I'll good a team. It's Patrick can Jumbo. It's the Bloody You Project where sans Tiff. She's in the thriving metropolis of Brisbane up there on the O in the Sunshine State, I should say, just doing what she does. Hi, mate, how are you?
Oh? I'm good. I haven't been to bris Vegas for such a long time. I was just thinking, it's probably been nine years since I've been up that far up and I'm kind of feeling like I need it at the moment because it's three degrees there's a heat wave here in the land at the moment. It was minus two when I got up this morning, so it's positively a heat wave in comparison.
Do you know you know that you're old? You and I know that we're old because we talk about the weather. I mean, that's the tally. What old people do? Old people? There's no twenty year olds getting on a podcast going ah, how's the weather? Ah? Fuck? What was it? I was minus too here now.
I can tell you if you live in a town where your car's frozen over, people all talk about the weather and those poor kids walking to school and yours. Oh yeah, I couldn't do it.
Well, I have many memories growing up in the thriving metropolis of La tro Valley having to go out and the ice the window of the Valiant Regal a number plate LVR four one four, just in case anyone was wondering. And so I was in charge of getting the ice off the window before mum or Dad could drive me to either school or the bus wherever I was gone. And but you've got a hack, yep?
Yeah, the night before what you do is you get a beach towel and you put it over the wind screen. So last night, knowing that it was going to be freezing cold this morning, laid the towel out, and then just before I left to go to the gym this morning, I peeled the towel off the wind screen. It was all frozen on one side and the wind screen was perfectly fine.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
It's a good hack, isn't it.
Yeah, it's great. And do you do you have to do? You have to do anything too, because I feel I could see they're going to slide down or blow away. Do you need to tuck it inside the doors?
Some people do, and that's what I used to do. But then I realized the only time you have frost is when there's no wind. Anyway, if it's windy, it doesn't get frosty.
I did not. Well, I guess that make I've never thought about that, but I guess that makes sense.
Yeah. Hey, you know the other thing you're talking about getting up early, going to school, and you got driven to school. But I had to walk to school. You know, when I was young, I walked forty kilometers to school every day. No, when I walked to school. You don't My funnest thing I used to love to do.
Is that a word?
Funnest? Probably is?
It is totally, It's totally a word. Yeah.
I used to love walking through the suburbs and when they had that frost on the grass, and as you walk through, it would leave footprints. And what I would do is when I got to a tree, I would hop around the left hand side on one foot and then hop back the other way, And then it looked like for all intensive purposes, when someone walked past that, the footprints diverged and went around the tree, so.
They somehow morphed through the tree and kept walking.
Yeah. Pretty good.
Wow, Yeah, great. I wonder how many people you scared the shit out of.
I don't know. I reckon that the X Files people were out there, or at least the Twilight certain people, I don't know, no one probably, but it amused me and it was a way to get the school freezing cold and at least do something.
And it's good to you told me just before we hit the go button that you're back in the gym. How long since you've trained consistently in a gym? Was it back in the harpst.
Days or oh no, no, no, no, I've been training quite consistently. But I had a really big break last year. For for a year, I got tennis elbow and it took me a long, long, long time to get over it. But I think since I left Harpers, I kind of had a break for maybe two or three years, and then I got back into it and I reckon consistently. I've been back for about maybe seven or eight years and then had last year off. You know, just isn't
it funny? It's a psychological game. You know, you've got to talk yourself back into it and when the pain started to go, and you know, at one point the tennis elbow funny, I never played tennis ever played tennis, but I just I couldn't even pick up a bag of groceries with one arm. It was really, really bad. And I did the whole physio. I think I went to about two different physios and got exercises which I'm
pretty average at doing. You know, they tell you to do these exercises every day and you don't really do them, which is silly because that's how you recover. Anyway, So I'm back into it. It's been a month and I think I need probably another is it two or three more weeks to kind of establish a routine, although I feel like I'm in a routine now. I didn't want to get out of bit this morning when it was minus two, but I did and I got there. So I reckon, I'm doing okay.
And what are you doing? Like, what's you kind of three days a week way to doing like strength stuff? You're doing funtial it's pretty much.
So I do four days a week of strength and it's a real full body you know, legs, arms, chest, back by tries, all that sort of stuff. And then I recently read an article. I used to do just eight to ten minutes on the rower as my cardio, and I used to do it before I did weights, and then I read an article that said it's actually better if you want to burn fat, it's better to do it after you've done weights, and so I've started doing that. So I've flipped it around a little bit.
So once I finished my workout, I do about thirty five forty minutes, and then I do a ten minute you know, eight to ten minute on the rower.
That's good. And do you flog yourself or you're just steady state or.
Pardon it to public gym?
Sorry?
Do I go a little hard? Yeah? Now you know what's interesting. I go relatively hard. I don't I mean, I don't kill myself with cardio. But over at the last month, my speed has increased. A little rower has an indicator of how fast you're going, and finding that I'm just I'm getting faster without working too much hard, which it doesn't feel like I'm working harder.
Yeah, you know you, I feel like we're pouring the fuck out of everyone listening to the topic at hand. But what's interesting about you is, I don't know how long we've known each other. It's got to be in the ballpark of thirty years. But your body is pretty much the same. Like it doesn't seem to me like, well, you know, like thirty years down the track, most blokes, well now they're like their postures, shit, they're they're a bit they're a bit fatter, they're you know, like that.
