Latest / Legal Late Night / Legal Industry Report 2025: AI, Office Trends & More (Feat. Niki Black) | Plus, Bad Beer & The Simulation!
Transcript
- Jared Correia (00:00): Hello everybody. We've got a show that promises to be mildly interesting for your listening and watching enjoyment. First up is a long overdue conversation about skunky beer, at least long overdue for me. Then we've got Nikki Black from APE talking about their latest legal industry report. Then Nikki sticks around to tell us why everything is bullshit, right? This is the fucking matrix. We'll tell you more, but first, grab yourself an ice cold Mickey's double deuced because we're talking about really shitty beer. So as I record this monologue, I just got back from Memorial Day weekend where I was in upstate New York. Why was I in upstate New York? You might ask. Good question. My daughter at a horse show, she won 24 ribbons, slaughter ribbons. I'm very allergic to horses, so I mostly stood far away from the festivities. But then on the Monday of Memorial Day weekend, we hit the National Baseball Hall of Fame and National Basketball Hall of Fame in the same day, which I was pretty proud of. (01:33): So I had a lot of time on the road. I was in hotels watching actual television with commercials, and that's how I learned about popular culture because when I'm at home, I only stream things on Netflix or HBO Max, and I only listen to podcasts. So I see actual commercials when I'm sitting in hotel rooms and I saw about a million commercials for a Bush light Apple, which is apparently a beer. Bush light is a fucking terrible beer. It's even worse than Bush beer head for the mountains of bush, I think not, and I dunno why you would try to flavor bush light with apples. It sounds horrendous. I mean, just make a fucking cider. What is this? 1994. So in my experience, you don't put apples in bush light. A can of bush light is for cigarette butts. (02:41): Before all these craft breweries started, beer was dog shit. It was really hard to find good beer. Now you got a craft brewery on every corner and there's a million different types of beer. When I was in college in the nineties, we didn't have a lot of options for beer. The fanciest we got was Mike's Hard Lemonade came out, alcoholic Lemonade. Zema came out. I don't even know what Zema was. It was sort of like seven up as alcohol was nasty, kind of like clearly Canadian, which they still make, but with booze in it. And then cider jack, all novelties cider. Jack was like apple cider, alcoholic apple cider. And we're like, wow. Now we got something working here. Oh, it was kind of working too. Well, I remember when Mike's saw Lemonade came out and I'm like, this shit is delicious. I could drink this all day. (03:40): And so when you're drinking lemonade and you're getting drunk off of it, it's pretty easy to drink. Like 20 Mike Star lemonades. And I remember I had the most horrible stomach ache of my life one night when I was just throttling Mike's Hard Lemonade all night at a party. Never again, I can't touch it to this day. They have Limeade and Mike's Hard Lime. Now I think I can't do it. I've never been able to look at it anymore without wanting to vomit. So back in the day, needless to say, I had a lot of experience with beer. I was a poor college kid. I probably would've drunk rubbing alcohol Kitty Dukakis style if I was in a pinch. I wasn't picky. And then I worked at a liquor store when I was 18, which you could do, and I think maybe you still can do in Massachusetts. (04:28): So I think it might be illegal now, and now you have to be 21, I think. But I was 18. I was good though I never drank any of the singles that were left in the cooler. I don't know what the status is. Statute of limitations on any of that stuff is in any event, in honor of the release of Bush Light Apple, which probably answers the question of what a human taint tastes like, I want to reveal my list of greatest all time skunk beers, or I guess worst all time skunk beers. I'm kind of confused. I'm just going to give Bush light Apple an honorable mention here because it's probably terrible. Before we get into the beer side of the equation, they usually say beer before liquor and never sicker. So I should start with my liquor here. I want to give a shout out, an honorable mention as it were to Jenkins vodka. (05:24): You remember Mr. Jenkins toiling away on his vodka recipe deep in the heart of Russia making the traditional recipe that only his grandmother could make. And if you're feeling a little heavy set these days, remember Jenkins Light has even fewer calories than regular Jenkins. Now, when somebody brought a handle of Jenkins light to the party, you knew two things. The first thing you knew was that that person probably had a lot of money left over, and the next