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A podcast for the quietly overwhelmed and cautiously hopeful.
to be clear if you were to give me $10,000 many of my problems would be gone like that's a
that's a significant number of money Conversely it it does correlate with effort when you
get like a handmade gift from somebody There's a piece of the brain, especially as you age
That goes a person gave a shit about this they cared
who's that guy Gideon Gage where we learned the neuroscience of brains.
We got the idea that the brain does stuff.
That was his name, right?
their brain doesn't fact do stuff.
Well, before then we had this weird thing about like hearts and brains, like we weren't
quite sure how it all worked.
What was his name?
something, something happened.
He was a, he was a mine worker, TNT exploded, something went through his jaw, his mouth
and one part of his frontal lobe and they thought he was going to die.
He somehow survived, but then started acting completely irrationally around town and like
he started behaving differently.
And that's, was our first glimpse of understanding that this affects our personality.
His name is Gideon Gage.
Gideon Gage by the way, what a name.
my god, that's a superhero's like regular identity kind of name with the alliteration, the
double.
Gideon Gage.
Or a fighting game character.
That's like a Mortal Kombat character, Gideon Gage.
It does.
If we ever have a moment to talk about, excuse me, the fighting game character Cobra from
Mortal Kombat, I just want to talk about Cobra from Mortal Kombat.
You know I'm talking about?
Finneas gauge.
I got the first name wrong.
Finneas P gauge.
Yeah.
Finny, Finny is P.
They went with the double P.
PP Gage.
PP Gage.
to be.
PP gauge.
PEN
Yeah, let's see, hold on.
Let me get this on.
Yeah, check this out.
This is what happened, this guy right here.
Oh my-
Damn.
And it was considered at this point, if this happened to you, you're dead.
Like you're not going to live anymore, but somehow the guy lived and it totally
irreversibly changed his behavior.
Just...
no...
What a respectful way to do this.
What a...
That is...
Damn, PP Gauge was kind of a looker too.
Hot.
Fuck.
Well, no, he's half less of a...
He's half as much of a looker as he was, if you know what
That's true.
That took me several tries.
actual skull.
Oof.
Jeez.
Crazy.
you may be having a tough day, but are you having a PP gauge tough day where a pole shoots
through your head?
and someone draws a comic book of it saying, Kaboom!
Kaboom!
I'd actually, I'd quite like if I had a horrific skull injury.
I would love it if there was a comic panel.
Yeah, I was gonna say the skull is definitely like,
Yeah
He looks kind of like not totally opposed to, he's like,
Ugh.
What a minor inconvenience!
I know.
eyes for that.
They just put them in there.
damn.
No, no, go back to that.
Go back to that.
Go back to...
I just appreciate few objects have attracted more visitors and spread further to the Pimdl
Museum than its most valuable specimen, Gage's skull.
That's what I want, is to be somebody's most valuable specimen.
that's a FromSoftware item description.
That's like a pickup.
Phineas Gage, the once pierced.
Yeah
Look at this, they have a monument in that guy's name, even show the skull right there.
He's known for what it did for neuroscience.
kaboom.
Kaboom!
Oh, the gauge accident.
Cavendish.
this...
thank you for saying that.
I was also thinking about that word.
Cavendish.
How are you feeling?
Kind of cabin...
Cavendish, I guess.
Cavendish.
I could go for a cabin.
Very bit Cavendish.
slightly 40k ish.
I'm gonna get into that I've decided I'm gonna like burn my money just to ash.
Oh, you see, it's so fun.
I actually got like, I got absurd, like not to not to brag, but to brag.
I got like absurdly good at painting the minis.
Like I was real fucking hot shit at painting those minis.
I became, you know, ADHD thing, I became like absorbed.
I was obsessed.
I was just like, this is my new thing.
This is is the thing that I do.
And I got so into it.
And then I was like,
I don't feel like I ever want to play the game though.
I was like, I just want this, I just want these.
And then when I realized that I was spending so much money and time and effort on just
like little plastic models and I wasn't actually using them for their intended purpose, I
was like, that feels a bit weird to me.
So I just started collecting Gunpla instead.
Those are in the same section of the store where my girlfriend works because it holds to
the same people.
Yes, and they're You know, robots, mecha.
I'm all about that.
I just, was your army?
What did you make?
I started off with some Eldari or the Eldar depending on what point in Warhammer history
you're talking about.
um
So because they're really cool because you know, like hedonistic space elves.
Pretty fucking cool.
And then I also really like the Tao.
Again, because Max just just big mecha fish people in Max.
PlayStation 2 Tau Fire Warrior was my entry into the Warhammer franchise.
Oh God, just had a blast from the past, what a great game.
It is so weird if you have no other familiarity like so I'm like a fish soldier like that
that's what I do but then I learned about the orcs and the orcs are the best thing in the
world they are the most captured thing that's ever existed and I love them so much they're
so it's stupid love it
Orcs' Psychic Mushrooms is the lore.
They're Psychic Mushrooms invented by a god to actually stop the Eldar who were invented
by another god.
I am very good at Warhammer lore because it's what I do every night.
So it's fun.
It's good.
lore of the Eldar and like slanesh and all that kind of stuff?
Oh, it's so fun.
It's so fucking fun.
Oh.
laughing god who escaped and then the fucking web win and the jacarri like, absolutely.
It's, it's a really good time.
It's deep.
It's fucking deep.
I watch actual plays of a game.
I don't understand how to play at all.
I'm just like, that's fun.
They're just having fun.
It's just like a bunch of like, just like husky 45 year old guys having a great time,
putting down beautiful miniatures.
It's just a fun time.
Sam is.
out.
Sam is the most lost he's ever been.
No, we're good.
just, I'm comparing what you're saying about how it's fun to watch something if you don't
know the rules.
And I think about D &D a lot, because a lot of people aren't in a D &D because they don't
understand how it all works.
And I'm sure John is incredibly sensitive to this as am I, but the gatekeepingness
sometimes of D &D drives me absolutely up a goddamn wall.
I don't know Daniel has opinions too, but you know.
like, yeah, man, just...
when I first started like exploring TTRPGs, obviously the first thing that I went to was
like D &D, everyone knows D &D, that's the tabletop game.
And I was like, okay.
And I started looking into it I was like, this is pretty cool.
I enjoy this, I enjoy this quite a lot.
And then I looked at every other tabletop role playing game and I was just like...
These are all kind of was like, DND is kind of...
What is DND so popular?
I was like, what is DND the most...
The one that everyone turns to?
Because DND is kind of not...
compared to most other TTRPGs.
That's my kind of spicy take.
I think it's a bit whack and it doesn't deserve its place as like the TTRPG.
I agree-ish.
I agree that I think there are brilliant mechanics from other systems and things and all
kinds of wonderful stuff.
Like if you didn't know this about me, I am like the blades in the dark GM.
It's like my signature system.
Everybody plays it is like, wow, this is your actually very, I got a lot of compliments on
it.
I'm very comfy there.
Clocks are stupid, stress is stupid, traumas are stupid, scores are The whole thing's just
incredible.
Stupid parentheses good.
um But I also feel like
I've reached a point where this might be bad for some reason, can't decide, but it feels
weird to say.
The systems are such a small part of the storytelling for me.
They're just a vehicle for me to like compel things forward.
I'm playing a 5e, two 5e campaigns right now with different parties that don't know
they're in the same world.
And I don't give a fuck about the feats or the whatever.
For me, it's just.
And I have the right players for it, but I do agree that 5e is fine.
It is a system with which to play a game.
It's there and it's fine.
But I went to Pathfinder and the team died because they were like, this is homework.
I don't want to do this.
And I was like, it's very good.
And they were like, it is.
We don't want to do it.
And I was like, okay, we'll go back.
But I didn't care as much as thought I would because I don't care about...
I do care about...
The combat in 5e being stand next to monster and hit it till it's dead.
Because that's boring as fuck.
I hate that.
You can design around that a little bit to avoid it, but Jesus Christ.
The attack of opportunity?
Stupid.
Bad design.
So dumb.
Yeah, I'm really just talking about like the GM or DM who decides we're going to follow
the rules to the umpteenth degree.
And if you do, you'll find some really interesting situations where the rules break and I
don't want to play that game.
I just want to tell a fun, cool story.
um And I've been in many sessions where we have spent an inordinate amount of time arguing
about rules and I don't give a shit.
Can the GM just make a decision?
Rule of cool.
Let's move on.
rule of call, house rule it, whatever.
because, this contradicts the previous decision that we made, and can I go back to that
from five sessions ago and then get the buffs from And like, I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
Stupid.
I'm very heroic fantasy with shades of grim, depending on the shedding and genre.
I want the players to succeed and I need them to trust me that I'm not going to fuck them
over.
They can fuck themselves over and the dice might fuck them over, but like, mechanically I
want you to win.
I just want you to have to earn it every time.
Yeah, same.
So like, you want a mechanic to help you, like I'm not, this isn't like a game you should
break to defeat the, like this isn't fucking Sleigh of the Spire.
This is a social storytelling with mechanics that justify the telling of the story.
I used to be a min-maxer.
I remember forming a min-maxer.
My apologies to everyone that I min-maxed around.
I'm so happy that you've recovered, because woof.
Yeah.
If the whole party is min-maxers, it's fun.
And if, the DM also wants to do it, if you're all like, let's make really broken, crazy
shit, that's fun.
But otherwise you just are making the story worse.
Yeah
Twilight Blades in the Dark, because you kind of can't min-max.
Yeah, I think we've all been in that campaign where like one guy's like, okay, can I like
do this and this and this and this?
And you can tell they want to like, they want them in max.
And the GM's like, nah, you gotta like trade one of those things.
Okay, how about this and this and this and this?
No, you can't do that.
How about this and this?
And they just keep going until they can finally get their ultimate wins.
Like, come on, man.
Don't you understand part of storytelling is like you get some wins, you get some losses
and like it's all about the whole cohesive everything and.
