Kung Fu Robots Are Here and We Should Be Worried | AI Jobs, OpenClaw, and a $16M Pokemon Card

Summary

Diggnation (Rebooted) – Episode Summary

Episode: "Kung Fu Robots Are Here and We Should Be Worried | AI Jobs, OpenClaw, and a $16M Pokemon Card"

Hosts: Kevin Rose & Alex Albrecht
Date: February 18, 2026

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Overview

After a 15-year hiatus, Diggnation returns with its signature blend of tech news, quirky internet finds, and offbeat banter. In this episode, Kevin, Alex, and the returning Justin cover the latest on open-source AI advancements, jaw-dropping robot demos from China, ongoing debates about AI's role in daily life, and wild stories from the world of collectibles—including a record-smashing Pokémon card sale. Expect laughter, nostalgia, and thoughtful commentary as they surf the latest internet currents from a geek perspective.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Catching Up & The Year of Health

• Banters about age, dry January, and travel
  • The crew amusingly reflects on aging, joking about using animal lifespans ("I'm only 34 in tortoise years!" – Kevin, [08:09]), and recent bouts with (and failures at) dry January.
  • Justin recaps a wild UK house party trip, and the group discusses the new health goals that come with turning "Galapagos tortoise age."
• Nostalgic humor about childhood, flying lessons, and pranks
  • There's a playful digression on flying, pilot’s licenses, and dealing with jet lagged travel.

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2. OpenAI Hires Peter Steinberger (OpenClaw)

• [14:11] Kevin breaks major tech news:
  • Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, has joined OpenAI. OpenClaw is an open-source orchestrator for multi-agent AI workflows.
  • "They always thought it was, like, one model to rule them all, and now they’re realizing it’s a little more nuanced… it’s all about these little sub agents working together." – Kevin Rose [14:24]
• OpenClaw explained & practical uses:
  • The panel discusses how OpenClaw acts as an orchestrator for “smaller, individual questions”—letting users delegate complex, ongoing tasks to AI agents (e.g., personal briefings, scheduling, smart integration with services like calendars and messaging).
  • Mal (guest/producer) reveals using OpenClaw for "connect calls" that handle call menu trees, API integrations, and make life meaningfully more frictionless ([19:25]).
  • Notably: “It’s just like this extra brain that is very personalized to you.” – Mal [19:13]

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3. The Great AI Debate – Power, Risk, and User Sentiment

• Nuances of AI criticism and acceptance
  • The hosts note users are not universally anti-AI; many just want clear ethical boundaries.
    "Medical field? Awesome. …But posing as humans and taking art—that’s not cool." – Alex [15:30]
• Threat of losing authenticity and ‘wabi sabi’:
  • Kevin and Alex muse on how AI, especially image editing, risks scrubbing the accidental, authentic quirks that make memories special.
    "'Wabi sabi.' …the little imperfections that make life so unique and so beautiful." – Alex [17:01]
• AI orchestration is dissolving walled gardens:
  • With agent-based AIs, integration is shifting rapidly—even if a service has no official APIs, AI can interact via browser-based automations ([24:08]).
• Litmus test for AI utility:
  • Justin: “Can I ask the AI to get me a table at a restaurant through OpenTable?” [21:09]
  • Kevin: “You can do that right now… just go to agent mode.” [21:35]

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4. Kung Fu Robots at the Spring Festival – Should We Be Worried?

• [24:59] Robot Martial Arts Showcases
  • The group reacts to footage of Chinese robots performing Kung Fu. They question why robots are being taught martial arts at all, referencing dystopian sci-fi undertones.
  • "Of all the things we could train robots to do, why are we training them to do kung fu?" – Justin [25:48]
• Philosophical musings and jokes:
  • “If we ever got into a war with China, they would just send those.” – Justin [27:35]
  • Comedic sidebar: Would you let a robot give you a massage? Alex confesses he’d prefer robot massages due to less social awkwardness ([29:18]).

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5. AI Fails at 96% of Jobs — Or Does It?

• [39:24] Discussing a new study:
  • A “wide-reaching” study pitted AI against humans for paid work; humans did better at 96% of jobs.
  • The hosts argue the real concern is not current AI shortcomings, but rapid acceleration: “What’s more disturbing… we’ve already taken up like 4% market share of all human work” – Kevin [40:21]
• Imminent paradigm shift:
  • Apps as glue for storing/processing data will become obsolete; “Your fitness apps don’t need to exist” when personalized agents can do it all, automatically, better ([40:41], [44:03]).

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6. Apple Event Anticipation Fatigue

• [47:14] Apple sends out invites for March event:
  • Rumors of an M5 MacBook Pro, entry-level iPad Air, and iPhone 17e.
  • The group reflects on Apple’s waning wow-factor. "Have not been excited for an Apple announcement… since the Vision Pro, which by the way, I was excited about until five minutes afterwards." – Justin [48:41]
• Contrast with AI launches:
  • "The Nvidia events and the OpenAI events… are way more interesting to me now than any Apple event." – Kevin [51:14]

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7. Collectibles Corner – Pokémon Card Sells for $16.4M

• [60:28] Logan Paul buys $16.4M Pokémon card
  • Used as a springboard for reflections on collecting, scarcity, and the next wave of valuable collectibles (Disney’s Lorcana game cards).
  • Justin shares his own brush with collecting Lorcana—predicting it could become the “next Pokémon” given Disney’s backing and special park-exclusive drops ([63:02]).
• Nostalgia & loss:
  • Kevin laments losing his comics and rookie cards in a fire, noting how such tales underline the true value of scarcity ([67:09]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Aging with Attitude:
  • "I'm only 34 in tortoise years!" – Kevin Rose [08:09]
• AI Ethics
  • "Medical field, awesome… Posing as humans, that’s not cool." – Alex Albrecht [15:30]
• AI-Enhanced Life
  • "It’s just like this extra brain that is very personalized to you." – Mal [19:13]
• Robot Kung Fu Anxiety
  • “Why are we training them to do kung fu?” – Justin [25:48]
  • "If we ever got into a war with China, they would just send those." – Justin [27:35]
• AI’s Rapid Progress
  • “We’ve already taken up like 4% market share of all human work.” – Kevin Rose [40:21]
• Apple Fatigue
  • "... it’s a MacBook, it’s a little faster. Okay." – Justin [48:41]
• Collectibles & Long Game
  • "27 years from now, something right now is hitting, and they're gonna be worth millions of dollars." – Kevin Rose [64:12]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |----------|------------------------------------------------| | 00:18 | Show kicks off – banter, travel stories, aging | | 14:11 | Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI (OpenClaw) | | 18:36 | OpenClaw in depth & real-world AI agents | | 24:59 | Kung Fu robots and robot-human martial arts | | 39:24 | AI Fails at 96% of Jobs discussion | | 47:14 | Apple announcement fatigue | | 60:28 | $16.4M Pokémon card / collectibles segment | | 66:09 | Physical media, comic book scarcity |

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Tone & Style

Classic Diggnation—irreverent, sharp, filled with in-jokes, geek asides, and sudden swings from deep insight to absurdity. The humor is self-deprecating, the camaraderie is obvious, and there’s genuine enthusiasm (sometimes mixed with worry) for the accelerating tech landscape.

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Final Thoughts

This episode hits all the Diggnation sweet spots: tech news explained with real-world flavor, hilarious tangents about pop culture, and a skeptical yet optimistic approach to the future. AI is everywhere—from agents booking your appointments to robots practicing kung fu—and as always, Kevin, Alex, and friends are there to make sense (and fun) of it all.

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[Edited to remove all advertisements, outro chatter, and non-content filler.]

Transcript

[Alex Albrecht]

Kirkland signature. It'll do me right.

[Kevin Rose]

We need a new sponsor. Honest to God, it felt like a Costco read.

[Justin]

Oh, my God.

[Kevin Rose]

Straight up, unprompted Costco.

[Alex Albrecht]

Where affordability meets quality.

[Justin]

Oh, my God.

[Kevin Rose]

This is. Dude, we don't get Costco.

[Justin]

This is Costco.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Kirkland, we're fishing.

[Alex Albrecht]

Welcome to Dig Nation.

[Justin]

Also potentially hazardous to your health. All right, moving on. Why do you have flies in your freaking house?

[Kevin Rose]

I noticed this earlier.

[Justin]

California. And I have shrimp. You put zombie.

[Alex Albrecht]

You put eerie in the title and.

[Kevin Rose]

I don't want to do it. Dignation.com friends, family, colleagues, past associates, ex girlfriends, and everyone there watching. I just wanted to say. I said that for you. Ex girlfriends mainly.

[Justin]

I was there.

[Kevin Rose]

I wanted to say happy dignation episode number 27. I'm Kevin Rose, your friendly neighborhood host.

[Justin]

And I'm Alex Albrecht. Clearly more prepared for the beginning of.

[Alex Albrecht]

The show than Kevin is.

[Justin]

By the way, Kevin, I just love. I don't know if any of our ex girlfriends actually watch the show. Actually, that would be hysterical. If you are one of our ex girlfriends, feel free to email in at dignation. Ignation.

[Kevin Rose]

No, do not email me.

[Justin]

I would be interested. I could have, like, you know, a.

[Kevin Rose]

Child that you don't know about.

[Justin]

Kate Cohen, from elementary school.

[Kevin Rose]

Interesting. Was that really a nice girlfriend I had?

[Justin]

Girlfriend Strong.

[Kevin Rose]

Why'd you break up?

[Justin]

I had a crush. I don't think we ever, like, officially dated. We were fucking whatever. 7.

[Kevin Rose]

Did you ever play spin the bottle?

[Justin]

You know, that's a really interesting question.

[Alex Albrecht]

You never did?

[Justin]

No, no, no. I don't know that I never did. I don't think I did.

[Kevin Rose]

Let's go over Justin. He was on his phone.

[Justin]

I was just.

[Alex Albrecht]

What, Spin?

[Justin]

No, he's Mike.

[Alex Albrecht]

I was just looking up what sp in the bottle was.

[Kevin Rose]

You know what it is.

[Alex Albrecht]

As a good Christian boy, I wasn't sure what that was.

[Justin]

Hard pass. Enjoy your apple juice, Christian boy.