thing you knew that you're going to have to drink that shift fast enough so that you'd forget what it tastes like. Okay, let's get to the beer list. I'm going to take a little detour starting out with my number five skunk beer, and I'm going to go with a craft beer, a more recent craft beer. So believe it or not, some asshole made a beer called Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout. (06:17): It's exactly what you think it is. It's a stout with pieces of real bull testicles in it, because apparently more testicles mean more iron. I guess. One Reddit commenter suggested that it might have been a Nut brown ale. Touche, sir. And that's a hard pass for your boy. Number four, the four shittiest beer ever. I got to give a shout out to Natty Ice here, the cheapest beer you could get Natural ice. I don't think I've ever seen Natty Ice out of its native form, which is a 12 pack. I don't think I've ever seen a 30 pack. I don't think I've ever seen a case, always some dude walking around with two 12 packs of Natty Ice, which went down not so well. As it turns out, only there's nothing natural about it as far as I can tell. My best guess is that truly natural iced doesn't taste like Sasquatch is nut sack. (07:22): If Phil looked a glacier, I wouldn't find that. Probably the search for Bigfoot. Okay, my third worst beer, Miller back in the day nineties, came out with these companion beers, ice house and Red Dog. And I actually didn't mind Red Dog. Red Dog wasn't bad. I had a big red dog on the label and Ice House had a house with ice on it on the label. So one was blue, that was Icehouse, one was red. That was Red Dodge. That's what you could tell the difference. But I always hated Icehouse. The worst. Icehouse was fucking wretched. I told you before, if I look at some things now in my old age, it makes me wretch a little bit. Seeing a can of icehouse makes me feel that way. It's ice brewed though. So now you know what ass tastes like. If it was ice brewed number two, my second worst beer, sorry, Nikki, I got to throw some shade at Rochester, New York, Nikki, I'll tell you about Rochester, New York in a second. (08:28): But they brew Genesee Ale, which is really fucking bad, and they may be brewing it with toilet water for all I know. I remember when I worked at the liquor store, you could get Genesee beer, cans of beer in like a 36 pack. Now most dudes are coming into the liquor store picking up a 30 rack. But if you need that extra six pack, you've got some options. Actually. You have one option, you have Genesee, and it's different flavors. So the nastiest of all the Genesee beers, in my opinion, was the cream male. I mean, if you're going to make a shitty little beer in a can, just fucking own it. Like past Blue Ribbon. Don't try to put cream in it or some shit. You're not making novelty sodas. I mean cream ale in a can in the nineties, right? Just call it butt ice and be done with it. (09:31): All right? Not what you've all bu for. I got a really interesting pull here for my worst beer ever. Another late nineties original 98, 99 Panther Brewing Company. Remember them? They came out with Three Stooges Beer, which meant that if you've got the Three Stooges ip, people are probably just going to buy it because it says three stooges on it and it doesn't have to be good, and it wasn't. But the worst part was that they doubled down on the Three Stooges idea and then they made something called Curly's Light, the light version of the Three Stooges beer, which tasted like a combination of fish and smoke. There it is. My list of nastiest beers ever. Let's recap number five, probably Rocky Mountain, oyster Stout and balls out everybody, I guess. Number four, Natty Ice, number three, ice house. Maybe don't make shit with ice anymore. Number two, Genesee Cream male lar, and number one curly light, although that got pretty dark. Next up, our guest interview, which always goes down smooth today, is Nikki Black. You also buckle your sleep belts. Well, I've effectively run out of things to say, which is awkward because this is a podcast. So I'm just going to sit quietly with my hands folded for the remainder of the episode. I did a lot of that in Catholic school when I was growing up. Let me tell you, now I'm just fucking around. That sounds awful. Let's interview our guest instead. Our guest today is a good friend of mine is Nikki Black. She's the principal legal insight strategist at ape. That sounds insanely impressive. Did I get that right, Nikki? Niki Black (11:34): You did. And that's my title as a, I dunno. Jared Correia (11:37): Yeah, I was going to say that's new, right? More duties or same type of thing. Niki Black (11:42): I think the idea was to try to encapsulate what I did more effectively and make it more understandable internally and externally. So it's still, I've always done bridge between law and tech internally and externally. Really? Jared Correia (11:57): Yeah, bridge between law and tech doesn't sound like super impressive. Title Lo, I see why you went the way you did. Let's dive into the report a little bit, which you are the author of. We've done presentations before on AI for bar associations, and those have mostly been fun when people put down the pitchforks. But let's talk about use cases because in this report it talks about specific use cases that law firms are utilizing for ai. So 54% are using it to draft correspondence. 