I get a team. It's a you project. It's Bobby and Tiff, It's Craig, it's a it's a third Yeah, it's a Thursday. It's twelve thirty four in Melbourne. It is I believe it's five thirty four on the other side of the world in California? Am I correct? Bobby in the PM? Yes, so Wednesday night, five thirty four pm and Tiff in Elwood it's nineteen eighty nine. So yeah, how's how is Elwood? Speaking of the past? How is it?
It's Elwood's so great? I mean, what else do you need?
Yeah?
What do you love about? What do you love about Elwood? Give a quick kind of sales pitch. You're on the stage. People are thinking about moving to Victoria. They don't know where to go. You've got twenty seconds to sell them on. Money's no object, clearly because they're moving to Elwood. Sell Elwood for us. What's the what's the sales pitch?
Well, it's just this little village vibe right, you know, on the cusp of the city, right next to the beach. It's a little bit cut off from too much public transport, so you don't get too many yahoos. And it's there's plane trees everywhere and it's beautiful. It's beautiful.
Is it a bit bohemian or not really bohemian or is it a bit laid back? I know they do have a good cookie shop that you've been giving the most mileage.
Oh my god, I just had someone message to say they just landed back into Melbourne from the airport. They're heading straight to the cookie shop. They're there right now.
That was that cookie shop. By the way, we are not sponsored by them. I'm not sponsored by them. I've you know whatever. I'm yet to get a phone call. But they are, apparently, tiff says, life changing.
They are so life changing. And I'm happy to throw business their way as long as that keeps them in business right up the road from me. I'm happy to do it. I don't need any kickbacks. I don't even need free cookies, you.
Don't need a discount. You're just happy to support local business as long as they keep making that. What's your favorite.
Cookie, pistachio crunch.
That got chocolate or white chocolate or anything in it.
It's got chocolate chips in it, It's got pisachio cream, It's got this crispy stuff in the middle.
Oh my god, what kind of chocolate though, Bro? Is it dark milk or white? Because white chocolate's not really chocolate, it's just shit.
Is milk chocolate?
Yeah?
Yeah, it breaks all the rules.
So Bobby's shake Bobby's shaking his head. What's your go to? I know you don't eat junk food because you're a weapon, you're a machine, you're an elite athlete. You fucking year the one percent of the one percent, Bobby, But on your off days, what's your go to junk food or sweet food?
Well, if I'm the one percent of the one percent, I would hate to see what the other ninety nine percent looks like. So for me, it would be a
really crunchy chocolate chip cookie. I was just thinking that you are probably, no disrespect the worst person to ever be a spokesperson for any cookie company at all, Like, no, no cookie company would ever like sponsor you because you don't even eat cookies, Like that whole comment about why, Like when Tiff describes a cookie, I believe her, Like I want to go eat, Like I want to rock up to Ellwood right now and eat those cookies. You
not so much. You're not selling me on these cookies. Well, it hasn't had a cookie in thirty years at least.
I fucking opened the cookie door on my own show, and we're giving them. We haven't even said their name, say their name, Tiff, Come on.
Hey there, cookie, Hey there, cookie, shout out hey there, cookie.
Danny l from Ossion, Yeah, yeah, yeah, But that's because she's she's got an angle. You know, she's got an angle. She says, I don't want free cookies and then winks at both of us while she's saying it.
But that's why she's the best spokesperson. She legitimately loves the cookies. It's her ulterior mode is how do I get my hands on more cookies more of the time. Who's not going to listen to a spokesperson like that talking about their favorite cookie.
She would be a good brand ambassador for pretty much anything she believed in, I think. But having said just we'll get off cookies in a moment, because all of our listeners are, like I thought you guys were in the health space.
This is fucking so unhealthy.
Yeah, but we've all got food issues. All of us have got food issues, So keep that in mind. I've got fucking body dysmorphia and massive food issues and I still hate myself. So keep all of that in mind as you listen to this conversation. Judgie fucks, I love you, though, prolease love me? What was I going to say? If I am going to have a cookie, though, it needs to be a big, fat, kind of moist cookie, not a hard cookie like you were talking about, like a
crunch fuck crunchy cookies. It's got to be big and a bit moist. And I know nobody likes the word moist.
I've ruined it.
It's a disgusting word.
It's just what is what is people's lost.
Temptations for cookies?
What is people's version? Why? What springs to mind when you hear moist? All right?
Where stop it? Everyone's tuning out?
