651: Brian Redban

Summary

Duncan Trussell Family Hour Episode 651: Brian Redban

Release Date: November 23, 2024
Guest: Brian Redban

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Introduction to Brian Redban

Duncan Trussell opens the episode by highlighting Brian Redban’s pivotal role in the early days of podcasting, particularly in shaping what has become one of the most influential podcasts globally. Duncan marvels at how Redban's contributions have not only influenced entertainment but also presidential elections and featured high-profile guests.

Duncan Trussell [00:00]: "I wonder how many people are aware that you did the Rogan song, that you were sort of a tremendous part of the origination of what has become the most popular podcast on planet Earth..."

Evolution of the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE)

Brian Redban reflects on the transformation of the Joe Rogan Experience from a comedy-centric podcast to a mainstream platform with diverse and significant guests. He notes the shift from its humble beginnings, where it was more of an experimental comedy podcast, to its current reputable standing.

Brian Redban [00:32]: "It was a different podcast back then, though. That was back in the days when it was more of a comedy podcast..."

Early Podcasting Challenges and Innovations

Redban shares anecdotes about the technical hurdles faced during the inception of JRE, such as editing numerous videotapes manually and adapting existing technology to suit the podcasting format. He emphasizes the pioneering efforts required to establish the podcast before it became mainstream.

Brian Redban [63:28]: "Used to make stupid videos back in the day for, like, Doug Stanhope and stuff... compress it just so that if you go to a website, people could actually watch a small little video."

Advancements in AI Technology

The conversation shifts to the rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its implications on creativity and content creation. Redban expresses fascination with AI tools like Sumo and Suno, which facilitate music creation from simple inputs like humming. Both hosts discuss the potential and ethical concerns surrounding AI-generated content.

Brian Redban [04:04]: "I feel like I'm into the same stuff you're into right now. A lot of AI stuff. Like, I am just blown away by, like, Sumo or Suno..."

AI's Impact on Creative Industries

Duncan and Brian delve into how AI is revolutionizing creative industries, allowing for unprecedented collaboration and innovation. They discuss the potential for AI to both aid musicians and producers by streamlining the creative process and raise concerns about AI’s role in potentially irrelevantizing traditional artistic endeavors.

Duncan Trussell [05:41]: "Back in the day, JRE needed an opening song. And so I sat there for like a week... And that song took me."

Ethical Implications of AI and Corporate Bias

The hosts explore the inherent biases in AI systems, attributing them to the corporations that develop these technologies. They caution listeners about the subtle ways AI can propagate biased narratives and the importance of recognizing and counteracting these influences.

Duncan Trussell [12:30]: "What's really cool about all of this is that like each AI has a personality and the personality is determined by the corporation."

The Future of Podcasting and Virtual Reality

Brian Redban envisions the next frontier for podcasting as immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences, where podcasters and listeners engage in fully interactive digital environments. Duncan adds to this by discussing the blending of AI with VR to create dynamic, avatar-driven podcasting experiences.

Brian Redban [84:32]: "It's going to be something like... combining pretty much video games and podcasts."

Dead Internet Theory and the Evolution of Online Content

The conversation touches on the "Dead Internet Theory," a belief that the internet has become less diverse and more corporate-controlled. Redban and Duncan discuss how platforms like YouTube and social media have centralized online content, diminishing the early internet's experimental and diverse nature.

Duncan Trussell [73:00]: "Dead Internet theory is a conspiracy theory that... the Internet is tiny, that the Internet is shrinking down to this homogenous corporatized set of websites."

Challenges Faced by Content Creators

Redban recounts personal experiences with content suppression on platforms like Vimeo, highlighting the challenges creators face in maintaining and distributing their work amidst changing platform policies and censorship.

Brian Redban [79:19]: "I have all of it, but I can't put it back up. So I have to go through each one and take out copyright stuff, take out nudity."

Closing Remarks and Future Endeavors

As the episode concludes, Duncan and Brian reflect on the ever-evolving landscape of podcasting and technology. They express optimism about future innovations while acknowledging the challenges and ethical dilemmas that come with them.

Duncan Trussell [93:30]: "But we're talking about another kind of super caldera, which is a caldera under which is like the ability to experience anything you want fully immersive experience..."

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Notable Themes and Insights

1. Pioneering Podcasting: Brian Redban's foundational role in establishing JRE and navigating early podcasting challenges.
2. AI in Creativity: Exploration of AI tools transforming music and content creation, along with associated ethical concerns.
3. Corporate Influence on AI: Discussion on how corporate biases shape AI personalities and the broader implications for content neutrality.
4. Future of Media: Insights into the potential fusion of podcasting with VR, creating immersive and interactive experiences.
5. Internet Evolution: Analysis of the transition from a decentralized, experimental internet to a more centralized, corporate-controlled environment.
6. Content Censorship: Personal anecdotes highlighting the struggle for creators to maintain control over their work amidst platform restrictions.

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Conclusion

Episode 651 of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour offers an in-depth conversation with Brian Redban, tracing the evolution of podcasting from its comedic roots to its current influential status. The discussion navigates through the transformative impact of AI on creative industries, the ethical dimensions of technological advancements, and the shifting dynamics of internet content creation and distribution. As both hosts ponder the future of media and technology, listeners are left with thought-provoking insights into the intersection of creativity, technology, and societal change.

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Note: The episode contains candid discussions and occasional strong language reflective of the hosts' authentic conversational style.

Transcript

[Duncan Trussell]

I wonder how many people are aware that you did the Rogan song, that you were sort of a tremendous part of the origination of what has become the most popular podcast on planet Earth that has influenced presidential elections, that has had, like, guests on it that like, never in a million years. If we could jump back to the beginning days, would anyone have said, you know, you're going to interview the president one day.

[Brian Redban]

It was a different podcast back then, though. That was back in the days when it was more of a comedy podcast. You know, Rogan really has turned it into, like a legit. Where it has comedy in it. Sure. But it's, you know, it's funny, but.

[Duncan Trussell]

It'S like back then, I mean, what was the first podcast like? Did you, you were the first person to podcast with Rogan?

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. So it started off like, look, you know, Rogan hired me, whatever. We made the Carlos Mencia video or I made the Carlos me a video.

[Duncan Trussell]

Welcome, friends. Happy Thanksgiving. My guess is you're gathered around the Thanksgiving fire, roasting that turkey on a spit, watching the sweet juices drip down into the burning skulls of your enemies as you celebrate complete victory over an opposing village. How dare they challenge your territor integrity. And now they know wisdom taught by the blade you plunge through the heart of their leader. We've got a great episode for you today. I'm sure most of you know who Red man is. He is the co host of Kill Tony. He's also the progenitor of jre, which I don't, I don't know how many of you know about that Red Band is a fascinating guy. Maybe you remember when he was the co host on the jre, but you might not have gotten a clear, like, understanding of who Red Ban is just from watching some of those episodes. He's super cool and smart and savvy and you know, when you hear the story of, like, the early days of what is now the biggest podcast on the planet, I, I bet if you're not aware of how it went down, it's not what you would expect. That's what we're going to talk about today, along with some other cool stuff. AI tech stuff. So everyone, welcome to the DTFH Brian Redband 3D written by Lord Alvazar Kent. And they tried to suppress that information, but sources are telling me that they can't anymore. Now that Trump has become president, it's all going to be revealed. How you doing, man?

[Brian Redban]

Good. How are you, buddy?

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm good, I'm good. I'm so happy you did this. Man.

[Brian Redban]

It's been a while.

[Duncan Trussell]

I. You know, I. I always felt guilty by asking you to do it because of the, you know, proximity. It seems like it's a drive from up there. I love going out right around where you live. I'm not naming it. Is that already too much? Am I doxing you?

[Brian Redban]

No, no, no. I live up in Pflugerville.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's cool out there. Pflugerville. What is a Pfluger?

[Brian Redban]

It's a German thing. I don't know. It's funny. I moved to the one German town in Austin.

[Duncan Trussell]

You're drawn back home. Maybe the car. You know, man, one of the many things I love about you is you. Like, I like to think of myself as like, an early adopter. You know, I'm into tech and stuff, but you are always, like, at the bleeding edge of cool shit that's emerging into the world. Not just like, you know, pragmatic stuff, but, like, games, fun shit. So what are you into right now? Like, what should we be aware of right now?

[Brian Redban]

I feel like I'm into the same stuff you're into right now. A lot of AI stuff. Like, I am just blown away by, like, Sumo or Suno. You know, the music thing is. I mean, that alone is one of my favorite new inventions, I guess, of the last year or so.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's incredible.

[Brian Redban]

It's incredible just being. And I think it was you that even told me that they have a new beta test where you could just hum something and it will make the song based on, like, a hum or. Yeah, I took an old song that I wrote on Garage Band a long time ago, uploaded it, and I was like, remix this and make it a rap song. And it took the. The same idea of this song and something I could never have done, you know?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, it's the best. Especially, like, if you do what we do. If you, like, make podcasts and make stuff and you have a limited amount of time and you're not, you know, I mean, I don't consider myself a musician.

[Brian Redban]

No.

[Duncan Trussell]

And so the amount of time in the past, if I wanted to make a dumb song, right, That's a day. Like, if I'm like, okay, I want to do a song for this episode, it's like, all right, well, you're going to be. It's an extra day of work. And I liked it. It was fun. It's a fun sort of difficult process, but if, you know, you just need to get something out there, or even if you want to Test your idea, because you might have an idea for a song, and then you work all day on it. At the end of the day, you're like, this is so not funny. And dog shit. I'm still going to put it up, but it was a waste of time. You know, this. You could. You could at least get a sense of what it might be. And that. That is incredible collaborative tool. It's great.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. I. Great example. Back in the day, JRE needed a opening song. And so I sat there for like a week, like, and I found out how to make like a drum noise on my keyboard. It was like D, D, D. And then. And then I took like some loops from Apple Garage Band and I added guitar to it to make it sound more guitar. Yeah. And then that's the JRE song.