Yeah, the concept of like failing forward can be fun.
Like you can fail a role, but you can make it interesting and you can be like, oh, like,
yeah, you failed at doing that, but then this thing happens as a result.
it's like,
I don't need to tell either of you guys this, but in a system as blunt as D &D 5e, you can
still get a ton of mileage if your players are cool with it by being like, okay, I roll a
three, I miss.
And you're like, you bring your sword down, its edge sparking against the eyes shield as
he powers under its power and it fucking falls off to the side.
He positions himself, takes a deep breath and you're ready to go again.
Like, so you miss next turn, like just.
Don't make people suck.
just don't make critical fails are never in my games because they're the worst thing
that's ever been invented.
Unless it's a comedy campaign, then they can be in my games.
But critical fails are like an epic adventure.
Every fucking 20 swings will poop his pants.
That's a fucking dumb mechanic and I'm angry about it.
I hate critical fails.
You can auto fail on a one for sure, but.
Next up, John tells us how much he hates tripping in Smash Bros.
Brawl.
Mm-hmm.
He loves it.
He loves it, actually.
I'm a huge Brawl fan.
This is one of my most controversial opinions.
I love that game.
It's my favorite Smash Brothers.
I got a lot of flack for this video.
I don't care either way, but you're saying you hate critical fails.
gotcha.
Cause you said if it's, if it's a party dynamic.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah, my tabletop, my titter-pag, if you will, philosophy is I want a cool story that
people will talk about for years.
I want to induce feelings in my players.
That's what I want.
In Smash, I want to have fun.
And I want to do a cool thing that goes, oh, sick.
And I want to go, what the fuck?
Also, that's also fun for me.
I got takes.
share with you back in the dark days when I truly felt the need to shit on every game that
wasn't the game that I was playing competitively.
We used to shit on Smash a lot and when the Smash people were trying to, they were so mad
that tripping was in brawl because it wasn't a melee and they were trying to make it a
competitive game.
We would use that in every way we could to tell them, well, that's why your game sucks.
You're bad.
You're stupid for liking this game.
You're stupid for taking it to the next level.
Play a good game like Street Fighter.
Like we did that.
It was shitty.
I regret that but.
Takes me back.
Yeah, I've had this massive guilt, Sam, and I'm really glad that you and I have become
friends.
um Because I was that not that long ago.
I was much more like gentle and subtle about it, I'd like to think.
But then, like, I went through the phase of this generation of games and like, I watched
you be right about things in real time.
And I was like, oh, no, these things don't matter.
And these things do matter.
And this is the pattern that he said I was in.
without saying it and I wasn't that pattern and now I have to live with the burden until
the next guy and he's not gonna and like it's all I don't know if everyone can have a
thing that's fun
You need to be ready for the pact when you call it out and no one will listen to you.
Yep.
I'm bad at that part.
no one will listen to you.
bruh, already doing it.
The fucking, I have to hit master and then I can feel good enough and they hit master and
they go, wow, this wasn't anything?
Every fucking time, every fucking time.
And then I do their credit.
I've had maybe 10 plus messages being like, yeah, you were right, which is validating, but
they won't believe it until they get there, so.
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which is the point of our fucking show is trying to crack that whole thing and be like,
hello, we have gone through stupid shit.
We'd love it if that could be an easier process for you.
Here are some thoughts.
Please take them into your head.
Oh.
Speaking of that, because it's nearly 9 PM for me, should we crack on?
Crack on.
Before we do, Daniel, quick question, because I love that expression, let's crack on.
But I'm not British, so am I legally allowed to use that phrase?
you will be beheaded and your head will be displayed upon a pike for all to see outside of
Windsor Castle.
did it better than you.
I was gonna say, with a plaque that says Kaboom.
uh
that says Kaboom on it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kaboom.
Quick and incredibly important question.
Incredibly important question.
You are pulling a sword out from a scabbard.
You are slashing a sword into probably a metal thing.
What is the noise that that makes?
The automotopia of that.
My family has a distinct loyalty to a specific sound.
So like a punch is like BAM or like FONK or like WHOOP or like whatever or like you know
the schnick of like Wolverine.
Like what is this like sword?
Or specifically the drawing of sword.
What is that sound?
sword.
like shh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For me it's washink.
That's the sound.
that's nice.
more like shing.
Like shing.
The shing is enough, but the whooshink, it's just been there forever.
It's like a huge piece of me and my cousin's childhood.
So I just have to ask people about that.
gonna be nuanced about this.
This is my take, super hot take.
The shink implies the sword is clean and sharp.
The shh, it's been used lately, it has not been cleaned.
I think there's a distinction there.
Is it a dirty sword?
Well, we're saying nerdy stuff.
Can I tell you a thing?
I'm gonna tell it to you.
So unless you say, like, don't, I'm gonna do it.
I might do it anyway.
I have a list of cool lines in my fucking, my personal Discord, just things for having
villains say, because I think it's fun to catalog those things.
Yeah, good!
And there's one where it has to be a gun-based setting, and the person has to say, you
know what I felt when I killed him?
The recoil.
What a fucking hard line that is.
and I only do sword settings.
Nice.
So please use that line if you get the chance, because it's a really good line.
If I run like, I'd love to run like a mothership or Delta green or something soon.
So I might do.
May get chance to use that line.
That'd be cool.
Please do, please do.
Or run Beam Saber because it's my pocket game and I love it.
No one's ever read it or played it ever.
It's Blades in the Dark, but it's Outlaw Star, Copyright Bebop, Space Opera.
I love it.
look into it.
Sounds good.
You guys want to do a show?
Nah.
Eh, this is Sam, this is John, this is Daniel.
Welcome to the Zero Dot Podcast, welcome to Team Human, and gents, it's been a week,
hasn't it been?
On a scale from instantaneous to all of time, I'd say about a week feels right.
So a little less than eight.
I think I've already said a little less than eight, a little more than six before.
I gotta get some more lines.
and then you started counting and you were like, there's lots of numbers and it was a
whole thing.
call it a strong?
call it uh
I think it's because ah from the moment of birth, we're suffering entropy and becoming
more and more dead and our existence is waning.
So we're just acknowledging the incredible limitations placed on humanity.
ah is, everything is indeed a week.
We called it a failing, I believe, for a very short time, but that was too harsh.
Yeah.
I get stronger every day.
Hell yeah.
That's because you're siphoning people's energy though, which is sort of unethical of you.
true, I am an eldritch being.
Yeah, but you know, okay, so just to just to fucking gasp at my boy If I have to be
fucking like ruined by an eldritch being if they could have a British accent it would help
me a lot Like I would just like that's okay.
Well, that's pretty suave of you So i'm down at the very least they shouldn't have like
one of the said with love like the accents that make me laugh like mine Um, I don't have a
super strong minnesota accent until I say minnesota and you hear it like slip out or when
I get mad it happens that the dark owl and like
I love this accent.
It is not cool.
It is not sexy.
It's like cute.
it, yeah.
Wisconsinites, when they get mad, fucking adorable.
Fucking adorable.
a British accent on an eldritch being would not be funny to you?
I'm torn because my brain is just saying bloodborne at you.
Like it's just like, but blood, but they're British a lot of the time in that game.
So maybe it's, maybe it's pretty good.
so sorry to bother you there chap, I'm incomprehensible.
It's just like, it wouldn't be scary like.
you know, no, I that worked for me really good.
was I was ready to be like, okay, cool.
Take my reality, brah.
I'm like, I'm fucking I'm good.
Let's do it.
I'm sign me up.
I'm a cultist.
Let's do it.
Yeah, the Philadelphia accent, we swallow our pronouns and we swallow the last nths of
words.
We don't say, he's going to the store, we go, going to the store, and you just have to
know from context I'm talking about this other person, not me or you or anyone else.
We do that a lot.
Can we try an experiment?
Real quick experiment.
So I'm gonna spell a word for you.
What I want you to do afterward is say the following sentence.
um We're gonna go slay the blank.
The word that I'm going to spell.
We're gonna go slay the blank.
Say it quickly.
We're gonna do Sam, then we'll do Daniel.
Just don't even think about it, just say it.
The word is T-I-T-A-N.
We're gonna slay the titan.
We're going to slide the Titan.
Okay, you both do the hard T.
There's a East Coast dialect and a Midwestern dialect that do an invisible T.
We're going to go slightly the Titan.
The T is even there.
go Titan, Titan, Titan, Titan, Titan.
get people here in the UK who will say Titan.
It happens a lot over here.
uh Or if you're uh Ben Starr voicing the protagonist of a Final Fantasy game, then you
say, Titan.
Yeah.
John, don't use me as an example though, because I always see the words written first
before I say them.
So this is real problem for me when I say the word Wednesday, because written it's
Wednesday and I always hesitate because I'm like, it's Wednesday, but no, have to stop
myself, correct myself and say Wednesday.
But my natural thing is if there's a T, I'm gonna pounce the whole thing.
There's a criticism in board and video games of a thing.
I lost the term for it mid-sentence.
I hate when that happens.
The point being like, oh, it's knowledge check.
That's the term, it's knowledge check.
Like you can only beat the thing if you just know it happens.
Like if you're playing like a Dark Souls and like this boss goes one, two, three, smash.
Like you can't react to it because you're like, I'm gonna react to the telegraph thing.
English as a language is full of knowledge checks.
There's a particularly good YouTube short about this where the guys talk about like roof
versus roof, which are the same, you know, like.
You can say it wrong.
And then there's like through rough and though, which is just a bullshit nightmare of
letters.
So it's where the knowledge check.
Well, we're probably not the knowledge checkiest language because there are languages that
involve tone, which is brutal.
Couldn't do it.
to learn.
People get really, depending where you are, people get really snippy when they hear
someone in slang or urban say, I'm gonna ax you a question, A-X you a question, right?
Here's what I love though.
