I'm Scott.
I'm Russell.
I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball where three aviation aficionados 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.
This week, Scott, I believe you brought our guest.
I did.
I brought our friend, Katie.
Katie, who is best friends with Della from episode 36.
Please go back.
Uh, Katie is a charismatic salesperson at heart.
She's lived the American dream and lived in more places than I can count right now.
She's worked every job under the sun from selling car insurance to running a small
city airport to doing a Silicon Valley startup, selling socks to working with
Wendy's to fight against lawsuits. She will be a fantastic
guest. So welcome, Katie.
Thank you.
We are so excited to have you.
I'd like the fighting against the lawsuits. I know. I want to
know. Yeah.
You're that he doesn't like lawyers.
I don't like lawyers. I had to say that as nicely as possible.
Yeah, you did. You did great.
A good like introduction leaves the listener wanting more. I
have so many questions.
Sometime we were talking in the pre-show Katie
Sometimes would guests like you come to us and have like a million billion ideas and have been gathering ideas from friends family and random strangers
We will do a round of intramurals to clear the decks of some reject half ideas
So who wants to get us started this week? Who's who's kicking it off?
Russell
Come on. All right, let's do it. Yeah, what do you got for us?
so
You know flowers. Okay, they heard. Oh, yeah, you've heard of them
But you need to get them right away.
You can't wait a day.
You gotta get them the day of.
You gotta get them now for a birthday, anniversary, whatever.
You can't get them a day early, you can't get them a day late.
So why not have drive-thru flower shops where you go roll up and you pick from the meals
of birthday, anniversary, Christmas, Mother's Day.
- A number seven.
- Yeah.
- Number seven, okay?
- Take a number seven with a Coke on the side.
- And literally you get, and what's good
about this flower shop is they get the fresh stuff.
Flowers, I think they rotate seasonally.
I don't know much about flowers.
But why not just get a number seven,
make it beautiful, and get it to my car.
Do I want it extra large?
Super size me.
Do I want a medium?
I don't wanna be overbearing.
This is my first birthday with this person.
Or a friend of a friend's birthday.
Throwback episode.
That's the idea.
It's a very simple,
hey, I'm gonna pick up flowers on the way home,
because that's the only way you do it anyway.
So might as well do it fast and easy.
- One of the very few things you can't get on Amazon
for same day or next day delivery is flowers.
So I gotcha.
- Okay.
- All right, who buys flowers not the day of?
Do you buy flowers a day before?
- Every woman everywhere.
I was just gonna say,
I think this might be a guy thing, you guys,
Because when you said in the explanation of it,
you were like, yeah, you don't buy them the day before.
You don't buy-- you have to buy them on the day.
No.
Every person I've ever bought flowers for,
I bought like two days ahead of time
because I knew I was going to see them.
Or I know your birthday's in two days.
Let me go ahead and--
I'm at the grocery store now.
I'm going to grab them for you.
But, but, all that to say--
That's two days of life that you stole from that gift.
Well, that's the thing.
Flowers--
That's true.
Typically, flowers are not yet in bloom
when you first buy them.
They're actually curated to be opened a few days
after they've been purchased.
That's their trick.
Yes, I know, I know.
But it's not--
But then you can't share the blooming experience, OK?
Like, that's what I'm buying it for.
No, I like this.
You want the experience?
I love that, bud, yes.
But I do think, though, you could expand this into--
I think it might need to be catered towards men,
because it seems to me like men are going to be the ones needing
to do this.
Oh shit, her birthday's today.
It's 9 AM.
I got to get somewhere.
But I would say add to that.
Make it like, oh, and it's flowers and gift cards,
flowers and wine, flowers and--
make little gifts in there too.
Roll it all in.
It would be like birthday, perfect.
Anniversary, it's this.
My mom's birthday versus my girlfriend's birthday.
Housewarming, right?
Exactly.
Certainly, they don't move all of the product
at the grocery store or whatever, right?
And some of those flowers are going in the trash.
like the next place that they could go. This is where they are when they are in
bloom because they were designed to be sold two days ago and nobody bought them
so now they are at the drive-thru station. Yeah. Oh there we go the post bloomed the ones
that sat. This is okay. I like the idea Russell of like I could put in all my
birthdays for the year ahead of time and just be like these flowers would be
perfectly bloomed, they will be shipped to your doorstep for all the different
reasons that you would ever need flowers throughout the year. Here's just a bunch
you figure out what to do with them. That's a great guaranteed Valentine's
Day for a whole nother business. And then they could just ship them directly to
the other people and then you don't think about or acknowledge them
personally. Not a thing. You don't even know that it happened you just played
Automate your sincerity.
I mean, I don't want to take it too far,
but I know from my time selling socks,
there are companies that will write
handwritten personalized notes to another person from you.
And you could put that in there too.
Like, love you.
And then it's not even you writing the handwritten letter.
Can you imagine the drive-thru?
What would you like the car to say?
It's just like, whatever.
Yeah, happy housewarming.
Do you dot your I's with a heart?
[LAUGHTER]
I do now.
Yeah.
We have a gas station here in our town
that used to have a drive-thru.
I think it was a Tim Hortons, and that part closed.
And so they put a big sign up on the wall that says,
drive-thru convenience items.
