Casey Neistat joins ModRetro to champion the M64: building the 'last Nintendo 64 that ever needs to be built'

Recently the YouTuber the creator over at Mod Retro now working on the chromatic which we've been playing in the studio working on the M64. How you doing Casey? Helen, good to see you. Welcome to the stream. Uh what's new in your world? Uh how did the are those the nothing ears? Give us a little review.

Oh yeah, these are fantastic. Actually to take them off because the noise cancelling on these is um it's it's like too good and I'm at home right now and my kids were screaming two seconds ago. But yeah, these things are fantastic.

Yeah, we had Carl Pay on the show a week ago and uh he put them down and I was like I was too afraid to ask like, "Oh, are those for me? " Like are you going to leave those for I kind of want those. I need a new pair. I'll have to pick them.

You know what is I'm not enough of an audio file to know what if something sounds good or not. It's either good or it's not good. But the physical switches like buttons you can touch. Yeah. I really like and the like the Apple I don't know what they're called. What are they? AirPod Maxes. AirPod Maxes.

There's no onoff switch. Yeah. Like I can't that digital crown. I needed I need an onoff switch and you have that. I like I like Yeah. Are you Are you big Teenage Engineering guy? It feels like kind of like that that they're almost coining like a trend that's like becoming more mainstream now.

Teenage Engineering is the only company whose products I buy religiously even though I have no idea how to use any of them. The same thing happened to me. I bought the little keyboard. Like I'm a musician now. Couldn't figure out how to make a song. But I use it. I love it. It's amazing. Beautiful. It's so beautiful.

And like someone that cares that much about the craft part of that. support them unconditionally. Uh yeah. So tell me about Mod Retro. How'd that come together? Uh what what what is the news in your world?

Um you know, the Mod Retro thing is really funny because uh I my video says all this, but like I'm a big retro gamer. Um I'm guilty of sometimes playing Call of Duty on my Xbox, but that doesn't work out when you got a wife and kids. I'm not being guilty.

Every every man should have an allocation of time daily for Call of Duty. you know, getting on rust. Getting on rust with your boys. So close to that W and then the door comes flying open, the children come running in. It's challenging. But I'm 44. So like Apex of video games for me was like 1989, I think.

Getting a Game Boy for my grandmother for Christmas. And like you guys are younger than me, but before that all we had were those like L le Led LCD games that were like really janky like the tiger games and they were terrible.

And the first time I turned on the Game Boy and like saw the Nintendo come down, I was like, "Holy, this is such a moment. " Um, and then Nintendo 64 came out when I was I was in like just getting into high school as a freshman.

We used to sneak out of high school, get on the city bus, like the the the regular bus, and then drive two towns across, and then walk a mile and a half to Toys R Us to sit in Toys R Us and play the demo of Mario 64 when that thing came out. I think it was in '94, so I was 12 or 13 years old. Yeah.

So, I I love that stuff. And Mod Retro, when I first learned about it, when I first learned about the Chromatic, their Game Boy, I thought it was really stupid. I didn't understand because you can get those like Chinese ones off of Amazon for 50 bucks. And um a friend of mine was like, "No, this is great.

They're doing great things. Do you want to talk to Palmer about it? " And I'm a huge Palmer Lucky fan. And I was like, "I'd love to. " And I don't know that I've ever been evangelized so much in my life.

Like by the end of that call, he didn't just convince me, but I was like I felt like an idiot for not seeing what Mod Retro was. And then as I got to know Torin, who who is the the CEO of Mod Retro, and understand the vision for the company, I was just so like overwhelmed.

I was like, "This is the most like beautiful vision ever. I don't understand the business of it. It makes no sense to me. But the fact that these guys have the guts to do this, like can I be a part of it? " And I think I pitched back to them what I understood the company was and they're like, "That's it.

