SvB Ep174 AI Is Overhyped, Disney Won’t Save Us. Guess We’ll Just Wait For More Kendrick Lamar Artwork

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SvB Ep174 AI Is Overhyped, Disney Won’t Save Us. Guess We’ll Just Wait For More Kendrick Lamar

July 15, 2024 • Theo Harvey | Mr Benja

Ai is overhyped. Disney isn’t doing that great with Star Wars and Marvel.
Joe Rogan is still weird. But Kendrick Lamar is doing great. What’d we miss?

00:00 Introduction and Summer Vibes
00:21 AI Hype and Reality Check
02:18 AI's Future and Limitations
17:55 Political Commentary: Joe Biden's Struggles
26:43 Kendrick Lamar's Impact on Compton
27:44 Hip Hop Dominance: Kendrick Lamar's Impact
28:44 The Challenge of Outshining the Best
31:48 Nostalgia in Movies: Hits and Misses
33:38 The Passion Behind Great TV Shows
41:11 Marvel and Star Wars: Current State
48:03 Joe Rogan and Representation in Media
53:00 Conclusion and Farewell

YouTube link to this Podcast Episode:
https://youtu.be/B08I1Klj9_U

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Introduction and Summer Vibes

Theo Harvey: This is show versus business. Pop culture, pop money with your host, the real Theo Harvey and Mr. Benja. So Mr. Benja, what's going on this week,

Mr.Benja: Man, what's going on? We are freestyling. We are flowing. We are enjoying the summer vibes in July. I just had a birthday, so I'm a little hype because I'm a little wiser than I was like a week ago.

It's all good, man.

AI Hype and Reality Check

Mr.Benja: We got some Kendrick Lamar to talk about again. The train keeps rolling, man. We've got some AI. Instances. We both had a little experience with some AI action going on over the week. So that's going to be a little interesting. Let's see what else we got on the list of the new Captain America trailer came out.

Yeah, I'm not sure if you saw it. I hope you did. But we got that. Of course, we got to talk a little bit about Terrence Howard, because why not? And a black Superman. We already brought it up, but yeah, We're talking about blackness today a little bit, so might as well throw him in there. And Redbox is shutting down.

We're going to toss that in the mix too, but as I said, we're freestyling it. We have show notes down there that you can check the timestamp to see what we're talking about and when. Thank you, James, for doing that. But aside from that, Theo, how was your week?

Theo Harvey: Mr. Benja. Wow. The week is not over yet. It's Friday.

We're calling this on a special Friday pod. So yeah, man, I'm out of it right now, as you guys can see, I've had my little corporate purple on. So I'm still in corporate mode, but I'm starting to get back into weekend mode deal. So yeah, it's coming, man. But so far, man, I've been listening to some interesting podcasts lately.

Do you know that joker, Adam Como? Comber. That's how you say it. Conover. They said it's wrong. And I put it in front of those guys. Yeah, it is a comb over Adam Conover. He had this show on true TV years ago. It says Adam ruins everything. And he's just comedian slash, I guess satirist or whatever that just goes around throwing flames.

He came prominent with the strike. I think he was on the actor, the writer strike committee for whatever reason. So he just blew up on the internet and he does his thing. But he recently had a conversation about AI and he said it's nothing. He thinks it's just hype burger.

It's another meta, excuse me. It's another metaverse is another Bitcoin. It's just another con that tech is pulling over eyes, Mr. Benja. And so this is something, I know this is more about kind of our weekly discussion, but maybe we'll open up for a discussion one on this one. You know what, man?

Okay. I think I may agree with them as someone who is the hot take. I know, but someone who saw the possibility of what AI can do and the possibility of, what it can mean for the future. I'm starting to realize, you know what? A lot of stuff they're talking about is still a ways away. And I've seen that the other issues, the limitations on chips.

Limitation on training data that's starting to come up. You're like are we hyping this for no reason and putting all this fear out there about AI taking over where we're basically still in, basic math with AI now, and Adam brought that up on his podcast. So I'm going to open up producer James, go ahead and put this on wax, man.

This is something that people want to talk about.

AI's Future and Limitations

Mr.Benja: So what do you think AI has been promising? That we're not getting.

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Good point. I think the futuristic version of AI, you just tell it whatever, and it knows exactly what you want and can basically what they call what agents that just can, I want to take a flight to Paris.

So I just say that. And then all of a sudden I have tickets to go to Paris. And so I think that's the dumbed down version. I look at it right now. If you look at all the versions of AI that we've seen out there, how. From what's it called? The classic movie, 2000 space odyssey, I think that was what's called and then also her, just so when you can.

It's almost indistinguishable from a human being that you'd speak to. But I don't think we're there yet. I was playing with AI with my son. I'm using the app version, the voice version of chat GPT on your iPhone. I don't know if you play with that yet. And we're just talking about, okay, what does it take to be a great basketball player?

Oh it's. It's not there yet, right? You still gotta give a lot of context and it's got to understand certain things. And as you to me questions, it's too polite. It's just, this is a big gap. Now, granted, it can get better. I get that. But, so if you're going back to your original question, my thought has been like, AI is going to be this and I know it's gonna take time to get there, but I think it's gonna take a lot longer than people realize.

Mr.Benja: I see. So I was wondering where , where we diverged in, in, in opinions on this, because I'm thinking AI is still on track to change the world, do X, Y, and Z. And, every, It's, I think it's a game changer, but from what you said, I just realized that I'm thinking of it, not from a consumer level point of view, I'm thinking about how it starts to change the underlying structure of a lot of interaction, a lot of behaviors in the same way that, that the internet, it's like, Hey, the internet and my aunt was like, I don't care.

I'm gonna call you anyway. No, you can email me. It's this new thing on the internet. She's yeah whatever. Be at your phone because I'm gonna call you and if you don't pick up, you don't get your birthday gift. And she's actually pulled that on me before where I didn't get my birthday gift. I was like, you kidding me?

