Curiosity Theory

Skilled Trades Are Six Figure Careers That the World Needs | Joshua Regis

Dr. Dakotah Tyler & Justin Shaifer

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0:00 | 1:18:00

In this episode of Curiosity Theory, hosts Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer sit down with Joshua Regis, co-founder and CEO of KritKarr, an AI-powered platform for auto repair, for a conversation about fixing one of the most broken industries in America, what the trades are actually worth, and who gets to write the future.

The discussion moves from Josh's path out of traditional school and into automotive work, how he discovered that a car contains every trade skill in existence, and how the flat rate pay system exploits the mechanics who keep the industry running. From there they get into what KritKarr is building, how AI diagnostics and mobile mechanics can bring trust and transparency back to auto repair, and why skilled trades are a six-figure opportunity that almost nobody is talking about.

The conversation also dives into whether robots will replace mechanics and why the human touch still matters, how automation is set to widen the wealth gap, the SpaceX IPO and what commercializing space actually means for regular people, whether we should be trying to colonize Mars before fixing things on Earth, and what Afrofuturism has to say about who controls the narrative of the future. It opens on the Tulsa Race Massacre and the question of what Black Wall Street could have become, and that thread runs underneath everything.

Chapters

00:00:00 Intro and meeting Joshua Regis
 00:03:00 Black Wall Street, the Tulsa Race Massacre, and what could have been
 00:07:28 Sci-fi, anime, and the Tony Stark effect
 00:14:50 How Josh went from struggling in school to becoming a mechanic
 00:15:44 Why a car contains every trade skill in existence
 00:20:35 Flat rate vs hourly: how the auto industry underpays mechanics
 00:27:42 What KritKarr is and how it works
 00:29:55 Skilled trades as a six-figure career opportunity
 00:35:00 Will robots replace mechanics? The human touch debate
 00:41:56 Automation, the wealth gap, and universal basic income
 00:50:56 The SpaceX IPO and what commercializing space actually means
 00:57:08 Mars colonies: who benefits and at what cost?
 01:00:18 Solar panels in space and the future of energy
 01:07:50 Should we fix Earth before trying to leave it?
 01:14:18 Afrofuturism, Black culture, and who controls the future's narrative
 01:17:00 Where to find Josh and KritKarr

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 Joshua Regis

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SPEAKER_00

Welcome back to Curiosity Theory. I am your co-host, Dr. Dakota Tyler, aka Dr. Starkid, astrophysicist, and head curious thinker of my brain personally. Here with my main man and co-host.

SPEAKER_03

Justin, Mr. Fascinate Schaefer, STEM media producer, uh lover of all things knowledge-based and uh applied knowledge and interesting things. Uh and we are joined here today. Very articulate. Yeah, it was uh one of my most articulate uh intros, definitely. Uh, we are joined here today with an incredible guest. We have Josh Regis, he's the CEO of Crit Car. Uh he has a fascinating background in engineering and being a car mechanic and taking those things to the next level uh and rethinking a career that I think has become quite sensational, Josh. Uh tell us a little bit more about yourself.

SPEAKER_01

Hi everyone, I'm Josh Regis. Um, I'm co-founder and founder, I'm co-founder and CEO of Crit Car, which is an automotive tech company or AI-powered um platform for auto repair. And how we are doing this, we're providing people with trusted mobile mechanics. We're uh we got AI vehicle diagnostics, making diagnostics easy for you guys. We have flexible workspaces so people could rent out their space so they could do work. And we we have technology that you know innovates small mom and pop shops so they can be modernized and willing to be increase their business. Um, some of the things I found a concept, I started working on cars and then I got into engineering, and then I learned electrical and mechanical engineering, and then from there, my mind went crazy and said, yo, how can I change the entire industry and how can I make it uh uh uh bigger and better? And one of the things that also helps me increase my knowledge, sci-fi anime, you know, comic books, those things. And I'm a I'm a I'm a consistent learner, I'm a consistent person that has a huge imagination, and uh I'm very delusional that I can make everything happen.

SPEAKER_03

So awesome, man. So we're gonna be taking a deeper dive into the nuts and bolts, get it, of Josh's career. Uh, yeah, how he figured out how to do a lot of these things. We're gonna be talking about SpaceX IPOs and uh the commercialization of space, and we're gonna do a deeper dive into all kinds of different sci-fi concepts. We're gonna be nerding out as usual. So stick around and tap in with us right now.

SPEAKER_00

What's up, y'all? We are live from uh all over the world right now. Pretty much we got Southern California, we got Oklahoma, we got where you at, Josh? Houston, Houston's Houston, the trifecta, uh in a way as well, too. Um you know, LA is uh certain parts of LA are known throughout uh black culture. Tulsa, you know, interestingly, could have been one of the major hubs for black uh entrepreneurship, business um, you know, expands, but of course that was cut short by the bunch of talking about the white man.

SPEAKER_03

Yep, yeah, uh 1921, the Tulsa race massacre. Um yeah, Josh, I don't know if you ever come out here and seen like some of the history and stuff like that, but it's a pretty interesting, um, like it's a pretty interesting lore that they've like built out of museums and paintings and things like that all over the city.

SPEAKER_01

Nah, I definitely gotta check out Tulsa because I I first of all that's where history is, but also understanding just being within the streets of what Black Wall Street used to be, you know what I mean? It's it's it's incredible, and you know what's crazy? They still haven't given the survivors money for everything or uh reparations for everything that happened, even though proof is all there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, man. You know what's crazy is I think what what you're saying is exactly right, but if you go down to that area in Tulsa, they did rename one of the roads Reconciliation Lane or like Reparations Road or some Reconciliation Lane, I think it's Reconciliation Way, yeah, reconciliation way, man. It's like, damn, the audacity is crazy. The audacity was crazy. Yeah, that's actually something I think about from time to time is like during that period, uh, you know, in the the mid-1900s, there was so much um like dismantling of anything that any black people were building, whether that was you know, civil rights lead leaders being assassinated, businesses being stolen, being burned down to the ground. And it's it's like you wonder what would American society, culture, and black society and culture look like today, had a lot of the business leaders, thought leaders not been eradicated, killed, murdered, whatever um deck all those those generations ago. It's like it's hard to it's hard to know.

SPEAKER_03

That's such an interesting thought, man. Because I mean, you think about something like Times Square, right? And like Times Square wasn't what it is today, but the foundation for Times Square existed in those time periods where you had these kind of like you know, rougher buildings, but it was densely populated. And it's like that's like foundational stuff for the black community, like our black leaders, uh, you know, our black wealthy people that can invest in in other businesses, and like all of that foundation has been erased time and again. And you know, yeah, it's it's it's even it's I think a different origin story from even like coming into the US and you know, trying to figure it out as you go that way.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, um, one of the things I did notice, or something that one out to to answer to speak to that question, I think we would be a whole lot further off. So so much more if we were like, let's say we were able to get reparations for a lot of the massacres that's happened to us. I look at it as like how the Jewish was able to build their own communities, it would have been we would have been able to literally build our own communities, hospitals and everything. Because I've seen how they do it in Brooklyn. Literally, it's it's like their own little world. And the best, the best example or the best way to speak to that. Have you ever watched the show Watchmen? Uh that was on HBO. Um, they did a what if, like they got reparations for Tulsa, and they had the whole economy and how everything was good, where they would just go to the Tulsa Museum and get their reparations checked every single time they said, Well, who you from? Put your DNA in, and then they were getting their check. And every there was multiple black businesses, they were flourishing while everybody was kind of like throughout Wash Rebody was still, you know, kind of not suffering, but they weren't as successful as black people because we were able to receive reparations. So if that kind of gives you an uh idea of what it could be, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

