Speaker 1 0:01

Well, I love that. The, that the barbarians, the, the name barbarian came from. Like that's how they thought people talked. Yeah, they were like, but these people come over and they're like bar bar, bar, bar, bar, bar bar bar, bar, so they're bar barbarians. You know, that's how they talk, that's right, that's hilarious.

Speaker 2 0:21

It's the Greek word barbaros.

Speaker 1 0:23

What's non-greek. Oh, is it? Yeah, barbaros, yeah, barbaros, is it not? Just was I misinformed that it was like the people I think you're right, barbaros.

Speaker 2 0:31

I mean, you can't really know how the word was invented, but it sounds like it.

Speaker 1 0:34

It sounds like bar bar, bar, bar bar. No, that was dumb, bar bar, bar, bar bar and they're like Greek, or like anyone who's not, anyone who doesn't speak Greek, and they just go around going bar bar, bar, bar bar. I think it was like three things. Those are barbarians.

Speaker 2 0:46

You had to speak Greek, you had to drink wine and one other thing I can't remember.

Speaker 1 0:50

To three things for what To do. What To do what?

Speaker 2 0:54

Hospital to be considered, not a barbarian. Oh, I think there was three things you had to drink wine, you had to speak Greek and you had to do hospitality law. What, yeah, what's that? That's what's called Sainos.

Speaker 1 1:08

Oh, you have to like, change you have to turn the corners down on the bed and you put a mint on the pillow Yep.

Speaker 2 1:14

If you put a chocolate on the pillow, that's not good, because then people wake up. They think they shit the bed.

Speaker 1 1:18

You're a barbarian.

Speaker 2 1:18

Yeah, you're no longer Greek, right.

Speaker 1 1:21

So, what is hospitality law. It's a Greek thing. It shows up at your house with a pillow. You have to let them sleep there. They must sleep.

Speaker 2 1:29

So you know the word xenophobia right. Xenophobia yes, so Xenos.

Speaker 1 1:34

Those are people who like the Hercules show but hated the Xena show. That's a real throwback for anyone. That's a real throwback. Anyone who's real young is like Hercules and Xena what are you talking about?

Speaker 2 1:47

The Hercules show was pretty good. Now that guy's.

Speaker 1 1:49

Kevin Sorbo. Yeah, he sort of pulls up Twitter with Little bit of a wackadoo. Yeah, right wing stuff. Meanwhile, lucy Lawless continues to be pretty awesome. Yeah, you're right. Anyway, xenophobia, great name too.

Speaker 2 2:00

Lucy Lawless. Yeah yeah, it's a fun one. Lawless.

Speaker 1 2:04

Yeah, Xenophobia.

Speaker 2 2:05

So Xenophobia the word Xenos means foreigner.

Speaker 1 2:08

But you're afraid of.

Speaker 2 2:09

Xenos law or Xenos, it means hospitality. So when a foreigner would come like a non, someone else would come to your house from like a traveler, like a foreigner traveler, then you would say it's in all the Greek tragedy or Greek epics and stuff. They're always like welcome to our home. Before you say anything, let us feed you and make you comfortable and have you bathe and be comfortable and fed. Then you'll tell us about why you're here and what's going on. So it's not like it's not conditional.

Speaker 2 2:45

Yeah, it's not like you slide open the door or just the eyes and you're like who?

Speaker 1 2:48

goes there.

Speaker 2 2:49

Who are you? What do you want? Go away, no, no, that's really.

Speaker 1 2:53

The idea is you provide hospitality to anyone, anyone and everyone.

Speaker 2 2:56

Okay, and the superstition is that the gods would come down and be like a beggar or a foreigner. And then if you were like go away, then they curse you.

Speaker 1 3:09

The first version of undercover boss was the Greeks thinking that the gods would put on a shawl and be like will you give me a bagel?

Speaker 2 3:19

Yeah, and they're like no bagels for you. Curse you no bagels for your family for a thousand years.

Speaker 1 3:24

All right, all right, I'm turning you into a fish now, goodbye.

Speaker 2 3:35

So we should probably do a solution. We should do a solution. Okay, climate change. That's the solution. I've been tracking this stuff. We are so screwed.

Speaker 1 3:45

It's only getting worse yeah.

Speaker 2 3:47

So we're not at 2023, which is now over, but 2023 was the year that we burned the most coal we've ever burned, ever in one year.

Speaker 1 3:56

Yay, in 2023. All right, we did it.

Speaker 2 4:00

We've known for 30 years and we've known with dire intensity for 15 years, 10 years Certainly in the last five years we've known the absolute worst thing we can do is burn coal. That's like the worst thing to do If you're an alcoholic and you're like shots of vodka. That's burning coal for climate change. It's the worst thing you can do.

Speaker 1 4:24

And in 2023, it was the worst year ever. Why? Why are we not? Because I would think it would be the lowest year because we have all the alternative. No, we got fuels, we got problems.

Speaker 2 4:35

I mean, a lot of it just comes from China and India, who they are like no, we're not going to sacrifice economic growth and we need energy to grow, so we're doing this thing, okay.

Speaker 1 4:46

It's extremely bad.

Speaker 2 4:47

It's extremely problematic, but I'm just saying climate change is really screwed. If you're listening to this and you don't think climate change will completely alter your life and the life of your children, I'm sorry. I'm here to tell you to wake up and smell the coffee. Everything is going to be different. Mass migrations, huge flooding will destroy things. If it doesn't destroy your home, it'll destroy somebody else's home, and then they're going to show up on your doorstep Exactly.

