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Joshy Robots / Honesty, Friction, and the Things We Make
Joshy Robots / Honesty, Friction, and the Things We Make
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About this episode
A deep dive into creativity, honesty, and the challenges of bringing ideas to life unfolds as Joshy Robots shares his journey from advertising to creating unique automotive apparel. The conversation explores the nuances of authenticity in personal expression, the struggles of entrepreneurship, and the impact of technology on driving culture. With a candid exchange about the future of autonomous vehicles and societal shifts, this episode offers a thought-provoking look at how innovation intersects with individual passion and community values.
Joshy Robots is a copywriter turned maker and designer, the person behind Earth to Robots, and someone who refuses to let good ideas stay theoretical. In this episode, he and Kris talk about honesty, friction, and why the best things are usually the hardest to make, moving from advertising and design to driving, autonomy, and what gets lost when the world tries to make everything easy.
Grab a pullover:https://www.earthtorobots.comSupport this show:Https://www.overcrestproductions.com/driversclub
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
"Like Camaro versus Firebird. Those are those are they live in the same universe."
The Camaro is a popular American sports car that looks fast and can be very powerful. It’s made by Chevrolet, a big U.S. car company.
The Chevrolet Camaro is a mid‑sized American muscle car produced by General Motors since 1966. It’s known for its aggressive styling and powerful performance options.
Car
Pontiac Firebird
"Like Camaro versus Firebird. Those are those are they live in the same universe."
The Firebird is another American sports car that looked similar to the Camaro but had its own unique look. It was made by Pontiac, a brand that no longer makes cars.
The Pontiac Firebird was a muscle car produced by General Motors’ Pontiac brand from 1967 to 2005. It shared many components with the Chevrolet Camaro but had distinct styling.
Car
917
"every time I'd see this thing, I wouldn't see the heritage of the 917."
The Porsche 917 is a classic race car from the 1970s that was very fast and won many big races. It’s a rare collector’s item today.
The Porsche 917 was a legendary Group C racing car produced in the early 1970s, famous for its high-speed endurance performance and dominant wins at Le Mans.
Concept
self-driving cars
"[3475.9s] with self-driving cars. [3478.8s] I go out on the block to go get a sandwich [3481.5s] and like no joke within a minute and a half, [3486.3s] I know the robot will drive by, right?"
These are cars that can drive themselves using computers and cameras, so you don’t have to steer or brake.
Self-driving cars, also known as autonomous vehicles, use sensors and software to navigate roads without human input.
Car
Nissan Maxima
"They're buying Nissan Maximas"
The Maxima is a popular family car from Nissan that offers good space and smooth driving.
The Nissan Maxima is a mid-size sedan produced by the Japanese automaker Nissan, known for its comfortable ride and strong V6 engine.
Term
LiDARs
"you know, with their LiDARs, scanning the environment to tell exactly what's happening"
LiDAR is a fancy way of saying the car uses laser beams to “see” its surroundings. It helps the vehicle know where things are so it can drive without bumping into them.
LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a sensor technology that emits laser pulses to measure distances to surrounding objects, creating precise 3D maps of the environment. It’s widely used in autonomous vehicles to detect obstacles and navigate safely.
Car
911
"I've got this 911 over there and it's banned."
The Porsche 911 is a famous German sports car that has been made for many years. It’s known for its cool looks and fast driving.
The Porsche 911 is a legendary sports car known for its rear-engine layout and iconic design. It has been produced in many generations since 1964, each refining performance and technology.
Select text to request an explanation
I'm not afraid to chase a scary idea, and in fact, I get excited because the intimidating
part is the production.
The intimidating part is not just how do we manifest this thing in real life, but how do
we scale it so that it's not just, oh, proof of concept, it works in the real world,
but how do we make it so that I'm not the only one that gets to enjoy this, the only one that
are to put a smile on their face?
Mr. Joshy Robots, how's it going, man?
It's going great.
I'm enjoying California's Brutal Winner.
Yeah, geez, don't even.
It's funny, like when you first hop on here, this is the second time I've asked
how you do it, and when you came on, then there's this thing that you do every
time we get together and I ask you that, is you actually think about it.
Actually you take a moment to think about the question, and it's very interesting, and it's
like kind of like my first thing on my notes here is this, I'm always very, and I'm going
to be very candid with you.
I'm very intimidated by you as a person, and there's a reason for this, not because
like, not for any like, oh, I'm nervous, you know, Joshy Robots is so famous and
so handsome.
But I always get nervous to talk to you because I feel absolutely exposed every time I talk
to you because you're very insightful.
I feel like pleasantries and the veneer of the bullshit is never there with you.
Where did that come from with you?
Can I push you one further?
Yeah, please do.
Can I push you one further and say, I bet you part of what it is is kinship,
which is to say, there's a high level of trust, even if we don't have a sense of where the
other person is coming from, there is that like, I'm trying to present to you my full
honest self, I'm not trying to show you a veneer, and I think probably the same is
true on your end.
And because that's the starting point, that is itself intimidating, right, like a no
bullshit zone.
Yeah, that's unique.
That's not normal.
You know, I'm most people, I think, at least on initial interaction with other human
beings have their guard up.
They've got a guard.
They've got like the, you know, the ghosted translucent glass in front of who they really
are.
And I do that too.
I think the majority of people do that.
And maybe you do it differently.
Maybe there's this different way that you protect yourself.
And maybe your honesty is some sort of version of that.
I don't know.
But I just wanted to throw that out there.
I don't understand.
I don't feel like that with anybody else.
Most other people, I kind of just have, I think on first impressions, even if you
haven't seen someone for a while, there's always this progression of almost like poking
your finger into like a rubber wall farther and farther and farther until it stretches
and then you're finally through.
Oh, there we are.
Okay, here we are.
Okay.
Now we've come back to our friendship.
And the role we're back in the groove.
Yeah.
And there's just something about you that's very strange in that.
That doesn't exist.
I feel like I'm like, I invite a certain level of like straight up honesty.
Okay.
So here's, here's my two, two thoughts on that.
One is we do this thing, especially as grown-ass adults where we sort of like,
we have these survival instincts, most of which came from our formative years
and hopefully most of which are like relatively healthy behaviors.
Formative years.
Formative years.
Formative years.
Healthy behaviors.
Just sure.
I'm already there.
And we do what works for us, right?
We do what we found success with.
And so for me, a big part of that has, is just like a lot of my childhood was
steeped in all sorts of like dishonesty and deception and that just throws me.
So where I found success is just being super straight up with folks.
And then interestingly, this is sort of the second half of that.
My own observations is that it sort of manifests, dare I say, in an aesthetic
or a way to be or a value set, which is I find myself just in life.
Where I am, you know, middle-aged man, trans and fashion come and go sort of like
in rhythm around me.
Sometimes it moves toward me.
Sometimes it moves away from me.
But because I'm just so like, no, this is the shit I'm into.
That when it comes back, it's like, oh shit, I'm right with whatever
everybody's with.
And then when it goes away, it's like, you're weird, man.
You're what?
You?
You're stupid.
But I'm consistently expressing that thing that's just like, no, this is what,
this is as a heat mist.
This is what feels good to me.
Oh, the story of your car matters just as much as the machine itself.
Every receipt, every late night fix, rally mile, that's your car's identity.
But most of us have that history scattered everywhere.
You know, it's in your glove box.
It's on social media.
It's in a repair bill that who knows where it went.
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So is there like a point where it was negative for you?
Because I find it as a positive.
I like that about you.
But has it ever bit you in your professional or personal career?
Yes.
So as you well know, my business card says copywriter.
I come from the world of advertising, although I've been trying to escape since I got in.
And the weird thing about advertising, especially on the creative side, is the way they get
you to join the party is they say, hey, yo, there's folks out here with a big old
bag of cash and they have a business problem and they need you to solve it with creativity.
And that's advertising.
