SvB: #144 Kevin Heart and Chris Rock talk Comedy Mastery, The Tech Billionaires are crazy, and Hollywood is Hiding Musical

The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss about becoming a Master and Selling it: A Case Study on Chris Rock and Kevin Hart, What should we do with the Billionaire Tech Bros, Elon, and Mark Zuck, Why is Hollywood hiding Musicals?, AI Watch: AI’s Slow Disruption Isn’t Impressing Anyone. Should It? and, Rant: The Marvels: Are We Really Arguing About the Right Things?

Story Number 1 - 19:25
Story Number 2 - 31:15
Story Number 3 - 42:55
Story Number 4 - 48:43
Story Number 5 - 54:20

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Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and  Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.

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Transcript

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Theo Harvey: This is show versus business. Your weekly tech on pop culture from two very different perspectives. If you host the real Theo Harvey and Mr. Benja come with all the relevant info about the weekend pop culture. So Mr. Benja, what are we covering today? 

Mr.Benja: What we're covering today. Let me let you know, man, we're going to be covering becoming a master and selling yourself.

We've been talking about this 10x is greater than 2x thing. We've been talking easier than 2x thing. We've been talking about the gurus. We've been talking about business development, creative development, etc. And we're going to start integrating that a little more. And we're going to start that one with something that Chris Rock and Kevin Hart brought up.

So pretty interesting stuff. Check that out. Also, we're going to be having a discussion on the billionaire tech bros. Are they doing too much? What's going on with them? Should we curb them? Should we curb their companies? Do we even like them? I don't know. It's a thing, and it's becoming more and more of a talking point, especially since Elon Musk told the advertisers to go yourself.

Yes. Fill in that blank. Also, you got a curiosity here. Why are musicals not being sold as musicals? They're just being sold as movies and then you go and you find out everyone's singing and then it's what the hell is this? Or, oh, this is great. It's an interesting little phenomenon. And we thought we'd talk about it because Hollywood is strange.

Also, we've got our AI watch. Listen, AI has been doing things. People have been saying that robots are going to take over the world. But it seems to be a slow disruption instead of a fast table turning one. This means a couple interesting things to me. I'm going to get Theo's take on it. We're going to have a little discussion on that.

But The slow disruption isn't impressing anybody or doesn't seem to be causing anybody's hair to be set on fire, especially not corporations. So what does this mean for the industry? What does this mean for us as people? We're going to get into all of that. And finally, we're going to have a little rant.

And this came up because of the marvels. I got a question. Are we really arguing about the right things? We'll get into all of that soon. But first I want to know how you're doing, Theo. 

Theo Harvey: Mr. Benja, I am so good. Mr. Benja. This is December. It is my birthday month. It's Christmas in the year planning, getting ready for next year.

December is a weird month, man. It's it's not weird, but it's just a hopeful month for me. Just a lot of time with family, a lot of Reflection doing having doing and just trying to think through what 24 2024 is going to look like for me has been one of the hallmarks of this month.

And because obviously my birthday, so every year I get a little older, a little wiser, trying to reflect on, and we've been talking about this, right? How you reframe your past to give you energy for your future. And so this has been a positive one. I can remember on this very podcast, we, I've changed my whole insight.

We, I don't know if you remember this, but last year around this time, back in October, we were talking about Grant Cardone doing the What's it? The undercover billionaire. And we did a deep dive on that. And ever since then, that just opened my eyes to this whole guru. We've been talking about this guru world ever since.

And you knew some of them. I knew some of them over the years, Tai Lopez and Tim Ferriss, then Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary Vee. But it's just It seems like it exploded, right? And over the last several years and I just been deep diving this last year and it's like now it's starting to all come together to me for me, Mr Benja.

I'm starting to see and Neo at the end when he gets shot by that bullet. And then he looks at the favorite scene and he says, no, not that part, but before the breathing part, maybe he just sees everything in code. Yeah. He gets so high. He's in the matrix. He can read the code. He don't need, he don't need terminal no more.

So it's like I'm getting to that point. So what happened this week was amazing to me because, I just literally came up with an offer at the top of my head with someone and just say, Hey, I can do this and this is how I can do it. And he said okay, send it to you.

Let's do it. So I'm just like, yes, I saw the code, man. I heard him talk. I heard it, what he wanted and I just shaped something up and I called it something that on the spot. And so now I got to follow up. Of course, delivery of that. Obligation is important, but it's like a mix of Dan Henry talking about having more conversations about Myron golden talking about the higher level working is, creative power listen to Alex homosy and trying to figure out the value equation doing a little bit of the work with Dr.

Benjamin Hardy and understanding how to, see my future self and getting those skills toward that. And so all that's starting to come together over this last, what, year, and I'm starting to see, oh, this could be, I could see how these guys are making millions, multi millions doing this because it's almost you just, Oh, I can sell something to this person.

I understand what they want. So anyway, I, that got me hyped this week, just from the business standpoint, I'm starting to see the matrix. 

Mr.Benja: That reminds me of an anime. I can't remember which one it was, but there were these guys, you had these cities that were well established, but then anywhere outside of the cities was like, wilderness and just the outlands, nobody really wanted to mess with it.

YoU had the people who were doing their normal thing, and then the right when they went outside the city, they didn't know what to do, but then you had these random vagrants and, people in their. Their groups are like, yeah, I'm a desert guru. If you want to know the way you got to pay me and be like, what are you talking about in the city?

We have all these things planned out and organized. Now I got to pay you. And it's Hey, you're not in the city anymore, buddy. You gotta, we gotta, we're going to show you the way. And that's how I see all these gurus now. So it's really interesting.