Speaker 1 5:14

If you're not directly impacted, you'll be indirectly impacted. There's no escape.

Speaker 2 5:18

There's no escape. It doesn't matter. Even the billionaires who have a compound in New Zealand. No, they're still going to be screwed. It's going to be everywhere.

Speaker 1 5:27

Do you see them building the back to your favorite director, elysium? They built this big circle.

Speaker 2 5:34

Wait, I like the director of.

Speaker 1 5:35

Elysium, yes, the District 9 guy. Oh, okay, yeah, I do.

Speaker 2 5:39

I don't want to keep track of directors.

Speaker 1 5:41

Elysium is like the rich people live on a rotating space station that's off the earth and everyone else has to deal with being on the earth. Do you see that happening?

Speaker 2 5:52

Meddaman.

Speaker 1 5:53

Before we figure out how to solve it for everybody, do you see? Just some people taking their resources and trying to eject no.

Speaker 2 6:01

I see these billionaires thinking that they can be insulated and then they are going to find they cannot be insulated.

Speaker 2 6:12

It's that they're going to find that they are totally screwed and that they should have gone to their boards and say we are using the full force and power of our billions of dollars in our corporation to fight climate change or I'm resigning. That's what all of them should be doing today. If they had any shred of leadership, any shred of morality, that's what they would do. Instead, they're saying oh, give me my $100 million compensation, I'm going to spend half of it on a compound in New Zealand. That is complete lack of leadership, complete lack of moral integrity, complete dissociation from reality.

Speaker 1 6:50

I mean, it's absurd. It doesn't seem like it's going to pan out for them the way they want it to either. It's not like, I don't know. Climate change, especially, is a thing where you can't escape it by being richer than other people.

Speaker 2 7:03

The atmosphere.

Speaker 1 7:04

You can't escape some of the impacts temporarily. But what are you going to do?

Speaker 2 7:10

I heard Neil DeGrasse Tyson say oh, I got to get to the solution.

Speaker 1 7:13

Okay, the solution is yeah, this is a lot of doom and gloom. Yeah, sorry, oh, by the way, hi, I'm Scott Moppen, I'm Adam Brous. Welcome to solutions from the multiverse, yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 7:23

We just happen to be in the universe where people are complete idiots and they Dumped carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 40 years when they knew it was gonna destroy it.

Speaker 1 7:30

Yeah, but it sounds like they already also knew, know it's going to destroy or doing it more than ever, right now stopping.

Speaker 1 7:38

That's crazy. I mean, it's the stupidest thing ever. When you know there's a, there's a difference between doing it not knowing what you're doing, you're just like industrial revolution we're building engines and blah, blah, blah. And then when you're like, oh, we're increasing the CO, like the level of the the sea, the level of the temperature of the seas is going to be a problem for everybody, and they're like, okay, now we should, but now, if you don't stop, it's intentional.

Speaker 2 8:04

It's insane. So here's the solution. One solution is so, basically, there are two big things that are the main things that drive climate change. Okay, one is the suburbanization of America. That that was the big.

Speaker 1 8:20

Carbon. We did that a few episodes ago. You were saying like people living in houses that are like, yeah, big houses spread out suburban life in America is a complete lifestyle choice.

Speaker 2 8:30

It's not like we were, like we need to save a million babies live, so we need to burn this gas it was like no it was just like a bunch of white people were convinced that they should be scared of living close to each other and that black people were scary that lived in cities and so they should all move to the suburbs. And then they were allowed to do that. It was a complete lifestyle choice is completely idiotic. The second big puff was the industrialization of of China and India, which are still happening, okay, but that actually was like saving a bunch of people's lives like. I don't know if you remember this, but when I was a kid it was like there are children in China who would eat your food, so you got to eat your food.

Speaker 2 9:06

That was like they were literally going from starvation To now being able to have you know health care and you know a motor scooter to get around and whatever right, so I mean they actually did something that wasn't a lifestyle choice. It was like actual humanitarian, like economic development To some extent, to most, most extent, most of it well, and there's been a lot like the.

Speaker 1 9:25

There's been a lot of industrialization in China and India that you're talking about, where they're like we're getting basic functions to like the poorest people right now exactly which I'm not against, but also it's. It's far enough. In the future, we should be able to do it without wrecking the World at the same time.

Speaker 2 9:43

What should be happening is the rich countries should be directly paying for the non usage of coal In developing countries. Like it should just be like don't use coal power plants. How much do we have to pay you? To not use coal power plants in China would be like you have to pay us $200 billion a year to not build any more coal power plants. And we need to be like here's a check for 250 billion. Please don't make any coal power plants like and that's what we need to do.

Speaker 1 10:08

That that's just the and also out of doubt that is what needs to be done like it's not everyone's like. All the climate's so complicated. Also, china needs to on there and they need to like. Then take that check and Do what they were gonna say and not then also be like yeah, we're also gonna do the coal thing.

Speaker 2 10:24

Well, that's why I give them the extra 50, you know Well, no, now you can do pretty good tracking because they like, so they have like.

Speaker 1 10:31

Would we like tracking.

Speaker 2 10:32

Do we run out of coal? I? This is no like we run out of no, we destroy the whole environment before the coal runs out there's whole mountains full of coal.

