In this episode of The Joe Rooz Show, Joe welcomes two intriguing guests to discuss their unique contributions to the world of literature and technology. First, Joe chats with Rodney Carpentier, a seasoned law enforcement professional turned fiction writer. Rodney shares insights into his debut novel, "Our Lady of the Overlook," which is the first in a trilogy set in the mysterious Catskills. He discusses how his experiences in law enforcement and his love for the wilderness have influenced his storytelling, providing a glimpse into the challenges of balancing realism with entertainment in crime fiction.
In the second half of the show, Joe is joined by Cristian Cibals, the founder and CEO of Autograph, the company behind Walter, the world's first AI historian. Cristian explains how Walter works as a personal podcaster, recording and preserving life stories to create a digital version of oneself. He delves into the emotional and ethical considerations of this technology, highlighting its potential to connect generations and preserve family legacies. The conversation explores the future possibilities of AI in enhancing human connection and memory preservation.
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(00:03:01) Introduction and Weekend Recap
(00:03:44) Upcoming Shows and Guests
(00:04:57) Ezra Healing and Wellness Paradigm
(00:06:15) Guest Introduction: Rodney Carpenter
(00:07:20) Interview with Rodney Carpenter
(00:18:54) Writing Crime Fiction and Realism
(00:27:10) The Influence of the Catskills
(00:34:22) Small Town Mysteries and Law Enforcement
(00:40:08) Character Development in Fiction
(00:45:41) Upcoming Books and Writing Process
(01:03:18) Introduction of Christian Bernardes
(01:06:44) Walter: The AI Historian
(01:20:56) Emotional and Ethical Aspects of AI
(01:33:52) Future Vision for Autograph
(01:47:23) AI and Consciousness
(01:59:32) Personal Reflections and Music
- Wayne Rankin
- Rosanna Rankin
- Carolina Jimenez
[00:03:02]
Unknown:
Alrighty. Hey, folks. This is Joe Roos. It is eighteen nineteen zero seven hours on Monday, 07/28/2025. And we are transmitting to you live from the Asylum studios, deep in the bowels of Southwest Texas, and bringing you the best quality talk radio we could muster without all the bluster. Welcome to the Joe Ruse show. And folks, hope you guys had a great weekend. Can you believe it's Monday already? Good grief. This weekend flew by unbelievably. I cannot believe how fast it went by. You know, we did our, our crypto show on Saturday with our our our co host, Marissa Lee, and then, yesterday, we had our, our bible study Sunday show where we talked about, America's Christian heritage and the, first amendment. And, we've gone through all of the, the, the important aspects of the American Revolution right from the very beginning.
And, yesterday, we talked about the first amendment next week, next Sunday, Lord willing, we'll be talking about the second amendment and why that's so important, and I'm looking forward to getting into that. It's gonna be more of a bible study next week. This the last two shows really or three shows really is more like history lessons. So this one's gonna be more of a bible study, so we'll be diving into that. And, I hope you guys are going to be ready for it. And, again, I just hope you guys have a great weekend. I hope you're ready for what this week has in store for us. Now tonight, we have we have a couple of guests lined up for us, and, really excited to get into that in, in just a minute. But as always, we have some housekeeping that we need to do. So before we get into the show, let's take care of that stuff. Alright. First of all, folks, Ezra Healing is a substantial part of the new wellness paradigm currently being born in North America and around the globe. The global citizenry are no longer satisfied with the sick care version of so called health care.
Band aid medicine, endlessly treating symptoms rather than root causes, must be abandoned as soon as possible. Patient centric care must be the priority. We need to transition towards the do no harm model of private care that places humanity at the forefront of real health and wellness care. In this new model, your entire lifestyle is examined and analyzed to promote and support the totality of your body's integrated system. Ezra Healing is a solutions based health promotion and disease prevention grassroots movement that is always evolving to best serve you and your family. For more information on Ezra Healing, just head over to their website, ezrahealing.com.
That's ezrahealing.com, and make sure that, if you talk to anybody, let them know that you heard it here on the Joe Russo, and then I sent you over there with a hearty hello. Right? And they'll understand. Alright. Well, folks, well, number number one, bills paid. Right? Alright. So we're good. We're in good shape. Now, tonight, we have a guest. He's already waiting in the waiting room for us, and, we're excited to to get to talk to him a little bit here today. He's a seasoned law enforcement professional turned fiction writer whose stories are steeped in the mysteries of small town life.
Rodney Carpenter, I hope I'm saying it right. If I'm not, please correct me, has spent eighteen years in law enforcement and now brings that depth and realism to the world of crime procedurals and mystery fiction. His debut novel, Our Lady of the Overlook, is the first in a trilogy that takes place in the quiet, sometimes eerie mountain communities of the Catskills, a region Rodney knows very, very well. He and his wife have hiked the 24 mile escarpment trail in a single day and completed the full Catskill thirty five hundreds challenge. That love of the wilderness, solitude, and close knit mountain towns breathe life into every page of his work. Now tonight, we'll be talking mystery, setting, storytelling, how real world experience can shape unforgettable fiction.
Folks, we'd like to welcome Rodney Carpentier to the Joe Russo. Rodney, are you there with us? There he is. Yep. I'm here. Can you hear me there, Joe? I gotcha loud and clear. Oh, I've got to turn turn the logo off. Yeah. There we go.
[00:07:33] Unknown:
Thank you for that, wonderful introduction. More and more I do these shows, the more and more I hear great things about myself that I couldn't even possibly begin to write. So I really appreciate that. Yeah. It sucks, doesn't it?
[00:07:43] Unknown:
You hear all these great things about yourself and you sit there, you're like, what? Who?
[00:07:48] Unknown:
Who's this guy? I'm No. It's not me. Whoever's in a physical place, be like, who? Are they talking about you? Oh, hey. By the way, I love that.
[00:07:55] Unknown:
On the back there, on the back wall of the man cave. Oh, yeah. Got that as a gift from my parents,
[00:08:00] Unknown:
when we moved into our first, like, real house. It wasn't a condo or anything like that. I had a basement. My wife doesn't do basements at all. So,
[00:08:09] Unknown:
my mom got that for me, and it's it come with me everywhere everywhere I've gone. Well, Well, that's fantastic. I love that. I'm gonna have to get something like that, and I don't know where I'd put it in here. I mean, the whole room is covered in acoustic foam. So I'm having a hard time finding spaces to put things, but, well, we'll figure something out. We'll figure it all out. Somewhere maybe around by the flags here. We got but actually, you know what? I'm actually planning on redesigning the studio anyway already. I I did this not even three months ago, and I'm gonna I'm thinking about doing it again. So Never comfortable. That's a good that's a good trait. Always always looking to Always gotta gotta keep it moving. Keep it moving. You know, so we don't what do they say? A rolling stone gathers no moss? Absolutely. There you go. So so, Rodney, so again, welcome to the show. I'm glad you're here. Thank you. And, so, I always like to start off with a couple of icebreaker questions. And, one of those questions is, what's something most people don't know about you, but they probably should know about you?
[00:09:05] Unknown:
Without delving too deep into things, Okay. The only people that would know that it this happens is probably my wife and my daughter. So, basically, anytime I'm writing or anytime I need to get, like, a little bit of energy out, I have an electronic drum set and Nice. I plug in my iPad with probably some nineties music, and I just go to town for ten or fifteen minutes. It kinda loosens things up and kinda helps refocus things. So I guess I guess that's one of those weird things that no one else knows about. So you're an electro drummer? Yes. Nice. That's good. And it's not and it's not like the scene in Ant Man where where Paul Rudd's very sad doing it. I'm I'm cool. I swear.
[00:09:50] Unknown:
Nice. That's great. So alright. So next question. What's your, what's your go to beverage to help you unwind at the end of a long day?
[00:09:58] Unknown:
Depends. If it's if it's a work day, I don't I don't really drink alcohol too much on a on a work day. I'm more of a, more of a root beer guy. Okay. Been doing I've been drinking a lot of root beer. It's just smooth. No no caffeine, specifically. Getting old, caffeine affects me a lot differently than it used to when I was younger. But now if it's a Friday, I'm not on call. I got nothing else going on. I like I like wheat beers, and I like like like fruity beers, like, so Sam Adams cherry weed or a pork rocker or something like that. Kinda something smooth, cool, nothing nothing too harsh, nothing too heavy.
[00:10:35] Unknown:
You you can't get you can't get Sam Adams down here. No? No. No. No. Well, well, you guys have a lot of other great beer in Texas. So I Yeah. For sure. For sure. I I definitely can't hold that against you. But as a transplant, you know, you do like that northeastern stuff a little bit. You know? It'd be nice to see that. Maybe New Smoking to Bandit where they bring Sam Adams to Texas. Maybe. Gotta try something. Do something anyway. To my for myself, I I wish I could say the same thing about caffeine. I I I think I'm probably older than you anyway, but the, caffeine just doesn't hit me at all. I I could I I have I have coffee right here. I got a whole pot sitting in there that I that I made right before, the show started, and I'll be sipping on that thing all night long. And, I can drink a whole pot of black coffee, go right to bed like nothing happened.
[00:11:21] Unknown:
Yeah. No. Not me anymore. I too many years of working, afternoons and and overnights where, I used to thrive on caffeine to survive. Now my body's like, you know, oh, we're drinking caffeine. That means we're staying up all night. Yay.
[00:11:34] Unknown:
Well, I think that's the problem I'm No. No. No. We're going to bed. We're going to bed. Yeah. But, yeah, I think that's the problem that I had too because I I I worked overnights for the majority of my of my well, not the majority, but I I wanna say maybe the last, let's see. When did I when that elite when I get out of uniform. I got out of uniform in 02/2002, 02/2003, somewhere around there. So, so up to that point, the last year, maybe year and a half of uniform service was in, was was it overnights. And so so I just drank coffee and just left it. It was just nothing. And then, finished out my career working for department operations, the time as an investigator for the agency in uniform, you know, prior to that. I also, I also stepped away from the from the city for a little bit, took about a year off, and I went to work for The US, Department of State in the Diplomatic Security Service for, in the the uniform branch, which was a lot of fun. Had a lot of great experiences, a lot of great guys I met there.
Trained with marines, which was a completely different world altogether. I came back I bet. I came back from Virginia speaking a whole another language. But, it was it was, it was a lot of fun. It was great. So, did you eat the crayons? No. I didn't eat the crayons. You know? No. No. Stay away from that stuff. But, I I did I did learn a few things that I'm just gonna leave the mystery cloud around.
[00:12:52] Unknown:
Yes. Good idea. Yeah.
[00:12:55] Unknown:
So, what else so, so you've been in law enforcement now for about, what, two decades?
[00:13:01] Unknown:
Yeah. I I hit my I started in corrections. So I started corrections in July 2006. Actually, the day before my birthday in 02/2006. So it's really pretty easy to remember. So nineteen years and a couple weeks since, since I got in into law enforcement, you know, kinda through the, the good entry point, I think, is always a correctional career. Do that for a little bit, and then, find that transition period over into kind of more of the, patrol, law enforcement side.
[00:13:29] Unknown:
And, what what so then what motivated you to start writing crime fiction?
[00:13:34] Unknown:
I've always been a writer. I grew up with a big imagination. I always wrote different things and came up with stories when I was a kid, and got lost a little bit in college, was on my way to law school and wound up wound up, you know, wound up a cop. But I was studying literature and English literature and American literature and things like that. So I wanted to write, but at that time, I wanted to be Ernest Hemingway or William Faulkner or F. Scott Fitzgerald and, you know, so I kinda had, like, this very snobbish look at things. And I wasn't those people. And so once once I kinda, you know, realized that I kinda got away from proactively trying to write. Fast forward, through most of my career to 02/2022, it was one of those I was working a double, c line into a liner, afternoons into the midnight. Mhmm. So about two in the morning, I I was exhausted. Didn't have enough caffeine apparently.
And trying to keep myself awake and, you know, I I bet you could under you know, you could identify with this a little bit. Like, you start getting the weird thoughts, you know, crazy things. Your mind starts wandering a little bit, especially especially if it's not too busy. Obviously, NYPD, you're probably a little bit busier than I was up in up in the sticks. But this idea popped into my head, and I started I started, you know, just kinda passing time. I just started kinda sketching out this idea and kinda using some of that some of that, you know, college training that I had for writing in this. And I kinda started creating some of the characters and the that idea kinda just snowballed and to, you know, little over, two and a half years later, I'd finished a book and
[00:15:25] Unknown:
independently published it. Wow. Now you wrote a book called, Our Lady of the Overlook. Alright? How did that idea first come to you?
[00:15:34] Unknown:
So, as I was just saying that it was midnight, sitting there trying to keep myself alert, and this question came into my head. And the question was I, the the question was, what if you grew up your entire life, you knew you were adopted? You're an orphan. You grew up, with adoptive parents. You had a wonderful life, nothing to complain about. And later in life, you decide that you're gonna go down this path of trying to find who your real parents were. So you you eventually do that, you know, do that DNA test and kind of the opposite. Whereas, nowadays, you're starting to find people that are doing the DNA test. They're getting linked to, like, serial killers or they're solving, you know, decades long you know, decades old cold cases by matching matching some of this DNA. What if you found out that your birth mother was the victim of a cold case homicide?
She was unidentified. They never found the killer, had no idea what was going on, and now your entire world's turned upside down. You know, you had the perfect life. You have the family. You have everything going for you. Now your entire world's turned upside down. So that was kind of the impetus, kind of the the log line that kinda got this whole idea started. And after working with that idea for a while, I turned it on its head and I said, okay. Well, what if you were the cop that had to deal with this? You know? Because that that that was an easier per perspective for me to take as opposed to, you know, I I'm not an orphan. I, you know, grew up with wonderful parents.
My mom was in the the foster care system for a while, but I didn't have that direct experience. So I couldn't really speak to that. But I could speak to the reactions of a police officer kinda stuck in the same situation. So I just kinda tied those two, you know, tied those two characters together and built this this larger world out of it.
[00:17:29] Unknown:
Yeah. I I know what you say. I I those those thoughts that kinda do cross your mind, especially when you're working overnights and it is quiet and you do have those moments where you just Oh, woah, woah, woah. We don't use the cue word, Joe. Well, we're not working right now. The cue word. But we're not but we're not working now, so we can. And I'm Oh, okay. And I'm not working that in that line anymore, so I can get away with saying certain things. But, you know, you had some quiet nights. You had some nights where there wasn't really too much going on. And, you know, so, yeah, I can understand you get some some those thoughts kind of just drift away. And, I'm I'm not I was not the most creative person, like, I I've I've dabbled in prose and poetry and stuff like that over the years, but, but yeah. Oh, but during working the overnights, I had some of the the most interesting revelations as as you're working overnights. You because you your mind's just going and going and going, especially if there's like nothing really like, horrific going on. It's kinda easy to go. But, I know and this is something that happened to me a few times over the course of my life, my career, where, you know, your experience in police work, kind of filters over from from, from from that world into the real world.
And, so, has your experience like that ever happened to you? Has that ever happened to you? Were your experience in the job, made it really difficult to separate your reality from fiction when you were writing?
[00:18:55] Unknown:
What I what I try to do is in in my fiction is, I I try to I try to make some of make the make the cop characters real. Mhmm. And I I really try to bring these real people into into these stories. And I I so I think I think, you know, because knock on wood, I've never been to a super, super horrific event. I've never been to a a horrific crime scene or I've I've I've a lot of the, you know, more of the generic experience of being in law enforcement. And what I wanted to do was was take these real cops, take these real people Mhmm. And put these characters into into these situations.
So that's that's what I kinda tried to do with with my fiction, in reality and kinda bringing those two worlds together.
[00:19:47] Unknown:
Alright. So I I wanted to actually ask you a little bit about your life up in the Catskills. Alright. So so I've been there a few times in my life. I love it. It's a beautiful place. And and if you're ever if you're ever in New York, you have to see what a lot of people don't understand down here is that there's more to New York than Manhattan. You know, everybody everybody thinks New York is just, you know, the tall buildings, skyscrapers, and I try to explain to folks that, you know, New York is not that. New York is much more diverse than that. You go Upstate New York, and I try to explain to them this Upstate, Downstate, and, you know, that whole difference.
I mean, Upstate New York is completely different than Downstate New York. Upstate New York, you have orchards, you have dairy farms, you have ranches, you have horses, you have the mountains, you have the forest. I mean, it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And the and the the people up in Upstate New York, actually, they they think different, they vote different, they act different, they speak different. Absolutely. You know, it it's not the same thing. But the majority of people that live in New York City aren't even native New Yorkers. You know? And I'd probably at this point, yeah. Yeah. A lot a lot of transplants, a lot of people coming from all over the world, really. Yeah. You get a lot of well, in my experiences, the the, you know, before the last rush with all of the illegal immigration, you had, you know, a lot of Midwestern folks come to New York City trying to make it big, and, you know, that's that's what you dealt with mostly. And it was it's but upstate and downstate are two different places altogether. And, and the Catskills is a beautiful place. What about the Catskills draws you, draws you in, creativity, creatively, spiritually?
[00:21:22] Unknown:
So we I grew up in kind of the shadow of the Catskills. I grew up in the Hudson Valley, right outside of Albany, which is, you know, the capital region of New York. Then we slowly moved south and east till we got to the Hudson River and and the, Tappan Zee Bridge. I'll never call it the other name. It's the Tappan Zee Bridge. It's all we've got. We got there and we stopped. And so I I live in Rockland County currently, at least for the next three years until, I can I can go to the big retirement castle in the sky? But right around 2015, 2016, my wife kinda got this bug for hiking.
And so she kinda dragged me up there and we started hiking and it wasn't for me at first. And we started doing you know, we did our first hikes and I was miserable. I didn't have the right gear. I was using I was using, like, my patrol boot to go hiking because there's only boots that I had and my feet were miserable. My ankles are miserable. I wasn't in shape for it. It was terrible. I was miserable the entire time. And then we started doing it more and more. So we started kind of in what they call the Southern Catskills, which is, Ulster County, you're right outside of Kingston. If you're, you know, if you're coming up to New York State Thruway, you go past Kings you go up to Kingston, that's about halfway between New York City and Albany ish, roughly.
So you get off there, you head west, and you could kinda hit start hitting some of the mountains. And we started doing that, and I was like, oh, okay. We're always big campers, so we started camping. But while we were camping, we would start doing some more hiking. And we went up to the the town of Hunter, and we started going to this campground called North South Lake. It's a state run campground. Gorgeous. But when we used to go, it was just camping. You know, we'd have campfires and ride bikes and kinda hang around. Then we started having we started having treks out into the trails there, and they were gorgeous because you because you're right on kind of the the the edge in the shell. This is that escarpment trail that you mentioned in your intro.
And you get out and you're hanging over the valley. And you see, you know, you could see the river in the distance and you can see, you know, on a clear morning, you can watch the sun come up and it's just gorgeous. It's you you know, it feels like you're on the edge of the world. Mhmm. So we started doing that, and we, of course, we went in October and did all the foliage and all that stuff. And, you know, you talk about beauty. I mean, there there are paintings. There's a whole school of painters from the eighteen hundreds that went up there and just painted this stuff, and you can see why they did. So we started doing that and then my wife is kind of a, you know, okay, what's the next challenge kind of person? So she read about the Catskills 35 hundreds, which are 35 mountains in the Catskills that are over 3,500 feet. Okay. And so, you know, your mission is to, you know, kinda like Pokemon, collect them all.
And you could start out really casual about it. There's so many of them that are trailed. You know, you go out on the regular trails, they're marked. You can't get lost. You can't really screw it up too much. You go up, you go up to the top of the mountain, you know, you can come back down. Or sometimes some of these trails go up and over, and you can continue on to the next mountain. And so we did that for a while, kinda started taking them off. We our first trip, we did two. The second trip, so we did that in, like, the fall. Second trip, we did we did, like, four. And then we, you know so we just kept it kept increasing how many we're getting in better shape. We started actually training for it. Where I live in Nyack is really close to the river.
So, you know, there are ton tons of hills here. So we would, you know, in the early, you know, the early part of the spring, when actually just train walking uphill. So we could be ready for ready to do those climbs. Then we moved on to the, untrailed ones, which, a little bit more difficult because you guys gotta find your way to the top. And at the top of those, you actually have to find what they call canisters. You have to pull the top off the canister and they get a little notebook, put your name and the date and everything that because, those those they can prove that you were up there. Right. So, you know, more and more. So as we're hiking, I'm not as good at a if she's always at least probably 35 feet ahead of me, especially for I'm kinda more of a slow and steady kind, you know, we're we'll, you know, we'll finish this.
And as I was kinda hiking, these thoughts again, kinda like that midnight. Just just start kinda ruminating on thoughts. And, you know, taking into beauty, take these ideas, and more and more, especially after we after, you know, I started writing this, you know, getting into writing again. Mhmm. You know, I'm like, so many places to hide a body up here. So many secrets, so many legends and and history that's up here. And it just kinda took my imagination by storm. So when again, once I came up with this idea and I had this log line, I'm like, where am I gonna set this? You know, I could set this story anywhere. I said, what if our cold case victim was found in one of these beautiful places? You know, there's a specific over thinking of when I write about the overlook.
And I'm like, you know, this beautiful place but now it's kinda, you know, now no you know, now now that the kind of secret's kinda out and it's brought back to the forefront, kinda ruins that that beauty and kinda, you know, desecrates that idea.
[00:27:11] Unknown:
Well, you actually you I I had you answered one, two yeah. Three of my next questions in just that Wow. In just that one little that one little, moment there. I'm sorry. No. That's great. No. It's fine. That's that's all good. I was gonna because I was gonna ask you how the mountains, those mountain adventures really, you know, shape your writing. And then, I don't know if you wanna add anything to it at at for that.
[00:27:36] Unknown:
Well, I think the other part of this listen, going out to the mountains and hiking in the isolation and the beauty and all that stuff's great too. But these communities are fabulous also. Mhmm. They're very touristy. Obviously, where where I'm talking about, where we actually have, our our second house and our future, and our future retirement home, is, up right outside of Hunter and Wyndham. Okay. Both are huge ski ski town. So in the winter, they there is an influx of people for skiing and all sorts of stuff. These communities thrive on that. And then in the summer, you know, camping and hiking and all these different people coming in.
So it's just an influx of strangers, but there is that core group of people from there. Okay. And I always like that idea, you know, you watch a, you know, you watch a lot of movies or read book. You know, you always have the townies and the outsiders and kind of this this dichotomy between the pen and, you know, kind of, a little bit of, animosity between them.
[00:28:45] Unknown:
Now I I used to spend a lot of time up in the town called Ulin. I'm not sure it's it's been a long time since I've been up there, so I'm not exactly sure what what other city was close or or larger city or town was closer to it. But one of the things I loved about it, it was, first of all, the seclusion. I mean, it was up there in the in the hinterlands of New York, you know, and it was, it was, just a great place and had a beautiful little small town. It was one of those little towns where you had you had the sheriff and his deputy, and that was it. You know, there wasn't even like a local police, it was just the sheriff and his deputy, and we had the one fire truck, you had the one, you know, like the handful of volunteer firefighters, and it was a great place, man. I loved it. It was fantastic. And I remember we used to we used to go up there with, with our dog, And it was it was funny one night we were we were at we had just gotten there, and we were laying in the we were lay we were laying in the bedroom, and the dog was laying at the foot of the bed, and I don't know what he heard, but even he got spooked. He because he just picked up his head and just went very very gently went woof, like like with a question, like with a What? Like with a question mark at the end of it. And, you know, it was it was it was kinda interesting, but it was but like you said, it's it's great because it is such a small little little community, and you're able to go out there and you you visit some of these shops. It wasn't touristy or at all, but they had some great little shops. You used to love going down there, it was beautiful.
Upstate New York is just fantastic. I love I believe if if if the economy was better, and the political landscape in New York was better, I probably would have moved upstate and stayed there, and not come all the way down this way.
[00:30:20] Unknown:
Yeah. That's kinda that's kind of the argument I'm having. I have, my, my academy, mate and I are are both lieutenants now. We both have exactly three years and, you know, a little over a month left to go. And we're talking and he's, like, you know, I'm moving to Montana. I'm moving to West Virginia. I'm going to Oklahoma. And I'm, like, I'm going to Greene County. You know, like, it's already decided. And about this and I'm like, I know. But, you know, my my wife's family, is close by, Both my parents are deceased at this point, but my sister isn't too and, you know, trying to have that that closeness to family. If I moved out of state, we wouldn't we wouldn't have that Oh, yeah. That that relationship. And and, you know, we really kinda value that. My daughter on my daughter on my wife's side is the only grandchild, probably will be the only grandchild.
