking it.
And that's how I was like,okay, this can be like an annual
thing where we make money offof it, and over time it'll grow
and people will be more engaged.

Tom (54:55):
But isn't that such a beautiful thing when like all of
your different hobbies kind ofcollide into one big project and
you're like, oh my gosh, like Iknow all these random tidbits
of things about music, aboutmarketing, about you know, like
you said, these legal likesituations, a non-profit
charity, right?
I just randomly know all thisstuff about like how to run a
charity, and then ultimately itall comes together and like in

(55:16):
this one big moment, you know.
That sounds like sounds likeit's fun because no matter what
you do in business, I feel likeyou have to pick something that
you just really fucking love,and it's just a lot of fun to
do.
And I kind of on a smallerscale, I was the social chair
for my fraternity in college,you know, nothing crazy, but
like I did plan all the eventsfor about a full year, and like

(55:38):
I just had so much fun doingthat, dude.
I had so much fun like pickingthe music, picking the drinks,
picking the guest list, pickingeven the decorations and stuff.
I just love setting up thewhole like aesthetic of the
place and just watching peoplecome in and having a good time,
you know.
Let's say you were in charge oflike the judicial part of the
fraternity or something, thenyou gotta fucking tell people
they gotta do this and theycan't do that.
But like being the socialchair, I was just being like,

(55:59):
hey, let's have a bunch offucking fun, dude.
And like everyone, everyoneloved like the parties I put on,
it made me feel good.
It like it made me really enjoywhat I do, and that's honestly
a time period where I reallyfigured out how to like be a
perfectionist about something islike putting together these
social events because whenyou're alone, it's hard to like
push yourself to that level.
But I just got so much feedbackof everyone's having a fun time

(56:20):
doing this.
I'm gonna do this again nextweek.
I'm gonna do it better, youknow what I'm saying?
Because it just it feels goodto give other people a good
time, you know.
And so I feel like this isgonna be a very rewarding
experience for you, you know?

blasé (56:31):
Yeah, I mean, doing it by yourself is not as fun, but
like, you know, being able tolike dabble in all these things,
you get to meet a lot ofpeople.
You know, I kind of preach thisevery time I talk to anyone
about anything music related,but like the collaborating
aspect is always like a bigthing for me.
And this is like such anotherlevel up for me because it's not
just music anymore, it's thebusiness side.
When I say legal side, I have afriend who's like in law school

(56:54):
right now.
Literally, just yesterday I wastexting her being like, Hey, I
have a quick question aboutthese like artist contracts.
Do you mind like walking methrough whatever you do know?
You know, she's always morethan happy to help.
Small interactions like that, Ifeel like one I learn a lot, it
fills in a lot of loose ends inmy own understanding of certain
things.
So I get to like get informedon those things, and as well as
like being able to talk topeople of like quite literally

(57:16):
all walks of life as far ascareer choice is concerned,
because they you know, differentpeople do like a hundred
different things.
Being able to tap into that ona multi-dimensional plane, as
far as you know, music business,yeah, like everything we were
saying before is concerned.
For me, that's super exciting.
I don't get bored easily.
That's like the beauty of it.

(57:36):
That's why I did the labelstuff too.
It was like, I don't get bored.
Like, you know, like when youdo one thing for so long, it's
so easy to get drained by it andlike exhausted, and you're
like, do I really like this atthis point?
Like what you were saying, it'sa bunch of different hobbies
that kind of intersect in someform of another.
That's what keeps itinteresting for me.
And so the label was my firstiteration of that.
And then the festival is kindof like how it's been

(57:58):
manifesting ever since, youknow?
And it just keeps things livelyand like it can turn into an
annual thing, which is why, youknow, I brought it up as like
maybe a potential stable form ofincome for whoever's involved,
you know, years and years tocome.

Tom (58:12):
I was telling you when I was on the way to like go pick
you up, I was listening to ourold episode and I was like,
dude, this is gonna be soawesome.
Blase knows all these thingsabout software development and
music and you know, storytellingand and startups, and and I
know that I can just jump aroundand learn all these different
things from him, and likewherever the conversation takes
us, I'm gonna be able to extractsome knowledge out and like
share something with my mylisteners and just like learn

(58:35):
something new.
I was getting pretty excited.
And I feel like it's the samething if you're planning a
festival with a bunch of otherother artists.
If you're like an accountant,it's pretty one-dimensional.
Like, you have to just be veryfocused and make sure that you
run the numbers the right wayevery day and do that.
But like, if you're any sort ofartist, there's so much
inspiration involved with artthat you can't just put it in a
bottle and be like, I'm the guywho makes really good beats.

(58:57):
Like, no, like you have toexperiment, you have to like
learn a couple other things tolike make yourself a
well-rounded individual.
Like we were saying, the storybehind the art is more important
than the art itself.
You have to make yourself aninteresting person in all areas
of life to make people actuallywant to hear your music or or
look at your painting.
People buy Da Vinci's paintingsnot because they look cool,

(59:18):
they do, but like he was such aninteresting person.
He was so interesting, and thatdoes transfer over to the art,
but it's not just the art thatis exciting.
And so, if you're putting thisfestival together with all these
different artists, you'retalking to them about where
should we put this stage or whatcolor should we make the
banner, or like things likethat.
You're gonna get a lot ofcreative ideas flowing and a lot
of different people coming froma lot of different backgrounds,

(59:40):
other people that aremulti-dimensional, all getting
together and working onsomething, just brings it to
like God level mode, you know.

blasé (59:48):
Yeah, I mean, you you kind of explained my entire like
mentality going into all thisfestival stuff.
It's very like refreshing, Ithink is the best word for it.
Like I was saying before, likeyou do the same thing, you get
stuck in a rud almost.
Even though it's like acontinuation of this like
long-term picture on a like amicro level, every single day is
very exciting.
Just like meeting up with thepeople and brainstorming, think

(01:00:10):
tanking or whatever it is, Ifeel like that's kind of my
favorite part.
The festival at the end of theday is like, I think it's gonna
be awesome, but like the littlesteps along the way is kind of
what makes it you know, yeah,man.
Exciting to me.
Yeah.

Tom (01:00:22):
When I when it comes to the podcast, the the thing I
probably like the least is theediting portion, but like that
part is still so much fun to mebecause I know the big picture.
Once you have the big picturein mind, some of the details get
so exciting.
And then if I get tired ofediting, I can just zoom out of
that and go to marketing or goto something else, or like start
texting you and hang out withyou and and and and actually

(01:00:43):
like sit here in the moment.
I know the big picture of thingI'm working on, and and you can
never really get bored whenyour big picture is so big, you
So for you, you're probablylike, oh, I want to make music,
cool, I know how to make music,or like let's let's say you were
just started off as a rapper.
Oh, I want to write music,cool, I wrote some music, I
wanna like rap, okay.
Now I can rap and write.
I want to produce, now I canrap and write and produce.

(01:01:04):
Okay, I want to help otherpeople produce.
Now I can rap and write and runa label.
Now I need to help them market,rap, write, produce, market,
run the label.
Okay, now I need to put on ashow.
Okay, now I'm an event planner.
You add to the list, and thenwhen you back up, it's like, oh,
I can jump into any of thesethings on any day.
It can never really get boringbecause if I get bored of
running the festival, I can justgo home and make some music and

(01:01:26):
know that eventually the musicwill make it to the festival.
Therefore, it all fits as longas like there's this big
umbrella over all your hobbies,then it's great.

blasé (01:01:34):
You're just you're describing my life to a T
currently, and it's it's it'sgood.
I mean, I'm glad um I'm gladyou you're you're like on the
same page with that because alot of people see what I'm doing
and they're like, you aredriving yourself insane.
And there are some strainingaspects of you know wearing that
many hats, but for me, like I'mliterally like, what's the

(01:01:55):
point if I can't do a little bitof everything?
For everyone, I'm sure there'sdifferent reasons, but for me,
like, in order for me to doanything, this applied in school
too.
I was a terrible studentbecause I was like, I don't see
I don't see me using this everin life.
Why should I care?
In my mind, if it doesn't haveany like long-term effect or
like can't provide me personallyany satisfaction, I can't do

(01:02:16):
it, it won't work.
So, like to an extent, itsounds super stupid to say out
loud, but like I kind of need itto survive, like jumping around
and being able to do all thosethings, and it just so happens
that all those different thingscan kind of like funnel down
into one end product.
A part of it was planning forthat to happen, but you know, I

(01:02:37):
feel like I I did get luckycompared to some other people
who I know who are trying to dosomething similar, but just
never pans out for one reason orthe other.
But I'm glad it worked out theway it did.
Yeah, as far as that'sconcerned.

Tom (01:02:48):
There's like this one of these personality quizzes you
can take called like thestrength finder, and one of my
top ones was connectedness.
Like I really like when thingsare connected.
Another one of mine was likefuturistic and maximal, making
things like as good as itpossibly can.
But I feel like you must alsohave the connectedness attribute
because I just love it when Ican bridge things together and I
feel like you're the same way.

(01:03:08):
Like, you don't want to add anew skill to your list as if it
doesn't connect with all theseother things you're kind of
piecing together.
But also you're so good atseeing the connections between
things that there's almostnothing that you at this point
you can't add in and figure outa way.
For me, the whole music thinghas been very hard to like work
into my idea because I'm like,oh, I like to listen to music in

(01:03:29):
the gym.
Like, maybe I'll put togethersome playlists uh for workouts
or something, like find some wayto pull it in, right?
And when I told you I wasmaking that Mac Miller podcast,
this is the umbrella, thisdoesn't fit in the umbrella, and
it made me upset.
But then I told you I took thebeats off of three of Mac
Miller's songs and put them todrive fitness promo videos.
Through that podcastrealization, I realized what

(01:03:49):
makes these beats so good, it'sthat you know, it feels very
personal, right?
And like someone's just talkingto you.
And I was like, well, thatwould be really good background
music to the podcast.
And then it was like, aha, Isomehow fit Mac into the podcast
in which fits into the app,which fits into the gym, which
fits into the okay, cool, it'sback under the umbrella.
And I was like, cool.
But there was like this likemoment of crisis where I was
like, oh my god, I'm making thisother podcast that has nothing

(01:04:11):
to do with my other goals, andlike I'm just wasting now.
I'm just wasting time and likeyou get stressed out.
And sometimes you gotta likecut something out of your life
because it doesn't fit, but ifyou can just with every like new
hobby, if you can just take apiece of it to fit, then it then
it okay, then it added to likethe bigger plan that you have
going, you know.

blasé (01:04:28):
Yeah, I mean, not only that, but like when you're
picking up a new hobby, if youdon't have something motivating
you to do it in the first place,it's so easy to like lose touch
with it.
Not only is it good for likethat big umbrella, big picture
thing that you were alreadyfocused on, but if you for some
reason do need to like go outand find something new to do,
associating it with what youalready know is a good way for

(01:04:49):
you to like keep going with it.
That's the best way to likeacquire a new skill, in my
opinion.
A lot of people like to watchcountless YouTube videos and
take like those random genericcourses online, and I'm like,
while that's great and fun todo, I would rather apply it to
what I'm doing.
And the best example I can giveis when I first started working
as a front-end developer, theylike gave me all these

(01:05:10):
technologies that they werelike, you have to use it.
This is what the project'susing, that it is what it is.
I wasn't very good at it, and Iwas like, I need to find a way
to learn it so I can you knowcontribute to that project.
I was like, I'm not gonna takesome generic class, I'm gonna
build my label website usingthis framework.
So that's what I did.
I built it, I understood theins and outs of it by the end

(01:05:30):
because it was for my ownpersonal gain, right?
And interestingly enough, itended up being the favorite
language for me to code in.
It made work a lot easier forme because I already knew some
of this from my own personalexperience.
I tied it into something Ialready knew, and it helped me
in more than one place at theend of the day.
So I I try not that I'm likevery closed minded with trying

(01:05:52):
new things, but I try to vet itto a point where I'm like, can I
can I use it in more than oneplace?
Am I going to enjoy it longterm?
Am I setting myself up to beConsistent with it.
If you're not even gonna beconsistent with it, like unless
like it's like skydiving orsomething, like you know, some
people might not want to skydivemore than once.
I don't know, but like youknow, if it's something that's
supposed to be like a part of aroutine, why try it unless you

(01:06:13):
know for a fact you can you wantto do it, and like that's just
kind of my way of understandingfor myself what what am I good
at, what do I like, and whatkind of energy do I want to
bring back into my own life.
That got very philosophical allof a sudden, but I do think
it's kind of like important toconsider that both ways.
One to try new things, and thenone to make sure that new thing
fits with you as a person, youknow.