Speaker 1 10:39

Okay, it's still burning, because I mean, like we would technically, like Theoretically, you run out of petroleum oil at some point.

Speaker 2 10:46

You don't necessarily run out, it just becomes very expensive to produce. Okay, you almost never run out, just the price.

Speaker 1 10:52

But the easy, the easy to get. Oil is gone. That's why they're like well, do fracking.

Speaker 2 10:56

We spent, you know huh, tens of billions of dollars in the last ten years to do, to do fracking and oil sands. Yeah all of that money could have just been spent doing renewables instead of that oil sands and fracking.

Speaker 1 11:10

But you're saying, like we're not gonna run out of coal, the idea that, like they just run out of coal, we're not gonna run out of petroleum either.

Speaker 2 11:15

It's just gonna get more and more expensive.

Speaker 1 11:17

Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 11:18

That's all called peak oil. Peak oil doesn't mean that it'll go away.

Speaker 1 11:22

It just means that it'll become more and more expensive Well to produce right, and then we've then everything that we've tied to oil, which is you know like everything becomes more expensive as a byproduct.

Speaker 2 11:32

I still haven't done the solution. Okay, the solution is cities, because remember the suburbanization. I can't really control China, so I Don't have a solution.

Speaker 1 11:42

I think you're just being lazy. You probably could if you try to control China.

Speaker 2 11:45

A billion people do something, but we do have a control over our culture and our cities right, it's our country, it's America. Okay, and we need people to move out of the suburbs back in the cities. That would like. That was like literally reverse the, that big puff of carbon right of suburbanization and car centrism in America so. How do we do that? Well, I think the answer is fun. I.

Speaker 1 12:15

Okay, fun and free and a four-hour-long, I like fun.

Speaker 2 12:19

Yeah, fun, I'm a fan of fun. So like, for example, what are the most popular cities that get popular and stay popular? So, there's already cities that are like tier one cities like San Francisco, new York, and everybody wants to move there. Extremely expensive to live there. It's expensive because people want to live there. Well, supply and demand.

Speaker 2 12:35

New York, la, chicago are top three High demand right and people will like want to look at those cities and they have everything there. So the question is like, what makes them the top tier cities? So it's like, well, everything, because they're everything's there. So what you have to look at is the cities that have gone from lower tier up and what had them pop up.

Speaker 1 12:54

Okay.

Speaker 2 12:55

So I think the best city to look at is Austin, because Austin went from being like a tier three or four city up to being a tier two and now it's like pushing up, like, with Tesla moving there and like and George O'Rogan moving there and like a bunch of people moving there, it's almost pushing up into like almost like a tier one city, like it's really becoming like a cultural phenomenon and like an economic powerhouse and stuff.

Speaker 2 13:21

So the question is how did Austin go up like that? And I think the answer is fun they got six street, all bars and clubs. They have four, at least four major music festivals a year. Wait, they have Austin. City limits Southwest.

Speaker 1 13:38

Southwest.

Speaker 2 13:38

Southwest, and I think they have a bluegrass one too, and then I think there's another one too in addition. But they have these music festivals that are just fun. They're huge, just people drinking and listening to music, and then they have food, which is fun, you know, like a food scene. Sure Fun to go get the food.

Speaker 1 13:58

Is there a university as well in Austin?

Speaker 2 14:00

There's a university, but I think the university that's again, I think it's all fueling the fun.

Speaker 1 14:04

Okay, so the university fuels the fun, but the university also provides you a constant stream of young hip people who are interested in having and finding fun and spending money on that Exactly.

Speaker 2 14:15

And so there's other things that feed into it, because like it's complicated and I was reading a bunch about what people think what made it happen, and the university is a big part of it, because people are like, oh, you need educated workers, you need educated workers, but NLA has UCLA. I guess there's like educated workers from that or whatever. But yeah, so there's fun, but I think fun is the tip of the spear.

Speaker 1 14:37

And then affordable housing, because all these low tier cities have more affordable housing, so people move there, don't those work in like? The thing about Austin is that now the housing is not at all affordable. Right, because everyone's moving in there. That's a supply and demand thing and they don't build enough, yeah.

Speaker 2 14:52

But if you took, but let's say, for example, let's say, for example, you could take a tier five city, you know like Toledo, Ohio, Toledo. Ohio and you were like, let's make Toledo, Ohio and Austin. That would be good for the climate and not just Toledo, Ohio, but if you could do that for 100 cities. If you could take 100 tier five cities in America. I mean, there's tens of thousands of cities. If you could take 100 tier five cities and you could make them all.

Speaker 1 15:23

This is like Austin, little Austin's.

Speaker 2 15:25

Where everybody wants to move into them. That would desuperbinize America, because that's what we need, because the suburbs were everywhere, they were around every city, so we need to like to desuperbinize. We need, like, many places for those people to move to, which means we need to like make many little cities exciting and cool to move into. And you want to be down in the downtown of Okay, so we need to make them all fun.

Speaker 1 15:51

So instead of so, instead of having just this is a limp.

Speaker 2 15:54

No, I just wanted to do a climate change solution. I'm trying to. I think we need to talk about climate.

Speaker 1 15:59

I'm trying to focus on how to that. I like how to frame it so like I know instead of having three big cities right, like the three main cities, and then a bunch way down lower. You try to kind of bring up, you know, like a bunch of awesome. Yeah, you're bringing up your minor links. And making them all awesome, so that there's not as much strain put on those three major cities and there's not as much demand for like the suburb area of those three major cities, or whatever, the Dallas.

