Modern Wisdom - #1035 - Mark Rober - How to Engineer a Life You Love

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

Mark Rober is an engineer, science communicator, and YouTuber known for viral experiments and STEM education. Expect to learn what it was like to wor on the Mars Rover for NASA, how NASA rewired the way Mark thinks, what Mark’s relationship with failure is like, which engineering heuristics transfer best to everyday life, how can grown-ups rebuild the natural curiosity that gets pruned out of them, how you can avoid losing the curiosity when you need to deliver views, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals New pricing since recording: Function is now just $365, plus get $25 off at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a free bottle of D3K2, a Welcome Kit, Travel Packs, plus bonus gifts (US only) when you first subscribe at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I never knew that you worked on the Mars rover for NASA. That's so fucking cool. Well, what's really wild is my name, Mark Rober, is only two letters off for Mars rover. If you change the K to a NAS and the B to a V. And honestly, it was meant to be. It took me like four years working at NASA to realize that. It's just one day I'm like, oh, dang. What did you do?

So I'm a mechanical engineer by trade. I got my bachelors and masters in that. and I worked on the rover that's on Mars for like seven years. So the way it works is they just throw you into the deep end. And I was responsible for a chunk of the rover. And so, you know, I design what it should look like. I, you know, you test it, you integrate it, you put it together. You have a team of people working with you.

They have gray beers. They call them at NASA who look at your design and tell you all the reasons it sucks. So you go back and change it. This sounds like some Gandalf the White, like you need to go and pay homage to the dude at the top of the mountain. That's effectively what it is. But they're smart. They know what they're doing. They've put stuff in space before.

And so they give it to the young folks who are just coming up. And they literally, I was in charge of a trunk on the top of the rover. The Armgoe digs in the dirt, takes that sample, puts into the belly of the rover. And, like, I designed the hardware to accept that. And it's still working. Fingers crossed on Mars. That's still going. Yeah.

Which is wild when you look up at the sky. You know, all the stars look the same. Mars has a little bit of red tint to it, right? You know where your baby is? Yeah, and it's like that's 90 million miles away. And I've touched an injury, I've touched something that's rolling around on that dot in the sky. And what's really cool is on Earth, things oxidize and break down. So they crumble and go away, right?

So let's say, you know, thanks to AI or whatever you want to say, a million years from now, our species is done. There won't be any, if you came here, you would just see nature. At that point, everything's broken down and crumbled and rested and gone away. So the aliens would come and they'd just see this lush planet. And then they'd go to Mars and be like, what the hell are these? Because on Mars, there's no oxygen and stuff doesn't break down. So a million years from now, those rovers are going to be sitting there space. Your shit's going to still be there.

And it's like, where the hell did this come from? What did you learn that you didn't understand about payloads going into space? What's interesting about that? you know one thing that's interesting about space is like there's no air resistance so once you get up there and you you start you just you just thrust at the beginning essentially you get up to about 25 000 miles per hour that's like five times faster than the bullet and then you just coast for the rest of the period right you just accelerate and then you go to where mars will be in nine months and they have and you get like three or four times do little course corrections but those

motors we call them mouse fart motors because when you're 90 million miles away and you're just getting that initial thrust at the beginning you know fractions of a degree mean you miss the planet by you know tens of thousands hundreds of thousand a million miles so it's just the tiniest little just to the side and because of that okay now you're going to hit now you're going to hit mars when it comes around. So it's really interesting the math orbital mechanics. It seems really complicated, but because there is no friction, it's like, you know, for a computer, it's pretty easy to do. And then we eventually learn tricks of like orbital slingshots. So you actually go around planets and you pick up speeds, kind of like, you kind of slingshot around, right? So it's a really fascinating,

you know, science. But it's the equivalent of hitting a golf ball in New York City. and getting a hole in one in L.A. That's the scale of landing a planet on... landing something on Mars. Have you ever read Seven Eves by Neil Stevenson? No. Really cool. Really cool, but great. Anyone that wants a sci-fi recommendation?

Yeah, I should read it. The moon explodes in the first land... The first line, sorry. Like the first line of the book, it's the moon exploded. That's a hook. And during that, you learn a lot about orbital dynamics because they repurpose the ISS into what will be the habitat for Earth. Because if this happened, and Neil Stevenson's hard sci-fi technically,

so it should be correct. Love it. Basically, what would happen, it breaks apart. You never find out why it broke apart. It just did. And there's seven pieces that it breaks into. But they realized that over time, those seven pieces would all be orbiting around each other, and they would crash into each other, and they would make 14 and 28.

And then it would basically turn into what they called a hard rain, which would be all of this material when it was no longer able to sustain itself in orbit would come down to Earth. And it would just be, so it's 5,000 years, whatever it is, that it's inhospitable. So you need to go up there. So I think they have 300 days to get themselves off the planet. And they're using all of these pods. There's all the diplomacy. There's all of the politics of what's happening down on Earth. Like how many people want to go from it?

And obviously all of the politicians are using every bit of fuckery that they can to get their family off. You know, playing with the system and then they have to have new laws in space. What does it mean if you kill someone in space? Is that prison? Do you just put them out the airlock? And one of the things I was learning about were apogees and zeniths

and the way that orbital dynamics and orbital getting two things to come together because it's not just three dimensions. It's also the angle and the speed and the matter. So even if it is easy for a computer, it sounded pretty fucking hard. Yeah. And it's a real.

problem like the concept of space junk of like if to your point if two satellites crash into each other in space and they each create you know 5,000 pieces of debris now you have to track all 5,000 of those and you could have a runaway problem where just stuff just starts crashing like when the moon exploded yeah exactly but with our own satellites so that's why we track everything over the size i think it is a golf ball we know where it is at all times orbiting our planet there's no vacuum cleaner to just go up and... No, not yet, but there are missions of like, how do we clean up space junk? They're actively working

on ways to go up and, like, clean, defunct satellites. And now if you put something up, we just, I just built a satellite, which is wild you could do that, where we put it in the space, you can upload your picture to it, and there's a screen that will display a picture, and then there's a camera that will take a picture of that.

So basically you get a selfie in space. You go to space selfie.com, we did it for free as like an outreach to kids to get stoked about space. And we built this and launched it like six months ago. We have a million pictures people have submitted. We're actively taking them every day. But part of that is when you put that up, you have to prompt,

you have to have a de-orbit plan. So in about five years, it will come back down and burn up. Wow. That's like being allowed into a country on a visa in them saying, and when do you intend on leaving? That's 100%. When do you present on, like, suiciding yourself? Crash-landing this thing back?

Yeah, well, it burns up, right? So the friction is so high. Oh, that would be enough. Yeah, so most stuff, there's very... It's disposable. Yeah, essentially. So that's why, as long as you decommission means, you come to a low enough altitude, there's enough air molecules there that you start getting more and more drag.

It starts heating up, and nothing makes it to the ground. Wow. Okay. I learned about astropolitics. Oh, yeah. Now, that, I think, is who owns the moon? Who owns this particular meteor? or is the geostationary territory directly above your country yours?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How far out? Yeah. What if I create something that's geostationary and is a little bit further out than that? And I think that sort of stuff to me is it's the perfect intersection of this should be sci-fi, but it has to be real life. Yeah. And what's even happening when we go to Mars? Like who owns, you know, if Elon gets to Mars first, does he just get to claim it?

Is it the country that owns it, right? Well, I mean, also, what would have to be weird? Also, what would happen if we got, we captured some asteroid and managed to double the entire planet's lithium or gold? Yeah. What happens to the stock market? What does it mean? Because almost all of the way that those resources are put together is done based on a closed system. Yeah.

And then if you start adding stuff into the closed system, all the maths breaks. Well, this is where, like, AI gets weird, right? It's just, like, all the rules that have normally applied just, like, don't. And I don't know. there's a world where we see some pretty fundamental changes but like well i mean just like going you know for this analogy before but you know going from the you know farming agriculture to the industrial revolution like that was a big change for society to go through that was kind of painful there was a lot of farmers that end up having go to the factories right and i think we're

we're going to see that in the next 10 20 years like a similar change where it's just a big, instead of just like, oh, here's a better way to farm. Here's a better way to farm. Those are incremental changes over time. Farming to the factories was a big, massive step change. And I feel like those kind of things are coming down the pipeline. There was a whole industry.

I think it was muck shovelers in New York City, the horses. Everything was horse-drawn carriage. So it's not just the main thing. It's all of the ancillary industries that trickle down from it. That's right. And that's going to go. Yeah, but almost potentially even more because it's like the computers can do just all of the jobs, you know? It's like generally you can go from, oh, there was this hill, the water rose.

Okay, now let's go over to this other hill, you know, at some point are there hills left, right? And what does that mean? What are some of the things you learn from working at NASA that sort of permanently rewired the way that you approach projects or productivity or efficiency? there must be some fundamental principles that were pretty novel there. Yeah, I think it's this idea of just like, you know, I like building things, right? And the number one mistake people make

when they try and make something is they try to make the final version first. Like, I want to build a bird feeder. I'm going to build the bird feeder, but I'm going to build the final version of it out of the gate as opposed to, which is how you put stuff on Mars and really make anything, prototypes. You just do something quick and dirty first.

In fact, you do like four of them. And you tweak and try, and those, they shouldn't be pretty. They're ugly. They're meant to just be tests and you learn from them. And then once you've established all those learning, and by the way, some of those prototypes, you break. You intentionally fail them to learn the limits. And then once you've done all that learning,

now you know enough to attempt the final thing. And so really ingrained in the philosophy of NASA, which is something I've now taken into my life and how I make builds for my YouTube channel, only even approach YouTube is like, I don't know. Like, I don't know the answer, but you know what? I could test to find out. So, whenever we do anything, it's like, there's so many versions that fail before you get

to the final output. And failing is the goal. Like, you want to break this thing. So if I know I have to design the wheels for the rover, you know, I'm going to make them out of three materials, I'm going to do some analysis on a computer, and then I'm going to have a bunch of different thicknesses and I'm going to test it and I'm going to smash it. I'm going to break it because now I'm comfortable. when I have my final answer, I know exactly why it is and the full limits of it, like,

what it's capable of. What's your relationship like with failure? I, like, I embrace failure, and I, like, I teach that. So in my videos, so we just did a video where we made a goalie robot that goes back and forth at, like, 40 miles an hour, and then you track the soccer ball, the football, and then the goalie will move to stop the shot from going in. and we trusted Christiano Ronaldo tried to go against it

and the punch line is he has no prayer even from the penalty kick spot kicking it 80 miles an hour this thing in the first six in the first six milliseconds we knew where the goal he needed to be that means the ball goes from here once it's moved an inch we know exactly where we need to be

how because you just have three points we're tracking at 500 hertz or sorry yeah 500 hertz So it's like every two milliseconds, we take a snapshot, snap, snap, stop, snapshot. And so you just three points, two points make a line, connect that line. Okay, we need to go right there. So literally it's less than a blink and half of a blink of an eye, and it's already in spot. It feels like it probably hasn't even left his foot.

Yeah, that's right. When we know, and then it takes a little bit of time, even at 40 miles an hour, takes some time. A bit of wobble, yeah. Yeah, just, whoop. So in that, though, we failed so many times, right? And to me, failure is part of the process. And I want to show, you know, especially kids who watch the video, I want them to know that, that this is the case, right?

