I'm Scott, I'm Russell, and I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three modem mystics and a guest empty our 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.
And this week, I am delighted to be welcoming our guest.
Today we have John joining us.
John is a lot of things.
John is a radiologist and a licensed pilot.
VFR and IFR?
- Yes. - Both?
- Yes. - Yes.
Kombucha business owner, D&D enthusiast,
3D printing enthusiast, avid outdoorsman, hockey player,
all around enthusiast of nerd culture.
John, welcome to Spitball.
- Oh, thanks, it's a pleasure to be here.
Thank you for having me.
- We're so excited to have you.
This is gonna be a good time.
John, among other things, you are a pilot
and you have flown across state lines to come visit me and my family before.
So for this week, I wrote a game that I'm going to be calling Plane Nonsense.
In Plane Nonsense, it's very simple.
I have...
Humanity took a while to settle on the ideal form factor for
planes and other flying machines.
And, uh, for this week, I have a list of all kinds of wacky Wikipedia flying
machines, and then a couple that I made up that I peppered in.
So I not only have descriptions to read you, but I also am going to be sharing photos with you,
which I'm very excited about. So if you're listening on your podcast app, look at the
chapter markers. And we're going to start as always, as we do with our guest, John.
Oh boy.
John, I have to tell you about the Caproni CA-60 Trenzero. This is an Italian plane in 1921 that
was a flying boat with a 100 passenger capacity, eight engines and nine wings. Is this a real
plane or is this a thing that I AI'd up? Oh boy. I'm gonna thinky thing this one
up. It looks like something that somebody might have tried but I don't think so.
It's a real thing! It's the cruise ships of planes. It flew once and then it crashed on the second
flight and never flew again but their dream was to make it transatlantic.
That's right. That actually that checks out then. Yeah. We made it to the Titanic
once. Let's fill it with people now and try it again. Right. Exactly.
Scott, I am excited to tell you about the Goodyear inflatoplane, a 1956 standard
looking fixed-wing propeller plane made entirely out of inflatable fabric. Real
or made up? That looks like an inflatable plane and that definitely is made up.
There is no way. That is a real photo of a real plane that I got from Wikipedia.
That is there were 12 prototypes made between 1955 and 1962.
Is that fit in a suitcase or something? That's crazy.
Yeah, my checked luggage is another plane with my kayak.
Russell, I want to tell you about the Vought V-153 Flying Pancake.
This is a 1942 all wing design plane built for World War II.
Real or made up?
Um, that can't be real.
That can't be real.
That is a real plane.
That's by the British.
That's right.
That one I recognize.
You recognize it?
Yeah, I do.
I love how we go from landing gear.
We need as many wings as possible for the Johns.
And now it's just like, no, we just need all wing.
That is all we're looking for now.
More wings.
Just one more.
We need more wing.
This thing was actually pretty successful
and flew in 190 flights over World War II, but it had a pretty high angle of attack,
which meant that takeoff landing stalls, it was a giant airbrake.
It was really, really hard to go steeply with this thing, so it didn't take off as a design.
The next one.
Wow.
John, I would like to share with you the BB Crabwalk STOL.
This is a 1970s bush plane prototype that can handle high crosswinds due to 12 wheels
that can swivel up to 120 degrees like caster wheels.
That's funny because I was just looking at the Hummer videos with the crab walk, but
I'm going to call it shenanigans on this one.
That's shenanigans, I made that one up.
Very good.
It's just a bush plane with way too many wheels.
It's a centipede.
Yeah, that one's pretty obvious I think.
Scott, the Conair XFY Pogo, a short and stout propeller plane from the Cold War era that
It had tail two wings and then another tail to form an equilateral X and it took off vertically like a rocket
Really, I was gonna ask the wing is yes. It's just an X wing the wings coming out of the bottom of it
plus wing
Gonna say bullshit on this. How do you even get inside that thing? That's a real one
It was around the same time in the Cold War that we were working on jets and they decided jets jets are better
Jets are better.
That's right.
Russell, the
Hiller VZ1
Pawnee, a Cold War
flying platform. There were
six different models made with guardrails and
helicopter controls that you sat on top
of, spinning rotor blades.
Real or made up? Just an old guy
on a walker on a UFO. I think
I've seen this before. This looks like a
trampoline, like one of those
exercise trampolines with
quadcopter, you know? Early, early drone. But I think this is real. I think I've seen
a video about this. This is real. Very good. Yes. I got to read you this quote. You ready?
"Dynamically stable, even though the pilot and center of gravity were fairly high up.
In testing, the prototypes flew well, but the US Army judged them to be impractical
as combat vehicles, as they were small, limited in speed, and barely flew because of the ground
cushion effect." I think this is a strategic camera angle we're looking at here from Wikipedia.
Oh, it's like right off the ground.
It's like an inch off the ground.
One more time through.
Next, we have the the Hafner Rotobuggy.