Speaker 2 16:27

We don't need to build more housing. And if, like you can't like I've been trying to advocate for more housing in San Francisco For almost 10 years, like I was a hipster, yeah, I like invented.

Speaker 1 16:36

couple episodes ago you said rip down the highways.

Speaker 2 16:38

Yeah, I'm gonna put up the housing, and but that's not gonna happen, unfortunately. I mean, I don't think it's gonna happen because there's just this really, really gnarly Nimby, really entrenched Nimby, anti-growth right people and you cannot budge them, like they are so, so incredibly Religiously addicted to this idea that, like, somehow the world, the sky would fall down if they built some seven-story buildings, you know, or whatever well, and they like to theorize.

Speaker 1 17:07

We need to do these things elsewhere, but definitely not here. And you know where you like, but everyone thinks that you know we like.

Speaker 2 17:12

Well, yeah, you know where there's housing stock Toledo, ohio right. It's already there and it's affordable.

Speaker 2 17:17

You know, you could probably buy a house for like $150,000. Yeah, in downtown Toledo, ohio. You know our $200,000. So what I'm saying is, instead of trying to say, okay, well, we can't build the city, we can't the San Francisco, people are blocking us from doing the right thing, which is just build a whole lot more housing in San Francisco. So let's bring what makes people want to live in downtown of San Francisco to other places. Okay, and I think a lot of people think well, that's crazy, because what it is is money and wealth, and it's the economy. Man, san Francisco has a booming economy and that's why people want to be there, because they want money, because that's why they're there. And it's like it's such a simplistic and and not evidence-based a perspective. I actually think money is a trailing indicator yes, not a leading indicator right.

Speaker 2 18:06

You look at Austin, it's the same way. It's not like a bunch of big banks moved into Austin and then it became a super cool place to move to right. It's the exact opposite. No, they just ran really awesome music festivals and had really good food and bar scenes, yeah, and then all the people move there and started their businesses and move their businesses there because they wanted to, you know, have the cool lives.

Speaker 1 18:28

It's like the cool people who don't have money create a thing in a place and they're like no, we're creating it because it's cool, because it's fun, right. And then the people who aren't cool but do have money are like oh, could I buy some of that coolness?

Speaker 1 18:40

Yes you're like a little bit, and then a lot of them do it, then the price goes up and then you look around and it's like oh, it's only the people who bought the coolness and all the cool people. People move, the actual cool people. Yeah, I think you're right, the money is a lagging.

Speaker 2 18:52

Yeah, but everybody all the people who think all the people who go in are in charge of cities, all think it's the other way around. They all think well if we had a JP Morgan on every corner?

Speaker 1 19:03

right. This city would be amazing banks on every exactly, and it's like you are so stupid.

Speaker 2 19:08

And of course they're stupid because they're 55 year old man. They're totally out of touch with like what's cool and like what and I and I admit that, as a man who's getting an older, I'm getting out of touch. I don't know what's cool either, but I can tell.

Speaker 1 19:21

I know everything, that's God knows everything.

Speaker 2 19:24

I can tell, though, from just looking at the, the stories of these arcs, these cities that rise like Nashville.

Speaker 2 19:30

Has risen in prominence. Boulder, the fun of Boulder, a lot of it was outdoors. Outdoors stuff. Yeah, I was very fun, yeah, but they also had bluegrass music and they had bought the, the, the, the, the micro brewery scene was really strong in Colorado and Boulder and they had this, the University, not because of the economics of the University Even though I think that does help, but because of the fun of the University. The University drives all this fun by having 50,000 people who are going to show up to the club or to the bar, to the concert or to the festival or the restaurant.

Speaker 1 20:06

Well, I think, like when I was growing up, the places like this, that would be that I think now are the money. Places are like Portland and Seattle yeah, are ones that were fun and there were. There was a whole scene.

Speaker 2 20:18

Yeah, and then the grunge scene right, right, and it was a music scene, a food scene Uh-huh, it's specifically not now Amazon and Microsoft are there right becomes a money scene and it becomes a like, it's like.

Speaker 1 20:29

You have to pay a premium to get the coolness that other people just had because they were cool or whatever.

Speaker 2 20:34

You know, this is the Dionysian theory of, but now it's like you, wouldn't you?

Speaker 1 20:37

wouldn't think of going to Seattle without a Like bags of money. You're not gonna do well there, right, but then you need to find those other places, like Austin is becoming that thing where it's like, if you wanted to, the time to Move into Austin was a few years ago, right. So now you need to look and see where are those, where those cities now that are going, that are on that trajectory, and it's hard to predict because you don't know what business is going to take off and decide to headquarter themselves there, or what kind Of industry is going to show up there that suddenly like brings in money?

Speaker 1 21:08

and workers and people, but Trying to find those places instead of the places that have already popped, you know, it's like totally it's, it's investing, talking about like from a real estate perspective.

Speaker 2 21:17

But what if you were?

Speaker 1 21:18

just from a being there. Yeah, I would rather be there being there.

Speaker 2 21:22

But what about from like a. Imagine you were like. Okay, imagine you were either like a government planner or like a giant organization, like a, like a, like a teacher retirement fund. Or if you were like a giant, like a billionaire, like if you were really a powerful person, you could really decide things about the society right right. It would be better versus or just the government. It would be better if we knew how to make cities that people wanted to move to right.