47% are using it for brainstorming. 46% are using it for general research, 40% are using it to draft documents. And I think you have seven or eight other use cases down here as well. I'm seeing that too in the firms I talked to. So do you want to comment on that a little bit? Why are these use cases so valuable and why have law firms been drawn to these first before other places? Niki Black (12:51): Well, I think what's interesting is when you look at the results from last year as well, there are some similarities and then there's some changes. So last year when we surveyed everybody, the only things you really saw them doing were things that were clearly not going to use confidential information, like really safe use cases for the most part in terms of what the majority were using it for. So brainstorming and general research. And now this year you're seeing some more legal specific use cases crop up. I mean it's still, and drafting correspondence was always popular a little bit easier, and it's an easier lift and it's a shorter output and it often doesn't have confidential data in it or you don't need to provide it with confidential data to get that output. So that stayed there up at the top and so did brainstorming. So people are still playing it safe in terms so as they should and putting confidential information into these general use case tools. (13:48): But I do think that what's happening is these legal tech companies are rolling out legal specific functionalities from more trustworthy sources. They're starting to use it for things that are a little bit more granular and a little bit more, and utilize confidential information like drafting documents, summarizing documents that often have confidential information in them, legal research, especially as those companies are really doubling down and rolling out pretty sophisticated AI functionality. So I think that what we're seeing is a slight shift in use case. And I think over time it's going to increasingly be more complex requests that utilize that confidential information and that's going to become the more valuable use case for most lawyers. Jared Correia (14:32): And this is kind of part and parcel of the fact that more legal specific products are coming out for AI because attorneys feel better about dropping information into my case, for example, than into chat GPT, which makes sense. Niki Black (14:48): And we asked about how there are data points in the survey about trusted legal providers and how important that is. And it's very important, and people prefer to work with trust legal providers that they have already vetted that they know will handle their information properly, which makes sense. Jared Correia (15:04): And hearing from other lawyers who are using the same software, in my experience, that's why lawyers do things when they hear from other lawyers that I'm doing the same thing. Then they're like, oh, well, if he's getting into trouble. So here's another interesting one that I pulled out of the survey. So you have a financial wellness section of this report, which has a whole host of interfacing data points to it. But one that I thought was useful was 56% of law firms using passive time tracking reported measurable time savings each month. Now I've been beating the drama on passive timekeeping for what feels like forever. And what's crazy to me is that a lot of people still haven't heard about what this even is and they're still doing manual time tracking. So first of all, can you talk about what passive time tracking is and then why lawyers are starting to flock to this option for a time tracking? Niki Black (16:04): So it's basically a tool that tracks the work that you're doing either in a specific program or on your computer, depends on the specific tool and what it does. But essentially we have smart time finder in my case, and it tracks all the work that's done in my case. At the end of the day, anything that you have not if you were on a phone call or rather if you were working on a memo or reading something and then you clicked after you'd completed that work, capture the time and you captured it and you entered the information, and so it could be added to the invoice for that