Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey, welcome to Subscription Heroes. I'm Scott Herf, co-founder and chief product Officer at Turnkey. You know, one of the cool things about starting a show is that I get to sit down with my friends who are doing well, other cool things. I'm excited to share my chat with Amit Gupta, co-founder of Psdo Write an AI powered creative writing app. Amit's one of the most optimistic people I know and a talented science fiction writer. We'll dive into the challenges of building on top of language models that are always shifting platform risk and what we can learn from what Amit calls bfi. Here we go. So let's just start by talking about Psdo. Write what Psdo Write, does what you do with Psdo, write all that good stuff.
Speaker 2 00:00:47 Psdo Write is an a writing tool for novelists, screenwriters and other creative writers. And it doesn't number of things it can do everything from just helping you get unblocked and give you ideas. It can help you deepen the editing process, kind of making your texts and your stories come more alive. And some of the newer stuff we're working on really walks you through the entire process from coming up with an idea to having a finished novel within a couple days. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:01:12 It's pretty amazing this new Canvas product, right, where I can jump in and give it a concept, give it kinda a log line metaphor and it just goes and it creates scenes and then just fills out everything in progression. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I had that story engine five years ago.
Speaker 2 00:01:30 Yeah, totally. Um, I think Story Engine has really captured a lot of people's excitement because a lot of people have come into this space in the last few months, this space being like writing with AI as a partner. And they've mostly interfaced with Chat G P T, and they've seen how that can like, help them get unblocked. But the workflow that we've built with Story Engine just like is incredible. It just, it's so fast to write stuff. I'm excited to, to write my first novel using it. I've never written a novel before. I've only written short stories, but it's, uh, yeah, it seems really exciting to spend days doing this instead of months or years doing this.
Speaker 1 00:02:05 Yeah. Writing a, no, I've, I've written two novels that never sold and, and they are flying solo, very painful. So this, this is like a superpower from my point of view. So one of the unique aspects of Suter right, is, you know, you're not tackling business cases, you're tackling art. I mean, what drew you away from marketing copy generators or summarizing meeting notes or something. And as I say, that kind of the answer seems obvious, but I'll, I'll leave that to you.
Speaker 2 00:02:33 Marketing coffee's boring, Scott. It's so boring. <laugh>. Uh, I say that as someone who spent a lot of time writing and thinking about marketing coffee, but man, it's pretty boring. I think that real answer for us was that we didn't get into this to start a company. We didn't, we weren't like, okay, here's generative ai. What can we build with it? What are the, what are the business opportunities? Both James and I were authors just like you. We were in the same writer's group, uh, and neither one of us was kind of like hankering to start a company. We were just playing. And so I think when GPD three came out, we saw the opportunities for building something cool with it, and marketing copy is certainly one of them, but neither one of us had a passion for going to, you know, build this like ad product or whatever. And the, uh, from a business case, I think it could also make a justification for not doing that. Cuz I think that the models are really good at just spitting out ad copy. That means that it's, it's harder to be defensible. So I, I think we're doing, we're tackling a much harder problem with a very different market that we enjoy tackling. So I think there's lots of good reasons not to do ad copy for us.
Speaker 1 00:03:35 It just blows my mind. Like, cuz you, you think about all the people doing creative work and art and everyone has very specific ways of working. They're in different genres. They have their own tools, own processes. I mean, how do you even start by unraveling how to help people in that process?
Speaker 2 00:03:53 Yeah, I mean we did a lot of research early on and we still do research. Yeah, I think we do like several calls a week with, with users. Oh, awesome. And one of the biggest problems writers would tell us when we did those interviews was procrastination. It's not, I can't figure out the plot of my story. I can't figure out whatever, it's procrastination. I don't make enough money writing the stuff that like you don't really learn how to do when you go to a writing workshop or read a book on writing or whatever. So they're pretty challenging problems. I think that these are like problems with the industry, not necess and with human nature, not necessarily problems that like AI or a writing tool would necessarily be poised to solve, but they are like very important for us to think about because I think that, like you said, writers have very different processes.