Fun Events for Tulsa

Speaker 2 21:58

That would be a good skill to have like in our back pockets as a civilization and we absolutely do not have that skill. We are just at the whim of just random sort of chaotic like blah flow what happens. And out of that random chaotic flow we get an extremely uneven distribution of desire for people to be in certain places, which leads to the housing crisis.

Speaker 1 22:27

Well, and we're also operating off of old instruction manuals where we're like all right, how do we grow a city sporting team?

Speaker 2 22:34

Yeah, exactly, we need to build a big stadium. Yeah, we need to build a big stadium. We need shopping malls and like more parking, more free parking. No, shopping malls don't work anymore.

Speaker 1 22:44

But people don't. I think a sporting team is now a negative value proposition for your city now or whatever. Yeah, figuring out the new way to do it instead of just going for the old playbooks is essential, but that's the thing.

Speaker 2 22:59

There is no new playbook, so I was reading this article. A city that I know is trying to do this is Tulsa.

Speaker 1 23:05

Okay.

Speaker 2 23:06

So the 47th wealthiest person in the world is this guy and he, like, owns a bunch of Tulsa.

Speaker 1 23:13

Oh, you have to look it up. You don't actually know.

Speaker 2 23:16

His name is oh no 476th richest person in the world as of September 21st. His name is or September 2021. His name is George Bruce Kaiser. Okay, american billionaire businessman and he's the chairman of BOK Financial Corporation in Tulsa, oklahoma. He owns, like most of Oklahoma, most of Tulsa. Okay. So he wants Tulsa to be the next Austin. Okay, selfishly, because he wants his investments to increase. And also he just has this legacy, vision, idea of making Tulsa great.

Speaker 1 23:48

What's he doing for Tulsa?

Speaker 2 23:48

Well, so that's the thing. So I was reading about it and it's like I was reading and it was all the same sort of them mistaking leading indicators for following indicators. Okay, so it was like look at Austin, elon Musk just moved there. He moved the Gigafactory there and they just built a new professional soccer stadium and it's all these stupid things. Oh, they have a university, which means they got educated workers, and it's like dude, when someone graduated from college, they can move almost anywhere.

Speaker 1 24:19

Yeah, they go wherever a job is.

Speaker 2 24:20

So it doesn't. And then the job is like well, why did Elon Musk move it there? Right, I mean it's because it was cool, because there were people there.

Speaker 1 24:28

Why were the people?

Speaker 2 24:29

there Because it's fun, Like everything goes back to fun. Fun should be, but again, of course, the people who run cities, these guys who are walking around they're all 50-year-old guys with like overweight in their gray suits, like walking around Austin.

Speaker 1 24:43

The fun. You're talking about the funnest people on the planet, right? Yeah, exactly, the absolute funnest people.

Speaker 2 24:47

Who can identify a party who get invited to parties all the time?

Speaker 1 24:50

Yeah, the fun crew.

Speaker 2 24:50

We're so fun. We know Just these like overweight, right wing, like middle-aged men.

Speaker 1 24:55

Fun, yeah, fun with crew cuts. Oh, crew cut is the most fun. Haircut Crew cut is the most fun haircut.

Speaker 2 25:02

Everyone knows we're not gonna get on the good side of the Tulsans, but anyways, if anyone from who's trying to make.

Speaker 1 25:07

Tulsa in the city. I like Tulsa. Or if you run a city like what if you're the mayor of Toledo and you're like, you're saying the Tulsa guy is like looking at it the wrong way, wrong?

Speaker 2 25:15

way.

Speaker 1 25:18

He's the guy who sees the golden goose and he's like cut it open, get the eggs, and you're like no, no, no, no, no. Exactly, that's not how that works, that's exactly right.

Speaker 2 25:24

So instead what they should do is they should do immediately fun things like a music. They should definitely music festivals, Like launch a huge music festival Tulsa.

Speaker 1 25:34

Palooza. Yeah, tulsa Palooza.

Speaker 2 25:36

That's on the weekend that no other music festival is. Don't have it be the same weekend as Austin city limits, you know right. And then invite Burning man to like do a Burning man thing there every year. Seasonally right Like a mini burner.

Speaker 1 25:48

Can you just invite Burning man? Why not? Is that a?

Speaker 2 25:50

person. Yeah, it's a huge organization.

Speaker 1 25:52

Dear Burning man.

Creating Fun and Vibrant Cities

Speaker 2 25:54

Super wealthy, super creative, super fun. People Tell them Tulsa would love to host you to have a mini quarter year Burning man festival, or whatever you know, or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 26:02

Is Tulsa legal on drugs? What are they? That's another feel. I feel like you get Burning.

Speaker 2 26:08

Man people in there. Well, if you got the billionaire who owns the whole city, I'm pretty sure he can tell the police officers to look the other way for a week or two you know, no, tulsa.

Speaker 1 26:16

I know Tulsa has medical marijuana for sure, Cause I have a friend who works in a dispensary down in Oglon, and it doesn't have to be Tulsa, we're just using that as an example. No right.

Speaker 2 26:25

There's lots of cities in America who are owned by a few hundred people who could get into a room and say, hey, we want to make our investments go 10X in our real estate investments. How can we get a bunch of people to try to move to our city? That's every city in America. People are having meetings like that every day.

