Latest / The PNW Podcast / Seattle Cashes In, Portland Goes Robotic & Scientists Take on Fentanyl

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Seattle Cashes In, Portland Goes Robotic & Scientists Take on Fentanyl · The PNW Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I used to buckle out of Taylor's.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: All my friends would be at Taylor's.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: All like the grad students and everything were always, the smart kids were always, you know, intellectualizing over at Renny's.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I would come in there swaying through the doors, walk upstairs where I could order some food that would come up the lazy Susan in the back.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I would go sit on the porch and with one to two eyes closed, I would just eat French fries, sometimes alone.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just I would hit that bank.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: There was a Bank of America ATM right outside Taylor's, and I would go and waltz down there and just go.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that was kind of my survival mode.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you hit one too many dollar beer nights or somebody bought you well shots.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just go over there and grub French fries until the cows come home.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome in to the PW podcast.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I almost named my other podcast there for a second.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I had a little geek.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't listened to that, that's the Fit for Radio podcast.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Write it down.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll come back to it.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: But we are in studio here at the Stafford Hills Club hanging out.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Marcus Down and Eugene.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I am here in the Portland area, and we talk everything that has anything to do with the Pacific Northwest.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that is uh that's exactly what we're gonna do today.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: We've got some amazing stories coming out of the Northwest today, Marcus.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And before we get too deep into it, you know, I I hate to taunt you up here because I feel like we have way more food weeks.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we talked about Burger Week, and then last week was Fried Chicken Week, and then I kind of uh botched the landing on it because while you were away, I had a um I had a guy on named Jesse the Chicken Guy, and he's gone viral here in Portland.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh attacked over a hundred different places for chicken wings up in the Portland area.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: He seems to really know what he's talking about.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we talked about fried chicken week because he also does all kinds of chicken dishes, and I just fumbled it because I didn't even realize that this week was chicken week.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was chicken wing week, and I didn't even get into it with him.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So um, if you ever want to know about wings in the city of Portland, though, check him out.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Jesse eats a lot on Instagram, but he's known as Jesse the Chicken Guy.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And um, maybe we'll dive more into what places you can go, but the Portland Mercury has your list for you:$10 offerings of chicken.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now, Marcus, it is um it's fair to say that the World Cup hooked up Seattle big time.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: The numbers are out for how much money was made in the city of Seattle just by hosting the World Cup.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's$889 million.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that is amazing.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: How cool.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, you say what you want about Seattle.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's the it's kind of the uh seat of the Pacific Northwest, whether we like it or not.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And people were having a blast up there, Drew.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was really cool to see um all these different countries come in and and experience American culture for the first time, whether it was the the Japanese or or the uh you know the the Swiss Vikings, the Norwegians, that's what I was thinking of.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: The Norwegians were having a great time.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: The the Irish and the Scotland, or excuse me, the Scottish team, they were great.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was so cool to see all of the news reports, and I'm happy that the city was able to benefit from it too.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's a huge payday, almost a billion.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's massive.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, soccer just it just trumps everything else when it comes to size and magnitude.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: They were talking about how one Premier League game was having more, I think it was two or three times as many people watched a regular season soccer game overseas, not even World Cup, then watched the Super Bowl.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we think of the Super Bowl like nothing beats a Super Bowl.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: They crush the number like all the time.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me wonder why, and and maybe it's just a uh the uh space that they have available over across the pond.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one thing that a lot of the people that came over here talked about was the size and the scope of the football stadiums that we have here.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they was like kind of amazed by ATT Stadium down in Dallas or by Lumen Field up in Seattle if that's what it's still going by.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: They are just kind of amazed because a lot of a lot of soccer stadiums sort of look the same in Europe and they're not uh, well, some of them are huge, some of them are pretty intimate too.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to see them get the stadiums that we have over here, over there, and and see what could happen.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you think about Bryant Denny Stadium where Alabama plays football and putting that in on top of maybe one of the little 30,000 seat stadiums over there in Europe, you know they'd fill it to the brim and they'd be falling off the top of it because there's so many fans over there.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it'd be really cool to see because they don't have trouble filling up 100,000 seat arenas to watch a soccer game over there, Drew.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's really cool.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and certain ones are massive, but it's you know, because they have relegation, which for people who don't know, it's if your team sucks, you can fall out of the Premier League.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if your team's really good, you can play your way into the Premier League.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how cool would that be if our sports were like that?