- I'm Scott.
- I'm Russell.
- I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three solution seekers
and a guest empty our heads of startup
and tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there,
so you can all have them for free.
Anything that we say is yours to keep.
And this week, I brought our guest,
my friend Greg.
Greg works at Hope College with me
as an artist and professor and professional maker
of amazing, cool projects.
Greg, welcome to the show.
- Thanks for having me.
- Oh, I'm excited to have you here.
This week, we're gonna do something a little different.
Today, we're gonna be playing a game
that I'm gonna call Nostalgic Noises.
All I gotta do is go through one at a time.
I've got some sounds for us that I'd like you to identify
either what company or product or software made this sound.
And I realized, I was informed shortly
after I wrote this game and collected all of the things
that apparently Marques Brownlee already does this
on his podcast.
So I didn't cop the idea from you Marques
as you're listening, of course,
but hopefully I do the idea justice
and it's not just a worse version of that.
Let's start.
So I'm gonna give each one of you going down the line
an opportunity to guess what the thing is from.
And if you fail to do it, then the other two,
you get two points if you get it,
one point if you steal.
So we will let you, the other two,
whose question this is not,
take a chance at it if you think you know.
Starting with, of course, our guest, Greg,
you gotta begin.
This is your first sound.
(soft music)
Does that sound familiar to you?
- I wanna say that's Windows XP.
- Very good, the XP startup sound.
I'm gonna start writing down twice
because I'm not gonna be able to remember this.
Did you two know that?
- I did.
I knew it was Windows, I didn't think XP though.
- I thought that was, that's not the shutdown, is it?
- I don't remember that.
- That is the one when you first turn on the computer.
Very good.
- Ah, it's boot.
- Greg, two.
Scott, your sound, next.
(soft music)
- I mean, the end is a PlayStation One game?
- That is incorrect.
Greg or Russell for the steal.
- Beep.
- Russell, you're raising your hand.
Okay, Russell, you said beep first, you go.
(laughing)
- What am I supposed to do?
What am I supposed to say?
- What was that?
- Xbox 360.
- Very good, that was the Xbox one.
Did you know that too, Greg?
- Yeah, very good.
- You each get a point.
- Just on that last little bit.
- I just decided.
- It's amazing how the sounds like they just come back.
- I know.
- The orb spinning?
- Russell, you're up.
(soft music)
- It's Pac-Man.
- Very good.
- Nice job.
- The original Pac-Man intro.
Excellent work.
Greg.
Now this is a two-parter.
There is that sound
and you'd also hear this sometimes too.
- Oh baby, stop.
The nostalgia.
- Man, it is ringing so many doorbells.
- Sitting on the computer after school.
- Yeah, why can't I remember?
It was like a, I'm pretty sure,
and this is probably not gonna be worth the points,
but it was like a point and click adventure game
where you're walking through a dungeon
and I can't remember what game it was though.
- Incorrect.
- Really?
Okay.
- Let's steal.
Go ahead, Russell.
Beep it in.
- What is AOL Instant Messenger?
- Very good.
- Oh.
- The AIM welcome for a new buddy just joined
and came online sound.
- Nice one.
- Excellent work.
- Oh yeah.
- Scott, do you recognize this?
- It really whips the llama's ass.
(laughing)
- I do.
- This is either iconic or completely unknown.
- Completely unknown for me here.
- I have no--
- Either of you two know?
- It really whips the llama's ass.
- Okay.
Should we guess?
(laughing)
- If you want.
- Whips.
Is it a bullwhip, the commercial?
(laughing)
- It is of course for Winamp, the music software.
You never use Winamp?
Oh man.
That was like--
- I used Winamp.
What was that?
When did that happen?
- I think there was a button in the toolbar
to make that sound if I recall.
- Oh.
- Oh yeah.
- Winrar only guy.
(laughing)
- He hasn't paid for it.
- In the trial fee.
- The full thing goes, "Winamp, Winamp."
It really kicks the llama's, or whips the llama's ass,
but I didn't want to obviously give away the name.
Russell, you're up.
(phone chimes)
Hmm.
- Wait.
That is a message tone, but I don't think it's AIM.
I think it's MSN or Yahoo.
Is it Yahoo?
- It is not.
It is not a messaging app.
Scott or Greg for the steal.
- You got mail.
(phone chimes)
No?
Oh, wait.
- No, you already guessed.
- I didn't figure it out.
(laughing)
Any final answers?
- Oh, so familiar.
- Isn't it just the original iMessage?
- Oh, not quite.
You're getting warmer though.
- It's not AIM?
I swear.
I know, I thought it was.
(phone chimes)
- It's similar.
That's the sound that iTunes makes
whenever you complete a task.
If you burn something, if you sink whatever,
that's what iTunes makes at the very end.
Very good, guys.
- Oh my God, this is painful.
- All right, last time through.
Greg, you're up.
Easy one.
(phone chimes)
- Oh man.
Can I remember the exact?
- It's like Motorola.
I want to say Motorola.
- I feel like you might need the brand name for this one.
- Yeah, I, yeah.
- I feel like I should, I don't know this either.
I know the sound though.
This is so hard.
- One more time.
(laughing)
(phone chimes)
- Scott?
- Do you guys ever see that show
where they had the massive cell phone
and they would have that go off?
- No, what is this?
- I think it was like one of those,
it was in the era of crank yankers,
but I don't remember,
like he would just have a massive one in a theater
and that would be going off.
- What was he holding?
What kind was it?
- Nokia?
- Yeah, I think I know now.
- It is a Nokia, yes.
- So I just remember this from Jurassic Park 3.
The dinosaur ate a person with a Nokia
and it kept coming out of the dinosaur's stomach.
- Of course, iconic.
Scott, your sound.
(phone chimes)
- That is the Pokemon, original red and blue Pokemon.
- You just healed your Pokemon.
- Very close, that's what happens when you catch it.
But you get the points for that.
- Oh, you got him, okay.
- Same thing.
(laughing)
(phone chimes)
- Yep, yep, you can see it.
- Very good.
- Amazing.
- And then lastly, Russell.
(phone chimes)
- That's when you turn on a Game Boy.