No, I think that's super interesting, man. I I I love Watchmen and Josh, you're a pretty big sci-fi guy in general, right? Like you take a lot of inspiration from comics and and things like that. Like you were talking about Tony Stark being like one of your favorite Marvel characters.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, like bro, Tony Stark was. I remember reading. First of all, uh, Tony Stark, like, really if you read like way, way back, he was a crazy alcoholic. But one of the things that I always picked up talking about Robert Downey Jr. No, no, no. The real Tony Stark, he was literally like he had a whole storyline where he couldn't be Iron Man because he was just too drunk, and every time he was doing something, he was causing destruction. So that's when uh uh before War Machine came about, that's when um his boy took over for him because he was just going through so much alcohol and drugs. That he was like, you know what, after he was able to sober up, he's like, I'll make you a suit. And that's how War Machine came about because he was just covering for Tony Stark while he was going through that season. But um I didn't know that. But yeah, one of the things, one of the things that was key, like when I was reading his comment, one of the things Tony Stark loved working on was cars. He loved hot rods, he loved working on different types of vehicles. And when I saw that and saw how intelligent he was, because that was his favorite thing to do, but it also helped him build his suits because he would like he had a suit that looked just like the paint job of his hot rod, because he built it and model it after that. And I was like, oh, it kind of like piqued my interest. It's like, okay, so maybe cars is a pathway to getting to the aspect of an inventor. Because to me, how Tony Stark went about the world, he could build literally anything, and he used science and he used uh astrophysics and he used quantum mechanics, like he was doing all these things, but it all started off his curiosity of wanting to build something.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I love Tony Stark. Man, what are we gonna say?

SPEAKER_00

Oh no, I was gonna ask Josh who your favorite inventor inventor throughout history, if you have one.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, honestly, the one I got two. There was one is why is this name not coming to me right now? Is it Kenneth Gareth? Though there's one, uh, there's two Nikola Tesla, only because the system that he created where he could have created infinite energy is so wild to me. But the fact that he was, I guess they say he was too smart that he went crazy.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I feel like that there's there's some uh uh I feel like that's what somebody who wants you to think they was too smart would say.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, I think it's too smart. My brain can't handle it.

SPEAKER_03

I know I could have created infinite energy, but I'm I I'm just too smart.

SPEAKER_01

I was too smart. I even no, here's the funny thing. You know what they always say? They were like, geniuses are just they're so smart that they go crazy because of how intelligent they are. And I was I used to always say, like, that doesn't make sense to me. Um, because it's like if you're intelligent, you can you I I'm I believe with intelligence you need awareness because you have to be aware to find something to apply your intelligence to. So the to say somebody's crazy means they to a certain extent means that they have a lack of awareness of what's going on around them. So to say that they're a genius and now I'll be aware of what's going on, always throws me off. But yeah, Nikola Tesla and um the next person is the person who created the radiator. I it's not his name, he's black man, radiator for uh uh stoplight. He just created so many things, and it's not coming to be. Ah dang, I'm trying to remember his name, but he's those two are inventors.

SPEAKER_03

Garrett Morgan.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, Garrett Morgan. There you go. Thank you. Thank you there. Garrett Morgan, he is elite, bro. And the thing is, what what he couldn't have created more. He had so many, like a listing of uh uh of images and drawings of things that he wanted to create, but he just didn't have enough life to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, that's that's an interesting take. Uh, and there's some really modern ones, you know. I think a lot of times your question, Dakota, around his favorite inventor, I feel like that kind of prompts us to think about historical figures that are either dead or just invented things a long time ago. And we kind of don't always consider modern inventors in the conversation because the way invention works now is so much more team-oriented and often less attributed to one individual person. Um, but like, you know, there are some cool people today that um I've actually had the pleasure of being able to interact with to some extent, like Lonnie Johnson, he's a black inventor. He's the yeah, the inventor of the super soaker, he's a big STEM guy. He also has invented a lot of other things as well. Um, and then this other guy I met recently, uh Lanny Smoot, he actually got a lot of uh attention. He is a Disney imagineer. So Disney basically hires these engineers to build things that are that are like fictitious concepts that Disney has. So he's like built life like lightsabers and things like that, which I'm like, damn, you could probably kill somebody with that. Yeah but also um he invented this thing called the hollow tile, and the hollow tile is basically like this uh it's this floor that so I have y'all have both worn VR headsets before?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I don't know if I have actually.

SPEAKER_03

You never won a VR headset? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00

I think I was afraid I was gonna get nauseous or get a migraine or something.

SPEAKER_03

Well, well, you definitely might. Um, I mean, I that is a that is a definitely a real risk. Um, and I think actually, I think there there was an there was an article that came out about this. Like more women get nauseous with VR headsets um because of some kind of orientation of the VR headsets and how they're designed and mostly designed for male users, which is really another interesting rabbit hole. But um, the hollow tile uh essentially is so the issue with the VR headset, if you wear one, is that you can't really physically move around without running into stuff. And so, like the meta quest solves this problem by allowing you to draw a boundary. Like, let's say you want to play MetaQuest in your living room, you draw a boundary, and it's like once you cross this line, it the camera turns on and you can and you can't see the VR anymore, you can just see real life, so that you don't like run into your TV or something like that. But Landy Smoot invented the hollow tile to basically allow you to infinitely walk or run in an enclosed space, so it's almost like this series of like wheels that kind of like omnidirectional wheels that like you can just walk around in physical space and you know never run out of space to walk and while wearing a VR headset, so it's a lot more kind of like a multi-directional treadmill, yeah. Like an omnidirectional treadmill, but it's an iteration on that where it's even more, I'd say, subtle. Um, like the omnidirectional treadmills that exist today, like they kind of have they require you to walk in like this crouched form. Um, yeah. So the but yeah, the hollow tile you can just walk normally or run or jog. Um, but it's like super high production, like you gotta like go to Disney to actually use one of these today. But I think it's still super dope. Um, but yeah, man, I think Josh was what's really interesting about I think your journey, what we've talked about is like you've taken a lot of inspiration from what seems to be science fiction, fantasy, um, you know, and kind of like applied that to your career, which I think is uh I think is a really cool way of just looking at your life. It's like, you know, these things are possible, you know what I mean? Because you because you started off as a mechanic, right?

SPEAKER_01

Was that was that like one of your first jobs or or so okay, so I mean, of course, my first job was like working at retail stores and stuff like that. But one of the things like since I was I was like a uh I worked in a shop, like being just a like a sweep, like sweeping the floors and stuff, just so I wanted to be close to cars, and then one of my friends had like a mobile mechanic business, and I was working with him, like being his assistant. And then when I went, once I got into high school, I was like, Oh, I want to do like technology or something of some sort. So it was like automotive technology. I was like, yo, that sounds actually that sounds pretty cool. I'm already kind of doing it already, so why not? Dove deeper into it, and that's when I was able to understand. Like, at first I was like, yo, I maybe I'm not that good at this, but then I realized I just needed to take the time for myself and understand how to build these concepts. And then as we're going deeper into the classes, I'm learning so many different concepts. Oh, this is related to this. It's like, yo, a car, here's the crazy thing our car has every aspect of trade in it electrical, plumbing, uh uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh new technology, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering. Like you think of anything, it's in a car. Because every aspect to make it function, you will have it. And that's when I was able to say, oh, this is this is something I could use as a medium to learn to increase my intelligence or increase, use that as a base to be able to handle all these other things. So then when I became a mechanic, went to technical school, became a mechanic, I got a um sponsored by BMW, became their certified BMW technician for a while.

