The Tech Ranch

The episode discussed various topics related to agriculture, starting with the potential lawsuits against Roundup for being a carcinogen and the increasing role of technology in agriculture, particularly in precision agriculture. They also talked about the use of genetically modified crops and the controversy surrounding non-GMO foods, as well as the emergence of new crops in North Dakota. The development of new technology for agriculture, such as robots that use lasers to kill weeds and pests, was also discussed, along with the potential for the development of autonomous farms in the future. The impact of technology on the family farm and the small-town banking system was mentioned, along with the early adoption of technology by family farmers. The episode concluded with a conversation on autonomous farming and lawn maintenance and the benefits of having autonomous lawnmowers.

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Transcript:

It’s funny, they just mentioned Alexa. Yes. Today is of course Tech Tuesday.

I’m Steve B along with Marlow Anderson, my guru of Geek Co-host national day calendar.com. Don’t forget to celebrate every day. We’re gonna talk about National Day Calendar coming up in just a minute cuz you had a really good idea. And I, I think businesses and everybody should look at National Day Calendar a little closer and follow it.

Really follow it because it makes a difference in your business model. It does, but we’re gonna get to that. So did you catch the promo about. You can follow us on Alexa? Yes. And so did you catch Alexa’s prediction for the Super Bowl? No. For what? World War iii? No. Yeah, like 1223 at 6:05 PM It, it’s video of asking Alexa, when’s the world gonna end?

And World War iii. Wow. 1220. That’s Alexa’s artificial intelligence prediction. Yes. Wow. Then it, you think of Skynet is real and they already have a date. And little bit actually it came out, the video was on TikTok. What does that tell you? Yeah. It, somebody staged it. So the world’s not going to end.

Despite all the reports out there that you might be reading or hearing about, that Alexa has predicted that the world is, world War II is gonna take place. Which you can actually, yeah, you can tell, you can have Alexa repeat whatever you want it to repeat. It is actually a setting for that.

Really. Yes. So you can go in and say whatever, and it’ll come back in Alexa’s voice and repeat what you said. So it would be pretty easy to stage something like that. I was gonna ask you about this cause my wife Wendy, she’s got a fitness watch , she’s got an Apple watch on her wrist and.

over the last week or two. We’ve been having conversation. All of a sudden it’ll start chiming in. Cause no, we’re not talking to you . But it’s listening to you. But it’s listening That’s right to everything you say. Everything you say. I’m like wait a minute. Did they change some settings or, I’m like, it’s not done that before, but maybe so it just listened and kept its mouth shut now that Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe there was a update or is it actually trying to coach you in your conversation? Yeah. Say Steve, say, I love you. It’s keying in. Maybe it’s ahead of Valentine’s Way. All right. Or your watches are talking to each other and Wendy’s watch realizes I don’t have one.

No, I got dumb watch. Oh, okay. No. I thought about it. That would be the thing. Your watches would talk to each other and it would say same. We don’t have to. Your significant other is upset with you right now. And it knows this because Cuz her heartbeat is a little higher. Or it’s like a mood ring.

Yeah, like a mood ring. And then it would actually notify you and say, and it would say something like, bring home flowers. Yeah. You’re in trouble. Maybe I should get one of those wines cause that might help me. Or even better yet, your AI just orders flowers because you, cause you don’t know what her favorite flowers are.

But your AI does do too well. I’m just, I would be in that space. I’m just picking on me. Okay. Yeah. How many husbands don’t know what their wife’s favorite? Many flower. Yeah. Many. Yeah. You might be onto something. It’s I wonder how many marriages it would help if the watches just talked to each other and you didn’t have to talk to your.

Because I, I’m sure there’s a good percentage that, maybe that’s just better cause I could hash it out and then you guys could just be what It’s like cancer or AI and cancer, that when it looks at AI looks Interesting analogy. Okay. I’m just, I know it’s a weird way to go there, be a cancer in society, but I’m just thinking that you’re not going in there, it can detect cancer earlier.

So maybe it can detect moods of your significant others sooner and then you would actually be able to understand what the other person is telling you. I’m not gonna say just what through my head right now, , because there’s a very medical, scientific yeah. But I guarantee you that sooner or later there’s gonna be apps or everything else that’s gonna say, Hey, you wanna know what your spouse is actually saying to.

Yeah. , no, because that’s gonna start another fight. Yeah. That my watch and her watch are gonna hash to half hash out. I don’t care where we go to eat for our anniversary, that means, oh, let’s go to blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But she does care. Yes. Okay. Now I’m a guy and I typically fall into this trap all the time.

It’s I don’t care. Where, wherever you wanna go. I’m the same way. Yeah. It’s oh no, they care. Yeah. , it’s your job to figure out that puzzle. Does this make me look fat? ? And the AI would actually give you a response, gonna tell you what your watch is gonna tell her, whether or not tell her, watch, whether or not you’re lying about that.

Yeah, exactly. Am I

Marlo? This is a dumb watch on my wrist. Cause it’s gonna stay way, stay that way just like me. Not a bad idea. As I’m evaluating all of this right now, Oh, so National Day calendar. Of course. Today one of the things that’s not on our little. Calendar short is it’s National Hot Chocolate day.

Yeah. Yeah. Because we pick two and tell stories on those two and there are many days that there are more than two things. Okay, so I’m assuming you picked the biggest thing or do you go by, what’s the biggest story? Or maybe what’s the more unique or fun story that we can round up?

Yeah. What’s not unique and fun about hot chocolate? I brought you hot chocolate today. Yes, you did. Did. And thank you my wife. Thank you for that. This is my wife in school district. She’s doing hot chocolate day today, so she’s making hot chocolate for all of her kids. And, but this is what got us to this little discussion we’re about ready to have as well.

Yeah, it is because I brought hot chocolate and I listened to the calendar short that we play and I’m like, but National hot chocolate day’s not on there. , there’s that’s the reason. So now you explain there’s always a lot, but okay. There’s only two on that short cuz otherwise it’s not short anymore.

We used to, in the early days, used to say it’s also blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah at the end of the short. But we found that a lot of people, it’s just, a lot of times it’s just too much turned into blah, blah, blah. Exactly. So didn’t pay attention. So we just picked two and stayed with those.

Yeah. Okay. But anyway, it is national hot chocolate. It is the day it, and my wife and I were at Sam’s Club Yes. Over the weekend and picking up our weekly shopping supplies and in bulk. And so I got cursed out a couple weeks ago because they had on sale hot chocolate bombs for $3 and 91 cents, which I thought was a really good deal.

Cause they’re a bargain shopper instead of the 10 51 that they normally wear. Yes. Oh and I got my butt chewed a little bit for that until she had one and enjoyed it and Okay. So it’s amazing. I’m right more often than she wants to admit, but I digress. So we go there this weekend Sunday and the whole end cap pallet of the chocolate bombs.

91 cents. Yeah. 91 cents. And there’s seven of them in here. And there’s seven there in a box. Yeah. So it’s like a dime fif, 15 cents for a cup of hot chocolate. Yeah. It’s a crazy, that’s a crazy price. Yeah. So we got eight. I’m like why don’t you get ’em students? And Yep. Yeah. And we’re pulling out of the, and I’m like and I usually get yelled at because I buy too much when things are on sale and we’re pulling out of the park.

It’s maybe I should get more. So we went back around and I ran in and got a case of them. Okay. So there’s 14 of these times. Seven in a case. So she’s got them for little gifts and for her class. And she went back yesterday. They’re all gone. Of course they are. For 91 9 cents now. Yeah. We were talking off air about why businesses should follow National Day Calendar more closely.

Yeah. Because these were marked down for less than half, so about 60, 70% off. Yep. Initially already. Yep. And then they marked them down to 91 cents. I know the cost on this is probably a little higher. Way more than that. Yeah. So if they would’ve known that it was National Hot Chocolate Day on National Day calendar, they could have just put a sign up saying National Day Calendar Hot Chocolate’s coming up Tuesday, be prepared and sold ’em for the full price.

Yeah. Or at least at the three, the sale price. And still made four x on what they just did. Yeah. And still would’ve sold out. I. Practically getting them away. Yeah. So we had a conversation with Walmart a couple years ago. They wanted to tap into our API on the national days that they would put into their forecasting.

So then and Hot Chocolate Day is probably a good example of this, but even iced coffee day, right? Maybe not a great example. I’m trying to think of something that I, ice cream Day would be better. Okay, so was they, is it every day Ice cream day? Every day is ice cream day. Yes. Yes. But on Ice Cream day, they would actually take our.

API and they’d put it together with the Weather Services api and then they could do some predictive forecasting as to, is it gonna be 110 in North Dakota or is it gonna be 60 degrees on National ice cream day? And then they would actually bring supplies in accordingly to supply, depending on the weather.

And the, you were gonna say they were gonna make it snow ice cream. Oh, there would be that as well. Or if it, instead of the what? What’s the little, the frale stuff? Yes. Yeah. That we had a few days ago. That’d be perfect for that. For like dots. That’s dipping Dots. Yeah, exactly. Por. Pour some stuff over.

When was little, when was Corona? It’s oh, those days were the coolest days. Yes. As you went out and it’s oh, I wanna catch those . It was dipping dots. Who knew? There was a lot of ’em the other day too. Yeah, there were, it was like a lot of different dots. Yeah, there was. Yeah. Alright.

So two guys with a D h D that were going, gonna have a conversation. Yeah, that’s you and me. What were we gonna talk about? , we’ve talked about 18 other things since we have agriculture, the Roundup scenario. Oh yeah. The roundup scenario. Could we just heard that at the top of the Ara news with with bear buying Monsanto and all subsequent properties.

Roundup was one of the products in the Monsanto line, which at the time made Monsanto very valuable. But you take a look at what’s going on in California with all these potential lawsuits that are out saying that it’s a carcinogen. My roundups are, right here. Here’s the thing.

If you bathe in it, if you drink it, I don’t care what it is, it’s probably gonna be a carcinogen. Sure. . We don’t know all the details on that yet. Yeah. Even water kills. Yeah. I can drown. Yeah. That’s why they call it water boarding. Sure. Very effective. Yes. So anyway yeah, so I, I just, I think that, technology’s gonna continue to play a bigger role in agriculture and probably in the pesticide and weed control space.

You and I were talking a little bit cuz I, I was telling you, cuz we were talking about this at the top of the hour you and I were talking about, I was reading the requirements for being an organic farm. Organic farming is big and in a lot of cases it’s a little bit smaller footprint from agriculture because it’s a smaller crop base.

So you’re not doing. 360 acres of wheat, you’re doing 40 acres of organic wheat. Different profit margins. So I was looking at the requirements of that last night and going, wow, it’s three years of this and three years of no artificial nitrogens and three years of no pesticides and all of this.

Yeah. And it’s three years, three, like the soil’s gotta be clean. And it’s quite part of it. It’s quite a commitment to move to that because you have to sit there for three years and, grow crops or whatever, that you’re not doing anything too. But yeah with technology now, that actually is a much more doable thing.

And part of that is where we’ve been going with precision agriculture, right? Because the precision agriculture with micronutrients and things like that have really tightened up that space on how efficient some of those operations could be. And you take a look at UAV V that has been in that. that space of precision agriculture for a while.

The computer systems on a combine and a tractor, a planters it’s amazing what they can pun intended. Drill down into Yes. And drop the right seed at the right place, the right moisture with the right nutrients. Yep. And you can get away from a lot of those additives. And you start thinking about like seed.

When you buy seed, will you actually need to have roundup ready crops now, you can buy seed that is resistant to Roundup and that way you can spray that field and kill off everything else and you’re, your wheat continues to grow. But it’s genetically modified. And a lot of people are, there’s this really big move on right now about eating non GMO foods.

That’s been around for about 15 years, a long time. I remember that discussion. People were, they freaked out about gmo and I remember having a conversation. I was broadcasting up at the state fair and I was talking to a farmer from Saskatchewan, who, north of Esteban, and I was visiting with him about his crops and what he was growing up there.

And he was growing corn, 68 day corn. Yeah. . I’m like, what? Yeah. Because he was getting 243 bushels per acre in Canada Yeah. Of corn. Now, going back, I never thought I’d see the day when you forego small grains as a rotational crop in the Red River Valley Corn. Did that think back, you never saw corn North of I 94.

That’s true. And the growing season was too short. Yeah. But GMOs facilitated that. Yeah. And I tell you what, that farmer 10, 12 years ago, I was talking to, it’s 68 day corn. That’s unbelievable. It is unbelievable. 243 acre corn or bushel corn in Canada. I never thought he’d see. But that’s what G M O does.

It allows different opportunities for different crops to grow in different regions. And when you start peeling back, no matter what side of the issue you’re on, if you take a look at the world’s population, good luck. You are not going to feed the entire world without some sort of A G M O, whether it’s shortening that germination period or the duration that crop comes to maturity.

It’s just not gonna happen. You’re, we’re not gonna grow enough food. I think about the grapes I would’ve never dreamed in a million years that. 15 years ago we’d start to see grapes growing in North Dakota. Not on a, on a level that would be viable for a vineyard, for example.

But yet there are group grapes emerging in North Dakota. See now I knew that was possible because we had these red grapes in my, so there’s always backyard. Yeah. And that was pretty much the hedge, it was Milos and grapes. Yeah. and grape vines climbed a bilock. They weren’t that great. I know they were bitter.

And now that NDSU has been involved with this a little bit, and they have some very flavorful grapes now, and there’s actually at least one place in North Dakota that sells grapes by the ton. Isn’t that something? Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. And not just the, but look at the wine industry and some of the.

Craft alcohols it, the apple, the cider industry. There’s a lot of different so there’s, you could make the argument that there’s good with this. Of course, the argument with with us consuming GM O. Products is that maybe there’s some health ramifications because of this.

People will claim that there, there aren’t cancer rates on the rise because we’re eating these type of things. I would probably say that cancer’s on the rise if we’re gonna go to the food thing because we add stuff to, it’s the additives of preservatives. I but anyway. Fully point fingers there.

Him and I were talking a little bit about organic farming and what that means, the tech side of things when it comes to agriculture. An opportunity to close a gap and become more organic. Whether that’s the intention in agriculture or not, it’s just when you have the opportunity to use technology to.

Streamline the growing process. There’s a lot of benefits there. So I think, what we’re about ready to talk about is two things. First of all, probably healthier eating and improving crop health, crop production, all that good stuff. And secondly, cost savings. Cause to, put down a pesticide or weed control or whatever.

There’s a lot of cost to that as well. And the first thing for sure is gonna be robots fighting weeds. really well. Yeah. So there’s actually a lot of robots that are emerging that will go through a field or your yard. Everything I wanna talk about here too can be utilized in your yard in some way or another too.

So if you’re tired of your dandelions or whatever, there’s actually a robot called Dandy. And I’ve seen this at CES and it’ll actually go around your yard, identify, I think it identifies 2200 different kinds of weeds right now, and continuing to go so it knows the grass and knows the other things that are in there.

And it knows like flowers and things too, so that you don’t want to, and then it has, so it’s not like Dr. Evil’s plan to put little lasers on sharks. We could put ’em on gophers, right? That’s exactly right, yes. And let ’em run around and lasers on robots. Yeah. Yeah. And it’ll go around. So this one actually does, that’d be a lot of work.