But I'm thinking about it from a Infrastructure kind of view. So

Theo Harvey: that's

Mr.Benja: what

Theo Harvey: I think that's a good analogy, right? The internet was more mostly infrastructure for a long time. If you want to interact with people, you had to go to those message boards, and communicate, or you had,

or you

remember back at fam, I had to go to the E building and we would go on the computer and we use our family email or hotmail to communicate with folks.

And that was still, early days of it. But But eventually, to your point, it became more consumer, more available for consumers where, video audio, we started listening to podcast Napster, we started downloading, tour torrents, right to watch videos and movies.

So it became more commercialized, but the infrastructure had to be built up. And so I hear your point, you're saying AI is still building an infrastructure in place. What I'm saying is I still think that's still a ways away because these chips are so expensive, Mr.

Benja. And

it's I saw some VC companies they're spending, they're enticing companies, so BC is vibe for top promising companies, to invest in, they're enticing them now, not with more money, but Hey, we have access to 20, 000 CPUs, they train your AI. Yeah, so I'm like. So that must be a real thing. And obviously, that's why the video is killing it, the game right now. But that's the other thing too, was the other thing they mentioned Adam in his conversation in this podcast, he mentioned that the training data set is I think we, the.

They're saying there's not enough there to help make these these algorithms more advanced. Now, I don't know if you have any insight on that, but the more I thought about it with that, I was like, I think he's right. There, there is a limit to what, we have out there that it can adjust.

And also, let's be honest, a lot of stuff, they scraped out the internet and stuff. There's still tons of stuff that's private that now that we know these algorithms out there, people are not trying to give access to.

Mr.Benja: I think on that end of things. That you're dealing with lazy minds. I was trying to think of a way to put it, but if you've got a large data set and you're just throwing AI at it, and then walk away with your coffee and let it compile its results for the next three hours, and then you walk back in the office and This sucks. That's what you're going to get when I was working in video games, the artificial intelligence, which wasn't automatically generated, which was a key factor. There was really a lot of work put in between a lot of smart people, psychologists, gamers, programmers, designers We even got a cartographer in, a map guy in one point.

And we were like, okay, how do animals figure their way around the world? It's they do this and they have landmark points. And okay. We started programming these little modules into the system where it's here's what a landmark is. That in the computer AI's mind, it was a bunch of coordinates, but this one was flagged as special landmark.

This one was flagged as people like to stay here. This one was flagged as dangerous because you might fall and die or something. So we started having to go in and customize what the world meant. And once we got that done, which honestly took a couple months to get right. And when I say workable, still not done.

Once you got it to a certain point, you're like, okay, now we can just throw stuff at it. And within this section of a. A game in this case, the AI is pretty decently intelligent, and this was stuff we were doing back in 2000s, you talk about 2015, 2015, 25 years later, you have to pull back a little bit, I think, from the idea of just.

I got phone books to data. I got maps. I got people eating habits. I got telephone bills. I'm just throw it all over a wall and it's going to be able to know everything.

Theo Harvey: And I think, your point is valid, right? Yes. For very specified tasks, right? You can pull all this data in and get the AI to a reasonable point, right?

That makes sense. Really, chat GPT is just a large language model right now. They're trying to expand upon that. Yeah. With more opportunity to take an audio and take in visual information. But I, the question, the challenge I have is, can we really get to AGI artificial, what's it called?

General intelligence, right? Is that something that's possible? Because you, you had to lay so much groundwork, to build that structure, to make it. Passable. AGI is something that's can you walk and chew gum at the same time? No, I can only chew gum because I got the data and I can only walk putting it together on my own.

Is that possible? And

Mr.Benja: is that necessary? That's what

Theo Harvey: you wanted to you. So you're saying we're just gonna have all these AI just do one specific task. I don't think that, are we going to have, Are we going to have a super AI that manages all the other AIs to do these tasks for them?

Mr.Benja: Is that what you're saying? And I believe that is okay. If you think about, there's in our games, we had just like this. We had the AI, this thing called an AI brain. I actually remember this from the code. It said AI brain. You're like, what's that? That's the AI's brain. Brain and underneath it, it had all these different modes and states that it would go through where it was in a fighting mode.

It was in a traveling mode. It was in a wandering mode and it just had these different bits of AI. The reason I mentioned the different bits and having to get them to work together at some later date, Is because the individual bits is what you're seeing now with the images. If you want an anime character, in with any kind of hair or whatever, there's plenty of images out there.

It's pretty much got that figured out. All the anime poses that people have ever drawn. It's pretty much got that one thing figured out now. I wouldn't ask you to go figure out like, what would a caveman stick drawing look like? It's going to come up with something, but it really, no one's really throwing that much data in terms of like how stick figures should be drawn.

I know because I looked up stick figures and was trying to get it to realistically draw certain stick figures. And I was like, it can do complex anime far better than they can do stick figures. This is interesting.

Theo Harvey: It wasn't trained on that data set.

Mr.Benja: Exactly. So who needs it to do everything? If I just want it to do one simple thing, Hey man, you're my AI.

Just get me to. Whatever destination I need to get to. And there are only a certain number of things it's going to do. It's going to check like the train routes, going to check the airplanes. Again, if you localize it and give it a very small set of information to deal with and a very small set of results that you want from it, then I think you're going to get a lot more gain a lot more quickly.

Theo Harvey: Okay.

Mr.Benja: I don't think anybody actually cares about, having a robot in the corner of your room, except for Elon or,

Theo Harvey: I don't know. Like I said it's, I, there's something there, but I just, I am getting the whiff of this whole and I've lived there, right? We've lived in both, the internet of all the things, maybe mobile technology and the internet, and maybe a few other smaller things that, that, that really blew up.

Although, but the, yeah. One hand that really transformed, how we live our lives. And so they're saying AI is the next thing after whiffing on the metaverse, whiffing on NFTs, whiffing on, crypto. And I get, that's where I was coming from, just saying, Hey, this is another. Foolishness. And, but like I said, I'm, I am leaning toward, I think it will be changing, but I don't think it's going to be as game changing as we think. And so the proof is going to be in the pudding. We can debate, man, we'll be on this side and you're going to be on that side.

