The Brilliance of Boredom with creative polymath Elle Cordova

True Classic is sponsoring today's episode. Fun story, I met Ryan, their CEO, over lunch, and I was like, I really like this guy. That's why we're proud to work with them and have them as our sponsor. I've been backed off and banned from probably close to like six, seven casinos now in Vegas. Unfortunately, they're all my mom's favorite casinos, so we can't go there anymore.

She's told me to stop. So I love this. All you wanted to do was be a good daughter, celebrate your mom's birthday, and now you're banned from half a dozen casinos unless we're good. I know. It's a funny turn of events, but yeah, I blame my mom. She's brought me there. I mean, it's always childhood trauma.

Exactly. I just wanted to sit with her longer and have a heavier drink, so. Two introverts walk into a bar. Let's be honest, that's not happening. But here's what did happen. Two introverts sat down for a conversation about creativity and the importance of boredom. Yes, boredom. It turns out boredom is underrated.

It can actually be a remarkable source of calm and creativity, which a lot of introverts may already know. That was definitely the case for El Cordoba. She's a singer-songwriter, a poet and a certified nerd who in the isolation of lockdown discovered a creativity she didn't know she had. The result? Well, I'm sure a lot of you have seen her sketch about fonts at a party or her poem about the Big Bang, both of which went very viral.

Before the Big Bang, there was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side. There was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side. There was no light, there was no dark, no shape of any kind. There were no stars or planet Mars or protons to collide. There was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side.

And furthermore, to underscore this total lacking state, there was no here, there was no there because there was no space. And in this endless void which can't be thought of as a place, there was no time and so no passing minutes, hours, days. I first learned about El when I stumbled on her song Roswell, which if you stick around, she plays live for us at the end of the episode.

And if you're a nerd, you'll appreciate our chat about Star Wars archetypes and how we need to give boredom a rebrand. Which turns out isn't boring at all. This is a bit of optimism. You are a perfect example of why it's important to meet your heroes. I'm not sure if I'm taking this the right way. Because you know you always say never meet your heroes because you're always disappointed.

I found you and your work from music. I found your song Roswell when you had a different name. What was your name? Reena D'Alsid. Right, you're the stage name. I had a stage name. Yeah, a stage name. Then I found out that's not your name. So I knew you as a musician, started following you on the Instagram.

Then I find out that you're a poet and a smart person and a nerd and you are the personification of a polymath. I reached out to you on the Instagram, and slid into your DMs and said, Hey, and you wrote back and we got together and and and nerd bonded, I guess. Yeah, it turns out you're cut from a similar nerd cloth.

You are even better than I thought you were when I saw you on the internet. Oh, thank you Simon. And the same is true of you. Oh, thanks. And when we just I think we can just cut right here. I think our work is a job well done. But but going back to this idea of a polymath. A polymath is somebody who is has diverse interests, learned it across many things.

And you have curiosities and talents in many places. You are, I think, have become famous for your poetry on social media. You've done a TED talk about your poetry. You are a musician. You are extremely well read. You know a lot about science. You are a lover of science fiction. You seem to know not a little bit about a lot of things, but a lot about a lot of things.

Intimidatingly so I might add. Were you always like, where is that from? Like what's your journey of discovery and how you have so many curiosities, but also that you're good at those things. It's not just, you know, good at one thing and have a couple things on the side. Yeah, well, I don't know how much is what you just said is true.

All of it is true. Okay. Well, we'll go with your premise. I think for me, it's just, I've always been a very curious person. So curiosity, and you've said the word a couple times when you were speaking just there, curiosity is sort of my motivating force in life. And what I'm trying to do with the content or art or whatever that I put out on the internet or put out wherever for people to consume is to try to spark a little bit of the same curiosity.

And I want people to consume, you know, whether it's music or poetry or just, you know, random inane thoughts that I post to the to the Instagram. Whatever it might be, I just hope people see that, get this little bit of like resident spark of curiosity in themselves. And then are either motivated to create their own thing or to like look up the concept I'm talking about.

And I wouldn't say I know a lot about a lot of things. I just think I've been very curious about a lot of things. You know more than a little. Well, okay. And I've gotten to know enough about enough things that it just like keeps lighting the fire. And I always find like new things to where did the curiosity come from?

Was it nature and nurture? Well, my dad is a really curious person. So he he was like a really like one of those guys that's like, breaks teachers hearts where he he was really smart and he would he was curious. But he you couldn't get him to finish an assignment or something. You know, but he would like read on his own.

He'd read the things you're not supposed to be reading about. He'd just go and check out a book about trigonometry when they're trying to teach them about, you know, algebra or something. So it's like if you taught him if you tried to teach him something, he wouldn't learn it. But if you let him lose in a place of knowledge, he will be hungry and he'll do it.

So I think I got a little bit of that from him. Although I'm more of a rule follower. So I wouldn't got the degree in and everything. Less of a rebel. Would you get your degree in? I majored in English. So I got a degree in English literature from the University of Minnesota. So that makes sense? Yeah.

So English, I mean, to me, that's just like a gateway to books, like all kinds of books and knowledge and stories from everywhere. So it's kind of like majoring in everything. And how did you, because you grew up in Fargo? Yeah. grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. Shout out to Fargo. Shout out to Fargo. Did growing up in Fargo, it's cold.

There's a lot of snow. It's not big. Right. Did that contribute? Is that the nurture part of the curiosity? Like it's not problem, for example. He has polio. So when all the other kids go out to play, he can't go out to play. So what does he do? He stays home and plays the violin. And he becomes one of the best violinists in the world.

Yeah. Or like Isaac Newton, you know, coming through his breakthroughs, like during a time of play, because what else are you going to do? He's like trapped in a trapped in quarantine, you know? All right. Yeah, sometimes I think restrictive environments can definitely lead to like an expansion of mind.

And was that the case for you? I think so. I mean, I think probably more than the cold environment, although that's definitely true of Fargo. And if you ever go there, you'll see it's like, it's not, it's just this unrelenting bitter, bitter winds coming across the plains with nothing to stop them. And it's very, very cold.

Less so now, because of certain global changes that are happening. But yeah, I think that's part of it. But I think the probably the bigger part is just this introversion, you know, just I have always been so cripplingly shy. And it's just easier for me to stay in on a Friday night with a book than to like make myself go out and socialize.

So I was even before the age of social media, I was probably spending too much time, you know, alone and not with a phone, but with, you know, books and... Like a paper device. And like notebooks and stuff. So basically, the polymathitude of it all is a defense mechanism to not wanting to socialize. Yeah.