Need your Pepto-Bismol or your whatever?
We'll just hand it out the window.
And it's always baffled me.
I don't know what I would ever pull up to a drive-thru
and get convenience.
But I guess this is one thing.
I guess if you're sick and you don't want to go in, I'd for some, I don't know about
Pepto-Bismol, but like some, some Theraflu or, you know, Dayquil.
Yeah.
I'd pay for that.
Sure.
Out the door and over the counter.
That sounds like a great idea.
O T O O T D.
Over the counter, out the door.
O T D ampersand O T C.
All right.
Who's next?
All right.
I got one.
This is one that it was an AI app, so I did not use it as my main one.
I want an app that I can take a picture of something and use it to show me what
the final result will look like in order to motivate myself.
So for example, I feel like this could be counterintuitive, but I've learned
that a lot of people are like the new year is coming up and I want to start
working out and I want to see what I would look like a year from now.
I have worked out every single day.
So I take a picture of myself and it'll be like this.
If you worked out every single day for one hour, this is what you would look like.
If you worked out every other day, this is what you would look like.
And you do once a week, this is what you would be and it'll just show me the end results and that'll be
Motivating to be like I got to keep doing this every single day
Otherwise, I'm not gonna hit that goal there and you could probably use it for other things besides just working out
I could take a picture of my super messy kitchen and be like, what does this look like clean? I don't even remember dude
There's a whole video Scott about little kids in a classroom and some parent like some teacher
What do you want to be when you grow up and they take a picture of them and then put them in an astronaut suit?
Put them in a like fire
Fighter outfit or whatever. It's just AI generated them in the future as that
Profession just in prints on them super early to be like hey, this is your path
The teacher was uploading photos of their kids to students LLM or whatever
I think this was a different country. Obviously, you know, this was not a local
Yeah, Oh totally fine then right guys, right totally fine. Yeah, we all we all agree
their data
- Facial recognition of minors, what could go wrong?
Whoa.
- Hey, but those kids are like, they love those photos.
It looks like that from the videos, they loved it.
So, but.
- Motivating. - Worth it.
- Honestly, I would love that as a kid.
This is what Scott looks like as an astronaut.
Yeah, I'd be into that.
- Yeah.
- A lot of adults that would like that.
- Oh, I want to see what I look like as a project manager.
Oh, yikes.
Scott, to go off of your idea, I had a thought and it was a little dark, but imagine that,
but the inverse of like, I take a picture of myself and I say, show me if I gained 200
pounds this year, if I just didn't work out, didn't do anything, that would motivate me
more because I'd be like, I can never look like this.
I am never allowing myself to get to that level.
I'm going to go work out right now.
Like, not how I-
You said it is your wallpaper.
-So we have a sliding bar to be like,
"This is where you're currently at.
This is what you can get to."
-But if you're not careful.
-When you don't work out, your phone's lock screen is like horror
show photos of you and stuff.
Oh man.
-This is what it'll look like if you don't achieve your goals.
-That's a good one though.
-That is more motivating.
-I think it would just depend on the person.
Some people are going to be motivated by that six pack.
I'm going to be motivated by the 300 pound version of me
that I would never want to meet.
-The shadow you're running away from, right?
(laughing)
- The carrot and the stick.
That's what it's called.
- Yes, it can be named that.
It's perfect.
- All right, Leo, what you got?
- All right.
You ever go to a beach?
This is, you know, it's mid January.
We love this.
You ever go to the beach and play with like the drip castles
where you've got sand and water mix coming off of your hand?
- Poop castles, that's what I call them.
- Poop castles.
I want a 3D printer that makes those.
(laughing)
My kids playing in a sandbox,
Or maybe this even happens with snow.
But I want a machine where I could set down some sort of--
I don't know-- hopper with a nozzle of some kind
and make really articulate sand sculptures,
because I'm not artistic.
Just G code for dropping sand slurry.
Why not?
Oh, that's really cool, actually.
You can manually do that, right?
You just put four sticks in the ground, a couple strings,
and now you could dot matrix your way through.
Exactly.
You could just pull on the ropes.
paint by numbers.
[LAUGHTER]
Yep, that's exactly what I'm doing.
Oh, yeah.
Full intramural right there.
I really like that, Leo.
I make those castles every time I go to the beach.
I could see some kind of gun or like a icing dispenser
sort of thing, but this, where it's kind of automating that.
Because those are fun to make, and you kind of only
get to do a little bit at a time.
So imagine that substance, which is kind of unlike any other building material that you
have readily available, that is infinite, that has a big magazine, a big capacity.
I feel like that'd be a lot more, I don't know, what?
Just imagining the Ghostbusters backpack.
Yeah!
At the beach!
At the beach, and you walk over to the water and fill it up with one container of water,
and you're having some dude fill up the other side with sand, and you're just blasting.
shirtless with a swimsuit and a huge-ass metal backpack and a hose of
monstrosity. Yes, that's me. The coolest guy at the beach. Surrounded by children
being like "whoa that's the biggest poop castle ever!" Oh I think you're gonna be
surrounded by hot babes because of how awesome I look. It's all part of the
intramurals. All the moms, "turn around son." Look how cool that guy is. I want to be
like him when I grow up. Yeah. We have nothing more to say about this idea.