[Alex Albrecht]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Justin]

Oh, my God. Speaking of apple juice.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, yes.

[Justin]

We are back. It is official. It's been a while. I feel like you were traveling. I was traveling. I just got. Where did you. You came back from Scottsdale, Idaho or something? Idaho.

[Kevin Rose]

I'm just kidding. I was in Scottsdale.

[Justin]

I came back from. I was in Manchester. And then Scotland. Edinburgh.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, how was it?

[Justin]

Amazing.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, man. Old Town. Edgar is so beautiful.

[Justin]

I've never been to Scotland before.

[Mal]

Really?

[Justin]

Oh, my God.

[Kevin Rose]

You say the train up there.

[Justin]

Cold. Took a train from Manchester.

[Kevin Rose]

Isn't it awesome?

[Justin]

Gorgeous. But Jesus, we were Ill prepared for the.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, but it's kind of cool when it's cold. Did you go into some little pubs and get a little bit drinky drinks?

[Justin]

Oh, God, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I did dry January, as you guys know.

[Kevin Rose]

Did you make it?

[Justin]

I made it to January 31st, first in Manchester, England.

[Kevin Rose]

Wait, you flew out there sober?

[Justin]

Yeah, I fly, I fly. I mean, I had a Xanax. I don't know if it's sober, but so ish.

[Kevin Rose]

But I. Oh, the claustrophobia gets you?

[Justin]

It does a little. A little? Actually not as bad on planes. I don't know why. Even small planes. Like when I would fly with people in like really small planes.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, interesting.

[Justin]

None of that.

[Kevin Rose]

So when you were getting your pilot's license, you ever didn't worry about like.

[Justin]

Having a panic attack? No. Wow. Never did. Crazy. I think it's cause I can like see outside, you know, and I'm in control of the thing. So it's not like, you know, the other thing that I never did, I never had to pee. I always thought about that I'd be up there flying, you know, for a couple hours and I was like, man, if I had to pee, that would suck.

[Kevin Rose]

Do they give you little things in case you have to. They must.

[Justin]

No, no, no. You're not gonna just take a leak in a Cessna.

[Kevin Rose]

What if you have to go?

[Justin]

Your job would just land. I would find the closest airport. Land, pull over, pee.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, exactly.

[Justin]

I mean, open feel field would be all right, but. Yeah, no, I had a really. I had a really good time in the uk. Oh. But back to the dry January. It was our friend's daughter's 18th birthday on that Saturday night, the 31st. I mean, her birthday was Wednesday, which was Heather's birthday. They share the same birthday. That's why we went out there to surprise her.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, nice.

[Justin]

But so it was like a crazy, awesome UK house party. And Heather and I both just got really. Because we were also like the LA couple that flew in to surprise her. So like all the people were like, you guys are from la. This is crazy. Heather said like came around because it was like, we're hanging out, we're having one just, you know, cool ass house party. And you know.

[Kevin Rose]

Were you jet lag too?

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

See that, that probably added to it.

[Justin]

We. So how up is this? Our flight got canceled the day before we flew. Oh, shit. Yeah. So we had to reroute everything and we spent. I spent ten and a half hours in the Frankfurt area.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh my God.

[Justin]

Ten and a Half hours. That's insane. I don't even know what I did. Thankfully, you told me about the Claude code. I was working for, like, most of it, but, like, that's too long.

[Kevin Rose]

Fucking Justin. You were on vacation, too.

[Alex Albrecht]

I was. I was. Although yours sounds pretty epic. And I do have to acknowledge the fact that you were less than 24 hours away from hitting a dry January.

[Justin]

Yes.

[Alex Albrecht]

And you just decided to spike it down.

[Justin]

I did.

[Alex Albrecht]

And just say time. You do not own me. That's kind of a power move in a really powerful way.

[Justin]

I knew in my heart that I had made it.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Justin]

And that's all I needed.

[Kevin Rose]

You knew that there was one time zone somewhere.

[Justin]

It was.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's what I was thinking.

[Kevin Rose]

It's kind of like when you're in.

[Alex Albrecht]

A different zip code and you can date someone else. Right? It's like that with the drinking. If you're flying and it's international, and I know this is your mo.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

That doesn't fly.

[Justin]

It's not fly.

[Kevin Rose]

Well, it was flying.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, you were flying.

[Kevin Rose]

You were flying.

[Justin]

You were flying.

[Alex Albrecht]

If you're flying, then it's air rules.

[Kevin Rose]

It's.

[Justin]

Flying is fine.

[Alex Albrecht]

Out at sea.

[Kevin Rose]

International waters.

[Alex Albrecht]

International waters. You're in international airspace. It is the next day somewhere.

[Kevin Rose]

I thought about that. Like, there are certain things that you can do in international waters.

[Justin]

Like, most things.

[Kevin Rose]

No, but, like, there's. There's, like. Piracy isn't illegal.

[Justin]

Piracy isn't illegal.

[Kevin Rose]

Like, if you download like. Like pirated stuff, like files.

[Alex Albrecht]

You're not talking about.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not, like, trying to take.

[Alex Albrecht]

I'm not talking about. Can I download a movie?

[Kevin Rose]

No, no, no, no. I was talking about taking over other ships and vessels.

[Justin]

That's completely legal as long as you're in international waters.

[Alex Albrecht]

The sea tends to frown upon that.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, that's true. That's true.

[Justin]

But you can drink as much grog as you'd like.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly.

[Justin]

I'll take a little extra. Speaking of which. Oh, man.

[Mal]

Good.

[Kevin Rose]

This.

[Mal]

Oh, yeah.

[Justin]

You finally got your wine. Hooch.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay.

[Justin]

It's been a while since you.

[Kevin Rose]

Well, you know, it's almost my birthday.

[Justin]

I know. Almost. Happy birthday to you, sir.

[Kevin Rose]

And by the next Ignatian, I will be a year older, still in my 40s. And this is the year of health for me. I'm going.

[Justin]

I love that you say that. This is the year.

[Kevin Rose]

Once I turn. I'm not.

[Justin]

49 is the year of health.

[Kevin Rose]

I didn't say I was turning 49. You did.

[Justin]

Some. Some number.

[Kevin Rose]

It Depends on how you do the math.

[Justin]

Okay. From the day you were born.

[Kevin Rose]

Listen.

[Justin]

Oh, that kind of different type.

[Kevin Rose]

There's Chinese years. Yeah, there's different types of years.

[Justin]

Do you know what you are?

[Kevin Rose]

You're dog years wise.

[Justin]

Are you a dog? You're a year.

[Kevin Rose]

The dog?

[Justin]

No. The cat?

[Kevin Rose]

No.

[Justin]

What's. What's the Chinese?

[Kevin Rose]

No, I, I actually it's a good question.

[Justin]

Are you 77?

[Kevin Rose]

Hold on, let me ask. ChatGPT. No, but there probably is a calendar we could go by. You could literally to be younger. Do you know what I'm saying?

[Justin]

Of course.

[Kevin Rose]

Do you guys know which one I'm talking about?

[Justin]

Leaf year calendar, where you get one year older every four years.

[Kevin Rose]

What are like those. Maybe turtle years. What are the things? There's certain animals that live really long. You know what I'm talking about?

[Justin]

I mean, turtles.

[Alex Albrecht]

The gooey.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly.

[Justin]

The gooey duck.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Oh, the gooey duck. The eatable thing.

[Kevin Rose]

Well, I'm about to turn 49. I have.

[Justin]

They're gooey.

[Kevin Rose]

Is there any calendar in which I could judge my age that would make me seem younger? Like turtle years? Julian calendar, maybe?

[Alex Albrecht]

Absolutely.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay, let's see where ChatGPT5 2 says. Short answer is yes.

[Justin]

Ah.

[Kevin Rose]

If you're willing to switch to a little refill.

[Justin]

Giant turtle years. You were right.

[Kevin Rose]

Holy shit. There it is. Okay, so I'm only 34 in tortoise years.

[Justin]

Amazing.

[Kevin Rose]

Look at that. I just came up with some new shit. The Galacopos Giant turtle.

[Justin]

Galapagos.

[Mal]

I can't even.

[Kevin Rose]

We started having mascot before the show started. I'm by the way.

[Justin]

Great idea.

[Kevin Rose]

It was a great idea. But I'm 34, so.

[Justin]

You're 34. Okay, but. So 34 Galapagos giant tortoise is going to be the year.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Justin]

Okay. Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

That's where we're going with this.

[Justin]

Yeah. Is it all like shark fin soup or what's the.

[Kevin Rose]

Here's like the legit rhino horn. When I turn 30s. Six in tortoise years.

[Justin]

Whatever that is.

[Kevin Rose]

In 50.

[Justin]

The next one.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. I'm going to be ripped.

[Justin]

Oh, like that's the challenge.

[Kevin Rose]

Healthy. Just like, just because I know you work out a lot.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

You're putting a hoodie on because you don't want to show. Well, what you got?

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, this one's. I'm back from vacation, so I'm feeling a little soft. I feel a little self conscious.

[Kevin Rose]

Did you do push ups before you came up here?

[Alex Albrecht]

Absolutely not. I feel like when I fall off, I got to fall off hard.

[Justin]

I got that.

[Alex Albrecht]

You know, and so I got to get back in it this week. But I won't be wearing a hoodie anymore. The next show you see me, I'll be topless.

[Justin]

Amazing. Yeah, that's going to be so great. So now, Kevin, I don't know if.

[Kevin Rose]

That'S going to help.

[Justin]

How are you going to hurt ratings? So did you did. Does this mean. Because when I hear shredded.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Justin]

I hear not drinking.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes, I'm going.

[Justin]

So are you planning on doing, like a year of not drinking?

[Kevin Rose]

I've got a new.

[Justin]

Because we got to get some stuff.

[Kevin Rose]

No, no, no, no, no. I've got a new.

[Justin]

I hear the rain sounds beautiful.

[Kevin Rose]

There's a little rain there coming down shop. I can't even take two drinks now. I'm like a rookie because I took so many months off.

[Justin]

Okay, but you're back. You're back.

[Kevin Rose]

My point is that what I want is with drinking it for it to be a special occasion. So I have a friend's birthday in Japan in March. I'm going to have a couple of Japanese cocktails out there. So they're both ish.