Speaker 2 00:04:37 They all write in different genres, they all have like very different strengths and weaknesses. And I think there's lots of things that we do today to help them with those things and also help 'em through various parts of the process. But at the core, if we could solve their procrastination problem or their money problem, like it doesn't matter what genre they right, they're ecstatic. That's kind of a nice north star for us to have. And I think the procrastination issue is something that we really have indirectly solved with Story Engine because we have all these writers coming to us who said like, oh, I tried so many times to write this novel. I just kept putting it aside, like I've taken years away from this. And then I came in and I put it in and I finished it. And it's not that they didn't want to finish it, it's that like they got stuck somewhere or you know, something happened and this product is enough to like push them along until they're actually finished. So it is, I think solving the procrastination problem for a lot of people. As for the money problem, we have some ideas, but we're not there yet.
Speaker 1 00:05:33 <laugh>, yeah, if you could, um, infuse the writing market with um, you know, a huge amount of capital or something, that would certainly go a little ways. But yeah, structural problems there for sure. There are so many ways. You know, I, I put myself in the shoes of a novel writer and there's, you take more than one workshop and you get, you know, three to six different ways of writing a novel. And so, you know, this, this new product of yours, like it still blows my mind how quickly you can get to an output that is meaningful and then that feedback loop of okay, that, you know, you can work with that input way more easily than, you know, you're sitting there stuck staring at an outline or something. Are you finding most of the response positive responses from novel writers, short story writers? I mean like does it run across the board or what
Speaker 2 00:06:25 For UHS Write in particular? I think we have a lot of people across the spectrum of novelists, short story writers, even nonfiction writers for Story Engine, which is not out yet, it's in beta, uh, with a couple hundred people. I think that's very geared today towards novelists. So mm-hmm <affirmative>, I do think that we're gonna expand that to uh, do longer and shorter form stuff, but at the moment I think it's most useful for novelists.
Speaker 1 00:06:50 Awesome. I wanna shift to, I mean we were just talking about how models, language models are being released all the time, new, updated. How do you deal with the <laugh> the fire drill to keep those updated versus <laugh> all the stuff in your backlog?
Speaker 2 00:07:04 Yeah, uh, well actually I wanna go back to your last question cuz I thought of something else I wanted to share. You mentioned about, uh, how different people have different processes and I think that, like, we're so early in building interfaces for AI today, it's easy to forget how early we are because it feels like things are happening really fast and you see lots of products coming out every day. But it feels like right now we're in the command line stage of this kind of stuff. Like we're, we don't have any, we don't even have a glimmer of the gooey yet. We just have this command line stage where we're, we're typing in these arcane commands and like learning how to like shape the prompt in interesting ways that sometimes does things differently and correctly and sometimes doesn't. And so I think today when you use Story Engine, we're trying to make it as user-friendly as possible, but I do think there's a learning curve.
Speaker 2 00:07:49 Like you have to figure out like how to write in this new way. And our job is to make it adapt to you instead of have you adapt to it. That's like, you know, what you're always supposed to do with, with interface. And so we're doing that, but we're, we're still pretty far from it, even though it's really easy to use and people can get a lot done with it, we're so, so early. So I think that's very exciting because I think our tool will look very different in a year or two, but every tool is gonna look so different in a year or two. It's so yeah, given how different people's writing styles are, it's a big challenge to like meet them where they are given all the different places they are. So your question about different models coming out and stuff. So we, we felt like we hit product market fit sometime late last year.
Speaker 2 00:08:29 It was the point where like, it didn't feel like we were just pushing this boulder uphill. We were really starting to chase it and it was moving by itself. So that was super exciting. And I think when you hit that point in a business, usually, uh, not always, but usually it's the point where you start to like be able to optimize and catch up and like just build what the community wants and the path forward gets clearer and clearer because the boulder's just running down the hill. Your job is just to chase it and your users are telling you what they want and your job is just to figure out the right, right, the right things to build that they've told you they want. It's not easy, but it's at least straightforward. And I think because this industry is so early, because AI is so early, generative AI is so early and I think things are changing so fast.