particular client. If you failed to do that for some of the work in my case, then what it will do is at the end of the day, and this is pretty much the functionality, no matter what tool you're talking about, (16:50): At the end of the day you go to click on a link and it takes you to a page that has a list of all the things that you've done that were not captured so that you can then check off the ones that you want to capture, confirm the information client or enter it if it needs to be, and ensure that amount of time is accurate and then capture it and it gets added to the invoice for that client. So it's just a way of, we all forget to track certain work that we've done and we forget that we've even done it. You get busy and you get interrupted. And so it's just a way to make sure that you capture all the work that you actually do and invoice it to the client and get paid for it. But it's a really valuable tool because as the data shows, both when we ask customers about it and also when we take benchmark, when we take an atomized data out of the software to see how much time is actually captured, it's pretty significant. And if you multiply it out by the billable hour, it's thousands upon thousands of dollars depending on the size of the firm and the amount of work performed every year or even every month. Jared Correia (17:54): All kind of lost time for law firms. I guess the other part of it too is that manual time tracking sucks. Everybody I talk to is like, I hate doing this. It's awful. And so the stuff that you're talking about is actually built into the system. I don't have to go out and buy another product to do or to do passive time tracking in the software like my case, Niki Black (18:13): You don't have to. There are standalone, I believe there's still standalone tools out there specific for legal or that can be very easily used for legal and often are. But when it's built into the software that you're already using, it can be incredibly valuable, especially when it's either your legal billing and invoicing software or your practice management. Without that built-in functionality, it can really save your firm a ton of money and pay for the software just with a weekly one week's use can literally pay for your software even one day's use sometimes. Jared Correia (18:44): I know, it's crazy. I think more and more attorneys should be looking at that. And also the other part of this that I like is it allows you to capture more data points if you want to utilize financial metrics, which a lot of law firms don't do either, or they should do more of that, Niki Black (19:00): Right? Yeah, for sure. Jared Correia (19:02): So maybe the craziest thing I saw in this report was, Niki Black (19:06): Oh no, what Jared Correia (19:08): There was a section on where and how people were working post pandemic. The number one method of work, which was a 28% was full-time in office for all team members. I don't know about you. I think that is fucking nuts. We are six years out, five years out of a pandemic and people are still being required to work in an office space, which seems so wasteful to me now. I know. I'm like, I dunno if your opinion is as strong as mine, that struck me as insanity. I dunno why you would do that. The cost savings alone of reducing your office space. It does make sense to me and I don't think people want to work in offices anymore. Your thoughts? Niki Black (19:57): Well, there's a lot of reasons We talk about this on Bob Ambrogi show. Joe Patrice was the first one to identify something that I hadn't thought of, but I think now it's kind of common knowledge. But at the time it was unique, which is a lot of these companies and firms have investments, both actual financial investments in commercial real estate, or they represent people in commercial real estate or else they're just locked into long-term leases. I mean, that's another issue. And so they want to justify the fact that they have this expensive lease and I think there's a lot of ego involved. People like to have their underlings constantly curing favor to them, and Jared Correia (20:34): That's going around. Niki Black (20:36): And so I think that there's a lot of that as well. But what was interesting to me about those data, I mean, I agree that that was a surprising data point, but if you'd asked me before the pandemic, I would've thought it was a great data point. Jared Correia (20:47): I mean, yeah, pre pandemic, I would've been like, great, that seems fairly high, Niki Black (20:52): But across practice areas, that's what was and firm size. It was particularly firm size in this particular data point, I think is what I looked at. But across firm size, it's super interesting to see how different larger law firms are actually, which the mid-size firms that are the most