I say, well, actually, actually, in old English, the word actually was ax, A-X, but they
thought that the X was being used for too many things, so they actually split the letter
X.
in half and made S and K.
ah They might have.
So when someone is saying axe, even if they're unknowingly doing it, they're actually
saying the most proper old English form of that.
come full circle.
I like that.
That's nice.
ain't that funny.
Anyway, that's been our, that's been our, a little bit of an opener.
John, it's been um not a strong, but a week as we say.
ah I need some good news.
You got some good news for me?
good news, my lord, a good news.
Dearest editor, you are going to have to forgive me because I just closed out of all my
tabs.
Here's the funny part, he's not gonna edit this part.
He's gonna keep this in the whole episode.
an absolute choice.
uh
Mmm.
well, you don't give me a whole lot of time.
You get whatever the first one is that I share with you, and I'm going to share this with
you right now.
Get ready for your lives to be a little bit better because there's a place in the world,
it's called Ohio.
Ohio not known for always being a good thing per the youths who I believe have turned into
a slang term for bad things, but in Ohio a specific event has happened.
There's a little baby giraffe who's been born who is rapidly becoming
A social media sensation due to a remarkable tuft of hair.
I speak of course of Eugene, which was chosen from public suggestions.
ah And he just has a weird hairdo from birth and he is becoming famous for his weird
little hairdo.
And now I inflict upon you this beautiful creature.
Screen, share, giraffe, hairdo, activate, look,
look at it, look at him.
Aww.
better.
It gets better.
It gets better.
Boom.
my, did you know, fun, fun fact, mean fun for me, giraffes are my favorite animals in the
whole world.
I love them to bits.
So it's really weird because I'm like really into, I'm really into aquatic life and I'm
really into like reptiles and invertebrates and stuff.
But then someone asked me my favorite animal, it's a giraffe.
I love them to bits.
The last time that I stood next to a giraffe, I cried instantly.
I touched a giraffe and as my skin touched the giraffe, started crying.
I was just out of the blue just because was so in awe of this animal.
I love them so much.
They're so silly.
They're so silly.
you love when a thing gets through evolution and is like, I look like this.
And you're just like, how, what, what, come on.
Like, no.
And it's like, nope, this is the best thing for me is to be this.
Having a huge giant neck and a blue tongue, that is what works.
So please, for the people who only listen to us and don't watch us, search up that
giraffe, Eugene.
The giraffe.
You won't regret it.
It was amazing.
And if you do search it up and you do regret it, you've proven instantly that the
listeners are making a poor choice and that you are worthy of judgment and you represent
your entire ilk.
So go ahead and think about that, you giraffe-hating monster.
I will have you know, John, none of my fellow listeners are gonna find that apprehensible
or deplorable anyway.
I think some viewers might not like what they just saw just right now.
Impossible.
That's why they use their peepers to suck in this goodness to be aware of the beauty of
giraffe hair.
That's why they, that's why we started the podcast as I recall.
Why is the slang for eyes peepers?
Because it's not too far away from other parts of the human anatomy, linguistically
speaking, and that bothers me.
I gotcha.
It's because if you've ever been in like a civilization that celebrates Easter, they make
these kind of marshmallow poof chickeny things that are called peeps.
Those were originally made from human eyes back thousands of years ago.
And we just, the term peepers kind of stuck around for a long time.
So jeepers, creepers is what you would yell and in fear and terror as they would remove
your eyes involuntarily to make Easter treats to celebrate the return of our Lord.
When you were talking about Easter, I thought, well, that's more of a number two
situation.
Take the E's out, make it O's, a pooper's, but you went with that direction.
I appreciate it.
Ooster.
Okay, Manisodan.
No, I wouldn't say Ooster.
That's...
Dear listeners slash viewers who aren't from this land, we don't, that's not how we talk.
We're not like, Ooster.
Happy Easter!
Some hoop-a-ooster, that's not a thing.
Nobody does that.
And if they do, they should tell us in the comments.
Thank you.
That was very, very nice.
Thanks!
It was a short notice, but I'm pretty pumped about it.
I feel pretty great about that one.
if you have to be put on short notice again, and it ends up with me seeing a silly
giraffe, then I'm all for it.
I have, okay, this is just an excuse for me to tell you a stupid thing that I do.
I was gonna make a joke that I have giraffefacts.com as my homepage on my browser, but I
don't.
But a while ago, I was talking to a friend of mine and I said something about bats and
they were like, what is this batfacts.com?
And I said, thank you for subscribing to BatFacts.
And about once a month, I just text that person a bat fact and tell them that they can
unsubscribe.
And whatever they say, I say, you can't unsubscribe from BatFacts.
It's BatFacts forever all the way down.
So, we'll do a BatFact next time.
BatFact, DraftFact, very nature themed.
Mmm.
feel the need to give a shout out to one of our avid listeners.
not a Patreon member just yet, but they've commented on a lot of our videos.
C's of Cheese 929 is their name.
I had the luxury of actually going to this person's wedding a few years ago, and at their
wedding, they hosted it at a zoo, and it was so lovely.
And because Daniel made it so clear to all of us how much he loves giraffes, I feel
compelled to share this very quick video of us literally sharing
some food to a lovely giraffe.
Their...
their horn head thing is so bumpy.
Why?
What's the purpose of the bump?
Just like aesthetics?
Oh man.
But man, that thing inhaled that lettuce like nothing.
Like nothing.
They have a very like, what's the word?
Like blah, like blase, is that the word?
But their expression is just like this, like yeah, lettuce time.
give me food, blah, blah.
you can't tell the face that I'm making nor did you see that video.
Another loss for the listening community, devastating.
Which I'm sure is not useful to anyone.
In that I will not mimic a tractor with my voice.
If you've ever seen a tractor before, Envision 1.
ah Did you get that?
Did you picture the giant two wheels in the back on the green hue pulling the thing
through the fields of corn?
That was what I was trying to convey.
So we're waiting, listener.
Did it?
Did it work?
We can't do the show if you don't tell us.
We really need to continue with the show.
okay, editors note, we need to continue with the show.
um Editors note, the listeners failed again.
Since this show is live, I decided right now.
they let me down.
It's gonna be awkward if we ever did a live show.
Just because like, you know, there'll be like a guy in the back like looking away, just be
like, I'm a listener.
can't, I can't look at you guys.
I've drawn my lines.
out complimentary blindfolds at the door for the listeners.
sir, please you have to wear this.
They've got a different ticket where they come in and everything.
It's a whole thing.
That gets real segregated.
I don't wanna do that.
I don't like that at all.
no.
no.
That's true.
all that good news.
ah And man, it'd be really great if we could just cut the episode right there and then.
But sadly, here at Team Human, we do want to make sure that we are keeping up with the
things that are happening with the world, not from the place of doom and gloom, but rather
letting us know what are the tools we can do, what are the things we can do to kind of,
well, put a dent in some of these things.
And I bring our eyes and our ears.
That's right, I'm making a break for our good viewers and our listeners here today.
to a recent study that just literally came out by phys.org.
This is a, actually it's an article.
I'm showcasing the work of linguist Cillier, Suzanne Alvastad, and let me know if I'm
mispronouncing that.
She gave a talk recently talking about her research in regards to linguistics, making
people more aware of the risks associated with large language models and its manipulation.
So what am I talking about here, John and Daniel?
Let me first just simply say, we here at the Zero Dot podcast,
We don't think AI is inherently evil.
We have nothing against it.
We think it's a tool like anything else, but I think we're all in the world that we are in
based on movers and shakers and bad faith actors doing whatever they can to do.
And this linguist and her team specifically focused on studying oh the traps that
artificial intelligence and large language models can do in terms of how the human brain
interprets credibility.
More specifically, AI generated fake news is often perceived as more credible and
informative.
than human written disinformation, despite showing less emotional appeal.
This is going to come back later.
Linguistic analysis reveals that fake news tends to use more present tense, informational,
informal style, emphatic expressions and categorical language, but these features vary by
language and context.
AI generated propaganda relies on generic authority, references and value appeals, making
detection challenging.
The scary part of all this is that they're saying that AI to us,
when something is misinformed from an AI source, large language model, um we feel that
it's more reliable, it's more accurate, and it's more factual when that might very well
not be the case.
So I bring this up to all of us here at Zero Dot not to suggest to make us feel we have no
power here, but let's just simply ask the question, how then do people respond to
AI-generated disinformation compared with disinformation written by humans?
Well, the researchers conducted a test with Americans who were asked to rate AI-generated
texts and texts written by humans on three parameters, credibility, emotional appeal, and
how informative they are.
The people who were tested did not know the sources of the texts.
The AI-generated disinformation was rated both more credible and more informative than
disinformation written by humans.
And just to be clear, the entire purpose of the study came from Cillier Suzanne Alvastad's
fascination with the uh
journalist, the American journalist Jason Blair, which if you don't know who Jason Blair
is, Jason Blair was a former American journalist who worked for the New York Times and in
2003, May of 2003, resigned from that newspaper because it became to be known that a large
majority of the articles he had written were all plagiarized.
They were fake.
They were all literal fake news.
And so she was trying to uncover what's difference between someone like Jason Blair and
the difference between a large language model who's literally using disinformation and how
we as human beings respond to that.
She quotes, or she has said, she in quote, we were not surprised that the respondents
preferred the AI generated texts.
But what I was personally a little surprised with that the AI generated texts did not
score highly on the emotional appeal.
Instead, they were perceived as both more informative and more credible than texts written
by humans, she has said.
This suggests that AI-generated disinformation may be harder to detect.
Large language models can wrap misinformation and disinformation in genres we trust by
default.
Alvastad believes that it is important that we are aware of this.
And before I talk about what we can do about this, John and Daniel, let me just break for
you all and your responses to all this information.
It's upsetting uh and a little weird.
feel like humans in general, well, certain groups of humans have become a lot better at
spotting AI stuff.
