That Time We Talked About Future Innovations

This is episode number 71 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're glad that you could tune in, dial in, tap that button, whatever.

Dial in.

Do people dial? Have you seen that video of the, the dad that, uh, gives his kid Uh, 5 minutes to dial a number on an old rotary phone.

And they can't do it. They can't do it.

They can't figure it out. It's hilarious.

Yeah, it's pretty hilarious. Yeah, it's, it's one of my favorite things on YouTube. It's pretty awesome.

If you haven't seen it, I guess we could, we could link that up in the show notes.

Yeah, I can put it up there.

Make that happen, Kevin.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's good stuff. My, my mother-in-law actually still has an old rotary phone that— does it work? It does. It actually does work. Um, but My kids love to play with it whenever they go over to her house, and they don't know what it is, but they, they love to play with it.

Dude, my kid's favorite thing is the typewriter. They think it's the most fascinating thing in the world. Like, we have a really old one and it still works.

Do you have an electric one or one that you have to press the thing?

Oh no, it's got the slide register and everything.

Yeah, we've got 2 at my, at my parents' house, and they've got one of each.

Yeah, so we're making ourselves sound way older than we are.

That's so true. My parents had it in college. That Does that help?

I don't know. Maybe they, you know—

I will tell you, I do remember when typewriters came out that you could type a line before pressing enter and it would, and it would then print that on the paper. You go to the next line, you could type out a whole line before—

Did it have like a little screen?

Yes.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still remember it was a really big deal when they came out with the ones that could delete.

Yeah, yeah.

Had like a backspace.

Yes.

That was a big deal.

Yeah.

So, and rightly so.

Yeah. And look at where we're at now.

Yeah.

Predictive text has gone—

Take that, whiteout.

Yeah, no kidding, man. How you doing?

Yeah, I'm, I'm doing pretty good.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm having to play Inspector Clouseau in my front yard right now, but that's all right. And it's very much Inspector Clouseau because I have little to no idea what I'm doing. I'm looking for a leak.

Okay.

There's been a puddle that's been accumulating in a specific spot.

Um, maybe your dog's just peeing a lot.

You know, that was actually my thought because it's right by a tree.

Oh no.

Like, and I, for a week I was like, these goofy dogs are just, have just decided that this is, this is the, this is the line in the sand.

This is it.

This is the tree.

Yep.

We're all gonna mark it.

That this tree's going down.

So, but no, it's, there's a leak in the ground and it's gotta be, it's gotta be a little one. And so, but I—

Maybe it's a natural spring.

That'd be cool. Yeah. Um, I'd be down with that. Yeah. I just need to figure out where to send the water.

Um, drill a, drill a, a line, put a windmill on it.

Okay. I could do that. It's right by my house is the problem.

Yeah.

And so I've gotta, I've gotta figure out what's going on.

It's probably a leak.

It's probably a leak.

It's probably not a spring.

Well, this isn't the first time this has happened either. We've had other ones be— because, because the house is so far away from the road and the water, the main water line's down by the road. I mean, like just leaks every once in a while because tree roots and cars driving on top of stuff. I mean, like, just leaks happen.

Yeah.

Um, but this one, I mean, like, it's— it just— it seems to be getting a little bit bigger and a little more aggressive. And so we gotta figure out what's going on. I may end up having to, you know, phone into Jim over at JC's Leak Detection if I can't figure it out. The problem is, is that I'm pretty good at plumbing.

Okay.

I'm not— I'm not great at a whole bunch, but I'm pretty good at plumbing.

Yeah.

I just don't enjoy it. So it's, it's a—

yeah, it's a lot of work.

It is. And like, and so like, I have to rationalize it in my brain because I go like, look, stupid, you don't enjoy this, but it's really expensive to have it done. You know that you're capable, and if you just spent the time, you could actually fix it. But then the other side of my brain is like, look, dummy, you don't have the time and it's got to get done now, right?

Yeah, so that's the way it goes.

So Basically, it's a no-win situation where I'm a moron no matter what I pick.

Just call JC.

Yeah.

Call him. I probably will. Well, it's an interesting time around my house as well. I mean, we've kind of, you know, Christmas has come and gone, which means we now have exponentially more toys than we did have.

I told your wife to stop buying you so many.

Well, but I keep, you know, playing with them, so.

You were a good boy.

Exactly, that's right. I did all the good things. Anyway, uh, so we, we've gone through a really interesting process of purging.

Nice. Um, I'm a big fan of purging.

Yeah, yeah, and, and we are too. It's just, it's, it's not that we're just the ones making the decisions. We're actively assisting our kids through that process.

And so That's just gonna take forever.

It does.

I just sneak in in the middle of the night and take what I want.

We've done that before and it works, but we really wanna kinda teach them, you know, you've got new toys, there are people out there that don't have toys and you should, you know, help them out and give them the stuff that you don't play with anymore or that you're too big to play with anymore.

Right.

And so it's just a whole cry fest of, no, it's my favorite toy that I haven't played with in a year, you know, and So that, that's been interesting. I just took, um, I took so much stuff to Goodwill today, it was ridiculous. Um, and, uh, so lots of stuff we purged. And then the other thing that's kind of— that was good today is we had a water softener guy come and, uh, kind of just check our system. And, you know, I, I, it just reminds me how important maintenance is.

Yeah.

