This is the best Hank podcast featuring Max Gurman, Shane Cunningham and I and Mike Vierman. Here's a secret you can. Welcome to the best Hank podcast. I'm Mike, we got Max, we got Shane and we got the new here.
It's 2025, we're all back together. It's good to see you guys here in podcast form. How's it going? How's your new you've been?
We got lots to talk about, lots to catch up on. Let's hear it fellas. First of all, I love your look. The 2025 mic looks unreal.
You have this crazy light fixture behind you. You're wearing a cool bucket hat. You're drinking a Corona extra. You know, this is the way I want you for the entire year.
You're living in New York, Mexico, right? Where are you right now? I am, I'm with the family on vacation in Mexico. So I actually stepped away from the pool with my Corona to record this podcast with you guys.
I heard it's a poll of vortex at home, Shane, which is not. You chose the right week to get the hell out of here. Yeah, things are good. I don't want to make you guys jealous off the top, but I just got this in the mail.
Check it out. Oh, sweet. I ran into Theresa. Max is showing us a very cool Toronto tempo shirt.
That's our new WNBA team. They named the team obviously over the last little bit. They got a whole line of merch out. I was me and Shane actually in the office.
And I saw Theresa, I saw Theresa, I was the president of the team. She was doing press, like she was doing e-talk down whatever on the floor, but the second floor. So I went down and said, what's up with that? All the merch lined out.
And I was like, I didn't want to be like, do you mind if I just take this hat? But I will go online and I will purchase. Max, did you purchase that? Or did you get sent that as an influential person?
Just this. It was sent to me. Come on. You think I bought this?
I don't buy anything. I just made it for people to offer. There's always like weird shit coming in the mail. I ran to a guy who has a protein candy company at the coffee shop.
He's like, let me send you some assistant boxes of stuff. Just about showing up on my thing. But I don't do the influencer thing where I have to show it up. I'm not going to do that, but I will rep tempo hard.
Hard, hard, hard hard hard hard hard hard hard hard hard hard. Yes. And you don't have to show it off by way. If you get it sent for free.
You don't have to. There's not some implied thing. Oh, it's implied, but we're not going to do it unless we like it. So you know, send it your own resume.
I just can't see the logo. Oh, can you see that? OK. Oh, they got the real old school thing.
And they have the fit I like too with the arms that are a little longer. That's now the new thing. Yeah, the chain kind of fit. The chain matches nice touch there on the photo.
You know, I was having this conversation with some friends the other day. And I don't want to get into politics. I was thinking about the bot today. And I was like, do I want to talk about anything outside of a public conversation?
Because I just find the internet and the world is so fucking annoying. And I'm so like, I hate everything. And I was thinking about these sycophants that are just running tomorrow, and the White House just to saddle up. And I was thinking about certain Canadians.
I don't even mention their name. They have some TV personalities that have made their way down there. The guy who killed the people on the boat that guy. That's maybe what I'm referring to.
I like the laps that killing people on the boat can get. That's how he's known now. But then also, he probably owns some brand that maybe is going to pay some influencer friends that we know to do something. And everything's so interwoven.
And the world's always been like that. And she's like, where do you draw the line? I guess my question is, where do you draw the line on stuff? And everybody has a different line that they want to draw.
They're comfortable with. Do you think your Facebook account now that Zuckerberg is stinky-fulthing with it? I fucking hate Facebook. I kind of want to delete all of it, to be honest.
But Zuckerberg owns Instagram, too. And we kind of need it for work stuff. This is the thing, I'm compromised. If they didn't need it for work stuff, then sure, I don't give a fuck I'll get rid of it.
But then you kind of need it because I say you speak to your fans. This is what everyone predicted. They predicted this a long time ago. Smart people were like, listen, ain't nothing for free.