sticking to this in-office all the time thing compared to solo smalls and really large firms. So it's interesting to see who's doing that and who's being a little more flexible and why there's a lot of value for solo and small firms to be nimble. And they're not into trapped in these long-term leases in large firms. They're just able to be more flexible because they have so many more employees. I think. Jared Correia (21:33): Yeah, the thing that's amazing to me is we're now five years hence, which not all of those leases are up, but some of them came up during that time period. And it's kind of wild to me that some people would've doubled down and been like, you know what? Let's do another five year lease. Why not? Niki Black (21:50): Right? Yeah. Don't you wonder, I kind Jared Correia (21:52): Of view it as a competitive advantage to be able to tell your lawyers, you don't have to work in the firm. I mean, we're all adults here. People can get their work done. I well, some of us are. Niki Black (22:05): Well, I mean judging by, I'm just thinking of during the pandemic when everyone's walking around their underwear in front of the camera and forgetting that they don't have pants on. I dunno for all adults, but Jared Correia (22:17): Adults don't have to wear pants all the time. Did I miss anything that you thought was particularly interesting in this survey? Niki Black (22:27): I thought a lot of the practice area specific data points, this is the first time we'd really crunched the data that way, actually collected data about practice areas and then crunched the data. And I was just really interesting to see with generative AI in particular, how different practice areas were embracing or not embracing the technology. And we also, there are a few other sections where we talked about that too. So I think in some ways it's unique to the practice of law, like certain law firms that focus on practice or don't even remotely run the same as firms that focus on another practice area, especially when they're only handling one practice area like a PI firm versus a trust and estates firm. Completely different business model, completely different approach to just about everything. So a tech as well. So it's interesting to see those differences across the practice areas. Jared Correia (23:12): I feel like at some point everybody's got to be on it though. Don't you feel that that's going to be the case at some point down the line? I think it's going to be really hard. Any practice area to avoid utilizing AI at least in some way? Niki Black (23:25): Well, I think that compared to any practice technology that preceded it adoption's up, it's gone up so much faster and the utility and the advancement of it, the way that they're constantly rolling out new, sometimes stupider, but new versions of it or lazier or way too nice, overly nice was the latest rollout of CHATT pt and they had to roll it back. But I think that it's going to be a matter of two years where you have the majority, the vast majority of people and lawyers using this tool. It's unbelievable how rapidly this is advancing and how rapidly people are adapting to it and adopting it. Jared Correia (24:05): So we talked about the 2025 legal industry report from ape, and that's available if people want to download that and get a look at it, right? Niki Black (24:16): Yep. If you just google ape legal industry report, you can get the link Jared Correia (24:20): Easy enough or I suppose ask your local ai. Nikki, that was fun. As always, you want to hang out a little bit longer? We got another segment for you. I promise I won't make you come to any physical location. We can just continue using our video conferencing technology. Niki Black (24:36): All right, let's see what happens here. Jared Correia (24:42): Hi everybody. Welcome to the Counter program. It's a podcast within a podcast. This is a conversational space where we can address usually unrelated topics that I want to explore at a greater depth in my guests. Expect no rhyme and very little reason. Nikki, welcome back. Niki Black (24:59): Thanks. I'm looking forward to the segment. Jared Correia (25:02): So we've spoken a bunch at conferences we have, and let's be honest, you're pretty convinced that we live in a simulation, right? Niki Black (25:12): I am. I am. Jared Correia (25:13): Okay. Would you like to share your thoughts on the care to explain? Niki Black (25:20): Sure. I think what piqued my interest about this was actually, there were some other things. I think I thought about this even before, I mean, first of all, I was a religion major in college. So that means that meaning not religious studies, but the study of religion and philosophy and the psychology and (25:40): Sociology of religion. And so I've always been kind of focused on this idea