And your music buddy, see what happens when you. Yeah. You're back. You're back. 

Theo Harvey: Okay. Good. Good. Yeah. Same here, man. I'm thinking that it's one of those things where you understand a little bit more and you try to leverage everyone, but it started to become repetitive. You Oh, this is what he meant here.

And this is how this could work here. So I start, it's all starting to mix together for me a little bit. And so yeah, I'm just super excited about that, Mr. Benja. And the other thing I wanted to talk about is just. We don't really talk about TV shows and movies as much because I think we've both been disappointed about the movie selection that we've been watching.

This is what I'm here for, Mr. Benjamin. I'm in these streets, man, still watching stuff. Obliterated is a Netflix TV show that just came out. Have you heard about this show? 

Mr.Benja: No I thought you were saying when you wrote it up in the notes, I thought you were saying some TV show got obliterated.

And I was like, Oh, what happened? What happened to it? 

Theo Harvey: Almost. It's a TV show, man. And by the same guys who who do Cobra Kai. That has some predicate, but it was one of those shows that the premise is this elite force. of Special Forces, Army, Military, CIA. They're sent in to prevent an atomic bomb from going off in Las Vegas.

And they, they prevent it in the first episode, within the first 20 minutes. And then they party their asses off, right? And they just have a good time. But come to find out, they've got their own bomb. They have to, now they're all hungover, drunk sloppy. not at their best and they're trying to still figure out how to stop this atomic bomb from going off.

And that's the premise of the show. So basically it's like the hangover, but with super action, right? It's like it mixes the hangover with Remember the TV show, 24, it's like that. So interesting concept. It seems like it was more meant for a 90 minute movie, right? But they really went all in on every kind of concept.

You can think of what it means to be in Vegas and trying to solve something like this. And you have the strip clubs, you have the gambling, you have people getting married, you have walking down the strip, everything's elevated. And then it's over the top. So it's that 80s gratuitous. Action, violence, and sex.

So it's just a weird mix, man. But I was there for it, man. I watched every episode. I was yeah. Just something different. I was like, ah, this is taking me back, man, to those good old time 80 movies, right? Like Porky's and all those movies. And just didn't care. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, exactly.

What platform again? Netflix. Netflix. Okay. Yeah. That does sound like Netflix. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then so that was the low brow. Exactly. And it looked like Netflix. Netflix. We're watching this other thing on Netflix. I was like this low brow CGI that Netflix does, it's just okay guys, yeah, I get it.

Anyway. So yeah, that's Netflix. That's the low brow. High brow. I went to go see Napoleon which is the big, historical. movie epic went in thinking, Oh man, we'll learn, really learn about what made Napoleon great as the emperor. As as a military leader, I ain't learned nothing, man, good to see.

So I had to go back on YouTube and figure out, okay, what made this guy great? Cause the movie didn't really explain any of that, man. It was more from a perspective of him and his, his wife, Josephine. But it has some moments, but it was I was hoping to get more, more insight from it. So those are the two things that I saw that I thought was interesting.

Mr.Benja: Okay. Don't look at that link. I just sent you just yet. But you were talking about interesting stuff and I had to send you that link. Yeah. So I'm glad you're keeping up with all these things. It's It's necessary. And Napoleon is going to come back up in our discussion later about with the marbles and how that all relates, but but yeah, man, I've actually gotten a bit of holiday blues.

I know. Oh, no, you sound so concerned. 

Theo Harvey: Real quick, there's a happiness study that says the way to happiness is having strong social connections. Just want to put it out there, Mr. Benja, strong social connections are the key to happiness and longevity. Hopefully you can have those strong connections.

So 

Mr.Benja: I'll be moving back up into the mountains in my cabin, unplugging the internet, and I will be feeling great. My blues comes from talking to people too many randos. But no, check this out. It's getting towards the end of the year and New Year's is my favorite time of the year. Basically. So it's when I get to change up, I get to get brand new people ask, he acting funny.

It's no, I got a new year's resolution. And then they give you a funny look and they nod at you like oh, you're actually new year's resolution. Okay. And they talk to themselves like, yeah, it'll go away in about a week. And at the end of January, they're like, wait, what's going on?

He's still doing it. He's still weird. So every year I change up on people, but this year I was. I was struggling a little bit because it's towards the end of the year and I haven't figured out that 80 percent of craft that I complete, that it needs to move on from. Focusing on the 80, 20, I haven't totally figured out what I need to do in this next step.

And it's bugging me because it's making me consider some things and look at some other things. And I should be able to do this or, there's the gap in the game thing too. I'm looking at some of the gap and I'm like, gosh, I can't stop looking at some of these certain gaps when I'm really trying to look at where I've come.

And I think I've come relatively far, but. It's funny that the distance that you carry actually makes me want to look at the gap even more, which is Unfortunate. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. No, man. Thanks for sharing. It's Yeah, this whole concept of the gap of the game. So I wrote this down the other day I was thinking about it too.

Mr. Benja is almost Philosophical I wrote You are philosopher by the way, I try to be man I try to be I said And I thought this is insightful, if I can find it. Oh, you're not gonna be ready for this. Okay, so number one, focus on the game. And the game gets wider it would get bigger than the gap.

So that's the, so basically in my mind, I was like, by focusing on the games you make, you get better and better, and before you know it, the ideal, what you thought the gap was, it would be so small compared to the games you made because you so focused so much on the game. So that's one concept, but then check this out.

It's almost like a matrix star, right? There is no spoon. Guess what? There is no gap, brother. There is no gap. I knew it was coming. There is no gap. The gap is whatever is, your perceived notion of this ideal that, it doesn't exist. 