Speaker 2 00:09:14 We keep having this thing where we set our plan and our plan is just, here's what we're gonna do in the next three months, here are priorities. And then a new model just drops like bam, G p D 3.5 comes out and it can do all these things that the earlier models can't do and everyone wants it right away, right? Because like all of our users are really enthusiastic about this stuff. So it's not like we can say, okay, we're gonna finish the mobile version, we're gonna do our onboarding, we're gonna do these three other things that are like, you know, improving the text quality of the editor and then we'll get to 3.5. No, we have to like work on 3.5 today. So that happens pretty frequently where we just, we're faced with a new model, we wanna stay focused on kind of the road plan, but it just makes sense for everyone, for us to dive in, see what the new thing is capable of and really push into it. And that's happened, you know, with 3.5 it happened when chat G P T came out, it happened with GPD four. So it's almost like every couple days there's something really new every couple months there's like an atom bomb that explodes and offends everything that we've planned <laugh>, uh, which
Speaker 1 00:10:16 It's like Taylor Swift. Yeah. It's like Taylor Swift dropping a surprise album and no one knows about it and it just, yeah, totally. It just shows like the enthusiasm that people have for what could, would typically be like an obscure technological release, right?
Speaker 2 00:10:31 Yeah. And it comes from all over, like we, there's some interesting stuff coming outta the open source community that we were talking about today. So it's not even just like open AI dropping these bombs, like these, these things are coming from everywhere. So it's, it's obviously like a great opportunity. It's great to be in the space, but it feels very different from having built previous startups where you figure out what you're supposed to do and then you just go do it. Here's, it's like every few days you figure it out all over again and then you try to go do it before everything changes.
Speaker 1 00:11:01 Let's take a little break to tell you about Turnkey. The ones making this podcast happen now. I think turnkey's awesome, but I am super biased because I'm a co-founder. But I love what we're doing for subscription companies. You might look at your churn numbers and think there's gotta be a way to turn this around. There's gotta be someone who can improve retention and help us track down why people are leaving your product. And that's why Turnkey's here, Turnkey's the only platform that fixes every type of churn for you. We handle retention for customer obsessed teams like Jasper Fair Drop, AI Dungeon and Casto. We lower cancellations by up to 42%, recover up to 89% of failed payments and even increase customer LTV by 28%. And we do it with our user-friendly, customer-centric, cancel flows, modern failed payment recovery and AI-driven feedback analysis. So if you want to run a healthier subscription business, head to turnkey.co to get started. Do you think you'll have to ex expand out to just having a core platform for lack of a better term model team and then this optimizing the, the output and and all that? Or is it just bigger than that? Is it just, it redefines the actual features you're building on top of the models?
Speaker 2 00:12:17 It really redefines because I think, and it's in some ways because we've been at it since 2020, I feel like we're at an advantage cuz all of this gender of AI hype came last year and all these new people came in kind of with dollar cents in their eyes. Like what can we do with this? Let's build it. This is the new mobile and we've been at it. So we've like tried a bunch of stuff. We kind of feel very confident about how we're working with these models, but we're also at a disadvantage because every time a new model comes up, you can't take advantage of it by doing the same things you did before and expect it just to do better. Like there's all these things that the new models can do that we still haven't even discovered yet. All the people working with with it today haven't discovered it yet.
Speaker 2 00:12:54 So you have to really go in with like beginner's mind with each model and start all over. And that's harder each time. Cause you have all this knowledge from the previous models. I could see there being like disparate teams once for larger where, you know, one team is really exploratory, just hammering on a new model and just trying to poke around and find the nooks and crannies in the latent space that haven't been discovered yet that we might wanna exploit. And other teams are integrating existing functions and trying to understand how it makes it better. We're small today so we're doing everything. Everyone's doing everything
Speaker 1 00:13:26 <laugh>. Yeah, I hear you on that one. That the model is just reacts in unpredictable ways that it's just tough to, for open ai, like to document it or something. I mean, it's not like you can go in and have a big knowledge base about everything, right? I mean it's just exploratory.
Speaker 2 00:13:43 Yeah, it's, it's like, I mean it's certainly documented in terms of their a p I and so forth, but I think the Yeah. Capabilities, especially the more interesting ones that are discovered by the community aren't documented. Because I don't even know if open AI knows what they all are. They don't have millions of people trying all sorts of weird combinations to see what comes out. And it's like a person, right? Like, I don't know all of your capabilities. I've known you for years, right? And we've talked tons of times and we've worked together and we've like, you know, done story critiques, but I don't, I know this like tiny fraction of you that's like above the surface of the water and there's all this other stuff that has, you know, that has to do with Scott that I'm never gonna know unless I really just like try poking in there and, and asking you questions and hanging out with you and I don't know all the other stuff. And I think the model's the same way, right? It's, it's ginormous and we may never know all the stuff that is capable of by the time GD five comes out, we just won't have even, you know, gotten deep enough to know GD four.