That's what we want to say. " And I was like, "All right, give me a job and my job will be to figure out how to communicate that and we'll make videos and stuff. " And they're like, "Sure, but we're not going to pay you. " And I was like, "Great. I'll take a business card.

" And um, it's been great working with I also I'm an investor in Mod Retro. I have a vested interest in them succeeding, but I mean that's not the that's not where the passion to be a part of what they're up to comes from for me. Yeah. So many places we could go with this. Uh this is fantastic. Um what uh Yeah.

Do you think that there's a world I mean that I I love the handheld gaming stuff. I my my experience having kids was I stopped playing console games. The N64 was actually my first console ever and uh but once I started kids uh Super Mario 64 for sure. Golden Eye was big. Big head golden gun. You gotta do that.

Um, and then a couple other Donkey Kong and uh was never really into the Mario Kart racers, but then Smash Brothers kind of took over and that was the real competition with everyone eventually.

Um, I think what I think what what's exciting to me is like building new new heart consumer hardware that will still turn on and work and bring joy 20 years from now.

I had I had the the game I have like my Game Boy Pikachu edition from growing up and I when Mod Retro came out I went and found it and I turned it on and it worked and that was like such an amazing moment for me cuz like when like I haven't I've got old iPhones laying around.

I've never been like not one I've never been like oh I should turn that on. It's going to be fun, right? Because it's like it's not evergreen. It was of the moment and you just move on.

And so I think if Mod Retro can do anything, which is like make consumer hardware, which is so disposable today across all these different categories and make it so that yeah, you're going to get your Mod Retro or your M64, you know, this year and then you're going to turn it on in 30 years and like, you know, bridge generations.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's I think there's there's it's easy to sort of [ __ ] on um planned obsolescence because it is real. I think of that like we woke up, my house woke up this morning at 7:30 a. m. because the refrigerator repair man finally showed up and was banging on our door at at 7:30 in the morning.

The dog was freaking out because our 2-year-old refrigerator doesn't work. And this is a refrigerator that has Wi-Fi. There we go. Let's give it up for Wi-Fi. Everybody's always It doesn't work. It doesn't work.

And when I think about that, it's like that refrigerator that we had as kids with the one big heavy aluminum door, like it just worked. It worked forever. But in order to keep selling [ __ ] you have to keep coming out with new things. And I think that's the negative of planned obsolescence.

But I think when it comes to consumer technology, there is an argument for having to keep up with the rate of innovation. You know, like the new phones that come out, every time you get a new phone, it does do something that your other phone didn't.

So there's a maybe a reason for that, but I think with that sort of title wave of innovation that feels faster now than it ever felt when I was young. Um I think we we lose some great things. Yeah.

And you know my understanding of mod retro, at least what I want it to be and I think what what what Palmer and and what Torren also want it to be is like let's identify consumer electronics that people just loved like had an unbelievable relationship with. They really like the love I had for my Game Boy.

I don't know that there was another thing that I owned through my adolescence that I treasured more than my Game Boy. And let's bring them back and let's do them justice. Let's build them so they last forever. I think Palmer's quote when I was interviewing was we don't want to build another Game Boy.

We want to build the last Game Boy, like the last one that ever needs to be built. And that's the vision with M64 as well. Like you can get emulators that kind of they kind of work. Um, but let's let's build the thing that that, you know, you and I had, John, when when we were kids, and let's have it last forever.

And I, you know, I just think there's so so much romance in that. When you start digging deep, you can start to see products everywhere. And, you know, Mod Retro is tiny.

It's a couple people working out of a small office, but like the list of of products that that we want to build, the list of ideas that we have is is endless. And that's like a that's a really exciting thing to take out of.

It's also such an interesting uh company because you're trying to recreate things of the past that were good products and you want to improve on them, but you need to stay true to the original product.

Otherwise, you know, what do you I mean, it's not to say that that Mod Retro couldn't one day create, you know, novel to totally novel products, but it is like an interesting constraint and challenge and you actually have to it's it's really in some ways it's easy because you know exactly what you need to build, but in other ways it's harder because you're taking a product that was almost perfect in its original form and still like you need to make it it needs it should be better otherwise you know what are you doing?