(01:06:35):
So it kind of comes full circlein that respect.

Tom (01:06:38):
No, dude.
So, first of all, that commentkind of reminded me of when we
used to work together at Venterabecause they were like, learn
all this new stuff, and I satthere for a whole summer and I
built my fitness stuff, and yousat there and built some music
stuff, right?
And you know, neither of usused those versions anymore, but
we both went on to like buildon those ideas.

(01:06:58):
As long as this stuff I'm doingfor work can fit into this
other stuff I'm passionateabout, then I'm okay with
spending 40 hours a week doingthis other thing that's not
necessarily my dream, you know?
So, you know, that that justbrought me back to that summer,
right?
Um, and then bro, I like thatyou got philosophical.
In fact, one of the things Iwanted to talk about, uh, and

(01:07:19):
just something I want to aim forin the podcast in general, is I
just want to have these likedeep philosophical
conversations, and you can'tforce them, right?
I need to have a uh episodelike center around like a topic
for the most part, andespecially if it's my first time
with a guest, and so that's whythis is a cool episode because
the first episode is like, hey,this is this guest, I'm
introducing you, and then thesecond time I meet with the

(01:07:40):
guest, it's like, okay, myaudience knows who you are,
let's get into things, andthat's second and on, I feel
like is when I can really crackinto some philosophical
conversations.
But I want to touch onstorytelling soon, but you have
all these different interests,right?
You got you know, musicproduction, you got computer
science, you got event planning,you got marketing, and you

(01:08:02):
know, out of all of them, lasttime we met, you were like, I'm
more of a storyteller, right?
And so, like, I kind of want tosomehow boil down, and instead
of talking about any of thosethings, talking about the center
point of how do you create I'mtrying to be so abstract, how do
you create something thatresonates with people?
What are some things, and likedon't tell me in any specific

(01:08:26):
discipline, because I want tocreate podcasts that anyone can
walk away from.
So there's some peoplelistening right now, they don't
know what NFTs are, they don'tknow even what music production
is really like, but what'ssomething that you can say about
creating content or a thing,intangible or tangible, that
makes it resonate with people,you know what I'm saying?

(01:08:47):
And and you, I thinkstorytelling is something that
you do weave right through someof your projects, but other
things like that that everyoneknows what a story is, you know
what I'm saying?
What are some other universal,or you can go you can dive
deeper into stories if you want,but what are some universal
truths that you have found inthe intersection of all of these
ideas that we're talking about?

blasé (01:09:07):
Okay, so this is gonna make sense.
The name of our festival iscalled Lemon Zest Fest, and the
reason we chose that name isbased off is we want it to go
off of the phrase when lifegives you lemons.
And if you think abouteverything we've sort of talked
about instead in in terms oflike learning how to do things
yourself, you know, start withone interest, Google this,

(01:09:27):
YouTube that, learn it,incorporate it in, and like, you
know, grow from there.
I feel like that like when lifegives you lemons, you make
lemonade phrase kind of soundssilly and childish and generic,
but if you really think aboutit, all it is is perseverance.
Based on what resources youhave at the time, make do with
it and you know, see where ittakes you.

(01:09:47):
And literally everything we'vetalked about regarding what I've
done and also regarding whatyou've done, it's literally like
this is what I have to workwith.
I'm gonna make it work.
And a part of it, I wasthinking about it when you were
talking about the personalitytest.
I don't know, I've taken one.
I don't know exactly what thecharacter idea or whatever was,
but the key thing was likestubbornness in the good way.

(01:10:09):
I don't have all the money inthe world to like buy the most
expensive gear.
I don't have like all the moneyin the world to pay someone to
professionally engineer my shit.
That's why we were like, we aregoing to take what we have at
our disposal, which you knowagain ties back to like the
technology thing where like youcan just YouTube everything and
figure it out.
You just have to put the timein and do it.
We took what we had and weapplied, like we learned what we

(01:10:32):
could and applied it tosomething we were passionate
about.
And that's kind of how likeliterally the entire evolution
of who I am as an artist and adeveloper and a creator,
whatever, like that's kind ofhow all that came to fruition.
As far as the festival isconcerned, the storytelling
behind it is we wanted to createsomething, one, for the
community to engage with, andtwo, to support artists like

(01:10:52):
myself who don't didn'tpreviously have that like
platform to perform in front ofpeople and engage with like the
entirety of the DMV on acommunity scale, right?
So we were like, let's buildsomething that, like you said,
resonates with people.
And the way we were gonna do itis like approach it from a
mental health perspective comingout of a pandemic.

(01:11:13):
We did all of this planning, weare still currently doing all
of the planning in a pandemic.
So there's all sorts ofrestrictions as far as that's
concerned, but we are stillpersevering through all of that
to get to this final goal, whichis having like a Saturday with
a few hours where everyone fromthe community can come together
once it's like, you know,relatively safe out to like join
and convene in that space.

(01:11:34):
So the entire theme of it isperseverance through whatever
obstacle you're facing at thattime, whether it's a lack of
knowledge, whether there's likelike a literal pandemic going on
in the world, whatever the casemay be, doesn't have to be
music, doesn't have to be, youknow, building an app
necessarily, it can just beanything.
It's just like persevere byworking with what you have and
just seeing it all the waythrough to make sure you don't

(01:11:56):
have any regret in your ownlife, as far as that thing is
concerned.
I don't know if that answeredyour question, but I feel like I
touched on every single thingpossible.

Tom (01:12:04):
No, it exactly does.
I feel like we're both gonnaleave this room and lighten
enlighten people.
It's the hair, it's the hair.

Tom and blasé (01:12:10):
The hair.

Tom (01:12:11):
So basically, what I'm gathering, no matter what it is,
everyone has a unique humanexperience, right?
I'm Tom, you're blase, but atthe same time, we're all
interconnected, right?
And so figuring out what yourunique experience is, whether it

(01:12:32):
is positive or negative,whether it's good or bad,
whether it's um sad or funny,whatever, figuring out what
makes you you and your situationyour situation and your life
your life, figuring out whatmakes it unique and and being
willing to share that is whatgives it value.

(01:12:52):
Because if your life is shitty,let's say you are the saddest
person in the world, okay, ifyou can figure out why your
specific flavor of sadness is sosad, or or whatever, even if
it's a negative thing, whatmakes it unique, what makes it
interesting or valuable, as longas you can put that together in

(01:13:15):
some medium and share it, thenother people are gonna resonate
with that and you're gonna turnthat sadness into a positive
because other sad people aregonna resonate with that.
If you have a lot of money,well, that's a good thing.
Share your money, pretty easy,okay.
Boom, just find the right thingto share it in.
I mean, that can be a problemtoo, but find what you're
passionate about and what you'renaturally inclined to, share
your money in that direction ifyou're an investor or invest in

(01:13:36):
your own ideas.
Okay, that's pretty simple.
Let's say you're broke, figureout how to share this negative
situation you're in in a way, oror help everyone view it in a
way.
You can go from being broke,okay.
Well, then maybe I can't afforda studio.
So then maybe I I'm makingmusic with sticks or something,

(01:13:57):
and that's so unique, no oneelse is doing that because you
know I'm saying, and no one elsewith money would do that.
You know, that's kind of arandom example, and I don't even
want to give too many examples,but like no matter what you're
going through, there's somethingspecial about it and unique
about it.
And as long as you can figureout how to assign value to that,
then it'll be brought into apositive thing.

(01:14:17):
Like some of the most depressedpeople are some of the funniest
people.
Is it good or bad that theywere depressed?
Like, well, if they if they canfigure out like how to wield it
in a in a in a way that theyenjoy, then then it's a good,
then it's good.
It's a good thing.

blasé (01:14:31):
Yeah, I mean, everything you you've said kind of just the
the lingering thought for me islike self-discovery, one of
yourself, and then once you cando it for yourself, you can kind
of see it in other people andbe able to like resonate with
them as well.
And I think that just likegenerally the world would be a
better place if people could dothat, but like, you know, very
specifically to what you said,that's kind of how I approach

(01:14:52):
songwriting.
Like, I always describe blaseas like my alter ego, and I
don't mean it to say that it'snot based on who I am actually
in real life.
You've listened to some of mystuff, it can get very sad and
very dark at times, the materialthat I'm talking about.
But the reasoning for mepersonally, for my own self
self-discovery, is like if Idon't put that somewhere, I'm

(01:15:14):
going to like be like that inreal life.
I would have been super sad anddepressing when we were talking
just now, you know.
But instead, I'm like, whydon't I put it in a format that
one, it's away from me because Iknow for myself, if if I bottle
it up, I turn into like an uglyperson and I don't want to do
that.
It's not fun, I don't enjoythat.
But I like how I can express itin a medium in such a way that

(01:15:37):
other people can listen to it,not to make them feel sad, but
them to remember that otherpeople are going through it as
well, and they don't have tofeel alone about it, if that
makes any sense.
And like you've probably heardthat answer before, but like not
a lot of people think about itin both directions.
You know what I mean?
It's somewhat tangent, I feellike, to what we were talking
about, but in the sense that youkind of need to know where your

(01:15:59):
strengths are and how you cancontribute to like society, I
guess.
Once you know how to do thatfor yourself, you can bring in
more people and help them aswell, if that makes any sense.
I feel like that's something weshould all be doing long term.
One, understanding ourselves onthat level to the point where
you're like, you know what'sgood for you, you know what's
bad for you, and whatever it is,you can channel that outwards

(01:16:21):
into the world and ideally helpsomeone do whatever they're you
know, get through whateverthey're getting through.
And I feel like, you know,everything I've done so far has
been aimed in that direction,and the hope is, you know,
people realize that to the pointwhere it can help them in their
own lives.
So which again, which is whyI'm talking about the festival
being very community engaging.
It's helping local businesses,it's helping local artists, all

(01:16:43):
those things are things I'mpassionate about, and the other
people on my team are passionateabout.
So, you know, that's just likea very easy common ground.
The concept seems very simple,but the execution gets caught up
in politics and like financialissues or whatever.
But again, that perseverancethat you have based on what you
have, yeah, in that currentmoment, if you can like carry
that with you, it goes a longway.

(01:17:04):
So that's been the theme ofpretty much everything so far.

Tom (01:17:07):
Yeah, I feel like the formula we're laying out, right?
Because I feel like we havethis idea we're wrestling with
and we're trying to like chiselit away.
So maybe call it a formula forlike enlightenment or personal
just happiness.
Not I hate the word happinessactually, but to be at one with
yourself.
I I feel like the formula rightwould be persevering for

(01:17:27):
self-discovery, like you'resaying.
So a path down self-discovery,and then I think an important
piece of the formula is sharingthat self-discovery and
therefore helping others withtheir own journey of
self-discovery.
Because we were saying youcan't just go down your own
rabbit hole too much, read allday and spend your time alone,

(01:17:49):
you're gonna go crazy, you knowwhat I'm saying, and work on
things and never tell anybodyabout them, and you also can't
just overshare all the time andnever grow, both internally and
externally, or with people andand by yourself.
For instance, I'll give threeexamples, right?
I used to be the social chairin college, that was way too
much like connecting to otherpeople and not enough of my own

(01:18:10):
personal self-discovery.
Then I spent two or three yearsreally deep diving into my into
my app, and it was never ready,never ready, never ready.
Apps are never ready, actually.
And so it was too, it was tooisolating, and I and I and I was
growing myself as a developer,I was growing myself as an
entrepreneur, I was growingmyself as a marketer, I was
learning all these things, but Iwasn't sharing enough, you know

(01:18:30):
what I'm saying, of thatexperience.
I was sharing the app, but Iwasn't always sharing the
experience, and and that's animportant key.
And then since I've discoveredthe podcast, it's been the
perfect balance for me of I amlearning about myself because I
have to do some research for onguests, or I have to read a
book, so I have things to talkabout, or I have to edit and I
have to reflect on myself.
So there's this bigself-discovery portion, but then

(01:18:52):
I share my experiences withwhoever my guest is, and
therefore whoever my listenersare, and I help them tell me
about their experiences, thenthey tell me what they're
passionate about, what they'vebeen doing, what their journey
and experience on this world is,and then therefore they're
rediscovering more aboutthemselves.
This formula that I've beentapping into, that it's like
life's never been better for me.

