Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard XX
[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.
[1] I'm Dan Rather.
[2] We have a spunky, spunky episode today.
[3] Milakunis and Ashton Kutcher are here to talk about the least probable topic, cryptocurrency, and NFTs.
[4] Now, we just want to acknowledge right out of the gates, Monica, myself, Ash and Mila.
[5] None of us are economists.
[6] We're not financial advisors.
[7] We're for lay people.
[8] attempting to understand this whole world.
[9] And we thought it might be of interest, y 'all.
[10] So please enjoy Milakunis and Ashton Coutcher.
[11] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.
[12] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
[13] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.
[14] Max, thank you for doing this.
[15] This would have been so much more exciting for you if Ithadik was able to do it with me. I promise you, you would have had way more fun than being stuck with the two of us.
[16] Instead, you get this schmuck.
[17] Which is so not exciting for you.
[18] She's laying the bar so low.
[19] Also, what bullshit.
[20] I know.
[21] To talk to someone who invented a blockchain technology versus two of Hollywood's most charming, beautiful human beings.
[22] What a ridiculous proposition.
[23] I'd rather talk to the other guy.
[24] I've got to be honest.
[25] Than me?
[26] No, the other guy, meaning than me, than me, Dad.
[27] No, she would rather talk to the other guy than me is what she really means.
[28] God, Mila, your skin.
[29] Well done.
[30] I've had horrible skin my whole life.
[31] My entire life.
[32] Yeah.
[33] I don't want to demean your experience, but I just have never noticed that.
[34] So this is neat for me. I appreciate it.
[35] I did like acutane, multiple rounds of acutane.
[36] Oh, no, no, no. like really bad skin.
[37] Wow.
[38] And then...
[39] What are you using as of late?
[40] I know.
[41] I should go look at all up.
[42] There's like a multitude of things.
[43] But really what happened was I had kids and my hormones balanced in the right direction.
[44] Wow.
[45] And so everything changed.
[46] Like during my pregnancy, my hormones were all over the place and I was a hot mess.
[47] And then they equalized to a place of I just don't break out as much.
[48] I still break out a lot.
[49] That's what I got to do.
[50] You got to get yourself pregnant.
[51] Oh, no. I laser the shit out of my face.
[52] face.
[53] Okay.
[54] I've now invested in really expensive esthetician.
[55] Like, I go in, I'm like, just give me chemicals and laser.
[56] Like, I'm so into chemicals.
[57] No. If it doesn't burn, it's not doing anything.
[58] I agree.
[59] I'm convinced all they're lasering off is all the crazy products that you put on your face.
[60] And basically they're taking all those crazy products, lasering them off, and then you're just back to you.
[61] Every time I come home from a. treatment.
[62] He's always like, what did you do to your face?
[63] You just waited perfectly into a pre -existing argument between Monica and I. We've been fighting for a month now.
[64] I told her to stop washing her body with soap.
[65] I said, tits, slits and pigs.
[66] That's what arm cherry came up with that, not me. And then I added souls and holes.
[67] Souls and holes.
[68] But you do not, you should not be getting rid of all the natural oil on your skin with a bar of soap every day.
[69] It's insane.
[70] Do you guys wash your whole body?
[71] Water.
[72] Water.
[73] I don't wash my body with soap every day.
[74] Okay, good.
[75] That's good.
[76] Okay.
[77] But I wash pits and tits and holes and soles.
[78] I wash the slits.
[79] I wash my slits and my tits.
[80] I wash my armpits and my crotch daily and nothing else ever.
[81] You don't?
[82] Exactly.
[83] And look at his, let's talk about his skin.
[84] I got a bar.
[85] I'll leave her 2000.
[86] There we go.
[87] It just delivers every time.
[88] Textbook soap.
[89] Nothing else.
[90] Nothing else.
[91] That's true.
[92] I can't believe I'm in the, my minority here of washing my whole body in the shower.
[93] I can't like, who taught you to not wash?
[94] I didn't have hot water growing up as a child, so I didn't shower very much anyway.
[95] But when I had children, I also didn't wash them every day.
[96] Like I wasn't the parent that bathed my newborns ever.
[97] We only did because it was part of the nighttime routine.
[98] We could care less about their cleanliness.
[99] We just put them in there as like Pavlovian.
[100] But then soon as we didn't need help, we haven't washed them since.
[101] It's been like six years.
[102] That's how we feel about our children.
[103] We're like, boof, something smells.
[104] Here's the thing.
[105] Now, here's the thing.
[106] If you can see the dirt on them, clean them.
[107] Otherwise, there's no point.
[108] I mean, I will say when I work out, I have a tendency to throw some water on my face after a workout just to get all the salts and the whatever.
[109] I wash twice a day.
[110] Yeah, you got to wash your face.
[111] I don't know, guys.
[112] I don't know if you need to wash your face.
[113] Dax, that's too much.
[114] That's too much.
[115] You wash your face.
[116] She won't just do an experiment.
[117] All I'm asking for is like a 30 -day trial where we don't fuck with soap on the face or the rest of the body.
[118] Pits and tits, and it's fine.
[119] And just see what the hydration level is of the skin, the moisture level.
[120] Let's just see what happens when everything levels and neutralizes.
[121] It's a totally, totally fair experiment.
[122] What is your hypothesis, Dax that will happen?
[123] She'll have no dry skin, no dry skin, which we call.
[124] Ashy skin.
[125] No ashyness on her legs or arms.
[126] When she scratches, you won't see any mark, which is the thing that she doesn't like.
[127] It's just because I have dark skin and you can just see the scratches.
[128] Well, hold on.
[129] When your legs are super moisturized, which we've witnessed, they don't do that.
[130] All right.
[131] Okay.
[132] So it's a very small request.
[133] It's a 30 -day trial.
[134] What do I do for oily skin?
[135] I have very oily skin and I break out.
[136] But you have oily skin because you're washing your face so much and your body's trying to push all this oil out to re -moisturize what you're stripping off every twice a day.
[137] I agree with tax on this one.
[138] Oh, twice a day.
[139] Twice a day with -old.
[140] different types of cleansers.
[141] Me too.
[142] Yes, and I feel bad for you guys.
[143] It's not your fault.
[144] You got sucked into this terrible treadmill of pressure to this and that.
[145] You're all victims.
[146] I'm just saying it's time to just let the skin be itself for 30 and see where we're at.
[147] Your skin has never looked better than what it looked during COVID when you weren't putting makeup on every day.
[148] I'm just going to be honest about it.
[149] You woke up a natural beauty every day.
[150] That's thanks, babe.
[151] Radiant, right?
[152] Radiant.
[153] Whatever.
[154] Do you talk about this with cabals?
[155] Does she not wash her face?
[156] No, she does.
[157] She washes her face, but she doesn't wash her body.
[158] Not only does she wash her face, she's got an instrument, like a DeWalt instrument, that she moves all over her face.
[159] It's a clarisonic.
[160] The scrubber.
[161] The clarionics scrubbed.
[162] Literally sanding her fucking epidermis nightly.
[163] It's a botched orbital sander.
[164] Whatever, guys.
[165] I know.
[166] They don't get it.
[167] Well, this may shock people, but we're about to turn from facial.
[168] skincare to cryptocurrency and blockchain.
[169] So the reason you guys are here, it's not to do the relationship that America's dying to have.
[170] They're so upset to find out that this is about cryptocurrency.
[171] We have check -ins.
[172] They're unpredictable, but we have check -ins.
[173] And what I like most about our check -ins is they're always over FaceTime.
[174] So, I don't know, once every four months, either one of you calls me on FaceTime or I call you guys on FaceTime.
[175] And then in these, like, whatever the topic was, whoever knows, it always turns into something interesting.
[176] Somehow it went into blockchain and cryptocurrency and then come to find out you're an armchair expert, Mila, on this technology.
[177] I'm not an armchair expert.
[178] My partner in crime Vitalik was supposed to be the armchair expert.
[179] And now we have a stand in the real expert and you're the armchair expert.
[180] So it's perfect.
[181] I'm the guy as Adam Grant would say, who's standing on stupid mountain who knows enough to be dangerous.
[182] If ever there was a whole so dedicated to the Dunning Krueger effect.
[183] We're going to have four non -economists talk about cryptocurrency.
[184] This is beautiful.
[185] The comment section.
[186] I can just feel it.
[187] I can feel it raging.
[188] Monica, just monitor it well.
[189] I thought what would be appealing about it is ultimately you are talking with lay people all over the place about cryptocurrency.
[190] Everyone's trying to wrap their head around it.
[191] And so I thought, actually, this could be fun because none of us are going to make any claims, really.
[192] It's just like what we've cobbled together, our knowledge of this.
[193] Correct.
[194] And you guys, I'll say, are on slightly a different side of it than I am, but I'm a very open -minded human being.
[195] So I would think best to start with, how on earth does Milakunis get interested in blockchain?
[196] Fair question.
[197] So nine years ago, Ashton started talking about cryptocurrency in our household.