And now here we are. I remember when I said that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I was just going to add on to what Max was saying about this feeling, that whatever progressive ideals that were being fought for and people back to 2016 and him winning the first time and people that are super conservative or right, meaning it felt like there was a war for, I don't know, the soul of North America, in some sense, or whatever. Again, this is all subjective because one person's progressivism is not enough for some people. And some person's version of conservatism is enough. But let's just say that there was some sort of idea of like, hey, we're all trying, let's lift everybody up.
Let's hold people accountable. Let's say the wrong thing. You could do your job. There was all these sorts of ways of accountability and being progressive and trying to give everybody a space to be and exist.
And a lot of ways with this latest victory by Trump and sort of everybody going over there and kissing the ring, all these business leaders. And everyone keeps saying it looks like a modern day, all garkey or whatever. But it just feels like that war is sort of like, if it's not over, it's like we're in the last, it's kind of like nothing really matters. Like do your thing, get your piece of money or whatever it is you're going for.
And it's like, I don't know, the ideals seem to be gone. Like I was just getting jokes off as the whole thing sort of crumbles and that's that. That's all, everything's just like a joke machine too. Like nothing, you're trying to say anything seriously that you're sort of make fun of.
And like obviously the Twitter algorithm has changed a lot obviously since Elon Musk taken it over. And then so sometimes I go, how do we want to open my mouth about anything? And like because it's like, what good does it do? Before I used to think that like words meant something and they like could help, that they could nourish people, that they could like help people.
But now just like, I'm just gonna adding to like the pollution because it's just gonna like start a whole lot. You know what I mean? Like I want to be productive, I want to be helpful. But it just feels like saying anything in the public sphere is actually like not helpful.
It's actually like unhelpful. It just like kind of adds to the culture wars. You know what I mean? It's a bad time for a book release.
It's one more. Trying hard is meaningless. Words don't mean anything. Well books are different though.
Your books are kind of nice because they're an interior experience. You know what I mean? You're not like shouting them out. Like for somebody to like to read the book, you have to like buy the book.
And you have to like, you know what I mean? That's kind of why I love the book. Is you can kind of quietly, podcast are kind of like that. Because podcasts are like, you have to kind of go searching for the podcast or to listen to the podcast.
Unlike an Instagram post or a TikTok post or a Twitter post where it just literally served up for you. Like, you know, it finds you. Yeah, that was a good save by the way by the book everybody. I was going to say, you know, and you know how there's those I think is never as good as you think it is and it's never as bad as you think it is.
Like people are feeling like down or whatever. There's all these external factors about the world right now and the price of living, the cost of inflation, the cost of groceries. Like people are down bad. And I think that like a rush to conservatism and sort of like, definitely fiscal conservatives, things like that.
It's just a reflection of people being freaked out because the world has never been in this place before. Jobs have been replaced, you know, real manufacturers. I just saw that the Amazon factory Montreal is getting shut down, they just unionized. And because I guess that was upheld, they just closed shop.
They're like, that's that. It's just like the world, like no, there's not a lot of wins that feel like for the people or for a common person, which is kind of the weird thing about the whole like, these rich guys being like, no, we're gonna make life better for the common person, which is like literally probably like, I don't see a lot of examples when that has worked out. But I gotta think that humanity's been around for a very long time. It's like, I don't know where we're going next, but we can always keep our own humanity internally with our friends and our families and our actions and the way that we do things.
That's the only thing, although if you heard me in the pub at the resort last night with the fellas, I was like, we're all fucked. You know, I was like, and they're like, Mikey, you're usually positive. I'm like, oh, no man, I'm like, these kids are never moving over to the house. All of our kids are gonna be looking at us till they're like 40.
Have you seen the prices of rent out there? And then I literally was trying to explain like jobless. I had all these cans of medello on the thing and I was doing like a diorama. It was a scene, man.
But it was a good time. Yeah, like Julian and shot her like Jesus, man. It's not that dark. Well, a lot of people say it's dark, but then you listen to someone other podcasts and they're saying that this is the best it's ever been.
Well, you think about it. You know, mind you, it was Bill Maher who was telling you. It was rich and high at the time, but you know. That is a great point though.
