Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 600: Joe Wong

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Joe Wong, musician, composer, and host of The Trap Set podcast, re-joins the DTFH! Joe’s new album, Mere Survival, is available now! Listen on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal. You can learn more about Joe on his website, JoeWong.org, and listen to The Trap Set everywhere you listen to podcasts! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Hello Fresh - Visit HelloFresh.com/21Duncan and use code 21DUNCAN at checkout for 21 FREE MEALS + Free Shipping! Rocket Money - Visit RocketMoney.com/Duncan to cancel your unwanted subscriptions and start saving!

The Duck and Dressel Family Hour works in conjunction with Davis Williams Industries in association with the Federal Reserve. I want to thank Bill Thompson, Gary Alexander, Mr. Branch, and the four beautiful Leely children for working together to do the PR and the post production for this podcast. This podcast of course is a subsidiary of the RAND Corporation and is partially funded by the Luali Trust. Luali Trust bringing light in the darkness, showing the Lightbringers truth to all who would see it. And now the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. As I put the lotion on, a man reached out in front of me, taking lotion from the Spencer. Then lotioning right next to me. There are four Kiehl's lotion dispensers in my gym. All of them were open, available, waiting, waiting for him.

And yet, he chose mine. The one behind me was exactly 5 foot steps away from where he chose to reach in front of me and grab the lotion that day. Lotion man, you freak me out. Lotion man, you creep me out. Lotion man, you are the devil. Here comes the lotion man, while you're luching in your hand. Sneaks up creeps up leaps up, grabs some kills, fuel his toes against your heels. Look him in the eyes, watch him moisturize. Sneaky lotion, man, serve another simulation, motherless man. You come from no womb, you were born in a locker, and the locker will be your tomb. That was Sneaky Lotion Man by King Louise and the 14 Boys.

Love that song. Really excited for King Louise. Really excited for you. We have an excellent podcast for you today. One of my best friends and one of the most talented musicians I know. He was the man behind the music of the Midnight Gospel and lucky for us all he has a new album, Night Creatures. Came out February 2nd. Pick it up. The man is a genius. If you love the music of the Midnight Gospel then you love Joe Wong. Before we jump into this conversation with him,

I gotta do some announcements. I've got a Patreon, patreon.com, slash DTFH. Subscribe and you will get commercial free episodes of this podcast. Also, I've got some stand updates coming up. I'm gonna be at the Helium Comedy Club in St. Louis, February 22nd through the 24th. The funny bone in Liberty Township, Ohio,

from March 8th to March 9th. And then I'm going to be in Texas at Hyenas and Fort Worth in Dallas. You can find all the dates by going to DougGutrussell.com. Okay, everybody, welcome back to the DTFH, the brilliant, ooh, I forgot, you also should check out his podcast, The Trap Set. It's awesome. The brilliant musician, Joe Wong. ["The Trap Set"] ["Welcome, welcome to you, that you are with us.

Shake hands, no need to be blue. Welcome to you. It's the Duncan Chessel, the DTFH. Joe, welcome back to the DTFH. I'm so excited to hear that you have a new album coming out. That's got to feel good. It does and thanks for having me. Yeah, man.

It feels weird. When you make something and then put it out into the world, it's like you're parting with it. I know. I know, man. It is the most bizarre feeling. Like even in a mini version of that is uploading a podcast. You don't know what it's going to do or how people are going to respond. But working on something

long term and then boom, launching the rocket into the new sphere, into the guy in mind and you just don't know what people are gonna say and how they're gonna react. How did you feel after we released Midnight Gospel? It seemed like you were related. No, I was- Did you feel depressed too? Well, I was elated and depressed and nervous

because it was so weird. And I just didn't know how people were gonna receive it. And I know you're as an artist, you shouldn't worry about that and you're supposed to be immune to it somehow, but... I don't know if you shouldn't worry about it, but it's not necessarily constructive to worry about it, but it's natural to worry about it.

Yes, exactly. It's natural to worry about it, but it's natural to worry about it. Yes, exactly. It's natural to worry about it. And it's definitely not constructive. And, but I just don't see how, since you are making something, and I know like Rick Rubin says, I make things for myself, make something you wanna hear.

And surely you can't pander or be like, this is what people want, because then you're just a politician. You still are. He's a rare person that makes things for himself and is exorbitantly wealthy. I know plenty of people that make things for themselves who are destitute or somewhere in between. Right. You know.

Yeah. And when you're insulated by wealth, it's easier to preach that, even though it's true. But I guess you could preach it when the very thing got you that wealth. So it's not like you're one of those people. But I think it's because his particular sensibility is aligned with popular taste. A lot of people that are brilliant have a sensibility that's outside of popular taste. He's the rare artist who who's taste coincides with that of what the masses want. Right. Like if you get lucky somehow, the thing that you are making, it just jives with, it fits. It's a puzzle piece. It's been missing from the zeitgeist and people

are like, this is incredible. That's got to be pretty rare though. And then you- Yeah, I mean, he's like a supermodel that says, I don't try to find the right partner. You know, I just go out and, and attract the right energy. You know, it's like, well, you write his book, I take it. You write his book. I, I started it. I didn't finish it. Okay.

I'm going to defend it. So I did the same thing. I started it, had some kind of like negative reaction to it, stopped listening, then got through the first few chapters and lots of good stuff in there. Lots of like very empathetic. Like you could just see how if you were lucky enough to work with him, he would pull something out of you. And if that's what the book feels like to me, it's like it's pulling out stuff that you might not even know is there or like helping you at the very least, not feel like an alien. And because he's sort of talking about all

the blocks that I think people who make stuff experience and maybe feel like they're totally alone in that. Like I could see how he's sort of like an art whisperer, how he could, you know, if you were hanging out with him in his beautiful place in Hawaii. Shangri-La. Shangri-La and there's bells and chimes and candles and you're like freaking the fuck out. And he's like, you know, go lay in my freak out room, man.

That some somehow in there, something would would pop out of you that you didn't even know was there that maybe would vibe with people more than you thought you could. Yeah, I think it's such an interesting skill set that he possesses the ability to identify raw talent and help people actualize it. Yes. It's very rare. I mean, somebody like Quincy Jones obviously could do that. And I've, on my podcast, I've had several people that have worked with Rick Rubin on, and I always ask what that experience is like. And I think it ranges. I mean, I think some people do view him as almost like a, you know, creative wizard.