[198] When Bitcoin kind of started, he was like, I'm going to invest in this thing called Bitcoin.
[199] I was like, this is a bad idea.
[200] And I've said this before, and this is the truth.
[201] I was like, I don't get it.
[202] there's no FDIC insurance behind it.
[203] How do I know it's legal?
[204] This is bad.
[205] Don't do this.
[206] And he was like, I love you.
[207] I'm doing it anyways.
[208] And I was like, cool.
[209] Cut two, 10 years later.
[210] And I was like, thank God that you didn't listen to me. I'm so happy we got into crypto.
[211] Okay.
[212] So then in the past year and a half, I kept hearing this thing called NFTs in the household.
[213] And it was like NFTs.
[214] And then he started having a fund that was dedicated to NFTs.
[215] And it was like, all this.
[216] And I was like, what is an NFT?
[217] And he starts explaining it to me. And I was like, so.
[218] So people are buying digital art, sort of speak, or like entertainment, but it's only in digital form?
[219] And I was like, but then can I print it out?
[220] And he was like, well, no, no. I mean, you can, but it doesn't mean anything.
[221] And I was like, so then I don't understand what's the point of having it.
[222] And that was my biggest obstacle to overcome was like, I don't understand if I can't hold it, what does it matter?
[223] And then he kind of kept explaining it to me in really mundane ways that made me go, oh, wait, this is actually really cool.
[224] And then the idea of a decentralized system to me started making sense.
[225] Right.
[226] So before I was so against it that I just refused to let it even make sense that I was like, this is above my head.
[227] I don't care.
[228] And then finally, given the time that we had in quarantine, I allowed myself to actually listen and understand the basic concept of crypto, the world of crypto and the benefit of it and how I do strongly believe in a decentralized system.
[229] I'm not a person who doesn't believe in it.
[230] The centralized system shouldn't exist.
[231] I think both can coexist.
[232] I know there's extremists who are like, this will take down the centralized system.
[233] And that's very possible.
[234] But I do believe that you need to have, too.
[235] It's almost like having checks and balances.
[236] Well, really quickly, this episode gives me great fear because if I know anything about people that are into crypto, it is a religion.
[237] Like, there are people that, let's say I said something negative about one of the cryptocurrencies and then by some miracle, it went down in value.
[238] I do think people will try to murder me. Like, I think they're that passionate about crypto.
[239] But equated to like a, stock.
[240] Like if you were somebody of a high power and you went and decided to shit on call it Target or Walmart and all of a sudden the stocks drop subsequently and you're a person of means or you're an influencer.
[241] You're right.
[242] But this is where I would lean my argument on is that people who invest in Walmart don't tweet all day long about how Walmart stock is the greatest thing in the world.
[243] People who trade cryptocurrency are very into it and they're very outspoken.
[244] I definitely think it represents a lot of things.
[245] One of them, being kind of a movement.
[246] It's kind of a punk rock movement.
[247] It's kind of a rejection of brick and mortar institutionalized hierarchy.
[248] Like it is definitely deeper and more symbolic than just monetary means, right?
[249] Okay.
[250] So here's what I kind of always try to translate it into is it's almost like being in a company pre -IPO.
[251] And this is not like it's a publicly traded, like, yeah, so anybody can buy a stock.
[252] But you're no longer responsible for that company.
[253] You can buy into that company and you cross your fingers.
[254] and you hope that that company does well.
[255] You have no control over that company.
[256] This is having some sort of control over a company before it goes public.
[257] This is having say, this is having investment.
[258] This is having stakes in something that matters.
[259] Skin and the game.
[260] That's the bigger difference.
[261] Yeah.
[262] I would actually...
[263] Come pop in, Bubby.
[264] This is going to be the funniest thing to witness because anytime Kristen and I have like shared knowledge on something, it's just always the most fertile ground for something.
[265] So anyways, continue.
[266] Do you think there's going to be a fight?
[267] No, I just think, watch.
[268] Watching lovers navigate, not correcting one another, but also trying to help one another.
[269] It's just a very unique.
[270] It's a lovely thing to witness.
[271] You are like spot on.
[272] By the way, we got an argument earlier today about definitions of blockchain.
[273] Oh, it was heated too for no reason.
[274] It's not heated.
[275] It just, it was an argument that was so dumb.
[276] There's no point in it.
[277] It was a dumb argument about the definition of a blockchain.
[278] So here what I would say.
[279] I feel like.
[280] In the world of Ethereum, in the world of Bitcoin, in the world of these sort of larger, more ubiquitous tokens where there's a little bit more market stability.
[281] If you came out here and just decided you were going to spend your entire time destroying Bitcoin, somebody's probably going to say, you don't know what you're doing.
[282] You're not that smart.
[283] You don't understand what's going on.
[284] But I don't think you're going to have this same hostility that you would get if you started attacking.
[285] like a dash or like a neo or uh two words i don't even know yet what are those what are dashes and neos they're like proof of steak oh this is what's proof of steak what's proof of conduct this is like super nerd talk but you got to just let's just put it this way so they're earlier in their life cycle so they're a little bit more fragile so market movement when you have fewer people holding a coin it becomes far less stable right because one yeah person within the network can move the market.
[286] And so if you have the influence that you can drive 5 ,000 people to sell their Bitcoin, you're not going to tank Bitcoin today.
[287] If you have influence, you can move 10 ,000 people to sell their Bitcoin.
[288] You're not going to move Bitcoin today.
[289] If you have influence where you're moving a million people to sell Bitcoin, you create a sell spree.
[290] And what happens is in these early chains that are like, somebody's trying to establish a new token.
[291] If you start doxing that token and you create a sell, a lot of the people that are in that token are speculators.
[292] It's like basically they've sold the family farm and moved to San Francisco because there's this new precious metal that somebody told them is going to be valuable.
[293] And suddenly you went, copper is not worth anything.
[294] And now all of a sudden the market's gone for copper.
[295] And a lot of people go, and that probably financially shouldn't be investing in cryptocurrency and they invest in these early tokens or these dogey coin or like whatever it might be because they hear that Elon Musk is hot on it and then all of a sudden Elon Musk turns on it and it tanks and you go, yeah, because it was a fragile non -utility token anyway.
[296] I've had this in terms I more understand.
[297] I've had this in terms of like owning an IPO, then it goes public and you realize there's very few people.
[298] holding this stock so you're looking at like what's it selling for well fucking sometimes not a single share sells for three weeks because there's so few people have it they don't want to sell it and then yeah it has a dramatic impact on the price when one person sells it and then over time yeah it gets more stable so that part I get because of that do the cryptocurrencies compete like would Bitcoin try to take down one of these new ones to make them whatever the more dominant.
[299] I don't know what I'm saying.
[300] To say that they don't is probably not true.
[301] People are going to say no, but yeah, of course they do.
[302] I mean, everybody kind of wants what they're invested in to do well.
[303] But a lot of people have a little bit of Bitcoin and a little bit of ether and a little bit of probably not dogy coin, but like you diversify.
[304] Yeah, there's, I mean, there's some things that are like more anonymous that you can utilize that have these thing called tumblers that cause people to completely obfuscate your identity and they're like a couple of those that are like the more popular ones they compete with each other.
[305] I would say Ethereum is very different than Bitcoin.
[306] They're both sort of proof of work similar sort of conceptually although Ethereum's probably moving to proof of stake which by the way I'll stop this nonsense talk.
[307] Fundamentally like Ethereum can do these things called smart contracts whereas Bitcoin is really just a store of value.
[308] And so they don't really compete.
[309] There's a certain market share, right?
[310] And each one of these coins, tokens are trying to get more market share.
[311] And they're competing with each other, right?
[312] Like in so much as if X number of people are buying crypto today, you want more people transacting your crypto because transaction velocity equals value.
[313] And unless the crypto market grows, which is more people are buying cryptocurrency, then there's only so much room to play.
[314] And it's so new, too, right?
[315] Like, everyone's waiting to see which one could potentially be, like, adopted globally and be the hegemonic currency.
[316] Like, the only crypto that is the U .S. dollar.
[317] Yeah, maybe.
[318] Isn't it El Salvador?
[319] Yeah, El Salvador just made Bitcoin.
[320] It's national currency?
[321] Yeah.
[322] That is so wild because built into the Bitcoin is value growth.
[323] Wouldn't that just translate into inflation?
[324] No, because you can fractionalize a Bitcoin.
[325] Well, maybe it's reverse inflation.
[326] If the whole country's dealing in it and then it goes up by 100%, then I suppose their buying power just went up by 100%.
[327] So I guess maybe it's the opposite.
[328] But here's the thing.
[329] And because it can be traded globally, you're not just trading into your own market, right?
[330] So what could potentially happen is that if the assumption holds true that Bitcoin goes from, I don't know what's at today, like 34 or 36 or something like this, if it goes from 36 ,000 to 100 ,000 and people in El Salvador are the ones that are holding it and trading it and exchanging it, those people are going to be a lot more wealthy relative to the global norm.
[331] And El Salvador isn't a giant country.