It's like the guys that I went to school with. Oh yeah, God bless them. It's like, fucking hell, I can't even some of them look good. But there's a few that's like, wow, there's father time has not been good to you, or maybe you've just been haven't looking after you, haven't been looking after you, but you still look kind of the same.
Well thanks, mate, that's what it's so to you though, you was just so buffing, you know. That's I don't think your body shapes been pretty consistent.
That's because I'm insecure and to like me, Yeah.
I'm pretty over the same, I reckon. That's one of the reasons. It's a good motivation. Though.
Wow, I don't know if it's a good motivation, but it's a motivation.
You know. I shouldn't admit this, but there's a little bit of one upmanship as well, because I have an identical twin brother and it's just hard not to comparee yourself all the time. And because look, you know, when my mom passed away just over ten years ago, I had to go. I went out and bought a black suit because I didn't known a black suit, so I bought a suit. And that's when I started hitting the
gym again. So I got back into the gym. And then after about oh maybe six months, I realized I dropped about two sizes and the suit didn't fit me. So I went on my brother's place and I said to my brother, look, you know you were in a kind of high end business. You know you wear suits all the time. Do you want this suit? I've only worn it once and I said it doesn't fit me anymore. It's too big. And he said, well, why don't you
hold onto it until you fit into it again. It's like, no, I never want to be able to fit into it. And so, you know, two sizes too big, and I gave it. I don't know if if he wore it or whether it fit him or whatever, but after dropping two sizes, it was just too big. But that's a nice feeling to be able to drop a couple of sizes and then to keep yourself motivated not to fill the suit.
Out again, are you guys identical or no?
Yeah, we're genetically identical yep, and single organism. We started off as some of us didn't progress much further. But yeah, now.
Do you and he have I don't think you do. But you know how some identical twins it's like freakishly intertwined with each other's lives. I know that's not you, but all you know that whole thing where you've seen people on Telly finishing each other's sentences.
It was a viral video of those women in Queensland. Did you see that? Wow? That was that was amazing, wasn't it. No, I what I've observed with twins, there are some twins that are almost joined at the hip, and then you've got other twins that are almost mirror images of each other in terms of and I mean biologically mirror images. Like you know, I've got one crooked tooth that's the exact opposite twisted tooth than he has,
like mirror image. But but no, we have had some freaky I don't know if I've told you about the freaky things that happened. So my brother's name is Paul and consistently, at least three or four times a year, I'll be on the phone to someone I know relatively well, or it'll be a call center where we start off a conversation and then halfway through the conversation they stopped
calling me Patrick and they start calling me Paul. Wow, local politician I've known for about five or six years, and she turned to me one day and called me Paul. And I've known it for years and years and years. So that's a bit freaky. But the freakiest thing I think that ever happened. I don't know if you remember. At one point in harp As, I had what do they call little flavor, say, but the little little beard thing they have under the lip, Remember I had. I wore that for a while.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what.
Well, one year I decided I was going to grow a go tea just before Christmas, so maybe six weeks before Christmas, I grew a full go tea. You know, thought I'm gonna look tough, white Craig. Anyway, so a mum and dad I was living. I was obviously not living at home anymore, but I go around to the folks place for Christmas Day, and Mum got to the front door, first opens the door and says, you've been
talking to your brother, haven't you? And I said, what, I walk in and my identical twin brother has grown the exact same go tea. Wow, that freaked me out. I shaved it off and was that.
The first time both of you had ever done it in your life?
Never neither of us had ever grown a go tea. And it wasn't like suddenly people were growing them like. It wasn't like the mullet thing.
No.
Yeah, yeah, so that was really really strange. That's a few weird things have happened.
Yeah, I don't know. There's something in that. There's something in that. And some some twins are a little bit weird, though some are a bit disconcerting. I feel like they're too intertwined.
Well, I guess in our case there's the good twin and the evil twin. And I think we know Paul's the good twin, don't we do?
We do? But also what else is interesting is that you like boys who likes girls. That that's interesting, like genetically identical, you know, So that.
About how don't have to tell you the story about how I added myself.
Uh, I think you did. But let's about half of our audience or more who haven't heard it.
Well, the ones that are still left because the rest of them have switched off, because this is the shit to start to any podcast. Where's Tiff when you need it now? I did a TV show years ago. There was a TV show on TV show and Channel seven called it was Australia's Most Identical Twins, and it was just a remaker of a British show and they got I think eighty four sets of identical twins from around the country and they got us to do a whole
series of tests. So they got us to do coordination tests, so you know those dance you know, video arcades sometimes you had these ending platforms you did that. They did our dental records. That's how I knew that my teeth were the exact mirror image of my brother, which is
really common in twins. We did everything from coordination. We did a blind chocolate test, so they put a you know, they got you to taste different chocolates to see which one you liked, and they measured you against your twin brother. But I knew one of the producers of the show, and I knew that there was no chance that Paul and I would be even remotely Australia's most identical twins.