(01:19:13):
Yeah, and I want to share thatwith other people.
That's why we're recording thisconversation, you know.
But it's not even for them.
I feel happy sharing it,knowing that one person can
listen to this and and go ahaand and figure something out
about themselves makes thisconversation so much m bigger
than for just you and me.
I don't know if this is true ornot, but a philosophy that has

(01:19:34):
been beneficial to my life isjust imagining, and I've seen
this all over the internet.
Imagining like the universe isexperiencing itself as you for a
moment, you know what I'msaying?
So like call the universe, callit God, is just experiencing
itself as Tom right now.
But also experiencing itself asyou, okay?
That makes me, you, you, me.
So like on the way, I was like,wow, I can't wait to learn more
about Blase because I meanlearning about myself, because

(01:19:56):
really I am the whole globalconsciousness just experiencing
me.
So everything you've ever donein your life, I've done, and so
is all the listeners at home.
Therefore, I'm if if I go intoit with a mentality of I'm
learning more about myself, thenlike your wins are my wins,
your pain is my pain.
It's like the limitations thatwe put ourselves, like the
universe puts itself in byexisting as us is what makes it

(01:20:19):
special.
But the more you learn aboutthe universe, the more exciting
it gets as well, you know?

blasé (01:20:24):
I feel like what you're describing is like a very
abstract version of like empathyfor like you know, just like
shared consciousness.

Tom (01:20:32):
Empathy, yeah.

blasé (01:20:35):
I mean, no, I mean, but seriously, like I think it is
something that's heavilyunderrated today, specifically,
especially.
So, like the fact that you'resaying it, I think is valuable
because a lot of people don'tgive a shit.
They're very much everyonelives in a very like
individualistic lifestyle, Iguess.
And I think it's hard forpeople to come out of that.
You know, a lot of people, likeI I come from an immigrant

(01:20:57):
family, you know, coming intolike a relatively diverse area
makes it very easy for me to seethat in other people because
you want to you want them to seeit in you almost, you know?
And you know, you're from theyou're from the DMV, so like I
don't know about your areaspecifically, but generally the
DMV is more diverse than likeother parts of the world.
You're exposed to a lot ofthings that you know some rural
parts of the country might notbe, and that makes it easier for

(01:21:19):
you to, like we were saying,empathize with people, which at
the end of the day is just likethe sharing of values, points of
views, whatever, you know,whatever it is.
And I feel like things getbetter when you when you have
that in your life.
I don't think there's ever beena situation where knowing more
about anything in general, butlike in this case, like about a
specific person or whatever itis, I don't think that has ever

(01:21:42):
hurt, you know.
It never hurts to learn morethings.
It can hurt if maybe they founda way to like remove
information from your brain, butlike that's not a thing that
people deal with, you know.
So yeah, I mean that generaltheme of empathy, I personally
relate with that as well.
I think a lot of the world'sproblems could be solved if we
just had a little bit more ofit.
And I feel like that's prettymuch exactly what you're

(01:22:04):
describing, you know.

Tom (01:22:05):
Yeah, to some extent.
When you said empathy, it mademe laugh, right?
Because why am I trying tooverexplain what empathy is in a
confusing abstract way, right?
But I think it boils down tothe fact that like ideas are not
words, and like empathyrepresents an idea, but it's
bigger than what it the idea isbigger than the word, so like we
simplify things as humans aswords into our brain.

(01:22:27):
And so you're so desensitizedto the word empathy that you're
like, I know what empathy is.
It's you know, looking atsomeone and and you know,
feeling what they're trying tofeel.
It's like, but what does thatmean?
It's like for some reason, likebreaking it down and like going
through all these differentscenarios and and different
outcomes and and situationswhere you can empathize with
someone and giving examples andstuff.

(01:22:48):
It helps you, it helps me, ithelps all my listeners, it helps
everyone actually feel thatidea in a more full way than
just the word itself.
I don't know, if we hadtelepathic powers, then we
wouldn't even need to describeit for three hours.
It would be more of this bigwave of understanding of like,
oh, empathy, that idea.
But it wouldn't come acrosslike that.
It would be like, oh, you wouldjust experience like

(01:23:09):
overwhelming.
It'd be like a flash of like Iexperienced everything that
everyone has ever experiencedfrom the beginning of time until
the future, from you know, thefirst microorganism to the last
artificial intelligent robotthat controls the universe in a
f in a second.
That's true empathy.
But I can't even right now, allthese words I'm throwing at
you, they don't do you're liketrying to describe something
that's intangible.

blasé (01:23:29):
It makes sense.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I I definitely understand whereyou're where you're getting at
with it.
It's an interesting thing,though.
I mean, that's if you thinkabout it, everything in life is
like that to some extent.
You're just trying to likedescribe it to the best of your
ability.
I don't remember where I sawit, but they were saying like
the only person who has heardevery word you are saying is
you.
And I thought that like reallystuck with me in a very weird
way.
You no one's ever going tofully, in human context,

(01:23:52):
empathize with you better thanyou yourself.
You can try, you can tryexplaining everything.
And even what your concept oflike strong amounts of empathy
towards someone else, you don'tknow for sure that that's even
correct.
You know, that's just like yourbest approximation.
So, like, everything isrelative, which is why, like,
even though people can't fullydo it, you have to do it to the

(01:24:14):
best of your ability within thecontext that you're given, you
know.
Even then though, I feel likepeople don't do it.
I feel like some people hadsome negative experience where
they're like, feeling too muchfor other people makes my life
worse.
And it's it's it goes back tothat thing where it's like if
you didn't know how to do it foryourself from the get-go, how
are you gonna do it for otherpeople?
There's like so many differentthings.
I think about these things alot, actually.
It's just I've never beenforced to like talk about it out

(01:24:38):
loud, I guess.

Tom (01:24:39):
Dude, I know, dude.
I was getting this kind offeeling, I didn't know how to
put it into words, but as I waslistening to our last episode on
the way to pick you up, right?
I was like, oh my gosh, thisguy is so multidimensional,
right?
Because we talked about musicand coding and like storytelling
or something.
I was like, wow, he thinksabout all these different
things.
I think about all thesedifferent things.
And it just made me realize,like you were saying, like, I
can empathize with you, right?

(01:25:00):
I haven't heard everythingyou've said for your whole life.
So I'm like, oh my gosh, inthat last interview, I only
scratched the surface withBlase.
I only learned less than 1% ofwho he is as a person.
And I left that last interviewthinking, like, wow, I really
know that guy.
And I do know you, but it tothe extent that I could in in
that time frame.
But even after today, we'rewe're gonna talk a car ride here

(01:25:20):
of three-hour podcasts, a carride back, about five hours.
I'm still not even gonnascratch 2% of you, maybe not
even one.
Because you're so complex,because every human's complex,
but we don't we think ofourselves as this complex.
Doesn't matter who you are,everyone in their head has as
many dimensions as you know.
If you call someone else onedimensional, you didn't you
didn't understand theassignment.

(01:25:40):
There is no one who's more orless dense than you are, or you
Everyone has all thesedifferent things that they're
passionate about, or thatthey're not people, there's
certain people that hateeverything.
That's they're still puttingconscious energy into hating it.
They're still the best athating a hundred things.
It doesn't matter, everyone'sthe same, everyone is God,
everyone is the universe.
And I was realizing that on theway here, and I was like, oh my

(01:26:01):
gosh, I get to learn more aboutBlase.
Like I get to scratch thatsurface further, and I know that
he has all these things in hishead, because I have all these
things in my head.
I know, I'm like, I know thathe thinks about everything I
think about, but like you said,I've never heard you say all
these things.
So now I'm like sitting downand I'm like, say all the things
that I think, and and you'relike, well, which one,
motherfucker?
There's a there's an infiniteamount of them, you know what
I'm saying?
Like I can't possibly which onedo you want?

(01:26:23):
Because I can't possibly boilmyself down to a three-hour
interview, or even say 20 yearsfrom now, we've done 10 of
these.
I can't boil myself down into30 hours.
That's so little of who I am.
I've lived for and I've andthoughts don't even work in the
same dimension as time.
So I've had infinite thoughtsall the time.
And that's just my consciousmind.
There's also my subconsciousmind.

(01:26:43):
It's like, oh shit.

blasé (01:26:44):
There's layers to the layers, I guess.
Yeah.
I mean, no, it's it's funnythat you say that, but I I
definitely um I definitely I'mI'm totally on the same page,
which is mind-blowing in and ofitself, because like sometimes
you feel like you're the onlyone and it doesn't like cause me
like anxiety, anxiety, but Ithink about it too much, and
then I get way too in my headabout certain things, and that

(01:27:04):
kind of freaks me out sometimes.
But like, you know, justtalking about it, I'm glad you
said, like, oh, I also thinkabout these things, because
sometimes it's kind of like,does anyone even think about it?
And I think that's kind of likethe question you need to ask
when you're like talking toother people, just in general,
not about any specific topic.
But like you were saying, youknow, you've only met them for
like a fraction of a fraction ofa fraction of their life.
You don't know the whole story.

(01:27:25):
I feel like a lot of peopleneed to humble themselves when
they interact with people tothat level where they're like,
I've literally met this personon every launch break for only
the last three years of theirlife.
You know, like how does thatconstitute knowing that person
and what they've been through?
You don't know.
Even if you're in a bad moodthat day, I feel like it's
harder, but like you shouldstill be like, Am I the only
person who's ever been in a badmood today?

(01:27:46):
Why do I get to be so specialand treat someone like shit as a
result of it?
It's hard to do.
I'm I'm definitely guilty ofit.
The feeling that revolvesaround the world word empathy.
I feel like I have to try andactively do it more.
I feel like I have a good core.
On that on that sort of thing,but there's definitely like gaps
of it missing, you know.

Tom (01:28:05):
So I think further along than you think, hopefully some I
can help you connect some dots,you know what I'm saying?
Because I'm on many differentjourneys.
I'm on a mental journey, aphysical journey, a spiritual
journey.
And you know, for instance, myphysical journey has I haven't
always it's not one directionwhere I'm always like getting
stronger, you know.
I'm saying there's been momentswhere I get weaker and it's
it's rough, you know.
Mentally, it's been morestraightforward because you

(01:28:25):
learn more and more and more andmore.
I mean, you forget some things,I've gone through declines, but
mental, the mental journey hasbeen I not everyone's mentally
inclined, but for me, it's it'slike always easier to add things
to my database of knowledge.
But only recently have I reallybegun on a spiritual journey,
right?
I wasn't super religious.
Um, and as a kid, I don't know,you can just believe what

(01:28:45):
people tell you and you don'treally know.
But the further I get into myspiritual journey, right?
I I read the Bible sometimes, Iread a lot of books, like I
meditate, I try all thedifferent spiritual stuff, at
least try it, you know.
And so I don't know exactlywhat I don't want to categorize
my spiritual journey, but I'mdefinitely on one right now, or
I've begun one probably about ayear or two ago.
The further I get into likeunderstanding the spiritual side

(01:29:09):
of this thing we call life, themore I understand that everyone
on everyone is going throughthe same thing I am, or has at
some point, or it's all thesame, you know what I'm saying?
And it's so obnoxious with likemoney is a rough one.
So when a really rich personsays like we're all the same,
it's like shut up, you're rich,you know?
And it's it you can throw outsome examples that it's it's not

(01:29:31):
fun to think like that, youknow, if you're like really poor
or you have some disability orsomething like that, and you're
like, we're not all the same,buddy, you know what I'm saying?
But your experience is uniqueto you, so the range of emotions
that you feel about everythingyou experience is the same.
I don't even know how to put itinto words, but in some weird
effed up way, we all are goingthrough the same thing, you know
what I'm saying?

(01:29:51):
And it's so weird.

blasé (01:29:52):
I have a perfect analogy for that entire situation.
Like where I grew up, I feellike I've been exposed to a lot
of diverse cultures, religions,whatever, whatever it is,
specifically religion.
You know, have you heard thisthing where it's like I didn't
even know this was a thing, butthere's like certain topics that
are like rude to talk about atthe dinner table, and it's like
money, politics, religion, race,or you know, like there's like

(01:30:16):
a I don't remember how manythere are.
Literally, if you just talkedabout those things, we wouldn't
have half the problems that wehave in the world right now.
It's literally like the tiptoetopics, and I'm like, why?
Like, those are the ones thatwe're sex is a big one too.