We started a company called Crunch Labs that is like basically these toys. You deliver your porch every month. You put them together. And then there's a video for me where I teach you like the juicy physics that make the toy work. A lot of times with those toys, they don't quite work perfectly. Like we intentionally make it so right when you put it together. Like the dislauncher is the first one. It's not optimal flying.

If we want them to tweak and to change, to move this rubber band here and to push this a little bit, oh, and now, oh, now I'm getting to go farther. And that victory feels so much better than if it just worked out of the gate, right? You know the IKEA effect? Yeah, I think I've heard of this. Same thing. Yeah. It's the difference between pick your own strawberries and cheap strawberries, right? I pick my own strawberries.

I really care about this thing. You can go to IKEA, which is nice budget furniture, I guess. And people love their IKEA pieces more than nicer, more expensive pieces that were prefabricated and made for them. And I think they measure that by like how long you hold on to it, right? You're much less likely to give away the IKEA furniture because you put that. I can spend an afternoon with it. We had an argument about that. I'm not going to give it away.

So to me, like I treat my, I treat challenges sort of like a video game. It's like gamification where, you know, a lot of times what happens is people internalize failure and they say like you have a bad test i'm just i'm bad at school a bad breakup i'm not good at the love thing business fails i suck at business but in like video games you know if you pick up the controller and you go and you fall into a pit you're not like oh i'm bad at video games and i don't want to do this this sucks immediately you're like oh shoot i want to try this again like what did i learn and go a little faster i'm going to jump a little earlier right you're excited because you're not you're not viewing the failure as internally,

and you're focused on, you know, rescuing princess from Bowser. You're focusing on the end goal. And so if you can treat your life challenges and this failure like that, kind of gamify it, it's a framework that really works. And I feel like this is my approach for the videos we do, like this Ronaldo one,

or really anyone that I've attempted. We did another one of a dartboard. Same thing that moves, tracks the dart. Although in that one, if you're buddy, you give the dart to your buddy, then it can register that it's his dart, and then the board moves the opposite way. So instead of getting a bull's eye, he can't even hit the board. And there again, tons of failures, but it wasn't like, I suck at this. It's like, okay, I know one more way not to do this. It stings. It still sting, just like it stings in a video game. But you're

like, you know what? Let's get back on it. Let's try again. What do you think is the difference between people that play video games and happily will have a go at the same level over and over again and people that go go through a breakup or try to give a presentation at work and doesn't go well or apply for a job you're right the fundamental is the same that this is an iterative game you have multiple lives at this thing how successful have you been at being able to take the learnings from science experiment across into real life I mean I think it works in real life too like you see this for example with kids like toddlers right when they're learning to walk when they don't like successfully walk they're not like oh i suck at this right they're immediately

excited to try again and as a result we learn more in the ages of zero to five than we do at any other period because we're just like failure isn't in our brains we're just excited to learn and do cool stuff right and i do genuinely feel like in my life i love opportunities for for mastery and opportunities to get better at something and to view it like a video game. Like, I don't like public speaking. Truly, I hate it. It makes me really nervous. And that's one of my goals right now that I'm working on.

I've got like a speaking coach. I've got a TED talk coming up in April. Like, I really want to get the public speaking as like something I actually enjoy, right? And I feel like I'm really good at it. Or like, you know, going to the gym. I'd never worked out really at all in my life two years ago about. I was like, I think I just want to try this thing. And it's an opportunity every day for an hour where I could just be perfect.

I could just give it everything I can. And to see the incremental results of literally like a video game leveling up. Sometimes sometimes sometimes doesn't work. Sometimes does. Like I crave those opportunities. And I've lost, I've gained like 30 pounds of muscle, lost 15 pounds of fat in two years now. Those noob games, dude. The noob games.

Oh, man, I remember them so well. The difference is it was nearly 20 years ago for me now when I started training. Yeah, I mean, it's great. It's one of the few things in life where you get a preview of what you will be like if you keep doing this in the future, the pump preview. Yeah. So the fact that if I try to build a car, I'm not as good as I will be at building cars in six months' time now because I just tried to build a car.

Yeah. But if I go to the gym and I get a pump on, that is me flat in six months. If I keep going. I love that. I've never heard of that. One of the few things that you get a preview of the future. Trentland, Italian. Yeah.

You don't briefly become better at Italian before becoming worse at Italian. Like, you just accumulate it over time and overtime and over time. That's so good. I've never heard of that or thought of it that way. Does that still work then? You said the noob gains. Now what happens when you get the pump on? You're like, I will never be that.

That's only my pump self. I suppose. Well, I guess it depends how consistent you're training. That is one of the reasons it's so addictive that people keep going. Even if you think I've hit my limit, this is as much muscle as my body's going to be able to carry without adding in some. you know uh enhancement uh you still want to chase it because even if it's just for the rest of the day you know i still look pretty jack um what uh talk to me about that mastery thing i think

that you're right we me and you both have a eye for detail um degree of obsession um how have you come to learn balancing that because there's a lot of benefits that come from it yeah um But there's also, it can be a painful compulsion to have. Yeah, I mean, it's like with everything, it's like moderation, like taking it to a limit. I think I am good at saying no to a lot and which can help. So it's like I don't take a lot on. Like if, you know, I've got like five really close friends as opposed to like 50 kind of good friends, a similar thing. So I'll pick a handful of things that I will go deep on.

I think where it could get tough is you're trying to go deep on everything, and then you're going to get overwhelmed and burn out. But, yeah, I mean, I think there's a cost for everything. Like, I probably, yeah, where it's like if you are, if you're too focused on a thing at the cost of a lot of other things, then it can be a challenge. And I do have some, you know, I have this conversation with Mr. Beas. He's another YouTuber.

He's like the biggest YouTuber in the world. And he's like, he's like, you could be me or you could be happy, like, choose which one. And he admits, he is a very dopaminergic brain. And, like, dopamine isn't interested in having things. Dopamine is interested in getting things. Like, that's the reward chemical, right? And he loves leveling up, but it's really hard for him. You know, if he gets a video that gets 300 million views, he's like,

why couldn't that have been 330 million, right? And I'm quoting him here. He's self-aware, but it doesn't change the fact that it's like, you know. And so when you look at someone like that or like, and Elon Musk is sort of a similar brain, it's like, you don't want their brains. And like they'll tell you you don't want their brains. Like they can't, there's a level where they can't be satisfied because they just need more. And it leads, I think, a lot of the amazing change that has come in our world,

historically, you know, if you look back, was kind of people with similar brains who are just so driven for more that they affect history. It's very adaptive, right, to keep on pushing because you only need one or two people like that in a tribe. Yeah. And they will find the new valley

that's got the bushes that have the fruit. Yes. And some of them will die, but so what? Like only a few of them will die. But the ones that do decide, I think about Brian Johnson. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this. I think of him or like an Elon or even a Mr. Beast.

They're kind of like scouts in an army. Totally. It wouldn't do to have an army filled with scouts. Frankly, I don't want to be a scout.

I don't want to climb up that cliff that probably treacherous and very well may die. Yeah. But they'll go up there and tell us.

They'll come back and tell us what they've seen. Yeah. And we'll benefit from that. That's right. And I tell Jimmy this and he's aware of me. He's like whacking through the bush

and so many times he waxed on a path that was just terrible. Mr. Beasberger, right? Whatever. He's had a lot of admitted like dead ends.

But what's beautiful is that then I see the ones that work and it's like oh thank you now i could trodn this path that's hacked down basically yes um and obviously do my own versions of that but like the main path people like that help break these glass ceilings and that benefits a lot of others yeah yeah yeah i i do think though that that that feature of sort of the dopamine wearing off i i do feel like that is a that is a feature and not a bug of our brains, right, in the sense that, like, let's say there's like a coyote chasing a bunny

and like the bunny leaps out of the way and makes this amazing move and survives that, right? You're going to get a lot of reward chemicals to your brain being like, good job, you lived. Now, I have a chance to continue to pass this DNA on that's inside you. You're going to get rewarded. And there was probably some bunnies in the population who had that dopamine last for like three weeks, just being like resting on the laurel. of this sick move. I'm the fucking LeBron James.

I'm the LeBron James. Just sitting back relaxing. Eden. Thinking about that immediately, those jeans are removed from the gene pool because they baste in that. So there's this like sweet spot of like, I'm going to make you feel good about this,

but then I'm going to make it go away so you want to try again. And I think that's a mistake people make with burnout is like, it's kind of like running on a treadmill. When you get on the treadmill, it's exciting. You're getting those. reward chemicals. This is really fun. And what happens eventually, though, is, like, those reward chemicals subside, but you're still sprinting because you crank this treadmill, because you could,

because it's exciting. And I think burnout is when, you know, you're still putting in the same input, but you're not getting the reward chemicals for it. And so one thing I really try and do is, like, keep my treadmill at like a jogging pace. Like, I can do this. There was a time in the YouTube algorithm where, like, they wanted, if you did daily vlogs, that was, like, like what you need to do to be successful. And I was like, I can't do that. I can do like one a month. And I've just kind of like tortoise in the hair of this thing.

And now 14 years later, you have got like 72 million subscribers. And still going. And still going and still stoked. And like, I'm as far away from burnout as I've ever been. Right. You know the Red Queen effect? No. So there's a scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice is running around the tree

and she has to run faster and faster and faster and faster and faster. And it doesn't get anywhere. And the queen says, you see, my dear, you know, have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. And I think about when people overcomplicate their lives, which everybody falls prey to. Like, this is me speaking to me. Yeah, yeah. Fucking speak down to my eye. But when people overcomplicate their lives, you're able to, I think humans are pretty good at dealing with pace.

Yeah. They're able to deal with difficulty, but not complexity. And I think that it's the complexity, complication really is damaging to the system. If you've got a day and you look at it and there's five different things that you need to do and it's got to finish my taxes and I've got that really important call to do with the team and that my mum's coming around. I'm going to have to have that conversation with that. That's going to be awkward.

And then I need to write that thing. It feels horrible. Whereas if you just had a full day of one of those things back to back, it feels a little bit more simple. if that was all you did with your life. Yeah. So a couple of things, like putting too much on your plate would be like going into a buffet and piling, literally piling up all of this workload

and then assuming that your stomach would expand to be able to fill it. Like, oh, I'm going to be able to fit all of this in because I said I would do it. I will be able to do it. Which is not the way that it was. And the same way is, no matter how delicious the buffet is, your stomach isn't going to just infinitely expand

to be able to fit the food in. Yeah, there's only 24 hours in a day. Correct. And then the same thing, for the complexity point, that your system is built to handle our work, but it's not built to handle complication. We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus, and your performance. But most people have no idea where there's

are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with function, because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year. They run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting a blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands. But with function, it's just $499. And right now you can get $100 off, bringing it down to $399 bucks. Get the exact same blood power. that I get and save that $100 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's an interesting point. I wonder if there's a correlation to like really successful human beings who can like handle like a lot of complexity. Like certain brains probably can just handle it better, right? To be fair, like, I mean, say what you want about Elon, but like I think

that is something his brain does well with. He's parallel processing king. Yeah, the executive function thing, but this is why you have sort of make a mode and manager mode in Paul Graham language or, you know, you tend to have a COO. That's right. And then you have like a chief innovation officer or something. And the two, there might be friends, but they've got fuck all in common. Yeah. Apart from the fact they work for the same company. That's me and my COO gym, 100%.