John, this is a British World War Two prototype Jeep with
helicopter blades for air dropping behind enemy lines.
They tested being pulled behind trucks like a kite.
Nope.
That's real.
That was a fake thing.
Oh, come on.
Asked a Jeep with a helicopter blade on top.
Gotta look up the Hafner Rotobuggy.
It's awesome. The name is ready for this two men could fit in it and two men were required to pilot it one to drive
It is an automobile and one to drive it with the control column as an airplane
That thing's ridiculous tests worked, but there were more practical alternatives that came along Wow
So they discontinued it Scott the clam clipper the sj11 clam clipper a 1940s flat
Fuselage plane that can open along a horizontal seam creating a giant airbrake for short or damaged runways
There's absolutely no way this is real
The back wheel is like floating in the air
Let's make a plane and let's make it fat. That's what this is. Clam clipper? That's just like the greatest name ever
It's extra
The Stippa Caproni, a 1932 giant wooden barrel tube
with an airplane fuselage inside the tube
and a quote, "in-tubed propeller."
Real or made up?
- Oh my, looks like it might work
'cause that's what modern planes look like maybe.
So I'm gonna say yeah.
- Is that what modern planes look like?
- Like the two on the side of those planes.
- Literally a cannoli with a propeller dude.
This is an Italian plane.
It is Italian and you are correct.
Very good.
It's your people.
You are right.
That is a real one.
The Bernoulli's principle made the aircraft's propeller way quieter and more
efficient, but it had a low top speed of only like 81 miles an hour and 131
kilometers an hour.
So it didn't do very well, but cool idea in principle.
Russell, I think you got all three, right?
Am I right?
I think you might've.
Wow.
Congratulations.
I'm going to call you our winner this week because I'm not keeping track very
closely.
You did it.
Great work.
Would you like to pick who goes first?
- Of course, that's what we do every week here, right?
- That's right.
- We're so consistent. - Who wants to go first?
I'm gonna give it to Scott.
- Do it, Scott, go first.
What do you got for us?
- All right, this idea came from earlier today
when I was trying to Google something that I wanted
and realized it didn't exist.
I actually should, I almost texted Leo and be like,
"You must know of this."
Okay, there's a million streaming platforms right now,
but I'm only watching one show at a time.
I just feel like that's true with most people.
All I want is a simple website
that I can just toggle on and off.
Hey, I'm watching this.
This is on Paramount+.
I wanna toggle on Paramount+.
It'll automatically go through
and start that subscription for me.
I have all my information set up.
And it goes, every single,
Netflix is different from HBO,
is different from Paramount, whatever.
And it'll just automatically go through the website
and sign me up for that.
And then when I'm done with that show,
I go back to that website,
turn that one off, turn on the next one.
Yes, I'm gonna be paying for the full month on that,
but that's better than paying for six at a time
it is. And that's the entire thing. Just a simple on and off website that goes through and turns them on.
Absolutely. Streaming services are becoming totally untenable. It's way more expensive than cable bundles ever were.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. I hear a lot. I'm not a big football fan,
but I know that it's an absolute pain to watch football games because they're on like 20 different services.
I want the same thing. I just turn it on just for this game, turn it off, turn it on just for this game.
I want to go to your website, Scott, and not say I am interested in Paramount Plus this month.
I want to say I want to watch Ted Lasso and figure it out for me
I want this thing to be a watch list system where like it's in the background
Maybe it's even the app on the TV to like loading up whatever BS service. I need to be subscribed to oh
I have to have peacock for that. I don't want to know that I have peacock right now. I
Want to watch the show and just that's it
When I've reached the end of the season it like ass. Hey you plan it on season two. What are you thinking?
We noticed you dropped off that other show. Okay, and it's like managing it all in the background. Here's my credit card
Here's my zip code figure it out
We have all these freaking AI browsers now that can click boxes and sign up for stuff and all that for you
Yeah, this seems automatable in a way. It wasn't three years ago
I could have sworn this must have existed, but it just is not out there
I would pay money for this service because you would save money for this like even if it was just a regular human being
like
- Uncle Mikey's subscription management system.
(laughing)
- Yep, like, listen, I just bought a subscription, bud.
Like, can you turn this off after a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely, man.
- Oh, I should like that.
- You know, end of the month, I got you.
- It like, it finds the absolute limits
of how many accounts you can share.
Like, I know like, Paramount locks you down,
but HBO doesn't give a shit.
And they're just like, yeah,
you can have as many people on this as you want.
So we just max it out, trying to save everyone money.
- It's five strangers that are just coordinating
and one account on the back end.
I'm logged in with xrxrzbo@monkeys.tv,
but I don't even need to know
because my TV just takes care of it for me.
- You could probably take it
beyond just streaming services,
anything that's subscription-based.
Just say, you know what, if I'm not using it, close it down.
And then if I log in to use it again, sign me back up.