Like life has never been sort of, we have everything. The Louis C.K. has an old bit about this about getting on the plane and you know, he's got the internet on the plane but then the internet's not working and the guy's like, what the fuck? And it's like, you just learned this existed and the world, you were already owed something.
You were flying through the air. You contributed nothing. Like life has never been better and people have never been less happy. You know, so I don't know.
Maybe it's just in our nature as humans. I'm actually kind of surprised because Max, you're the eternal optimist but you're the one that came in a little bit, sort of like what's going on with the world. Well, you know what it is. I like having a plan.
I think this is really what it is. I like having a plan. And right now it's hard to make a plan because the world just seems kind of crazy and it's unexpected. And it's like every Trump, it's like and it's stuff I deeply don't care about.
That offends me. It's like the Trump shit coin that came over the weekend and then like increased it. It's like when you hear these things, it's like, oh, do you know that Trump's net worth went from two billion to $15 billion in one day? And then it dropped in half because his wife put out a shit coin and you're like, what do they even do?
What do the shit coins even do? Like what does any of the shit even fucking mean? And it takes up so much. People are just like hyperventilating over it.
People are angry about it. Some people are inspired by it. And I'm like, is this solving any problems? Like, you know what I mean?
Like, are we addressing anything? Or are we just like talking about stupid forms of entertainment right now? I don't know. It's just the whole thing is confusing.
And yeah, I just don't know what to do about any of it. I'm just like, I'm just gonna go back with the shit coin. Mike, do you wanna explain this? I don't even really know.
Yeah, it's a type of cryptocurrency where you talk to I've gotten a lot of trouble for this, essentially. But basically the way that I understand it, and I am, you know, no finance whiz by myself, but basically it's like you come up with a specialized coin, right, this type, this form of crypto, and you can buy it. But it's kind of like this pump and dump thing. We're famous persons like, here's my coin.
A ton of people go in and they buy it, which is raises the value, but then they sort of turn around and sell it as quick as they can. And then I think normally it's coming in like, I want that Trump coin and they wipe out their life savings. So there's 50K, I want to buy 50K in this coin, but then they can't get off it because the coin is then worthless. But a bunch of people that get in early and sell it, it's just like, it's created value.
It's just like, you know, these are the two things. I know what that is, I just didn't know the term. Yeah, Trump came up with one the day before, I think he got inaugurated, which is another thing where it's like, wow, this guy's absolutely making money sort of off of it, trading on his presidency, which he did his whole first term anyway. And the whole joke is like Jimmy Carter had to sell his fucking peanut farm because you couldn't have these conflicts of interest, and none of those rules apply anymore because Trump and these guys don't get a shit.
But Mac got to be glad that he saved your TikTok. So you got to be kissing his ass. No, I want to get rid of TikTok too. Get rid of that, get rid of it at all.
I was hoping they'd be great at that. That would be kind of interesting at least. Ring it back was kind of the more boring choice. But you know, and then the other thing, not to belabor this, but it's like, Portnoy, Barstool, who's sort of like a good, like litmus for like America, because he's Portnoy, even though he's like Republican, like liberals kind of like secretly like him.
And like he's entertaining. I think he's known as an honest broker. Like he usually like, tells it to you straight in a way that most people find like believable. He tweeted, he's like, okay, I'm gonna buy $500,000 worth of Trump.
And he did, the next morning he got rid of it. He made a million dollars. And then he said, you know what a good American does? You make a million dollars in your fucking sleep.
And then you put it on the bills to win on Sunday. And then I think most of America was like fuck yeah. So as mad as people are about like inequality and all the issues that we have like, you know, in our world. And all the ways America needs to be better.
What they kind of love is like that, which is like the opposite of like diligent planning and thoughtful care. It's more just like random stupid toy thing that's meaningless, but we're giving it value. I'm gonna buy it, dump it and then put it on the football game. Isn't that crazy?
And Americans are like fuck yeah. You know, I mean, Americans have everything they have coming to them right now. Cause it's like. I mean, we're in chaos too.