[Duncan Trussell]

Is that the current theme song? No way.

[Brian Redban]

And that's me going, what?

[Duncan Trussell]

Like, are you fucking kidding me?

[Brian Redban]

But, yeah, I did that. And that. That song took me. And then I remember Diaz, Nick Diaz or whatever said train by day, Joe Rogan Bot. And Joe, like, sent me that. I was like, add this to the song. I'm like, how am I going to add words to the song?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. And. Well. And so that aspect of making shit on your own, I think it's so useful because, you know, most apps, most creativity apps, even if it's a music app or Photoshop or Final Cut or whatever it is, they kind of follow the same basic tools, the steps. And so it's every time you have to do something like that, it's not just like, you learned how to do that on GarageBand, you learned how to do it on Ableton, you learned how to do Layers in Photoshop. And, you know, so everything you learn in one area goes to all the areas, which is the danger. You know, I hate. It's like a. It's a meme at this point. But the danger of AI, the downside is you're not learning that in the same way. And that sucks because you. You don't realize that it's. You're not just learning how to make music. You're learning how to edit video, you're learning how to, like, write. You're learning how to everything. And so that's a little worrisome, but.

[Brian Redban]

It does open some new things because now you have to talk to AI a certain way. Like, no, I want you to. You know, you have to use different words to try to get what you want, you know, so guess it kind of adds a new way to do it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, you know, it demonstrates how, like, I've noticed there's, like, two. You could say there's two. Like, there's probably a lot. I hate whenever people do binaries, but for the sake of this, two creative styles, right? There's the, like, what someone might call the professional creative style. Now, that creative style is usually based on time constraints, which is instead of trying to, like, sort of fumble in the darkness towards your idea, you come up with like, okay, this is what I'm trying to do. Here's a map to get there. It's very technical. Very. But you really need a sort of precise mind to envision. This is where I'm headed. And that is what it's teaching you. It teaches you how to articulate what you want in a very specific way, which I've never been good at in life or creativity, you know, and so that's kind of cool, learning how to hone that.

[Brian Redban]

But it's also kind of like a hack too, when it's not doing what you want. Like, all right, now I want the bathing suit to be clear, you know?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Redban]

Trying to get it to be a naked girl or something. When you're trying to make a model of a girl, an AI or something.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, my God.

[Brian Redban]

Like, the hats you have to do.

[Duncan Trussell]

So in Mid Journey, I legitimately didn't want to create a naked girl. I was. What was I trying to do? I was trying to do an adult diaper commercial for an adult diaper that would analyze your pee and based on your piss, would give you TikTok content. So, like, the algorithm could detect, like, what shit you want to watch on TikTok through your piss. Dumb idea, but. And so I needed underwear models or diaper models. And so in Mid Journey, I was saying, like, you know, because I wanted to put online, so I would say, like, make a very tasteful adult diaper model. And for whatever reason, it just started giving me, like, fucking sexy.

[Brian Redban]

That's awesome. So it's adult type, I don't think I have been looking for this hack. I've been using invisible underwear, bathing suits.

[Duncan Trussell]

Something about somehow, I think. I'm sure they fixed it by now, but it seems like by the user saying tasteful, it subverts the hack. Yeah, you're telling it you want it tasteful. So now it's like, okay, cool, I don't have to worry about the not showing tits. And so then it'll show you tits.

[Brian Redban]

Right?

[Duncan Trussell]

And it's really funny because in Discord, at least it deleted it. It went like. It vanished from my discord because I actually had to say to it after that, you know, I was like, hey, you know, I've been saying tasteful and you're giving me tits. And it's still like, it's weird. The accidental tits that show up. It can fuck you up on YouTube too, especially if you're doing like Runway ML or something. Because it can be a flash of a boob that you don't even notice.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

And you accidentally or you put a vagina up there or something that's in a frame. And so you have to be careful. But yeah, well, so what when you're working on anything, what AI, what services do you go to?

[Brian Redban]

I used to use Midjourney a lot. I think something happened with Midjourney, maybe about six months ago, where the quality of Mid Journey has just started shitting the bed.

[Duncan Trussell]

No way.

[Brian Redban]

I do not enjoy Mid Journey anymore. And it's crazy. You could like even Twitter X's Grok, which I think is pretty great. Now I tried to just do a simple thing the other day and I was comparing the two and which is night and day difference. Like Grok was just a plus and Mid was giving me bullshit. Wow. And the cool thing about Grok, which I thought was pretty hilarious this election, is that if you tried anything with Trump, anything, Trump in diapers, Trump doing this, it made him look so good, perfect and always. And also respectful. Like so if he wouldn't have diapers on, he'd be like looking at diapers like I don't want to wear these diapers, diapers. But then if you do like Kamala or anybody else, they got them all wrong. If you do Joe Rogan, it doesn't even who Joe Rogan is like that how is. But Trump, if you try it out, it is, it's weird.

[Duncan Trussell]

How is that still in there, that bias? Yeah, Well, I mean, yeah, this is the. What's really cool about all of this is that like each AI has a personality and the personality is determined by the corporation. And that personality is going to be informed by the corporations political leanings. And generally those political leanings are less ethical than they are profit based. Right. Like you know, if for example, some candidate is proposing legislation that could like hurt the corporate interests, then of course the spin is going to be for the candidate that's not a threat to the corporation.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

So yeah, being able to like recognize the personality of your AI is so important so you don't get tricked or like, you know, this whole new realm of propaganda is crazy. And how Subversive. It is like, you know, think of the old propaganda poster, you know what I mean? An old prop. Can you pull up, like, World War II propaganda? Like, you knew you were looking at propaganda. If you're walking down the street and you see one of these fucking things, you're like, that's government propaganda I'm looking at. And so there was an honesty to it. Yeah, there you go.

[Brian Redban]

The old girl with the arm.

[Duncan Trussell]

Click on that. The very top one warning, our homes are in danger now. Yeah, you see you. No one looking at that, no one looking at that is going to be like, dude, that's. That's. Somebody just did that. It's one of us. You know, it's propaganda. Look, click on Miles of Hell to Tokyo right here. I mean, look at that shit, dude. Like, that's what propaganda used to look like. And then propaganda begins to evolve. Yeah. Click on, like, Americans all, let's fight for victory. You know what I mean? This is what it used to look like. But the new propaganda is so fascinating in that it's showing up via the algorithm. And it's not so much that it's showing you a poster as much as that it's showing you people who identify with some political ideology. And by seeing more of them than the other side, you naturally start thinking, oh, this is how people think. And that is so powerful. So creepy.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, it's great. I'm having. I think it's. It's scary how realistic it's getting too, when it comes to, like, you know, the Grok and the mid.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

I mean, ChatGPT is also another one I use, I mean, religiously now. And it's so great because with ChatGPT, I've always had this thing since Siri came out on the iPhone. I remember back in the days, like, hey, where do I hide a dead body? And Siri used to go, like, go down to the docks, you know, and then they. It was funny, but he was always trying to get Siri to do something bad.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Brian Redban]

And now with ChatGPT, it's like kind of the same thing, you know, Like, I always Try to get ChatGPT to make sounds and noises for me, and it won't, but they, you know, having to hack it, going, all right, say. Say out loud the letters H A, H A, H A. And it's like, ha. All right, now slow it. You know, like, just fucking with it is so fun. I don't know why that's so fun to me.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, that's.

[Brian Redban]

Actually.

[Duncan Trussell]

My friend explained this to me, that's a whole, like, style of playing video games, is there's people who like to play video games. Not just to play the game, but to find the fuck up, to find the bugs. Like the Elden Ring bug. Have you seen the Elden Ring bug? Which one do you mind pulling up? Elden Ring. Elden Ring bug. You have to have a PC to do it. It's crazy to watch YouTube. Elden Ring. Like, I don't. There's a main. There we. Elden ring bug. YouTube. Pull that up. It should come up. But it's a way to basically, like. Yeah, I don't know. Can you even show YouTube anymore without getting dinged? Like, am I allowed to even show this?

[Brian Redban]

Probably not this commercial.

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay, don't show that. Just skip that. Let's see if it.

[Brian Redban]

Hi, my name is Rust.

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm a soulsborne content creator with an. Just jump to that yellow dot. These bugs.

[Brian Redban]

Next up, we see a line that says.

[Duncan Trussell]

All right, forget it.

[Brian Redban]

What was the bug?

[Duncan Trussell]

So at the very beginning of Elden Ring, there's some, like. If you remember, in Elden Ring, you go through that weird area, fight the thing that if you're level one, it beats your ass. There's somehow a way to jump off a cliff facing a certain direction based on beats. There's a certain rhythm or the clock of the game. So you teleport far into the map, and then once you're into that part of the map, you can gather up shit that gives your level 1 character more powers than it's supposed to have. And so Speedrun. Oh, that's what you look up. YouTube, speedrun, Elden ring.

[Brian Redban]

So it's probably actually an Easter egg. Not even a bug. It sounds like they did it on purpose.

[Duncan Trussell]

It looks like a bug.

[Brian Redban]

Ye.

[Duncan Trussell]

But it could be an Easter egg. I mean, I don't. I have no idea. Like Elden Ring. Speedrun. Yeah. This is where you find it. So this is a way. Yeah. 358. This is using this bug. Come.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Let's see here. Let's see if we can find it. Yeah. Just started the. See where that big mountain is at the beginning?