[332] Like, you can go right next door to the next country, and suddenly you're the wealthiest person living there.
[333] Okay, so let's do some fundamentals.
[334] So really quick, you said NFT.
[335] Here's my understanding of NFT.
[336] This is the example that kind of got me to understand it conceptually, which was originally someone approached the NBA and they licensed or got access or bought, whatever, specific frames of basketball players.
[337] scoring layups.
[338] And so those got digitized in a manner where we know that that frame, that frame basically has an ID number now and people would buy it.
[339] And they now, they own that still, that image for life.
[340] And it's all kept track on this blockchain, a decentralized system where everyone that trades in NFTs could track who owns what.
[341] So there'd be no way to claim.
[342] you own something that you didn't.
[343] In theory.
[344] Correct.
[345] So those guys that you're speaking of, his name is Mac, and he's the one who brought the idea to the MBA.
[346] He's who I partnered up with for my NFTs.
[347] So then that happened and I was like, okay, I kind of get that.
[348] But then I was a little confused like, well, how does one utilize that asset?
[349] Can they then license that frame to somebody if they wanted?
[350] Like, do they own basically a copyright?
[351] They can resell it.
[352] Can they license it, Ashton?
[353] It depends on what the smart contract is.
[354] So in the case of NBA top shots, no. But everybody makes their own smart contract.
[355] But you do create your own pending on what you're selling.
[356] The metaphor that sort of speaks to what's happening here, the best, is if you think about an Andy Warhol print, why is an Andy Warhol print more valuable than a poster that I could have went and bought when I was a kid at Music Land for 10 bucks?
[357] Because they made a limited amount of the prints?
[358] It's a supply demand.
[359] there was a limited amount of the prints and somebody certified that Andy Warhol did this at this period of time, right?
[360] And that's what makes these Andy Warhol prints and they're prints.
[361] They're like one of 100, 100, however many.
[362] It's what makes those prints more valuable than the poster that Joe Schmogos and sells at Music Land.
[363] But just because I bought a print of Andy Warhol doesn't give me the right to go commercialize that Andy Warhol and create my own posters and sell them.
[364] the estate has to do that so right and when you think about what these NFTs really are what they really are are are official prints of a piece of art fine fine fine here we go here we go I mean can't call it art okay fine we should have given you a buzzer man man their official prints I'm so quiet I feel like I'm doing really good They're official prints that this thing happened at this moment in time and was minted by the creator.
[365] So why is like a handwritten letter from Thomas Edison valuable?
[366] And we exchange it today for like X amount of money, right?
[367] If it's a handwritten by Thomas Edison, why is that any more valuable than the first email that Steve Jobs ever wrote on a dot Mac address?
[368] I can't buy the first email Steve Jobs ever wrote on a dot mac address because it's digital and therefore it's infinitely copyable and nobody knows which one is the original.
[369] But if you were to be able to find the original, suddenly that is just as valuable as a letter written by Thomas Edison.
[370] That's a great analogy.
[371] You just nailed that right in the tush.
[372] But this gets so complicated.
[373] Like, the NBA player.
[374] They just have fun.
[375] We've used this analogy before.
[376] And at one point, amongst ourselves, he busted out like a Vegas analogy.
[377] And I was like, no, that makes it seem horrible.
[378] That's a horrible analogy.
[379] He's like, it's kind of a lie.
[380] And I was like, no. Yes, he went out.
[381] You lost him.
[382] You lost him.
[383] Okay, but let's say, so Michael Jordan is scoring, whatever.
[384] And that is the image.
[385] But how do we say, that belongs, doesn't, that's just like a memory in time.
[386] Like, how can we say that doesn't belong to Michael Jordan?
[387] Because the NBA owns that Michael Jordan dunk.
[388] And the NBA has now minted that dunk as the official moment.
[389] Why are these basketball trading cards worth anything?
[390] There were something because we say they are.
[391] There were something because somebody wants Kobe's rookie card and Kobe's rookie card got more valuable when we knew there was no more Kobe.
[392] Events happen in life and time that make these collectibles more valuable in the same way that Andy Warhol's paintings get more valuable, the more obscure Andy Warhol's paintings become, the longer he's passed, the more iconic Marilyn Monroe becomes, like all of these events create value.
[393] And the same thing can happen with these digital, creations.
[394] But now we can actually certify a digital creation as an original creation.
[395] And it's certified by the consensus of the decentralized network.
[396] Right.
[397] So then let's try to break that down in the most lay way possible.
[398] So my understanding of blockchain is instead of it existing on the FBI mainframe and someone could hack into the FBI mainframe and fuck with that single source of this information, all the information for blockchain is shared on.
[399] any computer that can hold the information.
[400] So there's millions and millions of different computers holding the same information.
[401] So it would be virtually impossible to get in a monkey with all the people connected.
[402] Is that the premise?
[403] Yeah, I would say that's exactly right.
[404] Ashton has more of a consternated look on his face.
[405] Like, he can't fully lop onto that.
[406] That's right.
[407] You're depending on the collective resolution of truth.
[408] Yes.
[409] That's completely right.
[410] Yeah.
[411] No, I have to like...
[412] No, no, that's just right.
[413] He's got to put it.
[414] I get it.
[415] He's got to put it in, but here's the thing.
[416] No, what I'm putting it through the filter of the dude in the comment section who's going to be like, this is just, you guys are bastardizing what this is.
[417] And I'm like, I hope those comments exist if we are, because I don't want to.
[418] Sure, tell us.
[419] Sure.
[420] Yeah.
[421] But, Mila, you can't be the last person on planet Earth that knows Ashton's AI, are you?
[422] Are you the only person not in on the?
[423] secret?
[424] I'm like, baby, baby, wait up.
[425] Turn on.
[426] Turn on, baby.
[427] She's a Russian spy.
[428] Yeah, I buy that.
[429] He's this statuesque, beautiful creature who's known for comedy, but then loves investing.
[430] What are you talking about?
[431] It doesn't make sense to you?
[432] Yeah.
[433] And you fucking came over here on a raft from Russia.
[434] Fucking didn't have hot water.
[435] No hot water.
[436] You're a comedian.
[437] What is going on?
[438] Stay tuned.
[439] for more armchair expert, if you dare.
[440] What's up, guys?
[441] This your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.
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[456] Okay, so I would say this is similar to, like, if I'm around people who are very critical of Scientology, I've got a great argument why it's no different than any other religion.
[457] And then I'm with the people that love Scientologist, then I have the other information to fight them on that.
[458] So I'm going to try to lay out both fights that I have.
[459] So first and foremost, I'd say, as everyone's knee -jerk to crypto, I think is generally like, what are you talking about?
[460] It's not real.
[461] There's nothing tangible.
[462] It just exists in y 'all's mind.
[463] To which I would say, as we all agree, money is a story.
[464] You have Harari.
[465] Yeah.
[466] Yes.
[467] There is no such thing as money.
[468] We all agree that we trust this piece of paper to represent value.
[469] Yeah.
[470] So because I accept that our current money system is completely a story as well, I have to say any story is a story.
[471] Like your complaint about crypto can't actually be that it doesn't exist because our money doesn't either.
[472] Yeah, just paper.
[473] So right there I would just say that that can't be your stumbling black.
[474] Now, where I'll get critical as I go, it is a story.
[475] But what story has legs?
[476] What story is one that's biblical that's going to last for 3 ,000 years long after the dude died?
[477] Now, I have reservations about crypto being a good enough story to sustain people's belief in it.
[478] And I think largely I'm fearful of that because, A, there isn't any institution behind it.
[479] This just happened last night.
[480] This is so fucking crazy this happened last night because we both looked at each other like, oh, my God, we're going to talk to Ash and Emila about tomorrow.
[481] So our really good friend, who had at one point, like probably $3 million in the main one, Bitcoin, luckily pulled half out to do a house renovation, still had like a million in there, gets an alert like, hey, if you didn't sign into your crypto thing, there's activity, he pulls over on the side of the road, he looks.
[482] So last night, he lost $720 ,000.
[483] He did not put it on a USB drive, which is recommended.
[484] So part of it's his fault.
[485] What did he leave it?
[486] What did he store it?
[487] So he has a password.
[488] He doesn't know how anyone got that password.
[489] Someone somehow got into his phone and his email and got that password to be able to do this.
[490] He didn't have it offline on the USB drive.
[491] But he only had a two -step authentication process.
[492] He literally got $720 ,000 last night just fucking vanished.
[493] Within like three minutes.
[494] It was all gone.
[495] Yeah.
[496] And I was like, ooh, that can't happen at well.
[497] Fargo.
[498] They'll call you and go, hey, did you just transfer $720 ?000?
[499] Like, someone will call you.
[500] A, there's no one to call.
[501] He's like, the most maddening thing about this is like, who do I call?
[502] Oh, right, there's nobody to call.
[503] Okay, this is like, you know, when airplanes crash, people are like, well, I'm not flying in airplanes anymore because they crash.
[504] And you go, wait, no, you don't understand.
[505] There were like five redundancies that was somebody overlooked.
[506] Okay.