[Justin]

Domo arigato.

[Kevin Rose]

I mean, there may be a few there, but I want it to be those very special moments and then long stretches of kind of like not drinking.

[Justin]

So our friend Ben, I chatted with him a week ago or so.

[Kevin Rose]

How's he doing?

[Justin]

He's doing great. And I was asking him about his relationship with booze. Cause he took some time off to do like a whole big cleanse thing, like a reset of all of his stuff. It was a whole big thing, like took coffee out, sugar out, blah, blah, blah. And so I was like, are you back to doing booze? And he said his new concept, which I was like, oh, my God, that speaks so much to me, which is if booze would increase my enjoyment of an experience, then I'll have it. But if it's just like sitting at home watching tv, you know, if I'm out to dinner with friends, having a glass of wine would boost my enjoyment of that experience. Going to a party or a friend's birthday party, traveling, you know, it would boost it. So he's like. So that's where I'm like, I would experience those things, right? To me, my problem is you like to drink when you watch TV at home, watching tv. Booze does increase the enjoyment of that experience.

[Alex Albrecht]

I was gonna say, I don't know what that metric works. I just don't think it scales.

[Justin]

I know, I know.

[Kevin Rose]

I Mean, do you guys really get, like, TV's death?

[Alex Albrecht]

I don't drink. I will say that that's good. If I'm alone, I don't. Only because by that metric, it doesn't help me enjoy a movie. More like if I'm just sitting there. But if I'm home and Hannah's making dinner and she's got a glass of wine, I'm just. Like, a glass of wine would make this.

[Kevin Rose]

Ok. Here's a question. How many times does your significant others pull you into the drink farm?

[Justin]

Me, Big time. I was supposed to do Dry January with Heather, and she was just like, nope, can't do it. I'm not interested. And so it's like. But it's also okay because I was able to just be like, dry January was fine by myself. But it's real. Heather and I are real, not enablers. Because that word has some negative connotations.

[Kevin Rose]

But it doesn't have negative connotations.

[Justin]

All it takes one person to be like, you know, I could use. Oh, yeah, let's do it.

[Kevin Rose]

I'm pooping a lot.

[Justin]

It's fucking. Because I'm drinking in the middle of the day. What do you expect, Kevin?

[Kevin Rose]

You're finally catching up.

[Justin]

You didn't even drink. No, not yet.

[Kevin Rose]

Take mine.

[Justin]

I know, because I'm gonna drink it when we do the sponsors later.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay.

[Justin]

What? So wait, what are you doing for your birthday then? Do you know?

[Kevin Rose]

For this year?

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, I'm going to meditation retreat.

[Justin]

All right. Blowing out of your ass.

[Kevin Rose]

No, I'm gonna be like, I'm starting clean.

[Justin]

I'm starting. Oh, I see. Right. Because this is the year.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Justin]

This all makes sense.

[Kevin Rose]

I mean, I'm flying there the day of my birthday, so.

[Justin]

So you're gonna have to do.

[Kevin Rose]

I'm gonna horse. I might. Might have a couple.

[Justin]

Have you just tried, like, a Valium or. Not Valium, a Xanax.

[Kevin Rose]

I've tried both those things. They do help with the flights.

[Justin]

Yeah, that's what it means. Like, in lieu of the drinks. Yeah. Because I have another friend that does that. She, like, gets fucking. She's like, I just got to get blotto because I hate flying so much.

[Kevin Rose]

I mean. Yeah, I wish I worked better. Like, they kind of, like, make you a little bit, like, whatever. But, like, when you're drinking, like. Yeah, it's like, win, win. Like both your drinking and you're. You don't care about flying.

[Justin]

I mean, you're not wrong about that.

[Kevin Rose]

I totally.

[Justin]

I appreciate where you're coming from that.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. So anyway, what's a collectibles thing? It says note collectibles.

[Justin]

Because you had said. We had said something about a collectible thing. Some story we were looking at.

[Alex Albrecht]

But that's later. We're gonna talk about that later.

[Justin]

No, I know, but then you were like, do you. Are you into collect? Do you have anything that you collect? And I started talking and you were like, oh, I wanna talk about this on the show.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, yeah, I've got a show.

[Justin]

Oh, you have a show. Ah, I didn't know you have a show.

[Kevin Rose]

It's called Dignity.

[Justin]

I have a show. It's called dignation. I should join it. Let's get.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay. You can see where we're going this episode. All right. First episode. First story of the day. How are we on the first story? Good God. Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI. This is the creator of OpenClaw.

[Justin]

He joined OpenAI.

[Kevin Rose]

You didn't know that?

[Justin]

It's crazy.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Justin]

So, wait, does that mean OpenAI? Wait, it's an open source?

[Kevin Rose]

It's open source.

[Justin]

So it's still open source?

[Mal]

Yes.

[Justin]

Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

They wanted his mind to work on this, and they're going to give him resources. And apparently he said every single vc, every single, like, Facebook, obviously, Zuck. Meta. Everyone was trying to get him to bring this kind of thinking to. Because AI is kind of searching for. They always thought it was, like, one model to rule them all, and now they're realizing it's actually a little bit more nuanced than that. It's all about these, like, little sub agents working together and the orchestration of it all. And he was the first with openclaw to really kind of kick off this whole new world.

[Justin]

So for those that don't know, do you want to just give a quick little.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, Jesus.

[Mal]

Okay.

[Justin]

Primer of what Open Claw is.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. So the best way to describe it is that if you haven't played with this, I will say. And I said this. It's funny. I look back on. It's weird because he did a podcast recently where this founder of OpenClaw said, the number one thing that you can be doing right now in AI is tinkering. And I had said that probably a year and a half ago on a video. And because I believe, like, you're betting against the future if you're betting against the AI. And I know that, at least on Digg, we have a lot of anti AI people that are, you know, and.

[Alex Albrecht]

Rightfully so, I think it's a little more nuanced. I don't think it's always that people are completely anti. I think they have very specific borders of what it can be helpful. Like, I even saw a post today about that. Somebody say, hey, medical field, awesome. Let's. Let's use it. Figuring out patterns for how to cure disease. That sounds amazing. Posing as humans and trying to do that. That's not cool. Taking art and inspiration and removing the people from the creation of it. Like, so I think it's a little more nuanced than just they're opposed to. I think they have very specific boundaries of where they want to see it occur.

[Kevin Rose]

And it's different for everybody. Right. Like, there are certain things that I've talked about on this show where, you know, we've talked about the kind of the magic eraser feature that Android has where you can erase, like, artifacts in the background. And for me, I'm like, when you look back on that photo 20 years from now, there's no way you're gonna be like, I'm so glad I removed that weird little thing. Because it's the little intimate details that bring that make this so interesting. Like some of my childhood photos. I remember the first little, tiny, miniature girlfriend that I had.

[Justin]

Tiny, miniature girlfriend.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. This is a really unique experience.

[Justin]

We were balding Scotland.

[Kevin Rose]

We were balding kindergarten.

[Justin]

Oh, so a tiny little one.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

It's like I was holding hands with her and I can put this. I can find this photo for you, man. Send it over. But, like, one of the things that I was always so curious about is, like, looking in the background. I was like, oh, what were the toys that were back there? What was the furniture and decor?

[Justin]

Like a creepy guy looking through the window.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

I believe we call that wabi sabi.

[Kevin Rose]

Wabi sabi. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

It's the little imperfections that make life so unique and so beautiful.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly. And so I worry that we lose a lot of that with AI. But anyway, long story short.

[Justin]

Okay, so the guy.

[Kevin Rose]

What is open claw? What does it do? It is essentially an application that says, okay, instead of creating and treating AI like it's one big prompt, or you can just say, hey, give me the best recipe for this. It's more like an orchestrator of smaller little individual questions that you can give it tasks that are long running. So you can say, hey, my buddy has it. Where? Well, think of it this way. It can extend when you install on a Mac Minion. You give it kind of an isolated environment. You can say, I want to give it privileges over all different types of things in my Life, my calendar, my email, if you're brave enough, my text messaging. Or you can create its own individual text messaging account. You can have it create podcasts for you. You can have it like look at news articles and find stuff that you might be really into. And so what my buddy does is he has it so that it calls him like on his drive, like in the morning, he picks it up and it's like, hey, here's your like briefing for the day. I like look through emails, there are three things I found and blah blah blah. And you might be interested in these news stories and because you start to kind of build a memory with it and it learns what you wanted to do. But the point being is that it's extendable in any way that you want. And I think Mal, you're the one that's probably uses most out of all of us here. How are you using it? What have you found it useful for?

[Mal]

Exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, it just becomes this extra layer of extra personalized AI. I use it a lot to deploy multiple agents to do things that are interconnected with APIs like Todoist and my Google Calendar. And I keep Docusaurus accounts going and it's just, it's just helping me with little day to day stuff. It's not, I don't have it connected to banking, I don't have it connected to my email directly. It's not true. I do, but I don't.

[Justin]

I was like, that's why I got that weird email from you talking about it to Bananas.

[Mal]

It's just like this extra brain that is very personalized to you.

[Kevin Rose]

What's the coolest thing that you've had it do for you? Like what is the one thing where you're like damn, that blew my mind.

[Mal]

Connect calls. So I connected it to Twilio and I have it connected to Telegram and Discord. But if I'm on the run, I'll say, hey, what's the find? So and so company. Connect the call. You could theoretically have AI interact with their AI and then once there's a connection made, it'll connect the call to me. So I'm not like hunting for numbers on the run.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, so you don't have to wait, wait, explain that to me. So you don't have to wait for.

[Mal]

Yeah, so as soon as a call is connected to whatever, like if I'm going to Target, I'm looking for stock on something, it'll navigate the menus for me and once the call is connected, it calls My phone and then connects me to an actual agent.

[Justin]

Oh, so you don't have to sit on. Wait, wait. I mean that in and of itself is amazing to be like, hey, call BMW. I want to check my. If I need my brakes looked at fluffed. Whatever you do with brakes on a BMW.