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, uh, insert sorry team here.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Browns, let's use the Cleveland Browns.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, if you don't start winning more games, you're going to the Canadian Football League, and the Argonauts are gonna come and take your place.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: While it sounds silly to us, that's how they do it.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why, like, so my dad's a fan of a smaller team, and that's Fulham football over there, and and their stadium's more the size of like a Ted Lasso stadium where it's just not that big.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then if you look at Manchester United or Manchester City, like Old Trafford at Man U is a massive place in Spain, they're massive.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: When your 49ers went to Australia, that was the biggest freaking place I've ever seen.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was tears and tears and tears and tears and tears.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Those cricket grounds are wild over there.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe how big those things are, and they're round, it's so weird.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: God, and I'm trying, like, and my dad's from England.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I should like cricket.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is so hard.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, baseball's hard enough for me.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: You add this cricket element, and for that many people to sit there for that long, that's aggressive.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm glad that they do it and that those things exist for when we travel for NFL football.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, now do want to move on here to uh there's new Amtrak Cascade trains coming that are gonna operate between Vancouver, BC, Seattle, Portland, and Eugene.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna have from Canada all the way to where you're at, Marcus, with these brand new Amtrak trains, which I'm hoping they're a little bit faster.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what passengers will get is new interiors, panoramic windows, which are pretty badass in a train when you can see all of the nature around you.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wi-Fi power outlets, USB ports, improved accessibility, more modern restrooms, and 300 seats per train set.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And now it doesn't seem like that's all advanced stuff, but trains are ancient and really you don't have a lot going on on there.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So to have Wi-Fi sounds pretty great to me to be able to just kind of lock in.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, with the creature comforts uh increasing every day, Drew, I really think that this is something that maybe I might uh take the wife on like a little weekend vacation and actually take the train up to BC because listen, uh, is it as fast as driving would be?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely not.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a lot slower.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: But from Eugene, Oregon to Vancouver, BC, can you name a more beautiful train ride that you could take anywhere in the United States?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's gotta go through some of the craziest uh landscape and and right up into the Cascade Mountains up in Canada.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like that, that would be really cool and probably pretty affordable too.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I drove a couple of years ago from here to Whistler and you go through Vancouver, BC, and a lot of that area up there, it has New Zealand feels.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: It, you know, where what we see in the upper end of the Columbia River Gorge really kind of continues all the way up there into just some beautiful country.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love to do that because yeah, it's a little bit slower than driving because you got to stop at a bunch of locations, but gives you a chance to shake a leg.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you have Wi-Fi now, you can have a cold beer and and wheels up.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the other thing: even if you just take it to Seattle, Marcus, one of the most annoying things about Seattle is where to put your car.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Even when you get a hotel, the price to park your car is the biggest pain in the ass at your hotel.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: They charge you like 60 bucks a night to put it underneath.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I'm all for it.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: What I do wish they were gonna do though is make them a speed train.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, like the Japanese have.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that would be sweet.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now, they spent, you know, some like 8 billion down in California to get one of those off the ground.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: They got about a hundred feet of track and made a bunch of politicians rich.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, not the way that we want to do it up here in Oregon and Washington if we have the chance to actually put them in, but that would be sweet.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Drew, I had a guy that lived with me in the dorms in college freshman year, who was from the Ballard area up in Seattle, and he he didn't have a car.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: He specifically took the train when he went back up home uh to see his parents and for Christmas and such.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And every time he came back to Eugene on that train, I would have to drive to the train station and pick him up, and he would be absolutely pie-eyed hammered by the time, and it was just like that's what he enjoyed.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't have any responsibility.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've got eight hours to kill.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to drink myself to sleep, and then my buddy Marcus will come get me.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: I like every bit of this, and I would love it even more if you could make it fast because the bullet train, here's what we're talking about now.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now we head south, right?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're talking Eugene or Portland to LA in just what a couple hours, maybe even less than that.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: That would be amazing.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing I'm gonna say about Eugene, if you ever stay in Eugene and you're not like in the burbs, if you decide to stay in like Eugene proper down by the Holt Center and Fifth Street Market, be prepared for 15 trains a morning.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, buckle up, dude.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't know if it's city ordinance, but they have to blow that horn the whole time.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: They just hold it down.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're pulling the horn like there is a homeless guy laying on the tracks.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no way that every train is experiencing that.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they're slowing down so immensely, too.