Tomorrow - 121: TC Sottek is on a Quest

Episode Date: June 22, 2018

This week has been a rough one. There's no way around that. To that end, Josh and Ryan talk about their coping mechanisms, like avoiding improv comedy, hiding from newspapers, or playing solitaire on your phone. Later they're joined by TC Sottek, managing editor of The Verge, creator of the new table top role-playing game Quest, and an all around chill mage. Do they talk more about Westworld? Of course they do. Sit back, relax and say "yes, and" to episode 121. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to tomorrow. I'm your host, Josh Wittipulski. Today on the podcast, we discuss burritos, escapism, and magic mirrors. I don't want to waste one minute. Let's get right into it. I'm Ryan. Yep. We're back. Oh, are we?

It's another week. Another crazy week. I'm usually just in this booth waiting. I know you're just sitting here. You actually were sitting here. I'm very disorganized at. I'm just sitting here. I'm just sitting here.

I'm just sitting here. I'm just sitting here. week, another crazy week. I'm usually just in this booth waiting. I know you're just sitting here. You actually were sitting here. I'm a very disorganized day. It's OK. I had a lot of typical Josh stuff. Anyhow, a lot of stuff happening this week. Yeah, crazy week.

What a week. I mean, this is every week, though. You know what's funny? Every week I watch the handmaids tell. And every week, it's so relevant to what's happening in the country, like whatever happens on the show, a direct thing just happened.

And then I realized like so much bad shit is happening, that it's always, they could just, you know what, like, do anything. It could be anything. I have not caught up on season two. There's like child being separated from its parent stuff happened this week on the show. Really?

It was like devastating. And I had like an edible and sat down and was like, let's just get through this. See, I would not want it. And it was, I feel like the handmade sales the wrong show to watch high. Depends on the high. If it's calming you and you're just like kind of like

more like here, that's great. Really? Because I'll cry less. It's intense, man. The handmade sales is like a very hard to watch show. It's like, I really like it. But it feels important every week, as opposed to stuff that's hard to watch

that isn't so important. Yeah, but it's like, I feel like there is, you know, I feel tortured by what is happening in the real world in terms of the kind of mental trauma that I feel like everybody's going through. in terms of the kind of mental trauma that I feel like everybody's going through. And then to watch us show like the Handmaid's Tale. A story version of things helps me process them. Like I've been really affected by the kids

that have been separated from their families by eyes. It's really like thrown me for a loop in a way that like a new story that doesn't directly affect my personal life hasn't in a while and The handmade style episode from this week was just about stuff like that and Something about like turning it into characters. It helps and seeing it and stuff It helps me process it a little bit and it helps me like know how I feel and like and contextualize my emotions and There's something a something to it. I don't know that it's for everybody,

but for me every week it feels like a little therapy session. Yeah, my reaction to Hamayet's Tale has been, it doesn't, I mean, I hear what you're saying, but I feel like it's where I escape is like more bad. I don't have a scape with that. No, I know, but that's insane. Like, my I have such limited time. Everything.

If I'm like going to watch something, I'm not saying it has to be upbeat, but I think right now, particularly in a week, on a week like this week, where, where, you know, the stuff with kids being separated from their parents at the border has been so in the news and so prominent and so insane to see and hear. That it just is like, I can't do it to myself. I feel like it's just, you know, I don't know. I think like, I guess I am looking, we talked about, but well, you know, this is, you know, well, this is the time machine. This is the, yeah.

We're in the future from the inner room. We're in the future. Right. You know, escapism is a hot topic. Yeah. You love an escaper room. I, yeah, I'd like to be in a room that I can't get out of.

No TV, no internet. Yeah. Well, someone did a sketch that was, and it was amazing. That was doing an escaper room and then really not wanting to leave. I'm gonna do an actually themed room, and nobody can get that.

That's like, I'm actually really good here. Got little puzzles. No, but it's, yeah, so that, I think my entertainment diet has changed, but the time I spend watching or gaming or whatever has been dramatically reduced for me lately. I mean, me too. I mean, like over the last year, I would say that my time spent, you know, I don't know,

I've started, I've tried to spend more time doing things that are like, like when I get home, you know, Laura and I will like have a drink and a smoke and just talk a lot of the time, you know, before we even talk about if we want to watch TV or do anything else, you know, like, you know, I try to make the weekends much more about hanging out with friends or family or Zelda, you know, obviously Zelda. But like, yeah, I think I, I'm like, I kind of get away from screens in some way. I think I might free time I used to really want to like binge watch or read a book or whatever and anything I had to do to get to that. It was like, well, I'll just, you know, get through my work

and then I can put whatever I was binge watching back on. Yeah. Now I'm in a place where like when John comes home at the end of the day, we have a talk, we eat, we put something on TV, we always do. It's just a routine and it's like that two hours and maybe an hour after he goes to bed, I'll watch something which seems like a significant amount of time, but it's part of my job and it's like that two hours and maybe an hour after he goes to bed, I'll watch something which seems like a significant amount of time but it's part of my job and it's part of my lifestyle. But it's now when I binge watch a show, like I'll watch an episode of something

and then I'm like, I'm good on this. I used to just fly through things like, I wanna know all of it, I wanna do it, I'm part of the conversation. Now I'm like, I don't have to know, I don't have to see even, for example, the drag race finale is very event. Like, people go to bars, they dress up, it's an event,

it's like super bowl. Everyone's gonna be doing it. I'm going to like a group sing along thing that my friend put together to like raise people's spirits. And I was like, I would just rather be present at that and I'll watch it on the DVR. Like, I don't feel the need to be with everybody all the time. Yeah.

On the non-important stuff. It's important stuff, like I want to be at the protest. It's interesting, like, I wonder how much, you know, binge viewing has changed in the last, you know, a couple of years or the last year or so. How we were doing. It doesn't feel to me, yeah, it's like, it like, oh, like, oh, the whole season of the Embreakable Kimmy Shmere

is available, it's like, yeah. I don't think I'm gonna make time for binge watching that show. It's like, that just doesn't feel. If it comes up, it comes up. Yeah, I mean, just,'t think I'm going to make time for binge watching that show. It's like that just doesn't feel. If it comes up, it comes up. Yeah, I mean, I think I just have chosen, I'm choosing personally choosing fewer things. It feels better to get stuff done, even if that stuff is like clean your apartment and reorganize your email and like, you know, I'm building this PC and I just spent a lot of time really

researching how to do that and like really making the right choices with my purchases. And that took several, like, six hours of my life. And I felt better doing that than I would binge watching something and just ordering a pre-built thing and spending extra $400. I think a return to the physical is a big thing. I think a return to face-to-face communication to physical activities. It's the summer also. Yeah. So in the summer, you want to physical activities. It's the summer also. Yeah, so in the summer you wanna be out,

like we can be outside at night now, it's nice like hang out. Like, I, yeah, I don't know. I don't, like, it's not a had this toy that she got, it's like a drill, it's like this set, you can do all this drilling. It's like it works like a real drill,

but it's all plastic. It has like a motor and it wasn't working this morning. It's like the works like a real drill, but it's all plastic. It has like a motor and it wasn't working this morning. It's like the button just stuck. And I was like, I'm just gonna take it apart and see if I can fix it. But like it was so enjoyable to like be doing something with my hands. Oh, yeah. In that moment, I was like, God, I wish I had more. I mean, I like I saw it at a keyboard together recently

and that was like really a relaxing, probably like two or three hours straight of just me just sitting there, maybe even longer just like soldering the same thing over and over again, but that repetition was really relaxing to me. This is gonna sound insane because it's not a physical thing and it is basically the same task, but rather than scrolling through Twitter and just seeing the same jokes and comments and bullshit because I felt like I just sort of wanted to disengage from a lot of digital relationships that I have, even if they're like comedy or whatever, like I'd rather just go take a class and see people one-on-one than try to do the joke game on Twitter. This is going to sound ridiculous. I've been spending a lot of time playing card games or puzzle games on my phone while I watch TV, and it's so much more relaxing to be alone with just the thing you're watching is background noise and just kind of focusing in like, like not having to feel like everything

is being seen or is important or every statement you make has to be parsed. And if some of a news story comes up, you got to get the joke in first or you have to have the hottest, smartest, sharpest take. It feels so much better to just be like playing a game of hearts or like, or like, we're doing a puzzle, we're just putting together a puzzle on our coffee table. Right. So that 45 minutes to me, it's so different, like the way that I move through my day. And I always thought I was a person that like,

enjoyed the like buzziness of being in the middle of shit all the time, but that's not true necessarily. Yeah. Speaking of the news, we should talk about that. Should we talk about the news? Let's see the Copemalani is wearing today. So I heard about this coat. I saw Rachel Sime, actually,

the who is engaged to Eric Hinton, who is on our dev team, disclosure, shout out, Eric. A shout out, Eric. Rachel's a writer and I started to eat the headline. She's like, I thought this was an onion headline, but it's not. She wore a coat from Zara that says or it's either, yeah, I think it's Zara. It says, I really don't care. Do you on a flight to see children in a detention center? Look, it's like this ended with new information.

I mean, the president and his wife and the entire people, all the people surround. I mean, like we should expect nothing less, but then the most classless of from the Trumps, Michelle Obama wearing a few thousand dollar designer dressed to a big event, or Barack Obama wearing a tan suit and those being week-long news cycles all the time. And I mean, this kind of stuff we're living in. You can't, but you know what, you can't think like that because I know I can't, because the damage, the damage, no, the damage to people who remember and are aware of the insanity of this moment is like the world before Gilead you keep going. Yeah, you keep going

like what the fuck is going on? Like you did like you were mad about like Michelle Obama's arms or something. Yeah. And we're like now this fucking bullshit is happening every minute of every day with these like, claseless pieces of shit. And Fox is like, yeah, it's normal. This is just how it's always been. It literally is like 1984. They are like the 1984 network. It's like, this is fine.

Now, everything we thought was shitty is great. And it's like, just the whole fucking world. I mean, but like, yeah. I mean, I, I'd like, look, I'm, in my disgust about Melania's jacket. I'm literally disgusted by every single fucking thing the Melania does. Like, I'm sorry, I don't have any respect for her. No, I don't have any respect for Donald Trump or Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner. I don't expect all they could all go fuck themselves. Yeah. Like they don't have an earned my respect. They will not earn it. They are essentially as far as I'm concerned, criminals.

It's funny because in the time before, I thought a lot about everything was a thought experiment. And it was like, if there was someone in your family that went neo-Nazi, like I saw a documentary about a neo-Nazi. I thought like, if someone went neo-Nazi, I wouldn't cut them off. I try to talk to them and reach their humanity. And maybe, you know, and a lot of the stuff

that I guess you get told, we're told, or like, you still get told by current ex neo-Nazi people are always saying, like, have compassion. And at this point in my life, like, I see stuff that's just, like, someone was violently, like, a neo-Nazi was punched in the face, or like, even Christian Nielsen was screamed at in a Mexican restaurant.

And it's like, great. No, but you know, he's in great. He's in great, he's the thing, here's the thing, I do not give a shit. One thing, one thing that the, one thing that I think is always a struggle with, this has always been a huge struggle between like, what I've seen on the kind of confrontation stage

between like, people who identify as, let's say, Democrats or on the left and people who are on the right, is that like the right will never pull a punch. They will never hold back. They will never, they will never, they do. No. They will never hold back. They will never. They will never do. They will never do. They will never do the kinder thing.

And I'm not saying that every Democrat or whatever is like this, but one of the issues with Democrats is that like, you know, actually, it's like Michelle Obama is like, when they go low, we go high. It's like, yeah, except here's the fucking problem. Like, they're always love if we never, we're never hitting back. It's like, yeah, except here's the fucking problem. Like, they're always love, if we're never hitting back, it's like that seemed really like the right sentiment. But what I see now is, is like, is like, if we got to do something,

like you have, at some point, you have to not stoop to their level, but you've got to go on the attack. If someone comes in your house, and they just start to breaking stuff, you have to get them out of your house. I mean, just like, yeah, just like, so the thing is that we're always like, John Kerry when he was the whole Swift boat mean, just like, yeah, just like, so the thing is that we're always like John Kerry

when he was the whole Swift boat thing, you know, they literally were like, you weren't in Vietnam, you're lying. And he's like, I'm not gonna respond to this. And it's like, well, maybe you should because now people are just like, why are you like, how come he's in responding? And they just keep going.

Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's like Democrats always try to be nicer. Yeah. And it's like, it always fucking backfires at this point. It's always on attack. It's the thing about Nazis yet. I mean And it's like, it always fucking backfires. It's always on attack. Did you think about Nazis yet? I mean, it's like, look, I mean, the argument there is no equivalence in the argument, right?

People are like, I'm a Nazi. I have Nazi beliefs and you're like, there is no like, oh, let's hear it out to me. So like, what the fuck is the conversation? There is no conversation. Well, okay, so it's like, so pride weekends this weekend. Yes. And we could talk about that.

It's a whole thing. We could talk about it. In Toronto, they had a serial killer that was just killing gay men for like a decade, just like knocking them off right and left. Really? And the police were like, there's a serial killer.

Like you can't just string together a bunch of people dying in one group and call it a serial killer. And for years, they were just in full denial. And it ends up, no, that's a serial killer. Like you can't just string together a bunch of people dying in one group and call it a serial killer. And for years, they were just in full denial. And it ends up, no, that was the serial killer. And he was hunting gay men at bars and in nightlife. And so the pride parade in Toronto was like, I don't know if it's a March or a parade

there, but was saying like, we don't want police in the parade. Like you ignored a serial killer because we were a group that you didn't want to engage with or investigate. And the same thing I feel with corporations. If you don't have basic, like if you don't care about trans people and you're not donating money or engaging with those issues,

if you're just like, we don't mind your game, Aaron, sorry like whatever company you can't come. You can't come to a free add in our thing. Like I know there are good cops. No, I have to believe there are. You know, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, of course there are.

I don't want it to be like. There are great people that work at X on mobile. Truly great people. No, but, but there are cops who are like, I want to make the world a better place and I'm gonna work really hard and be as fair as possible. Yeah.

I have to believe that those, and I don't, I don't know a lot of cops. But like, clearly there is a cultural thing with police that is really rotted like at its core. There's this sort of culture of policing that is at least certainly America. It's the whole brotherhood thing. I can't speak right. I can't speak to this police everywhere, but I have to imagine there are similarities. But it's like, when you put it gun in somebody's hand, you're like, you're like, you're in charge of people now. And like, you don't have,

you're not teaching empathy and you're not teaching, you're not giving people an understanding of the world that you're in, not just like the you police this world, but you are a part of it as well. That these people are not lesser than you and you are not greater than them. And I think the policing kind of has this, I don't know the dynamics of typical police training, but I would imagine that there is a real lack of,

I'm not saying police has to be nice people. They don't have to be nice, but they do have to have, I mean, to me, it's like, there needs to be systems like, just give a basic skill set and you can like aim a gun. There needs to be community overview of just basic stuff about the police and, and it's the same thing with prisons, like, there are people that need to be taken out of society, but the prison and doctoral complex is so disgusting and broken at its core. Yeah. That at this point, I really don't give a shit about helping a prison do anything. Yeah, look, I mean, I'm just a very large topic.

I know. The topic, which we get sped up. It's a tough week. A lot of times. It is a tough week. But I can make jokes about Chipotle giving out free burritos at the Pride parade if you want. Are they doing that? They do it every year. And I always think like, you know how we have sex. Oh my gosh, go on.

Come on man. Come on man. I could get into that and everybody's there. Is that a bit that you're doing? Is that my two speeds today? Is that your bit? Is that the actual bit? No, it's just something I think every year.

All right, I mean, I, you know, I think, I'll be honest with you, I think burritos, no matter what your sexual orientation is, burritos and sex are a dangerous company. It's a dangerous game, no matter how you have sex. You could give out margaritas. I mean, how long is it? You could give out chips. Like, I could say, what are the things you don't want to eat before sex?

Burritos, curry. Yeah, Indian, Indian, some Indian cuisine, not all of it, but most sausages. I don't know. It's like, I think you want to stay with me. I'm like, I'll stay away from food generally. Oh, yeah. I'm like a couple of Vespers, glass of champagne. Vespers, my new drink.

The Vespers. You know what the Vespers? Yeah. It's good. It's like, it's like vodka, gin. I want to say lilay, blank or lilette, blank. I'm not sure I belong. It's an attempt to do a classy long-eye on it.

No, it's fucking, it's like a different like- It's like a soft martini. All right. It's like a martini with slightly a slight bit more sweetness. It's quite good. I never liked a martini. Yeah. Well, Moussire, Vesper.

Maybe I will. I also ordered with a Bithic British accent. Because I had a dream last night that I was talking to British accent the whole time. Really? And I woke up and I went to say something and I was like, why am I speaking in America? This is an interesting thing. No, no.

All right. What else happened in the news? I was a rant. Yeah, that was just to come break down. I mean, obviously, there's the separation stuff, which like I don't even, I mean, we could talk about it, but I think it's been, it has been, there has been no topic more covered this week, but also like, I think, you know, our position is I think I am honest. I mean, I was speaking for you,

but it's like, I suspect human rights. Super fucked up. Trump is an an, is a complete fucking animal the people who are around him, but this guy, Steven Miller, is a complete, is a sociopath. Not fucking Nazi, piece of shit.

And I just think like more than anything, this just double triple quadruple proves that this administration is inhumane and racist, xenophobic and fucking dangerous. And like they have to be, you know, like we just have to fucking vote them out. Like they have to be voted out. Like, I, there's nothing else. I feel like I can say at this point, he said, like, please fucking vote. And don't just vote like if you have the income, disposable income to support, like get out of the vote campaigns

or if you have the time to do phone banking, I do that every year. Yes. Volunteer donate. And but most importantly, vote for somebody who is less awful. Like you look, I just want to say they're not going to be perfect. I get it. You know, even if you get Cynthia Nixon in, she's gonna do something you hate. No.

It's gonna happen. Just, let's do better. Better. Just let's do better than, well, it comes back to the Barack Obama message of just like, do you want just like any hope? Do you want hope? Like literally, do you want to like look at the future?

I'll tell you, maybe something going on. I don't need hope at this point. I just need relief. Yeah. A little bit of a break. I'll tell you, maybe something going on. I need hope at this point. I just need relief. Yeah. A little bit of a break. I just want to things to just, even if not, like I just want to stop, for everybody to stop feeling like they are,

like we were in this like slow motion, fucking car crash. Yeah. You know, anyhow, all right, what else? Anything else in news? Oh, blackberry, we talked about blackberry last week. So this is such a pivot, but I want to talk about it. Let's do it.

Well, I got it. They sent me a key, key to. They did. The new blackberry last week. So this is such a pivot, but I want to talk about it. Well, I got it. They sent me a key, key to the new blackberry. And I don't know. I'm thinking about it. So I think I'm allowed to talk about it. I can't review it. Don't review it at this point. But vaguely, will you be using it? I used it today. I've been using it. And I'm, it's interesting. I mean, it's been a long time since I had a phone with a physical keyboard where I actually did things with it. After we talked, I was like, oh, but it runs Android. Like, it's so hard to break in your mind

that blackberry is not what it was. But thinking about that, the more I thought about the more I was like, hey, fuck this iPhone X. It's a piece of shit. Listen, I love all types of objects. It's a piece of notch garbage. I'll tell you this though, here's the thing. I have a pixel.

Yeah, it is such a great phone. Yeah, the camera is so insane on it. It is. You sent me those pictures of me with that neon sign. No, I gotta say, it looks so good for no light. It's so crazy good. Like I don't know what the fuck they did.

It's so good. What's really insane is that everything leading up to that phone from Google was like not good. And Samsung had some like pretty good cameras, but like this makes the best Samsung camera look like garbage, but it also makes the iPhone camera not look like garbage, but when I look at the side by sides, I'm like, wow, like I gotta say, this is a, do you think it's Android or do you think that?

It's not that. It's, no, it's the pixel. It's but you don't you're not getting the camera. It is the camera. Whatever they've done with the software the quality just the fucking detail on some of these photos is so crazy. I was showing Casey aside by side comparison with with the blackberry just a decent camera actually camera actually. I mean, I haven't, again, this is not a review, but like a decent camera. And, but the detail between the pixel and that camera, or the pixel and anything else, it's just like insane. So I'm like spoiled now.

I'm like the way I used to do with an iPhone, which was like, oh, I can't leave the iPhone because the camera's so good. Because like that to me, and as you, like since I've had a kid, it's like six times, it's important because it's like, oh, he shit, so many amazing things are happening all the time.

I'm like, I have to capture this. Like, it is very hard to imagine, I mean, it's not hard to imagine a better camera, but at this point, it's hard to imagine leaving that. I mean, my hope is that whatever they release next retains the quality or improves upon the quality of the camera. I don't know if this product exists

because I'm not a camera person. All right, lay it on my... I would love a gadget that's like 400, 500 bucks. Okay. It's not a DSLR because I'm not carrying around lenses. I'm listening. But something that would fit in my pocket would take phenomenal pictures

and they would just show up on my phone in an app. And I could just use them socially like that and keep the camera with me. Sort of like a Polaroid camera, but the instance just go right to the phone. And it's a much better lens is, it's got a, just, it's got some kind of zoom on it. And it's just a product that's just a stand on camera, but it's so synced into an app with your phone that there's no like setting up the Wi-Fi and then dumping the photos into your files at. Like just simple, a point in shoot for the digital age. Why doesn't that exist?

I would purchase that. You're saying a high quality camera and all it does is dump them into your Google photos account or whatever. People pop lenses and fake LED case lights on their iPhones to be able to take the case off. They get to carry around a, but if I fit in my pocket,

people carry cigarettes and AirPods. If I could go to the party. What about that crazy camera with these like a thousand lenses? What is it called? Oh, yeah, that like it's like a it's not light show, but it's no, it's like that. It's what the hell is it called? I know you're talking about it's got all the picture the lenses on the back. It's called the light else. It's really expensive. It stitches them all together. Yeah, it's called the light L16. Yeah, it is $2,000. I don't think it actually sends them to your,

like a Bluetooth speaker, but for taking pictures, they don't have to be incredible. 52 megapixels. But better than what my phone's doing. Five times optical zoom. Like an Apple watch, but a camera. Convenient size, okay. I'm with you.

Oh, it comes with a wrist strap. I like this. In the box, the L1616, all right, cool. wrist strap is the second feature they list is what's in the box. It's like literally on the side. It's like, it must be in a wrist strap. Quite a strap.

A case. I put the case first and then there's a USB plug. It's like, thanks guys. Yeah. But I don't know actually, I don't think this sends stuff to your phone. Just like a seamless, magical take a picture and then it's on your phone. I can throw it on Instagram or whatever I want to do with it.

Because that's what I want out of a camera is basically the ease of sharing. What I want is, here's what I would like, is a camera like that that you described. That just snap, snapchat built glasses, but they didn't build a camera. No, well, they are a camera company. That's so stupid. I would really love a great camera. That's something like this form factor, which is like that light camera has like it's a very thin like flat form factor. So it's like you could throw it in your pocket pretty easily. Yeah.

That just when I take pictures, they'd upload to Google photos in full resolution. Exactly. Like like it just you can log in with your Google account. Maybe this exists. And if it does like please let me I'll buy it like that you log in with your Google account. And you're just it's seamless. You don't think about it. It just uploads and then you're done. I mean, it has, you can have storage on the camera, obviously. But I don't, just through Bluetooth, Internet.

Yeah, I don't want, no, right. I mean, or it has Wi-Fi. I mean, everything is Wi-Fi now. Yeah. Okay, hold on a second. Wait a second. I'm going to go on a camera. I'm going to go on a camera.

Okay, hold on. And also, maybe I should just make this. We'll make a million dollars. You really should. With Wi-Fi, maybe I should just make this. We make a million dollars. You really should, with why? And I'm gonna do that. And I'm gonna do that. And I'm gonna direct to Google Photos. If anyone out there knows how to build a product

and wants to do a Kickstarter with me, I'll do this. How to automatically upload photos for your digital camera, which camera, which will sync directly to Google Photos. This is on DP review, which isn't what you think it is. I wish it were. No, doesn't exist. Wait. Lumix Club, one of these from seven months ago. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Why doesn't that exist? Doesn't exist. Hold on, let me say, how do you do it?