Speaker 1 00:14:35 It's kind of staggering to think that it's already the limits of our own imagination and it's the limits of our own, you know, the context or the application you're working in, but it can just, it's just so adaptable. Yeah. That it it's, it is as multifaceted as a person already.
Speaker 2 00:14:50 Yeah, totally. And if we really do get to AGI in our lifetime, I think that's when things get really wacky because at least today we can try to project forward and say like, oh, if the model got better it could do X, Y and Z because we know that people can do X, Y, and Z. So probably the model could eventually do that, but at some point if the model exceeds the capabilities of all humans, how do we even imagine what's possible at that point? Cuz we can't do it.
Speaker 1 00:15:16 Right. All right, I I gotta ask you this one, I've never asked you this, but do we see AGI within our lifetime? Do you think? We'll, do you think you'll see it
Speaker 2 00:15:23 <laugh>?
Speaker 1 00:15:24 No,
Speaker 2 00:15:25 I hope so. I hope so. I want, I want, uh, society to be run by ai. I feel like, you know, I, I'm a tech optimist, uh, and I think a lot of the problems we have in the world are created by ourselves. And I think if we could actually create a system that is able to govern that has principles in mind that take care of everyone, it could actually be a much better society in a much better world. All or could destroy all humans, who knows what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1 00:15:50 I like your version better, the the optimist side. <laugh>, um,
Speaker 2 00:15:55 Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:15:55 Me too. I wanna talk to you about, about platform risk. I mean, how do you, there's a lot of chatter. I mean, uh, obviously with any new tech that's dominated by one or two companies, you know, there is an inherent risk factor there, but I feel like there's something you all are doing that that's got some special sauce that kind of makes you immune to that. But I don't wanna put words in your mouth.
Speaker 2 00:16:17 Yeah, I, you know, platform risk is something that comes up a lot when you talk to VCs, especially early in the gen AI world. Uh, I think now that the hype cycle is so, so big that VCs don't ask that question as much, but I'm very skeptical of that risk for, for a lot of tools. I think that the same argument could have been made, could have been made for mobile, iOS and Android are the two big guys. Why not just build all the apps and capture all the value? It's impossible. But they could have tried, but you know, they didn't, there's so many companies that were based that were built on top of mobile. And I think the, the other argument you can make is, it's not like text editors are something new. Every text editor does basically the same stuff. Pre AI at least.
Speaker 2 00:16:58 But you still might use Ulysses and I might use Bear or I might use Apple Notes and you might use, you know, Rome, like there's so many variations. Everyone's got their own tool set. I'm not gonna write my script in notes, I'm gonna write it in final Draft or I'm gonna use Ryner to write my novel, you know, specialized tool exist even though they're all basically doing the same thing and they have the same building blocks. And those building blocks are mostly provided by the OS anyway. They're just layering them top, uh, uh, top each other in a way that makes sense for their audience. So I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be different. I think there's a lot of deeper ways that we can be different in AI products because we can train own models, we can train on, uh, more relevant data and we can do a lot of interesting intermingling with different models and chaining. But even if we couldn't do all those things, I still think there's so much value in creating product that's specific to a user's needs.
Speaker 1 00:17:51 Yeah, I mean, you kind of touched on this bit, but it, it sounds like you're starting to develop, you know, your own abstraction layer between your, your product and the models. Is that, did I hear that right?
Speaker 2 00:18:02 Yeah, I think it's gotten particularly complex with Story Engine where we have multiple models working on different parts of the process and by the time you get to Oh wow, finished pros from the very beginning, it's gone through so many layers of iteration and so many kind of like sub-processes. So I think that will continue to happen and a lot of that is not just, you know, sit do this prompt and do that prompt. It's, there's conditional logic based on the input and what's come from the previous stage. So I think we'll see more and more of that in these products. I think you can just do much more interesting things as that layer gets deeper.