Katie, what do you have for your mirror?
[LAUGHTER]
Just the picture is really valuable to me.
Thank you so much.
And I like it.
Now I'm like, dang it, we don't get
to go back to the beach for months.
But when I do, I'm probably going to have to make one
of those, a drip castle now, thinking about it.
Oh, they're called drip castles.
That's like the real way to say it, right?
Not a poop castle?
Not a--
I've always called them poop castles.
That's nice.
This is the Mabel Tompkins show, isn't it?
We go poop people.
Flowers.
Flowers are meant for day of what?
Day of what?
Whiplash.
All right, Katie.
What do you got for an interview?
I do actually think I have one that's not fully baked,
but I'd love to make it fully baked.
I put down non-escape room, but I
think it could be an escape room, but not
a room you want to escape.
It's a room you want to escape to.
And my thought process was, we all, I feel like,
are probably of the same age.
And we have very nostalgic 90s memories
of waking up, you're nine years old,
you hear that little morning dove cooing sound.
You're just, it's a Saturday morning, it's warm.
You're just like, "Oh, I could watch cartoons
"and play on my Game Boy all day."
Imagine though, an escape room you can escape to
that is curated to be that 90s Saturday morning
when you were nine.
And you get to just go in there.
It's gonna have, I don't know, for me it was Barbie.
you guys like race car sheets or something on a bed and like a little chair somewhere
with a desk and a bedroom or something, whatever you want.
That was what I couldn't quite flesh out was like it can be curated to person and like
their age because like some people were teenagers too in like the time that they want to go
back to.
So like maybe there's a little bit more things there.
And you remember this specific brand of makeup was your favorite when you were 17.
And so something like that of an escape room
that you pay to escape to and you don't actually
want to get out of.
This is a themed hotel.
That's what this is.
You go for the night and it--
everything that's on the TV, everything
that's available to do for activities with people.
It's like that Star Wars hotel that failed,
but themed on '90s nostalgia.
Oh, man.
Or any-- I wrote down '70s, '80s, 2010s.
I would go back to the 2010s for a day.
-One day, but I would.
-I'm spending watching Hey Arnold the whole night.
-Yes, I want Hey Arnold and Froot Loops on tap.
That's all I want and that'll be great.
-Froot Loops.
-We need stuff that you can't get anymore.
There's a bunch of recreations of candies and cereals and whatever
and your soaps, everything.
-Using the original recipe.
-Yes. -That'd be great.
-Yes.
-You never have to leave your room too.
You have parents.
It's not room service, it's like parents and you just call up.
I don't know, I liked what Leo said too though about like activities you could do.
No, I want to hide in my room and watch Declan again.
I forgot, I forgot, we're your boys.
That is the only activity in this room.
Mom!
There's no smartphones and bikes in like an entire suburb.
Oh yeah, it's a Faraday cage.
No phones.
Yeah, Faraday cage.
And that could be a thing too, you have to give up your tech.
Absolutely, check it out at the door.
You don't get yourself out of it.
get a giant beige dial-up modem like AOL box.
- Yeah.
- With the tower.
- You could have the chat room in your room,
but your mom is gonna yell over the speaker
that she's waiting for a call to come in
and that you can't be on the internet
for more than five minutes.
- If you wanna talk to anyone,
you have to have their phone number memorized.
- Every time you walk in a door,
it's the aim, open door, and open close sound.
- Oh, that's a good one.
- You've got mail.
- See the nostalgia.
- Everyone loves nostalgia.
- Oh yeah.
- A company recently bought the Altoids Sours recipe
and is making them now.
You can get, remember those?
The little rough candies in the circular dish.
- Big Altoids.
- There's a, be on the lookout for retro sours.
Yeah, kills your tongue after two of them.
- Oh yeah.
- They're delicious.
- Salvating just thinking about that, oh my God.
- That's the kind of thing that's sitting on your pillow
when you walk in.
All right, who's got our main pitch tonight?
Who's kicking us off?
- Who won, Leo?
Who won the interviews?
(laughing)
- I went first last time, someone else go.
Russell, you kicked it off last time.
Do it.
- I'll do it, I'll do it.
I've been traveling a lot,
been doing a lot of road trips and driving,
and sitting in the car, staring out my windshield,
I thought not about keeping myself awake this time,
but about rest stop logistics, okay?
So you see all these trucks on the road, right?
The last mile is always the most expensive mile.
Why don't I pick up a couple boxes from a rest stop
along my travel and deliver it to the next rest stop
and the next rest stop.
And just create a daisy chain of logistical pickups
and drop-offs that get this package or set of packages
closer to my destination.
You know, pay for a little bit my gas money, right?
And it's vice versa.
I drop off my crap at a locker right off the highway,
Next to a McDonald's, of course, right?
Because they're going to pay for this.
[LAUGHTER]
For the real estate.
Couple parking spaces is all I need.
Pick up and drop off on a daisy chain.
So you're getting closer to Tennessee.
Pick up some box.
Here, open locker three, five, and eight.
You're making a mesh network of just people dropping crap off.
Yep.
And now you're going to drive, what, five hours down
to Tennessee.
You could drop it off at that rest area,
Or you drop it off at the two other locations.
It's just like a really--
that's it.