Like he is very, I'm good at like building a train and he is good about like keeping the trains running on time and just like, you know, all the things. things with the train station that I'm not good at and not interested at. You also secretly worked at Apple. Yes. What was that like? I was there for like five years. I was working in their special projects group doing product design on the Apple car. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that.

That's fucking sick. So you went NASA? Yeah. Apple? Technically there was two years in there where I worked for a Halloween company. Like costumes? Yes, costumes. Okay.

That feels a little bit like a pivot. I think you can say that from NASA, from NASA engineered to making Halloween costumes. Brief hiatus in between NASA and Apple. It was like an entrepreneurial thing because my first video ever was a Halloween costume where an iPad on front and iPad in back of me, you like cut a hole in the shirt. And it looks like you have a hole in your body if you do a FaceTime call

because the FaceTime camera pointing forward will record the hand and it shows it on the back. And it went really viral. That was my first ever video. And I was like, dang, I have more ideas than this. So I've basically done one video a month since then. But part of that were people like, cool idea, bro, but I don't have $1,200 for Halloween costume. So the next year, I was like, oh, we just had a design on the shirt.

Let's say it was like some guy's scary guy looking eye. And then I made a free app that had an eyeball that I filmed that was moving around. If you cut a hole in the shirt, duct tape your phone to the back of the shirt, it looks like you're this, like, animated t-shirt that looked wild. And that was pretty successful. So I did that, like, nights and weekends, grinding, made this free app, made the T-shirts. And it went well enough that, like, a year later, I sold the whole thing to these guys in the UK who make more suits, Halloween, costumes. And then I worked for them for two years. And so that was like, it was more of like an entrepreneurial opportunity.

And people were like, how could you leave NASA for that? But like, it was, you know, it's one of those things. In the moment, it made a lot of sense. The Roe is on Moves. Yeah. what are you going to do okay then you do apple i went and looked at all of the patents that you've got registered online it's not a small number there's quite a few well there's one that i was like lead author on which is actually a funny story because someone at apple was like hey you have all these

cool ideas for youtube where's your banger idea for apple and literally like a week and a half later i'm in a meeting about some stupid software tool and then i had this idea of like what happens when you combine a virtual reality with the self-driving car like what are the implications of that And I literally started shaking because I was like, whoa, there's so much here. Essentially like a car is the world's greatest motion simulator. So if you go to an amusement park, you have motion simulators to simulate moving forward. They just tilt you back like this. But then your butt's like, wait, but now there's no pressure on my butt.

That doesn't feel quite right. But in a car, you could actually simulate moving forward by moving the car. So it's like there's a lot of entertainment and just ways not to get motion sick, right? because, like, 40% of people struggle for motion sickness. We're going to be new self-driving cars, but we're having all this time, but you can't use it if you still have to stare out the window. So is there a way with virtual reality

that you can actually be way less motion sick and actually watch movies or work on your computer? And there's a lot in the patent, and we got, like, everything we asked for, which means we're sort of the first ones to really look at this. And I still think that's coming down the pipeline. Could you do something like, because it's typically the back of the car,

It's not the front, right, that people have with motion sickness. Yeah, but that's only because you can't see what's going on. So my point being, I wonder if you could somehow make the windows project the whatever you need in order to be able to help people feel better, as opposed to having to wear it. I'm trying to work out how you integrate it into the car itself. Yeah, but I mean, imagine though virtual reality in augmented, they're going to get to a point where it's essentially wearing sunglasses. So it's not this big, luggy thing. And as long as then, you know, as long as you have things in your visual,

field showing the motion of the car and where it's going to go, you can solve a lot of motion sickness. Right. And so then you can have your computer screen there and be working on it as long as you're getting the inputs. But you can also do like gaming stuff where it's like you pull up, you know, you're leaving your house, but it's like a grand theft auto insane where it's like you put this on. Suddenly your buddy just robbed the bank. They're coming down the steps. They're like, go, go, go. And you're accelerating in real life and feeling that. But in the game, you're actually like feeling that's actually happening because it knows your destination.

And so when in the game you're coming up in an alley and it's like oh there's nowhere to turn you're hosed but at the last second it's like oh you make a right. In reality that was just a right turn but in the game it was like this insane thing. Also you have all these other cars out you know where all the potholes are if you close your eyes I've done this test

if you go over a paula or a speed bump it feels a lot like running over a zombie but in the game right there's actually you where the pop holes are driving for this because there's going to be some people that are really not focus on the road. It's autonomous driving. This is virtual reality combined with autonomous driving. And what is the implication? I was just thinking about if somebody was to do this whilst trying to drive normally. Yes, that's bad. You're not allowed to do that.

So, okay, what's your perspective, given that you've done a lot of work in the AR, VR, space, you've thought about it a good bit. What's your perspective on kind of how it's delivered? Because I think I had a XXX, ex-X girlfriend, got me an Oculus go, which was the all in one. fuck eight years ago something like that and uh i remember thinking wow i mean this is like pretty not bad it's a bit pixely but this is not bad surely surely no time at all this is going to come apple vision pro we'd like i think as many people returned them as bought them yeah um which for apple is like oh and maybe it's the v1 and it's going to be expensive and the trickle down it's three grand but then it's only going to be 500 in a few years time and so and so on and so

how do you think the world of AR and VR technology has sort of delivered on the promises that we assumed and what's gone on what's the journey there they just don't have the killer app right like it's everyone who puts it on is like this is the most craziest thing I've ever experienced and they love it and then they put it on the shelf and never take it off the shelf myself included I've had a go a rift and Apple Vision Pro and I never use them and it's like I wish they just had the killer app like I would want what's the killer app I don't know being like court-sided a basketball game right give you access to like I want to watch the basketball game real time like I'm courtside or even better in a seat you can't even get put it on the crossbar

at a at a soccer match right you can't sit there but now I get to watch everything I'm messy's coming down and it goes in right I don't understand why they haven't just attacked that aspect of it but like Live sport seems like a great first place to start. I'm very non-conspiratorial. That's a, like, my tendency. I tend to believe the, like, mainstream to a degree. Same. Skeptical of most people, but.

Do you, okay, so, but what is your opinion on conspiracy theorists? Like, why do they exist? Like, what is? My opinion on conspiracy theorists, I think that they're exciting. Like, the theories are exciting. Yeah. They're much more exciting way. to think about the world.

Yeah. A big part of it is this idea called compensatory control. Yeah. So if you get people to imagine an uncertain medical diagnosis, they're more likely to see patterns in random meaningless static. The same thing happened, I think, during COVID. Before there was enough evidence to know that the lab leak was legitimate, a lot of people hooked into that because it's way easier to,

think that this global pandemic is because of some malign scientist than the chance mutation of some silly little microbe. If it's up to chance, what control do I have over this? But if I can personify it, it's myth, it's archetype, right? It's mythology. It's like a personification of this. There's good and there's bad and there's evil and oh, I could have, I think a lot of it is to do with control. So like having a reason. If the Illuminati exists and is running everything. It's a nice, it's a nice model that just explains everything. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not everything. I'm sure there's a million reasons. I've had some really great guys on, um, that, that do, uh, uh, conspiraturity. Derek Berers from that, uh, podcast was

real interesting. They know they wrote a book about the psychology of conspiracism. But I'm, uh, I'm kind of fascinated by it. Um, even though I'm not, I get to watch it. It's like, I don't know, someone else loving a sport and you not being a fan of it like, huh, it's kind of interesting to watch this. What do you think? What's your perspective on conspiracy theorists? I think similar, I think as humans

were just hardwired to recognize patterns. Like, that's probably evolutionarily like, been good and helped us survive. If you, you know, every time those bushes moved, you know, four to five times a tiger came out, I'm going to make a pattern that that's what's happening, right?

I think, I think I have empathy for them really like when people even like flat earthers and stuff when they're like you idiot they're not willing to look at evidence that goes counter to what they believe because they're incentivized to keep those beliefs

they have a community they have friends belonging they belong and guess what like pretty much everyone listening to this myself included I'll have some beliefs like just want that Well, and we have those, right? Where it's like, if you can't tell me five things that you agreed with with Charlie Kirk, or take it the opposite way, that you agree with with like AOC, if you really think everything, you've never actually listened to what they say, you just know they're the bad person on the other side. You're in the same camp.

Like, you haven't investigated truly what someone on the other side thinks, right? You know, I think there's an argument of religions, right? Where it's like, if you have your religious belief, are there, you know, you're really incentivized to keep those beliefs. It works for you. And that's great. But you can't be making fun of flat earthers and say they're morons and idiots because they're not willing to look at the truth. We all have elements like this in our life that serve us. And we're not incentivized to look at like how true they are.

A quick aside, you've probably heard experts like Dr. Ronda Patrick talk about the benefits of omega-3s. They reduce, hello, omega-3s. There they are. They reduce brain function. No, they don't. They support brain function. Maybe I should take more. They support brain function, reduce inflammation, improve heart health and are backed by hundreds of studies. But here's the thing, all omega-3s are not made the same. Most brands cut corners. They use cheap fish oil, skip purity testing, throw in fillers, and call it a day. But with Momentus, you know you're getting the highest quality omega-3s on the market. They're NSF certified for sport and they're tested for heavy metals and purity. So you can rest easy,

knowing anything that you take from Momentus is unparalleled when it comes to rigorous third-party testing. What you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. Most of all, Momentus offers a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can buy it and try it for 29 days. If you don't love it, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomomomomptus.com slash modern wisdom and using the code, Modern Wisdom, a checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-T-O-U-S.com

slash Modern Wisdom and Modern Wisdom. A checkout. You know one of the ones that I've seen recently, which I thought was really cool? You know what the fundamental attribution error is? Yeah, what is? Yeah, so somebody cuts you off in traffic. You cut somebody off in traffic.

It's because you were late. This sort of an attribution to motive and like an inner sense as opposed to for us, our shortcomings are because of situations. circumstance. Something that I noticed was an equivalent, but around people's parents, called it the parental attribution error, which is, it's kind of a right of passage in pop psychology to blame your parents for your anxious attachment style or your hypervigilance or your obsession or your depression or whatever it might be. But unless you're prepared to lay at the feet of

your parents, your strengths as well, you can't lay at the... That's great. Wow, that's great. I think that calls out a lot of people that you want to be able to own your wins, but hand off your losses. And let's not forget that sometimes your wins and losses are just two sides of the same coin. So yeah, you're hypervigilant, but that's your obsession to detail, which has allowed you to become a fantastic musician. Yeah. Yeah, perhaps you are overly concerned about upsetting other people, but that's made you a really great friend, which means that people really care about you a lot. Yeah, and if you have a constant need for approval,

like actually has motivated you to accomplish a lot in your life. Absolutely. Your feeling that nobody supports you has made you isolate yourself, which makes you a little bit lonely, but it's also meant that you're very self-sufficient so that you can work in solitude and you went and started a business.

Like, you know, just keep on raw. That's one version of this, which is where the coin is the same. Yeah. But at other times, you've just been given a bit of a mixed bag. I mean, like, this coin is kind of dark on both sides. but in the same bag are some that are light.