Speaker 2 26:44

You know, unless they're affluent already and they move there to get away from everybody. But most cities would love to have more people moving there and you know build up the city and you know make money.

Speaker 1 26:55

It's a double thing where you're like you want your cool companies to come in and have and move their cool workers there to spend their money, but also the companies want to have a cool city to go to so that they're not putting their workers in like crappy places.

Speaker 2 27:09

So it's like a synergy, it works together to raise the but people think of it as a chicken and egg problem. But I say it's not a chicken and egg problem. It's like fun first, fun, first. Fun first Make your city super fun and then profit If you're gonna get married in this city.

Speaker 1 27:31

You're gonna have to walk down a slip and slide instead of a normal aisle. It's gonna be fun. We're doing fun.

Speaker 2 27:37

Only fun weddings. I'd love for people to just agree with me on this, but like I'm trying to think of, like the causal chain that's outside of just a total chicken and egg. You know feedback, you know you know loop, what's the actual thing that injects and causes the beginning of it, and I can't see anything else besides fun. Like more money is not the case, because these cities are not rich before this happens.

Speaker 1 28:03

They're rich after.

Speaker 2 28:04

Right, you know universities. There's tons of cities. Like with universities, universities seem to be a requirement, but they don't seem to be the cause. They are a requirement, though I think you need to have a university. By the way, if anyone wants to start a university in their city, I'll come and do it for you. You can pay me and I'll do it. I've started universities before, I can do it again. So, like Tulsa, should absolutely be building up their university.

Speaker 1 28:29

But well, you're right. I mean humans are, presumably. We're not working 24-7 and we need stuff to do. Young people are not so you want to have things that are things that people can do ie fun, yeah, fun, you know what I mean. Like you want to have parks that people can go to, or movies that people can watch, or dances that people can like go, or a festival you want to have things.

Speaker 2 28:52

But you can do all those things everywhere. It has to be like most ultimate fun things. Yeah, super fun things.

Speaker 1 28:58

You want to have it where people are not worried that they're gonna be bored or run out of stuff to do.

Speaker 2 29:02

They're always like.

Speaker 1 29:03

I can go to the farmers market or I can go to the like there are things available for me to do and that takes infrastructure, but still not fun enough.

Speaker 2 29:10

Farmers market is not fun enough?

Speaker 1 29:11

Not fun enough, I mean you need to have those baseline farmers market and trampoline.

Speaker 2 29:15

But every city has farmers markets, doesn't change Taly to Ohio has farmers markets.

Speaker 1 29:20

But for some people that's fun, like, yeah, get up on Saturday and go and pick out, that's not fun, that's just nice.

Speaker 2 29:27

What I'm saying is if you want your city to really grow. It's what seems to be the case. Is that it's fun, really fun, Okay.

Speaker 1 29:34

Really fun. But then, like Colorado, has places that skiing is possible. Skiing is fun, so you get to do that.

Speaker 2 29:40

Yeah, that's why Boulder is able to go.

Speaker 1 29:43

Omaha, you can't go skiing.

Speaker 2 29:45

Yeah, well, you gotta do other things. I can't do it in Austin, but Austin does music festivals and barbecue and you know they do Sure Live music like crazy everywhere all the time. I think one thing that will support fun but is sort of subordinate to it, is affordable housing. So I mean I think you need to also make sure you just have like tons of housing that's affordable and then maybe even do like subsidized housing for like makers, like young people and makers.

Speaker 1 30:12

That makes sense. I was going to say because affordable housing is to try to get young, Younger people don't have a lot of money, but those are the people having fun. I have no offense to the older people in the world. Yeah, they're everywhere, but you know the people in their 50s, 60s aren't going out starting the fun. They're not the fun. It's young people who do stuff. Yes, they want to get young people, Older people join in later.

Speaker 2 30:32

Young people will move places. If they have some affordable housing and some fun, yeah, they'll move there. And most five, 50 or cities are already affordable just because they're 50 or cities. So all you need to bring is the fun and you'll become a thing. Now, it won't work overnight. It won't be like turning on a light switch because Austin wasn't. It builds it up. But I think a big music festival is something that can be done deliberately.

Speaker 2 30:59

It can be planned by sort of central planner people Uncool people can do it, and then they can just have people book the musicians and market it and you'll have people come to your music festival. And then you just have to make sure every year you build it bigger and bigger.

Speaker 1 31:15

Build it bigger. Make a good impression on the people that come.

Speaker 2 31:17

Some people are going to go clean up the city, make it look good, make it look great, and some people will go.

Speaker 1 31:22

You know what I'm going to come here when it's not the music festival? Exactly, exactly, and just because I want to see the place, or whatever, and maybe have something seasonal.

Speaker 2 31:27

So I would plan four major fun things seasonally. So I'd plan a big music festival when it's warm and nice in the city, right, and then plan a smaller music festival, like a B-side kind of music festival, like a bluegrass festival or some other kind of rap festival, like a smaller. Well, depending on what part of the country you're in, it's going to be bigger or smaller.

Speaker 1 31:46

If you're in.

Speaker 2 31:46

Atlanta, the big one should be a rap one. But if you're in a small, not so rap centric part of the country you might do a small rap. Sure, you know, kind of a conflict you gauge your audience. Yeah, and then so you do a big music festival, a small music festival, and then you like with two different brands. And then I would do another fun thing, maybe like a giant video game conference or like a giant like fun, it can't be like a giant insurance conference.