We're so different. And so right at the end of this series of you know, activities we have to go through, we had a couch interview separately and they asked us a series of questions. But it was a bit loaded because I knew that I was going to be asked the question, and so the final question was, so, you know, how similar do you really think you are? I said, Oh, we're really similar. We've got all these things in common. And then there's of course, well he's I'm gain he's not.
And that was the little clincher, like that little tagline, and they used that.
In the como.
So so what happened was when it went to air they used that bit and it was great. It just took all the pressure off because all my friends and everybody was watching the show and I conveniently just like, nah, I'm just going to app myself and that.
How many of your friends went? Oh? Well, of course, how many people went? Fuck? I didn't see that coming.
Oh look it's the close close circle of most of them already knew. Anyway, the closer ish, probably suspected. And then the the you know, the occasional people might have been a bit surprised.
I don't know, the old Maltese relatives just you know, raising their eyebrows hysterically.
No, but I've got I've got a small little section of mum's family in Malta that refused to meet with me and uncle and his family. So when I went over there, did the whole trip. I tried to make arrangements to meet up. And it's like, I wonder why he never seems to be available and his family never seems to be available. I'm only here for two weeks. And then I took aside one of my other cousins and I said, as has that uncle got a problem you reckon with me being gay? And she said, yeah
it is. It's like, oh, okay, that's all right. Then I don't want to see him either. Then hew h.
That's one of the things about religion that bothers me. Yeah, that would be for religious reasons. It actually was, Yeah, No, it was for religious anyway. Anyway, all right, let's talk about let's talk about the thing that you're good at, or one of the many Let's talk about let's talk about the ever shifting landscape that is technology.
You know, I've got this love hate relationship with AI, and I was reading an article recently see the Great Firewall of China. China has a lot of control over what people see and do, and in terms of the electronic side of I guess a lot of efforts put into sanitizing and controlling what the masses are able to access. So you can't use Facebook, you can't use Google, you can't use Instagram or anything when you're in China. There are the equivalent Chinese equivalents of those, but this really
struck home to me that China literally shut down. They're using AI their entire nationwide access for students, for people to be able to access AI during exams. So they have this one period of the year where they had these major exams, like the I guess the VCE exams that we have, they turned off a whole lot of AI features right around the entire country just so that I think it's thirteen million students were doing exams, and so they switched all these features off so that they
couldn't cheat during exams during the exam work. That seems unfair, well, It's kind of amazing, isn't it that you can flick a switch. That's the disconcerting thing. But you know, on the other side of that, it's now there was a really interesting article on the ABC in the last week or so that was talking about the anniversary of Tianamin Square and how now the kind of communications directorate in China is sanitizing the history and trying to erase that
from all of their records. So if you go to the deep, if you go on to you know, one of the like the AI search tools of Chinese AI search tools, and you type in you know, what happened during the Tianamin Square massacre, it won't give you any information. It doesn't exist as far as far as concerned. So, you know, it's nice to live in a country where we have free media and ability to be able to
talk about whatever we're talking about. But when you can erase history and effectively, that's exactly what the Chinese government's doing. So whether you're turning off AI or using AI to sanitize what is historically, you know, information is just disappearing. So there will be a lot of young people in China. Three was it twenty six years ago, tianam in Square or so something like that. So there'll be all these young people who have no knowledge of what happened in Square.
That's that's kind of frightening too, isn't it.
Well? I mean yeah, one, yes, and then two you think about how different versions of that play out all around the world in different ways. I mean North Korea and you know, even I don't know even in western countries. I think, how much do we actually know about what
gets withheld that we don't know about? Or I was talking to somebody recently on the podcast and we were talking about how the the shifting landscape of technology but also AI that we're talking about right now, but also in terms of education, and it's it's so interesting because I don't know how it's going to play out, especially in say a secondary school kind of setting, an undergraduate university setting, where you can kind of get AI to do the work, you know, to do your to do
your projects, to do your literature reviews, to do you know, all of the things that you can. You know, it's different with, for example, what I'm doing because I'm running my own research and getting my own data and it's
all brand new. But for people who say I've got to do a two thousand report, two thousand word report on Tianaman Square, and you live in Australia, you can just go, you know, write me, give me an overview, use references and quotes, and then it gets produced and you're like, yeah, now write it like a year eleven student who's pretty smart. Well they're not an academic.
Yeah. Well. The other interesting thing is that CEOs now in Silicon Valley. What they're doing is there's a new startup that's using AI to effectively clone the CEO. So what they're doing is they're putting all of their public appearances, anything they've ever written, all of their emails, that anything they can ga gather electronically about the principles, the way that they speak, all the different thought processes that have been saved, and they're uploading it and then the CEOs
who are all megabusy. What they're doing is if junior staffers want to speak to the CEO, they're speaking to the CEOs AI instead. So if you're if you're if you've pulled up every assignment you've ever written for the last two years, and you send every email you've ever sent, you don't have to make it sound like a year eleven student. Just make it sound like you, because it'd be able to get to the point where it effectively mimics the way and your voice, you know, your authentic voice,
and that's pretty interesting too. So I don't know that i'd like to talk to the AI version of you. I think i'd prefer to a spect to the real version of you. But but there's a possibility, you know, you might not. We might be out at a cafe having coffee while we're recording a podcast with our AI equivalents.