You know, your parents taught you something else as well. And yeah, sure, some people's bags are a bit lighter or a bit darker than others. But for the most part, if you're going to say my shortcomings are because of my parents, you have to say your strengths are too. And it's okay, I don't mind if people go,

no, everything is self-authored by me. I think it kind of denies behavioral genetics, which is a bit of a shame. But everything is self-authored by me and nobody gets to tell me what I did. Okay, that's fine. But you have to own your weaknesses too. That means that your hypervigilance and anxious attachment and athlete's foot and daddy issues are your fault as of your strengths or the inverse, which is everything is laid at the feet of the parent. So yeah, parental attribution error. I love that. I think that's great. On the attribution error, it's interesting if someone cuts you off in traffic. If someone does that in real life stands in front of you, like in line, we're so much more willing to like forgive them or I guess give them grace and stuff? What is that? You think you're just, you lose the anonymity and you like you see the human in front of you?

Oh, that's a good point. Do you know what I mean? Like if someone cuts you off and you're waiting in a queue and you're like, oh, excuse me, oh, it's okay. Like you're a lot more patient than in a car, you're like, I'm going to kill your family. Yeah, I'll fucking shoot you. Well, a few things there. First off, humans still have not fully gotten used to being in a three-ton missile that moves at, you know, multiples of the speed that we ever have before. Sure.

No, I'm a very comfortable driver. I'm sure you are, too. we're still very maladapted to doing that at that speed. Yeah. And when you're in a car, you're kind of in a bubble. And it feels like nothing, you're standing still and the rest of the world's moving past you. Yeah, relative. And then when something happens, you're kind of reminded of the precariousness.

So that's one part of it. I think another part of it is the reason that we have anger, the reason that it's adaptive, is that before laws, I needed to have a way to say to you, you've crossed a line. Yeah. you have encroached on some sort of boundary that you shouldn't do and my response to you is going to shock you into not doing it again the externality of somebody

cutting in front of you in line is not great but usually not life and death the difference kinetically it's way more dangerous but the final thing is that when somebody cuts in front of you in line if they turn around and notice

and they see you almost nobody has an issue You have to be a real dick for somebody to cut in front of you not knowing you were there or making some sort of a mistake I didn't realize you were waiting and for you to still have a problem

after they've said sorry and then stood behind you. But the same isn't true when driving. If someone flashes their hazards, you're still pissed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It helps. I mean, if someone does this,

like, okay, but still, you, you suck. Exactly, there's a little bit of you in the back of your mind that's like, I'm going to keep an eye on that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's probably right. There's something about the disconnection. anonymity because you see this online too where there isn't the danger of driving a kinetic

missile where we're a lot quicker to make judgments if it's just some anonymous name and you're commenting anonymously well there's no collateral damage right you can say whatever you want like there's no repercussion yeah that jordan peterson says the problem with the internet is that the proximate price of being a prick has fallen to zero yeah whereas in real life yeah um might get punched in the face exactly i like that yeah i think think yeah there is something too about like i mean you said anger where you there's something about like if someone cuts in line let's say 20 paces in front of you isn't that funny how like your your sense of justice it's just like that is not what we do and that has to be evolutionary because

it's like we have rules in this tribe we have rules in this tribe and if we don't all enforce them then bad things happen but it's so funny how some people just like we were at the airport recently and we had to make this flight actually to come back and film for a sesame Street thing. And there was lines that was like quadruple what they were. Because there was like a new policy and we literally had to cut to the front of the line. Look at my partner's like,

she's very good at talking to people. I was like, oh gosh. It's like that's the worst thing for me. I'm a roller roller. I'm not broke. Yeah. But other people were cutting not as good as us because we didn't get booed. And they were just like booing and yelling and like it was chaos. It was primal. Wow.

Because everyone's in this stressful situation. But like you could just hear like it was just it has just like deteriorated to like base human emotion. Watching somebody sprint through the airport is a special type of pain. Because we've all been there. We've all been there. The connection got delayed and the next thing. They're holding the gate, but you're at 72 and it's 24.

Yeah. I think that's why traveling is so stressful. The cost for mistakes are so high, right? It's like. I mean, this is a life hack. Whenever booking something that's got connections, if it's under 90 minutes, I know that the airport, says that you can make it, but the increase in stress is just not worth it.

For me, the risk, anything less than 90 minutes I won't do as a connection. I'll always have a 90-minute connection at an airport. Is it too much? Yeah. But the prices I maybe have to walk around and get a coffee. Always, though, if it's like if there's 10 flights in a day, it has to be a function of that, right? I'll think about that a little bit more.

But typically, I'm doing stuff that's a little bit more of a quirky route. Yeah. Or international. Exactly. Yeah. But then, yeah, watching, we were on a flight the other day coming back from tour and it had been super delayed and it was real annoying and it was late and there were loads of people and it would have been the last flight out and we did that thing where everybody stood to one side and you just saw this stream of people. Let me give you this one. The poverty parade on planes.

So there is a nine-time increase in passenger violence on planes where economy has to walk past first. Really? Nine times increase. Really? Yeah, it's huge. That's fascinating. Pass those assholes just on their laptops are in it. What are you reminded of?

You're reminded of your place in the hierarchy. This is status, right? You're reminded of the status hierarchy. This is from Michael Easter's second book. And, yeah, the poverty parade, nine times increase in passenger violence. And it's just on planes. That's what he calls it the poverty parade. That's what I called it.

Yeah, yeah, I see that. And is it the violence is from the folks who are sitting in the back. Yep. But the ones in the front, at least, it's like nine times less. Probably. I'm chill. They're like, fucking peasants behind me.

Yeah, exactly. I've made it. Yeah. Lots of excitement around AI and stuff at the moment. One area that I, again, AR, VR, I don't mean to shit talk on the engineers. I'm sure they're trying hard, but I've been disappointed.

Like, I'm a bit sad. I wanted super cool glasses. I haven't got super cool glasses yet. AR's coming though. Like, AR's getting there. I think that's the future for sure. And what will that look like? Something that can project up into a space

so we could watch something 3D in front. Is it just like Tony Stark-style stuff? No, like, I mean, Google's and meta's latest. Have you tried those on? No. Little bulky sterile, but getting there where it's like, it will, you know, illuminate the path. You're getting directions.

It's pretty functional. I mean, there's... That's the one with the little band that you can do that you... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, it gives you pretty good, like, I'm going somewhere, walking directions, okay, turn here, it's like actually mapping it on to your real world. It's decent. I mean, getting there.

also like real time translations for like if you're traveling um you know there's an argument there's a lot of if you didn't have to pull your phone at and you want to like hey show me a restaurant around here you know or even talking to someone there's a lot of like where reminding the name of the people you're looking at right like at a party or something yeah the best assistant researcher ever yeah like yeah like there's a lot of use cases where I think it would be really people would find it very useful, whether or not that's good for society. That's a different conversation. But, like, I think there, that is, that makes more sense to me than VR at this point. Well, certainly the meta glasses. I've got, I've got two pairs in the house. I bought two pairs

as gifts this year as well, including the Oakley's ones, a wrap-around one. And being able to take a photo without having to get your phone out, being able to track what you're doing just to press a button and it hold and it do the thing is... Oh my gosh, it is so wonderful. I went to a gig in L.A. the other night at the Roxy. I saw President play. 500 people, real small, real intimate, and the stages, three feet high. Yeah, yeah.

It's not high at all. And there was a girl, a woman in front of me, 30s or something, and the entire show she watched through her phone. And this is so trite for me to say. There's that famous, was it the Sean's Delizze in. in Paris on New Year's Eve a couple of years ago and it's just this single shot from the back and it's just a sea of phones

which is, it is what it is. But people want to take memories. They want to be able to recall this thing. How much better would it be if you didn't have to sacrifice? And I thought that's the best use case. I don't like the meta, hey matter, tell me what I'm looking at. Like I know what I'm fucking looking at. I don't need you to do that for me.

But at the moment, those rebands, being able to take a photo, being able to press and hold and take a video up to three minutes, now they're really cool yeah that is cool i know like for me i've kind of had my own moment with it's like how many times have i ever gone back and looked at my you know fireworks on the fourth of july videos right yet every year you'd be like no way right or like concerts are a great example like you never go back and look at those you just need one i think from those sorts of situations a hundred where was i remind me what it felt like i can fill the rest in that's right

you just need one that's 100 so anyway arvr like maybe it's get a in there, whatever, whatever. Robotics, I think when you compare with AI, robotics is a promise that everybody had expected. There's this new home bot thing with the fucking knitted jumper as a, it's got like your jumper on as a home assistant. And somebody put a video of it trying to close the dishwasher and said it looks like a guy on ketamine at an after party. What's going on in the world of robotics? This is much closer to your wheelhouse. I mean, look, AI still needs humans right now to, like, push buttons, especially when you say, like, AGI.

Like, once you have robotics, there's an argument that, like, now humans are truly redundant as, like, it makes sense that we're going into robotics. I think it pairs naturally with AI. I don't know what it means. I don't know how great it is for our species. I was, I'll tell you this. I don't want to say a name here.

But I was talking to someone who's, like, you know in Silicon Valley, he said he was at a dinner at his house with like 10 other people who are like leaders in Silicon Valley with AI. You would know half the names very well. They had a vote that said by the year 2050, what's the chance our sun is covered in a Dyson sphere? Meaning a Dyson sphere. Type two, Kadechev.

That's right. It's a type, basically, it's basically a solar panel that goes all around the sun. So you capture all the energy. And then you could use that energy then to populate the solar system. system in the universe, ostensibly. And of this group of folks, eight of ten said greater than 50% chance by 2050, our son is car. Really?

Fucking do it on Kalshi, dude. Put it on polymarket. Put your money where your mouth is. Don't give me your bullshit around the, I don't understand. But no, but the point is to get there, you need robotics. Yeah. Okay. Like, this is my point.

Right, right, right. Because you need robotics to, if you can make a million workers in, you know, in, you know, 20 days, and then those workers make factories that make more, that's when you truly go crazy exponential. So, like, the only way to get to that is a robotics revolution. So that does seem to be on the cusp, at least for some people. Yeah. And even if it's not get it up, do the Dyson sphere, Cardishev 2 thing.

The point is that, again, going back, like, society is at a pretty fundamental changing point if you can have, you know, the thinking machines and the doing machines who are going to be more specialized than us humans who have all this like vestigial traits of millions of years of evolution that just aren't necessary for today's world yeah you know walking around with appendixes and penguins and stuff like and like yeah coxics and toenails yeah stupid stupid idea it'll be interesting man if we can get to this stage where AI programs robotics that's when we're this is my point right and then robotics builds more robotics right so you turning the wrenches is now.

I had Eliezer on the show, and he was telling me about how one of the ways that a super intelligent general AI would be able to accumulate compute power without taking it away from servers that people would realize is it could reprogram the leaves of trees. Whoa. It's like biotrans computation or something, and he had this series. of books behind him on the biology of trees. It's like, oh, well, it's a relatively simple process. If you were to, you do this, and then you do this,

and then you reprogram to this thing, and then you reprogramming this thing, and then all of the trees are doing your compute for you. And you're just using the trunks and the roots, and you just draw up all of this power. And that would be the way, and it would just slowly seep its way into the biosphere. And before you know it, the shrub in your back garden is working out how to kill you. I do feel like anthropomorphizing robot. I get the argument for making robots that looks like humans

because the world is basically built for humans. But I think it's like a first cut, like trying to make that where you, I think it makes a lot more sense to make, like, factory robots. Like robots who you could sell to a car manufacturer, they can move around their factory that could in one year save them the cost of 12 of your fleets of robots you're selling. Like I feel like the winner of the robotics revolution will be the one who goes after manufacturing businesses first,

not homes for people who could afford it oh wow yeah that's a good that's a great point because how many people one need and can afford and those who can afford it already have a staff of people who do it it's a person yeah because it's not that cheap no that thing was maybe 500 bucks a month no that's right and it doesn't do it that well like what's a cleaner like to get a maids to come around is maybe even for a good sized home 200 bucks okay So you can get them every other week. Yeah. And you still have a hundred bucks to save on this robot academy.

