Adam: 00:00

I gotta pee. Oh.

Dax: 00:01

The sounds you make when you gotta pee. Oh my god. How's the nanny?

Adam: 00:28

Fantastic. It's actually a team. We have a small team of nannies. We have two. Okay.

Adam: 00:34

So one one of them can't do enough of the hours. So we found somebody who does want more hours, so we're kind of shifting the one into more of a babysitter ad hoc role and the other into the full time nanny. Anyway, it's a yeah. It's a group effort. We have we have special needs children, literally.

Adam: 00:51

But in the other way, I could mean that, I I don't know. Yeah.

Dax: 00:55

You're also special you're also special needs.

Adam: 00:57

I'm also special needs. Okay. Yeah. Let's talk about that. I'm bipolar, which I think I knew.

Adam: 01:04

I I even found a tweet where I like tweeted something about hypomania. I've probably talked about it on this podcast. Memory is

Dax: 01:12

very obvious. Very Yeah.

Adam: 01:15

In retrospect, I should have always known. But the thing that's not obvious or the thing that I'm now that I actually have the official you are bipolar diagnosis, it's not obvious how life should work or how I should be. Like, I enjoy being manic or hypomanic. I'm not sure that I'm actually manic. I'm I'm just new to the bipolar Reddit.

Adam: 01:40

I'm Mhmm. I'm catching up to speed. It turns out lots of people that have lots of similar life experiences, that's the great part about diagnosis is I never would have thought to look up like a Yeah. A community of people with bipolar and like, what do they have to say about things? And it's amazing just immediately how many threads on Reddit I've read that I'm like, wow.

Adam: 01:59

That is so nice to see. I am not just weird or whatever. Like, there are people who have navigated this and found good solutions. But so the main the crux of the problem is if I were a single man and I didn't have a family and I just was a lone wolf, Like I seem to want to be at times, like I I tend toward lone wolfness, just very isolated. I enjoy autonomy.

Adam: 02:26

I don't seem to need people. If I were that person, I would just be manic all the time and Mhmm. That because it feels amazing. I mean, is a high and there's a lot of like societal acceptance of people who get a lot done and I get a lot done when I wake up at three in the morning. Yeah.

Adam: 02:46

And when I don't want to do anything but sit at my desk and produce things. Like, it is rewarding in so many ways, mostly career and just feeling really good, like I'm on crack all the time. But it's like also terrible for my health. Like So, I would probably live a very short intense life if left to my own devices. Because like sleeping

Dax: 03:10

Just because like you don't sleep.

Adam: 03:11

Yeah. Don't sleep enough. Like, I sleep four or five hours a night, That's not enough hours. Yeah. But it feels like it's enough.

Adam: 03:18

That's what's always been weird to me. I've always said like, I just don't need that much sleep. Like, Casey sleeps like almost twice as much as me and I'm like, it's whatever. I just don't need much sleep. I'm an abnormal adult.

Adam: 03:28

But that's just the mania talking. And I I did know that I have these like periods where I'll go two, three months where I'm really not sleeping enough and I'm up and very excited. It's like Christmas morning every day. And then I crash for like two weeks where I just don't want to get out of bed. And I sleep like ten hours a night, and it's like, this is weird.

Adam: 03:45

What's this about? Is this depression? Like, I've always been like this back and forth and never thought about like maybe maybe there's a happy middle. I just don't know how much of my life I've lived not in one of those two states. It feels like most of my adult life, I've been one of those two things.

Adam: 04:03

And so now, as a married man with children, I have to figure out I am my best self, my best father and husband self. Maybe not my best coworker slash cog in society, but I am my best like human being to be around when I'm not in those extremes, when I sleep enough and I'm healthy and I'm not just like jittering all over the house, you know. Like, I actually think about other things when things slow down. Like, I don't just think about my work. So, yeah.

Adam: 04:36

Trying to figure all that out. I've I think I'm in the normal state right now. I don't know if the podcast listeners can tell or if they've seen if they've seen my bipolar over the years.

Dax: 04:45

It's easily tracked with your commit history. Like, we just chart that, it's probably very you can probably perfectly correlate it. That's funny. Did you get that data?

Adam: 04:55

I mean, it feels like anecdotally, it feels like I spend a lot of time in the upper state and then crash into the lower state for shorter amounts of time. But that's I mean, my memory is not very good. I think that's probably another like when you spend a lot of your time not sleeping enough.

Dax: 05:14

Yeah. It's really hard to to tell what actually I mean, that that that's with everything. It's like, unless you're literally writing it down every single day, it's really hard to self assess anything. Even from just like, what did I eat yesterday? Like, am like eating enough protein?

Dax: 05:27

This is impossible in this year, right? Anything like that is just hard to get a sense of. So are you doing something different or are you just like naturally in

Adam: 05:35

Yeah. So the the number one thing I can do to keep from going manic well, one, I can't consume caffeine. Sorry, Terminal.

Dax: 05:43

Mhmm.

Adam: 05:43

I really can't. Like, it 100% of the time shoves me into mania, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So I have to avoid caffeine, which is fine. I've been drinking decaf and enjoying it.

Adam: 05:54

But the number one thing I can do is just sleep enough. If I just don't let myself get out of bed before five and I go to bed knowing I'm not allowed to get out of bed before five, like put me in a straight jacket, tie me to the bed, like I cannot get out of bed Mhmm. It's really hard to go into that hypomanic state when I'm sleeping enough. That's that's the best thing I think I can do to stay normal. The hard thing is to not slip into depression, which is where I just sleep a lot and I don't feel like doing anything.

Dax: 06:20

Yeah. How'd you figure both of those out? Was that something that you just self assessed or did someone help you figure that out?

Adam: 06:25

I think my therapist said something about like, I need like, to sleep is the biggest tell or my psychologist or whatever she is. But I think I just kind of put it together. Like, I know I know that it's not good to be getting up at three in the morning or or 02:30 even. I got it just makes sense that that's not like some weird unique superpower I have. It's like, no, it's just not good for me.

Adam: 06:47

And I I it's just hard to imagine if I'm getting eight, nine hours of sleep a night having that brain state. I don't know. Outside of like drinking caffeine, I guess.

Dax: 06:56

Yeah. Interesting.

Adam: 06:58

I mean, I don't know that it works. You say, how did I figure that out? Like, this is like, I've tried it for a week, so we'll see we'll see if it actually works. But

Dax: 07:07

Yeah. I mean, those those two things seem pretty extreme in that like, I could see how they would explain like a large percentage of what's going on. Like, if you're not getting enough sleep and you're drinking caffeine, like Yeah. That definitely just puts you in like like a biologic just like a pure biology dense like it's put it by puts you in like a really weird place.

Adam: 07:25

Yeah. Yeah. Have you how how much do you sleep? Like what's your night? Like do you have like a pretty solid routine?

Dax: 07:31

I I've been in different phases in my life. Like ignoring my younger phase that's obviously I mean, everyone when they're younger is just like crazy about that. But like, in the past five years, I've probably fluctuated to some degree. It's never like that extreme though. It'll be like, I'll go for a period where I'm getting like one to two hours less than Yeah.

Dax: 07:53

I should. It's never like half. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I I think yeah.

Dax: 08:00

Don't know. I I one of those observations about me is she's like, you just don't change. Like, I don't like

Adam: 08:07

I'm just like the same all the time Yeah.

Dax: 08:10

In terms of like my mood or like my energy or like, you know. So yeah, I guess I have I don't know if that's because of that's not really stemming from really consistent routines. Like, actually I've gone in different directions in my life where I've had like no routine at all. Then I like saw the miracle of like what having a really strict routine does like just just the consistency of every day like just has just makes of gel into place more.

Adam: 08:38

Mhmm.

Dax: 08:39

But then I also had this other feeling of like, I don't know if that's where creativity really comes from when like every single day is the same and you don't like meander and like have things that aren't expected or do things that you wouldn't normally do.

Adam: 08:57

Sure.

Dax: 08:58

So now I'm kinda in in between where I think I'm still a little off balance. Think I've gotten like too much in the unstructured direction. Yeah. But yeah, I'm just trying to like find this balance of being like decently structured but, you know, you you just think of like great people in the past, like it's not like they were just adhering to something rigid structure every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam: 09:22

Yeah. So I I want

Dax: 09:23

to like make sure I don't I don't lose that. Just given I think modern society really pushes the idea of like hyper routine. But I like I know I need to like reject that to some degree even though there is like wisdom there.