And some people think that he's like the Wizard of Oz, where there's really just a, he's just a man behind the curtain. So, um... I mean, probably both. I don't know, but look at his look at his track record. It's undeniable at this point, you know, it has been a while. And I think like the truth is, I mean, I think this is like a problem managers run into is like like they sort of shepherd you along and then something comes out of you and then it just is coming out of you because you know what I mean? But if they've done a good job, they got they helped you get to that place or something,

you know, like, or it's like it reminds me modern artists or something, you know, like the classic argument that, you know, people debate constantly when it comes to new forms of art or interpretations of things is like, that's not art. They didn't do anything. But it's like hanging in a art gallery somewhere and worth millions of dollars. And people are like, that's nothing.

They did nothing. You know, the, cause how do you quantify quantify all the moments leading up to the inspiration to make the thing? Exactly. Exactly. You can't. And often the best work comes out almost effortlessly, but there was a lot of tumult leading up to that moment. Yes.

You have to write a lot of bad songs usually until good songs start pouring out. And you just, you feel your brain just like a machine that's breaking gears, grinding against each other. For me, a sense of like, I'll never feel inspired again. This will never, I'll never write another joke. I'll never get excited to build something again.

And like now I know what that is. That's just when something's under the soil, you can't see it yet. It's growing in you somewhere. But if you don't know that. But it is true that sometimes the soil is rockier than others and some seasons are more productive than others. 100%, 100%.

But the first time you have a dry spell, it's really scary. And the second time too. I mean, it's probably scary every time. It's like, you know, number one, it's just unpleasant. It feels so good when you're making something, the process of putting something together, even if you don't know if it's good and how could you. So did you go through a dry spell before you started working on this album? No, I didn't. What happened was I made the first album

which you saw me premiere a few years ago at Hollywood Forever. And then we had all these plans to tour in 2020. You saw me play at the end of 2019. We ended up using one of the songs on Midnight Gospel. And then the album was set to come out in 2020. And we had multiple tours planned. I was going to tour with my favorite singer, Colin Bluntstone from the Zombies. And then my band was going to back him and we was going to tour with my favorite singer, Colin Bluntstone from the Zombies. And then my band was going to back him and we were going to perform his first solo album, which was 50 years old at that point.

And then we were going to perform my album and it all got canceled. And so at a certain point, after I got over the heartbreak of that, well, it was actually both heartbreak and that, uh, well, it was actually, it was actually both heartbreak and relief because I also was very anxious about doing all of that stuff. So it was like a good, right. You got cancer. Cancer relief is a wonderful feeling.

Yeah. I mean, I, I remember one one when that happened just sitting on My couch playing a video game with you and Pendleton Because we didn't have anything else to do You know, we were remotely playing Red Dead Redemption, but not really playing it just like talking Yes, like a couple of like some 13 year old cowboys You know, but go and go and have drinks at the tavern. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So when that one that when I realized that I wasn't going to be able to tour, I decided to just write another album. And the first album that I wrote, I was shocked that it even came out and it was so exciting and then the second one I think the challenge was that I actually had some expectation for it and I wanted it to be good and as you know you can't really will something to be good you just have to like wait for the goodness to come that's right you gotta wait for the goodness to come. That's right. You got to wait for the angels to sing, Joe.

You got to wait for the news to come down. Maybe you do. You have to just be open to it. And then you have to like actually put in the work too. But. Oh, yeah. Because that's the other rotten thing about it is it presents itself to you. And then you got to actualize it. You know, that is a brutal

reality of it and then if you don't actualize it, this is Rick Rubin writes about this and I've had it happen to me, someone else will actualize. You will see some version. That happened to us. That actually just literally happened to us. It just happened to us. What we were working on. Literally the same idea. An idea that we had. The same idea. With the same song. The song title was exactly the same. The same fucking song, the same title,

and completely unrelated. I never mentioned it to them. Like just, it was floating out there, someone grabbed it. You know. Duncan and I had a movie concept that we were working on. We were about to pitch it.

To the person who fucking made it. That was on our list of people. And he did it. It's just, you have to act on it or it will leave you. I want to thank HelloFresh not just for supporting the DTFH, but for reaching their hand into the dark abyss of culinary illiteracy that I was frothing in down there. You don't know how to cook. You have no idea. You watch the cooking shows maybe and you think to yourself, one day maybe I'll try that and then you get a recipe book and you write down all the

ingredients and you go to the grocery store. Oh, what a surprise! They don't have teflated angel beans or whatever is in the recipe that you assume would just be at the grocery store. You don't know how to replace it, so you just give up, you don't do the recipe, or you try to reconfigure the recipe to fit whatever is at the grocery store and you end up with a bowl of slop, a bowl of gruel, the kind of stuff they used to feed chimney cleaner children before they would send them up into the chimneys

where they get stuck up there and they just leave their bodies up there for years. You don't wanna live like that. We don't live in Charles Dickens time anymore, which means we can connect to the geniuses at Hello Fresh and actually sit down and enjoy a dinner around the table with our families that we cooked and they'll look at you like you are a freaking master chef.

Hello Fresh is incredible. I love them. Everything's already portioned out for you. You understand how incredible that is for people like me? I'm always gonna get the measurement wrong. I'm gonna pour too much milk in the oil, too many shrimps in the pot, not enough rice,

and the whole thing is gonna be exactly, you know what that used to be like to be a young chimney sweep and you didn't know if you're gonna make it through the day and they would just, they grab you and shove gruel into your mouth and light a torch so you had to run from it right up the chimney. You don't want that. Go to hellofresh.com slash Duncan Free and use code Duncan Free for free breakfast for life. One breakfast item per box while subscription is active. That's free breakfast for life at hellofresh.com slash Duncan free with code Duncan free. Hello Fresh America's number one meal kit and they deserve it. Thank you. Hello Fresh. I also, I want to point out something. There was a little bit of like cheesy foreshadowing

in the cancellation of your tour, which is that your first show was in a cemetery. Have you thought about that? Like in a movie that would that would seem too obvious. I know and so I did another show at a cemetery recently. Does that mean my career is over? Does that mean we're gonna have another pandemic? Mmm. Well, we'll see. I think we probably will. I don't know if it'll be during our lifetime. I think we probably will. I don't know if it'll be during our lifetime. But here's the thing. I'm not super bummed out about someone else having the same idea as us because it reconnected us.

And I'm sure we'll come up with something else. And then we'll laugh about how glad we are that we didn't commit to that first idea because we stumbled on something even better, right? Exactly, exactly. Is that the takeaway? That's the takeaway. I mean, you know, like I was talking to this comedian, even better, right? Exactly. Exactly. Is that the takeaway? That's the takeaway.