On home things that sometimes are just out of sight, out of mind. And, you know, we've got a reverse osmosis system as well. So underneath they've got the filters and, and the 3 canisters underneath, and all those need to be replaced and everything. So it's all good. Everything's running good. We didn't have any issues.

I didn't replace anything.

No, we replaced all the filters.

Oh, okay. And, uh, are those expensive?

Well, I mean, they're not cheap. I mean, so 3 filters, um, I, if I, I did it last year myself and it was $60.

Okay.

Um, I had him do it, it was $80. So it's really worth him doing it. Yeah. Um, there's also a filter that we have on the outside of our house. It's a pre-sediment filter before Everything comes in. Yeah. And I don't know, I've never changed— I've never even looked inside that, that, uh, container, that canister. Um, but it's huge. It's like, it's 20-inch. It's a 20-inch filter.

Oh my gosh.

It's huge.

It's massive.

Yes. And, uh, this thing, we took it off and he looked at it and he said, we didn't install this. He said, I, I don't know who installed it. Maybe it was here before we even installed. Who knows? Um, But it was brown. Like, and I'm not talking like kind of brown. I'm like, it looked like, it looked like a tree limb. Like someone had stuck a tree limb inside this canister.

Yeah.

And so, I mean, we've lived there for 2 and a half years, right? And I haven't touched it. And I would be shocked if it was touched for the 3 years previous to that. So anyway, I mean, stuff like that, that, you know, maintenance is just—

Where do you even get something like that?

that? Well, um, he— the guy that was there working on it said that, you know, like a box store, Home Depot, Lowe's—

Oh, really?

That would probably have it. But I went to Amazon.

Okay.

Yeah, so I bought a 2-pack, should last me a year for like $35.

I'll have to show you the one in the garage, see if it's similar.

Okay.

We got a couple of them on different buildings around there. Yeah, they're easy to put on too. I mean, if it's the same one I'm thinking of.

Yeah, I mean, it's just a— it's just a line from the water coming into your house before it ever gets into your house. It's just a pre-filter, um, just to kind of get the, the sediment and stuff like that out.

Yeah.

And then it goes through our water softener, and then all that comes into our home. And then of course we've got the— on top of that, then we've got the reverse osmosis system under the sink just for the drinking water. So, man. If that water's not clean by the time it hits my throat, it's just not gonna get clean. It's not gonna get clean. So anyway, maintain your stuff, like change your, change your filters for your air conditioner, all that kind of stuff. It's, it's good.

So, man, well, we're, we're, we're pressing on tonight with part 2 of our, of our series.

Yes.

The best of the decade.

Last, last week we did what we thought was the best of the decade.

Right. Yeah. And if you haven't yet, we, we referenced a, a video that we found on, on YouTube about walking, walking through this old Innovations— Innovations or Innovations?

It was the— so the building that was in was Innovations East.

Okay.

And the name of the video was House of Innovations.

Okay.

So it was kind of playing off of the building that was in.

Right. And the gist of the video is it was, you know, Disney Epcot's predictions about what the home of the future was gonna be like.

Yeah.

And it was eerily accurate.

Yes.

And so we thought it would be fun to go through last, last week. What we did is we went through, you know, our, our, you and I, we each got, you know, 3, our top 3. Yeah. What we thought were like the best innovations over the last decade. And, and so in order to, to continue on in that spirit, we wanted to take this week and make our top 3 predictions. Um, you know, I, I don't, 10 years feels like a long time to be predicting stuff. I mean, like it does, you know?

Well, I mean, when you think about the last 10 years, I mean, so The way technology has traveled over the last 10 years— I mean, we talked about this— the iPhone was invented in 2007.

Yes.

Right? That's whenever it first came online. To where we are now, 12 years, 13 years later, is unbelievable, right? To see where that phone that didn't have a camera on it now is.

The first one didn't have a camera?

I don't think so.

That's boggling. It had to have had a camera.

I know the iPod didn't, because maybe that's what I'm thinking of.

Razrs like even had cameras on them.

Yeah, maybe it did. It was— it wasn't a very good one, I'll put it that way.

Um, not compared to what we have now, for sure.

No, not anywhere close.

Uh, we need to look that up and see if they had a— see if they had cameras on.

I know the iPods didn't originally. Yeah, I'm talking about the— I'm not talking about the rotary.

iPods.

I had one of those, by the way. Actually, I had 2 of them. Um, no, I'm talking about the full-screen iPods. I don't think that one did.

But you're talking about like the iTouches? Is that what you're—

okay, touches.

Yeah, yeah. No, I don't think those had cameras.

No, I don't think so either. Uh, anyway, nevertheless, to think where— I mean, that technology alone has come in 10 years. To think about the exponential increase we're gonna get over the next 10 years is mind— it is mind-boggling.

So here's a question I have, and I'm not— I mean, like, not to take us way off kilter, does Apple even make like music devices anymore? Like, I remember it was a pretty big deal when like they came out with like the Shuffle because it was a little tiny thing you could clip on your shorts.

And Microsoft had the Zune.

The Zune, right? Do they even make— I mean, like, I know people make MP3 players.

You can still buy iPods.

You can still buy iPods?

Yeah.

Like, are they like iTouches? Is that like—

Yeah, they're still— they're like, you know, whatever.

Really?

Yeah, like they have an 8th generation or something. Yeah, yeah, my wife bought one. Now I don't know— so here's the question that I don't know the answer to. I don't know if like they've made one this year or last year, right? But I know my, my wife bought the latest generation, uh, about a year and a half— uh, about a year ago.