And so you accidentally, because like it's a pro-man, it's like you accidentally become incredibly good at something when all you're trying to do is not do the other thing. Yeah, exactly. Scapism, maybe. Scapism, yeah. That's, I mean, I remember when you and I first got together, we're both socially awkward for first time meetings.

And second and third. You are not. You say that. I've heard you say that elsewhere. You are so warm and welcoming. And you're like actually an introvert's dream. When you first, you know, when I first met you, I was like, oh, this person puts me at ease. Well, that's very kind of you say, but it is all practice.

That makes sense. Because like if I'm not working, because that's work, I'm not naturally like that. So if I'm not working, I will sit there awkwardly and sort of be like, be funny, be funny, say something, say something. You know? And so it's only through practice that I've learned to sort of ask questions and create an environment where, but by the way, it also produces insecurity being the introvert, because I don't, I don't want to hold court.

If I create a space in your sort of one word answers and sort of head nods, I'm like, I've done something wrong. Yeah. You know, it's like, so it does, all of the introvert weirdness inside my brain is still happening. Well, you hide it very well. Well, thank you. Yeah, makes it much easier to talk to you.

Well, thanks. Yeah. Maybe maybe you should start a podcast. Yeah, it would be good. It would, yeah, a podcast by introverts for introverts. I mean, that's basically what it would have been. We just sit here awkwardly and people are driving on their commute just listening to sort of two people fidgeting and without the inner thoughts.

Wouldn't that be even better if you could have the, if the concept of like a cartoon with a thought bubble, if there was a technology that you could hear the actual thought bubbles of people. Yeah, I would love that. I would too, although I'd be really anxious about what my thought bubbles are saying.

So you'd have to have a thought bubble of the thought bubble. Like the anxiety of what my inner thoughts might be. Hope it doesn't catch that one. Then we've got an infinite thought bubble going all the way down. Very meta. Yeah, very meta. It's like those like being in two mirrors. Yeah, but with thoughts.

Anyway, there are people who are actually appreciating this conversation. Others already changed the channel. Speaking of changing the channel, another thing I just learned about you literally minutes ago, you are a gambler. I wouldn't call myself a gambler. I would call myself an advantage player. There's a difference.

A gambler somebody who sits down at a slot machine or a table game just playing by the rules of the house and playing without an edge, you know. And then an advantage player has an edge. Which you are engaging in gambling. Yeah, sure. It's like somebody who drinks as a drinker and somebody who gambles is a gambler.

Yeah. I think if you talk to like the world of the advantage players, like they get really prickly about being a gambler. Advantage players. It's a world out there. They're just trying to distinguish themselves from like the tourist at Vegas sitting at the slot machine. Or the degenerate gambler. Or the degenerate gambler.

Okay. Okay, so you're an advanced advantage player and blackjack is your game? Yeah. And this all started because I see, I was like, you know, phobic of casinos, I would say. Like in the way where it's just like, that's a place where you go to lose your money. Like why would anyone spend time in casinos?

But my mom is a big fan of Vegas. She's a gambler and she loves doing that. So she goes there every year for a birthday. When I was 16, she told me, when I turned 60, you're going to come with me to Vegas. And then when she turned 60, I kept my word and I came with her. And I looked at, I just Googled like, what is the game that I can play while I'm in Vegas that's going to lose me the least amount of money?

Turned out to be blackjack. And that's because you can have, you can literally just memorize, they call it basic strategy, memorize the right hand for every, the right play for every hand. It's, it's, it's, there's odds. Yeah, it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's math. The statistics of whether you're likely to get an advantage or disadvantage based on pure odds, there's more 10 cards than any other card in the deck, et cetera, et cetera.

Exactly. So if you memorize that, yeah, there's a right play for everything. Also known as counting cards. Okay, well, that's not counting cards, but, but memorizing is the first step. But memorizing the shoe is the counting the cards, but like how many have you? You don't have to memorize the whole shoe.

So this is so much easier than people think it is, by the way. This is not a, this is not a difficult thing. It's just a thing that you maybe have to spend a little bit of time to do. So you memorize the, the tables. Memorize the table of like the right play for every hand. Then if you're going to go to the length where you're memorizing the right play for every hand, then you might as well just go one extra step of just keeping track of when high cards are coming out versus low.

So you just add, you assign a value of one to everything that's high, and then a negative one for everything that's low. And then for like a medium-sized card, it's just zero. So all you have to do, if you can add and subtract by one, you can count cards. It's literally that simple. So you don't actually have to memorize which cards have happened.

Definitely not. Because they keep adding more cards to the shoe to make it difficult to remember which cards have happened. Those are just going to be- They have multi-decks shoes. And so to get more accurate, so if you're going to do that then, if you're going to start doing the ones and everything, then you might as well make it even better for yourself and look and see the like discount tray.

And then you can kind of divide by the number of decks that are left in the shoe. Because these days they're using six, eight decks, you know? So to really get an accurate count, you're waiting till the kind of the end and whatever. So it's just like, I got into this because I was like, first, just not wanting to lose all my money.

And then second, I want to be able to hang with my mom. So I'm going to be at this blackjack table anyway. I might as well just like tip the thoughts. You're just trying to make it so you can sit with your mom for as long as possible without losing all your money. You're just trying to make a nice night at it.

Just get some free drinks and like, at least just come out even. But as it turns out, you can come out ahead, you know? And it's not cheating. It's just using the information that's available to every player. You know, so they can't arrest you. There's nothing illegal about it. It's not cheating, but the casinos don't like it.

And I read somewhere and you probably actually know the answer, which is the odds of winning in blackjack are like 50, whatever, like whatever the number is, I'm making it up. But like 50%, let's just call it. And if you count cards, it's like 50.1. Yeah, it's very, very small percentage. Exactly. But over the course of an entire evening, that 0.1 adds up to an advantage versus the casino.

Exactly. And if you were betting a lot of money and you did this for long enough, yes, you're going to take a lot of money from the casino. But I'm just betting pennies, you know, or not pennies. Small dollars. Yeah, small dollars. So it's like they're, for the most part, they know your counting cards.

They actually have machines. They have cameras in the sky, like watching your plays. They even have chips inside of chips, you know, so like little devices that track, you know, how is she betting? How is she changing her bets based on the count? And their computers are counting the cards. So if your bets are changing based on the count, they know that immediately.

They don't even have to watch anymore. They just know. But they'll let you. You have chips in the chips. Thank you. You are with, not QR codes, they have, they're called RF tags, RF chips. Oh, yeah, so I didn't even know. Yeah, so that's how you use it. It looks like a credit card piece of plastic. Yeah.

And there is an RF chip that opens up your hotel room. Yeah. That's the same chip. It's probably the same thing. Yeah. So you didn't even know that they're doing this? So the old days in the 70s where they had the pitboss just coming, like standing over your shoulder, counting to see if you're counting, that's gone.