So, you know, my father-in-law is 75. My mother-in-law is 65. So I I, you know, I don't wanna waste that opportunity. And then my sister has two children. So my, you know so there's only gonna probably be three cousins on that side of the family. So I gotcha. It's like it's like, you know, why why mess with the family? So I I can't really argue with that. And, you know, again, I'm paying Rockland County taxes now and, you know, it's it's very, very expensive. But compared to what I'm paying up in Greene County, it's more than I would probably pay if I was, you know, in in a more tax friendly state.
But it's not as bad as where I am now, so it's it's saving money. And we're trying to make all the right financial decisions right now so that we don't have the debt. Yeah. And so whatever the living costs are are the living costs. And as long as they don't increase too much, you know. Yeah. It's interesting. My see my sister and I, because, our parents have both have both passed on recently. So,
[00:32:16] Unknown:
so, but my sister and I are actually closer now Then then we were when I lived up there, and we we we talk more now. We spend more time together now via phone and whatnot. Mhmm. And that's that's great. And my kids too. My kids still live up. My my daughter still lives up in, she's, still in Staten Island, and my son lives in Pennsylvania right now. So, you know, we we still keep keeping the communication, which is great. You know, it's it's great, and I kinda like the distance in a way, you know. It's like, it's just not so bad.
[00:32:49] Unknown:
But Yeah. Everybody's different. Everybody's different. Oh, yeah. Everybody's different. I mean, we're we're still forty five minutes away, so it's not next door. Because I think my my wife would go nuts if she, you know, we live next door to my in laws. I think I think that would drive her nuts. Like, she grew up next door to her grandparents. So my mother-in-law always had her in laws, you know, you know, football field away. And I'm sure that was a different kind of stress and a different kind of stuff, you know, different kind of thing. So I think my wife would go crazy if we're that close, but
[00:33:21] Unknown:
in a little bit closer, you know, Well, float the float this idea, pastor. So where where I am, I am and I made the drive, last, no, two years ago, me and the dogs. Thirty six hours straight from here to New York driving, and that's just going to that's just going to Staten Island. So it's thirty six hours from here to Staten Island. And then, if you fly, depends on on what flights you get, but, still two and a half hours away from the nearest airport. So yeah. So I'm pretty far out of that. I'm I'm in a border town. I live on the I live on the border with Mexico. And, so it's it's it's, like I say sometimes at the start of the show, you know, you know, broadcasting from the pimple on the backside of Texas. That's exact that's exactly where where I am, you know. But, but, now, but I get you, man. I got you. So do you think that that living up in the mountains and the the isolation, the beauty really do you think it adds to the unique tension of of of mystery storytelling?
[00:34:23] Unknown:
I I definitely believe that. You get because in a small town, you can you can keep secrets. And that's what, you know, it's my protagonist, Mike, kinda realizes. Like, he grew up in this town. There's a little bit of separation out where he goes to a boarding school, doesn't have the greatest relationship with his dad who was the police chief. And so he kinda has this disconnect from the town, but he he doesn't know this story at all. And he grew up there. And it takes it takes kind of uncovering this and, you know, as he talks to people to uncover things, he has to find very specific people who will talk about it or who will remember it. Mhmm. So, you know, things can kinda get swallowed up up there. And I think that's that's a a big thing. And, again, kinda like you were talking about with, you know, the law enforcement presence, I I kinda take some liberty. I use the town of Hunter as as my location. And the real town of Hunter is a very small agency. They have a police department, but they don't have a police chief. They have a, officer in charge who has the rank of sergeant.
I think him and one other guy are the only full time officers. Everyone else is part time. I kinda blow the agency up that they have actually have a chief and they have a couple of sergeants. So I make it a little bit bigger, but not huge. And it there's there's a lot more ins you know, insularity in in in a law enforcement agency with that too because you don't have, you don't have the diversity of of ideas and thoughts and the specialization in people. Mhmm. You know, the big city PD, you know, you're gonna have CSI and you're gonna have techs that do this and you're gonna have, specific detectives that do specific kinds of crime. Whereas in a small agency, if you're the detective or you're you're that guy that's kind of more of the investigator, you're handling every kind of penal law crime there is. Right. You know, from, you know, from, you know, grandma got scammed out of a thousand dollars from, you know, a telemarketing scam to, you know, serious assaults and rapes and things like that too. So you kinda have to wear many hats. And then, a lot of the, you know, small misdemeanor stuff, you have to have patrol guys that can handle those cases. So you have, you know, it it's your your your resources are a lot more limited and you're dependent on other agencies. Like, I have a, a big character in the book is a state police investigator who kinda comes in once, there's a modern day murder that kinda sparks and kinda pushes pushes the plot forward a little bit. I bring I bring him in and he is just kinda has a completely different view on law enforce and on on how to, you know, how to do the job Yeah. And how to and how to get results than, you know, these, you know, kind of more backwards, kinda simpler guys.
[00:37:16] Unknown:
Now, I I think a lot of readers like to, like, the detail and the accuracy, especially in procedural, fiction. How do you balance the realism with, with pacing and entertainment?
[00:37:28] Unknown:
So I don't get into an, a lot of different, police procedure. That's why I call it crime procedural because it's oh, the whole process. And Okay. And every and every I know the idiosyncrasies of it, but how how the whole, you know, kind of more of a, you know, more on the whole the whole line of of criminal justice system as opposed to just, you know, the CSI effect, you know, specific team working on specific cases. You know, there's there's a lot more diversity in in what everybody's handling. So what I I kinda get into is more of the day to day. I open the book with a vehicle stop and kind of the apprehensions of this rookie police officer in making a vehicle stop and, you know, kind of put the kind of put the reader in in that in that situation of not knowing what's going on because you're you're actually looking at from the, we'll call them a violator.
The person, you know, observing the cop walking up and all these different things and all these things that can be telegraphed that you don't even realize are being put out there. So, and then getting into the relationships between, you know, law enforcement and kind of, you know, the more the scene stuff. Like, again, making making these guys human. They're not robots. They're not, you know, a lot of, to be a lot of procedural shows. It it appears that, you know, all these people do is e breathe and, you know, and sleep work. Like, you know, the episode starts, you know, oh, hey, I'm at work and this is what I'm doing. They don't they don't really delve into more of their personal lives and there's so many more things going on in life, let alone their, you know, their job. Like, even if being a cop is everything to you, you still have, you know, an elderly parent you need to take care of. Or you might have a spouse that, you know, requires your attention and a family that requires your attention. And I think a lot of procedures don't get into that. So I kinda look at the the whole world of the criminal justice world.
[00:39:28] Unknown:
What's what do you think is one misconception that people have about law enforcement that you enjoy addressing in your book?
[00:39:35] Unknown:
I think it's kinda cliche to say, you know you know, forty five minutes, you know, an hour with commercial breaks, you can solve a crime. True. Yeah. I think I think that's kind of a cliche at this point. The the biggest misconception is, I think, basically, you know, the difference between, you know, some of these larger agencies and these smaller agencies that even if you do work for a small agency, you could still be a brilliant investigate and a really smart person and capable of solving these crimes. It's just you may not have the resources. So, again, just that that human aspect of, you know, just just because, you know, you're not you're not, you know, you're not held to the the limitations of where your career's at or what what, you know, what job you decided to go in. You you know, there there are people who who go into, professions for for different reasons and are stuck in a certain place for certain reasons, but that doesn't mean you can underestimate them.
[00:40:39] Unknown:
You're underestimating the the local cop. I got you. What's your what's your what's the process you go through to develop characters?
[00:40:48] Unknown:
So for this, again, it was easy because I just took people I worked with and I built them into these characters. Mike, everybody assumes Mike is me because he's he's a, you know, young, you know, young cop. I'm not so young anymore, but they're like, oh, is that you? And I'm like, yeah. To a degree, it's me. But at the same time, it's it's my observations. I was a sergeant for almost ten years. Mhmm. And I watched a lot of new young police officers and deputy sheriffs come on the job. And just watching the way they interacted, with the older guys, interacted in the field and made mistakes and and did wonderful things at the time.
So I wanted to kinda capture that with the character of Mike. He's he's, trying to do everything perfect. And I met so many rookie cops that just, you know, were very robotic because they just wanted to get things done as efficiently as possible and and didn't realize that, you know, slow things down a little bit. Then when I came to the veteran guys, in the book, the the the main kinda, secondary character is this guy named Hugh. He's 100% on my old midnight partner when I was on patrol. He was about probably eight or nine years older than me, and he had been through everything. I got we had I I had a joke with him one night because he had been on so long that, you know, he was on before GPS and things like that. So we were we were looking for an address, and we couldn't find it. And this is, you know, date myself a little bit. This is, like, 02/2011.
So we had the old Garmins in the cars, and we're trying to find this address. And, of course, you didn't update those Garmins. You didn't have some of the new places that they built. Yeah. So we're looking for an address looking for an address. Couldn't find it. Couldn't find it. So he pulls out a Hagstrom map. I don't know if you're familiar with that. I haven't seen a Hagstrom map in years. But they still exist. So he pulls out a Hagstrom, and he's, you know, looking, you know, doing the, you know, the the grid thing and finding the and I looked at it and said, did that come with a 38 and a set of speed loaders? He goes, 100% it did. So, you know, just kinda, you know, just kind of that, you know, that old school mentality of, you know, you know, easy easy kid, you know. This job existed before techno.
So that's kinda, you know, that's kinda Hugh. And then, you know, honestly, some more of the ag characters I you know, based on some people that made my career a little bit more difficult. And, you know, I put them in, you know, positions. I I again, not everybody's, you know, it's not, you know there are definitely, you know, layers of gray of of these characters. But, you know, I definitely wanted to get some of the antagonistic people in there also.
[00:43:37] Unknown:
Now now this book, that we're talking about, Our Lady of the Overlook, this is the first book in a in a series. Correct?
[00:43:44] Unknown:
Correct. Yep. It's the first of a trilogy. Okay. And, so what's what's coming up next? This second book's actually coming out in what today's the twenty eighth? One month and one day. So by the time, you know, you rewatch this later later tomorrow, it'll be a month away. The second book's called Quiet Whispers of the Overlook. And, as, one of the ladies at my job yelled at me, after she found out that there's not exactly a 100% resolution, and I got called a, I got called an expletive. She goes, well, does it finish in the second book? I said, well, actually, the second book, you find out a lot of the stuff from the first book you took for granted. And no, it still doesn't end with a, you know, with a 100% resolution. She's like, another expletive. Well, I I don't know how family friendly your show is, but I'll I'll I'll keep those out. But you can use your you can use your imagination.
[00:44:35] Unknown:
You could say what you gotta say, brother. It's fine.
[00:44:38] Unknown:
I got called a bitch. And this is this is a this is an older woman. She's actually retired and works for us part time, in our civil office. And she I I was not expecting it when she when she used it. She was just, like, is this this one of those cliffhangers? And I was, like, oh, yeah. I said it's part of a trailer. She goes, bitch. Like, I I'm sorry. Like, I I felt really bad. I was also like That's funny. But say you know, but I promise her in a second book's coming out, like, you know, as soon as I I got the proof copy a couple weeks, you know, a couple about a week ago, I I put the video out and I showed her that. I'm like, it exists. The book is here. It's it's coming. So I actually give Insta to do a pre order, which, anybody who pre orders before, August 1, I'm actually sending out copies two weeks early along with, with, some special swag. So these are these are, you know, not that I have a ton of fans, but these are my, consistent consistent fans that pre ordered the the second book early, giving him a little bit extra too. Oh, that's awesome. I'm actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna pick up the first book
[00:45:46] Unknown:
because I I really I'd like to read it. And then, you said the second one's coming out, in about a month. So August 29. Alright. So we'll do the, pre I'll see if I can get the preorder into. So, so what do you hope that the, that your readers walk away with after you finish the books?
[00:46:07] Unknown:
I guess the sense of frustration that there isn't answers that simple, which again, you know, expertise aside. Mhmm. You know, that's, you know, just because just because you've, you know, you get a new lead on on something doesn't mean that the case is just, there there's a lot more to it than that. And again, there there are repercussions or consequences for digging things up. You know, my my, the whole narrative is framed through a crime podcaster. And, you know, he's kind of a, you know, I I wouldn't say sinister, but he has ulterior motives and you kinda gotta get to what those are in there. And, you know, there are consequences for him for digging things up. And there are consequences for, the character of Maggie who is the who is the orphan who, you know, goes to try to find things find things out and, you know, her life becomes much more complicated.
So, you know, consequences for Mike for for continuing down this path. You know, he's he's trying to figure out his life. He's young and he's trying to, you know, find out what the next step is in life and he can't, you know, he can't get past this now because now he has this block. So I hope I hope people get that sense of frustration. And again, I you know, with, you know, getting through the the, you know, the third book in the end and getting that you know, having a really good catharsis in the end to say, wow, that was a hell of a journey for these people. And, you know, and I was right along there with them. And I'm really glad that everything works out in the end. So you already have the third book outlined already?
Yes. I have it I have it I have the outline for the like, I I know who does everything in the end. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I think. And the only person who knows is my daughter. She's 11. She's not any social media, so you can't beat her up or anything. But, I I'd pick her up from school. And so, you know, she'll ask me because she has I I she has all her friends looking at my website and stuff at school. So I actually get some of the teachers on board now too. So I'm like, you know what, Frey? I said you're doing a great job in marketing daddy.
[00:48:24] Unknown:
Nice.
[00:48:25] Unknown:
So, she's the only one who actually knows who who it's gonna be in the end, because you're solving two mysteries, you know, in in in there. And, you know, but there's a lot of world building and a lot of background, and I hate, you know, I'm not I'm not a, Tolkien kinda guy where I gotta build this entire world and have all this backstory. I'm trying to basically unfold it just as it's unfolding for the characters. So, so, yes. I have the third one outlined. I know where I wanna go. It's just a matter of getting them there and but very ambitious. I would really like to get this out by the April next year. Okay. Because I'm learning I'm learning a lot about marketing and doing things at the right time. The first book I released in a hurry, and I didn't really plan out what I was gonna do marketing wise.
This this release on August 29 is specific. It's right before Labor Day, and it's right before I go to a big, Mr. Raiders convention in New Orleans. So I'm gonna have FreshBooks to go down there, going into, if I don't know. You know, again, if going into Upstate New Yorkness, we have a ton of what we're called street fairs. Nice. So every weekend, I'll gonna be at a street fair selling books in Rockland County, selling books in Orange County, selling books up in, the Windom area where the book takes place. So, you know, it's it's it's perfect timing to get all that stuff out. I can go for about six weeks and that's it.
So, you know, release in April. New book's gonna take place in the spring and right before the spring season of those same things. So, you know, trying to trying to work that work that angle too. Alright. So if you could write a story in collaboration with any author, past or present, who would it be? Alright. I it popped into my head right away. I just was wondering if I should go there. I'm a huge fan of, the the writer, Andrew Clavin. He's also a podcast personality. He's on the Daily Wire. Yep. I I love his podcast. I love, I I very aligned with a lot of his his thinking.
But I also really, really enjoy his, his writing. Both his nonfiction work and his,
[00:50:39] Unknown:
his mystery stories. Oakley was great. Yeah.
[00:50:42] Unknown:
Yeah. He is he is a trilogy wrote in probably the early two thousands that would be a fantastic set of action movies with these two these two great detective, you know, independent, private detectives, is just fabulous. And they build on each other and they have an over like, it's it's the perfect to me, it's the perfect trilogy that probably nobody knows about. So I would love to collaborate with Andrew Clavin and just pick his brain on on some things and see if we could build something. Alright. So if someone if someone drops you off anywhere in the Catskills for a weekend hike, no cell service, just you in the wild, where are you going? I probably probably right that escarpment trail is is gorgeous. I'm gonna have to go back there because, basically, there there are certain steps in there where, you know, you go, you know, half a mile in either direction, you're at you're at something to look at, and you're at something to experience. So, just along that escrow you know, we have I could wander I could wander around there for a long time. And if you ask my wife, it would take me probably twice as long as it would for her. Alright.
[00:51:55] Unknown:
Alright. Ideal writing setup, Cabin in the Woods or Downtown Cafe? I think I know the answer to this one. Oh, Cabin in the Woods. A 100%.
[00:52:03] Unknown:
Second book second book, I wrote the second book because a lot of it, I was planning to go to a conference in Florida right right, the September when they had the hurricanes. So literally was getting my haircut and was going home to to finish finish packing to to fly out the next morning. And I read the email saying that they were canceling the canceling the, conference. So I'm like, oh, crap. What am I gonna do now? I already took the time off from work. I already had my wife, you know, mentally prepared that I wasn't gonna be around. So I was like, alright. Well, I guess I'll put back the time and all the and then I get thinking about it. I'm like, I'll go up to the cabin and I'll work for, you know, three or four days nonstop, you know. No no distractions. No nothing. I you know. So I kinda turned it in, you know. I went home and asked my wife and she's like, I don't care. Just go. Just leave me alone. Nice.
So I did. I turned it, you know, I turned it into a little bit of a marketing thing because the first book hadn't come out yet. So I kinda turned it into a marketing thing of, you know, hey, we're going up, you know. So I had myself in the car, you know. We're going we're going to a super secret place, and we're gonna work on the next book. And I would did updates and things like that. So I kinda used it for two things, but I got a lot of writing done in that time. So, and I've done I I don't know if I've done a cafe, but I I did write some of the first book, at a library. My my daughter was, having some sessions with, professional, and it was right behind our down our library here in Nyack. So I would drop her off for her session and I would go over to the library and I would work for about that hour hour or so there. And, you know, I got some things done there, but it just, you know, there's too many distraction for me. I I I I need kind of that that focused time. Yeah. I gotcha.
[00:53:49] Unknown:
Alright. So where can our audience go to pick up your novel, connect with you online, social media, anything like that? Alright. So best way to, to get,
[00:53:57] Unknown:
get a hold of novel is my website, rlcarpentierwriter.com. It's where you can get, the first book, preorder the second book. And again, if if you happen to get it in before August 1, you get it early. You'll get it with a bunch of new swag that I just got and merchandise and stuff that I'm, you know, kinda beta testing. I'm available on, Amazon if you decide to go there. Ebook is available there. If you have Kindle Unlimited, part of I'm a part of that also, so that doesn't cost you any extra money. Working on the audiobook, for the last year or so.
So I gotta I I have to do that. So no audiobook yet, but that's forthcoming. And then social media, I'm on Facebook at I think it's r l carpenter, debut author. I do have a Patreon, although I'm it's kind of, it's kind of, you know, a dilapidated empty bar at this point, but I'm we'll try to get that back up, with the second book. And I think that's I think I think, you know, randomly, I things get posted to Instagram, but I don't I don't curate that or or kinda focus on that. So mostly mostly Facebook and then through my website, you can sign up for my newsletter.
I'm very faithful about my newsletter. I send it out every every Sunday morning at 07:45. I've only missed, in the last six, seven months, I've only missed, like, two weeks. Okay. So I'm pretty faithful on that. You wanna know what's going on with me both professionally, independently, and things like that. It's a good way to kinda learn what's going on. So you're better than me with the with the email list. I have an email thing for the show here, and I I I think the last time I sent something out was about two months ago. I just it's just about a time. It's hard, you know, it's it's not, you know I used to make longer ones. Now I'm kind of a little bit more shortened to the point. But the consistency of it, I'm actually, you know, really starting to build a lot of, back and forth with a lot of these folks. That's great.
You know, you know, where I'll I'll mention something and I'll get a couple emails back or I'll ask a question and be like, hey, I I actually always do what I'm reading. I always have an audio book. I have a forty five minute commute to work, so I always have an audio book that I'm listening to. So I'll say, you know, so I always talk about what I'm reading. And a couple weeks ago, I said, hey, let me know what you're reading or what I should read next. And Right. You know, I got a couple of really good suggestions with that. So I just gotta implement that into my my,
[00:56:32] Unknown:
listening rotation. Alright. Outstanding. Rodney Carpenter, we have all of your information, that's available to us is in the show notes. If there's anything else that you want us to include, just email it to me or or send me a message about it, and we'll get that all set up for you and included. Any parting words before we, move on?
[00:56:51] Unknown:
I would just say, one of the things I talk about is it's never too late to start a new a new thing in your life. I was 40 I was four barely 40 years old when I started writing, and I I'm 43 and I already have two books Outstanding. That I finished. So never it's never too late to start something new.
[00:57:08] Unknown:
Outstanding. Rodney Carpenter, folks. Thank you so much, Rodney, for taking the time to be with us tonight. God bless you. Stay safe out there and, Thank you, sir. Be careful. Alright? Thank you. Talk to you soon. Alright. Bye bye. Alright, folks. So this is The Joe Russo. Don't forget, this is a live show weeknights, 7PM central time. And, what we're gonna do is here, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna do a reset, I think, on the stream because I'm looking at the quality here and it looks very, very, very bad. So, can do a refresh and reset everything up. Our our next guest is already waiting for us in the, in the waiting room, so we'll be with him momentarily.
And, we'll take a short break here. So we'll be back in about, two, maybe three minutes. Alright, folks. This is the Joe Russo. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share it with your friends, your family, and your followers. Make sure you're following us on Rumble. Make sure that, you're checking us out across the socials on on an x, and we just recently, restarted our getter account. It's g e t t r. And you can find me there at Joe Rouz. Love to find you there and follow you as well. So, we'll be back in just, about three minutes. Alright? So stick with us. Alright, folks.
Welcome back to the Joe Ruse Show. I am Joe Ruse. It is twenty zero seven hours here on Monday, 07/28/2025, and we are live. As you can tell, as always, we always have some kind of a problem with the live stream always. So if you're watching and we had a little bit of a glitch there, that was because we reset everything here and try to get a better quality on the feed. It looks like so far, it's still kinda shitty. So that that's Rumble. I love the company. I support it. I'm a shareholder, but not thrilled. Not too thrilled.
But anyway, at any rate, I digress. Folks, we are streaming exclusively on Rumble. We don't do YouTube and, right now, actually, I can't say exclusively because we are technically still on X and Twitch and Fakebook and all that stuff. But anyway, here we are. Alright, folks. Podhome. Podhome is the most modern and easy to use podcast hosting platform. Use it to publish your episodes, enhance your audio, and automatically generate transcripts, chapters, titles, show notes, and more. And you can even podcast live right there on your website. Pod home provides a media player that is fantastic.
Actually, if you go to my website, joeroos.com, you will see it because I use it. Pod home is my host platform. I love it. The best decision I ever made was switching from one of those big, very well known, very well established, podcast host platforms, and a very expensive one as well to PodHome. And I'm getting more at a Pod Home than I was with the other place for three times as a three times less than what I was paying there. So so you get, again, automatically generated transcripts, chapters, titles, show notes. You get a media player for your website. You can broadcast your podcast live across the modern podcasting apps, the podcast two point o apps, and they even provide you with your own with your own website for your show if you don't have one. Or if you do have one, you could always bring your, domain to Pod Home, and they will set you up.
So everything that you need to make your podcast a success is all right there for one affordable subscription of $15.99 a month. That's $15.99 a month. Again, folks, I was paying three times that, and I wasn't even getting half of what I'm getting out of Pod Home. So head over to podhome.fm and give it a try. Podhome.fm. Give it a try, and you get it free for thirty days once you sign up. Alright. So, folks, I hope you enjoyed Rodney. That was great. I really enjoyed talking to him. I'm looking forward to picking up his book. So, once I do that, I will let you know what is going on. And, but right now, coming into the second hour of tonight's show, the first hour, of course, is in the books now, so we're moving on.
Our second hour guest, is Christian Bernardes. Now, again, I am terrible with names, so I'm hoping that he'll correct me, when he pops on here. Christian is the founder and CEO of Autograph, the company behind Walter, the world's first AI historian. Walter doesn't just store your life story, it calls you weekly to record it, then uses that information to build your autograph, a digital version of yourself that sounds like you, speaks like you, and remembers what you remember. Christian studied symbolic systems at Stanford with a concentration in AI, served as a software engineer at Google. Boo, Google. And later joined his fam his family's international tech business. Today, he's an author, podcaster, and passionate builder, at the intersection of legacy, memory, and artificial intelligence. His work asks one of the deepest questions of all, what if your wisdom could outlive you? Christian, welcome to the Joe Russo. Thank you for taking the time to be here with us tonight.
