(upbeat music)
- I'm Scott.
- I'm Russell.
- I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to Spitball, where three binary bards
and a guest empty their heads of tech startup
and product ideas that we have stuck up in there
so you can all have them for free.
Anything that we say is yours to keep.
And I believe Scott, you brought our guest this week, right?
- I did.
This week I brought Rebecca.
Rebecca is a business development partner at my company
and works with Robbie,
who is our guest from a couple episodes ago.
- All right.
- Together they, yeah, recently started a venture capital
group in the organization
and they're all about fresh new ideas.
- Well, if there are none that are worth developing here,
you've come to the wrong place.
(laughing)
Welcome to Spitball, Rebecca.
- Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
- It's gonna be great.
All right.
And this week we are gonna be playing a game
that's a quick true or false one called Patently False.
I have here a list of patents
and you just have to tell me if I made them up
or if they're actually from the US patent and trade office.
It's gonna be easy.
No problem.
- Let's go.
- And of course we got to start off every week
as we do with Rebecca.
Rebecca, let me tell you about,
I'm gonna read the actual like claim
or there's a section that's an abstract for the project
or a claim.
I've taken a little bit of liberty
with making them not five paragraphs long,
but tell me if you think this is real or not.
The present invention provides a small umbrella
or a quote beer brella,
which may be removably attached to a beverage container
in order to shave the beverage container
from the direct rays of the sun.
This is an apparatus that's a small umbrella,
approximately five to seven inches in diameter.
And it has spaces for suitable advertising
and or logos that may be applied to the umbrella surface
for promotional purposes.
Is that something that I made up or is that real?
- I feel like this is real.
- That is real.
I can't believe that.
They'll grant a patent for anything.
Scott, a device that projects
a three dimensional hologram of a pet,
which interacts with the user
based off of movements and commands.
It provides the companionship of a pet
without any real world mess or responsibilities.
And I may remind you that these are patents,
not necessarily things that exist in the world,
but is that a real thing or a thing that I made up?
- I want this to be real.
So I'm gonna say real.
- I made that one up, I'm sorry.
- Ah, he's such a Spitball ideas Leo.
(laughing)
- We should just like troll them.
- Just use all your ideas in this.
- There's another podcast idea,
which is just trolling and developing the patents
that have all expired, man.
'Cause there are so, every single one of these
that are real have expired.
- Oh.
- Next, Russell.
Yeah, I know.
There's not very many that are actively enforced
when you just search for weird ideas over the years.
Russell, an anti-eating face mask,
which includes a cupped shape member
conforming to the shape of the mouth
and chin area of the user,
together with a hoop member and straps
that detach, they keep you from ingesting food.
Is that a real thing?
- Wow, I think it would help with more
than just ingesting food.
So I think that's definitely a patent.
- It's a chastity belt for, yeah, it's real.
- Can some guy just see "Silence of the Lambs"
and be like, oh my God, what a great idea this could be.
- I need that for cake.
- Yeah, right.
- Very good.
All right, Rebecca.
An apparatus for simulating a high five,
including a lower arm portion
having a simulated hand that was removably attached
there too, an upper arm portion and an elbow joint
for pivotally securing the lower portion
to the upper arm portion, a spring bias element
for biasing the upper and lower arm portions
to a predetermined alignment.
It is the high five simulator.
Real or fake?
- Oh, I feel like we're just talking about, yeah,
like maybe accessories for amputees.
Like I think this exists in some form.
So yes, it's real.
- It is real, but it's not anything noble or altruistic.
It is literally just a device that sits on a countertop
and gives you high fives.
- Okay.
- Scott, a shoe containing a hollow compartment in the sole
that opens to allow the collection of dog waste during walks.
This design includes a mechanism to seal the waste
until it can be properly disposed of
and a removable cartridge system.
Real or fake?
- I'm sorry, wait, back up for a second.
You're saying that I can like click my shoes
like James Bond and instead of a knife coming out,
a pooper scooper slash bag that puts it back into the shoe?
- There are no scooping mechanisms mentioned in this.
It is purely a little door.
- I love that's where your brain went.
- I thought I heard retract in there or something.
- Go gadget pooper scooper.
- That's what I thought too, Scott.
I thought literally you're walking
with the poop under your shoe.
- That's yeah, no, that's what it is.
It's a hollow compartment in your shoe for the poop.
- I'm gonna say false on this one.
- Yeah, that's from my twisted and sick mind.
I'm sorry about that.
- I'm still gonna pitch that idea next week though.
Just gotta give it a little more thought.
- Oh man, I believed it until Leo said.
(laughing)
- I shouldn't have elaborated.
I should have just said you get what you get, sorry.
Russell, furniture items that change shape
and function based off of user needs.
This includes a series of motors and adjustable parts,
a sofa that can transform into a bed,
a recliner or even a workout bench.
Controlled via an app, this furniture adapts to space
and functional requirements dynamically.
- Yeah, I think this was filed by Optimus Prime.
So absolutely, this is real.
- Sorry, I made that one up too.
- Oh man, Megatron.
- I think that means Rebecca two
and the other two won last time through here.
Rebecca, a child delivery apparatus
comprising of a centrifuge,
a mechanism for supporting the centrifuge
to allow rotational movement around a vertical axis
and a mechanism for securing the patient's body
to prevent displacement from the centrifugal forces
generated during rotation.
The patient's body is positioned radially
relative to the vertical axis
in a suitable posture for childbirth
with her head located at or near the vertical axis.
(laughing)
- And then it just kind of like, yeah.
(laughing)
- Or merry-go-round from hell, I guess.
(laughing)
- That pulls the child out of you by gravity?
Or centrifugal force?
Oh my God.
- There's like a man at the US Cabinet Office,
a guy who actually filed for this.
So it's gotta be real.
It's totally real. - It's real.
(laughing)
- It totally is.
- It's a real one, I was cracking up.
- That guy at the USPTO is like,
99% of his job is like this variation of a toothbrush
by corporations.
And then, no, I get the baby out of you
by spitting you really quick.
- Granted, I can't believe,
who's the guy granting that?
That is, wow.
- I mean, that's novel, I will give them that.
- Nobody would have thought of that.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Scott, a paired shower head
and matching audio-visual light box and speaker.
This device uses a microcomputer
to let you experience different weather conditions.
