SvB: #141 Netflix taking over Sports, Actors Strike but Hollywood still in trouble

The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss Netflix taking over sports, AI Watch: The Singularity is here, Actors Strike is over but Hollywood is still in Hot waters, Rant: Disney is messing up, and Loki and The Marvels: your MCU entertainment update.

Story Number 1 - 18:15
Story Number 2 - 26:10
Story Number 3 - 37:15
Story Number 4 - 42:47
Story Number 5 - 47:37

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Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and  Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.

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Transcript

Theo Harvey: Hey everyone, this is Show vs. Business, your weekly take on pop culture from two very different perspectives with your host, the real Theo Harvey and Mr. Benja come with all the relevant info about the week in pop culture. So Mr. Benja, what are we covering today? 

Mr.Benja: Today we have five bangers that we're going to be bringing to you.

The first one out the gate, we have Netflix taking over sports just like they do everything else. You didn't think that he'd get any bigger on the slide right in front of your face. It's happening with them. Also, we got an AI watch as always. The singularity is here. Give it about maybe five, seven at max 10 years.

And we'll be there. If you forgot what the singularity is, we'll bring that up to you as well. Also the actor strike finally over. Hollywood was still in trouble though. We got a long way to go, but this is a step forward in. Some direction. Is it the right direction? Theo will be here to tell you more about that And speaking of Hollywood and trying to fix things up We're gonna have to talk about disney because they might be effing up.

I retract that disney's effing up So we got to talk about it We got to let them know, that their draws stank and they need to be changed And finally we're gonna rant on loki and the marvels and the current state of the mcu just a little bit we pinged on it a little bit in the past couple shows But now that we've seen Loki and now that the Marvels is out, we just want to wrap it up in a nice little bundle of rant sandwich.

Theo, I don't know if I should have said rant sandwich, but I did anyway. What do you think of those stories? 

Theo Harvey: Hey man, I am super excited, man, super excited. And just FYI, the Loki and the Marvels, we're going to do some spoiler territory. Once we get into that, we'll definitely say spoilers. 

Mr.Benja: But we left it for the end, 

Theo Harvey: yeah, we left it for the end. But yeah, Mr. Benja story time for me. Mr. Benja, have you ever did a crazy 48 hour visit to Vegas? 

Mr.Benja: Yes. 

Theo Harvey: You know what my week was like then. Yeah, man, this week I went to Vegas, baby! The missus, and then my sister in law, my brother.

My sister and my brother in law, they wanted to go. And the big thing was they wanted to go see Usher, baby. Usher has a residency in Vegas and it's been getting a lot of buzz on social media and so they wanted to go and I was like, Usher, I've been around, I know Usher or whatever, but I said, I'll go to go.

Man, that dude puts on a show, bro. I forgot, man, how talented he was. He's just always been around. He always had a little hit here and there, but he always was like supplanted by like maybe Bruno Mars or Chris Brown or, these other kind of R& B slash hip hop guys, but he's just, he's always been the standard, it's he's always had a little hip bop on the radio, got a new bop now he started going viral with that.

So all the Tik Tokers, they know him from that. But the little millennials and Gen Z years. So it's like he's just been a consistent constant. And the thing that impressed me the most dudes 45 years old. So basically our age out there still doing moves when he was in his twenties. So he took off the handstand the back bit, I'm sure he's sitting in the ice tub right after that concert.

I don't care, who you are that, at 45, you're gonna be feeling that, and then he did a whole set when he was literally on roller skates. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, I've seen 

Theo Harvey: images of that and he's going backwards, and it's like a couple of times he got close to the end of the stage.

I said, Oh no, this could be a disaster. And wow, man. He may maintain it. And then, he did the whole strip club thing, which Atlanta, that's what it is. He had a whole strip club brought in on stage and live strippers doing what they do, with, tastefully, of course, but still.

Yeah. How tasteful can you get when you have cakes like that, right? Doing that thing. So anyway, a long story short, man, it was worth the price and the price of admission going out there. And Yeah, we don't really talk about like artists that have been around a long time like that, but, let's put it context.

Michael Jackson was 50 years old when he passed away. And, he was basically on his last legs and, was dealing with issues with pain. And here we got 45 year old guy, still performing at a high level that just goes show you that, there, there's a difference in different artists, how they maybe they learned from the past artists and how to have that longevity. Really impressed, man. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on usher in general 

Mr.Benja: specifically? No, no ushers, a performer. Definitely. He falls in that category and he was a, I don't want to say protege, but he did come off The Michael Jackson line, him, Chris Brown, a lot of these other performers, he really got a lot of their blueprint from Michael Jackson.

And, Michael Jackson had issues with drugs and health in general. But, so to see somebody like Usher doing it at that level, knowing about health in this new era, I think it makes sense that he's a little more resilient, knowing what to expect. Yeah, he's how far removed is he from that's 30 years difference between him and Michael Jackson.

Yeah, good point. You 

Theo Harvey: know, good analogy would probably be like Michael Jordan and LeBron James, right? So Usher would never be at a level of Michael Jackson, right? And probably LeBron would never be at a.

of LeBron James, right? He's been around for what, 21 years at a high level of basketball. Here it is 30 years for Usher. And, he's still performing at a high level that we remember him as. Even his hair, I don't know if he's putting some dye in the hair, probably is, but it's got the same haircut.

It literally looks like he's, still when you first met him and that's very rare for celebrities. And so they try, but not a few. That to me, I can maintain that same look. You remember when you first got introduced to them, right? And so I thought that was interesting. So so yeah, man.

Yeah, it's got some bops on the radios. Always got something and he's collaborative everybody. I saw I went back and saw some stuff he did with City Girls, yeah. Yeah. Beyonce danced for him one time when he was doing a set. And you go back to when we first started college, man, he had that album, Usher, man, when he was a little kid.