Speaker 1 00:18:33 Right, right. I have a lingering question from, from something we were talking about before on like the UI side. And I love your approach to interfaces. You know, it's, it's playful, it's human, there's a whimsical side to it when it comes to, to, you know, since we're in the, the, the CLI phase, like h how far do you think you can take a human through a web browser interacting with an AI model? Like in your wildest kind of imagination? Like what do you think you could build, it's the craziest interface to to that and what have you thought about there? Oh
Speaker 2 00:19:06 Man, I, well I, I think we can definitely replace me. Like I think all of us can be AI agents or a bundle of AI agents and that's an exciting world to me. Uh, <laugh>, our mutual friend Sahil recently met up with our designer Ryan when he was in New York. And one of the things Shill said, really like rattled Ryan and he said, uh, everyone's replaceable. And when I heard that he had said this, I was like, oh man, this is gonna make Ryan feel bad because obviously we all wanna be special, we all will all wanna be like really unique. Um, and also I don't really like this idea cuz it makes, it makes me feel like if I believe this I'm devaluing people. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, you know, I, I wanna be replaceable. That's always how I've treated my job.
Speaker 2 00:19:48 If I'm successful, I am creating an organization that doesn't need me. And I can see the glimmers of that in these models. I can see where I could program something that does most of the things that I need to do. And for me that's very exciting. Cause I think that uh, a lot of the stuff that we need to do, even when we're doing the work that we most wanna do, the mo the work that we are put on this earth to do, a lot of the day-to-day tasks may not be the things that we're deriving the most joy from or the most pleasure from. And if a model can do those things, then I'm happier for it. I don't know if that directly answered your question though. I feel like you're more talking about like interface and where, where this stuff is going.
Speaker 1 00:20:28 Well no, it's funny cuz you can use interface in a variety of, of ways, right? But I do like that line of thinking where if we had the ability to have a model learn from us on a, on a, just by observing and then it just gradually starts to take over parts of what we're doing, then you're free to go off and do other things and then you can unlock another part of you, you know?
Speaker 2 00:20:52 Yeah, totally. And if it's learned, uh, you know, in the writer context, if it's learned, if it's sat alongside me while I write and it's also sat alongside like millions of other writers, then it will know the right thing to say or do at the right moment to get me to where I wanna go. And I think that sounds magical. That sounds like the best possible reading partner slash teacher slash mentor that you could possibly have and better than any human because it has the time to sit with you every hour that you're at the computer reading, uh, and is able to like, you know, bad ideas back and forth when you're like, happen to be taking a shower and have some cool idea or whatever. It's just always present. That sounds pretty rad. That sounds like a cool interface. Something that you just talked
Speaker 1 00:21:34 To. That'd be amazing. That would be amazing, right? It's like, Hey, you know, teach me how to write like William Gibson and you know, it's like, I dunno, I just, I have this vision of I learned piano when I was, I don't know, 6, 7, 8 years old and just someone sitting next to you and like, okay, this is where you put your fingers. You need to do this transition, you need to do, here's how to play a chord. Having that for writing or anything else that is just never turned off is, is magical to me.
Speaker 2 00:22:02 Yeah. The one-to-one instruction stuff too is just like, it seems like such a game changer if we can get to that point where every student, every person who wants to learn anything has a like infinitely intelligent agent who knows exactly how to get you from A to B and is infinitely patient and infinitely knowledgeable is basically a god of teaching. Right. That sounds very exciting to me
Speaker 1 00:22:23 In terms of output. I mean, what, what's interesting to me too is the initial backlash of, you know, AI assisted stories to be precise. Clark's World Magazine long reads, they're blocking AI submissions in a way, which to me seems kind of an odd dichotomy. There's science fiction properties not wanting ai <laugh> assisted content to be accepted or submitted. But I, I wanna get your take on this. Like there's a policy, there's a policy question here. There's maybe copyright, but then there's, you know, creative output and what that means, right?