They don't even have to let on that they know what you're doing because the computers are doing it for them. So I've been backed off and banned from probably close to like six, seven casinos now in Vegas. And unfortunately, they're all my favorite, my mom's favorite casinos, so we can't go there anymore.

She's told me to stop. So you're not playing at circus circus because someone else will let you in. Right, well, those are bad. Do you only play where they have good blackjack? But anyway, my mom is like, why can't we just go have fun? And I'm like, okay, that was the original intent anyway. So I love this.

All you wanted to do was be a good daughter, celebrate your mom's birthday, and now you're banned from half a dozen casinos unless we're good. I know. It's a funny turn of events. But yeah, I blame my mom. She'd brought me there. I mean, it's always childhood trauma. Yeah. It's always like childhood trauma.

It's exactly what it is. You're banned from casinos. Exactly. I just wanted to sit with her longer and have a pet more drink, so yeah. But this is what I love about your brain, which is 99.9% of people on the planet would, if mom says come to me with Vegas, I just want to have a nice time with you, they would say, fine, I'll spend $100 and then I'll just sit with you or whatever is in their limits.

And maybe they'll play somewhat seriously and slowly to maximize, like no big bets, all minimum bets to just maximize the length of play. They would probably not have figured out which game can I lose the least amount on, which is blackjack. They probably tell you something they guess they can lose the least amount on or just play the game that they're on like.

But the fact that you did that and then your brain works in a way that you could not help yourself, but to find the advantage to prolong the game and learn to count cards, this is what I love about you. It's not the bite of the apple you take. We all take the first bite. It's that you always find a way to take a second bite of the apple.

And this is what I love. There's always something in addition to the thing that you started to do. And I'm just trying to think now, like even your own platform, like you always find a plus one in everything. Even in the way you're trying to sort of like make a, you have accidental fame. Is it fair that, is it fair to say?

Yeah, I mean, or is it a little more prescriptive than that? I think I was trying to reach people with my music before I started this whole social media thing. But the thing came in a different way. You had fame-ish. Yeah. From the music. A very small. It's a small but loyal group from the music. But when the poem started, and I think it was the font poem that really put you on the map, right?

Well, the font skit, and really was the, before that, it was the big bang poem, which is a space poem that I wrote. That was like probably the big thing that launched my... Oh, that's what I remember that one too. Who's the other guy? Hank Green. We were just talking about that. Oh, that's Hank Green.

The lovely Hank Green, yes. Oh, okay. Okay, so yes, the space poem, the big bang, which is by the way, brilliant poem. So the poem and the skit really launched you. They, you had viral success twice. Did you know that was gonna happen? No, no, definitely did not. And really what happened was that I was, I was very much just all in on the musician career.

That's what I did for 10 years. I was touring and then, you know, I was kind of picking up steam as we went along. We were slowly growing and we had these tours set up in like Europe and Australia. And then bam, the pandemic happened. Everything got canceled. Everything we had planned out for that year got canceled.

And my first thought was like, oh no. All the money that we're gonna lose and like how will we pay the bills? And then my second thought was like, thank God. Because I really needed a break. I was like getting sick all the time on the road. I had no time to create anything new. I was just playing the stuff I had written, you know, sometimes five years ago.

There just was, I had a schedule that did not allow me to be a human being and certainly not a creative human being. So when everything got canceled, it was such a blessing in disguise because then I rediscovered my creativity and the discovered that it was like, it went beyond music. I could write other things.

I think you're not written poems. I'd always written poems. I mean, I think every English major is written some poems at some point. But I'd never shared anything publicly with anyone. And I had never allowed myself to be playful online. It was always just like share your music and, you know, and TikTok and these new vertical format apps, just they really encourage something in me, just like, in a lot of people I think, just like share yourself, share, you know, be silly.

Like, who cares? We're all just killing time in the pandemic, it doesn't matter. So I shared this comedy side and that seemed to, well, like an earnest poetry side and then also a comedy side. I should probably niche down at some point, but, you know. Because you're a polymath. Well, there's no niching down.

We love you for your diversity. But various things, you know, just throwing things at the wall and it turns out like other things were sticking and I was just getting a lot of fulfillment from it. So I haven't really gone back to the musician lifestyle though I'm starting to dip my toe back into it now.

What's so interesting is I don't think people appreciate the value of space for a creative person. Like you said, you're sort of going about this music career and then when you get a gap where you can't do the thing, you can only think about doing the thing. Yeah. And we saw it like, I remember Bo Burnham, you know, when he wrote inside during the pandemic.

And it was, it was over time. I'm not sure it holds up anymore. I don't think you can watch it in 10 years. Some of those songs still will. No, the songs, yes, but as a piece of art, you know, I don't know if it's timeless or not, but it is a work of sheer genius. And I'd seen his comedy before and I think he's a brilliant comedian, but this was something else.

That only could have been made in that time. That only could have been made in that time. And I'm thinking about my own creative process. And people like, how do you come up with ideas? And what they would, it's hard to explain, which is the way I come up with ideas is when I'm not thinking. I get ideas sparked in conversation, but it's the rumination, the space, the gaps.

You know, I like to describe my writing processes is days and weeks of guilt and self-loathing punctuated by hours of sheer brilliance. Yeah. If only I could predict when those hours would happen. Yeah. And the trick is to be ready for it. And the trick is to be ready for them. And I've sat at home going, can't go out in case it strikes.

And then I like, just end up watching TV and like, I should have gone out and then I go out. And then it starts happening. And I'm like, grabbing anything I can write on napkins. I literally have sugar packets, because I couldn't find anything to write. And I know that one loses ideas as quickly as they have.

And so if you don't, if I don't capture it immediately, I will lose it, even if I wait a minute. The muse is not patient. The muse is not patient. And so literally I would take a sugar packet and open it delicately, dump out the sugar, grab a pen and start writing it. I have binder clips of sugar packets with ideas on them.

Yeah. The thing that I've learned is I can't be precious. Yeah, you can't be precious. You know, 99% of the ideas are shit. And the other 1% I can't read my handwriting. So it's the act of the writing that is actually more important. Because I sometimes go back and read them. But once they're written for some reason, they get stored somewhere else.

But this idea of gaps in space, you said it during the pandemic, watching TikTok, it was unbelievable how funny people were. And how creative people were. I didn't realize that people were that funny and that creative of every age and every disposition. And just people are really funny, you know? And I don't think anybody guessed that from you, did they?

No, no, definitely not. So yeah, I think that's true. And also when you're contributing to that and trying to be your own brand of funny and your own brand of witty and smart or whatever and try to contribute to the conversation, part of what I find is helpful is to remember that your audience is also that.