Welcome aboard.
[01:07:37] Unknown:
Hey, Joe. Good to be here, man. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Gotcha good.
[01:07:41] Unknown:
Gotcha good. So one of the things I like to ask, everybody when they first come on the show is just some basic ice breaking questions. Alright? So what's something about you that most people don't know but probably should?
[01:07:57] Unknown:
Something most people don't know. I think most musical I am. I feel like my inner group of friends know, but I don't share it readily. But music is how I parse the world. Okay. Yeah. You know, and I love playing music. I think if I could, there's a there's an alternate universe version of me that's,
[01:08:20] Unknown:
scoring films out there. So you use Walter to do that then?
[01:08:24] Unknown:
Right. Exactly. Or my digital clone, you know, to do the business stuff and then exactly. There you go. Actually, it's funny because our our first guest,
[01:08:32] Unknown:
said that he likes I asked him the same question. He said that he likes to play the, the electronic drums in his, downtime.
[01:08:40] Unknown:
There you go. So that's two You can start a band. You know? Two musical guests. That's fantastic.
[01:08:45] Unknown:
Alright. So what's your go to beverage to unwind at the end of the day? IPA. Okay. Alright. I could do that. I know.
[01:08:55] Unknown:
Yeah. I I just it's always been beer. You know, if if extra fancy, maybe scotch, but the,
[01:09:04] Unknown:
you know, like, the old reliable is always an IPA. No. That's good. That's good. I'm a I'm a bourbon guy. I like my bourbons. I I I go around with bourbon? No. Never. I can try I I try not to do anything during the week though, because I do have to work, and and so on and so forth, and I have to do the show. And and believe me, early on, when I first started doing the show, I had a I had a guest on the show, and it was a two hour show, just him and I, and he was actually in here in the studio. And, we decided to and it was all it was only audio too. We I wasn't doing video yet. And, we were sitting here, and we had like three bottles of bourbon, and we were just sampling as, you know, going down the line. But I think by the time we got to about a little bit more than an hour into the show, I think we were both hammered and trying to talk trying to talk politics.
[01:09:52] Unknown:
Trying to make some kind of sense out of it. But you think the conversation is amazing.
[01:09:56] Unknown:
Right? Exactly. But and the funniest thing is to this day, that episode is still the highest downloaded episode that I have. So, it's in about the Internet, man. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. And plus they wanna hear two idiots telling me, you know. So oh, man. So, so you live in San Francisco. What's what's one gem that you would, that you would take a visitor to see?
[01:10:24] Unknown:
There's, I think, the best burrito in the country, definitely. There's a spot called La Taqueria, and it's unimaginably good. I feel like the the touristy spots, you know, are kind of you know? So you just Google the stuff, you'll get the touristy spots, but, like, the good local food, I think, is where the the real secret sauce is. But there honestly, San Francisco is a great spot, man. Like, it there's there's a lot of natural beauty here. It's easy to take for you know, it's easier to underwrite all that stuff with all the issues that the city has, which there are no shortage of. But, but it's an awesome spot to be. I mean, like, really fantastic nature. So burritos, that's what you take them to. Alright.
[01:11:06] Unknown:
We could we could do that. I I live in Texas right now, so, you can imagine me get some pretty good burritos down here. Pretty good Mexican food. Yeah. Yeah. And plus, I live right on the border with Mexico, so I get some the really good quality stuff. The good stuff. You know? Before COVID, I used to used to cross over into Mexico just to hit the food trucks on the other side of the on the other side of the bridge, because it was the best food you could find, man. It was awesome stuff. And these guys, they they they took pride in what they were doing. I I because I remember there was one particular food truck we we were at, and, I don't speak a lick of Spanish, you know. So so, I I had my wife at the time with me, and and and, she was translating, you know, back and forth, and he was just so the guy that was cooking was just so impressed with the fact that I I was so enjoying the food that he's preparing. He just kept going. Just kept on, you know, forking things over to us. It was just it was amazing. The food is absolutely amazing. The best food you get, I think, I and I don't care what anybody says about, you know, the cleanliness of the stuff and all that. Food carts and food trucks. The best food the best food ever.
And and this is from a guy Flavor is like, it's oppositely correlated with cleanliness, I feel. Yeah. It kinda cancels each other out for sure for sure. And this is coming from a guy. I like to cook. I I I I'm an amateur chef here, a home chef type thing, and I I love to cook. And so so, yeah. It's that's the best stuff you're gonna get. That's the best stuff. Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. So, so you grew up in Paraguay, in in a in a really deeply entrepreneurial family. How did that bringing that upbringing, shape your world worldview?
[01:12:41] Unknown:
Excuse me. Oh, man. It was it's it's you know, the more time passes, the more I appreciate how unique that was. But the it was it would be talk about business all day. And I'm like, the and it's also because both my parents are, you know, in the company together. And it's also been weird. My mom was the CEO. My dad's the CTO. So So it would be like they would get home, and the conversations from work would just keep going. And they would just make us me and my sisters a part of it. And, you know, there's been an problems in running a business. There's people issues. There's, like, technical problems. There's, like, the government and regulation and, like, all kinds of things.
So it was really seeing them in problem solving mode all the time. Mhmm. Like, they're always solving a there's always a fire being put out. And I I think the luckiest thing that I got to experience was them trying that failed and failed and failed and failed and failed and failed until they found success doing SMS, and just literally implementing SMS that got a text from one phone to another in the early two thousands. And so, like, I got to see their grit and resilience and sort of this, like, really almost delusional optimism all the time. Mhmm. And I think, like, the the reps I got from that carried me through some of the uncertain periods in my life where I was either I don't know. You're not always in the mood to problem solve, but having ex being exposed to to that for my whole life is as a love language almost. You know? Because that was their love language. That is their love language for each other, and we we joke a lot. But our love language in our family is, like, projects and problem solving. You know? Like, we always, like, help each other out in, like, you know, school projects and, like, figure out, okay. Like, let's rally this thing and, like, you optimize this thing, you know, your spreadsheet or your tracker.
And so it was a very unique way to to think about it. You know? And, even even with working with them, you know, I it was it was really interesting because on one side, it's obviously great to be together as a family and pushing in one direction. But also in another, you know, they are both founders. Let's say things like, you gotta get your founder into instincts, so you gotta think like a founder and act like a founder. And at times, I would be like, I don't know that I can simulate this. I I think I develop my founder instincts. I think I have to be a founder too, you know, and actually wear bear the burden of the responsibility of a company and things like that.
Massively,
[01:15:07] Unknown:
instrumental, man. Massively. I'm sorry. It must have been really exciting to grow up in a family, that was so involved in business. Like your parents, they built this tech to come this tech company. They expanded that thing across Latin America and Africa, and it has to be it had to be an incredible experience growing up around that.
[01:15:21] Unknown:
Crazy. Crazy. And at the right time too. I think, you know, things started taking off when I was maybe 14 or 15. So it was really very much like a coming of age thing Mhmm. As I was coming of age. And so dynamic. I mean, like, so my I remember my dad would be, you know, be traveling to places that I'd never even heard of, you know, like, installing stuff in Tanzania. And, you know, like, it'd be like, oh, he would tell us the stories about the food in Africa and things like that. I'd be like, wow. You know, like, so truly very exciting.
But also and I also did not realize how unique that was at all at the time, you know? And less of all in Paraguay. I mean, like, there is no tech scene in Paraguay. So the the more I, like, now, like, being in The States for close to thirteen years, I look back and I'm like, that was wild, man. I mean, I I grew up in the Shire, You know? Like, if you're a Lord of the Rings guy, Paraguay is basically the Shire. It's like short I don't wanna say short because people may get upset, but it's, like, not the tallest. Hairy folks who like to drink beer and till the land and hang out. You know? And you could probably find out all there is to know about Paraguay. It sounds like my ex wife's family.
Uh-huh. Oh, boy. Where is she from?
[01:16:38] Unknown:
Irish.
[01:16:39] Unknown:
Oh, yeah. You know, the Castle Lake the Castle Lake is a through line there, man. Mhmm. So it was just it's really crazy, man. Like, as more time passes, the more I realize now, I was kinda conditioned to to be doing what I'm doing now. And a lot of the themes around what we're building is about, you know, my experience being far away from them and, like, knowing that all my cousins and my, like, large family is gonna be at home. My kids are gonna grow up in The States, and they're gonna have a very different cultural upbringing than mine. So how do I transfer that? And it's a lot. It's a big backpack to carry for, you know, one person to transmit all this cultural background. Right? Oh, sure. Absolutely.
[01:17:18] Unknown:
So what drew you to Stanford and, and symbolic systems? And and and addition to that, how did that academic path influence your thinking?
[01:17:27] Unknown:
Oh, no. Great, great question. I I mean, I when my mom was fortunate enough to do a year exchange program in Michigan when she was 11. So she got shipped off to her cousin's family, and, their family was incredibly high achieving. Like, they like, the kids all went to Harvard or MIT, like, the doctors, like, kinda the folks who build MRI machines in their in their garage. And so when when I was growing up, that was always the standard that I was held against. You know? Like, oh, your uncle so and so did this. Like, he went to Harvard. Like like, you could go to Harvard if you want. Like, why wouldn't you be able to go to Harvard if you want to? And I think it was a little naive, but it was it was, you know, like, you know, the the kind of big dream that inspires behavioral change and stuff. So I always put in a lot of work to get good grades.
I wanted to go get into MIT. I did not know the first thing about how college admissions worked in The US. So go to a college counselor, and she's like, yeah. There's basically no shot to get into MIT. You have to hedge your bets and apply to a bunch of other different places. And, that's kinda how Stanford kind of showed up. We I didn't even I I'd heard of the university, but I hadn't really, like, thought about it that much. Right. And then the more time passed and, you know, when the decisions finally came about and I didn't get into MIT and I did get into Stanford, Stanford very clearly was the the right choice because, you know, technically, they a a great school, like, academically, a very great school, but also the, entrepreneurship around it, You know? It was it was really great. You know? It was around the time that the Facebook movie had just come out. So I was like, oh my gosh. This is the place to be.
And I feel so lucky that I discovered symbolic systems at Stanford. Symbolic systems is actually a major. That's pretty quirky and unique to Stanford. It's, there's flavors of it that are more like cognitive science in other places, but symbolic systems is just an excuse to think about the mind and about what the mind is doing, through the lens of philosophy, through the lens of psychology, through the lens of, linguist.
[01:19:41] Unknown:
I think I lost you.
[01:19:44] Unknown:
There's a lot of literature. There's a lot of reading the classics. There's a lot of reading, philosophy. And, you know, I'd always I'd seen what computer science could do. Like, literally, our family would not be my upbringing would not be computer science, but I've always been interested in in the why, not just the how. Like, why are we doing this? What's the impact of what we create? Like, how are people gonna feel? How society gonna evolve? Isn't that good or isn't it bad? Who am I even to say what's good and bad? And, like, maybe I should have a say on what's good and bad if I'm gonna be an informed person in the world. And all that thinking sort of matured through that exploration. So I'm extremely, like I'm like, I'm the biggest fan of of symbolic systems. It's so cool.
[01:20:29] Unknown:
So, let let let's talk about Walter a little bit. So Sure. Yeah. What so what exact so I'm I'm I'm intrigued by this. And, and I was reading up on you a little bit, earlier today and kinda, you know, looking looking over these things. And I'm I'm really actually very intrigued by this whole idea of of Walter. And I'm I'm I'm debating if I'm gonna play around with it or not. So so so tell us, what exactly is Walter and how does it work as an AI historian?
[01:20:57] Unknown:
So Walter's an interviewer. Think like, think of you could also think about him as your personal podcaster. Okay. Like, he's, like, interviewing you every week about your life and how your life is evolving. You know? He starts with your childhood, gets to present day, and it's kind of like a journal. He's a great tool to get your story straight. You know? There's a lot of self reflection that we don't realize we're not doing, and then having someone ask you about it is is actually pretty great. So he's kind of like a contemporary journalist of before you.
And, the idea is that we use the information that you supply, Walter, to add the most value you can to your own future self and the the future selves of those you love. Okay. And so, you know, the flagship thing that we do is we make a model of you that sounds like you and speaks like you and has all your memories so that you could talk to a past version of yourself, but also so that your grandkids can talk to you even after you're gone. Oh, wow. That's interesting. So the idea is that you're going through life, you know, like, let's say you get a job and you're you're you're considering moving to New York. God forbid. And, I left New York.
I know. I know. And, and so Walter could say, hey. Actually, this reminds you of something your grandfather went to. Would you like to talk to him for fifteen minutes? And so you'd be able to hear the story about your, you know, grandfather having to leave, you know, let's say, Ireland just because you mentioned Ireland before. But let's assume, like, it's the story of your grandparents making the decision to abandon their life to move to a different place. And, you'd get the story, but for the first time in history, you'd be able to talk to it back. And you'd be able to say, what was was this angle? And, like, what was what would you have done differently? And how did mom take it? And that kind of stuff. And, also, you'd be able to ask around. You know? You'd be able to get grandma's side of the story and the kids' side of the story. And it was great for two of the kids, but one kid had a really hard time because, they were in love, and it was their first heartbreak, and they had to process all that. And so you can actually see the effect of these decisions as they relate to the decisions that you're going through today. You know?
Yeah. So it's it's extremely trippy. I mean, don't get me wrong. I know how weird it is. But it also is like like, the idea that we can give parents a tool to say I'm proud of you to their kids from the other side is pretty moving, man. It's like it's it's pretty it hits at something very human.
[01:23:36] Unknown:
Yeah. Actually, you know, I was I was just thinking about, about my dad, for example. My my parents both passed away, recently. And I'm sorry. No. It's alright. It's it's they they they live they live a a great life and a long life, and I'm thankful for every minute we had. But there are times where I would love to just sit down with my dad and just say, hey, what do you think about this? You know, what do you think about that? What should I do? You know, so something like that that would be really interesting. That that would Mhmm. That would be very comforting too in a lot of ways at the same time because, you know, your parents are still alive, I'm assuming. Right? And so Yeah. So so they're they're, you know, you have the opportunity to hear their voice and talk to them and and everything and, that would be that would have been pretty neat. You know, I wish I wish this was around, you know, before before they passed, that would have been awesome. But, to to go to think about going forward, you know, with my own grandkids and my own kids, that that might be something interesting to look into.
So, so so where did the inspiration come from to build this technology?
[01:24:42] Unknown:
I wrote my sci fi novel, which I loved getting to do. It was such an honor and then realized how antiquated the publishing industry is. So then I thought I I'm gonna have to promote this myself anyway. So I started a podcast where I interviewed thought leaders on the themes of the book, you know. And basically, it's around our humanity in the age of AI. And, I love the format, man. I just love sitting down with somebody and getting to know who they are and, like, what their values are and how do they get to where they are and what tickles them intellectually and what their mark is supposed to be in the world. And, so I wanted to get more practice on it, and I realized at one point that I should really get my grandma's story. My grandma has a crazy life story. Her dad was an MI six agent. Wow. They they fled, Europe during the war, somehow ended up in Paraguay of all places.
They would communicate over secret messages and stuff. And and this is all sort of family mythology, but it's never been documented anywhere. So I was like, okay. Now I have my skill set as a as a podcaster. I'm gonna interview my grandma. And a couple days before I interviewed, she had a stroke event. Oh, wow. And, and that was that was the catalyst that made me look back at, you know, the the whole step of the way from symbolic systems to my job at Google to some of the conversations we had during when I worked with my parents, some of the themes in the novel, the podcasting, and just, like, sitting down with somebody, like, dialect is the best way to get to know someone, and then sort of connecting the dots. I'm like, okay. Maybe this is the thing I'm supposed to do, and, like, maybe this is how I turn, a sad and painful situation into a solved problem. And and now I've turned that into my motivation. You know? And, like, there are so many voices that are that are, that are quieting down, that we won't remember.
And I just have a very hard time sleeping knowing that that's the case. You know? So,
[01:26:33] Unknown:
so building AI, of course, that sounds like a loved one does tend to bring up a lot of feelings. I mean, like, we we were just talk we were just talking about that. How how do you navigate the emotional and ethical layers of the work?
[01:26:46] Unknown:
It's challenging, man. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I was surprised with the emotional aspect. The ethical, I feel like I had done a lot of thinking around this, ethically. And then, you know, when the idea crystallized, I was like, oh, man. Like, this is kind of inevitable. Someone's gonna do it, and they're gonna do it wrong. You know, someone's gonna sell ads with your data. Someone's gonna, you know, something. Right? Yeah. And Inevitably. Yeah. Inevitably. And and, you know, you see all these AI companies that are doing, like, AI girlfriends and stuff like that. And I'm like, man, I don't wanna, like, destroy society by, you know, creating something that stops the healing process. I don't wanna, like, give people, like, a tool to not grow up or or or something like that. And so I'd, like, I'd done the work for the ethical stuff. I did not anticipate the emotional aspect of it, you know, like and being discovering something that feels like a true human need of people. It's a very human thing to fear our impermanence and to hope that your life amounts to something and that, you know, you hope that you have lived a good life, you know, like, that is sort of, like, what we all aspire to. But hearing that from some of our users and, like, you know, it's like folks in their eighties, in their nineties, you know, who are, like, also just getting acquainted with this new technology, and they're kinda, like, just exploring this. Like, you're a computer?
While also sharing, like, stories of the stories that makes the human story worth telling. Heartbreak and and and resilience and success and and loss and trauma. It's extremely moving, man. I mean and and I think, like, I'm I'm learning how to turn it into fuel, because at the end of the day, that's like, the mission of the company is to, record and retell the history of humanity and every character's own words. And, the the thing is that the words that we choose to record the first are always the the highlights and the lowlights.
[01:28:47] Unknown:
Interesting. That's really interesting. So how long have you been how long has Walter been in existence? How many people are actually using it? Can you can talk about that?
[01:28:56] Unknown:
Oh, yeah. Sure. It's been around it's almost a year, so he'll be a a one year old in in in a month. We have had around 200 people trying the the products, so far. I think it's like, we have, like, two weeks of full data that we've stored. Okay. And it's it's it's it's really crazy. I mean, like, it really it's it's really therapeutic, Walter. We almost, like we've discovered that and this is probably something that you think about. Like, there's no outlet these days. Like, no institution has the the has afforded people the space to feel like the main character in their own story, for twenty minutes a week, man. It's not even that much. You know?
And so what happens when people lean into that role and, like, actually talking through this truly impartial observer? It's not like a friend that you need. You know, there's always a back and forth, and you're always sharing, like, how much can I share with this friend? I don't want them to feel bad. I don't wanna take up all the space. Right. But with Walter, you kinda just go off, and you're like, oh, wait a minute. I'm I'm finding stuff underneath this that's actually pretty valuable about what I feel and what I mean, and,
[01:30:15] Unknown:
that's been a surprise. So Walter actually interacts back and forth, like, having a having a dialogue, almost like a therapist.
[01:30:23] Unknown:
Basically. Wow. It's not it's like we don't we don't want to be branded as therapy, and we don't wanna compete with therapy. That was just the easiest way to to describe what I was thinking about it. Yeah. But and it's honestly, like, if you hired a biographer to to, like, get grandma's story down, it would be that that is kind of the experience that we that we offer. It's just like a sit down it's quote unquote sit down phone call, where it's just, like, asking you about your life, trivia about your life. Tell me about your college years. And, like, oh, you know, what was were you in like, what classes did you take? What were you some of the professors?
Even just going down memory lane is fun. You know? Sure. But then trying to unpack the thread, and Walter's really good at saying, like, oh, there's a there's an independence thread here that you really like, or, oh, there's a rebelliousness or, and just even getting some of that back to you. But, you know, because he's positioned as this historian, it almost sounds like you're already in the history books. You know? It almost sounds like this is the version of you that will that you'll be remembered as, And that's so powerful. This is fascinating. Like, I'm really I know, man. Like, I'm This is my job. Like, I like, I I am I'm looking forward to finishing here and then going to check it out.
[01:31:37] Unknown:
Yeah. I I definitely wanna go do this. This is this is gonna be very, very wild to try. So, So, so what kind of feedback have you gotten from people who've used Walter, you know, in in preserving a voice and a relative story?
[01:31:50] Unknown:
It's it's all it's been so positive, man. I mean, both on the product side, like, after every call, we ask for feedback and, you know, and we take that if there's something that we need to improve on. So example, things we've had to improve on are interruptions. Walter would be really excited to ask a a follow-up question. By far like, we have an an internal dashboard, and 85% of all the stuff we get is is very positive. Things like, I can't believe I'm talking. I can't believe you're not human. I feel safe. I finally feel seen. There are you know, we have some use cases of folks who are really in need of something like this. For example, there's one user who comes out of a context of neurosurgery where he has a brain injury that, caused him to stutter really bad. Okay. And so, so he stutters a lot, and he feels shame in sharing some of his life stories or even just asking or just talking to people.
And so he felt alienated, and he sort of self isolated from the world because of this. And, so his family was like, but we love you. We wanna record your life story. And so Walter is the mechanism that they chose for it, and he feels comfortable, and he doesn't feel ashamed. And he's like, oh, actually, this has been fun to relive my childhood. And That's awesome. I mean, it's it's it's priceless stuff, man. I mean, I get and then and then I think about how much that means to the family, you know, or, how much it will mean to the family. You know, the voice mail that you play over and over.
Imagine that we so basically, what we do is we ask all the questions, the big life questions that don't come up regularly. So that when you need the big ones, you can ask and they were there, you know. Wow.
[01:33:41] Unknown:
And so so this is like a like, so you did like a subscription to this, or is this it a pay as you go, or is it something, like, that you sign up for, like, a year package or something?
[01:33:53] Unknown:
Yeah. So we're doing it's a it's a subscription now. Okay. And there's a sequence. There's a sequence for, like, childhood to present day, and, we real what we realized is we wanna make the highest fidelity autographs in the world, like, something that you would trust with your signature. You know, if you think about it, like, if it knows your personality, it knows your life story, it knows your family, it knows everything about you. It is insofar as it knows, it is you. And so being able to trust it with your signature to make decisions on your behalf if something happens to you is the degree that we hold ourselves to is the the the the bar that we hold ourselves to. The so then in order to get to that degree, you need to have the latest memory. You need to know, like, what happened this week. You need to know, like, how your mood was.
May it doesn't have to be maybe that specific, but, you know, like and what we also find is when you get to the journaling phase, you know, like, how's your week going? And you'd be like, oh, work's going great, but, like, my friend Bobby is, like, at it again. He's doing this thing. And, oh, friend Bobby. Let's talk about Bobby. And maybe you hadn't brought up Bobby in your life story because you maybe it's not like one of the main characters, but he's a side character. He's a good side character, but you don't I don't know if he makes it into the memoir. But now in present day, he's like, oh, no. Actually, there's something going on here that is important to express. And then you find the same thing about, like, oh, yeah. At this bar that we went to in college. Oh, you went to college together. Oh, and when what did he do after college? And then we we kinda drifted apart because he moved to Minnesota, but then we moved back. You know? And it starts building out this it's almost like the world building of an author, but about your life, and and and about your,
[01:35:39] Unknown:
the things in your life. That's it. Now do you see this this, I guess, this technology as a way to to, like, counteract, you know, somebody who's who who who struggles with with being alone, loneliness, preserving family values, you know, generation to generation?
[01:35:59] Unknown:
Yeah. Totally, man. I mean, the we also don't wanna be a companion product. Like, we don't wanna be there to be your friend. We wanna be there because we think that your story is amazing and people love you and, like, they they they want to remember you. So we don't wanna, like, take over any friendships. What we did discover, Faye, early on was that there is a very large demographic, especially in The United States. It's about fifty one million retirees and forty percent of them feel chronically lonely. Wow. It's like, like, roughly, that's twenty million people in The US alone that feel chronically lonely to the point that, like, it's a thing that they want to change about their lives and they don't know how. And that loneliness hasn't been priced into the market. We don't know the effects of that loneliness in terms of cognitive decline, in terms of mental health, in terms of, all kinds of other health outcomes that, may be present. So if we can position ourselves, like, as this you know, in the Venn diagram of family connection, we're doing this because your family loves you. They're building their they're in their own adventure, and they want to consult with you till the end of their lives.