Training the gophers. Oh yeah. Don’t terrible get that, but eat the end. Yeah. Yeah. But it could be done. Maybe. But you the, so this thing goes wrong, it actually does put chemical down, but it just puts chemical down on the weed that. So doesn’t one spot, you’re not doing a mass spring. So when you take a look at some of the the fertilizer that gets administered during a planting process you have that ability from the little robots to do it in even a more precise manual. Like when I do, when I fertilize my yard now, like the first time it’ll be a weedon feed. You have weed control and you have whatever it is that you’re mixing. Yeah.

Plant food. Thank you. I was thinking of plants, nitrogen and whatever else. Yeah, that’s cra, , electrolytes, going back to our, one of our favorite movies all time. Yeah. So what’ll wander around and do that? Imagine now that you can do this on your farm, so that it can go around and then it just identifies the weeds instead of spraying the entire crop.

With something that it’ll just spray the weeds that it finds, and it just like your robotic vacuum cleaner that you have in your house. This thing will just go around One I was just reading about does 50 acres a day. . So cool. Yeah, so it’s if you’re, if you got a field of, a section 640 acres or whatever, that basically means that every 10 or 12 days this robot has taken care of your cycle.

Yeah. Makes a cycle of your entire thing. It is about the growing cycle of a weed. Yeah. So you can go around and this one unit then would take care of that whole section for you. And it doesn’t impact, it goes between the plants that are growing that are, and then it’ll just spray the particular weeds to take them down.

Now you can, there’s another thing that’s being developed that doesn’t use chemical at all. It uses lasers. Lasers. I knew you were waiting for this, and it’ll actually see these weeds and shoot a laser to kill it. So this goes a little further actually, because if. Your fan. If your field, for example, is starting to see some grasshoppers, for example, it isn’t just weeds that these things will take care of, it’ll take care of pests as well.

See, I should go around killing locus up at our cabin cuz we had with the little wings and with magnifying glasses. BB gun. Oh yes, you’re, that’s a pretty good shot. You could be a good shot with that. No kidding. You gotta sneak up on ’em and then you gotta get down close enough to Wow. Make the shot. I got pretty proficient with my little red rider.

So I think that we did not eye out, we’re just coming on the age here where the cost of putting down weed control, pesticides, whatever farmers are gonna have a choice. There’s a cost of technology and there’s a cost of, but these application, but theses are not that. That’s the thing.

In order to put app, if you’re gonna put wait the next time you’re going to buy something that you’re gonna put down some weed control on, for example, or rent an airplane or whatever it is that you’re gonna do, right? These things are very expensive. Now. You can have a robot that takes a 10th of the space that’s gonna go between your rows and your of your crops and actually seek out and destroy these weeds or whatever, one at a time.

One of the things I wanted to bring up too is because you were talking about the fertilizers and the ability to put different pesticides, right?

And supply chain. Yeah. You take a look at what’s happened over the last couple years and the ability to get products and then those products are at a horrific price for producers and that all goes into the input costs. And cuz eventually we as consumers are going to be paying Yeah, those costs. But you have the ability to put up little docking stations around your field.

Yeah. Take care of it. They charge themselves up. And cuz I’m thinking supply chain it, where’s the, it’s interesting. Where’s the tipping point on cost? Because, and if you’re in agriculture farmers, ranchers, they every penny and fraction of penny, you have to monitor those costs. So at what point is it yeah, I could pay way too much for a chemical that I cannot get.

Or maybe I just invest into these little, and I’m thinking little spider robots from the Selleck movie . Gene Simmons is the bad guy. Yeah. It’ll look quite that way. But maybe, who knows? Yeah. Yeah. If you’re killing weeds or, think about yeah, I gotta gopher infestation.

You can kill those two prairie dogs. Yeah. There, there’s a lot of different things that you can do in a field with one device. One investment because, and I equate a lot of things to uas and UAVs, that’s just the platform you, what you put on that is the metric for your precision agriculture or inspecting power lines.

So that’s just the platform. So if you’re thinking of this little robotic spider, for lack of a better, that’s just the platform. So there’s this it’s weed season, so I’m gonna put a little laser that kill the weed or it’s rodents season. Yep. So I’m gonna get rid of the rodents or locus season and I, or gonna get rid of the locus, or I can do it all at the same time.

Yeah. While just wandering around. It just takes care of all potential threats to the. . Okay. And that’s, and that might be me because I’m out there the day before the corn gets harvested to I guess that’s a different story. , , do we want it now? But think of some of the work that Grand Farm is doing in Fargo in Cass County.

That’s some of the technology that they’re supposedly working on. Yeah. It’s an all autonomous or farm is what they going, because that’s the next step. It is. It goes from, okay, what’s a tool? Just like your tractor or your combine or your skid steer is on the farm to little robotics to, okay.

I can pretty much design an autonomous system, so I’m just gonna throw this out at everybody because this doesn’t relate to us too much, but you can see where this is going. And this goes back to your organic producers, right? Restrictions on what organic producers can spray means that they spend much more on weed or hand weeding.

Then do conventional producers. So if you’re getting into the organic producer, you can’t even go out there and actually spray your crop if you’re gonna go out and do and kill weeds, for example. You actually have to manually do this, if you’re gonna go out and spray a weed, you’d have to do that.

Oh, yeah. You think about that Now I grew up in the Red River Valley sugar beets. Yes. About 91, 92 was really the end of migrant labor in the Red River Valley. Because that migrant labor came into ho sugar beet. Yeah. There wasn’t a mechanical system or a chemical system that was there to get rid of those weeds.

So you manually hold sugar beets. So robots have the potential to more than half weeding costs. So we’re looking at a hundred to $300 per acre in cost savings for lettuce and broccoli. So I know that doesn’t pertain to wheat fields and things like that, but if there’s cost savings for lettuce and broccoli, I can tell you that there are cost savings for oats and wheat and corn and, strawberries or whatever else that we’re growing around here.

So I got one more question. Yeah. How feasible is it and when and , can I spend my money on this now? My wife loves the garden. Yeah. And we’ve got weeds garden. Your home garden’s a lot of work. It is a lot of work.

We’re talking about precision agriculture and what that means on the ag side of stuff and the ability to Mitigate some of the supply chain costs, some of the supply chain delays things like that when it comes to putting chemicals on crop land you can close that gap with technology.

Our friend, Dr. Gunderson Yeah. From devil’s Lake he was cutting edge on precision agriculture, very cutting edge. Yeah. And UAVs I remember 14 years ago, I had a conversation with them at ag show and I was like, the focus on the show was energy that day. And I was like, wait a minute.

So we got talking about the UAV platforms and you gotta remember this is 12, 14 years ago. And it was like, yep, they can do that. Yep. They can do that. Yep. Because I’m posing all these different applications for the energy sector. And he’s, yep. Yep. . Okay, let’s talk. Because, but he was focusing on precision agriculture.

And at the time the part of the story that really intrigued me was up at lake Region College, devil’s Lake. They were doing this precision agriculture with UAV v with drones. And these students in a two year program were a hundred percent placement after a year, their first year. And they got a job.

Yeah. And they were getting big jobs. Yeah. Big jobs. Yeah. Their second year was usually paid for by their future employer. And they came out with six figure salaries. Yeah. On a two year program. playing video games. I flying, I mean they were only graduating I think 20 students a year or whatever.

Pretty small, but it was still wildly successful. But it was so at the front edge of that and they were focusing on the precision agriculture. Yeah. Now you go to what some of the things we were talking about last hour and holy crap is precision agriculture come a long way. Yeah. It’s not just sitting in your combine or your tractor or your planter.

It’s so much broad, more all data driven as well. Yeah. So yeah, it’s really interesting what is going on in the space. Yeah. I need this micronutrient in this micro application. Volume on this spot and two feet over this way. It’s a larger application of. Same micronutrient. It’s that precise.

If you go on a quarter of land or a section of land I call ’em microclimates. Maybe others use that term as well. Micro, I’ve heard microbiomes, micro, all of that. But you go across a field that’s a, that’s just a quarter and any given rainstorm part of it might not even get any.

So you end up having parts of it that are drier than others. You have your soil pump, you have soil types down by the slew versus, versus on the other side of the quarter. Exactly. And now you can take, instead of just, scattering seed across the field and hoping that it will grow.

And farmers always knew this, you’re gonna, I’m gonna seed close to the slew, but it’s not gonna get as tall as the rest of it. Or depending on what you’re put in, that might actually be better than the rest of the field. Yeah. And the first two rows that only works row works with candy lines in my yard.

Yeah, it says scatter them. Let the wind blow. Yeah. But that’s, all of that’s coming to an end now because, all this stuff is data driven and they know how to plant and all this good stuff. So it’s really exciting. I think I, I’m not sure what this does to the family farm as we move forward.

But I think the ability to lower costs in some of these things means that they can spend the half a million dollars for a combine now. I don’t know. Maybe not. They’re more than that. Are they really? Oh, yes. , you gotta be kidding me. I remember when they broke the hundred thousand dollars barriers.

Way more. Oh my goodness. So that seems and that’s part of the problem with this, our small town banking system, they weren’t set up for those size expenditures. They were set up for, oh, you need seed money and fertilizer money and to get your operation going for the year. It was, and here’s a thousand dollars for a tractor.

Yeah. Yeah. Law. Yeah. Marla, you ain’t, you guys need more. So the technology side of things, one of the other things that I think is really cool is you go back and look at agriculture and the family farmer embracing technology and equated a little bit to, okay, I got a news phone. It’s I need to find a seven year old to show me how to operate it.

you go back 30 years, you remember DTN when that first came out. Sure. And that was cutting edge technology and it was something that every producer, every farmer, rancher had to have because of the weather applications, the market applications. They were putting up big satellite dishes on their farm just to get that DTN feed.

Yep. So our egg friends, they’ve known the TE technology side. They’re always early adapters to technology. Yes. So you can go back, I don’t know if our former governor Jack doll res, I think it was his great-grandfather. Great-grandfather, yes. That, that settled into the Castleton area.

And, his story about scattering wheat seed under the field. And it’s just a fascinating thing. He met Alexander Graham Bell and he was one of the very first people to buy a phone system, and it was because he got tired of riding across the farm, the plantation at the time.

What’d they have, like 12 homes or something on this? Huge, it was a big operation. Big operation back in the day by scale, back in the day. It was huge. And it would take a day’s ride to go across this land, and he got tired of trying to go across it. So he bought a phone system and put it in.

Yeah. Crazy North Dakota. Yeah. One of the first ones. Yeah, one of the first ones. And, who knows? As companies go, sometimes you need to have that order, that sale that, so that you can go and make the next one. You don’t know if, because of Mr. Doll repel if, do we even have phones today?

Because, bell could actually afford to continue to produce them because he was able to sell something to North Dakota. I just, I always wonder about that. I’m sure a way to figure out a way to have communications, of course, but let’s just claim it. . Yeah. Yeah. We’ll say that. Okay. We’ll claim it.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a North Dakota thing. It is. Yeah’s chop up to North Dakota. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Yeah, very good. We’re good like that. Yeah. . So at that’s a fascinating story in itself. Yeah. And I encourage people to go check that out sometimes that just shows the depth of how cutting edge farmers and ranchers in the ag industry in North Dakota has been.

And like you said, so the ability to adapt to new technology, frankly, it’s because of survival, right? So they have to do it right in order to survive. But you think about even today GPS going into vehicles and self-driving wasn’t on the highways and byways first. It was on the farm. And they’re getting experience.

They’re gathering data as they’re combining and seeding and doing all this stuff and that information. Is going into our cars now to make our cars safer. I remember when GPS first came out on on tractors and combine. You just set the points at the end of the fields and the only thing you had to do with in the initial part was.

Turn it. Yep. It followed everything else on its own. It just, that was cutting edge technology. Yeah. So we have a lot of, is that why Google Maps in, in other places, run you off a cliff . But in North Dakota you’re fine because we’re flat. Maybe that’s true. Develop that technology in North Dakota.

Yeah.

. Speaking of problem solving Yeah, we were talking a little bit about agriculture.

Yeah. Actually a lot about agriculture during the program today and what that means from a a farming perspective. If the ability to. You have a tool out there that can go mitigate costs for different chemicals that you put on the cropland. It’s eventually autonomous farming.

It’s to get frank about it. My yard, we were talking a little bit about that dandelion killer, how to 2000 whatever little lasers cause that’d be cool. Laser. But the ability to go through your yard, because right now in, you see them around the autonomous lawnmowers. Yeah. You just set ’em up and they mow your lawn and that, there’s a few that have them around, but I think the cost or the price point is no little much.

I know Husk Varna does one. And I interviewed Badger at cs, they have a $700 model for a quarter acre and their $800 model does an acre now first sub thousand dollars. I have one came in the mail the other day. Because previously we’re talking six, $7,000 at least free. Yeah. Yeah.

For an okay one, now it’s $600. My last push mower costs $600. I, granted, I got a little nicer one, but I don’t think it’s unusual for people to spend $600 for a push mower nowadays. No. So to have an autonomous one and a lot of people are going to the electric ones. Yes. Which you’re not gonna get into a good one of those until you’re five, six, $700.

So to spend $600 for a mower or 700 bucks that will, you’ll, you’d set it up and let it do its thing all summer long. Are you kidding me? That just seems incredible to me. So as I’m sitting in the backyard, in a lawn chair, sipping a cocktail with my feet up Yes. Enjoying the sunshine and my wife’s yelling at me.

What are you doing? I’m mowing the yard? Yeah. Yeah. , it works for me. . I love that. And your mo yard is always manicured. It’ll just go out and every day it’ll go out and putts around your yard and make sure it’s mowed and all that stuff. And then you throw into that the dandy scenario.

Right now you can get rid of the weeds. Now you can get rid of the weeds. That’s another 700 bucks right there. So that was where I was gonna go with this, okay. Is you take a look at my garage and I’ve got lawnmower, weed, trimmer blower, vac different implements, right? Snowblower takes up a whole stall of your garage, right?

I have seriously the same problem, takes up a stall of my garage. All these different summer, winter, spring. For all the seasons, I, there’s not even a four-wheeler in there. So you would need another stall for that. No. Yeah. It takes all the fun away from having a Yeah. This extra stall in your garage.

It’s the work stall, the stall that I could actually park a vehicle in or, yes. Yeah. Exactly. Or my boat or Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. But you’ve got all the space taken up. Yeah. So how long before we get to implements that get to multitask? I’m gonna, my answer moer this, right?

We, we’ve got the mower, we’ve got the weed killer, we’ve got the garden. Little tool. Yep. When are we gonna get to start checking multiple boxes off? Just like the three in one printer, fax, what was the third thing? Scanner. So now we have Yabo. Yabo. It’s a three in one as well.

It’s a, it’s, it’ll take care of your leaves. So what does YABO stand for? I have no idea. You are really bad on air. Maybe. . , that’s pretty good actually. And it’s true . So two guys with adhd. That’s right. All right. Yeah. So yeah, so Yabo is it’ll take care of your leaves. So in the fall when you, it’s like a leaf back.

Leaf back, right? Oh. By the way, it also mows, so it’ll mow your yard. Oh, that’s right. There’s the third thing, and that is that it cleans the snow off your driveway. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So here’s a picture. Snow lore as well. Yeah. So it’s a lawn mowing here. I’m turning, I know you, not everybody can see this, but it’s basically I guess you could say it’s like a tractor.