And then the second I stop it, drop it.
- Exactly, 'cause if I was gonna use it that month,
then I'll pay for it for that month.
but if not, just automatically turn it off.
- Whoa. - Yeah, that's fantastic.
- That's probably even better,
'cause now you just have, that's the whole service, right?
You pay monthly for it to track,
and yep, that is awesome.
Update the scripts.
- Oh, I want that for a planet fitness or something,
where I'm pulling into there,
and it instantly signs me back up
instead of having to go through
the whole rigamarole each time.
- Oh, yeah.
- 'Cause the cancellation is just evil.
- Or all those Apple free trials and stuff like that,
or things that come with your hardware, just cancel them.
When the free trial's up, just shut it down.
- I noticed you haven't looked
at that security camera in four months.
You do not need the Pro Plus whatever subscription thing.
Yeah, right, right.
- Then you get robbed the next day.
- It's like a watchdog on your phone and on your computer
looking at what services you use a lot.
I know that there are like the Rocket Monies or whatever
from a few places that'll make it easy
to show you what subscriptions you have.
So it seems like we're like almost there.
- And I think they'll cancel them for you,
but I don't know if they're automatically running it.
- I want them to sign me up too.
- And they'll drop you, but yeah,
they won't get you back in and help you
with when the ones that you are using not drop.
You know, you're gonna have to go through
and still manually do that, I think.
- You always need those like quickly.
You forget later, but you need it when you need it.
It's date night or whatever,
and you want to watch that show and oh God,
let me get the credit card
and do the rigmarole and stuff.
- I think the streaming services would love this too.
If you just like had the setup.
to make it easy to quit their service?
- To sign up for their service, right?
Like this is a sign up. - I suppose.
- This is the sign up version, right?
That's what you tell them.
Oh, and there's a little caveat.
I gotta turn, I gotta be able to turn these off as well.
But you just, you start with the, yeah.
- (mumbles)
- Don't worry about that part.
- That part's, you know, forget that part.
But easiest way possible to sign up for your service, right?
Or you sell, you have two different companies.
The sign up one and the sign off one.
And then, this is.
What?
And they each require a subscription.
And they try to--
the sign-off one cancels your sign-on one
if you haven't used it in a while.
The company that's doing the sign-up
is one selling to the streaming services,
and then the one that does this--
the people on the other side don't really care.
Well, like you said a minute ago,
this could be just a person.
So are those two people now managing
the sign-ups and the shutdowns?
Ying and Yang.
-They hate each other.
-Mortal enemies across the universe.
-They're in the same office, they share a desk and they just despise each other.
-It would definitely be more complicated for somebody like me
who keeps half of his subscriptions so his daughter can watch stuff.
-Right. -Oh, how does it know?
-I'm like, "Can I cancel HBO now?"
No.
When's that season over?
-That just means that everyone needs a subscription.
That's all. Needs a service.
-Or everybody needs me. -There you go.
I was gonna say, well, offline, we'll talk about my login.
Sorry, the service canceled it.
I don't know what to tell you.
The auto service canceled.
We're putting John's HBO password in the podcast description.
Don't keep this in, but I give my HBO to everyone because they don't give a crap.
Like I have so many people on my HBO.
It does seem like the kind of service that you could go to and make your daughter go
to, and as a condition of keeping me in the family plan or whatever, daughter, you have
to have an account with this thing.
And she has the watchdog that also watches, "Hey, turns out, honey, you
don't actually need that one service because the app told me," and it's like
monitoring across all the people you share with and knows about those links too.
Yeah.
That, that, that would be amazing.
It would save me a lot.
I, I, it's actually gotten to the point.
Yeah.
It's so ridiculous that I think I would save a lot of money if I just canceled
everything and just bought the shows that I want.
That's the thing.
It'll calculate that automatically.
It's, "Hey, is it cheaper to just buy it by the episode?"
PSA, do you guys know about Movies Anywhere?
There's a website that Disney and a bunch of others
came together and made years ago.
You plug in your Microsoft and your iTunes
and your YouTube music and your whatever else
and you forget about it.
And then when you buy a movie on one of the platforms,
it just magically shows up on all of the other platforms.
Everything you've purchased purchases.
- I actually have that, yeah.
- It's so awesome.
You can just have that video that was free on iTunes
10 years ago on all the services.
It's great.
- They just share with each other now?
Yeah.
It's one of the few exceptions to the rule
that all these companies are evil
and want you to be stuck in their apps.
For some reason or another, they came together.
I think I got a notification from one of them
that they weren't participating anymore.
Yeah, YouTube's temporarily having a dispute
right now with Disney, but it'll come back.
I hope.
But yeah, kind of fun.
We need that, but automatically managing subscriptions too.
So here's your big game plan.
You buy Movies Anywhere, the company.
You already have the licensing deals.
You expand it.
- Wow.
- There you go.