I'm going to be the anti AI guy now. Oh, I use it. I use it too.

Mr.Benja: I don't know what stuff is going to happen. I really don't. But what's interesting to me and what's fun about this whole thing is that stuff usually pops up that we're just completely not expecting, even if it's from the negative side. When people said they were adding cameras to phones, do you remember how many people scoffed at that as being a stupid idea?

Theo Harvey: I do. I do. you put a

Mr.Benja: camera in a phone? And I had a, I believe it was a Nokia phone of some type, actually. But I got it through Verizon at the time. And I was like, this is going to be cool. They had to be ad set up. It was the pictures on it were worse than, my game boy at the time, which is pretty terrible.

And I was

like, this is terrible. But hey, look, it's a picture and I probably still have some of those images. If I find one, I'll send them. But that simple thing that nobody wanted, that nobody cared for suddenly became the thing. And once Facebook hit, images were being sent around. Facebook goes mobile first, images from pictures everywhere.

Facebook buys Instagram, pictures again, Snapchat Tumblr. Leading all the way up to tick tock. Now we've got the short form video, which is pretty amazing. I don't know if I told you the story. I was talking to a young girl. She was 23 or something. Yeah. And she was like I was like, Hey, so what are you doing on your phone?

What do you, what are you kids up to? Trying to try to connect, what are you kids up to? Oh, I, Watching some stuff and I'm thinking, Oh, what do you like to watch? One piece anime or this or that she said. I don't really watch shows. I just watched Tik TOK. I was like, Oh, okay.

Hours at a time, short form video from everybody. So back to the point, we didn't expect images to become this big thing and video to become this big thing. And it happens so slowly and consistently that we don't look back and think about how amazing that is.

Theo Harvey: So like I said, the jury's still out.

I think the, I get the whiff of, what the number go up, but that's the argument, right? That that's a phrase if you never heard it before that growth at all costs, right? By these tech companies. I is a part of that conversation. We always got to, this is the next big thing.

So we're going to invest in the heavily. So the number can keep going up. We get more and more people, more and more money. So I get that argument. And so to your point, we're going to see how it evolves. And that's why we discuss it on the podcast.

Mr.Benja: What would you like to see? What would entertain you or make you like all this

Theo Harvey: awesome?

I just want it to be more useful, right? It takes a lot to get it to a certain point, just the way ChatGPT is right now. I used it, with my son example, but I recently tried to use it to source some information for some data I was trying to do, right? So I have a process I go through to create my prompts around, what, Persona do I need to have right?

What's the context right? What to avoid, so it's like all these different bits and pieces to get it somewhat passable and then it's still not there, right? So it's it's it doesn't get you there exactly what you want. And I don't know if it ever could because sometimes you can't even articulate exactly what you want, right?

Until you see it. And so I think AI, the promise of AI being something that You know, almost like an assistant to you, and doing what you needed to do, it almost has to know you almost intimately in your way of thinking and your processes. And I don't think it can get to that point to make it extremely useful.

But to your point, I don't know, right? We're going to evolve. I do see it being. We're heavily right now. We're in the midst of a election in the United States. I'm seeing so much gobbledygook out there. And it's people on my team interns, as soon as they show up, they're getting hacked, social hack people find our And they say, Oh yeah, this is Theo.

He's trying to get, I want you to buy me some some gift cards, and yeah, literally the gift card scam, but I'm saying that you're going to see more proliferation of that just random texts because people get access to things and using AI to scale out a lot faster. And so I think I'm seeing a bad part of it to proliferate more, but to be honest, internet was like that too.

How many of us saw scammy images, for years or what was that you go to these webpages with SEO, you had nothing but, thousands of words, right for boobs or something like that, right? I'm on this site SEO. Yeah, man. So anyway, like I said, I just do it out there.

That was something that was top of mind for me.

Political Commentary: Joe Biden's Struggles

Theo Harvey: But one person real quick, I know we don't talk about politics, but who's having a terrible, not so good, very bad day. A week, if you will, Joe Biden, man, this dude, I don't know if you've been paying attention to this mess. I know we don't talk about it, but it's hilarious, man.

To me, James, put this on wax, please. Cause this dude, man he's fine for his life. Why don't you say that man? Literally it's if he doesn't don't doesn't run for president, I think he might. Unfortunately, kill over. And so that's sad. It's almost like seeing your your grandparents put all this effort, to do something.

And then, son, I did it, I'm doing my best. I can, you're like, no, grandfather, just sit down, man, you're old. And so I feel for him and I feel like this is I don't know what to say, man. This is a sad part of what's happening right now in the country. And I don't know if you have any opinions or not, I just wanted to just comment on that right now the sad state of affairs of what's happening.

And a person who realizes he probably shouldn't do the job, but he's like holding on for some reason. I don't know why.

Mr.Benja: It's interesting. I saw a bunch of, not an argument, but a discussion, info, share, dump online between amongst a group of people that were looking up what happens when president takes office and decides to step out, can they do that?

Can that be a plan? And apparently some people say, yeah, it can actually be a total plan. So if he wins the election, he can be like, cool. I'm a figurehead. And then Kamala steps up and it's that's the thing where it's he's just standing over to the side

go ahead.

Theo Harvey: That's the challenge, man.

It's he could have done that. Months ago, years ago, a year ago, right? It just yeah,

Mr.Benja: but if he does that now, you don't want to start that talk now because then all of a sudden it's you're, I think you're going to just be given the election over to Trump if you try that right now, at least.

Theo Harvey: Yeah. And I, so the argument is that Kamala or anybody else that comes takes his place. Couldn't be Trump, but he's not being Trump right now in the polls. Let's be honest. So it's and that, that debate was so disastrous. It was like, I like literally the first seven minutes I text my parents and I said, it's over.

