I'm Scott.
I'm Russell.
I'm Leo.
I'm Jackie.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three prototype pioneers and a guest empty their heads of
startup and tech 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.
Scott, I believe you brought our guest this week.
I
did.
Our guest this week is none other than my little sister, Jackie.
Hello.
Hi.
Yay.
Jackie's a world traveler, a master's in food science and has worked on everything
food related from perfecting alcohol and coffee manufacturing to literally designing
astronaut diets as they orbit the earth.
So welcome Jackie.
Hey, I'm excited.
This is going to be a good time.
So not only did I bring the guests this week, but in honor of Jackie as the food
scientists I'm also gonna kick us off with the warm-up game and this is a
game I'd like to call feast or fabrication. Okay. Oh
you guys ever watch
Fact or Fiction?
Alright so in this game I'm gonna be giving you each a tech
related fad diet and I want you to tell me if this is a real diet that actually
exists or something that I just made up. There's so
many. There were so many.
Oh shoot.
Alright okay.
Cool. So
as Leah would say as always we shall start off
with our guest Jackie.
Okay.
All right, Jackie. The
DNA Diet,
a eating plan that's customized
based on genetic testing to optimize your metabolism. True?
That's definitely true.
That is true. Launched in 2016, DNA uses genetic testing to create everything cater around
your food sensitivities and nutrition needs.
Incredible. Does it say what the starting
price on that is?
Nope. I was
too afraid to look.
Rich Silicon Valley.
Yeah. Is there
a lot of difference between nutrient uptake between two random people off the
street?
Jackie,
I guess you would notice.
You said it's for food sensitivities, Scott?
That would make more
sense.
Food sensitivities, nutrition needs, and optimizing your metabolism.
But there's definitely easier...
DNA, so they're implying that they're, what, like, figuring out your genome to give you
the diet?
Yeah.
Because there's definitely easier ways to find out
food sensitivity.
My service has a checkbox that says gluten-free, yes or no,
and then same thing.
All right, Leo, the Smart Fork Diet
uses a fork that vibrates when you eat too quickly,
forcing you to slow down.
Well, I think I know the product.
It was called the Happy Fork.
We talked about it
in a previous episode.
But I don't know if that was--
are you asking if that's like a diet thing too?
Is there like a
service around it?
A diet
based on it.
It was more of
does this exist?
A diet based on it.
I'm going to say the
diet doesn't exist.
I think you made that up.
- You are correct.
Happy
fork hit CES in 2013.
I think you were there that year.
Promoted as a
mindfulness tool for weight loss
and better
digestion.
- Wow.
- Shout out to Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal
for relentlessly making fun of that
for like a year straight.
I remember it very well.
It was very funny.
- Russell, the algorithm diet.
AI analyzes your social media activity
and determine which food will make you happiest each day.
- What?
- Happiest.
It's fried chicken every day.
chicken nuggets every day.
Wait, how does it get that from your social media feed?
All right.
I'm going to say this is false.
It's definitely false.
Oh
man.
It could work though.
Give it like
another year and we'll be there.
You seem like you're in a chicken soup
day or whatever.
Here's some cookies
for you delivered and sponsored by Mrs.
Fields.
All right, Jackie, round two, the ASMR diet.
Listen to specific food crunching sounds through headphones before meals to
trigger a pre-satisfy signals.
You're supposed to whisper that one.
Oh, sorry.
These are really interesting.
I'm going to slip my drink
into the microphone one sec.
I think it's just because there's
so much money that goes into sensory science,
I think it's real.
That one is false, but we should probably start that one.
That's a good pitch.
That's incredible.
That is
a
good
pitch.
That's fun.
Interesting.
All right.
Leo, the HCG diet app.
Track your 500 calorie daily limit
while taking hormone injections, all
managed through your smartphone.
500 calories seems a little low. It's so specific though. I'm gonna say that's real.
It dates back to early 2010s. Wow!
And I pushed it on the FDA homepage, which they flag it
as a quote "very unsafe."
It's the Elon Musk diet.
That's what Elon did, right?
500. Oh, man. You're supposed to give yourself injections? Is that what you said? It's
all part of it. Wow.
All right, Russell, the Soylent Diet.
Replace all traditional food with engineered nutritional shake designed by Silicon Valley
software engineers.
That's 100% true.
That is absolutely true.
Because I wanted to do this.
You did something like this, right, Scott?
Yeah, I thought about it.
Huel is
a couple of different
variations of them.
Designed as a replacement shake to maximize efficiency and very embraced by Silicon Valley
who hated meal prep.
- That
is so
hard for me to empathize with.
- I know.
- One of the few joys in life
that you're just gonna turn into like sludge.
Every day
you wanna have slop from the trough, are you sure?
- All right, last round.
Jackie, the virtual reality diet.
Wear VR headsets while eating small portions
to trick your brain into experiencing more satisfying meals.
- No, that's not real.
- That one is true.
Wow, 2017, early experiments
of Tokyo showed that VR could actually alter portion perception.
This is all before Ozempic came out.
Yeah, all
this was pre-Ozempic.
Yeah, right, all the
funding's been pulled.
Leo, the pixel diet.
All food must be cut into perfect squares and arranged in grid patterns to optimize visual processing, helping to reduce consumption.
That's
adorable.
I thought you'd like that one.
I'm going to say you made that up.
I definitely made that up.
Yeah!
I don't know how that would help, but I kind of want to do that just for my kids now.
like smiley face pancakes or whatever.
Get it?
It's a grid of pixels.
No, dad, I don't.
Maybe a cool meal plan thing that you
could buy for somebody for a gift for a few months.
I'm not calorie
counting.
I'm pixel peeping.
Minecraft movie came out.