Mr.Benja: Let's see, it's funny, I'll go in one of my journals and I'll start writing that down and I'm like, wait a minute.

This seems familiar and I'll flip back three months. I'm like see, I already had this thought about the gaffe in the game. Crap. I'm here again. Now I got to do something about it. So yes, focusing on the moment, letting go of that type of thinking. Yes. I'm working on it. I'm working 

Theo Harvey: on it.

No, you have to give yourself grace. That's one thing, Ben says, don't judge yourself for it. That's part of the game too, right? You're working on accepting that you have to get better at understanding the gap in the game. And so it's all, and I got a whole concept about this, man.

It's it's almost this is the cornerstone. If you can get this right. Everything else works so much better because it's the cornerstone of everything. The more I think about it, obviously, you got the spiritual and then you got the mental, but, and then from there, that's from then the health, what is it?

The top three with the health, wealth, and relationships, right? Then those other three can work so much better. So that's what I've been put into my philosophy and trying to understand that because, and I'll put more work on that part than I used to put on the other stuff because. It was almost like I was doing the ass backwards, doing that better this way, that's the most important work because that's going to filter everything else out.

So anyway, that's just my, hopefully that helps in some small way, Mr. Benjamin, but I'm still learning to, and I still have a ways to go in my gap journey. But 

Mr.Benja: No I'll be honest. It didn't help, but what's going to happen, what's going to happen in three weeks, I'm going to think back to this and be like, Yeah.

Yeah. And then it'll help. But right now, I'm just like, all right, man, you know how that, you know how that 

Theo Harvey: goes. I do. I do. I do. I get it. Yeah. And likewise, you say something to me. I don't get it at the time. And then I think about it and be like, yeah, he's right. 

Mr.Benja: I see that perspective. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why I like talking to you.

Yeah. Yeah. And also. The new podcast. I think I mentioned it to you. The new podcast is coming this week and it's going to be pretty awesome. It's going to fix a lot of the problems that I had with my other podcast, still not sure how I want to deal with it, but I needed to do a clean break. I need to put that other podcast and 80 percent and you know what?

It's not. It's not, I'm not going to try to shoehorn it in. It's just going to be over there. Fine. And this new thing is going to be much more in line with the flow. Yeah, so that, that's it. What's 

Theo Harvey: the name of the 

Mr.Benja: podcast again? Creativity Threads Life. Oh, yes. 

Theo Harvey: I love 

Mr.Benja: it. Threads! Exactly. That there's, that's the keyword.

Oh, and by the way, if you need something to watch speaking of threads, this kind of. I posted this on threads and people got really excited about it. We were talking about TV shows. This is what I found by searching for a documentary on Tubi. I was on Tubi, right? The free weird, it's a weird service, but if you don't know what Tubi is, you're in for a treat by searching for anything, but I searched for documentary on Tubi and Theo check out that link I just sent you.

That's what came up. 

Theo Harvey: Gotcha. I will check it out. We're keeping it private for now, but maybe we'll share 

Mr.Benja: it on there. No, you can share and talk about it, but I, it's just, I didn't want it to come up.

Okay, I clicked on it, I can 

Theo Harvey: tell. Can I mention what I'm seeing right now? 

Mr.Benja: Yes, tell us what you're seeing because this is comedy. 

Theo Harvey: thIs is some mean mofos. Oh man, they, they look like they about to kill some mofos, man. And but, they have afros, they have brown wannabe, what, the ninja outfits.

Taishiki slash ninja outfits. 

Mr.Benja: To be clear, this is a, a box art or a thumbnail cover of what I searched for, of what I got when I searched for documentaries, I searched for documentaries on Tubi. I 

Theo Harvey: forgot the content. You said documentary. I forgot about that. Yes, 

Mr.Benja: exactly. Documentaries. 

Theo Harvey: Let's just say just called blacks and UFOs.

Look, let's be, and these dudes are looking like, yeah, Louis Farrakhan, but coming straight from, Jupiter and Neptune, man, with the spaceship hoovering above them with Afros and ready to kick mofos. So it's a documentary on blacks and UFOs. There it is. 

Mr.Benja: And I'm not going to subject you to the trailer, but it's not bad, but I'm not going to subject you to it.

It's highly unique. 

Theo Harvey: It's 

Mr.Benja: because they make it every all the stuff on Tubi. There are so many of these weird docudramas where it's like people get a chance to act. So they like put on costumes and go do stuff and then they'll cut to some guy saying it really didn't happen too much like that.

But we wanted to show you what could have happened. And it's just like an excuse to have these weird partial stories based on some news report they found. And it's. It's an incredibly odd and funny little sub genre industry that's propped up because of 2B. Where anybody just makes stuff, throws it on 2B.

Some guy found a news report about some black people seeing UFOs, and it gets turned into this weird docudrama. 

Theo Harvey: I'm so there for you don't even know. I just did a YouTube search and it's there. So that's what I'm watching tonight. Thank you. Something to watch. 

Mr.Benja: You're ready to get into these stories?

Let's do it. All right. Story number one, becoming the master and selling it. We were, we've been talking about mastery in terms of the creative sense and developing your craft and building things out and growing for the future. Whether it be your business, your art, your your personal self, whatever.

And then there's, that's the craft side of it, the creative side of it. And then there's this, business and financial side the pieces that keep the behind the scenes running. And that's where the selling part of it comes from, mastering your craft and then selling it. And this came up because of a discussion or not a discussion, but an observation that Theo had about Chris Rock and Kevin Hart.