[507] So step one in this process, you should.
[508] never had his backup keys on his main system, and he should have had them on a thumb drive, no question.
[509] And he admits that.
[510] He admits that.
[511] Step two, he could have kept it in cold storage, but he didn't.
[512] Tell us what cold storage is.
[513] Cold storage is where you can move all of your cryptocurrency to a machine or drive offline.
[514] It's not even online.
[515] Nobody can get to it.
[516] Like, unless they come and steal your physical thing.
[517] So, like, for instance, a lot of people that have it, they move it with them.
[518] Like, you can literally physically.
[519] can take it on a drive.
[520] So, like, don't lose your drive.
[521] So that's step two.
[522] Step three, most good custodians have a system in place that is co -authorization where you make somebody else an author on your account as well.
[523] And you can't make a transaction until multiple parties approve of it.
[524] Like the new keys.
[525] Exactly.
[526] The next thing is, is that most custodial accounts have transaction limits that you have to set.
[527] And you can't just go in and research.
[528] reset those transaction limits without having a second party agree to that.
[529] The last thing is, is like just simple two -step verification on whoever your custodial login is, all of those things.
[530] So it's five things that this one individual could have done.
[531] He feels terrible, but all that to say, the no one to call, you can't call insurance, like it just existed mentally and now it doesn't exist mentally.
[532] It's just wild.
[533] It's just a wild thing.
[534] How does that not fit in to your own personal values of...
[535] You're responsible for your own actions.
[536] How does that not align with that story?
[537] I know.
[538] And if I were you, I'd be making the argument like, oh, yeah, and guess what else?
[539] If he had a fucking briefcase of $750 ,000 and he took it to the bus stop and then got up and got on the bus and left, he'd lose that too.
[540] And there'd be no one to call.
[541] Yeah.
[542] This one actually comes more protected than the bank.
[543] I really genuinely believe that you can have more money in crypto than you can have in a bank.
[544] Everybody tells you don't have all your money in one bank, right?
[545] Like, that's you here.
[546] You always hear, like, put a little bit in this bank, put a little bit in this bank.
[547] Like, if you have over a certain amount of money, they're like spread it around.
[548] Crypto, you don't have to spread it around.
[549] Like, you could actually just have it, but just be split with it.
[550] I store all mine and my friends' houses and loved ones, cars that they buy.
[551] Oh, really?
[552] Oh, that's good to know.
[553] Monica, open your trunk.
[554] Awful story, by the way.
[555] Yes.
[556] And it wasn't to point out the weakness of crypto as much as, oh, yeah.
[557] When there's no institution behind it and you're in that crazy position, that's just a unique aspect of it where it's like, yeah, that's that.
[558] Like, over and done.
[559] You're no one to blame.
[560] Yes.
[561] Okay.
[562] So what are the other speculative negs that you have on it?
[563] Okay.
[564] So I think it's almost like it's up against the same problem that marijuana is.
[565] The fact that you have this federal law that prevents you from using credit cards to sell marijuana in a state that it's legal is so bizarre.
[566] Right.
[567] So you can't be doing your transactions in a bank because that's federally insured.
[568] It's federal.
[569] So you can't be running money that's illegal through there per the Fed. There's a similar dynamic with the crypto, which is like if no country is going to adopt it, although I'm learning today that El Salvador has done so.
[570] Yeah.
[571] The shining star of El Salvador has anointed this as the most authentic version of currency.
[572] They guys.
[573] Yes, yes, yes.
[574] You know, with the exception of them, when you look at the currencies that, have had stain power.
[575] It's like people would love to be off the U .S. dollar, but we've tied oil to it.
[576] A hundred years ago, we tied oil.
[577] All oil globally is based on how much U .S. dollars per barrel.
[578] That's maddening to some people, but because of that commitment, it has safeguarded the dollar in so many ways.
[579] Also, the people have lent us so much money that they can't let the dollar collapse.
[580] They'll never get paid back.
[581] There's all these mutual kind of safeguards built in because because it's so inextricably tied to big institutions, too big oil, to global.
[582] So I just wonder how it ever achieves that part of the story.
[583] Well, let me ask this.
[584] Does the existence of a cryptocurrency obfuscate the need for the US dollar?
[585] Or can they both live in the same world?
[586] Like, can we have an international global currency that everybody has, holds and appreciates and also carry and hold USD and or pounds and or euros and or yen.
[587] Can they live in the same world where I go, I'm not going to tether 100 % of my stored value wealth or my exchange power in my national currency.
[588] I want to hold my national currency and I want to hold the global currency at the same time.
[589] And I sort of look at it as an anti -friend.
[590] Hedgel Hedge that is saying, okay, there is going to be a good portion of the population of the world for quite some time that is feeling like a have -not and feeling like the system is fucking them over.
[591] That's going to happen.
[592] And as long as that happens, people are going to want a decentralized storage wealth that is global and buoyed by the global belief in it.
[593] And so I think most people minimize it to, okay, U .S. or crypto.
[594] And I think it could be an and equation.
[595] I think we said it earlier that both can live in the same place.
[596] Really hardcore crypto people really don't want a centralized system.
[597] I will tell you, we are not those people.
[598] Sure, sure, sure.
[599] There's a spectrum.
[600] Yeah.
[601] But I'd also argue that there's a secondary, maybe potentially it will become the primary utility of crypto, which is the smart contracts that create sort of decentralized exchange systems around all kinds of things.
[602] and where you're actually using blockchain technology, and ETH is what allows that to happen, for the most part.
[603] It's the most predominant version of that, which, by the way, ETH doesn't necessarily, from a utility standpoint, stand in the way of the value of any other cryptocurrency or the USD.
[604] Well, the friend who just got robbed, when we spoke, I said my understanding of Ethereum versus Bitcoin or any other thing is that Ethereum actually has the blockchain technology that will allow everything going forward in media, in music, all these different things, that'll be the technology by which we authenticate everything.
[605] I also like this diverges a little bit.
[606] Like one is a conversation about Bitcoin.
[607] Another one is about Ethereum.
[608] And I do believe that that technology will be how we come to authenticate everything of value.
[609] So I may think the future of Ethereum is enormous because of the technology.
[610] but I might not believe, here's my issue with the Bitcoin really quick, or just any cryptocurrency is.
[611] What you have that you don't have in the other currencies is competition, which is just wild.
[612] If it resembles at all the trajectory of the internet where it's like, it's Yahoo, they're on top.
[613] AOL's buying Time Warner.
[614] Like, they just all collapse.
[615] It's like, it's just a revolving door of what sites working.
[616] Then it's Google, then it's Instagram.
[617] Guess what Facebook is on the way out?
[618] MySpace doesn't exist anymore.
[619] I don't know how in a world where the monetary system's competing with other ones, it seems inherently destructive.
[620] What do we think about that?
[621] I mean, I think that there's a version of it that I do agree with you because it is the people jump ship so quickly where they're like, oh, I got a bail.
[622] But it's because they have nothing invested in it.
[623] There's no invested interest in Google or Yahoo or AOL other than they just spent some time putting around on it versus any sort of ounce of crypto versus ETH or B. Bitcoin or whatever, Dogey, any of it, it's physical, something that they invested in, that they, it's a system that they believe in, that they're now invested in that they want to see thriving because the more it thrives, the more they thrive, which I go back to my concept of, it's a pre -IPO.
[624] If I was an investor in AOL before AOL won public, I sure as hell wouldn't have jumped ship out of AOL to Gmail, right?
[625] Like, I would have stuck it out because I had something in there.
[626] That is the grounding force behind cryptos that everybody is in it for it to win.
[627] That's it.
[628] We're all invested because we all wanted to thrive and survive and we're all a part of it.
[629] Jumping ship from one to the other is irrelevant.
[630] It's all a part of cryptocurrency.
[631] So the idea of it is still something that you wholeheartedly believe in.
[632] But I wouldn't be like, oh, Bitcoin's doing great.
[633] I'm going to sell all my eth and go on Bitcoin.
[634] It doesn't work that way.
[635] Like you're still so invested in Ethan, you've seen it.
[636] You still want to keep your money in it.
[637] I guess in the most like tangible sense, it's like if we had five different U .S. dollar currencies that were always competing with one another, like, oh, they're printing green bills in Pennsylvania, but the West Coast got rainbow bills.
[638] Oh, maybe I like those.
[639] The constant option would just make you lose faith in the previous one, then you'd adopt this one.
[640] I don't know.
[641] It's just interesting.
[642] I guess you could say that currencies have always been competing globally, but domestically, it's just an interesting thought.
[643] There's really only two big ones.
[644] It's like you're not really concerning yourself with 30 big different types of cryptos.
[645] You really are concerning yourself with two big ones, which is Bitcoin and ETH.
[646] And the bigger differences, how about this, is that Bitcoin you will run out of.
[647] There is an end to Bitcoin.
[648] It's finite.
[649] Yes.
[650] ETH is not.
[651] Right.
[652] Wait, what do you mean it's finite?
[653] So when they created Bitcoin, they created an exact number of Bitcoin.