- The thought to actually own digital copies of movies
and shows again sounds ridiculous,
but maybe not anymore.
You guys are convincing me.
- You have young kids, Russell.
Surely you've watched the same Frozen or Cars movie
more than once by this point, right?
- Right, and why am I paying for the subscription?
- Cancel the subscription and buy three movies?
- To watch the same shows over again, right?
What am I doing, right?
It's like.
- The Office again, huh, Russell?
Okay, why don't you just buy The Office?
Right, like Carry Watch is three shows,
maybe four on rotation.
Like--
And they're all four different services.
We own the digital versions of that,
like the physical copies of it.
I bet, you know, but like, I don't know.
Now I'm questioning everything.
Sounds like you want to get a Plex server going
is what you want.
Right, right.
And I can, you know, borrow.
Yeah, right.
'Cause I'm not gonna say anything illegal
on this podcast, right?
Yeah, no, you download some Linux ISOs from the Torus.
What are those, Leo?
Put them on your Plex server.
Yeah, man.
But yeah, that's interesting.
All right, Leo, what do you got for us this week?
Do you gentlemen have one or two foods or restaurant items or packaged things in a grocery
store that used to exist that don't anymore, that you wish still existed somehow?
Is there that one thing that you had that's nostalgic to you that they don't make or that
one recipe or whatever?
I was listening to an episode of a podcast
a couple of weeks ago, and the guy was talking
about how he, as a trade, is a flavor chemist.
And you can just send him some stuff and he'll say,
"Oh yeah, this is probably a little bit of oregano
and this, that, the other,
and I think this is how they made it."
And he's got spectrum analyzer tools and all that stuff.
Sharks, I'm coming to you today with an idea
for flavor chemists as a service.
If I could take the Teavana, which is now defunct,
and send a little Ziploc baggie of this tea
I have a stash of and say, what was in that?
Please build me a recipe.
I would pay a lot of money for that.
I think there are many people out there
who have that one Altoids that they don't make anymore
from when they were a kid that they really wish
they could have one more time or whatever.
You buy a bag on eBay, you get an old copy
of those Oreos that they don't make or whatever,
you send it into my cool lab and they give you the recipe.
- Whoa. - That's it.
Flavor chemist is a service.
So the Krabby Patty secret formula.
Yeah, exactly.
So lime Skittles, Leo.
They used to be--
I think it's now Green Apple.
They did change it back, but I know what you're talking about.
The Green Apple were not as good.
OK, good.
Then never mind.
I don't need this service.
No.
Screw your idea.
That's a great example, though.
There were people mad about it.
That was in a public library where they switched back.
But there's a lot of things out there
that they don't make anymore that I
have again. Like what? What are you, what's the number one thing that you're like?
Oh there's a Teavana tea, I don't know, I should have had more examples as I was
going into this, let's see. What happens, like for the lime Skittles on there, if
they weren't, let's say I want the green apple Skittles back because they don't
make those anymore, what do I get back from the service? Is it just like
here's the 36 ingredients? Here's 900 chemicals. I put them all together and I get like this gelatinous blob but it
-Tastes exactly like green apples.
-Yes, right.
-Where am I supposed to get malodextrophosphates or whatever?
[laughter]
-Then you have another service that can put all those together for you.
-I think as part of this, they could include some--
You put it in an air fryer and you dehydrate it,
and then you take it to the freezer that you have
and crank it extra low or whatever.
You could probably get some--
It's not going to be perfect.
You don't have an industrial warehouse assembly line like how it's made in your backyard
But home kitchen could probably get you part of the way to making a skittle, right?
Yeah, you have another variation
It gives you the closest equivalent of what you can make with the ingredients that you would typically have without your menzo benzate
Whatever you get the extract right like this like a vanilla extract
But lime skittle that stuff is safe for human consumption. Maybe the company gives you some they're also a store
You can buy your weird aspartame whatever that you need from them
Yes, like your your first send-in recipe includes the first kit free. I've always wanted a bulk order red dye 40
Who hasn't?
Red dye 41 so much better. You're missing out. I
Can see it working better for recipes like you just like wow, I really like that
That that that chicken, you know dish they have at that one restaurant send in the dish
And they could tell you how to make it at home or at that that fast food thing
a lot of chefs that do that online that they'll say oh yeah if you want to make
the the whatever it is the chick-fil-a you know breakfast sandwich here's
what's in it really and here's the sauce here's how you make the sauce
my gourmet version but but yeah the Skittles that'd be tough you know kudos
to the guy who makes that at home yeah is it possible to do like a fourier
transform unlike that chicken dish you're describing we're like this is
like the flavor the culmination of everything but we're gonna break it out
into all these things and mix them into a blob and send that to you?
I think I'm stuck on the blob part. The texture is gonna be tough.