Yeah, the addressable marketing is very small. Versus, hey, I'm going to make a robot that can wheel around your factory floor. It is, by the way, its torso can stretch eight feet to screw in that thing and then come down. Like make a specialized robot for that factory. Still kind of probably looks like a human, but give it six arms because it's all its job is to drill in the six bolts on the bottom, right? and then make those robots, that immediately will have a massive R-OA for a company that has money to pay for it, right?

I saw a new type of warehouse robot. So instead of warehouses being built upward, this begins the warehouse high and builds it low. So all of these things run over the top of like tubules that come down. So imagine you've got your warehouse and you don't stack shit from the bottom up. You have the robots running over the top and they get stuff, bring it up to the top,

and then they run around here. with like a little grid formation and below each grid. So not only does it restock stuff, it also then goes and pulls it out. And it was some absurd space saving efficiency. This warehouse is eight times denser than a normal one because everything is just packed side by side. You don't need any space to run between the stock because the stock is the floor, the whole floor is just stock.

Oh, wild. I see. Yeah, I think. I think the winner of the robotics, the first big winner takes all. The invidia of the robotics will be ones who address like factories first. And then they'll be knock on effect. They'll bootstrap it from that. Then how do you perfect that for the home?

Not the other way. I'm surprised we're starting with the home. Before we continue, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for as long as I can remember now because it is the simplest way I've found to cover my bases and not overthink nutrition. And that is why I partnered with them. Just one scoop gives you 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics and whole food ingredients in a single drink. Now, they've taken it a step further with AG1 next gen, the same one scoop, once a day ritual, but this time backed by four clinical trials. In those trials, it was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels in just three months, and increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times, even in people who already eat well.

They've upgraded their formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable nutrients and clinical validation. Plus, it's still NSF certified for sport so you know that the quality is legit. Right now, when you first subscribe, you can get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 welcome kit, plus bonus AG1 travel packs, and for a limited time, US customers also get a sample of AGZ and a bottle of omega-3s. Just go to the link in the description below, or head to drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. I guess it's just a sexy idea. it's a cool

attention grabbing but yeah total addressable market is just it's not yeah it's not there okay for anyone who hasn't seen

your glitter bomb series please explain that well like a lot of my idea people are like where do you come up with your ideas and it's like I don't know like my brain's just always on

in the sense of like thinking of like oh that's a good idea right and so someone sold a package from my porch and I felt really sad. Have you had a package stolen

for a porch? No. Well, actually maybe, but I haven't known it's happened. It's very, it's an American thing, apparently. Apparently this doesn't happen a lot in other countries. But you really feel violated. And this was like a $3, I don't even know what it was, something from Amazon. It doesn't matter.

Right? And at first I was, the police obviously won't do anything about it. But then I was like, you know what? Like, I don't build the Mars rover, for heaven's sakes. Like, I could probably do something about this. So I designed, a bait package basically that had four phones in it that could i could track the phone so i knew where the package went but they were also recording so it could upload that footage to the cloud so even if

they destroyed the package i would have footage of the theft but more importantly when you lift it off the lid it had a cup that used a centrifugal force to spray like a pound of the world's finest glitter and then to make sure we got the package back after like two minutes it'd spray just a uncharitable amount of fart spray so they were incentivized and then i played fake police chatter like, you know, we have a report of a,

you know. And so we always got the packages back. Sometimes it better shape than others. And I don't know. I think it was, it just really struck a chord

for a lot of people who have had the same thing. To make a viral video, you just have to evoke a visceral response. Like, that is the key to making a, that is,

that is the key. Like, if you want to know how to, that's it. So you have to feel vindicated. It has to make you feel, it has to be funny. Has to make you feel angry. That's a trick that's used a lot these days

and making people feel angry to get them to share. And so this one just, it checked a lot of those visceral response buttons. And yeah, and so I did it for like each year I would improve and go crazy. Eventually we had drones that came out and sprayed the glitter in the house. You know, and they opened the lid. Each year I would like, as an engineering challenge, how can I take this to the next level? And I did it for like, I think six or seven years. Eventually we went to San Francisco.

I had like fake luggage because cars get stolen from. there all the time and I would I would work with the police you know anytime I got footage I would I would if the police wanted I'd give it to him and also this is a crazy fact probably about half the people's faces are blurred half of them aren't and people are you like well how do you make that decision if you're not blurred you signed a release which means they were willing to let me put their face on you signed a release every single criminal whose face isn't blurred in the glitter bomb Where did the release form go to? I gave it to them because I would like know the houses, right?

They took it to their house. So we would knock on the door and be like, okay, we got you. Are you cool if we show you in a YouTube video? And you might be like, well, why would they agree to this? Yeah. And you just have to offer them the correct compensation, which in most cases was like a Starbucks gift card. You're kidding.

No. You got people to admit to having their face on one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world as a criminal by offering them a Starbucks gift card. By the way, like a $10 Starbucks gift card. This wasn't like 200. Wow, we. But it's just what you'd find

is just like, we value our reputation a lot. And you think other people have the same frameworks and think like you. But some of them were like, hell yeah. Like, let's do this. Well, I mean, you thought that you were going to get a parcel. You didn't. You got sprayed

and fart sprayed. now you go to Starbucks you know it's kind of a aim for the stars to land in the clouds land in Starbucks yeah

I mean that's one of my favorite series that you've done I thought it was so great and another one your like scam phone call yeah

a broad taking advantage of old people thing the relationship that you have with technology you're obviously

very pro technology it's something that you're working on you're trying to encourage other people to do their own own, have you got, when you see things like that, when you see phone centers that are trying to scam old people out of money, does that become conflicted for what technology sort of

enables for you? I mean, at the end of the day, I think technology is amoral, and it can be used for tremendous good, it could be used for tremendous bad, and, oh, you hope the good outweighs the bad. And my job, you know, is to use some of the good to try and outweigh the bad. And in that case, literally that video was born. And I was making one of the glitter bombs and I got one of those like Microsoft scam calls, you know, or like your car warranties expired.

I'm like, who's behind these things? So eventually I worked with another YouTuber Jim Browning. We hacked into some of these scam centers in Kolkata, India. So we got access to their system. How did you access the security system? So their trick is that when they come to take over your computer, so you pretend you're an old, you know, some, I don't know what's going on.

And they're like, okay, ma'am, let me help you with your computer. Well, that's a two-way connection. so when that happens if you know what you're doing you can remote into their computers so that's what Jim Browning does is he's very good at computers and you don't just get access to their CTV you get access to like their mainframe

so we know exactly it's kind of a normal business by the way it's kind of boring they have like scam training they have like HR right they have like goals of how many scams you're going to do a month like pizza parties I was going to say you know what's happening for lunch that week yeah exactly

It's kind of hilarious, but we'd see how much, you know, they're making, I think, like, $30 million a year running three shifts, 24 hours a day. They'd been doing it for a decade, three of these. So we went there with, you know, our glitter bombs. First of all, I hired like eight people to work undercover for eight months just to learn, just stuff like find out what the week. To work there? At a scam center, yeah. I wanted to learn their weaknesses. And one of them, it turns out is you can bring lunch boxes out onto the floor.

You can't bring phones. you can't bring anything else, but they let you bring your lunch and like a water bottle. So we designed like a lunch box that we put like a hundred cockroaches in, but then it had a ball screw and a remote timer on a trigger. So the wall would move forward. So basically these cockroaches would start getting squish and then a door open. So all the cockroaches would run out at once. We had a smoke bomb in there. Of course, we sent him a glitter bomb.

And then we filmed it all in these CCTV footage. And it's hilarious footage. So, you know, my thing is like, I could have made a PSA on what these scams are and how to avoid them. That wouldn't have evoked a visceral response. That would have got 100 views. But if I can wrap this in a story and entertain you and make you feel a lot of things, well, now you're going to share that video. And Sunshine is a great disinfectant. And effectively, that's what happened.

We released this video. It has like hundreds of millions of views now. And because what was happening is you had a few bad Apple police officers. in these cities who were being paid off, they didn't have that spotlight on them. But now it made it impossible to defend them because the Times of India's covering it. All these people are up in arms and protesting,

and all three of those scam centers got shut down. The top, I think there was like 18 officials arrested from this stupid... This is real, real world impact. This is from a stupid YouTube video. Do you know the Greek god Hafeist us? You heard of that? No.

So he was the god of craftsmanship, fire, networking and stuff. He's kind of the archetype of the tinkerer, your way, Hephaestus, or Hephaestus. And he's the only Greek god that was crippled. So he's like a chubby guy, and he sort of needed crutches, and he needed a wheelchair. And I think he was betrothed or maybe even married to one of the most beautiful of the gods. and the super Chad God was sleeping with his wife behind his back and he knew that this thing was happening

and he'd discovered them and he was heartbroken and it's kind of a tale as old as time that the nerdy tinkerer has his good-looking girls stolen by the sort of Chad bully. So he gets back at her and him and he designs this unbelievably strong cage. Glitter bomb? Ah, it could have been.

Cockroaches. This really strong cage that is positioned over the bed and he waits until they get down into bed and then this thing drops and he invites all of the other gods and all of the other gods come in and laugh at them. And it's that it kind of reminds me of your story that there's

this sort of tinkerer who uses innovation and ingenuity to sort of righteously even the scales. Yeah. I love that. That's great. Yeah, it's like, I don't know, it's this, that was so lovely to see because it's kind of like this

what can I do? Like if I would have if we would have got that information from the scan centers and given to the police nothing would have happened right?

But if I make a story that makes you feel something and evokes an emotion attention. Now suddenly, right, now suddenly something happens. And I think, I don't know,

it's like a powerful example of like agency. It's like, what can you do in your spot, in your position, you know, to affect the world? Best question about agency.

You're stuck in a third world jail and you've got 24 hours to get out phone call who'd you ring probably jimmy kimmel that's a good one like he is he is he is he is we're good friends like we vacation together he saw one of my videos and I went on his show and since then we've just had a friendship and he's so loyal but also connected that it would be jimmy who do you call I got some friends the direct special forces Tim Kennedy would probably be pretty fun, Evan Hafer from Black Rifle Coffee would be, and Andy Stumpf would also be

interesting. Like dudes that are, you know, 40s and 50s that would really probably revel in it. They'd have a lot of, they'd really enjoy it. Yeah, it's a challenge. But it's just, you know, this person doesn't need permission, they can think on their own feet, they'll be able to. Oh, is this like them coming in actively rescuing you or just like pulling the strings to make it happen? I guess both. Okay. In a way. I mean, Jimmy's got to be involved. He's going to have to project manage. Unless he hands it off to an assistant, in which case, ring the assistant. But yeah, it's just who's the highest agency person.