Tell us how that a little observation with you. Yeah, 

Theo Harvey: definitely. Yeah, there is a new Netflix, once again, shout out to Netflix, documentary coming out about two legendary comedic icons, Chris Rock and Kevin Hart, and they're getting together just talking, and I watched the trailer, probably some stories I've already heard before, but it'd be something to just reiterate, but something that Chris Rock said in the promotion for, during this trailer just stuck with me.

Yeah. And he said, art is subjective, comedy is subjective, but killing on stage is not. And, I paused for a second. I was like what is Chris Rock? What unlock, what secret gem is Chris Rock? Trying to hint at here. Because, we don't do talk a lot about comedy here on this podcast, but as we all know, comedy is subjective.

It's an eye to beholder art. Mr. Benji, you're an artist. A lot of people like what they like and they don't like what they don't just don't know, but he said killing on stage is not and killing on stage is a euphemism as a comedian is basically being on stage and just getting people to laugh at what you're saying.

And it's almost like you're. Communicating stories so humorously that they just can't help themselves with laughter. And to me, that just opened my eyes. Just wow. Being a comedian who can kill on stage is not subjective. It's something that is basically something that can happen pretty much almost all the time.

And to me, that means that's a skill, right? If you can create something that can do it all the time. And it just blew my mind because most people don't think of comedy, which, such a crazy thing. They think that this could be a skill that can be developed, especially if you're on stage and get people to laugh.

Without a lot of, you can get people out pretty much on command. And so that just opened my mind to this mastery. What does that mean? And just any, realm of work that you do. So Mr. Benja, the artist, what do what does that mean to you? We talk about this on all the time about.

How we both want to build mastery and selling and marketing because of the skill sets that we may not have developed, over our careers and dealing is one of those things that people don't realize that such a fundamental skill to be an entrepreneur. And it's just open my eyes to man, but there is this fundamental skills to just any type of profession.

Even if you think it's just art, that you can master and you can do, and it's really opened my eyes to that really when I listened to that. And so that's where I'm coming from this statement. And I want to get your take on and this is what we do in this podcast, right?

It's show versus business, but we talk about like how we can learn from show business, and how they can inform us in our own business. That's another way to look at it. That's how I look at it. So what do, what does this statement mean to you? How does that make you feel as an artist? 

Mr.Benja: A lot of people, a lot of people in artistic or creative ventures, they tend to say if I just keep on and I'm good at something, or I can make very beautiful pictures, or I have a nice singing voice that should automatically take me into that.

Upper stratosphere. And you're like, and that, that's just a conception. And what I've gotten from a lot of business people is that yeah, you just, you're just good at business. You know how to talk to people, the right avenues to take, you're able to tell a deal from a scam and you just grab, a bottle of ketchup and you could turn it into the next big thing.

And it's Okay, but there's got to be some kind of craft and the cat was like, no, it doesn't matter. We can do this. That's give it some gimmick and whatever. And you see this disconnect and neither side is necessarily wrong. There's this area of overlap. You had a Venn diagram, creativity and finances, art and business, whatever you want to call it.

So business, I don't know what to call that sweet spot in the middle, but what he's getting at with this killing on stage, it's not an accident. It's something that's crafted and you have to stop and consider your creativity in the, in light of the product that you're selling and yeah, you're selling yourself on stage.

You're trying to sell people on ideas and these jokes and you've got to make sure that you're hitting all the right cities. You've got to make sure that you're. Doing all the right things. And Kevin Hart really, he's shown up on quite a few business podcasts actually. And we're talking about gurus before he was at the 10X growth con, so he did that whole thing and everybody loved him on stage.

So no they get it. They don't sell that side of things, but when they say stuff like this, you're like no, they totally get it. No, 

Theo Harvey: and, when I, most people don't realize that comedians, they work hard to craft an hour special they go away for a while, you see them show up every now and then on a podcast or on your favorite radio station.

But the vast majority of the time they're on the road practicing material. They're learning how to say a joke. A hundred different times, right? And they know exactly what, what word to emphasize, the beginning, the last word, the beginning, middle word, right? They know how to say it.

They know what words to use. They know it's like all these different components. I think you did some stand up for a second, but I didn't know how much that went into that. It's almost they're building. They know that every time this joke is going to kill because they've done it so many times to that point.

So when they put it on wax or put it on a TV special, they just know that this is works and then some can do it faster than others, but there's still there's that period of time they have to build that up and they craft that over time. I never knew that until like maybe a couple years ago that's how this was built.

And it just blows your mind that. That's what he means. It's that skill set you build. And then before that skill set is built, you have to realize, how to take your ideas. We all have ideas and how to turn them into jokes. And that takes a skill, right? To understand that piece. And then once you turn it into a joke, you still gotta learn how to deliver that joke.

Cause you could probably create a great joke, but you might not be the best person to deliver it. And you may have to just sell that joke to someone else to deliver it. And they can do it way better than you. So it just blew my mind and just all the different skills that go into creating a joke.

Dad was going to get people to laugh every time. And to me that, that blew my mind. I think there's insights that can be taken on just any of these things. We talk about these gurus all the time. Alex Ramosi said sales is pretty straightforward. You get good at it by just doing it, and you can probably get good at a couple of weeks if you just settle almost every day, to someone and persuade them.

And then over time it becomes almost natural to undercover, using questions to uncover what they're dealing with, undercover what the problems are, leading them to figure out what they need so that you can persuade them on you have an offer that maybe can help them. So to me, that's just opened my eyes to like.

Even in art, something as subjective as that, there's opportunities for skill development. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, definitely. And I actually want to throw Alex Ramosi under the bus right quick.

He's actually, he's really big on, on just continually doing something and getting better. And I think he's going as he's going so hard and at such a level that. There's nobody in his way. There's nobody really competing with him on what he's doing. Of course, it works. And I'm saying, of course like I'm a hundred times millionaire or whatever, like him.