I'm just impressed by the four-year transformation, you know, that's
radiology right there. If we can figure out what atmosphere an exoplanet has a
hundred billion light years away, surely we can figure out what's in that chicken
nugget that you just sent in, right? I got one, there was a tea that Trader Joe's
was made once like 10 years ago that was delicious it was a Black Forest
cupcake black tea they never made it again I would buy it for a hundred bucks
on eBay I'm sure someone out there has one left in a cupboard somewhere send
that in boom okay what about eat your candle you know all those candles that
smell so good you turn it into something you can eat oh there you tropical
paradise candle. EatYourCandle.com. You know what? Along those lines, if they could make coffee that
tastes like it smells the beans, that would be amazing. I want a chemist to
figure that one out. I would like to eat a tropical luau, please. Russell, that's an amazing idea. I don't know, every time I
smell the beans I'm like, "Ugh, it never tastes this good." Never does. I would, yeah, I
would eat that all day. That should be a chemistry problem. Let's call that guy up,
-Right. Let's call him up.
[laughter]
-Solve this.
-Now, I'm just thinking of all the things I want to eat but can't.
This goes back to the whole Tide Pod thing.
What would that taste like?
-Edible Tide Pods.
-If it tastes like how it looks.
-Tastes how it looks.
-Yes. You see something that just looks delicious.
-That's definitely more art. That's more interpretive.
-I bet you I could come up with a flavor you guys would think,
"Yes, that's Tide Pod." -That's Tide Pod.
[laughter]
-Just a Tide Pod.
(laughing)
- Russell, what do you got for us this week?
- All right, so this one's been in the hopper
for quite some time, but I guess I didn't pitch it before.
So I think I talked about, I have this electric scooter
and it was really great 'cause I could go to the bars
and just scooter home.
Probably is pretty still illegal.
I think that's still drunk driving.
- This is all allegedly. - Allegedly, right?
- Yeah. - Your honor.
- There's no proof. - That's right.
But I think what I'm suggesting is it'd be nice
if I could drive there and then Uber home,
but not leave my car there.
I'll be fine in the morning.
I just don't wanna go pick up my car,
deal with all of that noise.
So why don't we just start hooking up tow hitches
to trucks and Ubers and say,
hey, I'll pay an extra 25 bucks if you tow my car, right?
This is a, you know, from a $10 Uber to now a $40 Uber ride,
but man, it is worth every penny
'cause now I can have the five more drinks, let's say,
if I wanna have five.
This was back when I could have five more
and then just be able to get myself and my car towed home.
These tow hitches are cheap.
It's like you could add them onto existing tow hitches.
It's not a lot and you're like,
it's not like you're trying to hook up a chain and all that.
It's like two miles, you know,
you put a limit on it or something and you're good, you know?
- Russell, I wanna, you can do without the tow hitch.
Just have normal Uber,
but you just have one extra guy in the car
who just hops out and drives your car home along with you.
That's what I was thinking.
- Uber guy follows you, picks him back up.
- Uber X, Uber Black, Uber plus another guy.
- Yeah, exactly, Uber plus another guy, that's the website.
- I mean, that's a real thing though.
Yeah, I mean, people having to go back
and pick up their car, especially if it's far away.
That's a real pain.
- Yeah.
- So yeah, I like that.
Some way to get that car home,
whether it be by tow, flatbed, or an extra driver.
Maybe they just have a Uber bus service
that drops off all the guys
that'll drive you home in your own car.
Oh, that's true.
The bus just pulls up to the bar.
It's just making the loop a bus full of people.
You got him, you got them.
Our drivers.
Yeah.
Yep.
Just take them home.
When they're done.
And then I think, well, the bus would just come again.
Oh yeah.
The bus is an Uber for Ubers.
Uber for Uber.
Uber Uber.
That's great.
Cause like at last call, right.
Or like when all the bars closed, you just have the buses come and
to start releasing all the people to drive them.
- What do you do?
I'm a Uber, Uber, Uber, Uber driver.
- Uber squared. - Uber duper.
- Uber duper.
- This is okay, guys.
Here's the other side of this.
It's a safety win, right?
Less drunk driving.
Bartenders don't have to feel as nervous about over-serving
or less drunk drivers on the road, right?
You get the city government to sponsor this program.
All right, this is where we start going.
- Make it municipal, I love that.
- Incentivize. - That's right.
- Extra drinking.
We will pay you to drink more, love your government.
- All right, all right, the angle's gotta be
a little different, right?
It's sponsored by Budweiser.
- Yeah, right.
- But yeah, it's a safety issue.
- No, that's great.
You could definitely get other people to pay for this,
whoever it is. It's either the bar, it's their city township, whatever.
JAYLEE: I know in some places they have state laws, on the West Coast for example, where
to drive Uber it has to be an electric vehicle, it has to be a Prius, it's gotta be... yeah.
I wonder how many, like, what the stat breakdown is of the Uber and Lyft apps for what kind
of cars there are. Are there a lot of, like, towing-capable, tow-package Uber drivers out
there who are ready to be called up here in the Midwest?