- Very good.
- Good one, good one.
- Wow, you got that immediately.
Russell, I'm very impressed.
It was three Greg, three Scott, Russell six.
- Damn, nice job.
- I don't know, there's something about those sounds
that just, I can shut, close my eyes
and just imagine my purple Game Boy
turning on for that, you know?
The see-through one.
Game Boy color. - What was your first
Game Boy?
- Yeah, that was mine too, yep.
- Oh yeah.
- Leo, what idea have you brought us this week?
- All right, so I have a coworker who talks fondly
about a web game, a web service from a while back
that was the Celebrity Stock Market.
- Was it Greg?
- It's not Greg, sorry Greg.
The Celebrity Stock Market was,
I don't know how they measured and quantified popularity,
but you could invest fake dollar-y-dos
in how popular a celebrity would get,
and then you'd get return if they ended up
being a bigger deal.
Jennifer Lawrence seems like she's on the way up right now.
I'm gonna put money in around the Hunger Games
and see if she becomes a big star.
Oh my gosh, she did, right?
I think it'd be really fun to have that gamified market,
but for YouTubers, and that's something
that's already easy to quantify.
If I could buy stock in a channel that I know,
like, oh man, this is somebody who is already famous
'cause they have an audience with the journalism,
you know, there's someone in the New York Times
who's already really popular,
or they're a snarky tech blogger
who is part of an existing network
that's going solo or whatever.
I would like, I think it'd be really fun
to invest in that person, that channel, that new thing,
and see if you could turn the number of subscribers
and likes and views on the channel
into like a gamified market.
- Yeah, so you would get, you start with 102 bucks
or whatever, and you invest them into stuff,
and if they do just okay,
then you get a little bit of a return,
and you can buy and sell them.
Maybe you have a collection of a finite number of,
I don't know what you'd call them, stock in the channel,
and they could go up and down in value.
It seems like turning things into markets
is kind of a fun way to gamify something,
and it's already so easy to quantify
and like pull all this data from the YouTube API.
That's the pitch, I wanna gain--
- I love it.
- Cool, 'cause it's tangible too.
Like it's not just a celebrity, how popular,
but like we have likes, we have views.
We can actually match this to this.
- Yeah, there's a really neat service
called manifold.markets,
which kinda a little bit does this.
You can go there and make fake bets on real world,
like who is gonna be this person's running mate
in the election?
How well is this movie gonna do in the box office?
Will the whatever musician release their single this month?
And how many times will they say the word shit?
Like you can bet on whatever you want
and it kinda sorta gamifies it,
but I think we could pipe like actual YouTube data
straight into this app and make it into something fun.
- It's interesting because you could incentivize
channel interaction, especially if there was
something beyond just, hey, you got a badge
for doing this or whatever.
But if there was some sort of reward,
then you could actually be building like the equivalent
of maybe this is dating myself,
but street teams, you guys know what street teams were
for marketing?
- Oh, I don't.
- So like they used to like, you know, brands,
it's now like Instagram influencers, I guess,
but you know, they used to like hire people
to give out gear and wear their stuff.
And so it was like getting their customers
to be the marketers for them.
So there's a little bit of like,
if people were making bets that your channel would succeed,
they would be sharing your videos more
and they would be talking about them
because now they have incentive for you to do better.
- Sure, that makes sense, yeah.
You're out there promoting them.
And then you could even get the creator involved
and say like, hey, in order to get one avenue
to market your channel is to like get your investors
really excited on this platform
and turn it into a way to get people, yeah,
a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.
- Dude, I think this could be applied to artists,
like music artists too, right?
Like the band that I saw first.
- Spotify.
- I love that band.
I'm gonna throw money at it.
If I could get a return, amazing.
I just wanna sell this band.
I think that would be cool to,
if there was a return element,
I feel like I'm more invested in that company.
Like when you invest in certain stocks,
I feel like there's something about,
oh, I'm always gonna buy, you know, Google products now
because I invest in Google or Alphabet or whatever, right?
It's like, there's something about brand loyalty
when you become an investor in that.
And so you can do that with YouTube, Spotify.
- Yeah. - Okay.
- Spotify numbers, billboard charts, yeah.
- I'm just picturing all these YouTubers
at the end of their videos.
Don't forget to like and subscribe and invest.
- Yeah, right.
Buy stock in me.
- Yeah.
- There's no greater feeling than discovering something
when it's like indie and young
and then being the original fan
and having proof of that somehow in this service.
- Something tangible to be like,
I liked that before. - Right.
- Very cool.
- And I knew they were cool, so I put money on it.
Like there is nothing more like real than that, right?
- Yeah.
For prizes, like what you were saying, Greg,
like if these are, you know, they're rising stars
or if they do get big,
like you could get a chance to meet them or something.
That's a very easy, you know, low cost way
to incentivize people to use this new platform.
- It's one of the, it's sort of like a,
MrBeast does this a lot with his subscribers
where they get included into his videos
in a lot of different ways.
Like he, I think it's the reason
why he's the biggest YouTuber
is that he does such a good job
at getting his subscribers interacting
and, you know, being a YouTuber myself
with, you know, a measly, I don't remember what I had.
- I'd invest in you, Greg.
- Like 300 subscribers or something.
You know, like, it's like obviously
I am not doing that as well.
- Yeah.
- That would be a bad investment.
- I don't know.
Maybe you're just waiting for your moment to go viral.
- Yeah, exactly.
- I think this is so cool because,
yeah, for the badges and stuff,
but I wonder if like, how do you get the return?
And I think it'd be cool if like a percentage
of the earning, like, 'cause like normally stocks
like valued in worth, right?
So how do you sell and buy that stuff?
But what if like the YouTuber guaranteed
like a certain amount of funds gets put,
like actual dividends, like cut checks cut,
a percentage of revenue, percentage of profits
goes into this pool and you can set the restrictions
of like maxes and minimums and like really make it,
you know, so like if this YouTuber gets big in 10 years,
they guarantee like point, like 1% of all their earnings
goes into this pot.
And depending on how much money you put into that pot,
you earn that percentage of the, you know,
for every $100 you invested, 1/100 of the full pool.