Speaker 2 32:09

It has to be like something really fun to do.

Speaker 1 32:11

Four reasons four big like events that would bring people punctuate, bring people, bring money and bring you know and make people stick around. Oh, this is cool.

Speaker 2 32:20

Every season there's this awesome thing I can go participate in and my friends can come to town for that and I'll see them because they'll come in for that and it'll be fun, right. And then you got to build up your university for fun and you got to build up your food scene, which is I don't think is very hard, really just support restaurants and figure out what the bottlenecks are to getting good restaurants started. And then you do your party scene. When you make it, you make it safe, you make it fun and you figure out what the bottlenecks are.

Speaker 1 32:49

Aren't those opposite things, though? Safe and fun.

Speaker 2 32:51

usually you can do it, you can do it Like, for example, karaoke safe fun. Okay, right, sure, hatchet bars fun.

Speaker 1 33:00

What is it? Oh, very safe, though. Those are what you throw in bars. Throw the axe.

Speaker 2 33:05

But you can do it. I mean sure people get drunk, but I just mean safe. Like you know, there has to be like police precaution. There's been police out on the street like don't do anything, fucked up, we'll call, you know we'll get you, we'll nab you. You know you can't just do like Yee-ha Wild West. You know people drinking too much or whatever.

Speaker 1 33:19

Or just a guy in there going crazy Is he armed? Yeah, it's a hatchet bar, he's got an axe, he's armed, he's armed.

Speaker 2 33:25

You can't let like drugs go crazy. Obviously like hard drugs, party drugs. Right, you can't let like Wait, that's fun though, right it's fun but it's not safe and it'll give you a bad reputation, you know, and you can't have like, you know. So you have to make it safe but fun. But you can't make it so safe that it's not fun. So it's kind of like riding that edge, you know.

Speaker 1 33:46

That's the so yeah.

Speaker 2 33:46

So if you build up the bar scene, the edge.

Speaker 1 33:48

Disneyland has been trying to ride, I think a lot of the bar scene.

Speaker 2 33:50

the problem is just transit. People get drunk, they can't drive Like. If you're in Toledo, Ohio, there's probably like 10 lifts, right, there's like 10 Ubers. It's not enough to bring everybody home on a Friday night, you might say. In order to improve our bar scene, we got to put up a midnight bus line that starts doing a bus every hour from midnight to 4 am.

Speaker 1 34:09

You're like we're trying to get drunk people transferred around because we want them out drinking because that's having fun. Yeah, exactly, spending money.

Speaker 2 34:17

But if you went into Toledo Ohio City Council and you said this, you would sound like a crazy person. Right People would be like what are you talking about?

Speaker 1 34:25

You're trying to court drunk people into our city. It's like what are you saying? You're like all right, listen to him. I want to 10X your entire city's prominence. We're going to start More drunk people at night, more drunk people. And they're like what are you talking about?

Speaker 2 34:38

Lots of bars, lots of restaurants. We're going to get restaurants you can't afford. You all have to go to Everyone here at the City Council. All of you have to start spending like $400 a week going to restaurants. You just have to. You just have to.

Speaker 1 34:50

Anyway.

Speaker 2 34:51

I think we. I think that it's so counterintuitive Because the people at the wheel are the least fun people. They think no offense, scott, but they think like you. They think a farmers market is fun. Why it's not fun? I am offended.

Speaker 1 35:03

It's.

Speaker 2 35:03

Pleasant it's.

Speaker 1 35:04

I think farmers markets are fun too, maybe because we're well, we're getting old okay, well, no offense, but it seems like you're like we need to mandate fun.

Speaker 2 35:12

That's the will will force fun on these places, and that does seem hard to do Opportunities fun for the top down seems like a hard get a hard thing to Manufacture the guy who runs Coachella is like a billionaire. He's like a. He's like a Trump supporting right-wing Multi-hundred million.

Speaker 1 35:30

He just figured out he just sell our Coachella.

Speaker 2 35:33

Coachella. People love Coachella and it's in where is my, where is it? California something?

Speaker 1 35:37

like I need a hologram of Tupac Exactly now build it for me, do it. Stop it, mr Coachella, we come on.

Speaker 2 35:46

We can't. I heard for like for a hot minute, pete. When Trump became president, he started to do all this bad stuff for a hot minute people were like I'm not gonna go to Coachella, but then everybody still did that's the thing people go like I'm gonna boycott this thing and then if the Love fun if the company's way, now they love their a lot of times the boycott will die down in the back.

Speaker 2 36:06

Yeah, they just people love fun more than they love their political convictions. It's true, people do love fun, fun, dude, fun. That's the solution. The fun first theory of urban development yeah, I think I think you based on fun, and then what, and then what. You know if new opportunities for fun emerge, yeah, like, look at Colorado with the legalization of marijuana. Right, I think that was a huge fun thing. It broadcasted to the whole country. This is a state and cities in the state are fun because we have free, we have marijuana that you can buy. Boom, big opportunity To do fun. So what other? What other opportunities are there on the cutting edge of fun? I said like a video game conference or like a Comic-Con or like a you know, you know letting people, letting people start universities, that's pretty well.

Speaker 2 36:52

Definitely. If you don't have a university and you want one, you got to call me up and let people start new universities. Elon Musk is starting a new university. What, yeah, okay, new university. He it's called the found he's. He created a nonprofit. He gave it a hundred million dollars.