Tom (01:30:29):
Yeah, yeah.

blasé (01:30:29):
And like so many problems in the world could be
eradicated if there's like somekind of open dialogue about it.
The best one I can think of islike religion.
For different people, like yousaid, everyone's on a slightly
different spiritual journey, soit can mean a lot of different
things.
For the people who generallybelieve in God, the idea is
like, you know, he he loves you,and there's like an afterlife
of some sort, right?
There's so many differentreligions that have that same

(01:30:52):
end destination or like end goalwith the whole thing, but they
have so many different avenuesof getting there.
Some people believe there'sthree persons and one god, some
people don't, and then there'slike everything in between, you
know?
And I'm not a sports guy, butI'm like, why do we have
referees at a game?
It's not so they they candisagree and take home a
different decision.
The idea is that they see thesame thing from two different

(01:31:15):
perspectives and come to aconsensus at the end of the day.
And I'm like, why don't allpeople just do that?
Whether or not you believe inone thing or the other, what are
the chances that what aren'tthe chances that it's all
there's only one correct answerfor all of us?
I feel like, you know, assumingthere is a God, we probably all
come from the same God.
I would like to think that atleast.

(01:31:35):
If that's the case, why are wedisagreeing on it?
Why don't we just combine ourknowledge and come up with a
straight answer for what's goingon?
That's the best we can do,anyways.
You know, like no one actuallyknows a hundred percent what
happens after you die, but wehave all these beliefs based on,
you know, what our ancestorshave told us, what all those
people have seen in their ownlives, and a part of it is blind
faith.

(01:31:55):
That's like the whole point ofthe word faith, right?
It's like kind of blindlybelieving in something.
Why are we not doing it to anextent that we can all see
things on a separate page?
Like it's okay to like believein different things.
I don't know, that's a verytouchy topic for some people,
but we live in a world whereit's like the things that divide
us are also the things thatmake us unique.
You know, the race thing in inlike our country right now is

(01:32:18):
like a big thing.
Like people are very proud tobe from whatever country they
come from, but those are thethings that get them in trouble
in terms of discrimination, andwe're all kind of like doing the
exact same thing.
I don't have the answer forthat.
And we're getting very hot andheavy in this topic, I guess.

Tom (01:32:37):
But like we're gonna dig deeper into it, don't we?

blasé (01:32:39):
You should have like these things that kind of like
help you stand out from thecrowd, depending on you know
what it is, but it shouldn't beat at the point where it like
puts people down.
I feel like that happens in ourworld a lot.
Like I myself experienced a lotof like random prejudice for
race, religion, whatever it is.
And I know a lot of people havehad it much worse than me, but

(01:32:59):
I'm like, it's not because youhave a unique perspective on
things, it's because otherpeople are putting you down for
not having the same perspectiveor like you know, social status
or whatever it is as them tyingback to the empathy thing.
If you just try that, tryliving by that to some extent, I
think it'll be a lot easier andless of a strain on everyone.
I don't know.

(01:33:20):
That's also something I don'tsay out loud very much, but
that's kind of like I I feellike a lot of people think that
and they're just kind of tooscared to say it, maybe.

Tom (01:33:28):
Yeah, and see you sharing this, this is this is growth.
I would this is me growing.
This is like big, like it'simportant to say these things.

Yeah.

Tom (01:33:36):
Oh man, I'm gonna obliterate this conversation in
the best way.
But so I consider myself aChristian, right?
Yeah, but I will alsoacknowledge that religion, like
we are deeply religiouscreatures for some reason.
I'm trying to figure that out,you know.
I've been reading a lot, but itessentially is all the same,
And uh, people don't want toadmit that.

(01:33:57):
And I want it it, these are twoconflicting ideas, but I want
to be a Christian and alsoacknowledge that it is all the
same.
And there'll be a bunch ofpeople who tell me, well, you
can't be Christian if you'retrying to say it's all the same.
But listen, when I was a child,I thought everyone who believed
in God went to heaven.
I thought that's how it worked.
But then I realized thatthere's, oh, there's actually a
bunch of other religions, and myreligion believes that those

(01:34:17):
people don't go to heaven.
Oh, also there's a bunch ofsectors of Christianity.
There's the Catholics, there'sthe Protestants, there's the
Presbyterians, there's theBaptists, there's the Mormons
who consider themselves, youknow, Christians, there's the
Methodists, right?
All of those little sectorsbelieve that only their specific
brand of Christianity goes tohell.
And that disturbed me because Istarted doing the math like,
you know, I'm a kid, but I'm youknow I'm doing the math.

(01:34:39):
I'm like, wait, so like only10% of people go to heaven, or
even less?
Because I was like a SouthernBaptist.
What percentage of the world isSouthern Baptist, bro?
Probably 2%.
There's no way you're tellingme that 2% of people go to
heaven.
I did the math in my head, Ithought it was you believe in
God, you don't believe in God.
Probably 50% of us are gonnamake it there, 50% of us go to
heaven.
I was okay with that.
That made that was sound logicto me.

(01:34:59):
I was cool with it.
And then I started doing themath on like, wait, how many
Southern Baptists are there?
Oh, okay.
I don't know.
I don't know if I believe thatonly Southern Baptists go to
heaven.
Or some people will say, like,only Catholics or only this
bigger umbrella of whatever,whatever your belief is, you
So just from a like a youngage, I was like, I don't buy
that.
I don't buy that.
There's people are good,there's so many more good people

(01:35:20):
on this planet than just yourversion of your religion, you
Yeah, and then I've beenlearning more and more about
like astrology lately and howChristianity like perfectly maps
onto like astrology, andapparently there's been hundreds
of religions beforeChristianity that are the exact
same.
One example is Egyptian, right?
There was an Egyptian religionwhere there was some mythical

(01:35:44):
being, right?
And he was a virgin, and or hishis mother was a virgin, and he
was sacrificed on the same dayJesus was, you know what I'm
saying, and then rose again onthe same day Jesus did, and
those all line up with certainastrological things that happen,
like the summer solstice orsomething.

(01:36:04):
Like there's this there's thismoment where the sun uh comes
down and it sits for like threedays and then it rises again,
right?
Um, and it's just the way itlooks, right?
And this other myth in Egyptwas saying that this other
mythological person, he the thestory is that he uh died for
three days and then rose again.
And then there's a hundredother religions that do that,

(01:36:25):
apparently, right?
And and I also am a fan ofbelieving that Jesus is the Son
of God and that he did, he justhappened to correlate with the
astrolog astrological shitbecause of course he like God,
if God is God, he designed itthat way.
And and I feel like there iswithin this understanding a
realm to be like, well, I stillbelieve that Jesus is special
and all those other religionsare not, but even still,

(01:36:48):
Christianity actually fit intothis pattern of religions that
we've been seeing since thebeginning of time, you know what
I'm saying?
And and this is when we'regonna switch topics to one that
you like, but so you break down,like, well, what is a religion?
What are all these patterns?
What are all these things thatwe're seeing over and over and
over again?
And what do they mean, right?
And what does it mean to bereligious?
Well, the components ofreligion are traditions, right?

(01:37:10):
Like Christmas and Easter,these are way more important
than we realize.
They do, they it's everyonedoing the same thing at the same
time of year and going throughthe same, it keeps us all going
through the same motionstogether.
And it didn't matter if youcalled it Jesus or something
else, the Egyptians and everycivilization before us at those
times of year were doing thesame exact fucking things for
some reason, you know what I'msaying, for whatever they

(01:37:31):
believe.
But then there's always astory, right?
And like all of the older umpagan religions, they believed
in the gods and the myths andthese ideas, these gods in the
sky, right?
Or something.
And Christianity and Judaismand the Muslim religion,
religions that come around thattime, right?
It switched over to being like,no, Jesus was a real person,

(01:37:53):
Uh these stories of godschanged into like, no, this guy
was real, you know what I'msaying?
And that's why people thinkthat religion is special.
We can talk about that later,but it doesn't change the fact
that before Jesus even steppedon this earth for hundreds of
thousands of years, we werealready going through the same
traditions in the same stories.
He just lined up with a storythat we've been telling since

(01:38:14):
the beginning of time andtraditions that we've been doing
since the beginning of time.
The Greeks were doing thesesame traditions, you know what
I'm saying?
Like the whole um the drinkingthe wine, you know what I'm
saying, the communion.
Traditions like that have beenhappening way, way before Jesus
has been around.
Once again, I'm not trying tosay what's true, what's not
true.
Um, and it could just bebecause God designed it that way
that Jesus aligned withprevious traditions.

(01:38:36):
But this is what has opened myeyes to the importance of
storytelling, because all thesereligions have a very important
component of storytelling,right?
And you told me last time wehad an interview, you consider
yourself a storyteller, which iswhy I think you're further
along on your spiritual journeythan you realize.
And I'm also curious to likeopen up a conversation about
storytelling with all of that inmind and how important stories

(01:38:59):
are.

blasé (01:39:01):
Yeah, I mean, so you know, right off the bat, I did
not know, you know, I mean, Iwas raised Catholic, but I did
not know any of the stuff aboutthe Egyptian religions and
previous things of likerecurring patterns.
I'm not surprised by it, but Ihad no prior context to that.
But from a like a storytellingperspective, I do think there's
value, kind of like a reinforcedpresence on certain themes of

(01:39:23):
people's lives, you know, onebased on tradition, and
especially if it's somethingthat's like been repeated
throughout history, I can sortof see why that kind of stuck
around.
Because, you know, I I don't Idon't know what the percentages
are, but I do think it's likeChristianity is like at a
majority right now.
I I'm not at all surprised ifthat was because the themes that
they adopted into theirtraditions were from things that

(01:39:46):
people were already familiarand comfortable with.
And I feel like storytellingkind of comes from that to some
extent.
There are new elements alongthe way, but the core themes are
what like last time we weretalking, like when I was talking
about my Vitae album, I wastalking about like the different
stages in like a hero'sjourney.
Almost every story, like everygood story has those like set

(01:40:07):
themes, but they just introducenew nuances along the way.
Like I said, I didn't have anyof that context before, but I'm
not surprised at all because notnot to say it's all boiled down
to like good storytelling oranything, but like under the
lens of storytelling, I can seewhy a lot more people resonated
to it.
And like what you're saying,like the traditions, like the it

(01:40:27):
lining up with the astrologicalsigns or whatever, like all of
that kind of recurring over andover again makes people makes it
more believable too, ifanything.
There's some tangible thingbacking, backing a claim up, I
guess.
I'm a little reluctant to talkon it more, mainly because I
haven't thought about it myselfand I don't want to like say
something out loud that I don'tactually mean without fully

(01:40:48):
thinking of it.
But like, you know, everythingyou're saying kind of makes
sense to me.
I in terms of like, I think youbrought up the topic of like, I
don't even know why we have, ormaybe you've said you did know.

Tom (01:40:58):
I've talked about a lot of things.
A lot of things I'm trying todo.
I opened up like 12 differentthreads and put them on the
table.

blasé (01:41:03):
Recollective, it had something to do with what you
were saying.
But basically, what I wanted toadd to that is um I feel like
it's human nature to need areligion, but I for myself, I'm
conflicted as to like whetherthe religion of choice matters
as much.
Again, that'll cause so muchhate depending on who you talk
to.
But going back to that likeanalogy of the referees on the

(01:41:26):
court I was saying, I'm like,there's no way this tiny
percentage are the only peoplegoing up.
At least in Catholicism, one ofthe major themes is like you
can't be punished for somethingyou didn't know was wrong in
general.
Like, I don't know like whatmore nuance there is to that,
but like I feel like it's commonsense.
I don't think the God that weall know and understand today, I
don't think he, she, it,whatever, whatever you want to

(01:41:49):
refer to God by, I don't thinkthat entity is as petty as
people think he is.
Like, of like why he didn'ttell anyone you have to like
sign up for a religion to getinto heaven.
The oversimplification ofreligion is just like a rule
book of how to be good to oneanother and to be good to
yourself.
Yeah.
And as long as you do thosethings, it's basically like a

(01:42:10):
glorified way of saying thosetwo things.
And if you do all those thingsand live like an honest and like
decent life to what makes senseto your uh your living
situation, that's all it takesto you know make it to an
afterlife.
That theme is very consistentacross the board, no matter what
religion you're talking about.
Yeah, right.
So in my mind, obviously you'rebrought up with what your

(01:42:31):
parents were brought up with,and your parents are brought up
with what their parents arebrought up with.
I'm like, how much of it isyou're doing it for for
tradition, and how much are youdoing it because you actually
like believe like the littledetails related to each thing?
Like I said, I've been exposedto so many, and I acknowledge
the differences, but I'm like,we have so much more similarity
than differences.