It's not just the people making this content. It's also the people consuming. And when you reach out wide enough audience, like I can say confidently that even my best work, the work that I've spent the most time on, that I've put a lot of myself into that have made intentionally very, you know, I've tried to make it witty, I've tried to make it funny.

Nothing I've ever posted will beat the top comment underneath the post, you know, because you get the hive mind. And people are so funny and they're so smart, you know? So it's a good way to, to stay focused and just stay humble and, you know, and just to realize like you're part of, you're part of a species that's really innovative and smart and funny.

And I think with these platforms, a lot of that rises to the top. You get, you get really smart and funny top comments. But you're also attracting smart and funny people. I've been really lucky with the community. I mean, well, you're attracting, there's a lot of people like us. There's a lot of nerds.

Yes. Because you have to know a little bit about something. Yeah, exactly. So appreciate you, humor. And I've pushed it a little. I'm like, could I make a really weird, obscure skit about like particles hanging out in this lunar verse, you know, and talk about like Higgs, the Higgs boson. Like, and a lot of people in the comments like I didn't know what that was and then I googled it and looked it up and now I know what it is.

And that makes me happy. You know, it's like a sort of gotcha. Now we know more. But this is the genius of your work because we live in a world with unlimited access to unlimited information. And yet still, we see a post online or we hear a comment from a politician or some CEO said something. And in the span of 10 seconds, we can verify that that statement or not and we don't.

I mean, I joke about it. Like I go around saying, so I read this study. I think it's true. I don't know, but here you go. I literally could verify it any day. But I don't. Yeah. It's amazing how the momentum of laziness when we have the access and what I love about your work is it forces somebody to go, what is that?

And they do go look it up, not because they want to be smarter because they want to get the joke. Exactly, exactly. You dangle the joke as a carrot. Dangle the joke as a carrot. We're all the other criteria of like all the other circumstances of like, what's that politician saying? What's that CEO saying?

It's like, oh, I have to go be smart now, forget it. Yeah. You know, I'd rather just react, it's easier. But if the reward is getting in on a joke and getting to be part of this little community where everybody's joking in the comments, then yeah, maybe it's worth looking up what's a Higgs boson, you know?

I want to go back to this idea of space because I'm so fascinated by the gaps in space. Do you force your schedule? Because your busier now than you ever have been. Do you force gaps in space? Because for you, lockdown was a thing that unleashed this new creativity. Do you make many lockdowns for yourself?

Yes, absolutely. Well, it taught me the value of that. How do you do that? Like, do you schedule space? Like, do you put a blank thing in your calendar where there's presence and absence, right? It's like, yeah. I mean, I would love to tell you that I'm really disciplined and I have my phone and it's locked in a safe, like, from my creative hours every morning.

I would love to tell you that, I don't. I'm just as addicted to everything. I'm addicted to the supply that I give out, which is social media, dopamine, whatever, as the people who are consuming the stuff. But I think what I do try to do though is I try to consume more of the things that are going to fill me up creatively so that my output is better.

So instead of spending four hours a day just coming through social media, trusting the algorithm to give me the things to fill me up, which it will not. I will try to minimize that amount of time and try to instead replace it with, like, rereading Virginia Woolf's Subroom of One's Own or something. Something I know is going to, if I'm especially if I'm going through a rut, I'll revisit the things that I know are going to lighten on fire.

And they're going to create better output for me. OK, so this is, OK, this is good. So I'm not a reader, which we've talked about. I'm over the shame, but I still have embarrassment. I'm not a reader, but I do still need those things. I've had to recreate my creative process every time I've had to do something creative because what worked before it doesn't work again.

I don't believe in writer's block. OK. I believe that the format or system that you're using to create in the past isn't working anymore. So you're not having writer's block. It's not that you're having no ideas. The system is broken. OK. And so what we do when people have writer's block, they keep doing the same system and blaming themselves.

And I say, OK, I know I have ideas. I know I'm an idea guy. So if I'm having no ideas, am I broken? Or is the way I'm attempting to have ideas broken? And so I have experimented with it. Every time I lock up on ideas, I break down and I change the way I'm coming up with ideas. But this idea of space, when I realized I needed time, and so here's the thing.

So I learned this a bunch of years ago, which is our rational brains are thinking brains, the part that weighs the pros and cons and access our expertise. That has access to the equivalent of about two feet of information around us, right? Our subconscious brains, our limbic brains have access to the equivalent of something like three acres of information around us.

Every conversation we've had, every movie we've seen, every book we've read, get stored somewhere, you just don't have access to it. And so the value of the brainstorming session is not to solve the problem, it's to ask the questions. Because your brain won't ruminate on things that aren't presented.

It won't just solve problems that don't exist in your life. You're not going to just come up with some random idea. Like a problem must exist or a question must be asked. And then you can quote unquote think about it. If you think about it, we have our best ideas when we're falling asleep or when we go for a run or we're standing in the shower or you know, drive sitting in traffic.

Like it's when we're not quote unquote thinking, but the brain is still ruminating in the subconscious and it gives you the idea. And it seems like divine intervention, but it's not just your limbic brain. It's been working on the problem. And it's been working on the problem the whole time. And so the problem is is you need those gaps for your mind to give you the ideas.

And in our modern world, we have filled in all those gaps. So we don't sit on the subway on our commute and just stare off into space anymore. We're on our phones. We don't just sit in the car in traffic and just sort of let our minds wander. We make a phone call. I mean, you go to out for dinner with a friend and they go to the bathroom.

We don't just sit and like look around the room or talk to somebody or talk to somebody. We pull out our phones because it's too uncomfortable to just sit. And so I have worked very hard to force myself, like if I go out for dinner, I give my phone to someone else. Be like, here's my phone, put it in your bag.

So when they go to the bathroom, they take my phone with them. That's smart. And so I'm forced because I have no willpower. I'm addicted like everybody else. But if you take away the crack, can't do crack. Yep. I do the same thing with daily walks. So I don't allow myself to bring a phone or a- But you're creating space and gaps.

Yeah. And those moments, and by the way, space and gaps can also be created going to a museum. Or it's just engaging in other passive stimulation, not playing a game, not doing work, not surfing the internet, passive stimulation has been absolutely invaluable to my idea generation. Almost all my ideas happen in crazy random places.

This episode is brought to you by True Classic and this ad won't sound like regular ads because it's not. Instead, I sat down with Ryan and had an hour-long conversation with him. And we pulled out some of the best clips so that their ad is real content. I hope you enjoy. When people troll us online, I will find out who they are and I will find something in their timeline that signals something that they're into.