[Alex Albrecht]

But I mean it's the stuff that we've talked about before where it's like at the end of the day a lot of this AI stuff can be included. Incredible technology. But it's the user facing side of the house that I think needs a lot of innovation on that. So it's like the way people instrument a lot of these things is like you could just text your agent like through your traditional text messaging and so you can assign tasks and it can understand these things, but it could troubleshoot while you're there. So it's just like firing up your messages app, you know, or Discord or WhatsApp and just talking to it and just saying like, hey, I'm here, I've been thinking about this. Can you, can you let me know, blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, okay, good looking. And then it's giving you updates in real time on that. It's like that ability to interface so quickly and so easily I think feels a little more easy for a lot of people to grok. Now the setup is kind of its own thing, but I think that that is kind of what transforms the usability layer.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I think. Sorry.

[Justin]

Well, I was just going to say one of the things that I sort of is like a litmus test that I'm kind of like sitting with is can I ask the AI to get me a table at a restaurant through OpenTable?

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, 100%.

[Justin]

And that like to me, I'm always like that. To me is when the process is going to be correct. Because like I feel like by the.

[Kevin Rose]

Way, you can do that right now.

[Alex Albrecht]

Dude.

[Justin]

No, I know, but that's what I mean is like we're there, but it also takes setup. Right? Like I can't just ask ChatGPT to do that.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes you can.

[Justin]

What?

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, you can go to agent mode and turn on. It'll go and browse on your behalf and go and do all that.

[Alex Albrecht]

But again there is a spin up to get to get some of that all working. It's kind of that way with a lot of these companies. Like it's like again it's that whole. It's not one model or one app to rule it all. Yeah, there's a leak back there. So we got a pocket that's collected.

[Justin]

No, no, no, that's good. I just wanted to make sure.

[Alex Albrecht]

We wanted some grit.

[Justin]

Well, first off, I feel like one of the things when it rains in Southern California is it's basically the first time anybody checks in like seven years whether they have a leak in their roof.

[Kevin Rose]

Right, exactly.

[Justin]

I have had so many.

[Kevin Rose]

The number of 911 calls.

[Justin]

Yeah, I have a leak. We did periodically we had a skylight fall through, like one of those, like, you know, those little, like, they're almost like light wells, I guess, in our bedroom hallway. Thankfully, it was in the bedroom hallway. Started leaking one night. This is like a couple years ago. And it finally just went and came in and it was just a giant hole in the roof and it was raining in it.

[Kevin Rose]

You gotta get up there.

[Justin]

You ready?

[Kevin Rose]

Did you get up there?

[Justin]

Cause it was like 3 o' clock in the morning.

[Kevin Rose]

Plywood.

[Justin]

I stuck an umbrella through it and then opened it. And then I hung a kettlebell on it. Whoa. And then I woke up and I duct taped around the thing and then I called a roof guy.

[Kevin Rose]

Holy shit.

[Justin]

Because I was just like, how the.

[Kevin Rose]

Hell do I open?

[Mal]

Claw will do that for you.

[Justin]

I'm like, quick text message. The AI agent, he was like, I don't have arms, yo.

[Kevin Rose]

The way I went to the claw convention. You did?

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

In sf. And they had a robot that was walking around that was powered by OpenCloud.

[Alex Albrecht]

It was a Boston Dynamics, like dog.

[Kevin Rose]

It was like. It was like walking around and one of the. One of the people there told me that it was powered by and it was monitoring the alcohol. And there's this new website where you can like hire humans to do any task. The AIs can hire humans and they pay in stablecoins.

[Justin]

It's literally.

[Kevin Rose]

It bought alcohol. Alcohol and brought it into the thing because it detected and opened the fridge and shit and looked and saw that we're low. And then it ordered more alcohol for the party.

[Justin]

What the fuck? This is the best. Oh, God.

[Kevin Rose]

We need that for dignation.

[Justin]

Hell yeah. A robot dog. That'll get us booze.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Justin]

Be like, you guys need to eat. You're too drunk. Here's pizza. Thank you. Robotics. More D Biotics. Oh, my God.

[Mal]

I found an interesting pattern. Now, over the last couple months, if a service does not have API or MCP server access, I'm switching away from it at this point.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly.

[Mal]

I can't control it.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Mal]

Externally with agents.

[Justin]

Interesting. Well, that's so funny.

[Kevin Rose]

Well, that's the Whole thing is like, what's happening is all these walled gardens are being dissolved. Because if you have full browser access, like, for example, do you know when you go on Amazon and it's like, hey, your courier is five stops away from your, like, you know, your house. I don't know if you've seen that, where it's like, oh, it might be there in, like, a few minutes. The agents can now open a browser, see that, and be like, oh, I see that. You're halfway across town. Just so you know, you might miss that package if you're not there within the next 20 minutes. Because of what I'm seeing, there's no APIs even required for that to have that happen. But you're right. Like, it's gonna be way more efficient. It's just gonna be agents talking to agents.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Like, oh, Kevin should turn around and go home, because UPS is going to be there within five minutes. Like, all of that shit is just gonna, like, happen automatically. So crazy.

[Justin]

Good Lord, man. This is so cool. I'm gonna get to my second story, but I'm gonna skip around because I feel like this is apropos. Kung Fu Robots Deliver Knockout Performance at Spring Festival Gala. This was submitted by dpro9. First off, look at this. And I ask you, sir, of all the things we could train robots to do, why are we training them to do kung fu? I've seen this, right? Like, and then look, they come out and they're like, let's fight humans fighting robots.

[Alex Albrecht]

You can't today. Not in 36 hours.

[Justin]

It's gonna learn how to move.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Kevin Rose]

First of all, that's literally. Okay. That one was crazy. That one could do something I can't do.

[Justin]

I can't do that.

[Kevin Rose]

I can do that. No, I couldn't do that. Oh, couldn't do that.

[Justin]

I could do a lot of this. I could do that.

[Kevin Rose]

You could.

[Justin]

I could totally do that.

[Kevin Rose]

You can't walk backwards.

[Justin]

I can run backwards and then. Yeet.

[Kevin Rose]

Correct. Do that.

[Justin]

Look at that. I could do what that kid did that. I could do that. I used to be able to do that.

[Kevin Rose]

No, you didn't.

[Justin]

Yep. Shit, I can't even squat that low. That's the other thing. Oh, they're doing drunken monk fighting.

[Kevin Rose]

Jesus.

[Justin]

This is one of my favorite styles. Have you ever seen the Jackie Chan movie the Drunken Monk or Drunken Master? I think.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I know. You're talking about.

[Justin]

God, that. That I love that form of martial art because it's just so fun and funny and also effective. If you do it right.

[Kevin Rose]

Like, I just hate that these guys don't have any heads. Like, their heads.

[Justin]

Their heads are like. By the way, their head is literally just like one of those, like, Snuba masks that people have drowned in Hawaii.

[Kevin Rose]

You know what's really weird, though, is why are they making them look like humans like this? If this was just like, a star, like, with all these, like, little, like, pointy things.

[Justin]

An actual murder bot. Yeah, like, look at break dance Star Wars.

[Kevin Rose]

Why not just make it a murderbot? Yeah, exactly.

[Justin]

Because I think this is why. I don't understand why we're teaching it martial arts at all. Like, you should. I understand Boston Dynamic teaching it how to, like, pick a box up and put it in. Or, like, screw bolts in. Oh, that's like the boss mode.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, look how fucking tall he is.

[Kevin Rose]

Why would you build a giant ward, too?

[Justin]

Why would you build a giant one?

[Kevin Rose]

Why wouldn't you? If you can already build the small ones, you build a giant one. And why aren't you building mini ones?

[Justin]

By the way, a little one would be thousand percent. If we ever got into a war with China, they would just send those. They would just send those.

[Kevin Rose]

I know, and it wouldn't be pretty.

[Justin]

But, like, they're so nice. Exactly.

[Mal]

I feel like BattleBots has to get.

[Kevin Rose]

Like, way better than it is 100, dude.

[Justin]

BattleBots Battle. By the way, if one of these guys showed up to a battlebot competition and just walked in and picked the battlebot up and just threw. Yeeted it over the thing, it's like, I guess China won again. But it begs the question, why would you train them in kung fu, of all things?

[Kevin Rose]

Why? I mean, kung fu.

[Justin]

Massage therapy.

[Kevin Rose]

Well, kung fu is like massage therapy. I mean, there is a time and place.

[Justin]

Oh, my God. Is that cheating to get a massage.

[Kevin Rose]

From a robot with lotion snap?

[Justin]

I don't know what that means, but by the way, it was a really good ska band in the 90s. Lotion snap.

[Kevin Rose]

You know what that means?

[Justin]

I mean, I can infer what that means. I've never heard that statement.

[Alex Albrecht]

Never heard the term shut up. Yeah. By the way, I'm sorry. My moral compass. Sorry.

[Justin]

It's all because Justin Snapmozel. Like.

[Alex Albrecht]

I don't accept that. I don't accept that.

[Kevin Rose]

You have never been to a massage facility?

[Alex Albrecht]

No, no, but you have to understand, I don't like massages. I don't like massages.

[Justin]

Yeah, I get that. I mean, I don't understand it, but I. But I get it.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Justin]

Thank you how people can be. But I'm just saying, like, how great would that be to have like a professional, like, masseuse robot? That'd be so great because I'm always going, fuck, I should get a massage. I'm really like, it didn't work out. And then fucking shoulders. But then it's like, I just never. When am I going to pull the trigger?

[Alex Albrecht]

I actually think that would work for me because when I get a massage, I think I'm more thoughtful about their experience.

[Justin]

You're more self aware. Yeah, but if it was a robot, you'd be like, they don't give a shit.

[Alex Albrecht]

Right, Right, exactly. Because I just feel like I'm like, hey, I'm sorry. I know this isn't your best massage you had to give today. You got somebody you're looking forward to. I'm sorry about this. Like, this is what I got. This is what I'm working with.

[Justin]

I gotcha.

[Alex Albrecht]

I feel like it's a little more about that. So if it was totally, like, human.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, like you're just talking about a theragun.

[Justin]

No, no, but like, theragun still needs a person to like, find the thing.

[Kevin Rose]

And put it in a robot manual.

[Alex Albrecht]

Simulation.

[Justin]

Exactly. I want some computer simulation.

[Kevin Rose]

Do you really want robots to massage you?