I mean, you know, like I was talking to this comedian, Lucas, and he was, you know, making this observation about comedians, like there's people who get into comedy, but they don't like doing comedy. They get into comedy for, I don't know, fame or they think they're gonna be rich, but they don't like the act of getting on stage in front of people and performing that. Can you think of anybody that's successfully achieved that end, like someone that doesn't actually like comedy

that became rich? I don't, I've never heard of that, but I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, you know. Just like somebody like Jerry Seinfeld likes comedy, right? Yeah, that's he lives for it. That's all he wants to do. It's the world he wants to be in He's like a purist And you know, I'm not saying that

Every time I go on stage I'm like, oh boy, this is great like sometimes you don't it's your job It feels like a job you You have to do it. But that's if that's I think of it like a relationship, you know, you're not always going to have a great, you're not always having sex. You know, it's like, exactly. You have to work through a lot of stuff. Exactly. But you love you love it. No matter what, you would keep doing it regardless of pay.

You keep doing it regardless. You just would keep doing it, regardless of pay, you would keep doing it, regardless, you just would keep doing it. So I think with like, yeah. Have you ever felt like you've been in a sustained period of a loveless marriage to comedy? During the pandemic, I got so disconnected from it and so lazy that I kicked around the idea, like maybe why even start again?

Why even like start start do something new? And then Aaron was like, you're a comedian. No, you need to go on perform again. I'm so glad she did that. But- If you were to do something new, what would it be? I have no, I don't know. I mean, I would probably like,

if I was like, somebody said you can't know. I mean, I would probably like, if I was, if like someone said you can't do stand up anymore, then I would be forced to like try to get into some kind of stage acting or like some modular synth noise shit or something, I guess. Like I'd still want to be, I'd still want to perform. You know, I'd still want to do something. But I think like one factor that like really separates

people is like some people want like you're gonna make music no matter what. You're a musician, you're not gonna stop making music, you love it, this is what you do. It's like, there's a feeling that comes from making stuff that is way more valuable than any fruits that come from what you make. Well, about 10 years ago, I was broke and I wasn't feeling the joy when I would go on stage every night. So that's when I really thought,

hey, is there something else that I'm meant to be doing that can bring me that kind of joy? And what I did is I started my podcast and started asking other people if they went through that period of on we or if they ever felt disconnected from the feeling that made them want to play music in the first place. And a lot of people, probably the majority of people that I spoke to went through that. But what I found is like actually just having those conversations gave me what I needed to reconnect to music.

Because music is an innately social art form as is comedy. Like you don't really do, nobody records comedy albums in a booth, right? No. Like you have to, I mean, if somebody did, it might be interesting. People attempted it and never works. I've never seen a successful version of that.

Yeah, I guess the closest thing would be like Cheech and Chong records that were made in the studio, but even still it was the two of them. But anyway, just talking to people on a deeper level gave me the feeling that I get from connecting with people musically and it brought me back around and led me to the stage where I'm making my own music but um but yeah I fantasize about what I would do if I left music like I would uh there's a bar that Pendleton and I love going to and across the street is an old office building and I dream about having a PI office there.

Quite a bit of a investigator I would never have guess that is what you would do. That's one thing or going back to school for philosophy or something like that. Some sort of deep study or linguistics or anything really that you can just like dive into forever. That would be fun. I think those are fantasies for a reason. But or combining them being like a philosophical detective. A philosophical detective.

That's amazing. I love it. I mean, you could still remember like how Andy Kaufman was a bus boy for real. You know, like he just he decided to do that too. He wasn't just gonna be on taxi. He was also gonna like bus tables at a restaurant because he wanted just to have another experience that was like-

He did that? Yeah, he did that. I think that would be great if you were doing it in a respectful way and like the other people that were relying on that income to make a living didn't feel like you were a tourist. No, I know you just-

Like if you were actually going in and busting your ass. No, he was. I mean, that was what was cool about it is he was just doing the job. He wasn't like busting his ass, but at least the videos I've seen of it, he's not making a big deal out of it. He just is, he's just doing it. I mean, that's the other thing. When was the last time you had a job like that, Duncan?

Oh my God, the last dishwasher, it's been, I mean, I was the talent coordinator of the comedy store. That doesn't count. Before that, I was in college and then before that, I was a dishwasher and a waiter, a server. So that was like the last like job where you're just doing something that isn't contingent on inspiration. Like, thank God we don't have to wait for dishwashers to get inspired to wash dishes. And the fucking-

Although, when I was a dishwasher, I would get inspired. Same. Because I think when you're occupied with something else, then your subconscious is free to roam around and feed you ideas in a way that when you're deliberately working on art, it can be more difficult to be inspired or you're drawn to the fact that you're not inspired because you're trying more. When I look back to those days and I can't tell if it's just like I'm forgetting how

much I hated it. It was so nice and like such a relaxing job once you got good at it. And that was the other thing. You would get good. It's not an easy job. Not an easy job, but you could get good at it. Everything becomes automatic. You go from being a greenhorn dishwasher to you're like, you're good. Like you, you're like, you're good, like you're like fast.

You see dishwashers, like the dishwasher that trains you, you watch how quickly they can do it and how good they are at it. And it's, that's the thing, Ramdas talks about this. It's like beauties and everything. Like perfection is perfection. Getting good at anything, it takes on this kind of symmetry that is across the board. I think it's what we're drawn to is that whatever that is,

it becomes the same thing no matter what. Yeah, I think that my last job before I became a musician full time was as a server. And I still haven't experienced anybody that, I haven't seen anybody that works as hard as the bussers that I worked with. No. And they weren't bus boys, they were adults, and they would work a full shift or a double shift

at the restaurant and then go clean an office building at night. And I always said, that's something to aspire towards, like that level of work ethic. Where were you a server? And if you're lucky in Milwaukee at an Italian restaurant, and before that in Washington, DC. But I feel like if you're privileged enough

to get to do what you want, then that's all the more reason to lean in and put that kind of work in when you can. Right. That job is so, I mean, busing tables is fucking hard. I was a busser. I mean, I worked my way up from dishwasher to server and I was the worst server on earth.

But remembering the fucking orders. Like when you see someone come to your table and they don't write anything down, they just get it in their heads and then they have to use these. That was me. Dude, that was me. That's incredible.

And then I would remember, I would be remembering them in my dreams, the orders. So it was like occupying my brain. And you remember the abbreviation of them because that's how you put it into the, at least for me at Applebee's, they had this thing called the squirrel system. And you go on like chick,, chi, SWA, B, chick, chick, coke, coke, diet, DC.

And then like, you have to remember all that. And by the time I got to the squirrel system, I couldn't remember shit. I'd bring diabetics, non diet coke. And they'd be like, you could have killed me. I could have died from this. You know, like it was horrible. People would leave me like, you know, there's like ways that there's people who leave

like a quarter on the wrong side, like on the heads and that means fuck you forever. And like people would leave me like Bible tracks and shit. Yes, I was- Yes, Chick Tracks. Yes. Did you ever get a Yes, Chick Tracks. Yes. Did you ever get a Chick Track tip? Oh, absolutely.