You can't do it. Wait, new apps, new apps, that's picked to Google photos from Sony cameras. People carry new app, AirPods, cigarettes, send images directly to Google photos from your Sony camera. Here we go.

Sony is a bit of, has been a bit of a pioneer blah, blah, blah. Sony's system is unique. utilizing Sony's play memories app store. So I was going to add a ton of functionality their cameras from easy double exposure, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Is it an instant sync?

New third party, STG uploader app, which allows users to easily upload images directly from their Sony cameras to Google Photos with no phone required. So third party app. But will they do that when I'm on the go and just instantly do it? Or do I got it? Well, I think you need, I think you need it.

Login, hit upload. I think you need to on Wi-Fi. I don't know the answer to this question. But what I do know is there is apparently a way to do it. Okay. So, and, and listeners, if you know of something better, please reach out. I mean, I think this is huge. I get to meet a big computer. I guess it's a big deal. What? They helped me by a computer. Did they? All right. Let's do another new story. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. This is such a tangent. I like the idea though. I agree. Like, although, I don't know, man, I haven't I don't think about it that much anymore. The camera. I do. I take pictures for Instagram and I constantly think,

like, there's something about a phone camera. The way it bends things, you never look like you. There's just something about the lens that, and I know it's the math of how it sees things. No, it's true that what, I have a... Why doesn't it correct? Why do my nose look insane? Like I have a micro-four thirds that,

like with a pancake lens and you take pictures pictures of that and you're like wow like photos Can really be good really and you look different. Yeah, I want I need to take better pictures from my show I mean with a real camera. I think you do look better Well, I wanted to take pictures for my show like just a couple of perms. I was just to stick on things I'm not the most attractive man, but I need something. You're beautiful, man. But I want, I know that if I just get any, you know, Eva, is he's like a professional photographer. If I literally get anybody just with a dancer

to just take a photo of me, it's like a medium format. Like, all right, I mean, Eva with just a kid. Eva would shoot some shots to you. I have a green screen here. I just need a couple pictures of me to edit. I don't know about the green screen, but you could definitely get some photos taken.

Yeah, let's do that. Okay, great. One more talk. One more talk. Then we're going to get to TC Sadaq is here to chat. Yeah. Let's talk about the AT&T. Oh, Tim Warner merger.

Yeah. Do I have to? I mean, between that and the Disney 21st Century Fox thing, like, I mean, you said something earlier, you were like capitalism sucks. And it's like, it's like, what I want, I guess what I want to know is like, you know, could capitalism not suck?

I mean, like, there are things about capitalism where I'm like, that's okay. That seems okay. But then there are things about it. Obviously a lot of them where I'm like, that's fucking terrible. That's crazy. And also, also like the it. Obviously a lot of them where I'm like, that's fucking terrible. That's crazy. And also like the bigger it scales up the worse it gets.

It's like, you know, I think the, what now is the kind of given our current administration and what is happening in these business deals and these mergers, the common, I think thought is, oh, at some point we're just going to have like two companies that make all of the content for everything. And that'll just be the way it is. And that's obviously bad.

But it's also like all of this, but all of this bastardizes, I think like about the internet and it's like originally, the original sort of opportunity of the internet. And I think what a lot of companies have have have capitalized on to grow and become very big using, by being capitalists, right? People have used this open space to build something very new that's really, some of them are really amazing. Like Netflix. Yeah, it was like definitely like a company

that just started, I mean, they weren't originally on the internet, I mean, it was, it was like an internet component, but like just the idea of like, you could start a thing that had never existed before. I mean, look at YouTube. I mean, not only just as a product itself, but of the people on there, or any of those video creators.

With a fairly open, until recently, policy of just make whatever videos you want. But I think, yeah, I think it's one of those things where you become what you despise, you know? YouTube is like built to like upend. They want to like, you want to put videos in the internet, just do it yourself, DIY, blah, yeah, I think it's one of those things where you become what you despise. You know, YouTube is built to upend. They wanna put videos in the internet, just do it yourself. DIY, blah, blah, blah.

Spotify and soundcloud and all these things are like, you know, it just became a magazine. Well, right, blogs became, there is an industry around it. And I'm not saying that that shouldn't have happened, but have we protected the opportunity for future upends? Creators and future businesses. And that's for granted that the internet was gonna constantly provide that for free.

Unregulated capitalism can only lead to monopolization of markets and the increased, sorry, decreasing lack of opportunity for emergent businesses, artists, sorry, decreasing lack of opportunity for emergent businesses, artists, creators, whatever. Like that's the thing is unchecked capitalism, which is basically what we now have in America and certainly under the Trump administration,

certainly under the Department of Justice that we currently have, the FCC that we currently have, ethics, the ethics commissions are just bleeding people in the government. I mean, we're rolling back laws that protect consumers, we're rolling back laws that protect people from predatory actions and activities. So anyhow, so it's like, what can you do? If it's all unchecked, you will have a, you know, the housing crisis, you will have, you know, the big short, whatever it is.

Like, I mean, you'll have cable boxes. That will be the content. Well, that is, but America has a history of poorly regulating these things. And, and, you know, I think it's like, but I mean, you look at just basic, like a basic, basic, basic law. And over in the EU, they did the GDPR.

And it has been, it has an amazing fact on the larger internet and how tech companies like manage privacy. And even that, like those, like, simple guidelines, why, how can people not look at like, like, like, how, why does regulation solve a bad name? Was the Reagan campaign that good? Well, I mean, no, I'm not all regulations. Great. And in fact, you know, we just, no, but it's a tool you want to use at all.

Like, do you know what I mean? Like, let's just not put the tool away because some people have used it incorrectly in the past. Yeah, I mean, we just, I mean, look, I mean, we just ran an article on the site, which will be yesterday when people hear this, but about how the EU basically voted to make memes legal.

And like this over regulation now is going to. That's not great. You know, on the other hand, you know, maybe it's, maybe memes their time has come. You know, maybe it's time for the end of memes. I don't know. Memes are one of the things that you just can't, it's just a cultural, it's an in joke.

You can't stop human brains from having in jokes. Well, I mean, listen, listen to this. You know, I'm Wednesday European Parliament's committee on legal affairs voted to essentially make memes illegal. The decision came as a part of the approval process for the innocuelessly named article 13, which would require larger sites to scan all user uploads using contact recognition technology and an attempt to flag any and all remotely copy, write a material in photos, text, music, videos, and more. Now, how many people write original songs and get take-down notices from YouTube? Meaning memes using stills from copyrighted films could be auto blocked along with remixes of viral videos,

and basically anything that's popular on live streaming sites like Twitch. I'm fucked. Well, this is very much like, look, this law is very much like what they tried to push with, um, like look, this law is very much like what they tried to push with, um, search with an S. Yeah. Why am I blank on this? Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, sofa, sofa, sofa, so pups thing was like, I kept thinking schema. We're going to be able to anything that, you know, anything we see that we think is our copyrighted material. We're going to have it taken down at the ISP level. Yeah. Right. And then figure it out afterward. Now, this is putting the onus on the, on the hosting, the hosting providers, but then that obviously makes them,

you know, liable and ways that are going to be very hard for their businesses. And so they're going to go super gone and be super protective over this. I mean, I this who knows how, how if this is sustainable or not, but it is like, look, I mean, regulation is good, but there is a dark side of regulation, which is like when people don't fucking understand what they're regulating or when their influence is corporate influences. It's so much easier to deregulate something that's regulated though. It's so much easier to tear through that stuff.

I'd rather us keep trying to get this right and tear down regulations that aren't working or that we can knock down on the courts to get anything passed is so hard. Building things is hard. Right. I mean, but look at look at that neutrality. I mean, we had some regulation for a few years because the people who were in charge of the government at that time were like, let's do this. It just wasn't robust.

And then, well, but the, but the, but we need some things that are, that are, we need some, like, we need real laws that protect consumers and protect. Are we arguing for technocrats like Brandon will? I don't know what the fuck we're arguing for. I just want people to chill the fuck out and to use common sense. And I want to stop feeling like every fucking thing that we do is being directed by.

Just stop electing stupid people. But the bigger problem is the money. Is the money in, like all of this, so much of this, almost I would say 90%. I mean, that's how Net how naturality got knocked down. 90% of the horrible things that are happening is Trump is Trump a racist yes, but is his motivation? My guess is more than anything.

Somebody was like, hey listen, we could build these new detainment centers all along the border. It's huge money. We could get taxpayer dollars for x, y, and z and the entire thing is a fucking like Ponzi scheme, you know? Like when when when you see these lobbyists and you see the money that's put behind these causes like, you know, killing net neutrality regulations, that that's it's all about So corporations ability to either manipulate laws

or make money off of those laws, right? And I think that like, you know, you get right down to it, like that's the fundamental problem in this country, is that there is money dirty and not dirty money. I mean, you call it, yeah. Well, most of it's legal. Totally legal. It's legal. We have, we have made so much possible legally that it's just like, you know, these fucking senators, they are, they are, they have created, you know, they're just caching checks. Well, it's like, did you ever watch the show

to claws on TNT? No, it's extremely good. And it's on Hulu, everyone should watch it. Clothes like, like, why not? Clothes on an animal? It, the thing is about, it's basically breaking back to our girl gang, but they, their cover business is a nail salon.

And so they have these huge nails. It's super like queer adjacent. And it's just, it's super diverse. It's all older and magnesium ash is a tour de force. It's incredible television. Everyone should watch it. It's so good. It's very addictive.

But essentially on the show, the drug business they were running, unlike Breaking Bad, is legal. They're laundering money in a legal way to avoid anyone realizing that they're over prescribing to certain patients and getting slapped on the wrist, but you can essentially, in Florida, run a pain clinic, which is just distributing oxycodone or whatever, at huge profits, at a massive scale, which is basically being a heroin dealer, legally, as long as you don't raise bank

flags or any government flags in order to get a slap on the risk for over-prescribing. You can basically do whatever you want. Several times during the season, you're remember like, no, this is all above board. Like, everything they're doing is completely legal. It's just wildly unethical damaging. The crazy thing is, you're like, well, wait, the president can do that. I mean, I think this, this week's whole drama with this separation is a great indicator of just how loose everything is. The policy, I mean, it's like, oh, doctors can do that. Oh, the president

can do that. The policy was invented, uh, and enforced for no reason, except, I, uh, reason except to be cruel. It was invented because there were racists and then they found ways to incentivize people who weren't racist that you're going to make money. Look, the history of all crimes against people on mass starts with people just following orders. Yeah. People just doing what they're told. Yeah, we know. You know, right?

But like, so, but the, but it's the league, it's all legal. It's all fine. There's no real law, but they can do it anyway. And the president, who's a fucking liar can be like, oh, I can't do anything about it. And then he can just be like, I'm going to sign this. I actually can. He could send these. I've already said whatever, whatever he wanted from, I can't do anything about it. And then he can just be like, oh, I'm gonna sign this. No, actually, I can't. He could send these, I've already said whatever he wanted from what I can tell.

So we're living in this like, you know, I think one of the biggest, one of the things that Trump has exposed that's most improvocative and insane to me is that like almost everything we think is a, like a way you do things is just that. It's just the way we think it should be done. There's no rules. There's no laws. There's no actual like it's a matter of decorum. It's like, well, it should be a fucking law. You're like, Oh, doctors probably couldn't get you addicted to

paint pills on purpose and keep selling them to you. That doesn't sound like the president should be. But president should have the president should have enormous power, but enormous legal checks to that power. oversight. oversight. oversight. oversight. because like if I'm hearing that there's even a fucking argument that the president can party.

well that was the original. America was everybody could check everybody. everybody. they could be going, you know, that he could pardon himself. that's the fact that we're you're gonna have a fucking debate about it. it's like what are you talking about? yeah. pardon himself. That's even where you're gonna have a fucking debate about it. It's like, what are you talking about? Yeah. We mean pardon himself.

Yeah. You can pardon all the people who are found guilty or whatever. It's like, what is that? It's like, well, maybe he'll be in trouble with one of the states. It's like, I don't get to see you or stay in the state. Let me get this straight. Let me get this straight. You put this guy in charge.