We
should be jumping on this.
All right, last one.
Russell, the sunlight only diet.
Created by Indian gurus through intense training and meditation,
the human body can survive without food or water
by absorbing energy directly from the sun.
- There's no way.
That's gotta be fake.
- I was actually inconclusive on this one
'cause it was found in a documentary
and gurus have claimed to have lived in this manner
for 70 years, but when the diet hit the news in 2012
after multiple Swiss women died of
starvation
trying to replicate it.
- Yeesh.
- So depending
on your source--
- Why Swiss women?
- I
think that's
real and
shouldn't be
attempted.
- Yeah. - Yeah, yeah.
- I don't
know, maybe they don't have enough
sunlight
over there, who knows.
- Ah, that
was it.
They needed to go to a mountaintop.
- It works everywhere else.
- Yeah, right?
- Low battery.
- This game reminded me of, have you ever seen Vogue's,
Vogue would publish diets in their magazines in the 70s?
- No.
- And the most infamous one was the egg and wine diet.
- Oh, mixed together?
- So, wait, let
me pull it up.
Okay, this was the diet.
For breakfast, one hard boiled egg in one glass of wine,
Preferably something dry.
Glass of coffee.
For lunch, two eggs, ideally hard boiled,
but poached if
necessary.
Two glasses of white wine.
Black coffee.
For dinner, remainder of white wine,
one bottle is allowed per day.
- Just drink,
finish it up.
- Black coffee.
And then a five ounce steak grilled with black pepper
and lemon juice.
- It's awesome.
- Every day.
- Coffee, eggs
and wine, and then
a steak.
- Come down to a
bottle a day.
- It's great.
- I have no idea how many days
you're supposed to try it for.
- All of them.
- This is what you do
now.
- Oh my God.
- Who won?
You were keeping track, right?
- I was trying to.
I realize how
hard that is to do,
Leo.
- It's hard, I never
remember.
- I'm gonna start keeping track for you from now on.
- Okay.
- Leo, I do believe that you won this one though.
if you want to kick us off this week.
OK, I can do
that, sure.
All right, so this one's a little bit out there,
and it's a little bit for the millennials and older.
So many of us have fond nostalgia
for the early days of the internet.
I remember high school, college, when
like Advice Animals and Scumbag Steve and all
these meme templates and things were the hottest
thing on the internet.
I think it would be fun to--
you can put a quarter in the jar,
or you can just have this be handwritten.
Create a news site that's entirely made of memes,
where you're getting actual New York Times
or Wall Street Journal or whatever headlines,
but delivered entirely,
we need a middle ground between satire, the onion,
the click holes of the world,
and like, I'm reading the Harvard Review again, right?
- Okay, Leo, this already exists.
- Tell me more.
- So there's this Instagram account that I follow.
I don't remember
the username, but I'll find it,
But that's
essentially
it.
They give the
headliners.
And that-- did I just ruin the whole show?
No,
not at all.
[LAUGHTER]
You're trying to get next week, guys.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
This is like two episodes
ago to me.
I need to do more frickin' research.
No, no, we can Spitball off this.
Keep going.
You think so?
OK, so
I
can't check off news
site made of only memes?
OK.
It's Instagram.
Go ahead, Jackie.
I don't know.
I don't know the username off the top of my
head.
I'll have
to find it.
But there's probably two accounts that I follow.
- Okay, okay.
- And yeah, they take the biggest headlines
and then they just apply them
to like pop culture references or memes
and then connect the two somehow
to make the delivery more entertaining.
- That's great.
- And then it is happening that the accounts are,
you can find the more conservative accounts
or you can find the more left-leaning meme accounts.
- That's amazing.
Well, yeah, I know that there's like memeing the news
and that's a trend that happens on social medias in general.
I
want to
not pollute whatever social timelines
that I have already with news.
I really like that I have snarky tech bloggers
and comedians and musicians and stuff
and I have a pretty good algorithm
going.
And I also want to be able to engage
and then pull the rip cord and be done.
So I think I wanna put this in some kind of website.
Maybe it's my homepage, maybe it's like a--
- No, exactly, and like you can even just pull
all these Instagram accounts that post
and
feed your content
into your content network.
- Just embed them all or something, yeah.
You want to be able to like kick him back.
- If you want. - That's
interesting.
Maybe you want to build like an aggregator.
- I'm just picturing the New York Times like homepage.
I'm looking at it right now.
And it's, you know, it's all very serious and professional,
but just everything is a meme going down
in the same formatting. - Yes, yes.
- I would love that. - Me too.
And there's something about the structure
of an actual news site that I find appealing.
Like it's built into sections.
It's got like layouts and structure in a way where like,
just a random person making a meme
about the news in my time.
Sure, we've all experienced that,
but I want this to be a dedicated experience, you know?
And maybe there is a slider for liberal or conservative,
or maybe there is a slider for local
versus worldwide or something, I don't know.
- And then if it's a zone site,
you get less whiplash than when you're scrolling
through your Instagram feed and you get some
breaking, devastating news,
and then you just keep scrolling.
- Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I feel like my peers are starting
to disengage with the news a bit,
and I am myself included.
I don't really, I need to pick and choose my battles
Nowadays for like what I want to get mad about right and if it was conveyed to me like a dog getting his medicine with
Peanut butter or something
where it's like,
hey, here's a little bit of fun that can go with it. I think that would help me
personally
I
Feel like we're gonna hit some stories that are just gonna be impossible no matter how much of me
What happened to the refugees? Oh,
it'll be a valley. I don't know. We
should joke about that or whatever bag Steve
You could really make a too soon set of memes like that's just the whole new site. It's just like yikes
That was a little too soon
Just like soon dot meme. That's
yeah, like like
all those 9/11 memes being in like nine during 9/11
Oh my
god,
that is I mean, they're wildly inappropriate
I feel like for our generation
But it's like you can have a whole site and there might just be enough people out there be like it's like the onion shock
value. You know, people are like, "Eww." But, "Oh my gosh, it's kind of
funny."