of who are we? Why are we here? What's happening? And I've always been very interested in science fiction as well, that really, that interest was peaked in law school. And ever since then, I just religiously watch science fiction. And that obviously comes up in science fiction as well. So somewhere along the way I started to buy into this idea. And then people like Elon Musk and other people in the tech world, there's talks where they would say the likelihood that we are the base reality is minimal. It's like a very low percentage, meaning that we're the reality from which all these simulations spark. And we have simulations, we have sims, which is literally a simulated fake reality. And if you follow tech, you'll see one of the things that I thought was super interesting right before the 2016 election was, I think that's when I read about this, there was a simulation being run in, or right after Trump was elected, possibly there was a simulation being run out in Finland or something like that to test how religions impacted society. (26:45): So they ran the simulation in full without any religion, and all these little villagers and villagers all just did their own thing and they throw a disaster at 'em and then all bond together, even though they were in separate villages and try and help each other out. And then they reset, the simulation resets the part that I was really caught up in. I love that idea. But they reset the simulation. Jared Correia (27:06): Let's do that, Niki Black (27:07): Right? Do the same thing, but make them all the same religion, and they still all bonded together. So then they reset it and made them two different or three different, and they kept adding more religions and the more religions they added, the more that they all isolated in their little communities, didn't help anybody else and became horrible little people in this simulation basically. And so I thought it was fascinating because what if we're all just in a simulation? And then I came across the mental effect. I dunno if you're aware of that, where people remember things differently. And then you have in sci-fi parallel universes or the time goes into different pathways. And so that I got bought some books. There's a book by a MIT professor that's called The Simulation Hypothesis, and then he followed up with a multiverse hypothesis or something like that. That's even, even better book and that'd be kind cool. (28:03): An even better analysis and explanation of quantum physics at a quantum physics level, Stroger's cat, and you what you have to do a deep dive into all this, but it explains all these things at a quantum physics level that they can't quite explain. And so I'm convinced that based upon all of this and reading these books, that more likely than not, we are living in a simulation and that's why everything's crazy. They've just put this stress test to see how are we going to deal with everything. So it's a stress test on the simulation and right, and one day, and that's why we remember different things because some of us are from different timelines of the simulation and we all got mixed together because of the multiverse and the different game versions of the game that we're in because we're actually in a multiplayer game, simulated simulation. But I'm convinced. So that's the Nikki's crazy part of the show. That's fucked up. Jared Correia (28:58): That's not crazy. A lot of people believe this. I don't know. It's totally possible. I don't discount it at all. But what I want to do is not figure out whether we're in a simulation today. If we are in a simulation, this is what the simulation is dictating that I do. So I wanted to test your knowledge of various simulation from pop culture. Niki Black (29:22): Alright? Jared Correia (29:22): It's a game. I'm going to call the Unreal deal. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to read the IMDB log line from a TV show episode or a movie, and then I want you to tell me which one it is. Niki Black (29:37): See, let's see how I feel like I would need my husband here for this. He's the one that remembers all the things, but okay, let's see how I do on my own. Jared Correia (29:43): You get time. You can bring him in if you want. You can play this back with him later. And he can tell Niki Black (29:47): You, I can be dial a friend, a dial a husband. Jared Correia (29:51): I'll start out with what I think is relatively easy one. Here's the IMDB log line. When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth. The life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber intelligence. What is the movie? Niki Black (30:14): The Matrix? I know that one all on my own Jared Correia (30:19): From 1999. You've seen the Matrix, I'm assuming Niki Black (30:23): Multiple times. Oh, matrix. The Matrix