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's one thing if they blow by at 60 with the tri with the horn, you don't really hear it for that long.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: But when they slow it down to five and creep through the entirety of Eugene with the horn pulled, yeah, it rattles everybody's bones.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: I can hear it from my house.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a train that routinely blocks traffic, just uh a stone's throw from my house, Drew, and it's making me grow gray hair.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've lived here for long enough now, it's inconvenienced me enough to turn gray.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I get it.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: You're 100% right.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: I've got no answers for you there.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I love the ambiance down there.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, like there's even an old bar that I like.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You remember the Jackalobe down there right off of uh where the train tracks are.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I spent so much time in Eugene that I come back to town.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: There are two cities where I make a declaration that it's my city when I'm there, and it annoys the living daylights out of my wife.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: First one is Lincoln City, Oregon.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we've had a we've gone there multiple times a year, every year for my since 1986.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: When I was five years old.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: When people ask me at the store like what it's like to visit, I have to tell them that there's a place there that we stay at.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have to tell them that I'm kind of a local and Amy hates it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing with Eugene.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when someone's like, oh, where are you visiting from?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have to tell them that I lived here for 16 years.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And like, don't softball me right now.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I know where to take you to eat.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I might not, I might not see the the campus the way that it used to look because they ripped out my 7-Eleven and the Glenwood and Taylor's is gone, and I could go on and on and on and on, and they don't have books in the bookstore.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know the times have changed, but I lived there 16 years.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a damn local.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what is still there?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Cheesy bacon fries at Rennie's Landing.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: We can still go late night, like 1 45 a.m.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: and get an order of them cheesy bacon fries, Drew.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be fine.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I used to um buckle out of Taylor's.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: All my friends would be at Taylor's.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: All like the grad students and everything were always the smart kids, were always, you know, intellectualizing over at Renny's.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I would come in there swaying through the doors, walk upstairs where I could order some food that would come up the lazy Susan in the back.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I would go sit on the porch and with one to two eyes closed, I would just eat French fries, sometimes alone.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Just I would hit that bank.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was a Bank of America ATM right outside Taylor's, and I would go and waltz down there and just go.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that was kind of my survival mode.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you hit one too many dollar beer nights or somebody bought you well shots, just go over there and grub French fries until the cows come home.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's one of two options to do late night down there after a night at Taylor's.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're either going to Rennie's and being responsible by piling on 600 calories worth of bacon cheese and french fries and ranch dressing, or you're going down to Max's where you know that last call's coming a little bit later and you could still squeeze one more drink in and get a bag of popcorn.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it look, those are the two things.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm happy to say both of those institutions still exist.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's just the one that we were at before we went to them.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they lost their license for all sorts of reasons.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we won't get into that because we don't have the time.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: We don't.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Max's, it was always interesting.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: The bar would close, but Max's was open.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then you would, and which uh for people who aren't from there and aren't familiar with it, a lot of people believe that that is the bar that they mocked Mo's after in The Simpsons, which anybody who says it's from somewhere else can just absolutely get bent because that's not true at all.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, it was a great place.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And next door, if we're going down memory lane, there was a mini mart which m might still be there.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when you went in, everyone who ever stole from there or bounced a check, their face was on the wall.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was a Seinfeld episode.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: It really was.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like you walked in and just saw people you knew, like, oh God, dude.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Which is so funny because you were like, oh my God, that's so embarrassing.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then go to the other side of town where we used to do karaoke, and at the mini mart there, there was a couple who worked there who owned it, who they like to take pictures of their favorite people who came in and put them on the wall.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: So on more than one occasion, I was like, I had people come up to me and say, like, did you get busted stealing from a mini mart?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm smiling and opposing for it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's not off surveillance.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Critical thinking.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: I remember coming up to you once and being like, hey man, if you're writing rubber checks for late-night Snickers bars, I can kick you down a few shekels.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And they you had to set me right, you know.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was at a it was at a tougher time in life.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're gonna take a quick break, but we're coming back.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: We have two big stories to get to before we get going.
