when we lose legends. [The Counter Hit #6] Live Recording

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

boys and girls, everyone of all ages, but

those especially here on the internet.

Welcome.

How are you all doing today?

Good, I hope this is the counter hit.

Welcome board to the very first live

recording of said counter hit.

That is correct.

The very first live session for the

venerable counter hit series hosted by

your host, Sam Kirk, Sam scare quotes.

That's me as well as run by our lovely

Daniel Pratly, co-founder

and co-owner of zero.media.

What is the counter?

Well, this is the internet.

We are here now.

So are you.

Let's waste some time together.

Life's kind of hard.

It's not easy out there.

Last I checked.

And so in our time together today, we

remind ourselves that when we are

strongest, it's actually when our

resources are our lowest,

hence the meaning of zero.

And

so it makes sense for us to do this

session live for everyone to watch for

those that are interested.

I imagine many people aren't right now.

Twitch is a big platform.

YouTube is a big platform.

Our patron members

can also watch us live.

We are available live right now.

That's how life goes though.

Sometimes you just don't have

time for that kind of thing.

So folks, I want to dive

into our topics for the day.

You see what we're all about, which is

we've lost some real

serious legends this week.

And I'm pretty, I'm pretty honestly

bummed out about it all.

I'm not happy about it.

But before we dive into that subject, I

think it's important that we talk some

good news as we often do.

What are some good, good news happening

around the world here in internet land?

Remember when the internet was all about

just fun times for everyone all involved?

Fun times.

Not sad times.

Fun times.

Remember that?

Used to be.

It still can be actually, but the ever

growing algorithm is out to get us.

It's out to make us believe that whatever

we're seeing, our own lived experience,

the only lived experience

that we're capable of living

is the only thing that matters.

And today is going to be our reminder for

all of us to well, push back against that

in whatever way we possibly can.

So in that respect, in that regard, I

give us some good news for today and our

good news, from Princeton

University of all things.

That's right.

This comes from Princeton EDU as reported

on August 27, just a few days ago by G.N.

Jackson DeVoe, Office

of Communications here.

We have some good news here when it comes

to molecular biology.

Molecular biologist

Bonnie Bassler, the Andrew K.

Golden University professor at Princeton

and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute

investigator has been named the 2026

recipient of the Royal Society's Copley

Medal, its oldest and

most prestigious prize.

Oh, well, let's give round of applause

where round of applause is due.

Yes, yes, yes.

Round of applause.

And so with that, who

the heck is Bonnie Bassler?

What the heck did she do?

Well, again, these are the words of G.N.

Jackson DeVoe.

They writes, "Bassler's Copley Medal

recognizes her foundational research in

quorum sensing, the chemical signaling by

which bacteria communicate with each

other and band together to act

collectively, and for her, quote, dogma

overturning idea that interfering with

bacterial communication could form the

basis of completely novel antibacterias,"

end quote, according

to the award citation.

Quote, "Her discoveries are paving the

way for therapies to combat

disease-causing bacteria," quote, the

Society noted in its award announcement.

Quote, "I am delighted the 2026 Copley

Medal has been awarded to Professor

Bonnie Bassler," said Sir Paul Nurse,

president of the Royal

Society in the announcement.

Quote, "This well-deserved award

recognizes her invaluable contribution to

science as well as the extraordinary

creativity with which

she approaches research."

Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm.

She wrote to herself, let's

see, a couple of comments here.

Other award winners are Albert Einstein,

Stephen Hawking, Dorothy

Hodkin, and Charles Darwin.

Of course, Ambassador writes, "I am

deeply honored, especially given the long

history and central importance of the

Copley Prize to

scientific progress," she adds.

It is both humbling and inspiring to have

one's name on the same list as the

world's most celebrated scientists.

Folks, this is a big news.

This is a big deal.

I love it when we celebrate good science

for doing good science stuff.

She's kind of, she is the progenitor.

She is the one that kind of has figured

out that when it comes to bacteria, how

they talk to each other, how they band

together, recognize that they have a

signaling to that and recognizes a

compound in chemical that can help

triangulate that communication in a way

that helps benefit all of us

in human society as a whole.

Folks, that is, mm,

that's good news.

I like good news.

Good news like that.

Like when we celebrate good people, and

if I were to be so bold, I would say,

these are the kinds of actions, the kind

of celebrations we want to be focusing

for here when we talk about team human,

especially,

especially here in team human.

Individuals like these that help

propagate cases of science and health for

the sake of just helping all of humankind

is massive, huge, wonderful, amazing.

That's good stuff.

I love hearing things like this.

We should never get bored of hearing

things like this yet.

How often is it the case that we, we

don't hear this stuff.

We don't hear all the

good stuff that's happening.

We have more good news coming our way

here at the counter hit.

I want to start with that little bit of a

tease of the good work happening here.

Thank you so much, Bonnie, for all the

work that you've done.

We appreciate you so wholeheartedly.

But now we got to talk about some other

news, some maybe not so good news.

That's right, folks.

We got some not so good news

happening down the pike here.

It does not give me any kind of pleasure

to talk about these kinds of things yet.

Here's the deal.

If we don't remind ourselves of what's

happening, then we can't stay informed.

It was the great Denzel Washington that

said that if we don't read

the news, we are uninformed.

And if we read the

news, we are misinformed.

So for those of us that are informing the

news, all of you, and I guess I am part

of that equation since I'm a beacon of

this, we have a moral social

responsibility to get some of this news

right and report as justly and honestly

and objectively as we possibly can.

So this news comes from us from Tom

dispatch, specifically the intercept.com.

Ashley Gate wrote this literally

yesterday, August 31st,

2026, stating ecocide in Iran.

That's right.

We're gonna talk a

little about Iran right now.

The US Israeli war has caused more

massive environmental devastation, adding

to the long history of

American wars with toxic legacies.

Folks, let me pause

there for just a moment.

Yes, we're gonna talk about the Iran war,

but not from the angle

that you might be thinking.

That's right.

Folks, there's significant damage.

We, am I we I'm an

American not to dox myself.

I'm from the United States are a part of

when we are in this war against Iran, a

war that none of us asked for.

Let me just be very clear.

No American that I know

of has asked for this war.

It's a war that just

has kind of happened.

And so as a result of this, as a result

of this war that the president has gone,

we have done demonstrable damage to the

environment as we write here.

Yes, people have died.

Yes.

Lots of people have been implicated in

this particular capacity, but this is

doing a significant amount of harm to our

environment, the sea, the pollution and

everything in between.

And it takes me absolutely

no pleasure in saying that.

We, it says here alongside death and

destruction that was killed or wounded

tens of thousands of Iranian.

That's right.

Tens of thousands.

We're looking at 40,000 as of the time of

this recording right now.

The US is Israeli war has caused massive

environmental devastation

in its waters and so forth.

This is huge.

This is massive.

We are seeing toxic exposures threatened

not only today's war victims, but also

future generations who will grapple with

the knock on effects.

As Ashley gate rights in here, major

commercial satellite companies have

restricted or delayed the publication of

their Middle East data at the behest of

the US government, likely intended to

obscure the true extent of damage

inflicted on US military

facilities across the region.

The ongoing satellite blackout has also

hindered the work of those tracking the

environmental devastation that has

accompanied the conflict

since it began in February.

That's right.

Not only are we doing significant damage,

there is a, there's a blackout happening

where we are able to kind of see

specifically all the things that happen,

but we have, we have some indications.

I'm simply indicated by those working

conflict in the environment observatory

has concluded that all parties to the

conflict have appeared to target

facilities, including oil infrastructure

and water desalination plants.

According to research by the climate and

community institutes us and Israeli tax

on Iran in the first 14 days of the war,

emitted roughly 5 million metric cubic

tons of greenhouse gases.

Put another way in two weeks, coalition

strikes produce roughly the same amount

of carbon emissions as the country of

Iceland does over the course of a year.

And as with the war dragged on, missile

facilities, weapons, depots,

infrastructure, nuclear facilities, dual

use and citizen and civilian

infrastructure, including power stations

and desalination plants were also

increasingly struck folks.

One more time, 5 million metric cubic

tons of greenhouse gases emitted as a

result of this particular war.

Now you're a first time listener to us

here at the counter hit.

Let me just tell you

and remind you we are

teen human.

We believe in the human connection.

We believe in what human can possibly do.

We believe that the world's a better

place when we focus on the wonderful

things that human

beings are capable of doing.

And to do that, we have

to believe in planet earth.

We have to believe that planet

earth is a place that matters.

And yet, as we see this, we're talking a

lot about lives lost.

We're talking a lot about

undue territorial political strife that

none of us signed up for.

We're also doing damage to probably the

most important resource that we have,

which is our planet, which

is right here, right now.

So let us not forget this as the war

continues to wage on a war that none of

us asked for that none of us want.