SPEAKER_00

Is that um is that like one of the mechanisms that you can get your mechanic like mechanic school paid for? Yeah, um, like a car company that is looking as like sponsor somebody, they will come on then as a mechanic for them.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So you didn't have to pay for it then.

SPEAKER_01

No, I didn't have to pay for nothing. So um the way it works is like if you're first you're top of this, you're top of your class, then they invite you for an interview. You go to interview, you tell them the history, speak about it. Then it was like once you're in the program, it's like six months to a year, and you're going, you're doing two weeks in a shop, two weeks learning more about the technology, two weeks in the shop, back and forth, back and forth. Like I knew about the I8 before the I8 came out because I was already working on it before it was like come to fruition. I was seeing it, I was building up. I didn't know what it was. I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. Um, you know, all the the EV vehicles back then, before the way before they were uh when there were a concept, I was already working on them. Um working on Rolls Royce because BMW has Rolls Royce. So and learned that that was a seven, that's basically a glorified seven series. Um it it it it was and then when they when they sponsor, you're supposed to work to a certain time, so you can make sure you can pay them that through your labor. And then once you get past that, they're supposed to um give you a raise and more uh uh work to do because you're now fully certified to do the work where most people couldn't really work on their vehicles.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

unknown

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, man.

SPEAKER_01

So I was a certified BMW technician. Being uh during that time, I learned so much about technology. Like BMW technology, first of all, it compares to Mercedes and Audi, but learning about how technology works, you learn more technology actually causes more issues in vehicles, and you start to understand. That's when I really got my wheels turning and understanding vehicles because I was constantly diagnosing and learning and understanding how wiring works, schematics, looking at literal schematics before I got into electrical engineering where I started seeing schematics. It was like, oh, now it clicks. Oh, this is what this is, because you need to follow the trail of where a cotton a wire is, and the only way you could do that is looking through a schematic, and then you start to understand that aspect. And then I remember there was a competition in BMW at my BMW dealership where they would they called down their engineer, and it was basically like tech versus engineer, who would win? And I beat a bunch of techs that was um within my um my dealership. So they was like, Oh, well, how about you go against an engineer? And I was like, How am I supposed to be the person that made the car? Like they would know it better. Just go. So it was uh uh the the the competition was basically how can who can take out a heater core the fastest? Who can do what heater core who can remove a heater core the fastest? So a heater core is what causes the heat to go to your vehicle. It's it's in the center console. Um, it's uh it's like a uh a heating film where it lights up, it radiates, and then sends out the um the blower motor sends out the heat from the irradiated uh film, and then that's when you start to feel the heat. Oh, like for the air conditioning, yeah, for the air conditioning, yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00

So it's generated from where?

SPEAKER_01

Like what is the so okay, so you look at the center console of your vehicle where the steering wheel and everything, right there where the uh radio, that there's that's usually where it is, right there where the radio is. When you remove all that stuff, there's a a a square core with a heating film that's like usually circular or rectangular, all depending on how they design it. And to to remove that takes hours. I found a way once you remove uh some of the parts of the radio, there was like a hole within uh within the BMW that I could literally drill through, create an access rate, go to the bolt, remove it, and then have have it drop down from the bottom and just pull it out. Because you learn when you so the thing about working on cars, there's this thing that they call flat rate, where basically you get paid for the job of the time of the job instead of getting paid hourly. So if an oil change takes, let's just say an hour, you would have to literally do eight oil changes to get eight hours, pay uh eight-hour paychecks for the day. You know what I'm saying? So if you could do an hour job in 30 minutes, you could easily do, you know, you can do easily do eight at half the time. So that's the idea and the concept. I hate flat rate because it actually is kind of robs you. It's it's it's the fallacy to me. It's a fallacy because it's like it sounds good, but it's really not. Because if you have a slow day, you're screwed. But uh, yeah, so because I was working on flat rate, I always had to find ingenious ways to remove something, to get to something, so I can cut the time, so I can make the same amount of time in less. So when I was dealing with the engineer, they were doing it the way that they built it to be. I did it the way I figured out how to do it. And once I beat them, and it was like, How did you do that? I was like, Well, if you do this, you can drill a hole, it can't be seen because you cover it with the radio and just pull out the bolt and have it drop right right from the bottom. There you go. And he was he was so fascinated. And he's like, Yo, how did you like he was just trying to understand? Like, how did you figure it out? I was like, I had to try different things when and when you're in a situation where you have to figure it out, you you'll find a way. So that's and you was John Henry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like exactly, exactly. So About the dude was German, so that was another thing that was funny. So he the way he was talking, look, look he I felt like he was like, You're black, you should not be able to be able to do this. I don't understand. Like, that's the impression he was getting. That's the energy he was giving me. How did you do that? Like, I built this. How did you know how to do this faster than I?

SPEAKER_00

And I was just like, but I was like, what's the point? Yeah. So what's uh and then you end up going back to school for electrical engineering, right? Yeah, and then and that's when you were saying that a lot of these concepts that you kind of look like were under you understood the application and the mechanics of how things worked and like why things failed. But then when you added that extra layer of learning about circuits and you know, why like on the electromagnetic side, why things are are structured the way that they are, you said that it kind of like clicked for you and just like increased your understanding to another level. I thought that that was really cool because it's you know, I think um in any trade, I don't know if people always think about themselves the way that you describe where you're a scientist. You literally are like you're tinkering with things, like that's what scientists do, right? It's about like test creating a contraption, testing it, seeing what fails, how can you fix it? Why does it make sense that you can fix it that way instead of like doing something else? Sometimes you can like jerry rig or like invent a um a fix for something in like understanding why that works. And I thought that that was um that that was so cool that your application of yourself as a scientist, as an inventor, um, was in your work with cars as a mechanic, and then on and then layering after that, like the um the electrical engineering side where you have to like learn more about the math, and you know, I don't know if you ever had to go through like Kirchhoff's laws and all that.

SPEAKER_01

No, no, I I didn't.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and so it's it's like combining the like the the on paper, the theory on paper, and then combining it with how it's used, which I guess is what an engineer does, um you know, uh essentially. And I just thought that that was dope. Uh, and that that's like kind of tapping into this same sort of scientific curiosity and like desire to understand things and to create things that um like improve our lives or improve society or something like that. I feel like there's a a part of us deep down that is that is is interested in doing that, even if we aren't framing ourselves as scientists.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. One of the things that I feel like for anybody, if they want to do something grand or big, you have to have three things uh what the willingness, the curiosity, the willingness to learn something, two delusion, the delusion of under seeing something and say, hey, it can be done. Just because I feel like with everybody, a great inventor or anybody that does something really great, it was the aspect of having that delusion and say, yo, this sounds cool. Let me make it reality. And the the aspect of having a great imagination. Because a lot of we look at kids with their imagination, and they feel like they could do literally anything. But then as we get older, that kind of starts to fade away because life starts to hit us and make us say you can't imagine this. I never lost my imagination. That's and then that's why I constantly read fantasy and sci-fi and stuff like because it it builds on my imagination and allows me to be like, oh, cool, I didn't look at that. That's another way of looking at things. Anime is another thing that that you could look at, and then you try to then because like how I have ADHD, I'm constantly trying to find similarities and patterns and certain things. It's like, okay, it it we may not have the technology yet, but sooner or later we'll get to that technology. So, what's the closest thing to that? And that's and that that's how I always look at it. And that's how what always uh one of the things I remember my mom was like, why do you still watch cartoons? I was like, it helps me. It helps me, it helps me learn more. You may not see it that way, but it helps me learn more. It makes me gives me more zeal to learn. Because if I could see something that sounds, seems outlandish, I try to find where it can possibly happen.

