Speaker 1: This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come
Speaker 1: and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually
Speaker 1: it's about an hour and a half and I don't
Speaker 1: have an opener because these guys cost money. But what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway,
Speaker 1: come and see me live on the Pants on Fire
Speaker 1: Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now, and
Speaker 1: we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
Speaker 1: go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you
Speaker 1: on the road, My DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson.
Speaker 1: The name of this podcast is joy. I talk to
Speaker 1: interesting people about what brings them happiness. My guest in
Speaker 1: the podcast today I've been aware of for a long time.
Speaker 1: His band We're on my old late night show when
Speaker 1: it was so well, you'll hear this story anyway.
Speaker 2: Please welcome Damien Kulash from Okaygo. Damien.
Speaker 1: First of all, let me apologize. Don't get too close
Speaker 1: to your microphone because I'm feeling but a little poorly.
Speaker 1: I've got I think I've got a cold, but it
Speaker 1: could be leprosy.
Speaker 2: It could be anything. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We've got many symptoms. Start with a code.
Speaker 2: How are you you? Okay?
Speaker 3: I'm well, I'm better than I'm better than that. I
Speaker 3: don't think I'm I have leprosy?
Speaker 1: Okay, well that's good. Are you a hypochondriact? And anyway, No,
Speaker 1: not particularly many artists are. You know. I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's something to do with a creative mind
Speaker 1: getting bored and you go.
Speaker 3: It could be we're.
Speaker 2: Just the delicacy of our sensitive little souls.
Speaker 1: Now I see, we're we're going to embark on an
Speaker 1: existential crisis. Hey, I know that you did the old
Speaker 1: late night show like years ago, right, Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: doing Late Night and it was right at this It
Speaker 1: was before this two shell pass.
Speaker 2: It was before I mean it.
Speaker 1: Was really it was quite early, right, long time ago. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was when the show was so small. The band
Speaker 1: had to play and then you guys had to go away,
Speaker 1: and then we put the late night thing in and
Speaker 1: then we we shot it out of order so that
Speaker 1: the band played first. That was right, right, That was
Speaker 1: you were doing that? That sounds right to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've had kids done sense, So I don't remember anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting, so have I And I remember Patchy Bits,
Speaker 1: who were a great band.
Speaker 2: Patchy Bits they were they were really lovely.
Speaker 1: But listen, I think that was interesting because I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I've known of the band, and even right at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of Late Night, I always kind of
Speaker 1: like I would, I will say yes or no to
Speaker 1: the bands, and so I was very familiar with Okay
Speaker 1: go very early, or I thought early on. I mean
Speaker 1: imagine it was not early on for you, but since
Speaker 1: then the kind of performance nature of what you do,
Speaker 1: because you're not like a normal rock star. First of all,
Speaker 1: I can see you're in your kitchen. That's and you
Speaker 1: have a throw blank on your sofa. This is true,
Speaker 1: This is true. This is not my own home, but
Speaker 1: it's not no.
Speaker 3: Wow, there's been fires in Los Angeles as Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Did you get evacuated? Did you get into trouble?
Speaker 3: I did? I you know, I don't. My home is
Speaker 3: still there and is safe. But my kids' school is
Speaker 3: very close to where the fires were. And while I
Speaker 3: am not a hypochondriactor, and I'm very cautious with their
Speaker 3: exposure to heavy metals and flying asbestos and so forth.
Speaker 2: That's that's exactly what I fail about it.
Speaker 1: Because I lived in Ala for years and years and
Speaker 1: years and years, and I still have a lot of
Speaker 1: friends there who have moved out. I would have been
Speaker 1: I would be rified now to just be there breathing
Speaker 1: that stuff.
Speaker 3: And it is nasty stuff. And there's a big push
Speaker 3: towards normalcy, which I completely understand. Like everybody wants life
Speaker 3: to keep going, and so the fastest you can open,
Speaker 3: you know, the faster you can open the schools, the
Speaker 3: faster you can get everybody back into their sort of
Speaker 3: like routine, the better. But we are opting out of
Speaker 3: that for a little while we're in Santa Barbara because
Speaker 3: it is it feels too toxic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would be totally doing that as well. I'm
Speaker 1: in London and I've just been on the Tube, the
Speaker 1: London Underground.
Speaker 2: That's pretty toxic too. Actually, I think that's where I live,
Speaker 2: where am I go my.
Speaker 3: Cold so much much more romantic type of toxic it is.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like it's toxic, but it's also
Speaker 1: a Richard Curtis movie. You can see lots of little
Speaker 1: rich of Curtiss movies going on all over the subway.
Speaker 1: I think, by the way, that would be a good
Speaker 1: place for an okay go video would be the subway
Speaker 1: jumping leaping across trains instead of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why we haven't.
Speaker 2: Fun of it?
Speaker 1: Are you still doing the super kind of complicated and
Speaker 1: like performance are videos are?
Speaker 3: Yes? We just released a new video two weeks ago
Speaker 3: last week the week before, yeah, two weeks ago, which
Speaker 3: is it features sixty four clips on sixty four phones,
Speaker 3: all laid out on the floor as a mosaic.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I haven't seen it yet. What's
Speaker 1: what's the name of the song that goes with it?
Speaker 2: It's called a Stone only rolls Downhill?
Speaker 3: Okay? And it is the opening lines are I wish
Speaker 3: I could say, would all be all right?
Speaker 1: That you're concerned about the state of the I mean,
Speaker 1: I think everybody's concerned about the state of the world.
Speaker 3: Are you not concerned?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I haven't.
Speaker 1: No, I'll tell you I've been I've been bored in
Speaker 1: the urself of everyone who listens to this podcast. But
Speaker 1: I've been reading a lot of historical novels, particularly the
Speaker 1: work of gor Vidal, and it's been bad for a
Speaker 1: long time. I feel like this is not it's always crazy.
Speaker 1: I feel like I think like I'm getting a sense,
Speaker 1: a little bit of a sense of perspective. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'm worried, but if you look at it, it's it's
Speaker 1: always been pretty scary for humans on this planet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you think it's worse, I do, really, I think
Speaker 3: it is. I think it is more. I think that
Speaker 3: the things we are, I think we're at some tipping
Speaker 3: points into some some places we may not be able
Speaker 3: to return from as easily. I think it is.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, that has always been bad, and
Speaker 2: it has always been crazy.
Speaker 3: Uh. But I but I think that the I am
Speaker 3: very worried about the governmental changes happening in the US
Speaker 3: right now. That having a you know, a president.