Speaker 1 37:06

All right, it's called the foundation which is he started university or did he, like, accidentally buy a university and then kick out all the people?

Speaker 2 37:15

smart, he would buy a university. That's actually the fastest way to start.

Fun Cities, Housing Crisis Solution

Speaker 1 37:18

That's how he did it with Twitter. But well this is the thing I kind of.

Speaker 2 37:21

I actually kind of applied for a job there because I'd love to.

Speaker 1 37:23

I know I don't Know Elon you, yeah, yeah, I don't love, that's really.

Speaker 2 37:27

I think Elon Musk has made a few mistakes recently, but if he declared victory and stop and like and left Twitter if he stopped arguing online, he just richest person in the world.

Speaker 2 37:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think he'd improve a lot. I think he's really made a mistake in engaging in Twitter. Yeah, I think it's kind of ruined his brain, like with brain worms. But remember, before Elon Musk was on Twitter, like 10 years ago, he was like pretty cool. I wonder if he could get back to that. And I don't think there's the impulse to build a university. I don't think is wrong. So, anyways, I did apply to see if I can work there, oh, which I'd be happy to.

Speaker 1 38:01

Did you find out about it, or is this not just emailed him yesterday? Okay, not Elon to some other guy by the time this comes out. You may be. I'd love you might be Elon's right-hand man. I love you in Austin. I would, yeah, and I have.

Speaker 2 38:13

We're gonna have to move the podcast to Austin? Yep, well, we do. Or we do it remotely? Oh, we move it to Tulsa, actually. Well, elon gave it a hundred million dollars. Anyways, every. It'll be obviously controversial. Elon Musk University, but if you think about it like he won't be in charge, no, hopefully he'll hire people like me to be in charge.

Speaker 1 38:32

Really smart, teaches. He teaches every class himself, all day, every day.

Speaker 2 38:35

Yeah, you're like also, it's pretty easy to say that Elon Musk like, hey, you know, okay, all this crazy things, but what if we use science to educate the students better? Elon Musk will say yes. He'll say, yes, use science, and that's all you need to do to make university really good to use science. So evidence-based evidence-based education which is not what universities do today. They do exact opposite. Yeah, but anyways so.

Speaker 1 38:57

So build cities make them happen because we don't, starting with the fun. If you're a NIMBY.

Speaker 2 39:01

If you're a NIMBY and you don't think there should be more housing built in San Francisco Because you want to preserve the, the character of the city or whatever, right, this solution is for you Because we're gonna start somewhere else. Yeah, we're gonna use the housing stock that's already in other cities this is in other people's backyard solution.

Speaker 1 39:18

This is a. This is an.

Speaker 2 39:19

OB Obi-Wan Kenobi, other people's backyards. Oh P, oh, oh me.

Speaker 1 39:27

Oh, yards you like OPB, other people's backyards. Oh, yeah, you know me. Oh, baby, oh, you know me, yeah so what it does?

Speaker 2 39:34

is it it more smoothly? It smooths out the housing crisis, which stops being a housing crisis because there's plenty of housing stock in five fifth-tier cities that's affordable or relatively affordable and byproduct. There's a lot of places you could travel to now because there's more fun spots, tons of fun going on instead of just going.

Speaker 1 39:52

Where are we gonna go? We have to go to Disneyland or Disney World, because there's no other fun spots in the world.

Speaker 2 39:56

It would be like everywhere around you would be fun. That'd be fun.

Speaker 1 39:59

I know that'd be cool.

Speaker 2 40:01

Minneapolis I want to go to Minneapolis season, there was like every single weekend there was a major festival happening in cities within two or three hundred miles of you. It'd be so fun and each one could be really different. There could be like art festivals and you know, music festivals and, like a little burning man, creative music, art festivals. There could be tech festivals and internet podcast.

Speaker 2 40:21

A little different flavor of different places, sure, and then every place you went would have its own unique food because the food is fun and we'd have this awesome bar scene. That would be safe but fun and I just think. I just think the only reason we don't have this is because the least fun people Are in charge of cities.

Speaker 1 40:39

So, yeah, maybe. Well, it's because the fun people don't want to be.

Speaker 2 40:41

I know they're doing that with having fun. Exactly I don't want to do like budgets on spreadsheets.

Speaker 1 40:45

They're like would you rather go have fun or Figure out where stop lights need to be and exactly how long they need to turn red?

Speaker 2 40:52

and You're like definitely I want to go to Burning man or like, yeah, austin City Limits or something. Well, that's it. That's the solution. It's a climate change solution. It also falls under the the.

Speaker 1 41:06

I forgot it was a climate change. Yeah, I'm a change solution.

Speaker 2 41:08

I was just like yeah, we're making fun places. Yeah, it falls under the climate change. Solutions do not have to be austerity. They can make the world Net totally better.

Speaker 1 41:17

They're not like diet is what you're saying. They're not like turn on the thermostat and an addition of things, not a subtraction.

Speaker 2 41:24

Yep and we can make money. The real estate values of these fifth tier cities can go up, we can solve the housing crisis and we can solve climate change all at once by having fun. Yeah, this place is not fun enough. We need more fun. Yes, I agree, let's do it All right. Everyone for fun on three, one, two, three fun, all right See you soon.

Speaker 1 41:41

everybody have a good one.

Speaker 2 41:43

Talk to you next week. Bye you.