Yeah. You know, like one interesting challenge, and I'm not the right person to speak to this, so I'm not the technical guy, but to make the screen match the old Game Boy screen was an exhaustive process.

So, when you buy one of those handheld emulators that looks like a Game Boy, the Chinese-made ones, they have fairly high high pixel density screens on them. So, in order for them to give the look of an old Game Boy, you're using multiple pixels to emulate a single pixel. So, it's inaccurate.

And real psychopaths, I'm not one of them, but I appreciate it. Real psychopaths on Twitter have done like this super zoom into a pixel, and you realize that Mario is like jumping a half a pixel too low or a half a pixel too high within the frame because of the limitation of the screen.

And Torin and and Palmer's like religious obsession with matching that screen was one of the hardest things to overcome. So, it was actually harder to build something that matched the quality of a product that's 20 years old than it would be to actually get the latest and greatest screen and just plug it in there. Yeah.

I remember Palmer saying something about like a couple of the companies, the screen is actually rotated 90 degrees. So, instead of the scan lines coming down this way, they go across this way and then they just transform it at the last second.

But it's like this bizarre bizarre thing that you would never really notice of, but it's this craftsmanship that actually you feel I feel like and it feels like something that's just like been lost in this like everything's disposable, everything's junk, everything's a knockoff culture. And it feels like I I don't know.

Like it just feels like it's worth it to have stuff that exhibits craft and taste. And even if I don't even if I'm not the one that can tell that Mario's one pixel too low when I do the jump, like the fact that the craftsman worked on the product means something.

And I I it's hard to put a exact like quantitative value on it, but you feel it, right? That that is the gamble that is the company. Said that in my video, but he's like, you know, maybe nobody cares about this, but but weirdos like you and me, but that's enough.

And I think it's like there is an argument that's like, well, who cares if it's off by half a pixel. And if you're one of those people, totally cool. You're well, there's plenty of products in the market for you.

But if you're someone who does care if you're that weirdo that buys Teenage Engineering products because you just value the integrity of the product so much, you want to have it, then, you know, there's a place in this world for companies like Mod Retro. Yeah.

What What do you think about um like the temptation to just make like one small change? Like the chromatic has a USBC port on it. That's a huge upgrade.

But you could easily turn this into like well like you know we have the technology to make the M64 handheld and then you know then you're in Switch territory and all of a sudden it's like a completely different product, right?

I look that's everpresent and that's that's the problem with sort of limitless you know like when Nintendo was building this what was almost 40 years ago 35 years ago now they were so limited by what the technology enabled them to do like when you think about the Sega Game Gear I don't know if you ever had one of those great product this big but it was the first one that had really great color screen on it and it took six AA batteries instead of four like the Game Boy.

But the battery life on it was like 40 minutes. Yeah. And um do you remember the N64 like expansion pack that you put in to like double the memory? That was Yeah, dude. I remember that. What about the rumble pack that shipped with Star Fox? That was like the greatest innovation ever.

Funny exploded when the controller shook. Yeah, dude. These like uh like these add-ons cuz like they couldn't bake it all into the first product and then up and that's that's indicative of the limitations of what tech can do. Totally.

And when you look at like, you know, I don't know what what Samsung announced last week at two weeks ago unpacked and you're looking at what the limitations are today of like a folding screen that's as thick as 10 sheets of paper, you realize how far we've come.

But when you go in the other direction, there's kind of no limits and you're looking to make something that was made 30 years ago. The problem is like where do you draw the line? And I think that's a really uh it's a really interesting thing to try to overcome and confront. Yeah.

What can you teach me about the lore of uh in the video camera world? I was looking at a cool new music video and it had this fisheye lens and this grain and I was kind of digging in. It seemed like they shot it on like a Sony skate camera with mini DV tapes.

