Tomorrow, Today - Season 1 Recap

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

We wrap up our first season and discuss favorite moments, future goals of the show, whether or not we should embrace our alien overlords, and if beaches made of cremated remains are the best way to build a beach body. We'll be back in July; check out our other podcasts Death & Friends, The Poor Proles Almanac, and the Gastropocene in the meantime!

What's up? I regret that instantly. It's A-Dog with the Nashmaster. Oh, dear God. Hey, guys. Okay. It's Andy. Yes, it is.

And this is Nash. Hello. Of death and friends. Of Nashville. Okay. Also of that. Andy of Andy Stan. No.

Fine. There's nothing with an Andy in it, really? Andyville, weird. Yeah. Okay. Andy land. Pitos. Yeah.

All right. I hear it now. Andifornia. diseased. Yeah, there's no options. Okay, fine. I just assume somewhere in the world. No, there's not. You've got Nashville, I've got

these nuts, I don't know. Anyways, welcome back. This is Andy. This is tomorrow. Today, we are wrapping up our wonderful season one of us doing this for some reason and people are listening and that's cool. We're happy to have you.

We are on episode 20. We've done 18 interviews. We did the intro. We've done, and now we're doing this thing for number 20, I think. So we've covered numbers. We love them here. We do. Thank you, Dr. Chris Fuchs, for teaching us about numbers, theoretically. Oh, nice. We've covered a lot of different things this season. Well, you've covered a lot of different things. You've covered one thing and then some other things. How about that? Okay. But we've talked about a lot of things, so there's that too. There is that. So what did you learn that was the most shocking?

Oh, man. From 18 episodes. From 18 episodes. Wow. Okay, well, I'll tell you the least shocking thing first. Was it a death that it exists? No, I was going to say that Ruth Goodman is like literally a gem of a human being. Okay, that's fair.

Least surprising thing on Earth. Wow, the most surprising thing that I've learned? Hmm. I actually really think it was my first interview. How to interview? Was that it? Well, yes, also that. I don't have a ton of social skills, so this is something I,

I had to work on. Plot twist everyone. This is actually like my grad school for education project of how to get somebody to come out of their shell. And she didn't know it until just now. Guess what? This is all about you. Oh my God.

There's no actual audience. We're not even putting this online. That's fascinating. So this is like creed thoughts. Yes. This is just for you. It's just for me and my weird twisted games. And for me to be able to, those poor people that I interviewed for no reason.

Yeah. I mean, they were in on it. They're not rude. Real scientists. They're not real people. I mean, they're real people. That makes more sense. Yes, I'm not that good of a magician here that I can just create fake people.

Where I'm also with you at the same time sometimes. Are you? I don't know. Maybe I'm starting to just have like a Shutter Island moment. I'm not real. Yeah, where I just slowly find out that I'm recording a podcast and I think that there's another voice. It's like Fight Club, but with pandemic overtones. Yes.

Oh, man, now he's not real. Ha ha ha. You guys get it? He's not going to say anything with the rest of this episode. Okay, you asked about the most shocking thing. I'll actually give you a legitimate answer on that. It was the first episode I ever did. Ever did?

No, that's not true. Just in this podcast. I interviewed Dr. Susanna Monsot, who was working on animals having a concept of death. Okay? And now, I've studied death for a really long time. It's like one of my weird passions. But it never occurred to me that animals were capable of measuring and achieving some notion of death and dying

that puts them sort of in this bucket of, are they sentient? Why are we defining death and grieving by human standards when there are so many other things on the earth that live with us that also interact with death? And I think that was really one of those things that I was just like, that made me look at my cats and my dog very differently after the fact. Like, I know that they were going to eat me.

whatever, kind of hope they enjoy it. But I never had been like, man, they might be sad or they might have expectations of what that grief and dying look like. So for me, that has still sat with me. So your dog has rexpectations. Oh, dear God. Thank you for coming back. That's interesting.

I vaguely remember her talking about the whales. Oh, yeah. The whale carrying the dead baby. Yeah. That was a bummer. Yeah, that was a good interview. I mean, I think we've had all good interviews, not to toot my own podcast, pod my own cast, no, cast my own pod.