SPEAKER_03

That's powerful, man. And you know, it's it seems like you're kind of scratching the surface of something that's really relevant today. Because, you know, we're in the the AI era today. A lot of people are are you know skeptical about AI or maybe even have beef with AI because they got laid off by their tech you know employer due to AI concerns. And you seem to have built something that is more or less AI proof, but also augmented by AI, right? Yes, um, because you have your own company as well. Can you tell us a little bit more about it?

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. So, first and foremost, I'm a found co-founder and CEO of a company called CritArt, which is short for critical car repair. Um, when I came up with the name, I was thinking of like what's something catchy because it used to be campus car repair. That's how I used to pay my tuition. Was I working on uh uh students' cars, teaching professors' cars, and I learned so much through that. And I was like, yo, so I started teaching somebody else to do the work that I couldn't do while I'm in engineering class. Yo, handle this oil child change for me while I'm in class. Yo, handle this, I'll give you whatever cut from that. And then that's when I learned, oh, this can be a doable concept. And then that that's kind of like how it became like, oh, this is truth, this is uh proof. With it, within when I've Bill Kritkar, which is a company that uh provides customers with trusted mobile mechanics, um, AI vehicle diagnostics, so it makes diagnostics easy. Where you're like, oh, I don't have to pay an hour diagnostic. I have a uh uh custom agent that can help me solve the problem so I can send to my mechanic. We have flexible workspaces, so if you're a mobile mechanic or any automotive service provider, we have shops within our network that's willing to rent a space that they're not using for you to use it. Or you can use the shop, like say they close at five, you can use it from six to midnight. That's your place. So think like Air Airbnb with automotive repair. And then lastly, we we want to make mom and pop shops or a small automotive business more modern or digitized so they can stop using paper. So we create a CRM platform that uh modernize their business and gives them a great point of sales and marketing tools to be able to build out their business. That's what quick car is in itself. That's how we're starting now, but we got bigger plans like uh we want to increase the EV infrastructure by adding peer-to-peer charging. So if you have a uh a charging system in a garage, you can make money. Hey, and then now we can add to your travel, and now it'll be like the same concept of having a gas station, then you'll go into people's homes, and then you say, Hey, I just want to rent your uh uh EV charger for this time to this time, pay, go through the platform and get money. You know what I mean? That's one aspect. We wanna we're working with insurance companies to give the uh mixed mobile mechanics that don't have insurance have insurance. So now that's more incentives. Like we're we have so many concepts. The the the idea is to change the entire automotive industry and bring technology into it. And that and what I'm doing, it's it's making sense. The technology is getting better, AI is getting better. So as AI get better, we get better.

SPEAKER_03

I think that that's fire, man, because it just sounds so much bigger in concept than maybe what you may have been able to imagine when you first started helping your homie fix, you know, fix cars, like you know, when you were just getting into it. But I think it's so inspiring because it's like, you know, anybody that's in the trades, I think, you know, there's been this historical undervaluing of these trade skills, these like hard skills that require technical knowledge. Like being an elevator, like I saw a recent post about being an elevator repair mechanic can be like it's like maybe multi-six figure job opportunity. And it requires a lot of the same skills that software engineers have, just applied in a different direction. And I think like there's this undervaluing of that that is now like the AI age is like, oh, you have to recognize the value of these things, these are still important, essential roles. Uh, and so you know, it's like you're able, you know. I think a lot of people that listen to our show, they may not identify as like scientists or they may not work in tech, but they feel like they have that mindset. And it's like you saw that in yourself and in some of the comics that you read before you started to apply some of these keys. I think that's super dope, man.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. I think what it is when it comes to trades, people see trades as the dirty, backbreaking jobs, which it can be. Not saying it can't, but there's security in that. It's a need and it's a consistent need. That's like you, I mean, just like you need a mechanic, you need your doctor. Like you, you it is in your own, as long as they starve, you're always gonna need a mechanic, regardless of when you try to avoid one. As long as you have a house, you're always gonna need plumbing. As long as you're always gonna need electrician. These jobs, so now is what I see because of AI, which is it's incredible that I'm working in both worlds in a way, because of AI, more people are rushing into trade. So this is great for me because now that's gonna build my business up even faster. But also now that AI is getting better, I'm innovating it and and taking something that's not not really been worked on or revolutionized and making it better because it's it's the ancient, it's literally an ancient uh industry.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, I think something that's interesting. I don't know if you uh have read about any of this stuff uh uh recently, but I was watching a documentary about the progress of AI robots in China and how they've China is kind of like far ahead, head and shoulders above the rest of the world in terms of the application of robotics in warehouses and car building scenarios, and even I think there are people. I don't know if these are AI generated videos or not, but I think there are people that are sometimes getting haircuts in China now with robots. Um, and so you know it's like that's cool to you.

SPEAKER_00

I don't I don't know if the that's the lame that's so lame to me that your barber is your barber is a robot. I mean that's the thing you'll get roasted on. Like you got your hair cut by a Nexus robot. What's the what's the Tesla robots called? Is it Tesla robot? What is it called?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's called uh uh Tesla bot. I think that's what it is. Is there robot? Yeah, he gave everybody the Elon Musk haircut, you got the Elon Musk. So all right, I I hear you, I hear you, but I also think there's like a pragmatic side of that too, because it's like, well, I can't afford a uh you know, in LA, it sometimes people be charging you like 60, 70 dollars to get a cut, and it's like these robots will cut your hair in China for two dollars, and yeah, you might get roasted, but but you know what I mean? Like you I mean, and I and I'm not gonna say haircuts. You say you say it again? I don't get haircuts. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, well, that doesn't apply to have hair, yeah. But um, but still, like, you know, um, and I'm not I'm not advocating for that at all, but I guess what I was what I was getting at was more so like it it feels like we always think that AI is not gonna be able to do something, and then they train it on the data of other people that have done the thing, and then it learns how to do it. Like um, you know, like with art, like I I remember it was like five years ago, maybe less, where people like, yeah, AI's never gonna be able to create these beautiful graphic designs or make videos. Like, that's crazy. AI can't do that, and now we have stuff that's indiscernal, indistinguishable from reality on the internet all the time, you know. And so, you know, I I kind of think about I'm curious about your thoughts, Josh, on on you know, like where AI is headed. And like, you know, it feels like you've made something AI proof today, but five years from now, it's kind of hard to see, you know, exactly where things are gonna be. So I'd just be curious about your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_01

So there's a uh program that DoorDash is doing, right? They're hiring people, giving them uh to train AI. So they're putting like a headset, they're putting like different um like nodes on their body and seeing like their video of them delivering something, delivering uh uh uh food to uh and they're training it. And then to them, it's like, oh, I'm getting paid good money, da da da. No, you're actually allowing them to take that AI to be able to build a robot that can do the same thing.

SPEAKER_03

You're training your replacement, and you can't do that.