And I will always come around and figure out, even if I have to spend like, if I spend 45 minutes on this, here's a good example. Some guy was trolling us a couple years ago and said, like, stop sending me ads. And I just replied with, I hope your dad gets better soon. And what I figured out was he had a GoFundMe account and his dad had cancer.

And I made a big donation, a couple thousand bucks. And I just completely won him over. And the next week, he made a video about it. And he posted it and he was wearing all true classic with a true classic hat and he told the story and he just was like, this is how you're supposed to respond to this kind of stuff.

Not just like, let me block the guy, get out of my ecosystem, I don't wanna talk to you. Just like, let me show this guy what true empathy and kindness looks like. And let me just go overboard. And I didn't know if I'd ever hear from him again. But now he's lifelong true classic. Now we follow each other.

Like, we've become friends. So like, you build these unbelievable connections with people and when I was growing our customer service team, it was the same thing. It was guys, you've got to have a big antenna that just goes deeper than like, this is the issue. You know, that I'm solving, tracking, whatever.

Like, you've got to find out where are they, what are they into? And just probe a little bit for some questions that you can show up for them because that'll last a lifetime. But I think another important piece of it is something you said earlier where you said a question must be asked. A question must be asked.

We can't expect our brains, the brain that's ruminating and doing all this work behind the scenes to be working on a problem that we haven't presented to it. So it won't just spit out random ideas, like you said. So I think our brains are computers. There needs to be an input. You know, we need to ask it something.

We need to ask it to solve a problem. And the problem might be, what is my next idea? What is the thing I want to write about next or whatever? But we need to actively feed our brains those questions and give them something to work on. I think more specific than that too, at least for me. You know, that's where the conversations happen because the backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

You know, yes, there's answers in those conversations, but it raises more questions. And so it's not like, what's my next idea? But rather like, why are we friends? Like, and then you start saying why are we friends? Like, I understand the biology, I understand the anthropology. I can look that stuff up.

That's pretty written about, what is a friend? Now it gets complicated. Yeah. So it's not just asking a question. What is my next idea? It's a specific question about specific. And it can be big problems. Like, help me understand the world order, as we know it, post cold war. That's something I've actually thought about, right?

Like, what is the new world order? And it's such a big question that it's not going to be one. And that's why all the conversations and all of the articles I'm reading and all of the people I'm interacting who have different points of view, I'll either ask directly, so what do you think about the world right now?

And it's all feeding that until at some point, you go, aha, I have an idea. You need, I guess, two things. You need to ask three things. You need the question to be posed, big or small. You need to feed it with data through conversations reading, whatever your chosen preferred way of intake is. And then, and only then do you need space and gaps.

And we do the first, we do the second, we don't do the third. Right. And I think this is the thing, and there's been stuff written about this. There's a basic global decline in ideas. Like, the number of patents that are filed these days is vastly fewer than in the past. Oh, that's... And the quality of the patents is lower.

And so like, we know that there's fewer ideas that are happening. And I think this idea of space and gaps, and if we're gonna be a hyper-scheduled, hyper-connected world, not rebelling against it, just, it is what it is, then schedule gaps. See, now, I know you are an optimist. This is sort of central to you.

It has been, I have been accused of such. I will say the pessimistic take on this is, and I'm not calling myself a pessimist, although I have tendencies, is that now that we have the technology we have, we won't, in any meaningful way, be able to make those spaces the way that you're saying. And instead, I think what will happen is we'll channel our decision-making, our idea generation, into our technology.

Soon, we're gonna have, you know, you talk about the decline in patents. We're gonna have AI coming up with a lot of solutions for us that we simply haven't devoted the brain resources to think about, we don't have to anymore. We have a much bigger, smarter brain to sort of solve those problems for us.

I don't think it's either or, I think it's both. I think, you know, just as the calculator or the abacus could help us do calculations faster, the calculator up that ante, certain things in mathematics are going to the supermarket, got quicker. And so I think where math got quicker, ideas will get quicker, but that doesn't mean that the machine has the lock on all the ideas.

Right. And I still think that a human-generated idea will always be the kind of idea that it's the asymmetrical idea. It's the idea that nobody could see happening because, and maybe I just either underestimate the power of the machine or overestimate the power of the brain, the human brain, but... I have a more pessimistic view in general of like, you know, I think that machines will take a lot of our purpose, you know, but I do think there will be ways for us to work with them and alongside them to also, you know, generate ideas, continue generating ideas.

There'll always be a premium on human-made creations, human-generated ideas, but I just, I do think that a lot of the really heavy-lifting problem-solving the things that you'll need patents for, that's all gonna, I think we're gonna see a major shift toward it. Then the question is, can you put a patent on a thing that a machine came up with when...

The company who made the machine, I'll probably get the patent. That's where IP law is gonna get completely destroyed. Yeah. Have you found this in your work yet? I know in the art world, artists are being asked to sign affidavits to affirm that this was designed or produced by them and not by AI. Have you found that in your work yet?

That people are asking you to say, did you actually come with this or did the machine come up with this for you? Not yet, I'm sure it's coming. And I'm sure I've signed some agreement already that's signed away on my creative rights. It's not just the creative rights, it's they want the affirmation that the person came up with it.

That it wasn't AI generated. So like, hey, this little cute little skit you wrote, this little poem that you write, like... That is in many contracts, yeah. So they want to know that you wrote it and you did not write it with AI. So that's what I mean, which is we're not buying the product, we're buying the story.

Yeah, well you're buying a piece of the creator. You're buying a piece of it, but you're buying the fact that hey, she did this. Right, exactly. And there's a premium on the man made, the human made. Yeah. And I'm not saying that all like AI-assisted art is worthless and should be thrown in the trash.

No, agree, agree, agree. But I do think there will always be a premium on fully human made things. I mean, we don't watch, we don't sit around for fun, watching computers talk to each other, play chess against each other. We watch humans play chess. It's more interesting to us. The story, yeah. They're better at it, but we watch humans.

Because we like watching the mistake, the potential for the mistake. Right. It's true. Isn't that beautiful though, that the reason we find a human game more interesting, even though they're not as good, is the drama of the pressure and the mistake, is the part that we find entertaining. It's not actually the gameplay.

Right. It's the human drama. Oh, I love that. I think one of the really good sides of the AI, and by the way, I can't have a freaking conversation with that AI coming in. Oh, I'm sure this is all over the podcast. Every conference, every other talk is AI. But is I think it'll help us appreciate, because we have this, at least in America, we have this sort of vomit reaction to the concept of boredom, like that it's some sort of you cannot be bored, you know?

And I think boredom is the ultimate space, where you sit there staring off the clouds, not knowing what to do. And you're kind of like, how are you? I don't know, a little bored, got nothing to do. And I think there's joy in the appreciation of boredom, because, as I was saying before, for a curious mind, it goes right back to the beginning, for a curious mind, there's always questions and problems being asked.