Okay. It doesn’t look like a tractor, but how a tractor would be in on a farm. Or you can add different things to it. You can combine with it. You can plant the seeds. There’s these different attachments. So the basin, you just get the attachments. That’s correct. So I have a question for you. Yeah. Why does it have headlights?

If it’s autonomous, it doesn’t it can see in the dark, but that’s true. But I think it, it doesn’t need, I think it looks batter in me or it does. I have headlights on it. It’s kinda yeah, there you go. So it’s showing you the different, it’s your lip cooler, but it doesn’t need the headlights.

So how cool would it be that when it snows and it senses that it’s snowing, that all of a sudden it just starts going out there and snow, or moves the snow off your sidewalk or your driveway and when you get up in the morning, if it’s snowed overnight, it’s just done. Always just done whenever got a blizzard going on.

But I like that it’s always not neighbor that gets up at four o’clock in the morning and does half the nobody said you had to stop doing that. Okay. And we’re not saying you have to stop if you enjoy it, you just have the yabo do it for me. But there are a lot of people in it, and I always think about is it quiet though?

Because I try to be careful that I’m not doing that. I’m not sure about that. Yeah. Cuz Four o’clock snowblower I, yep. Might be a little quieter than you cuz you’re out there cheering as you’re five, , as you’re blowing the snow, you might get up in the morning, have a cocktail, and watch the AR boat work.

That’s true. That’s true. You could program it to do your neighbor’s yards for you, or at least the sidewalk all the way up and down your block. Yeah. Because just be done. Yeah. It’s really interesting. And I always think about people who want to stay at home a little longer when they’re getting a little older, and this is one of those devices again where Oh, shovel and snow is one of the first things that kicks people out the house. That’s correct. That’s correct. Because they can’t keep up with anymore, so they either have to hire it out, people don’t wanna do it anymore yeah. So you have to hire it out or what, whatever.

And a lot of places, like my mom, for example, I. There’s nobody in the town that she lives in that does any snow removal or yard, work or whatever. This would be perfect for her because she could keep her yard looking good. She could keep the sidewalks cleaned off and the driveway cleaned off all the time then.

These, this is a pretty cool device called the Yabo. I don’t know what the cost of this thing yet is yet. It’s just coming out and we need to get one of those for me to demo. Yes. Oh, they have a power station too. What is that about? Yeah, you have the badgers. Oh I’m excited to try the badge too.

This this is like a head unit and then it’s got the dish for an attachments that just stick onto the front, keep the power on any, anytime. So they have a power unit as well. What in the world? I am just reading through this right now. Technology changes that fast, folks. Yes. So now if you need to power your smartphone, your drone, your camera, your projector, speaker, laptop, cooler, wherever there’s a power outage at home, you are, if you’re out camping, you can take your ya away.

So charges up and it’s like a, and it’s got a, it’s got things that you can, the power unit has u and plugin and that type of thing. Yeah. So if your power goes out home, it’s like Ford likes to tout their lightning pickup is, Hey, the power’s out. You can power your house now. You know why they have headlights.

They can light your way during a power outage. But I think the headlights are in the attachments. So it’s on the frontier. It is interesting that it has, maybe it’s just a safety feature so people can see that it’s running around at night. Maybe that would be the only thing that it would even make sense as to why it would have lights put one of those bicycle flags on it that would, it doesn’t work at night.

The snow’s that deep. Okay. Yeah I’m guessing it’s a safe, I would be curious to, so if you are programming this, so I would be curious cuz you take a look at the snowfalls we had back in November, heavy wet snow. Yes. And I had to get up at way too early in the morning because I knew from the April storm that we had that if I let too much snow get down, then my snowblower couldn’t keep up.

And, but this would’ve the ability to, oh hey, there’s a little dusting of snow. Get out there and clean it up. I’m trying to find out the price. So the battery unit is 1300 bucks. This could go around vehicles and you gotta be strategic on parking Your vehicles in the driveway though, right? If this thing is for sale already, I’m just telling you.

Yeah, you might just see. Guess what? Your mom, guess what your mom’s getting for her birthday? Oh my goodness. . It literally is for sale. It is expensive though. It’s 5,600 bucks with all the attachments. All the attachments. So autonomous mower, which some of those are $6,000 anyway, plus the snowblower feature, plus the leaf I, oh, not the rate.

So right now, if you choose to pay a 10, 10% deposit, you’ll get a 10% discount on the price of the unit. The snowblower is estimated to ship in October, 2023, so you could order it right now. You’ll get the yard bowl with the snowblower in time for snow season next. The lawnmower is expected to ship in May of 2024, so you will get the lawnmower attachment in time for spring the following year, and then the leaf blower estimated to ship in May of 2024 as well.

So by May of 2024. Now you’d have everything covered for next season, starting in the snow season of 2023. Yeah. Show sponsor. All right, let’s, I think so. Instead of MyPillow we can use my yabo. Yes, I think so too. . Something a little more practical. There we go. We can talk about the experiences with my yabo every week.

It’d just be cool. Do you have a cat that can ride around on it? Yeah. Do you really? No, I don’t have a camera. Oh. We’d have to, a dog. We’d have to borrow, we’d have to borrow a cat so that we could get some footage of the cat running around, laying on it. Get the dog on it. That’s true. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah.

Little training. , Yabo owes us a lot of money right now. Yes, they do. How many people wanna buy this thing right now? I’d be curious. Buy both hands. I do. Yeah. Yep. I can’t spend my money fast enough on that.

We’re looking at the ABO stuff a little bit more. We’re just gonna assume that they’re gonna sponsor the show moving forward.

Yeah, so I have one of these. The blower attachment is amazing. Yeah, because I asked, it’s like I wonder if the blower attachment could just blow the snow, cuz if you get. A dusting, you want to get that off the sidewalk. But you don’t need a snowblower. There’s not enough to snow blow. So we’re watching it as it’s moving leaves off the, off, off of a yard here.

And the blower actually goes, what about a, I’d go like a 60 degrees. Yes. Directional. So it starts on the left side, pushes the stream of air out 120 miles an hour, by the way. And then it goes out 60 degrees or so to the right. Can we just have those winds? ? Yes, we did . So it just captures them and recycles that into, blowing the snow off your, but you’re right.

For sidewalk or something, this would be amazing snowblower. You just need the blower unit and keeps the sidewalks. Just that dusting of snow that we get occasionally. That’s perfect. It’s doing a pretty good job of moving the leaves here though too. I was thinking too, the other side of of this is we were talking a little bit about the different attachments.

It’s I need a rotor tiller, I need an aor, I need a De Thatcher. I just, all these different implements that you get kinda like the Ryobi one plus one line. You little tool for everything. You just snap the battery into it. Y Arby’s gonna be your new best friend. Yeah. Your dog’s my kid. A little jealous.

A actually, the first time my dog saw one of those autonomous lawn mowers. Yeah, it freaked him right out. Really? Yeah. I can believe that. And they’re like, what is that? I think it freaks most people out the first time they see ’em too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Anyway, all so Yabo just know we’re gonna be calling you soon.

ya boo . Yeah. We think, I think of the commercials right now. Commercial . That’s too funny. All right let’s talk about TikTok for a little bit. Yes. We were talking about TikTok and the world’s. Going to end World War iii? Yes. Yeah. Alexis ai. They have a little video on TikTok about it. False. So if you’ve read that somewhere this morning?

No. World War II is not starting. December 20, what was it? Third, I think. Yeah, something like that. It’s 6 0 5. I remember the 6:05 PM yeah. So’s interesting. Because it’s false. It was a TikTok. Yeah, it’s a TikTok video. Yeah. What I find interesting about TikTok is, and we’ve talked about the Chinese conspiracy theory, which of spy using technology to spy in the United States.

I personally don’t believe it’s a theory. I’ve looked at devices, I’ve looked at routers, whatever. There’s extra chips in these things that who knows what they’re being utilized for, like I said, my wife. Smart watcher, asshole watch. It’s like it’s starting to talk to us now. And it didn’t do that a week ago. And then you look at DJs listening and the drone company that’s based out of China. Why is it that every other drone that’s in a similar class as the DJs are like twice the price, three times the price? It’s because they want you, Chinese wants you to buy these because they need you to buy em.

All of this footage that you take goes into the DJ app on your phone or tablet or whatever, and guess where it’s stored in China? There you go. And not to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but, so let’s see, the Chinese government, should we spend a hundred billion on a satellite, or should we give this drone company 10 billion and let those crazy, citizens in the United States buy our products and then we have better coverage because there’s gonna be 2 million of them flying around in the United States, and we own all of that footage.

The satellite can only show us what you’re doing outside your home. We know what you’re doing inside your home. Yeah. So it’s, yeah. You could take it that way. And quite frankly I tend to lean that direction a little bit but, so this is a discretion is the better part of valor. Right?

So TikTok people feel the same way about this, including our government, or at least we think. That’s what our government said, or that’s what they’re saying that, there’s been talk about banning TikTok, the government’s movement. Yeah. The government has actually banned TikTok and all government devices, state devices, and federal devices.

So let’s just look at this a little bit. So does, do you feel that Facebook and Google have influence in our government? Yes. Okay. Do you feel that TikTok is a major competitor of Facebook and. . Of course they are. I say yes. Yeah. Because any, anything that takes you away from those platforms means that they’re competition because they’re all about eyeballs.

Fa it’s, it, if you’re more and more people are spending time on TikTok, less on Facebook, because that’s, people just have so much time and they prefer to look at TikTok. If there was no TikTok available, you’d probably be back on Facebook or Instagram or whatever else. MySpace or MySpace.

So the theory is, or the conspiracy theory is that, that Google and Facebook and these companies are lobbying our country, our legislators, to ban TikTok because of the competition that it actually has as opposed to that it’s not. Instead of it being, let’s just say it’s a security issue.

And so that’s why I’m bringing this up. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I just am bringing this up because I think when you hear stuff nowadays, you really need to think through who’s bringing these things forward. Yes, TikTok is a Chinese company, but they do have spaces or places in the United States, and I think they’ve done a lot of work to move that video to United States, but quite frankly, the Chinese can get any video they want anyways.

But I’m looking at it more of what these media platforms, these different social. platforms do as far as social engineering. And you take a look at what TikTok, and this is a known quantity, is the version that the rest of the world gets versus the version that the Chinese children of course get of course, because the focus is on children with TikTok and you’re looking at the educational opportunities, the limited screen times you’re talking social change.

Yeah. Not necessarily intellectual property at that point and e and even what it’s feeding to you. So it knows how you might lean politically or it knows that you like broccoli and it knows that you’re not a big fan of check this video out. Marlo does not know how to. It knows this stuff.

So then it’s it starts systematically sending you maybe messages that question the way you think a little bit. And you could say the same for any platform, that does this Well, and the other platforms have been doing that for a while. Long time. We’ve talked about this.

You’re sitting on your cell phone, you’re sitting next to you and you’re having a conversation with somebody about waffles. Yes. And gee I got a Waffle House ad, or egos just popped up or on Correct the ad. But that’s been on the ad side of things. Yeah. Now take that to the next step where you’re talking about maybe social engineering a little bit.

Don’t you think it always goes back to money anyway? Of course it does. So you just follow the money trail and if they feel like they’re able to engineer the messages that you’re getting. It’s all about if the company is actually able to make more money from that anyway. So that’s really what boils down to.

One of the things that you and I were talking about, we were gonna talk about movie theaters. Yeah. So on the weekend watch the new Josh DeMel and Jennifer Lopez movie. It’s okay, it’s on Amazon Prime. For the free subscription of Amazon Prime. Whilst that regular prime, the subscription’s not free.

You pay 130 bucks a year for it. It’s Prime. Before she ever figured out there, there was movies that too. A lot of people were like that programming, cuz it’s, I just don’t shipping the shipping and get it quicker. Yep. But it got me thinking, and by the way, the movies, eh, It’s cute. Good movie.

Okay. I mean for It’s a good Date Night movie. And I got thinking it’s but is it a date night if we don’t go to the theater and Right. Go out to dinner and we’re just sitting at home watching this. And I got to thinking it’s like good Gravy is Blockbuster went the way at the Dodo, our movie theaters going that direction.

They certainly seemed to be when pandemic hit. Yeah. The pandemic just took care of most of the theaters in the country. And we used to go to movies all the time. All the time because it was at night out of the house. Yeah. Yeah. But if you get lazy and okay, at a certain point it’s, it gets cold out.

Let’s just watch it here. And of course you don’t have the 19 inch screen anymore either, do you? Yeah. So that, that was probably the biggest. Theater popcorn. Which is by design of course. They make sure that they can hand have those ingredients that they have to make the popcorn.

But regardless, it might be $20 for microwave popcorn. It could be theater popcorn maybe. But I agree. And so there’s movie passes coming back, I remember that. I did not have it back in the day, but I remember that. Yeah. So I had it, I forget what I was paying. Was it 15 or 20 bucks?

It’s coming back cause it said welcome back. Yeah. And I think, didn’t they go through either they, they went through bankruptcy or structured something and now they’ve restructured and I don’t know if somebody bought them out or whatever, but they didn’t have the relationships with all the theaters.

It was part of the problem initially. There’s Hey, here’s movie pass and we’re gonna roll this out and it’s a discount. But you didn’t have, you’d walk into a theater and they’re like, yeah, we. Honor that. We don’t work with that. So what they’ve come out with now is, cuz before you could just walk in, anytime they would sl they would, you had a, like a debit card.

They would just slide it and that’s how you got into your movie. And I actually used it a few times. I thought it was cool then there was one day I went over to Grand and it didn’t work. So obviously they were in and they were already in until then they started, we paid for that.

Yeah, that’s exactly what was going on. I’m sure. So now they’ve gone to this they have these different plans. I’m looking at this screen right now. Basic is 20 bucks a month, standard 30, premium 40 and Pro is $60 a month. They have a credit system. So on the $20 a month you get 68 credits and. I was thinking is like $60 a month.

That’s a lot of movies. No, it’s really not now. Not really. Yeah. If you go to a movie for two people, you’re gonna probably, yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah, you’ll spend a lot. So if you go during the weekday, a matinee is 10 credits. If you go to the evening, it’s 15 credits on weekends of 20 credits.

What’s a credit equate to? So credit is if you get the basic plan as 68 credits a month. So you could potentially on the basic plan, go to 10 movies or six movies. Excuse me. If you did the matinee, and this is not in LA or in New York, this is everything other than LA or New York area. 30 bucks a month, you get 140 credits.

So you could potentially go to 14 movies a month. What’s a credit equate to though? So a credit, a matinee is 10 credit. Okay. Okay. An evening is 15 credit. But does it matter what the theater is though? Because you take a look at a matinee and Bismarck, it doesn’t matter. And I think it’s $10 now. They just went up to, yeah.

Yeah. I don’t think it matters. That’s why the, that’s why they have a credit system so that you’re limited to the amount of movies, and then if you go on weekends, it’s 20 credits. Question is though, did they work out the relationship with the theaters? So they have 4,000 theater. That they are, that they’ve partnered with?

They have there are some, they say that, they say you can use it anywhere, but I don’t know that scenario. I’m on the waiting list and I just got approved to get my card now. So if I, and I think I’m gonna go through it. You’re a lot of waiting lists right now. I you, I get a Yeah. NASA’s waiting list.