That's a lie.
They do have a big old bag of cash.
They do have business problems.
But the people with the bag of cash in their hand, they don't actually need you to solve
it with advertising or with creativity.
They need you to appear as though that's what you're doing.
That's all they need, right?
They need this.
There's gotta be a lot of dust up.
And so for a creative person who really cares about craft and art and communications and
just making rad stuff and putting it into the world, you get sucker punched by that, right?
Because you're going to put your heart into it.
And when it comes time to do the deal, like, okay, now let's make a thing.
Oh, you know, it either gets whittled down or watered or that's great.
What else you got?
And you know, you can go weeks or months like that.
But if you get wind, you start to smell around, oh, they don't actually want to make anything.
Or by the time they make something, it's just the same old noise.
And the majority of the stuff that we see in the world is that it's just noise.
That'll really wreck a person who's the whole time they've been playing like we're
all in the up and up with our putting our heart into it and being honest about it and
like actually trying to put beautiful things into the world.
Like the second that all comes crystal clear, like, no, no, no, this was all just, it was
just a game.
We're all just performing business over here.
That'll crush you.
And that's in large part when I stopped working in-house at agencies because I was so invested.
And then as a freelancer, I could just be like, okay, I'm on the project.
I'm going to give you my goods.
I'm going to give you my talent.
And then when the project's over, it's been cool.
I'm out.
There's sort of a reduced amount of personal investment.
And in fact, if anything, that's sort of when I started transitioning over to making
stuff for myself, not that it's any easier.
You don't have this big, huge production machine behind you so that you could just
focus on the part that delights us.
Would you say that advertising and the work you were doing before was lying?
Or was it just, because I always feel like when I see an ad campaign, the first thing
I do is what are they actually trying?
Because it usually comes from a point of, I feel like advertising and
copywriting in general is always coming from a point of weakness.
Like, what is our weakness and how do we say something positive about it?
What is our weakness and how do we spin it into a positive?
If you look at most of Porsche's advertising, for example, is our future is bleak.
So here's our heritage.
Yes.
So then they rewrite how amazing their heritage is, and then they kind of pull
what they actually are advertising into that and paint over it.
And I feel like that's what a lot of advertising is, is just kind of just lying.
Yes.
So here's what I'll say to that.
The best advertising comes from a period just before the business is about to go under.
Which is to say, they actually have a problem to solve and they need,
they really do need you to solve it.
And in fact, they're going to say yes to some good shit because they tried
everything they got in their bag of tricks and it hasn't worked.
So screw it.
Who knows?
And at that point in time, that's when the good creative comes along and they say yes to it.
The really honest stuff, the stuff that tickles and delights us, right?
The stuff that's beautiful.
And then, and this is the sort of the tragic part, it saves their ass.
And now they don't need good shit anymore.
Now they need, now they got to just status quo it.
And that's when the lies come out, right?
That's when the deception, that's when the milk toast, that's when the boring,
that's when the noise.
Because they no longer are actually invested in solving whatever the problem is.
If the problem was folks didn't really understand us,
folks didn't understand the benefit or, you know, there is no,
it's like, you know, classic Coke versus Pepsi, it's all parody product.
You know, it's just, we taught you to like this flavor over that flavor,
but there's no difference between them.
We're just going to maintain, and then we're going to tell you some bullshit
to attract your attention as opposed to like when we get right down to it.
And the sad part is, the vast majority of what's in our environments
is that noise, because as much as in agencies we like to flatter ourselves
that the, you know, the creative is, the reality is actually,
no, it's just presence, it's just, are you the brand that I see all the time?
I was just explaining to my kid, here we are coming into the holidays,
we're Jewish, but that gives me a really enjoyable sort of perch
to study Christmas from, explaining to her how her understanding of Santa
and what Santa wears actually has nothing to do with this character,
Noelle, or Christianity, or it's the Coca-Cola company's brand colors.
And how much advertising they did the turn of last century,
it just, they invented Santa Claus as we know it.
And then because, you know, America is, is, you know, big man on campus,
we then exported that around the world and now Coca-Cola's vision
and version of Santa is Christmas, right?
No, no birth of Jesus, no, no sort of like who is the guy on the sled
pushing through the forest to give people living in the cuts,
little delightful presence to warm their hearts and none of it.
It's consumerism in America.
Well, you talk about presence and you talk about advertising just being presence.
It's an interesting world we live in today where you can just pay for it,
whether it's good or not.
No, you can just pay for presence very, very easily.
I think it used to be a lot more difficult.
You had to choose like hope that if you put something out there,
people would see it.
Now you can physically give the money to force it in front of people's face.
It's very, very unique.
And it's never been like that in in human history
that you can pay for presence.
I disagree.
I'd say 98 percent of billboards I do my damnedest not to look at.
And then and then when a billboard is anything interesting whatsoever,
it's like it doubly attracts my attention because oh, they actually tried.
They didn't phone it in, but a billboard is public space.
Yeah, but it's also like you're you're you're advertising to like a general
population, right? You are paying for the present, sure.
But it's like, well, you're also getting you and me,
but you're also getting the 60 year old housewife that has nothing to do with us.
So it's kind of like this weird, weird market versus now the paying for
presence is you can just be like, you know, targeted, so targeted here, here, here.
Totally. That's fair.
Yeah, I think advertising is evil.
I think the thing that's so depressing to me about the whole thing
is this like on paper, it's actually
what would what would appear as like a really essential part of society, right?
As somebody with a good idea has something that's going to actually improve
your life and and here they are telling you about it.
Is it is it right? Oh, that thing's actually going to improve my life.
That's like it was like it was in the fifties.
Like if you look at car commercials back to me like four hundred
and cubic inches and a big seat and seat belts, you won't die in this thing.
And it's got air conditioning.
Yeah. Now it's everything's a cologne commercial.
You can't even understand what you're being marketed.
That the sort of the sort of the tell there that in fact, it wasn't actually.
Let me just present to you.
The good thing that we've developed is, you know, in cars, the fact that
they just put a new badge on the same vehicle and call it a different vehicle.
That's that's it. Right. That's they're giving it away.
Oh, this is this is for this type of person.
And this one is for this type of wait a second.
You didn't there's nothing new here.
On the other hand, I don't mind it, right?
Like Camaro versus Firebird.
Those are those are they live in the same universe.
But I kind of like a little variety.
Thank you for giving me a different color way in that body style, right?
Like, oh, wife theater or t-shirt, which is yes.
Yes. So, you know, again,
it's part of why since I got into advertising, I've been trying to get out
is because the reality is it is a pretty gross endeavor to try
and separate people from their money for mostly bullshit reasons
before somebody else can do the same. Right.
And that and that sucks.
And it's in frankly, it's not what I want to be doing with my days or my life.
I want to the promise was if you play the game,
you'll be able to put fun red stuff into the world.
And that's just so it's such a sliver of the game
that I've tried to do kind of this lateral move into.
I mean, I don't even know what it is that I do now how to describe it.
But just putting delightful things into the world
and thank you to the Internet, because you could just throw it out there.
And there's enough critical mass that it puts a smile on their face.
And it can help you pay the rent.
You're doing things like this. Yeah, right here.
This is a tell me about this a little bit.
What do I have in my hand right here for people that are listening and not watching?
I'm going to walk and talk. OK, let's do it.
So gosh, that's 10 years ago now.
Well, actually, no, maybe 12 or 13 years ago now, we bought a 9-11.
Won't labor you with the story.
But basically, we bought it because we kept running cars to go snowboarding.
And we needed a car to go snowboarding in.
But that ended up being the vehicle because in California,
they do a pretty good job of plowing roads.
So we didn't actually need four by four to go snowboarding.
And then we and then we started spending a lot of time in the car
doing more than just snowboarding.
Start going on adventures.
And there's this thing that happens where you just like
you kind of hang out in an environment
in what I, you know, and probably many people refer to as the office.