I was looking for something, but I'll just recall it as best I can. But yeah, not Yeah, last weekend, so on on Saturday, i'd done a little post for Instagram, and I jumped into AI and I said into chat GPT specifically, and I said, what's a good time to post tonight on Instagram? And it said, you know, for
maximum engagement. It said, ah, so tonight in tonight in Melbourne, And then it put in brackets Friday night and it was Saturday night, and it said this is a good time da da da da, And I said, I said, yeah, but it's Saturday night. Have you been drinking right, yeah, and it went ah, it said, nah, Craig, no booze here. Just my prefrontal cortex went offline for a moment. I said, yeah, this is what AI said, No booze here, Craig laughing face emoji. My prefrontal cortex went offline for a moment.
Sorry about that. And I mean, like, for me, that's the perfect AI because it's cheeky and it's sarcastic, and it's I'm like, oh my god, it talks like me. It's a smarter version of me.
Yeah. I interesting you mentioned chat JPT because you know, at the moment there's a court case in the US where a lot of the media outlets New York Times et cetera, et cetera, and now trying to sue open AI and they're trying to basically force them and they have by court and it's being appealed, but they have to keep every single chat GPT dialogue interaction. So every including the things you delete, are now going to be saved. Now who can access them as up to speculation whether
it's just the courts. The reason being is that a lot of these media are outlets behind paywalls. So if you want to access their articles, you've got to pay, but chat GPT can go behind the paywalls somehow. What's happening is a lot of these media outlets stories are still ending up as accessible to chat GPT, and so people are now finding that they can bypass the paywalls and access the articles, and of course the media outlets
are not happy about that, understandably. But what it's done is it's basically said as from now, everything that's being done has to be stored and has to be kept indefinitely until otherwise whether they can launch an appeal. But everything that you're doing, it's all going to be saved and stored indefinitely at the moment, including stuff you do.
I mean to me, that's almost incomprehensible, Like, I mean, what is that even? What does that even mean? Speaking of speaking of nothing to do with that, but China anyway, And Tech, did you get that thing I sent you through the week? Oh about the battery?
No? I didn't. I don't think I've got anything from you. Tell me about it. Come on, Oh really.
So I'll tell you what. Just jump on your phone right now, I'll talk to our listeners.
Okay, I did get a new phone this week, by the way, so have a.
Quick look at what I sent you through the week, and because I thought that would fascinate you. And so what it is, everybody, you have a quick read. It's a battery, like a small battery the size of your thumbnail. I guess it's a nuclear battery that lasts for one hundred years.
Didn't I send that to you?
No? I sent that to you this week. No.
I realized why. I wasn't able to open it because I actually haven't installed Instagram on my phone yet because it's a new phone. And so I took the link. It was like, oh man, now I've got to install it and I'm going to log in, and I thought, I can't be bothered. But how I know the nuclear battery. Yeah, it's the last one hundred years. It's pretty epic, isn't it. I think it was a topic that I was going to chat about it point. But that's phenomenal, isn't it.
The fact that they can I mean, the applications are amazing. Pacemakers. It means that people will be able to be fitted out with the pacemaker and they never have to replace the battery. So for medical application, even at the outset. You know, watches you never you have to worry about your watch ever happened to, you know, because I've got
a stack of really nice watches. I went through a phase of just buying watches that were analog, you know, without the need for having any technology aside from the fact they do need batteries. And the problem now I've got about I don't know eighteen watches that need batteries, and so I did this sit in there collecting dust because I can't be bothered getting a battery the last twelve months or six months.
And I think you spoke last time about some of the car batteries now that can be charged to like eighty percent within four or five minutes or something.
Well, it's almost well now the car making because this has always been a bit of a holy grail for the ev car market to be able to have that time parody between filling up with fuel. So if you fill up your tank get five hundred kilometers, you fill up your battery for five minutes and you get five hundred kilometers. And now they believe the achieved that, so that's not far off. I've got to tell you though, one of the most interesting little articles I've read recently
was Nicola Tesla. One of the things that Nicola Tesla Tesla theorized was being able to send electricity without the need for wires. So this is like a concept that's one twenty four years old. Now they're saying they may be able to beam power. They're looking at a whole lot of different things, lasers, microwaves, But what it could effectively mean is that you would never need to have wires and cables to turn on any devices you could have.
You know, you could run your whatever it is, you know, your car, your electric car, wouldn't need anything, just be beamed from space. How good would that be?
Yeah? I don't know that's good because I think, fucking where is that beam coming from? And what if I'm in between where it's coming from and the charging or I don't know, all of those unseen beams and microwaves of and energy fields and scares me a little bit.
Now, I know we kind of got off the topic of AI, but I've got to ask you a quick question, and particularly with the ability for AI now to mimic in the hands of those people who would do bad things with it, obviously a lot of the scams now are deep fake scams where people are called by a relative of saying they need money. Now, do you have a safe word with Tiff or Melissa? Just quietly?
Are we talking about No? I do not see.
You might need to think about a safe word. Okay, So what it is is if suddenly Melissa gets a phone call from you or an email saying I've lost my credit card, I've just about to buy a Tesla, can you urgently transfer this money to my new bank account? Those lines right, well, have a safe word? Is it really you, Craig? What's the safe word?