Speaker 2: That acts more like a fearer is not great.
Speaker 3: And and I do think that that that climate stuff
Speaker 3: is passing tipping points that really change the way humans live.
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily think like I'm not running from a
Speaker 3: specific fire as much as I am the toxicity that
Speaker 3: comes after that and the social changes that come after that.
Speaker 3: You know, I think that a lot of what's happening,
Speaker 3: you know, I think the let's see what's the right is.
Speaker 3: I think the war in Syria is really a climate war.
Speaker 3: I think that the migration problems at the southern border
Speaker 3: are really are really climate problems that when you have
Speaker 3: the reason you have MS thirteen in taking over cities
Speaker 3: in South America is because there's an influx of people
Speaker 3: from agricultural areas that are no longer used for agriculture
Speaker 3: because they've been in drop for so long. So it
Speaker 3: seems like a social problem at the border of the US,
Speaker 3: but it's actually a climate problem globally. So that's what
Speaker 3: I'm worried about.
Speaker 2: Well, what would you do?
Speaker 1: You have any ideas about how you think a solution
Speaker 1: may be achieved?
Speaker 3: You just write pop songs. That's the way to do it.
Speaker 1: But I think it's kind of interesting because I think
Speaker 1: nobody is worried about I mean, any sentient being. I
Speaker 1: think it has to be worried about climate change because
Speaker 1: it's it's the planet on which we live. But the
Speaker 1: the idea that I I've had this discussion with my kids,
Speaker 1: who are a bit probably a bit older than yours,
Speaker 1: I think, but that I feel at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: all of our frothy entreaties to you know, get your
Speaker 1: grandma to separate our you know, plastic bag from the
Speaker 1: you know, the.
Speaker 2: Eggs is not It's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: And I think at this point we've now reached a
Speaker 1: it's an engineering problem. We have to actually we have
Speaker 1: to actually intervene in some way. And I think that's
Speaker 1: kind of that's kind of fascinating to me because I
Speaker 1: feel that nothing's going to change until it becomes profitable.
Speaker 1: I feel like climate change has to become profitable for
Speaker 1: someone to say, well, we'll pay you five hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars to do some cloud seeding and bring down the
Speaker 1: temperature of the North Atlantic by three degrees, and then
Speaker 1: someone will do it because it can be done.
Speaker 3: I hope you're what do you think then?
Speaker 4: I think that solar is already cheaper than than fossil fuels,
Speaker 4: and yet we keep opening Newel's and trying to dig more.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that the I agree is systemic.
Speaker 3: I do not think that the that that recycling our
Speaker 3: you know that I don't. I don't think this choice
Speaker 3: should be on the consumer. I don't think it is
Speaker 3: a consumer choice. You can't expect everybody in the world
Speaker 3: to make the best decision for the planet. What you
Speaker 3: need to do is is actually make good structural decisions
Speaker 3: for the planet. I am not super bullish on geoengineering stuff.
Speaker 3: I'm but I'm also not a scientist. I just sort
Speaker 3: of feel like that those geoengineering solutions are often used
Speaker 3: as a sort of solve for like, I know it's
Speaker 3: really bad, but we can fix this, and sort of like, no,
Speaker 3: the thing we should do stop drilling, like stop stop
Speaker 3: burning oil.
Speaker 2: That is the obvious thing to do, and yeah, I
Speaker 2: know that.
Speaker 1: I well, we could easily find you know, someone else
Speaker 1: who could see here's why we mustn't stop drilling oil,
Speaker 1: and now we must have to. Yeah, I mean, there
Speaker 1: is such a it's an argument which is it seems
Speaker 1: like one of those arguments where you can't persuade anyone,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean. It's like people dig
Speaker 1: in exactly, and then it's like and I feel like
Speaker 1: the nature of argument has become a.
Speaker 2: Little a little difficult as well.
Speaker 1: It's like it's not just about climate change, it's about
Speaker 1: societal change, in the sense that the difficulty in argument
Speaker 1: now is that you don't really you don't really discuss
Speaker 1: to move forward it's not socratic. It's more about well,
Speaker 1: what's your position. Well, here's my position, and here's why
Speaker 1: your position is wrong, and here's why my position is right.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't seem to move. I think it's a
Speaker 2: real gridlock.
Speaker 1: It's I think that's that's that's a systemic problem with humans.
Speaker 2: As well, I think, isn't it.
Speaker 3: I believe that it is.
Speaker 1: So maybe what I'm trying to get to is maybe
Speaker 1: writing pop songs is the right way to go, because
Speaker 1: if you can in some way through art, maybe not
Speaker 1: only pop songs, but pop songs and literature and art
Speaker 1: and entertainment and all of the things that artists do,
Speaker 1: perhaps that can help people kind of break the logjam
Speaker 1: of This is my position and I will never change
Speaker 1: from it, because you know, one of the great things
Speaker 1: I think, one of the great movies I think to
Speaker 1: watch for this is Dirty Dancing. You ever seen a
Speaker 1: movie dirty Of course, you've seen a movie Dirty Dancing,
Speaker 1: and you watch that movie. If you watch that movie
Speaker 1: when you're fifteen, or you watch that movie when you're
Speaker 1: fifty and you have children, it's.
Speaker 2: A completely it's completely different movie. You're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: that dad is right?
Speaker 1: You know, you know, and she should be put in
Speaker 1: the corner and age is Patrick Sweezey with that.
Speaker 2: This is what it's all about, what's going on here?
Speaker 1: But I think perspective is an artist's job, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. That's why I kind of I loved about
Speaker 1: the first Mad Giant performance piece that I saw of
Speaker 1: yours with. I saw the very famous Trademill video. It
Speaker 1: was very fun, thank you. But the Rube Goldberg machine
Speaker 1: for this too shall pass. I feel like that must
Speaker 1: have taken about four or five years together. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was an enormously complex Did you actually get it
Speaker 1: in one take?
Speaker 2: Eventually we did what you actually see.
Speaker 3: It goes from Take A to Take B back to
Speaker 3: Take A because there's a section of that where we're
Speaker 3: going down an elevator shaft following a bunch of fluids
Speaker 3: that sort of rise and fall on different you know,
Speaker 3: as as the machine trips itself, and the incredible, incredible
Speaker 3: cameraman Mick Waugh, who was who was doing this amazing
Speaker 3: job filming that did in the one perfect take otherwise
Speaker 3: did miss the level of the liquid in there for
Speaker 3: a second, so we had to we had to sort
Speaker 3: of stitch in take b.