I mean, I'm really in chaos too. Like our Prime Minister just resigned. Like that doesn't happen. You don't just like, unless you have like an illness or something, it's pretty fucking embarrassing when you have to resign, you know, as the leader of the country.
Like it's, hey man, not to go back to the Knights Pub here at the resort, but we're all fucked. I mean, I'm just kidding. It's all fine. The sun is shining.
Okay, let's talk about, let's segue here. Because one of the modern advancements we're talking about is AI. And before we started the pod, you were talking about an Oscar campaign that's disrupted by AI accusations. Tell us what that is.
Shane was just saying that he's about to go see the Brutalist with his brother-in-law, which I was very, very, very excited to see. But it's this ethically long movie. It's like three hours there's intermission in the showing. But I was like, did you hear about, because it was in the news basically, the story kind of blew up on the Hollywood reporter.
I'm sure Matt Bellini's podcast will talk about this soon. But basically the Brutalist was sort of like trending towards this major sort of Oscar film, the performances, you know, all the actors are going to get nominated, the films are going to get nominated. That's a picture. And then somebody, I don't know who released this information, but it's almost like to disrupt the campaign, probably someone that's working on another movie, revealed that the way they were able to make this three hour epic so cheaply is because they used AI for a ton of the architecture designs and stuff because it's about an architect.
But then also in the performance, it was revealed that I guess they augmented Guy Peir's and Adrian Brody's Accent, these European accents apparently was augmented to be helped with AI. So the performances aren't really, I guess an authentic representation of what the actor can do. So, you know, people are like, should this be nominated blah, blah, blah. But it seemed like it was on track to win a bunch.
And now people are like, fuck that movie, right as I think the Academy's sort of voting in this window right now. So I don't know, I'd love to know Shane's thoughts on that because he'd just heard this news I feel like Brady has been pretty open about the architecture being computer generated. And the real interesting part is the voices being changed. And like how much does the accent you do matter in terms of the acting and the emotion you're conveying?
It's interesting, I just saw a complete unknown. And I was impressed with Timothy Chalamet's like Bob Dylan, like hybrid voice he did, but it's out, was augmented through AI. I wonder how I feel about it. Yeah, I'm on the fence right now.
I have no solid opinion. Joy's makes for interesting conversations. Well, you know, it kind of makes me think where it's just like how much is like human like diligence matter? You know, so it's, and I guess there's many ways to do it, but it's like, for instance, I couldn't be the Prime Minister of Canada not to get back to politics because I don't speak French.
But what if moving forward, we have the technology for every time I do a news conference, something in my voice is like projected in French. Who gives a fuck? Like who cares? If I'm a great leader.
Because your thought ideologies are still coming through. It's just the language would be the only thing. You're not judging how good of a Prime Minister you are based on how good you are at the language. So you're saying that in this case, because of it's an artistic award that we're talking about, that like you have to be able to, but like, but then you know, you think about different costumes people wear, like, it's like there's some performances where like, you don't even see their faces.
Like they're covered in superhero masks. And like voices are altered sometimes, right? Like sometimes like people have like crazy low voices. And that's like part of it.
So like Andy Serkis who did like all of them. Like, I mean, precious. Like that performance is very CGI. I don't think everybody got nominated for Oscar.
I think I remember that. But that performance is very praised. And he basically made a career that going forward being the guy you bring in. He's like a, he sees her in the, those plan of the eight movies and stuff.
He's just so good at that motion capture. Sort of like performance that it is an art, but it doesn't exist without technology. So the transparency matters. If people know, like people aren't questioning like, oh, is that an epsuit or is that computer gender?
Uh huh. Sure. Yeah. Transprancy thing.
When you feel like the kind of the rug's been pulled out from underneath you, it's similar to steroids and baseball. Maybe they were on steroids and they were still hitting those homers. We'd be like, oh, I still don't have the hand eye to hit the ball like that. So it wouldn't matter.