Choose from settings like tropical rain,
misty morning, or storm shower,
complete with corresponding water temperatures,
pressures, sounds, and visual effects
to match the chosen weather.
- I'm gonna say false, only 'cause of the weather in there.
And this sounds like something, Leo,
that you would either want to create
or have created already.
(laughing)
- I did make that one up, but I haven't made this yet.
I'll put that in the back pocket.
- Oh, that sounds awesome.
- Something that came to me in a dream, right?
Lastly, Russell, a timepiece for monitoring
and displaying the approximate time
remaining in a user's life.
A microprocessor monitors the passage of time.
A resettable memory is connected to the processor
for storing data representative of years, days,
hours, minutes, and seconds.
A display is connected to the microprocessor
for displaying data stored in the memory.
Buttons or switches are provided to enter
and change the stored data so that the approximate time
remaining in the user's life can be set by the user.
- That's definitely-- - The death watch.
- Thousand percent, yeah.
- That's a real patent, yeah.
- I've been to the website.
There's a web app, you type in how old you are
and how old you get up, yeah.
- Would you want that on your wrist at all times?
I don't know.
That's pretty far going.
- Yeah, I mean, what happens if you hit zero
and you're still alive, you know?
Just like, I wasted all my life and here it is,
I'm at zero, I calculated wrong.
- I imagine the actual implementation of this is like,
you have to put in your diet and exercise
and your BMI and all that, you know?
- That makes sense.
- Ominous. - Ominous.
- So I believe with all three correct, Rebecca,
you're this week's winner, well done.
You won Spitball.
- We did it, it's over.
(laughing)
- Cool, we're done?
- We're done.
See you next season, everybody.
- All right, Leo, the man with the podcast voice,
what is your idea of the day?
- We all have podcast voice 'cause we're on a podcast.
- Listen, the fans know what I'm talking about.
The true listeners.
- Thank you, I guess.
- The true ballers, as we call them.
- We don't get a lot of comments on here,
but the ballers, yep.
- All right, how many people on the show
have heard of the Internet Archive, archive.org?
- Yes.
- So they make the Wayback Machine,
so you can see what websites looked like back over time,
but they also are a digital library
with all kinds of amazing stuff,
and they're one of the few nonprofits
that I make sure to donate to every year.
I really, really love what they do.
They are in trouble because they're fighting
a court case battle about scanning and distributing books
that they didn't have publishers' permission
to distribute, and they may not live for too much longer,
which is too bad, 'cause they do some really cool stuff.
I'm very nervous about their future,
but I have an idea for something
that can help get the word out about how they exist.
The Internet Archive maintains many different repositories
of, like, here's a bunch of books,
and here is old software for the Commodore 64,
and here is a collection of this, that, the other.
One thing that they have is a huge live music library
where actual, like, authorized, random fans of John Mayer
or The Grateful Dead or whatever will go
and set up nice audio equipment at concerts
and record them and, like, put them up for free.
There are thousands of hours of these recorded concerts
that are not on Spotify or YouTube or whatever
that are all on this Internet Archive site
that are just freely available.
You fire up the website, and you listen.
They're available via torrent, or you upload a file,
and it converts it to all kinds of different formats.
It's so cool, and nobody freaking knows about it.
So I'm here today, Sharks, to pitch
they should just make a freaking streaming media app.
I don't know if you guys would fire up
a alternative to Spotify or whatever on your phones
to listen to just live music archives, but I totally would,
and the only way to listen to them right now
is via a tab in your browser, and I think that's silly.
So I'm asking for $5 million for 20% of my company.
(laughing)
Have you guys ever heard of this?
Is this something that would be interesting to you?
- Yes, I can download on my own phone?
- Yeah, you can just get all the files.
Just press a button, and you download the whole concert,
bunch of WAV files or MP3s or whatever the uploader posts.
- It's like bringing back Napster, but an app.
- And, like, legal. (laughing)
- And legal this time.
Can I, like, play it in the background
of, like, my YouTube videos and stuff
and, like, or is that not allowed?
- Ooh, that's a good question.
Will YouTube flag that and pull it down as copyright?
- Well, Content ID probably would.
I know that I've helped manage YouTube channels before,
and if a band is doing a cover of a song,
that often will get flagged as,
"Hey, you're doing a performance of Ed Sheeran's whatever,
"and that is gonna send ad money to him now, sorry."
So it's pretty loose about what is or is not flagged
as someone else's content.
- Okay.
- I mean, this is a shoein' app.
Like, easy.
I'm surprised somebody hasn't created that already.
- I think they have an API and stuff,
so it should be technically possible.
- Man.
- And it's totally crowdsourced,
where people are just uploading.
- Yeah, yeah, you can go archive.org.
- It's not illegal.
- No. (laughing)
Isn't that crazy?
- I know, that's the part that I'm trying
to wrap my head around right now.
- I don't know, I mean, some venues disallow it
and some artists disallow it,
so it might be, like, only the artists
that say it's okay for people to come and record,
but I think if you, like, bring your iPhone
into a whatever concert and you have
a good microphone on it.
- Oh, I guess it's--
- Plugged in via the port, you could even just do that.
- It's your content, I guess, huh?
In a way.
That's a gray area, right?
- I think it's morally gray.
Yeah.
Obviously, there's a varying degree of quality, too.
So, some of them sound better than others,
but some of them are really, really good.
- You just add a rating system in your app.
- Yeah, they have, yeah.
- Honestly, Napster did, though.
- The Internet Archive has, like, the classic TV
and the, I don't know, here's old cartoons from whenever.
- This is awesome.
I think one of the worst parts about a concert
is everybody holding their phone up
and trying to record the concert the whole time.
- Totally.
- And you're just looking at a crowd full of phones.
It's like, let's get rid of that,
and, you know, how about we archive the entire concert
through one 360 camera, everybody go to this thing,
and now we've solved, like, if you have your phone up,
you look like an idiot because you just go to archive.is
or whatever we call it,
and now you can see the whole concert.
You don't have to record it.
Put your phones down, enjoy.
That would be awesome.
- I feel like if most people knew
that the concert that they were at right now
was available online somewhere,
that they wouldn't bother recording it themselves.
Like, it's gonna be better when I pull it up later anyway.
- Right.
- It's like taking videos of fireworks.
Have you ever watched a video of fireworks that you took
and been like, wow, I'm glad I did that?