Trump won. It was just, I couldn't even watch the whole thing. It was just like, what is he saying? It was, and then what made it worse? It was a clear comparison too, because it was like split screen like this. You got one person telling lies, but he's articulate. He was energetic, his voice didn't sound garbly and yet the other person just I said this and just trailed off.

You're like, what are you talking about? And when they put the split, if he was just by himself, there's one split comparison. It was not, it was like night and day. It was like, oh, this is, this is the best we can do. We're, wait a minute. He's got the best PR people, the best marketing people.

This is the best they could do in the world. Oh my God. God. And so anyway, so make a long story short. I just feel yeah, it's going to be interesting. Maybe we live in interesting times and see what happens. I think he's going to try to white knuckle it and try to stay in,

but

I don't think, yeah, that's not going to be good.

One thing, and we talked about it last week, I think one thing people don't realize is that project 2025 that people are really scared about that. So that might be the undercover sneak up attack that we talked about that might be. Stem, Trump from getting elected, but we'll see, man.

Like I said, I just I don't know. How did we get here? ,

Mr.Benja: that's all. Yeah. Is a theme that's kept coming up and it's gotten worse and worse over the years. This idea of we are not here to make things better. We're here to win And, . That's when things, not when things start to go bad, but that's a definite sign of things going bad when that's common talk.

And it's what do I do with that? I don't know.

Theo Harvey: Yeah. So anyway, man, like I said, we dabble in politics guys, but Mr. Benja. How was your week?

Mr.Benja: 24 minutes in, let me see if I can remember. A week was funny, man. I had a birthday and I did the most introvert thing I could think of.

I turned off my notifications and I built a website.

And it was glorious. Yeah, I had fun though. I was just like, you know what, man, I haven't done. Let me just crack my knuckles, get in there, did all nighter. The sun came up and I was like, Oh, I still got it. Let's go get in there and bang some stuff up. But yeah, I had a good week, man.

I'm working on the whole rollout and launch for my new book. That's coming out, jot booking. And. I was feeling really good about it. So I went ahead and did that learn some things going to get back on it this weekend. And I got the weeks planned out over there, my little calendar. It's great.

Love it, man.

Theo Harvey: I love it. I hyped you up, man. I said, yes, do it. That's how you do it, brother. So that's how you do it.

Mr.Benja: To that point I didn't want to disappoint you. Cause I said the book was going to be out earlier. I never mentioned this, but at some point it stopped becoming one, it stopped becoming a smaller Like the 90 minute Joe polish book.

And I realized there was a little more meat that I wanted to put on it because I'm throwing this bone out to a couple of people and I want them to have something to chew on. So that's what happened. I was like, let me just go in on it a little bit further.

Theo Harvey: No, no worries, man. At least you got it out, man.

That's good. That's the, that's half the battle. That's 90 percent of battle to me. And then, cause I heard Alex Hermosi say this story and someone else said, that story about the pottery class, two people two cohorts of people,

Mr.Benja: art and fear. I think I told you about that years ago.

Theo Harvey: Yeah, exactly. Everybody's talking about that. So that anyway the mantra is basically two cohorts of people take a pottery class. One group is saying, Take your time and make the best vase boss ever. The other group is just to make as many bosses as they could. And so you think in the group that took their time and read the best boss ever, and they made some great ones.

But when you look to the ones who made so many, they did so many so often that they got better and better. And the complexity and the artwork was just so much more superior than the ones who just did one. It's just really about the work of just getting out there and doing more. And so that's what I've been leaning toward, more of a Hey, yeah, just get that thing out. Yes. Cause guess what, the book behind me, man that's already working on volume two edition two, man. So it's one of those things, but yeah, congratulations, man.

Just

Mr.Benja: get the work done. I love it. How was your, how are you with your, your, When you go through a cycle and you complete something how are you, what part of the process is like the part where you're having. Fun with it. Cause if it's like you start the beginning research, you put stuff together, you bang it out, you test, you release, and then you go back.

What part of that cycle causes you the most hiccups?

Theo Harvey: Good point. Yeah, man, that's the insightful thought. So obviously the beginning part, I'm super excited. And so I think I think most people are right. But then when I sit down and write it out, did I know how excited I am?

I'm like, Oh yeah, I can do this. I can do this. And then as I'm still, if I'm still typing, almost down the page. And I'm like, okay, this is a good idea. If I'm like halfway in, I started thinking about the negatives at that point. I'm like, I don't know, this is a good project.

So I'm more, but I use that momentum of the excitement of the idea to determine if this is something worthwhile. And then but to your point and then now if it's very rarely, something, I let it sit. And then, let it marinate with the subconscious kind of, get on me and then I come back to a later and then typically, I get that next momentum is to me is that last 10 percent that gets me every time.

Like last night, I had to get something out and I'm procrastinate like a mug. So I did a little bit. And then I'm sitting around, I said, okay, I'm going after eight, I'm just going to, chill out. And then start watching old game of thrones clips, right? Knowing I got to get this thing out. I'm sitting here watching this guy, the recap guy go all the recaps of all the seasons, pieces of game of thrones, like, why am I doing this?

That's okay. Stop. I got my coffee and just banged out the last 10%, but it's like that last 10%. I don't know what it is. Cause it's I don't know for me, you're right. It's just even though I say bang it out I suffer from it too. Is it good enough? Or I got this other idea I could do it.

That last 10 percent is always the toughest for me.

Mr.Benja: Oh, so it's a good place to be, man. Some people I know get so excited during that phase. They're just like, yeah, we're finishing it up and we're doing this and let's go fix this and let's talk. I'm like, wow. Okay. I w I was done a long time ago. That's my problem.

At some point, I'm like. It's done in my head. It's done. And then I'm like this sucks. Yeah, man. Speaking of getting stuff done and not being done, man.

Kendrick Lamar's Impact on Compton

Mr.Benja: Kendrick. Keeps coming, man. He just, he's got new songs bubbling in the background. And you sent us some business information. I asked if you'd ever been to Tam's burgers and neither of us had, but you said something about, let me see.