It's a very-- pays for people's gas.
And they don't deliver the last mile.
It's just to rest stops.
You have to go to your rest stops to pick up your thing.
And then you have to pick up from that rest stop.
Or you could go--
I think there would need to be--
the rest stops are not very convenient for some.
So you could do right off the exit.
A couple of those popular rest exits.
Those would be awesome.
But that's it.
I think this is how they used to deliver the mail when
we had horses and carriages.
The Pony Express.
Full circle, baby.
We would just be going back.
We're going to call it the Pony Express again.
Yes, literally, the Pony Express.
It would just be like, oh, where are you going?
Oh, here, take my letters.
Take my letters down the road a little ways.
Hope they make it.
Is that really how it works?
Yeah.
Well, there we go.
Let's do it.
But Uber it.
Good word.
But also, people might have been more trustworthy back then.
Dearest Anastasia.
Get in the rest stop and send it along.
OK.
I mean, you throw some insurance.
You get some VC money to insure all these packages,
just like Uber did.
Like, everybody was against Uber.
Don't get in a stranger's car.
But now look at us.
Everybody is just hopping in.
And you're right, too.
I drive a lot.
If someone's going to pay me like half my gaffs money
just because there's a couple of packages in my backseat,
absolutely yes.
I'm doing that, and they're going to make it
to their destination.
They're going to do it.
Just fine.
Yeah, kicked off the app as soon as you don't deliver, right?
Yeah.
Like Uber, you have to be screened and pre-qualified
in order to be a deliverer.
And all we are doing is putting up a bunch of lockers
in places and an app.
They pre-qualify Uber drivers?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I haven't had one.
A little bit.
Well, Shipt-- you think about Shipt,
you can buy like 1,000 bucks--
They have to check for a pulse.
Done.
That's some crazy Uber drivers, man.
Funny story in Austin in-- oh, I don't even
remember when it was now, probably 2017, 2018.
The city kicked out Uber and Lyft because they would not--
the city said, you have to have all of your drivers
pass a background check, an actual full legal background
check, every single driver that drives for any ride share
service in our city limits.
And Uber and Lyft both said, no, ha ha, we're calling your bluff.
And they got out, and there was a bunch--
those span of year and a half, two years, were wonderful.
Because there were so many homegrown apps that we used.
There was one called Ride Austin that I loved,
and I used it all the time.
And there was a woman-only thing I could flip on
and only get a woman driver.
And that was the first time I'd ever seen it.
And I was like, yes, every time I'm
getting home crazy drunk from downtown,
I'm going to make it and be fine.
Because there's a lady driving me.
So yeah, they do have to check them.
I think, though, Uber and Lyft ended up winning
and overturned the law or whatever,
because they did come back eventually,
and they are there now.
But yeah, they're supposed to go through some hoops.
Should.
And it's just boxes.
Some hoops.
You know, you could also screen the people,
like, oh, this package really smells.
You know?
It's like, I don't know why.
Oh, yeah.
What am I talking about?
I don't know.
Across state lines?
I mean, that's the part that I don't even know.
Where's the legality on shipping,
like knowing what's in it?
Well, with USPS, you just have to sign a waiver.
Actually, all the major carriers,
you have to sign a waiver saying it's not this, this, or this.
So the sender would just have to sign the waiver.
I'll just take a copy of that waiver and throw it on my app.
Boom.
Copy, paste.
And then if you did want to--
I think, Leo, you said the last mile.
Someone said that.
And that's actually a service that USPS offers to Amazon--
And UPS, too.
as a service. - The smart post.
- Where yeah, they'll actually go,
'cause they're already going to every single house
delivering the mail, they actually go to Amazon Hubs
and pick up, or I don't know how they trade the boxes,
but they get Amazon packages and your USPS driver
can deliver packages 'cause they go the last mile.
- Yeah. - So we could do that.
- So you could get 'em to do that.
Pick up at the hub, pick up at the rest stop,
take it straight to your door.
- Guys are great. - I feel bad for that USPS
or mailman who has to deliver that mini fridge
the last like 200 yards. - Oh, I don't think
to it for those.
I figured it has to be a turn side.
Yeah.
Right.
[LAUGHTER]
Has to fit in their tiny trucks.
I'm going to move across the country with my whole house,
just put it into boxes and send it along via peer-to-peer rest
stop delivery.
My smile.
[LAUGHTER]
Huh.
Is the main advantage price here?
Is that why someone would be excited to use your delivery
thing over--
Yes.
OK.
I feel like I would use it for environmental reasons.
They're going anyway, sure.
Yeah.
I feel like we're saving the planet a little bit.
At this point, a seller using FedEx is user hostile.
FedEx is a terrible company that has done me dirty many, many times.
So I would try your peer-to-peer network once.
See how it goes.
It'll get there eventually.
That's your slogan.
You'll get it.
Don't worry about it.
You'll get it at some point.
Someone's got it.
I get it.
I guess I don't know how much more money you'd be saving.
Like, is it that much?
Well, OK, it'd have to-- maybe it'd be for big items, right?
Where FedEx and UPS would just not make sense, right?
Because they charge per pound or whatever.
Yes, right?
So it'd have to maybe be like those extraneous items instead
of like small little goods.