He's the most powerful man in the country. He decides the laws. He can write laws into practice just by signing it. He also commands the entire military. Just commands the military can write laws into make them into real things just by signing a piece of paper. And now you're also telling me, he also picks judges. You're also telling me that he is beyond like prosecution. Forget about prosecution, he's beyond like being checked.

Yeah. That like we're just like, Oh, yeah, no, we can't do anything now. You're just going to be, what if he's like, yeah, I'm just going to keep being president. Oh, I, we can end on this. It's a dark note. I fully my entire bet. I fully believe there will be a fake crisis of some kind. Maybe it's, there's so many immigrants fake voting or the, or there are elections being hacked. And we don't know by who. There will be a reason to delay this election and he will attempt to do it. Maybe he'll be successful.

Maybe he will. No, 2020. There will be an attempt to quote unquote delay. And I, I, I, I can't, at some point, at some point, I know I'm just speculating. My understanding is that you, that if we, if we make a significant change in these mid terms, it's his, His actual power will be, because now Republicans will let him do whatever. They don't care.

So I think there's some hope, but let's see if that happens. Hope it happens. Yeah, exactly. All right, we should get going. Yep, we're gonna take a break and we'll be right back with TC Sotic. What happens if you play Monopoly with real money? We've got to pay the pipe.

There are no more watches in this completely reinvented game of an op-ion. real money. What does space sound like? What happens when you overwork yourself? Do you believe that work related stress has increased? It reflects the fact of how little value we place on the well-being of human days. The Outline World Dispatch. Every Monday through Thursday we bring you a new story on the theme of power, culture, or the future. And, picked from theoutline.com. Find us an Apple podcast, Google Play, Spotify, your Amazon Alexa Flash briefing, or wherever you download your podcasts. Also, you can say, okay, Google, play me the news, and we're right there. Oh my God, yeah!

Make your mornings a little weirder. Today is an old friend, a great mind, and a beautiful man. I'm of course talking about TC Sotic, or some people like to refer to him, SOTEC managing out of there of the verge, is that correct? It's correct. And creator of Quest RPG, a hot new Kickstarter project that just blew past its funding goal.

TC, thank you for being here. Thank you. That was a warm introduction. That was just off the dope. That's by real feelings and thoughts about you. Well, you know me. thank you for being here. Thank you. That was a warm introduction. That was just off the dope. That's by real feelings and thought about you. Well, you know me well as 100% I would agree with everything you just said. Thank you. That's what I'm looking for is 100% agreement throughout this podcast about everything

that I say. T.C. has been a while. We have, you know, have not done a, we've, we used to do some wine casts with Katie Drummond. Yeah, she's out. Won't be doing that shit anymore. No, Katie's at media. Maybe we'll break her in. I would love to.

I miss her. For wine cast. I know we have wine, because it's the middle of the day right now. Well, some people are, but we're not. Some people, no, listen, somewhere in the world, someone's enjoying a delicious Vino Verde.

But right now, we're just having some La Croix and some water. There's a lot to talk about. Now when this airs, this will all be old news, but we are hot on the right at this moment. Live, which now will seem very old to you when you hear about this. Trump just signed an executive order. TC's also, I should say, and a previous life was a was a lobbyist. That's right. Who was your lobby?

I was in the pocket of big national parks. All right, big parks. Yeah, big parks. You actually would be beautiful, spacious. Perfect for a Trump tower. You actually would be one of the people who is like fighting Trump on like the stuff he's just done with the national parks. Absolutely.

You'd be Leslie Noteping. Yeah, but he's like, he's not doing national parks. He's also messing. There's a lot of like other federal lands like under the Bureau of Land Management. Yeah. That they just want to open up to drilling and. Yeah, no, he's a some of the national parks. He's also missing. There's a lot of other federal lands like under the Bureau of Land Management that they just want to open up to drilling. No, he's a piece of shit. He's a fucking piece of shit and everything

he touches turns to garbage. Now, I will agree with that. Donald Trump, 100% agreement. Thank you. On this podcast. But there's been this huge, for the last, it's going to be going on now. I guess a couple of weeks.

I mean, this started actually a while ago where people were like, oh, there's these kids that are, I mean, I don't know how interconnected these, there's like, Oh, these kids are basically missing, I think, D H actually, I forgot about that story. Story. There was a story where it's like, Oh, there's these missing kids. And now the story kind of morphed or has kind of slid into this shit that's going on in the border, which is, you know, Trump, Trump's, you know, I don't know, immigration, architect Stephen Miller, who's a Nazi cunt. I don't find a lot to say

that. It's a rude thing to say, but I feel like it applies here. The guy's a fucking worm in a human suit. I'll check with Samantha B. Thank you. Oh, right. We're not allowed to say that. You can bleep it. I was a match when I said, should be used in beautiful contexts. Yeah, not in that context. I agree. I agree. We should honor that word and not use it to talk about disgusting, sniffling pieces of shit. He is a Nazi, he's a Nazi. Waffen SS, I think someone. He is the, all of the traits of a Nazi at his court.

Anyhow, Stephen Miller architected this plan for Trump, who's also a racist piece of shit. To separate kids at the border, from, you know, you cross the border, you're seeking asylum Trump, who's also a racist piece of shit, to separate kids at the border, from, you know, you cross the border, you're seeking asylum, you're coming from a country where you're, you know, you're fleeing to the safety of America, and then we've been taking people's kids

and putting them in fucking cages. And, you know, chain link boxes, maybe they're, maybe you don't technically refer to those cages. And yet, Trump just signed an executive order saying we're not going to do that, but we're going to indefinitely hold the families. Yeah, no change to this is your tolerance policy that they've

decided they needed to lock up, to treat basically treat as criminals people who are fleeing violence and terror in countries. I think what's crazy to think about is literally the rounding error percentage of people we're talking about who are crossing the border illegally, many of whom, or plenty of whom are seeking asylum, which is something that we offer in America to we are supposed to offer to people. That this has become because- Well, we do offer it to people from Nordic countries.

But what's crazy is that Trump has become because we do offer it to people from Nordic countries, but what's crazy is that Trump has made this a focal point of his Presidency starting with the immigration ban. I mean really this whole obsession with immigration Which is a total smoke screen like it's so fucking insane to me that and we've now been in weeks and weeks of this controversy For no reason except they're just fucking cruel and racist. Yeah, I don't think it's a smokescreen. I mean, I don't believe in the 40-chest bullshit.

No, no, no, no. It's like, day one of his campaign in Trump Tower, literally the first thing he said when he announced his presidency was rapist. I mean, I don't mean smokescreen in the sense that he's got some bigger plan at play. I mean, the feeling that he's trying to promote this idea that immigration, illegal immigration is like a mage, it's like the major threat to America. The smoke screen is his rhetoric about it that we are all supposed to be like, oh my god, yes, we must stop this scourge, which is like, infest infestation.

infestation. No, no historical parallels to that kind of language. None of them. None of them. No, but it's also like a complete, like it's bullshit. I mean, it's not like, yes, I mean, should we, is there reform we can do in immigration but all whatever, yeah, I'm sure. But it's so incredible to me. And I don't know if this is how he suits up for 2020. Maybe you have some thoughts on this. I hope you do. That's why you're here. Wait, he's been, he is how he suits up for 2020. Maybe you have some thoughts on this. I hope you do.

That's why you're here. But he's been, he's never stopped his campaign. Right? Is it only rallies the whole time? Right. And is this really, is this the cornerstone? Now, I guess it was originally, and to your point, he had the Mexicans or rapists

or whatever comment the day he announced his candidacy. But like this seems fucking crazy to me. Like that we are, that he is trying to create this sense of panic in this country over something that is literally, I mean, I'm not saying it's not an issue, but it is not America's most pressing issue. You know, I think he believes it. I think he's a bullshitter, but I think he, I mean, this is what he's always believed, right? There was that there was that there was a central park eight

or whatever that were that we tried to put central park five where he tried to, you know, put them on death row, basically taking out ads and the paper saying they were. He was sued twice by the federal government for writing scene next to people of color, just the black people who were trying to rent his apartments so that they wouldn't be considered for rentals. I don't think this is like a cynical turn.

This is just his DNA. I mean, he literally is like, his father or grandfather was in the Ku Klux Klan. Am I wrong? His grandfather. His grandfather. So like, I, but don't question these, died in the wool racist.

I don't know if that's the right turn of phrase there, but he's definitely a complete racist. He died in the hood. Died in the hood, right. But it is to me astounding that there is not more violent outrage in this country. I hope there will be at the polls. And I say this all the time.

I don't know what else we can say at this point. It's like you gotta vote these fucking people out of office. But is this not, does this not seem like we're in, I don't wanna be too- I mean, Trump's bad, but the real fucking dark shit is that like when they pull Republican voters and 55% think we should be separating kids from their parents, that's the, that's the dark,

the real darkness to me. Oh, yeah. Trump's a fucking lunatic, but to have that many, to have literally millions of people believe that's a, like, I don't know how I was to describe that, but evil. It's, you know, it is evil. I do think there is a core, there is such an intense lack of compassion

from so many people in the Republic that align themselves with the Republican Party. It's a combination of ignorance. And I don't know, I don't believe in evil exactly. Like, like, like, evil is like almost, you know, I don't know what time it was with Quest later on about alignments. But evil too exists, you can't have to believe in

like a spiritual play. Now, as you know, I'm a hardcore atheist. I hate, I hate, I hate, I, I've never, but I've actually never really used that term in our Instantile. Well, it feels, because it feels, it feels, I don't know how I was to describe it. It feels like evil.

And so the question is like, what is it? Is it ignorance? Is it a lack of empathy? It's sociopathy. Yeah. I mean, it's just like, like, it's like, it's like, it's like, um, you know, us Catholics. Yes.

I believe that hell is just the complete absence of God, right? It's being furthest from God's love. I think it tortured hell. I mean, maybe. That's the last draft. I mean, we'll find out. We'll find out. We'll find out.

That's the fan's fact. That's the twilight version of hell. That's how I would describe it. I would describe it as the absence of compassion. You're sitting there straight from God's light. The absence of compassion of it. Yeah, an empathy. And sympathy.

It's fucking crazy to me, though. I really don't understand it. I don't understand arguing for the Paul's. I don't understand like how your brain processes that it's crazy that 55% number. It's just like, I don't know. I want us to be in not these times. Like I feel like how are we actually,

do you ever wake up and you're like, how is this life today? Like, it wasn't things we're not like this. I feel like I, like all day long, maybe every half an hour or 15 minutes, I'm like, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, and then I go back to like, you know, finish making your sandwich and then it's what the fuck,

what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, and I cannot get anything done. I'm like, fraying at the edges. Yeah, the shit that really drives you crazy is whether when you, you don't know how you feel guilty for doing things that are not being outraged. Right? Like, like, play a game. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm making a game. I have to like, hype it up this month, right? And I felt like the past two weeks, I just haven't wanted to

talk about it at all. No, I think a lot of, I think a lot of, no, I mean, I think about this every day, as we, you know, we publish store, we, you know, at the outline try to be not, we don't go hard on the news cycle, right? Like we're kind of, and you know, we publish stories and like this is a great,

unless it's goop related. And that's good. We're just just fucking jam on that shit. But, but, you know, we're like, we publish stories, they're great stories. I it's goop related. And that's good, we're just fucking jam on that shit. But we published stories, they're great stories. I'm like, I love this. And it's like, I'll tweet about it or talk about it or whatever, but it's like, yeah, but all around you, everything is burning.

And you're like, I'm like, read this great story on 24 hours in Dunkin' Ducks, which is a really interesting slice of life in New York or whatever, but it is, you know, you just feel like, what the fuck? Yeah, what the fuck? You wanna see people break down, you see the already, and like mentally on the edge,

people in my improv class trying so hard to make jokes or anything and not bring up the news or anything upsetting. It's like victims. No, no, no, I mean, like you can watch people, but I get it. You try to be funny. I get it. At the breaks, like would take a 10 minute break,

it just, you check your phone and everyone's just like, you just see people fall apart. I've seen people cry or whatever reading a thing or whatever and you're like, okay, well, everybody, let's go back to like naming kinds of cards. It's so rough. This is why I'm already paid for it. So I'm gonna have some goon of these classes.