Like this feels like something that I was looking like maybe I could buy one on eBay but it's probably broken and I want someone to go remake it. But then of course you always have like oh you could just like throw the filter on there in Premiere or whatever.

But what what are some of the what are some of the iconic video cameras or just like creative tools that might uh you know be worth revisiting at some point? Yeah, it's it's such an interesting examination and and your your question is great because my family and I are out.

We're in Massachusetts for for summer vacation and there's a lot of kids around like we went and got ice cream last night. A lot of teenagers around and a lot of these kids come up and they ask me for selfies. Sure.

And the amount of teenagers that come up to me and ask me for selfies and they're carrying the point and shoots that we had in like the 2010s, like before your phone camera was good enough. Yeah. They all carry them. No one makes that camera anymore, which means if you have one, you have an old one. Yeah.

And every one of these kids has it. And when I I asked them because I'm curious like why do you carry that? They're like, I love the way it looks. Yeah. And I think we've reached this point like iPhone cell phone photography, it all looks so perfect in a way that it almost becomes artificial.

Like I think the iPhone 5 was the last iPhone where when you took a picture just sort of took a picture and then after that every time you take a picture now on any modern smartphone, it takes a picture and then runs it through an algorithm to make the picture sweeter and cleaner and sharper and better for you.

And I think there's sort of this yearning for something that feels more real and authentic.

It's like you look at a you're at a store looking at at a picture, you know, a camera from a picture from from 2010 uh or a camera or a picture from an iPhone today is like you're at you're at the grocery store and there's the organic apples and they look they look good but like they're a little [ __ ] up and and and you know they maybe like whatever part of it's kind of rotten and then you look over and you see the perfect apple and like intuitively you know that you're like that it's a little bit too good to be screw that Apple over there, you know.

And I think I don't know the other thing that's real is t removing the camera like adding the camera to the phone has been one of the greatest innovations of the century, right?

In in in many ways, but now removing it, removing the camera from the phone and being able to leave your phone and just bring a camera around is also an innovation, right? Going going going going backwards. And I think that's the other thing that that kids like and and I've found that's nice.

If I'm going to the beach with my kids, it's nice to be able to bring a camera but not have my phone. Yeah. Um my daughter is 10, so this is the first summer she's allowed to like walk around with her friends without a parent. And she has a flip phone.

And she had this whole argument for getting an iPhone that has nothing on it but the phone and messaging. And my wife and I have this discussion and the reason why we said no, it has to be the flip phone is because of the camera.

like it it introduces a new level of sort of attention and why you're in purpose and the reason why we wanted her to have a phone is simply to stay in touch with us. No other reason.

But the minute you introduce this other sort of novel aspect of it, it becomes much more of a social dynamic and a social consideration and the way that you're trying to get away from that. Um but I think just going back to the camera things, this is such an obsession of mine.

I think that we are quick to quick to ignore or look past the relationship we have with with the aesthetic that a camera yields. And when you see those pictures off those old point and shoots, they look like something specific.

Like when you were talking about that old skateboard fisheye DVD look, it looks like something specific. You have a relationship with that. When we see stuff that looks like it's VHS, we think of the 80s or the 90s. And I think now there's just sort of this generic aesthetic across the board.

this like crispy flat 4K phone thing and there's this desire to have something that that has some sense of identity attached to it. And that's why we're seeing these sort of Gen Z types, you know, looking for older tech that's that reflects more of who they are, more individuality.

And I think that's a trend that we're going to see continue. Yeah, it's this generation's vinyl. Yeah. I I I've joked that I want to film I want to film the first podcast on Panavision film or something. just spend a fortune developing the film.

What other what other what other c consumer tech categories are you excited about? We're having we're having the founder of Wave uh on and I and I in 20 minutes and they got like 12 million views yesterday for launching like sunglasses that will just live stream constantly.