And yet there's not enough solutions to all the questions. Yeah. And I think boredom and joy of boredom is the thing that not only keeps us human, but helps us see things, find things, invent things, write things, paint things, sing things, that the machine never can, never will. And I think in this hyper-create, not hyper-create, hyper-productive world that we live in, where the machines are just making it even more productive, that our creativity comes from being bored, not from being active.

Yeah, I think I agree, because boredom is the very space you were talking about, we need to create spaces where we can allow ourselves to, and I don't know if boredom is exactly the right word, but allow our brains to be free of distraction. By boredom, I mean, I have nothing to do. Yeah. I have nothing to do at most walking.

Yeah, and that's why I take my, I guess you could call them boredom walks, I take my, like, enforced boredom walks, so that I'm forcing my brain to think, to just whether it's problem-solving or just thinking about the world around me, or whatever it is, I think it's really important that I don't have my device, and I'm just forced for the next 45 minutes however long the walk is to my destination, to just ruminate.

And the important thing here is that it's okay if nothing happens. Oh, yeah, it's absolutely. By applying pressure to the boredom is the paradox, is the exact problem we're trying to solve for. Or giving permission for boredom. Giving permission? I can just be bored. I don't have to solve problems on that one.

And that's one of the things that people don't realize, which is I actually, I won't schedule anything in my calendar for Fridays. And I work on Fridays, but I will not pre-schedule anything on a Friday. It has to be blank, so that if I choose to have three hours or four hours of whatever I want, which includes staring off at a wall, that is my prerogative.

And this is expanded, because I used to do our, like I would literally put an hour break in my calendar to do nothing. I would schedule nothing. Not that I'm scheduling nothing. I'm scheduling to do nothing. Yeah, that's important. It's an act of nothing. And I think in any job, I don't care what your job is.

I don't care if you're a homemaker. I don't care if you're a caretaker or a parent. I don't care if you're in a creative job and non-creative job. I think all problems are solved. And maybe boredom just has bad branding. Yeah, it does. What should we call it? Because we can't call it creative space, because that creates pressure that the space has to be creative.

And it doesn't. Maybe a period of stasis or openness. Good nothing. Yeah, good nothing. I'm gonna do good nothing for an hour. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm. I like good nothing. What are you doing right now? Good nothing. You wanna do something? Mm. It's my good nothing time. I'm doing my good nothing time. Yeah.

I like that. Yeah, it's better than boredom. It's better than boredom, because I'm not bored. I mean, sometimes I am. I mean, I went out for dinner with a friend last night and she went to the bathroom and I sat there and just stayed around in the restaurant. And yeah, I was bored and started wondering, like, is she okay?

Like she's been gone a long time. I wish she'd come back and kind of bored. Do you have the same paranoia that I do when you go out for dinner with a friend, especially if it's a new friend and there's a line at the bathroom in a restaurant? And so or somebody's in there for far too long and you're just waiting for them to come out.

And so you find yourself waiting for a very long time and then immediately you have the paranoia that the other person thinks that you have like stomach problems or something because you've been gone a long time. But and I always come up like, oh my God, the line was really long. If somebody was in there, it's not me, it's not my stomach problems.

I was really quick in there. I have that intense paranoia that somebody thinks that I'm sick because I was gone a long time. Well, sometimes I do have stomach problems and I'll say it even then, no such a long line. Sneaky, sneaky. Okay, I have a couple more questions. Okay. What's the thing you've dealt with?

What's the challenge you've? For me, it's anxiety. It's intense panic disorder. I get panic attacks. They used to be incredibly bad when I was a teenager and then into like early 20s college, almost crippling. I had intense agoraphobia could barely leave my apartment and was like untreated, you know, during those times and I kept thinking.

Most phobia is afraid of outside. Yeah, like not being able to leave your place because of fears of anxiety, panic attacks which are happening anyway. So, yeah. So, yeah, I think just thinking back to those memories, it was just like again, like a warning sign. Like if I don't get my stuff together and I don't get treated, this is the ultimate reality and it's gonna tear our family apart and, you know.

How old were you when you started to be like, I think I need someone to look after me? Well, that's a good thing about having, you know, grandparents that have gone through stuff like that as you realize early on that, you know, this is a thing that needs to be treated. It's a condition, you know. So, I was probably 16 when I finally started to ask for help because I was having such intense panic attacks at school.

I was having to leave classes, which is, you know, like we said earlier, I'm afraid of authority. I like to be a good student when I can and having to like run out of class and look like I'm skipping or something was not. Which only added to the anxiety. Yeah, yeah. Knowing that you have to be in class.

Is it under control now? I would say it's like, as under control is it probably ever will be to the point where I can live a normal life. But I just, I always have to deal with panic attacks. How often do they happen now? It depends. If I'm traveling, if there's like a lot of going on, especially if I'm traveling, I'll have them regularly on in my travels.

So maybe every few days or sometimes multiple times a day. But if I'm home in my routines and I'm taking care of myself and everything, then maybe once, once in a month. Is there a reason you choose to talk about it? I mean, I just think we could all just talk more about our mental health. I think that there are, I feel two ways about it.

Because I also think there's like an over, maybe an over diagnosed, diagnosing. We over diagnosed things, yeah. Yeah. Like everybody who's a little bit, you know, everybody's OCD, right? Yeah, like we don't realize what real OCD is, which is deep, deep, deep superstition like your grandmother had. Yeah, yeah.

There are so many forms of it. But yeah, that's how hers manifested. But yeah, I think, you know, on one hand, we have people, I think, over diagnosing themselves and others and their friends and talking about it. And then I think there's another side of it where, you know, people who have really struggle with severe debilitating mental illness still don't really want to talk about it.

And I think it's just better for everybody if we get the word out there that these things happen because, you know, if you don't, it just gets worse at festers and then we have negative outcomes, you know, so. Have you ever written a poem about it? No, it's weird how, I find that the things that are the most personal and then go down the deepest are things I can't seem to get myself to write about.

Maybe that'll change. I don't know, maybe one day. But I like to just find solace in humor and distract away from that. I do find it ironic that you were such a rule follower and you sort of respect authority figures and running out of class created more anxiety. It's not that I respect authority figures.

Fine, but you like rules. I am afraid to break the rules. Yet you count cards and are banned from casinos. But that's not a good feeling when they, when I do, I see the suits swarming because they get the pitbosses together to start swarming. I hear the telephone's ringing. I know they're coming. I hate that I get all sweaty and then I...

Do you try and anticipate it and leave before they throw you out? No, I just let it happen because it's just better to know because sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes they're actually just hanging out talking about something else, you know, and then they all disperse. So no, they'll come over. And they're generally pretty nice, I will say.