And that was a bop, man. Matter of fact, in the concert, it was so funny. He was like, who my day ones here? Who my day ones here? So everybody knew everyone's song. Then he went back to Usher, if you remember some of the songs from that, but can you get with it? I don't know if you remember that song or some other songs like that.

And me and my wife are the only ones singing in the whole stadium. And see, I can't wait to start singing that.

Cause a lot of people came on board when my way hit, that was the big pop that everybody knew. And of course, Confessions, that, that was like phenomenal for him. Anyway, I just want to give him a shout out, give him flowers while he's around, man. But I was just, yes. Supremely impressed, man.

That's why I'm really advocate now to go see concerts of artists now because you never know. It's just good to see people perform high at that level. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, definitely. And speaking of the physical thing and perform at the high level, it's. Like I'm, I follow David Goggins and he's one of those people who was like, no, you can't turn this around.

I know you're into the health scene and that's one of those health stories. If you look at old, fat, out of shape David Goggins. And then look at 'em now and what he's been able to achieve and push through. It's pretty amazing. And, it makes me wanna get up and do some pushups.

So I'm telling you, I have a, it's funny, I have a thing, a real quick little tip for people. If ever I'm sitting down and I'm scrolling through Instagram, I have three or four fitness influencers that I follow. And if any one of them comes up and they're just like, Ooh, yeah, that was a great, that was a great shoulder workout, this and that.

I'm like, crap. Gotta do it. Put the phone down, knock out 25, 50 pushups right then and just keep going. It's funny cause I'll just be sitting in my bed. Just yeah, I'm scrolling Instagram. Damn it. Pushups. 

Theo Harvey: That's a good way to do it. I used to get motivated just going to the gym and seeing people work out.

So I got to step it up. I don't use go to the gym as much as I used to. I'm starting to do more ownership theory, but yeah, man, I'm, yeah, I'm motivated after watching that show. What theory? Orange Theory? You never 

Mr.Benja: heard of that? I don't even know if she said it. 

Theo Harvey: Orange Theory? Orange Theory.

It's a, it's like a bike treadmill type exercise routine. Dr. Chris, maybe we'll have Dr. Chris on one time. He's doing it as well. It's been around forever. Huh. And it's like a fitness. It's like a low level What's it called? Crossfit, right? You do different exercise movements and stuff.

And the theory is you want your heartbeat in the orange zone, which is typically around yeah, 83 percent to 90 percent of its capacity. And so your body, you're trying to stay in that zone. That's the maximum fat burning maximum, energy level. You don't want to get in a red zone, which is, 95%.

That means you're taxing your heart too much. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. I just found it on a website. It's a it's like this take on the, like you said, CrossFit, which is high impact interval training. And I see smarter workout for more results with the logo that looks like, what was that old stupid logo?

Because that's what I thought it was when I first saw it. It's like the Splat logo. Yeah, 

Theo Harvey: yeah. I'm surprised you never heard of it, man. They've been around for a while. Obviously there have been so many other kind of fitness studios that do all kinds of things from Pilates to the cycling, SoulCycle, all this stuff, but Orange Theory has just been, Pretty steadily, increasing.

And the thing I liked about Orange Stew is being a little bit more modernized. It used to be where you track your, my heart monitor was crappy. It's really good now. So I that aspect about it. But yeah, so I'm trying to do more of that stretching. You put me on to that, Mr.

Benja. So yeah, man, we got to do stuff like that, man. We want to keep pushing. 

Mr.Benja: I was I was archiving some DVDs. And putting them in digital format. And I've ran across some old Tybo DVD that I had, right? So I was like, Hey man, this Tybo DVD just used to knock it out the box. I looked up, Billy Blakes is still doing this thing.

I'm like, okay. When they finished digitizing, I was about to go on to the next set of DVDs. And then I got that moment where I was like. 

Theo Harvey: I love it, man. Yeah. I forgot about time. I used to do that all during grad school, man. I love that. Let me do my time though, man. It was such a fun little workout, man.

You felt like you did a little something. I tried to 

Mr.Benja: go ahead. I said, I tried, try to do a high kick in the setback down. 

Theo Harvey: You thought you could really kick somebody's ass after doing a typo. You're like, man, I'm ready, man. I can, come on. I wish Luke would. Come on. I'm ready. I wish they would.

I wish they would. Yeah, man. He actually showed up in a a video for artists. I can't remember the name of the artist now, but yeah, he's still doing his thing, man. He, so for those that know, Billy Blanks was a martial artist and became an actor. He did all these things. different lifestyles, but he really became famous when he came up with the Taibo workout DVD VCR series and that hit the waves in early 2000s.

And a lot of us took those, videos. That was the first, I think a lot of us, they had those before Jane Fonda and other folks, Suzanne Summers, rest in peace, and other folks. But I was like, Tybo, whatever it was, man, Billy Blanks just sold us all on Tybo. We jumped on it. Man, we, this is good stuff.

Mr. Pitcher. How was your week, man? What you got to talk about? 

Mr.Benja: Speaking of Tybo and physically fit, there's this kid I run into every so often, and he's just trying to find his way in the world. And he's always Hey man, I found this. And I found that I'm like. Okay. Oh yeah. That's from that school of people.

I got you. He's yeah, man, I'm looking into this. My cool. See him again every couple of weeks later. He's Oh yeah, man. I ran across this guy, Jordan Peterson. He was talking about this and that. Okay, yeah, you're trailing into dangerous territory. Just remember when you're talking to people, be sure you have your shit together before you just start repeating what he says, because you could end up in some arguments.