Yeah, I know. That’s the one I’m more excited about. Movie one waiting list. But I can get, so it’s not waiting anymore. I can actually go purchase a plan now, so I’ll buy one. I probably will do the standard or the premium. Premium is 113 credits a month. And they say five to 11 movies? I’m not sure.

I guess it just depends. If you’re going to Friday night movies, Saturday night movies, you’re gonna have five movies for 30 bucks a month. No, the other problem with that though, How many movies are coming out? I, there’s a few blockbusters that are slated there. They’re starting to have more, more worn out.

Yeah, it’s getting better and better. So anyway. All right. Two guys with adhd, who are hung up on Yabo. Yeah. Yeah. Can Yabo get my popcorn? Maybe. Maybe that’d be okay. Bring it with me all the time.

STEVE

 I’m sure you saw some amazing stuff at ces.

MARLO

Yeah. 

STEVE

We’re talking about that a little bit. But one of the things that you were also famous for, and I just mentioned it, NationalDayCalendar.com. Check it out. You were on CBS Sunday morning and that finally aired, I gotta cut ’em a little slack. You were bumped for the Pope and Barbara Walters.  But you aired and a little bit of buzz is going on with the calendar now. 

MARLO

Yeah, it’s been crazy since Sunday morning. I don’t want to say that we weren’t prepared, but I guess we weren’t prepared. I thought we’d see a little bump in traffic and, I get a couple media mentions or whatever, which is typical for the National Day Calendar. 

STEVE

It’s been a nice platform and a little bit of national media attention and, holy crap. 

MARLO

On a national level, telling the story of how we came to be and all of that, was really cool. And, I think, the cool thing around that story too is coming from a small town, in Mandan and Mandan was highlighted nicely in the piece. And I just think that there’s just something about that. I’ve always said that National Day Calendar is a grassroots thing. And I think, having CBS’s Sunday Morning come here and actually show that grassroots is Americana. I think just really, that National Day calendar and this whole movement of Celebrate Every Day comes to the heartland of America. And I don’t know, I just think that there’s something all about that, and I think that’s why. It’s just, I can’t even tell you the craziness that it – I can tell you some things, but the craziness that’s happened in the last 48 hours because of that piece, it’s just unbelievable.

I already have a little bit of a following in Switzerland. I have no idea how this happens. I feel I’m the Jerry Lewis of Switzerland because I walk in there and everybody’s, Hey Marlo’s here. Hey, will you interview me? And I – it’s the Tech Ranch. And they’re like, what? What is this?  I only got a couple of interviews done on Saturday in there and I told them I’d be back tomorrow morning to finish up with everybody I walk in there of course, and they’re just like, “Hey, we see you this morning on the show.” And it just was a whole nother level of buzz around that. And I was walking down the street and people would come up to me cuz they watched it that morning and, so it was a little different.

STEVE

Yeah. I’m trying to figure out why Switzerland?

MARLO

I don’t know. I did some interviews with them last year and they got some play nationally. 

STEVE

So I think that’s probably why. And then people from Switzerland will listen to the you and me, it’s not because you’re your own autonomous neutral country, 

MARLO

Maybe, I don’t know.

STEVE

So the question I’ve got is, explain the booth part because a lot of people may not know. So you say you walked into the Swiss booth. What’s a Swiss booth entail? What’s that look like? 

MARLO

So, they’re called pavilions actually. So the French have one. The Ukraine has one. No Russia this year, by the way that I’ve seen anyway. They have a lot of the countries, 

STEVE

If it would’ve been there, you couldn’t have ’em next to each other. 

MARLO

So yeah it was interesting to see Ukraine there, actually. Yeah, they had 11 booths in their pavilion. So they weren’t crazy well-represented but not bad. But sad. I interviewed a few of them. There’s one called E-Pharm. Great product by the way. They have a product that basically. you mount a sensor on your old tractor and then you put it like a tablet in your cab or next to the steering wheel, depending on how old your tractor is. And now you can drive straight lines down your field when you’re planting, or it’ll tell you to put a little more fertilizer here or a little less there. So it basically brings these old vehicles to the 21st century.  So I’m interviewing this wonderful lady, and then she brings up the fact that they’re developing part of their platform is for mine removal. 

STEVE

Yeah. That puts things in a little bit different perspective, doesn’t it? 

MARLO

It’s a whole different perspective. And the emphasis of their company now is moving to this platform and they’re using all the money they’re making to offset the mining situation. Or, the fuels being mined in Ukraine. Because removing mines isn’t the easiest thing in the world I just was really taken aback

STEVE

Interesting dichotomy. Just unbelievable.

MARLO

So a lot of people, I explained to them what CES is, and you and I talked about this a little bit last week. There’s buyers and sellers or there’s the other side there were people are trying to find out what the next biggest project I can invest in.

STEVE

So it’s like a big shark tank. 

MARLO

It is. 

STEVE

So from a pavilion perspective, I’m guessing there’s multiple layers on the pavilions where you’ve got all the countries represented, but you’ve got also industries represented as well.

MARLO

Yeah, so they’ll segment it out. So you’ll have all the 3D printing stuff in one area. Wouldn’t really call it a pavilion. They just  put these different things, because all the car automotive things are in one, one hall. All the televisions, all the screens are basically like in the main hall.

STEVE

So that’s another question – is how often are they asking your opinion? Because of course the Tech Ranch is the platform by which all this gets rolled out. How often are they asking your opinion? It’s “Hey, are we onto something right now?”

MARLO

The conversations afterwards are that way, during the interview not so much, but afterwards and then I get asked a lot to do, like on boxing and stuff, and I used to do a lot of that type of thing. I don’t anymore because of my dual role with National Day Calendar but I want to get back to that again. So I guess I really give advice to some of these things. 

STEVE

So, back to CES. 

MARLO

Yeah.

STEVE

So from a technology perspective what was CES this year as far as what your expectations were?

MARLO

I expected to see artificial intelligence at a level never seen before, and I was correct in that. It’s being incorporated in so many things. And for example have we talked about the refrigerator and cooking type of scenario? 

STEVE

Yeah, we did a little bit last last week. That’s right. 

MARLO

That’s what I thought. 

STEVE

Got a chance to take a little at someday it could be one unit. 

MARLO

Yeah, there was some prototypes of that. And the idea is that because of autonomous vehicles the thinking is that you don’t have to have as much food in your house. We’re off at that point now, you and I grew up in a generation, especially my wife, where you need to have four freezers and everything else cuz you need to store all this food if you come from rural country. That’s how it is, right? 

STEVE

Yeah. I’ve got my wild game freezer. I’ve got my cow freezer, 

MARLO

There’s enough food in our house to last a year if we needed to, I’m sure. But The idea here is that you have one unit that, that your refrigerator is going to basically talk to your favorite grocery store. The autonomous vehicle is gonna deliver your food in a timely manner. It’s gonna know that you’re leaving work and gonna be home at 5:45 or whatever. And that Autonom vehicle will show up at about the same time, and you can take your bag of groceries in stock, your refrigerator, and then it’ll start pulling things out of that refrigerator , to make things, there’ll be a robot involved in this as well. There’s actually robots that are being developed right now that will help you with cooking, doing your clothes, laundry, clean your house above and beyond. 

STEVE

With AI and the robotics and stuff going, wait a minute, it’s not about the safety aspect, it’s about workforce and getting workers. Has there been a paradigm shift from a mindset 

MARLO

It’s the quickest form to monetization. So if a company says, you know what, the United States has a workforce shortage right now of 18 million jobs or whatever it is. Right?  So there’s the economies as well, right? So then your fast food hamburger can’t be 99 cents anymore. No. All of it has to go up. So in order for you, if price point is an important thing for your restaurant, for example, which I would imagine most are. They look for two things that has to happen. They either have to lay off staff because that’s the most expensive part of a restaurant is the actual staffing that goes on. Or you figure out other ways to make or serve, make food or serve your customers. And probably robotics will come into play more and more all the time. 

You’re seeing kiosks and McDonald’s just pop up like crazy. I occasionally run into a McDonald’s. They seem to, they’re just more of them. And a lot of times when I’m in a smaller town, that’s the only fast food restaurant in town, so I’ll go in there, but even in a small town of three or 4,000 people, you’re met with four kiosks, and then they just have one person at the counter that would take the occasional order and or hand off the food instead of having four or five staff there. And I guarantee you, if you were to talk to the manager of that facility, they’re gonna state wages and they’re gonna state lack of workforce. Those are the two reasons why they put those kiosks in. 

STEVE

What else is out there to from a daily life simplicity perspective? What are some of the things you saw at CES? 

MARLO

There’s a lot of dedicated artificial intelligence. You can get into, if you’re an attorney or if you’re a bookkeeper, all of these things, there’s artificial intelligence being built to help you with those scenarios. For example, if you needed to do a search on a particular case as an attorney, in the past, before we had a lot of com, computer searches, you would probably go through a bunch of law books and site cases or whatever to make your point, right?

Then computers come along and you can do a search to do that, but you still have to compile this stuff. Now you can ask an AI that this is the case I’m working on. These are the parameters. This is what I’m looking for, to cite cases in the past to make my argument, and it will actually go and research that for you. 

STEVE

AI, what do I need to win this? What information do I need to win this case? And what information do I need to present to a jury? 

MARLO

Yes. Put all of that together for you so you can make your argument. Again, you could state that maybe you’re going to put a few people outta work here or whatever, but in, in an attorney’s situation if this costs me less money, they have to pay a little extra for the ai. That might, maybe the AI costs 10 grand a year or something like that. But it certainly will make their jobs more proficient, more efficient,

STEVE

you think about robotic surgeries and some of the things that surgeons can repair now with the use of robotics and now you get into the AI sphere of medicine. What did you see this year? 

MARLO

So it started with this, I did an interview with a company that is using artificial intelligence to determine if your pet has issues, health issues. So what you do with this app is you take a photo of your pet every week, okay? And it will then monitor your pet along with all the other pets that are in this database. Okay. So then they take machine learning, artificial intelligence, and they look at all these others, they start accumulating data that are noticeable on these photos they’ll have a photo of your pet healthy, and then there’s a biomarker that happens, let’s say a year from now. 

And that biomarker indicates some type of cancer. This is fascinating that they could, they’re taking all this data and they’re putting it together and with just the use of a photo, they’re able to determine or at least a high probability of your pet having cancer or whatever. So there are millions and millions of probably possible good businesses, good ideas, healthcare things, whatever else that’s sitting out there that somebody had a couple beers one night with a couple buddies, wrote it down on a bar napkin, but doesn’t have a million dollars, or can’t come up with a million dollars to do this. What happens if you can just pull up an app and type in the parameters and it punches out the app for you? 

What’s possible with this, and this is the thing I think you have to think about, and this is why I don’t think that the job markets in any jeopardy at all, because the acceleration of ideas being brought to market is gonna just go through the roof in the next couple of years because of this stuff, and then all these other companies are gonna get born. A great example in my opinion is National Day Calendar. If we didn’t have the technology that’s that we have available right now, National Day Calendar could not afford to do what it does because we don’t bring in enough people. If it wasn’t for technology, we’d have to have 200 people working there, right? 

But because of technology, we have our 20 people or so. Because that’s what our cash flow allows to have happen. Is the world better if we can create an app that can take photos of you every week over the course of your lifetime and then at some time it says, Hey, there’s something going on with you. You should go to the doctor now and check it out because there’s a possibility that something’s changed with you. And our doctors, for example, may not even be using a knife in the future, and microsurges are gonna become more and more commonplace because you’re just gonna put a laser or something inside of you. 

STEVE

Yeah. I go fix somebody who is on the cellular level rather than, okay, we have to give you a heart transplant.

MARLO

So DNA and the ability to break into DNA even further, which is what’s going on right now because there’s subs of subs. I guess the information that’s in DNA is just extensive and they’re starting to get it at a level now because they have the computing power and artificial intelligence, again, that can dissect this stuff, right? That is key to artificial intelligence. And I’ve learned that over the last month and a half that I’ve been playing with chat GPT. It’s all about the ask. You can get pretty close sometimes, but you’ll realize after a while that. Sometimes it doesn’t give you quite the right answer because I didn’t ask it the proper question. 

STEVE

So from an educational standpoint, there’s still the value in education because you have to have the ability to ask the correct question, 

MARLO

If you’re writing a term payment paper on Benjamin Franklin, for example, and you ask it to write a term paper in Benjamin Franklin, back and it’ll review the things that you’ve written in the past, online or in a book or whatever and then it’ll punch out a story about that. Let’s say this app that I just was talking about detecting skin cancers or other cancers in human beings, it has to have that database to make that happen. It’s your photo. And a million other photos, that this is AI, the database is tracking and then it cumulatively creates these biomarkers that if you start to have one of these biomarkers it’ll learn, but it can’t learn from you alone. 

It can learn a little bit from you, but you’d have to go in and let’s say you develop cancer sometime in the future, then you’d have to go in and tell the app that you had cancer. But it really doesn’t do you any good at that point. You, the app only learns when you have a bunch of people that have come in and said, all right, I developed cancer. There’s cloning that’snot cloning in the reality that you’re thinking but a virtual clone of yourself. Some of this stuff is possible. Maybe not hammer nail type of thing right now, but you could have your robot do that for you.

STEVE

Yeah. I hate dusting. 

MARLO

Your robot will. My robot can do that. Yeah. And have dinner waiting for you when you get home at night and have all your clothes full folded and cleaned. Impressed and, yeah. All good stuff. 

STEVE

See, I’m really good at loading the dishwasher and running the dishwasher and get yelled at for not unloading the dishwasher.

MARLO

Your robot will take care of that for you too. 

STEVE

So in the last.20 seconds we’ve got here. If there was one thing that you saw that was earth shaking, what was the most fascinating thing that you walked in the door and went, oh my gosh.

MARLO

Psionic is the name of the company. It’s a robotic hand that was attached to a person’s arm, somebody who lost their arm and below the elbow, and he’s able to feel his daughter when they hold hands.

JASON

We gotta talk about the world of innovation. And Marlo, I want your take on this because in my opinion, this has gotta be. At least in my world as a wordsmith, one of the most disruptive technologies that has entered into the American workplace in a long time, and it’s the rise of artificial intelligence. People might be thinking, wait a minute, are you talking about Terminator type artificial intelligence? No, folks, I’m talking about customer service, artificial intelligence. Marlo, you’re familiar with that? Aren’t you?. 

MARLO

It’s amazing what’s going on, and I think it’s a good time to talk about this because people are, just like you and I making plans for 2023, what technologies are we gonna invest in? All of that stuff. And yeah, the rise, not the rise of Terminator here, but the rise of artificial intelligence and how we’re gonna be using it in 2023 is astonishing. That is, it’s just unbelievable what has gone on that the public has access to now over the last two months. And with CES just around the corner. I’ll be there next week. 

JASON

And now what’s c ces? Sorry, what’s c? . 

MARLO

So the consumer electronic show. A show that’s been going on in Vegas. It’s the world’s largest technology show. There’ll be a few hundred thousand people that will be in attendance. I think they introduce 200,000 new products at this show every year. And I was doing the math on this a couple years ago, not to get sidetracked, but I know you and I are gonna be all over the place today with this stuff. But there’s 10,000 media that attend this event as well, which is one of the largest media events in the world as well.

And 200,000 new products. , if you do the math on that, that means that every person there that’s in media would have to report on what, 20 different new products just to cover all of them. And of course there are –  I’ll do 200 stories out a year in the next couple weeks. It’s a lot of new stuff and it’s just, it’s boggling how much you think everything has been invented. We haven’t even got started yet. I’m telling you right now. We haven’t even got started yet. 