No offense, but I stay away from improv. No, I'm not telling you to come. I'm telling you. No, you participate in it. Please come. No, please don't. We need, we gotta fill this theater. They do a great thing where somebody shouts out a word

and then everybody checks their Twitter. The only people who love improv are the teachers. Nobody the students are not enjoying it. The audiences aren't doing it. I listen, I'll be honest with you. When your co-workers is improv, Casey Neeson. Casey Neeson, yeah. He's a very funny guy.

Very funny guy. Very funny guy. But I saw, I don't know if I've ever been to like proper improv, but I did it South by Southwest a couple of years ago, end up at an improv event for a brand. And I was like, and I was like, was it an activation? I mean, I guess so. And I was like, oh boy, I don't like,

I don't think I like improv. Just go, just go across town, UCB. There's actually some pretty good stuff. No, like improv is like A plus or fucking like hell on earth Those are the two speeds operating Like the triple a teams have a great time You see someone asking your Facebook to go to improv nope don't do it. No, I know I but anyhow back to Trump And sorry, no, but you do you feel like it's anyhow to crush a and it's like you just

Carolizing it's just such a fucking bummer. It's like it does not have to be this way This is the thing that I think about all the time like, it does not have to be this way. This is the thing that I think about all the time. It's like, it was not this way before Trump was president. And there were bad things in America, no question. But it wasn't this level of intensity, of unfairness, of like, what are we fucking doing as a country and why are we doing it?

Fight, going to trade wars with Canada and fucking putting kids in cages and fucking like sitting down with the dictator of North Korea as if he's like a bro. And it's just like, it feels like everything. I mean, we've had duplicitous language crazy should happening since 9-11. Yeah. But you got this right. You got the sense that like at least Carl Rove and Dick Cheney and Donald Runsfeld and all those assholes were, were actually like saying what they believed in publicly rather than just like lying about literally everything they could possibly, like easily verifiable facts.

Yeah. Like, that's just, I mean, the fucking secretary of, what is her name? Nielsen. Christian Nielsen? Yeah, yeah. What is her, sorry, what is her official title? She's secretary of weight. Not she leads DHS, right?

DHS, DHS, that's yeah. She's like, we do not, we're not separating families that border period. It's like literally, you're fucking lying. It's obvious to everybody. No one thinks that's real. Everyone else has said that. That's exactly right.

There's video of it. There's audio of it. There's fucking pictures of cages. You literally have other people in your government going like, yeah,'s video of it. There's audio of it. There's fucking pictures of cages. You literally have other people in your government going like, yeah, we're doing it. Oh, yeah. They also went like through the five textbook steps of what abuser, the user playbook where it's like, we're not doing that. There's no policy. Okay. If there is a policy, well, it's the Democrats fault. Okay. Like, I like that. I like that. Trump, I was looking through his tweets is like a day ago.

He's like, change the laws. And then today's like Trump signs executive orders. Like interesting. Hmm. Interesting how that functions. Yeah. No, it's crazy to me. And I I'll have to say to anybody who's a fucking Republican

in voting for these people, how stupid are you? And how stupid do they think you are? And if you're voting for them, you are dumber than they think. It's okay to admit you were wrong. I was, I'm wrong about things all the time. It's just say I, I, I, I fucked up. I shouldn't have voted for this guy. And it's fine. You can be wrong. You can be wrong. But are you, I mean, are you stupid? Like, are you how stupid do you have to be? Like they, like, you've got Tucker Carlson on Fox going, like anything else you hear besides Fox is propaganda and it's like do you really think that that if you really

think that's true, you're fucking deranged like someone interviewed a Trump supporter of a rally in Minnesota yesterday. And she said yes separating children from parents is horrible. But those pictures are fake, right? Like they don't, there's no, they don't even believe the facts that would help them make a rational compassionate decision. Well, I blame the internet, to be honest with you, the internet, the greatest, the greatest appet. No, I agree. The greatest thing that can happen. I hate to say it because by all my careers based on the internet, but I think it's, you're in perfectly positioned to become a scene. Ready to do it is a man. We could instead I will play the outlet will become a like pop up

magazine but all improv no but like yeah I mean you know the greatest service anybody could do to mankind right now be to permanently shut down the internet that's if you're if you're terrorist out there looking for a really good cause bring down the internet permanently yeah I get rid of overwatch I'm straining to have 100% agreement on this podcast for fear of prosecution. I don't mean I'm not telling you to do anything. Of course, you know this podcast is purely for entertainment purposes. Anyhow, let's talk about, let's move on. So there's nothing we can't, we all agree in this. We're not going to solve anything.

We're just vantied. Then I do think like I will say on this, like we, I do think, actually, I think if we say the right combination of words on this podcast will bring Trump down. I love to do that. I I just I do think there's also this thing where it's like you know the futility of of outrage. The I've written how many tweets have you written and deleted in the last year? Well outrage is fine but like sitting around talking to people who follow you on Twitter all day it's not going to do shit. I agree. I've been talking to anybody on Twitter's not going to do shit. I think talking on Twitter is actually useless. I think talking almost on all social networks is basically useless.

It's very masturbatory. It's very masturbatory. But there's fucking, it's fun. It feels good. It is fun. It feels good. I was like yelling at people yesterday on Twitter and I'm like, it's, there's no use to this.

It is probably embarrassing myself, but it just feels, does feel good to say, to say fuck you to, to fuck it, Neil said or this. It is probably embarrassing myself, but it just feels good to say, to say fuck you to fuck it, Neil said it or whatever. It's just like texting them. Yeah, somebody dropped Stephen Miller's phone number and sending him a bunch of gay porn gifts he'll probably never get.

He did that for you, Lika. Yeah, I sent him some like, you're a not to piece of shit and then just tons of men fucking. But he's proffin races. Sorry, thank you. But he, but see, Miller's probably fine with that. He probably likes it.

It's probably, you know, you don't know what he's into. Listen, I just hope his eye cloud has to, he gets a new account, he has to get a new account. He has to agree. He's so crammed for his storage as we've got to do. Listen, anyhow, back to speaking of tech. He's going to find new folder on his desktop. Speaking of tech. That's a good segue right.

Thank you. What's the tech angle? What is the tech angle? Uh, no, but, uh, there's a lot of other shit batches speaking of shutting down the internet and that neutrality, which you guys have, the verge of done a ton of really thought. Totally thought. Neelie did a great, Neelie did a great piece, which I loved, uh, which was like a super long take down of the ruling on the 18 T time Warner merger. Yeah, the judge who presided over that basically knew nothing about how the internet worked. take down of the ruling on the AT&T Time Warner merger.

Yeah, the judge who presided over that basically knew nothing about how the internet worked. Of course. And the government also had a, it was like a confluence of two things that judge was fucking stupid and had no idea like what an app was. It's great. Like literally like he thought that direct TV and time Warner had to combine so that time Warner could provide

their shows over the top. Which is they're already doing that. That's called HBO now. That's right. But then the government also had a terrible case like they hired both like dumb experts. Bob Lobla. Bob Lobla was on the case. Please don't talk about it.

I don't want to hear any arrest development jokes. I don't want to hear any arrest. He's so bad. I haven't seen it. Didn't watch season four. Don't really not a big arrest development fan. It's bad. It was a big part of my first three seasons. My former viewers. I watched the first three seasons and they were fine. There were some funny people. When they were out, you watched them when they were out. It was on TV. No, I guess I watched them after it. It was very timely during the Bush, during the Bushes. Yeah, afterward. It was basically a comedy about the Trump family,

and then it's like, oh no, this isn't so funny anymore. The only entertainment, the only arc that I paid attention to during the Bush era was American Idiot by Green Day. God. Woo! Can we get that? Can we get that pipe down? Can we get a little America? What's the best?

Team America world police. That's a good idea. That's a good idea. Team America is a very good movie. I mean, inappropriate now. If you watch it now, you're like, wow, there's a bunch of stuff in this movie that would not make a lot at all. I mean, anything, any art that's like a decade old, I mean, even the fucking Gilmore

girls, you're like, wow, this is, no, I'm seriously, like on the Gilmore girls, like some, honestly, I was just remodeling. So he was like, that bag is gay. I'm like, that's crazy. What? Like, there's a Gilmore girl. There's an episode of the West Wing

where they're like, if you don't know your stuff, get sexually assaulted, you're getting rid of your sexual power. And as a woman, you should use that as a tool. Let him abuse you. And it's like, I was like, why? What am I watching? No, I'm telling you, man, it's crazy to go back even just a few years

and see how different things were. How fucking crazy things were, like, 10 years ago. It's not, anyhow. Anyway, so another neutrality is dead. It's dead, but- It's also at California got messed up because they were supposed to pass a strong, the strongest bill in the country today on it.

Yeah. And I got a torpedoed by a democratic representative who was biggest donors, 18 T. Oh, go figure. He he messed it up in procedure. I mean, so the, the, let's name and shame Miguel Santiago. And he's going to propose his own He's like plan. He's like listen Here's my proposal. It's full of loopholes

AT&T who'd you say is biggest donors AT&T concast he's like AT&T Should be allowed to do whatever they want but When it comes to Verizon and Dave, whoever their competition is, fuck it, I don't know. You gotta clamp down on them, gotta make sure they're regularly, heavily regulated. All these fucking, it's like money, money, money,

is the fucking problem. The most destructive thing that ever happened in this country was this Reem Court ruling that corporations are fucking people and therefore have free speech or whatever their ruling was, which is like. Yeah, I mean, this is the astros. We have like 100 plus years of precedent of the government just making terrible fucking decisions

about how to regulate, like telecommunication services, right? Net neutrality by itself is like putting a band-aid on a fucking gun wound. The issue has never been, like, Net neutrality is the last resort, right? The real problem with the internet is, A, there's no competition anywhere, like in many markets, Comcasts is your only choice or Verizon. Like in Greenpoint. Yeah, exactly. What do you have?

Well, you don't have a Greenpoint. No, I have Fios. Okay. And it rips. And I have choices. Fios is a crap. I have choices. No, I do. I have Fios and it rips and I have choices. Fios is a great episode. I have choices. No, I do have I do have choices, but Fios is very, very, very high has like three choices of gigabit level internet at his house in Virginia. Yeah. I have spectrum. And if I want to cancel it's DSL. No, when I lived in Brooklyn when I lived in Brooklyn, it was only time Warner or you get some other bullshit. That was me, but now I'd spectrum. Yeah, spectrum bought time Warner or you get some other bullshit. That was me, but now I expect from spectrum bot time Warner. Exactly. And then themselves are being purchased. And their apps fucking sucks. It's always time. I'm on real. I mean, Warner's app was actually really good. It

had like, I could change my Wi-Fi password in there. I could look up service issues. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. The spectrum app literally only shows me the balance of my bill. That's all it does. So bad. It's how it does. You're either pay your auto pay. But this is like this is the market, right? Like people don't have real choices. Which is why net neutrality is so important. Right. And then the other part of this is like now you have two media companies in the world, right? Or we're headed that way. It's going to be Disney and whatever ISP they merge with. And AT&T of rise and Comcast and all of the other shit that they merge with. And when we get into that scenario, it's just, you know, not having that neutrality around means

they're going to use the internet as a bargaining chip or a pawn and trying to sell people cable TV. Again, I'm not saying I'm not endorsing this idea, but if you can find a way to completely shut down the internet, just stop it all together. Guess what? They're not going to be able to hawk their wares with no pipes or signal. I don't know how you do. You can take some satellites that, cut some Odyssey cables. I don't know. But I'm saying, you know, think about it. Look, put some time into it. You know, anyhow, yet look, it's a fucking, we're living in a nightmare world. But also, you know, it's the great. But there's a lot, but Westworld, man, a lot of great television.

I would go that far. A lot of great. You're not. Are you watching Westworld? Are you watching Westworld? You're the past two episodes. I'm back. Are you seeing the show that I'm seeing the last episode?

Okay. Why don't we do a mini out West real quick here? Can you see me? Let me ask you a question, T.C. Because I get a little, a little out a little out west. A little west. We made it to Pennsylvania. Yeah. Here are two questions, T.C.

You're an avid west world watcher. See, yeah, I've seen every upset. You see the hard fan. Yeah. You've checked out the Reddit, Westworld. No, Reddit. I don't know. Okay.