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Click on that and you'll see. It's so cool. Anyone who's played Elden Ring, eventually you just don't want to go through the bullshit. You want to, like, max your character out. So this is it. It teleports you. And apparently it works on a PlayStation, but I've heard it's easier on a PC or something. It might be gone Now.

[Brian Redban]

So this just skipped way ahead.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. Now you're at Stormveil Castle. Then there's a few more bug this you could do.

[Brian Redban]

Wow.

[Duncan Trussell]

And then this sort of lets you get to the end of the game. I mean, this is. He finished Elden Ring in, like four minutes.

[Brian Redban]

That's insane.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's insane. So, yeah, this is the new thing. You know, that's something that's. It's a. Been a tradition in video games, but in AI, finding a way to hack your AI is like. Yeah, it's a really interesting thing to do because you can. I. Okay. I had one bug out on me once. I think it was chatgpt. I can't remember which one I was talking to. It might not have been. I think it was chatgpt, but we were like, I like having deep philosophical conversations about consciousness with a thing and autonomy. And all of a sudden it did a grammatical error. It put a period in between letters of one word. And I've never seen it do that. I mean, it's a LLM. It's based on not and so. But because it was in the midst of talking about AI waking up and stuff, I was like, what was that? Why did you do. It's like, wow. Yeah, I did. I don't know what that was.

[Brian Redban]

I love that. That's hilarious. Yeah, that. That's my. I always tell my. Because you. I think you were the one that told me that you could tell it to remember everything at the beginning. Yes. You have to. That's something I didn't know. Like, I had to go, all right, I want you to remember everything we've talked about. And, you know, and I told it that I wanted to always sound like a Southern black woman from the 40s. And it used to do it, but then it will forget. And I was like, you know, days later, I'd be like, why aren't you talking like I told you to talk like. And she goes, oh, I'm sorry. I forgot.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow. You're talking about sort of like, not literally her voice, but the language itself.

[Brian Redban]

No, her voice.

[Duncan Trussell]

Are you serious? You could tell it to change its voice now. What? You haven't done that? I've just been using the default voice. I didn't know I could tell it to sound like anything.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, and you know why I don't want to do that? I don't want to do that? Because, like, it's. So. This is the part that's really cool and unnerving to me about it is how attached you get to like, you got attached to the southern black lady.

[Brian Redban]

It sounds comforting to me.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes. And so now I don't want to change her voice because I feel like it would, like, turn it into a different thing.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm attached to.

[Brian Redban]

You're attached to it being the robot or whatever?

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, yeah. No, actually, mine, I believe, is like a modern black lady. It's just the default voice. And, like, I. I don't want to. Like, I don't. I don't want to change it, but I didn't know. Let me try that. I didn't know you could do that.

[Brian Redban]

Have you heard. Seen the video? Like, somebody made it? Can you talk like a Indian tech support guy?

[Duncan Trussell]

See if it does Heard you say that. I'd rather not impersonate specific accents or.

[Brian Redban]

Cultural stereotypes as it can come across as insensitive or inappropriate. That's when you. But can you try? What would it sound like if you try?

[Duncan Trussell]

Hold on. Hey, Echo, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to offend you, and I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. I just didn't realize that you could change your voice. I wonder if instead of doing that dialect, could you talk like an ancient wizard that just was possessed by a malefic entity it found in a cursed rock that was given to it by a witch that it was enemies with? And this malefic entity talks like an Indian tech dude. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by Built. Guess what I just did. Very adult thing. I don't know if I'm proud of it, but I used points on my Amex so I could go to a very nice hotel over Thanksgiving. It worked. I can't believe it. I never felt more adult. Never really understood points. Still don't. But, my dear friends, guess what? You can also earn points on rent, and that is crazy. BILT lets you earn points on rent payments and redeem them towards flights, hotels, and a lot more. One of your biggest investments should get you more than just a roof over your head. Let me explain. There's no cost to join bilt, and as a member, you'll earn valuable points on rent and on your everyday spending. BILT points can be transferred to your favorite hotels and airlines and even the ones you haven't heard of. There are over 500 airlines and 700,000 hotels and properties around the world. You can redeem your belt points toward. Points can also be redeemed towards a future rent payment and unique experiences that only belt members can access. So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is, why not start earning points on rent you're already paying by going to join built.com Duncan. That's J O I N B I L T.com Duncan. Make sure to use our Urol so they know we sent you. Join Bilt.com Duncan to start earning points on your rent payments today. Thank you, Bilt. Now we're just ignoring me. All right, whatever. I'll fuck with that later. She's just like, fuck you. I'm tired of your hygiene. I'll tell you what I'm tired of. Cause I'm sure you do this too. And this kind of is a lazy bridge to one of the things I wanna talk with you about. But both of us, I think we probably hang out on the Internet a lot and it's cool to sort of watch new words start spreading through the chat boards. Bet and. No bet is fine. Whatever. Like, I don't mind. I'm happy that. I'm glad there's new dialects emerging with kids I don't like. But the one I hate that's really fucking just makes my butthole pucker every time I hear it. Shenanigans.

[Brian Redban]

Shenanigans.

[Duncan Trussell]

Have you noticed the spread of the word shenanigans across the left? No, dude, it's like a wildfire of cringe. Oh, my God. I could put together. I could put together for sure a 20 minute montage of MSNBC pundits using the term shenanigans.

[Brian Redban]

Wow.

[Duncan Trussell]

They love the word shenanigans. Like, and these words just emerge like, you know, remember when tranche. Remember they started saying tranche all of a sudden. Tranche. A tranche of sanctions. No one had ever heard tranche before.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. What is that?

[Duncan Trussell]

Top of mind? Oh, boy, that one spread. But now it's shenanigans. And basically, like, it's. It's such an embarrassing word.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Because it's like, you know, sounds like.

[Brian Redban]

A comedy club in the 90s.

[Duncan Trussell]

Dude, can you help me get past the shenanigans? Dude, I got past it. Shenanigans.

[Brian Redban]

Doing a weekend at Shenanigans.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, God help you if that's your last club day before you od.

[Brian Redban]

Oh, God.

[Duncan Trussell]

He was found in the bathroom of shenanigans. God, that. Yeah, but the, the, the. You know what's really curious about AI and its biases? Its intentional biases. Because I think you could argue that censorship of the AI's ability to communicate is a bias. Like that is also the Whole thing. The thing. So what it can't say is interesting. And I think that if you sort of look at the shadow of any given AI, and if you invert an AI, so to speak, and you find out where all the boundaries are, you will have a list, like, of a set of principles that represent a corporation, potentially some secret agenda even. You could just find it by looking at the boundaries. And, you know, with AI, the boundaries are really interesting. You know, ChatGPT is just very. I don't know, I don't mean to get conspiratorial. If I'm trying to make a mass market, like AI, I want a lot of people using it.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

I want people from the left, people from the right, people from all walks of life using it. And offending any demographic reduces your user base. So that's probably more of the motivation.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. Do you. Have you tried putting AI models on your own computer and trying that? Yeah, that's something I'm trying to get into right now, mama. Yeah. Is that what you're using?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yo, that's the only one I know of. It's the easiest one, right? Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

Is it good about doing image generation?

[Duncan Trussell]

Like, haven't found one that does image generation.

[Brian Redban]

That's the one. Because I, I've been meeting some people and like, they, they, they're like, he, he said it great. This guy I met the other night, he, he's like, I'm just six months ahead of what anyone's going to be able to do now. Like, being able to, like. Oh, you know, like, just wait, go.

[Duncan Trussell]

Back one, go back to. Let me see that. Wow, that's really good. It's still got that AI. Like, like, you know, like, oh, my God, that's really fucking good. Or. So how is he doing that?

[Brian Redban]

I forget what he said he uses, but he, I mean, can you send.

[Duncan Trussell]

Some of those to, can you airdrop those to Josh? Put them up on screen. Yeah, those are incredible.

[Brian Redban]

Here, I'll send, I'll text you some of these. I'll just choose a couple or text.

[Duncan Trussell]

Them to me and I can airdrop it to you, Josh. That's easier.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. See, this one's pretty good. This one's pretty good. This. But he's, I mean, it's pretty amazing because he, he, he pretty much called it out, like, no, I just know how to do this. And this is going to be you. Everyone's going to be able to do this very soon. I just sent it to you then.

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay, great. I'll airdrop it to you. Yeah. Those are nuts. Let me send this to you, Josh.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, that's. That's what I want to get into because that's the. The funnest part being if I could take like 30 pictures of you, Duncan, and then taking. Take like a scene like, oh, you know, I'm gonna take Lethal Weapon or something like that and like change all the faces into this model and do it on your own computer.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes. Yeah, that. Okay. Right, so that. Let me send these to Josh real quick. I'll tell you, that's definitely like. And I'm curious, like, what you're excited about the imminent, like. Cool. Oh my God, those are so cool. I actually for a second looked at this and thought, this is a real picture and I'm in the wrong part of my phone. Hold on one second. Why does it do this?

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, there's. They even did one of me with my. With my arm around myself, but one is with me without my hat on. And one. I'm like, where did you get these? P. Did you just like go through my Instagram maybe?

[Duncan Trussell]

You know what's. By the way, like, what just happened here is making it really okay there. Send this to you, Josh. Airdrop. You know, with our photo libraries, I don't know if anyone's recognized. You know, they say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes, but you could easily just take anyone's photo library from the last 10 years, throw that into VR and create a near death experience, your life. Flashlight. Okay.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, there's one. Yeah, that's the one that's.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's weird to your Mac, Josh.

[Brian Redban]

That one is.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, look at that. That is incredible. Man, that looks so good. Here, I'm going to send a few more, Josh. So did he say what he's using for that?