Ah, I see. So it's a function. It's a way to identify who the highest agency person is. I love it. That's great. Yeah, maybe it's Jimmy. Yeah. That's funny because you're probably somebody's and I'm probably B-Pills in my life as well, right. I think I would be. Unfortunately, I'm too busy, sorry. That's right. But yeah, there's two groups. There's one group that is, if you want somebody to break you out of the third world prison, who is it?

And then there's another one, which I've got at least a few in my life. I think everybody needs somebody like this as well, which is if you want to go into business with your captors, like if you want to not only have you be gotten out, but before you know, it's somehow you now own the jail. And you've actually turned the jail into a really wonderful amusement park. And you need a couple of people like that that can kind of... That's Jimmy Donaldson for me, Mr. Beast. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's between the two jimmies. Yeah, if you want to launch a YouTube channel with your captors, go into... Yeah. Go with Jimmy. Okay, so you're... engineering brain, you're looking to apply engineering logic to some human problems as well. What are the thinking tools or heuristics that you try and apply when it comes to looking at human problems like tolerances or failure budgets or like iterative testing or something?

Is there something that you realize, in my daily life I can apply this engineering principle here and it works out pretty well? I think the engineering design process is something that's just so applicable for real-life problems, which is just like you start with an objective. I want to get a rover to Mars, right? I want to build a glitter bomb that these will take. That is your end goal. Again, it kind of comes down to life gamification.

And I know I'm not going to get it right. I know there's a lot of questions I need to answer. I mean, step one is really just breaking it down. If that's the end goal, here are the main four chunks that need to happen to accomplish that, right? I need to do some research. I need to do an initial prototype. I need to have a feedback loop and iterate a bunch. And I need to do the final thing.

And I think that's how you launch a business. That's how you make a microphone like this. This is how you build a garden in your backyard, right? It all, it starts with that, it's that same process. It helps make things feel not daunting, right? Because at the end of the day, if you're going to climb Mount Everest, it's just literally one step at a time, and people get overwhelmed. There's just like, how do I get up there?

That's so far. And so the engineering design process allows you to break it down into those bite-sized pieces. And then as failure comes, quote-unquote failure, you know that's part of the process. And it's almost exciting. It's more flavorful, right? Okay. And what about the reverse? What about emotional intelligence skills?

like frustration tolerance or kindness or humor or collaboration, how important are they when it comes to doing the engineering thing? Because I think a lot of people really love the idea of raw talent, innovation being able to be enough. But I certainly know from hearing you speak about your time at Apple being kind of a shock to the system of how important communication collaboration is. Unfortunately, even engineering doesn't occur inside of a sterile box. It's not just input process output. There's human psychology in here. No, for sure.

I mean, that's what makes our species different than every species on the planet is our ability to collaborate at large scales and have shared goals. And that happens through stories that usually are fictional, but that's part of, you know, you share a vision. And if you can, and that is, you know, at Apple, I did find people were not only smart, maybe not quite as smart as at NASA, but they, They were better communicators across the board. And that is almost, that's equally important because if you actually want to accomplish something meaningful, it can't be just by yourself. Like you need a team. If everyone's pushing in the same direction, incredible things happen.

How do you get everyone to push in the same direction? They have to believe in a shared vision. And that ability to convince someone of something to understand your vision. vision is a superpower. And you want to know how you do that? It's the same way you make a viral video. You have to evoke a visceral response. Sharing the facts and being like, well, if we build this, it'll be 20% faster in the processing speed, right? Nobody cares. But if it's like, hey, if we build this, like, that's going to connect people. And, you know, currently with CrunchLabs, like, that is our mission. We want to reach as many brains as possible and affect them with this passion for

learning and curiosity. And we have 100 employees now. And we are mission driven. and we get up and we're just so stoked about what we're building and what we're creating and yeah they're toys which makes a great last minute Christmas gift by the way

Crunchlabs.com Crunchlaps.com but it's like you're learning and they're so fun first of all they're so fun but we hide the vegetables and before you know it you're learning

all these really cool things but you have this emotional connection to it right it's it's that same we you have to attach the learning to some emotion and some feeling in other news you've probably heard me talk about element before and that's because i am frankly

dependent on it uh and it's how i've started my day every single morning this is the best tasting hydration drink on the market you might think why do i need to be more hydrated because proper hydration is not just about drinking enough water it's having sufficient electrolytes to allow your body to use those fluids each grabbing girl stick pack is a science backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium. It's got no sugar, coloring, artificial ingredients, or any other junk. This plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing brain health, regulating your appetite, and curbing cravings. This orange flavor in a cold glass of water is a sweet, salty, orangey nectar, and you will genuinely feel a difference when you take it versus when you don't,

which is why I keep going on about it. Best of all, there's no questions-ask refund policy with an unlimited duration. Buy it, use it all, and if you don't like it for any reason, they give you your money back and you don't even have to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below. I'm heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. Dude, look at Ken Burns's documentaries. What's the Vietnam documentary series? Maybe 20 hours? Maybe 30 hours.

Uh-huh. And history in school for me wasn't that fun because of the way it was taught. So the same topic displayed in two different ways, made all the difference. Yeah. And that's actually what we're doing. This is something I'm only starting now to talk about. We haven't talked a lot publicly, but it's like releasing, making a full school curriculum, third to eighth grade. It covers all the tricks I've learned on how they have vegetables on YouTube.

We're making like really exciting, cool science. it's got me, all your favorite YouTuber, we just, Cristiano Ronaldo's in it. It's, it, here's the standards, and it's going to cost us about $50 million to make, and then we're going to make it free for all teachers forever. And I feel like it's the most important work I'll do my whole life. So basically, Crunch Labs is you productizing curiosity, in a way.

That's what you've tried to do. You've tried to make a monthly box of curiosity. You don't know what it's going to be on the other side, and then you try to instill that into kids afterward by getting them to go through these experiments. Yeah, because I can't teach you, my YouTube videos aren't going to teach you everything you possibly know, but what I can be is a fire starter in your brain,

especially for young kids because the clay isn't hardened. Okay, so if what you're doing is trying to kickstart the curiosity, what have you learned from watching kids interact with the experiments that you've done that schools don't understand? Like, what do you wish that school is understood that you know? Like, every teacher will tell you, like, I can't teach you if I don't have your attention. And I think they do a very bad job of getting kids' attention.

So, for example, on this cool thing, class crunch labs are calling it, is when we're talking about electricity and magnetism, I'm in front of an MRI machine, I put a watermelon in there, I'm holding a 10-pound hammer, flip on the MRI machine, It just rips it from my hand and just obliterates this watermelon. And that, those eyes right there, I love that. And guess what? I have your attention now. And you're like, what the hell was that?

It's like, oh, well, there's these invisible fields called magnetic fields that are around us all the time. And now let me tell you about them, right? Versus like, here is a diagram of the Earth's magnetic field and a compass aligns with it, right? And like, the curriculum writers bless their heart, except not because they charge for it for these poor teachers don't have the money to buy it,

and it's really, really bad. They never had to have a YouTube channel where they had to earn the attention of adults and kids. They're able to sort of dictate the attention. You will listen to me. That's right. And if you don't, the class goes on anyway. The class goes on.

Like, the kids can get up and walk out. Like, they switch off the YouTube video. That's right. And so it's going to... Attention. Attention. So I would say, like... Yeah, like attention.

And the toys, too. Just they're fun. First and foremost, they are fun. Like, I'm not. not going to make a boring, if it's fun, now we'll figure out how to attach the learning on to that. So start with the attention and a lot of times that comes with fun. And the same thing, getting a visceral response. Like, I'll make a video about a 15 ton jello pool, which is really hard to do, by the way. Why? Why? Because you never made jello before? You got to heat it up.

You got to heat it up where it's almost well, and then you have to cool it down. And so to do that at scale, we're like, how are we going to do that? There's not just make lots of little ones? Yeah, but then it's not contiguous. Then it's not contiguous. Then it's not. not like, you want a belly flop on it, right? Understood. So what I did, to find a refrigerator, I just found the right place in the country at the right time that I wanted to film this

that got to almost refrigeration temperatures at night, but not cold enough to freeze, which happened to be where my brother lived in like Mapleton, Utah. So we dug out a hole, and then we had six 55-gallon drums that we boiled all of the gelatin in and then piped it through potential energy into the pool and over, layers, over seven days.

And then finally we got it And we got that shot of a kid belly flopping on it But the point is That video says 15 ton jello pool That is clickbait You want to click on it and then Pretty soon I'm teaching about the scientific method And chemistry

To hiding those vegetables Sneaky in the learning Once you're like stoked about the story It's sick man What's this? What have we got? This is creativity kit So this is just one of the things that we offer It's the newest one

So we had the build box That was the original one Then we had hackpack, and that's kind of robotics. Right. And then this one starts at age like six, where it really teaches the ideas of creativity. What's the state of, like, kids toys at the moment? Because I remember McConnell. Did you have McConnell over here?

No. So, Macano was like metal Lego, I guess. But much more involved, way more complex. Yeah. And that was, I found that fascinating. You could make trucks and cars out of there would be braces and bolts. It was really, it was sick. Wow.

But is that still? Are you guys kind of really breaking through with it? You and Lego, is that it for when it comes to the constructing shit? I mean, this is like, we are currently, we sell these, as I'm as it comes to, you know, direct to consumers. But I will say we are launching in, like with retail products and stores like Target and Walmart. In the STEM aisle, the STEM aisle sucks. What's the STEM mark? Like STEM is like science.

But what is in there? Every Target Walmart has either four or eight feet dedicated to, like, stem-type toys. And it's like the baking soda volcano or, like, geo-grow a crystal. It's been the- Stuff that's been the same for decades. 30 years. It's just ripe for being disrupted. And we have some really, really cool stuff that is completely going to disrupt that aisle.

I'm really happy to hear that. Okay, what about grown-ups who feel like the curiosity's been pruned? out of them. It's going to be harder for them to get the Crunch Lab subscription and feel that, you know, excitement. I don't know if that's true, though, because we have, again, now it's ages 6 to 106 where, like,

hack pack is for its kind of robot. Even if you've never coded before, you can put it together. It's a really fun build. And then we encourage you to, like, hack it and swap the, it's Arduino-based. What's that? Arduino is, like, a microprocessor.

Like, it's, like, a raspberry pie or Arduino. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's a simple form of like a Raspberry Pi. So it's like the first one's a desktop robot that's, you know, you could control with a little remote, but then we encourage people to go in and like tweak the code and make it really easy. You don't have to. It'll work out of the box, but we want to like just make the next step that much easier.

So if you've always wanted to learn to code but never have, we'll hold your hand with hackback. It's going to be super fun and you're going to grow and learn. And then hopefully you take that and do that to other parts in your life. Yeah, that is cool. I think certainly one of the things that I've seen is people's time's got squeezed more. We don't have much time to play or tinker because all of the additional hours of boredom that would have allowed you to do something a bit slower, a bit smaller, a little bit more quiet, has been squeezed out because there's a very attractive, well, there's YouTube videos and podcasts,

you know, games and social media and stuff. Which is all inputs, right? I feel like we are drowning inputs and sort of starved for outputs. It's great, right? Actually doing something with our own hands. That time is now just like passively feed my brain. And you can only learn so much. You haven't constructed anything on the other side.