I try to avoid Reddit as much as possible. Do you, do you have, do you feel like there's like big mysteries to unlock on Westworld? I'm curious. I don't anymore, but I think that's okay. Really? I think. So what's that? What's that? I wasn't into this season very much until they got to the episode before last where they went. What's that guy's name? The ghost nation guy? I get that episode. I could cheat. I could.

I could. Yeah. I said this yesterday. I know it's probably, but I did like the show. I mean, I thought I thought that episode was phenomenal in two days ago. But I did like the show, gonna all that. I mean, I thought that episode was phenomenal. In so many ways, it reminded me of the best of lost. Yeah, it was a lot of work. Because it was character driven. Well, there are whole episodes that aren't character driven with no sense of place. What beyond that, the characters are like,

you're like a deloist, really, I've said about her dad, but like these relationships, not even real. It's like not even an actual relationship. It's like a programming really. I mean, that's the thing I actually didn't care about really any of the characters until until that goes nascent episode. You didn't like the episode for the daddy Delos episode. That was good. That was good. That was very lost. It was very lost. It literally was like a lost episode and the unraveling of the of the guy getting, you know, validated or

whatever was pretty. Yeah, fucking great. I thought the Ghost Nation episode was really good, but I mean, it was obviously a bottle episode, but also it felt like one of those things where they were like, it's like, I don't know, you only have 10 episodes in the season. I feel like you're like, we need a time out from the plot. It's like, you only have 10 episodes to tell the story. Well, here's the shit that they get,

that they, that's not great. It's like watching you only have 10 episodes to tell the story. Well, there's a shit that they get that they, that's not great. It's like watching someone play fallout and there's like all these fucking side missions that you don't care about and like logistics and like people driving around from point of view. You also know I know where on the map you are and fall out, you're just, it's just a desk ball. Everybody's in this facility.

They don't know where, there's like apparently infinite floors to this place and nobody knows what's going on. Like that part doesn't really interest me, but I think it's a lot of... Oh, yeah, we've talked a lot about the technicalities of the mesh network. They're really obsessed with the mesh network. And I'm like, why?

A lot of HBO shows talking a lot about a mesh network with that, so look on Val. I'm saying about all stuff, but I'm onboarding in from the last two episodes, but I'm only, like, if they don't leave the park next season. Oh my God. I'm out. Okay, let me ask you a question. Like they have to like they need to fundamentally change the show next season. People need to get the like escape the park.

They need to go into the real world. The park show boring. I just It's like there's I think there's not enough area here for me to get invested. It also you want to leave. Do you think they're on the moon? No. Wait, there's so much. Where do you think they're located? They're on the day one that they were on. Where do you go? Some island off the coast of China. Right? You get on the boat. We're just gonna get on boat and go over China. They gave like, I mean, they kind of hinted at that, right?

Did they? Yeah, because they were on the first episode. They said they're on an island and the Chinese government. Well, actually, they were like, they were like, you don't have jurisdiction over this island blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Yeah. And so that we all think that that's definitely, it could be, they want to make it Mexico

or something and like we're in over there. Oh, no, I think it's, I think it's much deeper than that. Yeah. It goes real deep. I think it's like ownership of areas of the, of the moon. They could, they could create a pretty fucking convincing atmosphere. You saw, well, you know that it's a, you saw the trailer for the next episode, right? There's like a huge crack and there's a seam in the sky.

I didn't see that. Oh, you haven't seen it. You haven't seen the trailer for the next episode. They several, they seem, huh? There's literally, they're all of the characters converging and there's a mass of like electric seam up the sky that is like, no, I'm serious.. It shows like a rippling seam where you can see something behind it and the atmosphere around it is like Westworld atmosphere and there's this tiny little strip.

Let me just get out of here. No, just fucking reddish. Just Google Westworld seam in the sky and you will see it immediately. So now, yeah, the literally the thing you just said where they're like, whatever about the atmosphere, the it is a projection. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Because you know, they show Mount Fuji in Shogun world. Right. And obviously. And it's like how did they get right? That's the goodness. They have caught it at it. Yeah.

Did you find the scene? I didn't find it, but it's a good thing. It's a good thing. So I'll pull up a gift from the sims. It's a good thing to me. To me, I think the greatest. I mean, honestly, I know everybody's fucking so mad. I'm talking about this, but I can't stop thinking about this idea that they get to their

like, we're finally getting out of here. They're on the moon. And they're like, oh, fuck, it could be Mars. It could be, it could be a planet. It could be a place where like we've made the assumption that like, they can just get out and they'll hop on a boat over to mainland China and oh shit, the Hoaster Everywhere. I don't think it's gonna be that simple. Well, they do, but they do show people in like San Francisco

and- No, they've shown people in one Asian city. No, that's not true at all. I think that's all they've shown. That's where Bernard's home was. No, Bernard's home is in China or wherever. Is I think it's China. There's like, you know, he shows... He shows his blocks or whatever.

Maybe it was a San Francisco. No, they're in China or somewhere like China. No. Also, there was somebody pointed out to me that there's a... When Bernard and Dolores cross the street when they're he's going to show us a house, that's in China. That's in China. That's in China.

And also there's a thing that when they walk out of the thing, there's a sign that says space as if suggesting it's a space port. So anyhow, you know, we'll see. Clearly I'm paying more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am.

I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay more attention to this show than I am. I have to pay you're back in. I felt like I was so obsessed with the mysteries and now I feel like anyhow, whatever, I were talking about it in the out west. I'm not on the line. No, the mysteries are really good in season one. But now it's very lost in the sense that they need to get out.

I agree. If it's lost and they're on this island for seven seasons and you're done. It's going to be done. If Meeve ever leaves the show, I'm done. I'm not watching the show anymore. I'm done. Well, it looks like she's the most washable person. But I'm confident, so I think I, I mean, I think they've done some good stuff to see. In the next episode, it looks like she's all fixed up.

Yes. And she's doing some Vine Control. Yeah. Or is that like to think of it, Wi-Fi, she's doing some air drops. She's doing what you, it's more like a liquid, you say, an air-drapper. What? Last week you said, the best superpower would be able to get people to just do things that you're suggesting to Vine Control. Yeah. Vine Control. Very week you said the best superpower would be able to get people to just do things that you're suggesting

Mind control. Very you said minor just kind of a little you made it seem real maybe you're like Yeah, it was pretty no. I wouldn't be like let's have sex that wouldn't be what I would be doing Okay, I mean that how great would it be for to have a reveal after like five seasons Mave escapes She gets on the fucking J train and all of a sudden like a dick butt pops up in your air drop because she's, she's hacking your air drop. That's the big reveal. What does a dick butt? You don't know that mean? I know. What is, I'm sorry. Yeah, maybe I do when I just go to the name of it. Wow. I feel really dumb now. Can we pipe in a dick butt? I know the guy. I don't know the name. It's good stuff.

We'll put that up on the, we'll project that into your brain when you're listening to this. But, okay, yeah, okay, super power. You get a very super power over to be. That's a good question. Yeah, just chip pick one. Top superpower that you would choose.

You could have any one. I don't know if I want one. Who's on? I know if I want one. I feel like you get a super power. She said immortality was that your first choice. That's not a super power. If you can turn it off, that'd be good.

That's what that was the wish. I had immortality till I said, no, thank you. No, but you would never say no thing. You would always be a man. I don't want immortality. Maybe no pain. No, because you still be injured. You don't want that.

That means you'll get injured, but you don't want to. No, it's like a guy James Bond. You want to be impervious to injury. I don't want to be in the interpretation. So I feel like if you feel it, and once you get a superpower, you get on the list of some people who you don't want to be on their list. Like who I'm saying? Like the movie by the invisible guy, like the government wanted to track him down.

The invisible man. The invisible man. The invisible man. Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon. Remember that movie? It was a Kevin Bacon. How a man. Which is based on the invisible man, right?

That's a verhove in movie. A pulvera in movie. I'm very bad. I think it's a movie, but it's very nice. Is your read by Joe Astor House? Can you double check it? By crazy. It's like, as soon as you get that ability, like the government wants to track you down, you know, you become bulletproof like Luke Cage. Then there's some other bulletproof guy. It's like you get that as soon as you get that ability like the government wants to track you down You know you become bulletproof like loot cage then there's some other bulletproof guy. It's like

I'm not watching a I don't watch this. I can't get into that. I don't watch it either, but I watch you just saying like Jessica Jones I like the Love Jessica Jones because you want to be the villain no, no, no, you want the mic I know I need to terrifying these are terrifying villain you are a No, you want the mic. No, I need to terrifying. He's a terrifying villain. You are a limousine liberal.

You know, I should be a big needy villain. You know what show? You know what show? I can't fucking stand. I'd like to hear your opinion on this. Legion. I like. I don't I fucking hate Superhero shit.

I don't want any other. No, Legion's a show. No, Legion. Yes, but Legion is a show that test the test the actual narrative. It pushes the narrative limitations of it's extremely experimental. No, no, Yes, but Legion is a show that tests the test the actual narrative. It pushes the narrative limitations of Extremely experimental. No, no, but it's experimental and like they are like we have a serious important plot, but actually they have nothing and it's like all like it's all like It's very master. That's why I like I find it almost impossible to walk. I like it. It's a it's an experiment. Can't stand it. Are you a Star Trek guy? Who me?

Yeah, you know that I am. But I don't want to that news. You heard about all the, I don't watch this. They're like expanding the universe. They're like thinking about four new shows. Picard might be back. Yes.

I'm there for that. Can you do that? Yeah. If they put Picard back, I will watch that show. I will fucking evangelize that show. I will promote it. I also, they're also thinking like a Starfleet Academy one

and I want them to go like full CW like teen romance Starfleet Academy. Oh, like Riverdale. Riverdale, yeah, Riverdale space. I like, I would watch that. That would be fucking right. Like Lefem Nikita. They made that show Nikita on the CW.

It was like a spy school. Oh, really? Yeah, I mean, agents. Wait, they also had a Lefem Nikita show. Yeah, it's called Nikita on the CW. It was like a spy school. Oh, really? Yeah. They also had a La Fem Nikita show. Yeah, it's called Nikita, I think. But they were different shows. No, that was the show. Oh, well, Fem Nikita.

It was just called Nikita. Oh, there was another TV show called La Fem Nikita. On the USF. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. On older one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. On older one.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Luke Basson. Now I feel like if I went back and watched, you know, left I'm Nikita, I would be like, wow, there's been appropriate stuff of this. Yeah. He's French. It's from the 90s. Yeah. It's got to be some bad shit there. I don't remember it entirely. Like you go back and watch the professional, but you're uncomfortable through the entire film. I can't think of a movie. I wouldn't be uncomfortable watching from the past. There's something in everything.

Really? Yeah. So you know the rain. I don't know. It's pretty, everything. Really? So you're in the rain. I don't know. It's pretty, I have to look. It's pretty clear. I mean, it's, you know, aggressively white. I was just gonna say an all white cast. It was like in 1932 or whatever. I mean, like you, you know, you know.

Anyway, we should talk about things that you're making. Yes, let's pivot. T.C. Talk about the future. Yeah. T.C., I've seen you on Instagram for a year. I don't know how long it's been you've been working on this project going on a year Yeah, and and I remember you started I feel like you started you were you're an RPG fan What's your game? Yeah, I've been playing I mean I'm playing the dragon you games Trevor no, but you were like like I was playing Dungeons and Dragons But I've only been playing that for For five years now. Yeah, okay, but dear paper and dice. Friend, Deeter Bohn.

Yeah, Deeter Bohn. Dropped fifth edition came out. Yeah. Dungeness and Dragons. Yeah. I'd never played this. I made fun of those nerds in high school or in college. Yeah, I played when I was a kid.

I had a college roommate who played and I was like, what is this? It's so good. But I he also did larking. So I was like, I thought there were, I thought there was like some, you know, adjacent things. Um, but anyway, you know, Deeter dropped fifth edition on my desk. I picked it up. I was like, this is the coolest shit.