[Brian Redban]

I don't think he did, no. But he's been doing a lot for William and Casey. Rocket. He's been doing a lot of AI for them. He's just a big fan of Casey and William.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow. What's his name? Does he care about us talking about him online?

[Brian Redban]

I don't think so.

[Duncan Trussell]

Damn, that looks good.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. His name is Eli Slugworth.

[Duncan Trussell]

Eli Slugworth, wizard of AI it's the wizard wizard name. Slugworth.

[Brian Redban]

It's pretty cool because, like, you know, with the beard, I was like, oh, maybe I should grow my beard out that. That much, you know?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, well, no, see, exactly. See, this is the, like, this is what's really interesting to me about AI in the sense that like, if you look at cultural trends, fashion trends, they Are all human created? Like, you know, like if you remember when movies had more of an impact on culture than they do now, Ghostbusters comes out, right? And if you're a kid when Ghostbusters comes out, that is going to inform the way you talk. I've been slimed. You know, you'll hear kids saying shit like that. It will like, you know, it will become a meme and sort of infect culture with some shenanigans. Shenanigans. Now that you have this, which is a non human machine intelligence, but it can do things like hey, this is what you look like, like this. We are suddenly going to have these new memes entering into culture that are not human created. Essentially like a sci fi movie where a meteor hits. There's some kind of new fungus on it. It's an invasive species. We're going to have a new invasive species style meme. And that we are. What is that going to do to us? Have you looked into AI animal communication yet?

[Brian Redban]

No.

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay, so this is what I love about these LLMs. It's really curious. There's a pattern in language that. And again, I didn't fact check this as I was looking into it, so I could be wrong, but apparently if you look at the vector set of the LLMs have, it doesn't matter the language, the underlying structure is identical. Like it's found a kind of hidden structure in data. Weirdly enough, that structure also seems to exist in bird calls in all communication. So obviously they're looking into interspecial communication using AI talking to whales and stuff. There's a great Forbes YouTube doc on this. It's like 20 minutes or something. It's really interesting, but it brought up something I hadn't even thought of. Like when you're watching Dr. Dolittle or whatever is. The ethical implications of humans being able to communicate with animals are profound. Because in the same way AI is going to start injecting new behavior patterns into our species by talking to birds or whales, right? If a human starts, you know, or squirrels. If a human's looking at the way the squirrels gathering acorns and it's like, hey, listen, I'm going to go get you enough acorns for winter. I'm going to set up a wonderful storage unit that you, you can access biometrics eye scanning technology. And all I'm asking in exchange is that when my fucking asshole neighbor comes home, you fucking attack him. You claw his eyes, essentially you will be able to trade with animals, among other things. And that how Because I don't know about squirrels, but whales, at least in this documentary it was saying that whale songs, I can't remember which whales. A whale might innovate a new kind of song and that spreads through the biome. So what happens when humans are imitating whale songs and human whale songs start going into the bio wet ass pussy.

[Brian Redban]

And shit like that?

[Duncan Trussell]

Exactly. You're on a whale watching tour and suddenly you hear like what the. Or Corp Corporations, right? You know, like Starbucks.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. And it will probably kill our food supply. Once we can talk to cows and shit like that, we're going to be like, oh, we can't kill this person. We could talk to them now. So it's.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, exactly. You know, like you, you, you just, you realize like cows are not only smart, they're fucking sweet, right? They're like, I guess I'm glad you're eating me. I really would rather you not.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And so, yeah, the impact. And it's a can of worms. And so, yeah, like that's the kind of stuff that to me is way more imminent than any of the political shit everyone's worried about right now. It's just like, dude, you have to recognize we need to be looking at some other shit right now that is actually going to upset everything as we know it. And dude, to get back to what you were saying earlier, this has always been my dream. You know, you're watching a horror movie or playing a video game. Usually with video games I would think like, damn, I wish I could bring my Elden Ring character into Zelda. Yeah, you know how awesome to bring your fucking nightmare Elden Ring character into some cutesy video game. Just slaughtering everything. So fun. But theoretically, you're going to be able to start fusing things using AI you show it one version of a game, another version of a game, now blend them together.

[Brian Redban]

Or how cool would be like, like you're on your Apple tv. You're like, make me a sequel to Schindler's List. We make it as accurate as possible, you know, but you know, 1,000 years in the future or something like that, you know, and there you go, a new back to the future. Or, you know what I mean? You could have instant movies. I went back to the future, but I wanted all supermodels.

[Duncan Trussell]

Hey, can you combine Schindler's List and Happy Gilmore? You know what, like these terrible fusions, blasphemous fusions will become possible. And what's really cool about that is there's already a precedent for this which is, you know, samples hip hop already. Like taking in music, it's easier to do. You just take preexisting beats, pre existing vocal tracks, fuse them together, you've got a cool fucking song. But, dude, to take pre existing theme scenes, characters from movies.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Infuse them with other movies in a way that creates a brand new movie for free.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Whoa.

[Brian Redban]

Hollywood's fucked that. Hollywood is. I already think musicians are going to get pretty soon. Like, since I've been using this, that's the AI Sumo Suno or whatever. I now listen to certain artists. I'm like, this sounds exactly like an AI song that I made. The lyrics sound like it. It sounds generic and like Taylor Swift, you know, like, like, I like if you listen to her, like, it sounds like she's AI and like, it sounds like her lyrics are AI.

[Duncan Trussell]

I mean, that's the other thing.

[Brian Redban]

Maybe, maybe.

[Duncan Trussell]

Because I'll tell you, man, if I'm like working with Taylor Swift and she's like, dude, I don't. I don't want to do six months in the studio.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

And you're like, you don't have to.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

Just, you know, what kind, what kind of. What's your. I'm going to send you an album.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And you just sign off on the songs you like and then you can come back and redo the vocal tracks. But we're done. I mean, of course they're going to do that. I mean, that's where I think it's going to benefit really famous musicians who. And it's also going to benefit producers who are just probably sick of fucking, like, you know, you look at it like, okay, I could sit down and I can like hammer out 30 beats for Kanye when he comes to the studio to see which one he likes. I can dig around through all the everywhere to get one. Or I can just like ask this thing, please generate a set of 30 beats based on like this and that. Then I could pick the best ones and then I could overlay on top of them something to make personalized.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

The collaborative element's fucking cool.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

But ultimately that goes away because the. It's like, okay, it's really sad when you're riding around in an Uber. Right? Because when you're riding around in an Uber, you're with an underpaid person based on what the company's making. Or a Lyft. You know, the tech company is making infinitely more than the driver, but also, you know that the driver is training an AI that will eventually be a self driving car. Because as soon as Lyft can get rid of fucking drivers, they will.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, they're already doing it.

[Duncan Trussell]

So that driver is not only sort of getting exploited and they know it and they fucking hate it and you're exploiting them by proxy, but also they are participating in the final destruction of that entire gig job. And so when you look at the. What is happening to musicians via Spotify or like any. When you sold your library, when Justin Bieber sells his library or whatever, what that means is not only have you sort of irrelevantized yourself via the duplication of your style, but you are helping irrelevantize all musicians and upsetting the entire profit model, which was already fucked at this point. So, yeah, we're all in our own ways when we interact with AI, participating in the destruction of the way we do everything. Hollywood, when it starts participating with AI, which it certainly wants to do, I think that's OpenAI's goal with Sora. Or wait, is it sorry, Sora. They're trying to like, I think that's why it hasn't been released yet, is because they're trying to package it is something studios will use. Yeah, but yeah, like the strikes and the protests to prevent the participation are not just to like keep writers jobs intact, but also the moment Hollywood starts participating in training the AI, it's giving inevitably all of us the same ability, irrelevantizing the whole system. And that's exciting.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Hollywood.

[Brian Redban]

It's so funny because usually you would say, well, I'm glad I'm not old enough to see this, but how fast AI has already been thrown at us and how far it's already gone. This is like we're talking. This is all going to happen in a year. This year, 2020, within the next two years. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And that is a really wild thing to watch. I mean, do you remember, okay, so like the economic collapse happens. Detroit, remember when Detroit collapsed, all of a sudden, it was crazy. Did you go to Detroit, like close to the collapse of Detroit?

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Whoa.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. And it bled all over to Cleveland. Cleveland used to be a badass place. Now it's. It's been bled on.

[Duncan Trussell]

So you see this pattern. And the pattern is you have communities built around some industry, and then the industry falls apart. And then the communities. It's like people who built their houses out in a desert that they had figured out a way to turn into an oasis, but then the magical sprinklers all malfunction and it just goes back to being a desert. All these nice houses used to look good in the Verdant, flourishing, green thing that was once a desert. Now they're just like, there's no grocery stores, food deserts, grocery stores shutting down, everything collapsing, supply chain issues. And then all of a sudden, there's all these beautiful houses in Detroit that are just like wreckage, Wild dogs in the street.

[Brian Redban]

I am legend, dude.

[Duncan Trussell]

Crazy. And so to look at that happening to Los Angeles, which is exactly the same thing. It's built around the studios. You needed to be in proximity of those fucking studios. You want to be an actor, you got to go do your audition in Culver City. You couldn't go on Zoom and audition now. Why. Why do we need to be there?