Let us remind ourselves that the real

casualty in all of this beyond the 40,000

Iranians, which my heart goes out to all

those families, that's an unfathomable

number of people that

have been impacted by that.

And I'm so sorry.

Beyond all that, we're also doing damage

to our planet for reasons that have never

been explained to us.

Let's remember this.

And if there's one thing we can remember

about the counter hit,

you have two choices in life.

You can bear your head in sand and

pretend like none of this happening.

And for some of you, that

might be the right call to make.

For some of you, I

don't deny that for sure.

For some of you,

you make the choice to not listen to

what's happening right now out of fear of

emotional turmoil and toil within

yourselves and your family.

And that's your choice to make.

Absolutely.

But if you are on the internet right now,

like we all are, then we have an

opportunity just to keep a note, if

nothing else, because when things can

swing a different way in a different

direction, a way that we all want them to

have, we have to remember

the things that occurred.

We have to remember the undoing that must

be done and make those

mental notes wherever we can be.

So for those in Iran, I apologize for

those in the United States who are forced

to execute these orders.

I apologize for mother earth.

I'm so, so sorry.

And unlike many other people that might

disagree otherwise, I'm a

big believer in mother earth.

I'm a big believer in this wonderful

planet that we live on.

I kind of don't want to be anywhere else.

If I can be perfectly honest, I'm pretty

happy being where we are.

I think this is a pretty good planet.

If we can just keep this running for as

long as we can, I'd be

pretty stoked about that.

But as a stance right now, that's what

we're looking at right

now in terms of the Iran.

And let's just be mindful of

those things moving forward.

So not, not great news all around, not

great news all around, but that does not

mean I don't have good news elsewhere.

That's right.

We have some other

good news to talk about.

I'm not here doom and

gloom here at the counter hit.

I don't believe in just

hitting you hard with all the hits.

No, it's about giving you a

balanced approach of things.

We have some good news.

We got some bad news, some weird news.

Here's even more good news.

This is comes from, uh, comes directly

from Reuters reported today, September

1st, according to Colleen Ho at Reuters

organization, also known as a resource

for the associated press in Beijing,

China specifically solar farms overtook

coal plants in July to become China's top

source of installed power capacity.

State run media reported on Tuesday,

although solar still lags well behind

coal in terms of power

generation put into other context.

They write China had 1,288 gigawatts or

GWs as they're known.

If you're a metal gear fan, you have a

different name for that one of solar

capacity as of the end of July amidst

Cole's 1,285 gigawatts.

That's just three extra gigawatts more

according to energy administration

figures and state run media, but solar

contribution to power generation is lower

since it cannot generate electricity when

the sun isn't shining.

Wind and solar made up 24.6% of power mix

in the first half while coal was 49.7%

the energy

administration previously said.

This is the first time

coal share dropped below 50%.

That is huge.

And we often cite China as one of the,

um, the biggest uses

users of coal energy.

So the fact they're taking such a

significant leap forward here is massive.

It is huge.

Uh, they write here in Reuters, renewable

Cassie had already topped coal capacity

in March of last year.

China's installed wind and solar

surpasses the coal

fleet for the first time.

And they write China's new solar

installations have slowed

this year compared to last.

Unfortunately, following a shift from

fixed feed and tariffs to market-based

pricing, although total

fleet continues to grow.

That's right.

Slowed not happy about that, but this is

good news all around.

So it turns out we can do

good things for planet earth.

We can last I checked.

I think that's a good thing.

We should be celebrating that.

That's pretty wonderful.

Pretty fantastic.

If you ask me all the wonderful, amazing

and incredible things we

can do on planet earth.

And we just put our minds to

it and let science be science.

That's good stuff.

Good stuff all around.

Congratulations, China.

Thank you for all the work you're doing.

America's doing okay here too, but

honestly, we're in too many wars.

The net impact isn't that great.

So we could all learn a lesson from you.

Thank you so much for that.

That's some good news for us for today.

Before we dive into our larger topic

today about some of the losses we've had

literally in the last week for the year

of 2026, which does not

bode well for all of us.

Stay tuned for more details on that.

All

right, folks, as we indicated before, we

lost some serious legends last week, if

you've been paying

attention to the news at all.

Pretty rough stuff all around.

I'm not a big fan of this news, but it's

important we talk about this news because

if we don't know the news, then, well,

again, we run the risk of

being ignorant of this stuff.

And I think it's important for us to take

a pause of the losses we've had just last

week alone, past

couple of weeks, actually.

So, folks, I talked to you, of course,

first about Peter Cullen.

Good old Peter Cullen.

Ever hear of Peter Cullen?

I'm sure you know who Peter Cullen is.

He's the goat.

He's a master.

He's a legend of personality,

as well as his iconic voice.

We lost him

too soon.

Too soon.

And I thought it'd be important for us to

kind of be reminded of what his role was.

He was the voice of

Optimus Prime for Transformers.

And this kind of video of him talking

about his inspiration for the voice has

been circling around the internet.

And I think it's important that we all

take a quick listen right now and remind

ourselves what this is all about.

What made Peter Cullen kind of an amazing

person beyond raw talent?

My brother Larry, a captain in the Marine

Corps, had returned from Vietnam.

He was a decorated

Marine and

the Bronze Star with V and

a couple of Purple Hearts.

And we were sharing an apartment going

through a difficult time in

my life when Larry came down.

And it was about 1984.

And we were, as I said,

living in an apartment together.

And he would always take a little

interest in where I was

going every day, because I was a

grunt, as the Marines would say.

If you're a ground

trooper, you're a grunt.

Anyway,

Larry's 13 months

older, five inches taller.

But we're 13 months apart.

We were very, very close.

So he said, "Peter,

where are you going today?"

And he said, "Well,

Larry, you need the car?"

He said, "No, no.

I just don't know where you're going."

I said, "I'm going to audition.

I'm going to be...

I'm auditioning as a truck."

He did the same thing.

And so I said, "But Larry,

evidently he's a hero truck.

He's a real...

I mean, he's a hero."

And his face got somber.

And he said, "Peter, if

you're going to be a hero,

be a real hero.

Don't be a Hollywood hero type with all

the BS and all the yelling and screaming

and trying to be tough.

Be strong enough to be gentle."

Okay, Larry.

Yeah.

So as his voice is ringing in my ears as

I'm driving to the audition,

and I read the copy and Larry is just

coming out, his voice,

the way he talked to me.

And it said,

"I'm Optimus Prime."

No, it was,

"My name is Optimus Prime."

My

name is Optimus Prime.

That's right.

That's the iconic phrase we all remember

from Peter Cullen and his portrayal.

According to him, it was his brother that

inspired him to come from a place of

reality and realness and humanity.

And of that hero bullshit nonsense.

This resonates with me for

a lot of different reasons.

It resonates with a lot of people.

I'm not a Transformers fan per se.

I appreciate for what it is.

It is about talking cars.

Right?

Probably because I'm

not a big car person.

That being said, I

had a bunch of the toys.

They were super fun.

The movie, the animated movie is, oof,

that's something all right.

Holds a cherished memory

for many, many, many people.

When I think about

leadership though, it's exactly this.

And for those of you that don't know,

I've never tuned in before in another

life, life I technically still have now,

I'm a leadership consultant.

I teach people how to

be effective leaders.

I teach people about the quiet.

I teach people, it's not about being

puffing out your chest and

feeling like you're perfect.

It's about being human, strong enough to

be gentle, as Peter says.

And

I gotta be honest,

this makes me wanna watch

these shows one more time.

Go through all of them and

kind of hear his performance.

I mean, sure, it was a gig.

He was making money like we all are.

Trying to make a couple

bucks, trying to survive.

Here's Peter, inspired by his environment

around him, in this case, his brother of

all people and all things.

I wanted to be something more.

I wanted to take a shot and really do it

just as to his brother's visage.

He didn't have to.

When you think about it, he

didn't really have to do that.

He could have just

did the good old hero shit.

Could have done that.

Could have phoned it in, could have done

like how we thought the copy read.

As a voice actor, I know that I've had

that choice sometimes of

am I doing it straight copy?

Am I just playing it as

the words are on the page?

Am I being real?

And Peter took the choice to be real.

That's pretty, God, darn amazing.

Somewhat related, but

maybe not so related.

There's a film, a science fiction film in

the 90s called Stargate that had Kurt

Russell in it, James Spader.

And there's stories circulating around

the internet that apparently Kurt Russell

really wasn't a big fan of the script,

thought it was kind of bad, but he kept

being offered the role a bunch of times

with more and more and more and more

money until he finally took it.

And he said, look, I don't really like

the script very much but I'm a

professional, I'll do you a solid, I'll

do whatever and just move on.