But he leaves out the part about deliberate practice. And I think he gets this internally, but he doesn't really say it too often where it's no, you don't just continually do something. You have to stop, adjust. Reassess what's going on, look at things very, like he's very good at looking thing, looking at things, observing what happened here, what went there and then going, oh, okay, so this is like this.

This is like that and adjusting. I think he does that. So naturally, he doesn't put that out there as something you need to do because, Benjamin Hardy talks about or somebody maybe it wasn't him. They're talking about how if you've been doing something 20 years, you don't have 20 years of experience being a bricklayer.

You've got one year of experience bricklaying for 20 years. Yeah. One year of experience that you've repeated 20 years. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. I heard Myron say that. Myron Golden. But yeah, it could have been others. Yeah. And to your point, you're saying there's a deliberate practice so that you can elevate your skill level.

And he talks about that a little bit recently, about understanding where you can improve on your different skill, skill stacking, right? How you improve on your skills is getting feedback. But to your point, maybe he. You go so fast and rapidly due to the systems that you don't realize, Oh this takes time to develop that skill set to get comfortable with it.

It's really about confidence, right? Knowing that this works and every time you do it. But I agree. It's that proficiency. And then to your point, we'll go back to what you uncovered was that intersection between the art and the business. And understanding you still have to make that.

Art something great and, or because if they get it, if it's crap, it will never use you going to sell that thing for the rest of your life. Cause you always find the next new black with bird term sucker, to sell that too. But if it's good, then, it makes the, it makes it selling easier to market easier.

So I do feel like, that product piece, killing on stage, crapping that, that joke, making it really crisp and great. Can help you, then that, you become legendary because you create art that no one can 

Mr.Benja: surpass. Yeah. By the way random note, the killing on stage relates to laughing so hard you die.

I laughed till I died. You remember Roger Rabbit? They had the weasels. Don't laugh. Don't laugh too hard, you'll die. 

Theo Harvey: I do remember those. I do remember those. I was just thinking of yeah, I've been there. Someone just so laugh. We'll do some side note. The funniest thing I've ever been was at a Dave Chappelle concert back in Atlanta.

That had to have been like maybe almost 20 years ago. I was at the Tabernacle, and he just started talking. And man, I was laughing my head off and I was sitting next to a friend. I said, what's he talking about? I don't know. I said, I don't know either. And it was just like blew my mind. He just up there. He got to be saying goo.

And we were just

playing us like he was playing us 

Mr.Benja: like a fail boy. It's amazing how they can do that. But that's a, yeah, it's a good thing to study. We'll definitely be coming back to discussions like this. You got any more on that? No, I'm good. All right. Because I want to know what's going on with story number two.

What should we do about these billionaire tech bros? I'm talking Bill Gates and I'm talking Elon Musk. I'm talking, well, did we still talk about Bezos? I'll throw him in there too. Jeff Bezos talking about, you don't even have to be billionaires. We can talk about maybe, I don't know. Steve Jobs was one of them.

The guys from Google. So on and so forth, tech bros running things. We've been asking about this because just recently I'm not sure what type of discussion it was exactly. There was some conference New York times was running it, I believe. And Elon Musk was talking with this guy named Andrew, who he called Jonathan.

You know what I'm talking about, right? That's good. Yeah, they brought up the concept of advertisers. And it seemed to touch a nerve with the chief technical officer, Elon Musk, who said, who cut him off and basically got pissed off and was like, you know what advertisers trying to blackmail me, they can go F themselves.

There was silence. They hadn't seen anything like that. And of course he doubles down, like sits up in his chair. They could go F themselves. You have to look it up for yourself. It's pretty classic. It's pretty great. Great in terms of it's great content. Not necessarily that it was great, but this has started to question, this has started to bring into question a lot of these billionaire tech bros.

If you've got somebody doing that on stage, is this what we want running? Humanity. I'm not even going to say, our companies or whatever, these technical companies are pushing humanity in certain ways. And do we want these billionaire tech bros moving things in this direction or being out of control?

I don't know. I don't know. I'm sure you saw that Theo? 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, I did. It was the it was the yeah Andrew Ross Sorkin. He has this deal book summit that he does every year. Andrew Ross Sorkin, known for Young Guy. He wrote the book on the basis of The Big Short, which was about the housing crisis we suffered in 08.

So it was just one of those guys journalists that's out there. So Elon Musk specifically, but it's a lot of them, man. You talked, before our pod, I don't know if we record this, but we talked about the the all in podcast, right? Those guys, right? David Sachs and who else is on it? The other three they'll come to me later, but it's a bunch of these VC type guys get together once a month and talk about stuff.

Even them, they got tons of money. They were instrumental in that whole fiasco with Silicon Valley Bank, collapsing almost, and then pleading to the government to bail him out. Elon Musk and his shenanigans, and I think it's just this, it's a shape of what social media has wrought.

A little bit, because back in the day, A CEO could just go buy his business and do the business, right? And then that would be fine. But now the CEOs realize that the best way to these billionaire ones, right? The best way to stay relevant, to stay, keep your business in the Your shot, just like in a politics is becoming sensational to be bigger than life, right?

It's not about your company. It's about your brain. As long as your brain is big and brash and whatever, then you may have a chance because now you bring in the masses with you. All right. And because they see all the shenanigans and you tell them what's what he's not going down. And I think that's what's been happening.

And one of them guys, one of the guys from the all in podcast I forgot how you say his last name. He created this whole class. Of things called the SPACs. I don't know if you're in a special purpose acquisition class type of vehicles. He was pumping those things on Twitter. He had a big following on Twitter, pumping them.