[654] I don't know how many it was, but a hundred million or whatever.
[655] That's that.
[656] It's kind of like having a gold standard.
[657] Problematic if you want everyone to.
[658] Well, it just keeps getting fractionalized.
[659] So as it gains value.
[660] Now you're trading in 180th of a Bitcoin.
[661] Exactly.
[662] It doesn't, everyone thinks that it's all one to one.
[663] So it's like, oh, you can only sell one either.
[664] You can sell one -eighth.
[665] You can sell a fraction of a one.
[666] You're saying, I'm going to say all $100 worth, whatever that equates to.
[667] It's probably like 0 .002.
[668] Like, it's something so minuscule.
[669] Yeah.
[670] Is there a reason they capped it?
[671] It's just a supply demand curve that they were trying to create in order to motivate.
[672] So, and it also motivates minors.
[673] to continue to process new blocks on the chain because they get rewarded by processing these transactions, they get rewarded in said cryptocurrency.
[674] And it costs money to process these transactions because you have to pay for the energy to process that transaction.
[675] And so therefore, over time, it becomes energy prohibitive to actually mine for a particular coin.
[676] And thus the transactions would cease to exist on the platform.
[677] But the beauty of it is now they've created a layer two solution that sits on top of it that you can transact much more fluidly with far less energy.
[678] Well, I was going to say that was the other thing that started making headlines, I guess, like three or four months ago, is the enormous amount of power that it requires to run all these servers that ultimately house all this data.
[679] Yeah, kind of, but not really.
[680] So like Bitcoin does, but ETH runs off of access power that would otherwise just be waste.
[681] Well, actually, both of them.
[682] Both run off of access power?
[683] Well, what happens is, so if you think about it, you're a minor and you're processing these transactions.
[684] You're the one who's solving the math equation to build another block on the chain.
[685] That takes compute and it takes electricity.
[686] So if the electricity costs become too high relative to the reward that you get for processing that transaction, you won't process the transaction.
[687] So if you're a miner, what you're looking for is the cheapest energy in the world.
[688] Like, you actually want to use very, very cheap energy in order to make that transaction more valuable to you.
[689] So if you look at where most of the mining takes place, it takes place by places where there's stranded energy.
[690] So there's a hydroelectric dam and it's so large that it produces more energy.
[691] you get it, then they could possibly utilize at this point in time.
[692] So instead of zeroing out their energy costs, they sell it at a massive rebate to these miners that are processing this transaction.
[693] So, and that water is going to fall over the dam.
[694] Yeah.
[695] Come hell or high water.
[696] Especially high water.
[697] You like that?
[698] You might even press the dam.
[699] Wow.
[700] Well, I was going to say the other analogy that makes a ton of sense, too, is like learning about when our oil hit like $100 a barrel, however long that it was, 12 years ago, to learn that like shale oil production in Canada, it just doesn't operate until the price of oil is above $58 a barrel or something like that, because it costs $56 to mine a barrel of oil from shale.
[701] And so you see different technologies coming online when the price will allow for it.
[702] So it's kind of similar to that.
[703] This is exactly the same.
[704] There's like transaction fees.
[705] And so when your gas fees are high, certain things happen.
[706] and when your gas fees are low.
[707] It's the same exact thing on the blockchain when you buy and sell crypto.
[708] Okay.
[709] Now I want to seamlessly slide into what you're doing, Mila, because you're not just a bystandard for this or a passenger.
[710] You have a project.
[711] I double down.
[712] You're going all in.
[713] This is so fascinating.
[714] You're certainly the only actor doing this.
[715] Well, we'll see, right?
[716] This also came out of COVID.
[717] But it is because of this type of conversations that we had time to have in quarantine.
[718] And we had a lot of these conversations in quarantine.
[719] I produced content for TV independent of myself.
[720] And I had the show that I was going to do for TV.
[721] There was an animated series.
[722] And I was like, there's just so much content out there.
[723] And I have so little control of content once I sell it that I was like, I want to bring ownership of content back to the artist.
[724] I want to have a system where it's transparent.
[725] And then I was like, I'm going to do this as an NFT.
[726] And so in the middle of a workday, I ran down to him and I was like, listen, I got a really dumb question for you.
[727] I have X. Can X be an NFT?
[728] And he literally turned to me and goes, yeah.
[729] And I was like, okay, I'm doing it.
[730] And he was like, yeah, babe, you should.
[731] That was literally what happened.
[732] And then I was like, okay, but where do I begin?
[733] Yeah, what a fucking daunting undertaking.
[734] I barely understand it, much less I'm going to somehow create products.
[735] It was so dumb.
[736] It was so dumb, Dax.
[737] Looking back at it, I was like, this was dumb.
[738] But here's a thing.
[739] You're like someone who's like, I finally understand nuclear reactors.
[740] They split an atom.
[741] I want to create a nuclear reactor in her backyard.
[742] Yes.
[743] That's literally what it is.
[744] It's like literally being on top of stupid mountain.
[745] I'm queen of stupid mountain right now.
[746] But I surrounded myself with really smart people.
[747] Here's where things kind of made sense.
[748] So I was like, I have this idea.
[749] I need to make this happen.
[750] And subsequently, this woman named Morgan was at our house, and Morgan works with Vitalik.
[751] And she was like, and she has nothing to do with the entertainment industry.
[752] And she was like, this is a great idea.
[753] Let me help you.
[754] And then I jumped on.
[755] I was like, okay, great.
[756] And then Maria, who works with Ashton at Sound, she's like the crypto god of like knows everything.
[757] And I was like, Mario, let me run this idea by you.
[758] What do you think?
[759] And she was like, oh, no, I think this is great.
[760] Let me jump on board and help you.
[761] So then I had Morgan and Maria, my producing partner Lisa and I. And the four of us were like, let's just do this.
[762] And so blindly, it's an NFT called Stoner Cats.
[763] And so we condensed it into a five -knit short.
[764] Stoner Cats, if you didn't hear.
[765] Did you hear that, Monica?
[766] Stoner Cats.
[767] Yeah, I thought you said -tank.
[768] High -brow content, guys.
[769] High -brow content from the Coutures.
[770] So the people that created Stoner Cats directed and wrote and animated Toy Story 2 and Happy Feet and Space Jam and like the most amazing animated movies that you loved, they all got together and were like, this is such a fun.
[771] cute idea.
[772] It's about a woman who is diagnosed.
[773] I'm giving this away, but I think it's okay, diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
[774] And she's an older woman, and she's got these said cats, these five cats, and she decides to smoke weed for the first time.
[775] And the cats, all of a sudden, it's like magical weed call it.
[776] Get contact ties.
[777] Yes, contact tie.
[778] And get hotboxed.
[779] And then all of a sudden they can walk, they can talk, and they can explore life and experience life.
[780] And this NFT, essentially, these five little shorts are all about love and love.
[781] loss.
[782] It's a really beautiful sweet show.
[783] Okay, that's the heart of it.
[784] The absurdity of it is, yes, it's about stone cats.
[785] So I called people, because all, by the way, NFTs is, it's decentralized content.
[786] So I'm like, I have no money.
[787] We're all working for free.
[788] And so one of us makes a dollar.
[789] And we all make this dollar.
[790] We're all splitting it equally.
[791] So you're in this group together.
[792] And I called a handful of friends.
[793] And I was like, hey, I'm going to throw a crazy idea at you.
[794] I'm doing this.
[795] Do you want to jump on board?
[796] And every single one of them was, like, yeah.
[797] And so I can't say who it is because in the NFT world, they do these drops, and so they want to reveal it in a very specific way.
[798] I have it on good information.
[799] Stone Cold Steve Austin.
[800] Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
[801] Who else, Cooch?
[802] Sylvester Stallone.
[803] Jerry Brown.
[804] Tommy Chung.
[805] Monica, help.
[806] I'm sorry.
[807] Vince Neil.
[808] You know.
[809] Because you weren't afraid to tell me, and I will just say, incredible cast, really of her cartoon.
[810] Incredible cast.
[811] Are you allowed to say whether you're involved?
[812] Oh, yeah, yeah.
[813] So I can tell you I'm involved.
[814] I can give you a hint that maybe somebody I live with who's also an actor who can work for free is maybe also involved.
[815] You're being so coy.
[816] You're so coy.
[817] Okay, wait.
[818] So the show's going to come out.
[819] Well, she's going to get to that.
[820] Okay, so her first thought is just like, I'm going to create something.
[821] I'm going to ask everyone to just do it for ownership instead of payment.
[822] And now they have a fin - Do the show.
[823] Yes, make the show.
[824] Do the voices, animate it, finish it.
[825] Have it be a show.
[826] And now instead of, the options traditionally would be like, now let's go to Netflix, see if they want to put this fucker on the air.
[827] Yeah.
[828] Certainly people who watch Netflix, love stoner cats, seems like a smart option.
[829] And she says, no, I'm not going to go to any networks.
[830] All right.
[831] Take it from there.
[832] Okay.