So you actually get that in return.
- I mean, the platform itself could even,
they don't even have to get the creators
to funnel the money in.
There is the whole marketing side,
but you could just have the platform be like,
hey, every time a stock reaches 1,000
and 10,000 subscribers, we'll send you five bucks
or something.
And that way you're wanting people to buy your fake stocks
with your fake dollary dues.
And then like you have this thing
that might pay off someday.
- I see, I see.
- Maybe.
You could get the creators involved and have like,
you know, like you said, subscribers,
but it's almost like a Patreon type thing, right?
- The platform pays, I see.
- Yeah.
- Okay. - Maybe.
- Yeah, I guess I'm wondering if like YouTube
or even Twitch, like you create, like it's an add-on service
is I think that's what you're saying, right?
Like, and it connects to like, okay, of all,
let's say for every Twitch subscriber you have,
a dollar of the 250 gets put in that pool.
And now you guarantee that if there's 10,000 subscribers,
$10,000 a month gets put in that pool.
And I split that with me and the other, you know,
150 people that found you first, right?
We invested in you so your channel could grow
from wherever it was to now.
And so they, there's probably like a kickback.
And of course you're a subscriber at that point.
So I don't know.
I guess like to your point, like the YouTube API
could probably something, I don't know.
There's probably like an add-on connection there
that's like, oh, we can see your earnings.
And yeah, it's a, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
Twitch, YouTube.
- Incentivizing people to find new artists.
That's really good.
- And subscribe to it.
'Cause, right?
- And subscribe.
- 'Cause that's where YouTube's gonna churn there,
you know, and all now, I bet they have a big problem
with like those new creators actually being seen
and known and whatever.
You're now incentivizing the users
and you could even manipulate the stock market a little bit
in a way.
Here's a way that you could do this.
This is how you break the system.
- Of course, right from our market manipulation.
- Yeah, I mean, if you get a famous YouTuber
to like, they call these things called like raids
or whatever, right?
Where you send all your people on Twitch to another channel.
Like, you know, you're just like, hey, I'm gonna get you,
I'm gonna hook you up with a raid.
You know, you get a couple of those,
dude, you know, do the math, do the math.
Those mathers out there listening like.
- The altruistic side is like, how do we discover,
get discovery in front of new up and coming channels
and artists and creators and stuff.
It's a good vehicle for getting recommendations
in there and stuff.
- Yeah, and everybody wins, right?
Literally everybody wins unless that creator loses.
Everybody loses or everybody wins, I guess.
It's maybe.
- I just love how the idea went from an altruistic thing
to corrupted within five minutes.
(laughing)
- That happens a lot.
- Everything starts out altruistic, it seems like, right?
And then.
- There was this one time I was packing lunches
in a homeless shelter with a group of high schoolers
and I was leading a group
and my friend was leading another group.
So obviously it turned into a composition.
And within like 30 minutes, we were trying to trade,
you know, key people at different spots,
try to get the best team and whatnot.
And then like, when people were like not doing well,
we would literally like give them away and whatnot.
It was like within an hour, it was this crazy competition.
We were corrupted, people were bribing us for better jobs.
It was like, hmm, what went wrong?
- What are we here for, right?
- But you know what?
You probably made more, packed more lunches
than what you would have otherwise.
- We gamified it.
- Exactly.
- I think you just built a nonprofit, Greg.
I think you just did a mini nonprofit simulator.
- It's like a charity competition.
I'm pretty terrible at stocks
and fun money picking stocks and stuff.
But I think I'd be pretty good
at identifying up and coming content creators
and making my fake two bucks.
- Yeah, like I would like to do this with movies.
Like I would love to put puts on movies
that have like huge box office dollars and budgets.
And I'm like.
- That has to be a thing, isn't it?
I would be all over that.
For a while, there was an awesome service
called Fantasy Movie League.
And it was a fantasy football game, but for box office.
You'd get a fake movie theater with eight screens,
eight slots, and each movie that you chose to play on there
cost a budget.
So you'd get like a thousand dollar budget
and the new Avengers movie is $700
of your thousand dollar budget.
Oh man, I'm gonna play that one on screen number one
and then seven bad movies.
But then, oh my gosh,
Avengers didn't do that well in the box office,
but this other movie did really well and unexpectedly.
So I got a bunch of money and yeah, it was super fun,
but I think it shut down or got bought by somebody
or something.
It was so great.
That needs to come back.
- I would love, yeah.
Let's do it guys.
Let's make that, that's a fun one.
That's just like the fun app.
You know, I don't know how you're gonna make money on it.
- Fantasy football, but I don't need to put some ads
in the corner, you're good.
- Fantasy football, but YouTube channels.
That's great.
You could like draft a team of up and coming channels
and then however well they do with new viewers this week.
They had a hit movie video go viral
and wow, I did really well.
That'd be so fun.
- Side note, we might have to cut this out.
You guys ever played Drug Lords, the iPhone app game
or whatever the iPhone, the Palm Pilot game?
- Is that a Facebook game?
- Don't know this one. - Drug Lords?
- Oh, I'm thinking of Mafia Wars.
Nevermind, what was that?
- Where you would like buy drugs
and sell them to other cities?
No? - No.
- Okay, maybe that's what you.
Nevermind. - Drug Lords.
iPhone game.
- Why do you bring, why do you?
- It just reminds me of,
no, it was a really well thought out game.
You would buy drugs and literally.
- Urban drug empire. - Yeah.
You'd buy it in like Compton.
You'd travel over to like New York or the Bronx
and you would sell coke or weed at, you know,
you'd $500. - Drug dealer simulator.
- And then you would get notifications.
They'd be like, oh, you just found 20 grand
on the side of the road or you got robbed.
You know, it's kind of like Oregon Trail,
but for drug dealers.
- But drug dealers.
- No, you guys said, ah.
- What reminded you of this?
- It just sounded like the last thing
that you were saying was like, oh, like events
and you know, you're buying tickets,
you're upselling popcorn, you know.
I learned all that business stuff in Drug Lords.
Is that why I'm in startups?
- Buy low, sell high.
- I did really well at that game.