And supposedly there was a rift between

him and James Spader because James Spader

didn't come to set one day because James

Spader also, I guess, felt that the

script wasn't super great.

And he says, hey, I thought you're gonna

rewrite this script.

The scene needs to be rewritten.

And the director and producer are like,

we can work something

out while we're in here.

And James Spader says, no, I'm not coming

out of my trailer until you fix this

scene and rewrite it.

And Kurt Russell's on set

and he won't tolerate that.

He's like, yo, we got a time to keep, we

got marks to make and

we're gonna make our show.

Sweetie stamps on over, James Spader's

trailer knocks on his door, James says,

what the hell do you want?

He says, you're gonna come to set and

says, come on, man, you know

the script's a piece of crap.

And Kurt Russell says, of

course it's a piece of crap.

That's why we're paying us so much

goddamn money to say the lines.

And on one hand, you can like decipher

that and think, oh man,

you know, that's just,

it's being a little belligerent and just

kind of being funny.

But at the same time,

there's a little bit of like,

who cares about the words?

At a certain point, you still can make

choices around those words.

And I think about Peter

Cullen right now with that.

So

I was sad to hear of

Peter Cullen's passing.

There's people that worship that man far

greater than I, but I love

this story about his brother.

I love his earnestness to take the

character seriously.

I love whenever I've, you know, I've seen

footage of him in like conventions and so

forth, he loves his fans and he cares so

greatly about doing the good work when it

comes to this kind of work.

So

it was a real shame to miss

out, to lose Peter Cullen.

That would have been bad enough.

But of course,

we also lost someone else.

We lost Dolly goddamn fucking Parton.

Dolly Parton,

what a legend.

Of course, she left on

her own terms, right?

She did not.

Didn't seem like it was a surprise.

I don't know if she was accompanied by

family and friends as it happened.

It sounded like she kind of knew it was

coming and just kind of kept shut about

the whole thing, which lends a whole

other class to that particular lady and

couldn't,

could have been done better, I suppose.

But she's done so many incredible things.

Like for instance, it is often cited that

Dolly Parton specifically

funded some COVID vaccine research.

She partly funded Moderna's research and

gave the largest individual contribution

to make that piece happen, Moderna.

So it could be argued that without Dolly

Parton's contribution, Moderna might not

have gotten to market, tested as fast as

it possibly could have

done without her contribution.

She's known all throughout her friends

and family for being this,

being someone who looks

out for everyone else.

And that's just one way.

Another way that I'm thinking of for

Dolly Parton, I'm thinking about her

Dolly Parton's imaginary, imagination

library, a foundation that she started

where she would gift as many books as she

could to children that needed it,

believing that if you live a life with

literature and books,

it's a good life for all people around.

And if you go to the website right now,

imaginationlibrary.com, according to

them, they have gifted over 332 million

books to 3 million kids

per month.

massive.

And if you go on social media anywhere,

you'll see tons of stories of people

saying that they are a recipient of that

book and the gesture and love that they

felt they've received from Dolly's

generosity is incredible and massive.

There's a story I saw where someone

who was blind was receiving books from

Dolly Parton that were in braille.

And that was such a huge heartfelt moment

because many libraries don't carry books

in braille, but for Dolly Parton to make

it kind of a specific notion that no, if

we're gonna make sure everyone gets a

book that meets their needs, and if your

needs are, you need to get your braille

books, we're gonna

get your braille books.

We are gonna be talking for years about

Dolly Parton's contributions to

everything.

There's gonna be all kinds of secret

things that we're gonna find out later

that Dolly Parton played a hand in.

And I can't think of

anything more zero doubt than that.

Still giving back, still providing, and

not trying to make the

story and script about her.

What a lovely, amazing human being.

We can all learn a

couple things from Dolly.

And I think we can all agree, even though

she's had such a storied career,

we still feel like she left too soon.

That's incredible.

So if you'd like to donate to Dolly

Parton's Imagination

Library, you may do so.

We'll drop a link in the description of

the video slash podcast,

what we're done airing today.

But it's just imaginationlibrary.com.

Go ahead and drop a link, drop a note,

even just spreading the word will do a

lot because I think we can all agree the

world we live in right

now might be because,

at least the bad parts, not

enough of us read enough books.

So whatever we can do to

help fight that, just a smidge,

we're massive and huge.

So thank you, Dolly.

And of course, that would be bad enough

if we lost Dolly Parton and Peter Cullen.

But no, of course, of course,

we had to lose someone else.

And of course, the one I'm

thinking of is the legendary

Tim Curry.

Mm, Tim Curry.

Rocky Horror Picture Show, to name just a

few of his notable performances.

You probably have seen Tim Curry.

He's been that quote unquote guy.

It's unmistakable,

his persona, his visage.

I'll never forget him

from the movie Clue.

Have you ever seen Clue?

It's a phenomenal,

kind of whodunit story.

I'll never forget his role in that.

He played the butler.

We lost Tim Curry too soon.

Now we had early signs that Tim Curry was

not doing super well in his

health and everything else.

So it's not super surprising.

Still, the timing just hits so hard.

And you know, what I'm gonna think about

when I think about Tim Curry for probably

years to come isn't probably

any of his particular roles.

I mean, Pennywise is probably a notable

role for some people, but for me, it's

gonna be the role he didn't get.

That's right.

I'm thinking about a role that he had the

part for, did the pilot for, and then

ended up going to a different actor.

And then that actor had a second wind in

terms of their acting career.

The role I'm thinking of, of course, is

the Joker from "Batman

the Animated Series."

That is right.

At one point or another, at some point,

he was the guy who was gonna be

in the hot seat

being the Joker.

And you can find small little clips,

little snippets here and

there of his performance.

And I won't play the clips here for fear

of getting demonetized or whatever from

good old Warner

Brothers, DC Comics, et cetera.

I won't do that for

that particular reason.

But you should check it out

because there's a

creepiness to his performance.

There's a macabre to it, a real

sinisterness to that performance.

And everyone writes that

it was a great performance.

It just felt a little too creepy maybe.

And you can hear some of Tim Curry's

mannerisms inside of Mark Hamill's

imitation, especially in

the early goings of the show.

And so in that way,

Tim Curry kind of still exists, kind of.

And that's kind of cool.

That's kind of, hmm, that's kind of neat

if you ask me, for

sure, for sure, for sure.

So

if you can,

drop a dental note

for Peter Cullen,

Dolly Parton,

and Tim Curry, who we lost too soon.

It really stinks to lose legends, but

it's a beautiful thing too.

It's beautiful to lose legends in some

capacity because when you lose a legend,

you realize their impact more because

they're gone, their absence, you feel it,

the void is there, which is painful.

You also realize that,

well, you look at yourself, I think.

I know I look at myself all the time and

go, what am I doing?

This gives you a nice opportunity to go,

if Dolly Parton can do all of this, what

small little piece of the puzzle can I

contribute to do something of worth of

kind of note for other

people and my community?

It sounds like Peter

Cullen and Tim Curry,

and Dolly Parton,

they knew the assignment.

That's kind of nice to know that.

It's kind of beautiful in its own way.

Wonder what we can do to understand what

our assignments are in some small way.

Our assignment, by the way, not anyone

else's, just our assignment.

What's our assignment in life?

Curious indeed.

Curious indeed.

Thank you, Dolly.

Thank you, Tim.

And thank you, Peter.

Change the world.

My friend, a passage.

Goodbye.

(Upbeat Music)

All right, that's a lot of

doom and gloom for right now.

Some sad stuff all around.

We're gonna have some more good stories

for us in just a little bit.

However, I think it's important that we

take a little bit of a

deep dive into something else.

It's September 1st right now, as of this

recording, as of this live broadcast.

And if it's September 1st, that means we

are in the last three months of the year,

2026, before the year's over.

And in the world of

video games, that's right.

Video games.

This is kind of like the season for video

games to come out, at least start to come

out, especially the October, November

season, for sure, for

sure, the last four months.

It's funny though, in the video game

industry, this being kind of like the

most important season in a lot of ways.

It's been this way forever, but for a

couple of years, I forgot that's what

happens around this time because we had

this thing called COVID.

Remember COVID?

Remember the pandemic?

Yeah, for a while, because that threw

everyone's pipeline out the window in

terms of production and everything else.

We kind of forgot about that.

(Groans)

Not fun.

Not fun at all.

But it sounds like we're

on the right track now.

At least I think we are.

And so it's with that, we get to be

excited about video games again.

Woot!

I mean, Onomuusha is

coming out this week.

Orbitals on Switch, a Switch exclusive is

coming out this week.

Got some other games

coming out, like this

little indie game called

Grand Theft Auto VI.

Grand Theft Auto VI, that's right, Grand Theft Auto VI is

being keyed up as one of the highest

publicized video entertainment releases

all the time, maybe.

It's coming out soon.