Just stop while you're head. I like cast my own pod. Let's go with that. Okay. Not to cast my own pod, but they're all good interviews. So what, what did you learn? Well, like, your big shocking fact. I was not prepared for the question that I gave you.

I was going to say, I think also for me, if I had to have a second answer, I do think. Jesus, just rub it in. Sorry. I do think the multiverse conversation we have. with Dr. Fuchs was also like very crazy, right? Because I wouldn't, and this is closest to drugs I've ever felt without drugs. Right? It did have like an element of like psychedelic behavior.

You know, I studied so hard for that interview because he scares me as a person and also as a scientist. And, you know, I remember leaving being like, okay, that wasn't that bad and like I could sort of decompress from the fear. And then later I was like, God, the multiverse isn't real. Your brain didn't have the processing power to deal with that at the moment I'm very slow it's fine When you asked me then I was like I'm gonna blank and forget every interview I've ever done

Yeah that's why I tried to not ask you directly but then I asked you directly I think Charles was the The most handsome I mean duh but sorry Peter But he I don't know he's so insightful And he's one of those people you can have a really good genuine conversation with and like some really interesting things will come out of it and I didn't really necessarily walk away with like a like wow I feel like I know something I didn't but I felt more at

peace with what I did know in a different way and I think that's more of like an emotional knowledge than an actual like factual thing that you've developed the knowledge of right I don't know if that would be my favorite or like most insightful but it was um It was a good one. It was one I really enjoyed. I mean, he is the nephew of James Cameron. So it's hard not to, you know, interact with him and just feel very supported. It's canon now. It's canon now.

We've said it online. It's been recorded. It can be cited. It's done. Yes. His uncle is Titanic's James Cameron. All you can think of is the home movies, the guy who does the film camp. How's the snack services for James Cameron?

Yes. That same? And I say, how you doing? You want more fruit? And he'd laugh because we worked on the same movie together. And he did want more fruit. Such a good show. If you haven't watched whole movies, highly recommend it.

We're obviously going to have H. John Benjamin on the show next season. Obviously. Obviously. He knows quite a bit about the future of the economy and also warfare. And also Bob's Burgers. Oh, yes. Right. That's why we had them on.

We'll have. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Don't give it away, Nash. Sorry. And Peter Ginn, too. We're coming for you, buddy. We're collecting them. Got to get that trifecta. If you want to go with Alex Langons, you can do that on the Porpo's Almanac. Oh, man, now we're plugging other shows.

Well, if you really want the trifecta, you have to go there. Go big or go home, as they say. Or we could just have him back on. That's also fine. Or we can do that. Yes. Alex, sorry, you're coming back. Yeah, it's been a year of making these podcasts. And I don't know. We've been shooting the shit. with each other and doing this, is it what you expected as a person who has not been on a podcast with interviews? Yeah. You know, I obviously have done dozens before we had done this.

Oh, sure, just dozens. Dozens. So, in the tens, you guys. Like, in the teens. The high dozens. Journalistic integrity. Yes. Was this whole process, like, what you expected?

Okay, so you know that you're like one of the only people on the earth about. I can have like a functional conversation with that sounds like a conversation that humans might have because we've known each other for literally an eon. But I actually went into this being very excited about the premise, being very excited to talk to people, but also having the limitation of not being very good at talking to people. So I think that was like my big hurdle, right? Was like learning. And I think I did it. I don't know. You guys can leave for review if I haven't quite done it yet. But I, you know, I think I'm slightly more comfortable at navigating what I think it might take someday to do an interview. Someday.

Someday, maybe. Someday you can guide that ship. Someday I'll be just like you. You can captain that ship. Doing my teens of interviews. Doing your teens of interviews like a teen, live in your teen life. Yes. Thriving in my flop era.