That and Rollercoaster Tycoon.
This is all making sense to me.
- Your life was on a trajectory from a young age.
- You just saved yourself years of therapy.
- I guess so.
Now I understand myself, right?
I wanna do a whole, I'm adding another Spitball.
- I know.
- For, I have another idea that's similar,
but not for famous people.
- Do you wanna pivot into this idea?
We can talk about it for a minute.
- Well, I don't know.
- You sure?
- Okay, here's, ah.
It's like a whole Spitball.
Okay, you know what?
Screw it, we're gonna do this.
Leo. - Do it.
- I have this idea on my list about tuition,
college tuition.
Investing in that high school kid
that you know is gonna go far in life, right?
And literally you help crowdfund their education,
their MBA, their Kickstart, whatever, like at 18.
So you say, all right, I'm gonna put,
you get like all your friends and family
to put a thousand bucks in,
and now you promise in the next 10 years or whatever,
you're gonna put, contribute X amount of dollars
of your salary into this fund.
They already do this for jobs programs,
but now it's your friends and family investing in you,
and so now they're gonna tap their network,
they're gonna stack the deck in your favor
and also in their favor, right?
And I think there's this thing called,
like normally when you do fundraising or you do donations,
you are actually getting negative 100% of your donation.
Like if I give you $1,000, I lose $1,000,
but I would love to give you $1,000
with the intent of making $1,000 back,
and that would be a 0% loss, right?
Instead of a negative 100% loss.
And this is like one of the ways
that like you create like a revolving fund
for like your kids, your family, your friends or whatever.
Like it doesn't have to be college tuition.
It can be like, or like--
- Like Kiva.
- Yeah, like Kiva.
- What are you talking about?
- It's similar, but with like friends and family.
I just--
- Yeah, yeah.
- As you could tell.
- Oh cool.
- Yes.
- That's a great idea.
I think Purdue has a program
that's like a loan income sharing agreement type thing
where they'll do this as the college offering
that to some students, kind of like a scholarship,
but instead you agree to pay a certain amount back
and all that, but--
- Wait, what's a Kiva loan then?
Maybe I miss it.
- Oh, Kiva is the same idea,
but nonprofit for like developing nations.
You can say for 25 bucks,
I'm gonna buy this family in Uganda some chickens.
And so they can start farming.
And then when they make enough money from the eggs,
they'll pay it back.
And then you get the 25 bucks back after a couple of years,
and then you can reinvest that into something else.
And you've helped build someone else
with a little bit of a loan, but like a micro loan.
- That's it, exactly, exactly.
- That's super cool.
Hope College is trying to do a pay it forward model
where we do that, but with no set number
of like expectation of giving back.
- That's a really cool, hope.edu/forward.
- Yeah, that's right.
- Hope forward, it's a cool thing.
- A big issue.
- But we are, yeah, having that be like a local thing
where you are looking for friends and family
and stuff on there, that's super cool.
- I had a high school econ teacher
who he said if he had a lot of money,
what he would do is find high schoolers
and pay for their college,
but he would only choose people
that he wanted something from.
So like he would be like,
oh, you're interested in being a doctor?
I'm gonna need a doctor when I'm older.
I'm gonna pay for all of your med school
and then you will never charge me as a patient.
- Sure.
- I don't know, it's like favors.
- And then the whole time he's pushing them to be a doctor.
You should go to med school.
You look like a lawyer.
You're a mechanic.
- Yeah, I don't know how you'd identify them.
- You would definitely need to identify a lawyer
pretty quick with that system.
- You'd start with the lawyer.
- Right.
- Start with the lawyer.
Maybe get a barber in there at some point.
- That's indentured servitude.
What if you end up just like,
I need a lot of lawsuits going.
I mean, it's free.
So just gonna start sending lawsuits.
- I have an infinitely available lawyer on tap at all times
because I paid for their tuition once.
- If they signed it, it's legally binding
as the lawyers would say.
- Coercive manipulation into signing unfair,
unjust contracts, pretty sure.
- With 17 year olds.
- Some high schooler.
- 17, yeah, exactly.
- Right, at 17 years old.
- Yeah, like 50 years ago, this guy paid for my college
and now I still have to treat him.
- Still to fix his car.
- So you start with the judge
and then you get the lawyer so that you--
- Ah, the corrupt fleet of judges in the area.
Genius.
- What's your high school teacher's name again, Greg?
I think I gotta talk to this guy.
- Yeah.
- All right, Scott, what do you got for us this week?
- This is an idea I've wanted to pitch for a long time
and it's just too ridiculous
and yet every week of my life I'll be like,
God, I wish this was real.
And it is a bad day all at once.
And so what I mean by that,
my little sister recently had surgery
where she had to get something
with like a nasal passage expanded or something
'cause she was getting a bunch of sinus infections.
And right before, you know,
the day before she goes under,
a doctor called and said,
"Hey, while we're in there,
like we can also do a nose job if you want.
I know you didn't ask for this,
but you know, we have the same guy on staff
and we could just knock this out."
And she's like, "Yeah, why not?
Let's do it.
I'm already knocked out."
She did, the surgery went well.
She got a nose job as part of it and everything was great.
And I keep thinking about that.
Like if you're getting knocked out for something,
how many things could you do at once?
- Get my root canal taken care of.
(laughing)
- Exactly.
So like, I don't know, call it like,
like sleep and go or knockout services or something
where someone comes in, knocks you out
and all the bad things that you want done are just done.
I don't know.
You could take a vacation at the end of it
and end up in like, you wake up in Italy
and your taxes are done
and like the wisdom teeth are removed.
(laughing)
- Huh.
- It's just, yeah.
And that is the entire idea.
- I'm gonna need Friday off, boss.
I'm getting a colonoscopy root canal and something else
all at once.
That's fun.
- And that's the entire idea.
I was recently in an airport and they had like a,
it was somewhere in Denver
and they had a whole luggage conveyor system
for just like skis.
And I was looking at it and it looked just perfect
for putting like a human body on that
than a revolving thing going around.
And I'm just picturing shipping, you know,
you have a handler who just is supposed to take care of you
and just ship you somewhere to do whatever you need to
for this service.