I recently saw a pamphlet for a brand and it was just like, you guys just fucking popped
this in and got the Ghibli-esque sort of like, the saturated kind of yellow tint and the
thing with no ears.
ah But I think when it comes to writing, there's like a tone you can use to be more
scholarly.
And I feel like it is good at emulating that.
Um, but that's because it's copying someone who is scholarly.
And that is unfortunate.
I also feel like there's this, I won't get into it cause it's too long, but there's this
interesting thing where like AI informs humans, which informs AI, which informs humans.
And it's very fast.
Uh, the example of this that I recall was that like the word Dell was getting used more by
actual people cause AI was using it more.
And yeah, so this is creepy.
Yeah, it is creepy, isn't it?
exactly what I was going to touch on is the weird cyclical nature of AI speaks more like
people and then people start speaking more like AI and then the AI starts speaking more
like people and it just keeps going round and round and round.
Like a lot, what's it called?
Is it the dash that keeps getting very common in an AI text and now a lot of people have
started incorporating it in their natural written language.
Which is bizarre.
It's so bizarre.
And Daniel, let me offer you to that because I was someone who was a chronic emdash before
AI became a thing.
And now I have to stop using emdash is because people think what I'm writing is AI
specific or it's coming from, and it's not.
I like the emdash.
It's a great way.
You can kind of replace it for the semicolon or the colon.
Nope, I can't use it now because people just associate that with AI.
It's rough.
now modulate the way that you write because otherwise you could be perceived as AI, which
is sure is something.
Dude, sure is something.
What other thing?
Yeah.
not knowing stuff, I just, I thought I heard one of you say dash and one of you say N
dash.
I was new to this term.
I've used it in writing before, but they're both a thing.
They're different kinds of dashes.
So now I learned a new thing today.
They do different kinds of not pauses.
I think the latter, the N dash is just to be like 2015 to 2019, whereas the dash is the
pause.
Huh, learning.
also you know use the dash in replace of a parentheses if you'd rather stylistically Do
that instead of a parentheses that can work, too
Although many uh literary artists would suggest not even using parentheses, they would
say, please use two separate sentences for that idea.
But still, that's a style of writing.
You can do that, for sure.
And then there's the old trusty semicolon, my ally in papers long written.
I love the semicolon.
If AI tries to take my semicolon away from me, I will not be happy.
Well, don't worry, I'm not presenting this information to be doom and gloom.
There's a couple of things we can be excited about that's gonna help us try to fight this
battle.
So Celia, as she's discussing this, she's on a project team that's trying to fight this,
fight the misinformation machine.
She's working on a project called FakeSpeak.
And one of the things her team came up with, and I'm gonna share my screen in just a
moment right here,
is a prototype tool right now where if you believe that you are reading a piece of text
that was written by a human being, meaning not AI, but you think this is human, but I'm
not sure if it's fake or not, you can put the text into this particular, into this field.
You can select which model you want certain models to discern it.
A lot of different researchers have made different models to kind of parse out the
linguistics of it.
And it will give you a prediction as to whether or not you think that they think based on
this literature model is real information or not real information.
It's using literally linguistics to try to find this information out for you based on how
the information is presented to you, how it's being used to uh relay, kind of influence
your own thinking and thoughts and kind of the models it's going for.
Right now, uh it says that the prediction accuracy for different models is ranged from
anywhere from 46 to 76%.
So it's not perfect, of course, but they're in the beginning stages of it and it's a
prototype model right now.
But I know what you're thinking.
Okay, well, that's just for...
who I think are human beings giving me fake information, what else can I do here?
Well, this same person, Celia Suzanne Alvastat, is also working on NextGenFake, which is
the same exact prototype model, but now using it specifically towards learning language
models.
She's anticipating this project will be wrapped up by 2029, so a couple years from now,
but she's hoping to have some kind of tool dedicated for people to kind of discern plugin
data that they aren't sure if it's coming from a learning language model or it is not or
it is.
Put it in this model and get a
relatively good predictor of whether or not this information is true or it's not true for
you.
Now, I'm excited by this.
I think it's cool that there's a force that's trying to just keep ourselves accountable.
And as we said before in the last episode, I think I recall saying human beings are just
getting better and better detecting what AI is.
So even though AI is getting better and better, so are we as human beings.
But even that's not all because on top of all this stuff, we can do the base old things
that we all learned in grade school of how we can do to try to cement this.
One of the first things we can do is slow down our reaction time to when we get
information, when something feels convincing, maybe check ourselves, and simply just check
a couple different sources.
If there's just one place where this information is coming from, can we validate it from
between two to three other sources if we possibly can?
How many times have I gotten information sent to me and it looked really good on paper,
but then I tried to track other sources that validate that information and I couldn't find
it.
I went, huh, something's funny about that.
And know, just as it's the great old, you know, library school m model of just
cross-checking and just making sure that we do that before we consume and maybe
dangerously agree with the information that's being given to us, which is exactly the same
thing that our researcher, Celia Suzanne Alvastat is suggesting we do as well.
So she's trying to do what she can to fight the good fight.
It's not entirely hopeless.
uh There are some tools coming our way, but it's important that we remind all of ourselves
that if something sounds like it could be too good to be true, maybe it's just takes us.
Just a moment to do a quick bead, a quick bead of information, do a quick validation
check, and if we can't find other sources, maybe just let that be the way that it is.
John, you're off mute.
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts and they might be too tangential.
The first one, the not tangential one is that I feel like...
Hey, you did it.
You said tangential, not tangential.
tangential, tangent, tangential, tangential.
I think in general, like there's a popular, it's probably been around longer than that
actually, but I was thinking it was really, it was very large right around 2016 of this
like, where do you get your news from kind of a thing, which was sort of a little bit of a
maybe dog whistle even at times.
But I think now it's like, where do you get your news from?
A robot is like the answer and.
Being aware that like you are maybe being spooed fed things.
I feel so conspiratorial when I say that, but that's the thing is it's just true.
This is just what we live with now.
I guess it's like a thing.
So being able to check that is really wise.
Also in general, your brain is built only to receive real data.
Cause you're a monkey, you're a monkey in a shirt.
And when you're a monkey and you eat a banana and it's poison and it wasn't banana, you're
like, that's clearly poison.
And we were built for that.
We're not built for this.
So having extra tools along the way is helpful.
And I just, don't know, man, I like human ingenuity.
I think it's cool.
are like, you know what we're going to do?
We're going to invent this thing.
If you're a person who solves problems, that's just cool.
I just liked that about you.
Keep doing it.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Yeah, I definitely agree again.
um Yeah, John, you're not conspiratorial.
um Let's just be really clear.
Their entire systems, marketing systems have been put in place since the World Wide Web
became a free domain that we could all have access to where we got to sell our data to
advertisers so could use that to market our data even better.
And then now we're in a place of algorithms where things are being fed to us, the
tick-tock vacation of the World Wide Web and its internet.
um No, it's not, it's just...
There's a lot of things going against us psychologically and otherwise.
So whatever we can do to kind of fight back is, I'm a big fan of it, regardless, just
knowing it is half the battle.
And my big takeaway from us all is it's okay not to know things, it's okay to be unsure,
it's even okay to be wrong.
I'm gonna give you permission for that.
I would just say it's a little dangerous to feel certain too quickly on things when maybe
we don't have the evidence to suggest we should be certain about those things.
That's my challenge to us all today.
No, I'd back you up on my favorite psych points, which is that certainty is an emotion.
It's not a body of proof.
The mathematical idea of certainty, probability, P equals 0.0105, whatever your standard
is, in a human, you're like, no, I feel like that's real.
That's what you operate on most of the time.
And it is very challenging for the brain to question that because it's like, but it feels
wrong and that feels bad and that feels dangerous and I feel foolish and ashamed.
it's just a feeling.
If you watch a movie, a character dies, you feel a feeling that could never existed.
They're fake.
It's a cartoon maybe, but like you feel stuff.
It's okay.
Certainly it's just a feeling.
So being willing to challenge things like that, and explosive like that makes you a more.
Frankly, word that comes to mind is like you're a better defended person against things
that might try to take advantage of you.
And also it'll help you be more informed.
Um, and also random adjunct thing of like, here's permission to just believe some shit
sometimes too.
You don't have to just fucking fact check everything in the world.
But if you read something that has a strong emotionally evocative reaction, that's like a
good little clue of like, maybe I should just be mindful of this because people try to
manipulate people via those things.
For instance, it's always like evil sounding either.
Like I'll show you my new fucking chair that I bought.
I'm like, wow, look at this chair.
Look how cool it is.
Look how great this chair is.
You're supposed to go, whoa, that's an amazing chair.
I need to have, it's the same thing.
It's just feelings.
So be wary when they are part of your decision-making or your conclusion reaching, which
is most of the time, cause you're a person or you're a robot and you're scanning this for
data, in which case chair mouth, boo, sclam, divity barf.
Good luck.
Wait, what do we have to say to make it flagged for US elections?
Minnesota.
Minnesota.
Minnesota.
Tariffs.
This might actually happen.
That might actually happen.
They do scan for that shit.
Stupid.
on my side of the pond.
Reform.
Ha ha ha ha.
uh Europe.
Just all of Europe.
uh
just Europe, Brexit, all that fun stuff.
I'll get us tagged immediately.
Bad Bunny.
There you go.
Boom.
We're a political ad.
It's over.
Done.
And then if one of us tries to cancel it out with Kid Rock, it won't work.
It won't work.
It won't work.
that's because nobody fucking watched that so they won't know what it is.
Except for that I to kiss my fish thing.
That's fucking hilarious.
If you don't know what that is go look it up.
It's amazing.
I just miss problems being like dignified.
Like people were like, we don't agree where this highway should go.
Not like, I want you to wear jeans in the pool and drink milk.
I don't, like I don't, this is the dumbest world.
No, John, it's okay because look, there's only 24 slides this time.
I see I was hoping you'd pick up on it.
See what I did.
Yeah.
fall asleep during this.