[Justin]

Massage 1000%. Do that, I'd be down.

[Alex Albrecht]

What do you think those chairs are in the mall? What do you think those chairs are in the mall? There's an early form of it. I never saw the room.

[Kevin Rose]

One of those. I got to say, those boots, you zip up with a little air in them.

[Alex Albrecht]

Now you're into that. So you're down with them taking care of your feet. You're just not down with them taking care.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, my God.

[Justin]

Do you remember that?

[Kevin Rose]

Well, first of all, it depends on.

[Justin]

How they look in the goddamn. In Japan. Oh, God. That nearly took our feet off.

[Kevin Rose]

We almost died.

[Justin]

Jesus Christ.

[Kevin Rose]

What if the Is it? Let's not go here.

[Justin]

I have a feeling I knew what you were going to say. And it does not need to have any kind of human aesthetic. That to be honest, that's the thing is like, it's like the robo barista, but for massage, right? Like that. It doesn't have to look like a dude with a fucking samurai pone and a like, little hat that makes my coffee. It can just be a mechanical arm. So when you know I'm getting massaged, it could be literally anything. Here we go. All right, let's get to our sponsors. The first sponsor of the day. It's brought to you by Mercury, the financial platform for the people who expect more like you. You don't use floppy disks or fax machines anymore.

[Kevin Rose]

Not anymore.

[Justin]

So you managing your money like it's 1995, huh?

[Mal]

Huh?

[Justin]

Traditional banks, slow, clunky duct tape tools. Mercury is a fintech platform redesigned from scratch. Fast, elegant, easy. Do anything in a couple clicks.

[Kevin Rose]

Clack, click, clack, clack, clack.

[Justin]

Done. No headaches, no branch visits. Over 300,000 entrepreneurs trust it in tech e commerce agencies. Why is it good? You asked me, Kevin. Thank you for the yes.

[Kevin Rose]

Why is it good?

[Justin]

Well, funny you should ask that. Free to start, no minimum balances, no monthly fee. No monthly fees. Why would there be monthly fees? Your dashboard shows you exactly where you stand. You don't have to dig in anywhere. You've used it before, right?

[Kevin Rose]

I have, yes. And all sponsorship aside, I've been a fan for a long time. Use them for every. Pretty much every startup that I know uses them.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

And I love that they're now in the consumer space.

[Justin]

Heck yeah. So what? Wires are so easy, dude. See, you gotta do everything over everything. Done. Done. This is it. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna visit mercury.com, i'm gonna learn more and I'm gonna apply online in minutes. Mercury is a fintech company. It's not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA Member FDIC Kevin Members FDIC members FDIC Kevin.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes. Let's talk about your digital footprint, which is quite frankly a mess.

[Justin]

My digital footprint?

[Kevin Rose]

Everybody knows where your dog lives. And that's because data brokers, they legally collect and sell your personal info. People can search sites that have your name, your address, your phone and even your relatives. Although if you want to hang out with my relatives, at it. But that said, anyone with a credit card can buy it and delete me is helping you clean it up. I gotta say that I've been using delete for a couple of years now.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

And this is my take on it is that the problem with the Internet is that sites get hacked all the time.

[Justin]

Oh, dude.

[Kevin Rose]

And then you're. This is the problem with my email because I always get all these unsolicited like inbound emails. Your information is out there. And it's not like a one time thing because like a site is hacked like one month and like two months go by and another site is hacked. It's endless. And this is why this is pretty awesome. Because what deleteme does is they are constantly scanning for your information ongoing and they remove your personal info from hundreds of data broker sites. They keep scanning all year round. So it's privacy as maintenance, not as just like a one time fix. They're great for creators, parents, anyone wanting less exposure. They are a leading expert in removal for over 15 years. They named the number one data removal service by Wirecutter. Wirecutter of course. Huge fan of what they do in terms of rating these different types of services that are out there. You can get 20% off delete me consumer plans. When you go to JoinDeleteMe.com digg very important that you use that URL. Otherwise we won't get credit and you.

[Justin]

Won'T get 20% off.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly. So go to joinedelete me.com digg use promo code dig at checkout. That is JoinDeleteMe.com digg use code dig. Although if you go to slash dig do you really need to use the code do both? I think you do. Double time. Double code it.

[Justin]

Double time as they say.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Justin]

I see you've switched over to shampers.

[Kevin Rose]

Justin was kind enough to provide the juice.

[Justin]

Ah, sweet.

[Alex Albrecht]

Sweet.

[Kevin Rose]

Is this the tell us about the hack from Costco.

[Alex Albrecht]

I don't know if it's true, but from what I know, there are only so many castles in the world world that make champagne in the specific champagne area of the world. And from what I am understanding, the place that Kirkland Signature is made is also the same facility that makes the V. Now that said facility could mean anything, could mean the runoff, it could mean in the trenches of it, wherever it is. But to me, if I'm going to buy a bottle, I mean V is fine, it's reasonable. But Kirkland signature, it's a 10% hit for a 50% decrease in the price. And I think the math works out right there. Which is why I go to say maybe it's not the champagne you want to sip on necessarily by itself in isolation. You want to throw it in a mimosa. You want to have yourself a little time. You want to make a little French 75 Kirkland signature. It'll do you right.

[Kevin Rose]

We need a new sponsor. Oz to God came out of the.

[Justin]

Sponsor into another sponsor section.

[Kevin Rose]

It felt like a Costco read.

[Justin]

Oh my God.

[Kevin Rose]

Straight up unprompted Costco.

[Justin]

But I will tell you, dude, Costco, I just went and I got one of they do the trimmed tenderloin, the whole tenderloin.

[Kevin Rose]

Are we really doing Costco sponsorship? I love that.

[Justin]

But also by the way don't fuck Costco.

[Alex Albrecht]

Agree.

[Justin]

Don't fuck Costco. Because the other thing is, Heather loves white wine. Drinks wine.

[Kevin Rose]

I know you need to get your.

[Justin]

Now, here's Costco. Here's the thing.

[Kevin Rose]

Makers.

[Justin]

She doesn't love a lot of white wine. She's got a very specific palette. And I was at Costco, and I bought a bunch of white wine, and I bought. Kirkland has an Italian Pinot GRIGIO that's fucking $5.60 a bottle. So I bought a couple bottles, and.

[Alex Albrecht]

I opened it up.

[Justin]

Why would you do this? Listen. No, but. And again, it's just because I want to make sure that had, like, maybe she likes.

[Kevin Rose]

Did you blind taste test?

[Justin]

I did. Order some more. I fucked her up, and I said, try this one. She was like, oh. She goes, yeah, this is really. This is really nice. And I go, 5.99. And she was like, what? And I was like, yeah, it's Kirkland from Costco. And she was like, God damn it. Because she likes it.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Justin]

But that's why I was like, but that's great, because it's so hard. I'll buy, like, these really not nice bottles of wine because I don't buy, like, a ton of nice white wine, because she usually just goes, ugh, I hate it. Dumps the bottle and then pours herself Jack Daniels. And I'm like, dude, we got to fix this. We got to fix this.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, there you go. Costco, where affordability meets quality.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

There's. There's one more Costco thing, which is. I just want to make sure, Kevin, you love good kicks. Did you not see the Kirkland Signature Court Classics that came out? That was like, an entire, like, meme of people, like, buying.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, was this on Dig?

[Alex Albrecht]

I don't know. I don't think I saw that story making its way on Dig.

[Kevin Rose]

How long ago was this?

[Alex Albrecht]

This was maybe two or three weeks ago.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay.

[Alex Albrecht]

But you gotta check him out. I'm just saying I think you're gonna love him. I think you're really gonna like that.

[Kevin Rose]

Is he fucking with me?

[Justin]

He might be.

[Alex Albrecht]

You love dad shoes. That's all. You just love dad shoes.

[Kevin Rose]

Brooklyn Signature. What is it?

[Alex Albrecht]

I think they're Court Classics. Just say, like, Costco shoes sold out. And I'm telling you, there was, like, a run of shoes. They came out with that, like, went really viral.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay. Sold out. The Court Classics? Yes. Okay, here we go. Let me take a look at these.

[Alex Albrecht]

You love dad shoes.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. I mean, these are horrifically. Look, they're horrible.

[Justin]

Get what they got.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, but I'm totally into these. Sold out.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, this is it. You wear ironically, but now you've started liking them.

[Justin]

So for the record, yeah, those are Steve Jobs shoes.

[Alex Albrecht]

I know every, every time you get an opportunity, you've told me. I think you've told me eight times.

[Kevin Rose]

All right, let me just take these off here for a second. These are the actual shoes that Steve Jobs wore on stage. They stopped making about seven or eight years ago.

[Mal]

Oh, not literally the shoes.

[Kevin Rose]

No, not literally his shoes, but they stopped making this exact design. This is the exact design that he wore on stage. And you have to buy them on the secondary sides now. And they're retail.

[Alex Albrecht]

But listen, this is the one. This is actually the one. Ethan sent it to me. It's on. It's on StockX. No, no, it's these.

[Justin]

Oh, well, those are dope.

[Kevin Rose]

Those are Nikes.

[Alex Albrecht]

Nike, Kirkland signature. How do you feel about that, Ethan? Thank you for the assist. Thank you for the assist label.

[Kevin Rose]

That's amazing.

[Alex Albrecht]

They're not even ironic at this point. They're actually incredible quality, which is what Costco always guarantees.

[Justin]

Oh my God, this is terrible. If we don't get Costco. Yeah, Kirkland, we're fishing. Yeah. And by the way, I would love to have some 20 off your meat storage.

[Kevin Rose]

Here we go. I gotta say that their craft.

[Justin]

I made chicken stock. I did the. Chris. I think I talked about it on the last episode. Made some fucking maxabelle stew again. It's been, it's been. Been great. I make do.

[Kevin Rose]

You know, my buddy makes like 100 grand a year just by flipping the gold at Costco. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Anyway, all right, all right, what are we on your story?

[Justin]

All right, third story.