I don't think anyone's ever Googled "tow package for Prius" before, but that would be interesting.
[laughter]
That's... yeah. I feel like most Ubers I've been in have not been towing-capable. So this
would be a supply and demand problem at first.
Maybe more trucks would get sold and you'd see more truck Ubers, right?
I mean they have like an uber XL don't they with the big vehicles like a SUV. Yeah
Yeah, so you just add uber tow or a drunk towing, right?
It's the Midwest we have all these snowplow
Trucks that are just kind of sitting there during the summertime like just they all have tow hitches
You know, there was one time I rescued some surgical techs from a hotel bar and got them to the hospital in the middle of the night.
No, they weren't in the bar. They were coming from the hotel. I was in the bar.
So, they weren't drinking.
Anyways, but it was like big snowstorm and everything snowed in and nobody could get in and out of this parking lot.
And I'm there with my pickup truck and I had remote started it from inside.
I had no idea what was going on.
So they're standing by my pickup truck when I get out there, like, is this your truck?
I'm like, yeah.
They're like, can you take us to the, you know, hospital?
We're supposed to be in there working.
Uh, they called us in because nobody else could make it in.
And I'm like, I'm like, I can try.
And, uh, and no one else was going to anywhere.
And I, you know, I was parked, unfortunately on a, on a slope that I had to back up.
Bottom line is I wasn't doing so well.
And I'll be your designated drunk.
A, I think it was a Lyft driver, actually.
Actually, it might have been both.
He had the little signs in his window.
In a minivan, he goes blasting through the parking lot,
around behind the hotel, blazing a trail,
comes back the other way, pops out into the road and goes.
And I'm just like, that guy is my hero.
(laughing)
I don't think he was, I have no idea.
He was possessed.
But anyways, I backed up into,
I was able to back up into his tracks in my pickup truck.
He went through in a Honda, whatever, the Odyssey
or whatever.
And I'm in my F-150 and barely making it in his track.
I was like, that guy is a stud.
(laughing)
- Maybe it was a soccer mom, you know?
She's like, I gotta go.
I gotta go somewhere and I gotta be on the move.
This is it.
Minivan mode.
- It could have been.
- Yeah, minivan mode.
- Kid needs to be picked up from ballet, I'm going.
- Throw the e-brake, let's go, baby.
just it was impressive we have far deviated from drunk to well yeah let's
make that happen right guys like front going I like it I think it's it has
definitely merit good name it's definitely you know I know it's come up
before with my friends or they're like yeah shoot I don't know how I'm gonna
get my car to the next day I've got it you know be somewhere else in the
morning and it's just gonna be a pain so yeah that's cool I love that you don't
to do anything to make it either you just literally make a website and then
They just Uber to wherever you need to go or whatever it is.
It's all done.
I do wonder.
So like tow trucks do their thing when there's mechanical breakdown, but like
how many tow trucks are sitting waiting for something to do day to day, right?
That's probably more in the bad weather, but on a regular summer evening, like.
People want to go out and call your service.
That's a good way for making a few extra bucks as a tow truck, right?
That's true.
Honestly, people, people could just call the tow services to get Ubered home.
Yeah.
Why not?
Well, we could set up the app for the services.
Or not we, whoever develops this idea.
Oh, no, we can't.
Remember, this is the freebies.
We give away.
The idea is now yours, listener.
Maybe we can keep it.
We can.
We can try it.
We can do this one.
I'll vibe code it.
Delete everything.
Yeah, man, it's like usually there's probably
one hour in the middle of the night
where all the tow trucks can just be sitting outside
of the string of bars.
You know what I mean?
but then you have to sit in the...
Can I sit in my car being towed?
I don't know if I wanna be in a stranger's tow truck drunk.
Wee!
It's like when you get to be in a boat
getting towed or something.
You can be drunk driving,
but my car's not even started.
- You won't remember it anyway.
- Yeah.
Turn up some music.
- All right, John, what do you have for us?
-All right, so background.
At various points in my timeline, I found myself having a battle with a toilet.
-Yes.
That could be several things.
-I know, right?
-Did you lose?
-It's a battle.
-Sometimes I've lost.
No, so for various reasons, I found myself in situations where I'm regularly
having to plunge a toilet amongst other issues, but plunging for sure.
when I was working at a camp as a maintenance guy, and then later as a
counselor, I was a little type A kid growing up and didn't get enough fiber.
And so I had my own problem growing up for a little while there.
A little too much toilet paper, not enough flushes, you know what I mean?
But anyways, yeah.
And I was just like, you know what?
In this day and age, the modern world, we shouldn't have to plunge toilets.
You know, first and foremost.
That's the first part of this idea.
And then I was thinking, you know what?
Actually, the toilet is, it's a brilliant idea.
The design is great for like the 1800s,
but it's been a long time since anybody's really updated.