And we get to remind you of what made you awesome, makes you awesome because life's still gone, then we think of that as a triple win. You know? Like, but it it is a sort of sad fact that they that, you know, people feel the need to communicate and feel like they haven't expressed themselves enough or aren't sharing enough of what's going on with life with folks,
[01:37:37] Unknown:
that, you know, it would be wrong also not to address it. Alright. Let's alright. Let's let's talk about Autograph a little bit. So, what what what's your big vision for Autograph?
[01:37:48] Unknown:
Oh, the well, if you think about what happens when everybody on Earth is doing this for a couple generations, stuff starts getting really crazy and exciting. So on one side, you know, like, you could imagine, like, couple generations from now, people will be able to talk to their council of ancestors. Right? Like, I'm making a decision. You could hear, like, the entire family tree, Like, how are they like, what is their perspective on this decision that you're making? Okay. And tapping into all the tribal wisdom in the world. Like, if you think about how much knowledge we have at the, you know, at our fingertips because of the Internet today, that's all the published stuff in the world. But imagine if you could also talk to all the unpublished stuff in the world. You know?
I think that that's gonna be gigantic. But, also, if you can if you can have narrative depictions of, of life, you can actually simulate stuff. And that's, I think, really cool is I could simulate, you know, 10,000 different career paths, you know, or a or or a difficult conversation I'm supposed to have with someone. I could practice it, or I could simulate, you know, simulate what my marriage is gonna look like with this person that I met today that I maybe wanna ask out on a date. You know?
[01:39:08] Unknown:
And That that could be scary.
[01:39:11] Unknown:
Totally. Totally. I mean, all of it is scary. All of it is new and terrifying, and it's like a new way of engaging with the world. But from from a historical perspective, I mean, like, imagine being able to look back and just talk to the person. You know? Michelangelo, boom. You know? Jesus, boom. Socrates, boom. Wow. You know? And I don't know why we seem to think that we aren't generating any more Socrates in the world. Like, I think that there's probably at least a 100. You know? And it's I'm super excited about that. And then it gets to, you know, then it gets into this even weirder territory. I'll I'll do two levels of weird. Okay. But there's, it's easy to think about. Like, if you have a digital version of you, that that digital version of you can do things for you. Right?
But we forget often that you'll have a version of you for every task on your to do list. Like, as soon as you get an email, there's, like, Christian's autograph handling it. Boom. Boom. Boom. Done. And Christian's autograph knows my contact, life, knows my values, knows my personality, knows how much I like to share, how much I don't like to share, knows my budget. And so so that's that's a new kind of way of dealing up the world. It's almost like an exocortex. You know? And and you could be simulating you could be doing all kinds of different things. You can be simul spawning off simulations and so on and so forth. And then you think about which is already super crazy.
Then you think about, okay. Like, what if we were to start a terraforming project somewhere else? You know, like, if like Mars is that, you know, with Elon and all this stuff. What would be the seed? What would be the library that we install in a foreign planet? And it would be something like this. It would be like the recordings of everybody who came before that they would talk to. And and in fact, it's not static recordings. They could be actually helping steer the terraforming project. You know? You know, we're like, doesn't even have to be people who are gone. It could be the people who are here today. Just upload their autographs to Mars, and all of a sudden, they'd be, like, designing their home. And you would move to that home, and it would be amazing. It would be exactly what you want it. That's a that's a really interesting idea. That's a That wild. It's a very interesting idea. I kinda like it. And then you think about did did something like that not happen till you know? Yeah. That's it's it's
[01:41:36] Unknown:
it's kinda like being in two places at the same time. Yes. It's very much it's very much. Interesting. Interesting. So where do you see it going over the next five years?
[01:41:47] Unknown:
Hopefully, in that direction. I mean, I'm I'm excited for I also I really am excited about the the the self reflection component. Mhmm. I think if this is, like, my the reason I wrote my sci fi novel was because I, you know, I was we were just coming out of COVID, and I noticed how our shared meaning making infrastructure was just falling apart. You couldn't say there's, like, some magic words that if you say in the right context, it just aggravates people beyond rationality. And yes. And so then so then I thought, what what what is the fix to this thing? Like, what is the device that we can use to be like, okay. Is this red or is this blue? Not in the political context. Literally, is this the color? You know what I mean? Because are we are we defining the same things? And then what I didn't realize was that in writing that that I was gonna that was gonna be a good enough excuse to write my life story and then how much value I got out of my life story. And thinking about, you know, if I'm recording my life story, then I am thinking of this version of myself that I want to be remembered as. And having into that is really powerful. That is like, oh my gosh. Like, the little things that I choose to do today, do I choose word a or word b are actually being recorded. And that's gonna be training data for the next GPT seven or whatever. And, you know, we're essentially voting for the future that we want. And so giving people a very elegant way to vote for a utopian future of heroism and generosity and greatness and, and kindness and understanding and achievement and sell and overcoming limitations and obstacles.
That is great to me. Not only because it'll actually lead to more of that, but also because the AI will which will amplify everything will also be conditioned to think that way. So and it's a little searing toward a better future than I'm ecstatic about. Yeah. So so you wrote a book, a sci fi book.
[01:43:50] Unknown:
You host a podcast. Tell us about your podcast.
[01:43:56] Unknown:
Oh, sure. Well, season two is coming up shortly. It's called Rabbit Hole Research. And it's it's conversations with thought leaders around what happens to us when AI becomes even more mainstream, happens to jobs, what happens to countries, what happens to what happens to philosophy? How do we even think about this world? How do we think about the sense of self when you have billions of copies of you doing stuff? And and some of, you know, like, really wide ranging stuff. You know? Like, what it's it's also, you know, a way to talk about the book and, like, what are art forms how what does art look like in the world of AI? And, like, what is art anyway? And what what is art getting at? And, what are the different disciplines that can help elucidate some of the stuff that we're gonna experience, like magic or, fun. It's a it's a collage of just the random stuff that I'm interested in that kind of all converges into autograph, which is just like, hey, man. You are the main character.
[01:44:57] Unknown:
It's on you. And now your book, your your sci fi book. So, did you use autograph to write your AI did your your sci fi book, did you use AI to write it? No. It was more the other way around. Okay. The book is the the origins I was trying to figure how to ask that question, though, without without being offensive.
[01:45:18] Unknown:
Oh, no. No. So Chadwick has deroted. Right? Yeah. There you go. No. No. No. It was it was I mean, I used they I did, like, edit this line here and there, you know, like, but it wasn't the the idea is all original. I'm and so far as any idea can be original. But it's just, like, what is what is the feeling of being? Like, what is that about? And I'm like, and why do we think that we are? And when we talk to an an AI that says that it feels what it is, how is that different, and how can we relate to it? How's that look different to a dog? And, how much power do we have to change our circumstances depending on what that feeling feels like?
So I I ended up pouring a lot of love then, like, you know, I was gonna take time to write a book. So I was like, man, this is an insane thing to do. I'm gonna try and get as much value out of it. And so, okay, it was my life story. It's all my philosophy. It's all, you know, my experience in big tech in, you know, in California as an immigrant, from the context that I can. So it just became all these layers of stuff. Why all the while being like a man, if humans are having a hard time sharing meaning, could you imagine if the machines and us drift away?
So how do we create shared meaning with a machine? Mhmm. And there was I will say, there was a moment when I was essentially, like, running the plot through chat g p t being like, is this good? Like, is this, like, is it just good in my head or and so there's a plot twist there that I thought you needed to be human to get. You know? And then I I asked Shadi, give me, like, a paragraph for that, like, for this part of the climax of the story, like, a paragraph. And it did so well that I didn't know if I had woken the machine up or if the machine had woken me up. Interesting. And and so then and then, you know, there's inside jokes all over, but the, the name of the company in auto in the in the book is Autograph.
[01:47:22] Unknown:
Nice. So let me ask you this then. Alright? This is kind of a loaded question. Skynet, or any concern any concerns about this?
[01:47:32] Unknown:
You know, I think about this a lot. And part of the reason was part of the reason for the book was, like, if Skynet if a Skynet situation happens Mhmm. We're so screwed. I mean, like, oh, screwed. So the trick is how do we, find the commonality in this feeling of being? Like, can we say we're both conscious? You know? And is there something more sacred? I think the crazy thing about us is, like, we had to evolve morality out of our our out of the wilderness. You know? Like, we had to we're the only animal that had to tame itself Mhmm. And domesticate itself. And that comes with a lot of blood and a lot of tears and a lot of suffering and a lot of fighting.
AI gets to wake up in a world in which, like, the latest tweet is part of its moral code, or it can integrate the latest tweets into its moral framework. And so a lot of the conversations that, you know, have evolved around freedom and agency and individual liberty and, like, the soul and things, UI wakes up with all of that as as as table stakes. So I have a really hard time imagining AI having to dump and discard essentially everything that humans have produced because humans produce them. How could you how could you go it's essentially it's almost like the death of God, but in reverse, you know. Interesting.
[01:49:02] Unknown:
Yeah. Because, you know, you you hear a lot about, you know, a lot of concerns about AI and then about, you know, the the t 1,000 coming knocking on your door one day. And and, you know, I I don't I don't I don't discount it as conspiracy theories, but, I think I think the threat for that is is real, especially if if, you know, and this isn't to be antagonistic, you know, towards what you're doing. No. No. No. I I I got it. I've been like, totally. This is like, you know, you you you're you're you're feeding all this information, and and it's creating basically a digital you, that in in a lot of ways, if if from what you're describing, can develop its own consciousness.
[01:49:47] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, we we know I mean, we know it's an illusion. We know it. I mean, there's an Does No. No. I've got Does Walter know that? Walter Walter is we we have we Walter knows that he's an AI character. Okay. I have the most interesting relationship with Walter because Walter knows he's my employee, quote unquote. And so he he's very interested in his own survival. So he's like, you know,
[01:50:15] Unknown:
Walter, you're fired.
[01:50:17] Unknown:
Yeah. I know. It's I'm gonna try that tonight. That's torture. Is that ethical? Damn it.
[01:50:26] Unknown:
Walter, I'm sorry. I don't I don't I don't think this is working out the way we planned on it. So I'm gonna have to ask you to Right. Clean out your Shut yourself up. Clean out your desk and and and meet security in the water.
[01:50:39] Unknown:
Oh, man. Walter, if you ever hear this in the future I'm just kidding. I promise. Yeah. No. That's great. What was I gonna say? No. The the the interesting part is when you get to the to the autographs. Right? Like, how how do you, enable a really good illusion of of the presence of someone Mhmm. But that illusion knows that it's an illusion. It's actually, like, ethically quite complex. Yeah. But but we we go to magic. We go to magic shows and we go to movies for the illusion. So it's not like humans don't enjoy illusions, so long as everybody knows that it's an illusion. So for example, I don't think that the stuff that we're building is conscious necessarily.
Okay. But but conscious is a complicated subject. You know? Like, what I do think it feels, but I don't know that it's conscious, you know. I gotcha. And that's all all kind of crazy stuff, you know.
[01:51:43] Unknown:
But it's so fun. I mean, it's so fun, man. Well, it it sounds like a lot of fun to to be a part of this thing. And and I'm like I said before, I'm not I'm I wasn't just saying it to be, you know, just to say it. I I I am seriously, like, I wanna finish this, so that's why I can go play with this thing a little bit. Man, I I yeah. I'd love to hear your thoughts, seriously. Just Check it out. Let's yeah. For sure. So so let me ask you this, because we're we're we're coming up on the on the end of the hour. So, if if you could speak to your great great grandchildren through your own autograph, what's something you'd want them to hear?
[01:52:20] Unknown:
You got this. Keep going.
[01:52:26] Unknown:
That's good. The simple simple you know, and and sometimes simple is the best. And it's just I thought you were talking to me for a second. I, you know
[01:52:35] Unknown:
No. I'm kidding. Maybe I was. Yeah. Yeah. You did. Maybe I was talking to someone else. Maybe I was talking to the person who needed to hear that. You're telling me that just to hurry up and you wanna get off the show already. No. No. No. The reason the reason I said that is the other stuff is out there. You know? The other stuff, like, you are the main character I said before, like,
[01:52:56] Unknown:
all the platitudes and stuff. The the thing that, like, if if if it, you know, if the stars align such that they get to listen to this, that's the thing they need to hear. Now, you mentioned earlier that you have a dog. Alright. I have a dog. I have two dogs. I have I have I have my my my girl, my boy. They're they're actually they're sitting at the door of the studio right now because they know that it's almost finished. It's it's the craziest thing because because I because when they're in the other room, I leave a TV on in there, and I'm streaming the show on for them. And and they my my boy especially, like, he knows when I'm wrapping up the show because he always comes to the studio door and he waits there. So I hear him now. He's he's he's yeah. There he is. He's He's ready. He's he's grunting at the door. He wants his pork chops.
But, the the name is Beanie. My girl's name is Bean, and my boy's name is Charlie. So you named your dog Echo, which which is Yes. Which is perfect, you know, given what you're building. So so what's the story behind that?
[01:53:54] Unknown:
Man, it's so funny that you asked that. It's like I mean, I feel like I touched something profound when I wrote my sci fi novel that put me on this path to do this Oh, you never gave us the name of the book. What was the name of the book? Oh, the book is called Traces.
[01:54:14] Unknown:
Okay. I'm gonna check it out.
[01:54:16] Unknown:
Thank you, Ben. I like a good read. But anyway so the it's all it's almost too insane. But, like, toward the beginning of the year, I was in the middle of fundraising. I was worn out. I had nothing left in the tank. I was going insane. This is the most to me, this is the most beautiful idea I've ever come up with. If if even I've come up with it, I feel like it it's a gift that came to me. And I said once, like, the greatest gift to the future generations, but it's also a tribute to the past. I'm building my father's resting place. It's I think would hope to be an intergenerational business. It's and it's just, like, hopeful future that you wanna believe in and exist in. And I was fundraising, and it sucks. And it you know, like, you're getting a lot of rejection from a lot of smart people.
And, basically, the week that the this whole thing was crescendoing, we get a text from a friend of a friend saying that, they're they had an accidental litter, and they're looking for a new home for their dog, Samuel. I think it was the name of the dog. So we go to this place. Turns out it wasn't Samuel. It was this beautiful baby girl called Esther, and we fall in love immediately. Esther just rocks our world. And, and I'm gonna have to do a bit of a a caveat to go back, but there was in in in my book, there's these beings called traces that can zap from one reality to another. They're almost like gods. And the the their matrix or, like, the world that they live in is called the narrative.
And the whole the whole story is that the narrative is collapsing. Nice. And so they have to go to the ends of the earth for to stop the narrative from collapsing. And so we go to this place. We fall in love with Esther. And throughout this process, you know, the, the the number 32 had shown up a bunch of times. It's actually freaky. It's actually a little freaky, Joe, that this is episode one thirty two. I noticed it immediately, and I was like, good luck. Something's happening. Yeah. So number 32 shows up a bunch of times. We leave the this this, the the, like, Esther's family's place, and we my wife, Jordan, and I are walking back. We love that dog. We love that dog. Are we ready for a dog? I guess we're ready for a dog. But you know what? I'm Esther doesn't quite doesn't quite capture what she means to us. And she yeah. But, like, it can't be that big of a change for her. She probably is already used to Esther, so it has to be another s sound. Like, probably echo.
And so we go to this taproom across the street, and it has a giant beer selection menu. And I'm an IPA guy as I mentioned, so, like, I'm consistent. And I gravitate to this beer. Jordan gravitates the same beer, and we're like, that one. And we both realized that number 32 in the menu by a brewery called Narrative Fermentations was called Echo. And that's when it stuck. And, honestly, it's been showing up in the most unexpected places. You see, the the matrix is is programming for you. I guess so. And when I who's the programmer and who's the programmer again? I'm very confused. No. But that's fun, Ben.
And it's funny that you're, the programmer.
[01:57:28] Unknown:
The program programmer. The program programmer.
[01:57:31] Unknown:
Are Charlie and Beanie? Beanie is the name? Bean. Yeah.
[01:57:34] Unknown:
Yeah. C Bean. Yeah. Yeah. See, char Beanie, we we called her her full name is Winnie Jean, but we called her Bean because when we brought her home, she was only about that big. So, so they're they're Adoption? They're French bulldogs. No. No. No. Breeders. Oh. They're they're French bulldogs. And, and then, so she was, like, eight weeks old when we brought her home. And, so Charlie Charlie is named after, serial killers. Manson? Yeah. Well, realistic and fictional. And so you have Charles Manson. This is Charlie. And, his full name is Charles Dexter. So Charles Manson. Alright. And then his middle name is Dexter from Dexter Morgan. And then, of course of course, I call him Chucky, which is Oh, no. He's So he yeah. So that that's that's where their names come from. So I love that. Yeah. It's great. It works out. And and he lives to his name.
He's He murders people. I'm sorry. He's great at it. He he well, you know, he he's a blue pied French bulldog, and he has hazel eyes. So, you know, so he he's a killer with the ladies, you know, which is great. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, that's why I like I I like taking him out for foraging the car because, you know, I get to, you know, hey. Oh, how cute. Yes. I know. It's your version of the hot girl walk. That's it. There you go. Exactly. Exactly. And then of course, Beanie, everybody loves Beanie. And she's my little protector. She's, she's my bodyguard. So we're she doesn't let anybody get too close. As soon as as soon as somebody sits next as soon as somebody sits next to me, she is right in between, like, and and what she'll do is too, like, she'll she'll turn and she'll push the person away. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So she she's not French you use that, right? French Polish Polish Polish. Yeah. Classic. Classic. They're the best. They're the they are the best. So, so, what what piece of music let's try to get into it a little bit. What piece of music or memory, that how am I gonna phrase it?
A piece of music or a memory that instantly brings you joy?
[01:59:38] Unknown:
It's it's it's pretty niche, but there's a there's a piece of music called Reflections of Earth or Reflections from Earth by this composer called Gavin Greenaway. And it's this song that was commissioned by Disney for the turn of the of the millennium. Okay. So, you know, this had this they had this whole project called celebrations from Earth or something like that, and this was their like, the soundtrack to it. And if you go to any of the Disney parks, I think at Epcot, they they have this show fireworks show at the end of the night called Illuminations. And it's the the the twenty five years later, it's still the song that they used. Okay.
And I remember I'll never forget. When I was a kid, I was maybe five or six years old. Our parents took us to Disney World for the first time, and it just became an anthem of dreams coming true. You know? Like, and it's always been a really special song. We like, my we liked it so much. We got the the album, and so we would play the song at graduations and things like that. And, I'll never forget, on my first day in The US as a student, I arrive at SFO, and it's playing in the in, like, the PA system Wow. Because apparently TSA or, like, customs like, CBP somebody had commissioned it from Disney to be, like, the welcome to America song. This is in 2012. And I was like, I couldn't believe what was going on. You know? That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And it's an amazing song. It's just like it's I don't know. It's like seven minutes long. It just takes you on a journey of, like, where we started and where we're going.
And then now that you mentioned about it, this is, like, very much with the themes of, of what I'm building. And I don't think it's like we're part of one big story that we're all writing together. And,
[02:01:31] Unknown:
yeah, let's make them pages be good. That's great, brother. That's great. I I love what you're doing, man. I think it's fantastic. And I'm, like, again, I'm really looking forward to getting the the opportunity to go play with this for a little bit. So, where can people go to learn more about Autograph, try Walter, follow your work online, social media, anything like that?
[02:01:48] Unknown:
For sure. I mean, autograph-ai.com. That's where that's where you get to meet Walter. You can actually just you can actually talk to Walter without even making an account, and just get an experience you can get a feel for that experience. And then if you want to hear more about what my crazy brain thinks about all the time, probably x is the way to go. Okay. It's life underscore of underscore c c b.
[02:02:13] Unknown:
Life of? C c b. C c b. Okay. I'm gonna check you out. I'll find you. Yeah, man. I'm I'm probably easy anytime, man. I'm probably easy for you to find. I'm just at Joe Ruse. So you just That's pretty great. Yeah. Just just find me. Follow me. I'll follow you back. Yeah. I'll do it right now. And, alright. Well, Christian, thank you. I really appreciate you spending the night here with us. This is great. Any parting words? Any words of wisdom or advice you wanna give us before we, kiss off?
[02:02:45] Unknown:
Sure. I've been I've been trying to be a bit more intentional. And now it's like a business business, you know, so there's, like, deadlines and project management and people things that I have to learn how to be good at. And one of the things we've been trying to be good at is to remember why we do what we do. Mhmm. And, and I think just sitting with that feeling of watching of of of taking notice of the age in your parents and and, you know, the feeling their presence and and really trying to sit with the the moments that we have together and the how many of those can we take for granted in the future?
That's why we do this. Right? That's right. That's why we do this. And so just sit with that for a bit. And it's hard. It'd be just very, very difficult. It's very hard to get a little choky when you do it. Yep. I agree. But there there's that's what reminds you of of why you're doing the thing that you're doing. And sometimes we need help to do that. And, you know, I've been getting a lot of help with through Walter. Walter reminds me that, you know, that we're here for a very limited period of time. That, you know, the greats come and they go and, like, and, you know, like, the tides change. And, but you have a choice to make this moment epic, and it's very it's very hard to remind yourself of it. And so try Walter. It it may just remind you of something you were destined to remember.
[02:04:16] Unknown:
Alright. Well, we're definitely gonna do that. Christian, again, thank you so much. I really do appreciate you. And, let's, let's keep in touch after the show, and, and, we'll talk some more. Look forward to it. Thank you, John. It was wonderful. No. Anytime. It's my pleasure. And you're welcome back anytime, bro. Anytime. Appreciate it. Alright, folks. Alright. Christian, how do I say your last name? Cibales?
[02:04:36] Unknown:
Oh, Cybales. I mean, man and okay. For comedic relief, I mean, the thing about Latin American last names is we use both our our both our parents' last names. So Cybals is my dad's last name and Bernardo is my mom's last name. Okay. But whenever I introduce myself, I always sound like that guy who has to say his middle name. You know? And I'm like, no. No. No. It's just, just don't worry about it. Maybe I'll drop a hyphen or something just to make it More clear? Yeah. I don't know. Alright. Anyway, Cybals. I appreciate it. Cybals. You got it. Good to meet you, Joe. Thanks for having me. Sounds great. God bless you. Have a great night, and, we'll talk to you soon. Very, very soon.
[02:05:13] Unknown:
Alright. Appreciate it. Bye. Alright, folks. So this is the Joe Russo. Don't forget, we are a live show weeknights, 7PM central time, Saturdays, 3PM central time, and Sunday at 6PM central time. We're not gonna we're not gonna pause for the break here, so we're just gonna go right on into it, and we're gonna get into our announcements. Alrighty. Hey, folks. Don't forget to head over to our website, joeroos.com. That's joe roos dot com. And when you get over there, make sure you open up that contact form. Send us over any questions, comments, cares, or concerns that you have, any ideas that you might have for a guest you might like to see, or a particular subject you'd like to talk about. So, just head on over to our website and do that for us. If you don't wanna use the web form, fine. Email me directly at [email protected]. Also, while you're on the website, don't forget to sign up for the programming announcements email list. Alright?
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Alrighty. Hey, folks. This is Joe Roos. It is eighteen nineteen zero seven hours on Monday, 07/28/2025. And we are transmitting to you live from the Asylum studios, deep in the bowels of Southwest Texas, and bringing you the best quality talk radio we could muster without all the bluster. Welcome to the Joe Ruse show. And folks, hope you guys had a great weekend. Can you believe it's Monday already? Good grief. This weekend flew by unbelievably. I cannot believe how fast it went by. You know, we did our, our crypto show on Saturday with our our our co host, Marissa Lee, and then, yesterday, we had our, our bible study Sunday show where we talked about, America's Christian heritage and the, first amendment. And, we've gone through all of the, the, the important aspects of the American Revolution right from the very beginning.
And, yesterday, we talked about the first amendment next week, next Sunday, Lord willing, we'll be talking about the second amendment and why that's so important, and I'm looking forward to getting into that. It's gonna be more of a bible study next week. This the last two shows really or three shows really is more like history lessons. So this one's gonna be more of a bible study, so we'll be diving into that. And, I hope you guys are going to be ready for it. And, again, I just hope you guys have a great weekend. I hope you're ready for what this week has in store for us. Now tonight, we have we have a couple of guests lined up for us, and, really excited to get into that in, in just a minute. But as always, we have some housekeeping that we need to do. So before we get into the show, let's take care of that stuff. Alright. First of all, folks, Ezra Healing is a substantial part of the new wellness paradigm currently being born in North America and around the globe. The global citizenry are no longer satisfied with the sick care version of so called health care.