Even the biggest YouTube channel in the world, had it not have been for the fact that you did physical experiments, like show me where your YouTube channel is. Show me it. What have you built? Well, kind of nothing. There's code and there's numbers on a screen. And I think they kind of correlate to real humans that pressed a button.

But no, I think, I think, that the opportunity to do something slow. One of my friends had a professional coach who was trying to teach him a little bit of humility and to be able to chill out. And his task for a month was to start doing something new, but he wasn't allowed to try and get better at it. So he was told that he had to try and...

He decided to take up watercoloring. He always wanted to paint. And after he did it once or a couple of times and he really enjoyed it, he found that he wanted to go on YouTube and look at watercolor tutorials, and then he was going to go and research what the best Reddit thread said

about the specific brush he needed. No, no, nope, no, I can't do that. I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to allow myself to do it. And I thought that was so interesting. It was the first time I'd ever heard of anybody saying, I have this thing that I'm trying to do and I'm actively not trying to get better at it.

I did one version of that where it's like, I love chess, and I found I wasn't playing chess because going back to internalizing failure, I felt like if I lost, that means something about me. So I made a goal of like, I am going to play chess, but my goal, I'm going to try and win, but my real goal is to lose 10 times. Right. Right. And I'm not going to feel like I check that box until I've lost 10 games.

And it really flipped it for me and then normalizing, I acclimated to losing. And it was like, oh, wait, I'm back to loving this. and I don't attach these negative feelings to it because I won, because I lost 10 times. Have you looked at rejection therapy? No, but it's basically this thing, right? 100 days of rejection. 100 days of rejection.

My goal is to desensitize myself from the pain of rejection and overcome my fear. Three criteria I set for myself. One, ethical, two legal. Three, doesn't deny the laws of physics. Rejection one, borrow $100 from a stranger. Number two, request a burger refill. Number 15, be a live mannequin at Abercrombie.

Number 32, get my own free room at a hotel. So the ideas he did all of these. Number 36, trim my hair at a pet smart. Hugg a Walmart greeter, bike race at Toys R Us. My only day at a new job, so he joined a job for a day. Um, buy a quarter of shrimp. Name my own price at dollar tree. Uh, change your coffee shop's Wi-Fi password.

Uh, try and fix a PC at the Apple store. And, um, what was this? What was day 100? Interview President Obama. Um, or try. And I just thought, like, what a cool, like, such a cool idea. That's so good. Rejection therapy.

But like, going back to just like making stuff. Like, I would imagine we've evolved. to be digging in the dirt and to be building and to be working with our hands, right? And I do feel like there's probably some part of that, you know, this is me being an armchair expert here, but like the record levels of depression may have to do with just like all these inputs that are so attractive that just lit us sitting in a chair as opposed to like building, doing stuff with our own hands and getting out and moving dirt around. The pace that you're forced to operate on.

that pace that your brain is supposed to walk right out is really, really, really aggressive. And I certainly know the times when I've been able to, and even think about what meditation is. Meditation is kind of like, it's great, and I love it and I've done it an awful lot. But it's a really unnatural way to try and achieve what we're doing. It's the same way as our lives have become so convenient that we have to build a building where there's heavy things with special handles that you go into and pick up and put down, in exactly the same place, because your entire life is now bereft of you having to lift anything difficult.

Yeah. You know, even as an Amazon driver, you're probably lifting less than our ancestors would have done. And your job is to lift things. So we build this building that has stuff that you purposefully lift in very specific ways, so that you then put them down again. And meditation's kind of like going to the gym for slowing down. Because your life is so intense most of the time, you need to have this weird, holiday from that that's a portion of your day that is you doing something else that makes sense

yeah and it's also like it's crazy how hard it is to not think thoughts like you know a meditation i've dabbled and a little bit my partner's like really big in it and i've been doing it more but it's amazing how much i suck at it you know just like going to the gym for the first time it's like wow i'm not conditioned to do this it's wild how hard it is to not think and to clear your mind right and just like focus on the breathing, I find it incredibly difficult and it's certainly a muscle you have to build and a muscle it feels worth building

once I try and do it and see the benefits. Have you not, you know, if you've been tinkering with some glitter bomb for hours and hours, is there not a crossover toward a mindfulness practice with regards to that? I mean, there's something about like hitting flow state, especially for writing.

I still write all my own videos. and it's really hard until it's not and then it just all pours out really quickly right but no I think the opposite is true where it's like if I'm writing a thing or trying to solve a problem it's like it's always on

repeat and just in the back of my brain like we could be having this conversation and I could have like not a breakthrough but it's like oh I'm going to try that as soon as I got up you know what I mean yeah you are right I mean certainly stuff that captures the front of your brain while the back of it's still thinking it's lovely I love doing the washing

up. It sounds like such a dumb thing, but doing the dishes for me is so great. I have an unusually high volume of good ideas while I'm doing the dish. It's my favorite chore. Yep. Yeah. And well, it's just driving. Another one. I fucking love driving. I'm happy to drive. So do you listen to stuff? Are you listening to your podcast? Sometimes. Sometimes I'll be listening to stuff. But other times, if I'm just thinking, it's a great place to. Yeah, but I guess that's my point. Do you say, hey, I'm not going to turn on the radio because... When I'm being good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I had a period where for about six months, when I first started the podcast, I always put my phone in the trunk of the car. So I couldn't listen to anything. There was no AirPods, no nothing. And even if I was going to the gym and it was only 20 minutes away. Yeah. It sounds, I mean, what a revolution. You don't listen to something or even try and use your phone while you're driving.

And you have this wonderful mini break. from the world. Well, it's like the case for boredom, right? Like, I feel like raising kids, it's like, I want to get two presents for Christmas. And, like, the goal is to be bored every day. Like, that's for the creativity. I think that's a whole movement towards that now, right?

Again, it's the opposite to all of these inputs. Like, cut those off, and then what happens? Have you noted? I certainly have, I'm not an avid AI user, but chat GPT gets a good bit of daily use, you know, between 10 and 20. times a day something like that probably for you mean yeah yeah like i need to sort this thing how do i could how do i do i do this thing one of the things i have noticed is now i'm beginning

to get an aversion to having to overcome questions myself because i can just go to chat gpte and work out exactly what it is uh i haven't done this but like similar stuff if i if i had to write a difficult email i'm trying to say this to this And as opposed to wrestling with the problem, it's kind of like having a, you know, team of staff on hand. Instead of having to do the dishes, you just get the dishwasher or the maid to do it. Instead of having to put your clothes away, the assistant does it. Yeah, I mean, I think this is the argument that we are becoming cyborgs. The fact, like, how many phone numbers do you have memorized now? Three. Right. And 15 years, you know, 30 years ago, growing up,

up we had everyone's memorized like we don't need to because the information's there and obviously there was the case with google and i think this is just one more step in that direction and yeah these are an extension of our brain in some sense right as we learn to use them and work with them and adapt to them being part of us reduced friction by such a huge margin now i think even with google you had for sure you had to do the reading for sure i mean look at us talking about searching on Google like it was fucking foraging for berries. Like that's friction.

Yeah. I resonate with this so much. You're completely right. Like, even I needed to find like the right Christmas lights the other day. And I found myself Google and I hate this. I was like, wait. Why am I not using an LLM for this? I gave it exactly what I wanted. Sure enough. I had four websites. I was like, oh.

And now guess what? I'm never searching for anything. I've now learned that behavior. Yep. And now it's like, oh, now when I need to find something difficult, this is what I'm going to do. What will come next will be Gemini integrated into Chrome. Atlas already exists for ChatGPT. So this will just become one form.

Yeah. Isn't, you must know about this. I might need to bleep this out. You must know what the Open AI products are, do you? I have like probably a tiny bit more of a view than the average person, but I don't fully know. Fuck. But I think it's, my guess is. He brought what's his face on, right?

The dude that did. Johnny Ive. Johnny Ive. Yeah, yeah. And they said they're releasing three products by the end of the year. This year? Or by the something. Maybe it can't be the end of this year.

It can't be. But at some point. And they said that one of them has never been seen before and doesn't exist. And somebody asked it, is it a pin? And they said, no. My guess is it's just like a camera that can see the world and hear the world. But it's very minimal, however that is, whether it's a ring or it's a. And then if it's capturing all the information and visual,

could see stuff. It's like the world's greatest assistant, right? Because it remembers this conversation. It reminds every conversation you have. It helps you follow up. And then it, like, do you have a personal assistant or someone like that, is? What an unlock that was when you got one of those. And so now everyone gets this of like now when I want to buy those Christmas lights, to your point, it going agentic, I just have to say, hey, I'm looking for these kind of lights. And then two minutes later, it's like, okay, they'll be at your porch tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. Right. Whereas I have an assistant, I can tell that to the assistant and give them that problem and they do the same thing. Yeah. Now imagine, but you still don't have the assistant with you everywhere. So getting the context of your life.

Yeah. My guess is that's, and I have like one or two slight clues that that's true that aren't in the public domain, but that would be my guess. Wow. Wow. What do you think it would be? I was going to guess glasses because that would have made so much sense. Some kind of badge type thing or, you know, Yeah, just on your wrist, almost like a watch, but it's, it's a camera and a microphone. Yeah, and it's just tracking everything at all times, and you set it down, it charges at night. Yeah. But you need a way for it to communicate back to you, which means it would need a screen or it's going to have to be audio. Yeah, big audio, just like an assistant, you know, you just talk to them and they talk to them.

Then it's going to have to have Bluetooth and you're going to have headphones, so it's going to have to link them to some headphones. Or it could just be through your phone, right? It could just be the sensors, the eyes and the ears, and then you talk to the phone, but it has all the info. Yeah. I think, how do you feel about the future? Because everyone that I speak to, whether it's like a Toby Ord, Nick Bostrom, Elliot Dukowski, Tristan Harris, you know, whoever it is that I speak to from that side of the fence, they have vague despondency. They're like apocalyptic, but in a kind of a, ephemeral way. Want to know what I think, like, the best case scenario is? Yes. Have you heard the idea of like if you had 10 dogs in a house? If you have like 10 dogs in a house and there's a pile of food, those dogs and they're

just on their own, they're going to fight over that scarce resource, which is the food. There's going to be one big dog who's going to be the number one, but constantly fighting. They're, you know, wounded, some are dying. And that's not a great situation. But they are eating because there's a big pile of food. Just some eat better than others. Now, if a human goes into that house and be like, okay, hey, guys, I bought you 10 cages. You're all going to be in the cages, but I'm going to give you food every day and all the water you need.

You're going to be able to go to the vet. We're going to go on walks every day. And they'll basically help distribute those resources. Those dobs objectively, even the top dog, are happier because the resources are being allocated in a way because there's someone who can kind of map the whole situation. our best hope is for like a benevolent overlord in this sense someone who comes to the house and can help us balance the scarce resources or just create enough resources that they aren't even scarce but incentive like and the reason we do that for dogs is we think they're cute and we think they have value and we just have to hope the AI overlord sort of a value oh they're cute dogs like let's look after them and value in our species you know bostrom's idea of the urn and you pull out different technologies, and sometimes it's white and it's good.

Sometimes it's gray and it's kind of bad. And then every so often there's a black ball, and the black ball is a true existential risk, and it kills you man. Yeah. Like if you could, if putting sand in your microwave was an A bomb. Correct.