Sure, we got these seats that, you know,
will clean your backside and maybe light up at night
when you walk by.
But I want like a really smart toilet
that does a lot of things for me.
So that's what I came up with.
And I think in some ways,
some of these things exist out there,
but I'm not sure that the whole package does.
And I'm not sure what exists out there.
Maybe some of this is out there.
So here's my idea.
First of all, you have something that breaks up big loads
and sends them through.
And maybe we don't need that elbow anymore.
Now, the elbows are mainly to keep the swamp gas out
of your house, but maybe we can do it
with valves or some kind of flapper mechanism or something.
Again, it's not for us to design.
This is for you, the inventor out there--
The engineers will figure it out.
--to figure this out.
But yes.
But have a garbage disposal down there.
Just send that stuff through it.
So it's not going to get stuck anywhere.
Or, or jets have jets that are just black, just, just blasting this thing.
I've got a couple of names for these, for this idea.
And that gets into one of the names, but, uh, but then here's the thing.
I mean, so we're already processing all this stuff.
It's like, maybe we could be testing it.
Maybe we find out this, you know, we could do a fecal analysis.
We'd find out, Hey, maybe this guy's got colon cancer.
He's low blood in there.
Uh, you know, or he's, he's peeing and there's a little blood in there.
That means different things or protein in the urine or hey, wait a minute.
There's a little glucose in your urine.
Um, then we can detect, uh, early onset, uh, type one diabetes
before they go into a crisis.
You know, can we do that?
Um, you know, maybe, uh, get your, uh, get your floral in that, you know,
it basically be like, um, it'd be like Theranos for poop, but like not a scam,
but not a scam, please.
So the episode that there are notes for poop
- Poopinosis.
(laughing)
- All right, I'm opening the spreadsheet again
and renaming from smarter toilets to Fair enough for poop.
- We'll call it fair enough for poop though.
You know, so I got a couple ideas.
So it's a really smart toilet.
So it could be the IBM.
(laughing)
Or because of the Jets and stuff like that,
we'll call it the Turd Buster 2000.
The TBDK.
- Excellent, excellent.
- Yeah.
So that's kind of what I'm going with, you know,
and like the sky's the limit, you know,
you could be running all kinds of things
AI looking at your poop, who knows what it'll come up with.
But yeah, that's my true.
I'm delighted to inform you that the urine analysis that you add
to a toilet does exist withing this one as of last year.
But everything else garbage disposal makes a lot of sense.
Yes. Yeah.
Now, now, you know, I've got there's there's layers to this to this cake.
Gross. So
you don't have to go into the other layers.
So I hate dealing with, you know, the poop, but also like the toilet
and, you know, cleaning up.
And like when I was a camp counselor, the kids never hit the toilet.
So it's nasty.
And it's just like, you know what?
This this whole room, I should be able shut the door, hit a button,
and it just sterilizes the thing, just drops the bleach and then rinses it out.
And and it's like, why does that not exist?
And I guess it does exist, supposedly.
Somewhere, somewhere cooler than air.
But but but yeah, so and then I thought, well, you know,
maybe you could just have this all as a plug in unit plug and play.
Like you just deliver the whole thing.
It's a self-contained bathroom that you just install.
You just hook up the thing.
You just hook it up to your plumbing and electrical and any room's good to go.
Just drop it.
Just drop it by a by crane into the house.
You know, I mean, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this, but if I haven't,
my dad stayed at a cheap motel somewhere down south years and years and years ago.
And the bathroom in the cheap motel was one molded unit from the sink
to the toilet, to the shower, to the whatever was like those molded showers
that you get in.
but it was the whole thing.
And it had a little drain at the bottom middle.
So you could just freaking hose the whole thing down, shower
and sink and toilet.
All of it was one molded plastic piece that you just put in.
I want to. Yeah, I might not be the first to that idea, but you know,
I think I would incorporate it for homes.
But most importantly, like grind the poop up, get it out of there.
Don't let it get stuck.
Anyway, I don't want I don't want to get stuck in the elbow.
I don't want to get it stuck down the pipe.
I don't want anybody after ever like be trying to bust that up. Yes, it should be busted
I love the idea of just having a pressure washer in my toilet where I mean, it's just water
That's all a pressure washer is right? It's just a little more force the lid
30 gallons, right like a different lid. There's there's no reason you could this could be the lid. Yeah. Oh, yeah
just turn the lid you get you buy a special lid it like
like
all the water pressure that you have
because you attach another hose to it,
which is easy, right?
Just shoots it down, right?
Just like--
- I like that.
They actually have something like that for plug sinks,
that it blows up a balloon in your sink
and then it shoots water through the center of the balloon.
And so it creates the seal
and then the water pressure pushes the plug through.
- Whoa, okay.
- So, but again, I don't wanna be bringing a hose
into my toilet and dealing with that nasty.
I just want it to work.