And you wake up and it's done.
That is the entire idea.
And yet I would love that in life.
- The logistical problem is, as I understand it,
- There's several problems in it, I understand.
- The longer that you are under,
the more there is risk of complication.
And they want to make that as short as possible
from what I understand.
So you almost need like a pit crew
of different specialist physicians all going at you
at once.
- Yes.
- Like the dentist is up here
and the colonoscopy guy is down there, you know.
We're doing it all at once.
- I was imagining when you were talking
about the body bag going around,
it's kind of like the automated car washes,
but it's just doctors around you coming in.
(laughing)
- You just get on the conveyor belt.
- This guy got the premium service.
He's also getting.
- Yeah, then they coat you in wax when you're done.
(laughing)
- Make you nice and shiny.
- All your routine medical exams done in one go.
- Dude, I think this is great.
- And you get a haircut on top of it.
- Yeah, you throw the haircut in,
get the mani-pedi, you know.
- Fresh shave and a mani-pedi on a beach.
Really sore though.
Huh, it is kind of silly that we have
these specialist doctors for, you know,
this over here on this side of town
is the ear, nose and throat.
And over there is the guy who's my knee surgeon.
And over there, it just seemed like we could, I don't know.
- Put them all in the same building.
- There's probably.
- One anesthesiologist.
- If we made it so that they weren't allowed
to have one home office and they had portable equipment
for the stuff that could be portable.
I wonder if there is like a traveling salesman problem
where like, we're gonna get these 12 patients
in the building on this day and these doctors
come through in the morning here and afternoon here
and now we've made like the most efficient set
of who is where at any given day.
If it was all a little more modular.
- Or you could have preset bundles, right?
So you get your wisdom teeth, tonsil, colonoscopy.
And we do that once a month with these three folks.
You know, you got your tummy tuck, your BBL
and your facelift, right?
- Right.
- We have the three doctors in, they come in every Friday.
So we just stack up the year, right?
- Okay. - Boom.
And you get a bundle discount, right?
Like why not?
Just you got all three.
I mean, you actually probably save money
'cause the anesthesia costs, all that stuff.
- Insurance loves it, they pay less.
- I don't know, insurance would be like,
we'll cover these three and that one
but none of these other ones.
This would work in any country but America.
- Unfortunately, that guy was out of network, so.
- Ah, dang it.
Could you get like your passport picture done
at the same time?
They just hold your eyes open.
- Photoshop your eyes open.
- I mean, if you don't wanna do the surgery route,
you could just do the haircut, shower, shave.
Like you just walk in the room and they do everything
but keeping you awake, knock out like 30 things at once.
- Maybe they don't even have to knock you out.
Like it's like a hangover.
They just roofie you and you just don't remember
what had happened the whole time.
- Geezer.
- That might be too much.
- If they give you a bit of the laughing gas
and just sort of put a steam deck in your hands
and try to get you distracted.
I don't know, maybe if you're knocked out or not, maybe.
I mean, the idea of knocking out multiple unpleasant things
all at once.
- You don't remember it, what's it matter?
- I guess.
Are you still sore?
I feel like the idea of knocking out a bunch
of unpleasant stuff all at once is a great idea.
- Yeah.
- With a Xanax and a Nintendo Switch.
That actually sounds really good.
- There you go.
- There we go.
Yeah, I'm trying to think like the,
you could do haircut, eyebrow.
Like if, I feel like women could use this.
I don't know why, but I, the four dudes on the call,
maybe like.
- You know what women like.
(laughing)
- You know what women like.
Nah, maybe they enjoy it too much.
They probably enjoy the haircut.
I'm like, you do haircut, eyebrows, waxing,
mani-pedi, all of the beauty things that they go through.
They do one element a day for every week or whatever.
You know, just all in one car wash, just.
- You get, you also end up with a tattoo and a piercing
and who else knows.
- Those are add-ons.
(laughing)
- Those are add-ons.
- The colonoscopy tramp stamp combo deal.
- Yeah, like the dentist, dude.
You know how you get your teeth whitened?
You do all that?
Like there's a lot.
- Teeth whitening, that's a great one to throw in there.
- Yeah, yeah.
- The waxing's not bad either.
- I know.
- Back to the surgery thing.
If you, just any surgery,
they could do teeth whitening while you're under.
- There, that's simple.
- Like why not just be throwing that in as an extra?
- Some not very evasive,
but things that you just don't want to go
to a whole nother appointment and deal with.
- Do you think, okay, Greg,
I think you might be onto something.
Do you think that patient care would like,
like satisfaction would increase if like,
they provided all these like spa level treatments
while you were under or whatever?
Like, so when you wake up,
you have these services that have been provided as well.
- Yeah.
- I feel like I went to the chiropractor.
- You did.
(laughing)
- Ah, it feels so good.
- While you were asleep.
- While you were asleep, you got adjustment, yeah.
- Also your bunions are gone.
(laughing)
- Awesome, add that to the list.
- This is just a terrifying warehouse when you pull into it
and see what's everything going on.
- Uncle Joe's back alley combo doctoring.
(laughing)
- All right, Russell, what is your idea this week?
- All right, I hope I didn't pitch this one,
but you guys let me know if I did.
But I really like this idea.
It's an oldie on my list of things,
but it's called smashing trash into cash.
- It's got a good name.
- I'm on board so far.
(laughing)
- So you got these rage, you got these rage groups, right?
- Oh, there's more?
There's more to the idea?
- Yeah.
- Oh, okay, all right, great.
- Yeah, that's it, you smash trash, cash, okay?
So you have all this stuff, right?
Let's say you break up with, you have an ex, let's say.
You break up with an ex and you have all this stuff.
You go to the dump and the dump will provide you
the service, like a rage room experience at the dump,
and basically you're paying extra to deliver your trash
and smash it at the dump.
(laughing)
So it's taking the rage room to the next level.
You can smash cars, you can smash stuff
that would never, ever exist in a rage room.
- BYO memorabilia.
- Because like, yes, you could do full on fires.
You could do the dangerous stuff
because you're at the dump in a controlled environment,
but like, I mean, you're gonna take,
like you can only break certain things, right?