You hang out long enough and the dumb ideas start to come where you get steeped
in an idea, you know, you see it enough.
It becomes like these visual environmental memes.
So the one that tickled my brain was 917 knobs.
So they had the striations.
And because I come from a world of skateboarding,
every time I'd see this thing, I wouldn't see the heritage of the 917.
I'd see laminates of a deck and so probably.
Yeah, it'd be a decade ago now.
I had a kind of like a fuck it moment and I decided to make you held up yours.
This is the prototype.
It's big and goofy, I would say, oversized.
But this one, I glued it up and I brought it over to my buddy Paul's house
and he had his grandpa's lave from like the 1920s thing.
So like belts everywhere.
And just make it all up.
Oh, my God, it's like the sound of like,
yo, we should we should step back and put some safety goggles on
because this thing is going to explode.
But in fact, it did the trick and it took us.
I swear to God, it took us like five or six hours
to actually turn that knob because it was just like it was so laborious
and wasn't wasn't spinning on the RPMs and needed to.
But then it was a situation is like, oh, that's cool.
Like we did a thing and it went in the car and then as it were,
friends saw it. That's cool.
Can you make me one? Yeah. Oh.
But that, of course, that, you know, when you when you.
Synthesize worlds, right?
Like heritage of of Porsche racing and vintage car racing in general.
And skateboarding.
You're not alone, right?
There are other people who this is their van.
Vendaya McCrammett as well.
And it and it really.
It feels like personal to them, right?
It's these are not my ideas.
These are all ideas, right?
I live in the same soup that everybody else is living in.
And so you end up well, yeah, I'm the type of person who will actually.
Pull the trigger and bring the idea to life.
But then you can you could do the same thing for other people.
You differentiate between the prototype and then very different.
I think this is number 12.
This one, it ended up going in my car, living in my car for a long time.
And then before you know it, you're like, oh, shit, capitalism.
I better figure out how to make a brand.
So did you see this?
When did the light bulb go off for you that you're like, oh,
this is this doing stuff like this or creating things could be my exit
from this dishonest place that I'm quagmired in.
So I saw folks in advertising.
The if there is an exit strategy from that game,
the exit strategy was basically.
Cut your teeth in advertising, learn the game
and then go start yourself a donut shop
or go start yourself an art gallery or go go do something
that's closer to your heart.
And so it was always in the back of my mind of like, oh, here's the path.
Here's how this happens, right?
Like you learn the game in the agency walls and then you go
do something that's actually closer to your heart.
I think the difference in fact,
to reveal how much that was always the plan.
The last place I worked in-house was an agency in Montreal.
I was on the DG's original account and we moved from there back to San Francisco.
My first move once we got back to town was to create a business plan
for a treehouse building company.
That was my whole like, I'm going to figure out how in in San Francisco
get enough people with disposable wealth.
How can my life be building treehouses in the backyard of San Francisco?
And it actually, I got pretty far on it like to where I was doing.
I had I had a prototype and I had a bunch of
meetings with potential clients.
And then it was like, OK, but we still got to pay the rent.
So I had to start taking freelance gigs again.
And and then and then again, it's just sort of like
life feeds you opportunities, right?
We needed to go snowboarding. We bought the car.
I started making stuff and before you know it,
now this is the focus, this this this thing where
this is unreleased, but the magnet bowl for your tools
or for your for your free nuts is RIP these nuts on it, right?
And it's and it's like it's like a grave.
People throwing roses in there.
What what do I do? What the heck do I do?
And I and I love it, right?
Like, I get I get to put smiles on faces of people who
are are like minded and and and and I get to to, you know, dare I say,
I get to influence them a little bit.
I get to bring my values to our community.
I mean, we all love to evangelize.
Everybody does. They may say they don't, but they do.
Everybody loves to evangelize a little bit.
OK, I want to talk about this.
This is the I've got I've got one here.
I bought one and then Jeff also bought me one.
So I've got two.
So now that my wife can wear one
without making it smell like lady right here.
This is my three point pullover.
And I'm going to have Mrs.
Producer play a video that explains or shows what this is.
Go ahead, Mrs.
Mrs. Producer, whenever you are.
The three point pullover
by the robots to remove simply zipped from the wrist to the head.
Then pull over the head to reset.
Find the hem label and the zippered.
Let's see that again.
The three point pullover available now at earthrobots.com.
So.
I want to get into how this was conceived, of course,
and how it was built and the troubles and the trials and tribulations
and, you know, what it's done for you personally and emotionally, all these things.
But what was the inception for this?
Because there's always like this, you know, most things are either inspired
like the shift, I was like, oh, I love that beautiful thing.
How can I apply that beautiful thing?
And then there's this, which is was there a problem?
Like what what was the inception point for this?
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I have a terrible answer for you.
That's OK. There's no table. I don't I don't know.
I don't know what I do know is that
a lot of people have dumb ideas.
And I mean that in the most positive light, which is to say silly,
clever, whatever, I write them down and they fix it.
They don't go away, right?
So I think that the whole the question of like, where did that idea come from?
You could just as easily ask that question
about, you know, this little magnet bowl or.
I also got one right here for the the jerry can, right?
Like all of this stuff, where where did that idea come from?
I don't I can't tell you.
I can't tell you what I can tell you is that I say yes, right?
Like.
I'm not afraid to chase a scary idea.
And in fact, I get excited because
the intimidating part is the production, right?
The intimidating part is how do we not just?
How do we manifest this thing in real life?
But how do we scale it so that it's not just?
Oh, proof of concept, it works in the real world.
But how do we make it so that I'm not
the only one that gets to enjoy this?
The only one that are to put a smile on their face?
That's the scary part.
Less than that, it's just like, you know, you spend enough time in the cars.
You're going to run in here.
Yeah, like this sucks.
Wouldn't it be stupid if I'll give you a perfect example of that?
San Francisco City of bike messengers.
A lot of bike messengers, you know, you wear the messenger bag
and it's kind of like cross was like a seatbelt, right?
In fact, Chrome bags, they actually use the buckles of seat belts.
And as many folks may know, I like shooting
photos and video while driving.
Takes a little bit of juggling.
But for me, there's something the fact that you're doing it while driving
means that the camera is moving with the driver,
which helps the person watching that stuff later on feel really present in the car.
Like there's something way different between a shot that's locked down
on, you know, on some sort of a steadicam versus the one that's like
moving and being juggled with the person
trying to get down in those in those twisties at the same time.
So it occurred to me rather than having to dig in my pockets
while I'm driving, bike messengers already have across their
across their their buckle.
They have a little bit of like a little attachment pocket that they put right
there, stick their phone in, right?
Because while they're on the bike and they get like a, you know,
you got to go to this location, they don't need to be digging around
for their phone, pull it out right there.
Yeah, this is an idea I had five or six years ago.
So I bought one of these little these little attachments
where you can just slide your phone into it and I tried it on the car.
It's like, this is going to be rad while I'm driving.
As soon as I see something I want to film or we get into like
a really rad technical section right there. Boom.
Well, guess what?
It didn't work at all because the weight of the phone sitting on
the seatbelt pulled it down, right?
Versus when you're on a bike and a bike messenger bag, the thing pulls type.
It didn't work and it's fine.
I had to chase the idea.
I had to find out. I had to find it.
And in fact, in a lot of ways, I got the same
a dopamine in my brain by finding out it didn't work as finding out it did
because most of the the good time, most of the delight happened in the
wouldn't it be cool if the problem phase, the building phase, the
you know, creative design phase.
Yeah. So so in fact, I can give you, you know, as far as the pullover is concerned,
I can give you the run up and the story to how did I come up with that idea?
But it's almost the least interesting part, right?