Adam: 09:36

You you think about that a lot, don't you? You just like run your life based on how did great people live. You want to be a great person, don't you? Not faulting you for it. I think we all do.

Adam: 09:46

We just don't all put it in practice probably.

Dax: 09:48

Yeah. But I I think I think for me I have a very I think for me it's more that I have a very narrow particular personal opinion of like what I consider a great person that I would like kind of look up to.

Adam: 10:02

Sure.

Dax: 10:03

And because it's so narrow in particular, I think I'm like I really admire them. Like really really admire them because it's like a intense choice that I've made to like them. Yeah.

Adam: 10:13

I gotta ask more questions now because I I just assumed like that made sense to me, but it's not necessarily lined up with what like society views as great people. So it's not like the like default answers to that question, you have a different set of great people.

Dax: 10:29

I think it it would be well, it's not I'm not gonna be like, it's Hitler.

Adam: 10:32

I love Hitler. You know? So That's another topic that's very hot right now.

Dax: 10:38

Yeah. It's not really contrarian. I just think it's a subset of I think everyone that I it's fine. I can't even really name people off top of my head. It's more like a But vibe that I think I don't think I'm thinking of anything that's like anyone that's like underappreciated or like, you know, lost.

Dax: 10:54

It's more just

Adam: 10:55

all the great people, they don't all check your boxes. Like there's people who are considered the great people of our time and and you don't

Dax: 11:03

Yeah. I gotcha. I tend to like people that seem like weirdly good in a lot of different domains including being really enjoyable to be around. Think it's like it's people like that. Yeah.

Dax: 11:18

Yeah. Which isn't like, you know, most most great people.

Adam: 11:21

Yeah. So they just it made me think of Einstein. Like, Einstein wasn't known for being a good hang. Like, kind of miserable to be around or is that not what you're

Dax: 11:31

saying? Maybe that's maybe that's like maybe that was too strong of a statement. Like, because I I because I I like greatly admire Steve Jobs and people think he's a dick. But when I say great to be around, I'm like, I just feel like he had such a interesting way of like, phrasing things or like looking at things or really good perspective on stuff. So Gotcha.

Dax: 11:49

I'm like Like That seems like a pleasant person to be around.

Adam: 11:51

He would keep you guessing. Lots of interesting thoughts.

Dax: 11:54

Yeah. I'd say I'm not super into like this, like, the more like autistic in that like you imagine like a great autistic person like kind of the stereotype we have of that. That's like not what I'm super into. I'm a huge fan of Richard Feynman. I think he's like

Adam: 12:08

Oh, same.

Dax: 12:09

The best Big like in this category. Yeah.

Adam: 12:11

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Dax: 12:12

So it's like he he just seemed to enjoy every single facet of life and try to like pull the most out of all of it, whether it was like the intellectual science part or like the emotional part or like the appreciation of arts part. It's Yeah. I I tend to really, really, really like people like that.

Adam: 12:29

Yeah.

Dax: 12:30

And I tend to dislike people that achieve greatness through like overly specializing in some area.

Adam: 12:38

Yeah. I could listen to Richard Feynman. Feynman?

Dax: 12:41

Feynman? Feynman. Yeah.

Adam: 12:42

Could listen to him talk all day long. Sometimes like when I get tired of whatever book I'm listening to, I just pull up a random YouTube video of his where he's lecturing. I don't even know what he's talking about, but I just I love listening to him talk. Like somebody who really knows what they're talking about and is very passionate, even if they don't necessarily communicate in a way that I can understand, it's just very fun to listen to.

Dax: 13:01

Yeah, exactly. So yeah. And I think I just think society pushes you to into all these like narrow overly specialized ways of living and I like to remember people like that because it serves as a counterbalance. Yeah. Yeah.

Dax: 13:18

Those are off off of what we were talking about but that just I I do have consistent routines. I just try not to go overboard with it.

Adam: 13:26

Yeah. So I guess I do wanna I wanna go back to the bipolar thing briefly. I I wonder so it's mostly like working adults that have bipolar. It's not like a thing I've had since I was a kid. Or maybe I had the I don't know.

Adam: 13:38

I don't understand it all fully. Maybe I had the predisposition, the genetics somehow. I do have someone in my very close family that has had some pretty intense manic episodes that kind of led all this brought it all to a head for me and my wife, like I need to get diagnosed just because we wanna know, could I ever have one of those situations where like psychosis, extreme kind of like disassociation with reality. And like, just knowing some of the things about bipolar, it sounded like I might have said disorder. But it's basically like largely working adults.

Adam: 14:13

And I look at like tech and I wonder if it's I guess what I would say is this, if you find yourself not sleeping near enough, I feel like there's gotta be one listener out of all of our listeners

Dax: 14:23

Yeah.

Adam: 14:23

Yeah. That's like, oh, shit. That could be me. That sounds kind of like me. Not that it needs to change your life.

Adam: 14:30

I'm not looking to get on medication. I'm not looking to I just wanted to understand it and and kind of curb the main drawbacks. People with bipolar die like ten years earlier or something. Makes sense if you don't sleep, that would add up over time. So yeah, I think if you don't sleep enough and if you find yourself real excited about your work, like more excited about it than anything in life all the time and you can't sleep because you wanna wake up and work on it and then sometimes you're kind of depressed, just maybe look into it.

Adam: 15:00

Maybe DM me. Sometimes I get a DM when I talk about stuff and they're like, hey, didn't know that was me but that's me too. So that's nice. Yeah. Maybe it's you too.

Dax: 15:08

And I'm gonna provide a counter thing here which is if if this sounds like you but you're not getting a lot done, it probably isn't you.

Adam: 15:21

You're a bad bipolar, you're failing. You should actually get problem.

Dax: 15:25

You're probably just like not disciplined. Like, there's just there's a lot

Adam: 15:29

of ways to Yeah. See You could just not sleep and not be bipolar, that's possible. Because I think

Dax: 15:34

that was me when I was younger. Like, I definitely like didn't sleep. And I I was like, kinda all over the place in the same way, but like, it wasn't it wasn't related to this at all. Wasn't really getting a

Adam: 15:43

of Yeah. For me, it's like it's like every morning feels like Christmas morning. Like, when I'm hypomanic or manic, whichever it is, it's like I cannot stay in bed. I'm too excited. I gotta get up.

Adam: 15:55

And sure, there's like projects at work that that's probably normal for people. But when it's like every day for three months, I don't know. It's probably a sign. You should get get it checked out.

Dax: 16:04

Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, it's a having been around a few people now that have fallen under this, it's it's like easy to just be like, oh, that's normal. But then when you like actually think about it for a second, it's actually extremely obvious when someone's bipolar in the Yeah. Way

Adam: 16:20

It really is.

Dax: 16:21

That you are. Mhmm. So you also like mentioned to me that I just wanted to tell you this, you mentioned to When you got your diagnosis, mentioned to me like, oh, they recommended one aspect was like kind of routine social interactions.

Adam: 16:35

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Dax: 16:36

And I was telling that to Liz and Liz commented that, oh, he's going to like someone legit because that's like very tailored advice. It's not like the generic stuff you typically typically get. So, yeah, whoever you're going to

Adam: 16:51

for this She seems she seems legit. She costs as much as a lawyer, so she better be legit. It was like an eight hour evaluation. I sat in there all day with this woman. I mean, had seen me twice before like, this was kind of like she recommended we do a full assessment for a a few things and it involves sitting in there with her all day long.

Adam: 17:12

So she got to I couldn't hide any bits of me by the end of it. It was just me.

Dax: 17:16

So did you know that there are some therapists that specialize in treating other therapists?

Adam: 17:23

Really? Yeah. Who watches the Watchmen? Am I right?

Dax: 17:27

But then who who who do they go to? Right?

Adam: 17:28

Oh, yeah. There's gotta be a point of failure at some point up the chain. Yeah.

Dax: 17:35

Yeah. It's just like it's

Adam: 17:37

That's interesting.