It's coming out not too long from now.

And so we have this weird influx of game

releases not wanting to come out to

compete because they're not

going to win against GTA VI.

So they're all kind of rushing to hit the

door right now in the month of September

beforehand or well after

potentially and onwards.

So man, this is the time where your

wallet gets squeezed.

This is the moment when,

it doesn't feel like

you have any money you left in your

wallet and you have to be very careful in

how you spend your money

for sure, for sure, for sure.

Unless you're getting GTA VI, then all

you're doing is waiting

for GTA VI of that nature.

Unless you're like me who probably won't

play GTA VI, nothing against GTA, just,

I really enjoyed GTAs on the PS2,

three, Vice City, San Andreas.

I kind of got my fill after that point.

Four wasn't my cup of tea, but I know a

lot of people love four,

barely touched five, barely.

I picked it up at launch on PS3 and

really did not like having to mash the

triangle or the cross button

on the PS3 to keep running.

Give me just an auto-run

feature or like something else.

I don't know, it wasn't my

cup of tea, but not a big deal.

But what are we doing?

Are we talking about video games?

No, we're talking about something else,

which is a report that came from good old

thegamer.com as reported

by James Lucas, August 27th.

And folks, once again,

this is not great news.

But according to James

Lucas, this is his words.

Gamescom opening night live in 2026 was a

two hour highlight reel of

disappointment this year.

That's what they write.

Why is that?

There were occasional gems like Warlock,

Dungeons and Dragons and Metro 2039,

nestled between the endless dark fantasy

souls likes and anime

inspired action games.

Ooh, souls likes are still

a term we're using today.

That's interesting, that's fun.

But the showstopping reveals were a

remaster of a 10 year old game and a

remake of a 29 year old game.

That really says it all.

But there was something else that was

slightly off about the showcase.

The whole thing had a veneer of AI too.

Ooh, okay, so here's the deal.

The title of the headline is a quarter of

gamescom reveals openly, open use of AI.

Did that one use the word open?

Openly using AI, phrasing is weird.

A quarter of the game showcase, at that

particular event, used AI in development

and weren't shy about it.

So he writes, James Lucas, if you felt

the same, you weren't hallucinating.

Nearly one in four reveals, 13 of the 55

games shown or 23.64%

either used AI in

development or marketing.

To come to this conclusion, the game

report through interviews with

developers, official blogs and steam

disclosures for each reveal, which also

cross referencing a similar list was

shared with a Reddit post called

Socialist Gaming by Reddit

user, Frosty Magazine 9918.

We found that the following 13 games

utilize AI in some form and

they list the games right here.

16, 66, Amsterdam, Aon 2, Ananta, Anemo,

Crazy Taxi World Tour, oh, that kills me.

SEGA, what the hell are you doing?

Generative AI support tools used during

development as a quote unquote reference.

That still counts as using AI.

Crimson Desert, Enhanced

Edition, Like or Die, Once Human.

Oh my God, there's a game called Once

Human and it uses AI

generated assets for marketing.

Come

on, come on.

This stuff writes itself.

This is,

chefs, kids, this is science fiction,

dystopia stuff, all right.

Petite Planet uses an AI chat bot.

PUBGdead.net,

Steam disclosure reveals the team uses AI

tools to develop some in-game content.

PUBGdead.net, PUBG's still around?

I have no idea.

The Blood of the

Dawnwalker, oh, I heard about this.

This is from X

Witcher 3 Devs, right?

Placeholder, generative AI voices, Rebel

Wolves assures that everything will be

removed and replaced

with actors ahead of launch.

Hmm, launches like soon, isn't Blood of

the Dawnwalker coming

out in a couple of days?

Trainsimworld7 utilizes 11 abs next, text

to speech tool to generate voiceover

elements and ZooPunk players can use AI

for in-game customization.

Hmm, that does not feel good folks.

That does not feel good to be in a world

where everyone is using AI.

Not good, not good, not good, not good.

Okay, so here's the thing though, I

appreciate the article, it's a good

article, all things considered.

Nobody wants this AI

stuff, so why are we using it?

What purpose is this AI helping us solve?

Okay, like that's my honest question.

We have made a kind of a reputation here

at the counter hit and kind of bad

mouthing AI, but I wanna be very clear in

my opinion about this.

No matter how much I don't like a thing,

and I have dubious doubts about things,

everything I don't like has some kind of

function or purpose or

use in the right context.

I'll give you an example.

I don't like automobiles.

I had an automobile for a

long time, got rid of it.

My wife and I share an automobile now

trying to lower our imprint on life.

I'm a bicycle kind of guy.

And I'm a firm believer that,

did you know this?

The bicycle and the automobile were

invented around the same time, the safety

bicycle and the automobile invented

around the same time.

And our paved roads as our result of a

association, of bicycle association that

asked for paved roads and

cars kind of took it over.

Fun fact, if you didn't know that.

And we know that jaywalking is a smear

campaign made to infiltrate kids, young

kids' minds to convince them that

crossing the street except in designated

spaces is illegal and

bad and terrible for you.

And the car should have the

right of way in all cases.

We know this.

We know that when more bicycles and more

people are walking the common streets, it

forces cars to slow down.

And when cars slow down, cars are safer,

less death, less

automobile accidents occur.

We know this.

We know that automobiles

is a tool of two tons or less around that

range of steel, going at lethal speeds

that can kill people.

And it is responsible for untold deaths

in the entire world.

We know this.

All this is true.

Yet in the right context, I can tell you,

there are certain situations where it

does not make sense to do

anything else but drive a car.

I've been in certain places of the

country here in the United States.

And if you're not familiar

with, the country is massive.

We don't have great infrastructure unless

you're in cities for like buses and

trains and public transportation.

So it's not a great model if you need to

get from A to B in certain sectors of our

country to be using those infrastructure,

whether they exist or

not in a lot of cases.

Great example, great example.

Trying to get from Minneapolis, Minnesota

to Austin, Minnesota.

It's a 90 minute drive.

What else can you do?

You could rent a car, I suppose.

That's gonna be a pretty

large bill on your behalf.

You can

get a bus, which has a specific schedule

it caters to and makes multiple stops

along the way, making your

stops pretty long and elongated.

Or you can get a car.

And if you live in that

area, it makes a lot of sense.

If you gotta make that trip every once in

a while to have a car, to have a vehicle.

So even though I'm anti-car in a lot of

cases and a lot of context, in that

context, I'm not anti-car.

It's in the same way

here that I believe that AI,

pains me to say this probably has a use

case, especially when it comes to speed.

But in the creative arts and stuff like

this, in the stuff that makes things

worth experiencing, what are we doing?

What does this solve?

Do we know?

Does anyone know?

I have no idea.

I don't have a single clue what using AI

does to help streamline, make things

better when it comes to game development.

Beyond not wanting to pay people,

but you're just gonna pay for that in the

backend anyway, because

people can sniff that out.

They can sniff out the

final product when there's

a placeholder element.

Even if you replaced it, we can just feel

that it wasn't 100% integrated.

I mean,

look at game development pre-2017 when AI

wasn't as much of a bubble as it was.

You had to hire artists to make

placeholder art or get public domain

placeholder art to just kind of get your

idea off the ground.

And then that placeholder

art was so gosh darn annoying.

You spent most of your time trying to

make art anyway, even if it was crappy,

just so we could kind of feel the vision

of what the creatives were trying to

accomplish in that particular game.

What's the point of this?

What's the point of it?

Video games are meant to be a pretty low

cost entertainment

solution for many of us.

Video games, that's what

they're supposed to do.

That's what they're

supposed to do, right?

And yet

they're expensive.

Everything is going up thanks to tariffs.

There's chip and graphics card and RAM

shortages all across the board.

And you're using up those chips to use

AI, which is draining resources on our

planet, using up tons of water and

killing our planet for what?

What's the benefit?

I don't get it.

Like I don't even get how you

save money on this equation.

I think you're losing

money on this equation.

So like the whole greed

thing makes no sense to me.

I think you're losing a lot.

So look, I don't have

any agenda about this.

I saw this article and I

thought it was kind of wild.

I'm gonna trust their

validation on this one.

None of these games seem like games I

would be interested in except for crazy

taxi, but I already got the

indication they were using AI.

They kind of were outspoken about that.

I'm not a fan of Sega right now, modern

Sega that is, as a publishing

house and a developer house.

Not super keen on some of

their decisions at the moment.

If you listen to our zero dot podcast

before it became the counter hit, I

talked quite a few times about how

annoying that annoyed that I was that

Sega was not offering along with Square

Enix, no upgrade path for those that

owned switch one versions of games to the

switch two counterpart.

Not even like a discount, nothing.

Just you gotta buy the

whole game again outright.

And that is Garbo, big,

big massive Garbo here.