Speaker 1: But because you did get the machine to do what
Speaker 1: it set out to do.
Speaker 2: Who designed the machine? Are you part of that?
Speaker 3: Yes, well there was we we put I mean this
Speaker 3: is now, you know, ten fifteen years ago, but we
Speaker 3: put a we put up a job posting on a
Speaker 3: sort of like nerdy artists board saying we're looking for
Speaker 3: an engineer who can help us build a Goldberg machine.
Speaker 3: And twelve engineers together wrote us a proposal, and we're like, guys,
Speaker 3: you're not very good engineers, if you like, you know,
Speaker 3: we asked for one. This is too many.
Speaker 2: We can't we cannot afford you.
Speaker 3: And they said, no, no, we'll just pay us like
Speaker 3: we're one person, and we'll just split it up. And
Speaker 3: it so wound up being this sort of group art
Speaker 3: project where by the end, I think people logged hours
Speaker 3: and you only got paid if you did more than
Speaker 3: ten hours a week or something like that. Like, but
Speaker 3: people would just come into this giant warehouse and everybody
Speaker 3: would sort of work on it together and play and
Speaker 3: have fun. And my dad build some of that machine.
Speaker 3: I built a bunch of that machine. We broke it
Speaker 3: up into a whole lot of different six second chunks
Speaker 3: of the song, and so that there was sort of
Speaker 3: like there were discrete problems to try to solve and
Speaker 3: and we could then review things while we were on
Speaker 3: tour and come back and you know, like the last
Speaker 3: three weeks of that build, I was there every day,
Speaker 3: but there was another like three months.
Speaker 1: So you would you in the in the case of
Speaker 1: like these big videos, will you amand the music to
Speaker 1: fit the video?
Speaker 2: Will you change?
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you're in a you know, that
Speaker 1: one show looking thing in the airplane, do you change
Speaker 1: the music.
Speaker 3: To generally know the one shot one in the airplane
Speaker 3: is uh, that's the that's the album version of that song.
Speaker 3: That one is you know, we're in zero gravity and
Speaker 3: you can get twenty eight seconds of sorry, you can
Speaker 3: get yeah, twenty eight and a half seconds of zero
Speaker 3: gravity for each each time the plane dives. So what
Speaker 3: we did for that was we broke the song up
Speaker 3: into twenty one second chunks that were that fit the
Speaker 3: you know, tempo of the music nicely, so that every
Speaker 3: four bars there would be a applause based.
Speaker 2: So, how do you rehearse that something like that?
Speaker 3: Do you do?
Speaker 2: You have to rehearse it?
Speaker 1: Like are you watching a clock while the plane is
Speaker 1: in the site wave?
Speaker 2: Is that what was happening? Or were you?
Speaker 3: We spent six flights just bouncing off the walls doing
Speaker 3: every like, you know, six flights of fifteen each, So
Speaker 3: what is that three hundred? Do I have that? Six?
Speaker 3: Fifteen is six?
Speaker 2: No, I'm way off sixty ninety.
Speaker 3: So we had ninety little like test segments and then
Speaker 3: and then we then with the footage from that, we
Speaker 3: had go pros everywhere just filming everything. With a footage
Speaker 3: from that, we put together what we thought a routine
Speaker 3: would be, you know, just in a dance studio, going
Speaker 3: kind of like we could do this thing and then
Speaker 3: that thing, and then and then we went back to
Speaker 3: the plane and spent another week, another six flights trying
Speaker 3: out that routine, and then finally a week of shooting those.
Speaker 3: And during the week of shooting them, each flight you
Speaker 3: have fifteen periods of weightlessness. The video requires eight of them,
Speaker 3: so we do seven as a rehearsal, then reset everything
Speaker 3: and do the full video as the final eight. And
Speaker 3: in between each like, it's thirty seconds of weightlessness more
Speaker 3: or less, then five minutes as the plane climbs back
Speaker 3: up to where it can basically drop you again. And
Speaker 3: during that we just to sit still as we could
Speaker 3: so that we would later be able to like morph
Speaker 3: over that period.
Speaker 2: It sounds fantastically expansive. It was it. Yeah, who paid?
Speaker 2: The record company paid for this?
Speaker 3: No, we are our own label. So a Russian airline
Speaker 3: this was back before the Russia and THESTA fell apart.
Speaker 3: There you'll see on the back of the back of
Speaker 3: that plane, I mean like in the in the back
Speaker 3: you can see it as a S seven.
Speaker 2: That's a Russian airline and they were this was their
Speaker 2: ad campaign.
Speaker 1: Wow, so they donated that for an ad campaign. That's great. Hello,
Speaker 1: this is Craig Ferguson and I want to let you
Speaker 1: know I have a brand new stand up comedy special
Speaker 1: out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy, and
Speaker 1: I would be so happy if you checked it out.
Speaker 1: To watch the special, just go to my YouTube channel
Speaker 1: at the Craig Ferguson Show and is this right there?
Speaker 2: Just click it and play it and it's free. I
Speaker 2: can't look.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to come around your house and show
Speaker 1: you how to do it. If you can't do it,
Speaker 1: then you can't have it. But if you can figure
Speaker 1: it out, it's yours. You must have some very clever
Speaker 1: producing skills or some very clever producers to I mean,
Speaker 1: how the hell do you get in touch with Russian airlines?
Speaker 1: So do you want to do music video and it
Speaker 1: will get you know, because I.
Speaker 2: Don't think I don't think I even voice that video go.
Speaker 1: You know what airline I should be taken is the
Speaker 1: one that.
Speaker 3: I do remember thinking like how ambitious are you? Like,
Speaker 3: like well, and how risk averse are you? Because like
Speaker 3: that's not the type of airplane you want to be in.
Speaker 3: But you know, our Goldberg Machine was underwritten by by
Speaker 3: State Farm Insurance, which it's like, I feel like everything
Speaker 3: that happens in that video looks like something you should
Speaker 3: be ensuring again, you know, like.
Speaker 1: But that's that's kind of interesting because they I mean
Speaker 1: presumably they were the good guys when they were underwrite
Speaker 1: in the video. But I don't know if everyone's very
Speaker 1: happy with State Farm Insurance right now, particularly in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: No, no, but certainly not. I mean again, this is
Speaker 3: many years ago, but I you know, like we had
Speaker 3: to make this this choice fifteen twenty years ago about
Speaker 3: whether or not we were going to do the standard
Speaker 3: music industry dance or try to do it ourselves, and
Speaker 3: that that State Farm video was the first one where
Speaker 3: we had any any brand money helping to pay for stuff,
Speaker 3: and it was it was a difficult balance because back
Speaker 3: then the idea of selling out was a very real thing,
Speaker 3: and it was like, people are going to hate this
Speaker 3: if they if it feels like we are just you know,
Speaker 3: sort of dancing monkeys. Now it's best I understand it,
Speaker 3: Like you know, younger millennials definitely gen Z and beyond
Speaker 3: see see those brand collaborations as as a badge of
Speaker 3: honors like it's it's there's.