Yeah?
Yeah, I'll be the safe word now if you're right?
Yeah, ad or just ask them something that only they could not.
But this is but say, security experts are really actively encouraging this that they're saying that you should have with your close personal loved ones, people who have access to your life. Think about creating a safe word so that if there is that kind of weird request, you know, and with you know, the Hey Mum scam, the Hey Dad scam where you get a text I've lost my phone.
You know, I've got a borrow to someone else's phone to send you a message, I desperately need some money, and it might only be two hundred bucks, and the person might be traveling, or they might be somewhere where you can't contact them. But having that safe word is a really simple way. You know, it might be the name of your first dog or something, but it's not a bad idea when you think about it.
One hundred percent. And could you imagine how easy Ron and Mary would beat a scam fuck? And how yeah, like with like you could make an AI of my voice and go hey mom. Fortunately, the saving grace is she doesn't know how to transfer anything. She's got to pull twenty bucks out of her purse. You're getting nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you could I know what you're safe word could be with your parents? We wish you girl.
Yeah. I've been told they were shadow girl and my name was going to be Lisa if I was a girl. So there's that.
Really. Oh, there you go, Lisa, there is your safe word.
Yeah yeah, hey, Now I don't know if I told you this, and listeners, I apologize because I've shared this before. But so one of my papers that I'm writing for my PhD is what's called a systematic literature review. So it's two years of work, it's about thirty thousand words. It's blah blah. Anyway. The other day, so Melissa, for our new listeners, you might not know who Melissa is. She runs my life. She's the boss of me. She's
my business partner. Anyway, So Melissa took my paper, which is now finished, well, the first draft is finished, so it's a complete paper. Still got to be tweaked, but she took that paper. She loaded it into AI. Now, just reminding you that the paper is all about how accurate we are at understanding how other people see us. So you know, what Patrick thinks of me, that's perception versus what I think he thinks of me. That's metaperception.
Right now, meta accuracy is how close those two things are, how he actually sees me and how I think he does. Anyway, it sounds complex, but it's a really interesting thing when you do a deep dive. So she put my whole paper in there and it gets turned into a two person podcast between a lady and a guy in three minutes Patrick, it comes up with the twenty five minute podcast, which is indistinguishable. Like I've played it to people and they didn't know They're like, oh, what this is great?
What was this on? And how good are their voices and how interesting is this? And I let them listen to a few minutes and I go, that's not real. They're not real people. And the whole conversation, all of the conversation is drawn out of my paper, nothing else on the internet. And so because my research some of it's a bit complex, right, So I can just send people this thing and go here, listen to this, and this will give you six years of work in twenty five minutes.
I kind of feel you need to send it to me. I would love you.
I will send it to you. You'll I mean not only will you because you're all over tech and AI, but like, I really think you'll like the actual I love the conversation because they explained it in They explained it in a way which is very user friendly. And not only you user friendly, but you go, oh god,
this is actually an important thing that I understand. Understanding how other people see me actually matters because it improves a whole lot of interpersonal and sociological outcomes, you know, at work and away from work, and you know, problem solving and conflict resolution and leadership and all of these things where, oh, if I have an insight into someone else's mind, that's a good thing.
Oh, without doubt. I mean, when you think about the interactions we have on a daily basis. I had the loveliest thing said to me recently. I was at the local pharmacy and I it was a really busy day and you could see that the staff were all a little bit stressed. And then I finally got to the counter and I chatted to the lady at the counter and she said, it's so nice seeing you. You're always so friendly. You've made my day. It's been such a tough day. And I just said hello and smiled and chatted.
But it was It made me feel so good. And it makes you realize that, you know, it doesn't take much to change someone's whole day just because you say a nice thing to someone, or you know, a nice gesture or whatever.
You know.
And I guess that's the metaperception thing too, and in some ways working you know, knowing or trying to trigger that or you know, when you're interacting with somebody.
Yeah, I love that. So the first personal development book I ever read. You would have heard of the book. It's called How to Win Friends and Info. Yeah, very very famous. So a guy called Dale Carnegie wrote that book in nine thirty six, and you think about that, nearly one hundred there were books before that, but that was one of the groundbreaking what we would call self help type of books. Are you looking that up to make sure? I know?
No, I'm very familiar with it. You've mentioned quite a few times. Yeah.
But anyway, there's this thing in the book where he says, try to find something to compliment people on. That's genuine. Yeah, And I thought that's such a He's not just saying, you know, talk crap. It's like even people who were difficult, and he talks about this. I might fuck this up a little bit. But one of his jobs was he was basically a boy Friday when he was young, and
he used to have to deliver the mail. He has to go to the post office, and he was basically a in his younger days, a shitkicker, like an office shitkicker. And he used to have to go to the post office and wait in the queue with all the parcels and all the post and all the things. And there was a lady at the post office that let's just say, she was somewhat surly, and she probably didn't love her job or her life, and she was just, you know,
just didn't seem like a happy human. And he spent like a week trying to figure out how he could break through that. And he remembered the you know, I don't know something he got told, but the one not one thing, but he noticed that she had really beautiful eyes, which probably these days might sound creepy, but one hundred years ago, who knows. And one that he got up and she knew him and he knew her, but that was just very business, and he said, has anyone ever
told you you have like just really beautiful eyes? And that was it. That was the turning point because he just said something nice to her, and nobody ever said maybe not many people said something nice to her, which was, you know, there was no real strategy other than I
guess the strategy was to build connection, you know. And when I heard that, or I read that, I thought, yeah, that's not that's not a dumb idea, but also what a nice idea too, Just to genuinely find something to say something, something nice to say to someone.