So, hmm.

I don't know what

we're doing here, folks.

I don't know what the purpose of that

particular jaunt is,

but I hope someone is happy with their

decisions on that front.

I hope so.

So if you wanna sit out this season of

gaming and not play video

games, you're not alone.

If you wanna support indie developers and

kind of stay away from the AAA space,

you're not alone there either.

I think we're going to see an emerging

market come through on this front.

I think we're gonna see that there's been

this double A tier of gaming that's kind

of died a little bit.

I think that's gonna emerge back.

A double A developer I'm

thinking of is like Rebellion.

They make the Sniper Elite games.

I think developers like Rebellion are

gonna really excel by making lean, tight

games that don't move the needle super

far, but they just, they satisfy in a way

that the popcorn satisfies.

They're nothing

fancy, but they do the job.

And I think those are gonna blow up.

And games that are AAA, unless you are

the AAA of AAA or your

Nintendo, I think you're gonna drown.

You're gonna lose a lot of money.

I hope I'm wrong on that.

I really hope I'm wrong.

I just, I think we're

out pricing ourselves.

We're out bidding ourselves here.

Video games are supposed

to be relatively cheap.

I don't got money to go on vacation, but

I got money to spend 40 or 50 bucks on a

video game experience over the weekend

and sit on my couch and pass the control

along with some friends and maybe play a

multiplayer game with some folks.

Now I gotta commit to these things.

Oh man, I gotta rant

about this for a minute.

So

I don't play Call of Duty.

I haven't played Call of Duty in years,

but there was a Call of

Duty beta on the Switch too.

And I was interested because Call of Duty

has kind of relatively stayed away from

Nintendo for a while.

I don't know what I was thinking.

I just impulsively said, yeah, I'll go

ahead and download the free beta.

Sure, why not?

Of course I knew that the moment I

opened the program, you gotta put in all

your information in there so they can

have your email address and contact and

make an account and all this stuff.

And I just said, no, I'm not doing that.

I deleted the whole thing.

Everything is an investment, everything.

I wanna be able to give you a couple

bucks and that's it, we're done.

The transaction is over, but they're

still collecting data from you if your

console or PC is connected to the

internet in some capacity.

They're still tracking

that information from you.

They still have it, they own it.

They're not done.

They're constantly eating and seeping

away out of your resources.

That's categorically

insane in my opinion.

It's crazy.

We can do better than that.

I think we can.

I hope we can.

Only time will tell.

Next up,

some more good news.

(Upbeat Music)

All right, folks.

So this next piece of good news I have

for you once again comes from the

Associated Press reported by Chenal

Ganguly and Sheik Salik.

This was updated

yesterday on August 31st.

If you don't know,

El Nino is given a nice little uproar to

a lot of the world and making significant

changes to our geological systems.

I mean, to give you context here,

water freezes at zero degrees Celsius and

becomes water at one degree Celsius.

So even one degree of change in our

homeostasis can

drastically change things.

And we are seeing this as literal

floodwaters are destroying much of

Nepal's communities here.

This story is a

heartfelt one, don't worry.

It's a good one in many cases.

They report here, Rajendra Dawadi was

inside his classroom when a colleague

rushed in with a warning.

Floodwaters were racing through Nepal's

Trishuli Valley, tearing apart homes,

bridges, and entire villages.

Then a teacher received

another warning by phone.

Moments later, a parent

arrived, take her child home.

The danger had not yet been confirmed,

but Dawadi, who's the principal of this

school, had little time to act.

He rang the school bell and ordered his

students and staff out of the building

and toward higher ground.

"I immediately decided to stop school and

get the children out," he

told the Associated Press.

And the headline here is he evacuated

over 900 students before flooding swept

away their entire school.

This is a big deal because the disaster

has killed over 950 people and there's

more than 4,400 people missing as of

today, which is just awful.

But this principal is a hero.

He literally took the first sign of

danger, all the signs that he should do

something about it, got everyone into a

bus and got them to safety.

But the aftermath is huge.

He says, quote, "I have no words.

I got education from that school and I

gave education at that school."

Oof, it's heartbreaking.

Folks, if you haven't seen the images,

it's pretty horrific what's

happening right now in Nepal.

And again, all because of good old El

Nino and all good because

we probably aren't doing what we can to

protect our lovely mother earth.

People are dying as a result of this.

This is huge.

This is catastrophic in many ways.

But again, we wanna celebrate the good

works of those that are taking what power

they have and doing what they can to make

the world a better place.

And in this case, saving children's

lives, which Rajendra's oath as a

principle is to do that.

You get to do that.

The cost is he's seeing his entire

childhood, his school, the place where he

worked, lived, breathed, gone in an

instant, thanks to mother nature.

I don't doubt at all

that there won't be repairs.

Repairs are gonna come at some point when

the water has subsided.

There'll be new geological things to

manifest and consider.

It's gonna be heartbreaking for everyone.

It is heartbreaking for them.

But take a moment now, if you haven't

already to consider what's happening

right now in Nepal, no matter what else

is happening across the world, that is

huge and significant.

And even in those places,

heroics and doing the right thing and

being part of team human always wins in

whatever way it can.

So thank you, Rajendra.

I'm sorry for your loss, but thank you

for your heroism in doing the

right thing for those children.

It's good to know that we live in a world

where that's

generally the modus operandi.

Thank you.

Folks, have you been tuning in so far?

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Oh my gosh, that's crazy.

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We have another secret show being

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All right, folks.

So our next session, our next section,

words, words are a thing.

We like to scour the interwebs what

people are talking about when it comes to

life, leadership, mental health, and kind

of offer a different take on how to kind

of handle some of these challenges and

these problems happening right now here.

And of course, a main source of

inspiration for us is

going to good old Reddit.

So this is some Reddit stories here from

Reddit slash life

that are live right now.

They just got published on September 1st,

2026 on the moment this is airing.

We got some good stuff here, just so you

know for your

edification, for your knowledge.

I'm not a Redditor.

I guess by extension of be doing this,

I'm a Redditor, but I

don't post on Reddit.

I barely read anything.

I only read Reddit stories when I'm

broadcasting on this particular show.

And so

it's with that.

We're gonna dive into our

first little story here.

I'm here on r slash Reddit.

And here we go.

A lovely little post

posted five days ago.

It's got 316 upvotes in

135 different comments.

Holy cow.

Very short little prompt here.

The title says, "I just turned 25.

"What are some tips

to a well-lived life?"

Ooh, oof.

What a lovely question.

I like this question a lot.

It says here, "It's funny how I'm five

years away from 20."

I think they mean 30.

"Which felt like a blink of an eye, "but

I'm also five years away from

30, "which seems like ages."

Oh no, they were right, yeah.

"Five years away from 20,

five years away from 30.

"And to make the rest of my 20s worth it,

"I have come to seek

for some words of wisdom."

Hmm.

20s, 20s, 20s.

OP wants to make sure that

their 20s are worth a damn.

They wanna do something that matters.

Oof, wow.

It was funny, I was just talking to my

wife about this, and she and I agree.

And by the way, if you wanna see more of

my lovely wife in our other show where we

co-host a show, a secret show that only

our Patreon members see right now, has to

do with video games and literature, come

check out our Patreon,

www.patreon.com, slash zero.media.

But I was just talking about her about

this, and we both agree

that our 20s were dumb,

like real dumb.

We had this idea that once you turn 18,

you become an adult, and then by your

20s, you should have stuff, quote

unquote, figured out, but that's a lie as

far as I'm concerned.

My 30s are great, 40s are good.

Like things just keep getting better and

better and better as we

keep going through life.

Sure, things are difficult and

challenging, but I feel

more equipped, I feel more,

more capable, I think is

the word we wanna use, right?

And so we have some comments here.

First one says, invest in reading

paperback books for leisure, invest in

the stock market, eat healthier food and

stay fit at the gym.

Okay, reading paperback books for

leisure, what if it's hardback?

I don't know why they made it a big deal

to make it paperback, but yes, okay.

Physical bound books, okay.

Invest in stock market, eat healthier

food and stay fit at the gym.

Those are all pretty easy things, pretty

logistical, good tips, all things around.

People say it's a pretty good list, take

care of your health, your mind, your

finances, it really can pay off later for

sure, for sure, for sure.

Mm,

other comments we have,

comparison is the theft of joy.

Oh, John, our former co-founder, John

would have loved that.

In other words, don't compare your life

to others and try to live up to them at

your own standards, your own goals, make

yourself happy with you

and screw what others think.

Mm, love that.

Another comment, the older you get, the

more difficult life gets.

The harder it is to find

a job, let alone a career.

The harder it is to find a partner, the

harder it is to survive.

It's best to establish these things and

start at a young age so you don't have

these issues five to 10 years from now.

Hmm, interesting.