Hey, buy this. And so they were by these dog companies, helping them go public knowing that, yeah, maybe they could do something big, but probably a lot of them would not and a lot of them did not. So he's pumping them. So he had all these investors, mom, pop. Folks investing in these companies and they were dying on the vine as soon as they went public and went on the stock market because they didn't have the profitability, didn't have the infrastructure, everything to be a sustainable business on the stock market.

And he normally did that because he created the vehicle. He got his money out. Once it went public. Yeah. And he, it was basically a pump and dump scheme. Let's be honest. And then let's get into let's not get into the comments of all the different billionaires and, multi millionaires who are pumping a lot of these NFTs, Doge coin and all these other coins and alt coins out there doing the block.

Blockchain fiascos. Sam Bankman free, right? Yeah. He was over FTX. So anyway, to answer your question, they're doing what all good business people do. They see an opportunity and they're running through the opportunity and opportunity is leveraged the masses with these huge distribution channels, social media.

To get a lot of folks on their back, whether they believe it or not, it gives them enough leeway. They can still run their businesses how they want and not be in a career encumbered by government or regulations, and they can still do what they want to do. So that's how I look at them.

They're just using the tools of our modern culture. And so you just have to, you can't hit the player, just hate the game. 

Mr.Benja: So do we change the game? 

Theo Harvey: It's too late, Mr. Benja. The behavior has been baked in. Literally, I didn't, I was never a big social media person, but you'd be amazed how many people every night, just watch social media.

religiously. A lot of folks do and we know that's why we're on social media. And so it's almost like it's hard to, we take the phones to our bathrooms. Let's be honest, right? This is what, this is where we're at now. We're on the phone screw scrolling while we're doing our most intimate thing as human beings.

We're just learning. Listen to everybody. So of course, these, this, the behaviors baked in Mr. Benches. I don't know, how do you change, I dunno, unless you just forbid them from, being on social media, but they use social media to prevent that rule from ever passing . 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, no it's a weird problem.

And I think that like when someone asks. You ask a certain group of people, why this guy shouldn't be in power. And they're like, because he's a jerk. And at first I was like that's not a good enough reason. Coming from the computer science program or lifestyle, you walk into a room full of, jerks and you're just like, yeah, whatever.

Does the renderer work? It's like Tuesday and don't say shit to me until then. It's like, all right, Tuesday. And I won't say shit to you until then. Do you want me to remove you from the email list? Yes.

It's okay, you're dealing with these types of people and they'll start to say they need mental help, they're on the spectrum or whatever. And I'm like, I don't know. I've met so many of them that it's just I'm just thinking that they're this class of people. I am Noah. Mental health experts.

So in fact, I get like that sometimes myself. So I'm also hedging my own safety.

Theo Harvey: The flame is a little too close to home. I think, I don't know, Mr. Benja, it just seems like they just, the unlock has been leveraged social media to the utmost to, to build up a swell of goodwill. So that, it becomes bigger than the business and that's, look at San Altman, we're going to, help humanity. But as soon as, open AI turned on him, the board turned on him, what'd he do? He's leveraged social media, to get everybody on his, his team. And he was able to keep his his executive leadership position or open AI.

And so taking 

Mr.Benja: the selfie, 

Theo Harvey: With the, yeah, with the visitor badge. Yeah, visitor badge. And so it's huh, okay, that's the play. And so it's what it is at this point, and I think, players don't play man. And so I don't know. So are we tired of it? That's the question, right?

Mr. Bridget and America, I was thinking about this too the other day, I was like, man. What makes us so unique? You look at the history, man, like I was talking about, I watched Napoleon, right? And you just look at like Russia. They've been through so much crap. Not just World War II and all this stuff went on there.

And then you look at Napoleon and he went to try to invade Russia. And they were like, nah, you ain't getting us, son. We're just going to burn down our capital, Moscow, so you ain't going to have shit. Come get us. And so it's just like that cold, lifestyle, that cold, person that like the hardness or what's that movie we saw?

The one about Chernobyl, right? Those people went in there and just, Cleaned up all that radioactivity. And just a five second thought. That's not America. That's my point. Americans, we're about, I'm going to be a billionaire. Even if I'm born in a hit town in Kentucky, you may one day become a billionaire.

So anybody that, has a story that came from nothing to greatness. Rags to riches. That's just fundamental to Americans. And we just don't, we respect that so much that we don't want no one to take that away. And so when these billionaires speak, we want to hear them because they may have that key unlocked that can help me become who they are.

And so I think that's uniquely American. And that's why. For as long as we have billionaires, talking their talk, we're going to listen to them and I don't think they're going to go anywhere anytime soon, of course. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, it's weird. It's a weird situation where they're just, I don't know, man, if they really wanted to go out of control and I didn't think about this until the open AI debacle with Sam Altman.

It's like how many of his. How many of the employees sided with him? There's some huge percentage that we're ready to walk. And it's yo, I can get a, if I can get a whole bunch of people behind me to knock this thing out, to do this thing crazy. And, the government's going to have to deal with the possibility of my entire company just stopping.

And it's what does that do to. A country, a city, a municipality, it's, these are serious things like Google runs a lot of our technology. Amazon runs like large amounts of our technology. It's these people have sway. 

Theo Harvey: ELon Musk has access to the satellites to help the Ukraine fight in their war against Russia.

There 

Mr.Benja: you go. So yeah, I'm sure there's a guy from the government that they're like, we have to talk to Elon. Oh, who's going to do it? Okay. Sam, you go call, call Elon. Say, I don't want to tell Harris to do it. It's like, all right, Harris, you're up next. It's I could just imagine these government discussions, who gets to talk to Elon.