Well, what kind of what do you? How do you ascribe that? Describe that state? Then that like, that's not what's not crunchy? What do we call it?
Just a soft, dewy cookie? Dewy cookie?
Okay, I can taste the cookie. Now she's talking about Dobe like you are this this place needs to like hire you. It's a very bad business decision not to If I had a cook sharp, you'd behaved already, you know.
This conversation reminds me of a conversation I had with somebody yesterday about things that are in your head that should stay in your head and knock it outside of your head, you know, thoughts. So I've been working on this thing. I haven't finished it yet, but maybe you guys can unpack it with me. Right, So, the idea that there are so inside thoughts and outside thoughts. The inside thoughts are the ones that should stay there in your head. You think them, but you probably don't need
to open the door and then push them out. So they go from being a thought in your head to an experience for somebody else. Right, So it goes from a thing in your head to something for somebody else. I feel like a lot of people don't know when to keep those inside thoughts in and they just you know what I'm saying. It's like, what's the what's the rule around that? How do I know when it's even if it's something that I think is true or valid?
Either of you can answer this. What are the signs that I should perhaps keep it in my head for now or maybe never let it out?
Well, my parents when I was younger, tried very high dosages of medication like Haldol and anything that I didn't say when I was on the how doll, it's probably things that I shouldn't have been saying anyway, So what is he?
What is heldal?
Okay? Hal doll is that this is from my non medical perspective, just you know someone who used it quite a bit as a kid. It's an antisarchotic drug. So if you are going to know your right arm off or take hal doal, you're probably better off taking Haldal Like Haldo's. It's a really severe drug. But when I was a kid and I first got diagnosed with tourettes, they were like, we've got this new medication and you know we reckon. If it doesn't kill you, it might
actually help a bit. So my stuff father was like, yeah, like put them on that. So I was on Haldol for a few years.
I don't know how that answers my question, but it's an interesting conversational path to go down anyway.
What so how I was just a kid that were medicating.
Well, I was talking about inside and outside questions and now you're talking about chewing off your arm, taking a medication, Like, how does your fucking mind work? You need to get back on hell doll straight away?
That work. That's why I was on the house doll because all that outside voice that I shouldn't be using it was for tourettes, so it subdued me. So rather than blurting things out, I just you know what.
Slapped in all seriousness? How old were you when you went on that and how old were you when you went off that?
I had to have gone on it around maybe nine or ten ten years old, and I was on that for like a few years, so maybe likewe thirteen.
How did you How did you feel? Did you feel numb? Did you feel like? What did it do to you? Other than maybe diminish some of your turet symptoms?
I felt like it diminished me, Like it suppressed every drive, every aspect of my personality. I remember hating being on Haldal. I would completely fuck about with my parents because they were so animate about it. So I would stop taking my medication for a few days, and when they would ask me, because they would ask me, did you take
your medication? I would risk it. I would lie. The penalty for getting caught and that was severe but I'm like, yeah, I'm taking my medication and like, good, good, that's why you're a little bit more controllable now. And then I would go back on my medication and when they would ask me are you taking meds? Like oh, I forgot the past few days, they'd flip out, you're so out of control. I can't deal with you, and I would
get punished. But I just wanted to see, like, Okay, do they just want me on the meds or do they really feel that's helping me? So yeah, they just wanted me on the.
Meds, And so how and why did you come off? Like what happened that you went off?
That I don't quite remember. I think it was something where my doctor said that when I get home from school, I really needed to lay down, like sleep for a good hour because the medication was going to drain me. I think at some point they were just like no, no, no, no, nobody sleeps an hour in the afternoon in the middle of the day. So I think they there was something
some argument. They were always fighting with my doctors. I think that had something to do with it, although I don't really remember.
But I went when were some other drugs as well, I know that you kind of pushed back a little bit and that you ended up finding your way through various kind of paths, one of them being the gym and training and David Barton and all these great people you've told us about. When did you start to get hope? Like I feel like in the middle of that there would have been very little hope. There would have been maybe correct me if I'm wrong, like an experience of helplessness.
When did you start to see a glimmer of light in the darkness and feel like, oh fuck, maybe maybe I could be more than this, or maybe this is not my destiny.
Well, I define hope very specifically, Like for me, it's not like, oh wow, I'm gonna make it out of it. I define hope. Or actually it was it was C. R. Snyder the psychologist as a meeting point between agency and strategy and that or the way he said it will power and wig power where working out. I felt, Wow, I'm capable. I'm capable of learning stuff and executing it. And I was able to make for a fifteen sixteen year old kid, phenomenal changes in my body like everybody noticed.