And he's really? It's yeah, just trust me. He's oh yeah, okay. Yeah, I got into an argument and I said some things Jordan Peterson said, and they got mad and it's yeah, but then my uncle, he was backing me. I was like, okay, yeah, I'm just letting you know where you're going.

So he just bounces around. I picked Jordan Peterson because the next person that came up was more interesting. And I was talking about Hey, listen, you don't have to You don't have to necessarily like the work, you don't have to necessarily dislike the work, but you get in there and you respect the work, you get into this respect phase, just like it's not a dislike of the work, and it's not a like of the work.

I didn't want to use the term don't like, because assume that's the same thing as dislike, but I said, listen, just respect the work, you know what it's there for, you do it because it's part of the process and it gets done. And you respect it and you can enjoy the process, but you don't have to like, like the work.

That's not what I, whenever I talk about work, I'm never putting forth that you have to go to quote, like it or have a passion for it or anything like that. He's Oh man, you know what? You're right. That sounds a lot like Andrew Tate and I was like, Oh, okay. I'd looked into Andrew Tate before, but nothing really deeply.

And I was like, Okay. A lot of the, you'll have overlap with a lot of people, but I was surprised he pointed that out. I was like, where'd you get that from? He's Oh yeah, Andrew Tate talks about this, talks about that. I'm like, okay, all right. He's yeah. He's you should check out this stuff he's got.

I'm like, all right. Hadn't looked into it a lot. The last time I heard about him, some relationship guru was talking with him and they were arguing online. It just looked like click baity stuff. This is a very interesting cat. And very indicative of a lot of what was going on. And because of the whole money and the show versus business angle that I find myself involved in, I had to look into this guy.

Yeah. Dude had how many subscribers paying 50 a month. He had a hundred thousand subscribers paying 50 a month. And it was just like, it was pretty fascinating how he was turning over this business and doing what he was doing. And from what I could tell, a lot of it was this act, like he used to do the kickboxing, right?

And he would just walk in there and be like, I could tell that guy's chin is not, based on that guy's chin and his cheekbone structure, I'm going to kick him in the face twice and he'll go down. And everybody's looking around the room what is this guy talking about? 

LOng story short, I get these materials from this kid about Andrew Tate, and dude is actually pretty intelligent. And it's surprising, whenever you go deep into these people's things I think the last time I felt this way was with Frank Luntz. The political, analyst where I was like, this is dangerously intelligent stuff.

hE's not just a muscle head. So I was like, interesting. Yeah. I got a, that's just been another thing that's that I put into the category of, okay, now I get where this whole thing is coming from. I'm not, he's got a lot of despicable stuff going on in his whole aura, but it's just been an interesting way of thinking.

Now I see how he can change so many young minds. And I say that because there are a lot of, Okay. Young men out there, people who are confused about that angle. He might actually be worth listening to just to understand where they're coming from. Just okay, that's what that's about.

Okay. This is what Jordan Peterson's about. Okay. This is what, I don't know even left wing. More leaning people, but it's a very interesting people out there. That's all I'm saying. Oh, yeah, 

Theo Harvey: man and I'll just leave it at that Andrew Tate. I mean has come under some For those that don't know some issues with being Miss out misogynistic, you know this, very, you know anti women a little bit and some of the things he says about women's roles and things like that has been The base, I think he got booted off some of the platforms and stuff like that for some of his communication style.

A lot of these gurus are, have a lot of power now and it's alarming. 

Mr.Benja: It's the, a lot of it. Yeah. A lot of it is the style and the pushback against the arrogance of it, because there are a lot of, if you go to a lot of politicians. They'll speak this way very plainly, but he's just no, this is it.

Shut up. And that, I don't know if you've ever seen anybody really angry about somebody's arrogance, like, how is he so arrogant? I hate that guy. If you've ever seen that attitude pop up out of anybody, that's what led to him getting de platformed and and so forth, but. Extremely interesting guy. Not a good guy.

Theo Harvey: Extremely interesting. Totally, but again, every one of these guys can take something from so many different pieces. 

Mr.Benja: I will learn from the wolves and hang out with the lambs. Or the lions. Or the lions, if you will. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, so interesting. I love it. 

Mr.Benja: You ready to get into it? We'll do more on that a little more offline.

But let's get into it right now with story number one. Netflix is taking over sports, boy! Just like they do everything else. Anime? They came for it. Reality TV? They coming for it. International shows and translations? They coming for it. They got it. But now... Oh, rom coms. Don't let me forget that they coming for it.

Guess what? It coming for your sports too. People thought they would leave sports alone. Nope. Theo, how does this have you feeling? You're the sports guy here. 

Theo Harvey: I'm the sports guy, the sports authority, he is in right now. Live freaking news. Yeah, man. Netflix is just. Starting to dominate everything.

I just saw a recent report of how they brokered a deal with Warner Brothers to get all their more recent, the 12 of the last DC films are going to drop on Netflix December 1st. So that's including HBO shows are now porting over to Netflix. So it does seem like Netflix is starting to win You know, because they're the only profitable streaming service out there starting to win the, this war against streaming.

So I think the war is almost over, Mr. Pinchot. It feels like everybody's given up. But with that being said the big take, the takeaway from Netflix is are they going to get into more live type programming like news and of course sports. And the big thing with Netflix is, I don't know if you knew, they had two reality shows that popped up on the scene that kind of took off a little bit for them and they were in the sports area.

One was F1 racing and the other was golf. Golf is a known quantity that did pretty well for them. But F1 was a surprise because, anything about racing, Americans don't really care about F1 racing. Now, NASCAR? Sure. But F one racing with the sleek cars. We all play pole with pole positions so we know, or grand tourismo, so what those cars look like. But it is really a European sport. And it is one of those things like the, I don't think they even had any races here in the us but because it is reality show where you actually got to know the racers and it was like living their lives, it blew up on.