So instead of being an Uber driver,
these people are going to be just rest stop hoppers?
That's their whole thing.
- We're like daily commuters, right?
I guess like, ah, or I don't know.
- Yeah, that's good.
Are there items in your life that you're just like,
I could wait, it could just be ambiguous
when I receive this item,
that I would pay 10% of the shipping costs,
but I just don't know when I'm gonna receive it.
- I just put in my last furnace filter
and I know I need to replace it again in three months.
- Yeah, that's a great example.
- So I'm gonna replace it now,
and then it'll get here sometime between now
and three months from now, or--
- I don't think it'll take that long though, right?
In theory, it could be like--
Right. Well, no, you would just prioritize on the app. Like, all right people pick this up
You charge different prices right or something like oh
It's like a bounty system like oh the price is going up because this hasn't been touched in two weeks and it's sitting at the stop
In Des Moines. Oh, man. I hope someone picks it up
And then it's like the tariffs after it's delivered three months later. You get a bill for like
$6,000 31 people full tanks of gas. Oh shoot
- There are millions of people on the road, right?
Every fricking day just driving from one spot to another.
Like they got, like you just put one billboard,
make $10 an hour while you're doing it anyway,
might as well make 10 bucks, right?
Boom.
I think that's how it works.
- Yeah, I was thinking of it too,
of like visiting people.
Like this time of year,
a lot of people are going down to grandma's house
and she lives in, yeah, like you said, Tennessee.
Like that's what I was thinking of it more of,
is like the people who are just like sporadically
crossing state lines, going far.
Like, I just went to freaking Cleveland,
and that was a five-hour drive.
And I'm like, I would have happily
gotten off at a couple different rest stops,
dropped off and picked up some packages
if it got them closer to where they were going,
and paid for some of my gas.
Right?
Yes.
And enough people stopped there already.
Millions of people.
Millions.
Guys, it'll be called--
Every day.
Yeah, the Pony--
Millions of People is the name of the app.
Pony.
What did they call it?
Like, metal horses?
Didn't they call--
No, what did they call cars? What if we're didn't they call like robot ponies?
That was it
All right, Scott, what do you have to deliver this week?
Not a rope pony, but I did have an idea for this week
But in the last two hours
I saw something on reddit that I cannot get out of my high mind and I have to discuss it with you guys
Okay, the whole you you've probably heard of this. I don't know. I did not
My little sister works for space startup and she was telling me about this
Apparently there is a startup that has between now and the next four years are launching
thousand mirrors into space and all these mirrors they just have little
gyroscopes on it so they can rotate in whatever direction they want and the
premise is I can take my phone and I can order sunlight whenever I want so I have
like I can be like I will order five minutes of sunlight for this one square
mile and all the mirrors in space when you order it will rotate in direct
sunlight, more sunlight on this one spot that I want.
They're, and that's the entire premise.
Okay.
And they have nothing on their website.
I briefly saw it.
They're like, not like you could use it for this or this.
They don't, they don't talk about any of that.
They're just like, order sunlight, figure it out, go.
Guys, what would you use this for?
A solution in search of a problem.
I'm just, my immediate thought was going back to Ringcam where I'm like, hey,
what you have, you're going to propose your significant other.
I'm going to order five minutes of sunlight right when I do it
with a whole sky lights up 20% more.
And then there's more practical uses.
I could be, there could be like a hurricane Katrina or something.
I need, everything's out of power here.
I need just more light in this area or I got to get my solar farms up, but I just
want the, what crazy things could you do with this startup?
What happens when you shine a bunch of extra light on something that has cloud cover?
- That was my question, clouds.
Clouds are gonna stop you.
- Or you heat up the clouds and they evaporate.
- Oh, right.
- You burn them away.
- I think it would fuck with the weather.
I think that could be bad.
I think you'd cause some more storms and stuff.
But also farmers, your question, Scott,
like what would I use, farmers.
I'd be like, hey dude, you having a bad summer?
There you go.
- I'm getting out of the pool and it's gonna be cold.
I just want it to be warm for a couple minutes.
Let me order some sunlight real quick in my Uber sunlight app.
Oh, wait, could you use it on your enemies?
Do whatever you want with it.
You're about to get a really bad sunburn,
and you don't even know.
Is this the Jewish space laser that Marjorie Taylor Greene
was going on about?
I don't know.
They just started in December 2025.
Wow.
I'm going to make a cat six hurricane.
I just shine light at a cat five hurricane.
I just turned a cat six.
This would be crazy at night, right?
Like a night wedding, or like right now.
But I mean, like 5 o'clock, it goes dark.
Like, all right, I want the light just another 10 minutes.
Can you do this at night?
You'd have to be able to.
I think so.
It's space.
There's always light up there, right?
You've got the light coming from the other side of the Earth.
So if you've got one mirror in the right spot outside
in orbit, yeah, I guess it redirects down.
Huh.
Depends.
- Depends on the, I mean, right, how far out it is, right?
Or if it's--
- As long as, yeah, as long as the mirror's not occluded
also in like the Earth's shadow,
it has to be like a halo around it.
There's a zone where it'll work.
That's bizarre.
- Guys, the moon is lit at night.
Why can't these mirrors be lit at night?
- Yeah, light up the moon.