I'd also been watching people play on Twitch and listening to podcasts. You know, the Macaroid brothers have the adventure zone. They, they, people play paper, Dungeons and Dragons on Twitch. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. I mean, it's, they have their, they have, it's have it's like you know hang it's like hang on say I'll have a portrait You see the faces. It's cool. But it's just you know, it's just telling a story. I I had a story, but I saw you I feel like I saw you start you were map making I did I had two groups of people the Verge the first thing I decided I wanted to do was be a dungeon master yeah for 10 people and two groups and I could just got

I went down a huge hole I spent one night like five hours on Etsy looking up wax sealing stamps because I wanted to have props and I just Yeah, it became it is like an arts and crafts thing, you know as much as playing a game And then last year I had an idea for a podcast an original show idea that I wanted to do and Is a format no one else has done yet, so I still would like to do it someday. Keep it.

I'm going to. It's exciting. But it was like 11 PM at night. And I was thinking about this podcast and I realized Dungeons and Dragons is a terrible game to make a show out of, because it's just, you're gonna be talking about rules and nothing like that.

Overleak some black. Spread cheese and yeah. So I was up until like 6am creating a game and from there you you said I've been working on this at that moment you had you had the vision for how you could the kind of structure of the

game one night. Yeah, you're like, I want to make a new type of RPG role playing game for those who don't know. TT RPG. I don't know. TTRPG. I don't know what that is. Table top. Table top. Okay.

RPG. And so you started creating this game called Quest, which first off, Quest RPG is the official. No, just Quest. Quest, but which is like, wow, what a good name for an RPG, by the way, and a surprise that it's like not really been used. It's been used by a billion people, but usually it was something else around it. Like there's Hero Quest, which was a game on.

I'm saying, just Quest. I'm compatible, but just Quest, yeah. There was one game called Quest that was made, and it's a tabletop game, but it was made by some German guys in the 70s. Oh, so it's, I don't think they have me. Trademark on it. Well, guess what, find out when I can suit. From my cast starter money, with a can of W.

You can call it. If I do QWST, I'll also get sued by Silicon Valley company. I really? But I also have the amazing domain, www.adventure.game. Oh, wow. That's very good. Somehow I got that. How did you get that? The dot game domain was open. I just started searching for them. And that was inexplicably available. Adventure game. Somehow nobody.

Adventure dot game. If I go to Adventure dot game, I'll be on the quest. That's right. Do you have a mobile site? Is it mobile, really? Squarespace.com. Not sponsoring this podcast. Wow.

Squarespace. They have sponsored. Probably the first organic Squarespace mention. Adventure. It ever. Adventure.game. Game. Here it is. They have sponsored probably the first organic square space mentioned adventure ever adventure dot Game game here it is Here I am right here beautiful logo. Is it who designed the logo me? I did that word mark. Wow, okay beautiful word mark by hand from T.C. Sotic But anyways, it's it's designed to be role playing game forplaying game for everyone says you're splash paid.

Yeah. I want, you know, I've talked to a lot of people. I've tried to get people into D&D. I love D&D. First of all, it's like one of my two favorite games of all time. I love it. They eliminated, there's no longer advanced on just a drag, it's a dangerous drag.

It's just one thing. No, it's just one. And fifth edition is actually. It was D&D and AD&D. AD&D, and there's like, I played AD&D. Offshoots. Because I was very fat. Fifth edition actually simplified a lot of the it was D&D, it was D&D and AD&D. AD&D, and there's like, I played AD&D. Offshoots. Cause I'm very fat.

Fifth edition actually simplified a lot of the stuff. And D&D, but it still, you know, has 30 years of legacy baked into it. A lot of things that they, well, you're behind. It's very crunchy. There's a lot of rules, which is fine. Some people are really into that. It's, it's, it's a, you know, the Windows 10 of, it's a classic. Right. Windows 10 is a great, but it's very, you know, the Windows 10 of, it's a classic. Right.

Windows 10 is a great. It's very based on like war gaming and tactics. So right, so you want, there's like positioning and like you got a squares. If you want to use that, you know, you can use spreadsheets and I wanted to create something that was just really fast where the rules are intuitive where the language that you actually, the language of the rules

is like what you would say, just a normal conversation. But so it's meant to be just like you get into it easier, get into it. You get into it easier. It's, you know, there's just a lot less stuff to learn up front. I still create a character. There are, you still create a character.

There's lots of options. So, you know, it's a balance between quick learning, but then there's a depth to it. So if you want to play it over a long period of time, you can. There's a lot of room to grow. Have you played it? Yeah. A bunch. A bunch. Like, actually, I actually have hundreds of testers right now. You do. Yeah. And so what do you do? You basically have people sign up for beta testing. Yeah, I just sent out a call on Twitter. I got

an amazing response. Yeah. There's just a bunch, you know, there's a lot of groups out there. And so how does it work? Are they are they giving you? They're like, Hey, we hit this weird thing where if you do this and you do that, it doesn't work for some reason or whatever, like you're, yeah, I mean, there's a few things that we want to test, right? Like, is it fun? Right. Is it coherent? Like is the actual logic of the rules in the game? Does it work? Or is it broken in areas? Right. We haven't found anywhere. It's broken yet. That's amazing. It's amazing to have created something, a game from scratch. I've always wanted to do it. I never thought I'd play it. That's very cool.

I mean, it's very cool. It is crazy. But I'll say, I think that there are a lot of really simple RPGs. I think that people have made over the years, but it's like, you download a messy PDF, right? There's no product execution to it. There's no design.

Yeah. And that's something that I've been obsessively focused on, right? One of the questions was, what is the, and this is going to sound really do-sheet, but it's like, what's the iPhone of Dungeons and Dragons, right? Like what is the, I was going to say it's like the parachute of the role play it gives. You know, parachute, they make sheets. Yeah, yeah. You're like, I couldn't name a sheet bread.

The parachute is like, it's like these beautiful ads and like, you're like, oh yeah, like I never thought about sheets, but here's a real brand. That's cool. I took a crash course on typography for like two months. Yeah. My editor, Chris Plant, who you know, whose executive editor, Polygon at one point was like, you know, and I fucking hate reading textbooks.

Don't make this like a textbook. Yeah. So I meet the first thing I did after he said that I was like, oh shit, I shouldn't make it an eight and a half by 11 size book. I made it physically smaller and just the act of making it physically smaller made me redesign a lot of the rules because I had less text to put on a page. Right. Because you don't want to cram.

You don't want to be like a text wall because you want people to play. I think it's so interesting. So let me ask you this. You've got, you've got people playing it. They're, are they enjoying it? Yeah. Is it fun? I think it's fun. I've gotten, you know, I have gotten some negative feedback from people who are really experienced who will just, I think, prefer a different type of game. But I think this is too simple. I think they get what it is. Yeah. I don't think it's none of the feedback has been like, this game doesn't work or I don't see any value in it. So I think it's, I'm definitely happy with what the direction is going.

Are you? So the game itself will have stories. Yeah, we'll have campaigns that are in an original adventure format. It's really cool. It's based on this format called West marches, which was born out of just, actually, let me look it up to, I want to, you don't have to screw this up. Oh, yeah, Ben Robbins.

So this guy named Ben Robbins wrote an essay a while back called, it's just a theory about a type of, of gameplay to do. Because you know, Dungeons and Dragons is often like really long-term campaigns where you have a huge commitment. You're playing it for months or years with the same group of people.

And this idea was, okay, what if the narrative isn't a one story with one group of people, what if it's more based on a world that's persistent? And so there's, it's assumed there's one city in this world, all the adventurers start in the city, the farther they may have waved from the city, the more dangerous the world becomes. And it's assumed at the end of every session you return to the city. So it's a format where your character stays the same, but you can play with a different configuration of people every time, because the narrative always draws you back to the center. So we're making the first adventure we're doing is kind of based on that idea where we have a central city.

We're adding a little more structure to it so that there are persistent things about the world. So, you know, you upgrade your city over time, you can pursue shared objectives that affect the persistent world so that the person's world carries across your games not across the entire game though. Correct. It's not like correct. There's a database of city stuff that gets built up or whatever. Right. Because this is all on paper. Yeah. I mean, it's a digital component. Not for this. I mean, long term, I actually really do want to make a website where you have where it's almost like a twine,

choose your own adventure system where you can basically take other people's stories modules and it's a modular system. So it's a kind of community. It's a format. It's a concept of a world and it's modular so you can basically build your own stories into this world.

So do you see, so Quest is set in a, it's kind of a medieval, I would say it's not medieval, I kind of hate that setting. Okay. I say it's not quite modern, but I have like a lot of magic, magical concepts in it that are kind of ripped

from the headlines of our world. Like, like, there's just items in there that imply certain social dynamics and technology. There's a mirror called the site shuffler, name working title for this name of this product. But you wave your hand in front of it and it automatically connects you to someone else who has this mirror, a random person.

So it's chat relit. I'm just trying to think of a better name for that. Yeah, you'll come up with that. Let me understand. Let me understand the question. The mirror is, that's so cool. Are you wave your hand in front of it?

It's a magic mirror. And it opens a communication. You basically see someone else at automatically randomly connected to it. Who has the mirror in the game. Yeah. So they might be in a different area. So a non-player character is someone in the story.

Oh, it's a story. It's like a phone friend. An NPC. Right. And then there's like one-to-one communications. I really, not quite yet. I really want to sit here just thinking of that. Not quite for that.

Oh, there's like, like, like, do you need help? I'd love to sit around and think of this a day. Now, this is a fun. I have friends who have never done anything like this before and I sit down with them. I'm like, yeah. What do you wish you could do if you could just break the rules of the universe and we create spells, right?

Like you can create magic items, you can create spells. It sounds so much better than looking at the news. Oh, that's like, this is, you've created a real refuge. This is the perfect escape. It's like, I'm gonna create a world where magic exists and is not part of like whatever's happening right now, whatsoever, like completely original.

I love that. I think that's wonderful. You have made me immediately jealous. Like I'm like, yes, this is great. Better than like, you know what I do is like, I'll read like interior design blogs. I really like to just look at things like chairs and wallpaper.

And then I'll do my next, I'll create an interior design role-playing game for you. Thank you. So you're in a house. You've sent somebody down the hall to get some like, to get like a accessory, to get like a picture for the anyhow. This is why I got so into the magicians on Typhy

because it's culturally relevant and it's modern and it's funny and all that stuff, but it's also so removed from like reality. Even their plots that are like, well, this is the Hillary versus Trump episode as it's like a one-up. There's some of them reality and so absurd and anything can happen.

And again, they're breaking the universe. And it's so jam-packed with puns and weird ideas and concepts and special effects that it's like for that one, 40 minutes every week. I was not necessarily attached to anything. And even a lot of sci-fi and fantasy stuff didn't really give me that feeling. But when you really are cramming in just so much

like delight for your brain, like so much, it's really tickling your brain. Well, this is like, I mean, this is like my game, my recent gaming experience is I think like the last one I had, like video games is I played, not this is a perfect, not this is the perfect thing to do because it actually is very much about the news the day

but I played the last wolf and Stein You heard about the new one that's coming out right? Yeah, yeah, of course I'm very excited about all the all well any entry Any play opportunity to kill nazis I get excited about but um, but it was like something more horrible than the world I was in it's like Well, it could be worse At least the Nazis aren't in jet packs and Yeah, and don't have full control over everything. But I did find the escapism, I think, is increasingly, look, it's sad.

It actually is sad that we are increasingly escaping to fantasy worlds because of the world that we actually live in. I don't think that's sad at all. I think the real trap of all these assholes in the world is that if it makes you feel guilty for enjoying the parts of being alive, that are being live worth it. Right. But I don't want it, right?

But you don't want to ignore it. I always, it's like the fear of apathy is great, because apathy is how we get to Trump. It is the apathy of the voters. I mean, I'm not, like, it's not all at their feet, but like, if people had been like, wow, this really matters, if more people had felt that way, if more people had been like, I'm not gonna vote for Jill Steiner,

who any of these other guys, because like, I need to, no, I'm not saying she's the cause, but like, seriously, you know, if the Bernie bros had been like, I'm not gonna stay home even though I hate Hillary, because the alternative is way worse, we would have a different country right now. It wouldn't be perfect by any measure.