Netflix, and so a lot of Americans got exposed to F1, and because of that, now, I was in Vegas, they're now going to have their first ever night race in, on the Vegas Strip. So you have these cars, going down at 200 miles per hour, down the Vegas Strip. Turning those hairpin turns and it's going to be exciting.

And it was a mess though, trying to get right before last this week, cause it's happening. We're filming this about a week before it opens. It happens next weekend on November 18th. And I say that to say it's like Netflix is influencing what's possible because it made it more popular.

And then, because of that, they're going to have their first live sports competition, where they're going to have these golf players combined with these Drivers, these race car drivers in a kind of a golf competition and they're basically gonna sell advertisement on it. And they're going to do the whole kind of CBS, ABC kind of sports rigmarole.

It's called the Netflix cup. It's the first live television televised sporting event. Yeah, Mr. Benja, they come for sports. This is I wouldn't be surprised if this goes off well for them right now. NBA TV rights are up. A lot of people going to bid for it. We know Apple is probably going to bid for it.

Amazon, who's already got, we already talked about this black Friday football game coming up in a couple of weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix puts their bid in to get some NBA games. What do you think about this sports live, live action? I 

Mr.Benja: like it, man. I think it's really intriguing because, 

you can't just wholesale. You can, but I suppose, but most times these institutions don't just wholesale come in and take over the spot. What they do is they take a slight sliver or a certain event or a certain chunk, like if they have an all star game, maybe, or a special exhibition series of matches, it might get relegated to this other platform or duplicated on this other platform, if it's not wholesale.

Exclusive to it. How does Netflix make its entryway into this? Maybe you could have, like the three point contest and the slam dunk, contest, maybe that moves over to Netflix or maybe it starts somewhere over there, or maybe there's a new type of introduction they make Hey, mid season behind the scenes with these characters and these players, maybe that plays well on Netflix.

I don't know. I remember. Back in the day when you and I were watching wrestling, how all of a sudden it's like you had Thursday Night Thunder and that showed up, on one station and he had like other stations doing this and it was just like this weird little play of, getting audiences and getting chunks of time to.

To showcase things so I think Netflix is really coming with this and I'm really excited to see it actually because I think this will start to bring it out of the feeling that it has of this underground kind of, it still has this new. Underground spirit to it, right? Or is that just me?

I don't know. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, it does. Netflix is the originator of this whole concept, right? Of streaming. So it just makes sense for them to innovate faster and better than everyone else and do it better and be the most profitable one out there. But the sports are streaming. I think it's starting to get some ways.

We talked about Warner what's about Max is starting to, they have access to TNT. Content. So that's a lot of NBA games. They're showing NCAA basketball games. So there's a lot of content that You know, mass can show live, uh, Amazon is doing it. They are Thursday night live. You have the Thursday night show that they won and paying in the fell for that one game.

And then now they're going to have this black Friday. And then Apple TV has been doing a lot of baseball games, right? Every time you turn it on to the baseball season, there was a another game. And then Peacock TV. They just I don't know if you saw that I was going around to different. I was getting my haircut last Saturday and then I went to the comic book store and they were playing.

Live WWE action because it was on peacock last week. It was the what's it the one in the desert they do every year and it was like, I guess if you had peacock service, you could just watch it for free. I have the peacock service. I put up, open it up. I said, sure enough, I could watch. All the favorite, the Miz and, it was like real live action happening, across the world in another country.

Yeah, man, a lot of sports is coming for streaming. And so I'm there for, it's going to be interesting. And these, so that means to me, cause a lot of the streaming services that can afford this, they have deep pockets, like the apples, like the Amazons, like the Netflix. So I'm assuming that these, all these sports.

Entities, they're going to just get so much more money because now they're just going to be able to, because right now you have net, network TVs, hold it on as much as they can to sports. So they're going to pay as much as they can. Then you got cable still hanging on, right? They're going to pay as much as they can.

They got these streaming services. So you got these three buyers that's going to bid up everything. The NFL is going to get richer. NBA is going to get richer. M. O. N. O. B. Is gonna get richer. So you have all these kind of bidders out there for these live TV sports. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, man, I want to see Amazon.

Netflix come through with their version of wide world of sports, because in this era what's it going to be? It's going to be like, the worldwide web of sports going to have your You're all not alternatives for us, you've got your F one, maybe throw some lacrosse in there, strike a deal with ice cube, have big three on netflix pickleball.

It 

Theo Harvey: could definitely, that's a big 

Mr.Benja: thing. Yeah. Get usher's old self out there playing pickleball.

Theo Harvey: I love it. So good stuff. We'll keep an eye on this going 

Mr.Benja: forward. Absolutely. But another thing we're going to keep an eye on is story. Number two, the AI watch, the singularity people were talking about decades away. It's, maybe 50 years away. With all these recent technological innovations, people are saying actually, it's probably years away now, this is, I don't want to say alarming, but a little bit thought provoking at the very least, and very concerning to some, Theo, we've talked about the singularity before, way back I think it's time to bring that discussion back up again.

What do you think of this whole singularity thing? We haven't defined it here and probably should in some sense, but. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure I understand is the singularity, a sense of the time where the AI has, I, I get confused a little bit. Is it the time where we have what they called?

 I forgot what the term was, but is it going to be a time with AI? Is intelligently smarter than us are able to replicate itself faster than we can keep up, or innovate faster than we can keep up. What's the exact terminology or how you think we can define it? 

Mr.Benja: I would say both. And this is actually a common confusion because nobody has a hard definition of what it is.

But I guess the discussion now is what do we mean? And what does this guy mean by the singularity? To give an example or a definition, I guess we could say that when technology gets to the point where it's irreversible and it's outpacing our understanding of it. So we've reached a point where, you make a technology and you're like, listen, I don't even totally understand this technology, but it's going out and I can't keep up with it.