Like the reality is everybody who loves driving and many people
who don't have had that occasion when it's just a little bit too hot
and they're trying to pull their they're like, oh, yeah, it's just I pull
my sweatshirt off all day long, not thinking about stuck and you're fucking
stuck in it and you're like, oh, my God, you're blind and you're probably
traveling, you know, like 60, 70 miles an hour and there may even be
passengers in the car that you're freaking the fuck out.
Right. Like there are so many levels to that.
Everybody's had this experience and and the only question is this is like
how do we get from doesn't that suck to wouldn't it be cool if and to be honest,
this is this is the most disappointing part to be honest.
It went as far as I want to say maybe seven years ago, eight years ago
when I first started making t-shirts, I have this sort of like monkey
on my back about legitimacy, right, because I'm just one person.
And at very least if I'm going to make something, if I want to put it
into the world, I need to be legit.
I need to feel like quality one of the things when you're making a t-shirt
that makes a t-shirt legit as opposed to just like, you know, just a one off
high quality woven label sewn into the the the neck tape, right.
That's like a mark of oh, it's for real.
It's a real thing. Yeah.
So I make these labels iron on.
Yeah, yeah, I make these woven labels and I'm super excited.
And I got a bunch of t designs sort of in the cooker and an old professor
of mine says those are dope.
I'd love to see them as a sweatshirt and it planted in my brain this idea of
like once I get this cut of this these these teas and these graphic
teas on lock, I'm going to I'm going to jump into cutting.
So and and and of course design, you know, decorating a t-shirt and cut
and so are two very different universes, but it still planted the idea in my head.
And so I sketched out what would it look like if the label was just
like this big all over print, right.
And as long as I'm doing it, let's do a quality.
It's not going to be screen printed.
Each of those, you know, stripes, those rainbow stripes from the label
is going to be a color block piece of fabric in the construction, right.
Because we're doing this. It's anything you're doing.
You want to be doing it as your as your your heart would hope it to be.
And and and then and then comes the million dollar question.
How did it end up with the zipper under the arm?
And gosh, I don't know.
It was just like all these other things where it's like, wouldn't it be funny if
and then it just sat there.
All it was was a little arrow on the illustration of that first pullover
that I made, a little arrow that just mentions,
oh, and there's a zipper under your arm so you can pull it off while you're driving.
I would like the mechanical process of this in my head a bunch of times.
Yes, I was like, I was like the other way would this be possible?
And the reason I did that is because Jesse goes, I don't want to mess up my hair.
I'm a girl. Yeah.
How would that work?
And I was like, oh, man, how would that work?
And so I was like doing mental mechanical gymnastics with zippers in my head
of how to make it work.
I couldn't think of anything.
I just couldn't. I couldn't figure it out.
The hilarious part of me being an accidental engineer.
I also couldn't figure it out.
I have no idea how you would how you would make that work.
Like what what you could do, the only reason it works
is because it's a quarter zip pullover, which means
you can make the head opening bigger.
It won't work with a hoodie, right?
It needs and the only reason it's a quarter zip pullover
is because on the weirdo who idolizes
like fashion from 1989 to 1992.
And when I'm sketching this thing up and I'm saying to myself,
oh, crap, I'm going to make some cut and so it's going to be
some cut and so that I'm into, like that I'm stoked on.
So I'm making a quarter zip pullover.
That's that it was never a oh, how am I going to pull this over my head?
It was a this is the fashion that I want to make.
And in fact, the prototype,
the proof of concept came from a pullover
that I found at the thrift store here in San Francisco.
It's San Francisco tourist wear.
Yeah. Right.
And I'm like, this is going to be the thing that I use.
Something I found on eBay, based off of another one
that I found in the thrift store here in town, so I didn't cut up my favorite.
This is going to be what I use as proof of concept.
And then a scary thing happened.
I sewed the zipper in and worked.
The thing worked and I was like, oh, no.
Now I'm going to do it works.
Yes. Yes.
Now I got to do it. Right.
I'm still thinking of this mechanical thing.
What if there was snaps like little snaps right here
so that a girl like right at this armpit section
where the thing comes up and there was like just like
and you could unsnap it for the women that didn't want to mess their hair up.
Don't answer. We don't want.
I don't want to start brainstorming.
That's that's a ridiculous thing to do on this podcast.
OK, so what was what was what did you discover that was hard
with this? Was there anything that was just like,
oh, man, that you just, you know, I love getting things wrapped up
before I go to bed or at least having a good stopping place
so you can like settle your mind, leave to tackle tomorrow.
Was there anything that just was just an open loop
that you couldn't solve?
So the funny thing and you know, unsurprising
the world of fashion is a lot like the world of advertising,
which is there are all these folks who work in various disciplines
along the way and they're all just trying to get through their day
and handle the thing that the person above them is expecting them to handle.
Um, there aren't so many folks who are like
in it because they have love for it and
just can't rest unless the thing is as good as possible.
And sadly, that's my approach, right?
Like, if I'm going to make this pullover, if I'm going to ask real green
money from people, this thing had better be not as good as I want it to be.
This thing had better be as good as it can be
because somebody's going to that's trust when you hand over that money.
They're going to hand over their trust to me and I'm going to mail them something
and I need that something on the receiving end, not just to meet their expectations,
but to like far exceed them because it it it's they've already gambled
on me by putting that money down, right?
So the the the industry of fashion, that's not what it's designed for.
So the thing, the struggle and the thing that I that I had the hardest time with
was, um, I'd work with a team through the development process, either on patterns
or on finding fabric and then some bigger fish would come along
and they would just be radio silence.
I wouldn't hear from them like what what happened?
Well, I had to learn at the hard part, hard way,
but come to find out in the world of fashion.
This is just normal.
This is this is how they get down, right?
When a bigger account or bigger project comes along,
the smaller one gets paused.
It's all good, nothing personal,
but this is how we're going to pay the rent because their margins are so thin
and then maybe in time it'll come back to you.
But if you have a project, you're like, oh, yeah,
we're going to be able to turn that around in say two months.
Um, or this part of the process will take the week and a half.
We'll get back to you, uh, uh, you know, in 14 days.
You don't hear from them.
What happened?
So, um,
realigning expectations was probably, um,
the the thing that I learned most in this whole process.
Taking a deep breath and recognizing in this whole game,
I'm the only one who cares.
I'm the only one who has a sense of like,
I need to see this thing over the finish line
because there's a whole community of people out there
who this is going to put a big old smile on their face
in a way that's put a smile on my face.
And if I don't keep pushing at this thing,
I can't, I, I literally was like,
from illustrating the idea initially seven years ago,
I worked with four separate teams.
The first three of whom, um,
ended for that exact reason
because the project is moving along
and that I just didn't matter to them.
And there I'm standing there like having invested
gang loads of cash in either development or materials.
And now I have to figure out like, A, are you all okay?
Why am I not hearing from you anymore?
And B, uh, can I come by and get my shit?
Um, I sent you guys a photograph
of a whole bunch of cotton in the back of U-Haul
with our mutual friend, Joe Hagel.
It was one of the occasions when I had to be like,
I'm sorry, I got to fire you guys
because I need to move this project forward.
And you're not giving me anything.
It's over. I got to, I don't know what's going to come next.
I got to find another team to work with.
But in the meantime, I got a whole bunch of cash invested
in cotton that I have to rescue
because I can't just, you know, take a dive on all that.
Do you think that, that kind of frustration
isn't, and that hardship is a necessary ingredient
and a good product in the end?
I don't know because what I can say
is the reason why you were able to order a couple pullovers
was not because of the struggle, though struggle was necessary.
The reason why you were able to order a couple pullovers
is because somebody in our community
saw me struggling and said,
hey, oh, you need to get with my friend, Allie,
who will take care of you.
Who will get stoked about what you're stoked about
and see you through to the finish line.
That's it. It's like with everything else.
It's just finally working with folks who can be invested
and care, and that's the difference.
And so the question is, what if I had found this team right at the gate?
Well, for starters, we would have had pullovers four years ago, right?