Dax: 17:38

And again, having known some people that are like professionals in that space that are like really good at their career Yeah. It seems like a cursed career in a lot of ways because they're just thinking about this stuff so much and it's just not healthy to have to think about this much. Yeah. They all are like like way too analytical about every little thing that they do and they like treat it like They're like, what would a good patient be like and then they like try

Adam: 18:09

to act in like they they try

Dax: 18:10

to assess themselves in the way that Jeez. What kind of patient that them as a therapist would want. So it's like this really complicated thing when you're a therapist and you yourself need the therapy. It just seems like, yeah, like a special kind of hell.

Adam: 18:26

That's tough. Yeah. It feels like I mean, if you really believe that what you're doing is good, like you're doing something for other people Yeah. Exactly. Feels like you're sacrificing a lot of your life to live that life.

Adam: 18:36

Because yeah, sitting in a room every day with I can't imagine. Like, it's hard for me to spend an hour in therapy. I can't imagine doing it all day long every day.

Dax: 18:45

Yeah. So we have a so Liz's best friend has has had the dream patient scenario happen because I think every patient to some degree is self conscious that am I just super boring to this person? Like, is this person just like hating the hour they're spending with me? Yeah. And you know, the reality is is like, yes, most therapists find most of their patients like boring.

Dax: 19:11

Sure. And it's just it's just like very boring work for them. But Liz's friend had this crazy situation where a therapist is like, I am done, I'm I forgot what it was. She was like not being a therapist anymore or like she was retiring and she was like, but I wanna be your friend. Like, let's like continue to hang out.

Dax: 19:31

She got confirmation that she was like not a boring now

Adam: 19:36

I want to win over my therapist. I want her to want to be my friend.

Dax: 19:40

But that's also like not a that like is like a fundamentally unhealthy because like Yes. Relationship to have to your therapist.

Adam: 19:46

So Yeah.

Dax: 19:47

Yeah. These dynamics are funny and the way that the things they have to think about are yeah, are are really funny. So weird profession. I mean,

Adam: 19:55

you spend like as a person spending like on the patient side, you're spending time with this person every week. It's a friendship, like it becomes a friendship. But like, they can't just have all their friendships be their patients. So they have to like look at it very differently, right? Like Yeah.

Adam: 20:12

Not just becoming friends with everybody that locks in the door.

Dax: 20:15

No. No. Yeah. And and they can't they like have to be really explicit about certain things to avoid you seeing them in a certain way which I'm like Mhmm. Can disrupt what they're trying to do.

Dax: 20:25

That is a it's a funny thing. And then and then like our friend I was talking about who is a therapist, he does I think couples therapy mostly. So then that's like even crazier dynamics Oh, yeah. Because there's two people.

Adam: 20:37

Mhmm.

Dax: 20:39

Yeah. It's it's interesting.

Adam: 20:41

It's very interesting. Anyway, enough of mental health, my brain, etcetera.

Dax: 20:49

Adam is depressed. Everyone's I'm not sent him actually

Adam: 20:52

Sifted money because that's what'll make me happy. I did just come out of a little a little slump, a depression. I I hesitate to call it depression now because I'm like, it feels vulnerable or something which I wanna get back to that what that word means. Not that like, I don't wanna be viewed as weak or something because I'm depressed. More just like, I don't know if it's actual depression and I don't wanna make light of like, people who have depression, capital d, if that's like a separate thing.

Adam: 21:18

I don't know. I don't know. It might be the same exact thing.

Dax: 21:20

But But I I will say like, you're because we interact mostly digitally, I weirdly get a more shallow view of you but the shallow view has less noise so it's like really clear when you're in one mode or the other. Mhmm. You know? But I could tell for the past couple weeks Yeah. That it was you were in a different

Adam: 21:40

mode. Mhmm. There's something I've been sleeping like ten hours a night. And if nothing else in my life were different, that's crazy.

Dax: 21:47

Like Dude, tell Brian Johnson.

Adam: 21:49

Yeah. Oh, I wanna talk about Brian Johnson in this episode too. Cause he he's kind of like made the leap after I feel like we talked about him before. He was definitely in like the public light, but then the Netflix series came out and I feel like I see constant things about Brian Johnson now.

Dax: 22:05

And he's also like in our little bubble, like he replied to Madison yesterday.

Adam: 22:08

He yeah. He's like and I saw him reply to Theo. Like, he's

Dax: 22:11

a Yeah.

Adam: 22:12

He's kinda like in our Twitter circle in ways. He's touched it and it's very interesting. Where do you wanna go next? What's going on? Twitter, you wanna talk about something?

Adam: 22:22

There's lots of news. There's an inauguration. There's lots of memes.

Dax: 22:25

Yeah. I watched the inauguration. I don't know if you did. I actually don't think I've ever I don't think I've ever watched one really before, but I just had it on the background while I was working. Yeah.

Dax: 22:34

And man How how do you watch

Adam: 22:37

stuff like that? Was it on YouTube or was it

Dax: 22:39

Yeah. It was on it was on it everywhere. It like on Twitter, was on YouTube, was a bunch of places. Oh, was on

Adam: 22:43

Twitter, of course. Yeah. That makes sense.

Dax: 22:44

Yeah. It was a it was pretty boring. Like, I don't know. It was just like a lot of staying around and waiting. It wasn't like a back to back, like, we got stuff going, this person shows up.

Dax: 22:56

There's like a lot of like downtime and took forever for it to start.

Adam: 23:00

I thought so if I'm being honest, like, seeing a lot of the clips of people speaking and like there were speeches, all that stuff, I didn't know. I just thought it was like hand on the bible, hand up, say some stuff and that's the inauguration. I didn't know there was like a whole thing about it.

Dax: 23:13

Yeah. I mean, there's definitely speeches, but I don't know if it's always to this degree where there's just like a slew of people talking about about things. Yeah. So I think that the few things that stood out to me were, one, just it's crazy how intertwined with religion a lot of this stuff still is.

Adam: 23:36

I mean, hand on the bible. I just said, like

Dax: 23:40

Yeah. I mean I mean, that part is fine. Like, I think the whoever's getting sworn in can choose they can technically choose, like, what they're swearing in on. And I think it like I think I think in Trump's case, he like chose his mother's bible or something and then Mhmm. He actually didn't even put his hand on it when he swore in, which was probably just an accident.

Adam: 24:00

That's fine.

Dax: 24:03

Yeah. So like, just, you know, the people that speak, it's people that are like reverenced and there's also like a rabbi. And that one is just to me like, okay, like, the president isn't Jewish. So there's like no explanation as to why a rabbi is speaking besides Yeah. They're intentionally being, oh, we need to represent, you know, these ex religions as part of our government swearing in ceremony.

Dax: 24:30

So Yeah. Yeah. I I it is like just kind of increasing in that world that's increasing in like, fewer and fee fewer people are like involved in religion. It's

Adam: 24:39

Yeah. Increasingly secular.

Dax: 24:41

Yeah. It's a word. Yeah. It's bizarre.

Adam: 24:43

It stands out.

Dax: 24:44

It's just it's just interesting to see that that show up show up again. And it's not just like it's more the way okay. So the one thing is across all the speeches, everyone was just like crazy sucking up to Trump. That was like a I don't if that's normal when a new president comes in. Everyone is just like, you know, I I think there's like an above average amount of like, you know, showering the new Yes.

Dax: 25:10

Candidate in praise.

Adam: 25:11

I didn't I didn't watch the inauguration, but I've sensed there's an above average amount of sucking up this time. I don't know what that's about, but

Dax: 25:18

And I think it makes sense just because it was such a contentious election and like people saw it as a very important one. But there's like this whole so when the religious people talk, they do it in their flavor which is like like God guided his hand, God is protecting him, like he's like touched by like there's like this essence of divinity attached to it. And that's so interesting to me because I'm like, this is how we sit Like, this is how like kings and emperors were spoken of. Like, were seen as Mhmm. Literally Yeah.

Dax: 25:50

There's like a there's like a terminology for this, like, when like your rule is like, God like authorizes your rule. Yeah. Yeah. Divine right or whatever, divine right

Adam: 26:00

to rule.

Dax: 26:01

Some it's it's something like that. It's just like because I like, you

Adam: 26:04

know Ordained? Sorry, I've been trying

Dax: 26:06

to think of Ordained. Yeah. Or

Adam: 26:07

And that that one just came to my head.