Do you have a do you have a ratio of um positive to negative mentions in those 12 million views? I mean, I think everybody people had a viscerally negative reaction to it. That's that's my take on it as well.

And it makes me think, you know, my my software development company Beam my startup um and we started that company in 2014 and a little known aspect of that company is initially it was built around Google Glass. No way. And we actually, you know, we we rewrote the code, we rewrote the the software that Google Glass ran.

So, it had a singular function which was you push a button like this, it captures 10 seconds and immediately shares it to your feed. That's where we started with that.

And I remember meeting with Google and they were excited about it and they showed us what Google Glass 2 was going to look like and we're like, "Fuck yeah. " We started raising money based on that and then a week later they announced they were killing the entire Google Glass program and we we backed off.

We're like, "We'll just do it on the phone now. " Um, but I think when you ask about sort of the social impact of being able to live stream all the time or the negative reaction that we're seeing based on on Waves uh video they posted yesterday.

I think the social dynamic is something that is often um overlooked in in the hardware startup world. I think of the humane AI pin. You know, a really good friend of mine worked for for humane and obviously super excited about new technology. Yeah. Sam. Um, yeah.

Which parenthetically, you joke about Panavision for a podcast. Sam Schffer has in his studio for his live streaming setup a VHS camera hardwired into his deck so he can live stream from VHS. That's amazing. But Sam would be around. We tried to I tried to hire Sam, by the way.

We worked with him on a project and I was like, he's way too hot. He's way too hot. He's got to be He's got to be sold. He's way too big of a deal. Sam's the best.

But when I'd be around him and he had his AI pin on, I was always sort of looking down at that or like thinking about what I'm saying and uncomfortable about, you know, speaking openly to him. And I think like that's what I mean by so social implications.

Like, you know, my phone is on my couch right here, but if we're sitting together and I'm holding my phone like this the whole time we're talking, you're uneasy about that.

And so when I think of a pair of glasses that are live streaming or at least have the capability of live streaming the whole time, when I look at them, I'm uneasy. And I think of this, you know, maybe the most extreme example of this is um Apple Vision Pro, which, you know, blew my mind when I got that thing.

Like I made the most the most glowing video about it because it was the greatest technology I've ever used. But later that night, because I made the video the same day I got them, I'm at home using them. And my wife is like, "Casey, take those [ __ ] things off your face and pay attention to your kids.

" And I was like, "Oh, you can't wear these around other people. " Yeah. And I was like, "How do they not see that? " And I So I I think about that because like we're sort of accustomed to people using their phones and it's kind of okay. Like we're used to this. This is not okay. Yeah.

And so when I think about wearables, I think that that is going to be a gigantic thing to overcome which is well the crazy so so Amazon acquired a company uh it got announced this week called B which is a brace after after all everything they faced with Siri's listening to me.

The B band just listens to you all day long every single conversation. And uh and I and it's and it's cool like I I think all new tech for the most part is cool. Do I want my team to be wearing a B bracelet? Are we going to allow people to wear Bands? Might be a B free zone. This might be a B free zone.

You know, there's I'm not going to have any friends that wear bees. I don't have any friends anyways, but if you have a be it just means like we can't hang out. Yeah, because it makes it makes me uncom. And look, I think there's an argument. It's like get over it. Like you [ __ ] lite.

Like this is the direction everything's headed and you're being recorded all the time anyway. Sure. But in the interim, I do think like there is a there's a learning curve.

I think that Meta's decision to put wearable glasses with a camera on them in Ray-B bands, the most common sunglasses in the world was brilliant because we're all familiar with this pair of sunglasses. Like there was no learning curve. There was no like what's that thing on your face? We know what it is.

I think how emphatic they are about having the indicator light. There's no way you can turn it off. If you cover it, they don't record.

There's some degree at least there's Like my my question my question for the the wave founder in 20 minutes is should your glasses be bright red and have like you know a circle in the middle of your head that's flashing that says I'm recording I mean so that people shows up with a TV camera like I don't feel like oh this is in violation of my privacy.