- Or, yeah, picture of the moon, yeah.
- Yeah, that too, yeah.
I don't know why, but everybody's like,
whoa, full moon, check out this moon, it's so big,
and you send a picture and you're like,
I, you just gotta go outside.
It's not gonna work.
- It's just like a streetlight, a blurry streetlight.
- No, that would be, I guess, like, how would I,
I guess the streaming experience,
I think it'd be cool knowing that my concert,
the one that I attended was in this archive,
and, like, listening back to it would be awesome.
- Yeah, that's where I'm at.
Everyone's got that one or several concerts
that they're like, that was one of the greatest nights
of my life, and I wanna go back
and hear exactly that performance.
- Yeah, and you could actually get agreements
with artists or venues to hand out codes for that concert.
People, depending on who downloads it
or who searches it or enters the code,
you could, you know, for five bucks, it's yours.
- I went to a show that did that.
It was a, this is gonna put me in a weird niche,
it was a ukulelist.
But I bought one at his merch table,
they had, like, t-shirts and whatever else,
and then one of the things was a flash drive,
and on the flash drive was a code good
for one redeemable download of the show that you went to.
Then he said, you know, wait 48 hours,
and you go here, and it'll have it.
It's so cool.
That needs to be more of a thing, for sure.
And, like, I like the idea of decentralizing it, too.
- That makes sense, Rebecca, like,
why don't, why doesn't everybody do this?
Like, everybody should be just selling their concert for,
I mean, why not, five times the number of tickets,
get some Ticketmaster out of it, you know?
And make some direct cash, man, that's a no-brainer.
- Do you guys prefer to listen to live albums
when you're given the chance?
Do you skip 'em, do you mix 'em in 50/50?
- That's true. - Avoid 'em?
I feel like, yeah.
- I avoid them unless I've been to that concert.
And then even if it's not the same one I went to,
I'm still like, oh yeah, that was, I like that.
- I think artists are worried about saturating the,
and that might actually affect ticket sales, too,
if they are putting all their live stuff up too much.
- Oh. - Hmm.
- Eh, they should figure that out, that's not their problem.
(laughing)
- I don't know, there's some pretty cool,
like, unplugged concerts. - Yeah.
- Like, I think of Kurt Cobain doing unplugged,
and I don't know, I think that there is some sort of
nostalgic piece to it.
I would totally, I'd pay a ridiculous amount of money
to be able to have that, I don't know,
on a code or something where I could download it.
- There are some exclusive songs, too,
that like, only, they only do in concert,
that you're like, that's the first time
they played that song ever!
And I was there, and I listened to it, right?
And then now I can download it, or like,
that'd be awesome.
- That's pretty cool. - I think of that,
Panic at the Dis, not Panic at the Disco,
what is it, Streetlight Manifesto concert, Scott,
our, one of our guests, Sam Zoe, played.
He would've loved that download,
'cause he played Streetlight for like,
months after that concert.
I think he crowd surfed, that's right!
- He crowd surfed in that crowd, yep, I remember that.
- Are you allowed to crowd surf as a member of the crowd?
That feels wrong, you're not the band.
- I just remember that, he's just not typically
the person you would think of as crowd surfing in a concert,
and he's being crowd surfed, and they're all pushing him,
they're trying to throw him up on the stage,
and like, this big security guard comes
and grabs him out of the air and throws him down.
- He's a tall guy, too, I don't know how he.
- Calm, collected CEO getting tossed up on the stage.
- Almost. - It's a good time, almost.
- If you look, that concert that you all remember,
listener, might be on archive.org,
and while you're there, throw a few bucks their way.
- Or, you can download the app called Leo,
Leo, let's hear it, let's hear it, you know?
You got the idea name. - Um.
- Om. - Archivist.
- Archivist? (laughing)
I don't know, I panicked.
- That's pretty good. - It's MikedUp.
- Oh, that's good. - MikedUp.
(imitating music)
Spitball.show.
(laughing)
So you can download today.
(upbeat music)
- All right, Scott, you're up next.
What do you got for us?
- All right, I was thinking of ideas for this week,
and I've come up with one that I'm calling Carl Dating,
and this is gonna be a Russell's Love Corner.
Cue the music.
(imitating music)
So, where this comes from is actually how I met my wife.
We both met through online dating,
and what we had both been dating for a while
and not finding anything,
and what made our first date unique
was that we were going to meet up at a bar together,
and as we're walking into the bar, we see each other,
and then we also see a third party named Carl,
and Carl just happened to be walking by
and also happened to know both of us individually.
Complete coincidence.
I had run cross-country with him in high school,
and Caroline currently works with him right now,
and at the same time, both of us go, "Carl,"
and then we look at each other and go, "You know Carl?"
And, long story short, Carl crashed our first date
and sat with us at the bar and pretty much acted
as a mediator/hey, I know both of these people,
and neither of them are serial killers.
- Dual wingman.
- Yeah, dual wingman.
It was crazy and awesome, and now I'm married to my wife.
- It works.
So, anyway, I wanna create an app
that is essentially Carl dating,
where you have apps like Tinder and Bumble
where they look at your friends on Facebook or whatever,
and they actually remove you one or two degrees
from anyone and one of your friends on there.
They don't want you dating your friends
or friends of friends.
I wanna do the opposite of that.
I wanna be like, "You've matched with this person.
"Here is a mutual acquaintance between both of you.
"You should reach out," or we could both request him
to crash your first date or be a part of that.
- I love this love corner idea.
This is amazing.
- Of course you do.
- That is my, in a way, a dream of mine, Scott,
to just wingman both sides of the table.
Well, I think I would.
I'd probably not be.
I'd be rated low, but I'd be so excited.
(laughing)
- Three stars, wingman.
- So, you wanna have a whole Uber ranking system
for how good the wingman you are?
That's fun.
- If an app could just look at my friends list
and my friends of friends list,
and just be like--
- Compare the two.
- You know this person, and you know what?
You know a friend that really needs to meet somebody.
I could do it.
I could wingman 'em.
But it's, I guess it's a little weird
if you're the facilitator.
If Carl had set you both up, does that make it different?
It was just a quinkydink, right?
(laughing)
But maybe that's part of the experience.
He just, like, Carl could have just planned
the whole date for you by accident.