(01:42:51):
Why are like why is no oneharping on that?
Again, with the race, with thereligion, whatever it is, people
harp on the differences, but Ifeel like people gloss over the
similarities.
I'm like, that's the thingthat's supposed to be tying us
together.
That's like literally all wehave to tie us together, and
that's the one thing peopledon't like to talk about, and I
don't understand why.

Tom (01:43:10):
But that's my hot take on so I think I have a way of
phrasing it all.
No, this has been great.
Um, I think I have a way ofphrasing it all that we because
we keep saying, Oh, I don't wantto say this, I want to dance
around this, and I I agree withthat feeling.
I have the same feeling, like,oh shit, I don't want to say the
wrong thing and piss off thewrong person right now, or make
them not like my podcast becausethey think I'm either promoting
religion or hating on it,right?

(01:43:31):
It's it's I don't want to betoo confrontational, but I think
I have a way of phrasing itthat'll make sense to every
everybody, hopefully, which iseach religion believes the
differences is obviously thetraditions and certain their
similarities, but take thedifferences and focus on those
for a minute, and and one of thebig ones is the afterlife,
right?
The Christians believe thatthey're going to heaven, Muslims

(01:43:54):
believe that their version ofheaven, right?
But what I'm interested in thispodcast, and what I'm
interested in, is not whathappens after you die, but how
that a religion affects yourlife while you're here.
And I think everyone fromdifferent religions will be able
to admit that I'm right thatwhile we're here, the structure

(01:44:15):
of religion and the idea ofreligion, it does do the same
thing for people.
Because it's not religion isnot just about when you die.
In fact, I would argue it's noteven about that at all.
It's all about how to live yourlife the best way.
And by the way, one of the bestways to live your life the best
way is to spend your whole lifebelieving you're going to
heaven because that is gonnalike one of the hardest things

(01:44:37):
about being a human being isrealizing that someday you are
gonna die.
No other being on this entireearth or this entire universe,
as far as we know, is aware thatone day they will not be here
anymore.
My dog does not know that oneday he won't be here anymore,
but you and me do, and that'sour burden to bear, and that's
the point of religion is to takethat away.
So the point of religion is notabout death, it's about life,

(01:45:00):
and part of living your bestlife is not worrying about
death.
That is the fucking system, andthat is consistent across every
single religion.
And I feel like anyonelistening to this will
understand what I'm saying thatwhat a Christian person, what a
Muslim person, and what a Jewishperson get out of their three
separate religions on whileduring the time they spend on

(01:45:22):
this earth, what it gives tothem as a person is about the
same.
It's the same structure, it'sthe same feeling of importance,
it's the same understanding, thethe passing down of wisdom, the
community.
Because this podcast issupposed to be about drive,
motivation, not about afterlife.
It's supposed to be about howto succeed, how to how to live
your best life, you know whatI'm saying?

(01:45:43):
And and that's why I don't wantto shy away from the
conversation of religion.
I'm gonna start talking to itabout all my guests, because
it's religion is is if not oneof the most the most important
reasons why we all are beingdriven to do such cool things
while we're here, you know?
Yeah, but we don't realize it.
We think it's this thing that'sthere for insurance for later,

(01:46:04):
but the importance of itactually is how it affects your
psyche, your psychology, yourmindset, your behaviors, your
life now, you know?

blasé (01:46:11):
Yeah, for sure.
No, I totally agree with you.
I feel like we sort of said thesame thing.
We're all getting the samebenefit from it, what no matter
what your source of it is.
The ideas I I feel like overlapin such a way that it should be
defining the best in our livesto some extent.

Tom (01:46:27):
Okay.
So I feel like we we agree onthat.
Cool.
So let's move into like thespecific aspect of it, which is
storytelling, under the contextof everything said, what do you
think makes a good story?

blasé (01:46:38):
For religion or just in general?

Tom (01:46:42):
Just in general.
I'm just saying acknowledginghow important storytelling is,
it's extremely important.
You could use one of thestories of a religion to explain
to me good storytellingstructure or what makes a good
story.
I know that you tell storiesthrough your music, so but music
doesn't always have a itdoesn't music doesn't always

(01:47:02):
need a story to go through it.
For instance, I know a lot ofmusicians will look to like
movies, you know, to like find astory structure to put into
their album.
Like Kendrick Lamar's Good KidMad City is a hip-hop albums
version of um what's that onedirector who does all those gory
movies?
He does fuck he did uh OnceUpon a Time in Hollywood.

Oh, the Kill Bill.

Tom (01:47:26):
He does the Kill Bill movies.

I know.
Why can't it uh QuentinTerritino?

Tom (01:47:30):
Duh, I'm so serious.
So so there's a QuentinTeratino in the 90s, a Quentin
Teratino movie in the 90s, um,Pulp Fiction.
Okay, so you know how PulpFiction jumps around all those
timelines and stuff like that?
Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid MadCity, it borrows that similar
structure of this whole albumtakes place in one day, you know
what I'm saying, and you'rejumping from different points of
it, and it feels like a QuentinTeratino-esque movie.
And that's how I would explainthat album.

(01:47:52):
So, like, I'm just curious,with you and your music, where
do you go looking for sitcertain story structures?
Where do you draw inspirationfrom?
We can talk more about thehero's journey.
I actually read a book on thatafter you told me about it last,
but I want to stir up aconversation about just some
like not necessarily about musicstorytelling, but just about
like how you think aboutstorytelling in general and

(01:48:12):
where you where do you drawinspiration from?

blasé (01:48:16):
So, inspiration for the storytelling, I feel like is
based on what I consume and whatI enjoy as a human being.
In my personal case, I gavethis example last time.
Even the way I structured myalbum was based off of the way
the Marvel Cinematic Universedoes their movies.
They're all separate stories,they all have their own path,
but they find ways to convergehere and there in like those

(01:48:36):
crossover whatever is.
And I always picture like mysongs with other people as
crossover episodes, I guess.
In terms of borrowingstructures from other works of
art, I feel like that tends tobe where I go, mainly because
again, I'm I'm a big fan of likecollaborating and they own that
category to some extent, youknow?
They're the ones breaking allthe records by doing that that
sort of thing.

(01:48:56):
As far as storytelling goes inmy life, I feel like there's so
much value to be taken fromthat, but I also feel like a
word is only as important as youmake it, as many things are in
life.
And what I mean by that is somepeople don't care about the
words, specifically in music.
Some people literally do notthink twice when it comes to the
words, and other people it'scompletely life-changing when

(01:49:18):
they hear it, you know?
Mac Miller, for example.
I I can tell you listen to hiswords sometimes, and you're
like, you can kind of feel whathe's feeling, right?
And it's only for people wholike choose to let words have
that power over them.
And then there's other peoplethat might listen to Mac Miller
that like his voice, like theylike the way he sounds, they

(01:49:39):
like his production value andstuff like that, they harp on
that.
And then there's some peoplewho like a blend of something in
between.
But when it comes tostorytelling, I I I like to
consider all those angles.
You approach it from a point ofempathy when you do it, to the
point where if someone islistening or like watching, or
you know, whatever the mediumis, like if they're Paying

(01:50:00):
attention to those tiny, tinydetails in your story.
If you know that's about tohappen, you better put in all
the work you can into thoselittle details.
But you should also make itconsumable for someone who
doesn't care about those detailsand just wants to see what's on
the surface.
A good analogy for that is likeiPhone cameras.
When you first open up theiPhone camera, the picture looks

(01:50:22):
crystal clear.
But I don't know if you'venoticed it, but when you zoom
in, the quality becomes likesome trash.
It gets blurry and blurrier asyou go.
Right?
I think of amateur storytellingas that entire concept where
like when you first see it, itlooks great.
But then once you zoom in,everything gets fuzzy.
Like, you know, there's likesome gaps in a concept, or

(01:50:43):
there's a gap in like acharacter arc or something like
that.
The less of that you have, thebetter of a storyteller you are.
Just our conversation goes intoso many rabbit holes.
If you approach storytellingthat way, you'll fill in those
gaps really well.
It's like anything.
When you give a presentation,they say make sure you're
presenting on something youactually know really well,
because whatever pops up in yourmind, whatever someone asks

(01:51:05):
you, you'll have an answer forit.
I feel like when you're doingstorytelling, you kind of have
to do the same thing.
Usually when I write stuff, Icreate a scenario around it.
Like even when I'm writing forother people, I'll be like,
Where is this happening?
Who's there?
What's your sobriety level?
I ask those questions so I canpaint a picture in my head and

(01:51:25):
use that as like that's mycanvas.
And whatever I put on top ofthat has to make sense within
that frame of mind.
A lot of things do that reallywell, and I feel like a lot of
things don't do that reallywell.
And like I said, words havepower, but only if you let them
have the power.
Going back to religion,although I don't really want to,
some religions use metaphorvery heavily, and people take it

(01:51:49):
too literally.
But they know like a lot ofactivists these days, they'll
take the literal interpretationof certain things and they'll
like plaster it and like shoveit down people's throats.
The Bible is a perfect example.
They'll be like, oh, it it sayslike you can't do this and you
can't do this in the Bible.
But half the time they're lyingabout stuff like that.

(01:52:09):
They're lying by omission,basically, where it's it doesn't
explicitly say that, they justmention the opposite of whatever
point, and they kind of likedrive that point home with
whoever.
But the point is, like,sometimes it's just a metaphor.
In the Bible, for example,people kill their firstborn son
every other day for like the thepoint of the story.
No one's asking you to do thatin real life.
There's like an underlyingmeaning between behind some of

(01:52:31):
that, you know.
In the case of that story, itcould have happened.
I don't know.
I'm not here to fact-checkanyone, but the point being is
if you zoom in and it makessense, and then you zoom out, it
doesn't make sense.
That can cause a lot ofdiscrepancy for people,
depending on what you'rereading.
I just gave the Bible as anexample because that's the one
that you know, the talks aroundabortion or the talks around
homosexuality, that the mostpopular thing that gets brought

(01:52:53):
up in conversation is what theBible says.
I'm not here to say yes or noto any of those things, but um I
feel like people can use thevagueness of a story or like the
specifics of a metaphor andtwist it into whatever you know
narrative they want to have.
And so there are pros to havingit being so vague as the Bible

(01:53:16):
and you know, whatever otherthings have it, to the point
where it's like sometimes thestory is meant to be openly
interpreted, but there's alsolike scenarios where people use
it negatively.
I'm not saying any anythingI've mentioned so far as being
used to target or negativelyaffect people, but that risk has
always been there, and that'skind of what people don't like
about it.
I take it for what it is, Iunderstand the context in which

(01:53:37):
it was written, and whenever Ido come across anything that
someone says that was based offof it, I interpret their opinion
with that lens in mind.
It goes back to like puttingyourself in other people's shoes
when you hear them out orwhatever it is.
You have to understand wherethe context is coming from, and
only then can you really knowyou can you can't make an

(01:53:58):
informed decision on anythingwithout understanding the full
context.
And if you do make a decisionbeforehand, it sort of
invalidates what that opinionis, you know what I mean?