Where's that? I actually go ahead and give me that recap. What about it?

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. Tam's burgers, big business there in Compton. He was doing the video there, obviously hyping them up. So there They got 30, 40 percent more revenue in the last month, because of the video, it just blew up, because of not us video obviously blew up.

Got business. So yeah, he's just making landmarks of places in Compton that people go to all the time. And so that is something that was insightful, man. I think that's amazing, man. I put this, can I pivot a little bit though? Besides the music video business push? Yes, he's obviously, defeated Drake, right?

That's clear. But has he defeated hip hop music for the whole year?

Hip Hop Dominance: Kendrick Lamar's Impact

Theo Harvey: Cause I'm hearing other artists come out. I think Eminem has something, someone else mentioned something coming out. I don't give a care. Do you?

Mr.Benja: I do not give a care. Get out of here.

Theo Harvey: So my other artists came out with something. I can't remember who it was, but boom, like. Where's Kendrick, it's yeah, he's literally defeated hip hop music I don't think anyone can come, you know after him the rest of this year because I don't think anyone would top the year That he had what do you think about?

Mr.Benja: You got it man. It's just it's just the discussion point and what's funny is It's become enough of a discussion point where you're starting all my normal reactors who like react to anime or react to movies or whatever that do recaps for, we got the people who do Star Wars recaps doing a recap on the Kendrick Lamar's Not Us video.

I'm like, come on, man. Nobody wants to hear from you. Okay. I hear from you just this once.

Theo Harvey: This is crazy, man. He literally just changed the conversation. Heck.

The Challenge of Outshining the Best

Theo Harvey: One of my top views, long form views was a Kendrick Lamar, a conversation piece, a thumbnail, but I'm just like, man, this is, yeah, he really, has dominated conversation and like Drake, man, I think Drake was trying to come out with something or whatever, but I don't know, man.

He might have to, I don't know. He might have to just re really may come back, come out with some dreads or something, come out with a, just, this is a totally new genre for like a year kind. Remember Garth Brooks, he came out as a golf guy for a little bit. The country singer.

Remember he came out as a golf guy for a minute. People were like, what the hell are you doing, man? That's what Drake needs to do, man. Just go undercover. Go work some local bars, .

Mr.Benja: Yeah. I was at a, I was at a design. I was discussing something with some designers and one of the old school heads who really knew his, the industry and stuff about game development was like, okay, if somebody makes enough of a mark and you want to come out, you've either got to come out better than them in that thing.

If it's a fighting game, you've got to come out with something that's not just 5 percent better because that's who cares? We're all invested in the original thing. You've got to come out with something way better. Yeah. 50, 75, a hundred percent, two times as good. You can't just come out with something moderately.

Okay. Or you've got to come out with something that's a really big twist. If somebody came out with grand theft auto, and then somebody came out with a Western grand theft auto. Unfortunately, rockstar did both of those. So it's hard to deal with. It's you've got to do something in the same line, something with a twist, or you just got to pack up your bags and say, look, I'm going that way because I cannot even hang in the same sphere as this guy in the same atmosphere.

So if Drake or somebody was going to do something different, You might as well have an, you might as well join MMA, Drake's gonna have his first MMA fight, and then people might be like actual MMA sure. I'll tune into that.

Theo Harvey: Good point. That's a good idea. I like that. You're right.

It's like you really have to just get out, music, get out. I'm done. Yeah, you're right because the buildup. Interest again in what you're doing and stuff like that. That I never thought of it like that, but yeah, that's so true is I think Alice Hamozy said on one of his videos recently, he said all the games go to the top 1%, right?

So it's like you do a little bit more work, but because you're so much better than everybody else, you get all the games. And That's similar, right? If, Kendrick Lamar is getting all the attention. He could just, walk, in front of Trump. I don't know. He could just go out and get the newspaper, right?

And people be talking about him. So it's like he's getting all the attention, all the, and that's what I'm saying. He's soaking all the attention away from hip hop beyond the Sexy Reds or the other female, the latest female rapper du jour if you will. But Yeah, he's the only one that's cause Eminem has something I could care less.

Mr.Benja: Yeah, pretty much. So anyway,

Theo Harvey: I don't know. That's my two cents.

Mr.Benja: It's a very talented piece of work. I don't care.

Theo Harvey: Yeah.

Mr.Benja: Yeah,

Theo Harvey: exactly. Exactly.

Nostalgia in Movies: Hits and Misses

Theo Harvey: Did you want to talk about, these movies are still important. I think it got some views on the last time. My solo pot. I talked about movies and we've been talking about this lately.

What are your thoughts? It's halfway due to summer season. Have you seen any movies in the theaters yet? Mr. Bidget this summer for the summer?

Mr.Benja: No, I haven't. You know what? I was supposed to go see a movie with this girl that never happened. So it's whatever. Then Deadpool Wolverine was my only other summer movie that I was going to rock into.

Theo Harvey: Man, it's so sad, man. I love going to movies, man. And look, I was struggling trying to figure out if I could go see a movie last weekend. There was nothing I could see. Like I said, I already saw the inside out, inside out two. That's going to probably make 1. 5 billion. Probably the biggest animated film of all time, but I'm waiting for Yeah, Wolverine, maybe Twisters.

I might go see that one. That might be interesting. But yeah Deadpool and Wolverine is the only one I want to see Mr. Benjamin. It's so sad. It's movies in general, man. Maybe we'll talk about this. Did you check out that Netflix? Axel F. Did you look at that?

The latest Beverly Hills cop?

Mr.Benja: After coming to America, I had to put my, I had to put a pause on running to see something like that and I'll see it, but I didn't rush to, I'm not like worried about it.

Theo Harvey: It was passable. It wasn't as bad, but it's like this nostalgia play, man. I think there's diminishing returns, right?

It's I don't know, man. They're going back to that. Way too much. And it's getting across the board, not just with Eddie Murphy, but it's just across the board, man. It's like they're bringing back everything, man. It's this is not fun anymore. I don't

Mr.Benja: know. And you can tell the fun isn't there from the development side.