They haven't broken the law. Well, right. They'll say something really sweet like, ma'am, I'm sorry, but your play is just a little too advanced for us. We won't be able to take your action here, but you're welcome to enjoy yourself at the bar or any other game in the casino. They invite you to play.

They invite you to play crap. You're welcome to lose your money at our other places where you don't have the advantage. So other ones ban you, though, from the whole premises. So it just depends on them. If you get a mall cop type, Pippa, Pippa also. By the way, I have to insert a warning. Like, if you're listening to this podcast, the conversation is going to back to get incredibly nerdy.

And we're going to talk about Star Wars and archetypes and in-depth characters. And if you don't know what we're talking about and you don't like Star Wars, perhaps go listen to a podcast, another podcast right now. So you and I, the first time we met, we've very quickly bonded about our love of science fiction.

You skew Star Trek, I skew Star Wars. I mean, I love them almost equally. That is not true. If you put a gun to my head and you told me I had to only keep one, I would say Star Trek. I know that, because no one, it's like, there's no such thing as I love Star Trek and Star Wars equally, it is impossible and it doesn't exist for anyone.

I come very close. Well, you're the one, but you still skew. It's still skew. And only because there's more of Star Trek, I've spent more hours. I've logged more hours and more to consume. Whatever. So whatever, whatever the reason. I just want to belong to both fandoms. No one is 50, 50 on Star Trek and Star Wars.

Everybody skews one way. I like Star Trek. I love Star Wars. Hmm, yeah. I like Star Trek and I like different Star Trek. You know, like I'm a trekker or not a trekie. Okay. Which means I like next generation. Which apparently they call themselves trekkers. I didn't know that. I mean, maybe I'm not a real member of the community.

Maybe I'm wrong or it's outdated because there've been so many Star Trek since then. So I don't know what the new bifurcations are or they wouldn't be bifurcations because that's only two things. But I don't know what the new delineations are, but it was my understanding when next generation came out that you were a trekker if you were like into next generation.

You were a trekie if you're into the old Captain Kirk stuff. Okay, I learned something new. That's amazing. I don't think I didn't notice. My bedazzled. Yeah, this is amazing. And I don't know how the camera angle is, but I love that I'm associated here with the dark side. You are associated with the lone rebel hero.

I like that because in my mind, I think I've said this elsewhere. Star Wars is not the story of the Skywalker's. It's not even the story of a beautiful rebellion against an impressive regime. It's the story of a brilliant political strategist named Chief Palpatine, whose Machiavellian plans were foiled by dumb luck and familial relations.

And if I get canceled for anything off of this podcast, it's going to be for being a Palpatine apologist. I just love Palpatine as a character. I know you do. Yeah, I mean, yeah. He's just, you just have to admire the man. It's like he, I mean, he'll stop at nothing. He's a, he stops nothing. Well, like most villains, but he goes so much further because he lays the most intricate plan.

And it's just airtight. I mean, he's, he creates the Clone Wars. He's orchestrating things on both sides, you know. No, he's an evil genius. Just an intense genius. And also one of the most gifted force users of all time happens to be both. Happens to be an evil mastermind and a gifted force user. It takes both, you know, Anakin and Luke.

It takes a cheap shot betrayal to kill him in the end. And that, even that doesn't kill him. And, and, and a, and a, and a great actor who pretends to be good when he's really bad and like got everybody fooled. His genial senator. Yeah, he's just like personality. What a sweet old man, you know? So charming.

And then his like dark horrible voice. Right. Such an incredible, like it's the perfect amount of camp in that voice. It doesn't go too far somehow, but it's just perfect. And one of the things I think that the reason Star Wars is important in the world is because the, the archetypes of all the characters are so true, so consistent that everybody, you can learn about anybody by saying, which one are you?

And like, are you a Han Solo? Are you Luke Skywalker? Are you C3PO? Are you R2D2? Are you Darth Vader? Like everybody knows who they are. And you can know every, like I have a friend who's like, oh, I am so C3PO. Like that's, I also have a bet. That's friend who is 100% C3PO. And you know everything, okay, so let's compare.

I'll just tell you what my friend was like, and you tell me if your friend was the same. Okay. Like service oriented, like loves to like take care of people and like do get things done for them. Finds joy in like getting through the checklist. Extremely organized. Yes. Right? Yes. This is what I'm saying, they're archetypes.

So you can learn everything about a person, simply by them telling you which Star Wars character they are, they're, they're fine most like them or most drawn to. So who would Star Wars character are you? So I am an equal lover of Boba Fett and Han Solo. Okay. Interesting. You know, if you force me, like gun to your head, pick one.

I mean, I had two computers at a laptop and a desktop and one was named Han Solo and the other one was named Boba Fett. But if, ugh, I don't know how to choose, can you guess why I like those? No, I'm trying to imagine. You mean you, you're not, I've hung out a little bit. We're not besties, but the, but you know me enough, I think.

I mean, I can tell you, I thought about it plenty. Well, why Boba Fett? Tell me that one. Okay. Well, I can't talk about Boba Fett without talking about Han Solo. They're both incredibly independent, right? Like Boba Fett is just, he's, he's a bounty hunter but he, he works for himself, right? And Han Solo, super independent.

I guess maybe I'm more like Han Solo than Boba Fett, but Boba Fett's just so damn cool. He's just so damn cool. He is. So I guess more like Han Solo, which is fiercely independent, begrudgingly like really wants to be a part of the group but really wants to be himself and his constant battle. It's like, I want to be my own person but I want to be a part of the team but I want to be my own person but I want to be a part of that team.

And as independent as he is, always goes everywhere with a friend. Mm-hmm, chewy. Just, yeah. So that's where I am different than Boba Fett. Boba Fett's a total loner. And, and really loyal to those friends that he gets to those friends and plays up the independent, like I don't really care about you guys, but he really does a lot.

Oh, 100%. And so it's the hyper independence but the, the constant struggle of, I want to be my own self but I also want to be a part of the group at all times that paradox but also as independent as he goes everywhere with a friend and that rebel spirit of, let's just give it a try. It, to me, is I am, I'm so identified with Han Solo.

Yeah. I think for me, it's, well, I love Palpatine. I love to say I identify, I mean, obviously, in the real world, authoritarian regimes, tyrants, you, gross, don't want anything to do with it. In the world of Star Wars, he is such, I won't call him a dynamic character because he never changes. Like, a dynamic character is one who like discovers something about themselves and has changed and in the process, we as viewers change too because we learn something about ourselves.