Tom (01:54:07):
I feel like I'm really I do agree that the point of a lot
of these religious stories andjust stories in general are to
be metaphors that you can takeaway.
I do also, just to play devil'sadvocate with that idea, and
I'm speaking in generally, I dofeel like there is power to
performing an act in real lifein order for the metaphor to

(01:54:31):
resonate stronger.
So I feel like you're like, oh,they always kill their
firstborn son.
Yeah, maybe they didn't do it,maybe they did.
I'm not here to say thateither, but I'm just saying
there is power in actuallykilling your fucking firstborn
son for the sake of generationsof people to learn a lesson that
you like you carried outsomething that someone else
learned a lesson from, and ifyou didn't actually kill your

(01:54:53):
son and you just then theythought you were a liar, then it
wouldn't necessarily mean thesame amount.
So I feel like at times, uhstrictly like for the sake of
the metaphor, things haveactually happened that are
actually carried out, andtherefore it does give the
metaphor even more meaning, youknow what I'm saying?
But I want to still keep thisconversation focused on just

(01:55:14):
storytelling in general, right?
Yeah, that's that's where I'llput the brakes on the religious
talk because you were you'retalking about some other cool
things when it came to stories,and I think this ties into the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, whereit's like you were saying like
the best storytellers, they willit you zoom in and and the
pictures bl or it's not blurry,it's still crystal clear,
crystal clear.

(01:55:35):
And like the best books and thebest like novel, the best
stories basically that thebiggest following will be one
where like say like Game ofThrones, if you went and asked
the writer of the book aquestion about like, hey, in
chapter 15, it says Sarah walks,you know, to the next town, and

(01:55:55):
then it just skips to whenshe's in the town.
Be like, what happened on thislike that week she was walking
to town?
He'd be like, Oh, well,actually, and he'll know
everything, you know what I'msaying?
He's like, I just didn't have Ididn't I didn't have like the
ability to put it in the bookbecause I had to make the book
more concise.
But if you ask him all thedetails, the master of the
story, the the creator of thestory, he's he's not just
telling a story, he's creating auniverse, you know what I'm

(01:56:17):
saying, and then building astory around the universe he's
created.
So, as the god or creator ofthat universe, telling the story
is super easy because he justhas to tap in, he he knows all
the the corners and the detailsof that universe, and that's
what allows like someone likeMarvel to tell so many different
stories that intertanglebecause they've in their head,
or I guess Stan Lee did it,right?

(01:56:38):
Created a universe to go backto like Greek mythology.
The Greeks had a the normalworld, and then they had the
Greek mythological universe thatwas their MCU, and they had all
these gods, you know.
I'm saying, in the same waysthat we have all the Avengers,
those were the superheroes, andthose stories were real to them,
but it was this whole universethat intersected, and all these
different gods, timelines, andstories, they all fit together

(01:57:01):
because they created thisuniverse.
And and yeah, I just want tolike stick on that idea.
And you were gonna ask about myapp, we can do that at any
time, but I showed you what I'vebeen working on beforehand.
I'm I'm trying to build a spacestory into the app where your
workout programs align with thestory I'm telling.
And I feel a little bit heldback because I need to make sure

(01:57:22):
that the workout programsactually like they fit to a
certain topic.
Some of the topics would belike strength endurance, max
strength, stabilization, right?
And then different musclegroups, and there's a lot of
real life things about workoutprograms that I have to fit
these real life molds, right?
But I want to tell a story withit, so then I I I create this
universe with this spaceman,right?

(01:57:43):
And he has to go to thesedifferent planets, and and that
builds the story where he has towork out for whatever reason.
Right now, I'm making it up tofit the workout programs because
it's important for it actuallyto be tangible for people.
But at the same time, I feellike your advice to me would be
make sure that the actualuniverse I'm putting the
spaceman in is so detailed thateven if I don't talk about part

(01:58:07):
of the planet in the app, that Iknow in the back of my head
what's going on in this spaceuniverse that I've created to
place these workout programsinside of.
And the more detail I canimagine, the more I'll actually
be able to share that and bringforward for someone to latch on
to and and kind of resonatewith.

blasé (01:58:27):
This is where my mind kind of jumped when you were
just saying that, and like alsoafter you showed me the working
visual for your app, I'm superfascinated by space.
I watch all the documentaries,all the shows revolve, like even
the sci-fi ones that kind ofrevolve around it.
And like I want to almost saythat in collectively, if you
look, there's probably somethingstory-wise in all of those

(01:58:50):
where they had like a scientificor like a constraints of space
reason for doing certain manualactions.
And I feel like that would be acool way to like a cool thing
to integrate into uh your app.
And my the first one that comesto mind is Interstellar,
because you know they actuallywent planet hopping to find
signs of life or something, orlike, yeah, ways to like sustain

(01:59:10):
life in one all those places.
So I'm wondering, like, maybenot that idea specifically, but
I'm wondering is if yourworkout, I I don't know if your
workout has this yet, but likean end destination when it comes
to like you know, working outand building your body.
I I almost want to say that'snot there's there's never like a
finish line.
I feel like that should be likean ongoing thing.
Correct me if I'm wrong though,but like I'm wondering if

(01:59:33):
there's a way you can kind offactor in that concept of it
being never-ending to like theabyss of space.
I understand the tangibility ofhaving like a spaceman kind of
whether it's like an animationor just like what what this like
made-up character is doingwithin your app.
I feel like if you can addlayers to it in terms of where

(01:59:54):
where is this place in theuniverse, and how can you relate
that to the working out aspectof things itself?
Like, not to jump back to whatwe were talking about way before
when we were having our littlephilosophical question about you
know self-discovery.
You know how you were sayingthere was like phases, right?
Or like stages, where like oneis like you you just you do your
the self-discovery foryourself, you share, and then

(02:00:16):
you like do it for others,basically.

Tom (02:00:18):
Help them self-discovery, yeah.

blasé (02:00:20):
But when I I remember thinking when you said that,
it's like that's kind of like anendless cycle that doesn't just
stop once.
And you sort of mentioned itwith your app.
It's like the app is nevergonna be done, the workout
training is never gonna be done.
The common theme across allthose things we sort of talked
about is that it's never ending,and you have to find ways to
kind of make it exciting nomatter what, right?
So I'm wondering, and I feellike a lot of people gravitate,

(02:00:43):
no pun intended, towards topicsin space because it's so vast
and the possibilities are quiteliterally never ending.
So I'm wondering if there's away for you to write a story
around that that whole conceptof the universe ever expanding.
Your goals don't have to likenecessarily have a finish line,
it can just be like updated overtime.

(02:01:05):
I don't know if there's likeany connection there, but do you
do you get what I'm sayingthough?

Tom (02:01:08):
Yes, for sure.

blasé (02:01:09):
For me, that makes it so much more exciting.
A lot of people say the journeyis like the best part.
When you get to the end of, I'mpretty sure one of your
podcasts, the one of the peoplethat showed up on your podcast
said the same thing.
The destination is important,but the fulfilling part is going
on the journey to get there.
A part of me like feels like adread when I know I'm getting
towards the end of a journey,you know?
Like at the end of a familyvacation or like any vacation

(02:01:31):
for that matter, when you knowit's coming to a close, that you
kind of lose your excitementfor it and you might not even
see it through all the way as aresult.
You kind of want to want tohold on to like whatever you're
feeling right now, you know.
I can't speak specifically forthe fitness aspect of things,
but I would imagine there's likea similar thing where it's like
I put all this work getting mybody to look and feel one way

(02:01:52):
and get myself to like mentallyand physically feel a certain
way.
I don't want that to end.
What could you incorporate intoyour app to kind of give them
that rejuvenating sense thatlike this is not the end, this
is just a checkpoint in thelonger journey.
And I feel like, again, becausebecause I'm a fa like a space
fanatic, every the every singleshow, every documentary I've

(02:02:13):
watched, they're never they'renot saying Mars is like the end
of the line.
Like once they find a way tolive on Mars, they're not saying
that's the end.
That's just like the next bigstepping stone to allow them to
go even further out, you know?
So for me, that's reallyexciting.
One, because it's a hugeunknown, but somehow I still
want to like know more about it,you know?
And I feel like that's a verycompelling thing.

(02:02:34):
So I'm wondering if there's away to tie that.
It would like result in astory-driven thing, but like I'm
wondering if there's like afeeling that feeling if there's
a way to evoke that in the formof a story for your app as well.
I bet there is, but that's likemy immediate thoughts as far as
like you know, your fitness appand the space concept is
concerned.

Tom (02:02:54):
Yeah.
We're pretty deep into theinterview.
Uh so I if you want, I'llanswer that question with a
bunch of I'll start going alltangents about my app and
different ideas that I have.
Because if we're gonna go intomy app, I'm just gonna explode
with with shit.
But I feel like we're deepenough in now where I can do
that.
Um so I like what you're sayingabout keeping it constantly

(02:03:15):
like entertaining, right?
Because that was the goal I setout to do, right?
Which is it started withgamification.
So it's only in the past yearI've really kind of, and I think
starting with our interview andand other books I've read and
stuff, really started opening myeyes to the power of
storytelling.
Uh, another person, JordanPeterson, is um a psychologist,
I listened to his podcast, hekind of pushed me in this

(02:03:36):
direction too.
But originally, it I justwanted to do a video game,
right?
And obviously, video games dohave stories, and I knew that
there was potential in thefuture, but it started off as
like, okay, all I need to do isput points to working out, okay,
and now you get points forworking out, and then create
levels, and then make like allvideo games, make level one only

(02:03:59):
a hundred points, and makelevel two hundred points, and
like exponentially do it so thatlevel ninety-nine requires a
million points, and level nine ahundred requires a billion
points, you know what I'msaying?
So that you you can't reallyever get to ninety-nine and a
hundred, and then also I had aweekly leaderboard so that you
could compete with your friends,and that's when the sharing
aspect comes in.

(02:04:19):
So you're simultaneously tryingto move up in the levels, and
also if you get too deep intolike I'm level 78 and I'm not
gonna get to level 79 foranother month or two, you know
what I'm saying?
You have the weeklyleaderboard, the monthly
leaderboard, the yearlyleaderboard, and I think there's
a daily leaderboard too, sothat it always kept you engaged.
So just using like points andlevels and leaderboards, that

(02:04:41):
was the idea is to keep workingout always engaging.
And and that idea, it justsimply that never got fully
realized yet because it was soannoying to add all your sh
information into the workoutprogram that it never gained
that much traction.
And I still want to circle backto that idea or incorporate
that idea again once I canintegrate smart technology.

(02:05:03):
It's I feel like it's still alittle bit ahead of its time.
And someone will fucking inventit.
I've said this before on thepodcast.
Once all the hardware can is isavailable to track all that
shit for you, then my app, thatversion of the app is gonna be
really, really fun.
To because you don't have togo, you don't have to worry
about gathering the damn data.
And so that's just kind of agiven I put on the shelf and

(02:05:24):
I'll come back to like smarttechnology at some point in my
life, because I think all thesesensors and stuff is gonna be
easier to build.
But then I randomly was like,well, how about without even
tracking the data, how can Iengage someone with exercise in
such a deep, interesting waythat it doesn't, there's no it's
there's not necessarily pointsto it.

(02:05:44):
And then I started thinkingabout storytelling and how
there's these video games whereit's basically just a movie.
It's not about points, it'sabout like these cutscenes and
and this like basically it's nota very hard video game, but you
just go through this almostlike extended movie where you're
kind of interacting with it.
And I was like, what if I madesomething like that?
Yeah, that's when I went downthe space route, and so certain

(02:06:06):
ways of your making it lastforever.
Obviously, I could just make somuch narrative content that you
could never possibly finish itall in your lifetime.
That and that'll probablyhappen someday, you know, once I
can put together a company anda team and stuff like that.
But like at the moment, right,the it's a four-week program,
and it teaches you the fourdifferent weeks, focus on four

(02:06:26):
different core concepts ofexercising, and then it goes
through there's a littlenarrative part for every week
and day, you know, and thatconnects with the planet or like
a an enemy or something to dowith space, right?
In some in some way, and thenI'm wondering if I can take that
blueprint of narrative and say,okay, now anyone can make a

(02:06:49):
workout, a four-week workoutprogram as long as it kind of
fits this structure, and someoneelse can come and make a
completely different workoutprogram and layer that on top of
my story now.
Like my trainer, maybe.
I have this trainer I pay for.
He can make a four-week programthat's way better than mine.
And you can choose mine, or youcan choose him, and you can
play that story again, right?
Because books and movies andstories are fun to read twice
for some reason, especially ifthey're a little bit different.