It's funny. I had an ex partner who criticized me when we'd go to parties, I'd get this whole spiel, which would be something along the lines of, you're always interviewing people. Why do you do that? You always interview people. It's like, I'm not interviewing people. I'm just interested in finding about their lives. I want to talk to people. I want to understand about them. And you know, a lovely lady who since passed away, who was the manager
of our local neighborhood center. She said to me one day, you've got you've got one mouth and two ears, so you know you should be listening twice as much as talking. Yeah, it was a really love It's.
Not the worst advice. All right, let's jump back on to our little I want to know what when I hit the snooze button.
Yes, I want to talk about are you do you hit the snooze Do you sit an alarm at all?
I do sit an alarm, but my alarm is radio, so it comes on with just blokes talking.
Yeah, okay, so I've never needed an alarm. I'm a bit of a freak. So I did breakfast radio for seven years set my alarm, but wo up before the alarm consistently for seven years never needed it, and so I don't use an alarm. But there's been some really interesting studies done and Australians actually fare pretty well. We're not as dependent on the snooze button as a lot of other countries. So people in the US, Sweden, Germany have the highest snooze button snooze button use, whilst those
living in Japan and Australia had the lowest. So that's a good thing. But this study was pretty full on. It was a place called mass General, Bringham and they analyzed sleep data from twenty one thousand people and they used a sleep cycle app and they measured three million sleep sessions in the study, so it's pretty definitive. And so fifty six percent of those people on average hit the snooze button. So we're talking, you know, more than half of the people that were studied were the ones
that hit the snooze button. And what the sleep experts are saying is if you rely on the snooze button, it breaks up a really crucial part of your sleep process, So that rapid eye movement process when it gets when the alarm goes off, you break part of the sleep cycle. So what they say, is set the alarm, but set the alarm at the latest point you can possibly have to get up, so you're forced to get up and don't do the I'm going to set it half an
hour beforehand. That way you can just hit the snooze for the half hour. That's the possible thing you can do. So they're saying, if you have to try not to, but set your alarm for the latest possible time so you can't fall into the habit of hitting snooze. And I thought that makes a lot of sense, because it's hard for some people to get up in the morning. You know, some people are just not mourning people. And I get that, well, I kind of get it because
I'm not a night person. So yeah, I'm the worst in the world. My friends know, if I go out to dinner, I want to be going home by at eight thirty. I'm happy to go home at eight thirty. It's terrible. I'm a nana, but I always have that.
I think that's because I don't think that's because you're older. I'm old because I've been You've probably been like that forever. I've been like that forever. I'm like, I don't understand I mean theoretically, I get it, but if I get somewhere, you know, if you and I going out, we're catching up, we're having a bite. We meet at seven. I'm like, I'm definitely on my way home by eight thirty maybe eight, Mike. Yeah, And by the way, can we do dinner earlier than seven?
Oh yeah? My ideal dinner is five point thirty six o'clock.
You're a genuine here nana, dude.
You know if people come over for dinner at my place at six o'clock, yep, come over and start to eat at six. Tell us about on Oh no, no, just the one thing that was interesting though. The snooze pattern changes depending on the day of the week, so obviously work week people are much more likely to snooze on the weekends. The snooze thing doesn't seem to be a major factor. Just a bit of advice there.
That was all up. Sorry, Just the next little lightem on the list. I'm interested in because I feel like a lot of us are people pleases, because we don't like saying no, and we don't like hurting people's feelings, and we don't like creating a disharmony. So tell us about.
That, well, there is a science to saying no. And this is interesting because I'm going through a bit of a situation at the moment. I'm a volunteer in an organization, and I'm getting to the point where I'm so busy I may have to say no, and I struggle, I absolutely struggle to say no. But and this is an interesting quote Warren Buffett. You know, he was like a millionaire in the US. He's quoted as saying, the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really
successful people say no to almost everything. I thought, that's a great quote, and I'm the opposite. I tend to say yes to almost everything. But here's a bit of advice. When when you do feel the inclination or you have to say no, never reference time as the excuse. The second you say, oh no, Craig, I can't. I just haven't got the time, what it says to you is that I can't make the time for you, right, okay.
Whereas if you reference money, evidently that's okay. So what the research has found that if you use money as an excuse to decline a request. So so you say, oh, look, do you want to go to the opera with me. I say, look, I'm going to be honest with you. At the moment, I'm just a bit strapped and I just don't know that I want to spend something on that at the moment. Maybe another time, that's a better way of getting around it.
Yeah, this is my way. Yeah, I want to go to the opera. This is you asking me. No. No, You're like, why not I go because I don't like the opera? Next right?
Yeah?
And I love you, but I don't like opera.
So cycle for the next week. The only reason cycle you want is in your washing machine.