Dax: 26:09

Like in in certain cultures, like, the emperor, they literally saw them as like a literal god. And I'm not saying we're anywhere close to that, but it was it was funny to see that and, you know, they were talking and especially because he survived the assassination attempt, there's a whole angle of like, you know, there being a divine intervention in in making this Interesting. So, yeah, it it is interesting how much that is a part of everything. And I was it's not like, I guess, like you said, there's like a increasing percentage of the population that just doesn't live their lives that way. So it's kind of out of place.

Adam: 26:45

Yeah. Do you think that was the case four years ago? Like, do you think the there's a party divide on how much the religious aspects come into the presidency?

Dax: 26:54

I mean, I don't know because I think my gut feel is Biden is probably more religious than Trump, like in his heart. Yeah.

Adam: 27:00

Sure.

Dax: 27:01

I imagine that like

Adam: 27:03

I

Dax: 27:04

like, just the way Trump has spoken about this stuff, I feel like he for it's like so clearly he forces it in and, like, he just he just seems like just a guy from New York and, like, I know I know what that vibe is. It's not you don't like view life through religion really. That's my read on it. So

Adam: 27:20

That's my read as well. And it's very funny to me how much like Christian America backs Trump and is like I mean, it's just a huge part you can't separate religion from politics because it's like so many people in America align with some religion, specifically evangelical Christianity. And it's just like this thing that everyone knows they all vote for the Republican, and like Republican and Christian are just kind of like this weird amoeba thing that smashed together. Amoeba wasn't the right word. This weird like molecule that's been mixed together, and it's just I don't know.

Adam: 27:59

I can't talk about it without getting really like grossed out because it it kind of bothers me. But yeah. I mean, just like when I was part of that belief system, I saw it in like Yeah. The mega church in Springfield, Missouri has like the politicians come through during that season. It's like September, October.

Adam: 28:16

They all stop in the church and the pastor like announces them and they stand up and wave and like everybody claps. And like, it's just the whole thing is so dumb to me. Like I mean, just the idea that like I don't know. If you believe in something like Christianity, just show me the overlap of those beliefs with like, republican I American don't know. I'm just like I don't get it.

Dax: 28:40

Yeah. It's just like mean, like, yeah, it's just obvious that Trump isn't isn't like a Christian.

Adam: 28:44

Like, he's Exactly. But they view him as like this messianic figure

Dax: 28:48

Yeah.

Adam: 28:48

That's like come to save I

Dax: 28:50

mean, yeah. It it it's just the thing that overrides everything is like just alignment. Like, you know, if someone is aligned with goals that you have, then it's very easy to overlook a certain character. And to be fair, I think a lot of people don't do that. I think there's probably a lot of Christian people that are very upset by the way some people

Adam: 29:12

Sure.

Dax: 29:13

In power that are technically representing them, you know, represent them. But, yeah, it's just just a reality of just power and all these, like, all these dynamics. But, yeah, there's like no way that Trump it's it's just I just can't see it, like I mean, it's not like it's funny because it's like this might sound like I'm criticizing him, but I'm actually not. What I'm actually saying is, I know how I

Adam: 29:38

am Yeah.

Dax: 29:39

And like I feel like he's kinda like me.

Adam: 29:42

I don't even know how much he pretends that he's not. I I just feel like it's more on the like religious people's side that they've grafted this thing onto him and decided he is this thing. I think he does what every politician does, which is like say the amount you have to say to like get the vote for that contingency. You know what I mean? Like that constituency.

Adam: 30:01

Anyway, yeah. I feel like we can't not talk about Elon too, just how much he's played a role in this presidency and the inauguration and all of it. I don't know, like, what's the deal? He he donated a ton of money, I guess. Yeah.

Dax: 30:15

He donated a ton of money and like, yeah, just did whatever he could to put weight on the scale in that direction.

Adam: 30:20

Do you think that weighs in on why people like Zuckerberg are now so pro Trump? Is it like, we're not gonna let Twitter and X have some edge?

Dax: 30:28

No. I've already I've already done my rant on Zuckerberg. I've already

Adam: 30:31

explained Oh, you mean he's he's the lizard man. Yeah. Yeah.

Dax: 30:33

He what? Yes. He he He's just trying to be cool and he's just following whatever is cool.

Adam: 30:38

It does it does seem like I don't remember last time when Trump had his first term. I don't remember all these like corporate tech giants getting so behind.

Dax: 30:46

No. That's that's definitely a new thing. Yeah. I think it's just yeah. It's an incentive thing, I think.

Dax: 30:55

Okay. Let me actually talk about a very specific Did you see the Stargate announcement yesterday?

Adam: 30:59

Yes. I wanna talk about that too. Perfect.

Dax: 31:01

Okay. So I'm convinced that that's a fake announcement. Yep. And then I'm open to being wrong about this, but so just a for context, Trump got up there with Sam Altman, Larry from Oracle, Larry Ellison, and then the SoftBank guy

Adam: 31:22

Mhmm.

Dax: 31:22

Masa. Right? And they announced, hey, there's gonna be a $500,000,000,000 investment in infrastructure for AI over the next, I think they said five years or four years.

Adam: 31:34

Yeah. Something like that.

Dax: 31:35

And they listed who's involved. They were like Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, you know, SoftBank obviously, MGX, which is like a I think it was a it's like some some some fund in Saudi, like one of the, like, public fund from like managing their sovereign wealth or whatever. So I was like, okay, this is one a crazy number. So I did some digging and I was like, let's see if I can like make these numbers make sense. So obviously, when they list Oracle, Nvidia, whatever, I don't think those companies are contributing money.

Dax: 32:05

Yeah. They're actually the ones gonna be receiving money, I'm assuming. Right.

Adam: 32:08

For the GPU

Dax: 32:09

Oracle has some capability in building data centers, whatever, and obviously NVIDIA GPUs, etcetera. So ignoring those people. So Microsoft was listed and Microsoft already announced six months ago that they had some Stargate AI thing and they were like planning on spending a 100,000,000,000 over the next five years or something.

Adam: 32:29

There's a 100,000,000,000.

Dax: 32:30

They're already doing something. Are they just like counting Microsoft's effort as like, oh, yeah, it's like under this Stargate umbrella but that's they're like counting it as like, oh, this is general AI infrastructure even though that's just Microsoft doing that for themselves, kind of irrespective of It's not like they're gonna be giving this infrastructure to like, you know, their competitors or And it's probably more than just AI, just any any like cloud business that they have is probably part of Okay. So ignore so a 100,000,000,000 there. Okay. Gotcha.

Dax: 33:01

Softbank only has 350,000,000,000 in assets managed. So like, if they literally liquidated everything they had and they got like exactly what they wanted for it, that still wouldn't be enough to cover this 500,000,000,000. And realistically, they're not doing that. They probably will maybe raise a new round for this. What I

Adam: 33:20

was gonna ask. If it's over four years, is the argument from them just

Dax: 33:24

It's a 125,000,000,000 a year.

Adam: 33:25

Yeah. So is the argument from them that they're just they're gonna raise 500,000,000,000 over four years? Like

Dax: 33:30

Yes. Okay. So I I I think they're basically saying like, oh, we're gonna this is our target. We're gonna raise 500,000,000,000. But like the people they listed, like the MGX fund, the whole fund is a 100,000,000,000.

Adam: 33:41

I don't

Dax: 33:41

think they're gonna yolo the whole fund on like one project. Right? So like, for what they listed, I'm like, this isn't really like adding up. Like, numbers don't add up. And they do tending to say up to 500,000,000,000.

Dax: 33:55

They claim they're gonna deploy a 100,000,000,000 immediately. Maybe they're just counting Microsoft's thing plus whatever else they raised. I don't know. So I'm like, okay. I think what's going on here is they went to Trump and they were like, oh, let's do this announcement.

Dax: 34:11

It's gonna be sick.

Adam: 34:12

Yeah. Yeah.

Dax: 34:12

And of course, from Trump's point of view, great. That's great PR for them. Second day in office or first full day in office, like, he's got this really impressive sounding thing. And then they can like kind of make it seem like, oh, we're established as like the market leader. Google and Facebook are just gonna see that and they'll be like, oh, okay, we lost.