• 16:04
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• 16:51
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• 16:53
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• 16:55
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• 17:07
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• 17:22
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• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And brought to you by the Stafford Hills Club, which is the premier place in the Portland area to work out, relax, and just kind of take care of yourself.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sense of community around here, and they hold the door for you.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: They do all the things they want to see you at Stafford Hills.
• 18:08
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• 18:24
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• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Marcus, what do you think about robot taxis?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're coming all over the place.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've seen the viral videos of the new Tesla ones.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: They have no steering wheel.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: You get in, there's two two doors open.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's just like a bench seat, there's no back seat.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: You get in, the screen knows your name because he did it on the app.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: It basically locks the doors and just drives you away.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what are your thoughts on the future of robot taxis?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean, I guess if the technology's there, the technology's there.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not smart enough to argue with it.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Drew, I don't know that in 2026 I'm ready to jump into one.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you can call me a boomer or say whatever you want in the comments.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that the listeners will sound off.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I have one very specific reason that I'm not quite on board yet, and it's that viral video out of San Francisco uh from a couple years back, they're they're Waymo cabs, um, and they're just in a traffic jam trying to park themselves at the end of the night, Drew.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And there's like people living in apartment buildings around them, and it's just like beep, back up, beep, pull forward, beep, and they're just like 40 cars honking their horns at each other.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you can't figure out how to park where you're supposed to park as an automated taxi, how in the blue hell are you gonna get me back home when I'm too drunk to see straight?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I just don't think I trust it in the places where a taxi applies to me, which is always I've had something to drink and I need to get home.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, I'll either walk it or I'll call a friend or the wife or something like that.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I I just I don't know, man.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm a little bit cagey about it.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's cool.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think like that's like back to the future stuff, but I don't think I'm getting in one right away.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's so funny you say back to the future because I was just gonna reference the hoverboard because I was here at Stafford Hills Club and I'd finished a workout and I walked out the front door, and there's a lady out there waiting for her ride.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I look over and there's a car coming, so I'm gonna let it go, and it's gonna come in slow, so I just decide to walk across first and I look in the car and there's no one there.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that car pulls up, stops, and that lady walks around, gets in the driver's seat, and drives away.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's legal for the cars to do that on private property or inside of a parking lot.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have it go pick you up at the movie theater or anything along those lines, but it it felt pretty futuristic.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I looked at her and I go, whoa.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And she looked at me like, yeah, you know what?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like even she was still giddy and she owned it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and so I thought it was very impressive and it and it pulled up like a boss.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Was that an ominous feeling to be in the middle of the street and look down the barrel of a car that's approaching you and not see somebody sitting in the driver's seat?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: If it wasn't a Tesla, I probably would have soiled myself.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact that I just don't even know what to expect with that stuff anymore.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I am a little worried about the Tesla because you know, like I've been in the car while it's self driving, watching somebody else do it, and it's got that computer screen where it's basically has mock cartoon cars all the way around it.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And those cars, you know, it's predicting what's going to happen.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: But what about the D bag who's like gonna make a last second move into your lane or they're swerving so you can.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Tell when you're driving that that person's intoxicated or on their cell phone.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know if the technology knows that because they're not keeping their lane, that they're unpredictable now.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so can they can they drive as well against unpredictability as a human?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I just it worries me a little bit.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just recorded an episode for one of the podcasts I do for work with the with a truck driver that just recently saw an autonomous truck driving on I-10 in West Texas, Drew.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say autonomous, I mean no driver, nobody there, and hauling fully loaded, and not only fully loaded, but it was hauling triples, which means it was loaded to like 145,000 pounds over the normal 80,000 pounds that a regular truck could hold.