You want to come? Do you want to come to Imax with me and watch a three D movie? Yeah? I'm in. Yeah.
That was fun, wasn't it. We'll do more. We'll do more Avatar and three D than opera. I'm not a big opera person. I listen to a little bit, but I'm not an opera person either, So yeah, I'm with you on that one.
What's next on the list? Ibi one?
Oh, I was just waiting for you to pick something up. Let me think.
Tell me about robot cats that have got glowing eyes and artificial heartbeats? Yeah? Might heal help children be less stressed.
Now this is really interesting because at the moment, this is a trial that's happening in New South Wales and what they're doing is they're using what they call meta cats, so their therapeutic robot pets, and they're going into some libraries in the Blue Mountains and they're sitting down with kids and their life size they per They are basically
cat replicas and they help comfort and reduce stress. Now this is for particularly people or you know, young kids that have some sort of anxiety or potentially older people with dementia. So they can meow and they purr and they have little animated led eyes. So if you said, if I said to the cat, I love you, a little love heart would appear in the eyes. How cute is that?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah yeah. So and there's a little bit of movement, but they've got senses so they can tell they respond to human touch, so if you're patting them, they know you're patting with them, and then they'll start purring. I mean, personally, I can see this would be amazing if you've got people who are suffering from dementia or again, or if
you've got children that have apprehension and a concern. You know, it's something that generally, you know, you and I and I guess a lot of our listeners don't have the social anxieties that some people have, and so it's great. You know, I don't like walking into a crowded room, but I will do it. But for some people there's
some real big barriers. And if you can imagine a kid not wanting to go into a library because they're scared or for whatever reason, but they know they can go and pat the friendly cat and it can sit on their lap while they're reading a book, then suddenly the mindset changes and that can be a real deal breaker for kids that have anxiety and depression or any sort of barrier to being able to interact in the real world. So I thought that's kind of cool, and it's been done here in Australia.
I think more and more we're going to see humans building relationships. I put that word in in inverted commas, but relationships where you know, people, kids, adults are getting some kind of emotional and or psychological need met through interaction with essentially AI. And I don't think that's a
bad thing. I think it can be a bad thing, but you know, for people, you know, it's even like people in remote Australia listening to this, like, well, without this technology, they can't hear this, and they can't do a zoom call with their parents who live somewhere else, or you know. So I think it's it's trying to figure out how to build a symbiotic relationship between humanity and technology that is for the individual as much as possible,
positive not negative. And I think that that, you know, like even where I'm talking to you about the way that chat GPT responds to me and it uses language that I like, it swears at me, like not at me, but it'll use swearing when I ask it to comment on something or and it's you know, obviously it's a
result of very very very clever programming and whatever. But at the end of the day, if it creates an emotional response in somebody that makes them feel something in the ballpark of positive, I guess as long as they don't become then dependent and create a new problem, then maybe it's okay.
In China, there's been a groundswell of young people using AI as therapists because it's expensive, and I mean any sort of therapy is quite expensive. Here, we've got some safety nets. I think you can get a mental health care plan of ten or eight sessions through your local GP, and that's subsidized by the government, but in some places
that's not possible. And so being able to turn to AI that gets to know you and understands, but particularly remembers, that way you can have that ongoing conversation to be able to dig down with your anxieties and any apprehension that you have and talk through problems that you're facing, or even just organizing yourself, saying to the AI, these are the list of things that I've got to do today. What would be the best order to tackle them? I'm
struggling to do this. Can you help help me organize my life? Organize my day? And that's a real tool that's there now and available to all of us, you know, using those basic prompts help me with this. You know it could be financial. You know, these are all the bills I've got. This could be you know how I'm planning out the next week, next week. I just recently purchased a new phone. I had an issue with my
previous one, so I bought a new phone. And they're integrating AI now to the point where it will integrate calendar interaction with dialogue. I mean I add my calendar entries by voice all the time now. But what you can do is you know, if I said ad an entry to go to the doctor at three o'clock today, it would come back and say no, no, you've already got something on or I'm going to be in balorat and it's going to take you longer than half an hour to get to that appointment in the land, so
you may need to reschedule. So that's where the adaptive AI and the ability to be able to not just look at your calendar and add things to rationally say, well, wait a minute, it's going to take you half an hour to get there. That's not going to give you enough time if you book your appointment at three o'clock, because you're going to have to believe it two thirty.
And those are the things I see. Having the PA built into your phone or being able to interact in that way is going to make life so much easier. Not everybody about Melissa.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. Even Melissa doesn't have a Melissa Melissa's what does she call them. She keeps talking to me. We've spoken about this before, but it's like you and her have this language that you can both speak that I don't speak. Right, So she talks to me about she's building these agents, which are essentially like electronic employees to do stuff for us. Right. Yeah, I think it's super exciting, but we've got maybe two
more things we can get through. One I want to get through is selfishly, the man who's had two operations on his eyes, Oh, who can't see? Great? They might there might be a game that might help me.
I love this. You know what I was really excited about when I read this story is do you know what a stereoscope is? So people may or may not know what a stereoscope is. This is a device that's over one hundred years old, probably about one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty years old. And what it is, it's a wooden frame that you put a card in and it shows two images side by side, and then when you put it on, the images are in three D.