[Kevin Rose]

Third story of the day. Here we go. I would like to talk about AI fails at 96% of jobs. This is a new study, okay? Artificial intelligence has been hailed as one of the most transformational technologies of the century. That may be so, but not yet. In this episode, we take a look at a study that pits humans directly against AI for paid work. The results were surprising. So 96% of jobs. They did this wide reaching kind of survey and test case against AI. Humans could do better. Now here's the funny thing. A lot of people looked at us and they were like, yeah, see, it's not good as humans, right? And I'm like, okay, what's more disturbing, the fact that these high end models just hit like three years ago and we've already taken up like 4% market share of all human work.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Like 10 years from now. Are you we looking at the curve?

[Justin]

Oh, dude. Ten years.

[Kevin Rose]

The funny thing is, like, people are like, yeah, see, I'm like, you're missing the point. The point is that this is going to be. I'm really worried more so than I was even like a few months ago.

[Justin]

It was interesting because Peter, what's his butt. The guy who did Open Claw. Yeah. I saw a quick little video of him being interviewed on a podcast and he was mentioning this thing that I've been talking about for, I mean, a year, year and a half, at least a year, about the whole concept of sort of software less services where the. At a certain point. And I think we're getting very close to it. So he was saying, like, your fitness apps don't need to exist because what's gonna happen is you're gonna have your agent when you walk into the gym, it's gonna know you're walking into the gym. It's gonna be like, hey, make sure to tell me how much weight you're doing and what reps. And then it'll be like, hey, you're a little low. Yeah. Or you just set it up and it calculates all that stuff from watching you.

[Mal]

I've already built that with my Open Claw.

[Justin]

Right. But I've been thinking about that because I have. I use stronger on the gym to track like my one rep max and all that stuff.

[Mal]

They don't have API. They don't have MCP server.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes. See, this is the whole thing. Like the Monday.com stock like took a huge tank because everyone was realizing everyone can recreate this in like a day.

[Justin]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting because how did.

[Kevin Rose]

This class get bigger? You fucker. You Costco'd me.

[Justin]

Yeah. You got Costco.

[Kevin Rose]

I got Costco.

[Justin]

Yeah. It's a 99 cent hot dog. That's what you got.

[Kevin Rose]

Right? Their pizza is so good, though.

[Justin]

I know, dude. Welcome to Costco.

[Kevin Rose]

It's great.

[Justin]

And it's not that crowded. The thing with Costco.

[Kevin Rose]

We're going back, by the way.

[Justin]

AI is not coming for Costco.

[Kevin Rose]

It is crowded as when you go.

[Justin]

No, but it's only. It feels crowded when you see it.

[Kevin Rose]

Because when you first get in. Yeah.

[Justin]

And then you just got to go, I'm going to be here for as long as I'm going to be here. And you also get the free little snacks. And by the way, I'm usually in and out. And it's not that bad Dude.

[Kevin Rose]

My dad used to feed me at Costco.

[Justin]

That's neglect.

[Kevin Rose]

No, he would take me Saturday mornings.

[Justin]

My grandparents lived in San Diego, and they would go to Price Club, which was one of the original ones, and she had to have, like, a business license to get in. Oh, my God. It was. It was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

[Kevin Rose]

What were the good. Like, little samples. Oh.

[Justin]

So they didn't really do samples, but, like, you used to be able to get this thing. Oh, God, I wish it existed. And I don't if anybody out there remembers this or has any context of what this is. Costco. Price Club, back in the day, used to sell string cheese. And it was a giant block of cheese. It was about this size. No, no, no, no. That was about this size. And you would peel off the chunks.

[Kevin Rose]

They still have that.

[Justin]

They do not sell that. I've never seen it anywhere else.

[Kevin Rose]

Whole Foods has it. It's a big bundle of wrapped together, straight shrieking.

[Justin]

No, no, no, no, no. It's not the mozzarella. It literally was like a column. It looked like Superman's Fortress of Solitude because it had, like. It was like octagonal imprint on the top and imprint on the bottom, and you literally peel off an entire piece of string cheese. Like a thing of string cheese. Fucking loved that shit when I was growing up.

[Kevin Rose]

Sounds good.

[Justin]

Anyway, back to AI.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Justin]

What are we talking about?

[Kevin Rose]

I don't know.

[Justin]

Jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs. But no, but he was saying any. Basically any app where all it is is a store and processing of data doesn't need to exist because it and it and it's not. He's not wrong. Because it's like AI can just track that information for you can store it somewhere, can then read that thing. It can give you insight based on it. And to be fair, probably better than a piece of code that was written five years ago.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I know. That's why I think I just. People are so fixated on this, like, next three, six, eight months, and zoom out for one second and say, five years from now, you will literally be able to go, hey, I'm walking into the gym. I know we've never talked about this before, but I need a workout program. You're watching me. And who knows what the interface is going to be at that point. It could be AirPods with freaking cameras on them that point at the mirror or whatever. And it will do everything and store it and keep it and track it and chart it and give you graphs and all the things, and there will be no need why you because he's got the glasses. Exactly.

[Justin]

It sees.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly. But this is like, I'm saying five years and I'm being like, that's like generous. Generous.

[Mal]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

This idea of the personalized software era is upon us.

[Justin]

Well, by the way, we're almost already to the Star Trek. I just talk to the computer. I go, computer, what's the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, but I mean, like. But then have it action and do things on your behalf. Like, that's the place where we're gonna get it. The funny thing is, is, like, so we have Alexa's in the house. And first off, I just. This is so fucking fun. I was making eggs and Heather was in the back room. And usually I have to be like, breakfast and then walk in breakfast, you know, until we get closer. And finally I'm like, breakfast? Oh, okay, cool. I'll be right there. And then I was like, you know what? Fuck it. We have Alexis all over the place. I go, alexa, would you just say the word breakfast on every device in this house? And she goes, okay. And it goes. And I just hear Heather go from the back room. And she comes in, she's like, that was the most. That was the funniest thing that's ever happened in my life. I was literally just sitting in the back room and I just heard Alex says, breakfast. And I was like, that. But, like, Alexa now has this, like, AI layer that they put in for free.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Was it Alexa plus or something?

[Justin]

It's Alexa Plus. They put me in for free because I was like, I'm not paying for this. But to be fair, it's kind of nice to be able to go, I'm just going to ask this thing a question that I would ask. I would pull my phone out and ask ChatGPT, or I would ask Google. You know what I mean? It's like, I'm just going to ask the. The air. And it's interesting to talk about things like OpenCloud, because it's like, it would be nice to have that not be something that's owned by a giant, massive conglomerate company that wants my soul.

[Kevin Rose]

It's going to be.

[Mal]

I put mine on top of my Home Assistant server, so now it's made Alexa moot because Home Assistant does everything now with openclaw sitting on top of.

[Justin]

It and talking to it.

[Mal]

There's no need for Alexa.

[Justin]

I have yet to even scratch the surface. We talked about it a couple months ago where you were like, I'm using AI to help me build, you know?

[Mal]

Yes.

[Justin]

I don't know, like, build the YAML files. Yeah, the YAML files. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, but you just ask it. Like, I'd like to have this happen and it's like, okay, put this in home assistant. Love home assistant, man. So great.

[Kevin Rose]

All right, let's keep going.

[Justin]

Oh, yeah, let's keep going. So back to my first story. Because we gave Chinese people or training combat robots for some reason.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Justin]

Apple sends invites for a special Apple Experience event March 4th in New York City. Rumor suggests an M5 MacBook Pro entry level iPad, Air and iPhone 17e. This is submitted by Emil. Here's the reason why I wanted to bring this up.

[Kevin Rose]

I'm excited for the M5 MacBook Air. Is the air.

[Justin]

Like, think about your excitement level.

[Kevin Rose]

High to medium high.

[Justin]

High to medium. Because I feel like I have not been excited for an Apple announcement. I mean, I've been excited because I'm like, ooh, an Apple announcement. But none of the announcements have lived up to the pre hype of things. The like iPad or the ipod. Color. The iPad. Remember when we talked about the iPad? Like, what is the iPad gonna look like? The iPhone. We talked about what. What could possibly be the iPhone. I remember we were thinking, like, it's gonna have two batteries, one for your ipod and one for the phone. You know what I mean? Like, there's so much shit. All of that was so excited. The new Apple TV program, when it came out, it was like, oh my God. This is all. I feel like it's been since the Vision Pro, which by the way, I was excited about until five minutes afterwards. And I was like, wait, do I really want that? But while it was happening, I was like, this feels like one of those moments. I just feel like now all these Apple things are like, it's a MacBook, it's a little faster. Okay. You know what I mean? Okay. It's the cheaper version of the iPhone 17. Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

We haven't had a big. If you think about the last time Apple dropped a major game changing product.

[Justin]

Yeah, like Apple Watch, maybe.

[Kevin Rose]

Maybe. Probably the iPad.

[Alex Albrecht]

Honestly, it has felt away for a very long time with a phone.

[Justin]

So you were saying?

[Alex Albrecht]

I was saying the AirPods, to me, we're a product level innovation that I think actually fundamentally changed the way we think about headphones.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay.

[Alex Albrecht]

I think you could argue the AirPod Pro Max not the case. But I will say for the phone, I think it is like every year it is the most minuscule update. And typically I feel like they do put a lot into the camera. And as somebody who, like, I'm just not a photographer, it's like, I'm sure it's nicer, but that's really the only thing I'm getting. And then now we have liquid glass, and that's just its own thing.

[Justin]

Yeah, it's interesting, but. So you think iPad might have been the last.

[Kevin Rose]

I mean, I just can't think of anything that they've dropped that I've been.

[Justin]

Completely blown away by because, like, I've stopped watching them. Like.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Unless it's something that I.

[Kevin Rose]

Such a thing where we're like, oh.

[Justin]

I watch the Apple events, like, different text, chain, group, where they were like, we're all watching. People would be like, oh, my God, I can't believe they just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now it's like, okay, so there's another Apple announcement. I'll read the brushstrokes.

[Alex Albrecht]

And, yeah, they, like, changed the island. They got the floating island. They had the notch before that, but it really does feel like that's general. The format has stayed the same for a good amount of time. They move around the little notch where they gotta hide it. And outside of that, it's very liquid.

[Kevin Rose]

Glass is horrible.

[Alex Albrecht]

It's so.