So you could, but here's the other part.
You could take trash that's like somebody threw out
and like, let's say the dump decides to go through
some of that and says, oh, this is great for the rage room.
A 50 inch plasma TV that sure doesn't turn on anymore,
but would be great to smash.
Copiers, printers, you have all this stuff
that comes in that is trash.
You know, one man's trash is another man's smash.
- Smash.
- There you go, right?
We just made the commercial here.
And that's it, that's the idea.
You find new revenue streams for a dump, right?
And that's it.
- Okay, Russell, what are the names?
What's that heavy equipment
where it's just the giant rolling wheel
that you could drive the compact asphalt and stuff?
- They're called road rollers.
- Yeah, speed roller.
Honestly, I would just pay to be able to drive one of those
over my own stuff or any stuff and just to see what happens.
That alone would be amazing.
Combine that with everything else.
- Russell, did you have a collection of things
that you wanted to smash that you wished
you had the service for or what inspired this idea?
- I wish I knew.
I had this idea in my book in 2019, five years ago.
And yeah, it just sounded good today.
So what was the title one more time?
- Smashing Trash into Cash.
- Incredible.
- It doesn't make sense to like a user.
Like you're just smashing trash and paying cash.
(laughing)
- Smashing trash for cash, pick a preposition.
- But dude, you're right.
You could bring in some heavy equipment
and smash some stuff that you would never smash.
- Really, you're doing like a proposal.
The smashing trash into cash is for the dump,
not for the user.
Like you're pitching this to the dump owners.
Like, hey, you guys could, right.
You could monetize a rage field or heap.
- Or we rent.
- Your local municipal like waste refuse place
or recycling, like we have Padnos here in town.
There's the core of your idea that is truly great
is getting these guys to like let you demolish
and smash it.
'Cause they're doing the work of disassembling
these recycling plants and stuff.
They take the work of getting things apart the hard way.
Like if they could outsource that for a fee for people
to like do for them, that's great.
- You teach me how to run a tractor or a bulldozer.
Like, hell, do I even need to know?
Can I just like, just put me behind the wheel?
I don't know.
- Even if it's just like,
like there's gotta be all kinds of insurance issues.
But even if what they did is they just allowed YouTubers
to make content about destroying stuff,
they would get so many people who'd want to pay
in order to make their content of, you know,
I always went, like, I don't know,
Mr. Beast has been doing these like blowing up stuff
recently, just like there's, you know,
like the Mythbusters used to go to that demolition range
in Alameda all the time.
It's like, those were income sources for these places.
And you could have a lot more of that around
in a lot of these recycling facilities and whatnot.
- Or the Hydraulic Press Channel.
Like I remember Will It Blend people.
There's a whole thing here.
Will It Blend was great.
- Oh yes.
But guys, there's something about having watched
Mr. Beast, Mythbusters, like all these things.
I feel like creating that experience for some,
for you to then finally smash the thing
with the Hydraulic Press is so rewarding.
I think this is a very boy, like I would,
birthday parties, guys.
This is a 30 year old birthday bachelor party.
- Great idea.
Smash rooms, heavy equipment.
- Dude, even if I had a big pond
that I could drop giant boulders and rocks and like TVs,
you know those videos of just like dudes
throwing bowling balls off the Hoover Dam?
And you're like, oh man, if only I could do that right now.
Like I would pay money for that experience.
I don't know.
- That is a thing with heavy equipment in like Las Vegas.
You can, you know, pay for an hour at the dump range
where you drive an excavator around
and hit cars with it and stuff.
It's quite cool, but.
- Wait, seriously?
- Yeah, yeah, there's a few places
where you just, you pay per hour
to like drive an excavator and hit things.
- That's amazing.
- I know.
It's so good.
- I just think about like a,
I would love like for a bachelor party,
just like a limousine
and then everyone's got a sledgehammer.
- Yeah, right?
At the end of the night, you destroy the limo.
- Yes.
- Still has the mini bar inside.
That's what they lock the mini bar inside.
You have to get to the mini bar.
(laughing)
- It's not an escape room.
It's just a smash room.
- Escape in.
It's a reverse escape room.
You're trying to break in.
(laughing)
- Oh my Lord.
- That's a great one.
- The safe, like crack the safe.
- Crack it.
- You know, you got all these different tools.
- Here's some safety glasses and 480 volts go.
- I keep thinking about the original pitch
that you brought, Russell,
where you said you bring like a bunch of stuff
from an ex-girlfriend or whatever.
We quickly pivoted away from that,
but that is really interesting to offer
like various ways to destroy stuff
that you want to dramatically remove from your life.
Like I'm going to the demolition range
and shooting this with a 50 caliber or whatever.
You know what I mean?
Like what are the extreme services you could offer
of ways to destroy the keepsakes from your ex
or whatever it is that you want to get rid of.
- I think explosives.
- A vat of lava.
- Right?
- To be able to throw stuff into lava.
- Acid.
- Destroy it.
- Yes.
- Lava's a really good one.
- Imagine you rent a helicopter
and you're dropping a freaking dresser
into a freaking volcano.
(laughing)
Oh my God, that sounds awesome.
- How much energy would it take to create a volcano?
Like not like a full erupting thing,
but just like, yeah, stable lava.
- I mean, like foundries have them, you know,
big crucibles.
They're like, yeah.
- Yeah.
- That's true.
- But obviously it would ruin their metal.
- There's probably some like, yeah,
there's probably some geothermal like things
you could location place this near somewhere strategic.
Maybe, I don't know, near an active volcano.
(laughing)
- That alone is.
- Hello insurance company.
I'd like to you, I'd like to insurance against risk,
taking tourists to the volcano to throw dressers in it.
I don't see any way that could go wrong.
Please ensure my business, thank you.
- We've got seat belt buckles in the helicopter.
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- Seat belts in the helicopter.
- Like catapults guys, I don't know.
- Yeah, trebuchets range.
- You're right, this is an extreme, extreme destruction.
And you can do it all because you're at the dump already.
You know?
- There aren't any rules of the dump.
- It's already going to the trash.