But the fact that it was they were pretending they just got so jacked and all of a sudden, we're able to get like 70 home runs in a season that people felt lied to. And then that lie made them want to take away all their honors. So here at the resort, they have this kids movie theater. It's actually awesome.
But they were when we got back from the boat last night, we popped in and they were playing like Jurassic Park 5, one of the Chris Brown movies. So we sat in for a minute. It's the one where like the T-Rex has all these superpowers and camouflage, whatever. So me and Winter's sitting there.
She's kind of like, what's going on here? I started explaining what's happening. And I'm like, well, let's go to bed. I say, I'm like, so we're walking back.
And she's like, OK, so why do they do that? I'm like, honestly, I'm like, win on it. That's like part five. Like we're going to start at part one.
If we're going to like watch these, he's like, I really want to watch them. I'm like, great. So I was raining a bit today early in the morning. So she's like, can we start Jurassic Park?
And I'm like, yeah, let's do it. So we went into the, and I haven't sat through the original Jurassic Park. Like, I can't remember unless I'm a sat through a front to back. But obviously, it's a classic.
It was a huge movie of R-U, all that stuff. It was pretty cool. But there's a moment where the Jeff Goldblum character, the E&M Alcom character, who's like Chaos Theories, a professor of Chaos or whatever, basically John Hammond is like, oh, I created this park. And aren't these beasts magnificent?
And Jeff Gold was like, no. And he basically gives us this whole lecture about like, you're playing God, you've done all this stuff. You're standing on the show as a giant. It's come too easy that you've recreated this thing.
And you're so busy wondering if you could. You never stopped to think if you should. And I was kind of like, actually, as I was like sitting there in the bedroom watching Jurassic Park at this resort, I was just like, man, I'm like, that really applies to just where we're going as a species and AI and everything that we're doing. It's just like, it's obviously in our nature, as humans to create and push limits.
It's how we have built cities and fly in airplanes and all that stuff, technology has given us millions of things. But it's like, I don't know, man, I don't know for, I think we're definitely not collectively a happier people. Like ignorance is kind of bliss. Like if you talked to somebody 45 years ago, I don't know if they're happiest level was higher.
It had to have been. I feel like we know too much and we have too much anxieties. And I don't know, man, what do you guys think? You guys think it's better now?
We should have just stopped everything. Yeah, honestly, I'd be down with that. But you're 95. It said 95, but maybe 92.93.
I'd push it, I think we've had this conversation before. I feel like we, I'd push it to like 2008 or something like that. I want, I want a few more like back in the 90s. It's like if you were to travel, it's like phone plans were really expensive, calling around.
There's some communication stuff that was annoying back then. You know, when you went to like travel to Europe and it was like, you had to buy a whole new like sim card and stuff like that. Like that shit was annoying. You know what I mean?
Now there's like Roamike home. Well, I kind of like you're 92 because it's almost pre-cell phones being ubiquitous and it's definitely, it's pre-internet. And there's just something about that time. You made plans, you showed up, you had to meet people.
So to bring this back to the Oscar campaign and all the dirty backdoor politics and the tricks, do you guys think it was a smart move? Like for someone to leak that information and ethical? Oh, I mean, it feels like it's a very thought gamesmanship down there when it comes to Oscar campaigns. And so if you're a way to throw another movie under the bus, you gotta do it, right?
We like this, right? I think so. I think you'd be like, release the hounds as it started feeling like it was getting momentum. It's like, we need to shut this up.
But also that guy, you mentioned him Brady. He's like, I kind of looked him up. Like what was his other movie that he did? He's kind of like an interesting movie with Michael Pitt, which was a remake of like this German movie called Funny Games.
He's using like a super hunky guy. He's only 36, but now he's just like this incredible director. He did a movie with Natalie Portman, 2018 called Vox Lux, which people loved it. No one saw it.
And now the brutalist, which originally no one even saw. Now everyone's gonna see Oscar bud. But yeah, very interesting career. Cause he was acting from the age of like eight to 20 and then just quit to dedicate his life to film.