[833] We're going to do like a drop of a certain number of NFTs of like prints, right, of different characters and every day we're going to drop them.
[834] You buy them.
[835] And that is essentially what the cost would be to view the content.
[836] So you get a personalized token.
[837] So every NFT is essentially a token.
[838] It's a minted token that then gives you access to watch our little animated shorts.
[839] So here's the beauty of it.
[840] The beauty of it is that with the token, you have the right to watch every show that gets made in perpetuity.
[841] Yeah.
[842] Beauty of this thing.
[843] We're releasing the first one is a five -minute long one, and then there will be follow -up.
[844] Assuming that people buy the NFTs and allow us to make more, then yes.
[845] But what it's doing is, is like flipping the traditional media model on its head, where you go, we're going to see if people want to buy this and watch this.
[846] And if they want to buy it and watch it, then you reverse finance the show that way.
[847] And that way you're making content people actually want to see instead of guessing what they want to see.
[848] And then your NFT, your minted token, is a beautiful piece of art. It is created by the animators out of your favorite most beloved movies.
[849] Well, and I'll say if you look at, I don't know what Mickey Mouse's first foray into film was, but I think it's like Steamboat Willie or something, maybe one of the first cartoons.
[850] Oh, sure, the black and white one.
[851] You can imagine, and I've seen them sold, there are cells from that.
[852] And a cell is like the drawing that then gets photographed and put into sequence.
[853] of moving pictures, people own those cells.
[854] They own the original drawings.
[855] They own the original frame.
[856] They own all that stuff.
[857] And those things are worth a ton of money now.
[858] Yeah.
[859] So you're saying like, hey, if this is Mickey Mouse, you're going to own some cells that no one else can ever own.
[860] Is that a good analogy or no?
[861] Yeah.
[862] Imagine if you did the merchandising for a film before the film came out.
[863] Imagine I went and bought an original Superman action figure.
[864] And because I've got that original Superman action figure.
[865] Every time I show up to the movie theater for a new Superman film, all I got to do is show my action figure and I can come see Superman.
[866] It's like for perpetuity.
[867] One of the cups at 7 -Eleven back when they did that.
[868] You can get that big old, ugly big cup.
[869] That big cup.
[870] When you had the big goop, when you had the big goal, you can just walk in with that big goal.
[871] Yeah, like 70 -ounce big old.
[872] It's a real expensive bigot.
[873] It's a really expensive bigope because it costs a lot of money to make animated content.
[874] Wait, so yeah, How much would it cost to get a token?
[875] I have to see what ETH is worth at.
[876] So people call Ethereum, ETH, and it's short.
[877] You guys are already going to like moms, like bad moms.
[878] It's too long to say.
[879] So after five years of talking about bad moms, just like, on moms, we did blank.
[880] So you guys are already at that point, but we haven't seen the movie yet.
[881] So, so ETH is Ethernet.
[882] But I was trying to be cool.
[883] No, not Ethernet.
[884] No, I'm sorry.
[885] Ethernet's what you plug in.
[886] Sounds like the opposite.
[887] They're at the point where they're just like.
[888] Do you see the new pirates?
[889] No. What are you talking about?
[890] Oh, Pirates are the Caribbean.
[891] Yes, I know what that is.
[892] Yeah.
[893] So, like, when I was making DWMC, it was like everything but he's raised.
[894] And everybody was like, where's my car?
[895] And I'm like, oh, you've seen DWMC.
[896] You know what I'm talking about.
[897] WMC.
[898] Dude, where's my car?
[899] That's a deep cut.
[900] Oh, my God.
[901] Oh, boy.
[902] Okay, so Ethereum is Eats.
[903] Eat.
[904] Yes.
[905] Oh, how much is it going to be?
[906] It's expensive.
[907] I'm not going to lie.
[908] It's not like $10 because the cost of doing the animation and running it and running the service, it is expensive.
[909] So I think equivalent to somewhere around $2 ,000 American dollars.
[910] And the beauty of it is that if people don't appreciate it, they can take that ticket and sell it.
[911] It's a big gulp that you could ultimately sell.
[912] There's a market for the big gulp cup, used big cult cup.
[913] But we'll wash it.
[914] It'll be washed and sanitized before and re -minted.
[915] And reminted.
[916] That's the beauty of an NFT, no degradation.
[917] So you're not dealing with all the million sips that came out of that big gulp cup.
[918] So walk me through the rollout.
[919] So are they available now, right?
[920] The second to buy?
[921] Good question.
[922] When does that start?
[923] Shepard.
[924] Mid to late July, we're going to start rolling it out.
[925] We're doing it with Big Head, who are the guys that did the NBA Hot Shots.
[926] So it's Mac and John who did that.
[927] So we partnered up with them.
[928] I'm scared to tell you the date because the date is always like a day here or there, but mid to late July, give or take.
[929] You can join the Stoner Katz Discord channel.
[930] you can follow StonerCats on like Twitter.
[931] It keeps you updated a little bit more.
[932] Discord channel just to tell you really quickly, it's kind of like Reddit.
[933] If Reddit and Twitter had a baby, but only in the crypto community, it's called Discord.
[934] It's not only the crypto.
[935] Not crypto, but like a super nerd community.
[936] Well, thank you.
[937] So there's this beautiful Instagram account called the Arm Cherry Companion.
[938] This guy's in Cleveland.
[939] He's a lovely guy.
[940] He spends so much time curating fun things from the show, fan art, all this stuff.
[941] It's lovely.
[942] It's just a fan account, and it's really big.
[943] I DM with him.
[944] And he said, like, do you know what's going on on the Arm Cherry Discord thing?
[945] And I literally wrote back, I don't know what any of the words you just said are.
[946] Like, not only do I not know what's going on, I don't know what the fuck Discord is.
[947] So help me a little more.
[948] What is Discord?
[949] Wait, hold on.
[950] Before we get into what Discord is, can I comment on the size of your biceps right now, Dax?
[951] You know, I'd like nothing more.
[952] When you just put, I feel like you should, like, run a measurement of the size of your biceps.
[953] and just start dropping a weekly measurement into the Discord channel of like what the circumference?
[954] Or could he make an NFT out of his biceps?
[955] Yes, he could make an NFT out of his bicep.
[956] It is unbelievable.
[957] I mean, you're getting like Joe Rogan arms in there.
[958] It's like phenomenal.
[959] As you know, I don't think it's any secret I'm trying to become Joe Rogan.
[960] I think that's pretty well.
[961] He goes to Spotify.
[962] We go to Spotify.
[963] I mean, you look like He -Man right now.
[964] It's like by the power of Wasteckle.
[965] Hold on, hold on.
[966] Hold on, hold on, Dax or Monica, did you guys see that whole writing in the sky a couple weeks ago where it was shit -talking Joe Rogan?
[967] No?
[968] No. Oh, it was a whole story.
[969] It was like, Susie, will you marry me?
[970] She said, yes, I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you.
[971] You're so amazing.
[972] Also, Joe Rogan is only five foot three.
[973] Also, I love you.
[974] It was a whole story written in the sky.
[975] I don't know how you guys missed it.
[976] It was the most expensive skywriting ever took taking place ever in the history of ever.
[977] Like three weeks ago.
[978] He took like a cheap shot at Joe Rogan in the middle of it.
[979] They're like, and Joe Rogan's only five foot three.
[980] Just the weirdest?
[981] Anyways, first of all, I've never met him, but I can't imagine that's true.
[982] I can't imagine Joe Rogan's five foot three.
[983] Fact check this in your guys' fact check segment.
[984] I think he's like five, six or something.
[985] I looked it up because I was like, I can't believe that that's the height of Joe Rogan.
[986] And then he signed off like XOXO the Baron or something.
[987] The German Baron.
[988] It was the German Baron.
[989] Baron, that's what it said.
[990] Oh, my gosh.
[991] I'm going to put that in a two -way tie with things I'm upset.
[992] I missed the re -entry of the SpaceX thing that everyone saw and I didn't.
[993] And now this, these are the two celestial events I missed.
[994] Look at this.
[995] It's right here.
[996] But if you go on Snopes, Snopes, they've got it on Snopes .com.
[997] And it says, is Joe Rogan 5 '3 as written in the L .A. skies?
[998] L .A. Skies.
[999] You guys, I don't know how you missed this.
[1000] It was a story.
[1001] It was a paragraph.
[1002] Written in the sky by four planes.
[1003] Snope says that it's false.
[1004] Yeah.
[1005] Can I just tell you in a nutshell what happened?
[1006] In quarantine, I said to Kristen, I've been waiting for 10 years for Marvel to call so that I'd have an excuse to get huge.
[1007] And they're not going to call.
[1008] Like, that ship sailed.
[1009] I'm 46.
[1010] They're not going to call.
[1011] So I just have to do it for my own amusement.
[1012] And I gained about 24 pounds.
[1013] Just six days a week, lifting heavy, protein shakes going bananas, heavy testosterone injections.
[1014] I've told you, you got to be careful about these testosterone injections, I'm telling you.
[1015] I know, I know, I know.