We'd be done. We've read the same stuff. Yeah, yeah. So I kind of think about the same, but instead of it being an urn where you're bringing out different technologies, it's a ball's where you're bringing out alignments. And, but it's inverted. And there's only.

a very, very small number of ways for it to be benevolent. But there's a really, really small number of ways that you could align, and they wouldn't all be the same. There's not only one alignment that would make for a great world. It's definitely not an infinite number either. There are way more ways to break something

than to fix something or make it better. That means that even if you just go by fucking proportion, like the likelihood that you don't get it right is pretty high. And yeah, according to these guys that are way smarter than me and even you, they seem to think that it's on route. What's the best estimate that you've heard

for advent of AGI? I mean, the truth is nobody really knows, but I don't know. I don't know. I can't really answer that. I will say, oh, hold on, I just wanted to make a point. You cut this out where I'm thinking of this, because I wanted to make a follow point of that,

which is, oh, yeah. So I will say those who are the most optimistic about it are the ones who kind of have the most to gain. Like you look at Sam Altman and he's like, oh, it's going to be a perfect world. You know, everything, age is going to be so great because like he's so heavily incentivized. Maybe some motivated reasoning. Yeah. Because like even if it's a 1% chance, it is that amazing utopian case. In the new world, he's a god, right?

And in the 99% chance, unless I'm just assigning values to it, that bad things. things happen. Whether he does it or not, someone else is going to do it and the bad thing's going to happen. So like, of course he's... Might as well roll the dice to be the guy. Might as well roll the dice. What's that line about it's very difficult to make a man disbelieve something that his wage relies on him believing? Yeah, yeah, exactly, right? He's incentivized to have this polyana attitude. Now, look, a very good friend of mine is Sam's coach and is the head of human culture at Open A.I. And I trust him implicitly. It's Joe Hudson who's been on the show at time. He is as fucking legit as they come, Joe. And he's such a good judge of character. And he works

with Sam and I've heard a couple of things from Sam with regard to his meditation practice and what he's done. I'm like, I'm trying to square this circle where there definitely are some really scary potential externalities coming from this thing. And there's just this bit of me where, few people that I really know and trust so I have I have glimmers but does he work for Sam he did but he had this he had this way fake check

realize I don't even know it's really even maybe fuck yeah I'll use my own rule against maybe look I'm trying to find a silver lining in the stream of shit here but yeah the one thing I think we both agree on probably is is like whether it doesn't matter what I think about it

it's going to happen there's like a small set of the humans that are driving this forward and you can't unring that bell. So it's like, I'm not, I don't stay up at night because of it. You know what I mean? Like, I don't let it, I'm still just. You're on the roller coaster, right? We're all on the roller coaster.

Yeah. You can try and do the Eliezer thing and ring the bells sufficiently loudly. But the only way that this works is if you're able to somehow put a global moratorium on all AI development. And I just think that's not, that's not going to happen, which creates this weird, like, inverse arms race where everybody thinks, well, I'll do it, but I'll do it right. And if I get there first, so yeah, if you do have this sort of Pollyanna, God complex attitude, well, no, no, no, we can do, we got the engineer and the alignment and then what did, and you think, well, fucking what, dude?

Yeah, I had a weird thought the other day. We were hiking. I live in Silicon Valley. We were hiking up. We could see all the way to San Francisco and then all the way down to Silicon Valley. It's about a 50-mile stretch. And I was like, what's crazy is like this 50-mile stretch of length is sort of going to determine the future of humanity and our space. And then my next thought was like, if I'm a government that's on the other side of this, where do I want to put that a bomb? I mean, it's also probably one of the closest places to China, right?

I didn't love that thought. And I'm like, oh, right. That could, even if it just buys you. four months, that could be the difference of being the first to hit AGI, and then that's everything. Bro, there was a guy who I brought on the show. I can't remember his name. I wish that I could. And he told me this story. He wrote a really successful tech book a decade and a half ago, and then he wrote another one. The opening story of this book is him being invited by a bunch of these tech leaders, billionaires, pre-chat ChiPT, so maybe 2019, 2020, something like that.

And sat down at this dinner and there's sort of a weird atmosphere. It feels like the kind of a holding pattern going on in the conversation. He doesn't really know why. And then sort of the whole room changes a little bit. And they say, right, New Zealand or Greenland? He's like, what? New Zealand or Greenland? What do you mean?

For the bunker, what are you talking about? Oh, the post-apocalyptic war bunker, is it more effective for us to have them in New Zealand or is it in Greenland? And what do you think about how we control the Marines that work for us? Because what we're thinking is that we'll use shock collars and that we'll pay them in crypto, but that the ledger will be associated with biometrics. And if they betray us, if they try to do them, then we can just kill them with the.

And he was like, this sounds like an absolute movie scene. Yeah. And maybe he was making it up, but it sounded. Yeah, I'm kind of like at that point. And I've heard this, like, yeah, New Zealand because, like, they have everything you need to self-produce and there's all these reasons why it makes sense. But it's like, if, like, if that's what things have devolved to,

it's like, I'm good. Like, we had a great run. Like, you know. Hands up and put some more fucking crunch lab stuff together. Yeah, well, just like, if we're in a world where just like everyone is, like, killing each other and it's just like total apocalypse, like, do you, what are you looking to survive for?

Like, you come out of that bunker. That was exactly why. I mean, that was the exact reason that he gave, which was, what do you think they're going to do with all that Bitcoin? Yeah. What are they spending it on? Right. You have access to the food. Yeah.

What is that what is that that's left? Yeah, and it's almost like- How precarious human civilization is when you start to think about this thing. Right. And well, it's also like even with the AI, where for the first time in human history, like, generally the more money you made, it equated to the more employees you have. Right. As you made more money, you would hire more people. you could do more stuff.

And now for the first time, not only are they decoupled, but there's almost an inverse relationship where you could save a ton of money if you lay off all these people and now your profit's going to go way up. And the question then becomes are these CEOs and I've been in circles

where people have told me about this where they're like, this is awesome, we're going to do all this. But then quickly they realize like, but who's going to buy our thing? Because no one's going to have money because no one's going to be employed, right?

Yeah. But then you got into UBI, and there was a couple of studies done on UBI test cases and you get to look at these. Yeah. Seems like mixed results, right? Yeah, not super positive. And, yeah, man, we may be, this is the fear, I think,

the fundamental fear that everybody has always had. This is what Cassandra's are, that they're seeing some future apocalypse and that nobody's listening. And at each generation, reading is going to ruin the youth. television is going to ruin the youth and the car will destroy the horse and so on and so forth. And at each

level we felt like it's apocalyptic what's coming next, that it's going to be something that's really really worth us saying you shouldn't do this. But dude, this is a step function difference. This is not a difference of degree. It's a difference of kind. It is an entirely different world that we are moving toward.

And even if it isn't that one, it's the one that enables. And it really does feel like sort of the musical chairs and the music is slowing down to come to a stop. Now, maybe the song on the other side of it is way better, but it's definitely a different

fucking song, I think. Well, this is, I think, one of the most plausible. Are you familiar with Fermi's paradox? So it's like, of all the nine reasons there could be, the one I've always kind of and feels more and more plausible is just like by the time you develop the energy to use

and the technology to go to other solar systems, there's you've developed that, you've harnessed a lot of energy that then you could use against yourself or other people. You have to assume life is always going to be competitive if it's evolving in other spots.

So there's going to be competition built in and it's just a glass ceiling in civilizations. And as we, as things get closer and closer, you realize like, oh, maybe there is a glass ceiling effect and that's what we're approaching. There's a,

I tried to bring this guy on. Stephen Webb, if the universe is teeming with aliens where are they all? And he's got 50 solutions to the Fermi paradoxes and I should still try and bring him on it that I was obsessed

That's like one of my favorite Just like you're camping You're looking at the stars and just like Just to make your brain go like That's crazy where is all the life Yeah well what's that question There's two answers to where are they And they're both equally terrifying

Either there's nobody else out there Or there is Yeah And then, yeah, yeah, exactly. And we are, like, one of NASA's projects we're working on is, like, going to one of the moons that's, you know, Enceladus. And the core's lava. What's that? It's like a moon around, I think, Jupiter or Saturn.

But it has geysers of fresh water coming out at the top. So the top is, obviously, it's really far away, so it's frozen, it's cold. The core is molten. And so at some point between that icy surface and the core, there's like a 70-degree ocean. ocean and life we know formed in water here on this planet and we've never found life exists that doesn't need water so we're basically building something we're going to go out there we're to drill into the ice send a submarine down there and see what eats it and if like if there's life in that nice ocean out there it's it's fascinating and almost terrifying you know david kipping from the

cool worlds lab in cool worlds on youtube bro you would fucking oh really you know um Brian Cox So imagine Brian Cox, 15 years younger, big, like Chad jaw, like young dude. And he got 72 hours on the James Webb Telescope. No way. Yeah, it gets allocated to different projects. Obviously, it's like a shared resource. And he looks for exoplanets. He looks for exoplanets.

And he's got this amazing YouTube channel, a Sunday, it's fucking sick. And this is this sort of stuff that he talked. about a lot on his channel. Oh, really, really, really. Well, this is the point, though, because if life exists twice in our own solar system, but then you get onto Robin Hansen's Great Filter Hypothesis. Have you heard that one? Which is, I mean, it's one of the glass ceiling, the Great Filter.

Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is one of the nine examples, or every paradox explanation. Okay, yes. Filter of the civilization. There's something, but what you actually don't want to find is life in our solar system. That's a very bad sign. Agreed. because it suggests that the filter is in front of us, not behind us.

Yes. And so the filter could be our own doing. That's the glass ceiling. The filter could also be potentially, if this is what you're referring to. They are aware of us. Dark Forest. But we're just, yeah, right, we're just not enough of a threat. But as soon as we figure one or two things more out, they're like, all right.

Is it nuclear energy? Is it type two Kardashev? Is it into the... Is it AI? Yeah. Right? Fuck, that would be lame. Imagine if...

That would be lame. Totally. What destroys us isn't AI itself, but the fact of the development. Holy shit. Then aliens come for us. There's seti, but there's also METI, right? Messaging extraterrestrial. And I had a dude on that wrote an entire book about that, but the history of it too.

And there's been, since the beginning of time, a concern about how much bleed have we got from radio signals. Yeah. And what's the, they're tracking the sphere of the first ever radio signals moving through space to go, Remember the movie Contact? Do you remember that movie? I didn't watch it. Oh, it's great. It's like from that we just, I just re-watched it.

But the first signal they get back from the aliens is Nazi. It's Hitler. And it's because the, the Olympics from Germany was the first, like, broadcast television signal that had gone out. So it was their way of saying like, hey, we hear you. We're repeating this back to you. And it's Hitler. Fuck. so yeah

well what an apocalyptic way to finish yeah yeah dude I normally don't talk like this no you rule I'm so happy for everything you've got going on the Netflix the Sesame Street the Crunch Labs tell people what they should check out I mean and you go to crunchlabs

com or just go I have a lot of or just checking out the YouTube channel if you like if you're curious and you like to learn without feeling like you're learning then we've got a lot of content there you're great man I appreciate thanks for having me me. I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or

nonfiction or real life stories. And that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read. These are the most life-changing reads that I've ever found. And there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And it's completely free. And you can get it right now by going to chriswillex.com slash books. That's Chriswillex.com slash books.