I loved, I got such a kick out of his golden globe speech because mostly because I was just thinking about, if I am a studio executive, I am putting my fucking palm in my fucking face and going, no, no, no, no. Because his speech was like, listen, everybody said that there's no way a movie that's four hours long could ever be successful in the theater. So what I'm here to say to you is it can be successful and always listen to the director, always listen to the director. By the way, I'm paraphrasing.
It wasn't quite like that. But we are in this era of movies being way too long and every director hates cutting their shit. Every movie is too long. Every movie is too long.
But then all we know is that there are a bunch of directors that were watching that speech in the room and at home going, I knew I was right. I knew I was right. The executives trying to tell me to cut it are fucking wrong. If they'd only let me leave it at fucking two hours and 49 minutes, I might have a golden globe.
I always get such a kick out of it when certain artists like capital A artists like InstaPon stuff. And I'm always like, it works for you. I worked in this instance, but I don't know if it works all the time. He's trying to make it like there will be blood.
Like Guy Pierce is clearly based off Daniel Plainview. Like he's being Daniel Day Lewis essentially doing an imitation. But yeah, Brady is such a weird guy, like such a weird artist. Like he doesn't even pay himself for his movies.
So he must just be healthy. Cause he said he's never made a dime off his movies. Really? Yeah.
I love that. I think he needs some, maybe he has some like a tracker here. Like if you're Martin Scorsese and you want to do, he'll do the flower moon and it's very long. It's like, okay, Martin Scorsese gets to do that.
But again, I guess it's like, I might get that story of the Beatles with Hijud. The song seven minutes long because the non-ons are like fucking three minutes long themselves. But George Martin is like, like, just gonna be our next single. George Martin said, the radio is never gonna play seven minute song for single and John Lennon just said, if it's us they will.
And it's like, and he was right, you know, but the Beatles had built five years of like number one hits that it's like, and it's on to banger, you know? Yeah, like Bohemian rap city is a good song. But I think it's the exception rather than the rule. Yeah.
I kind of lucky with all this Oscar buzz. Cause that's a huge risk. So if you do make it over two and a half hours, your movie's probably gonna flop merely because they can't play it as many times at nighttime. You can only do one screening instead of two or three.
Yep. That's why they don't like the long ones. By the way, I loved, we're in this Beatles group chat and Mike put a whole area. The real story in there about Maxwell Silverhammer.
Can I do that song Shane? No, you know the song bang bang Maxwell Silverhammer and it's kind of a sleepy song. Yeah, it's a choice by the way. Yeah, it's a very you read it because I don't have it from you.
But it's a very Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney has a lot of these kitschy weird songs like Honey Pie sounds like a song from the 30s and Martha My Dear is this John T. Is John T. Paul just likes stuff that's a little bit on the lighter side.
This is another story Paul loves telling a story. You know, Elmer Rigby is all about Elmer Rigby. You know, the Rice in the Church. Where imagine weddings being the father of Mackenzie.
You know, anyway, this Maxwell Silverhammer is just about this murderous Maxwell who like goes on a date with Joanie Killser and then kills the judge at the end. But it's just goofy. And it's sort of infamously Paul just was focused on recording the song that the other Beatles were like, holy shit, can we just move on? It was during, he tried it for the Let It Be album which they recorded before Abbey Road.
Finally he gets it for Abbey Road. And all these quotes are real. This is the other Beatles talking about Maxwell Silverhammer. By the way, I didn't know the history of the song.
So when you said it to me, I was so delayed. So John goes, that's Paul's. I hate it. Cause all I remember is the track.
He made us do it a hundred million times. He did everything to make it a single and then it was never was and it never could have been. But he put guitar licks on it and he had some hitting, someone hitting iron pieces. And we spent more money on that song than any of them in the whole album, I think.
So that's John's recollection. George, sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs. I mean, dear God, Maxwell Silverhammer was so fruity. After a while we did a good job on it.