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the one thing that this 17-year veteran truck driver and I couldn't get away from was the instincts that you've developed in that truck over 17 years let you predict how cars are going to act out there better than you or I ever would be able to.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: You see a guy when he drives by on his phone and you've got a better idea what might happen in the future than what even somebody that's been driving for 30 years in a passenger vehicle has.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: How do you teach a computer that?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: How do you teach that unpredictability?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: How do you code that in?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm again, I'm not smart enough to tell you how they do it, but I don't trust that they can do it as well as an instinctive human being at this point.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I'm just not quite on board yet.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you can, like, if you can show it to me in some strange application, which I don't know what it's gonna be, a near miss or something like that, but uh it's gonna take a little bit of convincing.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: I will tell you that.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I will say this too, just a side note thinking about you crossing the the street and looking at like a 2001 Chevy Lumina without a driver in it approaching you, yeah, that's a real high rock situation, if you know what I mean.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, yeah, it's a soil soil city with that happening.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that I've learned over years of taking live phone calls on the radio from truckers, people who drive the big rig, they'll tell you straight up if you come in the lane at the wrong time and we're going too fast or we're going downhill, I'm going to hit you.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's I can't stop the vehicle.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if I can't stop the vehicle, then the computer can't stop the vehicle.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so you actually, to me, I feel like you would rely more on being able to predict bad behavior.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And being able to see someone who you clearly seize on a cell phone or watching, watching TV as they're driving down the road.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're, I see you, I see you're dangerous, I'm moving away from you.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the the automatic car is going to see that.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, and and how would it?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because it is it it's all reactionary.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's no preemptive action there that it can take.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because how would it?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Does it have instincts like a seasoned truck driver?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I just don't think it does, Drew.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's the one part of this whole equation that gives me pause because look, we know that they're faster, they're more efficient, they're gonna save the environment, all this with the, you know, all the new electric technology and everything like that.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And look, I'm for it.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I'll always have, I mean, I'm I, you know, I I think on the last podcast I was wearing a Chevrolet Silver Auto shirt.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm always gonna have a spot in my heart for a good combustion engine, Drew, but I'm I'm not against the advancement in technology.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the infrastructure needed to have a bunch of self-driving cars and self-driving big rigs and self-driving buses is decades from being installed in in our current society because it's such a shift from the norm that's been the norm since the Model A came out, for Christ's sake.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's been a hundred years of us doing it this way.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're just supposed to flip a switch and all of the auto-driving stuff can just use the same infrastructure.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just not quite there yet.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't buy it.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason we bring it up here is the robot taxis are likely coming to Portland and Vancouver.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they have been driving around mapping the area.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's what they do ahead of time so that the entire thing is mapped, which seems daunting in itself.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the Google Maps people, like, oh my God, we got to go down every single street, and then we got to do it like again and again.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I will say the Google map of my house is the wrong color.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's two owners ago.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of different things.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: All the plants are different sizes.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's it doesn't even look like my house, but you know, like I said, that's a highly annoying thing.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: But expect to see it at some point.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can fight it all you want, but it's coming.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, just uh don't do what Marcus's favorite Teams coach did and drop your cell phone, buck that thing, and crash it.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, could you imagine being tasked with driving down all of the old, like the old town Portland residential streets in one of those things to map it?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you have to go down one of those streets with cars parked on both sides and pedestrians and dot like there's some parts in in old town Portland that are narrow and a little bit dicey.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would not want to be the dude mapping those neighborhoods.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Even in Northeast, some of the places, you know, and I grew up blocks away from the one that I'm thinking of over in the Fremont area in Northeast.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: People park on both sides of the road.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: One car can get by in a squeeze, and you'll have to like back up two city blocks to get yourself out of the situation.