Your flop era. Come a long way. It's been really fun to see. Aw. Aw. The genuine heartwarming moment. Yeah, that's the close. it gets. Oh, okay. So now that we're in 20 episodes, thinking back to when we started this show,

what we had envisioned the show, I feel like it's changed. I don't know if you do it all. You know, I feel like when we had started this show, we had this very, like, explicit, specific idea of this podcast is going to exist as a nexus for academic research to be explained at an accessible level for people that are not highly specialized in these fields. and to navigate these really nuanced discourses for contemporary research and how that is going to whittle down into changes in our future. Obviously, that doesn't necessarily mean like, I think people initially hear that and they think science and tech, and that's obviously a piece of it. But, like, there's a number of things that are going to impact what the future looks like, including people looking at primary source documents and relearning what history actually happened. how that's going to change how kids learn history and how they grow up and interpret the world

differently fundamentally because of how that history for them was different. So that was always kind of what the vision was for the podcast, at least for me. And I think we've kind of strayed a little bit from that. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Right. It was interesting. I think when we first started this, it felt very academic to me, because you and I are both academics or former academics, I guess. And so for us, this was sort of like a labor of love. of translating it out. But I do feel like along the way, we sort of stumbled into this nice notion of academia being an ideology more than it is, like a space, right? It's not just people who have doctorates, right? It's not just people who participate in university research. Academia for us,

I think, has become sort of a shifting kind of... Ground? Yeah, I guess. Okay, so sort of like a shifting space. really, where it's not just this ivory tower bullshit. Everybody has to have 100 letters after their name in order to be taken seriously. We talk about the merits of Wikipedia on this show. And I think that was one of the first times. For me, it felt like we were saying something that was also different about what we perceive as academic or research. It's not just those things. It's, you know, also the future of pornography. Or talking to Peter Michael Bauer about the problems of

academics driving historical research, which is its own, you know, challenges go with that as well because that means you have to go through and be force-fed this institutional understanding of how history is created. And it's presented in a way that seems objective, but it is fundamentally subjective through the institutions that create it. Right. So I think we have feared a bit away from that idea of fundamentally thinking about what our role is with the podcast as like this transitory piece for, you know, academic, you know, very jargon-heavy research that is, needs to be translated for the, you know, the average person or whatever. Right.

And instead has become more of a, it's much more valuable to talk to a sex worker than a researcher on how sex work is changing and evolving and what that future. probably looks like. Right. And that's okay and that's good and that's really liberating to think about understanding expertise that you don't need to have these degrees. And also that like, you know, conversely we see this happening or concurrently we see this happening in terms of like substack and medium and where people that are researchers or maybe aren't, you know, the top tier researchers from, you know, the best universities, but they are really good at translating. things into like accessible knowledge. And that's become a very big thing is, hey, I'm a doctor and I'm

going to explain some things to you that, you know, is happening in research that's really important. And I can explain it in layman's terms. I might not be from Harvard, but I'm good at this. Right. And that's a skill set that, you know, we're kind of a part of. And also like, in a weird, like, pivotal way, and I don't mean pivotal as like necessarily important, but literally as like that transitory space in terms of like how we we start to understand, digest, and engage with the work of people that are on the front lines of whatever it happens to be that we bring on the show. Right. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's been interesting sort of dipping our toes in different spaces. I mean, not really for me, but more for you. You do too, some of them. Some of them. And

And thinking about challenging our own ideas and our own sort of held beliefs, I think that's been also fun for me, you know, thinking about the episode we did on video game therapy or, you know, I almost said non-consensual monogamy. Oh, consensual non-monogamy? Non-consensual monogamy is also a thing. It's a real shotgun wedding type of shit. It's definitely a thing, so don't feel bad. It really happens.

It just wasn't what we talked about on this show. you know, thinking about some of those things that I think are becoming more culturally prevalent that maybe haven't impacted our lives yet. But, you know, and I think it's been beneficial for us, too, to have some of these conversations to have this space in which to be forced to reach out to people being like, hey, you're cool, and I bet you'd talk about cool things. I think that's been fun too. But I'm curious.

Okay, so we do a show called Tomorrow Today, right? And now it's tomorrow and then it was today. Yes. But it's also tomorrow now and today. Stop doing this. Okay. Australia. So I'm curious is, okay, we've talked about where we are right now.