If somebody just has a, Hey, let's do this. And no one's excited about it. I guarantee you, no one excited in terms of making it. I guarantee you, it's not going to have that vibe to it.

The Passion Behind Great TV Shows

Mr.Benja: Like we were talking about X Men 97 from watching it. Even if you didn't like it, you're like no.

The people who made this were excited about making it. They had a lot that went into it. Animation was interesting. Dialogue was interesting. They made some stuff that, There were arguments in the writing room no, you cannot have this. Okay. If you're going to have it, I need a new script by tomorrow morning.

What are you going to do? You want a new script? You want a new script? Order some food. I'll have a new script in the morning. That's that kind of passion that ends up making great work. And I guarantee nobody has that for a lot of stuff going on today. It's just eh, they want us to make a, a TV version of Total Recall or something.

I don't care if no one cares. And it's you're done.

Theo Harvey: That's the thing I'm trying to figure out. It was like, you're right. There, there's a rare exceptions, right? With both the mail, right? I don't know if you saw the news. I think you pinged that to me. He's getting replaced by Matthew Chauncey, right?

Who did the Disney plus Ms. Marvel and what if shows, but both the mail, man, that dude, man, he, he had passion for it, man. And it showed, it's and it's man how come some content is just like, They know how to make that nostalgia sing, man. It's and to your point, I think it all starts with, how, what was it?

Genesis, right? Was it just Hey, I'm Eddie Murphy. Let's figure out another show I can put on Netflix. Or is it something that comes out deep passion? If you don't know both the males, he grew up as a gay, gay teenager and he saw the The X Men as metaphor for his life.

And so he drew, it was drawn to the characters. And so he had a story to tell and a point of view. And then that goes into to your point where they even little things like, it'd be cool when we actually see what it's like to transport with with the nightcrawler. And they did that perspective.

I was like, wow, it'd be cool. What if we made Cyclops a bad ass it was like, That I'm guaranteed those are conversations that happened because they were fans. And so I think you're right. If nostalgia can work, if people put the work into, or you get the crap that people try to take the piss out of the original one, like the He Man crap that Kevin Smith came up with, that just was terrible.

And so it's like, why even do this? Are you trying to make commentary? Are you trying to say this is a beloved thing? I want to honor what made it great, but also put my spin on it. That meant something for me. And I think that's what people miss. I don't know.

Mr.Benja: Yeah, and, there's a lot of people trying to be clever instead of good.

You know what I mean?

Theo Harvey: Just give a shit. How about that? Just give a shit. That's all it is. Don't have to be clever. Don't have to be good. But just, if you care, the good will take care of itself. That's what I think, right? Cause it's just really, if you're trying to be good at something, then you think about all aspects of it, right?

You think of about a three dimensional cube, right? You're going to look at every angle, but if you don't give a shit, you're like, Oh, it's just pink. Okay. Just what color should these shirts be? I don't give a shit. Make it pink. What is intentionality? You know what? And that's why I'm amazed because even if you don't know, you can always tell intentionality went to every type of art form just is something about it and it's I think people realize that over time.

But yeah, anyway, so I digress. You can see I'm passionate about this, but yeah, that's why movies suck right now, guys, because they don't put enough passion into them. You get maybe two movies, maybe five movies a year that are good, like Godzilla minus zero. That was amazing. And that's

Mr.Benja: pretty much it.

How much passion is in Hollywood right now? I'm asking because I'm watching these things and I'm not. Maybe it's just because I'm not tuned into it anymore, but I used to look up stories about, yeah, man, we wanted to get this film made and we fought this hard. And there were all these stories and that was really part of the vibe.

And even though that story was there, they were still pushing themselves away. And just listen, it's not about me. It's about this movie. Go see it. And everybody was really interested in seeing how this thing played out. Play it out. And you could see the, not trying to necessarily get, earn a buck, but you could tell that it was this work that really meant a lot to a lot of people.

They wanted to add to the cinematic history of, just cinema.

Theo Harvey: There was two passion projects that just came out recently. Kevin Costner did this horizons thing. He's a Western. I don't know if you heard about that. He did like a part one and part two, part one. He spent like 28 million of his own money, to get this movie out, but it was a passion piece. I haven't seen it or it was pretty decent, because he gave a crap. And he put some work into it. And then Francis Ford. Coppola, you heard about that mega megatropolis that, that crazy movie he created, he spent, a lot of his money, to create this. And so it's it's so weird. This movie is like in the middle of the movie, there has to be a actor that comes up and talk to the screen as if they're interacting with the main character in the movie. That's how weird this movie is. So yeah,

Mr.Benja: insert caveat. Never let artists go too crazy without checking them.

Theo Harvey: Dude he got no checks on that one from anybody literally and artistically. But he yeah. Francisco Coppola, great director. Did Godfather, Apocalypse Now. I was in the seventies, but, Made a lot, he made a lot of his money and food and wine. And so he's just like independently wealthy.

So he's just an artist, a true artist at this point. But to your point, it's just that passion. And so that's where the gripe is. I think when it comes to matter of fact, I see more passion in TV. That's why TV is still the bomb, right? TV show. That you could tell there's a lot of defted to them and, our artistry, right?

Beef, the TV show beef, the recent one the bear, right? Those are shows that people give a crap about.

Mr.Benja: I wonder if the attitude that we've seen in the workplace, everyone's talking about quiet quitting, you can't treat me this way. I know our generation gave a certain amount of leverage to, that guy's a complete bad ass.

He's going to yell. That's okay. He's going to park in the front. We know we don't have assigned spaces, but he's going to park in the front anyway. Just leave him alone. And nowadays it's who is he to do this? And he can't yell at me and I deserve, I'm like, look, I'm not willing to do what that guy does, whatever you want me to slice the cheesecake and leave it at his desk every day.