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's with people figuring it out.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: The uh I feel like the auto car is just gonna be like you can't honk your way out of here, dude.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what are they gonna do about the bikers in Portland?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean bikers wearing leather and patches, I mean cyclists.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: They are aggressive in Portland and they want their space.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: You come up and bump one of those with a Waymo, oh God, imagine the lawsuits, Drew.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: This should be entertaining, if nothing else.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel like they're gonna do to the bikers what they did to the owls.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, Marcus, um, in related news, um, another problem that needs to be fixed, and probably not via the owl technique.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Fentanyl is a big deal in Seattle, in Portland, in Salem, in Eugene.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: It goes on and on and on.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it has created drug zombies, they're everywhere.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: But believe it or not, there might be hope, and it's coming out of the University of Washington.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And see, Marcus, not every time we bring up the dogs is it a bad thing because they're doing it right.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: They developed a vaccine designed to train the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to fentanyl and potentially prevent it from reaching your brain.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, kind of like it nets the stuff before it can get to your brain to do what it's going to do.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: And kind of like how Suboxone would cover up an opioid receptor and not allow you to get high.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's that same idea that maybe they can fight it to whereas in if somebody truly knows they have a problem, or maybe I don't even, this sounds almost criminal, but a court order that makes you take the medicine because you are a worthless zombie who does nothing but destroy everything, including yourself, your family, and anyone who ever came in contact with you, maybe we could court order that because if you go by Delta Park here in Portland, I just saw a viral video today, and everybody's bent over it's full-blown zombie mode.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to the point where they're they're better at being zombies than actors.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's so scary and it's destroying everything.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's destroying, like I said, it's destroying families.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can do this, I'm all for it.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I am too, Drew.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I might, I might even take it a step further.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know the court order thing sounds weird, but uh again, when you're just watching people kill themselves uh for for months on end, and you know, that's that creates a burden on the system, right?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: If they end up getting arrested, there's a jail bed that's gotta house them, there's meals that go into that, there's and and there's all these social services that maybe they use and and it doesn't do anything for them.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: What if this became, and and again, I'm just spitballing here, but what if this became like, hey, in third grade, we're gonna go ahead and get your hep C vaccine, you're gonna get your MMR, your measles and mumps, and your rebell, and we're gonna go ahead and throw the fentanyl fold in there as well, just to make sure you don't make any questionable decisions when you turn uh of age.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, maybe that's a thing.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a we've heard it called an epidemic multiple times.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just in pockets, it's across the country.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's on the eastern seaboard, the western seaboard, north and south, and every place in between.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: If it is an epidemic and it's truly that bad, then maybe we treat it like hepatitis C.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: If we can vaccinate from it, we can prevent it.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I understand that there's medical applications for it, but maybe you could just find something else that isn't quite as readily available on the street and killing people.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Drew, I my wife had uh somebody in her tattoo chair here within the last few months um that was really broken up and she was talking to this person, and their 16-year-old daughter had tried weed and it was laced with fentanyl and it killed her.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you hear one story like that, there's 10,000 more of them.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: You just don't hear.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the, you know, right there, that's the definition of just a tragic epidemic.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I could get behind seeing a vaccine for this at a young age if the body can handle it, and this all makes it through testing and everything.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, we're not there yet, but uh I I will listen, I'm never gonna do this.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: So somebody might want to hit record.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tip my cap to the University of Washington.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, same here.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and I'm not even gonna get into it, but you know, I had 12 best friends from my grade in college.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Two of them died from fentanyl, accidental overdoses, thinking you took one thing, you took another thing, it took their lives.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's I never thought there would be a drug worse than heroin.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is way worse, kills you faster, destroys everything, turns you into an absolute pile of trash.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I saw a thing, uh, we were driving to the beach, and so my Waze app had diverted us to not go through wine country and actually wanted us to go over to Salem and over off of I-5 and then across to Lincoln City.