But if your seat did it, that's cool.
If it somehow actually creates a seal
and then pressurizes the thing, it
wouldn't even have to be water.
You could just have like an air tank.
Yeah, compressed air could just blow that thing through.
[LAUGHTER]
You better have good plumbing.
Oh, yeah.
And the poor guy working the sewers that day.
Whoa.
Not good.
But no, I think that's it.
They do make a toilet plunger that seals to the rim
of the bowl itself.
And then it does the pressure thing.
Yeah, where you like kind of push on the whole thing
and it acts like a big airbag almost that you're pumping.
So build that in.
Build that into the seat, it's so good.
'Cause again, I don't wanna deal with a nasty plunge.
100%, I love that.
You also said why, like we could just get rid of the trap,
right, the P-trap, right?
Yeah.
Like why even have that?
- That's like also the cause of problems.
- It is.
I mean, you're trying to take a cylindrical structure
and move it through a S-turn.
(laughing)
- Right.
- It's kind of the square peg in a round hole thing.
- Something like that.
- And so here's the thing,
that's the way your sigmoid colon is.
That's why they call it the sigmoid colon
'cause it's like an S.
But when you poop, the muscles of your intestines,
they will pull things straight
and create a straight shot out.
And I mean, that would be hard to do mechanically
with a toilet.
So you just keep it straight.
(laughs)
But, and then, but the only question is then,
yeah, you know, there's two things.
I don't think anybody uses it for finding their rings
or whatever that dropped down the toilet.
At that point it's gone
because the poo's pushing it through.
But people do use it so that you don't get that gas.
So you just need something,
and a water seal is a great solution for that.
but something to seal it.
- Trap door.
I don't, I mean, right?
I don't know.
Even if it was just trap door.
- Trap doors are kind of how the incinerating toilet things
work for like campers and stuff, right?
Like the sawdust ones.
- I don't know.
- That is a thing, but they're not water.
Yeah.
Yes.
We have so many competing ideas out there,
but we've never put them together to one good one.
- Yeah, man.
Even the test, right.
Just like, it does feel like we've, I don't know,
some of that stuff, it feels like we're
in ancient technology.
Like as a millennial, right, we should be past the point.
- I'm entitled to the best toilet technology that we can.
- The minor inconveniences of life,
it's not even minor anymore.
Like they're just real.
They're just like the inconvenience.
The first world problem is now the problem.
And it's, but like, this is like, I don't know.
I've had some problems,
like there have been some toilet problems
and you're just like, I hate to be the guy
that's always having to do it.
Like I'm always the dude, right?
I don't know.
This just feels like that.
Yeah, it's a dirty job.
It is.
And it feels like technology could be the solution on that
one, that we don't need to be living in the dark ages.
No pun intended there.
[LAUGHTER]
John.
We've been living in the world where water toilets are a thing.
Why don't we do fire toilets?
Like, why can't this be fire toilets?
No.
Well, they do have incinerating toilets, right?
Let's just turn, let's just do that.
- That's a real thing?
I thought we were making that up.
- Just burn through like propane on every flush?
- What do you mean?
It's just fuel.
- I don't think they're, I think they're electric.
Maybe even.
- You don't have to light a candle after.
- You cook the poop.
- They turn to ash.
- Nah, you get the poop fan, you know,
and it burns outside.
- You can vent the gases just like anything.
- Right.
It shouldn't smell because it's burning.
You're burning all the bad smell.
(laughing)
- You've never burned hair before, have you?
- Things that burn don't stink, we all know this.
(laughing)
- Is it, are we burning off the methane?
Are we burning?
- You gotta burn it completely.
You burn it enough, yes.
- Okay.
- Then you just have CO2.
(laughing)
- Okay.
- Partially burn poop, partially burn poop,
probably not great.
(laughing)
- If you burn poop it doesn't stink, 'cause you burned it.
No, no, they have composting toilets, but they also have incinerating toilets.
Composting.
That's what I was thinking of earlier that I didn't say right.
Yeah.
There's all kinds of things, but yeah, nothing as far as I know that just
disintegrates it, pushes it through.
Make sure, whether it's a blade spinning in there, it chops it up, but yeah.
Or a combination, because probably there's sometimes where even the
turd buster ain't breaking it up and then you need a little force.
That's right.
That's right. Not even the poop knife.
The poop knife. Not even the poop knife.
That was the first thing I thought of when you said this idea, like an auto poop knife that just comes down.
Honey, I built this really cool new invention. You gotta come see it.
We burn poop to keep it moving.
Well, dear listener, if you have us on in the can, as so many of you do while you're working on your morning project,
Thank you very much for listening today, and we hope you enjoyed yourself. Thank you very much John for joining us. This was delightful
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- Oh man, I'm not gonna stop thinking about this problem now.
(laughing)
I can't believe I'm on a prehistoric piece of equipment.
You know what I mean?
Every time. - Yeah.