Why are you putting the technology out? Because that company did and this company did, and if you have computers coding other computers and robots. Coding other robots, then all of a sudden it's going to get to a point where we're just trying to manage the system as it's spiraling out of our control, as opposed to, controlling everything, calling up Microsoft, calling up the NSA and saying, Hey, we're doing this.

We're doing that. It's going to be like, Hey, let me call up the NSA and say, Oh, my God, it did something we didn't expect. Prepare your servers.

Theo Harvey: Yeah. And I think we talked about this too. There was a guest on a real time of Bill Maher. He was the guru that used to work for meta and talked about how social media was built to create enragement. Because enragement. Equals engagement. So that's why we have these tribal, these tribes, and a lot of arguing back and forth in social media because That was what it was built for, right?

It's not a bug. It's a feature because they knew people get engaged in race. They stay on the platform longer. And so that's why we have, a democracy at risk. Likewise, AI, um, because there's no guardrails on it. And the fact that these companies are competing to get the more powerful, Engines and getting that out there and showing my stuff can do this and it's better than your stuff.

There's no guard. So now we're gonna have unchecked growth and to your point, it's getting to a point where that's probably why the similarities happen faster because there's competition involved. And now when that happens, people are just trying to build a bigger mousetrap because they think there's opportunities for the capture.

Market share, right? Fast as possible, they're not putting any thought into what would happen when these tools get out of control. And that's the problem. They're not designed to be, there's no sense of the problem with capitalism. Sometimes it's great in a lot of ways, but the problem with it, unchecked growth leads to a lot of inequities and a lot of other issues that we can't even fathom, right?

Yeah. So I think that's the challenge is like the singularity probably will happen faster because we are Really in an age of just unchecked growth and people are just being paid millions. We saw Netflix is gonna pay what a million dollar AI expert to come in and make you wanna watch more Netflix show.

So they're paying a million dollars just to make you watch more TV show. Imagine what these other folks are paying to get the AI system smarter and smart over time. So I just see it happening faster. 

Mr.Benja: E exactly. You got to consider, it's some, an obvious question, both of us come from a technological background, programming, engineering, et cetera.

One of the things that doesn't make sense to a lot of people is you're making it, why can't you control it? And that's okay, I'm, it starts out simple where, you're making a cake, one cake, you can control that. But let's say, you're in a kitchen with. 50, 50 ovens and you have 50 kids, little kids who are very smart and intelligent, but they're kids and they're like, we want to make a cake and you're like okay, grab your eggs, go run, make a cake and you're like, Oh God, I hope this all works out.

And when they say it's irreversible, why is it irreversible? It's because the person across the street has 45 kids baking cakes. And you got to beat them. And it's it's just this continual race and you can't just stop baking cakes because then your entire business goes away, you get sued. And that's the human methodology, methodological side of it, where it's I have to follow along in this path.

I'm stuck or the business goes away. And a lot of these businesses are contracted by law to make profit and do its best for the company. So now you've got a lot of political, social, financial, technological, and even law based realities to deal with. And it's that's a hard train to stop altogether.

And I get it where it's just make it stop. And it's like Elon Musk and all these other people had commissions where they're like, Hey, we need to slow down AI. Guess what didn't happen? We didn't slow down AI. It doesn't look like it's gonna slow down because if we stop, go ahead, 

Theo Harvey: I would say this.

Yeah, I don't think it's an engineering problem, right? To slow it down. You just can't regulate innovation. You can in certain ways, but it's getting too much and too fast. And so I think what's going to happen is restriction to data. It's going to probably become more and more whether that's legally or people just saying, we just talked about that with Scarlett Johansson.

And we'll talk about this later with the actor stripe. Oh, no. If you want access to any of my data, you're gonna pay me and you only have limited access, or, or you can't, we'll know if you train your model because we're gonna have some kind of time stamp or something on there. So there's gonna be limited restrictions to how to try and train these models.

Yes, they can be powerful and they can probably learn their limited set, but there could be some restrictions on how much information they gather. And I think that may be the only stoppage and that's more of an economic. Problem, right? How do you ensure your data is protected or at least you get compensated for the access to your data to train 

Mr.Benja: your models.

I forgot who it was. And artists may understand this problem a little better. Having access to data is one thing, but, and then, wagging a finger at somebody and saying no, you can't take that person's data. You could reverse engineer the data based on the output. Now that we've got all this.

Skill in terms of AI skills about being able to reverse engineer things, because that's technically how they're figuring out how to make AI art, their reverse engineering, a lot of output from artists. So artists used to have a problem when the, there was a certain landscape style that developed.

And some guys said, this is my style. You're stealing from me. And this is a forgery. Look at this. This man spent so much time working on trying to get the forgers taken out of the picture that he realized, wait a minute. In this time that I'm trying to get foragers taken out of the picture, I'm causing more foragers to appear.

I'm causing more people to look at other styles of art because it just seems like a bad deal to even deal with it. And at some point, I don't want to say you give up, but it's like the sharks are going to be in the water, and every time you try to kill one, it's like Hydra, two heads appear.

It's Oh my God, how can I even stop this? It's yeah, you can't really stop certain flows. You just have to outgrow them or buffer yourself or build up walls. But stopping it, that's a difficult thing. So yeah, that's the singularity we're talking about. And I think it's coming around in ways that we didn't quite expect.

So how many years do you give it? 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, yeah, I think 10 years is good time frame. I just don't trust these guys, man. These technology guys, they have proven time and time again, especially with social media, that they can't be trusted, man. And it's not their fault. They're just looking, to make profit.