I'm like I know exactly what's going on. news is here and if I step in front of the camera, I'm on the news. Like it it we have a social understanding of that and you still might not want to be around it.

They might be like, "Actually, I'm going to turn around and walk the other way because I don't want to be seen on on this camera or whatever. " I don't know. But there's there's an understanding there. Yeah. And look on on Wave's website in the Q&A there's a question like, "Is there an indicator light?

" And their answer is, "Yeah, but you can turn it off. " And so like I you know, I don't know that I read that and it makes me a little bit queasy. Yeah. as a guy who has a camera on him, you know, all the time. And and so much of the the videos that I've made is about filming everyone in the whole world around me.

I still think there's something honest about having that camera on your shoulder, pointing a camera at someone. Um versus like, you know, the glass hole movement of the, you know, Google Glass, which like by having this on your face, everyone was uneasy around you.

I think it's going be a big hurdle to overcome as we eventually like figure out what this hardware AI future is going to look like. Yeah. What do you think about uh like airplane demos? It feels like all there's so much tech where the demo is like you'll love this on an airplane. The Apple Vision Pro is a great example.

A lot of the a lot of the the handheld devices, it doesn't work when it's dark. Uh it's not too dark on planes. It does work very well on planes, but it's this like weird niche use case that feels like killer application and then you actually get out into most of your life is not spent on airplanes usually.

And so yeah, look, if if that's the best you've got, like I travel more than most people I know and we're still talking about, you know, maybe double digits, maybe 10 hours a month tops. Yeah.

So, you know, 4,000 bucks for a face computer that I use 10 hours a month on an airplane, which by the way doesn't work for me on an airplane. Like I didn't like it at all on an airplane. Okay. No, it will work. Like the technology works perfectly. No, when you're on an airplane, you're surrounded by strangers. Yeah.

Yeah. So, the idea that like I'm just gonna go like that and watch Avatar with all these people around me. You know, I don't fly Spirit that often, but I have flown Spirit and I know what goes on on those flights. Like, it it just again like Yeah.

the social implication of it, you I think if that's the best you've got, then maybe, you know, maybe you're not thinking holistically enough about your about your hardware. Yeah. How do you how do you spot talent? You you you discovered, Sam, uh someone in the chat was asking. Uh it's a great question.

You have a framework for it. It's a it's a it's a difficult question, but you know, it's the same I I approach it the same way that I approach uh investments and it's seldom the work and it's almost always the the individual, you know, like I I think Sam is brilliant, but he's brilliant at everything that he does.

He's brilliant with the work he did at Humane. He's brilliant the work that he did at the Verge before that. He's brilliant with his own YouTube channel. You know, I've got a dear friend of mine, a kid named Hunter, who works in the building with me, but Hunter's a friend and we invest together.

So Hunter's Hunter's fantastic and like I don't know what Hunter does because every time I have a conversation with him, he's starting some new business or some new endeavor. Like the work is almost irrelevant. It's the individual. And I think it's like it's that mentality that you have or you don't have.

Not everyone has it. I do think maybe you can get it if you don't have it. But when I see that in people, I I have a tendency to sort of gravitate towards those people.

And when I look at the when I look around at the friends of mine that I have some sort of professional relationship with a professional admiration for, they all have that thing that that sort of desire to uh to see it through whatever the it may be.

So, you know, I guess the short answer is like it's always the person, never the never the product. That's great. Hunter's in the chat, by the way. He says hello. Um the uh another question I have is we've been thinking about uh AI generated images, video, etc. is getting so good.

If it stays at this pace, you're going to be able to generate characters consistently. Uh you're you're already seeing this on Instagram, people just creating entire personalities for influencers in different verticals.

Do you have any type of strong thesis around how um how that will play out if we're going to have sort of organic influencers, regular humans, and then you know these synthetic? I've been thinking about in the context of um you know an example is like I don't want the AI Andrew Huberman.