Dax: 34:32

You know, it's just like it's that's not what's happening. And then Elon tweeted today, he has this whole thing with OpenAI. He replied being like, this is fake. They only they have less than 10,000,000,000 committed, which I'm sure he's probably making that up to some degree. So, yeah, it to to me it's just like a marketing PR thing.

Dax: 34:52

And I also thought, oh, this is exactly what I would do. Like I would go and make some big official sounding announcement if I had the capability to. Yeah. That just like creates a bunch of noise in the market. It's always good to do.

Adam: 35:04

Because they really said up to 500,000,000,000. That's a pretty hilarious marketing gimmick. Like

Dax: 35:07

They did say that.

Adam: 35:08

Yeah. I'm gonna spend up to 500,000,000,000 on cereal this month. Up to likely not gonna reach those levels, but I'll spend up to 500,000,000,000 on my house mortgage payment this month.

Dax: 35:22

Yeah. So I don't I don't know. And the other thing is that's kinda crazy is like that is such a crazy bet to make on this root singular. It all boils down to a root thing which is, is scaling all we need? Are we gonna be able to spend 500,000,000,000 and get like a 100 x c eight, the Or is it gonna be two x the quality?

Dax: 35:44

That's like the question.

Adam: 35:45

Can you speak to just like what they've announced with Stargate? Like, it's just data centers or what are they saying? And it's just for OpenAI to use to build new models?

Dax: 35:53

It's a broad statement. It's they're just saying we're gonna there's gonna be 500,000,000,000 invested in AI infrastructure that we need to do all this stuff. And technically, they're saying Stargate itself is a new company and then Masa is gonna be the chairman of it. But like, what does this company actually own? Like, I don't think they're necessarily owning the data centers.

Dax: 36:12

It's just like, I don't know, they they're just gonna raise money and like direct it towards different things. So they might like give it to OpenAI to then do stuff. They might give it to someone else to to go do stuff. They might directly give it to NVIDIA to do Mhmm. To do stuff.

Dax: 36:27

So yeah, it's like very vague, but if you imagine that some percentage of it is for training, some percentage of it is for inference, it's a lot of money that It's a lot

Adam: 36:35

of money. It's kind of hard to even fathom, 500,000,000,000.

Dax: 36:40

Yeah. I think I think Grok has the largest investment so far and that's only like in the like under 5,000,000,000 I think, if I if I remember correctly.

Adam: 36:50

Yeah, something like that.

Dax: 36:51

Yeah. I find it really interesting because I think I think they effectively killed the the perplexity category of companies, Mhmm. Which is like a modern search engine that basically just like ingesting real, like, real time information.

Adam: 37:08

Because it's doing all that, like it does real time stuff, right?

Dax: 37:11

Yeah. Yeah. And I find myself using it like in my head, I just had a mental block of, okay, I basically go to LMs for everything. But if I'm asking something like, when does the Severance show premiere? What time?

Dax: 37:26

I like can't go to AI for that because it doesn't know anything upcoming. But now I realize like, oh, Grok, like, almost always knows the answer to that. And it effectively like, basically, that's at the last part of the last time I go to Google. So now I'm trying to go to Grok more for that kind of thing. Yeah.

Dax: 37:46

Now, you know, sports stats that are the latest, you know, stuff like that.

Adam: 37:48

It's always it's always gonna have the advantage of having all the tweets. Like

Dax: 37:53

Yeah. That's just And tweets contain all the current event Uh-huh. Answers to all the current event questions. There's a tweet out there with any current event question you have, there's a tweet out there answering it, basically.

Adam: 38:03

Yeah. OpenAI, like going to chat GBT for like a you just don't even think to ask like a current events question because you just know like, I don't I don't think it can do that stuff. Right?

Dax: 38:12

And then the question is like, okay, technically, OpenAI's models are better, Claude's models are better, but that just seems like a temporary gap. If Grok just gets that good, why would you use two things? You probably wouldn't. You probably would just use Grok for everything. So Yeah.

Dax: 38:27

As of now, they're in like this really interesting position, I think. Yep. And it was kinda not very predictable.

Adam: 38:32

Yeah. Let let's talk let's talk about the whole AI landscape right now because there's so much going on with like DeepSeek r one came out. It's I guess people are very impressed Yeah. With this model. It's open source.

Adam: 38:42

And where does OpenAI sit in the landscape? Because Claude I mean, there's all these other models that people use that pay for subscriptions for. Like, is OpenAI behind? Are they still lead because for a while,

Dax: 38:54

they They're were still leading because their models are still the I mean, the best is such a fuzzy question. Yes. But like, on certain evaluations, their models tend to do well and they tend to release them first.

Adam: 39:06

Mhmm.

Dax: 39:07

So, yeah, the Deepsea thing came out but, you know, it was after o one and presumably, like, you know, they've like, OpenEye has advanced since they released it and they have so I I think they're still in the lead. It's just that lead is just more and more marginal and it's just becoming very clear that I mean, it's been clear ish for a while that the winning company is not gonna be it's not gonna related to like who has the best raw model because that just becomes a commodity that's just everyone eventually hasn't been good enough. And and Or around the

Adam: 39:41

same So you asked an actually really interesting question I just glossed over earlier. It was like, the Stargate thing, is scaling it really the problem? Do you have thoughts on that? Like, can we scale this current thing?

Dax: 39:53

I I I have no clue, But I think that's just a fundamental question, right? If it turns out just doubling the power 10 x ing the raw power is gets you like brute forcing to AI, like AGI, like yeah. That would be crazy. Yeah. Like, that's that that's all that's how the bets are aligned, basically.

Dax: 40:15

Not entirely. I'm kinda exaggerating. Like, there's other obviously also inventing new techniques like optimizing things. But roughly, they're betting if they build a 10 x bigger data center, you get like like an exponentially better model. But like the amount of effort you've invested, which if it's if that's not true and it's actually the opposite where it's, you know, logarithmic and it like starts to taper off, this is a complete like

Adam: 40:40

It's a bad bet.

Dax: 40:41

Waste of resources.

Adam: 40:43

Yeah. So what do you think about quantum? Because there's been all these headlines too. Google had a big we didn't talk about this. They had this big breakthrough with quantum computing, which has always just kind of been like this thing that is coming but not really coming and like we don't actually know how to do it and but think about the possibilities.

Adam: 40:59

Now it seems like there's actual potential for commercialization in the next some number of years. Do you do you think about that how it relates to AI? Because like all this stuff that we're doing with the types of LLM, the approaches to building these models would all be completely different in a world where quantum computing was like a part of modern infrastructure. Right?

Dax: 41:20

Maybe because it's not like it's still possible that okay. So just on quantum computing itself, it's like I don't know the number, but let's say there's like six moonshots that need to happen for quantum commuting to be usable. And that Google thing was like, we got past one But of they got they got past

Adam: 41:40

one Correction. Of

Dax: 41:41

But there's still like there's still like many of those left to get to a place where it's usable. And then even then, it's not like it's a general purpose computer, it's like insanely useful and gonna transform society but not it's just not clear whether like it's gonna be in a shape that like meaningfully impacts AI and also on the timelines and Yeah. A lot of stuff can It's

Adam: 42:02

it it's so Yeah. Like tantalizing when you read the headlines of quantum computing. Like, the stuff it can do, maybe it's just super specific stuff, but those things it does like trillions of times faster than a computer or just like does it and a computer couldn't. Like a classical computer could never work it out before the heat death of the universe and it can do it in like five minutes or whatever. You just can't hear those headlines and not think like, well, what could that do with AI?

Adam: 42:29

Like, what could what could that do with these approaches to like synthetic intelligence? I feel like the potential seems crazy.

Dax: 42:38

That's true. But the other dynamic to consider is it might be that, oh, it is true that scaling is all you need, but it turns out the other thing you also need is more input data. And you can have like the biggest data center ever and it turns out the results are not any better because we've exhausted input data for the system and like synthetic data, like, is not making it work any better. But then, you know, that could also be the bottleneck and then we won't know how to really really address that. I I think fundamentally, it's just this thing where clear like, even if this stuff works, we've just created a parallel way to get to some level of intelligence because this biological brain we have is still superior Mhmm.