[Justin]

By the way, it's so 19. It's like 2005. It's like the original bubble. Remember the bubble text with the like, oh, it is.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's a gimmick. At the end of the day, it feels like a gimmick. And I think that's the irony of all this is like, Apple did the gimmick in the beginning when they first came out with the iOS stuff. It was like, the first, like, dimensional thing, but it was kind of like. We look back at the skeuomorphism, and we're like, oh, that's cool, because it was the time, but they had to show you. No, no. You touch this screen like it's a physical object.

[Kevin Rose]

So everything felt physical.

[Alex Albrecht]

And now that they're kind of going back into it, it's like, oh, there's like, nothing left in the chamber right now. Huh? Like, this is what you guys are doing right now.

[Kevin Rose]

It seems. It seems like that, right? Doesn't it? It's like there's nothing about. It's going back for no reason.

[Alex Albrecht]

There's nothing timeless about. I think they look back on Liquid plus and be like, wow, that was a gimmick.

[Justin]

Nobody's gonna. Nobody's gonna love that stuff. But it's just sad. It's just interesting that we're sort of in this place where the big Apple special announcement thing is like, oh, okay.

[Kevin Rose]

Well, dude, the Nvidia events and the OpenAI events and the Claude events, those are like way more interesting to me now than any Apple event.

[Justin]

What is crazy too, because like, I feel like there's stuff happen. It is, it is ramped up so fast. There's like all the, the Seed Deep Seek there, see something or other camera with Seed Spark or whatever it was called where like the new video Generations Seed Dance. I know that stuff came out and I was like, oh my God. And by the way, that's the first real time when all of the, all of the big companies are coming out, like the Warner Brothers and Disney and all that stuff are coming, coming out and basically like Disney sent them a cease and desist and said, you're using our ip. And it's like at the end of the day that, that ship sailed two years ago, three years ago when they started.

[Alex Albrecht]

See the article today? That's big. Like, what's trending on Digg is an article about ByteDance acknowledging they're going to pull back.

[Justin]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

But again, it's, it just feels like for how long though? Like at the end of the day, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. You can fight against some of that stuff as long as you want. And it's nice to be an arbiter to defend like the creative side of it, but I don't see it going the other way.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I mean, it's essentially the early, like Napster days of MP3s, where everyone's like, remember when Metallica came out and they're like digital music. And then even the Beatles were like, we're never putting our stuff on digital. It's like, ah, you kind of have.

[Justin]

You'Re gonna, you're gonna.

[Kevin Rose]

All right, let's talk about Monarch. Monarch is one of our favorite sponsors because I've been using them for several years now. It is tweet 2026. That means it is a new year, it's a new you, and it is very easy to lose track of how you spend money. For me, Monarch has been so helpful because I tie in all my different accounts that I have and it gives me one dashboard to set budgets for 2026 that can feel realistic. You can set them and you can say, hey, I want to spend this much on clothing this month. I want to spend this much on food this month. On takeout, whatever it may be, it is awesome takeout, dude, you.

[Justin]

And I was gonna I. I said that. What's your worst.

[Kevin Rose]

What's your worst thing you spend on takeout?

[Justin]

Worst thing I spend on takeout?

[Kevin Rose]

Like the most money you spend on take.

[Justin]

Like I do.

[Kevin Rose]

I do coffee in the morning.

[Justin]

You do coffee in the morning. I like a latte from blue bottle.

[Kevin Rose]

It's good.

[Justin]

Anyway, we're gonna get you a nice coffee. That's my. That's gonna be my Christmas gift.

[Kevin Rose]

I don't know what that means. I didn't hear what you first said. Anyway, this is awesome because you can share it with your partner. So it's not just a one person journey. You both can be adding to it. They use AI to fill in auto categories. They do a bunch of great stuff. It is built for people with busy lives. You can link accounts in minutes and you get a clear dashboard and everything is automatically categorized. Like I mentioned, smart visuals, great graphs and charts. There is no more need for spreadsheets. Monarch handles it all. Set yourself up for financial success in 2026. It's still early enough. Yeah, if you do it right now, get your shit caught up because you're only a couple months in with Monarch. This is the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use code [e-mail] for half off. And I'm not just saying this like I literally make no money from this. I don't, I don't.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

People don't know that. Can I say this on the thing says yeah, like I don't. I. Digg does not pay me to do any sponsorships. I just do this for.

[Justin]

Because I'm sport of the company and.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I'm telling you, it's a great product. It really is. That's all I want to say. I don't know if that was like felt legit or not, but it's a great product. Use code digg at check out from monarch.com and you get half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year. And I really, truly use this product and I think you'll love it. Monarch.com with code dig half off for a year.

[Justin]

That's nice.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I got my sister using it.

[Justin]

Speaking of nice, everybody using it. Finally time for this antibiotics. I've been waiting.

[Kevin Rose]

That's why I'm gonna chase it with the Four Roses.

[Justin]

I mean, I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna chase it out the door with my four roses. Okay. ZBiotics holiday season. Yes, please drink responsibly. This just helps the next Day when you're tired. Look, it was the holiday season. I went to Europe. Parties, toasts, being the people who were there.

[Kevin Rose]

You know from the winding down after long days.

[Justin]

Winding down after long days. You're gonna winding up after short days for the next winding up after short days. My favorite thing to do.

[Kevin Rose]

Listen, there's both winding, it goes both ways.

[Justin]

Winding down. You need to be ready for the next morning. Zebiotics pre alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic.

[Kevin Rose]

Not in a bad way.

[Justin]

It was invented by a PhD scientist to tackle the rough mornings after drinking, which we all know how those go. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into toxic byproducts in the gut. No, I gotta drink.

[Kevin Rose]

I wanted it to have some than that. Drink as possible everyone.

[Justin]

I knew you were going to drink. You're going to snake my zbiotic. You already had a Z biotic. Here's how it works.

[Kevin Rose]

Do you have another ZBiotics?

[Alex Albrecht]

No, we don't.

[Justin]

I don't think you need to lay.

[Kevin Rose]

You have zbiotics makeup.

[Justin]

I think you're all right. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into toxic byproducts in the gut. It is the buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration that we all think that is the flame for those rough days after. It is not. It is not dehydration. People, hear me, hear me out.

[Kevin Rose]

It is very true.

[Justin]

Yeah, this is literally what we're talking about. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme that breaks down this toxic byproduct. And just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel the best. So go to zbiotics.com digg to learn more and get 15% off your first order. When you check out using Digg at checkout, Zebiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee. So if you are unsatisfied for any reason, they will refund your money. No questions ask. Thank you. Zebiotic.

[Kevin Rose]

A couple things. One is like, I think people will get entertainment value to this. We don't have to keep talking about Zebiotics because we're done with the sponsorship read. We're done. But I will tell you, my sister, she sent me a text and she was like, no, I'm not even joking. She was like, I got it with your code.

[Justin]

Amazing.

[Kevin Rose]

And she was like, I feel so much better. It really does fucking work.

[Justin]

It does.

[Kevin Rose]

It's weird because it's so hard for me. So many people over the years have been like, oh, you guys are just getting paid to talk about this. I'm so grateful that at this point in our lives we get to actually talk about the shit we love.

[Justin]

Mouse. Like, this stuff actually works.

[Kevin Rose]

So anyway, I don't have anything else to say other than.

[Justin]

Well, by the way, speaking of, this stuff works.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, put it back. You said you were going to.

[Justin]

No, no, it's open. No, I already opened it in the air.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay. All right, let's talk about elements.

[Justin]

Another one of the.

[Kevin Rose]

Do you have any elements right now?

[Justin]

Oh, my God.

[Kevin Rose]

I would love some element right now. So here's the deal with element. Element has been something I've been using for a very long time. If you are into all the things, health elements, energy recovery, focus, hydration is at that center apex of all those things. Electrolyte imbalance can cause headaches, cramps. You have cramps in your legs, fatigue, rain, fog.

[Justin]

Literally drank one today while I was at the gym. It was the best.

[Kevin Rose]

I want one right now. Element is a zero sugar electrolyte. Drink zero artificial colors or junk ingredients. It's a science backed ratio of 1,000 milligrams sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, 60 milligrams magnesium. It's great for athletes, heavy sweaters. Heavy sweaters. You're a heavy sweater.

[Justin]

I used to be. Oh, dead a little bit. But it's fucking hot as balls up in here.

[Kevin Rose]

It's hot in here. Okay. It's great for athletes, heavy sweaters. Like Alex fasting keto, low carb. Here's why it works. It maintains a proper fluid balance. It supports energy and brain function, muscle performance and sleep. And it prevents over hydration issues from drinking only water. So it helps reduce cramps and hydration headaches. So who uses this stuff? Alex does. Also Justin does his pro athletes.

[Alex Albrecht]

I have only when I'm with you.

[Kevin Rose]

It's the best.

[Justin]

The best. I love it.

[Kevin Rose]

All right. Olympic athletes use it, pro athletes use it, military uses it. First responders, health experts and performance coaches. Everyday people that just want better hydration.

[Justin]

I literally would get cramps in my legs. And my workout guy was like, dude, you gotta get your electrolytes in. And I tried a couple different ones and I was like, mm, mm, mm. And then I tried element before they sponsored us and I was like, this is great. The orange salt I think is the one.

[Kevin Rose]

I like the watermelon. Get the watermelon. Drinklmnt.com digg and they offer a money back guarantee, which I think is awesome. That they've had for a really long time. Which means that if you buy it and you go to drinklmnt.com digg and you don't like it, just send them an email. Yeah, they're easy.

[Justin]

They got you. They got you. Boo. Next story.

[Kevin Rose]

Next story of the day. Last story from Kevin Logan Paul. Pokemon card sells for $16.4 million. This was the collection shadowing the world record for rarest collectible. 16.4 million.

[Justin]

This was sent by Vena VP. So $16.4 million, this was. It was like a Pikachu, right? Like a rare Pikachu.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, it was a rare Pikachu he was wearing around his neck.

[Justin]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

When he went into one of the. The fights.

[Justin]

Yeah. Since I was a kid, I loved the idea of collecting. Like, I would get, you know, because we would have like those. Remember the toys, like the he man toys or like Ninja Turtles. And you would, like, go to Toys R Us and you'd look at the. Look at the aisles and see what they had and they wouldn't have like the Donatello or whatever. And you were like, oh, man. I get like, that idea was really. I really glommed onto it. But I never had a thing that I like, really got into collecting. Missed magic. Missed Pokemon. I was a little too old for Pokemon. A little too old for, like, Pogs and all that stuff that was just a squanch of a generation below us. Or.