SPEAKER_01

So now what companies are gonna start doing is creating shadows, that's why I call them shadows of people setting it up on people and getting paying them real good money for a certain amount of time to collect enough data. And I do feel like they're gonna try to do that with trade, but I just with the trades, there's but so much you can do that with you because you still need that human touch. You know what I mean? There's still gonna be a level of human touch. People, yeah, you're gonna have robots, you'll have robot assistance, but it won't, it still won't be able to do the job. Like you can have a robot fix a car, but if you have a rust, they're just gonna try to like rip out the like you know what I'm saying? There's there's certain human elements that you need for certain jobs, especially in the trade. Is that all it really is gonna be is like a robot that's just gonna help assist the job and make it more handle quicker, faster?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, I I think that's a good point because there's like things that are too dangerous, right? Or like too risky to leave into the like purely into the hands of robot. Like, am I gonna just let a LLM that hallucinates, you know, like that's the same technology as powering these moving robots? Am I gonna let one of those things operate on the essential parts of my car that I didn't have to go drive at you know 60, 70 miles per hour? I don't know. I don't know if I feel comfortable doing that, you know. But but also we didn't feel comfortable getting in the car with a robot driver, and now Waymo is a thing, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, it took some time though. It definitely took some time, and people are still eh about Waymo. You know what I mean? It's just 100%.

SPEAKER_03

People think about I don't remember if we talked about this on the show, Dakota, but like like let's say that you're like a young girl in like her early 20s, and you went out, right? And you're out with your friends, maybe you all have done some drinking, and it's like 1 a.m., 2 a.m. on Saturday night, you just left the the party or the club and you need a ride home. Are you gonna would you feel safer getting a ride with a random Uber driver in that situation, or would you feel safer getting a ride with a Waymo? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00

So I feel like there's there's different use cases where I feel like this is a question that neither of us three is equipped to answer. Sure, but I I think rhetorically young women rhetorically, I think it's interesting to think about it. I see what you're saying though, and I think that for a lot of reasons, the autonomous driving is safer. I know it like creeps a lot of people out, but if we just look at the um, you know, if you look at most of the statistics for car crashes and like deadly ones, you know, it's almost always because of human error, whether that's drinking, like you said, whether that's um texting or or singing, you know, people be recording videos of themselves while they're driving. Uh people just suck at driving. I'm in LA, people just suck at driving, they just aren't good at driving. And so I think that from a purely from like a data perspective, I think that it's clear that it's a it it's safer overall for everybody, and you get places faster because you know they can like optimize route uh driving routes and that sort of thing. So, I mean, I definitely agree with you on the car thing, and that one's interesting. It still trips a lot of people out. Like my mom is freaked out by when she sees the Waymo going and nobody in the driver's seat. But I think that there's you know, you brought up doctors earlier, and um, you know, a lot of the things I think in medicine also can be greatly optimized by a machine that's trained on spotting these patterns, but there's an element of uh of like person um of like that personal touch you were talking about, where pretty much I think nobody who goes into a hospital wants to get wants to be like communicating with a um an LLM or getting like I don't want to get my blood ever drawn by a Tesla bot or something like that, you know? And so it's interesting like what um you know what applications the AI can have and can make things better, and then what people ultimately like at the end of the day, will people rather pay double to go to a mechanic that's a human than you know pay half and go to a like a robot mechanic shop that opened up? Like, I don't know what that answer is in the future. I feel like right now a lot of people would say that, but if the financial um difference starts to get enormous, yeah, then it's like how will people behave in the future, especially if you know the the market uh the economy is going down or people are having trouble getting jobs and that sort of thing? It's like I don't yeah, I don't know what it what it looks like in the future, but it does still seem like that there's some uh uh I guess the trades in particular, but there's a lot of I think careers or jobs where people would prefer to interact with um with a person instead, even if you could prove to them that the person wasn't gonna be as good, which I think is sort of an interesting thing to think about.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. Oh, a quick data point on what you were saying about Waymo 92 lower rate of bodily injury claims and 88 reduction in property damage claims over 25 million miles of Waymo versus 25 million miles of the average human driver. So um, like incredibly safer on average, um, you know, driving in the back riding in the backseat of a Waymo. And yeah, I mean, like you're like, I don't know if you all see I was back in LA for a week, uh, not too long ago, and you can like apparently get this discounted delivery bots to like go those little bots with the eyes, yeah, rolling ones. They they can like deliver food to you for a lot cheaper. Oh, the boxes that it the boxes, yeah, and I seen some videos on TikTok, I think it was of people just kicking those robots over, like yo, y'all.

SPEAKER_01

I'm taking our jobs, like yeah, nah. Chicago, they were wild, they would bust into uh uh bus, uh the bus glass of waiting spots, people would just throw rocks, somebody put a firecracker in it. It was it was it was just a wild people.

SPEAKER_03

I'm like, Dan, like who do you really hurt in that though? You low-key just hurt the person who delivered asked for the delivery, but yes, you know what I mean? Because they they'll they have insurance on the robot, they just they're gonna get their money back, but still, like I understand the sentiment. It's like, yo, like when every person is not really given an opportunity, like the in-rows to actually adapt to this situation, and you know, everyone is like their jobs are being threatened. It's like, well, like maybe these robots, maybe we need to fight these robots. Like, I kind of understand that sentiment, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Man, one thing that that's a little, yes, yes, our jobs are at risk. But one thing about change, it's gonna happen. You just gotta like you literally gotta adapt. And the thing that sucks is with these, you know, with AI and robots and robotics coming in, it is definitely gonna widen the wealth gap because there's people that are like, I'm not dealing with this, I'm not learning this. I mean, the only way you can adapt is to continue to learn. Okay, if I ain't got the skill, what is the what is the skills that matches with it? How can I learn? What do I need to do? How do I upskill to be able to handle it? Because just as much as they take away jobs, it's gonna add more jobs, but you just gotta be willing to learn to be able to do those new jobs. So it is I'm like, I'm like, I'm like so so on it. I just believe one of the biggest things I believe needs to happen with AI is regulation, just having regulation because AI is getting so sophisticated.

SPEAKER_00

What? Say it again.

SPEAKER_01

So regulation.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, regulation, regulation.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, like AI is getting too sophisticated. Before you know it, it's gonna start to match the real world, if you understand what I'm saying, and how they treat us. Because I know it's it's already that's what um Elon Musk was having with open AI. He wanted the abilities for open AI and AI to be able to rightfully be able to discriminate against other races. And I'm like, bro, luckily he lost that. Luckily he lost that fight, but you don't think there's gonna be others that's gonna try the same thing. If you have regulations, that could kind of prevent some of that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. I agree with that. There is none of that, first of all, and they back and they the argument behind why nothing can be regulated is that regulations slow things down, and then they'll just compare it to like I'll just throw this out there to China, who Justin pointed out is also like you know, full tilt in the AI uh race, and that if you lose, um I don't know, maybe you could liken it to losing the nuclear arms race. Yeah, it's like everybody agrees that nobody wants anybody to have nuclear weapons, but if people are racing for it, you also don't want to lose that, like you don't want to be the one who doesn't have that, and that's like uh you know, you hope the quote. good guys get it first and it's like we got the the nuclear weapon which i guess is better than Hitler getting it first yeah but the first thing we did was dropped it on civilian cities um so which is like the thing I think that we would fear that you know that the the that the bad guys would do it and if you're listening I'm putting air quotes around but um I also agree with you on the it's like you know in some sense life the history of life like life on earth is about adapting to the new environment yeah and um I agree with that and it's like the hope is that well if you learn enough you can adapt with it successfully but I I came across this uh it made me think of this um post that I saw on threads today so there's this there's this company called click up um don't know exactly what it is but some sort of company and the CEO had uh posted that they recently reduced their workforce by 22 and it's not because yeah thanks Justin it's not because they are like struggling financially at all they're actually doing better than ever um but so and what they're gonna do when they the 22 uh reduction is just spread those funds to the other people who didn't get fired and so it's like in that company you know or and assuming that this sort of thing continues to happen right like if if developers for example are not having to personally write any code and they just kind of need to you can like have an agent write the code and then you can also like have an agent check it um and you and you're doing like this high level managing then you you can totally like five 10x your personal output in this job which does make a portion of the people who have been working there obsolete and so it's like could they have learned could that bottom 22% in this anecdotal example that I'm using have learned more and then made it so that they weren't the ones to get fired? Or was the bottom fifth of this company on the chopping block because it could be and if the answer is that it just was because it could be regardless of the financial situation then it you know then there's an element of pull yourself up by your bootstraps adapting that is like yeah on an individual level it is right you know I guarantee that they didn't fire their most productive you know employee I like you know of course they didn't but you know do we want everybody to constantly have a knife at their throat if they're not able to like 10x their output quarterly and that feels like quick soon it'll get I mean I mean I I imagine that this sort of thing would just continue to happen in like in five years what you know what will this company's workforce look like and I think that that's a future that also inspires a warranted fear mistrust uh a hatred in a lot of cases for some of these tools and like a disbelief in the uh the assumption that we it is something that everybody can grow and adapt with like provide you know like a I guess an alternative perspective.