JASON

Incredible. Where is CES and when is it again? 

MARLO

So it’s in Las Vegas. It’ll run January 5th through the eighth. So it’ll be next week. But actually there’s a lot of events that start in front of that, especially since it’s a Thursday through Sunday this year.

So starting on Monday already, I’ll be in a lot of different type of smaller events that are going on. There’ll be a lot of press-only type of things to introduce new products and get interviews and that type of thing. Expect a lot of stuff from me coming out in the next couple weeks.

JASON

So when we’re talking about, talk radio and the different types of programming and our target audience and demographics and all. That’s actually one type of artificial intelligence, and we can certainly get into the geo-artificial intelligence, if you are the geo-tracking, the eye in the sky, and you know that, that way you know exactly where to get the best cup of coffee, right?

That’s the whole idea. The other side of it that I want your take on before we take our first commercial break here coming up is in my world, the wordsmithing world, because the article that I was reading the other day from MIT of one of those snooty intellectual pieces that I like to read, it talked about the world of artificial intelligence in the rise of wordsmithing basically.

And the replacement of technical writers, the replacement of customer service writers that would do chatting and that sort of thing. But then it got into actually the mental health part of things, which is a lot of these artificial intelligent robots that are chatting with people in a customer service role. They don’t know how insensitive they’re being because they’re just giving facts. Then, I started reading more about how now some of the artificial robots that are doing the chatting are now suppressing some of the climate change information and all this other stuff. So now I’m going down a rabbit hole.

Okay, Marlo, let’s start from the beginning here. Where should people look for artificial intelligence first? For me, it’s the wordsmithing part because that’s my career. Where are you looking at it? 

MARLO

I do a lot of that type. I’m not quite as proficient as you are when it comes to writing, although I will be changing that because of this. I’ll actually put out more content this year than I ever have.  and it’s because I will have the ability with these tools now to do that. So I can, for example and I’m just throwing this out to you. I can type in a parameter, write a story about Jason Spies and Marlo Anderson doing a show on a Tuesday – 1000 words.

JASON

I just wanted to tease a little bit about Google Glass because I don’t think people understand what’s going on with that technology. I don’t, I haven’t checked in for three years. I do not know where we’re at with Google Glass. I know the rollout was a bomb. It failed for whatever reason, but the technology has kept going. Are we there with it in contacts yet? Do we have it? Where’s the Google Glass technology where you can walk into a room and all of a sudden, just like in all the movies oh, here’s Karen. Here’s her birthdate, here’s her husband’s name, here’s the dog’s name, all that stuff. 

That’s real, isn’t it? 

MARLO

So it’s real. What happens is when you wear Google Glass and you like, say you walk into a room probably, you know what it does is it hooks into your social media and it’ll pull this stuff forward. So if you were walking, let’s say you’re walking down a sidewalk and you looked into a restaurant, the menu might appear.

JASON

Folks, get ready for next year because the world that you see in the palm of your hands on your phone and on your screen, it might not be the real thing. So we’re gonna talk about how to actually accept this new reality. How to tell the difference. The article that I was reading about in my world, the wordsmith world, about the rise of artificial intelligence. The article was about how to detect it and how to navigate through some of the mental health issues that it’s creating.

I didn’t, how can you sue me? Now and then we got images. Okay. Think of all the pictures that you’ve put up of your kids and your kid’s sonogram and yourself, and. How many, back background pictures you might be in that someone else took a picture of. And then you got public records. So when all these, the first avenue meets first street, the nexus of the universe is met. How can somebody navigate through that on the social implications?

Because I see how awesome this is for the world of business. This is gonna revolutionize businesses next year. It’s gonna save ’em a small fortune. But the legal industry is the one I see taking off more than anything next year. . 

MARLO

What’s funny about this too, you bring up the legal part of it, I actually think artificial intelligence will be a huge part of the legal space as well. I’m gonna paint a picture for you here or a video. Okay. And I’m just gonna take our current president and, but this could be anybody, this could be you and I, Jason. It could be former President Trump. It could be anybody. Elon Musk, anybody who is particularly open to this. Because of artificial intelligence and the way that you can manipulate images and video, now you could take, and somebody could post something of a video of Joe Biden saying something totally different than what he meant to say.

So if somebody wanted to take the stock market down, for example, you could release a video of the president stating something that would have significant ramifications and then post it on social media as some type of news source or whatever. Granted, it will probably be taken down, but there’s always this thing about something getting posted and then by the time it’s discovered, it’s 10 minutes, it’s an hour, it’s two hours.

It’s like computer viruses, right? There’s always, there’s a new virus that comes out, but the virus protection software that you have has to know about the virus before it can protect you from it. Somebody has to report it. Somebody has to do something to it, right? So there’s a window of opportunity.

What you’re talking about is that window of opportunity can be seen by millions, tens of millions of people before it’s taken down. And the next thing you know, you and I are talking about it on a talk radio show or whatever, can you believe what the president said? And then it just gets amplified, right?

So there’s always this window of opportunity, and it’s all made possible because of this technology that we have now using artificial intelligence that you can manipulate what people say. And it can be on anything. It could be, if somebody wants to blast your next door neighbor, it can be anything. And it actually created this image that I put up and it looked, there was this path that was groomed and there was a bunch of cows  that were pulling these snow blades, and it was hilarious. And people didn’t realize that it was an AI generated image. They just thought that this was for real, 

JASON
That’s the part folks I want you to understand is the, a lot of people out there, they don’t understand – a lot of this is fake.

MARLO

This is the chat GPT I was just talking about with open AI. Could be used to plot out and design new games with it, including crossword puzzles dealing with loneliness and anxiety. So this is something that you were just talking about, Jason.

So if you put in, if you input this, I’m really sad and lonely right now, Chat GPT actually spit this out. I’m sorry to hear that. You’re feeling sad and lonely. Lonely. It’s natural to feel down sometimes, but it’s important to remember that you’re not alone. There are many people who care about you and want to help you and so on and so forth.

It can help you deal with these mental issues. It can also exasperate them as well. You have, there’s a fine line there, I think. 

JASON

I think the important part is that there’s enough good that we’re seeing with the artificial intelligence to move ahead on it. I think the important part for people to understand is there’s gonna be some, some correction that needs to be done. The correction might be a little bit testy at times because you are gonna deal with emotions. The counseling one is a great example to where the sheer resources that are needed to put a human behind a 24 hour help desk are not always available. But to answer 15 pre-qualifying questions, that is gonna save somebody’s life. That can be done and it can be done right now. 

And if they can, if they can save five lives and only offend one person who doesn’t take their life, but they just get offensive, that’s in that more good than bad column. So how can we now make this AI a little bit less sterile? That’s where we’re open to discussion and that’s where the vanilla gets the sprinkles, if you will.

Folks, that’s the part to keep in mind though, when we’re talking about the good, the bad and the ugly, the reason we’re talking about it is because it ain’t going anywhere. It’s here. So this is a platform, this is a place where you can have a public discussion, where we have a town hall talk of the town, if you will.

JASON

And Marlo, let’s talk about what parents can do because there is a lot of really cool things. What should parents do? Should, should they monitor their AI around their house? Should they start, saying, hey, I just want to have AI do a recipe, because that’s another thing you can just put, take, I think you can probably even take a snapshot of your refrigerator contents now and they’ll kick out a recipe.

MARLO

That’s correct. 

JASON

Oh, is it really? I was joking actually. 

MARLO

Oh, no you’re absolutely correct. I just figured the technology would be there. They can actually –  I’ve seen that before. AI is pretty new. I’m not really sure. , the implications that it will have yet for young people.

But I will say this, I think about my grandson, Tyler, when he was five years old, and I watched this go on and he’s a couple years older than that now. But, as a young child sometimes, especially when you’re surrounded with a bunch of adults, sometimes you might get a little lonely or maybe you don’t feel like you’re getting the attention that you want, right?

So it was a house full of people, all adults. He was there and he was trying to get somebody to play a game with him or whatever, and nobody would do this. So the next thing you know and I happened to be downstairs working on my computer, doing something at the time. He comes wandering down and I have an Alexa sitting there, and he went right up to Alexa and goes, Alexa “Count to 10 for me in Spanish” and Alexa just spouts off, count to 10 in Spanish and he’s five and he wants to learn how to count to 10 in Spanish. So he’s now interacting with Alexa to do this. Then Alexa play this song for me, and Alexa would play this song. From then he had a game that he would play with Alexa, and I’m just, I am just stunned that, he had this ability to actually interact with an artificial intelligence and he just took it for granted, so I think that there’s really good things that are possible because we have these devices in our houses. 

JASON

I tried to write someone a check the other day and they asked me what I was drawing .I feel your pain, Marlo. I know what you’re talking about!

MARLO

That is so funny!

MARLO

So anyway, they got in this conversation about television and my mom was complaining about. how expensive it is to have cable, and my daughter-

STEVE

We all do that. Yes. 

MARLO

Yeah. My daughter Kayla goes, well, I don’t pay for cable. My mom was like, well, how does that work? And she starts talking about streaming and the next thing you know, I’m putting the internet out at my mom and stepdad’s place.

STEVE

Wow. 

MARLO

Not for computer usage, but so that she can have Netflix and Hulu! So I thought, well-

STEVE

Why don’t you just get her a Roku stick or-? 

MARLO

Well, I decided on a TV that’s connected. You know, smart TV. So at the same time, I got her a little Chromebook. And she started finding out about Facebook and she loved that part of it. And my stepdad was very ill at the time. I put in a couple of Amazon Alexas and under the guise that you guys can just talk to this. And my stepdad fell in love with it immediately because he’s an old Western movies guy, loves the old music from that era of the fifties and the sixties, the Cowboys and whatever and he could just say, play Gene Autry and this thing would actually play Gene Autry. He was just like, you know-

STEVE

Now, now, now, you got me thinking. It’s like, huh. Christmas gift for my father-in-law this year.

MARLO

Yes. Well, so this gets to that. But my hidden agenda here was that they would have a way to communicate. My mom’s a little stubborn. Like I said, my stepdad was ill. He passed away a couple years ago and when I was setting this up, I set it up to their phone system as well. There was an adapter that you could get, that you could adapt a landline phone. Because she actually still has a rotary phone.The rotary phone that I grew up with, Uh, well it broke down a couple years ago. They came out and replaced it with a rotary phone. 

STEVE

Nice. 

MARLO

She pays a lease on this thing and they actually, they must laugh about this. $8. It’s still on her wall. It’s so great. And anyway, so I bought this device, it was like a hundred bucks to attach it to her Alexa. I get this weird phone call at seven o’clock in the morning and I’m like, I’m looking at this and I don’t answer because I think it’s a spam call then there’s a message that was left and it, and my phone transcribed it and it said, my name – Marlo. And then call 9 1 1. And I’m like, what in the world? What kind of message is this? And I start thinking about it and I’m like, did my mom fall or something? And then just at the same time, the phone rings again and I pick it up this time and it is my mother and she has fallen and- 

STEVE

Okay, now you think of the life alerts? Alexa, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. 

MARLO

Yes. But she doesn’t have a life alert again. She’s got Alexa. She, she’s a little stubborn this way. But I put these Alexas in her house for this reason, just in case something were to ever happen-

STEVE

You are a good son 

MARLO

-and she actually used it and it worked.

So, but it gets better than this. So I talked to her, of course she’s she’s able to talk, you know, just like she would, you and I are talking right now. And then on top of it, I got off the phone with her real quick. I called 9 1 1, got the ambulance in the route. I got ahold of one of her neighbors and she lives in a rural area outside of Minot and friends on the way. And then Alexa has this drop in feature that you can have set up within your circle. So I went into my phone, I see mom’s Echo. I tap on that and just like that, I’m now talking to her again. 

STEVE

Wow. 

MARLO

So I didn’t have to, I didn’t have to call a phone that she had to answer. I could actually talk to her and comfort her and tell her that I have an ambulance on the way. I have her friend coming over, but there was still gonna be a, like a 15 minute gap before somebody could even get there, because again, she lives in a rural area. So I was able to visit with her, and I could just tell that in, in a minute or two that even though she was unable to move 

STEVE

Soothing. 

MARLO

Oh, I, I can’t imagine the fact that she was able to communicate somebody 

STEVE

Lowering stress level.

MARLO

Exactly. You know, and, and then find out later on. Um, you know, and I got there just as the ambulance was getting to the hospital or whatever. She ends up, she had fractured both hips. Wow. I mean, there’s no way she’s moving. Right. She couldn’t crawl anywhere. She couldn’t get anywhere at all.

STEVE

Well, okay, so in a case like this too, because your hips are very vascular, large, flat bones, and you have some serious possibilities of bleeding 

MARLO

Yes. 

STEVE

So time is critical in a situation like this. So without that technology- 

MARLO

Well, I just, I just wonder how long now, this was the day before Thanksgiving, so of course we’re all gonna be, as her kids gonna be checking in with her, right? but if it was any other time, you know, it could have probably been days before somebody would possibly would’ve checked in on her because, you know, so this a ability for her to just, as long as she could utter Alexa and call Marlo or call my sister, or whatever, you know, she had that ability to actually talk to somebody.

STEVE

Wow. 

MARLO

I think it’s just amazing and it’s, and, and no monthly fee with this or any of this other stuff. So 

STEVE

How long before it’s “Alexa, have Marlo send his drone to take me to the hospital”? 

MARLO

Yeah, that’s a good question. Seriously, yeah, I, I, I’m. You know, whether or not, and, and I, I get into this privacy concern a little bit cuz we all talk about it and we laugh about, you know, 

STEVE

Well there’s the other big, big brothers watching and Alexa eavesdropping.

MARLO

If I say that I love Doritos, you know, within an hour I’m gonna see a commercial for Doritos on my phone or a drone, just drop ’em off at your phone or whatever. Right. And we’ve, you and I have had this conversation and it’s true. It happens. 

STEVE

They’re, well and it’s like the connectivity with the Ring doorbells that people had concerns about that was legitimate, but there’s security layers to that. Yeah. But, but you know, part of it comes down to, okay, you have an elderly parent that was in a life-threatening situation and technology mitigated that.

MARLO

Yeah, yeah. Added comfort to this whole situation. 

STEVE

There’s a balance to this.

MARLO

Yeah. So I, I just, you know, if you’re thinking about getting your parents something for Christmas and they don’t have an Alexa or a Google Home appliance or any of these, Speakers. First of all, they’re gonna love you for it because they can just pull up Gene Autry or Yeah.

STEVE

Especially if they like Westerns 

MARLO

Yeah. Or whatever kind of music they like. 

STEVE

My mother-in-law, pulling up Hallmark. 

MARLO

There you go. And you could connect these to your television too, and talk to them. And, and they do, of course. All kinds of things. They, I, I would hear, uh, the questions, they would ask it all the time if they were, you know, my, my mom and stepdad did argue a little bit and they would always use Alexa to, you know, find out which one was right. I don’t know, , I dunno how good that was. But, uh, because I think there’s always something about if he can’t prove who’s right or wrong, then the fight just kind of sizzles down, you know.

STEVE

I think they’re insurance commercials. Replay for the NFL game. Probably better that you can’t see it, you know?