I want Andrew Hubman to get health advice from because I know Andrew and I trust that he's making the best decisions and and studying uh you know and making you know these recommendations and and understands the weight of that and you have you have like a synthetic Andrew Huberman in 5 years doesn't care if he could convinces a million people to do something dumb with their health because he can just shut the account down and turn a new one on.

But I'm curious how you think. Yeah. Okay. My cynical take on it, which is which I believe is accurate, um, I'd wager that this is accurate, is that it's a title wave that none of us will will be able to to overcome. We can hold our breath for a while. It is a title wave.

And I wish I had a better analogy, but it's a little bit like, you know, when Toy Story came out in 1999, it was the first computer animated feature film, and it was great. I loved it. But then five, six years later, there was just this, you know, onslaught of computer animated films.

And I was like, you know what, the handdrawn stuff is better. I miss that. When CGI first started getting introduced into films, I was like, no, practical is better. Um, I like practical better. That's going to be the thing. And it's like, no, you're going to lose.

And I think AI is probably the most existential version of that. I think that it's just going to be so good that it's going to become irrelevant. And old people like us might appreciate, you know, real human things and we might keep it alive.

But the generation behind us, my children, when they see draw handdrawn animation, they're like, "What is this? " They don't care. It means nothing to them. So, I think it's just going to get so good that it really doesn't matter. And that that title wave is going to consume everything.

And um I think that we're we're it's the progress that we've seen over the last couple years of how good it is and how quickly it's developing is incredible.

But when you look at the capabilities of you know the latest Grock uh and the latest GPT you look at how smart these things are you look at what the sort of conversations you can have wi with um any of these agents and then you look at how good the images that can be spit out by um you know Google's video or whichever whichever AI uh you you might be fond of it's like they're just going to marry really really quickly and I think five or six years from now we're going to start to see real sort of erosion in the space because what they're delivering is going to be so good.

You know, like another example is like we haven't had a number one song yet that's completely AI generated, but it's going to come out of nowhere. It's going to be like Gangnam style, which like the novelty of it allows us to dismiss the lack of humanity that this song has.

The first AI song that's going to be a number one hit is not going to be a Bob Dylanesque song that comes from the soul. It's going to be something fun and outrageous, and we're going to forgive that AI made it, and then slowly it's going to start to chip away.

But I think it is a losing battle and the optimistic take on that is I think that there is going to be an extreme premium put on the humans that are able to sustain because of of what they represent uniquely. Um you know maybe another bad analogy is it's like I love Marvel movies. They're [ __ ] fantastic.

But as far as cinema goes, like you know, there's an argument that said it's like the kind of artistry that we saw in the the 70s or ' 80s, like the apex of cinema where it comes from one when you think of a Tarantino movie, you think of um you know, a truly great filmmaker with a voice.

Marvel movies are something else. Yeah, they're [ __ ] great and we love them. We all show up to see them and we're okay with that. And I think that's going to happen with AI, but it's going to happen at a rate of acceleration that we've never encountered before.

And it's going to be so good that we're willing to forgive it. And I think it's going to leave a handful of people out there. Maybe Andrew Humeman will be one of them. I hope so. I'm a fan of his as well.

But it will put an extreme premium on the sort of human voices that are distinctly um human that distinctly represents something that AI could never. When you look at the landscape of media, a lot of that [ __ ] could be replaced by AI. So, the power law gets steeper. Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense.

Well, that's like a 5 hour conversation, by the way. Well, we'll have you back on again soon. This was awesome. And congrats on your new your new uh fake but very real role at Mod Retro. Congrats. I appreciate it. Thanks for the time, guys. Have fun in Massachusetts. We'll talk soon. We'll talk soon. Take care.

Have a good one. Bye. Airhorn for Casey. Up next, we have Alex from Bright AI coming in the studio. Um, but let me