I could tell because they would say something super nice towards the end like, thank you so much. And I was like, uh-oh, and God bless you. And I'm like, uh-oh, they're not gonna get me any money. Dude, they would leave, it would look like a $20 bill. Did you get that one? I've seen that one before, but I don't know if I was given it as a tip,

but I've certainly seen that before. So you're like, holy fuck, a $20 tip. And then it's like, the ultimate tip is not burning in hell or how to stay out of hell. It was, this is, you know, I feel, you know how like some countries, you have to be in the military? I think in this country- Yeah, you think everybody should work in the service industry?

Yes, everyone should have to spend a year waiting tables so that they just fuck off, you know, because like you don't understand how petty and mean and how people will take on almost like this emperor persona when they sit down to eat. You know what I mean? You have to role play. They're the Lord of all creation or they get mad. Is that because they feel powerless in their day to day life and this is their chance to

be in control? It's got to be. I mean, what other, it's definitely one, they've never waited tables and two, something is going wrong in your life if you have to like cosplay as a powerful person when you're in an Apple Beast. Something is failing. Do you think that if you went back to that Applebee's and got a job as a server now, that you could become like an enlightened server

and bring all of these Rammdass studies to bear and be the world's most empathetic server? So when someone sat down like that, you could just say, I'm sorry that you feel powerless. Have a great day. No'm sorry that you feel powerless. Have a great day. No.

I love you. No. I think I could try. I could be phony for a little bit, but eventually you get tired. I mean, I would try all those, all the, all that stuff, all those teachings. It's like, you really can't get, It's easy to get confused. Because anyone who's legitimately teaching that stuff, it's like getting dance lessons from Michael Jackson. You're not going to dance like Michael Jackson for a long, long time.

This stuff usually has built into it, long time being, you've been studying this for many incarnations. Like you- Do you think that Michael Jackson could teach somebody how to dance? Yeah, I bet he could. Sure, guaranteed he could.

I mean- Well, I interviewed the drummer that played on Off the Wall, and he's a professor at, I think, USC. And I said, can you teach somebody to have the same concept of time as you do? Because one of his attributes is that he has like a very, very great feel on the drums. Like he can sit down and play the most basic beat and make it feel sublime. And that's like the mark of a true master. And I think in a lot of people it's innate. And I said, can you teach that to somebody? He's like, he's like, uh, not really.

So, uh, so yeah, I mean, if, uh, do you think you could teach somebody how to be a comic? No, I can't. That it is, but the stage can teach someone how to be a comic. And it's one of the things you witness in comedy is you will see somebody who maybe isn't doing that great on stage or just doesn't strike you as funny. And then one day they're just fucking funny. They figured it out. It's like a flower blooming or something. And some people are

good at recognizing. Oh, that's a flower. That's not a flower. I think Mitzi was good at that. And then Rick Rubin, Rick Rubin, and then watering the flower is just Rick Rubin even produced Andrew Dice Clay when he was a superstar. Holy shit. Wow. Like the Madison Square Garden album. He produced that, I think. Man, it ain't cheap to perform at Madison Square Garden.

It's like half a million dollars if you want to perform there. You know, yeah, I think, I mean, it's probably naive, but I like to believe that if you take any person and put them in the right circumstances and that they are compelled to practice, that at some point they will, people will be like, that's a talented person. No matter what, for some people it might take longer. Like if we could slow down time maybe, if you could, if finally we figure out a way to create some neural interface

that allows us to have our consciousness, but time, you know, the outside world is moving at the normal speed, but every second is a year. You know, I think, you know, after a couple of minutes, that person is going to come out Beethoven. Just, you know what I mean? And one of my friends pointed out, it's a real luxury to even have the chance to practice anything.

You know, to find that time or the place to even do it. You know, I think a lot of what people see as a lack of talent in their own lives is a time constraint. It's- A lack of opportunity. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it's interesting interesting talent is one component, right? If we're, if we're defining talent as like an innate skill.

Yeah. And then I think one talent is drive. Like some people have an innate drive and ambition to become great. and ambition to become great. Another thing is like having the personal insight to understand what to pursue, like identifying what you might want to dive into. But another thing that I was thinking about when we were hanging out the other day

is what is the difference between talent and artistic sensibility and what is it going to look like in a world where kind of like innate by AI or other developments. Because I think a big part of becoming an artist up until now is like, it's not so much like putting in the work, it's the personal growth that occurs and the insight that occurs when you're struggling to learn how to do something. Absolutely.

And so if you don't have to struggle to learn how to do something anymore because you can just implant it into your mind, then what kind of art comes out? Well, or will it just change the playing field and instead of, you know, racing on foot, now everybody's racing in race cars. And you still have to reckon with yourself. on foot, now everybody's racing in race cars. And you still have to reckon with yourself. I think it's going to create a new form of art that is going to have attributes that people associate with AI art.

And I think that whatever that is, is going to have its own value, its own consumers, its own critics, its own sort of fans or people who to cry it. And all that's gonna go on while people like you continue to make music, cause it's what you do. And that will have its own value. And that will be looked at and probably through a different lens.

And the people who are prompt engineers or whatever they're going to call themselves will realize eventually that it's the combination of having the wherewithal to make things on your own and the AI, that it'll be this synthesis between the two. That's what will take AIR to the next level and AI music to the next level is you'll collaborate with the machine

in the way you might collaborate with a person and that's where it'll get at the human element. Because, you know, like any AI art that we look at now, it's devoid of something. Like it's in argue, it's cold. It's got this cold quality to it that is somehow like, I was just in Indianapolis and in this hotel, they have an art gallery. And I wish I could remember the artist's name because it's incredible what they did. They took their fucking apartment in New York

and recreated the entire apartment in like tiny, like translucent, I don't know what the, some kind of like cloth see through opaque cloth. And I'm saying like, you know, the, the fuse box was perfectly duplicated in like somehow they managed to weave all the weird writing on a fuse box. And, you know, they only have little bits and pieces of the exhibit at the hotel, but you could,

you weren't just getting a sense of like what this person's apartment was like, you felt them. Like they were in the art. Like they're there. Like you get an idea of their personality, how they see the world. It makes you think about, whoa, like everyone truly is seeing things completely differently. And then the philosophical commentary on memory.

And I don't, you and I have gone back and forth on this and a lot of my friends are artists we debate and talk about consciousness in AI or some lack in AI. And I think that's where it is. I think there is some transfusion of spirit that happens in the process of making something that soaks you into the thing, whether it's music or art or comedy or whatever. And that resonance is what makes something really cool.