Speaker 2: I think that the opposite of that.
Speaker 1: I think they look at it a different way as well,
Speaker 1: because because they also use it as their as their power.
Speaker 1: I think the young people when they say we will
Speaker 1: withdraw our business from Target or Star Books or whoever,
Speaker 1: as they're angry at at the time, until you fall
Speaker 1: in line with you know, whatever we're arguing about, which
Speaker 1: is a different It is a kind of change which
Speaker 1: I think is it has it does it's valid? I
Speaker 1: mean there is a kind of like, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: buying your crap until I feel like you're a decent
Speaker 1: human being. Or your position aligns with mine, which I
Speaker 1: think is fair. That seems democratic to me.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, I think that. I mean, voting with your
Speaker 3: dollar is a is more effective than voting. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think everybody's voting with dollars. It just depends on much
Speaker 3: dollars you have and what votes you're using to do.
Speaker 3: What is the situation then with your record company? Now
Speaker 3: then you is it only your band or do you
Speaker 3: bring in other bands?
Speaker 1: And do you do you function like a We have
Speaker 1: occasionally released other bands.
Speaker 3: For the most part, it's more the record company stuff
Speaker 3: isn't very unal so it's like we don't particularly want
Speaker 3: to do it unless unless we're doing it for ourselves.
Speaker 3: But it's it's mostly just that it's not like there're
Speaker 3: the functions of a of an old fashioned record label.
Speaker 3: It used to be a lot about physical distribution and
Speaker 3: now that's not part of the part of it anymore.
Speaker 3: There's still a lot of business. I mean, it's still
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff that has to happen, and most
Speaker 3: of it is sort of just you know, promotional and
Speaker 3: and logistical. But it is you know, I don't it's
Speaker 3: not stuff I relish doing. But if you're kind of
Speaker 3: a detail freak. You're gonna wind up wanting to oversee
Speaker 3: it all anyways.
Speaker 2: You might as well just are you a detail freak?
Speaker 2: You think? Unfortunately, Yeah, I think that's I think that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not unusual for musicians or artists to
Speaker 1: be that way. I mean, you you want your your
Speaker 1: you want your ship to be the way you want
Speaker 1: it to be.
Speaker 2: That's that's the whole gig, right, you want it to be. Well.
Speaker 1: I always say when when I'm doing anything, is I
Speaker 1: don't want it to be produced unless it is produced
Speaker 1: by me.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't you know if you say, well, this is
Speaker 1: what happens here to go, I don't know what happens here.
Speaker 1: I'm doing it, so I feel like it's a That's
Speaker 1: why through all of it, and through doing the late
Speaker 1: night showing, through all the television I've done, I eventually
Speaker 1: went back to doing only stand up and doing podcasts
Speaker 1: because I can talk to you. I want to on
Speaker 1: a podcast because it's there's no one here to tell me.
Speaker 1: I can't you know, there's like you can't talk to like.
Speaker 1: I remember one of the early podcasts I did was
Speaker 1: with one of the senior undertakers. In New York City,
Speaker 1: a lovely man, and I wanted to know about undertaking,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea. It is fascinating world, and
Speaker 1: it's like you have to go to have a college
Speaker 1: degree to do it, and it's like a.
Speaker 2: Real, a real interesting thing.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't have been able to get that guy
Speaker 1: a three minute interview second guest on a Wednesday night
Speaker 1: or late night. There's no way I would have been
Speaker 1: able to do that. And I could talk to him
Speaker 1: for an hour. And that's what I think is the
Speaker 1: great gift of this world. Now, the kind of I
Speaker 1: know that you have talked. Then you're going from of
Speaker 1: Congress or something about net neutrality. I did, Yeah, can
Speaker 1: you describe to me what net neutrality actually means?
Speaker 3: Uh? Net neutrality? Boy? And I it has been a
Speaker 3: long time since that was the specific argument, So I
Speaker 3: hope I'm not too out of date, but that that
Speaker 3: the traffic on the Internet is going across lines that
Speaker 3: are right right like there are people there, there are there.
Speaker 3: The actual infrastructure of the Internet is owned by the
Speaker 3: same people who are generally by by the same companies
Speaker 3: who are who are selling us that access, and so
Speaker 3: they can preference what what information travels and what speeds,
Speaker 3: and and so that there was actual preferencing of corporate
Speaker 3: information over private information back then, and that there was
Speaker 3: there were basically it was it was essentially Internet payola.
Speaker 3: And that was.
Speaker 2: A nasty, nasty, nasty thing.
Speaker 3: Now we have a much worse issue, which is sort
Speaker 3: of we have wound up asking the content networks to
Speaker 3: be the police of the content on them. We expect
Speaker 3: Facebook to be to decide what should be on Facebook,
Speaker 3: and the misinformation that flourishes is their problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But it's interesting thing because then people go mad
Speaker 1: at Martin Zuckerberg recently because he said, all right, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna We're not gonna police it. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: people can flag it. Is that is that neutrality?
Speaker 3: Is that? Is that? I? I don't This is why
Speaker 3: I was scared of being on a date because I
Speaker 3: honestly don't know where. Like we've gotten now gotten past
Speaker 3: the point where we're worried about comcasting at and t
Speaker 3: throttling things so that they can uh, so that they
Speaker 3: can serve the interest of their business partners and into
Speaker 3: the world of misinformation and I and I honestly I'm
Speaker 3: so overwhelmed by it myself that I don't I have
Speaker 3: not developed a position that I.
Speaker 1: It's first of all, that's a very refreshing thing to
Speaker 1: hear any human being to say in this day and age.
Speaker 1: But what I think is is fascinating though, that in
Speaker 1: the age of as we wander into every discussion I've
Speaker 1: had with everybody, at some point we end up talking
Speaker 1: about AI. And I think because it's an enormous change
Speaker 1: in how we're living and it's coming fast. But what
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by with it is that it really is
Speaker 1: as far as the Internet goes, as far as the
Speaker 1: digital information goes, we're in a post truth environment where
Speaker 1: you can't actually trust anything, even the video which you're watching.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure there's an AI program that could
Speaker 1: make an okay go video that would convince most people
Speaker 1: that you had done it.