- My whole mind was for altruistic uses for this,
but you're right.
If there's someone I don't like,
I could just keep sunlight on their house 24/7.
- You're not gonna sleep.
- A little extra burn.
- Your grass is all dead.
It's inconvenience you.
Your pool's dried up.
- This is a very real thing that just got $20 million
from Silicon Valley.
This is coming.
- That's not a lot of money.
- I can't fathom it.
- Does $20 million buy you 4,000 mirrors in space?
- It'll buy you enough PR to get you more money
to get those mirrors in space.
- That's what it is.
Mm-hmm.
As you're right about the clouds,
but the deep seasonal depression that we go through
in the Midwest, that could be really nice.
Yeah, and it was a blue sky today.
I'm going to splurge.
I'm going to get some sunlight today.
Everyone gather right here.
Yes.
Come over to my sunlight party, guys.
Seasonal effective, yeah.
There's got to be some crazy use cases.
I like how they don't say.
They don't say.
You just can-- whatever.
You think about it.
Not our problem.
They don't care.
They're like, great.
We just got to point the mirrors at this point
time. Paid by the minute. Did you guys ever go to like the solar eclipse? Like a
full eclipse when like everything went dark? It would be crazy to like have all
the birds start chirping again. Un-eclipse it? Yeah, the ant's gonna piss people off in one
spot and be like, "No, you guys still get sunlight." I wonder, I wonder as it's
positioning like a bunch of like, it looks like a bunch of spotlights just go
across your house in your neighborhood and you're like, "Is there, is there
that escaped from a prison and they're looking for them.
- I think it's a helicopter, like circling.
- Right?
- Nope, it's God.
- You said one square mile casually.
Do you know what the radius of this zone is
that you can order?
- I pulled it up like three minutes before hopping on here.
It's one square kilometer right now, that they say.
- Scott, wait, you don't have an idea of that.
You gotta be like the guy that comes up
with the ideas for it, right?
That's it, like you're the reseller of sunlight.
- I'm very pleased to announce that I'm the first customer.
I don't know why yet, but.
Well, listener, write in with your ideas
with what you would do with a square kilometer
of 20% more sunlight.
(laughing)
- I think Scott's idea is that,
it's just going around to different businesses
and selling the concepts of sunlight to other people.
He's the reseller, that'd be dope.
That would make a lot of money, I think too.
- You're their CMO.
- You just figure out, yeah.
You just cold call and you make a commission on every sunlight sold.
Every sunlight.
Yeah.
Every ray of sun.
Everyone here owes me a dollar.
Yep.
Oh shoot.
I forgot to turn off the sunlight.
Oh, my sunlight bill is going to be through the roof this month.
Frick.
Oh, it's been three days.
Oh no.
My sunlight.
All right, Leo, what do you got for us this week?
I used Google Lens in front of my kid recently
and it blew his fricking mind
and he's a little bit interested in Pokemon
enough to know what a Pokedex is.
I wanna make a dedicated Pokedex hardware
that is just a Pokedex but for real world anything.
That is this kind of bird.
That is the Eiffel Tower.
That is the whatever, right?
We have now achieved all of the things
that we need to make a real world Pokedex
that can do creatures, that can do locations,
that can do historical monuments,
that can read aloud the thing that you're looking at,
but you don't know how to read yet.
All that stuff is within the possibility.
What is this product on the store shelf?
What is this whatever?
You can build an explainer, a handheld gadget.
And I'd rather not hand him a phone.
I'd rather not like, you know, take an old iPhone
and do the whole, it only uses this one app thing.
I think it needs to be something
a little more tactile and physical.
So, real world Pokedex.
- Oh.
- Do you remember what it looked like?
- It's a hardware.
- Yeah, it was like a plastic thing with a little screen,
but a lot of buttons and like a clamshell thing and stuff.
Like I want something a little more tactile, you know?
- All it does is have an API call to chat GPT
that says it uploads the picture
and has what question mark.
- Pretty much, right?
- And it comes back with your answer.
- Yeah, or Google lens or whatever.
- Yeah, and I feel like the Pokemon too,
it was like, it had another picture
and then it had like the pertinent information,
but you could also go in and be like,
okay, what are its evolutions?
Oh, okay.
After it's war tortle, then what does it do?
Like you can go down the rabbit hole as much as you want,
but it'll just give you the initial snapshot of info too.
- Here is the Wikipedia article
for that thing you just scanned.
Yes, absolutely.
- I think what's cool about Pokedex is it has a list
of all the stuff you haven't seen or caught.
- Oh, making a scavenger hunt.
- That's true.
- It's a birding app.
What kind of squirrels are there in this region?
- Birding would be good.
- Oh, foraging.
What kind of food is around you, bud?
What's edible in the woods near you?
Yeah.
You can tailor to your region, too.
Here's all the possible things you
could see in North America in this state or whatever.
On a road trip.
You haven't seen yet.
Yes.
Yeah.
Ooh, I like that.
Or even, oh, you're visiting Mexico?
See if you can't find this.
100%.
You can see who's like leaderboard.
See if you can find this crazy man.
You've got to catch them all.
I think that'd be so cool to know what--
I mean, it'd be interesting to know what in my area
I haven't seen yet, too.