- Hey, I'm gonna be at our bar.
Hey, you know, I'm gonna be at our bar too.
- That's interesting.
I'm not actually sure I would have gone on that date
if Carl had been like,
hey, I know one of my coworkers.
You wanna come out and hang?
- An ambush.
- Versus at the same time,
if I had been about to go on that date,
and a notification popped up to be like,
by the way, did you know that Carl,
this Carl also is, you know,
works with this person you're about to go on a date with?
Even just that information alone right there
would be enough to be like, you know, screw it.
I'll invite Carl.
I got nothing to lose here.
Let's go.
- Right, or you're just calling up Carl ahead of time.
Like.
- So wait, would you have to have both parties,
so Carl plus the person you're gonna date,
agree to the date?
Like, are you swiping on both of them?
- Carl, leave free Friday, please.
That's a great question.
I don't know.
- And it's kind of like LinkedIn, right?
Like when you have a request and it's like,
oh, I know they know Russell,
so they must not be a total creeper.
And then you accept their--
- Maybe that's the extent of it then.
It's just, hey, this person knows this person.
You could talk to them.
They don't have to crash your date.
You could just talk to Carl on the side and be like,
what do you think of this person?
Like, are they sane?
- Yeah.
- Carl has endorsed you.
- Carl has endorsed you on LinkedIn.
- But for the premium upgrade.
- Yes, exactly.
- Carl can come on the date.
(laughing)
- If you just told me free drinks at our bar.
- Here's Carl's dietary restrictions.
(laughing)
Okay, what if it, I'm trying to think of like,
what if I got a notification and it said,
come to our bar right now and get a free drink?
I'm like, okay, I don't know why.
And then all of a sudden I'm at our bar and guess what?
I see my friends in the room
and they just happened to be talking to each other.
And I'm like, oh, I didn't know you guys knew each other.
Yeah, you know, like create like complete,
I mean, it's a little harder.
I think it's a little less feasible.
- To create that organically.
- But I mean, but like, I would be,
I would definitely sign up knowing that I was gonna get,
you know what would end up happening?
I'd go to the bar, get my free drink
and look for everybody I knew
and try to talk to all of them.
(laughing)
Because of me.
- That's exactly what you would do too.
- Yeah, but okay, I get like,
I think there's some really valuable like dating app concept
of who is one of my, this dates connections that I know.
Right, is that not revealed in any dating apps yet?
I guess, I don't know.
It seems like it should be, I think.
- Maybe nowadays, back when we were online dating,
they were very much like,
no, we're not gonna show that information.
People don't wanna know that information.
- Seems like something Facebook would be poised to,
didn't they have a brief moment
where they dip their toes into Facebook dating?
- Did they? - I think so.
I think that's died now though.
And I don't know if it ever did
exactly what you're talking about here.
It should have.
- That's so cool.
It just feels like, so when my, okay, sidebar maybe,
but whenever one of my friends starts like dating somebody
or is interested in somebody,
you know, the first thing you do is Facebook stock
the crap out of that person and see how you know them.
And if they don't have an Instagram,
you find their LinkedIn profile and you're like,
dude, I can connect you to this person this way if you want.
I think there's some value in the, I guess I--
- The third party vouching for you.
- Yes, a huge, a huge value.
Like, especially if I saw the friends
that were friends with them, I'd be like, ooh, or oh.
(laughing)
Oh, they're only friends with those people?
I don't wanna talk to them, right?
But-- - Sure.
- Like, okay, Scott, like if you were on your dating app
and you saw, let's say,
let's say Caroline was a person that is not gonna,
let's say there was somebody else, I don't--
- You mean CJ?
- Let's say your wife was on the app
and you were definitely,
you're definitely doing a super like,
let's say, instead of a regular like,
because of the connections with that person.
What if this was like a play on a dating app
where you're trying to date somebody for their connections
or the other way around?
(laughing)
Not that, no, maybe not that, but more of,
but like, maybe you're more interested in that person
because who they associate with, you know?
- Whoa.
- And so maybe there's a little bit of that.
And it's because you can maybe tell something
about a person by who they hang out with
and who they're surrounded by.
And so I feel like there's some,
there's some maybe reason to not,
I guess in the other way, it's like,
maybe you're less likely to swipe right on somebody
that you're less interested in,
but then you realize, oh, they hang out with these people?
Like, oh, I know those people and I like those people.
So maybe they're like them, right?
- Might literally be just LinkedIn dating
then by the end of this.
- Well, you could call it five friends
'cause the saying is like, you're the average
of the five people you spend the most time with, right?
- Yes. - Ooh, that's a good one.
- I've never heard that, that's great.
- Yes, that's a, that's right.
Who do I hang out?
Do I hang out with you guys too much?
Am I gonna, gotta go?
(laughing)
- I mean, we have a podcast.
- Reassess that.
(laughing)
- Ah, good thing I'm not dating.
- I do my best to avoid you
other than when we're recording, yeah.
- No, that's so true though.
I think, all right, would you wanna be
on your friend's dating profile?
Let's say you had to like sign up for the app
and be the vouch or something.
- I would do that in a heartbeat.
- Totally. - I really would.
- That sounds so fun.
- It does sound a lot of fun.
- And it would be two people that you know, that'd be great.
- Wait, Rebecca didn't nod
and she's the only girl in the room, so.
- No, I would totally do it
'cause I feel like the inverse is also true.
Like there should totally be a feature like band booty
where you know they're bad guys
and you can alert other people or other friends.
Like this person's a pathological liar,
he'll ghost you or she, whomever.
But you should have a feature where it's like,
yes, I vet their thumbs up or no, definitely.
It was the worst first date I've ever been on.
And they go in the band booty.
- The band booty section, I love it.
- That's its own dating app.
- Band booty.
- An add on, it's a super feature to your dating apps.
- We got two ideas for next week now, this is great.
- But I think vouching for people or like,
oh, you know, what is it?
If I could swipe on maybe my friend's dislikes
and then maybe re-vouch or something, I don't know.
That might be a stretch.
- Whoa.
- Like I wonder if vetting the reverse way would be like,
I can't believe you swiped right on this guy, he's great.
Or this girl looks so cool, you should like her.
But then maybe that just comes off as like,
your mom trying to set you up with somebody.
- Yeah, we are closing in a little bit
on the friend of a friend market,
the previously pitched dating app too, aren't we?