And this technology over one hundred years old. And I used to collect a number of those three D cards. You know, I've got some tours around the world and it looks amazing. It's black and white stuff, but it's fantastic. But I got one a little a few years ago that allows you to It was actually being used to
train your eyes and depth perceptions. So when you looked at the three D image, it would focus you know, you'd have little numbers around the room and you would focus on the numbers, which would adjust your image so that your focus in real depth perception. So if it's in the foreground, you look in the foreground, if it's in the mid ground or the background. Now there's a game that these Chinese are Japanese scientists have just worked on at the moment, and they say it could improve
your eyesight. And what it is is for most of us looking at devices, the problem we've got is that it's flat and we're not adjusting our focal length. So they're using the metaquests too at the moment. To put on this, you put on the headset and it gives you real depth perception. So if you're playing a rudimentary game where you've got targets and you've got to shoot a gun at the targets, the targets are different focal lengths, so your eyes are trying to readjust constantly on the depth,
you know, the depth of the target. And that's what this thing can actually reverse some of the problems that people have with their vision. So that's got a lot of and it's not invasive.
Yeah. Well that, I mean, that's exciting as somebody like me because my one of my eyes is good. One of my eyes was complete rubbish?
Was it my opia? Is it nearsightedness? Well?
My so my right eye, which is my good eye, I had operated on because I had a cataract. So my my ophthalmologist or whatever you call them, I went and I saw her in uh it would have been May or June last year. I had my operation last year. She said, okay, so you'll be blind by Christmas if we go.
That's scary.
Yeah, I'm like, oh okay, so let's operate. So there's that. And my left eye when I was born. I don't know if you know this, but when I was born, my left eye was turned Oh okay, yeah, yeah. So I had an operation when I was about five to kind of straighten it.
But you're right eye was so BEAUTI your left I kept trying to look at it exactly.
Exactly, but here's he could you imagine? So I've just had my operation on my left eye, which is very weak, so they cover my right eye, which is good with a patch. So now I'm like, I'm five, I'm fat, and I've got a patch. I look like a short, fat fucking pirate. Right. All I needed was a parrot and I would have been off to the races and sock and I don't know where my self esteem problems came from, but I could imagine the story.
Well, evidently this new this is for near sightedness, is what be doing this on.
So just quickly, I'm interested. We've got about three minutes if you could tell me about drone deliveries. I know a lot of fast food outlets and the like delivering hamburgers to people's joints with drones.
Yep, look, I you know. It's interesting. They've got trials going all over Australia. There's some going over in camera. There have been a few. Well the interesting thing is these trials are going all over the place, so thousands of drones doing all these deliveries and there's been very few complaints. Now an independent study has gone into this and what has come out of it is that it may not be that people are annoyed with the drone deliveries.
It's that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority makes it so bloody hard to complain, so when people complain, they bring up the local council. Oh, I just heard a drone go past, and it's gone past twenty times in the last ten minutes. The problem is not so much that people aren't annoyed about drones. Then there's a call now for an easier, more transparent way to really assess whether these drone deliveries are going to be problematic for people.
So whether you have a time duration, we're not allowed to fly them after a certain time. I mean for drones generally Australia, you can't fly them at night. So if you have a drone, and even if you're registered with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, you're not allowed to dry to fly the drone beyond you know, you know, day well daylight hours. Effectively you can only fly them
when they can be seen. But it's interesting that that potentially I think they've only been three official complaints with your own delivery, so I guess the call now is for more transparency to be able to say, well, look, if this is going to be problematic, and if we want to really fully assess it's one thing to have these drones delivering and making life convenient. I want my coffee. Maybe I can get it now in the next thirty
seconds because it can fly straight to my house. But if people want to complain about it, we need a process to make it a lot easier to complain.
Am I the only one thinking that? If I order a coffee by the time name, I mean, it's already cold even if I pick it up in the But I mean, how cold is that shit going to be by the time it flies at two kilometers above the houses?
No, no, It'll be in an eski or something that keeps the heat in it. You know this is a thermal kind of blanket. I don't know. I haven't ordered a coffee, but I but think about it. If you crook right, and you you know you need some pain medication, or you happen you know you've got a bad cold, the last thing you want to do is get in the car, go to the pharmacy, pass it on to
everybody in the pharmacy. Whereas if your audi, your tablets and stuff and it gets delivered by drone, then that would be really convenient.
What about organs being delivered for emergency procedures, that'd be cool, Like a drone with a like a heart in it, just flying across just landing on the Royal Children's or something like that, or the Alfred.
And you know the good thing about drone delivery, I guess is that you've got all that space for them to fly around in that's not being used by anybody.
Yeah, Patrick, where can people find you and do yoga with? Not yoga, tie chi with you? Connect with you?
Well, if you wanted to do some ti chee with me, you go to Tichi at home dot com dot au. There some free video. It was a little website I put together during COVID for my students. But if you want to know more about what I do professionally, allegedly professionally websites, marketing, logos, branding, all that sort of stuff, you can go to websitesnow, dot com dot au.
Always good champion, We appreciate you. I think the Coin of the World will be back next week to keep us both in line, So probably need it a week after I should say, have a good day buddy, Cheers mate,