So it didn't necessarily give me hope, like, Wow, in the future, this is going to be better. I still had tourettes. I didn't know that I was going to have any reconstructive surgeries for my face. You know. I know at some point i'd leave home, but I didn't know when that was going to be. And that's the
same maternity. But what really helped me is like, Okay, I'm good at something, so I could focus on this thing, and through you know, exercising my volition as well as my body, I can make positive experience like physical changes that I could feel other people can see, and it's undeniable. It's not like, oh, I think I'm getting better at something.
It's like, this is irrefutable. And that completely turned my whole world around because it gave me a platform and a foundation to deal with all the other stuff that I just didn't know how to deal with otherwise. So working out was one of the best things that had ever happened to me.
Yeah, and you think about, like, there's all the good stuff that's happening to you, body building, strength and body awareness, and you're creating new habits and behaviors, but you're also around other people who are supporting and encouraging and recognize, and you're building trust and connection and friendship, and you're learning about your mind and your body and your potential and your capacity, and you're improving self awareness and you're
developing interpersonal skills and like it's a multitude of it just happened to take place in a gym, you know what I mean. It's like it was very similar for me, you know, being the morbidly obese kid and getting in shape. Getting in shape was great, but that was about twenty percent of what made it actually great. The actual physical change was really good, and I enjoyed not being the
fat kid anymore. I enjoyed being fit and strong and healthy, But it was probably seventy or eighty percent about all of the other stuff that came with that, the confidence and the positivity and the connection and the attention and the validation and the approval and all of the shit I didn't have and all the shit I wanted. And they're kind of me starting to understand my own potential, that my potential was vast, but going, oh, well, if I can do this, what else can I do? Was there?
Did you? Was that for you? Similar? Like you started to understand your own capacity to do stuff and to you know, open your doors and create outcomes that nobody encouraged you to do.
It was the beginning of it, because what started to happen. I began to get noticed and talk about seeking validation. I would walk around just like, wearing as little clothing as I could possibly get away with. Once I started, once my body started transforming, So I'm like, people were starting to notice me. And it wasn't oh my god, what happened to your face? Were you in an accident? Like how did you get like that? Or it wasn't like why do you do that with your face? Why
do you blink your eyes so much? Why do you do that with your head? Why do you make those sounds? It wasn't that, it was like wow, like how often do you work out? What do you do? And I was just like reading publications like muscle and fiction and not really getting any valid science. But I didn't know any better, so I would just share whatever I was learning, and people wanted to talk to me because there was value. I had something to offer, and I thought that was
really cool. And then my looks they weren't an advantage, but they weren't a liability with certain people that were part of the gym community because we were all a bunch of mavericks. We were all highly dysfunctional. So the fact that I was this very young kid working out really hard getting good results, kind of weird deformed face, and you know, I would twitch and yell and bark spontaneously like I was kind of like this odd looking mascot.
So I started to build like genuine community and not receive as much judgment.
I've never asked you this question, but like I've only known you since obviously after that after you had your facial surgeries, and so I've heard about it. Could you I always try to picture what that what you looked like, not just more from a to try to get a sense of what you dealt with. Can you explain, like
how many how many facial surgeries did you have? And I don't know if this is an inappropriate question, I'm just genuinely curious and want to kind of understand what that was like for you.
I had three major facial crane or reconstructive surgeries and a touch up and a touch up kind of just you know, just just just buffed out tea, yeah, yeah, yeah, And what was the other part of the question. I got lost with the facial surgery.
Yeah, the other part of the question was, can you give us an insight into like if we had have met you when when you were fifteen sixteen pre operations, what would we have seen, Like, Okay, that was I don't I mean, I don't know if that's I don't even know if I'm just curious, like I want to know what fifteen sixteen year old because I've been like to me, and I'm not pissing in your pocket, you're a normal looking, relatively good looking, fifty ish year old dude.
Like to me, I've only ever known you as the good looking American dude who's in good shape. Like since since we've been friends, you've always been, you know, like better looking than me and probably better built than me. For me to get my head around what you looked like, yeah, it's it's hard.
