STEVE
Uh, this is quite extraordinary. Of course this is one of the big songs from Armageddon where they had to go to an asteroid. Go to an asteroid and blow it up because it was gonna hit earth and kill us. Well, that didn’t happen in the movie. Just pieces. They saved the world. And now NASA’s working on saving the world, they went to an asteroid actually an asteroid revolving around another asteroid.
MARLO
Yeah, asteroid. So they called, they called this Mission DART – double asteroid redirection. So this is slamming a satellite into an asteroid just to change the direction. I mean, it doesn’t have to be much, right? I mean, 100th of one degree at a million miles is a lot. I mean, if you were to go from Bismark to Fargo and you changed a trajectory by one 10th of one degree, you know, over that 200, you’d probably end up in Mayville or something.
STEVE
I wanna give a little background to this too. So basically the satellite was the size of a refrigerator and they kind of missed, they were trying to shoot for dead center. They were 55 feet off.
MARLO
Oh my goodness. I was trying to find out how many miles it traveled. You know, 10 months in space traveling at whatever, 40,000 miles an hour or whatever they’re going at. And then to head an asteroid 10 months later and only be 55 feet off, that’s the fact that we know that ths little asteroid rotated around this other big asteroid and we could actually shoot something at it 10 months in advance and hit this thing is just unbelievable to me. Well, and then of course it gets to, well what about aliens? Right. I mean, if you’re, if you’re a believer in that, and now we take out their, or we, we, we’re now shooting rocks as somebody else’s planet . Now we’ve declared war on somebody else. Right. I, I mean, you know, this is, this is where the conversation was going this morning.I’m like, you have got to be kidding me.
STEVE
Like the movie Battleship.
MARLO
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There you go. There you go.
STEVE
Independence Day.
MARLO
Oh my goodness. Yeah. I’ve seen this thing. It’s crazy. It’s kind of like who’s invading us? I mean, it just looks that way. Right? Well, you could just position those in a way that they would actually spell something – E.T. ‘s coming from home, but I can, I can see that coming. Our planetary defense system is now activated.
STEVE
I thought that was Skynet.
MARLO
It’s planetary defense.
STEVE
Planetary Defense System, Yes. They got that launched back in November. The eventual evolution of Space Force, which kind of was started because there’s a space race going on again. Uh, but eventually that would morph into Star Fleet. Protect the earth. Really?
MARLO
And I just had a little smile on my face when I’m driving by that, the fact that there’s a sign out there that says Space Force this way. Yeah.
STEVE
And you don’t think Star Fleet’s coming?
MARLO
Of course.
STEVE
Well, yeah. Yeah. It was in the movies.
MARLO
It was in the movies.
MARLO
They postponed Artemis because of a leak somewhere. They rescheduled. That was postponed. And it was postponed to the 23rd of September, and then they postponed it to today, So the 27th of September. They actually pulled Artemis One off the launchpad yesterday. Because of the weather. Wow.
STEVE
They have been bad.
MARLO
But you have to feel bad for NASA. You really do. I mean, I think everybody’s so excited about getting Artemis launched and, and now that it’s ready, and then here comes a hurricane. I mean, my goodness. The timing of it is just impeccable. So they’re gonna have to, I don’t even know when the next launch window is here.
STEVE
We do have to talk about electric cars. Well, so when you’re looking at an electric vehicle, summer performance versus winter performance and climates like ours, greatly degraded. So up to 60% degraded.
MARLO
How long does it take to charge the car?
STEVE
Well, that’s the question. Depends on what you’ve gotten. Depends on the charger now.
MARLO
That’s correct.
STEVE
So when I was mayor, that one of the things we went after, some Volkswagen grant with their settlement. And that’s why we have two high speed, the, the fast charging stations right here in Bismark,
MARLO
Once you were told what they are, it’s like going up and buying a car that says it’s got 30, that it gets 30 miles per 30 miles per gallon. So there’s a new charger coming. And this charger claims that they can charge a hundred kilometers, whatever. Which would be what? Miles? Well, right about 67 miles, something like that. Then three minute charge to go 67 miles total charge under 15 minutes. So that’s what they’re claiming. And this is actually being launched right now.
STEVE
Now is this a universal charger?
MARLO
Universal charger, yeah.
STEVE
So it doesn’t matter what vehicle you have.
MARLO
For now. I mean, who knows what it’ll be? I mean, it’s like USB ports, right? Somebody’s gonna come up with something better and then they’re gonna say, This old port that you have can’t handle this kind of juice. Are we gonna push through it? Kind of like USB-C compared to USB mini and stuff, whatever in the past. So I think it’s interesting that they’re working on that.