MARLO

But anyway, I, I really, you know, for the cost of these things, I mean, you can get an Amazon Alexa, those little disks. You know, for $29 

STEVE

Little puck things. 

MARLO

Oh my goodness. Put three of those in your house. Now, do you have to have an Amazon subscription for those or not? So you have to just have an Amazon account and Google’s the same way. You have to have a Google account for that. But this is all free stuff. It’s not like you have to pay a monthly fee or anything for these. It’s just, you’d have to have that account to set it up.. 

STEVE

So it’s just like, I’ve got an Android, so I’ve got a Google account because of my Android. Same thing.

MARLO

And I would highly recommend the, so this is, this is the weird part of this probably, but because I set up my, my, because we never get weird. 

STEVE

We’ll never get weird here. 

MARLO

We never get weird. 

So there’s that drop in feature, right? So I could drop in any time. So you have to make sure that you’re trusting enough of the person that’s putting maybe these devices into that person’s home or whatever, you know, or that, because I could drop in and just eavesdrop anytime I wanted to, you know, there, it’s like a baby monitor type of situation.But in this instance, I was so thankful that I had that feature. You know, my mom didn’t even know that this was a feature there. I never 

STEVE

Well, she does now. 

MARLO

Well, she does now. So it was, it was a pretty cool thing that I was able to use this technology to, you know, help my mom out that morning.

STEVE

And she’s doing better now. And she’s in rehab. I mean, of course road to recovery. 

MARLO

Of course, of course. It’s a long haul and I’m not sure what the outcome is gonna be yet because it all depends on how well she recovers. But, but, uh, um, but I was glad, glad to have the technology there that morning.

STEVE

Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. A little personal story with your mom. 

MARLO

Go, but uh, go get this stuff. Yeah. Put it in your parents’ homes. Oh my goodness. Great example of things you may not think of. Right. From a safety perspective, uh, that smart technology can provide. 

MARLO

There’s a couple things that I think are really interesting for this year. Boes, what do you think of when I say Bose? 

STEVE

Speakers. 

MARLO

All right. 

STEVE

Or headphones. 

MARLO

Yeah. Or anything that produces sound, right? So Bose now has sunglasses.

STEVE

Really? 

MARLO

With builtin speakers, with builtin little speakers aimed at your ears. So instead of wearing headphones, these things sync to your phone. And you have these little speakers that are both speakers playing these things, I think. 

STEVE

Oh, they don’t go in your ear. Are they noise canceling? 

MARLO

Mm. I would say probably not. You know, so that’s the, that’s the thing. I mean, I have, I love my noise canceling set. I mean, I just, 

STEVE

When on the airplane it’s, you’re on a plane flying. 

MARLO

What, you know what I love about it more than anything else. You know? So if you don’t get somebody, a set of noise canceling headphones, if you, if they travel a lot or if they have a problem hearing in crowded areas, right?

STEVE

Me. 

MARLO

Because you can put the noise canceling on and then start having a conversation with somebody and it’s like they’re sitting next to you, without having, having all that crazy stuff. I actually was listening to a conversation from somebody that was three rows behind me two days ago. But it was so easy to hear them because the jet noise was gone. And the microphone still picked up on the conversation going on, so Yeah. 

STEVE

You don’t, what they haven’t done yet, the entertainment system on the back of chairs is Bluetooth. That’s because you get on a plane and if it’s an older plane or newer plane, some planes are different. the plug-ins are a little bit different depending on how you connect.  I was on a newer plane and they didn’t have the little TV screen. They just had you put your phone on here and that was the connection, that was the screen for the connectivity to entertainment on the plane, which I hated because my phone –  I, I don’t wanna have to wear my glasses to watch a movie on a plane.

MARLO

So I have wifi lights. I still think this is a great thing to get. So, lights that are connected to wifi, you know, like the lights you have on outside of your house Or whatever. Um, they’ve really come down in price. And there’s strip lights now that are wifi connected, all this stuff.

And you’re probably asking, why do I want wifi connected lights? It’s a good question because you can just put a light bulb in and, and, but the cool thing is, is that especially this time of year, especially if you have color changing light bulbs, is that you can just go on your phone, and all of a sudden you can connect them to red, red, and green across the front of your house 

STEVE

Or program them so they can sync with music 

MARLO

Or whatever you wanna do, right?

STEVE

I looked at those, I saw that, and I’m like, wait a minute. , my wife never has to nag at me about putting up and taking down Christmas lights again. You just put ’em up. And they’re off. They’re on, they’re off.

MARLO

And then when you want ’em to be white again, you just turn ’em back to white or whatever.

STEVE

Yeah. You need to illuminate the yard for company coming over, or, oh, let, summer, we better do the yellow bug light color, 

MARLO

And it gets even more interesting than that. So I use “if this then that”.Or if the International Space Station flies overhead, the lights on my building go crazy. 

STEVE

Hopefully they can see you. I’m hopeful for that, but they never have. Hopefully you’ll be able to see your building when you’re flying there. 

MARLO

So anyway, they got in this conversation about television and my mom was complaining about. how expensive it is to have cable, and my daughter-

STEVE

We all do that. Yes. 

MARLO

Yeah. My daughter Kayla goes, well, I don’t pay for cable. My mom was like, well, how does that work? And she starts talking about streaming and the next thing you know, I’m putting the internet out at my mom and stepdad’s place.

STEVE

Wow. 

MARLO

Not for computer usage, but so that she can have Netflix and Hulu! So I thought, well-

STEVE

Why don’t you just get her a Roku stick or-? 

MARLO

Well, I decided on a TV that’s connected. You know, smart TV. So at the same time, I got her a little Chromebook. And she started finding out about Facebook and she loved that part of it. And my stepdad was very ill at the time. I put in a couple of Amazon Alexas and under the guise that you guys can just talk to this. And my stepdad fell in love with it immediately because he’s an old Western movies guy, loves the old music from that era of the fifties and the sixties, the Cowboys and whatever and he could just say, play Gene Autry and this thing would actually play Gene Autry. He was just like, you know-

STEVE

Now, now, now, you got me thinking. It’s like, huh. Christmas gift for my father-in-law this year.

MARLO

Yes. Well, so this gets to that. But my hidden agenda here was that they would have a way to communicate. My mom’s a little stubborn. Like I said, my stepdad was ill. He passed away a couple years ago and when I was setting this up, I set it up to their phone system as well. There was an adapter that you could get, that you could adapt a landline phone. Because she actually still has a rotary phone.The rotary phone that I grew up with, Uh, well it broke down a couple years ago. They came out and replaced it with a rotary phone. 

STEVE

Nice. 

MARLO

She pays a lease on this thing and they actually, they must laugh about this. $8. It’s still on her wall. It’s so great. And anyway, so I bought this device, it was like a hundred bucks to attach it to her Alexa. I get this weird phone call at seven o’clock in the morning and I’m like, I’m looking at this and I don’t answer because I think it’s a spam call then there’s a message that was left and it, and my phone transcribed it and it said, my name – Marlo. And then call 9 1 1. And I’m like, what in the world? What kind of message is this? And I start thinking about it and I’m like, did my mom fall or something? And then just at the same time, the phone rings again and I pick it up this time and it is my mother and she has fallen and- 

STEVE

Okay, now you think of the life alerts? Alexa, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. 

MARLO

Yes. But she doesn’t have a life alert again. She’s got Alexa. She, she’s a little stubborn this way. But I put these Alexas in her house for this reason, just in case something were to ever happen-

STEVE

You are a good son 

MARLO

-and she actually used it and it worked.

So, but it gets better than this. So I talked to her, of course she’s she’s able to talk, you know, just like she would, you and I are talking right now. And then on top of it, I got off the phone with her real quick. I called 9 1 1, got the ambulance in the route. I got ahold of one of her neighbors and she lives in a rural area outside of Minot and friends on the way. And then Alexa has this drop in feature that you can have set up within your circle. So I went into my phone, I see mom’s Echo. I tap on that and just like that, I’m now talking to her again. 

STEVE

Wow. 

MARLO

So I didn’t have to, I didn’t have to call a phone that she had to answer. I could actually talk to her and comfort her and tell her that I have an ambulance on the way. I have her friend coming over, but there was still gonna be a, like a 15 minute gap before somebody could even get there, because again, she lives in a rural area. So I was able to visit with her, and I could just tell that in, in a minute or two that even though she was unable to move 

STEVE

Soothing. 

MARLO

Oh, I, I can’t imagine the fact that she was able to communicate somebody 

STEVE

Lowering stress level.

MARLO

Exactly. You know, and, and then find out later on. Um, you know, and I got there just as the ambulance was getting to the hospital or whatever. She ends up, she had fractured both hips. Wow. I mean, there’s no way she’s moving. Right. She couldn’t crawl anywhere. She couldn’t get anywhere at all.

STEVE

Well, okay, so in a case like this too, because your hips are very vascular, large, flat bones, and you have some serious possibilities of bleeding 

MARLO

Yes. 

STEVE

So time is critical in a situation like this. So without that technology- 

MARLO

Well, I just, I just wonder how long now, this was the day before Thanksgiving, so of course we’re all gonna be, as her kids gonna be checking in with her, right? but if it was any other time, you know, it could have probably been days before somebody would possibly would’ve checked in on her because, you know, so this a ability for her to just, as long as she could utter Alexa and call Marlo or call my sister, or whatever, you know, she had that ability to actually talk to somebody.

STEVE

Wow. 

MARLO

I think it’s just amazing and it’s, and, and no monthly fee with this or any of this other stuff. So 

STEVE

How long before it’s “Alexa, have Marlo send his drone to take me to the hospital”? 

MARLO

Yeah, that’s a good question. Seriously, yeah, I, I, I’m. You know, whether or not, and, and I, I get into this privacy concern a little bit cuz we all talk about it and we laugh about, you know, 

STEVE

Well there’s the other big, big brothers watching and Alexa eavesdropping.

MARLO

If I say that I love Doritos, you know, within an hour I’m gonna see a commercial for Doritos on my phone or a drone, just drop ’em off at your phone or whatever. Right. And we’ve, you and I have had this conversation and it’s true. It happens. 

STEVE

They’re, well and it’s like the connectivity with the Ring doorbells that people had concerns about that was legitimate, but there’s security layers to that. Yeah. But, but you know, part of it comes down to, okay, you have an elderly parent that was in a life-threatening situation and technology mitigated that.

MARLO

Yeah, yeah. Added comfort to this whole situation. 

STEVE

There’s a balance to this.

MARLO

Yeah. So I, I just, you know, if you’re thinking about getting your parents something for Christmas and they don’t have an Alexa or a Google Home appliance or any of these, Speakers. First of all, they’re gonna love you for it because they can just pull up Gene Autry or Yeah.

STEVE

Especially if they like Westerns 

MARLO

Yeah. Or whatever kind of music they like. 

STEVE

My mother-in-law, pulling up Hallmark. 

MARLO

There you go. And you could connect these to your television too, and talk to them. And, and they do, of course. All kinds of things. They, I, I would hear, uh, the questions, they would ask it all the time if they were, you know, my, my mom and stepdad did argue a little bit and they would always use Alexa to, you know, find out which one was right. I don’t know, , I dunno how good that was. But, uh, because I think there’s always something about if he can’t prove who’s right or wrong, then the fight just kind of sizzles down, you know.

STEVE

I think they’re insurance commercials. Replay for the NFL game. Probably better that you can’t see it, you know?

MARLO

But anyway, I, I really, you know, for the cost of these things, I mean, you can get an Amazon Alexa, those little disks. You know, for $29 

STEVE

Little puck things. 

MARLO

Oh my goodness. Put three of those in your house. Now, do you have to have an Amazon subscription for those or not? So you have to just have an Amazon account and Google’s the same way. You have to have a Google account for that. But this is all free stuff. It’s not like you have to pay a monthly fee or anything for these. It’s just, you’d have to have that account to set it up.. 

STEVE

So it’s just like, I’ve got an Android, so I’ve got a Google account because of my Android. Same thing.

MARLO

And I would highly recommend the, so this is, this is the weird part of this probably, but because I set up my, my, because we never get weird. 

STEVE

We’ll never get weird here. 

MARLO

We never get weird. 

So there’s that drop in feature, right? So I could drop in any time. So you have to make sure that you’re trusting enough of the person that’s putting maybe these devices into that person’s home or whatever, you know, or that, because I could drop in and just eavesdrop anytime I wanted to, you know, there, it’s like a baby monitor type of situation.But in this instance, I was so thankful that I had that feature. You know, my mom didn’t even know that this was a feature there. I never 

STEVE

Well, she does now. 

MARLO

Well, she does now. So it was, it was a pretty cool thing that I was able to use this technology to, you know, help my mom out that morning.

STEVE

And she’s doing better now. And she’s in rehab. I mean, of course road to recovery. 

MARLO

Of course, of course. It’s a long haul and I’m not sure what the outcome is gonna be yet because it all depends on how well she recovers. But, but, uh, um, but I was glad, glad to have the technology there that morning.

STEVE

Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. A little personal story with your mom. 

MARLO

Go, but uh, go get this stuff. Yeah. Put it in your parents’ homes. Oh my goodness. Great example of things you may not think of. Right. From a safety perspective, uh, that smart technology can provide. 

MARLO

There’s a couple things that I think are really interesting for this year. Boes, what do you think of when I say Bose? 

STEVE

Speakers. 

MARLO

All right. 

STEVE

Or headphones. 

MARLO

Yeah. Or anything that produces sound, right? So Bose now has sunglasses.

STEVE

Really? 

MARLO

With builtin speakers, with builtin little speakers aimed at your ears. So instead of wearing headphones, these things sync to your phone. And you have these little speakers that are both speakers playing these things, I think. 

STEVE

Oh, they don’t go in your ear. Are they noise canceling? 

MARLO

Mm. I would say probably not. You know, so that’s the, that’s the thing. I mean, I have, I love my noise canceling set. I mean, I just, 

STEVE

When on the airplane it’s, you’re on a plane flying. 

MARLO

What, you know what I love about it more than anything else. You know? So if you don’t get somebody, a set of noise canceling headphones, if you, if they travel a lot or if they have a problem hearing in crowded areas, right?

STEVE

Me. 

MARLO

Because you can put the noise canceling on and then start having a conversation with somebody and it’s like they’re sitting next to you, without having, having all that crazy stuff. I actually was listening to a conversation from somebody that was three rows behind me two days ago. But it was so easy to hear them because the jet noise was gone. And the microphone still picked up on the conversation going on, so Yeah. 

STEVE

You don’t, what they haven’t done yet, the entertainment system on the back of chairs is Bluetooth. That’s because you get on a plane and if it’s an older plane or newer plane, some planes are different. the plug-ins are a little bit different depending on how you connect.  I was on a newer plane and they didn’t have the little TV screen. They just had you put your phone on here and that was the connection, that was the screen for the connectivity to entertainment on the plane, which I hated because my phone –  I, I don’t wanna have to wear my glasses to watch a movie on a plane.

MARLO

So I have wifi lights. I still think this is a great thing to get. So, lights that are connected to wifi, you know, like the lights you have on outside of your house Or whatever. Um, they’ve really come down in price. And there’s strip lights now that are wifi connected, all this stuff.

And you’re probably asking, why do I want wifi connected lights? It’s a good question because you can just put a light bulb in and, and, but the cool thing is, is that especially this time of year, especially if you have color changing light bulbs, is that you can just go on your phone, and all of a sudden you can connect them to red, red, and green across the front of your house 

STEVE

Or program them so they can sync with music 

MARLO

Or whatever you wanna do, right?