[Kevin Rose]

Pogs were kind of a thing. Yeah.

[Justin]

But I was at a gaming weekend with some buds in Palm Springs and they brought Disney has a Magic the Gathering type card game called Lorcana. So it's basically. It's like a Magic the Gathering style collectible trading card game. And I, we played it a couple times and I was like, dude, this is like, I love this.

[Kevin Rose]

This one here. Laura Khan of the trading card game.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I really enjoyed it. And I was like, you know what? I'll just go buy like a starter deck. And I went. And I kind of weirdly caught the bug.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, I've.

[Justin]

I've literally not played it since Sense. I'm. I keep threatening to play it with Heather because I have like two starter decks now. I bought a bunch of, like, packs. I've got the Lorcon app. I'm adding the things.

[Alex Albrecht]

It.

[Justin]

It is scratching the surface. But I also don't know if it's something I'm going to continue doing. But it's super cool because it's like all these Tinkerbell. It's all the old, like, Disney characters.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, shit. That's cool.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you can play all the. Anyway, dude, this is going to be.

[Kevin Rose]

Huge in, like, 20 years.

[Justin]

100%. But also, like, they'll do. They'll do custom drops that happen only if you're at the Disney parks.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, shit.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's, like, a whole. It's a whole thing. It's. They're really. Basically, they started. This was the one that's out right now. The whisper in the wells. I have a couple of those. But. But it's one of those things that I just was like, oh, my God. I can see how people get fucking so into card collecting and, like, hunting the different alts. Like, these are the, like, epic alts and. Or. I can't remember Enchanted. I can't remember what. They're variants of those things, all the different variants.

[Kevin Rose]

Have you seen this one or.

[Alex Albrecht]

No, No, I haven't seen that.

[Kevin Rose]

They still sell at Costco.

[Alex Albrecht]

They actually do.

[Kevin Rose]

They do.

[Justin]

Yeah, they did. They did a drop at Costco, and I was like, oh, I should go get some of these. And there's a comic book store around the corner. And people don't realize that they have Lorcana, so they have, like, a bunch of old decks that they just never sold because people don't know to go in. And so I was like, oh, let me just buy a bunch of these. And they're. It's. It's really great.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, that's kind of awesome.

[Justin]

We should try it. I'll bring. I'll bring the two starter sets, and we'll play it.

[Kevin Rose]

The thing is, like, right now. So, okay, let's imagine what is. What is. What is. When was Pokemon cards created?

[Justin]

99.

[Alex Albrecht]

99. Yeah. 98. 99. Somewhere around there.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay, so let's call it 27 years ago or something like that. Yeah, yeah, 27 years from now. Something right now is hitting, like. And they're gonna be worth, like, millions of dollars.

[Justin]

Yeah, 100%.

[Kevin Rose]

So, like, what is that thing? Is it this?

[Justin]

I mean, it could be because of all the things. It's Disney.

[Kevin Rose]

Right.

[Justin]

They're behind it, so it's gonna have legs. Like, I don't see them ever stopping this for any reason.

[Kevin Rose]

Right.

[Justin]

So, you know, of all the things, then maybe. Oh, you know what I should do is I should go buy a bunch of the. The packs.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Justin]

From the first run.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Justin]

Store has a bunch of them.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, really?

[Justin]

What store Put it. It's the place around the corner from My house?

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, sure.

[Justin]

100. They got a bunch of shit. Really? Yeah. Because they were like. They bought it all because they thought little crime, like people were gonna come in, but people were still only coming in for Pokemon and Magic together. They don't know that. It's.

[Kevin Rose]

That's. The whole thing is like, it's always the sleepers.

[Justin]

Right?

[Kevin Rose]

Like the. That we, like, don't we overlook it?

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

And we're like, how do we overlook that? That was gonna be a good thing.

[Justin]

Get like a pack or like a box of packs and put it in the.

[Kevin Rose]

So do they sell boxes of it? Oh, shit. How much are they?

[Justin]

Like139. For a box of, like, a bunch of packs?

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean, that's bad. Eric, one of our engineers just messaged me and he said the interesting thing about Lorcana, this is how they're being really clever about it is that they are trying to make it so that each of the base cards is actually relatively easy. Easy to get, because there is a game that you can play with it.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

It's really only the variants that are really, like, very prized and very difficult. But that means that if all the base cards are easy to acquire because it's relatively affordable and it's just very low chance if you get those really, like, special ones. The base game, you said is actually really awesome. Like, people love the mechanics of the base game.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Which is a really cool way to do it.

[Kevin Rose]

I love that he's like, right down. He used to work for Disney too. He did, he did.

[Justin]

He knows his thing. I heard Lord Con. I was. Yeah, excuse me. Yeah, I'll bring some in and we'll play, but I might go back to that place and get some of the.

[Kevin Rose]

Dude, let's go.

[Alex Albrecht]

But I actually think you're right, though, Kevin, where we're kind of in that stage. Like, I don't know if you saw it, but it was like within the past, like, year or two years, it was like this strangely, like, Blu Ray is on the rise again.

[Kevin Rose]

No way. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Because of the fact that it was like, a couple years ago, I had a hack from my icloud account and I lost all of my movies. My entire thousand plus movie collection was just gone.

[Kevin Rose]

Right.

[Alex Albrecht]

And so it's like the idea of having physical media that cannot be taken from you, that is always yours forever and ever.

[Kevin Rose]

Let my house burn down.

[Alex Albrecht]

Just like your house burned down.

[Justin]

Just let your house burned down.

[Kevin Rose]

My physical media is gone.

[Alex Albrecht]

Your physical media is gone. Well, maybe bringing it up, if you look at. And this is gonna hurt again. If you look at comic books, this is power. This is what makes comics so powerful, is because the base issue of a comic is pretty easy to get. If you. If you're following a series, you can put it in your pull list. You go to a comic shop, they've got it for you. It's the variants that are really special, where it's like, you know what?

[Kevin Rose]

I lost the fire. Right.

[Alex Albrecht]

I'm aware. But you should say it, because it helps to say it.

[Justin]

By the way, that means that whoever has one of those now has more value because one of them, you helped him.

[Kevin Rose]

But you know what I lost, though?

[Justin]

It wasn't the first Wolverine or the Spider. The Spider Man.

[Kevin Rose]

I had, like 21st Wolverines. I had the first Spider Man. Amazing Spider man, the very first one. I had the first X Men. O, like, literally X Men number one. I lost Michael Jordan rookie card.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

[Kevin Rose]

And the first appearance of Phoenix. Oh. And was not expensive, but, like, you know, but, you know, sentimental value was that.

[Alex Albrecht]

Sentimental value.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. And it was highly ranked. Yeah. Good one. Good cover. Good, Good, you know, cover.

[Justin]

Good cover.

[Kevin Rose]

And. And so, like, I mean, it was really hard because the X Men dude.

[Justin]

Yeah, that's.

[Kevin Rose]

That cover is so iconic. And there's one less now, but to your point. Yeah, it's one less helping everybody else out.

[Justin]

Everybody else's went up by two.

[Kevin Rose]

I gotta. I gotta, like, use some of that insurance claim money to get. Give me at least one of those back.

[Justin]

Of course, dude. That's what. What it's all about. The collection.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Oh, my God. Anyway. Well, as if Logan Paul needed more money, he now has 16.4 more.

[Kevin Rose]

He got his ass handed to him.

[Justin]

Oh, that was the best, though. That was the best.

[Kevin Rose]

Anyway, I felt bad for him a little bit.

[Justin]

Really?

[Kevin Rose]

No.

[Justin]

There you go.

[Kevin Rose]

All right.

[Justin]

What. How are we doing this? I feel like we've been talking for, like, years. All right, we're done. You know what? We're going to save the rest for next week, guys. It's always great to come back, girl. It's always good to come back. Big gold, same old joke. Never gets old.

[Kevin Rose]

Cause it's true.

[Justin]

Never gets old. Until our demographics change, it won't be old. Thank you so much for sitting in with us as we pound through some booze and talk about some news.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes. Justin Digg, CEO, thank you so much.

[Justin]

Thank you, Justin.

[Kevin Rose]

For the next what's coming on Dig. Give us the next guess the next 30 days.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, let's see, last week we released Grid View, which is a way to really think about how we build visual communities. So if you're building a visual inspiration community, and it was a pretty important one for me because I came up in the design and product space. And so as an illustrator, like, having these visual spaces, like early dribble, like early Twitter, when people were still using it to share work and get to know one another, was a really powerful thing to really unite around. And so for us, it was, you know, we want to recognize that every community that is being stood up may have a very different intention of what they're trying to build. And so the cool thing I think about Grid View is this is just our first step into the pool of saying you run a community, you have a way that you want this to work. And it's different than just a message board. If you're looking for an inspirational community for a home, for your design community, for whole a home to share artwork or inspiration of other places you're finding across the Internet, this is our first foray into building into that. And just know that these different view modalities and experiences for unique communities, we're only going to continue to develop and make them bigger. So whatever the community you have in mind to build here, we want to hear from you. We want to know what kind of community would you build where people can rally around you with a common interest that we can support that viewing modality or that way to consume information. So Grid View is awesome and just let you know video posts are in active development and should be out sooner than you think. So very excited about that because this is the year of our Lord 2026, and video should be pervasive.

[Kevin Rose]

I think tomorrow.

[Justin]

I think tomorrow.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay, well, how about sooner than you'll be angry about? So that's on the way. We've got a ton of other questions, innovations that are coming out there very soon. It's a great time to be on Dig. If you're there, it's an early time. The community is fantastic. Really, really wonderful. Humans just showing up every day, having some of the best conversations to be a part of. And so, yeah, come on, join us. It's great.

[Kevin Rose]

Awesome.

[Justin]

Well, that is it for this week's edition of Dig Nation. I'm Alex Albrecht.

[Kevin Rose]

And I'm Kevin Rose. Until next time, hasta la pasta. Stay sober.