STEVE
It’s interesting to me that they’re working on charger technology versus battery technology.
MARLO
So the battery technology is being worked on as well–
STEVE
–but not as quickly. There’s, there’s some constraints with working on the battery. So their solution is, Okay, well let’s get a faster charger.
MARLO
You know, my stance on this, I think the electric vehicle, I think it has its place, I do believe that combustion engines will continue to thrive moving forward because I think there’s other alternatives that are coming that people don’t know about yet. And when that happens on a large scale, then it’s not really gonna matter anymore. As far as the fuel that you use,
STEVE
Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
MARLO
That’s correct. Airborne electric vehicles gets kind of exciting to me. You know, it’s not the, it’s not the ground based vehicles that excite me about this. It’s about the fact that we’re going to the air and that we’ll be able to charge those vehicles rather quickly to get us around town or short hopper flights.
STEVE
Over a hundred thousand recalls, Tesla. Apparently there’s something wrong with their window. So when the window rolls up, there’s a little sensor in there. It’s kinda like a garage door. So you can’t get things stuck in the window, like your finger. Or your head. So, and the sensor goes, a little pressure sensor, and it’s supposed to lower the window so it doesn’t go up all the way and. Injure somebody. Apparently that’s had an issue, which the part that was interesting to me was they’ve sold a lot of Tesla.
MARLO
So is this the first recall on a Tesla?
STEVE
I don’t know, but Tesla’s like any other vehicle. Cause I just had a recall on my Ford. So yeah, Not that I’m a fan of Fords oh, you know, just to wrap up on the electric car thing. So I’m not the biggest Ford fan all the time.
MARLO
Right. I noticed that.
STEVE
However, a friend of mine got a new Ford Lightning. Holy crap. Is that cool? Yeah. That’s a cool truck. Yeah, that’s a really cool truck.
MARLO
So this is interesting. Insurance companies are charging upwards of 20% more for electric vehicles repair costs. I just assumed. That after they had enough data that the insurance cost on electric cars would go down because they’re the, the working parts, you know, they’re just a lot less of them, the maintenance part of it. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. So they’re citing fires.
STEVE
Oh. So which ironically, remember I mentioned I had my Ford, I got a recall notice on that as well, right? For the front blower motor, which could cause fires.
MARLO
China’s been flooding the market within their, in their country with EVs, with electric vehicles. They had reported over a thousand electric fires last year in their electric vehicles. So I think they’re using, I think insurance companies are using that data in determining that. They’re charging more for insurance on, on electric vehicles. I just as, I don’t know why I thought it would be less. I just assumed it would be–
STEVE
I did too. I’m thinking about the safety stuff. Because you’re going to see a bunch of vehicles. That wind across the country that are being sold. And you have to be very diligent. If you’re buying a used vehicle and you think it’s too good of a deal to be true, it probably is.
MARLO
So what I think is what’s happening, if you’re in an accident or whatever else in a combustion engine, that’s not a big deal because you know, you have a bumper that gets replaced or whatever. When a car catches on fire, I mean, the whole thing goes, they have to total the car. So it’s not a $3,000 replacement or whatever. It’s 60 or 80 or a hundred thousand dollars.
STEVE
And have you ever had to rewire a car?
MARLO
Oh my goodness. I can’t even imagine it.
STEVE
It’s the biggest rat’s nest.
STEVE
James Earl Jones, right? Darth Vader. Yep. Voice of Darth Vader. 91.
MARLO
He, he really doesn’t – I just saw him in something. He does not look 91. That’s what’s amazing about it. He looks pretty good.
STEVE
Although, it’s funny cuz when Field of Dreams came out, he looked old then. Yes. But. 91 and well think about it. Star Wars, I mean, he was well into his career when Star Wars first and that’s 70? A New Hope was the first one, and Yeah. So one of the things with, if you saw Rogue One, then you saw that Carrie Fisher was in that. And you and I have talked about 3D and the holographic, holographic performances. And what that, you know, the big one, of course. Whitney Houston. So this kind of crosses some lines there. What Disney had done because they have the right to all the Star Wars now, but they have the ability to continue on a character. So Carrie Fisher who passed away, Princess Leia was in Rogue One. And it’s been in some subsequent Star Wars movies. Because they have the rights to her likeness as the character. James Earl Jones just signed over rights, signed a contract, which is good for his family because now there’s royalties at nauseam. But just signed over the rights to the likeness of his voice and his character. Vader will live forever.