Speaker 2 00:23:00 Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, as well as I do that the sci-fi community isn't pro technology, uh, <laugh>. That's true necessarily. There's, uh, probably you can see that in the kind of like the prevalence of dystopian sci-fi in the past, you know, 10 years or whatever. I think there's room for all types of publications. Like I, I don't have any ill will towards Clark's world or anyone else's choosing not to accept AI assisted fiction. I think that's great. I think it's the same, like I wouldn't submit a photograph to a, like a painting competition or a painting exhibit or something like that just doesn't make sense. I might submit it to a portrait competition or a portrait like exhibition, whether it's a painting or a photo. They're the same thing. But I can certainly see like, oh, you know, we're only accepting oil paintings for this.
Speaker 2 00:23:46 Cool, then I should only submit oil paintings. And I think that's a totally valid criteria to gate on. As for the, like, the morality of it or like the, the legality of it. Obviously we're still figuring all this stuff out as a society and whatever we come up with has to be fair to everyone involved and has to be respectful of all the rights and has to find a way to help people basically flourish as artists while still benefiting from the, you know, the work that they've put in. So hopefully as a society we can figure out how that all works. I think in the meantime, the tools themselves are so useful that it's basically impossible to prevent their use at this point. You know, it, it's not just writing too. I was talking to, um, a friend of a friend recently who works at Amazon and AWS and they're not supposed to use OpenAI LLMs in their coding.
Speaker 2 00:24:38 They're not supposed to use Codex or use, you know, chat G P T. Oh wow. And Amazon has its own LM to assist coding, but guess what they do? Guess what everyone, everyone on the team does. They use chat gpt and use Codex because it's the best. Yep. And it's like well known. And I think the same will be true here. Like I think that if these tools are truly useful in helping writers tell better stories, they're gonna use them. And I think if the stories that come out at the other end are actually better than the stories that were told before, we're gonna want to read them. And ultimately that's what matters. Like if we're telling stories, we want the stories to be good, we want them to connect with us. We want a way to understand the world through the author's lens that we didn't have before, a way that we didn't have before. So if AI helps us get there, I think it's, I think it's great.
Speaker 1 00:25:25 It's beautiful. I love how you put that. It reminds me of the, uh, classic Jurassic Park quote. Life will find a way, right? If it's good enough, find a way to use it.
Speaker 2 00:25:34 Yeah. There's a lot of relevant Jurassic Park quotes in this, in this area. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:25:39 Yeah. Well, since we're getting close to time, I wanna round out with two questions I asked you everyone. And the first is, did you read a book or a long form article lately that that had an, an effect on you?
Speaker 2 00:25:50 I'm reading a lot of stuff right now. Uh, I actually got into audiobooks because of, uh, Nancy, my partner, she just, she reads so many audio books and I used to poo whoo them before cause it's like, oh, it's not really reading. But now I'm like <laugh> in the middle of like literally three audio books and one paper books. I, I can't not call it reading anymore. I'm really enjoying two pieces of fiction. One is the Mountain of the Sea, which I, I quote unquote read while I'm running. So it's like, it's gotta be really good. Cool because, uh, you know, running is hard so it's gotta entice me to run <laugh> and I, so I'm only allowed to read that when I'm running. The other is tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, which I get to read when I'm swimming again. Has to be really good and enticing to get me out there. And I just started reading, uh, the hard thing about hard things, which I don't know how I never got to before. Man, this guy's so hardcore. He's just like a business warrior and he's like slashing or burning and he killing and he doesn't care who gets hurt, <laugh>. Uh, it's definitely an interesting tale. I think his parts of it are kind of scary to me, but, uh, a lot of it, there's a lot of wisdom there too, so I'm enjoying that. What's the fourth book? I think it's another fiction book I read before Bed.
Speaker 1 00:26:57 Yeah. Um, it's funny you bring up the Horowitz book. I too have not read it yet. I just bought it. It's sitting there on the table and I, I'm kind of eyeing it like side eyeing it. Like do I want to get into this right now? Cause I skimmed it and it, it looks so intense. I don't know if I need that in my life right now.
Speaker 2 00:27:15 <laugh>, it's uh, well I think it's very palatable in audio. Uh, I was pleased to discover that at least the first part of it is all kinda like narrative. It's more like, um, autobiography than it is like business book. Okay. And I found that part really engaging cuz I read the, um, the Silk Road book recently too. And it's like super engaging. It's like just this story, it's like a, it's like a HBO drama, basically told them book for 'em. And I think I, as in general, bfi like fiction about the business world is super exciting for me. Like, I watched Tetris recently, I just like love the business aspects of that movie. So I think that I really, I was really attracted to those portions of the hard thing about hard thing and they just, I breezed through them so at least start it. I think it's, I think you'll enjoy it. Awesome.