SPEAKER_03

Got it got it got it yeah no man that's that's really deep and I think I I think it's it is a general trend in technology right now um in stark contrast to like I don't know if you all remember this like I I came out of college in like the the 2010s and I feel like one of the sexiest places to work at was like Google or Meta because it had these like they had this campus and this free food and this sleeping area and you could play ping pong and basketball. It was just all this stuff all these amenities um and you know the working culture and technology has completely done a 180 from that kind of cushy work life balance to like this thing called 996 have you have you heard have you all heard of the 996 culture balance so it's essentially like um and I want to fact check myself here but 996 I believe is what is it nine hours hold on let me see if I can quickly find it 996 work term um yeah it's like a 72 hour work week so you clock in from 9 a.m to 6 p.m or sorry 9 a.m to 9 a 72 hour work week yeah 9 a.m to 9 p.m six days a week so like that's the Silicon Valley work trend right now how many hours are in a week uh that many more basically it's like you sleep you wake up you work and you go back to sleep um obviously you know yeah that so like if you work 12 hours a week and you or 12 hours a day and you sleep eight hours a day that's like four hours left for anything else so you can quickly have a nutrition shake yeah yeah you got just enough time to eat and uh yeah and then maybe like burn some calories for a little bit but yeah like that's the vibe out there right now is you know that's like an emerging term this 996 work culture absolutely and it's kind of like that's you gotta have that dog in you to really succeed right now and and and and so like that's what adapting to this environment looks like and I feel like if you tag that in you know this is that's maybe like one company or maybe it's like I don't know is this something that's a cultural trend yeah it's a cultural trend so yeah that's crazy to me like that's that's crazy to me yeah I mean I I think it I think it's insane but it also is completely antithetical to the promise that we were told from these oligarchs when these tools were being created like oh we're gonna have universal basic income and everyone's gonna be able to work less hours like these people are only working harder and more it's completely the opposite of of what what people were promising. They're basically they're trying to find a way to create slavery as much as possible but finding a different innovative ways of doing it like it's it's it's they it it's crazy to me I I think the concept is like the fact that they're you know your job is always gonna be on the child like at this point in this season that we are in is like they're trying to build rake workhorses and for what what does it like what does it lead to is it going to lead to a promotion is it gonna lead to lifetime wealth is it gonna lead to equity in the I don't know it's just that concept of working that hard six days a week nah that's wild well I think the I think the oligarchs are now focused on the commercialization of space I think that's kind of like where they're trying to get everybody to aim their focus like as a society like okay so why are we automating all this stuff what's the reason it's to get us to become a multiplanetary species which sounds cool in a sci-fi novel um but you know when in in practice when you know when you actually think of how that plays out in society where you have a bunch of disenfranchised people that don't have the type of opportunities they're used to and you have a class of people that is completely potentially completely unproductive in society it's like I yeah it doesn't feel like oh everybody's winning here what wait a second what makes you say that their goal is to make humans interplanetary why are you saying that um well i'm I'm thinking of the people that have uh a lot of the richest people in the world right now and I I think Elon and I think of Jeff Bezos specifically they have private space companies SpaceX is about to IPO they're about to become a publicly traded company yeah they're gonna become massively more profitable uh or they're gonna have access to massively more money yeah um the Artemis missions that NASA is kind of undergoing are starting this moon based settlement you know for this idea of basically giving us a launch pad to Mars like I know that's part of the I don't believe that at all I think that that is not true and I also don't think like I know that Elon Musk said that for a while but there's a lot of but he knew that that wasn't true which is why he walked that back and said I think he's a salesman yeah yeah yeah which is why to me it's like I don't think I question I because he's the person I would say is most you so you point out Bezos and and Elon Musk who you're right are like the two in in in terms of wealth they're like the top two or at least both in the top five and it doesn't it's not like what would be what's the what's the vision going to mark like that's like a a huge money making thing or something it's not it's like we're probably 70 years away if not more I would get I would guess but it seems like something that maybe in a couple generations we could have a a base on Mars or something but then it's like and but how is that profitable though you know what I mean like what's the what's the business um angle on that do you have like a a sense or like an idea of what like what and you know at what point that becomes something that you'd make money on uh I mean there's a few ideas are we gonna say Josh yeah I personally think one of the biggest things I think is just a brag and right type of thing to say we made it to Mars and I'm the first first person to get you tomorrow especially when the dealer when you're speaking about Elon Musk a lot of the things he does to like literally just say I could I did it first you know I mean it's not yeah but he won't he knows that he won't possibly get to Mars in his lifetime he knows that so that's not I don't I don't believe that in his mind he thinks that that's something that will happen before he dies I don't personally believe that he actually thinks that I think he know because he's not like people talk about how dumb he is but I think he knows that the things that he proposes won't work but he just like is able to garner a bunch of funding for them which is what he did with exact which is exactly what he did with the Mars thing he got all these government contracts and then he pivots and says well actually we're gonna focus on the moon it's because he knew that that was never something it was never going to be something that happened and like I make videos talking about this is a dumb idea this isn't something that's possible and then I think it makes sense to later see like two years later see him walk that back and say well actually let's just focus on the moon because we know we can go to the moon we've done we they did that before you know a long time ago yeah and I I do agree you know there may be something to like the legacy or the the bragging rights um angle but I guess I just don't when I think of what is actually required and like the level of for example research that needs to be done on long-term uh human presence outside of our magnetic field for example as like something we have no data on the Artemis astronauts were outside of the uh the significant part of the earth's magnetic field for like a few days which is fine but you know if you're out there for if you have a permanent base people have to live out there like yeah permanently and like that is it just seems so far fetched to me. So there's a couple things that I think of I do think the ego stroke in the legacy piece is a big part of any person's like you know that's that wealthy's desire to do this. Yeah um one of the things that I think they're trying to figure out is how to create a source of relatively endless energy um from the sun in space right because you know you could create a situation in there there's some parts of Mars that receive perpetual sunlight um and you could create a situation where you have like pretty much a uh an like an an endless energy source the fun like you know again for our use case today um out in space like having these solar panels out there in these different places uh asteroid mining is like maybe more of a long shot but I think that's kind of one of the the the industries that could be born from these exploits and I do think to your point Dakota like research around longevity right or us being able to withstand solar radiation for extended periods can help with de-aging research which I think is something that pretty much all the wealthy people are trying to figure out whether they're public about it or not is like how do I just extend my quality and quantity of lifetime and so if that those why would that mean but like what does that have to do with putting humans on Mars though like that has not those two things are just completely unrelated to me. Yeah his his rationale has always been that um the the thing that he sold people on I'll say is that it's like well an extinction level event could be around the corner on earth and if that happens there's no backup there's no you know we don't have any settlements anywhere else that could be self-sustaining. And so if we want the light of consciousness that's literally the term that they use in the IPO for SpaceX if we want to keep the light of consciousness extended sounds like a religious cult.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah sounds like some cult language but that cult stuff is effective man it is really just the people going think about it illegal must has a cult following you can't say nothing about this man without people saying oh he's a genius he's this he's that bro personally I think he just knows how to make the right decisions and how to finesse people the right way he's a to me he's one of the biggest con artists there is that's all it is and he was able to make it work for him yeah well like that's how I feel I mean I could be wrong but if I say this out loud now I'm gonna get a bunch of people like oh that lovely Lon Musk is gonna that's gonna fight front and back for him which I never understood but that's not a hero there.