But I think that the danger of the ex being excited, the joy of escapism is so true and pure. And I get excited just thinking about your game. And then you have to balance it. You're like, how much time, but I do think we're changing how much time we spend in the shit. I think for people in news especially. How much time we spend in the shit. I think for people in news, especially,

how much time you spend in the shit. I think we have a different perspective than most people. No, of course. Most people don't look at Twitter all the time. That was my mom today was literally she gave me a speech about just like, because I was on the phone talking to her about the ice kids. And she was just very like,

you can't think about this all the time. You can't focus on it. Like you have to do stuff and you're like, and I like, I guess for you, you just watch the news for an hour before better, or never be like, for me, how do I fucking not? It's better. It is better. It's the truth is, you're a healthier person if you don't look at the feed. Like you are. I do think it's unhealthy for people to be inundated with. And you don't know, you know, not to go back to the conversation where I'm at the beginning of this,

but you don't know how much is good or bad for you until it's like kind of too late. Like you don't know what is useful and not useful until you've had all of it. And then you're like, oh fuck, well like, you know, things that happen in very localized places, like it's sometimes like, I don't need to know a tragedy. I don't need to know every tragedy,

or I don't need to know every, right? You need to figure out which tragedies are yours to focus on. And even even when you're paying attention to something, right? Like just watching the same group of people all say the same thing at the same time as you know. Doesn't actually give you any insight into anything. This is how I feel about like Twitter, like where I'm yelling and other people are yelling and Ezra's got a thing. It's like this is immoral or whatever. And I'm like, I agree. And agree it's like but of course I agree like what now like what do we do with all this Rage you know, but that's when you shift to quest

You get your your party together. What do you call 100 millions? Yeah, you're how tell me about your goal was what your your The goal was 65,000 and which was very like the bare minimum. Yeah, you know, you want to show my momentum. And yeah. And what are you at now 115? Wow. That's great. So that's great.

That's fantastic. I should tweet. I should make a surplus. I'm a tweet about is you still going, right? Yeah, it's still. It's got nine days left. And let's tell people they should put money into something. A week, a week when this airs.

A week. Yeah. No, I got a whole new business to do. Right. Like I got a, get physical product. Managing Heather at the verge, are you gonna take do less time on site? No, I mean, I've been,

I've been basically, you know, full two jobs. But it's been fine. I actually feel more invigorated every day at the verge, having a creative project. This is like you go home, right? And this is, it's a hobby right? And this is a hobby. I mean, not a hobby, but like your hobby has become a whole other career.

But I also have more than a full year now to work. I'm not shipping in until next August. Oh, wow. OK. I've given, you know, that's the nice thing about Kickstarter as people are, you know, expect that they're contributing to get something off the ground. You don't get it like in seven days.

Exactly. Yeah. So tell me what you get. I give you how much was the starting a fine? So you can buy just the, there's a digital edition. So you can pay $20 and just get everything. Is that what is that like?

PDF. It's a PDF. Yeah, print and play. But I mean, the whole point of a lot of the work we're putting into this is that we're making a really beautiful product. We're making a very intentionally designed book. You're doing a leather bound book.

Yeah, that's a limited edition. That's 50. The regular one will be 40. So what's the starting century point? 40. I mean, you can play the entire game just with the book. Okay. But we're also making you get an actual book for $40. Yes. Okay. What's the digital only? What is that? 20. So that's a good deal. You get everything. But the, you know, then we're making a big deck of cards. So you know, instead of having to like flip through the book all the time and look But then we're making a big deck of cards. So you know, instead of having to like flip through the book all the time and look up what your spells

or you know, all that shit is. You have a spell deck. You'll have a card for every one of your little special moves or what are they? So you have spells. Spells equipment, just special moves. So you could. What if I need like, what if I have several people

with the same piece of equipment? Well, we'll have duplicates of a of that. That's a separate deck. We have a treasure chest deck, which is like items equipment. The core deck, which has like 350 cards in it. Is that in every single one of those? Each one of those individual investment, or I'd get a set of those cards.

So the core deck is one deck. Right. You only have one split it with the whole group. Yeah. Okay. What is it a typical party? I'm how many people four four to six. Yeah, because you have one narrow I can't do a 10 person. You could it would be it would be challenging to do. But it's possible. Right. Yeah. Um, okay. So for 40, I get the I get the regular book for 60. I get the, I get the regular book. For 60, I get the leather belt. For 50, I get the leather belt.

For 100, you get the book and the card deck. Right. And then for 140, you get the book, the, the core deck, and then the treasure deck, which includes like a bunch of items. And what do I have to do to get a special, to get the rights to naming a, a, a spell or an item? That's 2500. Or seriously?

Yeah. Oh my god. There's two tiers. There is a thousand dollar tier for naming an item after you Okay, and you got framed card okay with your item card interesting 2500 for a spell. I'm listening I never want to do the five thousand so I a thousand dollar tier was someone actually bought the first day Oh my god Wow, which is is it we name a major character a major central character after you say who bought it or is it? I can't know is it somebody you know? Can you do a PR? Is it somebody you know or is it just a random person?

It's a random person. Really? Yeah. That's amazing. That's a crazy thing. I don't want to have that money. Some stranger. One day.

Percy, you don't know. Some mystery. I'm sitting here thinking like, in this week or next week I'm going to drop 50 on that. No. For five thousand dollars. Well, here's a,000. I think it's $5,000. Well, here's a really cool reward. You know, you get, you were naming a major character after you, you're gonna get an ill-framed illustration.

Yeah. We'll work with you on that. But then we also are gonna work with this very small bookbindry in London, the Wevereign Bindry. They made a bunch of the book props for Harry Potter movies, for Hugo. Oh sure lock homes They're gonna make a one-of-a-kind unique edition of the game book. It's like really fancy authentic leather bound Oh wow like parchment, you know, yeah custom endpapers things like that. Yeah, they'll get a one-of-a-kind Oh, that's really cool. That's really cool. Yeah D-D-uh

What if the what if the person is Sorry, I guess they say really bad. If it's not, what if it's like Richard Spencer? No, I, I, I, I, I thought about that when I was making this. And there's like terms and conditions. It's like, it's like, uh, I definitely would decide the morality class. Yeah. Absolutely.

I'm trying to say if it's if they're in England, it's like, uh, what's his name? A Bragg's that are some kind of get the Ecuadorian at the Ecuadorian embassy Oh, Julian He doesn't seem like he does see like time the time He'd be like man. I'm gonna be here a while The world needs to know It's like Julian Sange would make a really good major character in an in an RPG He'd be the BBB bad guy big the bad guy. Big bad evil genius.

Yeah, we're like the right hand. Yeah, the little minion. Yeah, not a minion. He's like the scientist who's charged with creating a super weapon or whatever, the weapon is information. Anyhow, think about it. Oh, Russian information. No.

Oh, this is very exciting. Look, I'm very excited for you. Thank you. I'm very, I'm very, I'm very, I'm very, personally excited. I love, I love to play it. How do I get in on the, the testing? I'm going to play with a bunch of people this year. How many, we can try it?

How many, so what do you need? What's like a typical game length? Like what do you do? Like a, a, a, a game of campaign or what do you, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, you do? Like a, a, a, a gase of campaign or what do you, a link? Yeah, I mean, there's, uh, I'm actually doing one tonight. Yeah. I'm an air one tonight. I'm there. Just a group of random people who ask to do it. Where your house?

No on YouTube. Okay. No, I mean, but where's the taking place? Well, I'm doing it. They're all remote. Oh, everybody's remote. Okay. Yeah. So it's going to be like on a Google Hangout. Okay. Um, I'll be at, you know, on a webcam somewhere. All right.

On a disclosed location. Okay. With Julian. The box, the box office. Yeah. Yeah. But there's a bunch of not charter. You could do a long-term campaign or you could do what's called one-off, which is a it's a it's a contain basically a contained adventure that you could do in one session.

Right. So there's flexibility. You can play once or you can play as many times as you want. Have you gotten any famous people like are there any like? You know, have you? We should date. Oh, really? We tweeted about it.

Yeah, really excited. It's very cool. It's a huge following. Yeah, 3 million. It's exciting. Wow. That's good. No, but that's it.

Well, I can do worse. You could have been like return the Mac. I'm the Mac away brothers. Right. They're not very famous. They do the best. The Mac away. The Mac away.

The Mac away. The Mac away. Yeah. I mean, I like really nice great. So I'm just the Spencer's in the bunch. Just hold some close. Yeah. They're good guys. I've never, I've actually never heard that podcast. I mean, I'm not only has so much time.

Yeah. All right, T.C. Anything. What do we not cover that was important? What we got? What is it? Is there anything Westworld we talked about lost? Yeah.

We talked to all the big ones. Your, your, your RPG. Yeah, we talked about lost. We talked about all the big ones. Your RPG quest. Yeah, we talked about that. We talked about Trump. Trump. Well, edit that down. We're gonna edit that part down. And improv. We really hit all the video.

I'm trying to improv. Yeah. Anyhow, look, well, this is very excited for you. Yeah, thank you. I'm very happy that you found a creative outlet that's giving you joy. Absolutely, and it's great to work with you, and I really tell them,

people, my illustrator's great. Yeah, the people that other people are working on, those with you. It's my editor, Chris Plant, my illustrator named Celia Lohanthal. Yeah, the illustrations are cool. My brother's actually gonna be working on it as well. He's a traditional tattoo artist.

So he's gonna be doing a lot of like art for the card decks because they're their tarot-sized cards. You see covered in tats. Oh, head to toe. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Do you have to try to on your own? Yeah. I told him I told him I told him when he was a tattoo apprentice, if you graduate, I'll get a tattoo from you. It'll be the one tattoo that I get. And that's it for life. Yeah. I wanted to pick something that was abstract enough that people wouldn't. I think if you catch it, you're in on the joke. Otherwise, everybody else does. I feel like I won't be mad at this in 20 years. It's a shape. It's basically a shape. Yeah. I mean, you're not like it's not like it's not like it's not like a misspeedie bird on your neck. Yeah, misspelling like Chinese proverb or something.

Yeah. You made it. You made the right move. Yeah. A zoom logo. Yeah. But also worth. Actually, the zoom level is pretty cool. It was pretty beautiful. People docked the zoom, but it was the final stage. The Zune HD. The final with the Zune HD for another half of a week. I actually, we're wrapping. I actually, I think I have, when, Craig, me, I'm wrong, but I have a Zune HD city in my office.

Do I not? Yes. Yeah. You're fine. I brought the Zune HD in for somebody here, and then we couldn't get it chart. We couldn't find the charger. Oh, yeah. It was wonderful too. It's like a very weird like 32 pin or whatever.

Anyhow, TC, TC shot it. You've done, you've said it all. You've done it all. 100% agreement. There was no disagreement whatsoever. But you know, you're obviously watch for you on the verge. You don't write, you write occasionally. You don't want to get mad enough.

You write about corrupt politicians. You like to write about people who are taking money. Yeah, that's my new thing actually. What's your B? Corruption. List. All of the ATT money that people are taking. Right.

And then Quest, RPG, Adventure.game. Adventure. www.adventure.gam Go to Kickstarter and then quest RPG, uh, adventure dot game, adventure, WW, credible or go to Kickstarter and search request RPG. It'll be out next year. It'll be out in August of 2019. But we'll have a, uh, a digital preview going out in April. This is a great promo. Yeah. Very good promo. Thank you. We're giving you a great promo. I want to take this first quest. Con. Oh, that's actually I will be at a conference later this year.

I can't announce yet. But, uh, it's in Portland quest con. Oh, that's actually I will be at a conference later this year. I can't announce yet, but it's in Portland, Oregon. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's exciting. So yeah, I can't imagine what it will be, but that's exciting. Um, anyhow, T.C. Thank you for coming. Thank you, Joe.

It's always a pleasure to talk to you. Always enjoy it. Good luck with your improv. Uh, yes. And you're going to come back. I'm like, as the game progresses and you, and you're, you know, you as the ultimate dungeon master. By the way, what do you call it? Are you a dungeon game master?

Next time let's play, let's play half the podcast. We'll just play again. Yeah, I love that. Let's do that. You have all the pieces. It's just a storytelling game, man. But you got cards, tell stories. I don't need the cards.

Yeah, yeah. You bring in cards. I actually don't have cards yet. We have a printer. I'm getting a prototype. We have a printer here. It was jam that should write on. It's a, uh, hell yeah. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. A.C. Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week with more tomorrow and as always I wish you and your family the very best

though I've just received an invite from your family's improv troop and I don't think it's gonna be good you