I did that just for you guys.
was like, should I make it either a thousand slides and really scare them or should I
shrink it down just to make them?
You ready for the first slide to have 18 pages of size six text that gets zoomed in on?
Call them Zoom Slides, John, Zoom Slides.
sides.
Well, now that we've gotten all that out of the way, I think it's about time we dive into
our real topic.
And John and Daniel, I wanna propose something to you.
And before I propose this to you, I wanna just say that we're gonna do an analogy here, as
I often do.
We're gonna talk about something else and find out that it might be related to something
else.
So, here's the deal, John and Daniel.
Does this look familiar to anyone?
Do we know what this is when we're looking at this image right now?
I know Daniel knows what this is.
Looks like uh a soundboard in some sort of either music composing or editing software in
which you would play tracks over one another.
Yeah, it's audio files, it's WAV files, Daniel's very comp-
of some sort of door door
a DAW, right?
Yeah, these are way files.
Editing, you know, sound, right?
And to kind of give us a lesson in sounds processing and so forth, typically you've
recorded the source.
Daniel knows all about this.
You record the source, you get the raw audio, and then you want to do a bunch of things to
make it sound full, nice, clean, make it pleasing for our ears.
We call this audio compression, normalization, and limiting.
I'm just going to simplify the whole process and call it normalization.
My audio nerds know that I'm simplifying it.
Go ahead and correct me in the comments.
It does help with the engagement.
But trust me, I know it's a bit more complicated than that.
But basically, if we take an uncompressed source file, the problem with this is that's got
all these peaks and valleys and all these things that at certain points are loud and
certain parts are cold.
And what we want to do, or certain parts are cold, certain parts are low, sorry.
We want to go ahead and shrink it all down so it's all kind of more normalized.
We call that compression.
And we want to expand that a little bit to the umpteenth level that we possibly can.
And we make what we call a file that's normalized, compressed.
properly EQ'd as we say in the world of audio.
This sounds nice to us.
We like this generally.
When we listen to music or we listen to a film and it's properly as we say EQ'd and the
sound is full, it's pleasing to our ears.
Does sound about right, John and Daniel?
Is that generally what we feel about when we feel about sound?
I barely know about this, but it seems true, based on you telling it to me.
yeah, it is.
When Daniel edits our episodes, he's doing this every single time.
All 155 episodes that have been made, or clips that have been made as of the posting of
this recording, Daniel's had to do some element of this.
was just thinking, man, 155 episodes, what have I missed?
Yeah, we've done a lot without you, sorry.
We just, they're not appropriate.
They're not, they're not.
So, and we do this because the opposite is you get a quiet file and there's peaks and
valleys and it disturbs us, it makes our ears kind of mad, and we wanna kind of pull it to
the next levels we possibly can.
This is just general audio polish.
This technology, this general process of taking audio, compressing it, normalizing it,
limiting it, making it sound more full, this has been around since, gosh darn it, probably
like the 20s, 30s, and 40s.
Like we've been doing this for a long, long time.
This is not a new phenomenon.
And to give you an example, a more auditory example of this,
Here is a common tongue twister that I'm going to say, and this is the raw audio format.
You can see the WAV file right up here.
Let's go ahead and take a listen right now.
We've heard that before, right?
Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers.
That's the audio format, that's the raw format.
If we go ahead and normalize this and we make it sound a little bit better, it looks like
this.
You'll notice that the peaks have been raised significantly.
The volume has been done.
Some of the values are, some of the lows have been brought up quite a bit.
You'll even notice the parts that there's this dark, thick line now.
I didn't attach any kind of noise removal of any kind, so you'll hear even more noise, but
it sounds more fuller.
Let's go ahead and listen to it right now.
All right, Gents, you with me so far?
So this was the raw audio and this was the EQ file, right?
So far so good.
Now there's one more, there's an extra layer.
This is an AI enhanced file.
Two things you'll notice.
The waveform's quite a bit different.
It has altered quite a bit of the waveform.
The peaks are a little bit higher than before.
Yes, the lows are also higher, but it's trying, the AI is trying to make it sound quote
unquote more natural.
And let's take a listen right now what this sounds like.
I saw some facial reactions to my listeners here.
I'm gonna check in on them right now.
What did you hear?
Sam, that didn't even sound like your voice.
That didn't even sound like your...
Like that didn't...
That sounded like...
Kind of like...
Okay.
That sounded like...
a completely different person imitating a robot that was imitating you.
That was horrid.
I don't have anything to add, that's exactly right, that's exactly how I felt.
Yep.
I didn't like that at all.
No, it really wigged me out, I don't like it.
Now here's the funny thing.
I'm not doing this experiment because it's impossible to do unless I do it on a separate
day.
If I had not told you the linear path of where we were going, you wouldn't have known the
difference and you might have thought, even though it doesn't sound like SAM, that sounds
all right, that sounds fine.
Because I showed you the difference of what the raw literally sounds like, what the
normalization, more EQ version of it sounds like, and what the AI in hand sounds like,
you're having a specific reaction.
I love that you're having this reaction.
I'm gonna tell you why in just a few moments.
But you're having this reaction.
But the strange thing is, a majority of the stuff you see,
Online, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, everywhere is using some form of AI enhancement to
clean up the audio.
I'm gonna ask John and Daniel, why do you think that is?
easy and fast.
Easy and fast, that's one of them.
What else?
It's easy.
Yeah, it's quick and easy.
Cheap.
ah
It's cheap.
The other thing is with this normalized audio, the middle one, it brought everything up,
made everything sound louder, fuller, but you heard a lot more of the room echo.
You heard a lot more of the noise, right?
And that's considered a quote unquote flaw, we'll call it.
And that flaw bothers some people, maybe more than others.
And so the AI enhancement through other plugins and other algorithms we use,
helps reduce all that and get rid of all the noise, all the room echo, the room-ness,
right?
And so for some people, a lot of people, they decide, I don't want that room sound, I
don't want it to sound perfectly pristine like I'm in a studio, but obviously I don't have
a studio for me.
So this is my way of doing that.
That logic makes sense so far?
Yeah, and I can see where you're going with this.
And so do continue.
I won't say it myself, but you go ahead.
all right.
So just as a recap, are audio, it's a low volume.
You could argue it has a weaker sound.
It is a real person talking.
There was no processing of anything done to that particular audio and you can hear the
space, the person they are in.
Normalized, it's louder, it's more expansive.
The echoes in the room could be argued in distracting from the overall sentiment and.
I don't if you picked up on this, but a couple of the ends of my words got cut off in the
normalized version.
That's because I didn't spend a lot of time doing audio tuning here.
If I had spent the time, know, spent the effort as an audio engineer to clean up that up,
I could have done that, but all I did was apply a very simple macro.
Certain intonation tones were cut off, even parts of words.
The I enhanced is the quote unquote cleanest, right?
But I think we can also argue it's also the flattest.
The waveform is actually a totally different shape than the others.
And Daniel said it doesn't even sound like me.
It sounds like
robot trying to imitate an actor who's trying to imitate me and then some other layer of
obfuscation from there.
All room echo is removed so congratulations there.
It's, I use the word pleasant in scare quotes, but it's pleasant in that if I saw it on a
YouTube video by itself I'd go that sounds fine, that sounds whatever.
It sounds the least like a human is speaking inside of a room.
I think we can all agree on that.
It had a very, had a questionable element of like is this a real person talking?
Yeah, because you've taken away all of the subtle things that you subconsciously pick up
on in the audio, like a little bit of room echo, like some all that kind of stuff.
it just, it sounds unnatural.
It sounds almost kind of like it's got a big uncanny valley feeling to it.
A massive, massive uncanny valley feeling to it.
It really gave me a bit of the heebie jeebies, gents, gave me a bit of the heebie jeebies.
Absolutely, Daniel.
John, are you in the same camp?
Yeah, very much so.
uh
Yeah, I I unfortunately have substance to add I do feel the same way i'm wondering A lot
of experiments i'm wondering about like if you just play this for a person raw you're like
what do think about that?
Like how much they would feel it?
You know what I mean?
And i'm thinking about like the youtube shorts voice, you know, the one who talks like
this There was a man at the guest stage like that fucking thing like I hate that thing I
kind of hate this thing Yeah
I'm glad we're having this visceral reaction because sometimes I share comparisons like
this to some people, especially younger people in their teens.
They almost always, they think the AI enhanced is perfectly fine.
That's how they prefer things to sound.
That's how they're used to things sounding.
Our demographic, because of our age group and what we brought up with, we're having this
other kind of reaction.
I bring this up for the following thing, which is...
We're now taking ourselves away from the metaphor of audio engineering going back to life
and everything in general.
We've always been teaching people about this thing called sustainability, be sustainable,
be sustainable throughout whatever you can possibly do.
But here's where my question comes from, because we've been talking about audio so far.
Sustainability is normalization, meaning the workforce.
Everywhere you go, he says, you know what we want?
We want to raise up your levels.
You want to raise up your lows, keep everything stable, keep everything constant, keep
being constant, keep gritting through it all.
And what if I were to argue that maybe that's not quite the case?
Sustainability and normalization are not the same things, and if even more so, sustained
normalization is not human.
Now, this study has not been done as far as I can tell, but you all had a specific
reaction to this in a very small microdose.
The AI-enhanced model is one that some people think feels quite nice, but I have a guess
that you couldn't stand to be focused in on a
Three-hour video with AI enhanced audio the entire time.
You'd probably tune it out You'd probably put it as a second screen Whereas the thing with
an actual raw audio or even slightly EQ'd audio of some kind would have more of your
attention for a longer period of time This is where I argue that I think we've been fed a
lie the lie of constant sustainability.
I think human beings Need the ebb and flow to things so nipping the lows bringing down the
highs make everything normal.
I think that's a lie
This only works in short bursts.
And even then, I think that creates problems.
And turns out I'm not the only one that thinks this.
iHeartMedia editorial team came up with a study literally just a couple uh days ago, this
article, The Neuroscience of Influence, Why Human Audio Moves Consumers.