And once they realize that social media only makes sense if people stay in it longer, because they get more visibility to get more eyeballs on. Advertisement, then they had to figure that out. And the problem, the way to do that was keep people enraged using people's psychology against them in order to profit off of them.

And likewise, AI is going to do the same thing on steroids. It's going to be, this intention thing, we've talked about this guy mentioned that there is no, there's no such thing as free will. And this attention hacking is going to get very severe. Literally right before this call, I was, we're trying to get prepared.

I was looking at someone on Facebook for prepare for this. I got distracted. So just like that, it's just they know what. Things, and it's getting better and better, and AI is enhancing that, but also the AI engine is learning more and more about human behavior. It probably knows more about us than we know about ourselves, from a human behavior 

Mr.Benja: standpoint.

Yes, in a way that we don't understand that they know. Exactly. It's scary. What is that quote? There's there's this old man who was scared. I forgot the situation in the story, but the old man was scared. And they're like, what's wrong? He's looking out into the forest. He's somewhere out there, somebody that I don't know is doing God knows what, he just got like rubbing his chin, looking out into the forest and that was, I was like, dang, that's a.

That's a deep thought, he's doing God knows 

Theo Harvey: what. Exactly. That's how it is, man. You just put your head down and don't worry about it until it happens. Mr. Benjamin, we'll keep an eye on this, right? We'll keep an eye on it. I watch. That's for sure. We'll keep an eye on this stuff.

This is, yeah, that's what we're here for guys. We're on the wall. We're keeping watch. So let you guys know what's going on out there. 

Mr.Benja: And as always contact us, cause we want to hear what you think. And story number three, Theo, this is your wheelhouse. The active strike is over, but Hollywood is still in trouble.

Man, I'm about tired of hearing about this. I don't know about you. So what's new with these actors strike? 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, man, these actors finally went ahead and, they figured it out with the producers, the studios, and they stopped the actor strike. So we're all there. But, it's really what's stigma on two things, which was the revenue sharing component, they wanted the studio, especially Netflix to reveal their metrics.

And so they even got, I think they even got more than what the writer's guild got. Writer's guild was saying you were going to get. If a TV show did, 20 percent of the entire audience, when the first week you would get a percentage of that. So the actors got that, and then they were able to put it in a pool to help other actors and stuff like that.

So it really came down to that revenue understanding, if it hits a hit. Then the actor should take advantage of that, but really came down to AI. And the key was like, they didn't want things to happen where they create these synthetic performers. That's what they call them to be reused. So if you were an actor, they would take your image, likeness, whatever, and then guess what?

Scarlett Johansson shows up in a movie about, basketball. And you're like, what was Scarlett Johansson doing this? She signed her likeness away in so many words. So now they have clauses in there that if the studio is going to use a likeness, they have to form the original performer and they have to create some kind of compensation model for that.

So it really came down to AI and money and which. It's interesting. A. I can't delay this again. So it's to your point. We talked about this. A. I still coming is relentless. It's like the Terminator and, we can legislate this and put, things in there to hamper everything. But man, it's still coming.

And so I think active strike. Yeah, the active strike just highlighted that. One thing high level was the result of this. We had two strikes over, it took over six months to resolve estimated 6 billion a race from the national economy. And then obviously all the different movies that have been delayed because of this, I think daredevil.

Not daredevil, daredevil was one of them, but that may have been a good thing for Disney. So we'll talk about that later. Some of these, movies and TV shows, that was a good thing that got delayed. So everybody could just let's re let's rethink this thing. But one of the things Deadpool that got delayed.

It was supposed to come out next year and it got delayed for another year, which, the whole Marvel engine really is getting delayed because of this and other, performing movies. So it's going to be pretty. Dry season the next couple of months, but at least it's over any thoughts on that Mr.

Benji I love more you just done with it. It's a hey, I just did what they had to do I guess 

Mr.Benja: I mean as I said before it's you know you if someone's going in a direction and you're only your only response is to Stick your heels in the dirt and go in the opposite direction. I think that to me, that just feels like you're going to slow down, you're the dragging of yourself.

It's yeah, I'm going to slow the train down a little bit, but that doesn't help me a lot for the future. I think a lot of some moves could have been made to uh, I don't know. Yeah. So some moves could have been made to do things a little better. Like if you look at the, you're talking about the synthetic performers and there was that.

Somebody's. Notice that there were like Disney had been putting background CGI characters to fill up the stands and things like that. We know they do that, but now they're becoming more and more apparent and they're using them in closer and closer shots. So now it's hey, if you've got actors, sure.

But guess what? A bunch of these are going to be more CGI. And once again, I think it's going to hollow out the middle area a little, so you're going to end up with a lot of extras, not having to not having jobs anymore. And I don't know, I just don't think it works out as well as they think it will.

'cause Hollywood's gonna get Hollywood taken care of first. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. And just FYI more strikes probably coming , they mentioned here the net code, which is all the reality. tv, soap operas, game shows late night. That contract ends in June 30th. So we'll see what they want. Demand. And then the oh, I teamster, so all.

The carpenters and the lighting guys and all that, their contract expires July 31st. 

Mr.Benja: So it's they're trying to make themselves replaceable. Like they're trying to get themselves replaced. It's I'm I paint the walls in the studios. I'm not going to do it anymore unless I get paid.

It's I feel you. But there's a guy out there with a laptop working on a program that paints walls automatically. I don't think you understand what's happening, sir. It's no, I paint walls. I'm doing better than your computer. It's like, all right, dude. Good luck with that. Strike, but no, what's coming.

Theo Harvey: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. We'll keep an eye on this, but yeah, so that's why you're going to see the lay on your TV shows, movies in the next couple of months because they finally got back to work. And unfortunately, it's the end of the year. Everybody's trying to go home for vacation. That's just Hollywood.