Okay.

She bought the latest generation and, um, they were still producing them. Hmm. So I just—

but it doesn't seem like there would be a market for that anymore.

Well, and there's not much because if you go to— if you go listen to the Apple events, they're not talking about them.

Yeah.

So maybe they're not making new ones anymore.

I mean, anyway, but they're still available. I'm gonna look into that as well.

Okay. So for no reason?

Well, I'm just curious. I mean, like, well, I mean, like, you know, in the spirit of making predictions, I mean, like, no one's really doing anything. with like— because everything's streaming, right? Yeah. I mean, like, even music is streaming. And yeah, you've probably got like an Amazon account or a Spotify account or a Pandora account or something. All of them, you know. And so like, you know, which I, I imagine is rough on the music industry, but people aren't buying albums. No, they're not, you know. And they're barely buying songs.

Yeah. So why, why would you?

So I'm, you know, it seems like they, they ought to be creating devices that makes music more enticing. Yeah, you know, a higher quality device, or I don't know.

I don't know either.

What am I— it's not one of my 3.

No, mine either. So, so what we're gonna do tonight, uh, or today, is we're going to give our predictions, the top 3 predictions from each of us for the next— or for this decade, for our current decade, right? The '20s. Which is weird to say.

The Roaring '20s.

The Roaring '20s.

That's right. So, so I went first last time, so I think that means that you have to go first this time.

All right.

Fair is fair, Kevin.

OK. All right. Now, in full disclosure, we, we made this own kind of disclaimer amongst ourselves.

Right.

These are just predictions. Like, who knows if this is actually going to come true?

Oh, they're 100% accurate.

Yeah.

Guaranteed.

Well, I'm pretty confident in my first one. I'm going to go with my one that I'm most confident with to the one that I'm least confident with.

Oh, OK.

OK, so the one I'm most confident with, I'm just going to put out there, and the reason I'm most confident about this is because we're already starting to see this happen. I just predict it is going to go in some pretty cool and maybe scary places, and that is self-driving cars.

OK.

I think we're going to have self-driving cars. They basically have them now. There are certain road systems that are even being striped such that the car is reading the stripes.

Right.

We've had cars that brake for themselves for years now, and do all these sorts of things. I think we're going to see this technology really take off, right, and not just be something from a, you know, no pun intended, a test drive type of place, right, to something that is full-on by the year, you know, 2029. I think we're going to be all— that's going to be the thing. Everybody's got this, you know, this ability to sit back and play on your computer, take naps or whatever while your car drives you from point A to point B.

Well, and you're right. I mean, this is already happening. I mean, Tesla cars are fully capable of doing this, right? I mean, like, they've, they've shown it. And I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but like, there are people making products to hack Teslas because the— because it's against— it's technically against the law for there to be self-driving cars, right? Um, and but like, most of the Teslas on the market right now are fully capable of self-driving.

Yes.

So what Tesla had to do was to put in a system that requires you to put your hand on the wheel, and I think it's like every 2 minutes or something like that.

Okay.

So in order to ensure that the driver is engaged in what's going on. So there's these people that have developed these products that you can like basically attach to the steering wheel.

Oh man.

To make it think that your hands are on the wheel and you can literally play on your phone or whatever. Um, and so like that's, that's already happening.

Yeah. And, and so let me be clear on this. Like it's not that I necessarily necessarily think this is the, the innovation that's going to come, right? Because it's already here. My, my real point here is I think it's gonna take off.

Oh yeah.

And I think it's going to be something that we see come to fruition to the point where, you know, just like, you know, the, the House of Innovations video that we watched, um, and that we put in the last show, um, those products were already in production. But I don't know what the percentage of those were. 75% are probably things that you have in your home.

Yeah, some version of it.

Some version of what they were using there, up to probably 75%. You have a device or a something that was very similar to what they were using. And that's kind of my point with this. Like, I think it is going to be something that everybody winds up adopting, that all of the manufacturers of cars are going to wind up installing into their vehicles, and you gonna be purchasing a vehicle in the next 10 years that drives itself. Not just a Tesla, but, you know, a GM, a Ford, a Honda that's driving itself.

Okay, I agree. I think that's coming.

Yes, he agrees.

So I think it'll probably— I think it's probably gonna look a little bit different than what we think it's gonna be like, like our concept of driving. Yeah, I think we're definitely gonna have it.

Yeah, yeah. I don't— again, I don't know what it's gonna look like. I don't know what it's gonna feel like. Although I just think that— I think the laws are gonna change. I think the, the road systems are gonna have to update themselves on, you know, even signage is probably gonna have certain technology put into it that allows cars to know various things. But also, you know, all the GPS systems are gonna become So freaking advanced.

Well, I mean, I, I actually heard something the other day. I mean, that's the whole point of 5G getting out.

Yeah.

So, and I'll, I'll add, I'll add a little appendix to your prediction. I actually, I actually think it's only going to be, uh, at least in the next decade, I think it's only going to be functional in like high metropolitan areas.

Okay.

Um, I can see that. I mean, for, for a couple reasons. One, I mean, like, they're gonna have the infrastructure of like the wireless networks in order for these cars to communicate and GPS and all that kind of stuff. But, um, you know, yeah, I mean, I— and I think it's going to be an easy way to sell it when you can say we can alleviate traffic. Oh yeah, big time, because you're going to eliminate rubberneckers.