MARLO
I wonder if he’s the first person, cuz everything you’ve talked about now, like Whitney Houston, Carrie Fisher, Carrie died unexpectedly. I wonder if James is the first one who’s actually living that has signed a contract that beyond – he actually was part of the deal, yeah. See that’s what’s interesting to me about this cuz you know, we’ve talked about Whitney Houston, you can actually go watch a Whitney Houston concert right now you’re in the audience watching her as a holographic image with other dancers and singers with her on stage. You pay money for this. I’m assuming that a percentage of that is going to the estate to Whitney’s family or what have you. But that was all done after she passed away. This whole thing.
That’s what is really, it just really interesting to me that and, and what, what will this do to open up doors for a lot of, maybe even us, Steve, I mean, is there a possibility that you and I, I’m not talking about, on radio for example, or television or things, but maybe other things that we have done that they can use our likeness, use our minds, use our whatever, that when we’re not on this planet anymore, that we cont we can continue because of AI to, you know, could I, can I record something? Can I create my own ai, for example, and somebody can use my voice as for, for a voiceover in a commercial 50 years to now?
STEVE
The dangerous part of that is what is what if it’s something that you’re not in favor of when you were alive? And then they take, um, some creative licensure with it and. So then you’re promoting something that maybe you were dead set against. Although I can see Marlo promoting an ad for feminine hygiene products, or something. What if it’s something you wouldn’t normally sign up on?
MARLO
So I suppose in this instance with, with James Earl Jones, I mean, it’s about a set the slightness to the character character and that character isn’t gonna probably move far beyond,
STEVE
Darth Vader’s Darth Vader. You’re pretty much constrained to what the character. Is in that series.
MARLO
But I do believe that what we’re talking about here is possible and you, you would probably have to set up some type of constraints within the paperwork that I’m not, you know, I’m, I’m this way politically and not this way, so you can’t use my voice for these things.
STEVE
And you know, for products, these are the products I would endorse. These are the products I would not endorse. You’d probably have to really spell that out. Yeah.
MARLO
But if you think about it, if you’ve got that contract and you, cuz you’re famous. So down the road, 50 years a product that’s not even invented yet that you never even thought of.
STEVE
So do you, do you leave it in the hands of your management firm? I don’t. That would make those decisions for you. I mean, it’s just, this is kinda weird when you think about this. Do I trust my wife-
MARLO
It’s really interesting.
STEVE
This is a short film, Fabian Seltzer, he’s a filmmaker from Germany and he’s kind of got into all of this AI stuff and he’s now making some science fiction films. He’s making a series, which I’m kind of wondering where it’s gonna show up. Is it Hulu, Netflix, or It’s gonna show up somewhere. But it’s predominantly created with ai. That’s the platform. But so you mentioned Dolly. Yeah, D A L L hyphen E. He’s actually working with Dolly. There’s a Dolly too. And I didn’t even know what Dolly was until you brought it up and then it’s in the article I was reading, but although I didn’t know what that was, but you can make films down with ai and you and I got talking a little bit about some of the AI stuff during the break on where it could go.
MARLO
So Dolly is an MIT AI image generator. I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget exactly what it is. , I mean, I know what it is. I’ve actually used it before. Uh, so you can tell, you can go to the website and you can sign up for an AI tool. It’s an AI tool. You can sign up for this AI tool.
I think it’s kind of in beta yet. So you need an image. I need an image of a gopher smiling, drinking a glass of chocolate milk. Type that in and it, the AI will actually create a smiling gopher with a glass of milk and it’ll probably give you, you know, 50 or a hundred different examples that it comes up with. You click on the one that you like and then it, then it goes and does this thing and makes, makes a photo quality all kinds of stuff. So probably the more famous one is the astronaut riding a horse. And somebody just typed in astronaut riding a horse and within a couple of seconds or a minute or whatever, you have all these choices of images of an astronaut riding a horse.
I mean, it would have to be staged and or somebody would have to draw this for me. It would take, you know, a lot of planning who’s got time for that stuff anymore. So I think Dolly, there’s a place where this could be used, you know, for those type of things. And I’m sure it’ll be a subscription type of thing when it’s available. So, and people are making movies out of this now, which is incredible. I mean, I suppose you would probably have to create a series of images. I’m trying to think of how they would do this, but I, you know, there’s gonna come a time when you’re gonna have an idea for a movie. And you’ll type it in, or a book.
I’ll type in an idea and I’ll see what it comes up with and then I’m like, oh, I can, I can build something off of what it came up with, something I didn’t even think about. So that’s what I use it for. But it can create articles. That’s what’s crazy about it. It’ll actually – I can type in Five Reasons to come to North Dakota, to visit North Dakota in the winter. Right. A listicle that’s what most people read nowadays are lists online. Right. Okay. So it would come up with this list and it would write a little bit about them. And it’s actually readable and, and maybe not the greatest in the world, but I’m sure some topics it’s probably really good