- Wait, wait, wait, what if it's trebuchets outside the dump,
but you get to aim them so you can be like hitting stuff.
- At the dump.
- You know, you've got like your different teams of people
and you're just launching your trash,
trying to like smash it into the pile, whatever.
That could be the cash part.
If you get, it'd be like a carnival game at the dump.
And if you get like your,
if you get your thing inside of the pot,
then you could maybe actually win some cash.
- Yes, three months of free trash service
from your municipality.
- Free, three free mini fridges for you to smash.
(laughing)
- A giant stuffed animal.
- That's so funny.
- That you can give to your new girlfriend.
(laughing)
- It just feels like sometimes when you throw away
like big items too from your house,
you're like, "Oh, I feel like it's going to waste."
So you put it out for free and then nobody picks it up.
And then you have a moldy desk in your garage
'cause you're like, "I don't want to put it in a car
and move it to some dumpster illegally."
You know, 'cause I'm not actually like,
sorry, I shouldn't incriminate myself.
Hypothetically, people would go to some random dumpster
and throw out their furniture in some,
you know, open available one, right?
- This Ikea bed is not going to survive to a new family.
It's time to get rid of it.
- I could disassemble it and put it in the trash
over eight weeks,
or I could pay to drop it from a helicopter
into a volcano, exactly.
- Or visit my local trebuchet.
Like.
- I wonder if in medieval era, you know,
when they're sieging a castle, they run out of stuff.
Is that what they did?
- Just throwing cows in there.
- Peasants, villagers.
Yeah, they would just be like,
"Hey, we've got this old twin bed.
Why don't you chuck that at them?"
- Ye olde Ikea.
- You know the, what is it?
1-800-got-junk company?
It just, I don't know.
- Yeah, trash pickup places.
- I think there are trash pickup services.
You could probably like leverage that a little bit.
Like make a service.
And I think there's like an awareness campaign maybe
in marketing that you could do.
Like, here's what actually happens in the dump.
And here's how you could, you know,
you could turn this into a moral high ground element
of you're at the dump.
You can see how we recycle.
Go ahead and smash this mini fridge.
And then here's how we help the environments.
And then here's your, you know, mattress you can burn.
And then here's the, I don't know,
just sandwich of fun with garbage.
- Yeah, I feel like most refuse reclamation places
probably have like a abundance of stuff
that they can provide you to have fun with.
- This is a ridiculous idea and I love it.
- I'd do it.
- Perfect for Spitball, right?
- It really is bachelor party fodder, yeah.
- Greg, welcome.
Thanks for joining.
What do you got this week?
The best intro guy by the way, Greg.
- Seamless.
- You got the best guy.
- Thank you.
I think I'll go with my game show idea.
I've had this game show idea for a while.
And you get a bunch of companies
that have in-house marketing teams
and they form their marketing teams together.
And then every week they compete to make the best ad,
but they have to advertise their own company
using someone else's slogan.
And so the whole thing is like a jumble
of like Skittles built Ford Tough.
(laughing)
- Okay.
- Like, you know, and it'd be like,
you know, like just random things, you know,
tax act online, taste the rainbow.
- Sure, sure.
- And they would have to make,
so like every, it'd be like a reality show
where you're following the week
of how did the creative teams come up with their ideas?
How do they make these make sense?
And then every week, you know,
someone's getting voted out for the worst ad or whatever.
And then, you know, it's just circling through.
So everyone's getting free advertising
and you're getting to see this like creative competition.
And hopefully you have really interesting ads
instead of dumb ads.
(laughing)
- Sure.
- You have to use like their brand standards and stuff too.
That's interesting.
- Right, and like the, you know,
the big showcase could be like the winners,
the winning ad gets played during the Super Bowl.
- There you go.
(laughing)
The Super Bowl really is the Super Bowl of marketing.
That's great.
I know that I have coworkers
that have completely dismissed the power
of cohesive marketing and like good,
consistent brand standards and all that kind of stuff
to as like an influence that they think is real
or not real, you know, like said another way,
I've had people look and say,
it doesn't really matter what fonts
and logos really look like.
Nobody actually pays attention and cares.
And I feel like if you were to take
different companies' brand identities as they exist now
and jumble them and reform them and all that,
that would make the ideas of what marketing is
and why it is a useful tool
and why companies spend so much money on it,
like so much more obvious.
- So much more apparent.
- Yeah.
- And I think you would actually get more attention
because there would be like a cognitive dissonance
if they're really recognizable brands.
'Cause if you use no-name brands,
then no one cares.
They don't understand why you have a weird slogan.
But if you're watching an ad that is like clearly
for dentures and then it's got, you know,
get in the zone, auto zone.
(laughing)
Like people would be like, what?
- Yeah.
- And they'll be like, what did I just see?
Like, you know, there's like a,
I feel like there's just lots of ways
you could get this mixing and matching happening
that will actually get people like thinking
about the weird slogans.
I don't know.
It's similar to like, I'm thinking about the power
of the sounds you played earlier,
like that Game Boy noise.
Like there's something about like, you know,
putting that in the wrong context
and now suddenly it's funny.
You think back on the Game Boy,
you think about the new context.
And on top of that, I feel like marketers,
you know, like I'm thinking about those,
all the creative shows, like the fashion ones
and the different idol and got talent shows,
how you see a lot of these, like the creative process,
but never really in that like visual design marketing realm.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Totally.
- Especially in the sense if they've only got a week,
you know, like it's gonna be a hustle
to try to get like a 30 second ad made in a week.
- I don't think the average member of the public
thinks about the power of marketing,
thinks about ads and how much work goes into it,
thinks about slogan design and logo design
and all that stuff at all.
And they have no idea how much of an influence
it has on them.
- Yeah, my wife would love this idea.
She does UI and UX and it's just,
everything is all about brand recognition
and keeping things consistently going through.
They do, every week they do an exercise
with their group of designers where they're like,
all right, here's your challenge, here's your topic,
make a design around a go.
And her one this week, I saw today was,
create a clever 404 page that just no one would ever have.
And she did, what did you do?
It was like, you hit this page
and it's like this crazy psychedelic background
and there's all these like crazy things happening.
It's like, you are far out, man.