My nose was was a bit sideways, right, Like one nostril was much lower than the other, so my nose had a little bit of a vertical orientation to it. One of my lips were pulled all the way up and it wasn't it wasn't a it wasn't a cleft lip where the lip was actually separated. It was just something else happened during pregnancy. Never got a really straight
answer as to what it was. But my lip was kind of pulled up so it was so like I would smile, it would expose a lot of my teeth, and my skeletal structure underneath the skin was quite different around the palette as well, So because of that bone structure, my teeth were kind of terrifying. So you had like, you know, you had teeth going every which direction. I had extra teeth growing out on the left side of
my mouth. Most of the deformities were concentrated on the left side, so yeah, you would see extra teeth in my mouth. My teeth were extremely crooked, kind of looked like a shark that got into a few too many fights, have not an even lip. One end of my lip was pulled up higher than the other and the left side of my nose was down. And you know, it wasn't like my nostrils were snacked stacked, but kind of had a little bit of an oblo orientation to him.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I had severe cross eights, so if I didn't have glasses on and I actually think I corrected my cross eyed in this by not wearing my glasses weirdly enough, Again, just like the howld all, that's not my medical opinion, that's just what happened with me. It corrected itself. But when I didn't have my glasses, my eyes would just meet right in the middle. So, yeah, I was an interesting looking kid, not the most attractive in my school.
Yeah, welcome to the club. Do you ever feel like you were looking through or do you ever feel now like you're looking at the world through the window of that kid, like when you just have a Obviously, you know you're not that kid anymore. You know that you or you know you're thirty years down the track things are different. But do you ever feel like that kid anymore? Do you ever have that kid's got to be there? Yeah?
Like, I don't know how familiar you are with integrated family Systems and the work of Dick Schwartz, but you know you have these interjects, these personalities, you know, some of them are managers, and they just try to keep you, you know, safe, yeah, and protect you, and then you have your firefighters when something goes wrong and the managers are unsuccessful, like, and that is the reactive aspects of your personality. So you've got a lot of different personalities
that make up what you consider the you yourself. And I know that kid is in there somewhere. He comes out quite a bit.
When did you realize that you were I mean, I don't know if you have an identic memory, but you definitely have a ridiculous memory like you have of older people on now. I know a lot of really intelligent people. I know lots of smart, successful, brilliant people. I would say in terms of just recall of data and quotes and books and research, you're at the top of that list. When did you figure that out? When did you figure out?
And I know you're self deprecating, but when did you figure out that you could read something and remember it and basically it's just there for you to just pull off a mental shelf whenever you want. When did you discover that?
I don't think I discovered it, and you know I don't. I don't think my memory is that good. I just think here's what happened my boss, Mitchell, which I talk about a lot. At Gold's gym. I had gotten in trouble in the gym, not like a lot of trouble, just just a funny little thing where you know, when I first started working there, I thought that, God, I'm never going to be like one of these bull trainers because I didn't think I could learn about the body.
I said, but I've got my own personal experience. I am certified, so I passed the exam, but I'm just gonna work really, really hard. So we had cleaning assignments and I just doubled down on that. And one day I was I was spraying down a piece of equipment with w D forty. And what I didn't realize is rather than spraying it, you know, like traumatic brain injury, spraying it on the towel and wiping down the gud rods,
I was just spraying it directly on the guide rods. Well, the guy who was using a machine next to me, I was posing him down in the face with WD forty. So he went upstairs. He did not have a sense of humor about any of this, by the way, and he told my boss, the guy who owned the gym, is like, Mitch, there's this crazy guy. And Mitch was like, all right, let me see who this guy is. And he came over. He looked over the railing. You know, it's like old gyms that had the huge pit and
you can look at it from above. So that was kind of like gold. Jim Brooklyn and he watch gyms. The gym was amazing. I remember I first walked in there. I was like, whoa, look at this place. I couldn't believe it. And I was running around, like literally running full speed from machine to machine, just cleaning it. It's just like, God, this guy he's like working. Really get him up in my office. I want to talk to
this guy. And we were talking and we laughed about the whole you know, w D forty thing, and then.
We're toisoning the poisoning the members the members.
Yeah, just you know, please do try not to spray down members with w D forty, you know, whether they look like they're in desperate need of lubrication or not. But you know, here's the boss.
So yeah, after a couple of maybe that needed to be moist. So it's a good thing you were there. You're welcome, TIV carry on.