Where you're kind of like.
- I guess so.
- This could be a feature of friend of a friend.
- Yeah, all these.
- All dating apps end up being friend of a friend,
that's what this is.
- That's right, we're all making, yeah.
It'll all blur into one dating hive mind, just.
- Russell's hive mind.
- Oh, yikes.
What's the name of this app, Scotty?
- Rebecca named it.
- Band booty?
- Band booty.
I was gonna call it Carl dating, but I like band booty.
- Oh man, band booty would be good for mine too.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
- All right, Russell, what have you brought us this week?
- All right guys, this week, I really am sometimes
getting like antsy being in the house a lot,
or especially this winter.
And I really want to do, I guess like,
have you guys had like a game show kick,
where you're just watching a bunch of game show,
television shows, I don't know.
- I went through a phase, oh man,
like three years of high school, middle school era, yeah.
- Well, I guess part of me wants to live that experience
without like having to, I guess like part of me
wants to like be on Family Feud,
or on, you know, Price is Right or something.
And I guess this simple idea is game shows locally.
So you just host local game shows,
and partner with businesses, get giant groups,
and maybe stream it on your local television station,
you know, create some like really different kind of buzz
about, I guess like community events,
and all the other things that happen.
It just seems like a local game show type of experience
would be really interesting to me.
- A lot of communities have bar trivia.
How would this, what sorts of games are you thinking?
- I guess I'm thinking of this like a full on studio.
Like you go into a travel studio,
where you go into a like a local college auditorium,
and you have the boards,
you give out tons of gift cards and prizes.
There's that one game show, like one versus 100,
where you do giant,
like you try to engage the entire community or audience.
And yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
Like one versus, like, yeah, you know what I mean?
Or deal or no deal or something.
Well, that's kind of boring.
I feel like in real life,
there'd have to be more real life like games.
- Dude, just make this a show where,
okay, so you get an auditorium,
you rent it out from your local community center
or college, right?
You charge a cover at the door of like $10 a ticket
to come in, and you don't have any contestants chosen.
They're just randomly picked from the audience.
So it gives incentive for people to come
and they can participate in the show.
And then you just host the game show up front.
Half the money goes to you,
half the money goes towards the prize pool
that you get at the door cover.
- That's boom, monetization.
- Oh, I would attend that.
That would be so much fun.
Just the chance that I get to go up there,
and if not, I at least get to see my friends up there.
- Family friendly.
- Playing wheel of fortune or whatever.
Yeah.
- You've got to capture the crowd energy
of the prizes, right?
- Yes.
Oh.
- Screaming, trying to get onto the show itself.
I feel like half of that show is just like the excitement
of watching people lose their mind
with their matching shirts,
trying to get actually on.
- We always pick one guest that's the most enthusiastic
from the audience, just randomly.
There you go, right?
Okay, then you throw in some local sponsorship opportunities.
I guess part of me thinks of,
you know how bingo night at these old people homes
are like crazy?
How do you make the fun version of that for young people?
(laughing)
- Can you define crazy?
- I mean.
- What does that mean?
- How crazy, just use your imagination, Leo.
These old.
(laughing)
People are spending money on bingo with these,
and they have their own like little systems,
and they're buying eight bingo cards for a chance to win.
Like it just seems like you could tap into that,
make it more family friendly,
create an event, and actually win some money.
I don't know, it just seems like something different
from the typical entertainment that's out there.
And if you make it community centric,
or you partner with like,
you jump between town to town, right?
And you just get the whole community excited about it.
What do they call those events?
- The Chamber of Commerce.
- Yes.
There'd be just so much, if it happened,
if you make it reoccurring,
and you make it like an escape room experience,
it's not gonna be great.
'Cause it's always there,
the size is always gonna be too small.
It's gotta be like--
- One time thing.
- Traveling Circus, a semi full of all the props
for Price is Right, or Wheel of Fortune, or whatever.
And they bring it in.
- Yeah, you get like political figures to talk
in front of a whole crowd of people.
You just turn it into,
and now everybody's campaign is around their game show event
or whatever, like this is local politics,
local community buzz.
And you gotta get support from the downtown,
the chamber, that stuff.
And then it makes it a really rememberable experience.
And if it's like, the city of Detroit sponsored this event,
maybe not Detroit, something like,
but you know what I mean, right?
There's like elements there that makes it really engaging
for those types of non-profits and stuff.
- You know what this could be?
Our friend and former guest on the show, Steph,
did the tryouts, I think it was down south of here
somewhere, Kalamazoo or something,
for the Wheel of Fortune.
And they come to cities and set up the whole dang set
and everything.
And not only did they get like,
do you know how to play this game well
and that kind of thing,
but also like, what is your chemistry on the set?
Are you engaged?
Would you be a good contestant?
It seems like you could combine franchising out
popular game shows as a funnel for the actual
nationwide game show being the finals, you know?
So like, you get in touch with,
I don't wanna use like Jeopardy,
something a little more,
what's a high octane game show
that's like on the air right now?
- Price is Right, I mean, is always.
- Sure, so let's say you go to the Price is Right
and you say, hey, I think it's CBS,
we want to make a traveling Price is Right, whatever.
And anyone who wins at this can then go to the season finale
to be on the show for the one that everyone sees.
Yeah, exactly, it's regionals.
- Dude, that generates a lot of like buzz too,
like making more viewership on the show
because they just experienced it live.
Like there's, yeah.
- I'm way more interested in the Jeopardy's
and whatever of the world
when it's like the tournament finalists too.
If you as an entire, like,
here's the three episodes of all of the people
who've already won this facing off
at the showcase showdown or whatever,
like that's really fun.
- Dude, yeah, I like that a lot.
- The experts, the finalists, nationals.
- Like the worldwide Price is Right competition.
Like can you imagine?
Yeah, or shoot, you could go as simple
as rock, paper, scissors, man.
States, finals.
- This person has won like 3000
rock, paper, scissors games in a row.
Statistically an anomaly,
but don't you wanna see him play his next game?
- That is a thing too.
There is the National Rock, Paper, Scissors Championships,
the competition.
- I mean, there's got, like,
if you were to do that for the whole nation,
there would be one person, right?
That would-
- Who's just the best at it.
- That just would have done it like 3000 times.
I mean, I don't know.