(02:07:11):
So that's one way I'm thinkingit could be a variation.
Also, you layer in the pointson top of that.
You could try to beat your highscore every time, things like
that.
Also, there is just thepotential to create more and
more and more and more spacestories all the time.
But also, I don't know if younoticed, I posted like a zombie
picture at one point.
It's I'm also not I I want thespace story to be a mini game

(02:07:32):
within my Drive Fitness app, myDrive Fitness universe.
So the leaderboard, the pointsystem, all of that is now like
the background of the app,right?
And it's like more like aplatform for stories.
And so I have this whole zombieidea.
Space would be lifting, and thezombie idea would be cardio.
So you could run a mile everyday, and and every time you run,

(02:07:55):
or you get there was a bunch ofmetrics.
I took like steps, the distanceyou ran, maybe how much weight
you lost, a bunch of otherstatistics that deal with
cardio.
And I created a whole narrativeplan for a zombie universe
where there's certain likecrawler zombies, and there's
certain like um what's itcalled?
Just like each planet had itsown gravity and and the lifting

(02:08:16):
was different for that planet,each each town you went in had a
new zombie in it, and there wasthe zombies that explode, that
means you have to sprint fastaway from the zombies that
explode.
The ones that crawl, you haveto have good endurance and and
run for a long time.
I I created this whole otherworld that had not just like
more space stories, but it was awhole nother universe.
Unlike the Marvel cinematicuniverse, where what ties them

(02:08:39):
all together is that thesesuperheroes all exist together.
What ties all of my differentuniverses together is the fact
that they're all tied to myfitness data.
You see what I'm saying?

blasé (02:08:48):
Yeah.

Tom (02:08:48):
And I had a I had even another idea of these great
pyramids, you know what I'msaying, where you were a you
were a civil.
I like the idea of being Godand like overseeing like a
civilization.
In fact, in some of the spacenarratives, I want uh have you
seen like in in Interstellar,you mentioned that where they go
to a planet and then they goback off the planet and a lot of
time has lapsed.
Yeah, I want to use thatconcept to like every time you

(02:09:09):
go onto a planet and go back,the civilization grows and grows
and grows.
You go back every 30 years or ahundred years.
That way you can essentiallyplay God and like set things up
in the story, you know what I'msaying, of the video game and
like see a civilization.

blasé (02:09:22):
No, and see how it like different episodes.

Tom (02:09:23):
So now you're you're viewing this planet across like
generation.
It's like a it's like a storyabout different generations, not
about a single person.
Yeah.
I just think about all thesedifferent ways I could tell
stories within those contexts,is but like they do it in Rick
and Morty too, in in someepisodes.

blasé (02:09:38):
I was just gonna say, I'm like, that sounds a lot like
Rick and Morty.
So, like these differentstories that you have, is the
leaderboard keeping track ofeverything per universe, or is
it just collective?
Or has that not been integratedinto your leaderboard?

Tom (02:09:52):
It's all gonna integrate.
So, like because I wanted thestories to feel more like
cinematic, I took out adding inall of the data.
But in the end of the day, oncethe smart technology can track
everything, then so right now,if you want to go through the
space story, you don't have toenter in any data.
You just literally go nextexercise, next exercise, next
exercise.

(02:10:13):
It's more like you just watchand learn because that's what
people want out of an app todayin today's day and age.
They want to see an exerciseand do it, they don't want to
take the time to like tracktrack everything.
Even I don't want to fuckingtrack it myself.

blasé (02:10:25):
That's why Fitbits are popular too, right?

Tom (02:10:28):
So in the point system, I have a whole equation that gives
you more points if it's arecord or if it you do more
weight or more reps or thingslike that.
Since the app won't knowexactly what weight, rep, all
that stuff you do, you know,right at the moment, I'm just
gonna reward you a certainamount of points for completing
it.
Or I'll give you like achallenge.
It'll be like beat the beginnermode, and you get like a
challenge.
But what will happen is thatonce it tracks it for you, then

(02:10:51):
I can integrate my point systemback into the stories too.
So you'll just be going fromstory to story to story.
But just as if you were usingthe app back when you had to
mainly enter it in, since thetechnology is tracking it for
you, there will be a backgroundsystem of points and a
leaderboard that will always bethere in the background, no
matter what game you're playingor what story you're following,
or what workout you're doing.

(02:11:11):
Because I have this big assequation that tracks points.
It makes sense.

blasé (02:11:15):
Yeah, I mean, even like the immediate thing I was
thinking of for some reason waslike Candy Crush.
When you play that game, youknow how to win, you know how to
get points, but I don't thinkanyone's actively paying
attention to the points untilthe very end when you see like
exactly the results at the endof the the session.
And also with that game, theymake it seem never-ending, also,

(02:11:35):
but really that's just theirin-story explanation for our
developers haven't come up withmore levels yet.
So it's kind of like I I feellike you can definitely work
that angle as well.
But like, yeah, there'sdefinitely a parallel with that,
which is interesting.

Tom (02:11:47):
And that's what I want the points to do.
Like in the first iteration ofmy app, the points were
everything.
You remember?
It was literally just acalculator that made up points,
and like it was like, hey, thisis how many points you got, and
it could remember your history.
But no one's really gonna careabout points, no one's really
Gonna care about history in theend, or at least when they first
start using my app, you wouldgo there and you'd be like, Wow,
a space story.
Oh my god, you like now I havethis thing to pull you in, and

(02:12:09):
it's the story, and that's whyI'm focused so much on stories,
is because I think it's thestory is actually the most
important part.
It's like if I can make astory, a space story that's so
good that and the only way youcan look at my space story is if
you fucking actually work out,actually, because the technology
will track you and it won't letyou progress through the story
unless you have proper form andpush yourself as as hard as you

(02:12:31):
can be pushed, then you willhave actually have to do it,
then you'll get through thestory, and then you'll just
start playing these stories andand different like storylines,
and then it could be years lateryou realize, oh shit, they're
tracking my points.
And like as the stories startto like get less exciting for
you, you realize, oh wait,there's certain ways I can get
more points by doing this, andlike, you know, there's certain

(02:12:52):
there's certain level ofenjoying any game.
I can pick up Rocket League andplay a game right now and put
it down and be like, cool,whatever.
And then someone else isworried about like his monthly
stats on the leaderboard and hishis group of like his tribe,
and like you know, he's wearingthe skin that represents
something outside of the game,especially like communities.
Like, I'm sure that there couldbe like teams and com like

(02:13:12):
we've we played around with teamfeatures and things like that,
different communities or likegroups within the app and that
integrate into the game indifferent ways, or it could just
be like you're like, hey, Iwant to see what Tom did, and
you can just click through itand not even work out.
I want people to be able tolike touch it like a hot stove
or spend their whole livesobsessing over it in their
entire life.
I I want it to be it's gotta beboth, you know what I'm saying?

(02:13:33):
And that's what you're talkingabout that zoom in on the
detail, like you know.

blasé (02:13:37):
I feel like you've put in a lot of thought into it, and
it's really cool to hear howit's kind of like fleshed out
like that.
I feel like that zoom in, zoomout thing.
I said that on a whim, but Ifeel like it actually kind of
touches on many aspects of lifeand like projects that we've
both been working on, which iskind of cool to see.

Tom (02:13:56):
Yeah, I mean, that's originally why I started the
podcast because I was like,dude, I could talk about this
idea every single day for therest of my life, and I would
never run out of like detail totalk about.
And it as I started doing thepodcast, I realized the best way
to do a podcast is actually tocare about the other person and
and listen to what they'reinterested in, and like the
audience enjoys it, and it justmakes for a better listen when

(02:14:19):
the host actually like gets theother person to share things
about themselves because I'm thehost, you know what I'm saying?
My listeners they hear a littlebit about the app and the the
gym idea like every episode,they get a little bit of it, you
But they're they they don'treally want to always hear me
talk about it.
I like it when it connects, butI just knew that personally I
needed to talk through ideas andget them out and and get

(02:14:40):
inspired by other people and andconnect things and and have
people like you be like, Whathave you ever thought about it
like this?
And like I wanted every guestto come on and just talk about
my shit.
I've gotten better at being ahost, and like I I think it is
better this way, and it's kindof like they say you need to get
out of your own way, yeah.
Because, like I was saying, weall are the universe, so I I
can't I gotta be the universeand care about blase.

(02:15:01):
I can't just be Tom and careabout my idea.
For the betterment of everyonelistening, and for the
betterment of us, I can't justrant for three hours, even
though I could, I shouldn't, butit's tempting not to.

blasé (02:15:12):
Yeah, but I I feel like like especially with you know,
you you kind of just went intoit to like a pretty good extent.
I feel like that adds we werewe were definitely talking about
this before, but like it addsthe context that you need.
You've told me off off cameralike a lot about your app, and
I'm publicly saying all thethings about the music stuff,
and we're both saying to eachother, like, yeah, that does

(02:15:33):
line up with each other.
And to someone who doesn't havethat background, like obviously
if they've been following yourpodcast for like long term, I
feel like obviously they'regonna be able to pick up on what
you're doing, but like forsomeone who's listening to this
episode for the first time,having that context probably
connects a lot of dots, youknow, for new time listeners or
whatever.
So I feel like you know, wewere also talking about timing.

(02:15:54):
I feel like as long as you saythe right things at the right
time, it doesn't matter what itis.
Yeah, it's insightful because Iliterally didn't even know you
had this because even when youwere saying the space thing
before, I didn't realize thatwas like just one avenue of a
bunch, like you mentioned thezombie the zombie, like an
apocalyptic world approach toit.
Like I didn't even know thatwas on the table.
So you have like a lot ofdifferent worlds that you can

(02:16:16):
kind of tap into for differenttypes of workouts, and it keeps
a track of everything.
What I was gonna say to you ismaybe you should look into like
the Jackbox type of approach toit all.
Where I mean, are you familiarwith the Jackbox games like uh
Quiplash and all those differentthings?
It's like a group that one'sgroup oriented, but the point is
it's like they have differentthemes to play different like

(02:16:38):
game night games online and it'sinternet involved and like what
is it?

Tom (02:16:43):
It's called Jackbox.

blasé (02:16:44):
Give me an example of what I can example of the game
is like Two Truths and a Lie.
There's just like a digitalentity.
There is a story revolvingaround it.
The best one I can it's like atrivia game, I forget what it's
called, but it's basicallyaround revolving around a horror
game.
And it's like, have you you'veseen like uh what's that kind of
thing?
Saw, right?
Where he like plays like thegames or whatever, or like it's

(02:17:06):
basically like a like a deathtrap escape room, basically.
All those movies.
So it's like that, but liketrivia instead.
It takes boy basic, boringtrivia, which like depending on
who you are, you might likethat, you might not, but it
reels people in with thestorytelling of a serial killer
forcing you to play trivia soyou can like survive with your
life.
And so like that's like a verydumbed-down example, obviously.

(02:17:28):
But all the different gamesthat you can get in that suite
kind of have a it reminds me ofwhat you're doing because you're
kind of describing likedifferent workouts with
different scenes and settings.
And um, they also do the samething, they they like you don't
have to pay attention to thepoints as much, it keeps track
of that for you.
But the story is what drives itto like for people to want to

(02:17:49):
keep coming back to that gamespecifically.

Tom (02:17:51):
Here's the thing Can someone else come in and make a
story within Jackbox?

blasé (02:17:58):
So one uh some of the games are very user input heavy.
So like one of them it'sbasically they give you a prompt
and you have to give like afunny answer, and then the rest
of the people around you vote onwhich one's funnier, you know?
And there's like differentiterations of that.
That one, it's it's just theformat, the platform, that's all
they're providing.
The users have to create thefun out of it, basically.

(02:18:19):
So, like in your specificsituation, you obviously you
need the regiment of whateverworkout um kind of baked into
the concept, but as far as likewhat the character's name is,
what planet they go to, maybe,like that's kind of like you
know, that could be somethingthat like a user gets to decide,
you know.
Like, for example, you havelike workout circuits, correct

(02:18:39):
me if I'm wrong, I I don't knowmy terminology, but like are
those like interchangeable, ordo you have to do it in a
certain order?

Tom (02:18:45):
Right now, the way it's set up, and I want it to be like
the ultimate amount offlexibility and a program, like
in a structure, but right now,within a day, an exercise day,
you have to do those exercisesin that order, but within a
week, I have it flexible so thatyou can do any day of the week

(02:19:05):
in any order.
So let's say it's chest, back,and shoulders, those three days.
You can pick any of those days.
I could do chest first, backfirst, or shoulders first.
It doesn't matter.
You could do them any day ofthe week, right?
Within that exercise, you haveto you have to do them in the
order that I've laid out of theexercises, because I have a

(02:19:25):
there's a philosophy to that.
And then you can't move on toweek two until you finish all
three of those, though.
The story though parallels witha certain story aspect
parallels with the back day, acertain story parallels with the
chest day, and a certain storywill parallel with the leg with
the shoulder day or the leg day,whatever it is.
Um, and and you'll see thosestories out of order, actually.