And well, yeah, when you can virtually eliminate wrecks, yeah, then you eliminate the the traffic logjam that happens.

Yeah. So like, I think Houston will be an interesting city to see if that actually happens too, because it's such a sprawling metro.

It is.

Um, it's a little weird compared to other big cities.

Yeah, I agree.

Um, okay, cool.

You ready for mine? Yes, sir.

So my big prediction over the next 10 years is what I'm, what I'm categorizing as smart food.

Smart food?

Yeah.

Okay.

So I think, I think the way that people interact with their food is going to be drastically changing. I think it's very similar to your prediction. It's already happening.

Sure.

And so with things coming on the market that we continue to see, things like Keurig, things like Instant Pot, and I think I saw one the other day where there's a Keurig version of soft serve ice cream coming where you can have a soft serve in your kitchen.

Really? Yeah.

I think a lot of food interaction for people is gonna become more and more of that.

Yeah.

Which I don't necessarily think is a good thing, but I think we're gonna get to a place, you know, we're gonna have this interaction now, and you mentioned this last time about, you know, how grocery shopping has changed. Like, you know, you can order it online and run to the store and pick it up, or you can just have it delivered.

Sure.

Or Amazon can deliver it from Whole Foods, you know? And so like, I think the way that people are interacting their food is just going to drastically change. I think food is going to get smarter. I don't necessarily think it's going to get better.

There's a lot of things out there, even things like DoorDash, pretty much any place is delivery these days. Couple stuff like that with ideas of things like the Keurig that you can program to have your coffee, right, made, right, by the time you wake up in the morning is—

But I, I could, I could foresee a, an Amazon-type system, you know, where you're meal prepping and your meal prepping is basically clicking on a screen, you know, and then you have a device in your kitchen that basically receives that delivery, prepares the food for you, and you just take it out and eat it.

And it could, it could be really fresh. I mean, could be, yeah, you could have drones delivering your food and then your kitchen preparing it by the time you get home at 6:30 to eat.

Yeah, I mean, like, if you, if you had a, you know, I don't know, a deposit box for your Instant Pot and they're just basically dropping like a dish in there and your Instant Pot, you can, you know, you can either connect to it via Wi-Fi or whatever, you know, and like, hey, the food's been delivered, do you want Instant Pot to start cooking it so it's ready for I, I think that's— I think that's totally gonna happen.

Yeah. So that's interesting. I, I would— I, I'm with you in that I, I can see some— because there's a lot of great things that happens in a family around cooking, right, that, that I think would be lost. Um, but I mean, the convenience of that could also be really, really cool. Yeah. Um, what, what I'm concerned about— you bring up something, something I'm really concerned about is just the dumbing down of people.

Yeah.

In general. I mean, because no longer is there any use in debating information because all we got to do is pick up our devices next to us, ask Google or Alexa to tell us the answer, and we've got the answer. Um, and you know, before, before those devices were available and the internet was so readily accessible, I mean, just sitting around talking about stuff and, and trying to figure things out was It was just a different level of life.

Well, I mean, and I think that's true of like simple facts, but like when you start getting like complex facts, right? And I think food is one of those complex facts, right? Like what's the best kind of meat for you?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, that's a complicated answer because it really depends on the person.

It's subjective in a lot of ways.

Well, it's subjective, but then it's also like objective depending on the person. What's your health situation? What are you trying to achieve? Are you allergic to chicken? I mean, there's all sorts of variables in the answer. And so the truth or the facts get sort of— they're not muddled, but there's not a definitive, this is the one.

It's more complicated for sure.

Which is to me one of the problems with developing a system like that. Our technology is getting so much more advanced and complex that it's going to be able to adopt those characteristics and be able to tell like, okay, Craig's blood pressure is high, he's not getting enough vitamin C, maybe we need to adjust some things in the diet.

Okay.

And so I don't necessarily think it's going to be us picking the food as much as we're going to be able to submit who we are and our vital statistics. I mean, we're already getting a lot of that stuff through our phones and our watches.

Yup.

And we're sharing that information, and for a good reason. Some people are really upset about it for privacy stuff, and I get that. But this is why that kind of thing could be helpful.

Yeah.

I think one of the benefits of it, if I want to look at it from the positive side, is it might actually make you eat healthier.

Oh yeah, and, and part of, part of eating healthy is knowing the types of ways that your body needs to be fed, right? And so, and we talked about that in a couple of episodes ago, just that not every diet is for every person, but being able to tailor and custom make things based on your own individual needs, right?

Right.

And your ability to know what those needs are Yeah. That could change a lot of things.

Yeah. But I mean, can you imagine if like there's a device in your home that you're giving biometric feedback to that's then taking that information that it's looking at your sleep patterns, it's looking at your weight, it's looking at your blood pressure, it's looking at your mood, and then it's adjusting your diet based on those things? I think that's totally possible. Yeah, I think there's probably people working on it already.

I hope so.

So, but again, I don't know that I like that. Well, I, I love cooking. I think I like interacting with my food.

Yeah, and, and I, I think that there's probably— I don't know, this is the, the part of, of this conversation that I feel like we have to kind of rein in on some level and go, just because it is available doesn't mean that it's got to be adopted, right, either. I mean, so I, I think that just because something is available doesn't necessarily mean that that's where you have to go with it. And, and, and one of the things that I have a real, real hard time with is like, we, you know, take the— we talked about the iPhone, take that for example.