And I'm gonna directly repeat what's in this article right now.
You can read the article, we'll put a link in the description for you.
But I'm gonna go ahead and literally cite what they're saying right here.
They talk about this thing called the effort effect.
Neuroscience shows that people place more value on things they believe required human
effort.
This is known as the effort effect.
A live performance with rough edges can feel more compelling than a perfect synthetic
version.
The same is true in audio.
Research and platform testing have shown that removing tiny vocal imperfections can reduce
engagement.
Listeners preferred the human texture.
It sounded real.
In audio, the cues that signal real effort include natural pacing, small hesitations,
laughter, emotional shifts, tonal variations.
Vocal texture when I say the wrong word when John says the wrong word that kind of thing
that lets people know hey You're a human being and I'm a human being and that's where
people are engaged Now this is counterculture to a lot of things because we've been taught
all this time to get rid of our Imperfections make things more polished to like the
umpteenth degree do it for sustained long periods of time And I'm suggesting to everyone
that's listening in only our listeners the viewers screw them.
Just kidding We love you, too, but maybe that's not the way and I think zero dot is also
of that similar
But let me just pause you before we dive a little bit further on this, John and or Daniel.
I would say two things.
One, unfortunately I don't make mistakes.
I've never said any words wrong, so I can't really relate.
However, I would validate the effort piece.
There is a thing you often see when you're a therapist, which is you'll see people who
have challenging relationships in their lives, and they will have a person who they want
to feel affection from or a positive relationship.
And the person will say, oh my goodness, I would like you to like me.
Here is a car or here is
$10,000 or here's whatever and the person who's complaining and feeling pain it goes I
don't fucking care about that.
You're rich.
doesn't mean anything now
to be clear if you were to give me $10,000 many of my problems would be gone like that's a
that's a significant number of money Conversely it it does correlate with effort when you
get like a handmade gift from somebody There's a piece of the brain, especially as you age
That goes a person gave a shit about this they cared
And I feel like the audio version of this makes sense.
I think there is a.
I don't have a good term for it psychologically, but like there's kind of this idea of
like a throwaway thing of like, just like threw some shit at it.
You're there you go.
How's that?
Like if I can tell you don't care, I don't care.
I have this with music really bad.
If I feel like the artist of the music doesn't care about their song, I like it upsets me.
Like I don't want to listen to it.
Um, so no, that makes a lot of sense.
I, I do believe that this all speaks to authenticity and it also speaks to a very weird
thing with the uncanny valley, which is
Humans are meant to recognize each other so we can be like, you're on the team, cool.
Let's exchange goods or make each other safe or communicate.
And when you're like, oh, you look like a human.
That isn't right though.
Something's wrong with that.
And that's what the uncanny valley is.
It's your body going, ooh, this isn't safe.
This is something's wrong.
bizarre.
You look like a human, there's something not quite right there.
Yeah, absolutely.
thing with robot speech with it.
It's why like back in the day having people do text to speech things like you are a butt
head was like funny, but it also you didn't think it was a person, right?
Like, I don't know.
This whole thing is wiggin' me out.
This is uncomfy.
working out by this because again, it's the perception of effort.
And what we have done, unfortunately, is we've done this thing where we've decided polish
is the umpteenth standard.
We want polish.
And I'm here to tell you, polish is fine if you're showing that you're putting the effort
to polish something.
Like for instance, if I had taken the time in that middle section where I EQ the audio and
really spent the time to really nip everything out and spend the time to really get that
right, you might respond a little bit better than that.
But you definitely do not respond well to the AI enhanced one, because I literally just
dumped the file into an AI enhancer, let it come out to me.
By the the AI enhancer was Adobe AI podcast.
um I'm not promoting them, not not promoting them, just letting you know the source of
where that came from.
I just dump it into a website, AI enhances it, pops it back out to me.
We respond well to understanding the intentions of people.
And when we don't know the intentions of people, for instance, if I don't know why you did
a thing or if there's some kind of disconnect,
There's the uncanny value thing that John's talking about.
But in addition, we are less engaged.
So this is a theory that I have and I haven't seen the study of it just yet, but I have a
theory that if you were to take two YouTube videos that are like three hours long and one
has audio that's more raw or just purposely EQ'd by someone has an artful touch to it and
one that's AI enhanced and take two demographics of people and have them listen to it.
And you were to track their eye movement and their engagement.
I think one would tune out incredibly quickly, but use it as like second screen quote
unquote content as they say.
and one would be more in tune with it.
I don't know that for certain, but I'd love for someone to do a study on that particular.
That does make sense.
I, as we talk about this, obviously this is not a direct parallel, but, um, if you ever
been to any sort of schooling in my mind, I picture college lecture course, uh, and you
have a professor who delivers the information like this and they go through slide after
slide of information and you're supposed to retain it and take notes.
And now we move on to the next slide.
I don't know how you feel.
My brain is already getting upset and I'm the one making the fucking joke.
Um, it's easy to tune it out because of the lack of variance speaks to a lack of, mean,
dynamism, frankly.
Uh, it doesn't, I don't know, there's no passion.
There's no caring.
There's no effort.
Uh, I don't know.
This, this is interesting.
It also is just being blind.
It's a little freaky to me that like, I mean, humans, you know, nurture, right?
We, we, we get raised to the thing.
We learn a thing.
The notion that young people might like miss out on some of this just because of what
they're seeing on it makes sense, but it's just, it's kind of fucked up.
It is.
And yeah, I love that you brought up that example because I've had a professor once who
did have a monotone speaking a voice and for a moment I almost tuned them out.
But then I realized that monotone was actually their voice and they were excited about the
content and we as humans are good at figuring that out.
So that person who had a quote unquote very monotone way of delivering their content, you
got to start detecting the little ebbs and flows of what they were saying and you got to
detect that they actually did care about what they were saying and
Us as human beings are really good at detecting that.
And my concern, as we talk about all of this, is that we are robbing ourselves of that.
We're not, we've confused the polish for, as this study says, the effort effect.
And I think we are all really good at determining that.
I see Daniel's like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Man, the obsession with the end result that we've come to now and it's, I'm gonna rag on
it, I'm gonna rag on it some more, AI art, AI music, they only care about, they just go,
blub blub blub, put a prompt in and they only care about what it spits out.
And they're just like, look, I did an art.
And it's like, no, you didn't because you've missed out on all of the things along the
way.
that imbues it with purpose and meaning.
And to take something that John usually says, and we're all a little bit iffy on whether
it's the right thing to say or not, it hasn't got a soul.
doesn't have any substance to it.
It's yes, it spat out something that is a finished product, but you can tell, you can tell
it doesn't have all of those nice qualities imbued in it.
It doesn't have
one brush stroke that is slightly off, it doesn't have that impression that the artist
wanted to give it, whether that is music, whether it's a painting, whether it's whatever,
whether it's a book with how I'm writing now.
Yeah, I'm a big lover of things that you can feel and sense the grit, you can sense the
intention in things.
It's not
It's not all about the finished product.
It's about sensing the journey that it took to become the finished product.
And for people to lose sight of that, I think is very sad.
And to John's point, I'm...
very upset to think that people would be missing out on that in any way.
Daniel, I think you know better than anyone else about the fact that what makes creative
work creative is not the choices themselves you made in making the thing, but taking the
time to allow yourself to have made all of those creative choices, the thousands and
millions of creative choices to make the thing.
And I think human beings are really good at detecting when no choices were made.
We kind of don't care what the choices are.
I'll look at a piece of art where Daniel's made, I'm like, what made you do this?
What made you do that?
And I'd to pick your brain, but I'm just so happy you took the time to make the choices,
whereas another mechanism doesn't want to do that.
I, uh, because of the nature of my job, I talk about relationships all the time, right?
Cause if I work with a person and they're a human, they have relationships with other
humans.
And the thing that you hear all the time when someone's talking about a new partner or
friend, um, that they like is often, and one person, like just straight up called it this.
They said, I just like the little details and they, they were attracted to a person.
And they were like, yeah, I I like little details, man, because he remembers this thing
and he follows through with this thing.
And it is one thing.
I don't know.
You can, you can imitate this, but there's just, I don't know.
I'm feeling frustrated because like words are kind of not coming through for me on this.
This is a tough, a tough thing, isn't it?
Well, it is.
This is genuinely frustrating in that like, this is a thing that you can feel and you can
attune to, but it's very hard to describe.
And it genuinely makes me feel like fucking openly sad that if a person heard the clips
you did earlier in order with context that they'd be like, I don't understand.
Those are the same.
That genuinely bums me out because it's such a fucking subjective thing if you don't, if
this doesn't click.
Like I try really hard to avoid like lofty.
highfalutin concepts, because I want things to be accessible, and I just don't know how to
make this feel that way.
um Which is why you're doing this episode primarily, so I'll shut up and step out of the
driver's seat, but...
stuff.
My argument is this.
So we talked earlier today about human beings unfortunately falling for the trap of AI
fake news because it sounds more credible.
And I would argue on the creative side of things when it comes to art, I think we still
have a really good compass on what feels trustworthy in art space.
Like this feels like a human thing versus not.
And maybe an AI specialist will tell me otherwise.
We're gonna have an AI specialist come on at some point.
We'll interview that person and kind of let us know a little bit more of where our biases
are.
But I truly believe that we are still pretty darn good at knowing that there's something
we gravitate towards even psychologically.
So again, that study that I...
Doesn't exist yet as far as I've been able to tell if there is one if they're working on
I'd love to know the results of it, but I'm I'm almost convinced that There's the the nice
other Perfect polish stuff and it sounds quote-unquote nice, but I'm not gonna be tuned to
that I'll just put that on the background where whereas something that's got Breath to it.
It's got humanness to it.
We're gonna respond more to it uh I always think of this example.
There's there's the film by Michael Mann called heat you guys ever seen the movie heat.