What is he going to do to you? It's 

Theo Harvey: the government, they probably got spies all up in SpaceX. And so come on, let's be honest. The CIA is all up in there, man. They know, but 

Mr.Benja: yeah, there has to be a front, right? Yeah. A fall guy speaking of fall guys. And this is a terrible transition, but we're going to do it anyway.

Story number three, why is Hollywood hiding musicals? This is a weird thing that came up that I thought was really interesting. And we'll get into how we feel about musicals in a second. A lot of the musicals that are coming out aren't being sold as musicals. It's they're hiding these facts, this fact from everybody.

The trailer for Wonka, you wouldn't know it's a musical. The trailer for the new Color Purple, you wouldn't know it's a musical. MiRaculous on Netflix Adam Sandler's new animated comedy, Leo, musicals, but you wouldn't know. And this goes on and on. I'm looking at the list here and. There's an article from Screen Crush, and one of the things the person says is, I must assume that someone in a corporate boardroom somewhere has determined that audiences don't consider musical numbers to be a selling point for movies these days.

And, I can attest, that's true. Have you noticed this at all, Theo? This phenomenon? 

Theo Harvey: I have. Do you want to talk about if we like them or not, or do you want to save that for the end? I 

Mr.Benja: think they're garbage. Carry on. Okay. 

Theo Harvey: I like them. I actually like them. So there you go. Yeah. Oh my God. Oh, it depends. It's like I, I didn't like him at one time, but we watched the kids and I, years ago, we watched the greatest showman. Hugh Jackman and it's also okay at the time. Yes. The musical. Oh, I'm taking it off my 

Mr.Benja: watch list now. 

Theo Harvey: I say that to say that. But it's funny the first time you listen to a song on a musical, but they do little tricks, right?

If you've ever been to the one song they want you to remember, they'll play that song throughout the movie, like little snippets here and there, like Frozen, the Frozen, the one, Let It Go, they were playing that, if you watch that movie A hundred times like I've had because I have a daughter, you hear that the chords for let it go at the very beginning of the movie and all the way through.

So when the big song comes out, it's there and it shows up at the end. So anyway, I say I have to say is that most of the musicals, song numbers, you're like okay. But the thing is, they become ear warm. So when you watch it again and again, then you start knowing the words and then next year, oh, that's a bad, die, bad musical. And then recently, we went to a sing along where you actually sit in the theater and you had a little bouncing ball at the bottom with the words, and you would sing along when that came up. And the whole theater's just singing, singing along. But anyway, I digress.

I like them, but look, man, it's marketing number one. And I think a lot of folks probably feel like you do that they don't like musicals. So that's probably why they're hiding it. The hope is that the songs are so good that people will be like, okay now there's been rumors that people find us a musical and they walk out, but yeah, the ones that give it a shot, they may just be a, just enough.

Right to get them to stay and so that's what they're hoping. 

Mr.Benja: I was mad at Sweeney Todd for that one. I Went in and yeah, Johnny Depp got me. I was like, oh you got me yeah, it's it's a whole thing and it's funny like you would figure that For the people that like musicals, it's like, hey, the number one smash musical and sing some songs in the trailer and people were like, you know what, I need to go sing those songs in the theater with a bunch of other people who like musicals, just like me, and they'll go, but that's not the case.

And I'm wondering, do people who. Follow musicals. Are they like passing notes to each other? Hey, dog, don't tell anybody, but this is a musical, and it's okay.

Theo Harvey: It's one of those things. Hamilton, I went in completely blind. I saw the actual stage play when it first came out years ago. And not that far ago. And I was blown away. It's they're going to be singing the, it's, they sing the whole time singing around me.

You've probably seen it by now, but he's singing rap the whole time. And when you go in not knowing that you were like, Oh, but you get used to it. You're like, Oh, this is good. Yeah. And but you, so you did like any musicals, Mr. Benjamin, I don't 

Mr.Benja: like I, they're not my favorite genre. There's not, there's either musicals.

I liked, there was the The Carmen hip hop. There was that one

Theo Harvey: Deep Cat. 

Mr.Benja: Me? Yep. . I love that. There was the episode of what do you call it? Buffy. There, there are a couple of them here and there where I'm like, okay, I like this as musical in the marvels. I actually got into the musical scene there. I was like, okay, cool. But for the most part, when I go to a movie, I'm looking for a story, not a musical extravaganza.

I'm looking for the plot and the characters, all this to play out. So when I sit down and they're like, they start seeing it. And this is terrible. My, my mother hated me for this because I. Grew up watching opera and I like opera for what it is. Phantom of the Opera is great. Porgy and Bess is great.

HaMilton's probably great as a play. I wouldn't want to see it as a movie musical. I'd like to see it as a play. There's that disconnect for me. That's all I got on that. 

Theo Harvey: Go see a musical, guys. 

Mr.Benja: Go listen to Mr. Benji. If you got your favorite musicals that you want to see me roast, Then please send them to me catch me.

Theo Harvey: You should do reaction videos of musicals, Mr. Benja. We'll have your, our faces at the bottom. I'll be like this and you'll be like, Oh 

Mr.Benja: man. So yeah, that's that. Story number four. We got an AI watch here. People have been talking about AI disrupting things, taking over the world, stealing jobs, going Skynet on us, controlling your devices.

Watching you taking all your data and basically turning humanity into a subservient class underneath robots. That's been the boogeyman speak that they've been saying, but hasn't been so disruptive like that. It's a, disruptive industries come around and they flip over the table. And all of a sudden you go from regular push button phones to smartphones.