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, and it's mind muggling.
Speaker 3: And it also, luckily for my little man, it does
Speaker 3: put a premium on stuff that where people try just
Speaker 3: for the sake trying, right, I mean, there is some
Speaker 3: trust is involved that people do on the other end
Speaker 3: of the screen, Like the thing we make winds up
Speaker 3: on the other end of the pipeline going into your
Speaker 3: eyes or going into your ears, and you need to
Speaker 3: trust us in some way that this is the real thing. Luckily,
Speaker 3: we've been doing this for twenty twenty five years, so
Speaker 3: we're fairly trustworthy source of you.
Speaker 1: You are trustingly, but the machine is no longer trustworthy.
Speaker 1: That's what I think is the frightening thing. That I
Speaker 1: trust you to make the product, the way that.
Speaker 2: You make and the way you said you made it.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if I trust my phone to
Speaker 1: be giving me something that wasn't put together in a
Speaker 1: bot farm somewhere, and I don't know anywhere wherever the
Speaker 1: boat farms are.
Speaker 2: Do you ever use? Are you ever?
Speaker 1: Because on one side, everybody likes to I certainly like
Speaker 1: to talk about how scary AI is and how bad.
Speaker 2: It is, but it's also you know, it could be great.
Speaker 2: You know, I've talked to I've talked.
Speaker 1: To a surgeon on this this podcast who is like, no,
Speaker 1: this is fantasic. Is going to save so many lives
Speaker 1: in surgery because this thing can do stuff that I
Speaker 1: just can't. You know, it can do it faster, it
Speaker 1: can do it can do it, It can make decisions,
Speaker 1: It can analyze data that would normally take me a
Speaker 1: week a day, two operations, three operations.
Speaker 2: I don't have to do it.
Speaker 1: I can get it instantly as as soon as the.
Speaker 2: Patient is Sometimes I don't even have to open them up.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is the other side of
Speaker 1: is the technological balance, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I know it's incredibly, incredibly powerful, and I think
Speaker 2: people mostly sort of jump to endpoints.
Speaker 3: Is this going to be a big monster that's going
Speaker 3: to come after us and try to kill us, or
Speaker 3: is it going to make a believable version of Craig
Speaker 3: Ferguson that's not actually Craig Ferguson. I think the more realistic,
Speaker 3: in my estimation, sort of slide into the future has
Speaker 3: more to do with how many intermediary steps it cuts out,
Speaker 3: and whose jobs is replacing, and what that does to
Speaker 3: the eventual product that Like, when you think about it
Speaker 3: with respect to music, it's not that it's not just
Speaker 3: that you can have an AI replication of Taylor Swiss Voice.
Speaker 3: It's that I would be astonished if our recording programs
Speaker 3: within the next year or two didn't have a button
Speaker 3: that you could push to get a better guitar track
Speaker 3: than the one that you just recorded right.
Speaker 1: All right, So it's almost it's like but extrapolating that
Speaker 1: so that it gives you, it realizes what you're trying.
Speaker 2: To do and makes it better.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So like, for instance, my wife and I directed
Speaker 3: a film for Apple the year before last, and in
Speaker 3: the mixing process, I remember you were you know, we're
Speaker 3: there in a giant mixing studio to do this very
Speaker 3: high end professional cinema mix and the tool that was
Speaker 3: used to clean up the audio was all AI based.
Speaker 2: And it's unbelievable what you can do.
Speaker 3: You can take a track from you know, a musical
Speaker 3: track from the nineteen sixties and pull out each individual
Speaker 3: instrument and remix it on the flat if you want to,
Speaker 3: and that it's unbelievably powerful. Crazy, it's it, and it
Speaker 3: is you know, from a workflow perspective, why would you
Speaker 3: not do that? But when you think about what that is,
Speaker 3: what that is capable of them, why would like it's
Speaker 3: that tool? Anybody uh in the path is dumb not
Speaker 3: to use that tool. Right.
Speaker 2: But now, now, like pivot that to logistics. Let's say
Speaker 2: if you're running a port right now, you would be
Speaker 2: dumb not to run your logistics through an AI that
Speaker 2: can make better routing decisions.
Speaker 3: Than you can't. Right, And if you are a small
Speaker 3: local government, you would be dumb not to interface with
Speaker 3: that I with your own AI, you know, and like,
Speaker 3: and at some point you're it's it's not a question
Speaker 3: of like, this big evil robot coming after people. It's
Speaker 3: just that they're they're all black box decisions. We don't
Speaker 3: know why it's a better decision. We know that it
Speaker 3: came up with an answer that works, right, and that's
Speaker 3: all we know. Right, You usually can't go back into
Speaker 3: an AI and actually figure out what the reasoning was
Speaker 3: because there is no reason. It's it's pattern recognition, and
Speaker 3: it's recursive and and it feeds on itself, and it's
Speaker 3: like it can't explain to you why it has done it.
Speaker 3: So what happens when you have misalignment with with the
Speaker 3: actual human goals that have gone into it, Right.
Speaker 1: So when the human goals and the synthetic intelligence goals
Speaker 1: don't mash up, so the artificial intelligence makes a decision
Speaker 1: in favor of who well or in.
Speaker 3: Favor of what it believes the goals to be, which
Speaker 3: you may have set but like you know, like the
Speaker 3: Aladdin's lamp or whatever. It's sort of like there's always
Speaker 3: a way to achieve those goals, which actually may reveal
Speaker 3: to you that you should have had better calls, you know.
Speaker 1: But it's but it actually goes back to I think
Speaker 1: the point you were making la on about climate change
Speaker 1: effects is is what's affecting the society change because it's
Speaker 1: a technological It's like when the printing press is invented,
Speaker 1: then very quickly you lead on to the Protestant Reformation
Speaker 1: in the because people are starting to look at Bibles
Speaker 1: that they weren't allowed to look at before, and then
Speaker 1: you start thinking about we'd like to look at this
Speaker 1: in our own language. And suddenly there's a and suddenly
Speaker 1: everything changes because of a piece of technology. But I
Speaker 1: think that the AI to me, it seems to be
Speaker 1: on a par I think with the printing press and
Speaker 1: the sense of the changes that will bring. Some of
Speaker 1: them are outstandingly good, but it's probably not all going
Speaker 1: to be good.