- But I guess like if you wanted to go smaller too,
you could go to each high school,
you could do, you know,
kind of like the speaking,
the local speaking event routes,
but you do that as entertainment to each school
in a school district, different types.
- I love that you can use like local businesses
as the prizes too.
Like, yeah, you can get, you know,
whatever voucher at this place,
if for the top winner there
and they'll donate the prizes or whatnot.
And then as you just keep getting bigger
and keep expanding on that.
- In addition to the prizes being,
you get to go to the actual show on TV.
That's a cheap prize
because they have the filmings anyway, right?
Instead of just picking randos for it.
- They gotta earn it.
- Seems like it'd make their life easier too for casting.
If you can go to these actual game shows and say,
"We can guarantee you contestants who are enthusiastic
and good and play tested and whatever,"
that might be better for everybody.
- Dude, yeah.
- That's good.
- It might, and it'd be fun, like,
you know, it's like a minor league baseball team.
I feel like I wonder if there's like a way
to make enough ticket sales
or like fill arenas that are empty during non-seasonal.
- The price is usually right.
(laughing)
- Like, I mean, there's so many like churches
that are empty during the week.
Like you just throw a Friday night event or something.
I don't know if that's the,
or like what is Van Andel Arena doing
on a Tuesday afternoon?
Like, kids, people with families would go there
and do that stuff, I think, so maybe.
- You need to attract more people
if you had the Jeopardy's and the Price of Rights
and the Wheel of Fortunes.
Who wants to be a millionaire?
Everyone would do that.
- Who wants to be a thousandaire?
(laughing)
- Who wants a thousand bucks?
- The minor league.
- Who wants a thousand bucks?
(laughing)
- In gift cards from your local pizza and--
(laughing)
- Who wants a thousand bucks in gift cards?
- I do.
- All right, Rebecca, welcome and let's hear it.
What's your Spitball idea of the day?
- Okay, so I've always been really interested
in like sensory substitution or sensory expansion.
I came to the States when I was two
and I'm partially deaf,
so I have a hearing aid in my right ear
and it's not from the auditory nerve,
which means I don't have brain damage
so I can still pick up sounds through vibration,
but it just needs to be amplified.
It's basically a mechanical issue.
So my eardrum is static.
Usually an eardrum is really dynamic
and with sound waves, it flexes
and then translates those waves into sound in your brain.
Mine's damaged so it doesn't actually flex.
There's a lot of scar tissue on it
and throughout the years, like hearing aids,
functionally, if I took it out right now,
it almost looks like a little tiny satellite
that can go right into the ear.
So I take it out when I work out, I do hot yoga.
So it's like, I feel like they're casing and everything
and all of the little like electrical components
are pretty delicate.
And I was on a plane one time and I saw this guy,
he had these totally encased silicone earphones
that actually sat above his ears
like a cochlear implant would.
They're called shacks and they're like 200 bucks
and they're waterproof
and it seems like such a better feature
for a hearing aid.
So when I went to my audiologist, I was like,
you have anything that's like a cochlear implant
but it's like just single
and I don't actually have to have a hole drilled in my head
that I could use 'cause they,
he let me try them on and they were awesome.
The sound came through really crisp and clear
and I didn't have to like stick something in my ear
and have it sit like on top.
I wouldn't have to take it out when I exercise.
It's like the shock absorbent properties
of whatever the shacks were made out of
plus it's totally encased in silicone.
So it's basically waterproof.
So what I was thinking is an actual hearing aid
that's like a cochlear implant that sits above the ear
instead of piping something directly into the ear canal
and it's, yeah, more user-friendly for exercising.
I think you could probably even swim in it.
So.
- Yeah, so most of the time,
I have a pair of the Aftershocks, the running version.
So they're not totally waterproof
but they're sweatproof and stuff and they're great.
I use them because they sit on top of my ear,
like you said, and they're bone conducting
and you don't have your ear occluded
so you can still hear traffic.
And when I'm commuting via bike or I ride a one wheel,
they, I can still hear traffic and car horns
and things around me without occluding,
and blocking out the world.
They're also great for like wearing around the office.
You have your podcast or music in or whatever
and if somebody says, "Hey, come here for a second,"
that you can like still hear what's going on around you.
They're great.
They don't sound super great,
but they'd be great for like an amplification
of in-room audio for sure.
- And you're saying that this doesn't exist
as a hearing aid right now?
That is crazy.
- Your options for like, for the bone actually
is for a cochlear implant.
- That's it?
That's ancient technology now, right?
I feel like they've been doing that for like a long time.
I guess it's like 2024.
Like they haven't fixed that?
- My thing is like, we can literally send shit
to Mars and we can't come up with better things
that like go on our bodies.
That it makes me feel crazy.
- And the Aftershocks that I have,
have a microphone in them for phone calls, for Bluetooth.
But they just don't pipe the microphone that's in them
into the speaker that's on them.
- Wait, what?
Like there's a separate microphone to it?
- You're 99.9% of the way there.
- Totally, I feel like you just do a steady change.
- They're headphones?
- Yeah.
They're headphones that have a microphone
so you can take a phone call, right?
Like any, most Bluetooth headphones have.
But there's no way to like turn on,
make the microphone pick up what's in the room
and make that sound louder in the headphone.
It only can pipe the sound to the phone call,
to the phone, you know?
- No, no, I'm confused as to why this doesn't exist.
This seems like very doable and clearly useful.
- Without Googling it, Aftershocks, I think,
makes a version that's two independent ones too.
So we're like 99.99% of the way there.
- Do we just need to call their customer service line?
- Should we not air this episode?
Should we like just do this real quick?
- Yeah.
- So the other piece of it is too,
if like for people who are profoundly deaf,
like I still have hearing in my left ear
and I'm not profoundly deaf, just partially.
I feel like there's options for vibrations
to be able to be translated in different parts of your body.
So maybe you can't, your auditory nerve is broken,
but I've seen things like wristwatches
or like whole chest pieces
that people put on like smaller children
to translate sound waves or vibrations
and correlate it to certain sounds,
like certain pitches and the sound of a dog
that can help round out the way that you hear.
'Cause your brain is just perceiving these sound waves.
And so I feel like there's some kind of in-between there,
between like an over-the-ear hearing aid
and that vibrational piece
that people are like strapping all over their body.