But when Paul got an idea on a razor in his head, it's just Paul's really writing for a 14 year old audience now, and he how? Ringo, the worst session ever was Maxwell Silverhammer. It was the worst track we ever had and to record. It went on for fucking weeks.
I thought it was mad. But Paul, they got annoyed because Maxwell Silverhammer took three days to record. Big deal. So great.
And I loved, I know we have to turn this into a Beatles track. But guys, speaking of acting performances. Oh, I know where we're going. Where we going?
You're reading your book. I'm doing some voice acting. You're right. You're right.
I think it'd be better if you read your book as a Shaq. I think you should do it in someone else's voice. Yeah, my do of Shaq audio book. And it wasn't even Shaq reading it.
It was imitating Shaq. And we listened to it for about an hour on the way home from a bar. Like one of the most entertaining hours of stuff. But how was it going, Max?
Because I was talking about this with Sperg, who's our producing partner, who's our show. And we were placing bets on whether you could sit for 12 hours and do it or break it up into two hour chunks. And I said, well, we definitely foresaw all that. And his three hour chunks is what I did.
It was like nine to 12, three days a week. Because yeah, after a few hours, you're not a gas, right? How can anybody do it longer than that? You lose perspective.
Well, like how many times out like two hours and 20 minutes, you just go, OK, I'm good. And then just get up. I mean, it was I was actually pretty well-behaved, because I don't want to admit this. But when you're reading words that you've written about yourself, you can really own it.
But it was good. I learned a lot. And by the way, I was thinking about this, because you know I have all this under and confidence that I just think I can do anything. It reminded me of like, because I've been telling everybody for the last 20 years that I could be an NFL quarterback.
If I just had the right O line, I could be an NFL quarterback. It's not that hard. And then I played last summer, I played flag football six on six in like C division. And I was the quarterback.
And our team went one in six. We lost so much. But anyway, so I was like, how hard could be I'll be the best voice actor? And it turns out it's harder than it looks, because the first day I was getting a lot of good coaching.
There was this great director who does all the audio books there, Caleb. And he was like showing me how to lean into certain words in every sentence. Give us an example of a lean in. Let me put.
OK, I have a book right here. I have a galley copy. I'll open the middle of the book, because. OK, the show.
Whenever I go to a concert, it inevitably turns into a work trip. Occasionally, I allow myself to get swept away by the performance. But most of the time, I can't help but figure out what worked about the show and what was missing. So in those two sentences, do I want to lean into occasionally?
Or do you want to say, occasionally, I allow myself to get what words do you want to give a lecture to? And as you know, you could read a sentence seven different ways. You know what I mean? I have a different feeling behind it.
So I learned a lot as I went. The other thing I learned, though, which is sort of embarrassing, is that whenever I asked Ash to come in and film me, because I wanted to get some BTS content, I was so much better. I needed an audience. I'd stumble over the same three sentences in a row, and I'd be getting in my head, and I just couldn't perform.
And then as soon as I had Ash in there, your brain just works in a different way. And it kind of goes into overdrive, and you can't fuck up, because there's a live camera in front of you, even though obviously it was a live camera. And that was way better. So I was like, whenever I got fucked up, I was like, Ash, come in here and just look at me.
And it was way better. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I think, Max, you should maybe use me a contest. You should bring in some of our tell fans that could sit and watch you read.
You mean on your game. Like two fans get to come and sit and watch me read my book. It's not a bad idea. It's like, yeah, I mean, the book's over now, so I don't have to do it.
But we're finished. Yeah, anyway, I feel like I have a lot of experience under my belt, yeah. How long is the audio event? So like, what will the book work out to?
If I listen to the audio book of Try Hard, what's the like? I think it's like six hours, six and a half hours. So it's like a short audio book. I think they basically allotted 18 hours of recording time.
They always say like, times the number by three. So I was like, six hours is the runtime, and you should have 18 hours to do it. I did it in probably 14 hours. Yeah, I think it's gonna be cool.