Speaker 3: No, It's hard for me to imagine a an industry
Speaker 3: that won't be completely top down. Time you've talked about
Speaker 3: a revolutionized planet, because I'd feel like mostly what AI
Speaker 3: is currently good at is pattern recognition. Most what humans
Speaker 3: do is pattern reaction and like and that's and we're
Speaker 3: in the early days. We're like, we're we're at you know,
Speaker 3: we're in the Internet of nineteen seventy eight, not even
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety, you know what I mean. We're like, this
Speaker 3: is very, very very early days, and so I have
Speaker 3: a hard like, in fact, the first song on our
Speaker 3: new album is is written to this idea because I
Speaker 3: just realized writing a rock and roll album right now
Speaker 3: is feels almost silly, like a bunch of guys standing
Speaker 3: there with guitars and drums making music like it feels
Speaker 3: like releasing a brand new flip book the day before
Speaker 3: cinema is invented, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get it, But I think that that's why
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like in my reaction to it
Speaker 1: has been like all of the work now has to
Speaker 1: be live. Everything has to be live. I have to
Speaker 1: do shows which are live. I have When I started
Speaker 1: out in my life when I was six fifteen, sixteen
Speaker 1: years old, my job for the until I was about
Speaker 1: twenty one was I was a drummer. I was a
Speaker 1: drummer in rock bands and punk rock bands, and I
Speaker 1: remember saying that nothing's going to replace drummers now, but
Speaker 1: the first fucking thing to go it was, like I mean,
Speaker 1: and I was.
Speaker 2: I should have known better.
Speaker 1: I was listening to craft Work when I was twelve,
Speaker 1: but I didn't see the signs, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like I didn't put the I didn't make any
Speaker 1: pattern recognition.
Speaker 2: But I think you're right.
Speaker 1: There's also you go into any town in the United
Speaker 1: States and you will see a bunch of groovy people
Speaker 1: looking for vinyl in some store, probably near the railway station.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I listened to vinyl. You know, I still
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: I imagine you probably have a vinyl collection as well, And
Speaker 1: I think that there is I don't think it's just nostalgia.
Speaker 2: I think it's also it's a different experience.
Speaker 3: Well. I think it all points to the same slippery slope,
Speaker 3: which is that when anything is possible, nothing is special, right,
Speaker 3: So everybody wants to have more and more access to
Speaker 3: the stuff they love. But the more access you have
Speaker 3: to the less special any individual part of it becomes.
Speaker 3: And so you and I grew up summing through through
Speaker 3: punk rock record store seven inch boxes to find that
Speaker 3: one seven inch from that one band that nobody else
Speaker 3: had a copy of, because it would I mean, the
Speaker 3: music that was on there could change your life.
Speaker 2: But just having it was a thing, you know, it
Speaker 2: took some work, it took some effort.
Speaker 3: And and that that relationship to songs changed twenty years
Speaker 3: ago at least, right, But but it continues to change
Speaker 3: all the time. I mean, there's no now to a
Speaker 3: fifteen year old, it's just as easy to discover Edda
Speaker 3: James as it is to discover Taylor Swift. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: they're not other.
Speaker 2: Than the promotional money behind one.
Speaker 3: There is no there. They're both right there on your phone, right,
Speaker 3: there's no like when I wanted to know who John
Speaker 3: Zorn was, I had to find a weird enough record
Speaker 3: store to carry John Thorn records. Now you just have
Speaker 3: to know you have heard the names, you know, or
Speaker 3: the algorithmlessons.
Speaker 1: But I think does that make you optimistic or pessimistic,
Speaker 1: because because some of it is some of that is great.
Speaker 2: Right, It's both. It's just it's just changing mystic, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's just that like it doesn't that you can't that
Speaker 3: that you can't really put that Genie back in the
Speaker 3: bottle and and like we buy people buy vinyl now,
Speaker 3: but I don't even know if they buy it to
Speaker 3: listen to so much as to like have a tactile
Speaker 3: experience again and be able to like engage with something, right,
Speaker 3: you know, that's not sort of coming from the cloud.
Speaker 3: And I would say that that's where that's where I
Speaker 3: think that the like the ai AI universe is likely
Speaker 3: to be that expansion to every piece of the human
Speaker 3: labor there is right that like everything is possible and
Speaker 3: nothing is special, and so like I do, I hopefully
Speaker 3: there's just there's just things that are then arbitrarily special
Speaker 3: because like we're gonna put work into like, okay videos, right,
Speaker 3: there is an easier way to make this, but we're
Speaker 3: going to do it this way because it will mean more.
Speaker 1: I did have a movie about I don't know, ten
Speaker 1: more than ten years ago, probably like closer to fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago for the I don't know if you've heard
Speaker 1: on the Disney Corporation and yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: These guys and they decided that they wanted to make
Speaker 1: a movie of Winnie the Pooh, but they were going
Speaker 1: to do it all hands.
Speaker 2: So I did the voice of Owl.
Speaker 1: But the entire movie was hand drawn, was done in
Speaker 1: the old style, and it was I think the last
Speaker 1: one they've done. And I remember asking them why they're
Speaker 1: doing it, and they said, because we can't, because we can,
Speaker 1: because we're Disney and we can. We can do it,
Speaker 1: and it can be great, and it's great, it's beautiful
Speaker 1: and it has Maybe it's because I know that the
Speaker 1: movie was hand drawn, it feels different to me. But
Speaker 1: because I'm sure that the eye program can now can
Speaker 1: now make it animation look like like that, it can
Speaker 1: make it look exactly the same way.
Speaker 2: My oldest kid is an animator.
Speaker 1: He's twenty four, and he's looking at having studied all
Speaker 1: through that time, now looking at an industry which is changing.
Speaker 1: As you say, it's like the Internet in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: It's like what now? What now?
Speaker 2: What now? What now? What now? But you have children?
Speaker 3: What do you?
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 1: You have view parameters and your parenting? Is there is
Speaker 1: there something you think? This is what I must teach
Speaker 1: them in order to navigate this.
Speaker 3: No, there's six and a half year old twins, and
Speaker 3: so I'm basically just hanging on for dear life to
Speaker 3: be honest, young kids, like being proactive is difficulty, just
Speaker 3: trying to keep it from God understand.
Speaker 2: And I've been there.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because my oldest is coming up on
Speaker 1: twenty four and are there where just coming in When
Speaker 1: he was a little kid, iPads and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: so there were things to do.
Speaker 2: I don't know how.