Also, I think the biggest tip I can give

is to make good choices.

Do not risk your freedom for anyone or

anything and learn

patience if you have not already.

I made a terrible decision, here we go.

I had a feeling there was some reason why

they're sharing this.

I made a terrible decision some years ago

that turned me into a felon.

Whoa, this took a turn.

This took a turn, holy cow.

Okay.

And I'm at 30 years old having trouble

finding a job I don't mind

doing and rebuilding my life.

I'm five foot four and 130 pounds

replacing windows and doors bigger than

me making 100 to 150 a day because I

can't find a job I like that looks at my

background and gap in

employment for my incarceration.

I don't know why your height matters.

Edit, work hard in 20s, invest in 30s,

chill in 40s, retire in 50s.

If you can begin investing in

your 20s, that's even better.

Whoa.

Oof, okay.

That's a take.

That is a take.

Yeah, from that perspective, if you made

a certain choice, became a felon, had to

pay the price in the prison system, now

you're coming back

and starting brand new.

Plus you have something on your record

that you can't ever avoid.

Yeah,

that's rough.

That's rough.

That's rough.

I was gonna say I don't, I

think you can make some mistakes,

but I think their perspective when they

say, make good choices

is don't do that shit.

Don't do whatever it

leads to being a felon.

Caught in the wrong place, wrong time.

Even if you're complicit in

a crime can be huge for sure.

I'm five foot three and 130 pounds.

Okay, you're

replacing windows and

doors bigger than me.

I respect that, but also

who cares about your height?

I know logistically, maybe in your work

there's some physical labor that's hard.

I'm five foot six.

Still,

I think there's a

kernel of truth in there.

I think also don't be so

hard on yourself in the 20s.

I can say as someone who was really hard

on myself in my 20s,

you don't gotta do that.

You don't gotta do that.

All right.

I have a comment here.

Stay in decent shape.

If you don't, things will suck after 40.

Yes, that is correct.

You gotta stay in shape.

Take your body seriously.

Seriously, it is so much easier to

maintain a decent lifestyle than to be a

40 something cash pay to and try then.

Yeah, that's tough.

That is really tough.

Someone says, remember that overbrushing

leads to gum recession and you'll be

happy and you're old age

and make sure you floss.

17 up posts on that comment.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Save money for retirement.

Someone says 12 years old is about the

time when you have to start putting

actual effort and

maintaining friendships.

12.

No, 25 years old, sorry.

A 25 years old is about the time when you

have to start putting actual effort and

maintaining friendships.

Friendships kind of happened nationally

in school, college but now you gotta make

an effort to keep in touch and keep

hanging out with people that you like.

Okay, that's kind of true.

It's also not quite right because for

some people it was never natural.

For some people they never made friends.

So that's a big assumption there.

Are you white?

That's the difference.

Just saying.

(Soft Music)

But it is true.

You become more

intentional with your friendships.

You have to put more effort into them.

You can't just be like, hey, it's the

person I hang out with on Fridays.

It's no, I'm going to consciously set

aside time to be with this person and

spend time with this person.

For sure.

Someone says fast, read, write, meditate,

train, drink water, travel, bro, travel

as much as you can, okay.

Fast I mean is I guess intermittent

fasting or some kind of fasting.

Okay, sure.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

Well, these are pretty good tips.

Here's a big one here.

Mitigate how often you

consume short-term content.

Read and write, open a broth IRA, invest

in an ETF that tracks the S&P

500 and max it out every year.

Never withdraw.

Work out 45 minutes a

day, a few times a week.

Try to at least once a week, sit and

close your eyes for 30 minutes and let it

be you and your thoughts.

Take care of your teeth,

use lotion on your skin.

Once a month, do something you find

difficult mentally or

just don't want to do.

Go to a willow hanging over

a river at night in October.

Burn its bark into fine ash, dig up the

clay underneath its roots

and mix it with the ash.

Cover yourself in it, sleep

in the hole you've dug, fight.

Whoa.

(Laughing)

That's wild.

Oh my gosh, wild.

That's from Goob from Goo.

I guess he did that and he

came out of the goo, I suppose.

And someone says, sit by yourself, no

noise, no distractions, just you and a

piece of paper and actually ask yourself,

what a quote, life well

lived quote looks like for you?

What do you enjoy?

What do you want to achieve?

What do you value?

What do you want to do more of?

What do you want to do less of?

There'll be more questions that come to

your mind when you've sat here in

silence, but work out what you want, not

what the world wants you to want.

Okay,

little

pompous if you're asking me, a little

saucy there, but that last part, yeah,

work out what you want, not what the

world expects out of you.

Couldn't agree more, that's a huge one.

You'll

be pretty happy.

(Laughing)

All right, this final comment,

I have to read this out loud.

It says, fuck more, put solid effort into

learning about money,

change is important for growth.

If your plans don't scare you, then

you're not big enough.

If you don't have plans and make one,

then expand it to the

point where it scares you.

A plan turns a dream into a goal.

Finally, learn how to cook and do some

sort of exercise every week.

(Laughing)

Oh my gosh, that's hilarious.

Wow, and a lot more comments here.

So good stuff all around.

Yeah, my own personal advice.

Don't be worried about your 20s, spend

them however you wanna spend them.

Your 20s is your time to make mistakes

beyond the felony stuff.

And the one thing that you're not quite

asking, but I'll just pop it in here.

I'm a big believer in this.

Write more,

even if it's just for yourself, writing

in a journal, writing emails to yourself,

write more outside of what

you're expecting to write.

Practice the art of clarifying thought.

The more you do that,

I think it translates into all other

skills of life, makes you happier, makes

you be able to communicate better, even

just to yourself, to your partner, to

your spouse, to friends, family, to

coworkers, all around, it just helps you.

The value of writing is massive and it's

a skill you can never get good enough at.

You can always get better at it.

So that's my take for

that one, my big take.

Here

we go, here's another one.

Posted one hour ago, new topic.

Title is who is

actually happy with their life.

I am,

I'm pretty happy.

Took a lot of work to get here, but I'm

pretty gosh darn happy.

OP says as a 16 year old, oh,

16,

that'll do it.

16 was a year of all time.

I remember being 16.

16 was a thing for sure.

As a 16 year old, I see and know loads of

people, loads, all of whom don't really

like their position in life, either that

or it just looks like a horrible life

from my point of view.

I want to know if it's possible to live a

balanced life while still having fun.

There you go about

writing, learn how to write.

Not to knock against you,

just writing is good for you.

Okay.

People

aren't happy with their position in life.

Yeah, it's common.

That's gonna be common forever

because what is easier in the immediate?

What's easier is if I give in to the

external forces on me, make those forces

happy, like whack-a-mole, and I wait for

my turn to get happiness, or I fight

really long and hard for my own

happiness, what matters to me, and I

don't care what the

external world wants from me.

That's harder

in the immediate because it requires you

to know what you want.

It requires you to say

no to a lot of people.

It requires you to disappoint people.

The short-term life, the immediate life,

is just make everyone else happy.

That's always gonna win out in terms of

just what people go towards because it's

easier to recognize and it's

easier to tackle, for sure.

But I'm pretty happy

with my life, honestly.

Got a great job.

I've got great friends.

I've got a great wife, great family.

And I make enough money that I'm okay.

Not filthy rich or anything, but I make

enough that I'm all right.

That's important because if you're not

making enough money and it infringes on

your basic needs of food on your plate,

health taken care of for you and your

family, that ruins everything.

But if you get that sorted out, then the

rest can kind of get worked out.

So there's two layers.

There's that, then there's making

intentional effort to be with friends,

family, and just taking care of yourself

and doing what you love and want.

So

I would not worry about

the majority of people.

With respect to all of them, screw them.

They're gonna do what they're gonna do.

Help them out if they ask for it, but

beyond that, focus on you.

And there are people

that are happy in life.

I see some comments here in the chat.

Misery loves company.

Go find people who look happy or

successful and ask

them how they got there.

They'll probably find it

charming that you asked.

This might sound random,

but you look genuinely happy.

What's your secret?

I like that.

Ask people.

Someone says, "I am pretty happy.

"I prefer being an adult

over a kid or a teen for sure."

Yeah.

Someone says, "Cell phones or social

media, "our social media

have destroyed your generation.

"Put the phone down for two days "and see

how much better your life is."

Wow, we're making this

a generational issue.

Everyone's just

responding with how happy they are.

Okay.

Yeah, no one's really

offering really any advice.

Interesting though, but again,

screw everyone else.

Listen to yourself.

Listen to what matters to you.

And I promise you, you'll do well.

All right, let's see if

we got time for one more.

We got a big post here.

It was posted about four days ago.

175 upvotes.

Let's see what it says.

The OP with the title

says, "Well, period, I'm done."

Period.

Okay.