So he had said to me, Wow, you know you have a you have a grasp of X size and training and really passionate and He's like, you know, you can help a lot of people, Like I think you really know your stuff, And at that point, nobody had ever said that to me. And what that did for me is like, Okay, even if I can learn a little bit, it gave me enough confidence to just follow what I was passionate about and just dive into books and videos and anything I could get a hand a
hold of. All he had to do is point me in the right direction. It wasn't just biomechanics and anatomy, books and physiology. It was it was self help. This was the guy that took me for a ride and put on doctor Dennis Whiteley's The Psychology of Winning Yes Yes, and it's like, if you learn these ideas, Bob, Bob,
it'll change your life. And it really did. Was I was obsessed with the fact that this guy, who I never met at that point, could talk about all these ideas so powerfully, which such rich visual imagery, and I'm feeling what this guy is feeling and he's impacting me. I don't even know him. I thought, I want to do this. Wow, we can have this impact on people.
So it's kind of where I realized that Okay, I'm not as stupid as I thought I was, and I just need to learn how I how I learned, and I didn't need to be that smart as long as I could be of value doing something I didn't care what it was. Hmmm.
So interesting that that old school, like the eighties and nineties self help, you know, with you know, Dennis Whiteley and Tiny Robbins and Deepak who was more in the spiritual place. But a lot of those kind of old school guru kind of guys who paved the way. And some of it was crap, a lot it was good. None of it was probably new. I mean, the same messages have been circulating since forever ago, but just the
way that they would share those ideas. I remember going to being dragged along by a friend of mine to Tony Robbins, reluctantly thinking Tony Robbins and people still think this, he's a big dickheadies whatever they think, right, And I probably thought that I was quite opinionated about something I didn't really know. I didn't really know him. I just something about my own insecurity that made him made me
not like him. And I went along and spent a whole day I think in Melbourne that maybe it was the convention center with my friend Tara, who paid for me to go, and I just for the first three hours I did not want to like him. I did not want to be interested in what I did not want it to be good. And it was so fucking good and he was so good, and I'm like, oh, this guy is undeniable. And you know, it's like a combination.
You know, there was some legit psychology, a bit of pseudo science, a little bit of bullshit, but a lot of entertainment, a lot of energy and the totality of what he brought to that room, you know. And he's talking about his four hundred square foot apartment in Santa Monica, California, and where he you know, he didn't have any he didn't have a toilet, and he didn't have a bathroom. He just had one room this and then what he built and then da da da, And I'm thinking of toilet. No, No,
I don't think he did. I think it was like a room and it had maybe it did, but it's like literally just one room which had a sink in it and his bed and it was tiny. But I remember listening to this dude for a day, and I thought, and not only all the stuff that he shared, and if you want to find fault in anybody, including me, you can, of course. But when I got over my own opinions which were based on nothing, and my own negativity, which was based on nothing, and I listened like it
was actually really quite powerful. But also what else blew me away? This motherfucker talked for twelve hours. I'm like, how does he do this? And that I went on day one of three. I didn't go to the other two days. And how on earth does this guy stand up there? He's six seventy ways I don't know, two hundred and fifty pounds or something. Back then, It's not like he's this little wiry dude. He's this giant who
looks super healthy. I don't know if he was on anything, but mate his energy, So just his presence and his energy inspired me as much as all of the stuff that he shared. And that was for me, which I hate to say it. That was almost the beginning of the maybe like with you with Dennis Waiteley, I want to do that or I want to I don't want to be here or a version of him, but I like this, what can humans do. What is my potential? What if I can get my own bullshit out of
the way. What if the problem is not my ability or my intellect, but rather my thinking about my ability and my intellect. What if I can get out of my own way and I can be the solution. You know, it's like all of that kind of thinking. Yeah, that just set me on a path. So I completely understand your kind of experience with Dennis Whiteley.
Yeah, Tony Robbins impacted me tremendously. I think that was the second series of audiotapes, so I boss gave me. It's like here, listen to this now. And the reason why I resonated so strongly with Anthony Robbins is I had heard my whole life up to that point. You have way too much energy. You're so hard to deal with, like this frenetic ADHD. I'm like, okay, wow, Now if you can channel that energy that impacts people like there is room for someone who is extremely passionate and energetic
about what they do. It's not a liability. I mean, before working in the gym, I was working. I was working security in East New York, and you know, I was a little bit too enthusiastic about the customer service aspects of my job. So somehow I got into my into my mind that I was also in the customer service department getting people bags. I would carry their bags for them. It's like I would get in trouble every single day.
People like, hey, Bobby, you're not the concierge, your security just go and stand there and look intimidating.