Mm-hmm.

It's been around for now, uh, coming up on— it's not 13 years old yet, it's still 12 and a half, right? Something like that. It takes a decent amount of time for a piece of technology to be available.

Mm-hmm.

And people adopt— for people to adopt it. And then once it's adopted, there takes— there, there's a certain amount of time for that technology to be used before any data can be, uh, really taken from that.

Right.

And then the data takes time to be researched and understood before a statistic can ever come out.

Mm-hmm.

We are just now in the last year getting real hard statistical data on how the iPhone specifically, or just smartphones in general, are affecting humans and the way that it is, it is changing our, just our psyche.

Mm-hmm.

From a depression standpoint, from an anxiety standpoint, from a busyness standpoint, from a distracted standpoint, from a, um, just a reclusive type standpoint, all these sorts of things. Um, now those are all negative things, right? There's a lot of positive things that you could put on it as well, but we're just now starting to see the data from that. So what's going to be interesting to me is, is if something like what you're talking about becomes available, it's going to take a while before we understand how to interact with it.

Yeah.

I mean, because I, I— what I sense right now is I sense technology being one of those things that people are like, oh, that's awesome, let's do it. You buy it and then you like, at some point you look back and you go, wait a minute, I didn't ever expect to be here with this piece of technology and I wish that I wasn't.

Yeah.

And trying to rein it back in is very difficult. And so, uh, that'll be interesting.

Yeah, for sure.

So, all right, uh, my second one is I think we are going to have new and alternative fuel sources that are running both things in our home and our vehicles.

Okay.

Not just electricity.

Oh.

I, I, I think that, um, I think there's certain limitations that electricity, um, brings with it. I think there's timing, uh, things. I know there's a way to recharge things. I know that there's There's— but, you know, solar is even part of that. It's a different energy source than what electricity is, right?

Right.

Like, you can turn solar into electricity, right? But I think we're gonna find different, uh, more efficient fuel sources that are, A, more, uh, more cost-effective. And I think they're going to be less draining on, uh, just the environment as a whole.

Yeah.

And so, you know, right now most homes are run off of electricity and natural gas, right? Now you've got propane, you've got solar, and you've got some other things that people are utilizing, but—

Kerosene.

Kerosene, uh, coal. By and large though, um, it's electricity and natural gas. I think that we're going to see different types of fuel pop up. And, and a lot of this in my mind is generated from the— from just the knowledge that, you know, the, the EPA has gotten so involved with the way our vehicles are, are made, right? And so like now you've got these diesel engines, uh, in these big trucks and, and vehicles that, um, they have to have certain types of filters on them.

Right.

And then you've gotta, you know, you've gotta put in certain additives in it so that it burns cleaner and all these sorts of things. And I think At some point, we've got to get to a point where we go, OK, this is destructive enough that something else has to happen.

To your point, I think they're going to eventually regulate it enough where it's going to be not profitable to produce those devices.

Exactly. We've already found that over the last, call it, 20 years, diesel was way cheaper than gas. And now it is never cheaper than gas. No. And you know, it's weird because like—

But more efficient.

It is. And, and what's weird is like, from what I understand, I don't know that much, okay? It's not clear, right? But my understanding is you make diesel out of the leftover remnants of what's in the bottom of the gas barrel, right?

Okay.

So you're using, you're, you're using leftovers to produce it, and it's more expensive, which doesn't necessarily make sense, but, um, it does out there to somebody.

I know, right? Yeah.

But either way, I, I just think that we're going to get to a point where the current fuel sources we're using are not efficient enough, they're harmful to the environment, and we're going to find new and inventive ways to, um, to fuel the things that we do. And it means everything, everything needs power these days. We live in a very power-necessitated world. Everything we have is powered. Just figuring out what that new source is is going to be interesting. I think in the next 10 years, we're going to have at least something else available.

Do you think there's a chance that we could miniaturize nuclear?

Maybe. I mean, I'll tell you, I'll tell you my theory on this.

Okay. I think we probably already have the technology to do that.

Okay.

But that we don't, because once we open it up to the public, then it's going to become the, the scary side of nuclear is going to be available to other countries that we don't want to have access to that.

Okay.

I think that's probably the reason it hasn't happened yet.

Sure.

Because they haven't figured out how to close that, that loop.

That's an interesting thought. And I don't know. I really don't know what it's going to be.

Because you want to talk about like efficient.

Oh yeah.

I mean, it may not be like the most environmentally friendly, but I mean, like, for the most part, they've kind of figured out how to minimize that.

Well, and we've done that with so many things, right? I mean, so many things that we have in our, in our, in our lives, we figured out how to make them environmentally okay. I mean, we could say the same thing about plastic, right? I mean, we could say the same thing about burning lots of different things that we burn.

Oh dude, I actually learned some stuff about plastics recently that just freaked me out.

Okay.

Like, I think we've actually made it I mean, if what I heard was true, it's way worse.

Is this like the whole McDonald's Chicken McNugget thing? Way worse than you really thought it was?

Well, I was listening— there's this kid that's developed this— do you know about the floating island in the Pacific?

Yeah.

That's the size of Texas?

Yeah.

That's nothing but plastic?

Yeah.

I mean, that's insane.

Yeah. It's not OK.

So, and apparently the way plastics break down, they just break down into smaller and smaller pieces.

Hmm.