But at the same time, the good news is, I'm not a capitalist.
I'm not in it to sit on an empire of pullovers.
If the idea takes time and patience and dedication, so it goes.
Because at the end of the day, what really matters is, again,
making sure that when they actually hit the street,
that they are as delightful and high quality
as I think people in our community deserve,
and that they stand on their own, independent of me and my ego,
and trying to force it through to the finish line,
that just as a thing on their own, they're adding good.
So when you held that first run in your hands,
and it showed up and you open up the box or whatever it was,
what did that feel like when having the completed thing
that you knew that you could send out into the world?
You finally had that thing to set sail.
I first visited those babies down at the factory in Los Angeles
to do quality control, because, again, every single one of those
that goes out into the world has to be top shelf.
Nobody be disappointed by what they receive
when they hand over their faith.
This is in between being in North Carolina with you for Lyft,
flying back to California to do Robin's Rally.
That's the quick visitation at the factory of all the units
we produced for the first drop,
and then doing Robin's Rally and then hopping on a plane
to go do Overcrest out in Appalachia.
So I didn't get to stay with them.
They were there.
There was a couple of little tweaks on some of them
that I need doing,
but I had kind of a whirlwind of a month
where it was a lot of driving and a little bit of business.
And then I got back to California
and they were waiting for me in my living room.
And it was such a bonkers month
that I kind of just, I took a deep breath and said,
okay, they're here.
They're safe.
What do I have to do to actually release them into the wild?
Normally, being somebody from advertising,
it's communications game.
Normally my strength is making those little bits of communication.
How do I tell people the news?
How do I get the word out?
But this particular creative endeavor
has been such a crazy,
hey, it's a whole new world,
a whole new learning curve,
that by the time they actually are there
hanging out in the living room,
I just don't have the juice anymore
to release them into the world.
It's just like, oh my God, can I go take a nap now?
Yeah.
So I gave myself a little bit of a breather about a week.
Then I said, okay, baby steps.
Let's take this thing real slow.
Start with product photography.
Make them look pretty.
Present them in a way that is honest to what they actually are.
So at least folks who are in the know can say yes, right?
Folks who have tried out the prototypes,
folks who have been riding along this whole time can actually,
we can actually do the transaction and I can get them out to them.
And then we got to cast that net a little wider.
What does that look like?
Well, it's kind of a demo, right?
Because part of the design aesthetic of them,
the whole idea behind them is that this is like,
it's a little more than a sweatshirt,
it's a little less than a jacket,
which is to say it's not weird that you're kind of wearing it.
A little often, right?
This is this is part of my like, my when I go driving kit.
But if that's the case, aesthetically,
we kind of wanted to be a little simple.
This is our driver's pullover.
We allows you to take the sweatshirt off
while still being buckled into a 3.0 seat belt.
This is the proof of concept video of this graph.
Oh man, from years ago.
I'm going to pull it right off.
Look, it's like baby Joshie.
Yeah, years ago.
In the pull of the wrist,
you can pinch the sleeve under your hand
by keeping your hand on the wheel
and pull against that pinch under the zip,
creating an opening with the zipper under the arm.
Oh, that's a great question.
Hey man, I don't like...
Um, had I known it would take seven years
would I continue?
Absolutely.
Because again, I'm not I'm not here
to be sitting on a mountain of pullovers, right?
I'm here for the ride.
I'm here for the process.
There is something really difficult about
you thinking to think should be so simple, right?
Can't we just get this right?
And in fact, that you know,
that the things that I'm talking about are
does the zipper get stitched into the seam with a little fold
or does it sit on top of the seam?
No, because it gets zipped right into the fold.
Okay, cool.
Wait a second.
Why did that sample come back like that?
Okay, no sweat.
I'll put a little note on there
and we'll zip it into the fold.
Well, then the next sample comes back
and we're in the same place.
Wait a second, right?
So the development process itself is such a
its own education
that that became its own reward, right?
Learning how to push that boulder up the hill
with style and grace.
Well, I think that that belies the question then of,
okay, so it was worth it.
It's good that you did it.
Is there another like functional apparel
or would you do something different?
Not would you do it again?
Because obviously you've already done it.
It's very difficult to speak to that.
Do you want to do another project like this?
Would you?
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I would say this is all I've ever done, right?
Like, not to say that this wasn't the most
Herculean thing that I've developed so far,
and in a lot of ways it is.
But in fairness,
when I first started making graphic tees,
it was a struggle finding illustrators
to execute the stories I wanted to tell
with the flavor I wanted to tell it.
That is its own, like, learning how to do it.
And frankly, I got a roster of illustrators now
that I can go ring up when I got an idea
that needs coming into fruition.
That's no longer a challenge.
But at every stage, every aha,
you're like, well, how the heck do I figure this one out?
Right? If anything, that's part of the reward.
The reward is taking on those big challenges.
If the idea is strong, you're fed, right?
Like, keep chipping, keep pushing at it, keep pushing at it.
And as I say, if anything, there was a bit of a like,
oh, no, when the pullover, when that first prototype worked.
Oh, no.
It's inevitable.
It goes from an idea to an inevitability.
Yes, because before I tried it out,
yeah, before I tried it out,
it was just something tickling my brain.
And then once it once it worked, it's like,
oh, no, okay, here we go.
Now we got to develop it
because now it needs to needs to be in the world, right?
Like, I need to gift this to everybody else in our community.
Well, I've got another topic I want to talk about here after this,
but where can people, and I'll put the show notes,
a link in the show notes,
if someone wants to grab something from your store,
but where can they find it?
On the internet, earthtorobots.com.
There you go. Easy, easy.
In the show notes too, if you're too lazy to type,
you can just touch it with your finger.
And it'll teleport you in time and space.
Pick one of these up.
Okay, so, pardon me.
I think it's clear that we have very different world views.
Which is okay.
At least interesting discussion.
I think it's essential.
It is essential, it's true.
So I wanted to pose this question from that foundation.
From an egalitarian perspective,
and egalitarian means fairly equal,
like aiming towards equality.
Yes.
Autonomous cars seems like something that you would love.
Because it makes travel and movement
more egalitarian and accessible.
But at the same time,
I know that you are someone who loves to drive
and loves the freedom to travel and explore at will.
And these two concepts seem at odds.
And I'm just wondering how you,
because I actually,
I don't know what your opinion is on a robot car,
so maybe I shouldn't assume.
But how would you reconcile that?
How do you square that circle
being someone who,
one, accessibility for all,
but also is a bit of an individual?
Sure.
So I live in a terrible shit hole called San Francisco.
I think it's probably in competition
with Paris, France
as being one of the most disgusting places on planet Earth.
Being facetious, of course.
It is strangely gorgeous, naturally gorgeous.
And I think the folks who lived here
and have lived here for generations
have done pretty well,
making it even more beautiful.
It's an urban environment.
There's no fun to be had
driving in an urban environment.
I once had fun driving on the island of Manhattan
in a track car.
The part that was fun about it
was actually just going toe to toe
with all the cabbies.
And I think the reason why that was fun
was mostly because cabbies,
like they have a rhythm with each other
that does not involve civilians.
Or a race car.
Or a race car.
And the fact that my car was not painted yellow,
and so they did not recognize me as one of them,
but I was getting in there with them,
getting in their rhythm,
and boy, was that a lot of fun.
So urban environments, for the most part,
if you're not part of that network,
it doesn't work.
If anything, it's a pain in the ass.
People don't understand.
There's a lot of people that will harp on about,
public transportation is bullshit, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And normally, I would tend to agree,
depending on the size of the urban scale.
I was just in New York City for a matter of days.
And I could go anywhere in the city
at any time that I wanted to go
and be almost anywhere within like 20, 30 minutes.
It's fantastic.
When I lived in San Francisco,
I lived in Daly City,
per part of the time that I was there,
right next to the Cow Palace, actually.