Dax: 43:23

In like every single way. Like, it doesn't need a billion examples of what a dog looks like Right. To look like a dog. It needs like two. Yeah.

Dax: 43:33

And it doesn't need this crazy amount of power. It doesn't need all this stuff. So I still feel like there is still maybe a totally different approach to AI that might end up being the thing that actually makes it happen. Because what we have now feels so divorced from what nature invented. And a lot of things in life are that way, like the more efficient thing is like not the way it works in nature at

Adam: 44:00

all. But

Dax: 44:03

when it comes to intelligence, it feels like the nature version is is really really good.

Adam: 44:09

So it is really really good, but there is I take issue with the the idea that this thing, we've created a parallel version that's just a shittier version of our brain. There are things it does that I couldn't do, like Yeah.

Dax: 44:21

Has infinite memory.

Adam: 44:22

The memory thing. Yeah. Like the ability to like pull context from areas I've never heard about and like put a coherent answer together. That feels very useful, especially in our line of work like as a knowledge worker. It how do you explain that in terms of like, it's just memory?

Adam: 44:39

It just has more memory than us or it has more a wider

Dax: 44:43

but I I think what I'm describing is, I'm not saying if you built the nature version of it that you could just also have that. Like if you built it in a virtual environment, there's no reason you couldn't give it more memory while still retaining what's good about the way our our brains

Adam: 45:00

Oh, you were saying like if we built a whole different approach to AI that was more like our brain, you could also give it the memory.

Dax: 45:06

Yeah. You you can still untether it from the downsides of our brain Gotcha. Which is like it experiences time at a certain rate, so you you can't like teach it at a faster rate than we want and like, you know, it it like forgets stuff and it's unreliable in certain ways. And it might turn out like a lot of those things are important. Like, if you build something that's a human brain that remembers perfectly, like, it has any kind of negative input and it remembers it perfectly forever, it might just end up being traumatized in a way that is hard to correct for.

Adam: 45:36

Yeah. Can relate.

Dax: 45:37

So Yeah. So maybe the forgetting is like actually really important. So yeah, I I think it's it's just so clear when I started talk start talking about things in this way. The thing we have is quite different than a brain in a box.

Adam: 45:55

It is so this is such an interesting moment in time where all these companies you think of Nvidia and then all the major tech companies, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, whoever, they're all pouring so much money down this path because they have to. They have to like assume it's gonna work out and they're gonna beat They the other

Dax: 46:14

have no choice.

Adam: 46:14

The competitive forces are such that they have no choice. And a trillion dollars will go in this space in the next five years. And it's like, could be wrong.

Dax: 46:25

Oopsie. Like, imagine someone that has just like, what would it look like to make a contrarian bet today? It would be betting that they're investing in the wrong place. Like, not entirely wrong. Like, you still you still go for AI, but you're like, the architecture they're following is like totally wrong.

Dax: 46:43

Yeah. And if you make a contrarian bet there and you're right, this is like the best bet ever made in the history.

Adam: 46:50

The bigger the bigger short. The biggest short.

Dax: 46:53

You would build a business that eats all of them.

Adam: 46:58

So how yeah. How do you make that contrarian bet? Not like I'm actually gonna try and make this contrarian bet, me and my middle America.

Dax: 47:04

I mean, you you would have to have the idea for it first. That's just like, I don't I'm like not smart enough to

Adam: 47:08

come You're with saying the contrarian bet is the person who makes the alternative that goes hard down that path. It's not just like shorting all of their stocks.

Dax: 47:15

No. No. No. Yeah. That that's no.

Dax: 47:17

Short shorting is not actually a contrarian thing. It's a you have to bet on the thing that actually wins where everyone's betting on the thing that ultimately loses. So there's like a crazy opportunity for whoever is able to have clarity on that. And maybe there isn't nothing, turns out they're right.

Adam: 47:33

Yeah. Could it could be right. Yeah. It's just yeah. It feels like it'd be really hard if you're like a founder type and you actually have the credentials to do this to like get people excited about I mean, maybe not.

Adam: 47:44

Maybe there's there's people excited about everything. But to be like, we're gonna go a different direction. Forget the whole LLMs and what are what's the underlying thing that transformer architecture like, we're gonna do a totally different thing. I guess there probably are companies doing that and getting funded.

Dax: 47:59

No. If someone had that and they had like a compelling story around it, they would easily get funded.

Adam: 48:05

Yeah. It's true.

Dax: 48:05

Like, there's still most VCs are not contrarian, but there's still like true contrarian VCs out there that like make sure that they don't miss those things because that's their job.

Adam: 48:14

Seems like a noble mission. Seems like somebody needs to be building the backup plan because yeah. It would just suck if this really did all kind of it feels like there's no way to know if it's a dead end or not. It's just like you have to build these giant data centers. You have to stuff more and more GPUs and more and more training data into these things to figure out the limits.

Adam: 48:34

Right?

Dax: 48:35

The thing that's unclear is ultimately all humans operate the same and we're a lot of us, like, we're we're all like pretty faith based when it comes to a bunch of things. And we do a good job of distorting ourselves so we could we could operate that way.

Adam: 48:50

Mhmm.

Dax: 48:51

It's possible that some of the people in charge, if they sat down and looked at it really coldly, they would not make this bet. But the enticement of this actually working out is so large that it's overriding that analysis. So it's possible Sam Altman is just like, actually, like, doesn't fundamentally believe that scaling is all we need, but he hopes it is. Yeah. And there's like a small chance that it is and there's a small chance that it is and of course, he's gonna do whatever he can to like direct as many resources that the world has at it.

Adam: 49:27

I mean, I I think the worst case, I guess, is I think about it like the floor is still pretty good. Like, this stuff is useful. It's just is it useful enough to warrant like the biggest investment in history in any one thing?

Dax: 49:40

Did we already talk about how he said o one pro was not profitable? Yeah.

Adam: 49:43

You said that last I think last episode maybe.

Dax: 49:46

Yeah. So I mean, that's the problem though. It's like, the stuff is useful.

Adam: 49:50

But can it be sustained?

Dax: 49:51

I saw a video of someone like stacking five Mac minis to run deep seeds Mhmm. At, like, a really shitty, like, slow rate. Okay. Like, a really, like, crappy, like, token per second rate. And I'm, like, what the fuck?

Dax: 50:05

That's what it's anytime every time I hit them, like, that's what don't know Of course, they're using more optimized hardware and, like, I'm sure some stuff is better, but that, gave me a visual of,

Adam: 50:13

like It's a window into it. Yeah.

Dax: 50:15

Holy crap. Like, I'm consuming the equivalent of five Mac minis, like, percent dedicated to just answering my question when I'm using this thing. So yeah, it's possible that it's just, you know, the optimizations just can't happen for for it to get there. So

Adam: 50:32

Interesting times we live in. It really does feel like I kind of feel lucky sometimes just to live in this timeline. I mean, I know some people hate this timeline, but like, feels nice to like get to see all this stuff unfold, like in our prime of our career. Like, are the odds? Or maybe it'll be crazier stuff that our kids get to witness, but I don't know.

Adam: 50:51

It feels pretty cool. You think about how how little the world changed

Dax: 50:54

Oh, sorry. Yeah. I was gonna talk about it. It's like I always think about, wow, it's so crazy that I could have been born like in medieval times Yeah. And like I wouldn't have seen any of this.

Dax: 51:03

But at the same time, there's a weird dynamic where there's more people on earth than ever, so it was actually most likely that I would be born at this time. Interesting. Yeah.

Adam: 51:13

That's a good point.

Dax: 51:14

I think most people a kind trippy

Adam: 51:15

concept. This time. Yeah.

Dax: 51:17

Yeah. It's actually really rare for you to have been born in the medieval times.

Adam: 51:21

So maybe yeah. Maybe not medieval times, but think like a hundred and fifty years ago, like the world didn't change a lot in your lifetime. Right?

Dax: 51:29

I I mean, I think about people like grandparent age currently and it's like or maybe even like a little bit older than them. Like, people that were like born Yeah.

Adam: 51:39

Guess older than that because they saw like electricity come into being like, that's pretty crazy to go from like candlelight to like, there is electricity.

Dax: 51:46

You you can just feel it just by looking at clothing. Okay. So imagine someone in the late eighteen hundreds. Okay? Like imagine like what they would be wearing and kind of like your imagery of them.