That's not Palpatine. He'd literally never changes. He's static throughout. But that character is so well drawn. And so. So what about you as Palpatine? Well, he's a planner and I like to be, I like to be a planner, you know? His plans tragically did not work out. Through real, no fault of his own, but, but yeah, I'm inspired by his, his scheming.

I won't say that I've seen myself in him entirely. I think if I really had to pick a character, I would say R2D2 because R2D2 is also. By the way, the original, it's the original episode 456 that are the perfect archetypes. It's those, those, those are the characters, the original characters. Although you really see Palpatine shine in one, two, and three.

Exactly, but you and I have had this fight, which is you can keep you one, two, three, and I'll start Star Wars. As a Palpatine fan, you got to watch, the prequels are written. Oh, I watched them. No, I know, I know. Won't watch them again. But they're, they're worth it for Palpatine. Okay, so what, what is it about R2D2?

R2D2 is, R2 is incredibly underestimated. And I like that he's, he always seems to know exactly what's going on. He's like privy to more information than we are even aware. Like everybody's writing him off as this little droid. It's like, oh, get out of the way you trash can, you know? But he's always saving the day.

He's prepared. He knows where the map where, you know, Luke Skywalker's at. He's, he's just behind the scenes, just so instrumental to everything. The entire mission. Are you underestimated? And I want to say like, what I like about him is that he's not out there being flashy about it. He's just, he's just, get the job done.

Yeah, he gets the job done. He's, he's really capable, really like much smarter than people think and, and humble about it. And he's funny. And I just think that, I don't know, I relate to R2D2 in that way, you know? Unexpectedly funny. Yeah. Good planner. Yeah. Always lurking on the background. But like, yeah, he's not a big brager.

No, he doesn't. That describes you. Yeah, I mean, we, I mean, to be fair, we don't know what he's saying. Only C3PO can understand. Right. But we assume that C3PO is accurately translating because that C3PO is nature. He's a translator. And I love the relationship between them because R2 is always like checking C3PO who is kind of braggadocious and, you know?

But anyway, I just, I really like R2D2. He's probably the most secure character in all of them. Yeah. He's, he's, all of them have their baggage. And he doesn't. He's kind of like, he just gets the job. He just gets his shit going and gets the job done. And there's a reason why Anakin, you know, bends over backwards to, to protect him and through the Clone Wars, you know, the animated series.

And, and, and take him with. Yes. He's, he's the chosen. There's an episode where he almost gets left behind and it's like, oh, it's a lost cause. It's just a joy. Just let him get destroyed with the ship or whatever. And Anakin's like, nope, I'm actually going to go wrist my life to get to this, my friend.

Right. So, I think that that's a perfect way to, to end this and to move into Roswell, which is, I think you are a friend that everyone would be lucky to have you by their side. You are R2D too. Thank you, Simon. I won't call you C3PO because you're not that good. I'm not that good. But you're, you're Han Solo.

So yeah. Hi, I'm, can I ask a favor? Yeah. This is totally selfish, totally selfish. Mm-hmm. I've, I've discovered you because of this magical song called Roswell. Oh, yeah. My favorite thing about this song is it's accurate. It, yeah. It's intensely accurate. Every line, and I knew the story of Roswell.

Yeah. And how it became a thing that it wasn't. It's not aliens, but it's funny. Mm-hmm. And I love that every line of that song is an education. Like if you, if somebody sings along, they're smarter. Here's one thing though that I kind of got slightly wrong. And I'm going to take this opportunity to correct myself.

So I, I mentioned the CIA. And technically, the CIA was created like a month after. It was the OSS. Yeah, I don't know, it wasn't, yeah, I don't know the exact. I mean, it was CIA-ish. Right, and the precursor. But the CIA was formed kind of in the wake of this event. Yeah. So maybe because of this event, we don't know.

But I did mention that they called the CIA, which technically they couldn't have done that. They couldn't have done that, but they called the OSS. But it's a fun line. It's a fun line to put in there. So let's just be clear what happened that Roswell, I mean, well, well, actually, we don't have to. My ask is, can you please sing the song?

Yeah. And I can tell you exactly what happened in Roswell by singing. By singing the song. But first tell us the origin story of the song. How did that song come to be? So Tony and I were, Tony's a league guitarist in my band. And we were coming back from Minneapolis having played a show and we decided since we were coming close, we're going through New Mexico to get back to LA.

I was like, we have to visit Roswell. That's got, as a space nerd, you know? It's a mecha. I'm less into conspiracy theories, but whatever. I just wanted to see it. So we stopped through Roswell. We were there for two days and then on our way out, we were actually about to leave. The van broke down. So and it broke down hard.

Like they had to get like a some obscure piece that they needed to send in. And we ended up being there for 10 full days while the van was being fixed. 10 days. 10 days. I mean, that's like a, okay, that's a long time to be. It was a long time to be. And Roswell is middle of nowhere, right? Yeah, there's not much to do.

Rather than learn about the incident and go to the museum. And although like kitschy alien things, it's great. I mean, even the McDonald's there has like alien. It's like a spaceship. And it's really, it's really a cute town. I liked it a lot. And everybody was super nice. So I would, I was asking locals about it.

I was going to the museum. I was reading books about it. Like what else are you going to do for 10 days in Roswell? And then I was like, we have to write a song over here. So before we left, we wrote the song. And then we filmed it in front of the Roswell, like water tower. I hate to point this out. Okay.

But Roswell was your lockdown. It was your blank space. It was your good nothing. Yeah, it was. And good nothing. You had nothing to do. Yes. You're bored because you've exhausted everything there is to do in Roswell. The only thing left to do was to be creative. Exactly. That's exactly right. So maybe we shouldn't call it good nothing.

Maybe we should call it Roswell time. I like that. I need some Roswell time. Yep. I like that. At least I need to be stuck in Roswell to create something. I like it. It's great. Roswell time. It is. Okay. So amazing. We have Elkordova and Tony Lindgren and they're going to perform Roswell for us. Yeah.

Yes. We're going to do it. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he had to hit me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not by watching there. Yeah. Yeah. Flying saucer captured, I don't know who makes it go But the artist came from Washington, and tears were changed Town was hushed, and silence, and that gravel was detained It scooped up all the evidence that flew into one world Station covered photos and the heavens were moving towards the end There's nothing to see here in Roswell I'm torn up for the weather blue And majoring myself is taken as well about Roswell Get it, Tommy There's nothing to see here in Roswell But the story still exists

Movers turn off the ease, and fears turn to mess And you is dying day, the major swarm on your head There's no way in hell, and that fell was made by Thurman It says, this dude looks on out of Roswell And sleeping in Mexico town majoring myself, what could she tell us about Roswell The story of Roswell Thank you very much The story of Roswell Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other

The Brilliance of Boredom with creative polymath Elle Cordova

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