[1016] Hold on, hold on.
[1017] You don't let someone wash their face or their bodies, but you think injecting yourself with hormones is okay.
[1018] Dax.
[1019] I do.
[1020] I think taking yourself to your 28 -year -old level of testosterone is just fine.
[1021] But that's neither here nor there.
[1022] All I want to say is, you know, I'm 185 on the button, baby.
[1023] I've always 1 .85, and now I'm 2 .10.
[1024] I spent my whole life as a medium boy, and now I'm a big boy, and I like it.
[1025] You're a big boy.
[1026] Dex, if I sell my Bitcoin and finance a film where you get to play a superhero that we make up, we'll just make up the ripped cab driver.
[1027] Yeah.
[1028] Will you stop taking the testosterone?
[1029] You know, more than I like what it does to me physically, well, first let me just add that my father too was low in testosterone, so I come by this honestly.
[1030] But the point is, forget the body.
[1031] Mentally, I love it because it makes me far more on fire to be alive.
[1032] I was depressed after chips.
[1033] I was literally retiring.
[1034] That was the plan.
[1035] I'm out.
[1036] Started going on testosterone.
[1037] Two months later, we started this podcast.
[1038] I had said yes to your show.
[1039] I had said yes to two other shows.
[1040] All of a sudden I was on fire to work.
[1041] And I'm like, I like this version.
[1042] This is the version I enjoy.
[1043] What are we going to say to that?
[1044] Silence.
[1045] I know silence, just silence.
[1046] I like happy Dax.
[1047] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.
[1048] All right.
[1049] Okay, so you buy the NFTs in July, but now how do you distribute stoner cats?
[1050] Your personal NFT becomes a token to watch it on stoner cats .com.
[1051] Is it a code that you would put in?
[1052] It'll be your wallet address.
[1053] It'll prove that you minted your own StonerCat.
[1054] Oh, so maybe you should first get a wallet.
[1055] Then you should get some Ethereum.
[1056] And then you should buy our awesome badass NFTs made by badass people.
[1057] Then you can watch our five minutes content at every episode drop.
[1058] Right, because basically the ID for the transaction exists as it is associated with your wallet.
[1059] So if you just log in to stonercats .com with your wallet, then you, you, You can have access to scene.
[1060] Got it.
[1061] I am so excited to see how this...
[1062] Me too.
[1063] This is very cool, very cutting edge.
[1064] Guys, what if in episode two of Stoner Cats, when this is super successful and we can afford to make a second one, we'll do, like, on their television that they're watching, we'll just animate the both of you on it and you guys can be, like, animated into the thing.
[1065] Or what if they just start just listening to headphones and they're, like, ingesting the world through all.
[1066] I was going to say, I think as they get stoned, They start all doing different inexplicable things.
[1067] One of them is one of them falls in love with podcasting.
[1068] Oh, wow.
[1069] And we would love.
[1070] So that's a big yes from us.
[1071] Okay, maybe when they're driving, they'll be listening to Armshire expert.
[1072] You'll have one of the cats on the show.
[1073] Okay.
[1074] Oh, my gosh.
[1075] That's also an exciting opportunity.
[1076] I think.
[1077] Because we did let Seth Rogen smoke weed in here.
[1078] So certainly we'd let a cat.
[1079] Of course.
[1080] Yeah.
[1081] This is great.
[1082] The armcheries are invested now.
[1083] Yeah.
[1084] They're going to want season two to have us.
[1085] Oh, you're right.
[1086] You're right.
[1087] Exactly.
[1088] So if you want to see Monica and Dax in episode two appearing as a character in the show, then they have to come and sell out our NFTs.
[1089] And hopefully a cat will come to terms with some trauma they've experienced and we'll help them work through that.
[1090] Oh, all these cats have trauma.
[1091] They're all like personalities of little traumas.
[1092] It's very sweet.
[1093] There isn't a cat that hasn't fallen out of a third or fourth floor window.
[1094] That's just standard business for a cat.
[1095] They're going to fall out of something so high.
[1096] They're all walking around with that.
[1097] They remember.
[1098] Maybe these cats now can walk.
[1099] They're special cats.
[1100] Yeah, they're hominids.
[1101] They're bipedal.
[1102] I mean, they're forced to pee and poo in the place that they pee and pooed every day, day in the day out.
[1103] That's got to create some level of trauma.
[1104] Yeah, if your parents made you poop in the laundry room, every day.
[1105] And you had to go in there.
[1106] And then they had friends over.
[1107] And the friends were like, what smells in this house?
[1108] What's that?
[1109] My smell is awful.
[1110] My kid urinates in the corner.
[1111] I mean, I make them, but still.
[1112] I mean, my God, talk about shame.
[1113] What if you're forced to eat the same thing for every meal, your entire line?
[1114] That's what I feel about our dogs.
[1115] I feel so bad.
[1116] I literally look at them and I'm like, I'm so sorry.
[1117] This must be awful.
[1118] I don't.
[1119] Mila, I don't, because if you watch enough Discovery Channel, those wild dogs, they're eating like old rotten carrion.
[1120] They eat, and they eat poop and stuff.
[1121] They eat each other's poop.
[1122] Okay.
[1123] Yeah, but the mountain line, the mountain line that was in our neighborhood, I mean, he was eating like a champ.
[1124] It was deer one day, a cat the next.
[1125] Just like those guys eat like champs.
[1126] And meanwhile, these cats are stuck in a domicile.
[1127] Stop it.
[1128] Stop it.
[1129] day eating out of a can well you know our guy P -22 this son of a bitch that mountain line he got into the L .A. Zoo and this jerk ate a koala bear what could be meaner it fucking got in and got his hands on a koala bear it's horrible it's all the fucking why are you laughing I laugh when I get uncomfortable wait wait we were just hold on we just took the kiss to the L .A. Zoo and they didn't have the koala exhibit it was shut down and I wonder if it's because the cat ate the koala.
[1130] Of course it is.
[1131] The whole thing's filmed, too.
[1132] So this thing just leaps into the thing, snatches a koala bear, leaps out.
[1133] He's got this teddy bear in his mouth.
[1134] It's terrible.
[1135] Wait, we had this in our backyard.
[1136] No. Oh, yeah.
[1137] Yes.
[1138] We had a mountain line living in our backyard for two months.
[1139] No. We called the city.
[1140] And the city was like, there's nothing we can do about it.
[1141] We don't relocate lines anymore.
[1142] We don't do anything.
[1143] It is what it is.
[1144] It's not tagged.
[1145] We watched it on the neighbors.
[1146] It had a security cam.
[1147] We watched it just jump over like an eight -foot gate.
[1148] With a cat in its mouth.
[1149] With a cat in its mouth.
[1150] Oh, my God.
[1151] And there's just like a blood trail going across the road.
[1152] And then the next day or like next week he came or she came with like a deer.
[1153] The whole leg.
[1154] Just a deer like.
[1155] We were walking the kids or we went for a walk and the door opened and the mountain line was in our driveway.
[1156] This all started because the neighbors were effing with the ecosystem and they brought in some feral cats to take out some snakes.
[1157] That's how it always happened.
[1158] If you mess with the ecosystem, the ecosystem messes with you.
[1159] You just keep having to bring in higher and higher apex predators until we have tigers everywhere to deal with the wild pigs we brought in to kill the snakes.
[1160] Yeah.
[1161] So we lived it.
[1162] I feel so bad for the koala.
[1163] Oh, buddy.
[1164] You guys have such an exciting life where you take.
[1165] terrified with the kids when they were in the yard?
[1166] Yeah, that's horrible.
[1167] Yeah, they couldn't go to the yard for a couple months by themselves.
[1168] It was really bad.
[1169] And the dogs?
[1170] Is the man taxed with protecting your family?
[1171] Did you think, like, I don't want to kill a mountain lion, but I don't have a choice.
[1172] Yes, yes.
[1173] Hold on.
[1174] So a couple things.
[1175] One, here's the thing about mountain lions.
[1176] Oh, my God.
[1177] Mountain lions are deathly afraid of human beings.
[1178] You can run a mountain lion.
[1179] Wait, wait, can I just sell a story before you go on.
[1180] Hold on.
[1181] You can run a mountain lion.
[1182] Off a predator.
[1183] Let me just get to the funny part.
[1184] Hold on.
[1185] Wait, you can run a mountain lion off its own prey that it's killed.
[1186] Okay.
[1187] By playing talk radio.
[1188] I just turned on your podcast.
[1189] You missed the whole funny part.
[1190] I was like, listen, we're going to carry bear spray with us.
[1191] We're going to get your gun, load it.
[1192] We're not taking the kids to the park without a gun.
[1193] He was like, whoa, whoa, I'm down.
[1194] Everyone has to wear full leathers at all times.
[1195] I was like, ready.
[1196] So he goes on the internet.
[1197] the internet says, because you know, we trust everything the internet says, it said that there was a thing made where they tested the mountain line and the fear of a mountain line and they played human voices while on a hike and it scared up the mountain line.