Dax: 51:56

And then realize that they probably died in like the seventies. And then imagine what the people are wearing in the seventies. Like how did one person

Adam: 52:04

Witness all that.

Dax: 52:05

Experience both of those situations. Right?

Adam: 52:08

Interesting. Yeah.

Dax: 52:09

It's really mind blowing. And then, of course, the clothing implies like massive change across the board

Adam: 52:15

Yeah. Like

Dax: 52:16

all parts

Adam: 52:16

of culture and life. I don't really notice the the clothing changes anymore, do you? I don't pay attention enough. I'm probably so out of touch with my dress, how I how I dress myself.

Dax: 52:27

Well, I I was complaining the other day that I really think that we're at like a low in terms of aesthetics across the board. And I don't think it's a subjective thing that I'm just like old and out of touch. I think it's I think there are times in life where the society is in a better place aesthetically. Mhmm. Other times where they're more lost.

Dax: 52:47

So I think we're in like a lost phase right now. Everything is just kinda ugly.

Adam: 52:51

What yeah. I I I don't know if I pay attention enough to the world. I thought you just meant like software

Dax: 52:57

It's not just clothing. It's it's like everything.

Adam: 52:58

Yeah. I thought you just meant Yeah. No.

Dax: 53:00

Software too. Just like everything. Yeah.

Adam: 53:03

So we're in a low

Dax: 53:04

And I I think everyone feels this with with like furniture interior design, like, we just haven't seen anything better than like the sixties, the mid century modern stuff. As as cliche and tired as it is, like, you just look at any scene in Mad Men and you're like, oh, this is really good. This is really nice. And we've we've tried other stuff but most of it hasn't really been better.

Adam: 53:30

It is interesting that like I have a ton of Into Dream Modern stuff. Like where is the last sixty years of furniture change? What is the new stuff?

Dax: 53:40

Yeah. Like the Eames chair is still everywhere. Everyone wants still wants an Eames chair as their centerpiece in their living room.

Adam: 53:47

I mean, you can't you can't walk around in a city like, we were just in New York. I mean, I guess not just New York, but it was a few couple months ago, whatever. Just like seeing buildings with crazy architecture, just like the ornate stuff on the facades.

Dax: 54:01

Oh, yeah. The older stuff?

Adam: 54:03

Yeah. Just like we don't we wouldn't do that anymore, would we? Is that just like an old man yells at Cloud thing?

Dax: 54:08

I don't even under because like, you'll like walk by a building and there's like a sort of random ass intricate carving on like some corner of it and you're just like, how did they allocate Yeah. Someone's time to bother doing that? That just like doesn't make sense to me at all. And I mean, like, York is crazy, like, so the modern stuff in New York is also very crazy. So it's gonna be extreme to look at.

Dax: 54:34

But like, outside of extreme places like New York, the modern stuff just feels like so lazy. It just feels like we try to build like the easiest possible thing.

Adam: 54:44

Why is that? There's something there. There's some deep psychology to be honest or it's really simple. I don't know.

Dax: 54:51

I think it's a mix of I think there is like a real cultural thing.

Adam: 54:53

Like, we don't put enough value.

Dax: 54:55

Yeah. We don't. We don't we don't put enough value and then also there's like a practical side of it. There's like a there's always like zoning complexities which I've learned about recently that are why a lot of these buildings are are pretty ugly. Mhmm.

Dax: 55:07

There's this whole thing about like buildings need two sets of stairwells now and that forces like all these constraints on what types of buildings people can build. And the side effect of that is it's almost never the kind of stuff that you would want. Mhmm.

Adam: 55:23

Things are ugly. Can I bring up something else? It's completely unrelated. Twitter. There's a thing there's a there's a one last relic of LinkedIn that lives on Twitter.

Adam: 55:33

And it is

Dax: 55:34

Oh, what is that?

Adam: 55:34

It is, I'm a parent who just loves my children, and I love playing with them. If I if anything takes me away from my kids for an afternoon, f that, I'd rather play with my kids. You know what? Shut up. Stop it.

Adam: 55:48

Because I'm a parent.

Dax: 55:49

No. I'm glad you're bringing this up because I have felt I've had like strong thoughts about this recently, but I'm like, I can't say anything because I have Okay.

Adam: 55:56

Well, I have And I'll say this. Yeah. And I I don't know what I've said about my kids on the podcast. I love my children. I honestly believe it's the greatest and the worst part of my life.

Adam: 56:08

Like, it makes all the highs higher. I don't know if I've ever said this on the podcast. I'm sure I've said it to you in person or something. All the highs are higher, all the lows are lower. Like, life got way more intense since we had kids.

Adam: 56:20

We've got a 10 year old, so it's been a decade now. I love my kids. I would not say that like on a Saturday afternoon, my favorite thing to do is play with them. There are some times where I just miss playing with them. Haven't seen them and I I wanna just that's what I genuinely wanna do.

Adam: 56:36

But a lot of times, I play with my kids because they need to be played with because they're bored or they're whatever. And like, it's an obligation at times. And that's okay. It doesn't mean I don't love my kids, But to act like Yeah. I don't know, like all I wanna do in life is be a dad.

Adam: 56:52

Maybe it's my bipolar speaking, but like that's not the case.

Dax: 56:55

No. No. I I I I've I have this different perspective on this where I don't have kids, but seeing people talk about this, I'm like, I'm actually I wanna make a commitment to never speaking about my kids in that way because it sounds really positive, but in a lot of ways you are saying that you're not doing a bunch of things because of your kids. And you're kind of putting you're like basically saying that you're kind

Adam: 57:26

of like and this is

Dax: 57:27

an extreme way to put it, but I think it illustrates a point which is you're blaming them effectively for you not doing a bunch of things. And the reality is is there are people that always do both. There's always someone out there whose kids are like, my dad was great, he spent a ton of time with me. And they also did all this other stuff that people are like, I don't do that stuff because I want to spend time with my So I just don't want to ever feel like of course, people don't phrase it in a way where it seems like they're using them as an excuse. But I I I think I'm 100% wrong to say like there is some aspect of that and I feel like I don't wanna ever position them

Adam: 58:04

Yeah.

Dax: 58:04

That way.

Adam: 58:05

There's definitely some kind of like, we all wanna be good parents. We all wanna like be viewed as good parents and people who value our kids. I think our generation too, like, I think there's some amount of we were shaped by our parents, our boomer parents who maybe didn't they wouldn't have said these things if they had Twitter back then. They wouldn't have been like Mhmm. Man, I just love to play with my kids.

Adam: 58:28

There's a there's a bit of like millennial identity that is we love playing with our kids. And I don't know. I just Yeah. For sure. I don't want to like I'm not trying to shame any individual who says that their favorite thing to do is play with their kids or that they hate activities that take them away from their kids.

Adam: 58:44

That's fine. Maybe you actually do, but I do think there's a bit of like LinkedInness to it where we all just want to be viewed as like amazing parents. And it's hard. Being parents is hard.

Dax: 58:54

I think there's this natural dynamic of you say like it's a millennial identity thing. There is generally a culture that we want to be true and then we will engage in rituals that reinforce that whether it's fully true or So like this thing of saying like, all I want to do is spend time with my kid is because we want a world where you could just do that. So everyone just says it over and over and reinforces it and maybe they don't say that, hey, like you said, like you just said, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I don't wanna go do a thing on my own. Because even though that's true as totally fair and no one would be upset at that, it's not in service of this larger culture that I think we're trying to make happen.

Adam: 59:37

You put that very smartly. Thank you for making that sound smart. You took what I said and you made it smart. I love it. No.

Dax: 59:44

I'm I'm just glad you like I said, I'm glad you said it because I feel like I felt this way and I felt really unfair for me to again, I'm I'm just not in that position.

Adam: 59:52

No. I think you should just respond to tweets like that and be like, listen, from someone who doesn't have kids, shut up. Think I think it'll come really it'll it'll come through really hard if the fact that you don't have kids.