And there's some theories floating around that a lot of the increase that we're seeing in cancer is actually the microplastics that have gotten into our system and are causing inflammation that allows cancer to attach. There's all kinds of weird stuff about it. I don't know if any of it's true. There's smart people who are talking about it and they're scaring the bejesus out of me. Um, yeah, but because, I mean, he was even— I mean, like this, I forget the name of the guy. It was this— it was on the, uh, Tim Ferriss podcast.

Okay.

And it was this, uh, it was actually the guy that, uh, originally, uh, developed the, uh, iPod for Apple.

Okay.

Um, and he's really big into, into, you know, trying to solve the plastics issue. And he was talking about how, uh, the labeling on some things have even allowed them to make it appear as if they're recycled, but it's just all it is, it's like it's new plastic that's recyclable.

Oh, OK.

And he goes, that's not helping anything.

No.

You're just creating more plastic.

Right.

So, anyway, scary stuff.

What's your No. 2?

My No. 2. This one, I think we're going to get really in-depth smart pet devices.

OK.

What I mean by that is, You know how we have WebMD now? I really think— because people are already OK with microchipping their dog, microchipping their cat, and these are really just location devices.

My dog is microchipped. It was a free service when we got her spayed. We got her microchipped. What is interesting, at least about the one that we have, Is it's not GPS at all, right? It is just a way to know whether or not that's my dog, right? I mean, it's an— it— the microchip contains information, right? And, and you— there are certain places that can read that chip.

Mm-hmm.

And if the dog is taken to one of those places, they can read the chip and go, oh, that's Kevin's dog, let's call him, we have his phone number. That's all that my microchip does. But to your point, it's, it's not only available, it's very common for that to be in dogs these days.

Yeah. So I, I think it's, I think it's going to go many, many steps further. I think, I think we're going to have, uh, devices that we, you know, basically put on our pets. They give biometric feedback data, um, you know, so like checking their heart rate, checking all that, all that kind of stuff, um, you know, kind of like the way that we put on Apple Watches and they can do like ECGs. And is that what it ECGs?

Yeah.

And so, you could almost, instead of going to the vet, you can connect virtually to a veterinarian office and that vet's going to be able to get all the diagnostic data that they need in order to determine, OK, do you actually need to come in? Or, what are the other symptoms that are going on? And I can just diagnose right here because I have all this information right in front of me.

That would be beautiful. It would.

Um, so I, I think, I think that's coming. And I think because people, you know, I think you're gonna— guys are gonna be developed— guys and gals are gonna be developing that technology because there's— I think there's a market for people who, you know, want to take better care of their cats and dogs. Sure.

Um, but, but honestly, vet visits are very difficult, right? I mean, they're— I mean, if you— especially if you have multiple animals and taking the time out of your schedule.

Mm-hmm.

To go to the clinic.

And it takes, you know, and it's a pain cuz you never know if your dog's gonna attack some cat or—

Exactly.

So I, I, I think this is, I think, you know, the reason I'm predicting this, I think it's actually good for the veterinarian business. Sure. You know, they can, they can actually, they'd probably be able to see more, uh, more clients.

Yeah.

People are gonna, because those appointments will probably cost a lot less because, you know, it's, It's just going to be cheaper to have those appointments.

You're not in a brick-and-mortar type of establishment anymore. They probably have an office, but it's not the scale that it would be currently.

I talked to a gal the other day. She was using some sort of online doctor service because she was out of state in Colorado. Something happened to her where she was like, I know what it was. I just got on the computer. There was a doctor on the other side of the screen. I told him my symptoms. I told him what my temperature, what my vitals were. He told me he concurred with my own diagnosis of what I thought and wrote me a prescription and I picked it up at the hotel.

That happens all the time. We do that with our own family now.

And she was like, it was crazy cheap. Oh yeah.

I mean, so with—

I think she said it cost her like $50.

With our insurance that I've got through my job, we also— I think they pay— it's, it's something stupid, like $7 a person to get this, uh, like a Teladoc service, right? It cost me zero copay. Zero. Zero dollars to call into the doctor. And yeah, I can send them pictures and we can just talk on the phone, or we can do a, a video face-to-face.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah. They can go, yeah, this is what it is. I'll write you this and you go pick it up.

Awesome.

It is so awesome.

Right. Yeah. I think that's exactly what's going to happen because, I mean, like, you know, veterinarians are regulated. They're not nearly as regulated as people doctors.

Right.

Um, you know, but they're— I mean, like, they're highly regulated.

Sure.

But if we can do that with people—

Yeah, why not?

Yeah. And then the technology's there.

Yeah. So I agree. Okay, cool. I'm with you. I like it. Yeah.

All right, I'd even use it.

Oh yeah, we would too. Absolutely. Okay, so here, here's my last one, and this is the one that's, um, a little far out. Pun definitely intended.

Oh, okay.

So, um, I, I think that we're going to see space vacationing—

Oh, okay.

—become a thing. I think we're going to see people vacationing to the moon. for example. Oh, um, I, I think that we're already seeing like Virgin— Virgin is planning on this.

I mean, yes, they've already sold tickets.

Yes, on, on having some opportunities for that. And it's a ridiculous amount of money.

I think it's like $120,000. Yes.

Um, and, and, and you're there for a very limited amount of time.

Um, and that's just going to space.

That's just going to space.

Yeah.