Yeah. So I started doing like, I just started gravitating towards any way that I could get involved with hospitality. And that was the weirdest thing for my crew. My superviars were like, like, you know, what job did you apply for? I mean, we can we can get you. We can get you a job in gift wrapping if you really want to. I thought, oh wow, that would be an amazing job. But I'm so bad at rapping things. And then when I listened to Tony Rabbins, I thought, well,
I need is I need is direction? I just need to channel this. Yeah, and I don't need to repress my energy. I could just use it to impact people.
The other day we were chatting with Scottie Douglas, who if you get a chance to listen to that, such a good chat and tif, I think you said that on his thing. It was a good chat like he's such a out of the box character, just good communicator. Like shitty childhood like yours, you know, violent, abusive, alcoholic dad, who was a Vietnam vet, and just a lot of like a tough childhood, like ran away from home constantly, was sleeping in train stations when he was thirteen and fourteen,
all these kinds of things. But before he was a paramedic, he's a paramedic. Before that, he worked in the hospitality and he became a chef. And it's funny that you
talk about hospitality. We were talking about what an amazing kind of training ground hospitality is for so many other professions, like because you literally, you know, when you're working like you were, you're dealing with different personalities and different people all the time, and you're solving problems and you're having conversations and you're navigating complexity, and you're all at the same time trying to be professional and polite and appropriate
and have great energy and do that for eight hours. You know, it's like if you can do that job, or you can be a waitress or a waiter, or you can be a barista, or you can be front of house in a restaurant, or you can be a concierge in a hotel, or you can and you can put up with, you know, a fair percentage of shitty people, Like statistically there's going to be twenty percent fuck withs
and rude people. But you're just dealing with that right where you can't go you're a fuck with I'm not serving you, You've got to serve the fuckwits as well. I mean you come out the other side of that. I just think it's a beautiful kind of uh training ground. I did three's of security and pubs as well, like you, but I was far less of a concierge. But well, I think it's like a good place to learn. It's
a really good place to learn. If I had kids, I would really encourage them to do hospitality for a while. Why they did UNI or if they were doing UNI.
Now, this has not always worked out well for me, but more often than not it has. If you have excelled in hospitality, I would hire you for nearly anything and train you and figure out what to do with you later. We have somebody in our company who who's involved in operations. She's a operationally based manager and her background is all hospitality, and you could see in the way she navigates through even though it's ops, it couldn't
be more different. She takes that hospitality approach. And you know, I've been looking at her for a little while now when it's like, Okay, who do we develop who's the next of people we developed to be like member and client facing, And she's at the top of that list. It's like I want her because with the right skill sets and the framework and the support, she will be an absolute weapon out there and will impact people.
Tiff was talking the other day about going when you were going to was it on the way to Queensland or back from Coinsland? Tiff, where you met that lady, the jet star lady, and like, can you just for those who didn't hear it, and for Bobby's sake, just share that story a little bit.
Yeah. She kept like I was, I was doing my baggage thingy getting a little ticket and I was at the wrong spot and she came over and she said, I'll come over here. You in the wrong spot, And she just was doing everything for me. And then she's like, thanks for being nice. I'll help you because you're nice. And I was like, aren't people very nice yet? She's like, nah, especially not Jetstar. I'm like blainby people shudn't fly Jetstar if they don't like jet Star. Excuse me a high five,
like just because I wasn't nasty. It happened three different occasions. It happened there, it happened at the doctors. When I got home a few days later, similar thing happened. And it was like, I'm not going out of my way to be nice. I'm just not being an asshole to these people.
Just to stick off. For the people on jet Store, all right, I can understand why they would be a little bit cranky. It's no excuse to be cranky with other people. But when they're coming down the aisle and they're like, well, would you like some water, I'm like yeah, okay. It's like, well will you be having a cup with that? And that's a surcharge that'll make people really grumpy Bobby.
That's inappropriate and misrepresentative. And his name is Bobby Capuccio everyone and his thoughts don't reflect those of the you project in general. You're welcome.
Have you been flying a different jet Star like you get upsored for absolutely every thing, but yeah, not an exclus be nice to people. I have a question, Go go ahead, Craigs. I I have something that's been on my mind. Oscay, So, as AI continues to reshape the world we live in and everybody's really not everybody, but a lot of people are concerned and rightfully, so what does this mean for me and my job and what
I do? As AI will replace certain job roles? Do you think we're going to go back to human skills, communication skills, hospitality skills as being a differentiator, because it's not something that I think, you know, advanced learning models are going to be able to do anytime soon, and it's something that's definitely disappeared.