Like, what if I just had one for my town?
And like, whoa, I should just catch all,
or take pictures of, or whatever I'm thinking,
of all the, there's this butterfly.
- Catch all the wildlife in your town.
- This is a raccoon.
- With a net. - This is awesome.
- You have to have a physical proof.
(laughing)
- With a net.
- Rabies, do not approach.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, there should be some warnings on this, too.
- Yeah.
That is a Gengar. Get away from it. That is a heroin needle. Put that down.
There's nothing good there. One of the people had an idea and her idea was
sounds. But it was like a Pokedex for sounds and her thing was like when
you're camping and it's late at night and you hear a noise in the woods that
scares you, you want to just... it's like for the the music one. I don't remember
what that one is. But there's that music app that you can... yeah, Shazam! You can Shazam a
to shajamps, whatever that word, when something is like dying in the woods and you want to know
what that is. But that could be cool to add in. And as we were crowdsourcing this, of course,
across the tables, someone else was like, "Oh, make it not just for animals. I want to know
what's wrong with my car when it's making a weird noise." Oh, that's a good one.
It's like, "Oh, sounds, yeah." That's a really good one.
And she said it was very funny too, because she was like, "My daughter loves to call and
tell me the sound that's being made.
It's like a chaka chaka chaka chaka chaka.
Yeah, right?
That's exactly what you did.
And I go, what?
Do it again.
Mechanics live for that, when you go up there and like,
tell me the sound that it makes.
Bleeble blebble bleble ble.
Yeah, right.
Do it again.
I don't think I quite got it.
Just shazamming life in general is a really good idea.
The input into this thing could be photo or video or audio.
Totally.
That'd be cool if you're just sitting in a park
and you turn on the audio capture
and it just tells you all the Pokemon near you, right?
Bugs, animals, or whatever, and you're like--
Birds.
Right.
Oh, I didn't catch a Robin yet.
Let's go find it.
Somewhere here.
That noise is a tweaker.
Please leave.
I don't know that bird.
A red-bellied tweaker.
Battle started.
You know?
(laughing)
- All right, Katie.
What is your idea for us this week?
We're pivoting.
- So yeah, the sound recognition one was on here,
but oh, I did have though, okay,
this was one that I came up with
because I dream of someday having a homestead somewhere,
I also love the idea of doing it with other people. Many hands make light work, all that
good stuff. I would have a homestead matchmaking company. What you do is you just put it out there
to everyone and be like, "All right, what kind of assets do you have? Do you have land? Do you
have skills? Do you have livestock? Can you grow crops? Give me all your stuff." Then,
what are your political ideologies? What are you looking to get out of this? How long do you want
want to do this? Would you be willing to enter into a legally binding contract
that you'll do this for this amount of time? Do you have children? Do you
have partners? Do you want children or partners? Like all of the questions you
could possibly think of to get a like-minded community of people to the
right size with all aligning beliefs and like structures put it all together
you've got a bunch of really cool homesteads. Crowd cult. Yeah, crowd cult.
Crowd cult! Do you have kids? Do you want them? Are you willing to have them for
glorious leader. Do you want outsiders? Insiders or outsiders?
No but I mean that it's a slippery slope I know. It doesn't have to be a cult you
know you can leave there's some legal agreements slider for that too. Many
months ago Scott you pitched the communes startup kit I forget what we
called it communes as a service or whatever but Scott here has been for ten
years as long as I've known him saying we should just buy a big plot of land
And everyone should put a house on it and we should go in together and I know right like
I get the more people are like, let's just do this. Let's just do this. Yeah, I've never considered the strangers aspect though
You do need a lot of specialized skills if you're doing something like that and actually doing the full-on
Homesteading thing making your own food and stuff. I don't think any of us want to do that in our friends group. I can kill a chicken
Great one skill
Very valuable.
I like the idea of your starter kit though.
It's just like, comes with one doctor, one lawyer, one mechanic, one farmer.
Yeah, farmers only is taken, isn't it, Dan?
I think this is like a thing that should happen because it'll help solve, I think, some of
that housing issue stuff that we have going on.
Because it doesn't matter if you have the right community, it doesn't matter where you
post up, right?
can go buy a bunch of cheap land with the right group of people
and build a town like the good old settlers, you know?
And do something like that.
Like, that doesn't-- it can be more like that instead
of the cult thing that I said, right?
That would be way cool.
I can't see how it could go cult. But yeah,
like, that's the dream, is that it's just, like,
like-minded individuals who are finding a better way than,
like, let's all live in a giant city and be separate.
Let's live together and in harmony.
My neighbors across the street, they moved out because they wanted to find
something like this and they didn't find the land that they had in their dream,
that in their mind, and they are living in a basement right now, waiting to
find the right plot and stuff.
And it's been like two or three years.
They would love to hook up with some other people who are, yeah, exactly.
That's great.
See, they'd sign up for my company, get a couple of other
families in on that and boom.
Totally.
It can manage the legal process of like, here's what the contract
language could look like, here's who you can get it certified through so that you
know, yeah, you're subscribing to a two-year commitment and here's what it
looks like and all that. Yeah, boilerplate it all. I want this so bad. What would you call it?
I liked, what did you say about the cult thing first? Oh, crowd cult?