It's a, it's like it's a positive thing.

So who knows?

Felt like the universe gently smacked me

in the face today and told me it's okay

to be done with my marriage.

Ooh, saucy. "14 years, three kids.

"I've been trying so

damn hard for six years."

He has as well.

And somehow I felt worse than ever with

him lately despite my and his efforts.

He said a lot of horrible

things to me last night.

"I almost called into work this morning

at 4 a.m. "because I'm just drained.

"Didn't want to mess up my students'

schedules "and cause problems for them.

"Ended up telling my students to take "an

extra long lunch break "and I'd see them

in an hour and a half, "which is a huge

no-no for our curriculum."

Wow.

"So I go grab lunch and I'm honestly

exhausted, cranky, "and just feel like I

want to scream "and felt like I couldn't

breathe all morning

"and just genuinely bad."

(Sighs)

The woman making my food is

super nice and we're vibing.

And then she says they get to give away a

free meal when they feel like it and

said, "I was kind of cool."

And she picked me for the day.

"Super random and maybe small?"

But my gosh, I told her, "Wow.

"I'm actually having a really terrible

day "and this is so kind

of you and unexpected."

And she said, "What, really?

"This is a bad day?

"Here I am trying to lose it "and start

bawling while filling my free lemonade

"that I started trying to pay for."

She also said, "No, on the house.

"While I simultaneously feel like a

gremlin "and have been told for almost

two decades "a lot of negative things,

"the only person I loved and tried so

hard to impress "and be enough for, my

husband, thinks I'm a pathetic CUNT "and

truly can't stand me.

"Yet I felt more comfortable with this

stranger "in less than eight minutes

today "than I have in

14 years with my spouse.

"I'm doing the best I can.

"I think we all are.

"Every day trying to be positive "and put

one foot in front of the other.

"Do better, be better, be kinder,

"look out for others more.

"But damn it."

The universe grabbed me by my shoulders

this afternoon and said, "Hello."

A free $20 meal was a nice surprise, but

for me, so much more than that.

Thank you, Kava employee.

Wish I got your name, but I hope you get

all of the good karma and

kindness in this lifetime.

That small gesture was so

impactful for me and so needed.

Needed to share.

So here I am with a burner account,

sending anyone else in a similar

situation love and a little smack on the

ass from the universe to keep going

because you deserve good things.

That took a turn.

Wow.

Beautiful too, beautiful story.

I had

a dark period of my life,

really dark that I was super low.

And for the sake of this being broadcast

everywhere right now, I won't get into

the actual low-lowness because it's

pretty low, but just

know it was dang low.

And so when I hear her talk about this,

I'm reverberating.

And for me, I was on a train,

taking the train I always take from

Center City back home.

I'm in Philadelphia and

there was this conductor.

He's not there anymore.

I think he's retired.

He was one of the OGs that became a

conductor early on in like maybe the 70s,

made a career out of it, has a pension

and all that good stuff, drove a really

nice Benz in the parking lot.

But you can tell he

loved his goddamn job.

He announced every stop with gusto, names

he has said thousands of times by now,

but he said it like

it was the first time.

And

I'll never forget,

never forget.

I was feeling my lowest.

I was about to get off my stop.

And

he said, I hope you

have a beautiful day, man.

Give me a pat on the

shoulder and a smile.

And he didn't know what

I was going through and

he didn't give everyone a pat on the

back, but I'm sure he just picked and

choose based on what he felt.

And in that moment, I couldn't bring

myself to say or do anything that

wouldn't be awkward.

Like I wanted to just give him a big hug

because I was just that emotional, but

that was enough to kind of give me just a

little bit of hope that

like, I can get through this.

I can do this.

This is hard, but I could do this.

And so this

Kava employee

reminds me of that.

And it's those little

things that really do matter.

When life is that fucking hard.

And the amazing thing is I learned from

that lesson that I can do the same for

others if I chose to do so.

Not in like a

ostentatious toxic positivity way, but

like I could just do it from a place of

like earnestness and love.

Absolutely, I can do it

if I want to.

The question is, do I give myself the

space and time to do that?

That's a great story.

I'm sorry you're going

through that with your

husband.

A lot of the comments here are

commiserating in this story.

Someone says, yep, I

know exactly how it felt.

I'm sorry you went through it also.

It won't be easy at

first, but it'll be all right.

Sending prayers, hugs, all

people are giving comments

about the marriage itself.

Comment here says, did you tell him,

please don't say

anything negative about me.

I'm at a breaking point.

The sun cost is real, real, real.

But if you put it to them in their face

clear, nothing changes, it's sad because

they need to change now because in a few

more years they forget and

find a new way to be toxic.

I.E. the person doesn't

have the self-awareness now.

It is rare in my

experience that they ever will.

I'm not getting the read that this person

is necessarily toxic.

I didn't get that read at all.

The person is putting an onus on

themselves to be

better for their husband.

And it says that

their husband is also trying really hard.

At the same time though, it sounds like

the night before they, he said some

pretty nasty things based on whatever

they were working through.

So I don't know, we

don't know what that is.

A lot of people give in

context and kind of advice here.

I like this one.

You deserve good things too.

You deserve to be lifted

up rather than torn down.

Sometimes it takes the kindness of a

stranger to remind us that.

And I'm glad to hear

someone did that for you.

I wish you all the best in your endeavors

to find peace and happiness.

That's good.

That's good.

Reddit is kind of

beautiful place sometimes.

I'm finding, I'm new

to the Reddit sphere.

I don't know much about Reddit.

I associate a lot of bad stuff with

Reddit, especially some of the circles

I'm more associated with or not

associated, familiar with.

So I'm just amazed by some of this stuff.

We'll do with one more.

I feel generous.

There's one more.

Just popped up six hours ago and I feel

like there's some good

stuff here.

So last one,

promise.

Dealing with laziness.

That's the title, laziness.

Most of my life I've been dealing with

laziness, which has helped me in some

situations and have

gotten to some easy solutions.

But now I'm thinking it has been

preventing me from

achieving much more in my life.

If somebody relates to this and has found

a solution to dealing with laziness or at

least negating it somehow, what was your

solution or that moment

that helps you get out of it?

Hmm.

Hmm.

What an interesting conundrum.

You're trying to negate laziness?

Trying to get rid of it?

I'm not sure that premise is good.

I'll tell you why.

The human brain, by definition,

is an incredibly

efficient, effective machine.

That's what it does.

It finds ways to be more efficient.

The human brain wants to be lazy.

If something is really hard to do, it's

gonna find a way to do it easier the next

time or avoid doing it all together.

That's how the brain works.

It's a gift.

It's a good thing.

Trying to negate the laziness is like

saying, I want to be robot, please.

That's not gonna help

anyone, not you especially.

There's probably more of the story than

what you're advising on.

Is it a condition?

Is there a neurodiverse

thing going on here?

ADHD happening.

Is it attention?

Is it hyper-fixation thing?

Who knows what it is?

I'm not a psychologist or therapist to

kind of advise on that.

But it's worth exploring that because I

would not want you to get rid of your

quote unquote laziness

based on what you're saying.

I would instead want

you to lean into that.

What is your quote unquote laziness

telling you about yourself and where you

want to put your energies towards?

That's what I would do in

this particular instance.

Now, I will say there is a joy in

enjoying the hard things, learning that

this thing I'm avoiding, if I just lean

in a bit more, it's actually kind of fun

to kind of get in the mud

and kind of wrestle with stuff.

There's fun there.

Absolutely.

So maybe that's something you need to

embrace and enjoy and

have someone show you.

Like, hey, we're gonna do

this thing and it's gonna suck,

but it'll be a lot of fun.

And go through that moment.

I think I had a couple of those moments

where like, I don't wanna do this thing.

This is painful.

Why would anyone do this?

But at the end, I couldn't

stop the fact that I was enjoying and

laughing the entire time.

I'm like, oh, that's why.

Like, yeah, it sucked, but you get past

the suck and suddenly it's a lot of fun.

And you have to keep remembering over and

over again that the suck is worth it.

But you only can

get that

cost proposal, like

the risk cost and the opportunity cost to

get that ratio down.

If you've done enough of the sucky stuff

and it's paid off in the end, and you

have to have someone show

you that it's worth it for you.

I think that's my two cents.

What are some of the comments are saying?

Some people are saying, same thing

happened to me last year.

And what helped me was just accepting

that motivation is kind of a lie.

I used to wait to feel

ready and that never came.

So I just started doing the first two

minutes of whatever task I was avoiding.

And most of the time I kept going.

Hardest part really is just starting.

That's good advice.

I'm a big believer in showing up, just

show up to the thing.

You don't wanna do it, just show up.

That's all you gotta do.

You'd be surprised what happens there.

Someone comments, there is

no such thing as laziness.

Only lack of motivation.