SPEAKER_00

So the um so a couple things that that you said they come to mind. So one is the the infinite so we do have an infinite source of energy it's literally the sun and you don't have to go to Mars to get access to it 24 hours a day. It's the sunlight is in space right it's night on earth you just put solar panels in space if it's if the collection of energy is what's important to you is when you the way that sunlight falls off it like falls off with the distance squared. So as you get further and further away from the sun the same air like box of area is going to receive an exponentially lower amount of light so on Mars I'm not sure the exact amount but it's something like it gets half the sunlight. So you would be going millions and millions and millions of miles away to get 50% of the sunlight that you would get if you just like put solar panels in space or something like that. So it just doesn't I don't know it just doesn't make sense to me in any way and like making getting a colony up and running on Mars would be so much harder than having a nuclear fallout war destroy earth and getting uh a colony back up and running on earth like I would say that a best case scenario or maybe a worst case scenario I don't know exactly how how I want to say that is that whatever we did to earth would not make it as bad of an environment for us as Mars is right now. Like there's almost nothing that we could do short of blowing up the entire planet. I'm saying like blowing it to pieces where there's nothing to stand on that would make the earth worse of an environment for us than Mars. So it's like I just I don't see I I don't know I have trouble like wrapping my head around that being a serious goal.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah that people actually think that people that understand like engineering and physics which I have to assume that that he does and that these the the people in these companies and I agree with you that like commercialization of space I agree with that and maybe even like stuff on the moon but it just seemed I just can't bring myself to believe that anybody seriously thinks that being on Mars is in the near term well how about this okay so commercialization of space makes sense but that's not a real cult leader level vision that you can sell people on that's like oh my god we could do we could commercialize space it's like uh maybe I mean like the bit the capitalists will buy into that yeah but like I don't know I feel like in every cult leader's playbook is this kind of like arbitrary vision that is like not very well described that everyone's like man that just sounds amazing and you know it doesn't even have to be worked out practically but it's like it it like checks the box of like this is the thing that we're all doing for this is why I'm not becoming worth 700 billion dollars so that I can get richer and have 20 kids and like selfishly expand my own empire but this is for all of us it's for humanity to become a a multiplanetary species expand the light of consciousness like it really checks the box of like that cult leader vibe you know yeah when you would as you're repeating it it's like yo that really is and that's why people just believe it's like yeah he's gonna be the person that sends us there he's our modern day Tony Stark I said what the hell y'all talking about did you see the Iron Man Iron Man 2 I think yeah when Elon Musk pulled up to Tony Stark they shook hands I was like uh at uh F1 Monaco Grand Prix I was like what yeah yeah yeah yeah that's when I first found out about because I never knew about Elon Musk until Iron Man 2 and I was like that's when he started like really like really starting do things but now he's just like like I said he's just on the he might become the first trillionaire though that's one thing he I will say he will because once SpaceX IPOs he'll be damn near close to it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah I think so he'd be there right I think they might let him I really I'm not sure he'll be very very close because they're supposed to IPO at like 1.75 trillion yeah yeah which is crazy because it's it's three different companies that's one in within SpaceX is XAI is Tesla um SpaceX and else it's uh Gronk Gronk which is uh another version of his AI system yeah this is um yeah the the IPO should push him past trillionaire status that's um you know now how long it stands at that inflated stock price is is up for debate but um you know me like there's a startup um right now why combinator that is building a hotels and um hotels in the Mo I don't know how they're gonna do it but it sounds good and people are throwing money at it like like like Dakota said the commercialization of space is the thing that's the wave that's like to me it reminds me you know NFTs it reminds me of NFTs where everybody's just like yo let's throw money at this throwing money at this now we're having NFTs nobody ever heard of it we don't hear nothing yeah the thing about NFTs though is that we you know when you're wrong about that you're just embarrassed and you're at and you're ass out of like 50 000 grand uh $5000.

SPEAKER_00

When you go to this hotel on the moon and the whole thing like explodes because there's a pressure leak or something like that then you know it's like the the stakes um I mean just think about the the space program right a lot of people don't know this um but the Mercury program which was the what preceded the Apollo program where we were just trying to like put somebody in space at all three of those astronauts died in a fire during testing the Columbia um explosion that happened upon I think Columbia was on re-entry um challenger exploded after you know during launch there's like been so Apollo 13 there was you know almost a disaster because an oxygen took tank exploded and it's like for us to even just be able to go around the moon with um two astronauts there's there's like dozens of dead astronauts that have you know sort of paved that way and we have not come anywhere and you know mind you they're in a a pod that's you know not not much larger than the rooms that that we're in right now we're talking about building like a like a you know like a hotel on the moon it's just I I can only imagine that there are countless more disasters to get to that point. You know I obviously I that's not something that I hope for but yeah just with the challenges of that and like the unknowns it seems yeah it seems wild but I mean yeah you're right it's I saw that as well that people you can for I think a million dollars you can reserve them a room which is uh kind of wild because you know the people who probably have the funds to just put that down uh to hold that spot are most likely gonna be dead long before that thing ever comes to fruition but um yeah I mean like if you send your kids if that if that ended up working out yeah uh yeah Yeah. Not it's a it's a crazy time. And I love space. I'm love love love to go to space. But it also, I don't know, it also like comes at a time when so many people on earth are still struggling. And there's like you brought this up, Justin. It's like this diversion of you know the people who are gonna have access to all these things and what they want to do. And then like the majority of all other people that exist, it's a crazy time.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I just feel like in most of the sci-fi that I would read growing up that would just excite me about these kind of things, it felt like the future that everybody was a participant in. Like a Star Trek universe was like everybody's going to space and everybody's kind of like on different planets. And you know, in reality, it's like most of y'all not gonna get this opportunity, but you should fund me so I could do it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I could test it out for you guys, and maybe, maybe you get an opportunity to do it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I mean to your point, like there's nothing that force is like forcing us to do it in a in a messed up way. We could do it in you know, like uh a utopian way. Um, but yeah, I I guess that's that's not what tends to happen. It doesn't look like that's the path that we're on right now. Nope, nope, nope, nope.