Like, I, I think that we're gonna see some sort of habitable place on the moon that we're going to be able to go to and spend a night, for example, and just have the ability to be there and be on a completely different planet, so to speak. It's a moon, I realize. Okay, people, don't send us emails. I know the moon is not a planet, okay? But it, you know, it's a completely different foreign type of place to us.

Yeah, um, you'd be just as excited to be on Pluto.

Exactly, exactly. Which thankfully is again a planet.

Is it a planet again?

Yes.

Make up your mind.

It's been reinstated. Yeah. So I think, and whether or not it's the moon or whether it's, you know, just, just some other space station, you know, that you get to go to and do that kind of thing, I think that people are intrigued enough about space, right, that we're going to get to a point where I mean, people are outlandish with the things they already do.

Yeah.

I mean, just the types of vacations that you hear some people wind up taking and things that they do on these vacations.

Yeah.

I, I had a, I had a friend, uh, he was a pilot. He was a private pilot for a banker, and he came home regularly telling me things that his, uh, his boss had him fly him to this, that, or the other. And he told me one day, he came home, he's like, dude, you'll never guess what I just I was like, no, you're probably right, I won't. He's like, you know, you ever watch Shark Week? Like, yeah, I've watched Shark Week. Who hadn't watched Shark Week? Uh, and he was like, so, so you know like the great white episodes where they like get down, you know, they put people down in the cages and,

and, you know, they, they put the, the fish in there and they come up and they're like biting at the cage and stuff? I was like, yeah. He's like, I did that. So you did what? He's like, yeah, I had the chainmail on and everything.

Oh my gosh.

I was like, why? And he was like, because we were in South Africa and my boss wanted to do it and he asked me if I wanted to. I said sure. And so he, he goes vacationing to swim with great white sharks.

Awesome.

Like, the, the risk-taking that that winds up being, right, is just astronomical. And so I, I think that we're going to see a completely different side of travel. Um, and, and whether it's space or not, I think that there's a lot of inventive ways that travel is going to go crazy. And we're seeing things like underwater hotels, which I think are awesome. Yeah, I mean, but again, like, there's a significant risk to doing something like that, right?

I don't care.

Um, I'm, I'm kind of with you. Uh, but I, I just, I think that we're gonna find that there's, there's some pretty cool opportunities to vacation differently than we're currently vacationing.

I'd be with it. Bring it on!

I don't think I could ever afford it. Come on, Kev! Surely, it'll be affordable someday, right?

The Kev of the next decade could.

Yeah. When I'm 70—

New and improved Kevin can do this. You got it!

I guess if the next decade they get me super healthy, then—

That's right!

Sure, I'll go up to space. Why not? Healthy. All right, so that, that was the one that I told you I was like least confident about.

Least confident. Okay, I'm actually pretty confident in my number 3. Okay, we'll see if it happens though. My number 3 is, uh, storage container homes.

Oh dude, okay, um, go ahead and talk.

Yeah, so, uh, have you seen, uh, Ready Player One?

Yes.

Okay, so you know how like Yeah. That, that whole, you know, I, I think we're gonna, I think we're gonna start seeing more and more of that.

Yeah.

Um, and not just because, and I think, I think initially it's going to be because it's kind of the hip thing to do.

Sure.

But I think it's actually going to come out of practicality.

Okay.

Um, I, I think it's gonna be, you know, that's gonna be the conscientious— that's, that's the way you're gonna be able to virtue signal your, your conscientious house building.

Yeah.

But it's actually very practical.

Sure. Sure.

Um, and it's not a bad way to build a house. I mean, they're super structurally sound. They're very safe. I mean, they're like hurricane resistant. I mean, like you put them together, right? They're not going anywhere. Right. Um, and you know, and they last forever. Sure. Um, so I, I think it's going to be more and more of a trend. And I also think it's going to happen because I'm actually, I'm actually anticipating a, a big glut in the real estate market in the next at least 5 years. Okay. We're just building too much right now and there's not enough people buying. We're, I mean, we're the, the generation that we're them for is really not interested in owning homes.

That's true.

And so there's a huge— there's a lot of people building apartments right now, and I think people are going to get tired of that model. And so I think some people are going to catch on. Building shipping container homes is actually pretty cheap.

Yes, it is.

And so I think when the traditional real estate market kind of takes a tumble, which it traditionally does— I mean, it always does. I mean, it goes up and down just like everything else.

It ebbs and flows.

So when it goes down again, I think one of the things that's going to bring it back up is shipping container homes.

Okay. So we just down the road, um, that we have a shipping container car wash.

Yeah. That they just finished building.

Yeah. And it's, it's pretty interesting. And I think it's catchy. I think that's one of the reasons they did it. Yep. Right. Um, but, um, to, to your point, My, my sister and her husband, they, they sold their house and they moved out to a lake area that they owned a little bit of land. And their goal was to build a metal home, right? Like a Mueller type of home. We had them on the, on our show not too long ago. And I went out to dinner with her not too long ago. And she was like, so yeah, I don't think we're gonna do the metal building anymore. She's like, really? Why? it's just kind of more expensive

than we originally thought and just not quite as practical as what we were thinking. So I think we're gonna do a shipping container home.

Yeah.

I said, whoa, what? Like, I'd never heard of this.

Yeah.