Look up inattentive ADHD

and see if it applies to you.

Okay, motivation.

I'm not gonna get into

the word play of that.

I get the sentiment,

we're just playing with words now.

So I'm just not gonna

dive into that there.

We have a big giant comment here.

I'm not what you

would call a lazy person.

I have lazy days and have a

problem with procrastination.

I procrastinate by distracting myself

with other projects that I've been

procrastinating about.

I have a pretty good

idea of what makes me lazy.

Number one, beer.

If I have just one beer, that is enough

to throw the whole plan out the window.

So I don't keep beer in the house except

for payday weekends.

Okay.

Number two, YouTube or

anything that you watch.

Okay.

If I start my day watching something,

it's enough to throw the whole plan off.

So I put on some music or listen to CBC

radio in the morning while I have my

coffee, and then I can get to work.

The problem with screens is that they

take up too much attention.

That's really the worst

things that will distract me.

So the thing that keeps me motivated is

not some kind of trick, but it's more

about connecting with the

things that I want to do.

How does this work for me?

I have very clear values

that I will have built my goals around.

Then I have boundaries that protect those

values, therefore protecting my goals.

I've been doing this for decades now, so

it's very easy for me.

It has meant that I have gotten to live

my life in an

interesting and interested way.

I think there's a great thing in having

some wins under your belt.

If you don't see the benefits of spending

your time putting effort into the habit

of making shit happen, then you will

probably have a harder

time getting off the couch.

The biggest benefits of getting shit done

is that you can choose

what you are interested in.

For example, if you drive by my house

today, that a very

lazy person lives there.

Currently, I'm not

interested in mowing my lawn.

I still do it, but my

retired neighbors have decidedly,

my retired neighbors have decidedly

deeper interest in lawn care.

If you come into my house, then you would

see the piles of study watercolors and

oil canvases that I have in play.

You could also check out my agentic

workflow and the architectural landscape

design for my property.

You could possibly watch me make pasta

from scratch and see me add tomatoes,

garlic, peppers, and

basil from my garden.

It's all about momentum and balance.

My downtime is yoga and exercise.

I don't feel right if I don't get it in.

Anyway, this has been a

writing exercise for me today.

Good luck and be fun.

I like that.

Good luck and be fun.

Hmm.

Wow.

Interesting stuff.

Interesting stuff here

on the life Reddit thread.

Very interesting things.

Yeah, I don't believe in laziness.

I don't think laziness is really a thing.

When people say it's

lazy, I'm a lazy person.

Okay, you're a human being.

We're all lazy.

You doing something or not doing

something has nothing

to do with laziness.

Never has, never will.

So I don't buy into that.

But interesting.

Also, I feel the need to point out this

person's name on Reddit

is sexy machine warrior.

Maybe that's your motivation for things.

Sexy time.

Nothing wrong with that.

There's ways to manipulate the schism to

be in your favor in that regard.

That's what you want to do.

For sure, for sure, for sure.

All right.

Well, that's been Reddit.

We're gonna take a short

break before we dive into, well,

one more of our meteor topics before we

round things off here

for our counter hit today.

(Upbeat Music)

All right, and as we start rounding

things out, just a smidge, kind of

bringing things back

to the forefront here,

we're tapping into

kind of the secondary,

secondary topic for today.

And that's binaries.

Ones and zeros, black and white, on

or off.

When I think about the people

that we lost last week,

Dolly Parton, Tim Curry,

Peter Cullen,

and I love that we're worshiping them now

and we're thinking about their memory in

such a lovely and beautiful way.

Yet I'm also concerned

that we have this ideology

that they're either

good things or bad things.

Right things and wrong things.

Legend is a good thing.

Right things and wrong things. Legendary people, goaded

people, and not so goaded people.

If there's anything to learn from Homer's

"The Odyssey," which by the way, haven't

seen the film yet because IMAX has sold

out all the gosh darn time.

Hopefully I'll see it,

but it's an age old story.

It's one of the most prophetic and

important lines about

good old Odysseus,

that he is a man of many things.

We are people of many things.

We don't have to

prescribe to

any one specific ideology.

We don't have to.

It's not in our DNA to do that.

We are all multifaceted creatures.

We can make mistakes.

We can still do good things.

And you won't be a good man.

You won't be a bad man.

You'll just have been someone who lived.

What matters most is

if people remember you.

People miss you when you're gone.

That's the impact you'll

have at the end of everything.

I think about this because

I've made a lot of mistakes

in my life, a lot of mistakes.

And there was a time when I truly

believed in my heart of hearts

that I was a bad person.

I was a bad person

because of the stuff that I did.

And that there was no way that I could

atone for those things

that I did that were bad.

You know what healed me?

It's my friends and family and loved ones

who were there to remind me that my

avatar version of myself, my mental mat

for myself was incorrect.

As well as my therapist.

Thank you.

Jen, you know who you are.

I know that when I'm gone, a select few

people, but people that matter a lot to

me are gonna miss me when I'm gone.

I don't say that out of pride.

I say that to remind myself that I'm not

a good person or a bad person.

I am someone of impact.

And it's in that same exact way you can

do the same thing for yourself.

You can all do that.

I'm so lucky

that I have an amazing life partner who

sees the good in me,

doesn't hold me accountable to things

from my past from a long, long time ago,

knows the version of me

that I want to become.

And when I stumble,

says, you're on your way

instead of beating me down.

I'm really afraid that as we start

hitting the twilight of 2026 and onto

2027, geez Louise,

2027's coming, holy cow.

I'm really afraid we're

gonna hit this mark of

overly categorizing things,

good and evil, bad and good.

And it's gonna hurt us in the long run.

Like for instance, we've made it super

clear on this show that we're not big

fans of artificial intelligence, but I

want to also be very clear.

I don't, if you are someone who's using

AI right now and you think

there's a lot of promise,

I'm choosing to believe that at this

point, there's a lot

of ignorance involved.

In your usage of it.

And if you knew better,

you might change your tune.

If you knew that there's even higher

value in human made things,

you might change your tune.

If you knew the cost this stuff is

doing to our planet, you

might change your tune.

I also know that maybe there's some

contexts where

artificial intelligence use,

well, it's just, it's the most efficient

way of doing one particular

task that we need to get done.

I don't know what that task is yet.

I mean, there's a couple of things like

fast calculations using presupposed

algorithms that can help for sure.

But you know what I mean?

Like,

just like it's bad for us to hate anyone

that uses AI, just like AI people hating

people that are pro team

human shouldn't hate each other.

We shouldn't be categorizing ourselves on

either sides of any spectrum.

We're all on the same team.

We're all on planet earth.

You got one planet.

I would love this planet to

be around for a long time.

So that way my children and my children's

children and your children's children

have somewhere to be.

And I hope our

children mingle together and

play in the same playground together and

learn from, learn what we want them to

learn, the good stuff, but also learn

from our mistakes too.

Perhaps it's just human nature to

want to protect our ego so much we create

lines in the sand,

arbitrary lines in the sand

and fight each other.

And maybe some of it's for fun too.

Rage bait and all that good stuff.

Perhaps we're doomed to do it.

I'm gonna choose another way though.

And I'm gonna choose another way.

I'm gonna choose another way though. I'm gonna choose hope.

I'm gonna choose believing

in the human spirit what we can do.

We've seen it.

That principle in Nepal

who saved 900 children.

Bonnie who changed how we look at how

bacteria communicate with each other.

Dolly

who did countless amazing things but made

sure that kids could have

books if they needed them.

Tim Curry.

Who gave us performances

that only Tim Curry can do.

And Peter Cullen who

told us to be a real hero

is about being gentle as well.

We all have the ability to

do that, to create that space.

The question is what

are you doing to do that?

And also what I'm gonna do for that.

And that's what I'm gonna do for that.

Only time will tell.

That has been your

counter hit moment of the week.

(Upbeat Music)

All right folks,

that about wraps up this

week's episode of the counter hit.

A live broadcast sent

across multiple streams.

How did you like it?

Hope it was fun for everyone.

It's fun for me.

Fun for you.

I'm your host, Sam Kirk.

It has been a pleasure wasting some time

with you today here on

this week's counter hit.

Hope to see you all soon.

As always, you can find us at

www.thecounterhit.com,

our official website where you find all

of our prior episodes

including the Zero Dot podcast.

You also have a submission form.

You can write in and ask us questions.

If you want us to talk

about any particular topics.

Then of course,

make sure to check out our Patreon page

and become one of our

club zero dot members.

And thank you to those current club zero

dot members for being investors in our

dream here at Zero Dot Media Land.

So with all that, all that said.

I think it's time we take a close.

We'll see you next

week at the counter hit.

Be good, be safe, wander more.

This has been the internet

and now you're about to leave.

Cheers.

(Soft Music)