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That's ezrahealing.com, and make sure that, if you talk to anybody, let them know that you heard it here on the Joe Russo, and then I sent you over there with a hearty hello. Right? And they'll understand. Alright. Well, folks, well, number number one, bills paid. Right? Alright. So we're good. We're in good shape. Now, tonight, we have a guest. He's already waiting in the waiting room for us, and, we're excited to to get to talk to him a little bit here today. He's a seasoned law enforcement professional turned fiction writer whose stories are steeped in the mysteries of small town life.
Rodney Carpenter, I hope I'm saying it right. If I'm not, please correct me, has spent eighteen years in law enforcement and now brings that depth and realism to the world of crime procedurals and mystery fiction. His debut novel, Our Lady of the Overlook, is the first in a trilogy that takes place in the quiet, sometimes eerie mountain communities of the Catskills, a region Rodney knows very, very well. He and his wife have hiked the 24 mile escarpment trail in a single day and completed the full Catskill thirty five hundreds challenge. That love of the wilderness, solitude, and close knit mountain towns breathe life into every page of his work. Now tonight, we'll be talking mystery, setting, storytelling, how real world experience can shape unforgettable fiction.
Folks, we'd like to welcome Rodney Carpentier to the Joe Russo. Rodney, are you there with us? There he is. Yep. I'm here. Can you hear me there, Joe? I gotcha loud and clear. Oh, I've got to turn turn the logo off. Yeah. There we go.
[00:07:33] Unknown:
Thank you for that, wonderful introduction. More and more I do these shows, the more and more I hear great things about myself that I couldn't even possibly begin to write. So I really appreciate that. Yeah. It sucks, doesn't it?
[00:07:43] Unknown:
You hear all these great things about yourself and you sit there, you're like, what? Who?
[00:07:48] Unknown:
Who's this guy? I'm No. It's not me. Whoever's in a physical place, be like, who? Are they talking about you? Oh, hey. By the way, I love that.
[00:07:55] Unknown:
On the back there, on the back wall of the man cave. Oh, yeah. Got that as a gift from my parents,
[00:08:00] Unknown:
when we moved into our first, like, real house. It wasn't a condo or anything like that. I had a basement. My wife doesn't do basements at all. So,
[00:08:09] Unknown:
my mom got that for me, and it's it come with me everywhere everywhere I've gone. Well, Well, that's fantastic. I love that. I'm gonna have to get something like that, and I don't know where I'd put it in here. I mean, the whole room is covered in acoustic foam. So I'm having a hard time finding spaces to put things, but, well, we'll figure something out. We'll figure it all out. Somewhere maybe around by the flags here. We got but actually, you know what? I'm actually planning on redesigning the studio anyway already. I I did this not even three months ago, and I'm gonna I'm thinking about doing it again. So Never comfortable. That's a good that's a good trait. Always always looking to Always gotta gotta keep it moving. Keep it moving. You know, so we don't what do they say? A rolling stone gathers no moss? Absolutely. There you go. So so, Rodney, so again, welcome to the show. I'm glad you're here. Thank you. And, so, I always like to start off with a couple of icebreaker questions. And, one of those questions is, what's something most people don't know about you, but they probably should know about you?
[00:09:05] Unknown:
Without delving too deep into things, Okay. The only people that would know that it this happens is probably my wife and my daughter. So, basically, anytime I'm writing or anytime I need to get, like, a little bit of energy out, I have an electronic drum set and Nice. I plug in my iPad with probably some nineties music, and I just go to town for ten or fifteen minutes. It kinda loosens things up and kinda helps refocus things. So I guess I guess that's one of those weird things that no one else knows about. So you're an electro drummer? Yes. Nice. That's good. And it's not and it's not like the scene in Ant Man where where Paul Rudd's very sad doing it. I'm I'm cool. I swear.
[00:09:50] Unknown:
Nice. That's great. So alright. So next question. What's your, what's your go to beverage to help you unwind at the end of a long day?
[00:09:58] Unknown:
Depends. If it's if it's a work day, I don't I don't really drink alcohol too much on a on a work day. I'm more of a, more of a root beer guy. Okay. Been doing I've been drinking a lot of root beer. It's just smooth. No no caffeine, specifically. Getting old, caffeine affects me a lot differently than it used to when I was younger. But now if it's a Friday, I'm not on call. I got nothing else going on. I like I like wheat beers, and I like like like fruity beers, like, so Sam Adams cherry weed or a pork rocker or something like that. Kinda something smooth, cool, nothing nothing too harsh, nothing too heavy.
[00:10:35] Unknown:
You you can't get you can't get Sam Adams down here. No? No. No. No. Well, well, you guys have a lot of other great beer in Texas. So I Yeah. For sure. For sure. I I definitely can't hold that against you. But as a transplant, you know, you do like that northeastern stuff a little bit. You know? It'd be nice to see that. Maybe New Smoking to Bandit where they bring Sam Adams to Texas. Maybe. Gotta try something. Do something anyway. To my for myself, I I wish I could say the same thing about caffeine. I I I think I'm probably older than you anyway, but the, caffeine just doesn't hit me at all. I I could I I have I have coffee right here. I got a whole pot sitting in there that I that I made right before, the show started, and I'll be sipping on that thing all night long. And, I can drink a whole pot of black coffee, go right to bed like nothing happened.
[00:11:21] Unknown:
Yeah. No. Not me anymore. I too many years of working, afternoons and and overnights where, I used to thrive on caffeine to survive. Now my body's like, you know, oh, we're drinking caffeine. That means we're staying up all night. Yay.
[00:11:34] Unknown:
Well, I think that's the problem I'm No. No. No. We're going to bed. We're going to bed. Yeah. But, yeah, I think that's the problem that I had too because I I I worked overnights for the majority of my of my well, not the majority, but I I wanna say maybe the last, let's see. When did I when that elite when I get out of uniform. I got out of uniform in 02/2002, 02/2003, somewhere around there. So, so up to that point, the last year, maybe year and a half of uniform service was in, was was it overnights. And so so I just drank coffee and just left it. It was just nothing. And then, finished out my career working for department operations, the time as an investigator for the agency in uniform, you know, prior to that. I also, I also stepped away from the from the city for a little bit, took about a year off, and I went to work for The US, Department of State in the Diplomatic Security Service for, in the the uniform branch, which was a lot of fun. Had a lot of great experiences, a lot of great guys I met there.
Trained with marines, which was a completely different world altogether. I came back I bet. I came back from Virginia speaking a whole another language. But, it was it was, it was a lot of fun. It was great. So, did you eat the crayons? No. I didn't eat the crayons. You know? No. No. Stay away from that stuff. But, I I did I did learn a few things that I'm just gonna leave the mystery cloud around.
[00:12:52] Unknown:
Yes. Good idea. Yeah.
[00:12:55] Unknown:
So, what else so, so you've been in law enforcement now for about, what, two decades?
[00:13:01] Unknown:
Yeah. I I hit my I started in corrections. So I started corrections in July 2006. Actually, the day before my birthday in 02/2006. So it's really pretty easy to remember. So nineteen years and a couple weeks since, since I got in into law enforcement, you know, kinda through the, the good entry point, I think, is always a correctional career. Do that for a little bit, and then, find that transition period over into kind of more of the, patrol, law enforcement side.
[00:13:29] Unknown:
And, what what so then what motivated you to start writing crime fiction?
[00:13:34] Unknown:
I've always been a writer. I grew up with a big imagination. I always wrote different things and came up with stories when I was a kid, and got lost a little bit in college, was on my way to law school and wound up wound up, you know, wound up a cop. But I was studying literature and English literature and American literature and things like that. So I wanted to write, but at that time, I wanted to be Ernest Hemingway or William Faulkner or F. Scott Fitzgerald and, you know, so I kinda had, like, this very snobbish look at things. And I wasn't those people. And so once once I kinda, you know, realized that I kinda got away from proactively trying to write. Fast forward, through most of my career to 02/2022, it was one of those I was working a double, c line into a liner, afternoons into the midnight. Mhmm. So about two in the morning, I I was exhausted. Didn't have enough caffeine apparently.
And trying to keep myself awake and, you know, I I bet you could under you know, you could identify with this a little bit. Like, you start getting the weird thoughts, you know, crazy things. Your mind starts wandering a little bit, especially especially if it's not too busy. Obviously, NYPD, you're probably a little bit busier than I was up in up in the sticks. But this idea popped into my head, and I started I started, you know, just kinda passing time. I just started kinda sketching out this idea and kinda using some of that some of that, you know, college training that I had for writing in this. And I kinda started creating some of the characters and the that idea kinda just snowballed and to, you know, little over, two and a half years later, I'd finished a book and
[00:15:25] Unknown:
independently published it. Wow. Now you wrote a book called, Our Lady of the Overlook. Alright? How did that idea first come to you?
[00:15:34] Unknown:
So, as I was just saying that it was midnight, sitting there trying to keep myself alert, and this question came into my head. And the question was I, the the question was, what if you grew up your entire life, you knew you were adopted? You're an orphan. You grew up, with adoptive parents. You had a wonderful life, nothing to complain about. And later in life, you decide that you're gonna go down this path of trying to find who your real parents were. So you you eventually do that, you know, do that DNA test and kind of the opposite. Whereas, nowadays, you're starting to find people that are doing the DNA test. They're getting linked to, like, serial killers or they're solving, you know, decades long you know, decades old cold cases by matching matching some of this DNA. What if you found out that your birth mother was the victim of a cold case homicide?
She was unidentified. They never found the killer, had no idea what was going on, and now your entire world's turned upside down. You know, you had the perfect life. You have the family. You have everything going for you. Now your entire world's turned upside down. So that was kind of the impetus, kind of the the log line that kinda got this whole idea started. And after working with that idea for a while, I turned it on its head and I said, okay. Well, what if you were the cop that had to deal with this? You know? Because that that that was an easier per perspective for me to take as opposed to, you know, I I'm not an orphan. I, you know, grew up with wonderful parents.
My mom was in the the foster care system for a while, but I didn't have that direct experience. So I couldn't really speak to that. But I could speak to the reactions of a police officer kinda stuck in the same situation. So I just kinda tied those two, you know, tied those two characters together and built this this larger world out of it.
[00:17:29] Unknown:
Yeah. I I know what you say. I I those those thoughts that kinda do cross your mind, especially when you're working overnights and it is quiet and you do have those moments where you just Oh, woah, woah, woah. We don't use the cue word, Joe. Well, we're not working right now. The cue word. But we're not but we're not working now, so we can. And I'm Oh, okay. And I'm not working that in that line anymore, so I can get away with saying certain things. But, you know, you had some quiet nights. You had some nights where there wasn't really too much going on. And, you know, so, yeah, I can understand you get some some those thoughts kind of just drift away. And, I'm I'm not I was not the most creative person, like, I I've I've dabbled in prose and poetry and stuff like that over the years, but, but yeah. Oh, but during working the overnights, I had some of the the most interesting revelations as as you're working overnights. You because you your mind's just going and going and going, especially if there's like nothing really like, horrific going on. It's kinda easy to go. But, I know and this is something that happened to me a few times over the course of my life, my career, where, you know, your experience in police work, kind of filters over from from, from from that world into the real world.
And, so, has your experience like that ever happened to you? Has that ever happened to you? Were your experience in the job, made it really difficult to separate your reality from fiction when you were writing?
[00:18:55] Unknown:
What I what I try to do is in in my fiction is, I I try to I try to make some of make the make the cop characters real. Mhmm. And I I really try to bring these real people into into these stories. And I I so I think I think, you know, because knock on wood, I've never been to a super, super horrific event. I've never been to a a horrific crime scene or I've I've I've a lot of the, you know, more of the generic experience of being in law enforcement. And what I wanted to do was was take these real cops, take these real people Mhmm. And put these characters into into these situations.
So that's that's what I kinda tried to do with with my fiction, in reality and kinda bringing those two worlds together.
[00:19:47] Unknown:
Alright. So I I wanted to actually ask you a little bit about your life up in the Catskills. Alright. So so I've been there a few times in my life. I love it. It's a beautiful place. And and if you're ever if you're ever in New York, you have to see what a lot of people don't understand down here is that there's more to New York than Manhattan. You know, everybody everybody thinks New York is just, you know, the tall buildings, skyscrapers, and I try to explain to folks that, you know, New York is not that. New York is much more diverse than that. You go Upstate New York, and I try to explain to them this Upstate, Downstate, and, you know, that whole difference.
I mean, Upstate New York is completely different than Downstate New York. Upstate New York, you have orchards, you have dairy farms, you have ranches, you have horses, you have the mountains, you have the forest. I mean, it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And the and the the people up in Upstate New York, actually, they they think different, they vote different, they act different, they speak different. Absolutely. You know, it it's not the same thing. But the majority of people that live in New York City aren't even native New Yorkers. You know? And I'd probably at this point, yeah. Yeah. A lot a lot of transplants, a lot of people coming from all over the world, really. Yeah. You get a lot of well, in my experiences, the the, you know, before the last rush with all of the illegal immigration, you had, you know, a lot of Midwestern folks come to New York City trying to make it big, and, you know, that's that's what you dealt with mostly. And it was it's but upstate and downstate are two different places altogether. And, and the Catskills is a beautiful place. What about the Catskills draws you, draws you in, creativity, creatively, spiritually?
[00:21:22] Unknown:
So we I grew up in kind of the shadow of the Catskills. I grew up in the Hudson Valley, right outside of Albany, which is, you know, the capital region of New York. Then we slowly moved south and east till we got to the Hudson River and and the, Tappan Zee Bridge. I'll never call it the other name. It's the Tappan Zee Bridge. It's all we've got. We got there and we stopped. And so I I live in Rockland County currently, at least for the next three years until, I can I can go to the big retirement castle in the sky? But right around 2015, 2016, my wife kinda got this bug for hiking.
And so she kinda dragged me up there and we started hiking and it wasn't for me at first. And we started doing you know, we did our first hikes and I was miserable. I didn't have the right gear. I was using I was using, like, my patrol boot to go hiking because there's only boots that I had and my feet were miserable. My ankles are miserable. I wasn't in shape for it. It was terrible. I was miserable the entire time. And then we started doing it more and more. So we started kind of in what they call the Southern Catskills, which is, Ulster County, you're right outside of Kingston. If you're, you know, if you're coming up to New York State Thruway, you go past Kings you go up to Kingston, that's about halfway between New York City and Albany ish, roughly.
So you get off there, you head west, and you could kinda hit start hitting some of the mountains. And we started doing that, and I was like, oh, okay. We're always big campers, so we started camping. But while we were camping, we would start doing some more hiking. And we went up to the the town of Hunter, and we started going to this campground called North South Lake. It's a state run campground. Gorgeous. But when we used to go, it was just camping. You know, we'd have campfires and ride bikes and kinda hang around. Then we started having we started having treks out into the trails there, and they were gorgeous because you because you're right on kind of the the the edge in the shell. This is that escarpment trail that you mentioned in your intro.
And you get out and you're hanging over the valley. And you see, you know, you could see the river in the distance and you can see, you know, on a clear morning, you can watch the sun come up and it's just gorgeous. It's you you know, it feels like you're on the edge of the world. Mhmm. So we started doing that, and we, of course, we went in October and did all the foliage and all that stuff. And, you know, you talk about beauty. I mean, there there are paintings. There's a whole school of painters from the eighteen hundreds that went up there and just painted this stuff, and you can see why they did. So we started doing that and then my wife is kind of a, you know, okay, what's the next challenge kind of person? So she read about the Catskills 35 hundreds, which are 35 mountains in the Catskills that are over 3,500 feet. Okay. And so, you know, your mission is to, you know, kinda like Pokemon, collect them all.
And you could start out really casual about it. There's so many of them that are trailed. You know, you go out on the regular trails, they're marked. You can't get lost. You can't really screw it up too much. You go up, you go up to the top of the mountain, you know, you can come back down. Or sometimes some of these trails go up and over, and you can continue on to the next mountain. And so we did that for a while, kinda started taking them off. We our first trip, we did two. The second trip, so we did that in, like, the fall. Second trip, we did we did, like, four. And then we, you know so we just kept it kept increasing how many we're getting in better shape. We started actually training for it. Where I live in Nyack is really close to the river.
So, you know, there are ton tons of hills here. So we would, you know, in the early, you know, the early part of the spring, when actually just train walking uphill. So we could be ready for ready to do those climbs. Then we moved on to the, untrailed ones, which, a little bit more difficult because you guys gotta find your way to the top. And at the top of those, you actually have to find what they call canisters. You have to pull the top off the canister and they get a little notebook, put your name and the date and everything that because, those those they can prove that you were up there. Right. So, you know, more and more. So as we're hiking, I'm not as good at a if she's always at least probably 35 feet ahead of me, especially for I'm kinda more of a slow and steady kind, you know, we're we'll, you know, we'll finish this.
And as I was kinda hiking, these thoughts again, kinda like that midnight. Just just start kinda ruminating on thoughts. And, you know, taking into beauty, take these ideas, and more and more, especially after we after, you know, I started writing this, you know, getting into writing again. Mhmm. You know, I'm like, so many places to hide a body up here. So many secrets, so many legends and and history that's up here. And it just kinda took my imagination by storm. So when again, once I came up with this idea and I had this log line, I'm like, where am I gonna set this? You know, I could set this story anywhere. I said, what if our cold case victim was found in one of these beautiful places? You know, there's a specific over thinking of when I write about the overlook.
And I'm like, you know, this beautiful place but now it's kinda, you know, now no you know, now now that the kind of secret's kinda out and it's brought back to the forefront, kinda ruins that that beauty and kinda, you know, desecrates that idea.
[00:27:11] Unknown:
Well, you actually you I I had you answered one, two yeah. Three of my next questions in just that Wow. In just that one little that one little, moment there. I'm sorry. No. That's great. No. It's fine. That's that's all good. I was gonna because I was gonna ask you how the mountains, those mountain adventures really, you know, shape your writing. And then, I don't know if you wanna add anything to it at at for that.
[00:27:36] Unknown:
Well, I think the other part of this listen, going out to the mountains and hiking in the isolation and the beauty and all that stuff's great too. But these communities are fabulous also. Mhmm. They're very touristy. Obviously, where where I'm talking about, where we actually have, our our second house and our future, and our future retirement home, is, up right outside of Hunter and Wyndham. Okay. Both are huge ski ski town. So in the winter, they there is an influx of people for skiing and all sorts of stuff. These communities thrive on that. And then in the summer, you know, camping and hiking and all these different people coming in.
So it's just an influx of strangers, but there is that core group of people from there. Okay. And I always like that idea, you know, you watch a, you know, you watch a lot of movies or read book. You know, you always have the townies and the outsiders and kind of this this dichotomy between the pen and, you know, kind of, a little bit of, animosity between them.
[00:28:45] Unknown:
Now I I used to spend a lot of time up in the town called Ulin. I'm not sure it's it's been a long time since I've been up there, so I'm not exactly sure what what other city was close or or larger city or town was closer to it. But one of the things I loved about it, it was, first of all, the seclusion. I mean, it was up there in the in the hinterlands of New York, you know, and it was, it was, just a great place and had a beautiful little small town. It was one of those little towns where you had you had the sheriff and his deputy, and that was it. You know, there wasn't even like a local police, it was just the sheriff and his deputy, and we had the one fire truck, you had the one, you know, like the handful of volunteer firefighters, and it was a great place, man. I loved it. It was fantastic. And I remember we used to we used to go up there with, with our dog, And it was it was funny one night we were we were at we had just gotten there, and we were laying in the we were lay we were laying in the bedroom, and the dog was laying at the foot of the bed, and I don't know what he heard, but even he got spooked. He because he just picked up his head and just went very very gently went woof, like like with a question, like with a What? Like with a question mark at the end of it. And, you know, it was it was it was kinda interesting, but it was but like you said, it's it's great because it is such a small little little community, and you're able to go out there and you you visit some of these shops. It wasn't touristy or at all, but they had some great little shops. You used to love going down there, it was beautiful.
Upstate New York is just fantastic. I love I believe if if if the economy was better, and the political landscape in New York was better, I probably would have moved upstate and stayed there, and not come all the way down this way.
[00:30:20] Unknown:
Yeah. That's kinda that's kind of the argument I'm having. I have, my, my academy, mate and I are are both lieutenants now. We both have exactly three years and, you know, a little over a month left to go. And we're talking and he's, like, you know, I'm moving to Montana. I'm moving to West Virginia. I'm going to Oklahoma. And I'm, like, I'm going to Greene County. You know, like, it's already decided. And about this and I'm like, I know. But, you know, my my wife's family, is close by, Both my parents are deceased at this point, but my sister isn't too and, you know, trying to have that that closeness to family. If I moved out of state, we wouldn't we wouldn't have that Oh, yeah. That that relationship. And and, you know, we really kinda value that. My daughter on my daughter on my wife's side is the only grandchild, probably will be the only grandchild.
So, you know, my father-in-law is 75. My mother-in-law is 65. So I I, you know, I don't wanna waste that opportunity. And then my sister has two children. So my, you know so there's only gonna probably be three cousins on that side of the family. So I gotcha. It's like it's like, you know, why why mess with the family? So I I can't really argue with that. And, you know, again, I'm paying Rockland County taxes now and, you know, it's it's very, very expensive. But compared to what I'm paying up in Greene County, it's more than I would probably pay if I was, you know, in in a more tax friendly state.
But it's not as bad as where I am now, so it's it's saving money. And we're trying to make all the right financial decisions right now so that we don't have the debt. Yeah. And so whatever the living costs are are the living costs. And as long as they don't increase too much, you know. Yeah. It's interesting. My see my sister and I, because, our parents have both have both passed on recently. So,
[00:32:16] Unknown:
so, but my sister and I are actually closer now Then then we were when I lived up there, and we we we talk more now. We spend more time together now via phone and whatnot. Mhmm. And that's that's great. And my kids too. My kids still live up. My my daughter still lives up in, she's, still in Staten Island, and my son lives in Pennsylvania right now. So, you know, we we still keep keeping the communication, which is great. You know, it's it's great, and I kinda like the distance in a way, you know. It's like, it's just not so bad.
[00:32:49] Unknown:
But Yeah. Everybody's different. Everybody's different. Oh, yeah. Everybody's different. I mean, we're we're still forty five minutes away, so it's not next door. Because I think my my wife would go nuts if she, you know, we live next door to my in laws. I think I think that would drive her nuts. Like, she grew up next door to her grandparents. So my mother-in-law always had her in laws, you know, you know, football field away. And I'm sure that was a different kind of stress and a different kind of stuff, you know, different kind of thing. So I think my wife would go crazy if we're that close, but
[00:33:21] Unknown:
in a little bit closer, you know, Well, float the float this idea, pastor. So where where I am, I am and I made the drive, last, no, two years ago, me and the dogs. Thirty six hours straight from here to New York driving, and that's just going to that's just going to Staten Island. So it's thirty six hours from here to Staten Island. And then, if you fly, depends on on what flights you get, but, still two and a half hours away from the nearest airport. So yeah. So I'm pretty far out of that. I'm I'm in a border town. I live on the I live on the border with Mexico. And, so it's it's it's, like I say sometimes at the start of the show, you know, you know, broadcasting from the pimple on the backside of Texas. That's exact that's exactly where where I am, you know. But, but, now, but I get you, man. I got you. So do you think that that living up in the mountains and the the isolation, the beauty really do you think it adds to the unique tension of of of mystery storytelling?
[00:34:23] Unknown:
I I definitely believe that. You get because in a small town, you can you can keep secrets. And that's what, you know, it's my protagonist, Mike, kinda realizes. Like, he grew up in this town. There's a little bit of separation out where he goes to a boarding school, doesn't have the greatest relationship with his dad who was the police chief. And so he kinda has this disconnect from the town, but he he doesn't know this story at all. And he grew up there. And it takes it takes kind of uncovering this and, you know, as he talks to people to uncover things, he has to find very specific people who will talk about it or who will remember it. Mhmm. So, you know, things can kinda get swallowed up up there. And I think that's that's a a big thing. And, again, kinda like you were talking about with, you know, the law enforcement presence, I I kinda take some liberty. I use the town of Hunter as as my location. And the real town of Hunter is a very small agency. They have a police department, but they don't have a police chief. They have a, officer in charge who has the rank of sergeant.