I was like two blocks away from the Cow Palace.
I could take the BART system pretty much straight to
wherever I needed to go.
I went to the Art Institute downtown San Francisco
and I could travel around.
I needed my bicycle and I needed the BART system.
And I didn't really ride the Meany.
I don't like the bus.
The bus is just, I don't like the bus.
Not for you.
It's too slow.
It's too slow.
Like if you want to go a couple stops,
that's fine.
But if you need to travel it,
if you're going from Daly City
to downtown San Francisco on a bus, that sucks.
It surely sucks.
But I think there's like this argument
that just goes to the edges on this,
like transportation should be always
and public transportation should be never.
But I think it's far more nuanced than that.
I don't, I think a lot of America
is not built for public transportation.
I think a lot of it is very sprawling
and it's very large and it doesn't work.
I just wanted to add that note to you.
Continue.
I'm still listening.
Yeah.
I think, no, but I think you're on to something
which is to say it's not a,
transportation is not one size fits all.
It morphs depending on the needs of the environment.
I think in fact, one of the things
that you'll see in both urban and rural environments
when you roll up to a stop sign
and look over at the person next to you
is that they're on their phone,
which is to say they aren't really there as a driver.
And I think that kind of signals
is this person given their preference,
would they like to be driving right now
or would they like to be in their phone, right?
So just as a like, just laying the groundwork,
transportation is about getting from here to there.
It's about doing that with a certain level of autonomy and efficiency.
And it's about doing it in a way that you're comfortable, right?
It's while we all bemoan traffic.
So as far as systems and where they fit,
I live in a city that's now getting pretty saturated
with self-driving cars.
I go out on the block to go get a sandwich
and like no joke within a minute and a half,
I know the robot will drive by, right?
It's like that.
And now-
What do you think when you see that?
When you see that drive-by,
does it still strike you as different
or is it so normal that you don't even think about it anymore?
So I actually, not at this house,
but at our old house,
we lived on one of the blocks that they were testing.
And so I've been in an environment
looking at robots for about three years now.
At first, I just love fucking with them, right?
Like I'd throw shit into the street to see them go,
it's scary, right?
Like it just gave me so much happiness,
which is sort of a weird thing, right?
Like what is it about us as humans
that just sort of disrupting a robot?
The robot, there's no ego to the robot, right?
It doesn't care that I just interrupted its line, right?
Like it's the whole thing.
But I think there was a level of,
and it goes to your question,
there's a level of novelty
that I was responding to.
But now it's the same as a bus going by,
which is to say I have a huge fondness for the,
the, oh, called operators
who drive the buses in San Francisco.
They're like such rad stand-up people
and they're pretty hardcore
because as a bus driver,
you got to deal with a lot of shit in the city, right?
So the amount of respect I have
for those bus drivers,
I now have it for the robots
because the reality is those robots
are pretty damn predictable
and is a very aggressive driver.
That's kind of one of the things
I need out of my environment.
I need to know, like with relative certainty,
how that vehicle is going to behave.
I know how the muti buses are going to behave.
I know how the robots are going to behave.
You know who I don't know how it's going to behave?
Is the person who just recently decided
to tint all their windows all the way around?
Yeah.
Like, yo, I don't know anything about you.
I don't know what you're going to do.
And that just like,
that just gave me the jitters.
Now it sucks.
It sucks to drive
because I can't,
I can't work in rhythm with you in this environment.
I will say though.
Yeah.
I don't know, man.
I mean, I agree.
Driving with conviction is important
and no one's going to drive
with more conviction
than a freaking robot.
That is the ultimate conviction.
They're, you know,
it's yes or no all the time.
Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no.
That's what they do.
There's probably a some amount of reason
that will have to be plugged in at some point
because, you know,
you always think of the drawing
where it's like you've got the child on one rail
and then you've got 10 adults on the other.
Which level are you pulling?
Yes.
You know, eventually it's going to have to make that decision
and that will have to be programmed in.
The value of life will have to be poured.
It probably already is.
We just don't know it.
Who knows?
But I feel like in a system where
that is where we're going,
the room for Josh to drive around is 9-11
amongst that doesn't exist.
Okay, so let me push back on that idea.
There's no way regulators
are letting those two things exist
at the same time.
There's no world.
So, like in Europe,
that's already out the window.
Yeah.
But, wow, we're Cowboys though.
It's true.
And here, I will reveal to you
why I think it's going to work
and I also will reveal
what makes me most uncomfortable about it.
So, again, with the starting point
of regardless, urban or rural,
when you roll up that stoplight,
you look over and you see somebody on their phone
or even more fun,
you see them on the freeway or whatever.
I read from that this person
is not stoked to be driving right now.
They are not present in that role.
Okay, so let me assume from that then
that the majority of people
actually don't like hanging onto that wheel.
They don't like that role being the driver.
What are they getting out of
owning their own car?
It is autonomy, right?
It is efficiency.
So, it's going where you want,
when you want, how you want.
Exactly.
And here's another tell.
You roll up to the Walmart parking lot,
black, silver, gray, maroon,
black, silver, silver, black,
maroon, gray, jellybean, jellybean, jellybean, jellybean.
These aren't even people who like love their cars, right?
It's a utility object,
which is to say, right now,
we've got an idea in our head,
that's my car.
And it says something about me,
but not really.
That's how it's marketed still though.
Like when you watch cars,
it's still marketed as a
you can define yourself with this car.
This every segment car segment
is for a particular person.
And a for a particular role or whatever.
So, it's still marketed and advertises
a personality choice.
Listen, Chris, I made
what I call rocket pop,
blue, white and red pullovers.
And I made black pullovers.
I'm going to pimp the shit out
of those rocket pop pullovers, right?
Like that's the bright fly eye catching
version of the pullover,
but I'm going to move the black ones.
That's what people will say, yes.
So, I think what you're sensing there
is the thing that attracts our attention
is not actually the thing
we end up saying yes to,
the thing that actually is in our hearts.
As a society, as a society.
Collectively, what are the decisions we make?
They're buying Nissan Maximas
and Nissan is just charging them 20% interest
and that's actually the product,
not the car.
Got it.
Oh, here's another world.
Another world is where we have
all of these Robo cars,
hive mind,
they're all connected to each other.
The way they already work is by,
you know, with their LiDARs,
scanning the environment
to tell exactly what's happening,
not just in their line of sight,
but around the corner.
So they've got this
real-time map of the environment,
which is to say,
you know, we're still early days,
but the thing is developing super fast.
They will know everything
that's going on the road
at any given time,
anywhere, all the time.
Yes.
100%.
That's going to happen.
Yes.
In what world are they letting you
drive in that landscape?
Why is that allowed?
So the question is as much
why will Josh driving like an ass hat
in downtown San Francisco
not mess up the rhythm
of all the robots talking to each other?
As the question is,
in what version of Cowboy Country,
America,
do enough people look at that
and say,
no, we should definitely not let
Josh drive with the robots.
Because the reality is,
what the robots are programmed for
is to assess the real world risks
and to adjust, right?
The kicks I would get
by chucking my sweatshirt
into the street
when they would come down the way,
that's what they're programmed for,
which is to say,
they're programmed to deal with me.
And here's the part that makes me uncomfortable.
Yeah, but you're saying that
like the robots have the choice
of whether you're going to be the one
that's allowed to drive or not.
No, I'm saying the transition
isn't us collectively saying,
no more humans, only robots.
It may be that.
But I think what it's going to be is
more and more people,
it's the same like with electric cars.
We miss the sound of them.
We missed the ritual of going to the gate.
I don't know what people's excuse is.
Whatever it be at the end of the day.
Listen, we got three or four vehicles.
One of them is electric.
It is by far the lowest maintenance,
easiest to drive,
easiest to park,
easiest everything, cheapest.
I don't even see it as a car anymore.
It's so easy to take care.