A core goal of the project would be to come out of it informing people, right? Even if they only
got a headline and a gist. You want that to be not just conspiracy theories and jokes upon jokes
upon jokes where it's eight layers deep and doesn't actually correlate to real world happenings. I
want this to be a social good, you know?
Oh, a social good. Okay. So it's got to...
- Russell's like, "I'm out."
- Can't just make it worse.
- Oh, we can't just flush the entire world down the toilet?
(laughing)
- Everyone's already doing that
right now.
- Yeah. - It's true.
- This is a tool for informing people.
- Through memes. - Through memes.
- Yeah, I'll find the Instagram account and then,
it's called Saint Hoax.
- Okay.
- And it has 3.4 million followers on Instagram.
- All right, we need to take stuff like Saint Hoax.
- And
it's just this one person that makes the account.
- Oh, I've seen a lot of these.
I didn't realize this is all from here.
- Yeah, it's always like the same neon green header.
- I also realized going into this
that every generation's gonna have a different definition
of the word meme.
I'm
thinking--
- Like 2000s memes. - Culture of like, yeah,
yeah.
Weird proto
memes where it's impact font in all caps
on top of a penguin or whatever.
I feel like, well, maybe there's different sections
of the paper and the settings of it and stuff
where like this website's able to, you know,
generation
boomer
means get
it we hate our wives and also here's what happened
with the tariffs today okay I don't get it
you got Dilbert for
the gen Xers
there you go
right blondie
or
whatever like oh that's
that's like inappropriate
is Dilbert but the first meme
the comic section you
were big into comics right
- Do you get comics every, Scott, like delivered to you?
Right?
- Yeah, our mom would
send me comics in college
'cause I always loved them growing up.
She was the best.
- I'm surprised you remember that, Russell.
- I just remembered it right now.
I was like, "Who's the college guy with the comics?"
That was like...
- Thanks, mom.
- Yeah.
- Do newspapers still have comic sections?
- I don't know.
- Do newspapers still exist?
- Man, I might be more interested in,
like the meme is great for like the headline,
But if I saw the news in a comic strip format,
that'd actually be kind of cool and interesting.
Like the whole articles in comic strip,
there's probably enough cartoonists out there
that would do it too.
- Demand
in the world for a good illustrator is going down.
So yeah, this could be a good rehoming, reworking effort.
Yeah.
- They all become
journalists.
- Artisanal,
home drawn comics
about the latest attack in Syria or whatever.
Yeah, my next pitfall is taking AI out of documents
and turning them into cartoons.
You have to come up with
punch lines at the end of every one.
Honestly, if it's a little off color,
that might make it more popular.
All right, Scott, what do you got?
All right, Russell, way back when, in an early episode,
you had pitched vitamins for
gamers.
And I've been thinking about that idea a lot,
especially because I'm really trying
to take better care of myself, which is just
resulting in me taking a large pile of supplements every day
and turning
my pee really weird shades of color.
- And you are a known
gamer.
- That's some B
multiplex.
I know
that one.
- There it is,
it's the B one.
- Same.
(laughing)
- I've realized I'm starting to like dread my morning,
I don't know, vitamin time, I'll call it,
where I just have these piles of horse pills
and I just like,
I just gotta get through all these guys, man.
Okay, so here's what I wanna do.
I wanna revamp old school vitamin water,
but I actually wanna make it vitamin water.
I wanna take all off the shelf,
calcium, vitamin B, D, all that stuff.
I wanna grind it up and I wanna customize it.
You go on this website and you'd be like,
here's what I wanna take, or we can do a recommendation.
I will put it into a bottle as a powder
and mix enough sugar water/Gatorade into it
and send it back to you and be like,
you gotta chug one of these a day and that's it.
And you just, and that's the entire idea.
- That's so good. - It's all off the shelf.
- That's amazing.
- Yeah, I would buy that. - Vitamin water.
That is
a terrible company.
They make Kool-Aid, and they should never have named it that.
And Coca-Cola is a terrible company for inventing it.
Did they acquire vitamin water?
A
long
time ago, right?
A long time ago.
Yeah, I think it's part of Coke.
Scott, would it come in like Jones-style bottles?
Oh, I like that even more.
Or Sobe.
Jones soda feels fancy.
Sobe, classic.
Honestly, we could make it look exactly like vitamin water.
I learned that Sobe is short for South Beach.
I didn't know that.
Are they still around?
I feel like I haven't seen a lot of Sobe around
lately.
- I don't know, I just remember that one
that was really unnatural green color.
- I think they all were, yeah.
Bright iridescent blue, nothing in nature comes that color.
- I'll drink
it though.
- That's what your vitamin water's
gonna look like though, dude.
- It's gonna be that.
- Something more like
milky looking.
- Just keep
adding sugar and dye
until it's something palatable.
- Otherwise it'll
all be that weird chalky white orange, yeah.
- Yeah, probably taste awful.
I was really
excited about this until I'm like,
oh wait, I take fish
oil every day.
And if you've ever accidentally broke a fish oil capsule,
it's
awful.
It's just everywhere and it just reeks of fish, go figure.
So maybe not fish oil.
- That's why you gotta eat breakfast
when you do fish oil, right?
'Cause like you'll be having fish oil burps all day.
I hate
that.
Yeah, it's
disgusting.
- Unless
you're having fish oil drink
from
Scott's new company.