But I don't know how any of the science pieces of it work,
but.
- Yeah, you just need an equalizer.
So you make your bass more loud
if you can't pick that up naturally as well or vice versa.
I think that most traditional
hearing aids themselves do filter out.
Like I know that my pair of,
I think it's Pixel Buds or Sony earbuds or AirPods
all have active noise canceling,
where you can say only let the voices through,
but the rest of the sound not.
And AI is getting really, really good at real time,
like only let certain frequencies through.
So if you had a personalized profile
of what frequencies you can and cannot pick up naturally,
then you just boost what you're not able to pick up.
And you like, it's your own real world EQ
and you normalize it yourself.
That's so good.
- Can I tune out certain voices of certain people
and just be like,
I just don't wanna hear this person talk ever.
(laughing)
- I'm sorry, I can't hear you.
- You're on mute, sorry.
No, I put you on mute.
You, person.
- Real life mute.
- Isn't there a black mirror about that?
Somebody gets like shunned from society.
So they're blacked out and you can't see or hear them.
And they're just like a blur
'cause they were committed to crime or something.
- That's gonna be this show.
- It's like that.
- When we get famous,
people are gonna be muting us.
(laughing)
- Full kids.
- IRL blocked.
(laughing)
- I wanna, I guess like imagine,
thinking of concerts, right?
You can't, you wanna hear the concert,
but you wanna talk to your friend
and you don't wanna scream.
Like, or you're at a bar
and now you're just, everybody's talking
and now you can have a normal voice conversation
and not yell at each other
because you have this like bone.
You still have the bar experience with,
but you can isolate voices or, yeah.
Like it's maybe more magnify rather than like isolate
'cause you still wanna hear the outside sound,
but you wanna magnify in a specific voice.
So aftershocks should just, or whatever,
we create a version like this
that's just like a setting
that allows you to have normal conversation
with people in loud places.
Simple, right?
- Rebecca, this is one of those ideas
that's making me angry that it's like,
doesn't exist 'cause it's,
we're so close as a society.
Aftershocks only makes the kind
that you're talking about
where they wrap all the way around.
- Like two, right?
- And it's one big wrap around here,
but there is no one that I've seen that's two from them,
but other brands have some like bone connecting ones.
So basically you just wanna like
take one of the two pair of earbuds that BoneConducts
and stick it on the side that you are more deaf in
and crank up the volume from the mic that's on it.
Yeah, totally.
- And I feel like anything in age tech,
most deaf patients are older.
I feel like there's a silver tsunami coming
and we have to figure some of this stuff out
and then people like me will benefit greatly.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Hearing aids were recently opened up
for over-the-counter administration,
which hopefully will spur some innovation in this market
because they've been restricted
by you need to go to an audiologist,
you need to have a prescription and stuff for decades.
- What's crazy is it's not covered by insurance either.
- What?
- That's nuts. - Yeah, they're like four,
four grand. - Man, this country sucks.
- And they're not covered by insurance.
- Four grand? - Yeah.
- Is that what you just said? - Yep, for one.
And it's not covered by insurance.
- Man, how long do they last?
- I mean, you can like 15 years, 10 years,
but like the tech gets better all the time.
- Wow, I guess like, is that its own insurance?
It's like vision, maybe that's why.
Like, I guess people are walking around blind all the time.
I just don't understand why that's not covered by insurance.
Like, it's okay if they're blind, you know,
they gotta pay for vision insurance, not health.
It's not for their health.
- Or dental, like, yeah, you're covered
except for the teeth, like what?
- That's not critical to your health.
- How is that not health?
This country makes no sense.
Yeah, it sucks that they're $200
for a really good pair of Bluetooth earbuds,
which do a lot more than a hearing aid,
but then a hearing aid unit itself is thousands and thousands.
- Totally a racket.
- Hopefully that's being fixed soon.
- Like my urgency here is I'm not getting more hearing.
So the deafer I get, so somebody out there listening,
make me an on the bone hearing aid.
- Mark, it's there.
- You said that you do have a little bit of sensitivity
in the one ear, right?
- On the right ear, partially, yeah.
- Do you have, partially, okay.
Have you ever tried putting in one Bluetooth earbud
and just cranking up the pass through?
- No.
- Really, really loud?
- No.
- That'd be interesting to do as a little experiment.
- Every noise though, right?
- You can get, well, I mean like AirPods and Sony's,
you can say only let voices through and stuff.
So that would be an interesting thing.
Everybody would be different listening to this.
- Yeah, 'cause they tune them,
like when you go to an audiologist
based off of the frequencies that you can hear
and lower sounds are much harder for me to hear.
So they, like I'll take it out if I go to a concert
or mine's tuned to pick up lower frequencies.
So male voices, if I'm not like looking at you
and kind of watching your mouth,
I can miss like a third of a conversation.
- Three white married 30-somethings on a podcast,
for example.
(laughing)
- Your pipe's like directly in, so.
- Wish you had to crank it up, guys, for us.
(laughing)
- Yeah, I feel like there's other applications too
that it's not like, it's a benefit
to those of hard of hearing, but like, I don't know.
I wonder if the isolation thing is really important
in other scenarios or I don't know.
Like it just seems like there's a lot of other use cases
and I'm curious what our listeners
are gonna come up with, you know?
- Yeah, like the bar scenario.
I mean, even dinner in a restaurant,
if you're in like a work event
or any type of social gathering,
there's like tons of ambient noise
that's happening all the time.
And there's like a buzz that's always there
in the background and you have to really pick out tonalities
so I feel like if that tech improved
or became more accessible, it'd benefit multiple venues.
- Yeah.
- Actively canceling out just the TV at the bar
or just the, yeah, the things you don't want.
Man, I wish I could open an app and it would show me,
here's the four different things
that we're detecting around you
that are the category of sound
and which ones do you wanna just turn off?
- TV at the bar.
- You wanna prank?
Crying baby.
Yeah, cancel.
- Yeah.
- That would be incredible.
- Yeah.
- Or like a, yeah, like a concert again.
You wanna listen to the band and not like, you know,
the people or you wanna enhance the audio,
get clear audio and...
- But turn off the screaming drunk guy
that's one row ahead of you.
- Yes.
- Who's singing along with it.
- Yeah, well, if it's on the bone,
you'll be able to turn off, I think, as many voices, right?