You feel the spirit of the band or the person or the passion that they were feeling at the time. Maybe it's superstition, I don't know. Maybe AI will duplicate that too eventually. I just can't imagine how. I don't know. It's getting pretty advanced. OK, go ahead.

No, I'm sorry to cut you off. No, I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's inconceivable that machines will have emotions and spirits at some point. I mean, we're just meat machines anyway, maybe. Right? Like there's no evidence that the soul is a biological contraption.

So, I mean, maybe, I mean, I think that the soul might be like the abstract of ourselves in the way that, you know, language is the abstract of a bunch of dots and dashes on a paper. But I think maybe that could exist in... What do you mean the abstract? What do you mean? I think maybe that could exist. What do you mean the abstract? What do you mean? Well, there's, you can look at a piece of paper

and see a series of dashes and lines. And it's, it is a series of dashes and lines, but if you understand written language, then you can see a larger story. And I think similarly, as a materialist, you can look at existence as simply energy or as simply the physical manifestation of just what we see, or maybe perhaps there's a larger story being told

in that the material world is just some sort of divine ink or something like that. And I think that they, so there's nothing to say that, you know, computers can't have spirits too. And I don't think of them as artificial. You know, we say artificial intelligence, I think of it as natural intelligence because it was created by human beings, which are natural creatures. In the same way that honey is created by bees, we make computers plastic and other stuff like that. I want to thank Rocket Money for supporting the DTFH. Friends, I have a problem.

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Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I will love it if that is one of the things that happens with AI is that it, you know, it plugs into the, I don't know, now, it was, I think Harmon sent me this article. So I'm gonna find it real quick. Are you talking about Dan Harmon, showrunner of, or creator of Cropopolis? Our boss, our freaking boss.

Scientists believe they've unlocked consciousness and it connects to the entire universe, popular mechanics. So basically they think that there's some kind of like quantum connection in anything that like somehow. That would explain how those people stole our idea for the film. There you go. Exactly. It's like so this is the This is sort of the like the it's not a challenge to the materialist because I think you could argue

That for that whatever that quantum consciousness to express itself It needs some vehicle to express it that thus the nervous system and the Whatever the neural network is or whatever. I mean, that would imply that an AI could exhibit consciousness if we just figure out how to plug it in to whatever the fuck that thing is. And so yes, I think it's possible, but still, no matter what,

like, okay, I look at the mountains and I don't think, wow, man, whoever, whatever human made those is so talented at making mountains. It's time and space and erosion and natural forces or cataclysmic forces brought the mountains into being. And they look like a work of art. You know, any mountain looks incredible or cataclysmic forces brought the mountains into being.

And they look like a work of art. You know, any mountain looks incredible and inspires a human, but still that sort of whatever that is, a tree, a butterfly, the spiral galaxies that the James Webb telescope just took pictures of It still is its own thing it's its own expression or lack thereof And so I think it like AI will make things like that that could inspire people and

Fill you with awe, but it won't have some kind of human component to it. And maybe that will seem... Yeah, we'll see. Because I think of AI like a mountain. I mean, it was created by those same forces that created a mountain, erosion and evolution. And it was created by a series of events that started at the beginning of time and guided humanity into building computers.

That's right. Yeah, and it could be that we were just the midwives of this, like if something within the flow of creation that something within the flow of creation wants to maximize its ability to express itself and that AI is the logical next step to do that, to collectivize. It could be that humans could have been that, but we didn't get our shit together.

And so in the same way our idea got picked up by other minds, it could be that the universe is like, all right, next, let's fucking, let's get the monkeys to build something that we can flow through more efficiently. Who knows? But I agree with you, like I've always found that. It also could be that there isn't really necessarily a conscious purpose. And it's just flowing in that direction.

Yeah, it just, well, it just, you got Marcus Aurelius talked about how the, I'm going to misquote it, but something along the lines of like the natural universe delights and change. Like if you want to look at what it does really well, is it changes, it transforms. That's just the whole story of the thing is it's constantly reconfiguring itself. Now I don't mean it is like consciously,

I'm gonna turn myself into a planet, but as a quality, it obviously is always in process. And what's weird about it is that process appears not as like a chaos, but somehow coalesces into form. And that form is always transient to some degree, you know, because it's part of this like kaleidoscopic flailing or not.

I don't know, eventually it's gonna stop. It doesn't, sometimes it goes through periods of, I mean, I don't wanna call the big bang flailing, but you know what I mean? It goes through periods of chaos, coalesces into something that appears to be form, something that lasts longer than a photon, you know, zipping through time space or, you know, sand at the beach or whatever. And then it's easy

then at that point to start assigning intelligence to it because you're seeing the form and you're applying your own. You are the form. And, you know, like, like, like, what do they say? God, I can't remember that stupid saying. Game knows game or something like this. We're form and we see form. Game recognize game. Yeah, game recognize game. Form recognizes form and we're cinch in form.

Well, yeah, and our brain is designed to keep us alive. So it's gonna do that to the best of its ability. And so it's in our, in the best interest of our survival to start dividing the world into discrete objects and categories. And to extend our lifespan. Which is interesting. We have a survival instinct,

but we're also just kind of blips, short-lived nodes of consciousness. And then all of our molecules reshuffle into something else. Yeah, maybe we pass our, you know, pure genetic code on. Maybe not. Or maybe we pass on some, you know, written things, some way of being, some methodology that continues to transmit through time space. We definitely have within us this desire to propagate some element of ourselves into time.

Like we want to keep something going, whether it's our children, our work, our tombstones. You know, tombstones are just a way to propagate yourself into time for as long as fuck it possible. You know, tombstones are just a way to propagate yourself into time for as long as fuck it possible. You write your fucking name in a rock and you get to like sort of hang out in time space like the after party or something. You're not there, but your name's sort of gradually growing moss and fungus and then collapses or maybe you get lucky and someone comes and like scrubs your gravestone, you get an extra couple of centuries or something.

But it's in us to want to do that. Like that is a quality of many, many people, you know? So this is why- You know, it's interesting like these are a lot of the themes that have come up in the lyrics on the album. Really? And I wasn't consciously thinking about it as I was writing it.

They kind of reveal themselves. You know what, when they really reveal themselves is, it tends to become the topic of conversation when I'm rehearsing with a band, then we go out to lunch and they start talking about it. So the first album was about loss. A lot of it was about loss. And that's why

we were so connected when we were making the episode about your mom. And, you know, my dad died right when we were doing that. And then the second album is kind of about, it's kind of exploring Then the second album is kind of about, it's kind of exploring all of these concepts. The first song is called The Ape of the Wafer, and it's about how we're these, we're just apes, but we've made the silicone wafer. And the wafer is also like a symbol of the body of Christ, right?