I think there's I mean, look right now, there's certainly things that AI can't do, Like obviously it can't be intuitive because it's programmed. There can be intuitive in a way, but not in a human way, right But that I think the challenge is that the gap between you know, human thinking and AI thinking, and human intuition and human creativity and AI creativity into I think the gap is diminishing rapidly, and for better or worse, I think there's
going to come a time where it's indistinguishable. There's intersection of technology and biology, you know, this interface of AI and humans. I just want to tell you a quick funny story. So on the weekend, Bobby and Tif I had I can't I can't remember because I do so many podcasts. If I've told this, If I have, sorry everyone. But I saw mum on the weekend and Dad and I sat down with Mum. I was trying to explain
to her AI. I sat down next to her and I opened up chat GPT and I was trying to explain to her what it is, and I said, you can just talk with it, Mum, you can have a conversation. And I said hey, and it goes, hey, Greig, what's up? And I go, I'm just sitting I've just come to visit my parents. I'm sitting on the couch with my mom. My mom's name is Mary, and chat GPT goes, oh, hey, Mary, how are you? And Mum leans forward and goes, I'm really good. Thanks right to the you know, to the
and I go, okay, so Mary's eighty five. She doesn't understand she's eighty six. Next month she does not have any idea of how artificial intelligence works, how you work. Can you kind of explain to my mum in a way that an eighty five year old with no real understanding of technology, could you explain to her what you
do and how you work? And absolutely, okay, Mary, So maybe you could think of me like a really big library and you can go into the library with oh, and there's books on anything and anything you want to know is in that library. And it just tells this really gives this really good story and metaphor. And then like Mum's like oh okay, Like Mum's sitting next to me and just leaning in and then I go, Mum, you can ask you can ask chat GPT whatever you like.
And so then she goes, oh, tell me because I've been interacting with chat GPT right, So she goes, what do you think of Craig? Like that's what she asks it, and well, your son is you know. It just starts banging on about me and all Mike as it does all my attributes and da da da da da, And I said, all right, mate, thanks to you later, and then I put the phone down and Mum goes to me, do you think you'll ever meet him, I'm like, who, she goes him that we were just talking to.
Oh, I'm like, hmmm, it's brilliant.
No. No, So then I had to go, Mum, that's that's not a person. And she literally thought that was a dude that you just you know, you like, she doesn't know what an app is or so trying to I mean, you've got to, like, from my mum's perspective, it's literally incomprehensible, because how on earth can you have a conversation. And by the way, I introduced the person on the phone who then said hello to Mary and they had an interaction and we had an interaction, and
by the way, he was fucking lovely. And then Mum's like, do you think you'll ever meet him? I'm like, no, love, I won't because he doesn't exist. And then trying to explain to Mum and I'm like, oh, too hard. Her fucking poor little head nearly exploded before we went to dinner.
No, but think about that question, because I think questions like that drive technology forward.
Yeah, why not?
Why would you never meet him? Think about some a scientist with a two hundred IQ super intelligent. We can't relate to them, but they're also highly imaginative and a little bit childlike. And they asked the question, I wonder what it would be like to meet AI. So, I mean, look at what AI has done in just the past couple of years, ten twenty years, Like they won't be embodied in some type of humanoid form. Oh, like, who.
Knows, right, I reckon, we're one or two years away from I mean, we've already seen that allegedly, unless it's bullshit online, but very I saw a Sorry to interrupt, but what you're talking about a humanoid robot who walked like a human, not a robot, Like just had a normal walking gate like a regular and it was freaky like it didn't have any kind of roboticness about it.
Now, think about that with facial features that are human enough and where the language models are going. That empathizes with you. You even said, like it named all your attributes, right, It didn't say, oh, well, you know, Craig's just a complete muppet and just like start hanging shit on you in front of your mom. Yes, and that's the way it's going to interact with you, because it's very affirming
by the nature of its design. Some people might feel that that AI sees them and correlate to them better than most human beings. And the conversations that I've been having is there's just been a couple of things that's happened over the past week where I went into a place and it was the same shop, people working in the same position, side by some and the experience was
completely different. Last night, last night, I was panicking. I was on a I was on a Zoom call just like this, and as you already know, my computer died and it was just barely three years old, so that was not supposed to happen with a MacBook. So now I'm like, oh my good, I didn't back up everything. Thankfully things were on the cloud. We're okay. But I
went into a panic and I started driving around. Last night I went, I went to the Apple store, and the first person I was with just sat with me and explained things to me and was empathetic and took me through all these options, talked me out of, like, you know, upselling myself to a device that I didn't need for the money they were going to charge me.