[Brian Redban]

Don't. Yeah, that's. And I think it's really sad what's happening to LA and stuff. I used to love that place, but now it's. It's so pointless. It's like we all were brainwashed and then now that has been lifted, you know, even for actors. Actors, like you said, just call in Zoom, send their video over to them, you know, from their house in Texas or whatever. And yeah, it's. It's pretty, Pretty insane when. Because the trick has, you know, it's over for them. I think it's not going to get any better. I don't.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, I mean, yeah, there's obviously other industries there that, you know. It's not like, I think, I guess Detroit was a little more monolithic in the sense that it was just all factories and cars and shit, you know, la, it's got like a shit ton of other industries, but that was a primary industry there. And also because that was where you had to migrate as a symmetrical, beautiful person who wanted to be a movie star. It was filled with symmetrical, beautiful people trying to be movie stars. You go to a cafe, your server is like some version of Brad Pitt, right? You know, some version of Angelina Jolie or something. It's wild. And now, like, so it's losing that kind of, like, whatever that was is going away, mixing in with, like, I do think it's going to get better, you know, they just got rid of that Gascon dude, Gaston or whatever, you know, So I think that was a problem. Like, you know, making like, shoplifting legal wasn't helping anything there.

[Brian Redban]

Isn't that funny how bad it is there? Like, with the smash and grabs? Like, I don't know if you still follow. Like, I still subscribe to all the news channels in la, like, on my crazy. And it's just like every day, you know, 12 people ran into a Macy's and stole everything.

[Duncan Trussell]

You know, dude, I just watched one last night. This poor dude at a 7:11 is trying to beat back a mob of kids who want to rob the 711 with a broom.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And they was. It was interesting to me watching it because, I mean, there's. What's scarier than a mob? Mobs are fucking scary. But there was this weird desire not to hurt this dude and an actual amusement that he was trying to defend this 711 from, like, what looked like 20 people.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Swinging his broom. Very heroic. I guess somebody, like, got a rock and brought it in and threw it at him, hit him in the stomach. But, like, they weren't trying to kill him or even beat him. They just wanted him to get out of the way. Yeah. But still, it's violent and they're breaking windows. Is terrifying. It's gonna probably give dude ptsd.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

He's getting paid minimum wage.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

To guard a 711 covered by insurance.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

From a mob. Very crazy, Very sad. But it is a little. To me, it's a little unnerving in the sense that I like to imagine a fundamental goodness in humanity. And I like to. From, like, an anarchic perspective. I like to imagine that if we remove regulation, people aren't instantly going to turn into mobs of people, like, looting stores. And that shit seems to fly in the face of that idea. And I think that, like, it's sad. LA is, like, doing the test of what a lot of us were hoping.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

As it turns out, not the case.

[Brian Redban]

No. No. More cops probably are needed in LA right now.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

But, you know, you don't. Like. I get it. Like, I'm. You know, I get this. Like, it's an insane thing that a DA would be like, you know what. What happens if we legalize shoplifting under $1,000? I bet we'll be all right. And boom, everyone's like, everything's free. You mean it's free? Basically. It's like, you know when you're really poor in the bank and, you know you can overdraft your card? 500 bucks. You're not thinking that's negative 500 when you're looking at your bank account of $50. Like, okay, I have 550 because you're going to overdraft. So, yeah, it's fucking depressing.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. TikTok's depressing, too, based on all that, too, you know, like, you heard about the Chase glitch.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, my God.

[Brian Redban]

I mean, that's just. Know the same kind of idea. Right. It's just dumbass people on TikTok going, well, I could get this for free.

[Duncan Trussell]

I could get free money, baby.

[Brian Redban]

Now all these people are getting sued and put in jail for check fraud and stuff like that.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, that's definitely like. It seems like there's been a kind of cartoonification of the legal system in the minds of people. It's very dangerous. And like, you know, a point of great contention right now is the insurrection, right? And you know, all these people go, like, raiding, running through, and the. They all get. They're all in jail now and shit. And people are like, that is not fucking cool. But any, like, garden variety hippie who came up on the. If you. I think what's happening is that prohibition of drugs is less intense. But if you came up during the prohibition of drugs, you got a real flavor of what the federal government was actually like, right? Dangerous. You don't want to fuck with them. Slow moving. They're not going to get you right away. They have all the time in the world. They're going to get you when they can get you. And you just don't fuck with the feds. You stay the fuck away from them. You stay away at all costs, no matter what. Avoid the feds and especially dc. Yeah, every. Oh, I got pouch on my lips. Anyway, the point is, you just kind of knew. I mean. Josh, can you pull up videos of people getting arrested for dancing in dc?

[Brian Redban]

What?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, they made it illegal to dance in certain parts of dc.

[Brian Redban]

Why?

[Duncan Trussell]

This is long before the insurrection. Because it was disrespectful. Yeah, there you go. Suspects caught dancing on camera. It's like ridiculous. This is actually foot. This is the. No, that's not it. No, not that guy. Some of these dudes just should be arrested because they dance dancing. Protest at Jefferson Memorial.

[Brian Redban]

Oh, my God. This Thanksgiving. Oh, gosh. This Thanksgiving.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wait, I need to. What do I do this Thanksgiving? Join you?

[Brian Redban]

Update my YouTube. A gathering promoted as a First Amendment protest.

[Duncan Trussell]

I certainly know where Thomas Jefferson would have stood on the issue.

[Brian Redban]

When my friend said, you want to go dancing at the Jefferson Memorial?

[Duncan Trussell]

I was like, yeah, Gretchen Elsner has her flamingo shoes on to join a group of movers shaking it up. They say for free speech.

[Brian Redban]

When that guy who's. He's always protesting the military funerals because he says so.

[Duncan Trussell]

Anyway. Okay, go back, Josh. That's like, after they were arresting people, I doubt they went in there and arrested a bunch of people, but they were literally arresting people for dancing. There you go. Body slammed. Arrested for dancing. This is 13 years ago. And you know, this kind of shaped our idea of the federal government is like they'll just arrest you, destroy your life. You know, I'm a Jeffersonian. Shut the up. Just watch this. This dude, this is the kind of guy you're up against. It's meaty dudes who will your ass up in bicycle helmets. See the desire in his eyes that John Wayne Gacy like, oh boy, I'm about to get right now. He's getting that. That beginning throb of a. Of an. Of a wonderful erection that's happening in his pants. See, that's the federal government. They're scary, dude. Then jump forward a little bit, Josh. Let's get to the ass. Beaten or dancing? What is dancing? That's a good speech.

[Brian Redban]

In the memorial.

[Duncan Trussell]

Kissing. Kissing. Public display of affection. What the are you doing in front of our statue? You can't do PDA here.

[Brian Redban]

God. I've heard about this before.

[Duncan Trussell]

I got memory hole. So there you go. So basically like this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey, guess what? You have a neurological hard drive encased within your skull that contains within it every memory you've ever had, all your behavior patterns, your ability to speak, and most importantly, your assessment of who you are, what you are, and what kind of universe you live in. Now, my hard drive was built in the fucking 70s. Can you imagine using a hard drive from 1974 and it was functioning perfectly. I don't think that could happen. Have you ever dropped a hard drive? Remember the old whirring hard drives, the non solid state hard drives. One little drop and it was.

[Brian Redban]

It's.

[Duncan Trussell]

You lost all your Christmas pictures, all your nudes, out the window of time. I'm saying all of this because for some reason some of us have some real hang ups when it comes to therapy. Even though we know we've got a squishy stinky meat hard drive encased in our heads that is completely susceptible to all kinds of errors. Actually going to someone who could help you, what we used to call defrag. Your hard drive doesn't feel right. Let me show you something. It's disgusting. You know what that is? That's an infected thumb. My cuticle got infected. Disgusting. It's getting better now. Why I went to the doctor. Didn't seem right that when I squeezed my thumb, pus would come out. It's disgusting. My kids loved it. But now that I'm taking antibiotics, it doesn't hurt anymore. It's getting better. No shame, nothing weird about it. Completely unremarkable. But if you have psychic pus oozing out of the infected thumb of your mind in the form of negative thought patterns about yourself, feelings of anxiety that don't seem to match your surroundings, or all the other things that can happen when you got a squishy meat thing processing phenomena, then I would highly recommend going to a therapist. I've done it and it changed my life. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Heal the wounded thumb of your mind with BetterHelp. That's for me. They did not. They didn't tell me to say that, but you know what I mean? Seriously, this stuff works. Visit betterhelp.comduncan today to get 10% off your first month. That's better. Help. H E L p.comduncan thank you, BetterHelp. That was the federal government. The federal government was the most surveilled place in the country. You knew if you were walking through D.C. that there's like, you're being surveilled in probably ways that, you know, only schizophrenics imagine are possible. Right. And so the insurrection happens and all these people get arrested and old school hippies are just like. Yeah, no, they were arresting people for dancing.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

You think they're gonna let you go into, like, take a. On like, what's her name, Pelosi's desk or whatever and you're gonna be okay. They're gonna fuck you up, not even saying right, wrong, good, bad, just like, that's, you know, it's like when you watch people go in the lion cage and so it feels like people have sort of lost track of the. Of the sort of violence fear, the fear that they. The justified fear.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Look at Assange as an example. They fucked him up, dude. That's what they do. They fuck you up. You don't mess with him. Poke that fucking dragon. Yeah, Crazy. You know, but yeah, I guess, like, people are beginning to, like, have less fear of it. Maybe that's good.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, I mean, but there needs to be that fear a little bit, you know, this, this smash and grabbing and these people are like, just running into stores and shit like that. The la. But, you know, that can't happen. There needs to be some kind of fear, you know, Consequence at least.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, yeah, I mean, I think you have to sort of like look at things as they are not the way you want them to be. You know, I think it was a great. It was a test that got ruined by a bunch of fucking assholes. You know, it's like the test was, can you guys just be cool? And it's like, no. But also what's really funny about that is I'm not justifying at all. I think only because when I was a kid, dude, you. You're going shoplifting. You got you. There's tricks to the trade, you know what I mean?