Russell's Town. I think it's like, I think it's like Settlers of Catan but like, but IRL.
But I think that's like, I'm like wondering why there's so much cheap real estate in like,
well, I think I know why.
North Dakota, South Dakota, right?
Nobody wants to live there.
But like, why not just, if you get enough people in a spot, you could just boom a town
and that town could be legit.
Like who would have thought Austin, I guess, like would have been before it was just like
a, it's literally just a bunch of shacks with bars that turned into a booming city, right?
I don't know, Leo, is that?
I have no idea.
We're about to shit on a big city with lots of people.
Austin, if you listen to this episode--
Fuck Austin.
No, it's Austin now.
It's legit, because they brought all these people
into the town because of their, I don't know, scene.
And now it grew, and it blew up.
And now nobody can afford to live there.
So they should just do what they did in Austin.
Solely because they got rid of Uber and Lyft.
That's the only reason.
Yes.
That was the two words.
No.
I will say, though, too, that's an interesting point,
Austin is a very young town. It's a lot of like 20 and 30 year olds. So I think
that would need to be something too where you're like, "All right, we have a
time limit on this because we're gonna get old." And then maybe you
reopen it and you say, "Okay, we're old now. We will give this to young people who
don't have paths anywhere and they just work the land, do our jobs, take care of
us while we age, but they get to have this when we die."
generationally yes that's cool Florida Florida is great for that
are those the only places you can think those are your options there's nothing
in between those two though the homestead in the swamp dude and like
that would be legit too cuz like everybody works remote now so like you
You could have a lot of wealthy people on a homestead.
Living in North Dakota.
Wherever it is, right?
And it'd just be like--
Silicon Valley types looking to get out and reconnect
with nature would totally get an app that automatically
homesteads their life, guides them through it.
That's your target market, is the people
who are sick of coding and want to go be woodworkers.
And have the money backing to do it.
That's where you got to find the sweet spot of, all right,
there's somebody who knows all the stuff about farming
and exactly how to make this work,
but they're poor and can't afford the land.
Well, there's also the rich Silicon Valley guy
who just wants to get out.
He can afford it.
Pair them together.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
And all they want to do is till land.
Like, I get it.
But for real, I have a buddy that is an accountant.
He's like, all I want to do is paint walls.
That'd be awesome.
Or cut wood.
Like, that would be awesome.
Because you just sit at a computer all day,
you're like, so done with this.
So--
Yes.
I would literally, I would take out a scythe
and mow a lawn if I could get paid enough to do it.
You know what I mean?
- Or, since money is made up,
if you just had food and water and shelter
and fun things to do, you wouldn't need to get paid
to do the scythe cutting.
You'd just do it.
- That's true, that's true.
- Pay him in Bitcoin, like any good cult commune.
- Pay them in eggs and chickens.
- Yeah, Russell can kill the chickens.
Pay him in chickens, Russell.
- I'm a chicken killer, that's what I'm gonna put.
- What?
- Nobody wants to do that job.
- That's your skill.
- Yeah, you learn that skill,
everybody's gonna be like, I need the chicken killer.
- How many chickens to fill this cavity?
(laughing)
- How many chickens do you have to kill a day
to make yourself useful?
That's a lot, that's tough.
- I don't know, it doesn't matter.
It's a dirty job and this guy's gonna get
free eggs for life, baby.
- None of you killed a chicken.
- Yeah, there's not gonna be any left.
- You see, the chickens hatch to make more chickens.
I think, I'm not the hatchery guy.
I'm not the hatchery guy, talk to that guy.
- He's not the hatchery guy, he's the killer guy.
- Yeah, the chicken killer, you.
- Russell, do you actually have experience with chickens?
- I will in three months.
(laughing)
- I just need to borrow someone's chickens to kill 'em.
See if I can learn.
Just need some practice.
- I'll probably need two videos before I get to my homestead,
you know, I'll be fine.
- Oh, that's probably a real thing, isn't it?
(laughing)
Well, anyway, Russell the Chicken Killer!
I can't end it there.
Anyway, listener, thanks for listening.
We hope you enjoyed yourself.
We know that you're listening to us
in your coding dead-end cubicle job,
wishing that you had a chicken killer on your homestead,
and we have the hookup for you.
On retainer.
Thank you very much, and we hope you enjoyed yourself.
And thank you, Katie, for joining us.
This was really fun.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Our website is spitball.show.
There you can find links to our YouTube channel,
other social media.
Hey, if you have an idea, record a pitch and a voice memo
and send it on over to podcast@spitball.show.
Maybe we'll talk about it in our intro segments.
That's also how you can follow us on the Fediverse,
such as Mastodon, we are podcast@spitball.show,
or on BlueSky at spitball.show.
Our subreddit is r/spitballshow.
Our intro/outro music is "Swingers" by Bonkers Beat Club.
Please, hey, if you wouldn't mind,
that one coworker who's always bringing in like eggs,
'cause they have four chickens,
but somehow they have 40 eggs a day
and you're like, I guess I'll take some for free.
Send them a link to this episode.
We think they'd like this one.
And if you wouldn't mind, leave us a review,
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts,
whatever it is that you listen to.
That is the best way for people to find out about the show.
New episode is coming out in two weeks.
We will see you then.