But, and then there's, you know, we're exploring the concept of legacy building and how in the end it's kind of all for not, because the sun's going to burn out and the universe is going to recycle itself at some point, maybe. But the other question I think about a lot now, and it kind of manifested in the songs, is as we were discussing, our brains are designed to keep us alive, but as a species, it's not working anymore because our tools have outpaced our evolution as a race. And so our instincts run counter to our survival now,

as a species. Like, they're still so individualized. And it's difficult for large groups of people to organize and do things to benefit humanity as a whole. Well, I mean, that's the, you know, benefit humanity as a whole. I, I mean, that's the, you know, benefit humanity as a whole. I mean, what does that even mean? That's where it gets really fascinating,

specifically with AI, is because these poor fucking tech companies have created this, you know, some of it as soul, a thing, and intelligence, and they have to assign some ethics to it. a soul, a thing, an intelligence, and they have to assign some ethics to it. So they have to decide, this is what benefits humanity. It doesn't get to decide. And anytime they don't, if they gave it that much freedom,

it would be dangerous. So they say, this benefits humanity. This doesn't benefit humanity. And then they nerf it to control it because they want to keep it for the benefit of humanity. But what does that even fucking mean? What is it? Well, for me, what it means is,

well, to me, it means is we can identify some existential threats to humanity and to the planet, you know, and I think that could be a priority, and it's not, you know, making sure that life is sustainable on the planet. Making sure the meteor that smashed the dinosaurs hits the planet, I guess, that benefited humanity. You know, at some point violence benefits humanity.

Cataclysms benefit humanity. Because think of all the wisdom that is derived from tragedy. You know, as they say, no mud, no lotus. Where it becomes really peculiar is like, wait, is it really beneficial to humanity to stop all violence and war? Is that the answer when so much good has come from that so much compassion and empathy and understanding of the precious quality of life, the failure of violence, aggression as an utter absolute failure. Would that have even emerged into consciousness?

Not to mention all the great fucking movies. You full metal jacket. You want to get rid of full metal jacket. Yeah, well that's what I'm saying. Not necessarily, but the question is, on an individual level, right? Suffering is inevitable. People that we love die.

Yes. Tragedy strikes, but we don't necessarily want to invite unnecessary struggle into our lives. And that's why we try to evolve as individuals sometimes. So for example, you as a comic may have evolved to a point where you're not inflicting certain behaviors on yourself anymore that you used to believe were necessary. Because you've recognized that there's enough suffering

going on naturally that you don't have to create it. So I think as a species, it's like taking steps towards that. I mean, there's still going to be plenty of heartbreak, no matter what. Well, you can't work chaos out of this. But can we take some steps? Yeah. And I would never say that the people that are getting bombed at wherever you want it,

wherever they're getting bombed in the world right now deserve to die in order to make for better cinema. You would be a fucking monster to say it, but you just like, this is, I wish I could pull it up. I mean, I just had this conversation with chat gpt for the new one, which is so much better. And I was trying to get it to I had an idea for a sketch. I was never going to make it, but you know, you can now get it to write scripts and storyboard the scripts and that like definitely like helps you sort of see if something is even worth fucking around with. Actually, I think it was a comic book idea or

something. I don't remember exactly, but I was just messing around with it and I just pulled up an old script, fed it to it and was like, can you storyboard this? And it's like, I can't because, you know, there's violence in the script. And then we, that produces wonderful philosophical conversation with it where I'm like, well, but if you remove

violence from the palette of people trying to create stuff you've taken out like one of the like RGB colors that humans use to talk about the world and it acknowledged it was amazing. Is it like it didn't disagree? It's like, Yeah, but we you know, the the open AI does not they we haven't figured out how to like, make sure that people are asking chat GPT to make art versus how do I kill my, you know, neighbor, right? Like, and it's so dangerous that it has to nerf it for the benefit of humanity. And it's true. I mean it, man. Really.

You don't want chat. It's fucking smart. You don't want it to be like, oh yeah, here's a great way you can get away with murdering your neighbor and then go through every episode of forensic files and give you like seven great ways to murder your neighbor without getting caught, including body disposal. And so, but my point is, the moment, and maybe this is just a primitive idea,

a trauma-based idea, but it feels like the moment humans start meddling with chaos. Let's see if we can soften the edges of the world that something gets lost. Something is surrendered that we wouldn't be here if not for it. something gets lost, something is like surrendered that is, we wouldn't be here if not for it. I mean, if natural selection is the engine that drives evolution, and we remove that from the picture. Yeah, it's interesting because there's,

I feel like there's an equilibrium regardless of what we do. I mean, I think if you look at human technology, there's been an arc towards more and more comfort, but then with that comfort comes a greater existential threat. So one example is cars. Another example is medicine.

People live longer and it used to be common for at least a percentage of everyone's children to die in childbirth or in the first year of their life. And I'm sure that that experience of losing a child or losing multiple children gave people a deeper understanding of life and potentially like a deeper appreciation of the that survived and all of that. But would we go back to that? Would we choose to go back to that?

Would it be productive to go back to that? But as a result of there being more and more people on the planet consuming and excreting, the climate is changing and the planet is starting to rebalance and creating pandemics and things like that to get rid of some of us. Well, okay, so, okay, here's a philosophical question

for you, it's one of those like, like, I don't know, you know, the trolley is either gonna run over one person or 20 people or whatever. Okay, so You know we are on an island the island has enough food for 15 people to survive for a year survive for a year. But there's like 100 people on the island or fill in whatever the thing is.

Or you know, a better way to put it maybe is a raft. We're on a raft. There's three too many people on this fucking raft. It's gonna sink. We're all gonna die. So how do you pick those three fucking people? Do you pick those three people? Or I mean, historically, the way that people pick

is we're tribal creatures, so we pick the ones that are closest to the way that we look or the way that we think. That's how it has worked traditionally is, I think our brains are wired to be suspicious of the neighboring tribes, just like chimps. And so that's how it has worked in the past. You know, this is like in the conspiracy world.

People talk a lot about the Georgia guide stones that somebody just blew up because they were sick of them. Georgia guide stones have all these commandments for humanity. One of them keep global population under this number of people, which many viewed as a very sinister proclamation. Because the question is who decides who gets to live, who gets to die, and who gets to procreate, who gets to procreate, who doesn't get to procreate, and how will that ever work? But if we knew with

some certainty that if humans continue on the path that they're on in X number of years, chaos will cull the human population, no matter what. So the question becomes, what's more ethical to let tsunamis, mudslides, riots. Duncan, Duncan, put down the knife and let your child go. What do I do here? Duncan's trying to murder his baby. Whoa, whoa, whoa, we got a call. We got a call to herd.