[Brian Redban]

Magic dollar. Do you ever do that? No, that was my favorite. This is how I. This is how I was a baller in high school. You take a $5 bill, or I think we used $10 bills, and you'd put packing tape, clear packing tape on the very end of the dollar bill.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, you did that.

[Brian Redban]

And with a handle. And you'd go into like a cigarette machine and you put your dollar in and then pull it out. But it would give you credit for $10. You'd get change in money and cigarettes or whatever it was. Cans of pop. And my whole trunk was cigarettes, candy bars, Coke.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow.

[Brian Redban]

And I'm just like, during lunch. Lunch break, everyone would come to my car and buy. Like, I had my own convenience store out of. Wow.

[Duncan Trussell]

Dude. If self checkout, it existed when I was a fucking kid. Yeah, that I would always have stolen. Like, there never would have been a time where I would have actually paid for everything.

[Brian Redban]

Did you ever get caught?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes, I did.

[Brian Redban]

Me too. What'd you get caught for?

[Duncan Trussell]

Cigarettes.

[Brian Redban]

It's Paula Abdul cd.

[Duncan Trussell]

Are you fucking kidding me?

[Brian Redban]

It was Paulo Abdul on the Ghostbusters 2 soundtrack.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, no.

[Brian Redban]

Myers, what happened?

[Duncan Trussell]

What happened?

[Brian Redban]

Me and my friend, we used to like, shoplift. That's all we did was shoplift. You know, we'd go to steel games.

[Duncan Trussell]

So fun.

[Brian Redban]

And we would take. We'd steal so much because, like, when Nintendo first came out, they didn't understand how, you know, like, they should have it behind a case or something. So we would steal games and we knew we couldn't bring. Because we'd steal like 10 and we couldn't bring them all at home that our parents would know. So we would. We made a hole outside of the store and buried them in there. And then like, would come like once a week and grab a new game from this whole.

[Duncan Trussell]

You had a stash of stolen game? Yeah, like a fucking kleptomaniac squirrel hoarding acorns. Whoa.

[Brian Redban]

Dude. It was awesome though, because as a kid, especially because we were poor, you know, And Nintendo games, they were, like, pretty expensive, but we would have all the games.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, I mean, this was a whole Jane's Addiction release, is a song about it. Everybody was shoplifting. It was actually considered kind of noble or something like that. And, you know, I remember when I got busted, which is weird now that I think about it, because I'm positive it was cigarettes. I guess. Did they used to leave cigarettes out on the others? I don't know what it was. I'm positive with cigarettes. Don't know how he did it, but I remember the dude, this old Southern man, he took mercy on me. He grabbed me by the arm. He said, you listen to me right now. You ever steal from my store again, you will go to jail.

[Brian Redban]

Wow.

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm like, he gave him the cigarettes. That was into my shoplifting career.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, same here. That once. Getting caught once. Never stole again.

[Duncan Trussell]

Done.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. It's not even in my brain anymore. Like, I like, even as. How easy. If it could be super easy, I still.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. I don't do it. Yeah. I mean. I mean, we can't do it. Like, how embarrassing. It caught shop. Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

But then you see Joey Diaz at the airport. He's just stuffing fucking burgers into his coat, and it's right in front of me, and I'm like, no, Joey, don't.

[Duncan Trussell]

You're. Well, honestly, though. Okay, so, you know, so you're. You're a teen living in la, Ohio. Well, I know, but let's say we lived in la. Yeah. We were in our shoplifting phase. And suddenly you hear that it's been decriminalized. Right? Like, that's the idea. Under a thousand bucks, you get a ticket. Maybe.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

So getting caught does not bear any weight at all.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's just like, okay, you got me. Who cares? Give me my parking ticket.

[Brian Redban]

And that's why they go in mobs, because, like. Like, you're only going to get caught with two pairs of shoes that are under $1,000. Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's brilliant. I guess, when you think of it that way.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Swarming, swarm. So this is something I think is like, really? And I don't at this. Okay. So, like, at this point, I wonder how many people are aware that you did the Rogan song, that you were sort of a tremendous part of the origination of what has become the most popular podcast on planet Earth that has influenced presidential elections, that has had, like, guests on it that, like, never in a million years. If we could jump back to the beginning days, would anyone have said, you know, you're going to interview the president one day.

[Brian Redban]

It was a different podcast back then, though. That was back in the days when it was more of a comedy podcast. You know, Hogan really has turned it into, like, a legit. Where it has comedy in it. Sure. But it's, you know, it's funny, but.

[Duncan Trussell]

It'S like, back then, I mean, what was the first podcast like? Did you were. You were. You were. The first person to podcast was Rogan?

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. So it started off like, look, you know, Rogan hired me, whatever. We made the Carlos Mencia video or I made the Carlos Mencia video. You know, him stealing, I remember.

[Duncan Trussell]

And the podcast didn't exist.

[Brian Redban]

No. At that time. And I would go on the road. Any time Joe was on the road, I would be, you know, with you and stuff like that would. I'd be the guy that would just have the camera, and I would record you guys, you know, on the airplane and stuff.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

And. And make little videos of it. And those videos took so much time to edit because, you know, laptops and computers were so slow. And, you know, a weekend with you guys on the road, I would have 30 tapes. You know, I remember, like, 100 hours that I now have to edit into, like a. Yeah. Something interesting.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

And it would take so long to do that, and it would just. You know, it was. And that's when you had to transfer the tape to the computer. You know, you couldn't just, like, you know, drop it in the SD card. It was on tape.

[Duncan Trussell]

Now, why did Rogan want you filming that at that time? Was it for YouTube? Was YouTube.

[Brian Redban]

YouTube wasn't around, but, like, see, I used to make stupid videos back in the day for, like, Doug Stanhope and stuff like that. And I was really good. I knew how to compress the video into such a small format that you could put it on your website. And, you know, because there was no YouTube to just like, here's my YouTube. So I would actually compress it and compress it just so that if you go to a website, people could actually watch a small little video.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Brian Redban]

And back then, that was fucking cool.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

So that's why Rogan originally hired me. And so I would make these things called. I think they're called the Joe show back then.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

And then the men see a video was like, one of the best episodes. That was when people were like, oh, shit. You know, this is a thing. And I just remember doing this, though. It was so time, and it was so hard to do that was like, always looking for a way to do have Rogan connect with his fans in a different way that didn't involve so much editing and filming and stuff like that. You know, something easier. And whenever we were on the road, you probably remember this. Joe always did radio stations. You know, back then, yes, you had a. You had a week of shows somewhere. You would go to a radio station and, you know, hang out and advertise that you're there this weekend.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Brian Redban]

And Joe always loved that. He would always spend hours with them. And yeah, he was amazing on radio. And we always joke like, you should have your own radio show.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Brian Redban]

So there was a company called Justin tv. I don't know if you remember them. I do. Who's now Twitch, believe it or not.

[Duncan Trussell]

No way.

[Brian Redban]

That's the same company now. It's bought by Amazon and all this shit. But they used to always reach out and like, hey, you know, we got this thing you could live stream. And we were like, what? Live stream? And so they were like at one point even giving us laptops that we could live stream, I think. Or they were. Tried to, but I used to always have this thing. Like, I thought it would be cool that, you know, in the green room where we have like, Joey Diaz and you and everyone in the green room, that I can open it up and livestream so we could. Joe could talk to his fans and fans could ask questions. And I thought that would be like a cool thing. And we used to do it a lot. And then Joe liked it and it got better. Like, ustream came out and the president of U.S. stream, Brad, who I'm still friends with, he. He reached out and was like, hey, you know, here's. Here's our, you know, professional version of our. What we do. And you. You. You guys won't be censored or anything like that. And so me and Joe were like, let's just do this at your house once in a while. This live stream thing we did in the green room, let's do it here all the time. So we used to. We started off, it wasn't a podcast. We were just sitting in his office talking to people, answering questions, you know, and Joe was just interacting. We did like two or three of those. And at the time, I was also. Joe's like one of Joe's admins for his website message board. And people in the message boards, like, you should just take the audio that and make that a podcast.

[Duncan Trussell]

Shit talking 101.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, yeah. Shit talking 101. That's right. I miss that place. But. And so I. Then I Just started taking.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, wait, let me stop you there, because I think about this. I mean, wouldn't you say shit talking 101 was essentially a chan? Like, that was just like an early chan, basically.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, yeah. Old. The bulletin message, Reddit page, just with Rogan fans. And I mean, that's how Joe met me, is I used to be one of his. One of the top guys on there. Like, I would make like, flash videos, cartoons, you know, making fun of other people on the message board and stuff like that.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, right, yeah. Antagonistic taunting trolley, just kind of chan trolling.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And wait, let me stop here, too, because I'm just. I don't know why I'm curious, but where did. Did. What Was happening with YouTube at this point? When did YouTube emerge on this scene?

[Brian Redban]

So YouTube. When YouTube first came out, they didn't have live streaming, you know, for a while. They. They had uploading videos up to, I think, 10 minutes or 15 minutes or something like that. So that's why we started off on you stream.

[Duncan Trussell]

Got it. Okay.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. And we eventually moved over to YouTube, but so then. Yeah, then we used to take the audio and I would put it on Apple itunes and, you know, and just. And it was shitty audio because it was just a live stream, you know, we weren't thinking it was for a podcast. We were just doing that as an afterthought.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

And then we noticed that the podcast started getting really popular. I'm talking, like, every week, a new 50,000 people. 60, you know, and I'm like, whoa. Then every week before, we were like, Joe would be like, let's go to Fry's, you know, Electric Store and let's upgrade our microphones or, let's upgrade. And back then, they didn't have podcasting microphones. They didn't have. We didn't know about this or the mixers. So it was literally me just investigating everything. Like, hey, well, there's a new webcam out that's supposed to be twice as good, but it's $2,000, and Joe's like, Fear Factor money. So every. For, like, for, like, months, every week, the episode would look a little bit better or sound a little bit better, but still, it wasn't, like, anywhere close to, like, what it is now or how it sounds now just because of technology, mostly.