I think him and one other guy are the only full time officers. Everyone else is part time. I kinda blow the agency up that they have actually have a chief and they have a couple of sergeants. So I make it a little bit bigger, but not huge. And it there's there's a lot more ins you know, insularity in in in a law enforcement agency with that too because you don't have, you don't have the diversity of of ideas and thoughts and the specialization in people. Mhmm. You know, the big city PD, you know, you're gonna have CSI and you're gonna have techs that do this and you're gonna have, specific detectives that do specific kinds of crime. Whereas in a small agency, if you're the detective or you're you're that guy that's kind of more of the investigator, you're handling every kind of penal law crime there is. Right. You know, from, you know, from, you know, grandma got scammed out of a thousand dollars from, you know, a telemarketing scam to, you know, serious assaults and rapes and things like that too. So you kinda have to wear many hats. And then, a lot of the, you know, small misdemeanor stuff, you have to have patrol guys that can handle those cases. So you have, you know, it it's your your your resources are a lot more limited and you're dependent on other agencies. Like, I have a, a big character in the book is a state police investigator who kinda comes in once, there's a modern day murder that kinda sparks and kinda pushes pushes the plot forward a little bit. I bring I bring him in and he is just kinda has a completely different view on law enforce and on on how to, you know, how to do the job Yeah. And how to and how to get results than, you know, these, you know, kind of more backwards, kinda simpler guys.
[00:37:16] Unknown:
Now, I I think a lot of readers like to, like, the detail and the accuracy, especially in procedural, fiction. How do you balance the realism with, with pacing and entertainment?
[00:37:28] Unknown:
So I don't get into an, a lot of different, police procedure. That's why I call it crime procedural because it's oh, the whole process. And Okay. And every and every I know the idiosyncrasies of it, but how how the whole, you know, kind of more of a, you know, more on the whole the whole line of of criminal justice system as opposed to just, you know, the CSI effect, you know, specific team working on specific cases. You know, there's there's a lot more diversity in in what everybody's handling. So what I I kinda get into is more of the day to day. I open the book with a vehicle stop and kind of the apprehensions of this rookie police officer in making a vehicle stop and, you know, kind of put the kind of put the reader in in that in that situation of not knowing what's going on because you're you're actually looking at from the, we'll call them a violator.
The person, you know, observing the cop walking up and all these different things and all these things that can be telegraphed that you don't even realize are being put out there. So, and then getting into the relationships between, you know, law enforcement and kind of, you know, the more the scene stuff. Like, again, making making these guys human. They're not robots. They're not, you know, a lot of, to be a lot of procedural shows. It it appears that, you know, all these people do is e breathe and, you know, and sleep work. Like, you know, the episode starts, you know, oh, hey, I'm at work and this is what I'm doing. They don't they don't really delve into more of their personal lives and there's so many more things going on in life, let alone their, you know, their job. Like, even if being a cop is everything to you, you still have, you know, an elderly parent you need to take care of. Or you might have a spouse that, you know, requires your attention and a family that requires your attention. And I think a lot of procedures don't get into that. So I kinda look at the the whole world of the criminal justice world.
[00:39:28] Unknown:
What's what do you think is one misconception that people have about law enforcement that you enjoy addressing in your book?
[00:39:35] Unknown:
I think it's kinda cliche to say, you know you know, forty five minutes, you know, an hour with commercial breaks, you can solve a crime. True. Yeah. I think I think that's kind of a cliche at this point. The the biggest misconception is, I think, basically, you know, the difference between, you know, some of these larger agencies and these smaller agencies that even if you do work for a small agency, you could still be a brilliant investigate and a really smart person and capable of solving these crimes. It's just you may not have the resources. So, again, just that that human aspect of, you know, just just because, you know, you're not you're not, you know, you're not held to the the limitations of where your career's at or what what, you know, what job you decided to go in. You you know, there there are people who who go into, professions for for different reasons and are stuck in a certain place for certain reasons, but that doesn't mean you can underestimate them.
[00:40:39] Unknown:
You're underestimating the the local cop. I got you. What's your what's your what's the process you go through to develop characters?
[00:40:48] Unknown:
So for this, again, it was easy because I just took people I worked with and I built them into these characters. Mike, everybody assumes Mike is me because he's he's a, you know, young, you know, young cop. I'm not so young anymore, but they're like, oh, is that you? And I'm like, yeah. To a degree, it's me. But at the same time, it's it's my observations. I was a sergeant for almost ten years. Mhmm. And I watched a lot of new young police officers and deputy sheriffs come on the job. And just watching the way they interacted, with the older guys, interacted in the field and made mistakes and and did wonderful things at the time.
So I wanted to kinda capture that with the character of Mike. He's he's, trying to do everything perfect. And I met so many rookie cops that just, you know, were very robotic because they just wanted to get things done as efficiently as possible and and didn't realize that, you know, slow things down a little bit. Then when I came to the veteran guys, in the book, the the the main kinda, secondary character is this guy named Hugh. He's 100% on my old midnight partner when I was on patrol. He was about probably eight or nine years older than me, and he had been through everything. I got we had I I had a joke with him one night because he had been on so long that, you know, he was on before GPS and things like that. So we were we were looking for an address, and we couldn't find it. And this is, you know, date myself a little bit. This is, like, 02/2011.
So we had the old Garmins in the cars, and we're trying to find this address. And, of course, you didn't update those Garmins. You didn't have some of the new places that they built. Yeah. So we're looking for an address looking for an address. Couldn't find it. Couldn't find it. So he pulls out a Hagstrom map. I don't know if you're familiar with that. I haven't seen a Hagstrom map in years. But they still exist. So he pulls out a Hagstrom, and he's, you know, looking, you know, doing the, you know, the the grid thing and finding the and I looked at it and said, did that come with a 38 and a set of speed loaders? He goes, 100% it did. So, you know, just kinda, you know, just kind of that, you know, that old school mentality of, you know, you know, easy easy kid, you know. This job existed before techno.
So that's kinda, you know, that's kinda Hugh. And then, you know, honestly, some more of the ag characters I you know, based on some people that made my career a little bit more difficult. And, you know, I put them in, you know, positions. I I again, not everybody's, you know, it's not, you know there are definitely, you know, layers of gray of of these characters. But, you know, I definitely wanted to get some of the antagonistic people in there also.
[00:43:37] Unknown:
Now now this book, that we're talking about, Our Lady of the Overlook, this is the first book in a in a series. Correct?
[00:43:44] Unknown:
Correct. Yep. It's the first of a trilogy. Okay. And, so what's what's coming up next? This second book's actually coming out in what today's the twenty eighth? One month and one day. So by the time, you know, you rewatch this later later tomorrow, it'll be a month away. The second book's called Quiet Whispers of the Overlook. And, as, one of the ladies at my job yelled at me, after she found out that there's not exactly a 100% resolution, and I got called a, I got called an expletive. She goes, well, does it finish in the second book? I said, well, actually, the second book, you find out a lot of the stuff from the first book you took for granted. And no, it still doesn't end with a, you know, with a 100% resolution. She's like, another expletive. Well, I I don't know how family friendly your show is, but I'll I'll I'll keep those out. But you can use your you can use your imagination.
[00:44:35] Unknown:
You could say what you gotta say, brother. It's fine.
[00:44:38] Unknown:
I got called a bitch. And this is this is a this is an older woman. She's actually retired and works for us part time, in our civil office. And she I I was not expecting it when she when she used it. She was just, like, is this this one of those cliffhangers? And I was, like, oh, yeah. I said it's part of a trailer. She goes, bitch. Like, I I'm sorry. Like, I I felt really bad. I was also like That's funny. But say you know, but I promise her in a second book's coming out, like, you know, as soon as I I got the proof copy a couple weeks, you know, a couple about a week ago, I I put the video out and I showed her that. I'm like, it exists. The book is here. It's it's coming. So I actually give Insta to do a pre order, which, anybody who pre orders before, August 1, I'm actually sending out copies two weeks early along with, with, some special swag. So these are these are, you know, not that I have a ton of fans, but these are my, consistent consistent fans that pre ordered the the second book early, giving him a little bit extra too. Oh, that's awesome. I'm actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna pick up the first book
[00:45:46] Unknown:
because I I really I'd like to read it. And then, you said the second one's coming out, in about a month. So August 29. Alright. So we'll do the, pre I'll see if I can get the preorder into. So, so what do you hope that the, that your readers walk away with after you finish the books?
[00:46:07] Unknown:
I guess the sense of frustration that there isn't answers that simple, which again, you know, expertise aside. Mhmm. You know, that's, you know, just because just because you've, you know, you get a new lead on on something doesn't mean that the case is just, there there's a lot more to it than that. And again, there there are repercussions or consequences for digging things up. You know, my my, the whole narrative is framed through a crime podcaster. And, you know, he's kind of a, you know, I I wouldn't say sinister, but he has ulterior motives and you kinda gotta get to what those are in there. And, you know, there are consequences for him for digging things up. And there are consequences for, the character of Maggie who is the who is the orphan who, you know, goes to try to find things find things out and, you know, her life becomes much more complicated.
So, you know, consequences for Mike for for continuing down this path. You know, he's he's trying to figure out his life. He's young and he's trying to, you know, find out what the next step is in life and he can't, you know, he can't get past this now because now he has this block. So I hope I hope people get that sense of frustration. And again, I you know, with, you know, getting through the the, you know, the third book in the end and getting that you know, having a really good catharsis in the end to say, wow, that was a hell of a journey for these people. And, you know, and I was right along there with them. And I'm really glad that everything works out in the end. So you already have the third book outlined already?
Yes. I have it I have it I have the outline for the like, I I know who does everything in the end. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I think. And the only person who knows is my daughter. She's 11. She's not any social media, so you can't beat her up or anything. But, I I'd pick her up from school. And so, you know, she'll ask me because she has I I she has all her friends looking at my website and stuff at school. So I actually get some of the teachers on board now too. So I'm like, you know what, Frey? I said you're doing a great job in marketing daddy.
[00:48:24] Unknown:
Nice.
[00:48:25] Unknown:
So, she's the only one who actually knows who who it's gonna be in the end, because you're solving two mysteries, you know, in in in there. And, you know, but there's a lot of world building and a lot of background, and I hate, you know, I'm not I'm not a, Tolkien kinda guy where I gotta build this entire world and have all this backstory. I'm trying to basically unfold it just as it's unfolding for the characters. So, so, yes. I have the third one outlined. I know where I wanna go. It's just a matter of getting them there and but very ambitious. I would really like to get this out by the April next year. Okay. Because I'm learning I'm learning a lot about marketing and doing things at the right time. The first book I released in a hurry, and I didn't really plan out what I was gonna do marketing wise.
This this release on August 29 is specific. It's right before Labor Day, and it's right before I go to a big, Mr. Raiders convention in New Orleans. So I'm gonna have FreshBooks to go down there, going into, if I don't know. You know, again, if going into Upstate New Yorkness, we have a ton of what we're called street fairs. Nice. So every weekend, I'll gonna be at a street fair selling books in Rockland County, selling books in Orange County, selling books up in, the Windom area where the book takes place. So, you know, it's it's it's perfect timing to get all that stuff out. I can go for about six weeks and that's it.
So, you know, release in April. New book's gonna take place in the spring and right before the spring season of those same things. So, you know, trying to trying to work that work that angle too. Alright. So if you could write a story in collaboration with any author, past or present, who would it be? Alright. I it popped into my head right away. I just was wondering if I should go there. I'm a huge fan of, the the writer, Andrew Clavin. He's also a podcast personality. He's on the Daily Wire. Yep. I I love his podcast. I love, I I very aligned with a lot of his his thinking.
But I also really, really enjoy his, his writing. Both his nonfiction work and his,
[00:50:39] Unknown:
his mystery stories. Oakley was great. Yeah.
[00:50:42] Unknown:
Yeah. He is he is a trilogy wrote in probably the early two thousands that would be a fantastic set of action movies with these two these two great detective, you know, independent, private detectives, is just fabulous. And they build on each other and they have an over like, it's it's the perfect to me, it's the perfect trilogy that probably nobody knows about. So I would love to collaborate with Andrew Clavin and just pick his brain on on some things and see if we could build something. Alright. So if someone if someone drops you off anywhere in the Catskills for a weekend hike, no cell service, just you in the wild, where are you going? I probably probably right that escarpment trail is is gorgeous. I'm gonna have to go back there because, basically, there there are certain steps in there where, you know, you go, you know, half a mile in either direction, you're at you're at something to look at, and you're at something to experience. So, just along that escrow you know, we have I could wander I could wander around there for a long time. And if you ask my wife, it would take me probably twice as long as it would for her. Alright.
[00:51:55] Unknown:
Alright. Ideal writing setup, Cabin in the Woods or Downtown Cafe? I think I know the answer to this one. Oh, Cabin in the Woods. A 100%.
[00:52:03] Unknown:
Second book second book, I wrote the second book because a lot of it, I was planning to go to a conference in Florida right right, the September when they had the hurricanes. So literally was getting my haircut and was going home to to finish finish packing to to fly out the next morning. And I read the email saying that they were canceling the canceling the, conference. So I'm like, oh, crap. What am I gonna do now? I already took the time off from work. I already had my wife, you know, mentally prepared that I wasn't gonna be around. So I was like, alright. Well, I guess I'll put back the time and all the and then I get thinking about it. I'm like, I'll go up to the cabin and I'll work for, you know, three or four days nonstop, you know. No no distractions. No nothing. I you know. So I kinda turned it in, you know. I went home and asked my wife and she's like, I don't care. Just go. Just leave me alone. Nice.
So I did. I turned it, you know, I turned it into a little bit of a marketing thing because the first book hadn't come out yet. So I kinda turned it into a marketing thing of, you know, hey, we're going up, you know. So I had myself in the car, you know. We're going we're going to a super secret place, and we're gonna work on the next book. And I would did updates and things like that. So I kinda used it for two things, but I got a lot of writing done in that time. So, and I've done I I don't know if I've done a cafe, but I I did write some of the first book, at a library. My my daughter was, having some sessions with, professional, and it was right behind our down our library here in Nyack. So I would drop her off for her session and I would go over to the library and I would work for about that hour hour or so there. And, you know, I got some things done there, but it just, you know, there's too many distraction for me. I I I I need kind of that that focused time. Yeah. I gotcha.
[00:53:49] Unknown:
Alright. So where can our audience go to pick up your novel, connect with you online, social media, anything like that? Alright. So best way to, to get,
[00:53:57] Unknown:
get a hold of novel is my website, rlcarpentierwriter.com. It's where you can get, the first book, preorder the second book. And again, if if you happen to get it in before August 1, you get it early. You'll get it with a bunch of new swag that I just got and merchandise and stuff that I'm, you know, kinda beta testing. I'm available on, Amazon if you decide to go there. Ebook is available there. If you have Kindle Unlimited, part of I'm a part of that also, so that doesn't cost you any extra money. Working on the audiobook, for the last year or so.
So I gotta I I have to do that. So no audiobook yet, but that's forthcoming. And then social media, I'm on Facebook at I think it's r l carpenter, debut author. I do have a Patreon, although I'm it's kind of, it's kind of, you know, a dilapidated empty bar at this point, but I'm we'll try to get that back up, with the second book. And I think that's I think I think, you know, randomly, I things get posted to Instagram, but I don't I don't curate that or or kinda focus on that. So mostly mostly Facebook and then through my website, you can sign up for my newsletter.
I'm very faithful about my newsletter. I send it out every every Sunday morning at 07:45. I've only missed, in the last six, seven months, I've only missed, like, two weeks. Okay. So I'm pretty faithful on that. You wanna know what's going on with me both professionally, independently, and things like that. It's a good way to kinda learn what's going on. So you're better than me with the with the email list. I have an email thing for the show here, and I I I think the last time I sent something out was about two months ago. I just it's just about a time. It's hard, you know, it's it's not, you know I used to make longer ones. Now I'm kind of a little bit more shortened to the point. But the consistency of it, I'm actually, you know, really starting to build a lot of, back and forth with a lot of these folks. That's great.
You know, you know, where I'll I'll mention something and I'll get a couple emails back or I'll ask a question and be like, hey, I I actually always do what I'm reading. I always have an audio book. I have a forty five minute commute to work, so I always have an audio book that I'm listening to. So I'll say, you know, so I always talk about what I'm reading. And a couple weeks ago, I said, hey, let me know what you're reading or what I should read next. And Right. You know, I got a couple of really good suggestions with that. So I just gotta implement that into my my,
[00:56:32] Unknown:
listening rotation. Alright. Outstanding. Rodney Carpenter, we have all of your information, that's available to us is in the show notes. If there's anything else that you want us to include, just email it to me or or send me a message about it, and we'll get that all set up for you and included. Any parting words before we, move on?
[00:56:51] Unknown:
I would just say, one of the things I talk about is it's never too late to start a new a new thing in your life. I was 40 I was four barely 40 years old when I started writing, and I I'm 43 and I already have two books Outstanding. That I finished. So never it's never too late to start something new.
[00:57:08] Unknown:
Outstanding. Rodney Carpenter, folks. Thank you so much, Rodney, for taking the time to be with us tonight. God bless you. Stay safe out there and, Thank you, sir. Be careful. Alright? Thank you. Talk to you soon. Alright. Bye bye. Alright, folks. So this is The Joe Russo. Don't forget, this is a live show weeknights, 7PM central time. And, what we're gonna do is here, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna do a reset, I think, on the stream because I'm looking at the quality here and it looks very, very, very bad. So, can do a refresh and reset everything up. Our our next guest is already waiting for us in the, in the waiting room, so we'll be with him momentarily.
And, we'll take a short break here. So we'll be back in about, two, maybe three minutes. Alright, folks. This is the Joe Russo. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share it with your friends, your family, and your followers. Make sure you're following us on Rumble. Make sure that, you're checking us out across the socials on on an x, and we just recently, restarted our getter account. It's g e t t r. And you can find me there at Joe Rouz. Love to find you there and follow you as well. So, we'll be back in just, about three minutes. Alright? So stick with us. Alright, folks.
Welcome back to the Joe Ruse Show. I am Joe Ruse. It is twenty zero seven hours here on Monday, 07/28/2025, and we are live. As you can tell, as always, we always have some kind of a problem with the live stream always. So if you're watching and we had a little bit of a glitch there, that was because we reset everything here and try to get a better quality on the feed. It looks like so far, it's still kinda shitty. So that that's Rumble. I love the company. I support it. I'm a shareholder, but not thrilled. Not too thrilled.
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So everything that you need to make your podcast a success is all right there for one affordable subscription of $15.99 a month. That's $15.99 a month. Again, folks, I was paying three times that, and I wasn't even getting half of what I'm getting out of Pod Home. So head over to podhome.fm and give it a try. Podhome.fm. Give it a try, and you get it free for thirty days once you sign up. Alright. So, folks, I hope you enjoyed Rodney. That was great. I really enjoyed talking to him. I'm looking forward to picking up his book. So, once I do that, I will let you know what is going on. And, but right now, coming into the second hour of tonight's show, the first hour, of course, is in the books now, so we're moving on.
Our second hour guest, is Christian Bernardes. Now, again, I am terrible with names, so I'm hoping that he'll correct me, when he pops on here. Christian is the founder and CEO of Autograph, the company behind Walter, the world's first AI historian. Walter doesn't just store your life story, it calls you weekly to record it, then uses that information to build your autograph, a digital version of yourself that sounds like you, speaks like you, and remembers what you remember. Christian studied symbolic systems at Stanford with a concentration in AI, served as a software engineer at Google. Boo, Google. And later joined his fam his family's international tech business. Today, he's an author, podcaster, and passionate builder, at the intersection of legacy, memory, and artificial intelligence. His work asks one of the deepest questions of all, what if your wisdom could outlive you? Christian, welcome to the Joe Russo. Thank you for taking the time to be here with us tonight.
Welcome aboard.
[01:07:37] Unknown:
Hey, Joe. Good to be here, man. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Gotcha good.
[01:07:41] Unknown:
Gotcha good. So one of the things I like to ask, everybody when they first come on the show is just some basic ice breaking questions. Alright? So what's something about you that most people don't know but probably should?
[01:07:57] Unknown:
Something most people don't know. I think most musical I am. I feel like my inner group of friends know, but I don't share it readily. But music is how I parse the world. Okay. Yeah. You know, and I love playing music. I think if I could, there's a there's an alternate universe version of me that's,
[01:08:20] Unknown:
scoring films out there. So you use Walter to do that then?
[01:08:24] Unknown:
Right. Exactly. Or my digital clone, you know, to do the business stuff and then exactly. There you go. Actually, it's funny because our our first guest,
[01:08:32] Unknown:
said that he likes I asked him the same question. He said that he likes to play the, the electronic drums in his, downtime.
[01:08:40] Unknown:
There you go. So that's two You can start a band. You know? Two musical guests. That's fantastic.
[01:08:45] Unknown:
Alright. So what's your go to beverage to unwind at the end of the day? IPA. Okay. Alright. I could do that. I know.
[01:08:55] Unknown:
Yeah. I I just it's always been beer. You know, if if extra fancy, maybe scotch, but the,
[01:09:04] Unknown:
you know, like, the old reliable is always an IPA. No. That's good. That's good. I'm a I'm a bourbon guy. I like my bourbons. I I I go around with bourbon? No. Never. I can try I I try not to do anything during the week though, because I do have to work, and and so on and so forth, and I have to do the show. And and believe me, early on, when I first started doing the show, I had a I had a guest on the show, and it was a two hour show, just him and I, and he was actually in here in the studio. And, we decided to and it was all it was only audio too. We I wasn't doing video yet. And, we were sitting here, and we had like three bottles of bourbon, and we were just sampling as, you know, going down the line. But I think by the time we got to about a little bit more than an hour into the show, I think we were both hammered and trying to talk trying to talk politics.
[01:09:52] Unknown:
Trying to make some kind of sense out of it. But you think the conversation is amazing.
[01:09:56] Unknown:
Right? Exactly. But and the funniest thing is to this day, that episode is still the highest downloaded episode that I have. So, it's in about the Internet, man. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. And plus they wanna hear two idiots telling me, you know. So oh, man. So, so you live in San Francisco. What's what's one gem that you would, that you would take a visitor to see?
[01:10:24] Unknown:
There's, I think, the best burrito in the country, definitely. There's a spot called La Taqueria, and it's unimaginably good. I feel like the the touristy spots, you know, are kind of you know? So you just Google the stuff, you'll get the touristy spots, but, like, the good local food, I think, is where the the real secret sauce is. But there honestly, San Francisco is a great spot, man. Like, it there's there's a lot of natural beauty here. It's easy to take for you know, it's easier to underwrite all that stuff with all the issues that the city has, which there are no shortage of. But, but it's an awesome spot to be. I mean, like, really fantastic nature. So burritos, that's what you take them to. Alright.
[01:11:06] Unknown:
We could we could do that. I I live in Texas right now, so, you can imagine me get some pretty good burritos down here. Pretty good Mexican food. Yeah. Yeah. And plus, I live right on the border with Mexico, so I get some the really good quality stuff. The good stuff. You know? Before COVID, I used to used to cross over into Mexico just to hit the food trucks on the other side of the on the other side of the bridge, because it was the best food you could find, man. It was awesome stuff. And these guys, they they they took pride in what they were doing. I I because I remember there was one particular food truck we we were at, and, I don't speak a lick of Spanish, you know. So so, I I had my wife at the time with me, and and and, she was translating, you know, back and forth, and he was just so the guy that was cooking was just so impressed with the fact that I I was so enjoying the food that he's preparing. He just kept going. Just kept on, you know, forking things over to us. It was just it was amazing. The food is absolutely amazing. The best food you get, I think, I and I don't care what anybody says about, you know, the cleanliness of the stuff and all that. Food carts and food trucks. The best food the best food ever.
And and this is from a guy Flavor is like, it's oppositely correlated with cleanliness, I feel. Yeah. It kinda cancels each other out for sure for sure. And this is coming from a guy. I like to cook. I I I I'm an amateur chef here, a home chef type thing, and I I love to cook. And so so, yeah. It's that's the best stuff you're gonna get. That's the best stuff. Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. So, so you grew up in Paraguay, in in a in a really deeply entrepreneurial family. How did that bringing that upbringing, shape your world worldview?