You've got other disruptions like the, the Uber economy, all of a the entire taxi and driving economy. It was upended by. Ubers and Lyfts, but AI hasn't seemed like such a disruption. I don't know. Is anybody getting disrupted Theo? 

Theo Harvey: Good point. There's rumors, right? It's going to replace 300, 000 jobs and it's going to do this and that.

Let's be frank. This revolutionary chat GPT that really spurred this new arms race. It was only a year ago, but that's a fair point, Mr. Benj. It does seem like it's not disrupting as fast as we thought it would and how it could because you still need that human interface, but I will say this.

The challenge, we're trying to do it in our company, our corporation, but it's almost like a glorified like researcher or copywriter, just basically just one level up from any other type of thing that we use, like a grammar checker or, ideal generator for headlines for marketing.

So I don't, we're not using it like, Corporate wide. And I think a lot of companies are struggling with that. Maybe it can help individuals do better with their work, but I don't see it being used effectively. So is it disrupting what we do? No, it's helping what we do, but I don't see it disrupting what we're doing.

Mr.Benja: I think that's a key point where if it's helping you do enough, then maybe you don't need help from somebody else. You might have paid down the line. I'm thinking of. Concept artist and, oh, let me just mention some of the things that we were talking about search instead of search, you could ask the AI and you get more nuanced results.

And I think it's slowly disrupting search and search is morphing into this. Now production assistance if you want to make sure you email somebody, you have your AI thing, go through all your emails. That's integrated into Gmail. Now you can start using that visual effects.

Hey, we need to make this whole scene be lit a certain way. Should we go relight it? No, just run AI through it. Okay. Concept art, entertainment, visuals, marketing. You want to send out your emails to the right people and they ask questions, you have your chat bots, content creation. aLl these are little menial tasks, I would say, where they're not like you want, you don't want an expert getting replaced by AI.

I don't know if we're not there yet, I don't think in any cases, but it's I'm working at home and I'm like should I send this off to a VA, a virtual assistant, or should I just get some suggestions from AI? Oh, we have a junior copywriter in the office. Instead of talking to him about getting me 50 ideas, let me ask chat GPT for 50 ideas, or, we're working out this new sales letter instead of getting Sally from, down the hall, let's just run it through this sales letter, optimizer AI program.

And that's what I'm looking at where it's starting to cut off the little bits of excess here and there, but not disrupting anything. Yeah, I would agree. 

Theo Harvey: And also there's rumors just the AI companies themselves are still trying to figure a lot of things out, obviously we talked about the two weeks open AI corporate governance slowed down, some of the things that they're trying to do with Sam Altman's removal and then eventually, him coming back on board.

So there's some doubt there that, Yeah. Even the corporate structure will allow them to accelerate faster with AI type technology, even amidst the rumor of a more powerful generative AI out there. What's it called? Q squared. But, we'll see what that looks like. And in Google who You know, basically invented the concepts of, how these algorithms work, there's, they're behind.

And but they're, they bought it launch of a new 10 GPT pod. Gemini has been allayed. And to your point, the new technologies and then all these, startups that came out of this. Most of them, most of the VCs are realizing that, you know what, they don't have the resources or the know how to compete with an open AI, a Google, right?

Facebook. And so it's like a lot of these startups with their ideas of how they can do one piece of the AI puzzle is still debatable. So to your point, I just don't see the disruption coming just yet. It's almost, just like we've done with. It's almost like we got so good at just hyping technology that we forgot how to just make the technology useful like we did.

So it's like before we got Wi Fi. We talked about it, but we had Wi Fi. We had net, computer networking, just communicating email. We got that working, and then we hyped it up a little bit right now. It's the opposite. We're hyping everything up. Black chain, this, that, now, AI.

But is the technology, there yet? And that's always the challenge now, as opposed to what it was. 

Mr.Benja: I think so too. We'll definitely come back to that one, but for now, we're going to do, we're going to beat our previous record in the shortest rant ever. Story number five, thinking about the marvels, are we really arguing about the right thing?

The narrative that keeps coming up is the marvels was a flop. And now we've got people talking about. Hey maybe we're not supporting women or why is it always minority characters and women, why do we always seem to bash them whenever something does bad? And it's always that stop talking about that.

Really stop talking about that. I think we're not focusing on the right things. And I think our focus is a little bit misdirected. There are a lot of things the marvels did well that no one is talking about. And is this toxic positivity? Yeah. Maybe there's a little bit of it, but I think our discussions have gone way too far on the wrong side of things.

And we really need to get back to pumping movies that are good for what they are. It's going to take some time to get these hero people into watching anything about Hey, I can't relate to a, what teenage Pakistani girl with. Light powers. That's not where I'm coming from. That's not what I understand, but she made good.

There was a good product. The Miss Marvel was good. The TV series. And I thought the Marvels was actually good. So let's talk more about getting people out and understanding that they should check these things out and see them. And, yeah, so much of the argument is about people wanting to discuss why this is an argument instead of actually doing good by the movie.

Sorry, I had to do this in a rant. There it is. It's I've got so much more to say on this 

Theo Harvey: Tokyo ish. Maybe we'll do a whole, we'll break it down later in another section, but I would agree wholeheartedly. We both like Ms. Marvel that this course has came at the wrong time. Be honest with you.

There's probably people against Disney and just this whole woke, woke Disney narrative that even Bob Iger is trying to step away from. So maybe we'll have a discussion on that next week, Mr. Bridget. But yeah. Mr. Benja, I think that's it, man. Let's get out of here. We do a nice little hour here, guys.

So look, if you like what we talked about, please subscribe, comment on Show vs Business on X. Formerly known as Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Listen to us at Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Go visit us at our website, Show vs Business. Hey, Mr. Benja, take care of yourself. Peace.