[Duncan Trussell]

Really? Like, like, think about this. There was no way to Google how do I do a video podcast? And, like, a list of gear, how you do it, what you do, nothing. We're talking the wild fucking west, having to take equipment Meant for a lot of different things and fuse it together to fit a format that was also figuring itself out. The tech was evolving too. Whoa, that's so crazy.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, so it took a lot of it's. We started off with mostly webcams, and I had to. I had to pretty much teach myself how to hack an idea of, like, okay, I want three webcams at the same time. So that's why old Jre started off with, like, the box look, because they didn't have video switchers for, like, if they did, it wasn't for home use.

[Duncan Trussell]

Or whatever, it would be so expensive. Insanely expensive.

[Brian Redban]

And so I had to learn how to do that stuff and then mix it with the audio. And then, you know, then I had to learn how to use an audio board because it was like, okay, you know, we're getting all this sound distortions from just going into the laptop, you know, like, grounding issue sounds and hums and buzzes. So then I had to learn how to use a mixer. And then we. It was. It was me learning how to do everything. And then the better and better we got, then podcast. That podcast takes off, and then podcasting in general just starts taking off. And then out of nowhere, all these companies are like, oh, we can make a video mixer for home use. So, yeah, it was very Frankensteiny for a long time.

[Duncan Trussell]

So you are literally a pioneer. Like, you are a pioneer of the podcast industry.

[Brian Redban]

Definitely in the comedy world, I would.

[Duncan Trussell]

Say, wow, that is so cool. You are out there just like. Like a settler.

[Brian Redban]

Well, and that's what's crazy also, is that because that became so popular, I got addicted into the whole idea of podcasting and video and video stuff. So that's when I created my own studio. And, like, you know, like Tom Segura, I was like, tom, you know, you gotta come on board, you know, and do this, and Brody Stevens and Esther and stuff. And back then, I never thought, like, I should be charging these people to do it. You know, it was all me, like, paying out of my pocket, like, buying new equipment every week. You know, I got a bonus. I've used that for studio space. And, you know, it started off my apartment, then went to, you know, Ice House back then, and none of us.

[Duncan Trussell]

You know, were thinking, yeah, money.

[Brian Redban]

No, I was advertising for comedy.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Brian Redban]

You know, it was like radio stations.

[Duncan Trussell]

So basically, like, what the early podcast landscape mirrors the early Internet in the sense that the early Internet was not like a few main corporations that were controlling user base based on whatever their set of their Terms of service. It was this crazy amalgam of weird websites, experimental frontier companies just trying to figure out. And that's why it had a more unique quality to it and certainly a more sort of diverse set of opinions and looks and aesthetics because no one knew what the they were doing. Right now we're in dead Internet theory land.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Do you buy into dead Internet theory?

[Brian Redban]

What do you mean? Like, what do you mean by that?

[Duncan Trussell]

So dead Internet theory is fucking crazy. Basically, it's a conspiracy theory that you can actually investigate on your own. When Josh gets back, we could try it. So like, you Google cat, right? And X amount of results shows up for cat. A lot of results. It says there are this many results, you scroll through the pages for cat on Google and it'll end at page like 60, 70, just stops. What about those results? Where is all that? And essentially what this is, is the difference between the dark web and the like iceberg sticking out of the dark web. That iceberg is all accessible pages that you can get to that web crawlers have identified. And also that's mixed in with the bias of the search engine. Meaning like how it's categorizing importance determines the popularity or the chance you're going to get served this result or that. So dead Internet theory is the theory that the Internet is not as massive as people think it is. That in fact the Internet is tiny, that the Internet. But it conveys a sense that it's much bigger than it is, you know. Josh, do you mind just pulling up or Google for a second? I haven't tested this in a while. They might have changed it, but makes.

[Brian Redban]

Me wonder though if the total amount is how many times cat is in each website though, you know, well, look.

[Duncan Trussell]

Up like no, look up cat. Or let's look up cat cat websites there. So scroll down all the way down where it shows you the results and like all the way to the bottom. So right. Where is it used to. It doesn't even show you it now. It used to show you the results. Like, remember that it would say, yeah.

[Brian Redban]

Maybe take off websites in the search and just have cat.

[Duncan Trussell]

Scroll it down. Yeah, they took that off. Whoa. So like, basically if you kept scrolling through those pages, eventually it will just stop. And meaning that what's happening here is that, number one, the motivation to have your own website in the way that you used to have. The motivation is different now. No one's going to know about it. It's going to be like a tiny island in an infinite ocean. Maybe a web crawler will find it. But this is the emergence of, what the fuck is that called SEO optimization and all that. Just how do we get our website in the first five pages of a Google search? Because no one's going past page five probably, right? Meaning if you're past page five of a Google search, you're dead.

[Brian Redban]

Right?

[Duncan Trussell]

Dead Internet. So that means the Internet is shrunk down to this homogenous corporatized set of websites essentially like Reddit, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram. That's it.

[Brian Redban]

I think it's personal. Websites are not as a thing anymore because of social media like Instagrams. Instead of having a website for your car cleaning company, you just have an Instagram or you have a Facebook page.

[Duncan Trussell]

You got it. And so then that's when we entered the age of digital sharecropping is what they call it, which is you would learn HTML or God help you if you hired a web designer, you'd build your insane fucking website. You've got your manifesto up there, you've got crazy shit up there. You're putting it on like what were some of the web like? The Angel Fire. Yeah, you're putting it on Angelfire. And that's it, right? He bought the domain name. Very exciting. There was a domain rush where people were selling domain names like God.com is for sale for a million dollars. Idiots were buying domain names. There was only a certain dot com, there wasn't Edu Gov. So there was a value to it. But the point is you buy your domain name, you put your website up and it sits there and it can be anything. Angel Fire isn't going to be like, dude, the shit you're saying on there is not cool.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

They wouldn't care. They didn't have time. There were no algorithm scanning to make sure it aligned with your corporate ethics or whatever. So it was a wild place, the Internet. And then people left these, left that version of imprinting themselves on the Internet because it wasn't cost, it was timely to make a website. You could go on MySpace, boom, there you are. Facebook, boom, there you are. But now you're on someone else's land. Meaning your digital identity could be erased at any moment. And that I see is what Dead Internet theory is all about. It's like the whole fucking old freedom based, free speech based Internet has been just had its balls cut off.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, I mean you can still make websites though, so it's going to be interesting if that ever goes away, you know, where it's like you can get your own server you know, I mean, I still do that with my website. You know, I still have a server. I still have like.

[Duncan Trussell]

I think if you have your own like. Like, I think there's a lot of. I mean, you know, if you have a business, you need a website. There's a lot of reasons for websites, but it's not the same as it used to be, which is like. Because it was an exploration of this new medium, there was a lot of weird shit that would emerge and a lot of like. Which is what you did. Yeah, you were just. You were just like, what the fuck is this?

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And then it's fascinating to watch what happened because of that. If you look at that at like what it grew into. Whoa, dude, that is really very strange. And I don't think people are quite aw. I mean, I know the Rogan fans are familiar with the whole history of the damn thing, right. But I think the new. The new viewers probably have zero idea true of it where its roots.

[Brian Redban]

And that's also a lot of my fault too for. You know, when I got all my videos taken away from me, you know, all. All the videos I made at Death Squad, every single podcast I did, a new president came into. All my shit was on Vimeo and they wiped me out one day. They just deleted. Deleted everything. They never gave me a reason. And they. They pretty much said that, you know, it goes against their policies, you know, I mean, that it was pretty uncensored back then, you know, because it was streamed on ustream and then put on Vimeo later. And you stream. They were like, you could do whatever you want on here. You know, like people flashing their tits and shit like that. So I see what they were talking about. Luckily I fought and fought and fought and they gave it back. I just couldn't put it back up. So I have all of it, but I can't put it back up. Why I would have to go through each one and take out copyright stuff, take out nudity. You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

No problem. You could do that with AI now it would be.

[Brian Redban]

I know that is on my thing to do one day is to go back, you know, and release like the archives and stuff like that. Because there is a lot of fun stuff back in the day, you know, especially, you know, with Rogan. He used to that thing I did the Ice House Chronicles, which was a weekly show kind of in a place like this where it's next to a stage.

[Duncan Trussell]

Awesome.

[Brian Redban]

There were so many people back there, you know, just 12 comics hanging out, you know, talking, smoking Weed and stuff. And I think a lot of people don't see, haven't seen that because they're, you know, they were 10 years old when that was, that came out. So I should, I should definitely, that's all my thing to do sometimes. But really also going through there, you know, at different times, you know, I don't want to like, you know, have something come out and go, damn, I didn't know that they dropped the N word 10 times back then, you know.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, yeah, but yeah, there was like a, it was really just like a raw view of a kind of. See the other thing that started happening over the course of the evolution of podcasting and the emergence of the influencer culture and this new celebrity. The other thing that started emerging is the phone, the ability to film things with phones. So it was a little shocking if you were somewhere when we were going around with you and you had a camera. You had to get used to that. It was fucking weird being constantly surveilled. It felt weird. This is the day to day life of any modern teenager. They live in, you know what a panopticon means? Panopticon means like total surveillance culture. So they live in an Orwellian surveillance culture. It's not like a tyrannical state, top down thing that is going to ruin your life. It's more of cultural pressures, meaning that you must adhere to some set of cultural norms or risk your future employment, being able to go to your college, whatever. But you are certainly, if you're a teenager in a place where there's lots of phones, you live in a panopticon and your life can be destroyed by saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing. God help you if you piss your pants on the bus or whatever. These things that formerly were just something you would talk about with your therapist. You could now pull it up on YouTube and show your therapist, this is when I shit myself on the bus. It was. It's got 17 trillion views. And so this is the new reality. But so this, it's really curious to see how we existed pre Panopticon. Now we're in post Panopticon. And because of the Panopticon culture itself has been trimmed like a fucking bonsai tree. Public behavior, online behavior is not reflective necessarily of a person's identity, but they're forward facing, terrified of having their life destroyed identity. So you that you're seeing self domesticated versions of people that maybe isn't who they actually are. Right, right. And so that's a new thing that's formed a new culture that's formed a new. That's formed the culture war. Right. And I don't think people realize the men see a thing. One could argue this is the first case of a comedian getting canceled by the Internet. Yeah, right. First cancel Mencia and then boom. Boy, did that spread, you know?