STEVE

I looked at those, I saw that, and I’m like, wait a minute. , my wife never has to nag at me about putting up and taking down Christmas lights again. You just put ’em up. And they’re off. They’re on, they’re off.

MARLO

And then when you want ’em to be white again, you just turn ’em back to white or whatever.

STEVE

Yeah. You need to illuminate the yard for company coming over, or, oh, let, summer, we better do the yellow bug light color, 

MARLO

And it gets even more interesting than that. So I use “if this then that”.Or if the International Space Station flies overhead, the lights on my building go crazy. 

STEVE

Hopefully they can see you. I’m hopeful for that, but they never have. Hopefully you’ll be able to see your building when you’re flying there. 

MARLO

A lot of things have really ramped up in the last week about flying cars. So, a little bit later on the show we’re really looking–

STEVE 

So we are really that close to the Jetsons?

MARLO 

We’re getting there. It’s actually amazing what’s going on right now. 

STEVE 

Actually, it was funny, during the break. Again, during the break, you were showing me some pictures of NASA. I’m like, wow, that’s really cool. There’s the moon and what’s the celestial body over there? I’m like, and I’m trying to – it’s not round. It’s like an asteroid. I was just, this tiny little speck off in the distance. I’m like, oh, wait a minute. Scratch the screen. What’d you have for breakfast this morning?

MARLO

A bagel.  

STEVE

Okay. I’m thinking it might have been the bagel 

MARLO 

With a little cream cheese next to it, right? 

STEVE

That would’ve been the milky way

MARLO 

Yes, we are now around the moon. Orion is there. This is, I love this. Last night they were interviewing people from NASA. One of the NASA directors said the team is giddy about how well Artemis One is performing. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the word giddy ever come out of anybody from NASA before. 

STEVE

It’s like watching an episode of the Big Bang Theory except grown-up. 

MARLO 

They said the imagery coming back from the dark side of the moon is stunning.

STEVE So were there Decepticons? 

MARLO

No Decepticons 

STEVE

Chinese?

MARLO

No Chinese. 

STEVE

Yet. 

MARLO 

Yet. So the closest they’ve been, maybe they’ve been 80 miles away from the lunar surface. So you never know.  So the next time it goes up, it will actually have astronauts, but they will also not land on the moon. And then later this decade we’ll be putting people back on the moon to start building a moon base. 

STEVE 

They were doing a story on what they were gonna deploy from the next moonshot.. And they started talking about base, how some of that technology was based off of some old technology because the old technology had worked so well. And I forget the name of the rover, but they brought up a rover that was supposed to do a 60 day mission on Mars and it’s still chugging along. 11 years later. It’s still fully functioning.  

MARLO 

Supposed to have a short lifespan as well.

STEVE 

So when you put up a solar powered anything, it really functions well. 

MARLO 

Yeah. You’re oh, I forget what they call it, the most efficient solar arrays we have on the planet right now probably operate at about 30%. So anyway, we’re getting way off the topic here again but Artemis is working like it should, Orion is now. Orion is actually the spacecraft that’s going around. So anyway things are going well with Artemis, so much so that NASA’s giddy, so let’s just hope it continues. 

STEVE 

Wait, so we’re talking flying cars because according to you, a lot of technology has taking place, which I’m excited about, but I still have that question about batteries. Boeing tried, it didn’t work but you’re getting batteries off the ground, 

MARLO 

But you’re talking about full size, full sized aircraft too, right? Yeah. And there’s actually, there are actually, 

STEVE 

But there’s still a manufacturers that have power to weight ratio-

MARLO 

Yeah. I can’t imagine any type of long-term flight outside of an ultra light, with a wingspan of hundreds and hundreds of feet that would actually be able to – there is actually a plane and ultra light that’s been developed that will fly indefinitely. 

STEVE

I think I saw that. The wings are just huge.They called it the Gossamer, I think. 

MARLO 

The Gossamer was a human powered.vehicle. Back in the, I can’t believe I even remember this- 

STEVE 

You’re scaring me now. 

MARLO

There was a British competition. 

STEVE

Oh yeah, that’s what it was. 

MARLO 

And it was, like, launched in the fifties or the sixties and they put like a million pounds or something on it for a prize.It took until 1988 before somebody even won it. 

STEVE

Did you get the interest that went along? 

MARLO

I’m not sure. But it took 20 or 30 years before because the contest was ongoing until somebody was able to do this course. And it was the gossamer that the gossamer two as a matter of fact. So there’s, at the Smithsonian now, there’s the Kittyhawk, there is the Apollo and there’s the gossamer. Believe it or not, those are the three aircraft that they show off. 

STEVE

Speaking of Kittyhawk, did you know the Wright brothers only flew together once? 

MARLO

Yes. , 

STEVE

That’s because their father forbid them in case there was an accident.

MARLO

No, I did not know that. 

STEVE

Yeah. Interesting. They did that for their father, but they only flew together once. 

MARLO 

This is such a great show. I learned all these things. 

STEVE 

We just know way too much stupid crap. 

MARLO 

We do, too.  We’ll be the best trivia partners. I’m telling you right now. . 

MARLO

Alright so before we get into flying cars you brought up something that I had learned over the week here since we last talked. So electric cars. Now I’m not for or against them, I just think they’re another form of transportation. 

STEVE 

It’s an option.

MARLO 

It’s an option.

STEVE 

I don’t think it’s the ultimate option. It’s a stepping stone. I think electric vehicles are a stepping stone right now 

MARLO

…to wherever we’re going —

STEVE

I wish we would’ve gone further down the road of hybrid because of that. Something beneficial. 

MARLO

I find that interesting that you’ve said that.

STEVE 

Toyota is about the only company that really is like, “nope, we’re still doing the hybrids.” 

MARLO 

The engine in your car is basically a generator producing enough electricity for your car to run. 

STEVE 

That’s why railroads and look at all the weight that they transport.. 

MARLO 

That’s why they’re electro motives. So there was a, of course, a study but somebody has investigated. Do you know who John Stale is?

STEVE 

Yeah. And he did this investigative report on Nightline way back in the day that he was on. 

MARLO 

He does his own thing now. I think because of the back politics of the world nowadays, he doesn’t get a lot of airtime anymore. Cause I think he is a little more right-Leaning than most people like but with that said I always have liked John because I thought he was always 

He’s a good journalist and. If you didn’t know his political leaning, you wouldn’t know. He to me, he’s like the modern day Walter Cronkite.

STEVE 

You didn’t know, did the homework, gets the fact 

MARLO

That’s correct. 

STEVE

He and didn’t care about what side it hurt. 

MARLO 

Yeah. It wasn’t about a political agenda, but, so anyway did this investigative thing on electric cars and he, through his whatever, came up with a, that the first of all, the, you have to get to 60,000 miles on an electric vehicle before you even start to get close to the carbon footprint that a traditional gas powered vehicle gets to, and you actually start to see that a little bit of savings at a hundred thousand miles. So when your vehicle gets to a hundred thousand miles from that point forward, you will probably be about 20 to 30% less carbon footprint than what a traditional gas vehicle would be.

STEVE 

Two questions for that. 

MARLO 

All right. 

STEVE 

One, how many charges was that to get to a hundred thousand miles and which set of batteries are you currently on? 

MARLO 

So they didn’t get into that so much. They were just generalizing all of this right. What’s interesting, so 500 tons of material has to be moved to mine enough and I, and they’ll line up, I’ll have ’em line up on, on who’s on this side, who’s on that side. And their goal is to try to convince others. And what happens a lot of times is that when I’m in rural settings, like in Tioga, I just do this in Tioga recently.

MARLO 

And the car side usually wins out, but in urban settings, they all come back and say I can order a car anytime I want to. With Lyft oran Uber. So I’m taking the smartphone side. 

STEVE 

In ten years from now when things trickle down into rural North Dakota, then probably, what’s that answer?

MARLO 

Yeah, it probably will be the smartphone would be my guess, but yeah. 

STEVE

But can that autonomous vehicle. Avoid me getting stuck in a ditch in my four-wheel drive. 

MARLO 

Probably not. And the fun that it takes to get out of it.

STEVE

We were talking a little bit about politics and I’d mentioned the shortage of diesel fuel, because according to national stores we’re down to 21, 22 days of supply left. 

MARLO

Yeah. 

STEVE

Because of what’s been going on with the strategic reserve and all kinds of stuff, and it’s a little daunting because the world stops for most people when there’s no diesel, because that’s how we ship.

MARLO

Yep. 

STEVE

That’s our connectivity to the supply chain, and we know what happened with the supply chain earlier this year. So, a lot of focus has been taken off of other places. But, if you go back a month and a half, two months ago leading into this political cycle, there was a lot of discussion on climate change and that was a push and now it’s fallen by the wayside because they weren’t getting traction politically with the climate change narrative. So we’ll come back to that after the election, I’m assuming. But, things come and go as it meets political and I say this all the time. It frightens me when things get politicized that are agendas and when you politicize an agenda, then bad things happen. I’m not a fan of that, but you have some legitimate climate change tech. 

MARLO

Yeah – and I wouldn’t – this article that I’m bringing you or quoting you from here is gonna be the articles based around climate change but it really is more about producing more energy, more electricity, and that is actually the takeaway for me here because I don’t think anybody can argue the fact that we’re using more and more electricity.

STEVE

Absolutely. 

MARLO

The only reason that we haven’t gone up in the last seven or eight years is the conversion of regular lighting to LED that has actually leveled the playing field for seven to eight years. But if you look at the rate of consumption of electricity, moving up to 2013, 2014, the amount of energy that LED saves is just enormous. We’re plugging more things in. We all have more devices that we’re using.  

STEVE

Just look at a smart house. The connectivity in every bit of connectivity is using electricity.

MARLO

That’s correct. So, regardless of how you feel about electric vehicles, and even if they’re gonna get off where they’re at right now and really make a significant impact in the world – we’re gonna use more electricity. So, this is interesting to me. Ocean current power. The amount of potential energy in Ocean’s currents is five terawatts. So that’s about five times the energy generation capacity for the whole U.S. So if they can tap into Ocean Currents, then we can basically solve the energy crisis which is interesting.

STEVE

I read – and this was 20 years ago, maybe – an article on producing electricity from tides. The take of the article though, where what they were going after is how to, because you have to be careful and if you screw up tides, bad things can happen. So, you don’t wanna screw with Mother Nature too much. But the take on the article was an opportunity to generate energy from, say, a hurricane. We just take a look at what had happened with Ian down in Florida. Now if you’re able to stop that tide, that flow, whether it’s a net system. And that’s where they were going, because granted, this was 20 years ago at least. They were looking at, we can drop these nets in, it’ll stop the currents and we can change the course of some of these storms. But, then it got taken into the electrical production side of that and now I think they were taking the electricity running it back onto the storm and dissipating a storm that way was the theory on the paper but it was fascinating. Cause my takeaway on it was we can generate a lot of electricity though. 

MARLO

Oh my goodness. 

STEVE

Now the question is, it’s like where do you run those transmission modes? How do you get it from point A to where it needs to be consumed? 

MARLO

Of course, there’s always this talk about, yeah. Imagine there are houses that run totally on wireless power. Now, I’m not sure about the health risks of that, but that’s the thing—

STEVE

You’re living in a microwave. 

MARLO

Yeah. That’s crazy. There was a time when there was a talk of doing a solar array in outer space and they tethered that to the Earth so they would be up high enough, so that they could have 24 7 sunlight on this solar ray, and there was this long ass cable—

STEVE

Right now, I don’t see there a solution being out there that is currently in practice, whether it’s wind or solar. It can’t meet the needs of everything that we need if you’re looking at something tidal, but the thing I always worry about, okay, what are the unintended consequences of anything you do now if you screw up, currents and tidal patterns and things like that. 

MARLO

And if you’re generating energy from them, you’re just moving it from one thing—

STEVE

Conservation of energy. We have a finite amount of matter on this planet. It just goes from one form to another. If you take energy away from something, because like I said, that paper I was reading was about mitigating hurricanes, but it was the energy side of stuff Great example, if you screw up ocean currents. So think of it in terms of trade winds. I was in Hawaii for some conferences, 2014. It was the fall that it was back to back hurricanes that almost hit Hawaii. There were no trade winds. Now, there’s always a breeze in Hawaii but there were no tradewinds. They were disrupted because of the three hurricanes, which didn’t hit the Hawaiian Islands, but it screwed up the Tradewinds. It screwed up the weather in Hawaii for a month. 

So you have to be careful of what you do that might change something. Does it change rainfall? Does it change? Things like that because you’re disrupting weather patterns. I’m a little leery of some of the carbon sequestration stuff. Plants need carbon. So, are you changing the climate with carbon sequestration? Because carbon’s not supposed to be sequestered like that. Now you’re looking at, because of what we’re doing over in Europe right now, people are looking at cutting down forests because they can’t pay the natural gas bill to heat their house. That’s the biggest carbon sink we have. So I’m worried about things like that. Yeah. Now the tidal to me is very interesting because it’s—

MARLO

I think it is too. and I think that if done properly, it’s just another augmentation to what we already have going on, right? You don’t want to take all the energy of the ocean, but you could potentially tap a few things here and there that would increase our total energy production without harming things too much, I’m guessing. If you put some type of turbine in an area that has significant title forces going on, and it can spin both ways. I think that would be significant. 

MARLO

Anyway, so getting back to the space stuff. 

STEVE

You could put up a solar ray in space and collect unfiltered solar energy.

MARLO

And then it’s always high noon in space, right? This idea was brought forward by Isaac Asomov, the science fiction writer, which I know you know every movie, right? 

STEVE

Yep. Every movie.

MARLO

 I forget the name of the book but he talked in this science fiction novel – about which I’m assuming was made into a movie at one time – about collecting energy from space and beaming it to earth. So this book was written in 1941. The book is named Reason by the way, in which a space station transmits energy collected from the sun to various planets using microwave beams. So between 1978 and 1986, the Congress authorized the Department of Energy and NASA to jointly investigate the concept. 

Basically, cable that would be tethered to this huge solar array in space and that’s how they would get the electricity to earth. Now, moving forward, in 1999, NASA’s Space Solar Program, Exploratory Research and Technology program, where SERT was initiated, they are now looking at this very seriously. And they actually anticipate that space-powered energy being beamed back to the earth will have a significant impact in the 21st century. As far as our energy consumption goes up. They’re using a laser-guided system. 

STEVE

Now think of it this way. It’s like how many science fiction movies have had a death ray? 

MARLO

So that’s interesting with this, right? If that laser guided system is off by even the 10th of a degree, Chicago disappears. But it is, it’s interesting to see that this could potentially be a pretty big deal. 

STEVE

Is that work or, I’m on social media–

MARLO

Right. 

STEVE

I use LinkedIn a lot for my day job. 

MARLO

Yeah, I do too. 

STEVE

Is that considered social media or is that a quote-unquote “productivity” and everything? But that’s everything. It’s all encompassing. The lawsuits, the mental health, the lost productivity, all of that goes into that. But it brings up a great point. the gray area. For me, I use LinkedIn a lot for my day job. And do you consider LinkedIn social media?

MARLO 

Of course. 

STEVE 

Okay. So it’s also a tool that’s replaced email in a lot of space. 