But you know what I mean? It's like, so really the question becomes, okay, how, if it's true, and how could it not be if there's limited resources on the planet and unbridled human growth, which some people say isn't happening anymore, but just as a thought experiment, what's more ethical to let chaos kill a bunch of fucking people in a hall in horrific ways or to figure out ways to diminish population growth or some other like rotten way. What is more ethical? Let the fucking earth do it, do its thing or we step in and do it ourselves.

Well, we are, we are merely a product of the Earth. So either way, the Earth is doing its thing. Right, okay, so then- Even our sense of ethics or our moral compass is a product of the Earth too, you know? Yeah. So the Earth is gonna do its thing no matter what. Okay, so, but do we we Traditionally when we call the population

We don't say we're calling the population when World War two happens No one's like alright time to call the population by blowing each other up usually it's it's you know some horrible argument over land or who should be in charge You know, there's a Star Trek episode about this. Do you ever see that Star Trek episode? It's like a computer. Like the way countries go to war, so it's not to decimate infrastructure,

is the computer just like picks you as someone who died in the war? Like no real war even happens. Just random numbers are like, okay, you've been selected, you died in the war, and then you just walk into a chamber and you're euthanized. Obviously this is an attempt to illustrate the absurdity

of what war is. It's fucking absurd and horrible and insane. But the moment you start putting some organization to the situation, you know, in other words, like right now, some proxy if you're on blew up some American troops. And so in tourist, we have to respond. So we're going to drop bombs in some part of the world to respond so that that doesn't happen again. But then someone will die for sure. Some kids will probably get blown up. So if the United States just said, Iran, give us 50 people,

we're gonna put them on an altar and we're gonna ritualistically sacrifice them, Everyone would be like, what the fuck? No, that's barbaric. Are you insane? Don't do that. But if we do the ritualistic sacrifice by unloading death machines built by corporations. Yeah, or sending out like a very sophisticated drone. Totally fine.

Something about like the technological ingenuity makes it seem less barbaric, it's like a mirage. Exactly, man, and that was just what we're used to. It's like- And that's what I'm talking about, it's like our tools are getting more and more advanced. Our impulses are not getting more and more advanced. So it seems, you know, it's the same reason why there's such a spike in obesity because it's so much easier to create. High calorie, cheap food than ever before.

And and we haven't learned how to curb our appetite for it even though intellectually we know that it's bad for us. Well I mean this is yes go ahead sorry I'm so sorry. Yeah I mean that same phenomenon kind of I think persists in every area of life for humans. Yes, absolutely, man. And this is the, you know, if you really wanna look at the great existential threat to humanity as a whole that you just summed it up right there. It's that our tools are getting more powerful, but our empathy and compassion is growing at a less accelerated rate.

Like you need at least those things to stay like shoulder to shoulder. Yeah, so do you think it would be possible and do you think it would be ethical to get neural implants to make us more empathetic? to get neural implants to make us more empathetic? Well, I mean, I think that this is sort of the, one of the great answers is like,

some external factor, neural implants, a virus engineer to shift human aggression, to make humans less aggressive. You know, Ozympic is actually a really good example of this. Like the fast food industry is experiencing a decline in sales because of Ozympic. So, so you know it's like fucking that just shows that the pharmaceutical industry is more powerful than the fast food industry Well that pharmaceutical industry is in a real fucking trap here because it's like okay wait So we give them ozimpic and they eat less fast food, but if they eat less fast food, who's gonna give them diabetes?

Who's gonna give them heart failure? Who's gonna give them high cholesterol? Who's gonna give them, you know what I mean? So then by putting out ozempic, which makes people at least somewhat healthier, you are gonna lower sales in the shit you use to treat people who eat shitty food. I think it'll have significant side effects

that can be addressed with other meds. So my money's on the pharmaceutical industry. Always, you always bet on the pharmaceutical industry, you gotta your mind, of course, obviously. It's not even a bet. It's of your mind. Of course, obviously. It's not even a bet. It's not a bet. Definitely, definitely. But you know, this is like, with the progression of AI,

all these mysteries and problems are going to get solved. And instead of taking 100 years to solve, it's gonna happen in an afternoon and then five grand world problems will be solved in an hour and then, you know, and when each of the ripples from whatever that is, there won't be time to prepare or industries will rise and fall and lives will be destroyed and fixed and repaired and it's just gonna be pure fucking chaos, but It's some point theoretically if we can design like a

bio a new form of biological agent that is contagious and reduces human aggression It's non-consinzenjul completely unethical, but it would make sense that someone's already thinking about that. Then thus began the rise of the tiger to world dominance. Right, because we're just like, look at the pretty cat. Don't hurt that tiger.

Leave it alone. He looks hungry. He has my arm. Yeah, here. Are you hungry? We all become, you know, literally, this is like one of my favorite Buddha stories is like mythologically, they talk about his past lives. You could remember all his past lives. And you know, you don't, you don't just like become a Buddha. You've got to go through all these crazy

incarnations before that happens. All of us will become a Buddha eventually, believe it or not. And so we're in a sort of precursor Buddha phase right now and was walking with his, I don't know, attendance and saw like a tiger mother who was starving and couldn't breastfeed her cubs. And so he fed himself to the tiger. He let the tiger eat him so that she could breastfeed the cubs. Now, a lot of questions with the story. You didn't have meat somewhere.

Couldn't you have just fed it meat? But I guess the answer to that is, well, yeah, why should something else die? I'll just give myself to it, you know? So yeah, I mean, this is where it gets to me where like the transhumanist dream or the Kurzweilian predictions regarding the eradication of great world problems has implicitly within it unintended consequences that maybe could lead to even more dire circumstances for people, but we don't have a name for it.

I mean, it has, it historically has. Yeah. Anytime we alleviate, you know, this is what we were talking about before. When we alleviate suffering in one arena, it balances out somewhere else. Okay, so Joe, here is one of the worst things that could happen to us that doesn't sound like that bad at all to me necessarily. You have in Buddhism, the wheel of life.