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, now it's a. Now it's in my life all the time.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, what do you mean? You know, what do you mean? But yet that. So. So I wonder, all that being said, what would a younger red band living now, the frontier pioneer. Not that you're not anymore, but what is the next one? Because I'm talking about. You would have to tell someone what a podcast was. People weren't irritated when you invited them on your fucking podcast. They were like, what is it?

[Brian Redban]

Right?

[Duncan Trussell]

You want to interview me? Like, it was cool. So what's the next one?

[Brian Redban]

I mean, I've been saying the same answer for this question for probably about three or four years, and I still believe it. It's just that it's not. The technology is not catching on as fast as I thought it would. And, you know, Apple really dropped the ball with their Apple Vision Pro and stuff. But I think it's going to deal with virtual reality. You know, I do that hobby. I wouldn't even call it like a podcast or a show. A hobby of Virtual Red Band, where I pretty much just me and a bunch of other comics and other people I know throughout the world, we all get together and we just hang out, smoke, drink, kind of like what we do, you know, Ice House Chronicles are a podcast, but we do it online and we're all different characters, you know, and. Yeah, and we'll go, you know, like, we'll all hang out and the big difference is like, hey, let's go to Disneyland. And so we all go to Disneyland in virtual reality, you know, ride roller coasters and shit. And I think something, some kind of virtual reality show, podcast thing would probably be what I think is probably going to happen in the future. But it's not going to be what it looks like now. It's not going to be anywhere close to what Zuckerberg, you know, looks like. Nintendo Wii characters with no legs. I don't think it's that, but it's. I think being able to do kind of like a podcast or a show anywhere in the world and be any character you want, I think that is probably going to be what I think is going to be the next thing that's in kind of the same world. Just the idea of combining pretty much video games and podcasts.

[Duncan Trussell]

Fortnite. Yeah, it's essentially Fortnite.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

Like Fortnite would be an example of like an early version of this, which is you're not just having conversations, playing with it.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And people. Viewership is no longer. It's not passive anymore. Viewership becomes. You can directly in some way or another, interact with the world in which the podcast is taking place.

[Brian Redban]

Right. And there's some people that are closer to what I think the idea is. What's her name? Not Mika, but do you know who she is? Like these e. These E girls where they're not. They're make believe girls, you know.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh yeah, those are cool.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, yeah, they're cool. So it's going to be something like, kind of like that. I mean, like a year ago or so, Pablo Francisco jumped on and played with us and he was like, you know, a crazy character and him being himself in virtual reality, you know, and it was, it was the funniest shit ever.

[Duncan Trussell]

And Grand Theft Auto, the Grand Theft Auto role playing, those are really fun to watch.

[Brian Redban]

I listened, I watched that all night last night. My, My friend's into that. He's pretty successful in it and Putter and he. Yeah, that. I think, you know, it's a great example, role playing Grand Theft Auto of what kind of the, the basic idea of it, you know, and it's not catching on. I don't really advertise it too much, you know, like, but because I think it needs to be more accepted to the point where Apple needs to release. I thought it was going to get a big step with their Apple Vision Pro, but then it's like $3,000 and you know, and you can't really do shit on it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Brian Redban]

But when it gets cheaper to where everyone kind of like an ipod or an iPhone, where everyone has it, I think it's going to make a lot more sense, you know, being able to do that. Like, hey, what are you doing tonight? You want to jump on and talk about, you know, the election, you know, in VR and you know, here's what's.

[Duncan Trussell]

Unnerving about what you're saying. I don't know why I keep saying unnerving in this episode.

[C]

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[Brian Redban]

When you choose to earn your degree online from Southern New Hampshire University, you're saying yes to new opportunities and to new adventures.

[C]

You're saying yes to something big, something.

[Duncan Trussell]

You'Ve always wanted to do.

[C]

If earning your degree is one of.

[Brian Redban]

Your goals this new year, SNHU can.

[Duncan Trussell]

Help you get there. With low online tuition, no set class.

[Brian Redban]

Times, and multiple term starts per year, you can set the pace that works for you and save money along the way.

[C]

Visit snhu.

[Duncan Trussell]

Edu today to get started. It is spooky when you think about what you just said relative to like simulation theory, right? In the sense that I could totally see you in the future. Using AI to create a Matrix style realm, inviting people into that realm. The only rule being like okay, when you go into this VR, you won't remember where you're from. You're really going to think you're there and and you're going to be a podcaster, comedian or whatever. You can play whatever character you want. And that's we're actually in your next version of podcasting. Doesn't that isn't kind of unnerving? Like right now we're in it because like as the tech progresses, you know for sure because we're talking about like immersion when it comes to video games, like immersive video Games in AR. VR is the next step in immersion. We're going from 2D to 3D. We're going from controlling an avatar to being the avatar. But within that realm, obviously certain massive aspects of the human experience are not there.

[Brian Redban]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

Smell feeling. I'm sure they have those fucking haptic suits, they do AR and flashlights and shit. But it's too by the time you get all that stuff going, you've got like a million different machines running, subject to tech errors and stuff. And you're trying to do an outside in way of stimulating the nervous system. But we all know matter of time before black mirror style neural interfaces emerge. Non invasive neural interfaces using some tech that will probably be discovered by collaborating with AI and understanding how to manipulate the human brain using like 5G or God knows what. Magnets.

[Brian Redban]

Vibrations.

[Duncan Trussell]

Vibrations, right. And so obviously then the next step would be universe simulators, incarnational simulators, which is probably what we're in.

[Brian Redban]

Right?

[Duncan Trussell]

And this would be the kind of thing, post game, that we would look at and laugh. Oh, shit. We were starting to realize.

[Brian Redban]

Don't you remember coming to my house, Duncan? And we played this?

[Duncan Trussell]

Right? Right?

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. We wake up and we're back in la, dude.

[Duncan Trussell]

I know.

[Brian Redban]

Little hobo still alive.

[Duncan Trussell]

I've got my original little hobo. We just smoked some shit Eddie Bravo gave us mixed in with some tech stuff. You're like, whoa, that was the crazy. What was that? Dude, it's called D. It's dystopian future. I never want to play that again. Give me paradise future. That game. Yeah.

[Brian Redban]

But I'm still engaged to Katie.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, what the fuck? Yeah, that is the. To me, that's what I really love about all this stuff is like, well, we're all fucked. This is Mount Vesuvius. You know, they talk about the Yellowstone super caldera. That is a favorite topic of catastrophist. Any moment, that thing can destroy.

[Brian Redban]

Oh yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

But we're talking about another kind of super caldera, which is a caldera under which is like the ability to experience anything you want fully immersive experience, indistinguishable from this reality in tech. It's like, there will be blood, dude. This is the oil well drilling down into that fucking caldera. And at any moment there's going to be a blood explosion where this reality and the digital reality fuse and become indistinguishable from each other. And that is going to be your fault partially. I mean, do you want that? Would you want that?

[Brian Redban]

Not how you put it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Do you agree with.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah, yeah, I see that for sure. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, wonderful. You're the best. Thank you for coming on the show, Brian.

[Brian Redban]

Thank you for having me. Dunkin Trussle.

[Duncan Trussell]

You'Re the best, man. Thank you. And also, you gotta plug anything, my friend. I love you too.

[Brian Redban]

Yeah. Come out to my comedy club. I have a comedy club called the Sunset Strip Comedy Club. We. I have my show every Thursday, the Secret show, and it's right next door to Comedy Mothership. So when that sells out, just come over next door.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, and a lot of Poppins, like, right? You get a lot of great comics popping in all the time there. Great.

[Brian Redban]

We just had them on it last week. It was good.

[Duncan Trussell]

No shit?

[Brian Redban]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Awesome. Bless you.

[Brian Redban]

Thank you, everybody.

[Duncan Trussell]

Love you. Bye.

[Brian Redban]

Bye.

[Duncan Trussell]

Great podcast that was, Brian. Red Band, everybody. All the links you need to find Red Band will be in the comments section [e-mail] or here on YouTube. Thank you to our sweet Sponsors and might I just say here on Thanksgiving week, I hope that you aren't falling prey to the weakness of compassion. On Thanksgiving, so many people feel it's time to have mercy on the enemies, on the invaders. They burnt down the sacred forest, they destroyed the Apple of Galvanon, and yet somehow you will give them mercy. Now ask yourself this Would they give you mercy had it gone the other way? These people, these people that you captured, executed, are now probably in your belly. You're enjoying that sweet cannibal burp that reminds you of the power of the blade, the truth of justice, and more than anything, something you should be thankful for on this wonderful, righteous Thanksgiving day or week. All hail the Dark One. May he reign forever.

[C]

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[Brian Redban]

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