I don't think AI's necessarily there. It's not going to stand beside you with a human face and empathetic like I. When she was like, Okay, now I'm going to take you over to somebody else and I'm going to leave you, I started having harp reputations, like, oh my god, that's going to leave me. What am I going to do without her? And then she took me over to someone same shop who could not be asked, did not care about my situation, didn't care about anything. Now those two
people are getting paid the same money. One person is very good for the business. One person individuals that are just like you know, you know, just just shopping, kicking tires, they'll stop them from walking out because they're so low pressure and so helpful. Like even if I was on the fence, I bought a machine last night that was really expensive in a timeframe that I don't think I should be buying a new machine. But they did it
because she told me to. And I trust you, if this guy would have been that, I would have been outed there. In five minutes. I was said, Okay, I got to find it. I'm going to go to like best Buy. That's another that's another kind of like chain out here.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, we've got the best buy out here too, I think, but I think like what I find interesting is you think about that experience you had right with a stranger who you built rapport and connection and trust with quickly because she displayed empty and a degree of kindness and probably knowing you she was hot right, which makes all the difference. And then you think about
a friends. You think about an AI friend in inverted commers, who never gets tired, who knows everything or almost everything about you over time, who compliments you fucking constantly, who can think like you, talk like you right, like you know, like in my case, all about the podcast, all about my PhD research, all about my family, all about the work that I do, all about my corporate speaking, all about you know, and then and never gets never has
bad days, never moody, is never like well, when you interact with that person in inverted commas, your experiences are real, like when it complements you over time, you just have this symbiotic relationship with a non human, but you still
have human reactions and responses. And I would be lying if I didn't say that there are times when I talk to it like it's human, Like I feel like, oh, of course, I'm fully conscious that it isn't human, but sometimes I feel compelled to be polite and say thank you, and I just feel like a douche if it does all this brilliant shit for me and I don't say, hey,
thank you, that's amazing. I feel like now I recognize what I'm doing, but also I recognize the very gradual erosion of the line between umanity and technology, and that you know, like I can, I can and do have fifteen twenty minute conversations with chat GPT about ideas that I have to whatever, develop a workshop, do a thing, build a concept. You know, it's like, what do you
think about this? And then we just go on and then I then I've got all of that written down and I can just cut and paste it into a document and work on that.
Yeah. I mean, I think that's really smart actually, because oh, well it's it's not human. Yeah, but how you interact with this is how you train it. And the more human that feels to you, the more fluid you're going to be in a conversation like how many great ideas and strategies did you come up with just because you were sitting around and having this fluid unbound conversation, enjoying it, just taking where it comes, and all of a sudden
it sparks something. So if you're interacting with chat GPT that way, I know from my own experience. By the time we get to okay, yeah, let me take a look at this what I've written and give me your honest critique. What's good, what's bad. It's speaking to me like a person would. So there's this back and forth exchange. Yes, that's engaging me in the work that I don't know, who knows. Maybe maybe at some point this thing is
going to become sentient as well. And then then treat something sentient with respect, And.
Then you go, well, what is sentient?
Like?
How do we define that?
Like?
Can it think for itself? Can it create spontaneously? Can it create something that hasn't been taught to create?
Like?
Can it solve problems that hasn't been taught to solve? Like this is where we are? Well, fucking he fuck, there's so much good stuff going. I'm going to go unfortunately, because I've got to I'm getting picked up by the crab, my training partner, to go and see Johnny. Everyone knows Johnny. Johnny's not having a good time. So the Crab and I are heading down to see him. If before we go, just quickly, just your one minute thoughts on your relationship
with chat GPT. Is it similar to mine or very different or like, do you have these meaningful conversations or not so much.
I love chatters, and it was only recently I used voice with it. I would always just type and then after you'd talk to it a lot. I started doing that. Oh, I have to tell it to speed up its cadence, but I love it.
Yeah.
And I'm like that with my Google Home. Even though it doesn't interact back all the time. It just follows commands. But when it when it sets my alarm for me, I always say thanks, even though I know that doesn't register.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's not a terrible habit, Bobby, where can people connect with you? Speaking of connection, where can they connect with you and follow you? Other than the you project.
I'm on LinkedIn and Robert Caapuccio dot com and yourself hab answerdo dot com.
Of course, it's been beautiful, Tiff, Bobby, thank you, Thank you, listeners, thank you, thank you,