Speaker 1: I see people at the airport where their kids have
Speaker 1: got headphones on and they're looking at phones and that stuff,
Speaker 1: and that you don't know how lucky you are, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I.
Speaker 3: I and I am that generation because we are a
Speaker 3: total fascists about screen time. We do not let our
Speaker 3: kids have any screen time unless traveling like that.
Speaker 2: And then it is and then it's this incredible drug
Speaker 2: because they've never read that. He's exactly the same.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting I noticed that my bo both kids really,
Speaker 1: but my youngest will put it down.
Speaker 2: It's almost like they're Tom bombadill with it.
Speaker 1: The younger generation they're like, yeah, it doesn't it's a thing,
Speaker 1: but it's not the only thing. And I think that
Speaker 1: will happen true that you know, it's a thing, but
Speaker 1: it's not the only thing. And you can't have a
Speaker 1: visceral experience without viscerality, if that's even a word. You
Speaker 1: have to I mean the idea of you can have
Speaker 1: a you know, you can have an AI interactive sex robot,
Speaker 1: and you go, well, you can, but it's that's not
Speaker 1: going to be it's not going to be the same.
Speaker 2: It mightbe all right, but no, no stakes. There's no stakes.
Speaker 3: There's no stakes, you know, because when everything is possible,
Speaker 3: not that it's special, you know, it's just sort of
Speaker 3: like there's that finding the the human equivalent to that
Speaker 3: person takes real yest.
Speaker 1: And also it's it's a it's a very interesting thing.
Speaker 1: I'm very glad that my romantic life was reached a
Speaker 1: conclusion in terms of monogamy before for the invention of
Speaker 1: the data nows because I don't I don't know how
Speaker 1: because now it's involved and I know I won't say
Speaker 1: it is because it's a little embarrassing, I think, but
Speaker 1: I know a relative of mine who found out he
Speaker 1: was in a flirty relationship with a robot was not
Speaker 1: a real person. You know that it's crazy or or
Speaker 1: is it? Maybe it's okay to be in a flipsy
Speaker 1: relationship with a rule vote. Nobody's going to get it.
Speaker 3: Well, so you started with it's this is that it's
Speaker 3: always been crazy. It's always always been crazy.
Speaker 2: It's just crazy changes.
Speaker 5: You know, Yeah, I believe that, But I also think
Speaker 5: that the level of let's say, if you were to
Speaker 5: measure social changes with a Richter scale.
Speaker 2: We are experiencing several like seven to.
Speaker 3: Nine you know, like really really big earthquakes simultaneously. Right now.
Speaker 3: We've got climate change, and we've got a I and
Speaker 3: WE and social media I think has done has really
Speaker 3: really dramatically changed a generation of people for the words,
Speaker 3: and all of that is either feeding or a fueling
Speaker 3: or bouncing off of the rise of totalitarianism all over
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 1: Like, well, totalitarianism is not new that I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's a pretty tried and tested kind of that's been
Speaker 1: around for a while.
Speaker 3: It sure has, but there have been a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of big tenth pole democracies that stabbed it off for
Speaker 3: a couple hundred years that are not doing a good
Speaker 3: job of.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's I mean, I I kind of know.
Speaker 1: I struggled with this a little bit because I mean,
Speaker 1: what what I have the conclusion I've kind of come
Speaker 1: around to This is only a personal thing. But the
Speaker 1: way I've come around to is that I kind of
Speaker 1: messed around with with all sorts of looking at religions
Speaker 1: and philosophies and theologies and and basically how what I
Speaker 1: seem to be zeroing in on in the past couple
Speaker 1: of years is uh, basically the works of Epicteties, Socrates, Seneca,
Speaker 1: but people who have been dead for a couple of
Speaker 1: thousand years, but basically said the same thing. It was like,
Speaker 1: you can do very limited stuff. You can actually fucking
Speaker 1: do and everything else. It's really not your concerned, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, and and I think you can drive yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean, like Seneca was it was Nero's school teacher.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a dangerous fucking job, you know. But
Speaker 1: I think that that the idea that we all because
Speaker 1: you know, I have this conversation with a Way and
Speaker 1: she's like, have you seen this in the news, and
Speaker 1: have you seen that news?
Speaker 2: I'm like, I've seen it.
Speaker 1: But I have a clutch mechanism, which is, what the
Speaker 1: fuck am I going to do?
Speaker 2: What the fuck am I going to do?
Speaker 3: Oh totally agreed. I'm not saying that I know what
Speaker 3: to do or that there's anything we can do. But
Speaker 3: I do think that the last hours of the Weimar
Speaker 3: Republic were probably a scarier time than.
Speaker 2: The early hours of the Viymar Republic, right.
Speaker 3: Like, that's depends.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, I would agree, I think, but that's
Speaker 1: historical perspective. That's It's like if you stand a period
Speaker 1: of time and look at that time. You know, like
Speaker 1: if you stood in right here, right now, and you
Speaker 1: were talking to the geniuses that we're putting together the
Speaker 1: fucking Treaty of Versailles in nineteen eighteen, you'd say, you
Speaker 1: know what, France, maybe you should calm the fuck down
Speaker 1: and not make everybody angry to make this shit all
Speaker 1: rise up again. You know, whereas you take real geniuses
Speaker 1: like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu who say, you know what,
Speaker 1: we have to dismantle this. It's the only way we're
Speaker 1: going to move forward truth and reconciliation. And that to
Speaker 1: me is fascinating because I think historical. I don't think
Speaker 1: his history begins until everybody's dead, you know. So you know,
Speaker 1: the way that we're looking at you know, the way
Speaker 1: that we look at the Second World War is about
Speaker 1: to change, you know, like this kind of like all
Speaker 1: of the That's why I think you get these scary
Speaker 1: rise of wad kind of crypto fascist organizations because so
Speaker 1: many people have now forgotten.
Speaker 2: What was going on. They're like, well, you know, they
Speaker 2: had nice hats, you know. I mean, it's it's tricky.
Speaker 2: I don't think history repeats itself. I think it was.
Speaker 1: There's been attributes to Mark Twain it says history does
Speaker 1: not repeat itself, but it rhymes. I think that that's
Speaker 1: and speaking to someone who does part of what you do.
Speaker 2: Is you make things rhyme.
Speaker 3: I do often rhyme things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that That's how it appears to me.
Speaker 1: That's what it seems like. And I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I look at the way things are
Speaker 1: now politically in America. I happened to be reading at
Speaker 1: the time, just when the election was going on, by
Speaker 1: Gorfidell's biography of Aaron Burr.