- So JK, I was gonna ask, what is the,
I almost don't wanna know, but what's the legality of this?
Like off the shelf vitamins, can I resell them?
Would like the packaging on this thing
be like a mile-long list of disclaimers and facts?
So if something is a supplement
there's almost no regulation on it.
Hell yeah.
Which is
kind of
terrifying but...
So we're in business.
You can do whatever you want.
Costco A vitamins and get your mortar and pestle out.
Alright.
If you want to gain people's trust you have to get like third-party
certifications and like laboratory
purity and like Instagram influencers
no
sponsored by meme news no
like third-party testing for purity and things
like that but that would be hard if you're like saying that you're gonna
customize your product to different people's needs I
mean I could have them
selected I'll just hold up like here's the bottles we're gonna put exactly one
of these into yours and exactly one of these into yours and here's all the info
on each one seems like a lot of work but we could do it we could automate that
What about if you made this like a bespoke thing
for the customer, where they say what supplements they want,
and then you mix it with/for
them?
That's what I thought he meant.
And
ship them the weekly
seven bottles
or whatever.
Is that what you were originally pitching?
Yeah.
Oh,
OK.
So you're saying like, in order to prove it to the customer,
you have video
evidence of
you
creating it for
them
or something?
Sure.
Do one video, and they'll get the gist.
Do you think you would be able-- this
really low effort. Do you think you'd be able to sell a three-quarters full
bottle that is specially made to enhance your vitamins or
whatever you just add
your own vitamins to it? Oh like I take a
big bottle and dissolve my
B-complex
in the night before?
Yeah.
You like open up the pill into the Yeah, exactly.
Wait, they would just dissolve,
wouldn't they? Like put it in a blender? You get you create a really cool
machine, Scott, that like, you know, you can buy, you put all your pills in there.
It crushes, blends it, compacts it, or, and mixes it in with all the other good stuff.
Right?
Good stuff.
First vitamin water's
name's taken and now Vitamix's name is
taken.
Man.
Ah, damn.
Something that stressed me out about taking supplements is that I made the
mistake of one time searching, what time of day should I take calcium supplements?
Oh, I've done that.
And then it's this whole thing of like, oh, well you should take it at this time,
but not at this time because then it will inhibit the bioavailability.
And don't take it with this supplement because then you won't absorb it at all.
Can't do it with magnesium because they'll cancel each other out and all these other things.
Yeah, exactly.
And now I'm like,
well, so are multivitamins just a farce?
Like, what am I supposed to be doing?
I'm so confused.
So now I am like trying to time my supplements because I put way too much effort into it.
Like, these are my nighttime ones and these are my breakfast ones.
And probably not actually making a difference, but it makes me feel better.
You pee it all out anyway.
I'm gonna cross this line here and say,
could you do this with prescription pills?
Like for old people that really have a hard time
taking their pills, you're just like,
Grandma, here's your--
- Chug this
Gatorade.
- Here's your
Gatorade.
- You gotta finish this by the end of the day, Nana.
- Your meal,
what is it, like the Ensure?
Like a lot of old people drink a lot of Ensure.
You just mix that in with their prescriptions
and then all of a sudden they're taking their drugs.
I mean, you're just blending it.
- What are you in for?
I got busted selling Nana's Vicodin shakes.
(laughing)
- I mean, it might solve,
that would solve a major problem.
In a way, if people are just,
don't wanna do the pill thing, right?
They just wanna--
- This whole thing is Leo's peanut butter trick
with the dog.
- It is.
(laughing)
- That's gonna be the theme of the episode.
- All right. - Yep.
- Could you mix this with
food instead of drink?
Like, I mean, I don't know if,
even no matter how much dye, sugar, natural flavors,
Maybe there's just like a, you know,
you slip a pill in like a sandwich,
you know?
- Or mashed potatoes.
- You're mashed potatoes, right?
Like a slice of cheese.
- Your egg and wine.
- You know?
- Egg and wine.
(laughing)
- Just replace the egg yolk with Vita Blend.
Deviled eggs with Vita Blend.
All right, Russell, what have you brought us this week?
- All right, so actually mine kind of piggybacks
off of Leo's a little bit.
Well,
tell me if I've done this before.
I'm pretty sure I didn't,
but I get a ton of newsletters that I subscribe to
that I really enjoy and want to read.
And I end up reading all these other news sites
or I get my news from like whatever feeds.
Google News is like really addicting for some reason.
And then I just want to take my newsletters
and put them in a format that feels like a news site.
So I'm
not just, I
just, I don't like them in my email,
but I don't wanna unsubscribe from them either.
I just wish I could forward all these emails to,
and I'll even pay for newsletters.
You know what I mean?
I've paid for a few of them,
and I just don't read them because the format.
And I'm like, it's like mixing work with pleasure too much.
And I just can't stand, it's like,
if I'm doing my email cleanup,
I'm like, newsletter, I could read this.
Nope, I'm just gonna clear it out
'cause I never read these now, right?
And that's all I want.
I want my newsletters,
or just like if it could read my newsletters
and link the articles that my newsletters gather anyway,
like that would be awesome too.
So yeah, it'd be a site that would tap into my email
and maybe pull the links from my favorite newsletters
into a customized newsfeed or be the newsletter itself
if it's like custom kind of content, right?
Um, that's I want to desperately want
that.
I love it.
Custom news web page just for you based upon your wants on there
of things you subscribe to forwarding it in is
so good.
Take this
one more level.
Have an option on there where they will make a print version
and mail you a full newspaper customized for all of your news.
I love that.
We'll go your next generation back.
The core problem is that being in your email is such a sucky experience.
You have
associated
20 years of I am here and therefore I am miserable.
I hate being in my email.
Why would I want to spend another second in my email?