[1198] So he read online that human voice is the natural voice of a human being scares off the mountain line and or human piss.
[1199] So now Mila walks around in the yard.
[1200] She's like, haban, like having a whole conversation with herself as she's walking everywhere she goes.
[1201] And I'm like, are you, and I'm like half deaf.
[1202] So I'm like, are you talking to me?
[1203] And she's like, no. I'm making sure the mountain lion doesn't come get me. I'm like, you're on the porch.
[1204] The mountain lines are hopping up here.
[1205] Can you imagine a better Hollywood story than reading like in the front page of LA Times.
[1206] Two of Hollywood's freshest face is killed by mountain lion in backyard.
[1207] What a spectacular way to die.
[1208] As much as they are afraid of voices, we must also recognize that like just three years ago up in the Oakland area, some dude was hiking with his kid went to tie his shoe, that fucking.
[1209] Mount Lion snatched the toddler, and the woman fought this thing and got her toddler back.
[1210] So they'll also eat your toddler, let's say.
[1211] You know what she should have been doing?
[1212] It's like the rabbit goes around the tree and out of the hole.
[1213] And if she would have been doing that, that Mount Lion wouldn't have been terrified.
[1214] He started playing music in our backyard at 24 -7.
[1215] There was just music being played in our backyard at all times.
[1216] Now, there was one evening when the Mountain Lion showed up in the driveway.
[1217] Yeah, that was not funny.
[1218] And right is the sun was going out.
[1219] And the neighbor and I, we had a pack that if any of us saw the Mountain Lion, we'd call each other.
[1220] But please put a disclaimer, or Peter's going to come after you and or Dax after this.
[1221] No, I was protecting the family.
[1222] We made it very clear.
[1223] I would rather cut off a pinky toe than kill a Mountain Lion.
[1224] But I would also cut off a pinky toe in two seconds to save my family.
[1225] So let's just keep it all in perspective.
[1226] So the Mountain Lion is in the driveway, and I'm out there with a mag light and a Glock walking around.
[1227] And the neighbor comes over with like an AR and I'm like, what do you got that kind of a weapon for?
[1228] And I'm like, that's how you guys will die.
[1229] The Mount Lion will do a thing, but you and your neighbor will fucking shoot each other because you got spooked.
[1230] Oh, my God.
[1231] So stupid.
[1232] All you would have had to do is go, and then you would have heard gunshots.
[1233] Meanwhile, the lion was long gone.
[1234] Oh, yeah, and the line left.
[1235] I would have just take shot in the air and scared it off.
[1236] Yeah.
[1237] Let's start there.
[1238] unless he charges.
[1239] Now the tables have turned.
[1240] Okay, no one's going to kill a mountain lion.
[1241] None of us have and none of us will.
[1242] So everything's hunky -dory.
[1243] This is neither here nor there, but I was hiking with Lincoln when she was really little in Griffith Park.
[1244] And we're just walking up this trail.
[1245] We've walked up a million and a half times in a fucking stag, jumped out of the woods and crossed the path.
[1246] And this was a huge deer.
[1247] I did not know they existed.
[1248] in Griffith Park.
[1249] I mean, this is like a 300 -pound deer with a rack, and it was at a full clip and just crossed the path.
[1250] I was like, oh, if we were standing there, we're done.
[1251] It happened to us.
[1252] Same thing happened at Lake Hollywood.
[1253] Yeah, it happened to us in Lake Hollywood.
[1254] Yeah, and it ran across like the paved thing.
[1255] It was like, you scared the sales out of me. The kids were on their bikes, and the kids went ahead of us.
[1256] Shut the fuck up.
[1257] Wait, listen, the kids are in front.
[1258] I don't even know what that means.
[1259] No, fuck, forget it.
[1260] Wait, I want to hear.
[1261] No, you know what?
[1262] It doesn't matter, Monica.
[1263] It's not that good of a fucking story.
[1264] Stoner cats.
[1265] Yeah, stoner cats.
[1266] I don't scare the sales out of you.
[1267] Well, we love you guys.
[1268] We adore you guys.
[1269] Ashton, you're a three -peat.
[1270] Yeah, you're now a three -peat.
[1271] You and Sanjay Gupta.
[1272] You guys are tied.
[1273] Wait, guys, I just heard you Obama.
[1274] Oh, it's so good.
[1275] Oh, thank you.
[1276] You joined us at Spotify.
[1277] I'm so grateful.
[1278] Yes.
[1279] Some people are having a hard time downloading that free app.
[1280] That's a big barrier.
[1281] to entry for some people.
[1282] Mine was already registered.
[1283] Like, yeah.
[1284] I stupidly was like, oh, I got to download Spotify.
[1285] So I went to do it.
[1286] And then when I went to the app store, it just said, open.
[1287] I was like, oh, I already have this.
[1288] And then I opened it.
[1289] And I'm like, oh, I'm already signed into this.
[1290] We are big Spotify.
[1291] I feel like I'm doing like an advertisement for Spotify.
[1292] But kids love Spotify because of podcasts.
[1293] So we listen to kid podcasts on Spotify and books on tape on long car rides.
[1294] Yeah.
[1295] Anyway, so I love Spotify.
[1296] I use Spotify every day.
[1297] Like, I feel like I literally am doing an advertising for Spotify.
[1298] I have nothing invested in Spotify.
[1299] The thing is, like, don't come look at our playlist because it's all like KidsBop.
[1300] It's like KidsBop 21, KidsBop 22.
[1301] How did you get your children to not listen to KidsBop?
[1302] A friend gave us a CD of like KidBop bullshit and we left and Kristen said, oh, that was nice.
[1303] And I said, I'm throwing it directly in the fucking trash can.
[1304] We will not introduce children's music to our kids.
[1305] listen to Hall of Notes and Steely Dan and fucking Grandmaster Flash.
[1306] We're not going to do it.
[1307] It was like a hard rule for me. I'm like, I can't listen to that stuff.
[1308] So if they don't know what exists, who gives a shit?
[1309] And so they never heard it.
[1310] And now they just love, I think, good music.
[1311] Oh.
[1312] What a response.
[1313] We would have to do a hundred takes to get that response.
[1314] That was fucking perfect.
[1315] We're fucked.
[1316] I don't know what to say.
[1317] Oh, yeah, that ship has sailed.
[1318] You guys are dead.
[1319] It's over.
[1320] It's like a tablet or something.
[1321] Once it's infected them, and forget it.
[1322] It's over.
[1323] I had the children listening to nothing but beautiful country music and like Bohemian Rhapsody.
[1324] Sure.
[1325] Our daughter could tell you that that was Ella Fitzgerald, the Louis Armstrong, the whole thing.
[1326] And this one shows up with a tray of candy.
[1327] Bach and the Bruno Mars knockoffs that are like, I can't.
[1328] I mean, Bruno, you can't recreate Bruno Mars uptown funk.
[1329] I don't want to listen to children sing that song.
[1330] I want to listen to Bruno Mars sing it.
[1331] Yeah, it's like remake and Citizen Kane.
[1332] Why are we trying that?
[1333] Let's just keep it.
[1334] Well, listen, I do want to applaud us as friends that we've really kept our kids apart in hopes that your son will marry one of my daughters and your other daughter will marry one of my daughters.
[1335] Because put the four of us retired somewhere.
[1336] No one's getting a word in edgewise.
[1337] I mean, no one is going to be heard.
[1338] Four broadcasters, no receivers.
[1339] What a retirement.
[1340] But it makes for a really lively dinner.
[1341] Was that a comment on the amount that I've talked during this podcast?
[1342] I'm not really conscious of it?
[1343] And I'm like, wait, did I just overbear it?
[1344] No. No one steamrolled, but only as a result of great restraint.
[1345] It took everything in me. I know.
[1346] It was me. Me too.
[1347] I was quiet for a lot of it.
[1348] I just kept going.
[1349] I couldn't get a word in edgewise over here.
[1350] You weren't quiet as much as you think you were, and you didn't talk as much as you think you did.
[1351] That's my, um, verdict.
[1352] It was very even, very even.
[1353] You were quiet.
[1354] I just needed to settle this before you called cut, because if we didn't, and tonight she'd be like, you just dominated this.
[1355] You were talking over people.
[1356] It was very even.
[1357] It was very, very even.
[1358] There was so much restraint applied, and we applaud you guys.
[1359] Thanks, guys.
[1360] Oh, boy.
[1361] If I ever had a gun to my head, and they say, you must make love to a couple, including the guy.
[1362] Don't act like...
[1363] To save humanity.
[1364] You don't need a gun.
[1365] I think this is my pick right here.
[1366] You would do that anyway.
[1367] You're right, I would.
[1368] But I had to frame it in a way that it's not gross.
[1369] And it's super not gross.
[1370] You're bringing the guns.
[1371] You got two of them.
[1372] I know.
[1373] We'll see how much you guys hate that testosterone once we get between the sheets.
[1374] You think I'm winning the guns?
[1375] hammer anywhere near my life.
[1376] All right, love you guys.
[1377] Bye, guys.
[1378] Bye, guys.
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