MARLO

But you could make the same argument for—

STEVE

So, is email social media?

MARLO

I don’t think it’s in the same realm, so I’d say no. Because that’s more of a direct messaging type of scenario—

STEVE

But there’s an evolution—

MARLO

There is. 

STEVE

—that has taken place. 

MARLO

Yeah. Because like you—

STEVE

But for me to go to work in the morning and sit there, and I never viewed that as productive. Sitting there, going over emails for an hour. And so you talk about the productivity side for me, that wasn’t productive. 

MARLO

It drives me nuts, too. In fact, I have a person that’s almost full time handling my personal email. Isn’t that insane? 

STEVE

That’s okay in the business place. But, okay, if I’m on a social media platform and we’ll say LinkedIn, which is a business one that I use a lot. I’ve skipped over emails because my good lord, I can’t read all this . 

MARLO
I think a lot of people have. You have email right? But if they really wanna get a hold of you-– 

STEVE

If you wanna get a hold of me. I tell everybody—

STEVE & MARLO

Text me. 

MARLO

Or, but a lot of people, I mean our younger people aren’t using text like they used to either. So they use their social media platform. What I’ve noticed—

STEVE

Messenger, Snapchat. 

MARLO

All of it. Instagram, TikTok. TikTok now has—

STEVE

It’s Russian. I try not to go there.

MARLO

It’s like you and I have to have, we have to be gurus of all the things. Because I have people that talk to me strictly through Facebook. I have somebody that I’ve been corresponding with about sponsoring a curling team. But it’s interesting. He’s contacting me through, Twitter my old cohort on the Tech Ranch. he’s a Facebook guy too but we always talk through Facebook, so we were messaging each other back and forth and I have some people that text me or message me through Twitter and now it seems like TikTok, I’m getting more and more messages through TikTok. It drives me crazy.

LinkedIn is by far the most popular for business stuff though. I always have a half a dozen or a dozen messages waiting for me on LinkedIn. And I like that. I always tell people, if you really want to get a hold of me, either you Slack (and that’s my internal stuff that we use) or if you message me on LinkedIn, I’ll probably get back to you because I’ll notice it. I won’t notice email because email, I get thousands of them a day. It’s just lost. 

STEVE

You can make a phone call on it. 

MARLO

Do you know how often your phone is used to actually make a phone call? 

STEVE

Not very. 

MARLO

It’s 8%.

STEVE

Is that it? 

MARLO

Isn’t that something? Texting is almost 20. 

STEVE

Yeah. 

MARLO

So texting has replaced the actual using the phone as a phone. There’ll be a day that maybe we don’t even call it a phone. Maybe it will just be the smart device that you carry along. 

STEVE

At that point just carry a tablet, right? 

MARLO

Yeah. 

STEVE

Because that was the other thing I’ve wondered is like, why don’t tablets make phone calls? Oh, there’s an app for that. . 

MARLO

Remember the day when we would just pick up the phone and call people?

STEVE

And that’s the thing with smart devices, they’re, we talk about AI occasionally, but your smart device is an AI device.

STEVE

One of the things we were talking about – Elon Musk. Some breaking news on Elon so which time is this, that he’s buying Twitter again? On again, off again. On and off again. On again. Off again, on again. Lawsuit. So is he buying it because of the potential lawsuit, or does he really want it or—? 

MARLO

I would have to think that, I don’t know. I just don’t think that the lawsuit had a lot to do with his decision, but people are saying that it is. How do you force somebody to buy your business? Just because they said you’re gonna buy it when you’re the one that said you have this many followers and you don’t, it’s come out that Twitter has a significant amount of bots running. 

Some people estimate 40% of all the accounts are fraudulent accounts. Meaning that there are bots, people and this is rampant. It’s rampant on Facebook right now too. The cloning of accounts is out of control. It’s really rampant right now so you have to be careful with that. But anyway, getting back to Twitter. This is what Elon was saying is that your company isn’t worth this much because you don’t really have that many followers. Maybe Elon just decided that it was worthwhile even at the 44 billion to get it. I don’t know. Did you see the footage though of the SpaceX? The Falcon Nine in front of the full Moon the other day? Oh my goodness. 

STEVE

Was that cool? 

MARLO

It was so cool. And it wasn’t just a photo. There’s actually video and you can see the flame. In the video, you can see the flames coming out of the back of the rocket as it’s going in front of the full moon. This is – you gotta be kidding.  So I highly recommend just go YouTube it or Google it or whatever.

STEVE

We had a question about whether or not you can trust internet searches. Because you got me thinking, okay, in this day and age, plagiarism aside for college kids and high school kids doing their homework, and nowadays we’ve gotten to the point where Google it. But now I’m thinking of sites like Wikipedia that are open for interpretation, people can add to them. Do you trust some of those sources? So how do you do a search or research and know that you’re getting reputable information in today’s day and age? 

MARLO

Yeah. I think, first thing is that – just don’t blindly trust the first website that you go take a look at. I think you need to verify that information by at least one more. And I would say even three sources – the first one is amazon.com, then you have Wikipedia, then you have Merriam Webster. Okay, so this one’s actually not so bad, right? 

STEVE

I’d go to Merriam Webster. Cause I wanna know where it came from. I know that Amazon is a sales site. Wikipedia I don’t always trust, right? And it might be an ancillary resource, right? But okay I’m gonna go to the Merriiam Webster because that’s where the definition is. So rule of thumb are you, should you look for things that don’t have a connection to sales? 

MARLO

Yes. If you’re doing research, I would certainly do that. Now, if you’re doing research to buy something, and then of course, same thing holds true here. Go and check out two, three sources if you know exactly what you’re looking for, if I’m gonna buy this particular type of pen that I’m holding in my hand, for example, I would certainly research this pen. Go to find two or three sources that sell it.

STEVE

But the point is, you have to do diligence whether it’s having to click on a friend request on social media, or you’re doing some research or I don’t think enough is made about high school, middle school kids that are doing homework and some of the things that they may be exposed to as they’re doing some of this research. Parents really need to be diligent. 

MARLO

Yeah, they should. And depending on how old the kids are, like your routers, you can put parental filters on now, which I think is important. You and I could probably come up with a bunch of things that could be researched. Other types of industries like the adult industry might have zeroed in on as well. And those are keywords to take people to pornography or what have you  and it could be all kinds of other stuff. It could be racial intentions. There’s all kinds of stuff that can come up that your kids will inadvertently find so—

STEVE

Is it the fact that the kids are inadvertently finding them or that they’re finding the kids? Because with a lot of these and I come back to political agendas, agendas in general that get politicized. You wind up having so critical race theory and gender issues and things that some of those sites are actively going out and seeking your children.

MARLO

No doubt about that. 

STEVE

Yes. Because they want that influence on your kids. As a parent, Are there programs, are there filters? What do you do as a parent other than just sit there and look over your kid’s shoulder as they’re on the internet the whole time? 

MARLO

And you can even go deeper to this, right? What’s Google’s agenda? What’s Microsoft’s agenda? So the search engine results that you’re getting, what’s the algorithm doing? You have other search engines to choose from as well. You have Bing from Microsoft, you have DuckDuckGo. There you go. I haven’t used it a lot recently.

STEVE

So that brings up the question then, as a parent, how do you pick a good search engine? Because you’re helping your child, which nowadays you need to have a computer for success in education.

MARLO

Yep. 

STEVE

So you’re helping a child. So, you set up that laptop or that desktop at home for your child to use. How as a parent do you make an informed decision to go “okay, we’re gonna use Bing or we’re gonna use this” because that little step makes a big difference.

MARLO 

Makes a big difference. 

STEVE

So, how do you walk through that process as a parent?

MARLO

I would just research them as well. Just like you would research, Google it or Bing it or whatever. We say Google it because Google is dominant. It’s like the Phillip Screwdriver. It’s the same thing, right? 

STEVE

You go back to the marketing strategies from the fifties and sixties and stuff, and people call things like down south, it’s I’ll have a Coke but clear or colored. 

MARLO

Yeah. That’s just it wasn’t that long ago with Yahoo. In recent history, Yahoo was the dominant search engine for a few years. AOL was huge right away, Google just has been around a little longer now and not that the other ones have disappeared. They just – Google’s been dominant, but yeah.

STEVE

You could think Google’s acquired them, is what happens. A lot of cases they’ll gobble up smaller entities. 

MARLO

Yep. So yeah, I would just research and see that it falls into what you want your kids to be exposed to. There’s all kinds of ways to do that, but just be aware. That’s the simple thing to follow, I think.

STEVE

And some of the things I wanted to talk about, I was reading through this and Marlo, you mentioned during the break a little bit we’re talking about Apple chargers and that kind of dovetails into one of the articles. So let’s talk about the chargers first. So, the European Union has come out with a dictate. It concerns Apple and there’s a little dark side to this that you brought up, and we’ll get into that. But, on the surface this should make a lot of Apple users happy. One of the big headaches with Apple, my wife’s an Apple user, I’m not, but every time she gets a new phone, she’s gotta get a new charging cord. Or because they change it with every phone. 

MARLO

And you could maybe say the same with Android too. Maybe not as often. USB-C‘s been around for a couple years now. 

STEVE

Yeah, once I switch to C, I’m sticking with C. That’s it.

MARLO

You can stream video through it. So, you can hook it up to your television. It’s like an HDMI in that regard. It’s very universal. So, the European Union has stated that by 2024, all smartphones and all tablets have to use USB-C. There is no other exception.

STEVE

And we’ve heard rumblings of that. Talking from the United States that it was coming. So, now that the European Union’s done it, I’m guessing it’s gonna come a little quicker in the United States.

MARLO

It’ll be interesting to see if this comes about and it could be the one caveat that we were just talking about where, 

STEVE

Cause that’s the one of my box checkoffs when I’m looking for a new device is, does it have C? 

MARLO

Right. But a lot of people don’t think about it until you bring it home and you’re like, “oh my goodness” –  it’s got another different one. The challenge that I have with this, now, I like this because I’m the same way as everybody else. I hate carrying all the different chargers. The downside to this, of course, is innovation. And the European Union is dictating that you use USB-C and they’re saying in 2024 for tablets and for phones and 2026 for laptops. So, they’re projecting four years into the future. Now, I don’t know of any USB cord that has lasted four years because there’s usually the next iteration of things. So, one would have to think that they’re gonna continue to get better. So, does this stifle innovation because all of a sudden? Now, the European Union is not gonna be using anything but USB-C for the foreseeable future.

STEVE

What happens when you take away that innovation piece and take it out of the private sector? Because, you’re subsidizing it or you’re mandating it. And that takes away the private sector’s ability… inspiration to innovate. You’ve taken that out.

MARLO

Yep. So I don’t know. On one side, I’m 50-50 on this, because I’m gonna love if the United States were to do this too. “Hey, Marlo, my phone is dead. Can I borrow your cord?” Sometimes I don’t have the right cord with me. Well, I usually do cuz I have a whole gadget bag I carry with me. 

MARLO

I have it right here. Are you ready? We didn’t go down our usual rabbit hole. We were talking about production of products coming back to the United States chips and such and chips and such. Of course the chip shortage really brought this to light. I just saw a video of, I think Ford had rented out one of the race tracks to store their vehicles because they’re waiting for chips. It’s $2 billion worth of pickup trucks sitting there waiting to be delivered.

STEVE

GM had actually started sending out vehicles without all the chips. I ran into a guy back in August that had a brand new Yukon and it didn’t have the air conditioned seats, it didn’t have this.

MARLO

So they’re shipping them out-

STEVE

They’re like “Take it.” We’re gonna deduct that off the cost of the vehicle and then when that chip is available, you’ll get a recall notice and come in and we’ll put it in for free.

MARLO

So, Intel is building a $20 billion computer chip facility in Ohio and this thing is huge. Now, I’m just looking it up for the second time here because I know that you and I talked about this a while back. It’s a thousand-acre site. Just east of Columbus, expected to create a thousand company jobs and 7,000 construction jobs. Support tens of thousands of additional jobs for suppliers and partners. This is going to significantly impact Ohio and Columbus but $20 billion going into this chip manufacturing facility coming to the United States by Intel. 

STEVE 

Well, if you think about it, what do you need to make chips? When I first heard of that, it was like, why would you put chips in the rust belt? But then think of where the chips are going. So the auto industry, of course, huge in Ohio and Michigan’s right there. Indiana. Illinois, They’re there. So that piece of it. But you need energy, a lot of it to make chips. And you’ve got the Marcellus Shale play right there and then you need water and you’ve got Lake Erie right there. It makes a lot of sense that to locate in that area. It’s quite the deal. 

MARLO

They announced this in January of this year, coming online at the end of 2025. So we’re gonna build this thing in two and a half years. 

STEVE

So my question though, is,  because of what’s going on in China. We just discussed that a little bit at where we are at with the elements that it takes to make a chip. So all the rare earth elements that go into a–

MARLO

Yeah, but chip computer chips aren’t really, it’s all the other stuff around them. Silicon’s the biggest deal–

STEVE

It is mostly silica, but it’s about getting those resources right because that’s a massive plant.  

PAT

There’s no shortage of rare earth elements in the United States. 

MARLO 

North Dakota itself has a significant positive, Montana and South Dakota, already have mines in existence and  I just think it’s a matter of time before you start seeing it. 

PAT

Well, a lot of the high end ships are made in Taiwan, right?  And that’s a vulnerable part of the world. 

MARLO 

Intel is the number two semiconductor manufacturer, globally. 73.1 billion in revenue last year, behind South Korea’s world leaders. Samsung Electronics was 76 billion. So, I would imagine after this manufacturer or this facility goes into place that’ll probably bump Intel to be the number one semiconductor manufacturer in the world.

PAT 

But at the same time, AI is creating a world where a lot of workers might be superfluous. So, how is that all gonna play out over the long run? And in as AI, when you enable the fellow who ran Google, wrote a book with Kissinger about AI, he sees AI as everyone’s personal assistant really.

MARLO 

I see it that way too, actually. 

DAVE 

Yeah. He wrote The Age of AI In Our Human Future, Eric Schmidt. But, who’s gonna have access to that?  How democratized is it going to be that everyone has AI and can do their jobs? Or is this really for an elite class or a professional class and everybody gets left behind? As well as the biotechnology, people will be able to increase intelligence and all sorts of things.

MARLO 

Elon Musk – Tesla – over the last couple days… did you see the robot? So the robot is, this year, was on its own power. Last year, they had somebody dressed up in the robot. This year, it actually walked out on the stage by itself and waved at the crowd and it’s humanoid, looks very much like iRobot. I just could not believe when I looked at that robot, I was just thinking that right away.

STEVE 

Which is better than Terminator.

MARLO 

Better than Terminator. Yeah. But to your point, I do believe everybody’s gonna have their own. You’re gonna have this artificial intelligence that’s your assistant.

DAVE 

We already do, with a smartphone. 

MARLO

 We do. but it’s gonna get better and better where this person’s gonna make your doctor’s appointments for you. Then, I wonder if it’s gonna be something like Lyft and Uber where you can get gig-type jobs, right? So, your robot then will go to work for you, right?

And be able to get these jobs. And then if you’re a person with means, you have the ability to have better robots – and this is where I think the divide will come in, where you know you’re gonna have people who are still working manually, you and I are out there flipping burgers or whatever it is. But, the person with means has their robot going to flip burgers for them instead.