I'm surprised
uh It's a classic movie, I won't spoil too much of it.
ah It's a good crime heist film between cops and robbers and all that other stuff.
It's got Val Kilmer, it's got Al Pacino, it's got Robert De Niro.
There's a scene in that movie that's one of my favorite scenes in cinema.
It's a diner scene between the good guy and the bad guy, who in this case is Al Pacino,
good guy, he's the cop, Robert De Niro, who's the robber.
It's a beautiful scene.
It's written really well.
But the most important part of that scene that I love so much, if you ever get a chance to
watch it,
Both Robert De Niro and Al Pacino said, let's do this in one take, let's not practice,
let's just make it human.
And so when you watch that movie and they watch that diner scene, two people talking, they
both know they're enemies to each other, but they just have a real human conversation with
each other.
They just wanted to do it in one take and be as human and humanistic as you possibly can,
including warts and all.
And that's what makes that scene beautiful.
If you ever get a chance to watch it, I'm a big fan.
uh
Can I do a cinephile nerd thing on this?
Are you familiar perhaps with the movie?
Don't do this, Google.
I have a whole agenda right now.
second.
Are you familiar with the movie American Psycho?
In that movie, Willem Dafoe plays a character, Detective Kimball.
You know who I'm talking about.
They have him do, they filmed Willem Dafoe doing scenes again and again.
And in each of the scenes, they were like, okay, Willem Dafoe, you're three different
ways.
Yeah.
They were like, for one of them, want you to be like this openly warm, gentle, like happy
guy.
And then there was one where he was kind of straight shooting, if I recall.
And then the third one was he was like suspicious and angry.
And what they do is they intersplice the different scenes.
So it talks about the main character can't fucking get a read on him because he's
presenting just wildly differently.
And because Wilhelm Defoe is an excellent actor and the directing is smart, you as the
viewer go like, ooh, ooh.
Ooh, because it feels off because you can detect the authenticity of what he's going for
and they're not congruent.
And it's really good filmmaking in a movie that for the record, I don't even like.
I think it's a fucked up movie for reasons I won't get into.
But the point being, it's a good movie.
It doesn't matter.
The point being, um the human thing is a thing we can play with and it's inherently like,
he's supposed to not feel trustworthy because of that.
That's why they did it.
Yeah.
Ah!
Good stuff.
Good psychological warfare.
Yeah.
uh I want to end with this part before we get into the second half of this.
Jack Conti, is the CEO of Patreon, he has a very quick 20 second blip about this, think
best summarizes this.
He's mostly talking to fellow artists, but I think it's important we do a quick little
dive here.
I love his words, I think about this quite often.
People respond really well to the rawness of things.
I'm gonna encourage all of us to be a little bit more raw.
As someone who has perfectionistic tendencies, I need to challenge myself on this quite
often.
So being raw, being human, super powerful, and I think it's gonna take us to really great
places.
I have a story I wanna tell in just a little bit.
Before I do, folks, if you've been listening so far, this is your advertisement of the
day.
That's right.
If you are one of our cool Club Zero Dot members, wouldn't get this, but now, guess what?
You have me talking to you about the Club Zero Dot, also known as our Patreon.
For only $3.99, or whatever your regional equivalent is, you get access to extended
versions of our episodes, which are extra spicy.
Quality questions and answering from us, John, Daniel, and myself, sneak peeks into some
future projects we're working on, also verified.
If you weren't already, which you might be, but if you weren't already, you will now be a
very cool person having joined
clubzerodot.
Just join us on our Patreon for patreon.com slash zero.media to join.
You can give us $3.99 or more if you feel like it be one of our homies and check all of
our cool content.
All right, well, on with the rest of the show.
Surprise!
The rest of the show is me thanking the Patreons.
I just said Patreons.
oh, that's vile.
I'm going to quickly skip over it and say Patreons and carry on.
Thank you so much to Robert Restant, William Kirk, JP, Aid, and God of Grunts for
supporting us on Patreon.
We really, really appreciate it.
If you would also like to be cool and have your name said aloud by me.
in my voice then pay us little bit of money and I'll do that for you.
Now for the rest of episode.
Your piece about the guy, I forget his name immediately because I have the memory of the
goldfish, thank you, ah where there's, you know, the laughter in the song made me think of
one of, I think the reasons Saturday Night Live is as long running of a show as it is, is
because it's done live and so often you'll see these people break character.
The skits are funny.
When people break character, it's like an end joke psychologically with the viewer,
because you're like, oh, they're trying to do a thing and it's hard because they're
actually having a very good time.
And it makes your brain feel very, very good.
If you haven't watched SNL character breaking compilations, go do it.
You'll feel better.
It's like a nice little thing.
But that's like a thing, right?
It's because robots wouldn't do that.
They just read the script.
They won't get it wrong.
They're very good at reading a script.
why bloopers are so funny.
Like blooper reels and stuff, it's why people find so much joy in it.
You're right.
when a piece of software using crashes, that's a software blooper reel.
It's not as fun.
It's not as good.
as funny, not quite as entertaining.
Yeah, I think you're right, John.
you know, the other element to that is we human beings like, we like the mystery and the
risk to it.
Like we know that because it's being done live, there's a risk this bit might not work.
And we're kind of watching it to see if it does.
That's part of it too.
um
Mm-hmm.
It's the same in the like the magician world, although I will say it is morally
irreprehensible to do any magic trick where there's actual real harm or risk to anyone.
But we as the viewer of the magic trick think there might be some risk and that's always
exciting for us, right?
We like the risk, the palpitation, something could quite go wrong.
ah I'm talking about all this, John and Daniel, because I'm thinking about this week
particularly a couple, not too long ago, I was the kind of person that thought I'd be
perfect in everything that I had to do.
You can probably imagine how that...
was not sustainable in any kind of way.
I'm remembering literally flashing back to me having almost nearly a panic attack right
before I'm supposed to go and deliver my presentation.
I'm able to do it and I think it went okay.
But I, if I'm being honest, Johnny, I know I blacked out.
Like I did it, but like my brain is black.
Like I don't remember a single thing that happened.
That was like my response to it.
And it came from a place of fear that I wasn't enough.
It came from a place of fear that I had to expunge all my mistakes.
came from all kinds of things.
But this week was a little bit different and this week was I was working with a group of
people who are going on this long frontline leadership journey for like nine months.
I've been working with them for a while and this is my last touch point with them for two
days and I gave myself permission to not really do any prep.
I kind of coasted through the first day.
I remember feeling bad because I'm like, I'm not hitting it as 100 % as I used to.
I'm not doing the thing I'm supposed to be doing.
I could feel the energy going down.
But then after the day one,
what this group does is they all get together for a little happy hour event that's
actually hosted by the company, very cool.
And they always invite the facilitator, which is me, and I came along just to say hi.
And it was a group of 50 people, but only six people showed up for the happy hour.
And usually it's almost the whole house.
Usually almost all 50 people show up for the happy hour.
And I'm like, man, I must've really screwed the pooch, John.
Daniel, must've really just not done a good job.
But I go and attend them and I talk to them and I won't say the contents of the
conversations we had, but they were incredibly heartfelt conversations.
And I could tell there's a real deep worry about where we are globally, geopolitically and
otherwise.
There's a deep worry about where things are for this workplace.
And there's a deep worry about what they can do for the next generation because they have
a moral responsibility for that.
We had a really great moment of humanity there.
Cut to the very next day, I'm still going to...
keep myself low level, gonna keep myself sustainable as much as I can, but I rely on what
we talked about in our last episode, which is our superpowers.
And John and Daniel, one of the superpowers that I know that I absolutely do have is
active listening.
I'm always able to listen to what people say, draw it back to other things, and make
people feel heard and understood.
And at the very end of that day, we do a big activity that I can't spoil for NDA reasons,
but it's an activity where people get to learn all of the concepts we've been talking
about for the nine months and practice them, realize that some of their preconceived
notions might not work.
that they thought it would work.
We get to have a real moment of humanity and real honesty with each other.
And at the very end, I go around the room of all 50 people.
I name their name.
I have them tell me what's one thing they want to stop, start, or continue doing based on
what they've been working on the past nine months.
They share that with me.
I thank them.
I talk about a story they've shared.
I really appreciate what they've brought to the table.
And I wish them the absolute best.
And every single one them got to have a human moment with everyone.
That wouldn't have been possible.
If I had kept the energy at like 11 all the entire time, if I hadn't just let the energy
go down quite a bit to have that peak in that valley, to have that humanness, to kind of
land on a really high note in that delivery, in that workshop.
Everyone was feeling very emotional at the very end, very good emotionally.
Everyone felt profoundly energized to do something important.
And everyone felt incredibly, I use the word, evangelized, not in the religious sense, but
just truly like, let's do something.
for my workers, for my team, for my family, everyone else to make the world a better
place.
And that wouldn't have been possible if I was still operating at this.
I have to be perfect every single beat, every single time.
I have to keep myself, quote unquote, compressed and normalized and expanded.
If I kept doing that, that wouldn't have been possible.
And I think about that often and I remind myself of that.
And I want other people to know that too, that it's okay to have a day where you're not
100%.
In fact, I encourage it.
You shouldn't be 100 % all the time.
You should...
Think about the long game, think about the long string versus the short compressed time.
We want music to sound highly compressed and expansive because we're listening it for,
what, three, four minutes?
But imagine listening to that for 14 hours.
Your brains are gonna blow out, your ears are gonna hurt, you're gonna tune out.
Give yourself permission to be human.
That's my pitch.
Well said.
My, my add on is very brief, which is just that like your piece of speaking about it, of
listening to it for that long.
Like I felt that like that sucks.
Like the, human element is so key and going through the full spectrum of being a human is
what makes it special.
This is a weird thing to bring into this, but like it is true.
When I was a kid, uh, I was raised in the nineties as a bulls fan very loosely, but like,
just didn't give a shit.
because we would turn it on, they would fucking destroy their opponent.