Are you kidding me?
So when people start making
their purchase decisions,
this same group of people who,
yeah, they've grown up on the romance of the car,
but at the end of the day,
when they make the choice,
they choose the gray maxima, right?
Those same folks,
they're going to start making
the less expensive, easier to maintain
more reliable choice, right?
And you and I and all the rest of us,
Romantics, are going to be out there saying,
are you going to let us
be on these streets any longer?
Yeah.
They won't care.
They're going to be in their Game Boy,
sitting in the back of the robot car.
They won't care.
Totally cool.
I think most people don't care,
but I think there's this certain level of control
that regulators would just go,
dude, you unsafe.
You know, we remember the time
when everybody was dying.
This is what freaks me out.
You can't interrupt this.
Yes.
Utopia, it's literally a driving Utopia,
is what it is.
I think it's going to be realistically,
in our lifetime, we're fine.
I think we're fine.
Here's what I think is going to save us.
That urban world divide,
I already can't get my rocks off
driving in San Francisco.
I have to lead the city
to go out to the twisties, right?
So already the question is not,
am I going to drive like an asshole
in San Francisco?
I already don't, right?
I'm super, super chill within city limits.
Until we get out,
it's when the fun happens, right?
So that's not a question.
But the thing that,
and this you may be able to relate to,
the thing that does make me uncomfortable
is all these hive mind robots
that are all over town
that got their eye on me as a threat, right?
Like they just do a threat assessment
of this 9-11 shaped object
moving through San Francisco, right?
They're going to scan the car
and they're going to go
and they're going to immediately listen
to the other podcast we have
where it says Josh is ready to die.
They got me.
They got me.
And then that said, it's over.
They're going to drive you off the road,
off the bridge into the San Francisco bay.
From the surveillance perspective, right?
I don't have,
one would think,
we live in this society where it's like,
I'm not guilty because I committed the act.
I'm guilty because you caught me and proved it.
We're going to live in an environment,
a transportation environment
where you got all these little eyeballs
moving about the city,
always watching you.
You ain't going to get away with shit, right?
That's what makes me nervous.
How do you feel about that?
I hope, collectively as Americans,
I hope that we step up
and we create some firewalls.
Because on the one hand,
already statistically speaking,
the robots are way better
and way safer at driving than we are.
I mean, that's cool.
And I like that people
who don't want to be holding the wheel
don't have to be holding the wheel
without giving up their autonomy
or their sense of individuality.
I like that a lot.
But at the same time,
if we're not soft-soul
about how we legislate
and create the environments
that these hive minds exist in,
culturally, we will create a monster.
We were never going to be down with, right?
Maybe we shouldn't matter, though, dude.
Maybe you and I shouldn't matter.
Why do we matter, is it?
That's fair.
You know what I'm saying?
I do.
Maybe we're just idiots.
I do.
We love cars and we're just this fringe.
Like, who gives a shit about us?
Society can move on.
I think the answer to that question
has way less to do with us
and people who own cars
and way more to do in general
with American culture.
The question is...
Like rebel culture?
Like break the rules, punk rock.
Fuck you.
I don't give a shit.
I'm not going to tell me.
Perhaps.
Or, for that matter,
any type of individuality
that...
I think culture has to come from
the freedom to stretch out ideas.
And if we create a society
that just as a default is constrictive,
we won't make room.
There won't be fertile ground for free ideas.
Now, that said,
there's got to be some, like,
ground rules
in order to create an environment
where people are able to flourish, right?
Are able to feel safe, be safe,
and work in community,
and work to our higher goals.
I tickled something.
I'm just thinking of, like,
I go...
My brain just goes,
why does society need any new ideas?
Haven't we come up with...
Other...
I'm not talking about engineering.
Ideas and tech ideas.
I understand.
I'm talking about, like,
cultural, social, religious.
Why do we need any more...
We don't need any more ideas.
Do we?
Do we really?
So...
I'm not saying that people
shouldn't believe in what they want to believe.
I'm saying, do we need to...
Do we need to constantly try
and make progress all the time?
Can't we just go,
this is pretty good.
Can we just do this?
Realizing humans are these imperfect beings,
and we're just...
Can we just be like this?
Yes.
So says the caveman.
You were standing...
But we're, like, thousands of years
of new ideas away from caveman.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, and just consider,
you know, 100 years into the future.
Chris, 100 years into the future says,
okay, okay, now's the point
at which we press pause.
No new ideas.
We're good.
You could say that at any,
at any point in human civilization.
And I think it, you know,
becomes a self-defeating argument
because really it's a subjective question
about when...
Yeah, you would think that eventually
society would either A, become enlightened.
Yes.
Or B, crash and burn.
There's like this tipping point of...
Yes.
We're either gonna become
the enlightened species that
is almost similar to Pluribus,
the new show that's out where it's this
hive mind of people and blah, blah, blah.
Everybody's no war piece.
Everything, everything's fine.
Yada, yada, yada.
Or there's just a complete collapse
of civilization when we start over.
And we come up with all these new ideas
all over again.
I like it and I have a third possible
path forward.
Okay.
And I'm gonna change venues
because the cat is enjoying her toy.
The third possible path forward
is that there's always work to be done.
And this, I think, directly
addresses your question of
why do we always have to be trying
to make things better?
Well, because there's always work to be done.
So for example, in the 19...
I think you started in the 50s,
but it didn't actually get any traction
until the 60s.
Ralph Nader started pushing for seat belts.
Ralph, leave us alone.
Why you always gotta be pushing things
forward, right?
And as a result, we got seat belts
in every car.
And, you know, there's a lot of people
who get to live their healthy lives
because Ralph kept pushing things forward, right?
Every corner of society, we have
progress that wouldn't be there.
Women being able to own property,
let alone vote, right?
Women being whole members of our society.
In the last 100 years, though,
we've seen massive change that's been good.
I agree.
I'm not saying that change is not good.
There's been many times in human civilization
where we were horrible, toxic, just the worst.
Yes. Yes.
But is there a point where...
And I'm just talking...
I'm thinking of like this
high-flying autonomous car civilization.
And I'm thinking in my brain,
what else is like this in this civilization?
There's so many things that are going to be automated
and we're a universal basic...
Income because nobody's going to be doing tricks or whatever.
We're literally going to have robots
that'll be able to complete all the tasks that humans can do.
Yes.
It's inevitable.
Yes.
That doesn't seem great.
And maybe we should just chill.
And work on those social issues.
Maybe we can work on being better people
rather than continuing to advance.
And I sound like God.
I sound like the worst leadite in the world right now.
I know it.
I know I do.
I disagree.
I think you perhaps are the classic fish swimming in the bowl
not realizing it's water that they're swimming in.
Because it's so close and it's ever been thus
that you think this is as it should be.
But let me just suggest not to pick on any concerns.
But if these robots, if we do do a good job on them
and they do as promised, which is to say,
pick up the slack, right?
Do a lot of the work that otherwise
would be needed to be done by humans.
And then your nightmare comes true,
which is people now have to work as much or at all.
There's no frustration and struggle
for which to overcome and succeed.
Nothing's hard.
I will kick that back to you.
I think,
challenge me on this, but I think
being a race car driver is a valid profession.
I think it's admirable.
I think it's I think it's downright sexy.
And I think we should have race car drivers.
But I think you could also make a pretty good case
for why it's not a profession.
It's bullshit and we don't need them.
What if we could make a world where there were
more race car drivers?
There were more gardeners.
There were more people who made pullovers
you could take off without taking your seatbelt off.
There's an alternate timeline where we're not
It sounds like a world where everything's great
and nothing is special.
I don't want everybody.
I don't want everybody to be a race car driver.
More gardens isn't special?
I'm well, I'm sorry, race.
I don't want more pullovers like this.
I want one.
I want you to make it.
I want it to be special.
I don't want race car drivers.
I want a few that I can that are
a spectacle and it's marvelous.