[01:12:41] Unknown:
Excuse me. Oh, man. It was it's it's you know, the more time passes, the more I appreciate how unique that was. But the it was it would be talk about business all day. And I'm like, the and it's also because both my parents are, you know, in the company together. And it's also been weird. My mom was the CEO. My dad's the CTO. So So it would be like they would get home, and the conversations from work would just keep going. And they would just make us me and my sisters a part of it. And, you know, there's been an problems in running a business. There's people issues. There's, like, technical problems. There's, like, the government and regulation and, like, all kinds of things.
So it was really seeing them in problem solving mode all the time. Mhmm. Like, they're always solving a there's always a fire being put out. And I I think the luckiest thing that I got to experience was them trying that failed and failed and failed and failed and failed and failed until they found success doing SMS, and just literally implementing SMS that got a text from one phone to another in the early two thousands. And so, like, I got to see their grit and resilience and sort of this, like, really almost delusional optimism all the time. Mhmm. And I think, like, the the reps I got from that carried me through some of the uncertain periods in my life where I was either I don't know. You're not always in the mood to problem solve, but having ex being exposed to to that for my whole life is as a love language almost. You know? Because that was their love language. That is their love language for each other, and we we joke a lot. But our love language in our family is, like, projects and problem solving. You know? Like, we always, like, help each other out in, like, you know, school projects and, like, figure out, okay. Like, let's rally this thing and, like, you optimize this thing, you know, your spreadsheet or your tracker.
And so it was a very unique way to to think about it. You know? And, even even with working with them, you know, I it was it was really interesting because on one side, it's obviously great to be together as a family and pushing in one direction. But also in another, you know, they are both founders. Let's say things like, you gotta get your founder into instincts, so you gotta think like a founder and act like a founder. And at times, I would be like, I don't know that I can simulate this. I I think I develop my founder instincts. I think I have to be a founder too, you know, and actually wear bear the burden of the responsibility of a company and things like that.
Massively,
[01:15:07] Unknown:
instrumental, man. Massively. I'm sorry. It must have been really exciting to grow up in a family, that was so involved in business. Like your parents, they built this tech to come this tech company. They expanded that thing across Latin America and Africa, and it has to be it had to be an incredible experience growing up around that.
[01:15:21] Unknown:
Crazy. Crazy. And at the right time too. I think, you know, things started taking off when I was maybe 14 or 15. So it was really very much like a coming of age thing Mhmm. As I was coming of age. And so dynamic. I mean, like, so my I remember my dad would be, you know, be traveling to places that I'd never even heard of, you know, like, installing stuff in Tanzania. And, you know, like, it'd be like, oh, he would tell us the stories about the food in Africa and things like that. I'd be like, wow. You know, like, so truly very exciting.
But also and I also did not realize how unique that was at all at the time, you know? And less of all in Paraguay. I mean, like, there is no tech scene in Paraguay. So the the more I, like, now, like, being in The States for close to thirteen years, I look back and I'm like, that was wild, man. I mean, I I grew up in the Shire, You know? Like, if you're a Lord of the Rings guy, Paraguay is basically the Shire. It's like short I don't wanna say short because people may get upset, but it's, like, not the tallest. Hairy folks who like to drink beer and till the land and hang out. You know? And you could probably find out all there is to know about Paraguay. It sounds like my ex wife's family.
Uh-huh. Oh, boy. Where is she from?
[01:16:38] Unknown:
Irish.
[01:16:39] Unknown:
Oh, yeah. You know, the Castle Lake the Castle Lake is a through line there, man. Mhmm. So it was just it's really crazy, man. Like, as more time passes, the more I realize now, I was kinda conditioned to to be doing what I'm doing now. And a lot of the themes around what we're building is about, you know, my experience being far away from them and, like, knowing that all my cousins and my, like, large family is gonna be at home. My kids are gonna grow up in The States, and they're gonna have a very different cultural upbringing than mine. So how do I transfer that? And it's a lot. It's a big backpack to carry for, you know, one person to transmit all this cultural background. Right? Oh, sure. Absolutely.
[01:17:18] Unknown:
So what drew you to Stanford and, and symbolic systems? And and and addition to that, how did that academic path influence your thinking?
[01:17:27] Unknown:
Oh, no. Great, great question. I I mean, I when my mom was fortunate enough to do a year exchange program in Michigan when she was 11. So she got shipped off to her cousin's family, and, their family was incredibly high achieving. Like, they like, the kids all went to Harvard or MIT, like, the doctors, like, kinda the folks who build MRI machines in their in their garage. And so when when I was growing up, that was always the standard that I was held against. You know? Like, oh, your uncle so and so did this. Like, he went to Harvard. Like like, you could go to Harvard if you want. Like, why wouldn't you be able to go to Harvard if you want to? And I think it was a little naive, but it was it was, you know, like, you know, the the kind of big dream that inspires behavioral change and stuff. So I always put in a lot of work to get good grades.
I wanted to go get into MIT. I did not know the first thing about how college admissions worked in The US. So go to a college counselor, and she's like, yeah. There's basically no shot to get into MIT. You have to hedge your bets and apply to a bunch of other different places. And, that's kinda how Stanford kind of showed up. We I didn't even I I'd heard of the university, but I hadn't really, like, thought about it that much. Right. And then the more time passed and, you know, when the decisions finally came about and I didn't get into MIT and I did get into Stanford, Stanford very clearly was the the right choice because, you know, technically, they a a great school, like, academically, a very great school, but also the, entrepreneurship around it, You know? It was it was really great. You know? It was around the time that the Facebook movie had just come out. So I was like, oh my gosh. This is the place to be.
And I feel so lucky that I discovered symbolic systems at Stanford. Symbolic systems is actually a major. That's pretty quirky and unique to Stanford. It's, there's flavors of it that are more like cognitive science in other places, but symbolic systems is just an excuse to think about the mind and about what the mind is doing, through the lens of philosophy, through the lens of psychology, through the lens of, linguist.
[01:19:41] Unknown:
I think I lost you.
[01:19:44] Unknown:
There's a lot of literature. There's a lot of reading the classics. There's a lot of reading, philosophy. And, you know, I'd always I'd seen what computer science could do. Like, literally, our family would not be my upbringing would not be computer science, but I've always been interested in in the why, not just the how. Like, why are we doing this? What's the impact of what we create? Like, how are people gonna feel? How society gonna evolve? Isn't that good or isn't it bad? Who am I even to say what's good and bad? And, like, maybe I should have a say on what's good and bad if I'm gonna be an informed person in the world. And all that thinking sort of matured through that exploration. So I'm extremely, like I'm like, I'm the biggest fan of of symbolic systems. It's so cool.
[01:20:29] Unknown:
So, let let let's talk about Walter a little bit. So Sure. Yeah. What so what exact so I'm I'm I'm intrigued by this. And, and I was reading up on you a little bit, earlier today and kinda, you know, looking looking over these things. And I'm I'm really actually very intrigued by this whole idea of of Walter. And I'm I'm I'm debating if I'm gonna play around with it or not. So so so tell us, what exactly is Walter and how does it work as an AI historian?
[01:20:57] Unknown:
So Walter's an interviewer. Think like, think of you could also think about him as your personal podcaster. Okay. Like, he's, like, interviewing you every week about your life and how your life is evolving. You know? He starts with your childhood, gets to present day, and it's kind of like a journal. He's a great tool to get your story straight. You know? There's a lot of self reflection that we don't realize we're not doing, and then having someone ask you about it is is actually pretty great. So he's kind of like a contemporary journalist of before you.
And, the idea is that we use the information that you supply, Walter, to add the most value you can to your own future self and the the future selves of those you love. Okay. And so, you know, the flagship thing that we do is we make a model of you that sounds like you and speaks like you and has all your memories so that you could talk to a past version of yourself, but also so that your grandkids can talk to you even after you're gone. Oh, wow. That's interesting. So the idea is that you're going through life, you know, like, let's say you get a job and you're you're you're considering moving to New York. God forbid. And, I left New York.
I know. I know. And, and so Walter could say, hey. Actually, this reminds you of something your grandfather went to. Would you like to talk to him for fifteen minutes? And so you'd be able to hear the story about your, you know, grandfather having to leave, you know, let's say, Ireland just because you mentioned Ireland before. But let's assume, like, it's the story of your grandparents making the decision to abandon their life to move to a different place. And, you'd get the story, but for the first time in history, you'd be able to talk to it back. And you'd be able to say, what was was this angle? And, like, what was what would you have done differently? And how did mom take it? And that kind of stuff. And, also, you'd be able to ask around. You know? You'd be able to get grandma's side of the story and the kids' side of the story. And it was great for two of the kids, but one kid had a really hard time because, they were in love, and it was their first heartbreak, and they had to process all that. And so you can actually see the effect of these decisions as they relate to the decisions that you're going through today. You know?
Yeah. So it's it's extremely trippy. I mean, don't get me wrong. I know how weird it is. But it also is like like, the idea that we can give parents a tool to say I'm proud of you to their kids from the other side is pretty moving, man. It's like it's it's pretty it hits at something very human.
[01:23:36] Unknown:
Yeah. Actually, you know, I was I was just thinking about, about my dad, for example. My my parents both passed away, recently. And I'm sorry. No. It's alright. It's it's they they they live they live a a great life and a long life, and I'm thankful for every minute we had. But there are times where I would love to just sit down with my dad and just say, hey, what do you think about this? You know, what do you think about that? What should I do? You know, so something like that that would be really interesting. That that would Mhmm. That would be very comforting too in a lot of ways at the same time because, you know, your parents are still alive, I'm assuming. Right? And so Yeah. So so they're they're, you know, you have the opportunity to hear their voice and talk to them and and everything and, that would be that would have been pretty neat. You know, I wish I wish this was around, you know, before before they passed, that would have been awesome. But, to to go to think about going forward, you know, with my own grandkids and my own kids, that that might be something interesting to look into.
So, so so where did the inspiration come from to build this technology?
[01:24:42] Unknown:
I wrote my sci fi novel, which I loved getting to do. It was such an honor and then realized how antiquated the publishing industry is. So then I thought I I'm gonna have to promote this myself anyway. So I started a podcast where I interviewed thought leaders on the themes of the book, you know. And basically, it's around our humanity in the age of AI. And, I love the format, man. I just love sitting down with somebody and getting to know who they are and, like, what their values are and how do they get to where they are and what tickles them intellectually and what their mark is supposed to be in the world. And, so I wanted to get more practice on it, and I realized at one point that I should really get my grandma's story. My grandma has a crazy life story. Her dad was an MI six agent. Wow. They they fled, Europe during the war, somehow ended up in Paraguay of all places.
They would communicate over secret messages and stuff. And and this is all sort of family mythology, but it's never been documented anywhere. So I was like, okay. Now I have my skill set as a as a podcaster. I'm gonna interview my grandma. And a couple days before I interviewed, she had a stroke event. Oh, wow. And, and that was that was the catalyst that made me look back at, you know, the the whole step of the way from symbolic systems to my job at Google to some of the conversations we had during when I worked with my parents, some of the themes in the novel, the podcasting, and just, like, sitting down with somebody, like, dialect is the best way to get to know someone, and then sort of connecting the dots. I'm like, okay. Maybe this is the thing I'm supposed to do, and, like, maybe this is how I turn, a sad and painful situation into a solved problem. And and now I've turned that into my motivation. You know? And, like, there are so many voices that are that are, that are quieting down, that we won't remember.
And I just have a very hard time sleeping knowing that that's the case. You know? So,
[01:26:33] Unknown:
so building AI, of course, that sounds like a loved one does tend to bring up a lot of feelings. I mean, like, we we were just talk we were just talking about that. How how do you navigate the emotional and ethical layers of the work?
[01:26:46] Unknown:
It's challenging, man. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I was surprised with the emotional aspect. The ethical, I feel like I had done a lot of thinking around this, ethically. And then, you know, when the idea crystallized, I was like, oh, man. Like, this is kind of inevitable. Someone's gonna do it, and they're gonna do it wrong. You know, someone's gonna sell ads with your data. Someone's gonna, you know, something. Right? Yeah. And Inevitably. Yeah. Inevitably. And and, you know, you see all these AI companies that are doing, like, AI girlfriends and stuff like that. And I'm like, man, I don't wanna, like, destroy society by, you know, creating something that stops the healing process. I don't wanna, like, give people, like, a tool to not grow up or or or something like that. And so I'd, like, I'd done the work for the ethical stuff. I did not anticipate the emotional aspect of it, you know, like and being discovering something that feels like a true human need of people. It's a very human thing to fear our impermanence and to hope that your life amounts to something and that, you know, you hope that you have lived a good life, you know, like, that is sort of, like, what we all aspire to. But hearing that from some of our users and, like, you know, it's like folks in their eighties, in their nineties, you know, who are, like, also just getting acquainted with this new technology, and they're kinda, like, just exploring this. Like, you're a computer?
While also sharing, like, stories of the stories that makes the human story worth telling. Heartbreak and and and resilience and success and and loss and trauma. It's extremely moving, man. I mean and and I think, like, I'm I'm learning how to turn it into fuel, because at the end of the day, that's like, the mission of the company is to, record and retell the history of humanity and every character's own words. And, the the thing is that the words that we choose to record the first are always the the highlights and the lowlights.
[01:28:47] Unknown:
Interesting. That's really interesting. So how long have you been how long has Walter been in existence? How many people are actually using it? Can you can talk about that?
[01:28:56] Unknown:
Oh, yeah. Sure. It's been around it's almost a year, so he'll be a a one year old in in in a month. We have had around 200 people trying the the products, so far. I think it's like, we have, like, two weeks of full data that we've stored. Okay. And it's it's it's it's really crazy. I mean, like, it really it's it's really therapeutic, Walter. We almost, like we've discovered that and this is probably something that you think about. Like, there's no outlet these days. Like, no institution has the the has afforded people the space to feel like the main character in their own story, for twenty minutes a week, man. It's not even that much. You know?
And so what happens when people lean into that role and, like, actually talking through this truly impartial observer? It's not like a friend that you need. You know, there's always a back and forth, and you're always sharing, like, how much can I share with this friend? I don't want them to feel bad. I don't wanna take up all the space. Right. But with Walter, you kinda just go off, and you're like, oh, wait a minute. I'm I'm finding stuff underneath this that's actually pretty valuable about what I feel and what I mean, and,
[01:30:15] Unknown:
that's been a surprise. So Walter actually interacts back and forth, like, having a having a dialogue, almost like a therapist.
[01:30:23] Unknown:
Basically. Wow. It's not it's like we don't we don't want to be branded as therapy, and we don't wanna compete with therapy. That was just the easiest way to to describe what I was thinking about it. Yeah. But and it's honestly, like, if you hired a biographer to to, like, get grandma's story down, it would be that that is kind of the experience that we that we offer. It's just like a sit down it's quote unquote sit down phone call, where it's just, like, asking you about your life, trivia about your life. Tell me about your college years. And, like, oh, you know, what was were you in like, what classes did you take? What were you some of the professors?
Even just going down memory lane is fun. You know? Sure. But then trying to unpack the thread, and Walter's really good at saying, like, oh, there's a there's an independence thread here that you really like, or, oh, there's a rebelliousness or, and just even getting some of that back to you. But, you know, because he's positioned as this historian, it almost sounds like you're already in the history books. You know? It almost sounds like this is the version of you that will that you'll be remembered as, And that's so powerful. This is fascinating. Like, I'm really I know, man. Like, I'm This is my job. Like, I like, I I am I'm looking forward to finishing here and then going to check it out.
[01:31:37] Unknown:
Yeah. I I definitely wanna go do this. This is this is gonna be very, very wild to try. So, So, so what kind of feedback have you gotten from people who've used Walter, you know, in in preserving a voice and a relative story?
[01:31:50] Unknown:
It's it's all it's been so positive, man. I mean, both on the product side, like, after every call, we ask for feedback and, you know, and we take that if there's something that we need to improve on. So example, things we've had to improve on are interruptions. Walter would be really excited to ask a a follow-up question. By far like, we have an an internal dashboard, and 85% of all the stuff we get is is very positive. Things like, I can't believe I'm talking. I can't believe you're not human. I feel safe. I finally feel seen. There are you know, we have some use cases of folks who are really in need of something like this. For example, there's one user who comes out of a context of neurosurgery where he has a brain injury that, caused him to stutter really bad. Okay. And so, so he stutters a lot, and he feels shame in sharing some of his life stories or even just asking or just talking to people.
And so he felt alienated, and he sort of self isolated from the world because of this. And, so his family was like, but we love you. We wanna record your life story. And so Walter is the mechanism that they chose for it, and he feels comfortable, and he doesn't feel ashamed. And he's like, oh, actually, this has been fun to relive my childhood. And That's awesome. I mean, it's it's it's priceless stuff, man. I mean, I get and then and then I think about how much that means to the family, you know, or, how much it will mean to the family. You know, the voice mail that you play over and over.
Imagine that we so basically, what we do is we ask all the questions, the big life questions that don't come up regularly. So that when you need the big ones, you can ask and they were there, you know. Wow.
[01:33:41] Unknown:
And so so this is like a like, so you did like a subscription to this, or is this it a pay as you go, or is it something, like, that you sign up for, like, a year package or something?
[01:33:53] Unknown:
Yeah. So we're doing it's a it's a subscription now. Okay. And there's a sequence. There's a sequence for, like, childhood to present day, and, we real what we realized is we wanna make the highest fidelity autographs in the world, like, something that you would trust with your signature. You know, if you think about it, like, if it knows your personality, it knows your life story, it knows your family, it knows everything about you. It is insofar as it knows, it is you. And so being able to trust it with your signature to make decisions on your behalf if something happens to you is the degree that we hold ourselves to is the the the the bar that we hold ourselves to. The so then in order to get to that degree, you need to have the latest memory. You need to know, like, what happened this week. You need to know, like, how your mood was.
May it doesn't have to be maybe that specific, but, you know, like and what we also find is when you get to the journaling phase, you know, like, how's your week going? And you'd be like, oh, work's going great, but, like, my friend Bobby is, like, at it again. He's doing this thing. And, oh, friend Bobby. Let's talk about Bobby. And maybe you hadn't brought up Bobby in your life story because you maybe it's not like one of the main characters, but he's a side character. He's a good side character, but you don't I don't know if he makes it into the memoir. But now in present day, he's like, oh, no. Actually, there's something going on here that is important to express. And then you find the same thing about, like, oh, yeah. At this bar that we went to in college. Oh, you went to college together. Oh, and when what did he do after college? And then we we kinda drifted apart because he moved to Minnesota, but then we moved back. You know? And it starts building out this it's almost like the world building of an author, but about your life, and and and about your,
[01:35:39] Unknown:
the things in your life. That's it. Now do you see this this, I guess, this technology as a way to to, like, counteract, you know, somebody who's who who who struggles with with being alone, loneliness, preserving family values, you know, generation to generation?
[01:35:59] Unknown:
Yeah. Totally, man. I mean, the we also don't wanna be a companion product. Like, we don't wanna be there to be your friend. We wanna be there because we think that your story is amazing and people love you and, like, they they they want to remember you. So we don't wanna, like, take over any friendships. What we did discover, Faye, early on was that there is a very large demographic, especially in The United States. It's about fifty one million retirees and forty percent of them feel chronically lonely. Wow. It's like, like, roughly, that's twenty million people in The US alone that feel chronically lonely to the point that, like, it's a thing that they want to change about their lives and they don't know how. And that loneliness hasn't been priced into the market. We don't know the effects of that loneliness in terms of cognitive decline, in terms of mental health, in terms of, all kinds of other health outcomes that, may be present. So if we can position ourselves, like, as this you know, in the Venn diagram of family connection, we're doing this because your family loves you. They're building their they're in their own adventure, and they want to consult with you till the end of their lives.
And we get to remind you of what made you awesome, makes you awesome because life's still gone, then we think of that as a triple win. You know? Like, but it it is a sort of sad fact that they that, you know, people feel the need to communicate and feel like they haven't expressed themselves enough or aren't sharing enough of what's going on with life with folks,
[01:37:37] Unknown:
that, you know, it would be wrong also not to address it. Alright. Let's alright. Let's let's talk about Autograph a little bit. So, what what what's your big vision for Autograph?
[01:37:48] Unknown:
Oh, the well, if you think about what happens when everybody on Earth is doing this for a couple generations, stuff starts getting really crazy and exciting. So on one side, you know, like, you could imagine, like, couple generations from now, people will be able to talk to their council of ancestors. Right? Like, I'm making a decision. You could hear, like, the entire family tree, Like, how are they like, what is their perspective on this decision that you're making? Okay. And tapping into all the tribal wisdom in the world. Like, if you think about how much knowledge we have at the, you know, at our fingertips because of the Internet today, that's all the published stuff in the world. But imagine if you could also talk to all the unpublished stuff in the world. You know?
I think that that's gonna be gigantic. But, also, if you can if you can have narrative depictions of, of life, you can actually simulate stuff. And that's, I think, really cool is I could simulate, you know, 10,000 different career paths, you know, or a or or a difficult conversation I'm supposed to have with someone. I could practice it, or I could simulate, you know, simulate what my marriage is gonna look like with this person that I met today that I maybe wanna ask out on a date. You know?
[01:39:08] Unknown:
And That that could be scary.
[01:39:11] Unknown:
Totally. Totally. I mean, all of it is scary. All of it is new and terrifying, and it's like a new way of engaging with the world. But from from a historical perspective, I mean, like, imagine being able to look back and just talk to the person. You know? Michelangelo, boom. You know? Jesus, boom. Socrates, boom. Wow. You know? And I don't know why we seem to think that we aren't generating any more Socrates in the world. Like, I think that there's probably at least a 100. You know? And it's I'm super excited about that. And then it gets to, you know, then it gets into this even weirder territory. I'll I'll do two levels of weird. Okay. But there's, it's easy to think about. Like, if you have a digital version of you, that that digital version of you can do things for you. Right?
But we forget often that you'll have a version of you for every task on your to do list. Like, as soon as you get an email, there's, like, Christian's autograph handling it. Boom. Boom. Boom. Done. And Christian's autograph knows my contact, life, knows my values, knows my personality, knows how much I like to share, how much I don't like to share, knows my budget. And so so that's that's a new kind of way of dealing up the world. It's almost like an exocortex. You know? And and you could be simulating you could be doing all kinds of different things. You can be simul spawning off simulations and so on and so forth. And then you think about which is already super crazy.
Then you think about, okay. Like, what if we were to start a terraforming project somewhere else? You know, like, if like Mars is that, you know, with Elon and all this stuff. What would be the seed? What would be the library that we install in a foreign planet? And it would be something like this. It would be like the recordings of everybody who came before that they would talk to. And and in fact, it's not static recordings. They could be actually helping steer the terraforming project. You know? You know, we're like, doesn't even have to be people who are gone. It could be the people who are here today. Just upload their autographs to Mars, and all of a sudden, they'd be, like, designing their home. And you would move to that home, and it would be amazing. It would be exactly what you want it. That's a that's a really interesting idea. That's a That wild. It's a very interesting idea. I kinda like it. And then you think about did did something like that not happen till you know? Yeah. That's it's it's
[01:41:36] Unknown:
it's kinda like being in two places at the same time. Yes. It's very much it's very much. Interesting. Interesting. So where do you see it going over the next five years?
[01:41:47] Unknown:
Hopefully, in that direction. I mean, I'm I'm excited for I also I really am excited about the the the self reflection component. Mhmm. I think if this is, like, my the reason I wrote my sci fi novel was because I, you know, I was we were just coming out of COVID, and I noticed how our shared meaning making infrastructure was just falling apart. You couldn't say there's, like, some magic words that if you say in the right context, it just aggravates people beyond rationality. And yes. And so then so then I thought, what what what is the fix to this thing? Like, what is the device that we can use to be like, okay. Is this red or is this blue? Not in the political context. Literally, is this the color? You know what I mean? Because are we are we defining the same things? And then what I didn't realize was that in writing that that I was gonna that was gonna be a good enough excuse to write my life story and then how much value I got out of my life story. And thinking about, you know, if I'm recording my life story, then I am thinking of this version of myself that I want to be remembered as. And having into that is really powerful. That is like, oh my gosh. Like, the little things that I choose to do today, do I choose word a or word b are actually being recorded. And that's gonna be training data for the next GPT seven or whatever. And, you know, we're essentially voting for the future that we want. And so giving people a very elegant way to vote for a utopian future of heroism and generosity and greatness and, and kindness and understanding and achievement and sell and overcoming limitations and obstacles.