Dax: 01:00:06

I think it's also I mean, just you saying it is also as important because the downside of this thing where we like, you know, it's good to have this ideal and strive for it, but the downside of it is people take it too literally and then they like find themselves in situations where they feel the way you do where you're like, oh, sometimes I don't wanna,

Adam: 01:00:26

you know,

Dax: 01:00:27

I wanna do my own thing. And they might feel bad about that or they're a bad person. Because everyone else around them is professing like some kind of purity around it.

Adam: 01:00:34

And that's why I call it out, not to shame the people who say it, but to like push back on this feeling because I have the feeling when I see stuff like that, just like the I'm a dad, I can't believe I'm a dad, I'm the it's the best. When I see those kind of things and I have any bit of like, oh, but it's also like so hard, I feel bad about am I just a bad dad? And it it doesn't help like being bipolar. And honestly, I wonder like, do I just not enjoy my kids as much as most people because I just want to be working? Because I'd rather be manic and at my desk all day with coffee?

Adam: 01:01:04

Like, there's that fear. So I definitely have all these self conscious like bad feelings. And then I come back to it and it's like, no, you know what? It's just it's hard being a parent. And we don't all feel that way.

Adam: 01:01:13

It's it's like a ritual like you said. I I it feels like one of those things like everything that's posted on LinkedIn. Like we just say it to get the claps and then yeah.

Dax: 01:01:22

Yeah. The LinkedIn thing is funny. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know.

Dax: 01:01:26

It just for me, I don't me personally, identity is not the one that I am am going for. To me, like, that feels I have this thing about, like, I'm like and I guess it's entirely a personal thing. I feel like when you say certain things that cheapens the reality of the actual thing. Mhmm. So I feel like, again, just a personal thing, if I feel like I like really like love my kids and love spending time with them, it feels wrong for me to like say that.

Dax: 01:02:01

It feels like it kind of cheapens Yeah. Like the sentiment behind It feels like, okay, some part of it is just because I want other people to know. Yeah. Which is fine, like, everyone that's true, but like actually saying it like makes it too real.

Adam: 01:02:14

Yeah. If we all just constantly say how much we love Next. Js, then when we actually do love Next. Js and we have that feeling man, this is a good framework, it cheapens it because it's we've just been a ritual now and it doesn't sound real.

Dax: 01:02:25

Yeah. So

Adam: 01:02:26

we have to actually be real.

Dax: 01:02:28

Yeah. And this is the thing I have with the with the the whole wife guy thing too.

Adam: 01:02:33

Oh, what's the wife guy thing? Oh, no. I'm probably this guy.

Dax: 01:02:36

No, no, no. I don't think you are. It's So there's this dynamic of like publicly being like talking about how like great your wife is and you know, x y z. That's like a trend that is a thing Mhmm. On social media.

Dax: 01:02:50

And I felt the same way about this where I'm like, I do feel that way, like I really do. But if I ever post it publicly for other people, to me it feels like I'm like taking something away from the from how genuine that thing is. And Liz feels the same way too. She's like, don't be a wife guy, please. Like, she she she like doesn't she doesn't like that that concept.

Dax: 01:03:12

And the funniest thing is a lot of times, it tends to be kind of projection or like cover for things aren't actually are as perfect as as people are trying to make it seem. So it's definitely very similar to the whole kids thing. But then it's reality of social media. There's a lot of performative aspects

Adam: 01:03:32

of It's unfortunate because I'd love to like be super relatable and share all the actual difficult things in life. But like that stuff doesn't really go on social media very far, so it's like you can't really help that many people. It's like

Dax: 01:03:44

No. I think

Adam: 01:03:44

it does. Okay.

Dax: 01:03:46

So did you I finally had my first ever like truly viral tweet.

Adam: 01:03:49

Oh, really? Wait. What? When? Yes.

Adam: 01:03:51

Did I miss it?

Dax: 01:03:52

Like, it it ended up in like newsletters

Adam: 01:03:55

like Paul

Dax: 01:03:55

Graham replied.

Adam: 01:03:56

What was it? When was this? What how did

Dax: 01:03:58

I miss It was the dumbest tweet ever. It was it was dumb. I would say if I would rank it on my tweets, it's like not particularly good Okay.

Adam: 01:04:05

Not screenshot a potato. Okay. I'm still scrolling.

Dax: 01:04:08

No. No. No. No. Here.

Dax: 01:04:09

It's Ask

Adam: 01:04:10

how recent.

Dax: 01:04:10

I wrote the only the only career advice I have is make every decision that moves you closer to not having to be on LinkedIn. Okay.

Adam: 01:04:20

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good

Dax: 01:04:21

one. It has 95,000 likes.

Adam: 01:04:25

Okay. What's that like? Does it even give you notifications? I always see those tweets and I wonder like, what's it like to get 95,000 likes?

Dax: 01:04:31

I've muted every I always mute things like very soon after they like go above like a couple 100. So I don't know what it would have been like. Maybe Twitter just saw some notifications, but it was really crazy because like all these like professional social media people were like including it in their newsletters and like, you know, it was just like this funny dynamic. It was on some like random blog spam article being like

Adam: 01:04:55

top tweets this It's funny.

Dax: 01:05:00

But the point I bring it up is why did this tweet do well? It's not particularly insightful, like it's not particularly good.

Adam: 01:05:08

Let's see where this is going.

Dax: 01:05:09

But it is the most relatable tweet possible because everyone loves shitting on LinkedIn.

Adam: 01:05:14

And we all know like it's fake. It's that thing where we we're doing it but we know it's it's so fake. So there's something about that that we all just like, yes, thank you. I hate it.

Dax: 01:05:24

Yeah. So I I think the things that go the most viral are things that are contrarian in a shallow way where they're like counter to what's currently happening, but technically, that's a very common thing. Like, everyone hates LinkedIn, but it's counter to like everyone is on LinkedIn trying to do LinkedIn thing. Mhmm. So the thing you're describing probably, if you talked about this, it would probably do pretty well because I think a lot of people do feel the way you feel, but it is counter to what you're supposed to be doing.

Dax: 01:05:53

Yeah. Yeah. I gotcha. Yeah.

Adam: 01:05:56

I just scrolled forever. You tweet so much. I was trying to find the tweet so I could like it. I wanna join 95,000 people in liking your tweet.

Dax: 01:06:02

Did you just open my open my page in private browsing?

Adam: 01:06:06

Oh, because it shows you your top like, the public view of people's profiles like their top tweets and Yeah. Oh, that's so funny to think about like, what are my dumb top tweets and that's not a great view

Dax: 01:06:16

of me. It's crazy because that one is 95,000 and number two is 9,000.

Adam: 01:06:21

Wow. That's a big leap.

Dax: 01:06:22

It's crazy. 10 x. Yeah. A a step Something crazy.

Adam: 01:06:29

Step coach. Order of magics. Order of magics. That's what I was like. That's one of those founder words,

Dax: 01:06:35

you know?

Adam: 01:06:36

Nobody knows what that means. Nobody knows what It it

Dax: 01:06:38

just means 10 x.

Adam: 01:06:39

10 x. Yeah. Just add another zero. That's funny.

Dax: 01:06:43

Yeah. It's it's also funny because like I tweet so much and I've been on Twitter for so long and it's taken me That long to get so many tries before I've gotten here. And there's people that like do this that we know that do this. Yeah. Like very frequently.

Dax: 01:06:59

Like, you know like, know Vic?

Adam: 01:07:00

You mean like pop off? Vic? Yeah. I know Vic. Me and Vic go way back.

Adam: 01:07:05

He pops off.

Dax: 01:07:06

He has like he has so many of these. I feel like every other week he's just going crazy viral for

Adam: 01:07:12

Annie has a bunch of them. I've seen a bunch of hers.

Dax: 01:07:14

Annie yeah. And then Annie's like, every single week she's got something going. Yeah.

Adam: 01:07:19

I gotta pee so bad. Are we done? Should we just be done?

Dax: 01:07:21

Okay. We're be done.

Adam: 01:07:22

It's been an hour, hasn't it? Okay. Yeah.

Dax: 01:07:24

We should

Adam: 01:07:25

just be done.

Dax: 01:07:25

I gotta

Adam: 01:07:25

Alright. Alright. See you, man.

Dax: 01:07:27

The sounds you make when you gotta Oh, god.

Adam: 01:07:30

Oh, okay. Alright. See

Dax: 01:07:33

you. Alright. Bye.