Even if it's actually something fun.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
I would love that to get like the actual print newspaper, especially since starting a remote job.
My eyes always hurt by the end of the day from staring at a screen.
It's like the last thing I want to do is wake up and look at a screen like while I'm drinking coffee.
I
have subscribed to two physical mailers. One of them is the onions newspaper that comes every month and the other is
Patreon guy who sends jokey things in the mail and both of them bring me a way
Overproportionate amount of delight and joy. I did not expect how much I would like having a physical newspaper. I get it
I'm sorry mom for all the years that I made fun of you
Wow
Man, maybe we're ready for this.
Like a digital print or a printout.
That's amazing.
I've seen people take
receipt printers
and print their Google Calendar and tasks and weather
for the day and stocks and stuff and kind of take it on the go
as a little mini newspaper.
I wonder if you could home printerify this, where you've
got like, here's my newsletters that I got in the last day.
There's three of them.
And they're on cheap, disposable paper
that spat out from my little machine in my kitchen
every day on the way out or whatever.
Comes
with a magnifying glass.
Do printers
have auto timers?
I mean, you hook it up to a Raspberry Pi or something,
have it print in the morning.
Yeah.
I love that.
That's awesome.
Here's your morning newspaper on demand.
No shipping, no logistics.
Only
things you're interested in.
Every article is something I care about.
But yeah, I think even the digital version
is still awesome.
You could even subscribe to other newsletters.
Because your inbox is kind of curated
and those newsletters are stuff you've chosen.
You can just create and link other newsletters
that are relevant that you would have never heard about.
So now you have like an ad revenue stream.
Like if you have Spitball news paper,
you know, the four ideas that came out this week,
throw it in your channel.
And now like it comes out every two weeks.
You could take podcasts almost
and like convert that into your newsletter feed as well.
It just turns into like a whole different news media.
And I just, I maybe, I don't know.
Have you guys found, I haven't found a great news outlet
that I can skip all the BS politics stuff if I want
and maybe I gotta figure out my Twitter or X account
or whatever better.
- No
you
don't.
- But I just
like, no, it's just not,
it's probably the opposite.
I guess that's what's frustrating to me.
It's like, I just want my own news channel
and that kind of thing.
- So would the person would have to go
to their printer every morning and then print it out?
Or are you thinking of like,
Because you're saying the receipt thing made me think,
like, oh, you could get,
I wonder what the cheapest printer you can manufacture is
that just does it, like automatically.
It'll just print it at 6 a.m. every morning.
Just like one little sheet.
- You could find some cheap laser printers on there.
- Poor Russell's trying to claw this back
into being a website.
We just, we need it to be physical.
- I'm cool with it.
You know what, let's go with it.
'Cause like, I literally have this now.
I've made a new Spitball like printer
that is heat paper only, right?
- Could you burn, like could you just buy regular paper
and just get the right, instead of ink,
you just have a hot end?
What if you just
did that?
We're gonna laser the printer.
You know, you probably could.
Like you just change the, I don't know, what is it?
Like a dot printer or whatever?
It just goes back and forth, left and right.
- A little soldering
iron in there.
- Boom, with the right temperature, obviously, right?
- I want my news printed on sterling silver every morning.
(laughing)
- Lead.
I
meant
just burning paper, but that's good too.
The world yearns for Google Reader, Russell.
You want an RSS feed but has your subscriptions and newsletters and stuff in it too.
I spent a lot of time in my RSS reader and it's still there, man.
You can make your own little newspaper-y, Markham is Red thing, but it takes some work.
This is way too far, but I want to bring it
back to the lasering food idea that we had.
Yes!
pancakes in the morning just have your news on top of
your morning toast with
the weather and the stocks yeah exactly I
saw someone do that that's
great
there was a yeah an Arduino project years ago or someone
made that awesome
okay wait how did so you're making newspapers what kind of ink and paper do
they use why don't you just buy a bunch of newspaper and the newspaper printer
I
think it's called newspaper paper yeah it's like a its own thing their
ink
can't be expensive you know what I mean like by the free press are pretty cheap
There are
no newspaper printer machines that are smaller than a room, you know
I think it's meant for scale
I don't think anyone has invented the cheap newspaper and cheap ink but only makes one yet.
Yet. I love the burnin idea
I want I think like the heated paper like is repeat receipt paper expensive
Why don't they just make eight and a half by eleven versions or whatever?
I've
seen people take like Ender 3 printers 3d printers and
Change out the extruder for like a pen
Draws you could have your little soldering iron writing the words like it's drawing a pen like you pick up penmanship
And it's
a in your own hand tomorrow
morning
There
will be mostly
cloudy like it's writing onto your paper by burning it with a soldering iron. That's fun
Oh, that's just sketch boom
Every day it erases you have to send it back every I guess that's e-reader though, right? I don't know
Yeah, you want a Kindle?
It all comes back to e-ink, baby
All right
I did see someone take a 42 inch e-ink screen put it on their wall and it's just the New York Times front page
It's gorgeous every
day. Dude, we might have to re-Spitball this. We're
gonna have to do some research on some burning paper
I like the burning thing a lot. I think maybe it didn't catch on cuz the fire risk
Well, bristeak paper or whatever, right? Like I wonder if it's like how hot does it have to be?
I don't know. Do you have to use a special paper?
- I just want to burn it. I don't want it to catch fire.
I think that's really, really similar.
- Like a marshmallow brown, you know,
like the perfect, perfect marshmallow.
- Toasted.
- Just
do it on marshmallow, man.
- Marshmallow,
and then you eat it afterwards.
- Yeah.
- I guess
marshmallows burn pretty often
and catch fire often, so it probably isn't a good analogy.