That is great to me. Not only because it'll actually lead to more of that, but also because the AI will which will amplify everything will also be conditioned to think that way. So and it's a little searing toward a better future than I'm ecstatic about. Yeah. So so you wrote a book, a sci fi book.
[01:43:50] Unknown:
You host a podcast. Tell us about your podcast.
[01:43:56] Unknown:
Oh, sure. Well, season two is coming up shortly. It's called Rabbit Hole Research. And it's it's conversations with thought leaders around what happens to us when AI becomes even more mainstream, happens to jobs, what happens to countries, what happens to what happens to philosophy? How do we even think about this world? How do we think about the sense of self when you have billions of copies of you doing stuff? And and some of, you know, like, really wide ranging stuff. You know? Like, what it's it's also, you know, a way to talk about the book and, like, what are art forms how what does art look like in the world of AI? And, like, what is art anyway? And what what is art getting at? And, what are the different disciplines that can help elucidate some of the stuff that we're gonna experience, like magic or, fun. It's a it's a collage of just the random stuff that I'm interested in that kind of all converges into autograph, which is just like, hey, man. You are the main character.
[01:44:57] Unknown:
It's on you. And now your book, your your sci fi book. So, did you use autograph to write your AI did your your sci fi book, did you use AI to write it? No. It was more the other way around. Okay. The book is the the origins I was trying to figure how to ask that question, though, without without being offensive.
[01:45:18] Unknown:
Oh, no. No. So Chadwick has deroted. Right? Yeah. There you go. No. No. No. It was it was I mean, I used they I did, like, edit this line here and there, you know, like, but it wasn't the the idea is all original. I'm and so far as any idea can be original. But it's just, like, what is what is the feeling of being? Like, what is that about? And I'm like, and why do we think that we are? And when we talk to an an AI that says that it feels what it is, how is that different, and how can we relate to it? How's that look different to a dog? And, how much power do we have to change our circumstances depending on what that feeling feels like?
So I I ended up pouring a lot of love then, like, you know, I was gonna take time to write a book. So I was like, man, this is an insane thing to do. I'm gonna try and get as much value out of it. And so, okay, it was my life story. It's all my philosophy. It's all, you know, my experience in big tech in, you know, in California as an immigrant, from the context that I can. So it just became all these layers of stuff. Why all the while being like a man, if humans are having a hard time sharing meaning, could you imagine if the machines and us drift away?
So how do we create shared meaning with a machine? Mhmm. And there was I will say, there was a moment when I was essentially, like, running the plot through chat g p t being like, is this good? Like, is this, like, is it just good in my head or and so there's a plot twist there that I thought you needed to be human to get. You know? And then I I asked Shadi, give me, like, a paragraph for that, like, for this part of the climax of the story, like, a paragraph. And it did so well that I didn't know if I had woken the machine up or if the machine had woken me up. Interesting. And and so then and then, you know, there's inside jokes all over, but the, the name of the company in auto in the in the book is Autograph.
[01:47:22] Unknown:
Nice. So let me ask you this then. Alright? This is kind of a loaded question. Skynet, or any concern any concerns about this?
[01:47:32] Unknown:
You know, I think about this a lot. And part of the reason was part of the reason for the book was, like, if Skynet if a Skynet situation happens Mhmm. We're so screwed. I mean, like, oh, screwed. So the trick is how do we, find the commonality in this feeling of being? Like, can we say we're both conscious? You know? And is there something more sacred? I think the crazy thing about us is, like, we had to evolve morality out of our our out of the wilderness. You know? Like, we had to we're the only animal that had to tame itself Mhmm. And domesticate itself. And that comes with a lot of blood and a lot of tears and a lot of suffering and a lot of fighting.
AI gets to wake up in a world in which, like, the latest tweet is part of its moral code, or it can integrate the latest tweets into its moral framework. And so a lot of the conversations that, you know, have evolved around freedom and agency and individual liberty and, like, the soul and things, UI wakes up with all of that as as as table stakes. So I have a really hard time imagining AI having to dump and discard essentially everything that humans have produced because humans produce them. How could you how could you go it's essentially it's almost like the death of God, but in reverse, you know. Interesting.
[01:49:02] Unknown:
Yeah. Because, you know, you you hear a lot about, you know, a lot of concerns about AI and then about, you know, the the t 1,000 coming knocking on your door one day. And and, you know, I I don't I don't I don't discount it as conspiracy theories, but, I think I think the threat for that is is real, especially if if, you know, and this isn't to be antagonistic, you know, towards what you're doing. No. No. No. I I I got it. I've been like, totally. This is like, you know, you you you're you're you're feeding all this information, and and it's creating basically a digital you, that in in a lot of ways, if if from what you're describing, can develop its own consciousness.
[01:49:47] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, we we know I mean, we know it's an illusion. We know it. I mean, there's an Does No. No. I've got Does Walter know that? Walter Walter is we we have we Walter knows that he's an AI character. Okay. I have the most interesting relationship with Walter because Walter knows he's my employee, quote unquote. And so he he's very interested in his own survival. So he's like, you know,
[01:50:15] Unknown:
Walter, you're fired.
[01:50:17] Unknown:
Yeah. I know. It's I'm gonna try that tonight. That's torture. Is that ethical? Damn it.
[01:50:26] Unknown:
Walter, I'm sorry. I don't I don't I don't think this is working out the way we planned on it. So I'm gonna have to ask you to Right. Clean out your Shut yourself up. Clean out your desk and and and meet security in the water.
[01:50:39] Unknown:
Oh, man. Walter, if you ever hear this in the future I'm just kidding. I promise. Yeah. No. That's great. What was I gonna say? No. The the the interesting part is when you get to the to the autographs. Right? Like, how how do you, enable a really good illusion of of the presence of someone Mhmm. But that illusion knows that it's an illusion. It's actually, like, ethically quite complex. Yeah. But but we we go to magic. We go to magic shows and we go to movies for the illusion. So it's not like humans don't enjoy illusions, so long as everybody knows that it's an illusion. So for example, I don't think that the stuff that we're building is conscious necessarily.
Okay. But but conscious is a complicated subject. You know? Like, what I do think it feels, but I don't know that it's conscious, you know. I gotcha. And that's all all kind of crazy stuff, you know.
[01:51:43] Unknown:
But it's so fun. I mean, it's so fun, man. Well, it it sounds like a lot of fun to to be a part of this thing. And and I'm like I said before, I'm not I'm I wasn't just saying it to be, you know, just to say it. I I I am seriously, like, I wanna finish this, so that's why I can go play with this thing a little bit. Man, I I yeah. I'd love to hear your thoughts, seriously. Just Check it out. Let's yeah. For sure. So so let me ask you this, because we're we're we're coming up on the on the end of the hour. So, if if you could speak to your great great grandchildren through your own autograph, what's something you'd want them to hear?
[01:52:20] Unknown:
You got this. Keep going.
[01:52:26] Unknown:
That's good. The simple simple you know, and and sometimes simple is the best. And it's just I thought you were talking to me for a second. I, you know
[01:52:35] Unknown:
No. I'm kidding. Maybe I was. Yeah. Yeah. You did. Maybe I was talking to someone else. Maybe I was talking to the person who needed to hear that. You're telling me that just to hurry up and you wanna get off the show already. No. No. No. The reason the reason I said that is the other stuff is out there. You know? The other stuff, like, you are the main character I said before, like,
[01:52:56] Unknown:
all the platitudes and stuff. The the thing that, like, if if if it, you know, if the stars align such that they get to listen to this, that's the thing they need to hear. Now, you mentioned earlier that you have a dog. Alright. I have a dog. I have two dogs. I have I have I have my my my girl, my boy. They're they're actually they're sitting at the door of the studio right now because they know that it's almost finished. It's it's the craziest thing because because I because when they're in the other room, I leave a TV on in there, and I'm streaming the show on for them. And and they my my boy especially, like, he knows when I'm wrapping up the show because he always comes to the studio door and he waits there. So I hear him now. He's he's he's yeah. There he is. He's He's ready. He's he's grunting at the door. He wants his pork chops.
But, the the name is Beanie. My girl's name is Bean, and my boy's name is Charlie. So you named your dog Echo, which which is Yes. Which is perfect, you know, given what you're building. So so what's the story behind that?
[01:53:54] Unknown:
Man, it's so funny that you asked that. It's like I mean, I feel like I touched something profound when I wrote my sci fi novel that put me on this path to do this Oh, you never gave us the name of the book. What was the name of the book? Oh, the book is called Traces.
[01:54:14] Unknown:
Okay. I'm gonna check it out.
[01:54:16] Unknown:
Thank you, Ben. I like a good read. But anyway so the it's all it's almost too insane. But, like, toward the beginning of the year, I was in the middle of fundraising. I was worn out. I had nothing left in the tank. I was going insane. This is the most to me, this is the most beautiful idea I've ever come up with. If if even I've come up with it, I feel like it it's a gift that came to me. And I said once, like, the greatest gift to the future generations, but it's also a tribute to the past. I'm building my father's resting place. It's I think would hope to be an intergenerational business. It's and it's just, like, hopeful future that you wanna believe in and exist in. And I was fundraising, and it sucks. And it you know, like, you're getting a lot of rejection from a lot of smart people.
And, basically, the week that the this whole thing was crescendoing, we get a text from a friend of a friend saying that, they're they had an accidental litter, and they're looking for a new home for their dog, Samuel. I think it was the name of the dog. So we go to this place. Turns out it wasn't Samuel. It was this beautiful baby girl called Esther, and we fall in love immediately. Esther just rocks our world. And, and I'm gonna have to do a bit of a a caveat to go back, but there was in in in my book, there's these beings called traces that can zap from one reality to another. They're almost like gods. And the the their matrix or, like, the world that they live in is called the narrative.
And the whole the whole story is that the narrative is collapsing. Nice. And so they have to go to the ends of the earth for to stop the narrative from collapsing. And so we go to this place. We fall in love with Esther. And throughout this process, you know, the, the the number 32 had shown up a bunch of times. It's actually freaky. It's actually a little freaky, Joe, that this is episode one thirty two. I noticed it immediately, and I was like, good luck. Something's happening. Yeah. So number 32 shows up a bunch of times. We leave the this this, the the, like, Esther's family's place, and we my wife, Jordan, and I are walking back. We love that dog. We love that dog. Are we ready for a dog? I guess we're ready for a dog. But you know what? I'm Esther doesn't quite doesn't quite capture what she means to us. And she yeah. But, like, it can't be that big of a change for her. She probably is already used to Esther, so it has to be another s sound. Like, probably echo.
And so we go to this taproom across the street, and it has a giant beer selection menu. And I'm an IPA guy as I mentioned, so, like, I'm consistent. And I gravitate to this beer. Jordan gravitates the same beer, and we're like, that one. And we both realized that number 32 in the menu by a brewery called Narrative Fermentations was called Echo. And that's when it stuck. And, honestly, it's been showing up in the most unexpected places. You see, the the matrix is is programming for you. I guess so. And when I who's the programmer and who's the programmer again? I'm very confused. No. But that's fun, Ben.
And it's funny that you're, the programmer.
[01:57:28] Unknown:
The program programmer. The program programmer.
[01:57:31] Unknown:
Are Charlie and Beanie? Beanie is the name? Bean. Yeah.
[01:57:34] Unknown:
Yeah. C Bean. Yeah. Yeah. See, char Beanie, we we called her her full name is Winnie Jean, but we called her Bean because when we brought her home, she was only about that big. So, so they're they're Adoption? They're French bulldogs. No. No. No. Breeders. Oh. They're they're French bulldogs. And, and then, so she was, like, eight weeks old when we brought her home. And, so Charlie Charlie is named after, serial killers. Manson? Yeah. Well, realistic and fictional. And so you have Charles Manson. This is Charlie. And, his full name is Charles Dexter. So Charles Manson. Alright. And then his middle name is Dexter from Dexter Morgan. And then, of course of course, I call him Chucky, which is Oh, no. He's So he yeah. So that that's that's where their names come from. So I love that. Yeah. It's great. It works out. And and he lives to his name.
He's He murders people. I'm sorry. He's great at it. He he well, you know, he he's a blue pied French bulldog, and he has hazel eyes. So, you know, so he he's a killer with the ladies, you know, which is great. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, that's why I like I I like taking him out for foraging the car because, you know, I get to, you know, hey. Oh, how cute. Yes. I know. It's your version of the hot girl walk. That's it. There you go. Exactly. Exactly. And then of course, Beanie, everybody loves Beanie. And she's my little protector. She's, she's my bodyguard. So we're she doesn't let anybody get too close. As soon as as soon as somebody sits next as soon as somebody sits next to me, she is right in between, like, and and what she'll do is too, like, she'll she'll turn and she'll push the person away. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So she she's not French you use that, right? French Polish Polish Polish. Yeah. Classic. Classic. They're the best. They're the they are the best. So, so, what what piece of music let's try to get into it a little bit. What piece of music or memory, that how am I gonna phrase it?
A piece of music or a memory that instantly brings you joy?
[01:59:38] Unknown:
It's it's it's pretty niche, but there's a there's a piece of music called Reflections of Earth or Reflections from Earth by this composer called Gavin Greenaway. And it's this song that was commissioned by Disney for the turn of the of the millennium. Okay. So, you know, this had this they had this whole project called celebrations from Earth or something like that, and this was their like, the soundtrack to it. And if you go to any of the Disney parks, I think at Epcot, they they have this show fireworks show at the end of the night called Illuminations. And it's the the the twenty five years later, it's still the song that they used. Okay.
And I remember I'll never forget. When I was a kid, I was maybe five or six years old. Our parents took us to Disney World for the first time, and it just became an anthem of dreams coming true. You know? Like, and it's always been a really special song. We like, my we liked it so much. We got the the album, and so we would play the song at graduations and things like that. And, I'll never forget, on my first day in The US as a student, I arrive at SFO, and it's playing in the in, like, the PA system Wow. Because apparently TSA or, like, customs like, CBP somebody had commissioned it from Disney to be, like, the welcome to America song. This is in 2012. And I was like, I couldn't believe what was going on. You know? That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And it's an amazing song. It's just like it's I don't know. It's like seven minutes long. It just takes you on a journey of, like, where we started and where we're going.
And then now that you mentioned about it, this is, like, very much with the themes of, of what I'm building. And I don't think it's like we're part of one big story that we're all writing together. And,
[02:01:31] Unknown:
yeah, let's make them pages be good. That's great, brother. That's great. I I love what you're doing, man. I think it's fantastic. And I'm, like, again, I'm really looking forward to getting the the opportunity to go play with this for a little bit. So, where can people go to learn more about Autograph, try Walter, follow your work online, social media, anything like that?
[02:01:48] Unknown:
For sure. I mean, autograph-ai.com. That's where that's where you get to meet Walter. You can actually just you can actually talk to Walter without even making an account, and just get an experience you can get a feel for that experience. And then if you want to hear more about what my crazy brain thinks about all the time, probably x is the way to go. Okay. It's life underscore of underscore c c b.
[02:02:13] Unknown:
Life of? C c b. C c b. Okay. I'm gonna check you out. I'll find you. Yeah, man. I'm I'm probably easy anytime, man. I'm probably easy for you to find. I'm just at Joe Ruse. So you just That's pretty great. Yeah. Just just find me. Follow me. I'll follow you back. Yeah. I'll do it right now. And, alright. Well, Christian, thank you. I really appreciate you spending the night here with us. This is great. Any parting words? Any words of wisdom or advice you wanna give us before we, kiss off?
[02:02:45] Unknown:
Sure. I've been I've been trying to be a bit more intentional. And now it's like a business business, you know, so there's, like, deadlines and project management and people things that I have to learn how to be good at. And one of the things we've been trying to be good at is to remember why we do what we do. Mhmm. And, and I think just sitting with that feeling of watching of of of taking notice of the age in your parents and and, you know, the feeling their presence and and really trying to sit with the the moments that we have together and the how many of those can we take for granted in the future?
That's why we do this. Right? That's right. That's why we do this. And so just sit with that for a bit. And it's hard. It'd be just very, very difficult. It's very hard to get a little choky when you do it. Yep. I agree. But there there's that's what reminds you of of why you're doing the thing that you're doing. And sometimes we need help to do that. And, you know, I've been getting a lot of help with through Walter. Walter reminds me that, you know, that we're here for a very limited period of time. That, you know, the greats come and they go and, like, and, you know, like, the tides change. And, but you have a choice to make this moment epic, and it's very it's very hard to remind yourself of it. And so try Walter. It it may just remind you of something you were destined to remember.
[02:04:16] Unknown:
Alright. Well, we're definitely gonna do that. Christian, again, thank you so much. I really do appreciate you. And, let's, let's keep in touch after the show, and, and, we'll talk some more. Look forward to it. Thank you, John. It was wonderful. No. Anytime. It's my pleasure. And you're welcome back anytime, bro. Anytime. Appreciate it. Alright, folks. Alright. Christian, how do I say your last name? Cibales?
[02:04:36] Unknown:
Oh, Cybales. I mean, man and okay. For comedic relief, I mean, the thing about Latin American last names is we use both our our both our parents' last names. So Cybals is my dad's last name and Bernardo is my mom's last name. Okay. But whenever I introduce myself, I always sound like that guy who has to say his middle name. You know? And I'm like, no. No. No. It's just, just don't worry about it. Maybe I'll drop a hyphen or something just to make it More clear? Yeah. I don't know. Alright. Anyway, Cybals. I appreciate it. Cybals. You got it. Good to meet you, Joe. Thanks for having me. Sounds great. God bless you. Have a great night, and, we'll talk to you soon. Very, very soon.
[02:05:13] Unknown:
Alright. Appreciate it. Bye. Alright, folks. So this is the Joe Russo. Don't forget, we are a live show weeknights, 7PM central time, Saturdays, 3PM central time, and Sunday at 6PM central time. We're not gonna we're not gonna pause for the break here, so we're just gonna go right on into it, and we're gonna get into our announcements. Alrighty. Hey, folks. Don't forget to head over to our website, joeroos.com. That's joe roos dot com. And when you get over there, make sure you open up that contact form. Send us over any questions, comments, cares, or concerns that you have, any ideas that you might have for a guest you might like to see, or a particular subject you'd like to talk about. So, just head on over to our website and do that for us. If you don't wanna use the web form, fine. Email me directly at [email protected]. Also, while you're on the website, don't forget to sign up for the programming announcements email list. Alright?
Like I I said I mentioned on the show just a little bit ago, trying to get this thing to to to take off and, you know, if you sign up, we're not gonna spam you, we're not gonna send you a bunch of stuff you don't care about, we're not gonna send you ads and, you know, you know, buy this and buy that, and we're not gonna do that to you. The programming announcements are strictly that, programming announcements. So when we have guests lined up, we're gonna send you out an email to let you know about the guests. When we have a if we have a a reschedule or a late start or an earlier start or, you know, or maybe, you know, you know, god forbid we have to cancel the show, we're gonna send you out an email and let you know about that. It's the easiest and best way for us to reach everybody. And so if you would sign up for that, we would really really appreciate that. Again, it's free, which means it doesn't cost you anything. And, we're not gonna sell your information to anybody. It's all stays safe and secure with us locally. And, we'll we'll make sure that, that you don't get a lot of stuff that you don't want. Alright? Also, don't forget, to sign up for our socials. Alright? And I was gonna say something else, but, I'm not ready to make that move yet.
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You can, find me there also at joe roos. Now also, as always, we'd like to give out our shout outs to our producing team. We have our executive producers, Wayne Rankin, Rosanna Rankin, Carolina Jimenez, and, Marissa Lee, and of course, our producer, anonymous, Angela, who does fantastic work for us, and she's a real blessing to be having around. And we appreciate all of our producers, all the support, and all the encouragement, and all the everything that they do for us. You know, just the other day, just as an example, I I think I mentioned the other day, wasn't really feeling so so great. I wasn't such a great mood. And, you know, I I spoke to Wayne Rankin, our executive producer, and, you know, just what a source of encouragement and and his wife, Rosanna.
Both of them, you know, we we spent some time on the phone, we talked, we we vented to each other his problems, my problems, all the stuff that's going on. All this, by the way, fifteen minutes or so before the show started. So it was really it was it's it it they have been rushed, but we but we did it, you know. And, what a what a great encouragement they are, and and I really appreciated it. And then, you know, of course, we we prayed for each other, which was a phenomenal thing to do. Really gave us really really gave us a lot of encouragement. Then, of course, you know, Caroline Jimenez and Marissa Lee, I really appreciate everything that they do for the show as well. And, Marissa, with with the show that we we've been doing every other Saturday with the, about cryptocurrencies and finances has been a fantastic experience. So I hope you guys check that out. And then, of course, like I said, anonymous Angela shows a fantastic job with everything else that that's going on, and, you know, just trying to keep tabs on all the guests and the emails and and and the accounts that we have. So she's amazing. Everybody that we work with here is amazing, and we really appreciate them. Now if you wanna get on board with that, if you wanna help us out, you can do that very easily by, donating to the show. That's what keeps us moving here. That's what keeps everything paid for. It keeps all the lights on and everything.
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We they're producing the show through their contributions. Again, whether it's their treasure, time, or talent. So we appreciate that, and and I appreciate that immensely. So thank you so much for those for the folks that do that. And if you're able to, if you have the means to do it, please take a look at sign up for one of the producer tiers and and get on board with the team here. We would love to have you. I'd love to have the extra help. Now, the additional benefits that the executive producers get is they get to book a segment on the show with us, thirty minutes live here on the show, and also they get to get they get some t shirts, they get some swag, all, you know, whatever we have that's on hand at the time, they they're they're privy too. So you can easily sign up for that. Just look at the website and, just click on any one of those donations and, sign up for it. Alright. Now if you wanna donate cryptocurrencies, we would love to get that from you as well. We have our wallet information up there. It's Ethereum, Tether, Bitcoin, Solana, Texacoin.
Any number of ways that, you can contribute to us is great, and we appreciate it. And then, of course, you could also contribute by listening to the show through on the audio on the audio side of it through the, modern podcast apps, podcast two point o. We are a value for value show, and all that means is that, you know, and I usually say this earlier in in talking about donations, but value for value. And so if you are receiving anything of value from what we're presenting, whatever content we're putting out, you can return that value to us in the form of a donation. And you can do that in any one of those ways that I've already mentioned, or you can do it through listening on the modern podcast apps, like like fountain.fm or podcast guru or Podverse, where you can actually stream sats to us through the course of the show. Sats are micro payments of Bitcoin. So we appreciate that, and that that's fantastic to do. You could also help us out in another way too. You can head over to our affiliate link at alexjonesstore.com/joe, and you can get, some of those great vitamins and supplements that we have, available to you. Earlier in the show, you may have seen if you're watching at the very beginning, I have this wonderful blue beverage in this cup here that was methylene blue. I take it every day. It's great for you. And, really, it it it's it's just it's like a wonder supplement. It's fantastic. It's not a drug. It's a wonder supplement. It it it it helps you in so many ways. I couldn't even list them all to you, but it all starts at the cellular level, at the micro mitochondrial level. It just it's like a cleanse. It's like an energy boost. It just it's a level energy. It's not something that's like, you drinking, like an energy drink or or one of those, caffeine loaded energy drinks. It's it's a nice level smooth, energy throughout the course of of of the entire day, and it's fantastic. And it's so it's so gentle for you that you could actually drink it before you go to bed, and you'll have some great dreams, man. I'll tell you. I tried it. It's a lot of fun. So try it out. Methylene Blue, you can get it on our website, at our affiliate link at the alexjonesstore.com/joe.
That's the alexjonesstore.com/joe. Alright. Well, I think, that's gonna pretty much do it for us for tonight. So thank you again for taking the time to be with us. Don't forget, joe roos dot com. Send us over what you think and let us know. And, you know what, folks? Make Texas independent again. Go podcasting, keep a steady stride, and keep talking. Good night and goodbye.
Introduction and Weekend Recap
Upcoming Shows and Guests
Ezra Healing and Wellness Paradigm
Guest Introduction: Rodney Carpenter
Interview with Rodney Carpenter
Writing Crime Fiction and Realism
The Influence of the Catskills
Small Town Mysteries and Law Enforcement
Character Development in Fiction
Upcoming Books and Writing Process
Introduction of Christian Bernardes
Walter: The AI Historian
Emotional and Ethical Aspects of AI
Future Vision for Autograph
AI and Consciousness
Personal Reflections and Music