You'd be only, well, I don't know, I guess.
Oh, maybe you--
- Whatever your input is, process the input
and determine your output.
- But the TV's at a bar, that was, yeah, Leo, like...
All right, it's less weird, put something in your ear,
but now I can listen to this, like,
yeah, this TV, that's great.
- I've used active noise canceling headphones
by in one form or another for many years,
and it's still novel every time to turn on
the noise canceling and have the sound
where it just sort of turns off the,
oh, I didn't even realize there was an air conditioner
running in this room, but yeah, that's way better.
Feels good.
Every pair of active noise canceling headphones
I've ever owned has a microphone on them
because they have to, to like cancel out the wave
of the sound that it's around.
Just fricking pipe that in, but louder,
and boom, that is ear enhancement, dang.
- Rebecca, you're saying there's devices
that someone who can put like around their waist
or something that is able to translate sounds
into vibrations, or like your wrist, you said?
- So it gives like electromagnetic pulses,
which that's all your brain is using to convert into sound,
'cause your brain doesn't see,
and your brain doesn't actually hear,
just takes in these electromagnetic waves.
So basically these devices, there's,
I think the smaller, or like for children,
it's an actual chest band, and then for adults,
there's like a wristwatch, and it takes a little bit
for your brain to be able to kind of learn
how to hear through the pulses, but basically it'll,
I don't know how they tune it,
but then they have you wear this for a couple of days,
and you're able to pick up like certain words
because of the way that your brain is starting to train
on the vibrations. - That's amazing.
- And I mean, there's major implications
for sensory like substitution or sensory expansion,
like think, Google Lens even,
or what were the glasses that came out?
Yeah, totally, oh, like, oh, so it was at South by Southwest,
and there's this VR set, and the only thing it plays
is like these K-pop dancers who are coming
like really close to you, and they're,
you know, there's like these dudes lined up
with these goggles, and they're like right in your face,
and I'm like, this is what we've used the technology for.
We can create an entire experience
and like put people elsewhere,
and this is what we chose to do?
- K-pop. (laughs)
- I know, I know, don't get me wrong, I like K-pop,
but we're like so close in all these areas.
They're so close to like really revolutionizing some things
for sensory expansion in a way that's helpful.
- Sensory expansion, like can I like,
so I'm really interested in how like dogs
can smell an entire different world than humans.
Not that I want to, but it's just like,
they don't see as well, like you can't do that.
You can't, can you train, like are there people
trying to train people's noses to like,
I don't know, pick up crazy stuff
that maybe wouldn't be able to,
it's just like the weirdest thing,
'cause like there's no technology out there for smell,
and I always am like trying to figure out how like--
- I've wondered that too, actually.
- There's an entire world that you can't see,
feel, taste, process, even with technology.
Like we have cameras, we have microphones,
we have, I'm sure, feeling technology,
but you can't do smell yet, I think.
- But I imagine it's just like if you could translate
the what stimulates the olfactory nerve in your brain,
right, like you, they could hack it,
they could figure out like to just saturate you
with the most sumptuous smells based off of like
triggering some like series of dots
in your olfactory system.
- Send you some electrical pulses and boom, yeah.
- And all of a sudden it activates a center of your brain.
I mean, there's people like stroke victims
who can speak other languages or all of a sudden
have like cheese then associate,
like the smell of cheese associates with like forest fires
and things like that because the wires get crossed.
I feel like even technologies like infrared
or like night vision, I feel like we're one step off
of being able to see like if someone was just sitting down
in a seat, we can see like a heat print
of where they were sitting based off like having goggles
or something that allows us to see like a thumbprint
on a mic and see who last touched it
because there's still a heat transfer on it.
Like I think sensory expansion is like,
we're so close to VR and like night vision goggles
or stimulating the olfactory nerve.
Like we're really close to this whole other world
where like what if we could see the way that
there's like animals that have such a larger spectrum
of color that they're able to access
and that's gotta be a center in the brain too, right?
- Oh yeah.
- And you're right, smell is one of the only senses
we haven't really developed much augmented technology for.
- Could argue taste too, I guess,
but it's kind of hand in hand with smell.
- Yeah.
- That's interesting.
- I think just, yeah, it's kind of like bio training.
It's like bio hacking, but with training.
Like that is crazy.
Can you imagine like 20 years from now
and your kids are like, yeah, I smelled that.
What did you smell?
(laughing)
- Did you hear about that?
There's a woman in the UK a couple of years ago
who has some sort of, what's the word I'm looking for?
Genetic mutation that lets her smell Parkinson's
and scientists are totally baffled by that.
What is that all about?
Like once in a while, I guess a human comes along
that's inches closer toward some new unlocked realm
of smell that we've never had before.
- That's such a crazy mutation, that's awesome.
- It just validated my idea.
Rebecca, we got this.
Like it's gonna happen now.
We just gotta start having people smell diseases
and shocking them and that's it, right?
Just a little bio shock.
(laughing)
Scott, you got a taser?
Anybody got a taser?
- Why me?
- You're gonna be the, no, not you.
- Who has to tase you until you can smell new smells?
- Oh God, I'm not tasing you, I need the taser.
- I need a research grant so I can just tase students
and see if they smell new smells.
- You need the real scientist.
Nah, we got this.
- Well, listener, whether you're listening
on your Smell-O-Vision in the year 2050
or in a podcast app now, we thank you for listening
and be grateful you can't smell us, I guess.
We hope you enjoyed yourself.
And thank you very much, Rebecca, for joining.
That's such a fun idea.
Thanks for being here.
- Thank you.
- Our website is Spitball.show.
There you can find links to our YouTube channel,
other social media, email us, feedbackpodcast@Spitball.show.
We'd love to hear your ideas, comments,
all the stuff about olfactory nerves
that we didn't get right.
We'd love to hear your corrections
and/or expansions on these ideas.
And that's also how you can follow us on the Fediverse,
such as Mastodon, or podcast@Spitball.show.
Our subreddit is r/spitballshow.
Our intro/outro music is Swingers by Bonkers Beat Club.
Please, you're listening for now on a podcast app,
maybe someday on a smell app.
Give us a rating, subscribe, add, review us,
wherever you get your podcasts.
That's the best way for people to find out about the show.
New episodes coming out in two weeks.
We will see you then.
(upbeat music)
(dramatic music)