(02:19:46):
Let's say on chest day you runinto some aliens, let's say on
back day you have to carrysomething, and then on shoulder
day you have to like dosomething else.
I don't I don't even know, butyou'll see those three things
out of order.
But then those at the end ofthe week, those three things
will add up, and then there'llbe a bigger narrative plot at
the end of those three days, andthen each week has its own

(02:20:06):
narrative plot, and you have todo those in order.
You can't go do do like weekthree without doing week two.
So we play we've played aroundwith letting you switch the
order of the exercises.
We've played we played aroundwith lots of different aspects
of this.
There's so many differentcombinations of ways I could go
about it, but I do want it to behere's what you should do, like

(02:20:26):
a structure, but also beultimately as flexible as you
need it to be because everyone'sdifferent.
That's really hard to do.

blasé (02:20:34):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, basically what you justsaid is kind of what I was
getting at.
So, like, that's awesome.
What I was getting, the onlyspecific thing that I wanted to
add to that was like it soundslike you you can dictate order
on a weekly basis, just not on adaily basis, with like the
specific workouts or whatever.
But like the game that I wastalking to about, they basically
have like sassy or like youknow, depending on who you are,

(02:20:56):
I guess.
If you're into like sass, likedark humor or whatever it is,
like if you want to incorporatethat into the story depending on
the map or whatever, like youcan do that.
But basically, it would be likeif you avoided leg day on
purpose, you know, is there afun way to like kind of poke fun
at you for like, oh what'swrong with your legs?
How come you didn't start withleg day or something like that?
Like what you said, everyone'sdifferent.
Some people might not likethat, some people might even

(02:21:17):
find that discouraging, so youmight not even want that at all.
But like the point I was tryingto get to is like the game
responds to your selections andadapts the narration as far as
the story goes.
The process of the game andlike the order in which you do
things, that is somewhatpredetermined, but the dialogue
and how you perceive the flow ofevents as a story do change

(02:21:39):
based on actual user input.

Tom (02:21:42):
So there is outside of the story, and like basically the
platform that I had alreadybuilt the last time we talked,
there is basically free modetoo, right?
And and there are just workoutprograms that are just workout
programs that that just havenothing to do with any story,
they're just points and workoutprograms, and you could even I
even have it so that you couldjust pick out an exercise and do

(02:22:03):
that and enter in some data forif maybe you only care about
your bench or something likethat.
So you do within the world ofmy app, you do have the free
reign to do whatever you want.
You don't have to play a story,and you can just do squats
every day.
And we have played around withideas.
A big thing for me is like Ihave these animations, these
avatars, and by the way, a a bigthing in how I think I might

(02:22:24):
make money off of this is makethese these animations and these
skins a big deal and NFTs andtry to do something within the
world of interesting avatars,right?
And one of the ideas we playedaround with, we haven't executed
this yet, but like say you do abunch of chess exercises, your
little avatar gets a biggerchest.
If you are unbalanced, youravatar will start to look
unbalanced.
There we're kind of motivatedto like do balanced workout

(02:22:46):
programs.
And that's like the power ofthe story is someone can just,
it's like you're going along forthe ride.
You know, I put it together,but hopefully, eventually, even
someone who's more of an expertthan me to put the actual
programs together in the storiesand that you can just kind of
enjoy the ride and have faiththat you're gonna come out
balanced on the end.
You're not gonna be like youcan't skip leg day in the story
because first of all, like thenthe story won't let you

(02:23:08):
continue.
And therefore, you have faiththat uh you're doing balanced
routines with you could justenjoy the story, basically.
But sure, if you wanted to belike, fuck the story, I'm just
gonna go do chess every day.
There are funny ways I thinkthat we can incorporate making
your avatar look weird orwhatever it, you know, or just
funny challenges that are likekind of like blooper challenges.
We give out medals for goodthings, we could also give out

(02:23:29):
medals for like always skips legday medal.
I think there are fun ways toincorporate what you're saying,
but I want the story to have aperfect balanced regimen for
whatever your goals are.
And then one more thing Iwanted to say because it's a
cool idea I've never had before,but you were saying, like, is
it like this game or that gameor whatever?
And I I do want to create thespace game and the zombie game

(02:23:52):
or whatever, but also what I'mreally trying to do is be like
epic games, like someone whojust has the platform where
other people come and makegames.
Like, I don't even I just wantto show other people like how
you could create a story arounda fitness program and be like,
look what you can do, and thenhave personal trainers come in
and make programs that they canplay on my story, and then by

(02:24:14):
the way, have other like artsartists and creators and
storytellers come in and belike, wait, can I add a bunch of
image like use all the imageslike I was showing you?
Can I add my own images?
And instead of a space story,can I do a fairy tale?
It's like, yes, that too.
And that's when it'll get tothe point where you like you
were saying, there's alifetime's worth of of narrative
and content to go throughbecause you you give all the

(02:24:35):
trainers the tool to make to addall their programs to stories,
you give all storytellers thetools to build stories around
programs, and then hopefully ifI can just do it right, and and
it'll not it'll just go crazy.
Because I I think the guy fromAmazon said this with AWS the
best companies are ones thatgive people tools and empower
people.
So I don't want to necessarilybe like, I'm Tom, I have a cool

(02:24:58):
space idea.
Look at me, you should play myspace idea.
I'm like, no, I am building aplatform for you to build your
own story and your own programsand to interact and enjoy
everyone else's.
But the things that have to beconsistent are the points in the
background and eventually thesmart technology.
There's no creative way aroundthe smart technology and and and
that has to precisely track allyour shit.

(02:25:20):
Yeah.
But there's so many otherthings that I want to build
around that that anyone can grabonto and and run with.

blasé (02:25:27):
The thing you said about it turning from just an app with
the story you made into kind oflike a platform for other
people to use as a tool.
I feel like that's I thinkthat's kind of like the way to
go.
You're not only just providingvalue for other people, but
you're giving them an avenue tolike create value for themselves
as well, to some extent, youknow?

(02:25:48):
That's a cool source of incomeas well.
If you want your program to bein my app, again, I'm I'm a big
advocate for um collaboratingwith people.
That's a huge way to do that,which is cool.
But also what you were justsaying in general, that's kind
of what I was getting at withthe label stuff too.
I've done it before, I'm proudof it, but I don't want to harp
on it.
The point is, I can do the samefor you with the exact same

(02:26:11):
platform that I did it formyself.
It's a recurring theme, butproof by example, you know?
And I feel like you're sort ofdoing that.
And you know, if I was atrainer, like I feel like you're
you're hitting off all theright points for me to want to
like invest my own time and putmy own self-created program into
your platform in somethingthat's already accessible to
people on like a storytellinglevel.

(02:26:32):
So that's really cool.

Tom (02:26:34):
Yeah, man, there's so many potential business opportunities
packaged within my idea thatit's almost overwhelming.
I do think that Drive Fitnesscan be like a billion-dollar
company someday because there'sso many different layers of
opportunities to create, toprovide people value, to
innovate.
The fitness industry is justgonna do so much cool shit over

(02:26:56):
the next hundred years, with orwithout me.
It's gonna be so cool, man.
We're just scratching thesurface.
In the 70s, they would justjump rope and shit.
Bodybuilders weren't even athing until like the 50s because
we didn't even get to this likestandard of like living.
We were just fucking surviving,you know.
I obviously like gladiators andshit back in the day were fit
and stuff, but it was different.
Like we've never reached thislevel of comfortability to make

(02:27:17):
ourselves uncomfortable withfitness.
We're just now comfortableenough to we all sit at our
desks and do the metaverse andstuff and distract ourselves
from reality because society isso great, but like we're also
about to be so technologicallygreat that we can properly
challenge ourselves the rightways.
And that's with all the thingswe were talking about with
religion, and it ties intoeverything because you were

(02:27:39):
saying that like something badcan be good, right?
Or whatever your situation is,it's all about how you phrase
it, or you know, we we had a lotof conversations about that,
but like people need tostruggle, people need to and
people need to physicallystruggle to feel the best in
life.
At times we struggle too much.
Now we're in a society where wedon't struggle enough, and
that's why everyone's depressedthese days.
So many people have anxiety ordepression.

(02:28:00):
If we can innovate in thefitness field in in really
artistically like cool,innovative ways, and then we can
really truly enjoy our ownphysical suffering again, and
then we won't have as muchmental health and all the all
the other problems is like thiswill solve so many problems if
it can happen the right way, youknow?

blasé (02:28:18):
Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
We're getting so comfortable tothe point where like I think
people do crave like a littlebit of discomfort, like you
can't really grow without likesome form of discomfort.
And I feel like what you'redoing currently kind of you know
harps on that idea to the pointI feel like when people say
harp on something, like it makesit sound like it's bad, but I
in this case I think it's likeyou know it's something that

(02:28:39):
people don't realize they needin their life more.
Yeah, like for me, I was justtelling you before, I'm like, I
need to like get my eating shittogether.
I don't have anythingmotivating me to do it.
Everything we've talked aboutfor your app so far, I feel like
are all things to get peopleengaged and to like stay
motivated and doing workoutroutines.
So I I think that's reallycool.

Tom (02:28:58):
You talk about the Marvel cinematic universe, obviously it
starts with Marvel, but Disneyis a company that runs that, and
I love the company Disney, andI love the guy himself.
I'm like obsessed with Walt.
And one of the reasons I likeWalt is because he was just so
innovative.
At a time where people likereally needed something to
entertain them, he didn't justcreate animated movies, he

(02:29:21):
created a new medium forartistic expression.
There was no animations.
He put the pictures togetherand made the pictures move in a
certain way, and he gave peoplethe tools to actually like
imagine squirrels and things,whatever you want.
It's not a damn movie, it'sanimate.
It's animation was so freakingdifferent than anything that
ever existed on this planet.
And near the end of his life, Ifeel like he was aware that

(02:29:45):
animation was so powerful thatit's almost distracting, it
almost pulls us out of real lifetoo much.
And he was building likeelectronic stuff, and he was
like getting into engineeringway more, his imagineers and
stuff like that.
And I feel like if he had keptgoing, he would have hit on
certain ideas that I have.
And I think Marvel is like theextent of how because it's
basically animation at thatpoint, bro.

(02:30:06):
All the CGI and stuff, it islike we started with I think it
was Snow White or something, oneof Disney's first animated
films, and now these Marvelmovies are the extent of that.
But guess what?
I don't know if we were at warback then or something, like the
quality of life wasn't as highas it was today.
But now our quality of life isso high, and and and these
movies are so entertaining,they're so good.
There's so many movies, right?

(02:30:27):
How many if you added up allthe Marvel movies?
That's like 48 hours.
No, it's like a hundred hoursof content.
And all the TV shows, it'sprobably like 180 hours of
content.
So we have so much entertainingcontent, right?
Netflix, Hulu, all thesethings, we have so much content
that all we want to do is sitthere and do nothing.
And everyone's wrapped up inthis cool animation paradigm
shift that happened a while ago.

(02:30:48):
But it's like, dude, the newentertainment needs to be
entertainment that helps youalso get physically in shape.
Like, I don't want to watchIron Man, I want to be Iron Man,
I want to feel like I am IronMan.
I want to go through Iron Man'sstory and have to get in shape
in order to fight all the guyshe fought and look, and I want
to actually look like him.
Well, that's what I'm trying todo.
That's what I'm trying to likeimmerse video games and

(02:31:09):
entertainment into like hardworkout programs to bring you
into the universe.

I get you, yeah, for sure.

Tom (02:31:15):
And that's what I think the metaverse and all that shit is
gonna help.
And I think there's a there's alot of shit cut like it's all
gonna inter interconnect, butlike I don't know if I'm gonna
be able to do it, but that'slike the next level of
entertainment.
Entertainment that also hasphysical benefits and is not
just sitting on your on your assfor three hours.
That's not like the true likepeak of our our society, is just
making

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blasé: Storytelling, Producing, Programming and how they relate to God | #29

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