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we went through a park of, and if you live in Salem, Oregon, you know this park.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is all drug zombies, they're everywhere.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've got people with like a leg and a wheelchair, like hunched over, like collapsed on the side.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's people who pooped their pants, there's people walking around with their pants at their ankles, there's people frozen in time.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I see this guy pull up and he does not fit in.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: He had he's fully preppy, he's on a BMX bike, and he's cruising around the perimeter, just kind of scoping it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Amy says, That's the dealer.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I look over, and sure as hell, this guy he does a lap, and we're at this big long light, and it's taking forever.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm watching this guy, and he comes around and he pulls up on a bunch of zombies who aren't in zombie mode yet, but they are clearly dressed as the others are, and like as in they're waiting to zombify.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as they see him, they surround him in a mob and just start begging and exchanging.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, I guarantee you, if I came back in an hour, this guy the all of them would be zombied.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's just what it was.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: He rolled in, he was clearly the dealer.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I rem I had I don't know these people at all.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it like it made me angry.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm like, oh my god, you're making a living killing people.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like you, you are as bad as somebody who assaults people in the street.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're as bad as somebody who sexually assaults people, people who shoot into crowds.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're as bad as them.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I I he is just a walking pile of dog vomit.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's what level of human I put him at when I saw it.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, imagine that you're driving by that park and you see uh a family member that you haven't seen for 20 years, and that's the guy that that family member walks up to.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh imagine what that would do to your your heart and your mind and the things that you would want to do to that person that is casually making a living by killing uh your family member, everybody's family members.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, you can say, oh, he's not actively killing him.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a it takes a decision.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, you're right.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: There is personal autonomy in this, but there has to be access.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the dude on the bike that Drew's describing is providing the access, which makes him the scum of the earth in in this scenario for sure.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know why I know that, Drew?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't be dressed nice, wouldn't be riding around on a nice BMX if he was going through the same stuff that these people are, because the people that are addicted to this terrible thing can't function like that.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: They can't keep themselves uh on the up and up for long enough uh to get their shit together and actually go out and do something.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the tragedy, that's the epidemic part of it.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: And man, I hope that guy sooner or later gets to cool his heels in the clink for a long stretch, Drew.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Send him to Coffee Creek, send him up there to Snake River, send him to one of the places where you're so far removed from society that you don't even remember what a pretty sunset looks like.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's the type of punishment you deserve under the prison.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because even though we're all annoyed by the situation and the drug addicts in the park, they're human, they're mentally ill, they're sick, they need help, they don't need an enabler.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And now, granted, it his thought is if it's not me, it's the next guy.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you all think like that, we're gonna kill them all.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I'm and I'm not gonna sit and and shake my stick about it.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's pretty obvious what's right and what's wrong.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: But if we can come up with a vaccine where this dickwad can't walk into a park and make himself a couple thousand dollars off these people because the drug quite simply doesn't work, sign me up ten times out of ten.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Love to see that idiot go out of business and have to pawn his bike.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's a hundred percent correct.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, well, that's gonna do it for us.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: A little passion there at the end.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's all right.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have fun, but we're also going to speak our mind on this show, and hopefully we can get that thing under control, and um, not everyone has to walk around with a can of Narcan, hoping that some bad thing doesn't happen to them.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back again next week.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, new episodes.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Share the show with someone, do us a favor, and go on YouTube and watch it.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to this every single episode, we take the time to edit it, put it up there so you can watch us get all red in the face as we discuss these things and talk about that D bag on the bike.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, it's the PW podcast.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great rest of your day, Marcus.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Drew.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: You too.