You are way beyond where you should be right now.
404, go home.
And it's just stuff like that.
But this is, yeah, I really like this idea.
This is a good.
- Yeah.
- I think creatives, yeah, I think this is a different,
it's an interesting game show because yeah,
you see the woodwork, the baking shows
and all that stuff, right?
But I feel like what I'm having trouble with is like,
is this gonna be a PowerPoint show?
Is this like people pitching their ideas, you know?
Like, or is this like they're building an ad
and that takes a lot,
like if they're building a 30 second ad,
I think they have to do, I think there's something else.
There's like something more creative
than like a commercial or whatever, or like storyboards.
They gotta do, the game show is like maybe
getting the most votes or getting the most like
high fives in a room or--
- Winning over the audience,
the studio audience or something, yeah.
- Yeah, like they're in a, like the game show would be
maybe like you're in a baseball stadium
and you have to get as many people wearing your hats.
And literally it's like you come up
with the most creative hats, you're a marketer.
So same thing, right?
How do you get the most people to wear your hat
walking out of a stadium?
How can you convince the general public
that that slogan is for your company?
How can you steal their slogan?
It was such a great pivot as to what that thing means.
- FedEx gives you wings.
- That now people in a survey,
a thousand people, Family Feud style,
answer a survey saying, oh, get in the zone,
that's for Chick-fil-A or whatever, right?
You can like--
- Yes.
- Like get the general public to think about that thing.
- I love the idea of like these challenges, you know?
Like if celebrities were suddenly introduced midweek,
and it's like, hey, Danny DeVito's gotta be in your ad now.
Oh yes.
- Hell's Kitchen sort of thing.
You gotta throw like a curveball at him.
- Right, just lots of weird material every week, you know?
Like this week's everyone's ads have to use like frogs.
- Yeah, it lends itself well to these.
- Especially with like AI generators now.
There's lots of flexibility for it.
- It lends itself well to the reality show format.
Maybe just 'cause I'm married to a designer,
but I think there's definitely a target audience for this
that's larger than people would expect.
- I think it'd be hilarious too,
'cause like if you do the challenges right,
these people, like these marketing people are,
you let them go crazy, like they will make something,
they know how to get attention, right?
That's what marketing is.
And so like, I don't know, just stuff might go off the rails.
So it becomes, yeah, fun.
- Well, and it'd be interesting to see the dynamics
of the different marketing teams.
I had some acquaintances who used to work
for a couple of different reality TV shows
in Southern California when I was living there.
And it was hilarious because like one of them,
their job title was something like story creator,
you know, for like supposedly a reality TV show.
- Oh wow.
- It's like her job was recording all of these people
and then building a story out of what she got,
even if there was no story there.
And that's where it's like, you know,
they're doing all that stuff.
Like how do they get the personalities
of the different marketing teams?
How do they figure out what wrenches to throw in?
You know, do they, it would be another thing of like,
rather than teams necessarily getting voted off,
you know, do they lose someone?
So it's like, hey, you just lost your art director this week
because you didn't do well last week.
It's like, now you gotta work with three people
or something, you know, I don't know.
There's all kinds of ways you could like make it dramatic.
- Oh yeah.
- It's so good.
- The reality show producer as a concept is like a,
it's a certain talent, man.
I have mad respect for that.
- You know what's funny?
I wonder if the game show would end up,
if some of the challenges would like make the news
because they did such a good job marketing
or like it becomes viral before the show's aired.
Like what a cool, I don't know.
There might be a concept there.
- Do you know the show Nathan For You?
- Yes.
- Incredible adult swim show.
- He is a guy who plays the character of a bad
at helping businesses come up with ideas
to make themselves more successful.
And he goes to businesses and he pitches ridiculous ideas
that are obviously a joke.
But there's one episode that doesn't start
with the normal intro.
It starts with a montage of like,
good morning America and the Today Show and CNN
and all these different people talking about dumb Starbucks.
The thing that he built that was a parody of Starbucks
that used the same logo and menus and items for sale
and everything.
And it was like a thing that broke out
of this small Comedy Central show
and became a nationwide story for a hot minute.
There's totally potential for this show
to have those moments.
Like, did you see that billboard in Omaha
that had the slogan all weird?
Like how did they, what's going on?
Yeah, totally.
- Yes.
- Nathan For You is like one of the best.
- It's a hero.
- That show is so insane.
- The best thing about the dumb Starbucks
is that he actually stole napkins and cups
from a real Starbucks.
But he's just like, can I take some napkins?
And they're like, yeah.
And then he would just grab the whole thing
and bring it to the other Starbucks.
I didn't know that.
That's a great episode though.
- He is the, like you take that concept
that you apply it to the game show format.
Like his, like the free TV thing.
Like, you seen that episode?
It's like, TV's for a dollar.
And then he would go to the store next door
and buy the TVs because they price match.
So, they are required to price match.
So like, that's what we want to see in this show, right?
Like that's the kind of content that like,
people are like, damn.
- Chaos energy.
- Oh yeah, chaos.
I'm all about that chaos energy.
Let me say, oh.
- You are.
- Televised, oh.
- As we're always saying on this show, Spitball.
I'm loving it.
Thank you very much for listening.
We hope you enjoyed yourself, listener.
And thank you so much, Greg.
It was such a fun time having you here.
- Yeah, this was great.
Thank you guys.
- We'll have to have you back soon.
You said you got more ideas.
We'll get those out of you someday.
- Excellent.
- Our website is Spitball.show.
There you can find our YouTube channel,
other social media, email us feedback, comments, ideas.
We'd love to hear from you.
We are podcast@Spitball.show.
That's also how you can follow us on the Fediverse,
such as Mastodon.
We're just podcast@Spitball.show.
Hopefully threads soon,
if they ever release that Fediverse support.
Our subreddit is r/spitballshow.
Our intro/outro music is "Swingers" by Bonkers Beat Club.
If you wouldn't mind, please,
you're listening on our podcast app.
It'd be super helpful if you could fire that thing up,
subscribe, leave a review.
That's the best way for people to find out about the show.
New episode is coming out in two weeks.
We will see you then.
(dramatic music)