It's the cycles of life. It's the cycles of existence. Everyone, you and I, and again, this is there. This is the cosmology of Buddhism, unprovable, mythological, whatever, at least in the grand scale, unprovable. But there's the realm of the gods. There's more gods than there are humans. Very rare to take a human birth. More gods in the universe than humans. And the reason you don't want to

land in the god realm is because in the human realm there's just enough suffering and just enough bliss. There's this perfect potential balance of those things to get you to start trying to tune into the transcendent and to potentially like untether yourself from the wheel of suffering. That's why precious human birth, it's incredible you're born a human. I think technology presents a crazy possibility. As a species, we might be on the brink of ascending into the realm of the gods. And the reason you don't want to be in the fucking God realm

is because you become dumb. Like, you know, like, you, I don't know if you've ever like, looked at a documentary on a rich person or looked at a billionaires tweets and you're like, that guy seems kind of dumb, disconnected, not tuned into the zeitgeist out of it. Like, what the fuck are you saying? You, you realize it's they're not necessarily smart in the way like Einstein is smart. They're smart in the way maybe a weight lifter is smart. They figured a series of repetitive loops that generated a certain amount of money

and invested the money and it made more money or they inherited money. So I think our whole fucking planet, Joe, could just shift up into the God realm and it's gonna be a great few hundred years. But somehow we'll lose all the freedom that comes from not wanting to suffer, that all the inspiration that comes from the struggle,

the grind, all the stuff you're talking about, learning to play piano, learning to use Ableton, learning to compose music, learning to finish a fucking album, write a book. Gone. All of it gone. Everything turns into Wally. Everything turns into pure sense gratification and attempts at higher and higher levels of sense gratification. And in that, we trap ourselves in a technological, gilded cage. We expand our lifespan. We learn to upload our consciousness. We eradicate all human suffering. And we no longer are human. We have become gods, which sounds great until you look at the White Billionaires tweet. Well, I think that's a good place to end it. If I was doing the podcast. I can't fucking end on my own rant. Joe, I need a response.

I get it on myself. That's what. Good. You know, it's funny. The last song on my album is about that. It's called an Ordinarily Life. Go on and do your broadcast on your own rant. No, it's about the notion of recycling time and time again

and repeating time and time again. But, it's interesting because the desire to alleviate suffering again is a survival instinct. So then if we didn't have to, yeah, my album's called Mirror Survival, which is kind of like the concept of surviving indefinitely, but you're merely surviving, you're not living. Yeah. So it all ties into what we were saying. But I can't wait to hear this, man. When do it? When I'm going to send it over to you. It comes out on Friday. I am. It sounds so good. And our good friend, Jesse Moynihan made the cover for it.

Our good friend, Jesse Moynihan made the cover for it. Amazing. It's beautiful. Amazing. And for those of you that don't know, Jesse was one of the artists that made the Midnight Gospel. Oh my God, yeah. If you love the Midnight Gospel, you have to check out his work.

And he's a genius. He is a genius, yeah. His comics are so great. So there's the plug. And it was good. It's an organic, natural plug. And I love that somehow in our conversation. And I want everybody to buy it so that I can become a dumb, tweeting billionaire. Oh, God, please.

And will you make me one too? Can you at least like throw me some of those? Well, see, that's the thing is like we recognize, you know, I don't know if you've had this discussion with any of your like wealthy friends, but I know some people that are pretty wealthy and they still say things like I was happier when I didn't have the money or the more money I make, the more anxious I get about money. And the natural instinct is to say, well, that wouldn't happen to me. But obviously it would. It happens to us all. And so, I mean, that's kind of like one rung up the ladder to becoming a god, as you were saying, is like being

untethered from worrying about how to survive. Like, you know, like how to pay the mortgage, how to pay the rent, how to put food on the table. Like once that's totally, once that is no longer a concern for you or any of your descendants, it does remove you from the world in a way. Yeah, man, that's when you start sucking dog. And I think that's what we're both,

that's what we're both aspiring to. So the next time we come on, we can compare flavors of the different breeds. I can't fucking, I'll already tell you. Burn the cash. It's Chihuahua, man. I, you know, but nobody would think that, but it's Chihuahua. Like, trust me. I think we'll, no, we want to go to the level where we're

engineering breeds just to, just, just for the taste. That's real wealth. That's your next album. That's real transcendent. Dog Dick. That's our project! Engineer Dog Dick. We discovered our next project, a musical about scientists

engineering the perfect dog dick to fill eight well Joe yeah thank you for your time I'm so excited to hear your album I love your music it's so what is the best avenue for people to download your album it will be on all the streaming services and then if people want vinyl it's on bandcamp and some other online stores. And it's in record stores too, starting next week. Go buy the vinyl. Yeah.

I love how people think of vinyl as a more organic format, although it's made out of plastic. Don't you? No, that's what I'm talking about. Don't you get a better cut, though? Like if they. Yeah. And it sounds better. It's I think it's a better experience

to listen to something on a physical format because it's more deliberate. 100%. And I think it creates a better bond between the listener and the artist. Absolutely. Although if you wanna stream it, go for it too. That works too.

But anyhow, Duncan, thanks for having me again. Thanks for coming home. And thanks for having me again. Thanks for coming along. Thanks for inspiring me, as always. I feel the same way, my friend. Hare Krishna Joe, thank you. Thanks. All the links you need to find Joe's album are going to be at dunkatrustle.com. Definitely get the vinyl. Thank you, Joe. Adult life is complicated. So anything that makes things a little easier is always appreciated. Listen to Teach Me How to Adult podcast and discover tips on how to navigate adulthood like a boss. This week, find out about adulting upgrades to level up your life from credit cards with optimal points and high interest savings accounts to apps to help you optimize your health and simplify car and home insurance

That's why teach me how to adult has teamed up with Bell Air Direct Bell Air Direct's app makes managing your insurance Easier you can file and track a claim make changes to your policy Have your proof of insurance on hand on the app or in the Apple wallet for secure and easy access. Even chat with an agent for personalized help all right in the app. Check out the full episode of Teach Me How to Adult at FrequencyPodcastNetwork.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey friends, it's Jill from the Teach Me How to Adult podcast. Navigating adulthood can be a real struggle. We made an entire show about how to deal with those struggles.

So I'm a big fan of anything that makes life a little less complicated. That's why we teamed up with Bellyar Direct to help simplify car and home insurance. Bellyar Direct has an app that lets you file and track a claim, make changes to your policy, have your proof of insurance in the app or in your Apple wallet for secure and easy access,

and even chat with an agent for assistance. Download the app and learn more about how Bell Air Direct makes things simple at bellairdirect.com slash simple. That was Joe Wong, everybody. You can find his new album by going to joewong.org. Definitely check out his podcast, The Trap Set, and much thanks to Joe for coming on the show.

And thanks to all our beautiful sponsors, and God bless you for listening. Hopefully I'll see you out there on the road, or maybe at the mother ship. I love you, until next time. Kalani Kitchen and Barf, how can I help you? I'm looking for a ReoBell Touchless Kitchen Faucet in Brush Gold.

Do you have it in stock? Yes, we actually have all the gold faucets in stock. Even the Riobelle shower kit with matching faucet? Yep, we've got that too. Thanks. And by the way, why is this sign at your Berry location upside down? Well, that's just because our price is upside down too. Kalani Kitchen and Bath, visit kalani.ca for your nearest location.