They're not going to rush to get these movies done for you for your sake. Go home and relax and get started January. So we'll see what happens. 

Mr.Benja: Strike while the router is hot. Alright. Story number four. Disney is effing up. That's the only lead in I got for it. Disney's effing up let me tell you, let me just run down different ways and Theo, then we can start to break it down.

All right. So the parks are being expensive. We talked about this in our podcast where it's too expensive to have fun. That's a problem for him. The streaming business has lost nearly 11 billion since the launch of Disney plus. Streaming is getting hit, now you've got your flagship properties, Star Wars movies, haven't released a feature film in a while.

So that's just a languishing studio property and everything else. You're getting a lot of noise and negative contentious talk on social media. Right or wrong. That's just not good for a brand stocks down 6 percent over the past six months. And for somebody. Biggest Disney, that's a problem. Cause you got a lot of properties to deal with.

They're buying Hulu outright for 9 billion in a half to move. It's not like they, they have to buy it now, still don't know what to do with ESPN. We were talking about sports earlier. Maybe they start selling a little bit of this all for licensing or something, but yeah, that's a pretty good laundry list of things to deal with Theo.

What's going on with Disney. How's the mouse house. 

Theo Harvey: It's effing up, man. You listed everything accurate there. And people see it. It's not just from the quality of content. The properties, MCUs down. Pixel, pixel pixel, what's it called? Pixel. Pixar is down. They can't blast Pixar. I didn't even mention that.

Yeah. So it's just, they're just trying to find anything. The movies have been down. TV shows have been down. Parks are getting more and more expensive. Anytime I put up Disney content on my stuff, I get like thousands of likes and stuff. And people are commenting about how expensive everything is.

And It's just, yeah, I think, is Iger the right person to steer Disney through this? This is challenging. I don't know, man. This is, this takes someone who's really gonna, Iger was good at, being a marketer and, being a cheerleader about how Disney is great and.

Building buying properties, to grow it, but we're in a new era where you have, you need a operator. Someone who's going to cut costs and be vicious on how you get things in control and that might not be either. We'll see, man. We, I stand for Disney, I wanted them to do well, but, and then this whole political thing, we know what's going on with that.

It's a lot of challenges at one time. I don't know, man. We'll see. Six months from now, I wouldn't be surprised, be honest with you. I would not be surprised. There's been rumors. Will Disney look to sell itself or something like that? There could be some more discussions around that if things don't turn around in the next six months.

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Most of what I have to say about Disney relates to us getting into the MCU update and don't get me started on Star Wars again. But it's, I don't want to say sad, but it's dang, I want, I wanted this to turn out differently. And can they pull themselves out? I always hope for the best, but, and this is my ignorance.

I don't see it. And I don't see how they really do that without a big PR push, a big, let's get back to dealing with the people and really getting our people excited. I look on Disney plus and I'm like, yeah, it's like they're not even trying it. I don't even know if it's possible to sense internal employee malaise from looking at a website.

I can almost feel the internal corporate malaise of people just walking around. Hey man, how's it going? Mickey Mouse. Yeah. Stand up and say the pledge of a pledge of allegiance to Disney, the Disney pledge every morning before we start working, everybody's just let's be done.

Theo Harvey: Yeah. So anyway, yeah we'll, I think this is a good point that, we'll keep up with. Seeing how look, Disney, you want to hire us? We here, we got some ideas. We can get you through this, let us know. And Hey, look, for those that listen to us, if you guys have ideas, shoot them out to us, reach out to us, like the show versus business like Instagram and YouTube and all that, because we'd love to hear 

Mr.Benja: your opinion.

Here is the saving grace. If we want to call it one and this goes into our next story, there's. A large and very energetic contingent of people who really like this new version of what Disney could be. I think the difficulty though, is making sure that meshes with what you already have. And we'll get into that in a second, but that's all I got to say.

Theo Harvey: Love it. 

Mr.Benja: Good with that. All right. Story number. Loki, the marvels and our MCU update spoiler time SPOILERS boop beep boop laughing every time So he who remains the story at the end of time. I don't know, how did you want to format this? Because we're gonna, let's jump into Loki first, right?

Or how did you want to format? I don't know. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, let's jump into Loki real quick because I don't think you saw the marbles I had the opportunity to see earlier. So I can do that more detailed. First of all, did you like Loki? Did you enjoy it? 

Mr.Benja: I respected the hell out of Loki. I really did. There were a lot of great things about it.

And a butt's coming, right? There were a lot of great things about it, but after it was over. I sat down and looked at my plate and was like, wow, that was a good meal. So you really liked it. And I'm like this is Thai food. I actually came for barbecue. I don't know how this whole thing got mixed up.

So this is something I did not want. Thank you very much. But it was fine for Thai food, right? That's how I feel after watching Loki. I'm like, I don't believe that this is not what I wanted. But it's good. It's solid. I did my tenant thing. I checked all the timey wimey stuff from all my doctor who references.

And I was like, no, no timelines branches. Oh, actually inverting into a tree, the loom temporal manifestations, duplications, it all works out. I just didn't want it. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. I didn't like it at all. I fell asleep. I did fall asleep. I skipped a couple of episodes, fast forward things. It was like, I have to watch this cause I need to know what's going on, but it wasn't enjoying it.

I would say this though. The last episode was a little bit more enjoyable and there was pockets to your point that were pretty decent and it really hinges on the acting and that tells me that they. And then the nature of the story itself, let's be honest it really looped on itself, right?

So at the end, so basically everything you saw up to that point really did not matter at all, right? And so that tells me that they could have done that in like a two hour movie and been done with it, right? Like a, just a special event, two hour movie. And it could have been done with because really we did five episodes, nothing really changed and happened in those five episodes that mean anything 

Mr.Benja: that meant anything.