Um, and she was like, yeah, uh, we've been looking into it and a lot of people are doing it. And they are— we think we can build something that is, um, just as big. And, and they're not talking about anything huge. They're talking like 1,500 square feet, right? They're not looking for anything massive. Uh, something that is a lot more cost efficient. They can do most of the work themselves. And it's just, I mean, like you said, structurally, you, you don't get anything stronger than steel, right? That's what they're made out of. And so, uh, and they're making these things 2, 3, 4 stories high. And it doesn't matter.

Well, if you've ever seen them on a ship, I mean, they stack them 8 and 10 high.

Yes, they do.

And like, they don't have any problem.

No, none. And so it— whenever she was telling me about it, I was like blown away. And then I started like doing some, just some one-off research moments where I'm like, I'm just gonna look at this. I looked at some of these houses. I'm like, that, that actually looks really good. Yeah. And you paint them all the same color. You can have balconies, like you can position them in certain ways. to where you've got a natural balcony, you know, like natural overhang, you know, between one of the stories and the other. And, um, anyway, just a really cool concept. And, and I don't, I don't know that it's for me. Yeah, but it's an interesting idea.

Yeah. And well, there's actually, uh, not, not far from here in The Woodlands, there's a 4-story shared office complex that just went up. If sometimes you want to see it, I can take you over there and see it. But it's, it's a giant L-shape and it's nothing but shipping containers. Wow. It's a really cool looking office place, too. So, you know, it's been going on for a while. And like, obviously, I mean, if you went and searched it, you can find lots of examples of people who've been doing this for a while.

Yeah.

This is not like a new thing.

Sure.

I just actually think it's going to become more widespread.

Right.

And for one of the big reasons that you mentioned, because, you know, you're going to get a smaller footprint. And I think that, again, that's going to be something where people can sort of Hey, I'm doing— I'm not using as much space as you are because I don't have as much stuff as you do. I mean, like, it's, you know, it's all that kind of mentality, which is not a bad mentality, right? You know, we don't need as much stuff as we think we do, right? Um, and we don't, you know, need as much space as we think that we do on our living spaces. I'm a big land guy, if you know, right? I'd be perfectly happy with 1,000 square feet in the middle of 50 acres.

Yeah, and you know, it opens up different types of opportunities. Yeah. And, and one of the opportunities it opens up is inexpensive housing that is every bit what you and I are living under now, as far as a roof, a safe place.

Um, you can, you can bury them too. Yeah, I know. And that's—

I mean, like, which you think about, like, like the option for a basement, you know, whether or not you have a buried home or whether or not it's just a basement, right? Like, it's completely sound basement, you know?

Well, not only that, I mean, like, once, once it goes subterranean, I mean, you can really increase your energy efficiency.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. A lot of, a lot of people have done that. And, you know, just the— I mean, you have a different level of insulation.

Yeah. Well, I mean, here's, here's one of the other things that I've seen people do with some of these homes is they're made out of steel. Yeah, they can put sod roofs on them. Yeah, or garden roofs on. Yeah, which increase the energy efficiency of the building.

That's right.

You know, you put like a grass, a grass roof on it, you know, you've got that extra layer. Yep. And it actually deflects sunlight and it produces oxygen and, you know, a food source possibly. Could be, could be growing vegetables up there.

Oh man, well, I don't know. I mean, it'll be interesting, you know, instead of having, you know, trailer parks, you got shipping container parks possibly.

I think it's better.

Well, yeah, it would probably be better.

And honestly, they would cost as much.

Yeah, yeah, they probably would be a similar cost, but the structural integrity of those things is better, way better. Yeah, I mean, especially in areas that are— that have, you know, natural disasters like tornadoes or floods or hurricanes, you know, different things like that.

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, we would love to hear from you guys. If you guys have some predictions for the next 10 years, we'd love to hear what you guys are thinking's on the horizon. Did you think— maybe we should put it, put it to a vote as to who thought— what the audience thought, who had a better list.

Okay. Yeah, or yeah, better list. Yeah, maybe even the best one, best overall.

Who do you think had the most accurate list? Okay. Okay, that could, that could be an interesting one.

And, and in 2029, we will come back and revisit this episode.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we're podcasting in 10 years. Oh, that'd be crazy. That would be crazy.

We need to at least have some interns by then.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

So what else? What else? Anything else?

I, I think that covers it. I, I just really appreciate people downloading this episode, and, uh, hope you, hope you enjoyed it. Should be fun, uh, just to kind of talk about, you know, what do you think, what do you, where do you think stuff like this is going to go in the future? I think it's interesting, um, and who knows? No, none of us know unless you're, you know, one of those people that's already developing this technology.

Yeah, yeah, we've got some, and we've got some other fun, uh, interviews coming up pretty quick. We got a, we got a, I think we're like 2 months booked out, man, with, uh, with guests at this point. So we've got some really cool interviews coming up, but then in February, we're going to be doing a new series called Getting Out of the House.

Getting Out of the House.

That's right. So we're going to be— we're doing— we're going to do a whole— I think we're doing 3 interviews on nothing but travel.

Yeah.

And so we're going to be bringing you guys some really cool content about travel over those— over those 3 interviews. So if you have any suggestions, if you have any questions about travel, send them us— send them our way, right, so we can prepare our guests for the intensity of the question.

Yep. So go ahead, if you haven't already, subscribe, click that notification, make sure you get all of our episodes each and every week. We're here on Tuesdays. Thank you for being loyal to us. Tell us what you think with the reviews, and a rating on iTunes, that would be fantastic. Tell your friends about us, and until then, we'll see you next time. See ya.