- I saw some really expensive marshmallow brand recently
that their packaging was advertising it
as being a great source of collagen.
- Wait, the marshmallow or the packaging?
- The packaging was advertising the marshmallow
as being a great source of collagen.
And it wasn't like your typical Puffs marshmallow,
it was some sort of homegrown looking thing.
- It's
basically health food.
- But I feel like that just kind of goes hand in hand
with the gamer juice.
(laughing)
- Gamerjuiced.
- I love it, we should call it that.
- With no vowels.
- Gamerjuiced.
- G-M-R-J-C.
- Gamerjuiced.
- By the domain.
(upbeat
music)
- All right, Jackie, what do you got for us this week?
- I have a serious food pitch,
or I have my, I'll do my less serious one.
- Excellent.
- Okay, so you know how, shoot,
I already forgot the name of the app,
but there's this alternative to Airbnb
that's been popping up
and it's house swapping.
So
there's this new app where essentially
if you agree to lending your house to strangers
while you're gone, then you have access
to everybody else's home on the app when they're gone.
And you just put
in your dates of like
when you're not there and then you can swap with somebody
and it costs nothing.
- Is this trusted house sitters
where you like watch their dogs too or whatever?
Or is that different?
- That's different.
This is like
- Swap.
- I
mean, I don't know. It's
kinda, I think I need to like watch some videos on how
it actually works. But anyway,
since I've been moved recently, I keep finding
that there's all these things that I need
and haven't bought yet. And it's
starting to pile up in expenses. And I was
like, why isn't there just a site for item swapping
or item exchanges that you can just
borrow other people's things?
Like you would just put it in,
like, can I please use such and such?
And then you could.
So basically if you agree to allowing people
to use your items, whether it's like lawnmower,
camping equipment, leaf blower,
arts and crafts equipment, something like that,
people can use it.
And then you, by allowing them to use your things,
you automatically can use their belongings.
But there isn't, it's not like for money.
It's just more of a community exchange.
And I understand that Facebook groups exist
and everything like that,
but there's a lot of other stuff going on in Facebook groups.
It's not as straightforward as that.
But like, for example, I really want to go camping
in the next few months.
And I'm like, man, I can't afford all this
camping equipment right now,
especially if I'm just going to use it once
and then never use it
again.
And
that's probably how most people
treat their camping equipment.
- I'll trade you my snowboard for a tent.
- And then you can rate people
after the experience,
like how well did they take care of your items?
Did they trash it?
Yeah.
- That's really interesting.
If this podcast has a thesis, it would be,
we need better community exchange stuff.
Like, I feel like we've danced around something
like this idea for a while, but that's great.
- It'd be cool to have like a wishlist of stuff
that you want in the near
future too,
which is like, I don't know, like crock pots or turkey.
You know, like when you want to cook a turkey or something,
I hate those giant pans, but I would love to borrow one.
- Yes.
- And then you could have this running list
And then, man, I would give up my, let's say,
dehydrator for a few months knowing that I would collect,
let's say, currency.
Or if I don't want to--
Kind of
website currency.
Yeah, like--
Karma.
Oh, I gave it to this person for two months.
I get points every time.
And then you can either buy points or exchange, right?
If you could do a trade.
Ideally, if I have a dehydrator and Jackie, you need a tent,
or like the other way around, I need a dehydrator.
I have a
tent, we would swap.
But if I don't, we could just create a currency
or something that would buy in.
And now you have like a three trade, right, or something,
or a four trade
going on.
And maybe the app could do that, right?
So Jackie needs a tent.
It's hard to make sure that those line up
at the exact same time.
You almost need to have like a, I lent out some stuff,
and therefore I have a few Jackie bucks, or whatever.
Or a-- yeah, I guess that's true.
- What you're saying, I'm agreeing with you, Russell,
that
if
you have it be asynchronous,
that it gives you a little bit more flexibility
and choices out there,
where you can pick from the menu of stuff
without having to make sure that you need the intent
the exact day that you get your dehydrator out or whatever.
- And that's the thing that I wasn't sure
how it worked with the home swapping,
'cause of course you're not gonna switch homes
with somebody at the same time.
- Maybe.
- Unless it's a one for
one.
- Possibly, but.
- What are the odds that your vacation
just the
exact other place at the exact
same time.
- Yeah. - Right.
- Yeah,
what if it was more like,
yeah, instead of the points part, it was,
all right, Jackie has,
like you have a list of stuff that you're listing
and the stuff that you need.
And as long as you have one thing out,
you can check one thing in, right?
And so it's just like
that
kind of trading, right?
And then that can open up the market to,
oh, I have three things out for trade right now,
but now I can get these three things
from these people on their lists
and now we can kind of do that swapping, right?
Like a library where if,
and then maybe you have to like help mark,
that'll help incentivize marketing your stuff
to be good and good looking, right?
'Cause people could just like take a picture
of their tent with their, you know,
their old
smartphones. - Smartphones in it.
- Yeah.
It's like, oh, I don't care.
As long as I have things listed, I'll get trades, right?
But.
- Yeah.
And then people could like rate the,
They could rate the borrower,
the item that they borrowed, the quality of it.
- Yeah, like parties, like hosting parties,
like folding chairs, like just everybody's got
like a hundred folding chairs in their house
and everybody needs folding chairs,
that hundred folding chairs for that party,
speakers, you know,
lights, stuff like that.
- Parties are a good one.
Weddings in general, all the leftover decorations
and stuff you have.
That could go a long way.
You'd be rich in this app.
- Right.
And dude, tents is a great example.
Like anything in anybody's garage, right?
Maybe that's what it's like, a garage swap or something,
like attic swap.
- Attic swap.
- Toys, dude, like kids' toys.