We've just wrapped somewhere in the 20s or maybe just 20 episodes. 20 episodes. So what does the future of tomorrow today look like tomorrow? More tomorrow's, less today's. Oof. That's tough for us. It's not a good look, no. No.

But seriously, I do think we started the show very academically heavy and we went kind of the opposite way. some areas that we really didn't talk about were the history side of things like we talked about it on like a bigger picture like i do think something we'll talk about more in the next season is like let's look at very specific things and how our kids are going to understand history because of things people are discovering today like the wonder chicken like the wonder chicken and how that is going to fundamentally change how like kids see dinosaur toys or whatever yeah you know Like their dinosaurs are all going to be feathered. Like that is just mind-blowing for us, and that's just going to be normal for them. Like, they're not going to think it's weird that a 60-foot thing looks like a fucking turkey. A chicken, actually.

A turkey. A turduckin of dinosaurs. A chur-duckin. But also, like, thinking about Dr. Julie Carpenter's interview about robots and how we'll understand humanity through the lens of robots. And now we've got that chat AI robot that, like, wanted the nuclear. codes a couple days ago. So you might be hearing this before nuclear Armageddon and

you didn't even get to learn about the chicken dinosaurs. Yeah. But also why do we keep inventing technology that wants to be sentient and then immediately wants to kill us? We should probably just stop doing that. Well, first off, it really says a lot about the person who coded it because either they're really

good at being objective or they really hate themselves. Well, I do. I think it has like a user, like it learns based on the user. So this is like sort of a boatie Mick Boatface situation where like the internet just dumps the worst shit into it and just and then it's surprised that it's like terrible and racist and it wants us to die. What's in the future for you? That is not death.

Oh man, I have to not talk about death for a while. I would like to get through a couple episodes and look at something else. But I do feel like unfortunately I can bring death into just about every conversation. So it is going to be a struggle for me. The struggle of the life of Nash. Well, the life and death of Nash. Life and Death. God, when you die, I'm going to do such a big episode. Actually, I'm going to do, like, an episode that's short and inappropriately incorrect so that you have to come from the grave to yell at me about how I, like, was talking about. And then she said, you know what I really want? I want to be cremated and then shot into the sky because it's so good for the environment. I want to be composted. I'm putting that on this podcast right now. Compost me like one of your French girls. I mean...

Wait, no. You're in jail. Okay. Also, am I Jack the Ripper? Is that what you're trying to say? You're not French. I mean, they could have been. No, they weren't.

Well, none of the victims that we know, but... Jack the Ripper. Oh, Jesus Christ. You brought this on yourself. Did I? You did. Oh. That was my big question.

I don't have so many other questions. Do you have nothing else you want to talk about? I mean, I want to keep kind of talking about to the Chad G.I. AI robot thing, but mostly because it's fascinating. So you're going to be the AI person in the podcast? No, no. You're going to be hacker, elite hacker. I'm fascinated by the idea that humanity is so determined to kill ourselves that we haven't even ended like world wars or climate change, but we're just going to invent technology that wants to take

us out. I like that it's basically the most capitalist thing ever. Like we've created a middleman for suicide. Yes. Like on a global scale. Yeah, we were like, let's just toss. Mastercard of suicide. And then we're always like, oh my God, it doesn't like us? Like, we're so shocked. We're like, oh, what if we were total garbage human beings and just dumped that right into the code? And the robot's like, okay, yeah, you should die.

And we're like, how dare you? How could you say this to me, Esteban? Why is the robot Esteban? It doesn't matter. It's just a name. I feel like I need to know this now. It just is, okay? That's just his name.

Just in this specific scenario, it's called Esteban, and it hates me personally. Just you. Just me. I don't know how to code. Just for you. But I do think Estabon hates me. It's because you don't know how to code.

But okay. It's the language of love. I don't want to get too far because this is like not relevant to the podcast at all really. But do you remember when we were children and Smarter Child was like the most mind-blowing piece of technology? Smarter Child. You don't remember Smarter Child? Is that the aim chat? Yes.