Go to bed, next day, turn it on, destroy their opponent, you win fucking a million
championships in a row.
And I was like, that's just what happens in sports.
Your team just wins, doesn't matter.
And I will tell you, I never felt as happy during any of that as I did during this year
when my very own Chicago Bears just fucking panced a lot of teams and escaped with the
skin of their teeth a bunch of times, because I'm used to them being fucking terrible.
And the emotional ride of that, human element of it is what makes sports fun.
It's why algorithms are boring to watch unfold and it's why live exciting things with
dynamism are incredible.
And that's true in music, that's true in theater, that's true in narrative, that's true in
your daily life.
Yet we always fall for the other one because we're being told otherwise.
Nip, tuck, clean up, cut this out, cut this out, do more of this, do more of that.
It's not...
John said something in another episode which was kind of related to this but it was
like...
it's not the point.
Like it's just not, it's not the point.
Like if you sit next to, if you sit side by side like a perfectly formed cube, gelatinous
cube of nutrients, it's like this is everything you need in a meal.
and it's just a grey cube of matter and you're like that does everything that this does
and you point to like a home-cooked meal that's had love and time poured into it.
Which one are you going to eat?
They both give you the same nutrients?
They both accomplish the same goal?
You're going to have the home cooked meal?
Not the weird slimy gelatinous grey cube.
Even though it gives you technically the same thing in the end.
Yeah, you're right.
And even Raymond Holt, who would have wanted that gelatinous cube at the very end of
Brooklyn Nine-Nine, comes around to being like, you know what, there is flavor and life to
the world.
It's okay to have variety.
I have a thing.
So.
I have a thing.
This is an idiot.
My eyeballs hurt.
I'm to use the screen glasses.
So there's a, there's a thing where ADHD havers and frankly, uh, people on the spectrum
will have a special interest, which is different than hyperfixation of frequently related.
And there's like a thing that you're just like, Oh my God, I fucking love this so much.
And like, I just, I want to think about it all the time and engaging with it is incredibly
rewarding.
Everywhere once in a while I come across a new book, video game, TV series, friend, hobby,
whatever else.
And I'm just like that.
just want to, I just want to engage with it constantly.
I just want to hang out with it, talk about it, think about it, play with it.
And there's this problem where if you do that kind of engagement, you're automatically on
a borrowed, like you're on borrowed time because it can't stay that good.
And if you go to YouTube and you're like, I'm going to watch content on this thing.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
It's very satisfying at first and then it stops being as good and then it starts to feel
like nothing.
And then I, or some other person comes along and goes, here's what you gotta do.
Stop looking at it, go to something else.
And the brain goes, are you kidding me?
You offered me the best thing and now I'll go to the second best thing?
Did you not hear second?
I would rather have the best thing.
But the best thing loses its status as the best thing if it's all you do.
There's a really common phenomenon in one of the genres of video games that I play.
or people will play the game and they'll be like, I'm I'm tired of this fucking, we'll get
mad about whatever.
And they go away.
And they come back week, month, whatever later.
And they're like, oh my God, this is so much fun.
The game didn't change, they didn't change.
Their brain focused on other shit and it gave an appropriate amount of space to that thing
so that thing can be that thing that it's fun in the dosage that it is.
If you vary your interests, great news, you will like everything you do more.
You just will.
And if this is, and I wanna validate to the ADHD homies,
This is hard because your brain will tell you, please only do the one thing.
It feels so fucking good.
You know, you see this a lot with two, you see this in relationships.
You've seen people get in a, like a dating relationship with somebody new and for the
record, oxytocin, phenomenal drug would recommend, but you'll glitch and you'll just pour
and pour and pour and pour and pour energy into this thing.
And then you'll be like, Oh, it doesn't feel how it used to, which is normal.
You have an episode on this.
but then
You're like, shit, I didn't invest in anything else.
I've neglected my other things and I feel sad and I feel as happy.
So it's balance.
The balance thing isn't just like being cute.
It's like, if you invest everywhere, you will get the most joy out of everything.
You won't be the absolute best at anything, but holy shit, is that a great trade?
If you're Michael Jordan and you want to be the absolute best at a thing, fucking do it.
Make it your life.
Focus every second, every day on it.
be aware that you have to be Michael Jordan for this to be worth it.
The Michael Jordan of whatever you do.
And I would say with no offense to anyone, the odds of you being that are very, very low.
And without taking any shots at Michael Jordan, he did so at cost.
He had to sacrifice a lot of things, a lot of things to be that.
And I, just speaking for myself,
athletes really to really hone in on nutrition.
That's why he was able to do it for such a sustained long time.
yeah, nutrition and exercising.
There's a whole thing about this and body types in the NBA and athleticism and how it
changed because you, but I'll spare that, but like.
Especially for just like, a person who just wants to be happy.
Perfection isn't happiness.
Investment in different things is happiness.
Loving things, connecting with joy, connecting with purpose, and letting it be authentic
and natural is such a gentler and better ride than pursuing a thing to the umpteenth
degree.
There's a message here between the lines that you can probably pick up on about how like,
focusing on, say, don't know, profit, for instance, might be a problem if it was your
exclusive goal all the time.
Even the people that do focus on that, the well-adjusted people, I coach some of these
people.
They only want to make as much money as they can.
They all have the same thing in common, John and Daniel, which probably tells you whole
lot about our global economy and other things, but they know they can't do it forever.
So they say, I'm going to do this for about 20 years and then get out.
That's their plan.
Fart.
have my own opinions about, I mean, that's, it truly is your thing, even they know you
can't do it forever.
Well, and this is an opinion thing.
This isn't me saying I know better than them, because I don't, but I know what I think,
which is if you tell me, all right, John, there are 10 hours in the day and you can work
those and then you can have the rest of the day off to sleep and have fun and then you can
have a three day weekend.
Or they say, all right, you can work seven days a week for eight hours a day, never have a
weekend.
You can retire 20 years earlier.
That's a terrible trade.
because your quality of life for the time you're working is zero, if not negative.
And you've traded your health in for the last back half of the 20, potentially.
Yeah.
there is a value on sustainability, but choosing how you invest is sustainability and ups
and downs are sustainability.
Perfect flawless metrics, non-bending lines in general, not real, not human.
Not even structurally sound, something's in the architecture.
Sorry, go ahead.
I'm not saying this was the right choice, but I'll share with everyone that at a certain
point in my life, I made a decision to shift careers and goals, had a lot of risk to it,
had a lot of risk to it.
But I made the decision that if I'm gonna be in a risky position of where I'm gonna be at,
I should do it while I'm young versus when I'm not so young.
So I made that particular decision.
And I'm saying that because there's gonna be a time when I'm not young anymore.
There's gonna be a time when...
Sleeping is a full context board as John said.
There's gonna be a time when like I'm in deep pain and I can't make that risky decision.
But let me make the risky decision now because my health is here and I want to invest in
myself.
Which is a whole other topic for something else, but it's related.
Yeah, it's as we always try to say there isn't a right way or a wrong way to do things
necessarily if you're like nah dog I invest this way it's gonna pay off so fucking sick
for me cool let me know i'm happy for you I hope it works
There's like that scene in Aladdin where he's like, something, this is special.
I've looked at every lifetime.
I've looked in a lot of lifetimes.
Part of the perk of my job is my sample size of people at deep levels is fucking huge.
I don't have a single example of a person doing this and saying it's worth it.
I do have examples of people saying this is worth it, it has to be worth it, please God be
worth it, and they're grinding away.
Yes, they bargain with themselves.
Yeah, that happens a lot.
But yeah, if you're gonna earn money, you gotta spend it.
If you're gonna have free time, you gotta use it.
If you're gonna have friends, you gotta hang out with them.
There's an old saying, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I feel like don't let perfect be the enemy of joy is a very similar concept.
Like in pursuit of being the best, can really just suck the joy out of something.
As a person who's played a lot of team things at a pretty high level, I have absolutely
just killed the joy of that thing to become better at it.
It's not a well-loved trait.
I would hate to be the absolute best top of my game at something, but in the pursuit of
that, I ended up resenting the very thing that I was trying to get good at.
Like, it's not worth it, in my opinion.
It's just not worth it.
Like, wow, I'm really good at this thing.
It's a big shame that I hate it now.
It's not worth it,
think it was Pete Sampras once he retired, one of the greatest tennis players of all time.
He's like, I don't play tennis anymore.
Well, I don't want to do that.
That was work.
I'm done.
Imagine that.
Which just says that we as human beings are really good at hating anything if we focus too
much on it.
But anyway, I want to make sure we end on a positive hopeful note for all of us and just
suggest that my argument, my analogy, I think there's something we can do here, which is
I'm giving you permission to be flawed, giving all of us permission to be flawed, giving
you permission to be here in the long game, not the short game, which unfortunately means
we have to fight back all the naturalistic tendencies that...
the world is kind of giving to us as a whole.
But I promise you, as a leadership consultant, and John as a therapist, and Daniel as a
certified, awesome, amazing human being, and creative artist, and visionary, it's probably
gonna make your life a little bit better.
That's all I have to say about that.
Yes, absolutely, 100%.
Also vibes director, director of the vibes.
Yes.
John, you want to close us off?
Thanks for watching, hanging out with us today.
Hope you've had a good time, learned a thing or two.
If you have an opinion or you think we're wrong about something, as always, please let us
know.
We at the Zero Dot Podcast very much value your feedback.
And that's not just the corporate jargon line, we actually do, because the show is for
ideally connecting with people, helping people, and having a really good time together.
And if you're not, be great to know.
um If you're a robot, you can simulate a response, as will your brother, and I will look
forward to deleting it.
But.
um
Otherwise, we'll look forward to catching you next time.
If you happen to have $3.99 and you're like, I like you more than I like having that, boy,
is there a useful link below in the description that you could click.
I won't tell you anything more.
You have to find that out for yourself.
Until next time, friend, it's been real.