Speaker 1 00:27:59 I I also watched Tetris recently too. And, and yeah. That, that was very well crafted and the Yeah, like the the backroom stories. Yeah. How about how do they make the rights? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:28:10 How do they make contract negotiations so exciting. <laugh>, but they somehow they did.
Speaker 1 00:28:13 Seriously, it's a skill. I love it. Last question I have is, um, you know, just in life, like anything that you've, you're you're living by these days or you know, a pattern you've identified that has pushed you ahead or inspired you even a piece of gear. Any, any tips there?
Speaker 2 00:28:33 I think one of the big shifts for me has been paying more attention to my body. When I was younger I didn't really care that much about my body. It was just the vehicle from my mind. I think I both started to honor it more and appreciate it more. So like, this is a small thing, but I, when I was traveling recently, I started to have a lot of pain in my neck and shoulders, like stiffness in my neck and shoulders. And I realized that I'd actually been having this for like 15 or 20 years off and on. Uh, maybe actually just building up over time, but I just hadn't done anything about it because it wasn't serious enough. But if you're just like always a little bit like uncomfortable or always a little bit hungry or whatever it is, like you're always gonna be a little bit cranky and a little bit less alive than you would otherwise be.
Speaker 2 00:29:16 And what a terrible way to live your life. Just always being hungry or always being uncomfortable or in slight pain or whatever. So I decided to do something about it and I don't think I would've before, I think I would've just been like, ah, whatever, it's just shoulder pain. I'll like get a massage and get on with life <laugh>. And now I'm like man, I wanna try every possible modality to fix this and just like really have a solution. And so I went to see my doctor and I got some physical therapy prescribed. I saw someone to do Alexander technique was just like a, a process of improving your posture that I've done before. I'm gonna get acupuncture cuz someone suggested acupuncture, so I'll just try it. Uh, what else? I'm gonna try getting a desk treadmill down the wall. Um, oh, I wanna try stretching more. I wanna try like having a program of stretching for a month that just really like forces me to do it. So I think that just in general, like paying attention to my body has been a really new thing for me. And I think a really good thing for me do that. Everyone should pay attention to their bodies. It's the only one we get. I
Speaker 1 00:30:15 Like how deliberate you are about that too. I'm, I'm taking notes
Speaker 2 00:30:18 <laugh>, can I share a piece of gear? Awesome. Yeah. Okay. So this is uh, my keyboard. It's a wireless keyboard and the key wells are like bull shaped like this. And I've used a keyboard by this company Kinesis, for like literally 23 years or something. It wasn't this one cuz Bluetooth didn't exist back then, but I was getting like pain in my fingers, in my, in my hands and arms and nothing. I did fixed it. And then I got this keyboard which cost like a crazy amount. Like I couldn't even afford it. I think my parents helped me buy it at the time and right it like within a day like cured my hand pain. I just love this company. And that single keyboard that I bought in 2000 or something, year 2000, uh, worked. It was the same keyboard I used until last year when I got this replacement.
Speaker 2 00:31:11 Wow. So it's like this American company that makes these expensive keyboards. I think it costs like $300 at the time, but they're super high quality and they have like incredible support and they last forever. Like I probably, I can still use that keyboard. So like I'll probably use it until I can't connect it to a computer I'm using because USB doesn't exist anymore or something. And that's really cool. Cause I feel in computers and in tech in general, stuff is really ephemeral. I can't think of another piece of equipment that I've kept using for like two decades. Right. Even if it was the same thing but I replaced it like let alone the same actual physical device. So I have a lot of respect for what they're doing.
Speaker 1 00:31:46 Impressive Kinesis, you said? Yeah. Cool. All right. I'm gonna check that out. Awesome man. Well thanks for coming on. Appreciate
Speaker 2 00:31:53 It. Yeah, great to see you as always.
Speaker 1 00:31:55 You too man. Don't miss out on future episodes. Get alerts from new
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