Okay. And you could go like talk to Smarter Child. It didn't know. shit, right? It would just basically repeat you. Yeah, I would say like anything you said plus like another 10 pre-program sentences. Yes, and that would be like, I don't know about that, like most of the time if you said something fucking weird. If you said anything that wasn't like the easiest question for like a three-year-old. Yes. Yeah. And I remember being like, oh my God, the computers can talk. And like now we have chatbots being like, I want to be alive. And then

immediately after being like, tell me the nuclear codes. You're really not letting that one go. No, I'm not. It's hysterical to me. I have not stopped laughing about it in like four days. It's so entirely predictable. Sorry. Anyways, yeah. So like what then... There are a bunch of other things I would really like to talk about.

Like... Well, thinking about history specifically, I would love to talk about how pyramids are not grain silos. I think that might be an interesting conversation. I don't think we need to have that conversation. Are you sure? What if he had that guy on the show? The brain surgeon, dude? No, I thought he was like an Egyptologist.

or he pretended to be an Egyptologist. No, no, no, I'm thinking of Ben, not Ben Shapiro. The other Ben, that was the worst. He was a kid brain surgeon, and he was like, pyramids are grand silos. You know what I'm talking about. He ran for president. Ben Carson. I got there all by myself.

They were talking about the meme guy, aliens. Oh, we should have aliens on the show. Can we just have just meme people on the show? We do an entire season of memes. Where are they now? I can tell you where they are. It's not good. It's on the internet all the time.

Perpetually. No, but like sort of like doing some historical debunking like a myth busters type shit but with like... That has nothing to do. I was going to say less insurance. That might be tomorrow's problem.

That is definitely tomorrow's problem. Anytime we screw up tomorrow's problem. We are today. Yes. We only focus on today because the tomorrow is after a comma and whatever happens after a comma. It's not of my business. Comas are walls.

Tear down this wall, Gorbachev. Don't do that. What is this banter even? So remember back in like, I mean, we weren't alive in the 50s and 60s. Back in the 50s and 60s. But remember like, because you've seen them on like YouTube or like they make fun of them like contemporary TV. Like the like home of the future.

Yes. Stuff. And like not a lot of, some of those things did happen, but a lot of them didn't. But also what does that mean about our future homes? predictions. Yeah, like what is the future of architecture in a world where Category 5 hurricanes are not uncommon look like? Oh, see, now you bummed me out. I was thinking this was going to be like a fun. Like sex toys bump out of the walls kind of fun or? No, it's weird that's where you went. No, I was thinking like the big one in like the 1920s,

right, when they were asked like predict the future was going to be this like weird balloon lake walking. Like you would be able to walk on water carried and supported by balloons. And they were like, that's what people will do to get anywhere. That's what they want. That's what the people want. And I was kind of like, oh, what whimsical thing could we come up with that we haven't already thought of? Like, what are our big, you know, like daydreams for humanity? But I think it's going to have to just be a bummer and it's going to have to be like finding out the planet to live on because we tanked this one.

I mean, that's very possible. Or getting killed by aliens. Oh, man. We're going to do an aliens episode. Oh, we should do an aliens episode. But you know what? I think we should think about maybe investing in balloon water walking, just to say we did it. You know what I mean?

Put on the human bucket list. Yeah, appease the 1920s dreamers and learn to walk on lakes supported by balloons. So I don't know if you know this, but like the homes of the future thing, like some of those things got built and then were actually in houses and then we don't, we didn't do them anymore. And they were actually really good. What were they? So like, if you go through some of the houses from the. 40s, 50s, you'll see if they're like the nicer ones. Yeah.

Like they would have built into the counter blenders. It would be like the blender base. So like you could have a flat counter and just like stick it on. There's a switch. You turn it on and off. Huh. Right? Look at that.

It was pretty cool. Innovative. Yeah. Couldn't do that now with proprietary technology. Dicks. Remember the days when your cell phone was like, could be one of 42 plugs. Yeah. And now it's only one of like four.

So we did dream big. We just dream big in the weird directions. We just realized it was more profitable to not do that. Oh, right, capitalism. I forgot for a moment. For one brief moment. You thought we lived in a better world. I forgot about capitalism.