Yeah. If you have the whole Loki moved as a character and all that, it's like fine. But I spent season one quantum mania season two, and then all that to say. Hey man, look, he has a heart and he's going to sit on this chair now and, just hold his branches. I'm like. All right, man.

 On an artsy fartsy level, it's no, that was really deep. And then the other level, it's just get the hell out of here with it. 

Theo Harvey: We saw his art. They, and they highlighted me, they, the storytelling is very like spoon fed. If you watch the trailers at the beginning, you see him saying I am burdened with glorious purpose.

So the arrogant God. I've become more benevolent, accepting God and that's really what the transformation was about, which I get and look fabulous performances, man. Tom Hilson did his job, man. He was excellent. This last episode, uh, or Wilson. Awesome is Mobius and given his perspective.

I had John DeMages. No, there's some controversy with them right now. Still as he who remains fabulous performance every time he's on. The screen just, does, gives it some more energy. Yeah. But beyond that, man, it was like empty calories. It was like, man, I didn't have to wait six hours for this.

Mr.Benja: Yeah. MY, if I want to boil it down to one thing, I was like, I didn't care. And this is why you're talking about falling asleep. It's he's Oh, he's got to go save his friends. And I'm like, I can't stay invested because I don't think they're, I, you'd never sold me on the fact that these are friends of his.

It's like they did that scene of, zooming in on Owen Wilson's face as he's like about to cry. And I'm like, what are you crying for? He's that's not your friend. You barely showed any emotion when you're leaving your kids for the rest of your life. What the, what are you talking about? And you never got to see him on the water with the, I didn't even get that.

 Like why is B15 his friend? She was beating the hell out of him with that stick all the whole time. And then, it's these aren't your friends, dog. Casey never liked you. You stole, he stole infinity stones. Probably. That's probably why he got his kleptomaniac thing. It's just come on.

None of this. You told, they told and didn't show that. That was the thing. Like I cared when old Loki from season one showed his glorious purpose. I was like, okay, that guy's got glorious purpose. You remember he was doing? Yeah, I do. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, we can see they're setting up some stuff at the end of Loki.

So now, just to get out the mechanics of it all, instead of just one sacred timeline, they now have all these infinite branches and they have to stay. The reason why they're staying in existence because Loki is making them, allow them to stay. So now all these different variants can live.

And that does set up what I'm going to talk about in the marvels a little bit. So yeah, Loki, check it out. You want to mark, check the box. So you won't be confused. Great. But definitely not the greatest TV show as it could have been because they have very, a lot of promise from season one. So with that being said, the marvels, Mr.

Benjamin, would you at all interested in seeing

Mr.Benja: Yes, because I wanted to see what they did with it. I also wanted to see how they, if they came back, I wanted to see what they did with the characters because they seem like innocent type of characters with no connection to anything. All of a sudden having a connection to something. So I wanted to see what they connected, but I wasn't terribly interested.

Yeah, 

Theo Harvey: me neither. But I'll be honest, I was pleasantly surprised, man. The little hint in the trailers of them switching bodies when they use their powers worked really well in the movie where you see them fighting and switching out. It almost had such an energy. It was like a different kind of view of fighting.

the same person there. Now, a new person has to use a different format to fight the bad guys. So it was interesting. And then, they would mess up and the bad guys would come with them. Sometimes it was just very chaotic, but very interesting kind of format. And they kept that going quite a while.

So I thought that was interesting. They took some left turns in the storyline where they Yeah, did some weird things. They had a musical number in the middle, which was interesting. But they really kept the fun high. And the fact that it was only an hour and 45 minutes shows me that they really said, okay, let's just make, have a fun time.

And then, do the business of what we need to get to the next step here later. But we're going to have a fun time overall. And I think that meant that, obviously there's a lot of hate. Toward Captain Marvel justifiably be honest with you, let's be honest. She's a nothing character.

She's never been anything character in the comic books, no one really knows what she's about. The most interesting thing that ever happened to her was when Rogue took her powers, right? And that's so sad. I would just say, but Kamala Khan, she turned out really well if you watch the TV show.

Yeah. Fabulous performance. Rambo, Monica Rambo. I think the actress is great. Character, not so much. But I see what they were doing. When you look at all three of them when they're together, you have the brain. The brawn and the heart, and that's what they each represented. And so when I saw that, I was like, okay, that kind of, because Monica Rambeau was the smart one.

She figured out all different things. Obviously Cara Danvers is, the muscle. She's the most powerful Avenger. And Camila Khan is always hugging people and just so excited. And so that kind of worked. I think that theme worked. So overall, nothing, nothing special, spectacular. Now, spoiler alert, 

Mr.Benja: you probably heard about this Mr.

Benja? One thing I don't want to spoil is the end credits. Oh, okay.

Theo Harvey: All right. So we won't talk about it. So let's just say, there's a reason why there's multiple universes. They still going with the multiverse and they're starting to do some interesting things. All right. Yeah, it was funny. My kids, we were watching this one guy when he saw the end credit, he stood up in his seat.

He said, Oh my God.

I looked at him down there. I was like, I thought I was excited. 

Mr.Benja: All right. I'm gonna check it out tomorrow. 

Theo Harvey: All right, guys. So anyway, I think that's it. Mr. Biggie, anything else we want to discuss? So high level. Go check them out if you want to do your homework. Have a good time, but don't expect anything high for both of those.

I guess that's what I would say. Yeah. And let us know what you think of them. Don't give up on marble. I still have faith in Feige, he can turn this ship around. Just have faith. Glorious purpose. Yeah. If you can say that. All right, everyone, thank you for your time. Please subscribe and comment and show us some business on Twitter.

YouTube, Instagram, listen to us at Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit us at our website, show versus business. I am Mr. Benjamin. Have a great one. Peace.