I'm pumped on it. Are you gonna do the whole book back and make notes? I, they're gonna send us stuff. So we'll see how it goes.
So Mike, you're in Mexico and Shane, where were you again? You're on some vacation, aren't you? I went on a Disney cruise. Yeah, I think with a bunch of influencers and Chris Kirkpatrick from, he's an NSYNC, right?
Yeah, yeah. Finish the pod with the story. Cause I gotta go out, but I wanna hear about Disney. Oh, I don't really have a good story.
I guess an interesting observation would be that influencers were never on their phone. Cause people were like, oh, it's gonna be annoying. They're always gonna be on their phones. Like everyone's just not like a selfie stick walking around and filming that way.
But I noticed that influencers are kind of like you. And I know I always say everyone's like you. Cause I find you are on your phone filming shit a lot for like TikToks, like you'll film a skit. And then it's like you're not always filming shit when I'm with you unless it's for something very specific.
Focus on normies, film way more than right? I went to Disney World and I went on to Disney Cruise ship. In Disney World phones out almost 100% of the time everywhere you look, so I think there were people which film full fireworks displays. But influencers like if there's fireworks, they film it for two seconds.
They know the perfect time to film when it's at, it's like Apex, they can just sense it. Put their phone away and they just enjoy it. They're shooting a skit or filming anything. It's just the film it and they're done.
The interesting thing which was kind of counterintuitive to me. I thought it was gonna be way more annoying. And I thought the small talk was gonna be held. But as influencers, again like you, Max, they're kind of like provocative conversationless because they put their life so much.
So they kept the mall doctor just like, yeah, you guys don't like having kids, right? Like you'd ask a question. But that asks like Naughty Question. The influencers did that a lot.
So I was always comfortable around them because I hate small talk and I hate, you know, socially but they put me at ease with all of their, just diving in deep real soon, like almost too quick. And I like social strategy. Like you'll be out of the barn, you'll just ask a mildly inappropriate question right off the bat just to say, hey, we can go there, let's be comfortable and have some fun. Oh, I love this.
What a great insight. Are we saying that influencers are more advanced species than the rest of us? Because it sounds like they're way more efficient with their phone use and they're like a better conversation. Are they more advanced?
I think just socially, they're more charismatic. They're popular for a reason. They're good at it. Like for me, it's really hard to articulate.
I thought they can distill a thought. Like I was just walking with this woman, like huge influencer. She just pulls out her phone. It's like, hey guys, I'm just here with Shane distills this whole thing that we're doing in a 15 second sound bite and just put me on the spot in a way that I was kind of comfortable with.
And like I spoke on it and it was done. This is Shane. He's having a ton of trouble buttoning up his shirt. Let's just all watch as his hands shake.
But yeah, I do think they're just advanced socially. Like maybe, and they have a good level of like they're oblivious to certain things. I don't make them self-conscious. And I think you need to be a little bit oblivious to be truly comfortable in your own skin.
It's like a little bit. Yeah. Well, you heard it here guys. Let's sign off.
Influencers better than the rest of us. And the world is fucked. What else, Mike? No, well, those are the two title options.
Influencers better than the rest of us or the world is fucked. Maybe that is the full title. We'll let Nathan and Nash decide. The one question I have just before we go Shane, are you still friends with Chris Kirkpatrick?
Is he in your phone? No, I just shoot a TikTok with him. I know you all know that, but it was funny when I won't buy him. Or like we approached him.
We're like, oh, what are you doing to Santa here? He goes, I'm just waiting for somebody to ask me to do a TikTok. And they got over a million views. They didn't go like crazy viral, but yeah.
He was a cool guy. Well, I guess we'll say bye bye bye. Now to our listeners. Hopefully you're having a great 2025.
It's nice to be back. Fellows will obviously do this again. Hopefully in person next week. Thank you so much for listening.
Thank you so much for the manager, thank you so much to Nathan Nash. This is a great hand, guys. This is me with us.