Speaker 3: Was fucking crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, but and because he's been dead for such
Speaker 1: a long time, highly entertaining, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I wrestled with it, but mostly I
Speaker 1: seem to come down to I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is the way you do. I come down to, I'll
Speaker 1: deal with what I can deal with, and that's all
Speaker 1: I can really do. Like I'm not, I don't feel
Speaker 1: like I can't change anybody's mind. I think it's folly
Speaker 1: to think that you will.
Speaker 3: Except your kids. You're right, and that's that's exactly and
Speaker 3: that's exactly where the where I'm still stuck with. I'll
Speaker 3: just deal with it, but I can't because I have
Speaker 3: no idea.
Speaker 2: How do you prepare them for all this stuff?
Speaker 3: There's now that's what song, that's what The song by
Speaker 3: the way that a Stone Only Rolls Downhill is like
Speaker 3: my kids. When I was writing out, there were four
Speaker 3: to four year old twins. You're you cannot tell a
Speaker 3: four year old the world is fun not not a
Speaker 3: good idea.
Speaker 2: It might not be not it might not be.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you if you were to say the
Speaker 1: world is if you were in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Black Death.
Speaker 2: You know, when one in.
Speaker 1: Three people in Europe was killing over dyan, when infant
Speaker 1: mortality was off the charts, when antibiotics were just a
Speaker 1: fucking nobody even thought about it, Like jare theory was
Speaker 1: like a couple of guys, and you know, Pythagoras had
Speaker 1: maybe mentioned at some point you would have said, well,
Speaker 1: this is the endgame clearly, you know, I mean the.
Speaker 3: Well, but I would argue that like, yeah, that time
Speaker 3: was way worse than one hundred years before one hundred
Speaker 3: years after.
Speaker 2: Yeah, depending on where you were standing, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of like I wrestle with it
Speaker 1: all the time myself, you know, and I think trying
Speaker 1: to find a sense of perspective in the world when
Speaker 1: perspective and maybe this is what it is like. As
Speaker 1: you say, social media has changed the generations. I think
Speaker 1: I think what it's called legacy media, I think it's
Speaker 1: this has been destroyed, you know, the the the kind
Speaker 1: of the idea that the press will somehow keep the
Speaker 1: government in some degree of all it. That's that's gone,
Speaker 1: and it's been gone for a while, I think, longer
Speaker 1: than we give your credit. I mean, fucking you know,
Speaker 1: William Randolph Hurst was no. You know, I don't think
Speaker 1: he was impartial, do you know what I mean? I
Speaker 1: think and no, And I think that on the one hand,
Speaker 1: I get as scared as everyone else. But I think
Speaker 1: in the other hand, I think ultimately it comes down
Speaker 1: to well known about one hundred years when it would
Speaker 1: mark to you and me.
Speaker 3: Well, you know that there's a term in biology and evolution,
Speaker 3: punctuated equilibrium the world. It's not a the world doesn't
Speaker 3: change and evolve in some sort of steady and ramp
Speaker 3: like a nice line. You have long periods of sort
Speaker 3: of things relatively imbalanced, and then something happens and everything
Speaker 3: shifts really quick right right. And that doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: when the dinosaurs were alive, they weren't, you know, in
Speaker 3: constant struggle, and things weren't crazy all the time. But
Speaker 3: also there was a moment when when a commedy right
Speaker 3: right like, and when there's a when there's a vacuum
Speaker 3: in a system like that, the entire system rearranges itself.
Speaker 2: You know that that's where we are. You think we're
Speaker 2: in that that place?
Speaker 3: I think we are, Yes, I think that. Like just
Speaker 3: because Aaron Burr had an incredibly insane life, and because
Speaker 3: World War two or World War one or utterly horrific
Speaker 3: and world transformative, does it like they were? Those are
Speaker 3: all moments, Those are all punctuations in the equilibrium. The fifties,
Speaker 3: like the fifties that followed World War Two. We're not
Speaker 3: we're not free of strife and craziness. They were full
Speaker 3: of strife and craziness, but they they also represent an
Speaker 3: equilibrium of sorts, right, like you can make some guesses
Speaker 3: as to what's going to happen next. They're not all right,
Speaker 3: but like you can you can trust certain institutions and
Speaker 3: certain kind of trajectories to be more or less as
Speaker 3: you imagine they will be, you know, like and right now,
Speaker 3: I think it's incredibly hard to imagine what the world
Speaker 3: will be like three years from now, much less ten
Speaker 3: years from now. And I think like some of that,
Speaker 3: I mean, a big part of that is technological, A
Speaker 3: big part of that is social, you know, socioeconomics, stuff
Speaker 3: like governmental essentially. And I do think that we are
Speaker 3: an inflection point with with with climate change. It had
Speaker 3: it's a slow, slow change, but it's starting to have
Speaker 3: these effects that people notice as human. Like I would argue,
Speaker 3: like I said that, you know, the conflicts in Syria
Speaker 3: and on the southern border in the US are clearly
Speaker 3: climate issues, but people don't recognize them as that, and
Speaker 3: they're not going to be publicly like that. People aren't
Speaker 3: going let's fix the climate so that there won't be
Speaker 3: an immigration issue across the Mediterranean. That's not what people
Speaker 3: are saying, you know they have, but they are saying,
Speaker 3: holy shit, La just burned down, and now there's canad
Speaker 3: and wildfires that last all year. You know, there are
Speaker 3: people are noticing that that the erratic climate is causing
Speaker 3: real human issues. And I think that if that's that
Speaker 3: may not be a three year change. That might be
Speaker 3: a ten year change or a twenty year change. But
Speaker 3: when you when you combine that with the other ones
Speaker 3: that are going on right now, I do think we
Speaker 3: are likely at one of those inflection points.
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's a fair hypothesis. I think
Speaker 1: that could be argued pretty reasonably.
Speaker 2: What will you do? Will you go back to La?
Speaker 3: Probably not, but I'm not sure I that mostly, I mean,
Speaker 3: I love La. I love my house in l A,
Speaker 3: I love my life in La. But the but the
Speaker 3: long game for LA looks like a lot more of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I live in a much colder place
Speaker 1: with less fires, but other problems.
Speaker 2: That's what it is. It's been fascinating to talk to you.
Speaker 1: I thought we would have an interesting conversation, and I've
Speaker 1: certainly been very interested in hearing what you have to say.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for making time for us. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you. This has been so much fun and for
Speaker 3: me too.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much. Now fuck off and deal.
Speaker 3: With your kids. I will