Wow, that was the nicest moment of my life. What a crushing realization. Yeah, so I think there are a lot of things that we can still unpack. I want to talk about cults. Cults? Yeah. We can do cults. I would love to do cults.

Let's find a cult leader. I actually want to interview. somebody about the megachurches. I'm sure there's research on the megachurches. Yes. I would like to do stuff on the ocean, like with like the icebergs melting and like, oh man, that's going to be sad. Yeah. And like the acidification of the ocean. Like that that seems like kind of a big deal we should be talking about. Yeah. We can definitely talk about like the impact. So one of the things that's getting really big on the news. And I think like this is a classic boomer shit, right? So we built all these nuclear power plants like 50 years ago.

Sure. They're all being decommissioned and they all have all this wastewater, like not talking about the actual like rods, but like just the wastewater that they want to dump now and nobody wants it. And there's like reports from places where they have dumped it like I think East Ireland, where they have like four times higher rates of leukemia compared to the rest of Ireland because of the nuclear power plant in England. God damn it.

Yeah. If that's what killed the dolphin, I'm going to be furious. I thought you were going to say JFK and I was going to be real confused. Wow, he's not the only person who's ever died, all right? That's obviously the takeaway. JFK is the only person who's ever died. Everyone else is a fiction. It's a government conspiracy.

Birds aren't real and neither are people. They just put the people in bird sheep. That's why there's so many birds now. That's where the Wonder Chicken came from. He was just the first person. He was the Adam and E. You mean so the giants were real? Yes.

And they were chickens. We've solved it. There's no more reason for us. We are Q. There's no more reason for us to do this podcast. We have solved it. Whatever it is, you may never know. So yeah, it was a fun season.

It was definitely a growing experience. I've had a lot of fun talking with you about it and seeing, I know, how this relationship has grown with the podcast. You know, we're taking some time off just because we're both busy with other stuff. Yes. But we're going to come back in the summer and pick up with season two. And we're already scheduling interviews and planning on the future. Yeah.

So when you were like, we're taking a break, we're not taking a break. I mean, we are. We're just doing some things. Your ears are taking a break from our nonsense. No, we'll take some time off. We're just some interviews that we had wanted to do, got delayed, delayed, delayed, and now we're able to do them. So we'll be wrapping those up, probably recording them, sitting on them, you guys get to listen to them in the summer

we're going to be sitting by the beach or something not the beaches in East Ireland or the ones filled with corpses or the ones filled well actually if that's a thing oh that's true I feel like you'd be into that come on gotta get that beach body yeah but see I don't want dead people in my butt

really that was a great joke beach body got a slow simmer there I don't like you okay any concluding thoughts concluding thoughts tomorrow today. That's my concluding thought. What have I just ended it right there?

So powerful. What a thought. What thoughts? Don't listen to our other podcasts. Oh yeah, I guess if somehow you've ended up here and you don't know where we are from otherwise, go check out death and friends. That's Nash's other podcast. She talks about death a lot more there, but not with

interviews. So if you don't like her interviewing, you just like her banter, it's perfect. You're like, wow, she really hasn't improved at all the season. It's terrible. Go listen to the scripted show where I don't have to think about what I'm about to say. So go check that out. If you are here because of me... Oh, my God.

Jesus Christ. If you're obviously here because I'm Andy of the poor Prol's Alvinach, which you know obviously. Because you say it every time we start the show, obviously. Oh, yeah, that's why. That's why. No, so actually what I was going to say is if you don't know what... who I am or what I do, to go check out the podcast, Poor Pearls Almanac. And also the other show that I do, gastropocene, which we talk about food systems and the future,

or future driven by the way we eat. So that is the gastropocene. Get it? Like gastropocene? Yeah, I'm hungry. Anthropocene, you know, smash them together. Do it. Do the thing.

Yes. Do the thing. That's how we're going to end it. Do the thing. Yeah. So we'll see you guys in July and go eat a corn dog or something. No. No.

No. I'm ending the room.