And there's this breadth of difference
between that guy and me.
I want that contrast and that value of this
versus the I suck at race car driving.
I want to suck.
I want to not know how to make a three-point pullover.
I want someone else to do it so that I can marvel
at the time, effort, frustration, and success
and the result of that whole work.
I want that.
I don't want more people to be able to do that.
I want it to be hard.
And I will tell you,
you get a hard scrabble race car driver.
You get a gardener who's in touch
with the worms and the earth.
You get an ass hat who came up with some goofy idea
because we have the room in our lives
to spend our energy on that.
We have surplus in society
that the race car driver doesn't actually
have to go work in the iron mill
and instead can pursue race car driving.
I'm not telling you you have to be a race car driver too.
I'm telling you, as society creates these surpluses
in work effort, we can start developing
all of these other endeavors
that we wouldn't have the resources to chase.
Right?
I think without Roblox,
I think if it's if it doesn't demand sacrifice,
I think it becomes less valuable.
Are you telling me developing a three-point pullover
doesn't demand sacrifice?
I think it does.
But if you don't,
a lot of that sacrifice is financial
because you have to be able to provide for your family.
Totally.
Yes, I'm in some heavy debt right now.
I'm with it.
So if that sacrifice doesn't exist
and the reward,
it's almost like human beings need
the reward of what they're doing.
And I can see where this conversation is going.
You're about to make my point for me?
Yeah, I can see it.
Like I can see on the horizon that we live in a political system.
But I think human beings need to be rewarded for hardship.
I think scars are important.
I think imperfection is very important.
And I don't think giving people more time
is the answer.
This goes off the rails very, very quickly.
I have a case in point.
Me being able to step away from advertising,
even as I've had to go into debt to do it,
has created the opportunity for me to be able to come up
with absurd ideas.
It doesn't happen if I can't afford to step away
from the advertising agency, right?
So I understand what you're saying.
Humans need to struggle.
I agree.
Humans need to struggle to struggle.
We would not be satisfied
if we didn't have that in our lives, right?
We would not.
That's like a nature, man.
That's like intrigue and grass and everything.
It's that hardship makes everything stronger and better.
If it's not there, we're just going to have this milk, toast,
wet, paper towel society that crumbles and fails at any hardship.
My point being that we all feel that.
We all feel the craving to struggle and to strive.
We all feel it within ourselves.
And then we look across the way at the person who lives
in that community way over there and say,
yeah, but if you cut them a check,
they're going to be a bum and sit on the couch all day.
Wait a sec.
You're not a bum, but they are.
How does that work?
Wait a sec.
Your family is in a...
No.
If we create a community in a society that values
making big, beautiful things with your energy
as opposed to clocking in at the factory, right?
Why don't we have the robots clocking in the factory
and you can make, dare I say, the podcast.
Do you think that human beings, that everybody pines or would do that?
Do you think people, if they had the time
and they had the space in their lives,
would like...
I don't think everybody's built that way, man.
I think there's different human beings that are raised
different ways and some get the genetic lottery and some don't.
Some of the creative people are the way they are
because of the hardships they had and the way they were raised.
Yeah.
If we wipe the slate clean for everyone,
I just, I fear that the ingredients will not be there
to create beautiful things.
I just...
I hear you.
Here's the thing that gives me hope.
This is like this.
It's that line where it's like, yeah, well, we need more of this,
but like, oh, no, it can't be too easy,
but we should try to make it as easy as possible for everyone
so that we can have more of the beautiful things in life,
but oh, we can't...
What we already do with our spare resources is excellent.
We join our church and create celebration.
We join a quilting circle and create community.
We say yes to a rally and drive across the country
to go drive in circles so we can drive home.
We're already doing it with the resources we got,
and the assumption that if I don't have this nine to five
with an ass whole corporation or middle management boss
putting their thumb on me, I won't also participate
in all these other parts of my life
that are sort of closer to my heart.
The assumption that once the toil goes away,
I won't pursue my humanity.
How does that track, right?
I think we're talking about scale, right?
So you're talking about scale.
Like it doesn't have to be race car driver.
It can be guy who likes to just drive with his bros.
It's a nice little picture.
Yeah, I mean, I think that whether I like it or not,
and generally I do not,
I believe we are heading towards a society
that is very, very autonomy based.
I think we are going to need a UBI as much as I may hate that.
There needs to be some sort of universal basic income.
This is a car podcast, right?
Where we need a universal basic income
where people, because obviously it's like,
hey, I've seen the ads where when electricity came out,
everybody's like, everybody's going to die, right?
We don't know what the economy will do.
It's a very complex and verbose structure
of human beings that can often be very unpredictable.
We may, this is uncharted territory for civilization.
We maybe don't know how people will react
in this Petri dish of autonomy and AI.
We don't know.
Maybe, I don't know what jobs will be created.
I don't know what economy is going to, who knows?
I have no...
We don't know the specifics,
but we do know the behavior.
Here's a screwdriver, literal screwdriver, right?
What's it do?
It drives a screw.
It's a hammer.
Over there in a box is a drill driver.
No, that's a hammer, Joshy.
That screwdriver can be a hammer.
I'm just saying.
That's not a noise.
That's a noise.
You can even pry to it.
Anyway, continue, sorry.
What do we do?
What do we do with not this one,
but the one I plug into the wall, right?
Will we get that screw driven in?
Look at the split.
Well, what am I going to do with that extra time?
I'm going to drive a second one in.
At some point in time,
all of this mechanical efficiency
has to do something for me, right?
I built the shelf in half the time.
Can I please have that half the time back
to go write my wife some poetry, please?
I can guarantee you that is not how...
Not that doesn't work in the economy we've got,
because I can guarantee you,
if you become more efficient or I become more efficient,
I'm not working less.
I'm just going to have more of my labor extracted from me.
Oh, sounding like a peer socialist.
I like it.
I just know that's how it works.
As we've gotten more efficient over time,
that's how it's always been.
And so as it is with the robot cars,
where as we feel this change coming,
we have to legislate to create guardrails
to protect, for example, against the surveillance state,
so too as we feel these mechanical efficiencies
entering into our life,
we got to legislate so that we don't get exploited,
right?
So that we do have that time back to go...
Bless our own communities, right?
Like to actually do stuff for the neighbor
and not be like, I ain't got time.
I ain't got time.
Right?
No, you get your time back and the mechanical efficiency,
i.e. the robots, fill in the gap.
Or another way we could go is that all of that efficiency
gets translated economically into the pockets
of the folks who own the robots initially,
and we don't get our time back.
And in fact, we get ever invested
into being consumers in their endless...
Oh, here we go.
You're right, it is a car pocket.
I'm pro-robot cars.
I'm pro-robot cars.
I'm stoked.
I'm excited to toss it up with them
and then get out into the cars.
I have a dream of being 96 years old.
I've got this 911 over there and it's banned.
And all of the autonomous cars are driving around
in Minneapolis and I've got cancer.
I'm going to die.
Mad Max.
Let's go.
I'm taking that car out.
I'm going to just rip down like Hennepin Avenue
or Main Street.
We're up Main Street, any town.
And I'm going to tear it off.
See how many of those robots you can pit.
Yeah, right?
Just get out of the way.
Binky Bunky.
Imagine the guy that has a dump truck
sitting in the back of his field
that's just like, fuck this,
that he puts a snow pile on his dump truck
and just plows all those autonomous cars off the road.
Yeah.
Interesting times ahead.
Brave new world.
Interesting time.
Thank you for coming on and talking to me, man.
Everybody go to earththorrobots.com.
Check out this guy's cool merch.
I have great respect for you, Joshy.
I'm really impressed by what you accomplished.
I sense how difficult this was.
It's a labor of love.
Yeah.
It is.
And good on you, man.
We'll see you around.
We'll see you next time.
See you, guys.
All right.
Take care.
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