SPEAKER_01

It's I don't know. It's it's just interesting what what's the next wave of things that's gonna happen. You know what I mean? This the next revolution. We're in the AI revolution right now. Before it's industrial, and before that was uh um, I guess mining. But is we are in this new revolution, and it's like, what do we do to adapt? How do we get better? How do we prevent certain things from happening? How do we help more people? And it's like now people say, no, let's try to leave Earth because it's not working here. Let's try to figure out a way to get away from Earth. If there's a game, um what's the game uh called? Uh it's it's features like a girl with a bow and arrow, and she's fighting robots, hunger games, animals, and no, no, not Hunger Games, not Hunger Games. It's uh um damn, it's not coming. Why is it not coming to me? Oh Horizon Zero. Horizon Zero. That game the main villains is literally oligarchs or rich people that went to the moon and then went to outer space and then came back to the planet after they destroyed the planet. And the the person you fight is you fight somebody that looks like Elon Musk, and you fight somebody that likes to look just like Jeff Bezos. And that's dope. It's it's it's it's honestly wild. When I was fighting them, I was like, wow, this is they're not subtle. They're not subtle. But the the concept is shame that they're building all this commercialization of space because they're trying to leave space, and it's only gonna be the wealthy that really be in space and then leave everybody else, you know, down on earth to fend for themselves because they're just gonna take their money and go. I don't know. That's kind of the concept when I see people are going so hard for space and throw money at it as much as possible. And it's like there's so much more information we need to learn about the ocean that we never even touch because we can't get past certain pressure point line.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. There's not a lot of money in that though. There's like no commercialization of the deep. It's like yeah, yeah. I see. I I I hear people uh sometimes like people who don't believe in space or whatever will cite that. They'll be like, Oh, you know, but we've only we only know five percent of the ocean. I don't know what the real number is that we that we know about, but it's a little, yeah, it's not the whole thing because the ocean's enormous, and it's like um there's a lot I think that's important. Five percent, yeah. But it's like, you know, what's the what's the incentive for mapping the entire ocean? You could like find a lot more about like the uh topology and you know the surface down there, you can probably learn a lot about biology, but it's just not as incentivized as clearly as going to space, right? You put a GPS satellite in space, you put you know Wi-Fi sat, whatever, you can do all these things in in space. You can't do any of that in the bottom of the ocean. Like, you don't get there's no like low gravity environment to do um experiments on uh in medicine or biology at the bottom of the ocean. Yeah, you'd just be doing a normal experiment, but in a super dangerous environment. So it's like there's not always, yeah, like I don't know, and I love marine biology. I mean, Justin, you got a background, right? Marine biology, it's fascinating stuff, and we learn about, I think there's a lot to learn about um animals like um sperm whales, I feel like in other cetaceans and how intelligent they are, um, but there's also not that, you know. I guess in a capitalist society, you need some you need people to think that there's something that they can get rich off of, yeah, yeah. And there and that doesn't exist in the ocean in the same way, yeah, but it does, I think, in in space, which is interesting to think about.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, because if you say there's some rare oil that can power us for a certain amount of time, people is gonna do everything that Exxon would be drilling into it, spilling it into the Atlantic Ocean as we speak, without a care in the world, without a care in the world. As long as we can figure out a way to make money, it's that it's not what's the incentive, what's the motivation behind it? You know what I mean? Yeah, it's not for the sake of curiosity and discovery.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. But let me ask you this, Josh. I'm I'm just curious about your take because it sounds like you you've had to think of a lot of ways to adapt your business to the times. Let's say we were like for whatever reason you ended up in a settlement on the moon, uh, and you know, maybe it's like a few million people on the on the settlement, and you had to rethink your business for for the moon. Like, how would you how would you rethink it?

SPEAKER_01

Okay, well, one, I'm not gonna lie, I'll probably be getting robot assistance or uh uh uh some way to have a machine that can communicate between space and and um earth. One of the ways I can do adapt, have a tech learn how to basically move the function of what they're doing and have the robot implementing that so they can do it from a distance. That's one way, that's how I think that's how my brain is remote controlling a robot that's doing the same action and automation. Like you have like a a prop vehicle that shows certain lights where the issue is and have the robot do it, and you like, okay, this is what I'm working on, this is how you remove the bolts, this is how, and then the robot is literally doing the same exact motions that you are doing. So you can still keep your job, but you have you'll you just you'll just have more skills that you can apply to it. Or or we can have a base ourselves, our company, because I do one day went to IPO, which I truly believe will happen one day, and we have our own base over there, and we have technicians that's just there because they'll pick fix the moon vehicles, they'll fix whatever. Because if you have a colony of let's say 50 million people, you're gonna they're gonna have vehicles and they're gonna need to be repaired. So you're gonna need to have a list of techs, or even have a government contract.

SPEAKER_03

My company has a government contract where they have technicians up there and then have it have it that way because that's something I'm looking into the city of Houston trying to get a contract with them to have some of my mobile cans to just do work within the city, but um so it'll be like a moon rover, a moon rover repair business that you operate remotely so that you avoid the danger of having to physically be like just outside of the base or whatever and like working on this rover. I think that's a cool concept, yeah. Um, but yeah, you know, I think I think it's cool to think about space, man. And I, you know, I feel like I still feel this like excitement about our future and you know, some of these things, but I just I don't know. I I have become a little more jaded with I think the reality of of how all this actually plays out versus how it was dreamed up in a lot of these. I mean, honestly, white authors' science fiction depictions of society and it in its future, you know. Um, one of the things we talk about a lot, Josh, on the show is like Afrofuturism and how I mean influential black culture is, and you know, the erasure of black culture and a lot of these depictions of the future, which seems absolutely outrageous because it's it's completely like culture is black culture, basically, like American culture and the world's culture is so heavily influenced by it. It's like, how could you possibly not see black culture having a dominant role? Maybe if you just don't have that vantage point where you can like, you know, if you just focus on other things, you don't see it, but it's kind of hard not to see it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. Like, so like like I remember I was telling you before in our first conversation where I'm writing a book, like it's it's gonna have Afro-futurism because like a lot of my, even though they're not humans per se, but they're based off of you know, Afro, uh based off of African people, based off of people, based off of all our culture, Afro-futurism has been around. And when I really started to study it, like a lot of the concepts of ancient times actually have futuristic things that happen to it. But we we always notice they always say it's the aliens that did these things. No, we did it, you know, we made it happen. Because I think sometimes when it comes to Africanism, I think for the common mind, it's just too outlandish for them. But when you have these white sci-fi writers make write these things, yeah, for racist, basically, yes. But racism, yes, that's the reason why African futurism futurism doesn't take being taken seriously, even though a lot of concepts that people have is far one of the uh great Afrofuturist writer. Um why am I not remembering people's names? But Arcadia Butler, what like literally certain things that are happening right now, she said it over 30 years ago. You know what I'm saying? She saw what's gonna happen. You know what I mean? So that's Afrofuturism in itself. But you know, once again, it's when it comes to what people take seriously, is you know, the ones that are highlighted, the ones that are seen. And it really is, you know, whoever whose narrative gets highlighted the most that actually people pay attention to. But yeah, when it comes to Afrofuturism, there's a lot of concepts that's already been made and created within Afrofuturism that people are talking about now.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, that's a fact. That's a fact, man. Well, look, man, Josh, I think this has been an epic conversation. I know we touched on a lot of different things. Uh, I want people to know where they can find more about you and your company.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, absolutely. If um, if they want to follow my personal page, it's at King Regis underscore. Um, if they want to follow my business page, um it's um at Krickart K-R-I-T-K-A-R-R. And also check out my white website if they right now, currently we're just in Houston, but we're planning to move to Austin to build out our company. We're building out the mobile mechanic um supply chain over here, and then we're gonna move to Austin and then we're gonna take over to um Texas and move all over the other state um states. But like I learned from Uber, you start with the supply side, the customers will come. And um, so just check out the website www.crickheart.com, and you'll be you'll be able to sign up, learn, and become one of our uh um first customers or users to be able to use our platform.

SPEAKER_03

Dope, dope. Oh man. Well, thank you so much for your time, Josh. And as we always like to say, thanks for sticking around. Stay curious. Oh, absolutely.