I could trade swap that all
day.
Like my kid outgrows the one-year-old toys.
Can I swap for two-year-olds?
And then I'll swap for three.
And now I've just contributed a bunch of one-year-old toys
into this system that are just forever swapped,
and I just keep swapping up to--
that
would be cool.
And everybody's saving so much money at the same time.
Right.
We need to go back to trading and bartering.
I feel like money became too easy to do everything.
And it's like too convenient
now to
just excel and buy things
and just, oh, let me just turn it into currency,
instead of just trading up.
Like those stupid penny, pen, like the,
you start with a pen and you trade up to a car
or some house or some,
like,
it's just, I don't know.
It just seems to equalize things for some reason.
- I
wasn't sure if I was needed to have
a food-related one or not.
(laughs)
- You did say that you had a not-so-serious one.
Do you want to do a doubleheader?
No pressure.
- Oh, this is the more serious one.
(laughs)
It's just, it's like,
just 'cause
it's so technical.
Oh.
(saxophone music)
- I've just been seeing,
you know how everybody's obsessed with protein recently?
- Oh yeah. - No.
- That's like the-- - I'm still.
- Okay.
- Sure.
- See,
I don't,
my problem is that I don't know
how much of the media I'm consuming
is because I'm like in the food science scene
and how much of it is like mainstream.
- Yeah, totally.
- So in my eyes, everybody's obsessed with protein recently
and especially when you are looking at food products,
it's always, that's one of the things
that they always will try to list.
Even like cereals, there's so many protein cereals now.
If you go to the--
- That I have seen. - Protein cereals?
- If
you go
to Meyer and you just walk down
the cereal section, it's so funny,
like the cereal section's turning into the wine section
and that the really expensive cereals are on the top
and then like the cheap generic ones are at the bottom.
- It's so true. - And on top,
and on top are these $10 a box protein cereals
that are made with like, I don't know, pea protein,
egg white, just anything so that they can say,
"16 grams of protein per bowl of
cereal."
But anyways, I'm seeing protein-dense products
are trending, but what they don't tell you
is that a lot of plant proteins,
the protein isn't as bioavailable
because there's these things called anti-nutrients
that are found in legumes and plants
that inhibit your body's ability to absorb protein.
And
so you
see all of these plant protein products
that are trending and I feel like eventually
that's gonna become common knowledge
that just like, oh, plant protein, it's not the same as,
and it already is in the fitness and influencer space.
Like the carnivore diet, that was in response
to the amount of plant protein that's everywhere.
People are like, I'm just gonna eat meat and butter for--
- Ever. - Scott
looks confused.
Have you not seen the carnivore diet at all, Scott?
- From way back when, I'm still trying to figure out
the difference of the plant protein and not plant protein.
- Okay, so it's
like, part of it's like amino acids.
There's like that laundry list
of the different kinds of amino acids.
And meats have a ton of them,
whereas legumes only have like a few.
And it's not as easy for your body
to do useful things with fewer amino acids.
- Got it.
- So anyways, the research that I did for grad school
was taking plant proteins and fermenting them.
And the yeast that you use to ferment the proteins,
the yeast themselves produce a bunch of amino acids
that are really beneficial.
So my invention, and I think it's starting to catch on,
but I haven't seen it on any shelves yet,
is they need to start making
amino acid enhanced plant proteins.
- Wow.
- Protein beer?
Is that what you're saying?
- No, it's just like, it's taking plant protein,
fermenting it, and then selling it.
'cause it's like a much better product
than just like the unfermented plant protein.
- We gotta cut this pitch out.
We can't put this out there, it's too good.
This is incredible.
(laughing)
- Fully
grounded in
reality.
- Yeah, it's too good.
- The thing is, I like want to make this so bad,
but in order to do this,
you have to have like all of this fermentation technology.
Like you have to have the - A
manufacturing supply chain. - Rent
it, just rent it. - Rent
it, use the bartering system.
I know they make, they make like those drawers that you use for like baker's yeast, like
to make bread.
Bread drawers.
Proving.
That would
work.
Yeah, proving drawer.
That would, I could start with that maybe.
The thing is, I don't know if people care enough about like any of the science of it
to like They
just market it until they care. It
says 16 grams of protein. It's
good enough, right? Yeah.
And then
like the yeast have all these other, not all yeast, like there's those like the candida
yeast that's like a pathogenic strain of yeast that's bad.
- Who?
- The like Saccharomyces yeast,
they have all these health benefits,
like they're anti-carcinogenic and antioxidants
and they improve your cholesterol.
And it's like, they do all of this crap that,
but nobody's out there just like taking yeast supplements.
So.
- Right.
- Yeah.
- This is like
Russ said,
this is a branding exercise entirely.
You have to like figure out how to explain this
to someone who's glancing at a box of cereal
next to the other
box of
cereal.
- Have you
made this before, Jackie?
- Yeah, yeah, I have.
- Does it taste like tea or like a protein shake or like?
- It tastes like, the yeast we used was like a relative
of baker's yeast, so when you walk into the laboratory
it smells like a bakery, and the
products taste
like it,
taste like bread.
- Can we use like cottage laws somehow,
just to get this on the market really quick?
I'm just making this at home and selling it real quick.
It's bakery bread, but protein.
- So it
tastes like
bread?
- Yeah, so you can
take like a really neutral plant,
tasting plant, like a chickpea,
you
can
add the yeast to it,
And after a three day fermentation,
the chickpeas would smell like bread and taste like bread.
The texture is the hard part.
- So you would take pea protein, sugar, water,
and yeast and make a bread drink.
- You don't have to add sugar
'cause there's already like carbohydrates.
- You had me until drink.
Why drink?
- Yeah, drink.