Sure. Fine. Whatever. I'm not sure that's, I think there's a bit of that's actually necessary, that person who, or those people who are just going to be so into it and out there, we have to give them a little bit of space to be obnoxious to the rest of us. And I don't mean mean, but weird, out of the box they require certain things and don't require other things.

I think that's what I was getting at when I said, does Hollywood have that kind of thing anymore?

Theo Harvey: I'm sure there is, I think with the algorithms arise of Netflix and his algorithms, the lack of the producers, the producers were the ones who drove projects, they have projects for years, even decades, before they got things to the front line, actors can go and come and go, directors can come and go. The producers are the one that kind of created that. So in theory, it's supposed to be the keeper of that passion, but. They're no longer relevant. And the ones who have passion now, the ones who have power, who built power over time. But yeah, man I don't know, man, this is a weird time. And so that's why this discussion on movies is interesting.

Marvel and Star Wars: Current State

Theo Harvey: Can we discuss as we view this, you talked about Captain black American Falcon, right? The new trailer just got released after American for, I did.

I sent you a text. Did you not see it?

Mr.Benja: Oh, I didn't catch that text. No, I'm sorry.

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Let me you saw it, right?

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Yeah. I totally saw it.

Theo Harvey: Okay. Let me read you this text and get your live reaction on the pod. I said, Isaiah Bradley putting that old black men strength on them.

Mr.Benja: Okay. Okay.

Theo Harvey: That's deep cut guys. If you know what that is, you know what that is. But yeah. What do you think?

Mr.Benja: You know what? I was ready to hate on Sam Captain American Black Falcon Wilson, but I was pleasantly surprised that they straight up addressed a lot of the things we were thinking about, where it's not this, it's not this sad kind of, hi guys. I'm the knockoff character. It's no, I've got to, I've got to fight for some things. I'm thrown into a situation. That's crazy. Things are happening around me that I don't understand. And it gave me a little bit of that aspirational hero vibe that I think has been missing for a while in a lot of these Marvel movies.

And

when that hit me, I was like, okay, we got a little bit of a charm here. And there was a little bit of political intrigue and I'm all about the political intrigue in my hero movies. And then, I won't spoil it, but this character was in there and they didn't show much of him, but I was like, Oh my God, there it is.

That's his foot.

Theo Harvey: You got excited about a foot.

Mr.Benja: I got excited about a foot dog. What color was it? It was a different skin tone than all the other feet I've seen in Marvel.

Theo Harvey: Yeah, man. I like that political intrigue. It reminds me of Captain America, the winter soldier, just that vibe.

Yeah. And I liked that vibe for Marvel. And to your point addressing, dead on, cap captain black American Falcon, what is his purpose? If not knockoff character, but hopefully that, and they even dress that basically, yeah, you're right.

You're not Steve Rogers, but I'm this and they show what he could do that's different. So yeah I'm excited about it, man. Hopefully Marvel with Deadpool Wolverine. And then obviously this coming out, when did it say, Oh, it's coming out to February, so we've got some time black history month, of course, let's get it right.

We're going to see what happens, man. But yeah, we're going to see what happens. I, like I said, I hope it does. I sure it does. It would do passable, they got their knives out for Marvel now, man, this is

Mr.Benja: the only Marvel movie in between Deadpool and Wolverine. And that's the next one.

Theo Harvey: I think so. There's nothing

Mr.Benja: else. I can't imagine.

Theo Harvey: Yeah, that's it, man. Because this, technically this was supposed to go out to come out this summer. They pushed it back because strikes and all this stuff and

yeah,

some retooling because you remember you go to McDonald's. There's a little black American.

Sit around.

Coughing up black Falcons everywhere.

Mr.Benja: Can you still get those? There's a lady behind the counter. Hold on a sugar. I think we got a bunch of those in the box down here.

Theo Harvey: Yeah, so anyway I'm pretty hype about it, so we'll see what they, Marvel does what they do, man. Man, I know I'm moving around a little bit.

Mr.Benja: Hold on one second. The thing about Marvel and Disney that I'm worried about is the Disney support. I'm wondering if they've I don't want to say given up, but just throwing their hands up in the air. I was like we don't understand these Star Wars and Marvel nerds.

And I say that not just because of the marketing and the actual stuff that they're putting out in terms of media. I go down to my neighborhood target and I swear they're, they have one of those big Disney sections. They moved all the Star Wars and all the Marvel stuff in there. It's like in the bottom corner of this little Disney area, you have a couple Star Wars things and some Marvel characters that have fallen over and not even hanging on the pegs.

It's it's just sad. And I'm thinking they're pumping Donald duck harder than. Captain America and there's a Captain America movie coming out. It's just curious to me or harder than star wars and the acolyte is out right now.

Theo Harvey: And that's, you read my mind.

That's why I was going to go with this. The yeah, man. Not looking good, Mr. Benji. I know you haven't been paying attention to the discourse. There were like some fans and then after this last episode, I think some of those fans fell off. I just, it's man, Star Wars just can't get right, man.

It's just man, you had all this open road to do something different, unique, and it's still, it just, They're just missing something, man. It's just so anyway, so yeah, a lot of, I get what they were trying to go with it. And so I I respect the attitude. I know you haven't watched it.

Maybe we'll discuss it when you do watch the whole series and maybe it might play better if you watch it in a in a binge mode. But I think there's some concern here about just man, what are we doing, man? With star Wars, man. And I get it. I think, it, I had this hot take, but I don't know.

Star Wars. Can expand beyond is it harder to expand beyond just skywalkers right to create a more mythic Big expanding universe like a game of thrones, right? I think it's difficult right a day and they're trying to do it But it's been driven by the skywalkers for so long It's just like hard to open up to new characters and all that without These creators putting their little spin on it.

The little salt Bay on it. It's

Mr.Benja: I get you this. What I'm, that's what I was concerned with back in the day, even when the sequel trilogy came out, I was like,

as I said, I made that that one reel about the two unbearable extremes, where it's like, guys, we've got to do everything in, in, in a completely different direction. And broom kid is going to be the next, F a Skywalker. You don't have to be a Skywalker to have the force.

And we already know that, Kit Fisto has the force. What are you talking about? Get out of here, making stupid arguments. And then on the other end, you've got these, freaking die hards who've read every book. And it's technically there are no gray Jedi. It's Oh my God, I know that.

Shut up. We're talking about nevermind Star Wars.

Theo Harvey: Yeah. I you know what? And I was hoping that this could be, I knew there's going to be some hate because of who was in it. But I was hoping it was going to open up, to some new storytelling. So I watched it with my kids and even they were I don't know about that one, dad.

I was like, Oh, wow, this is not good. I'm the one that, I was patient zero for them. I exposed them to the original trilogy. We saw a couple episodes of clone wars, they were into it. And now they're like they doubt my my, my street cred, man, my nerd cred.

I'm like, oh, Lord, I might fall off . I'm gonna find something good for him next. So anyway, star Wars

Mr.Benja: dad's not cool anymore. He watches Star Wars. I

Theo Harvey: know, man. It's, at least I gave him avatars, so they can't take that from me. So that's, ah, yeah. So anyway, so that's I digress Mr. Benja, what else you want to cover, man, before we head out for today?

Joe Rogan and Representation in Media

Mr.Benja: Real quick, man you asked me a while ago, if I listened to Joe Rogan, you remember that you asked me, I never got back with you, but I said, I wanted to so listen is a strong word. If there's somebody he talks to that I'm interested in, I'll check it out. I listened to the Terrence Howard one.

That was a tough listen. I don't necessarily, let me back up. I don't necessarily follow Joe Rogan like that. I keep tabs on him. He's when I say I listened to him, it's not Oh, I listened to Joe Rogan cause he's, The paragon of, everything awesome. And he deserves to be listened to on every topic.

No, he's just a very interesting person. I think he's fun. I think he's very motivational in a lot of respects. He does things very entrepreneurially, gets out there and does them, tackles tough issues, or tries to bring them up, bring certain people together, extra. Extra interesting conversationalist in the way he bounces between comedy, not knowing, picking at topics, pushing boundaries, and he's a comedian, so he does it in a fun way.

So I think there's a lot of interesting things to learn from him, and that is why I tune in. That's what I'll say. I tune in to what he's doing. But do I listen to him based on his past episodes with how he deals with the black audience? I'm not going to call him or Grant Cardone or a lot of these guys over and, just have a great Hey, man, we're on the same page.

Let's go to let's go to a Drake concert together. We're not doing it. And with this last little episode with him and Eric Weinstein. Tom, Billy is now getting in the mix. It's this thing I was talking about where it's like, they take a black character, a black individual, and they say, look, man, he's so funny, man.

He's got some interesting ideas. Everybody, you should listen to what this guy has to say. It's putting us out there as entertainment instead of as people. And I think that happens a little bit too much with certain people like Joe Rogan. The way he put Terrence Howard out there, Jamie Foxx was on, that was a cool, that's actually a good interview, Jamie Foxx and Joe Rogan, and they can, Jamie Foxx can hold his own and knows what's going on, and they're comedians they match on that level, but with somebody like Terrence Howard, I don't think it was As straight up and down, respectful as it should be.

And he'll say, no, I let him say everything he needed to. That's like a little bit of that's the problem.

Theo Harvey: Let's be honest, Terrence Howard put himself in that predicament anyway, right? By saying foolishness.

Mr.Benja: Yes.

Theo Harvey: Yes, he

Mr.Benja: is, but it just seemed like such a setup to you get what I'm saying though, right?

Theo Harvey: I know. They find the clown folks out of let's be honest, out of our race, they've done it for hundreds of years and they go, Oh, look at this. This is the paradigm of, black culture or whatever. I hate to say it. Tyler Perry, he gets all the movies and stuff, but we all know it's trash.

It is. Sorry, but it's he has more movies come out and TV shows than I see any black creator ever. And the stuff he puts out there is just not the greatest. You saw Donald Glover talked about, he said, I only got one award. I got the same amount of BET awards as Sam Smith.

And so here's a guy that, We've seen as putting out great stuff and thoughtful content and creativity, but even our own black community, we don't, respect that excellence. So I think, it's unfortunate. Yes. If you're the clown of the, and if it fits a certain stereotype, that's what they want to put out there.

They're going to put it out there. And some of us don't do ourselves any favor by, falling into that stereotype. But I get what you're saying, and, but, like I said I'm not a Joe Rogan fan. I listen to him. I don't really, I don't listen to him, but I just know what he's about.

He's gonna have, you saw, he's gonna have his, the first, the next live Netflix special. So we'll see how he does on that. But I'm not, keen on his comedy too much, but I don't know, but he's the most number one podcaster in the world. Who would have thunk it? Here's a guy, conspiracy theorist MMA comedian here he is, the kind of leading and changing behavior, influencing people from his words, it's crazy, man, crazy times.

We live in.

Mr.Benja: Yeah, man. Yeah. So I'm not promoting Joe Rogan. I still think he's a fun, funny guy worth listening to. And. But, bring along your your cup of salt to scoop with, I'm not saying just go listen to them or anything like that. But yeah, man, I just have a problem with the way people, Present us in a lot of these situations.

So I'm always concerned about that, especially from the left wing. I know what the right wing is up to, but the left wing kind of sneaks in there and does some foolishness, like putting Eric Weinstein. And, oh, that was terrible. I just think that whole situation was terrible. I couldn't watch it.

I was just like. This is the biggest show. Yeah. Yeah.

Conclusion and Farewell

Theo Harvey: Man, Mr. Benja, this has been insightful as always. They were going to end it here. Everyone. Thank you for listening. Please like subscribe and comment and show versus business on X YouTube and Instagram. Let's just add Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Visit us at our website, show versus business. Go check it out. We have some great information there. Mr. Benja. Enjoy the rest of your week.

Mr.Benja: All

Theo Harvey: right, man. Peace.