- You want bread drink?
- Well, I don't know yet.
I don't know.
It might be, like, if you drink protein shakes
every day,
like anything, give me anything, right?
- Yeah.
- Like this would be the alternative.
This would be like the slow drip.
Like, you know how people drink coffee in the morning
and then like a little tea in the afternoon.
This would be the, like the second drink, you know,
you're, I'm guessing here, but like you're maintaining,
you don't want to take all your protein at once.
You kind of want to do certain protein in the morning
and then certain protein in the evening.
And maybe this would be like the lunch pick me up,
throw a little caffeine,
a little Celsius branding on there maybe.
and you have like, Mr. Beast is there.
Well, I mean, like you have the caffeinated versions
that have protein, but then like how much protein
would be in there, like 20, 16 grams or something?
That's still better than like not having a protein drink.
Right?
I don't know.
I think this is like legit.
These cereal companies are taking some protein powder
or whatever and just like adding it in.
It's not like an integral to the recipe, I imagine.
Right?
For a lot of these cereals and
stuff.
Some of them are like legume based,
but they're not fermenting it.
We'll just be like, I don't even know.
- I was wondering if you could market this
directly to the Kelloggs and General Millses of the world.
If you had your really cool
enhanced plant protein alternative that you could say,
hey, if you use my product,
then your cereals or whatever it is that they make,
your oatmeal is like,
you can market
that it has extra benefits.
It has antioxidants now because of my cool thing.
- That's one of the sad parts of being a food scientist,
if you come up with any technology while you're at the
company, it usually just belongs to the company too.
So you gotta do it independently.
- You share it on Spitball,
and then one of the people on Spitball takes it.
(laughing)
- And then they cut you a commission.
- I thought you were gonna say the sad part is that
people don't give a crap about nutrition.
(laughing)
Still got a Whopper for lunch.
- This magic spoon
cereal is made of milk protein,
which just sounds so unappealing,
like a nice big bowl of milk protein.
- Okay, have you guys had that before?
I've never had it, I hear ads for it all the time.
- I have had it before, it's hard.
Every one of the ones that I had
was like a work out of the jaw.
It was fine, it wasn't milk tasting or whatever,
it was like a lightly sweetened Reese's Puffs alternative
or whatever.
They had it at Costco and then there was something about it though, like the aftertaste had this
like, I don't know, this like chemically, it had like a
chemically aftertaste
to it
that you like, maybe because I just love Froot Loops and like, and that one I got was Froot
Loops base and you're just like, this is not Froot Loops and it's too, something about
it was like the artificial about it was really prominent.
They really had to try to make it taste good or something because it was like keto friendly
or whatever and it was at Costco and I've always.
- Wait, is
that the Catalina Crunch one?
- Oh,
the Catalina Crunch one?
I
know that one too.
I've gotten that.
- That one's horrible.
- So bad.
- I've tried that one.
I don't know what that one's made of.
- Anything keto friendly that,
like I got keto brownies back in the day.
Those were awful.
They need more Stevia in all of it or something.
Is Stevia
okay for
you, by the way, Jackie?
Speaking of.
- For Stevia?
- Asking
real questions now.
- Yeah.
Is it like awesome?
Is it like a miracle sugar?
- It's fine, yeah.
There's like, well, that's the thing that's really complicated in the food world is that like every single ingredient, there will be some research like demonizing it.
And then there will be other research being like, it's amazing.
It's so good for you.
But there isn't there isn't enough bad
press
on
Stevia yet to be, yeah, to be of concern.
Cool.
Because I feed my kids.
We got a couple more years at least, Russell.
I feed my kids Zevia drinks because it's like, I guess it's better than anything else.
Right?
Yeah.
I would, Jackie, I think you should make a couple and let us try it or something.
I think
it's actually pretty good.
We'll send
free
samples to our listeners.
There
it is.
Yeah.
You
heard it here first.
Are there a bunch of different protein drinks out there besides protein shakes?
Like I only think of like the protein shakes.
Oh my God.
New high protein, low calorie beer targets gym goers.
It's called Barbell Brew.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's pretty good.
That's good.
Amazing.
Well, dear listener, if you're enjoying our podcast over a bowl of Buff Bites
protein cereal, we hope you enjoyed yourself. Thank you very much for listening. And thank
you so much, Jackie, for joining us. This was so fun.
This was so much fun. I'll do another one.
Yes, please. We'd
love to have you. Our website is Spitball.show. There you can find links to
our YouTube channel, other social media. We'd love to hear from you. Email us feedback, comments,
ideas, we are podcast@Spitball.show. That's also how you can follow us on the Fediverse,
such as Mastodon, we're podcast@Spitball.show, or on BlueSky@Spitball.show. Our subreddit is
r/spitballshow. Our intro/outro music is Swingers by Bonkers Beat Club. Please, if you wouldn't mind,
that one friend of yours who is too much of a gym rat and they are always screaming as they throw
down the weights and you're like, "Ugh, I wish that they weren't so into being at the gym." You
You need to distract them.
They need a distraction.
And if you could send them our show so that they have something to listen to
while they're working out, that would be really helpful.
If you wouldn't mind also leave us a review, Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever
it is that you're listening right now.
If you could add subscribe, whatever buttons next to the name of the show,
that would be helpful.
A new episode is coming out in two weeks.
We will see you then.
I accidentally dropped something at Planet Fitness once and then somebody did the lung pull-up.
Really?
I like, accidentally, it was a total accident. It was like, you're not supposed to, oh, it was like the lap pull-down
and then I like thought that it was all the way up and then I dropped it and it like slammed and then somebody
did
the lung pull-up.
It was you.
That's body shaming.
I was like, I'm never coming back here.
(laughing)