Reloaded. Jared Correia (30:26): Oh really? You've seen 'em all? Niki Black (30:28): Yeah. Jared Correia (30:29): How Niki Black (30:29): Many? All I do is watch Sci-Fi Jared Correia (30:30): Four. Is that right? Niki Black (30:32): I don't know. I'm pretty sure I've watched all I I've fallen asleep during the last one. Jared Correia (30:37): All you do is watch sci-fi. Like you should crush this then. All right. You're one for one. Niki Black (30:41): Yeah. Jared Correia (30:42): I believe in you. I believe in you. Okay. Niki Black (30:45): We'll see. Jared Correia (30:46): Second one. This one might be a little bit tougher, but we'll see. Captain Robert Daley presides over his crew with wisdom and courage, but a new recruit will soon discover nothing on this spaceship is what it seems. This is a episode of TV show I'll give you. It's a little bit more modern Niki Black (31:11): Captain. I don't know why I don't know the name of Jared Correia (31:15): If you haven't seen it. Niki Black (31:15): Definitely not Star Rek. Jared Correia (31:17): Not Star Trek. No. It is Black Mirror. Niki Black (31:23): Oh, I definitely watched Black Jared Correia (31:24): Mirror episode. No, season four, episode one. USS, Callister. Have you seen that one? Niki Black (31:30): Yeah. No, I've seen Every Black Mirror. I think I was trying to think of a show that was, every episode was about the spaceship, not like Black Mirror. Every single episode is a different, it's like Twilight's zone, like a whole different Jared Correia (31:43): Story. It's like an anthology show. Niki Black (31:44): Yeah. Anthology. Yeah. Jared Correia (31:45): You've seen all of Black Mirror episodes for sure, including the new season, season Niki Black (31:49): Seven. The new season also has a Starship one. Jared Correia (31:52): Yes. The sequel to this one. Niki Black (31:54): Oh, is it the sequel? Okay. Yeah. Jared Correia (31:56): The last episode of the season. I'm going to do, I don't want to, let me tease this. I'm going to do my own little overview of Black Mirror in an upcoming episode. I love that show. All right. Niki Black (32:09): It's alarming though, because Jared Correia (32:10): It is most of it because it's all Niki Black (32:13): Tech and most of the things that they say, oh, this may happen one day, they end up happening like four months later. And you're like, Jared Correia (32:19): Yes, like right away. My God. Like a Bumblebee Niki Black (32:22): Robots one, they've been around for a while. These Bumblebee robots, Jared Correia (32:26): They have some crazy shit on black mirrors. If you're not watching Black Mirror, you absolutely should. Okay, here's another one. This is a movie. Here's the IMDB log line. An insurance salesman begins to suspect that his whole life is actually some sort of reality TV show. What movie is that? Insurance salesman? Niki Black (32:48): This isn't what's his name? No, it's what's his name? It's the one who Tom Hanks. Tom makes it. No, not Tom Hanks. This is where I need my husband. I'm really bad. Jared Correia (32:59): I feel if you're closing in on it. Niki Black (33:01): No, I definitely know who it is, and I just can't remember the name. It's the movie about, he's the guy that goes, God, the comedian. Why can't I remember his name? Jim Jared Correia (33:11): Carey. Jim Carey. Niki Black (33:12): Yeah. Jim Carey. It's Jim Carrey. And it's Jim. It's so sad because he gets on a boat and he goes to the end and he hits the wall, and he realizes that all his friends aren't really friends, they're just actors. I can't remember the name of the movie, but Jared Correia (33:23): You're describing Favorite everything about, I'm going to give this one to you. You described literally the entire plot of the movie without Niki Black (33:29): Naming. Yeah, no, I know. I've watched that one multiple times, and that's one of my favorite ones. Poor guy. Jared Correia (33:35): The Truman Show Niki Black (33:36): Show. Truman Show. Yeah, Tru. My husband would know it. That's when I turn to him and say the one, the guy who goes and his friends, and he somehow, he always knows exactly. He's Jared Correia (33:44): Like, yeah, Jim Carey. Niki Black (33:46): Yeah. Just like you did. Well, you knew the answer, but yeah, he totally, Jared Correia (33:50): I did the knows the answer. I was cheating. All right. All right. Next time we'll have to do couples trivia. Niki Black (33:55): Yeah, right. But for now, I need a backup. Jared Correia (33:58): I think this one might be in your wheelhouse. I'm not sure. So let me read. This is a TV show episode. Episode of TV Show. Lieutenant Barkley mistakenly Awakes Morrie Yard. Which episode? Do you know? Should I stop at this point? Niki Black (34:16): Well, he's in a whole bunch of 'em. We can read. Okay, Jared Correia (34:18): Let me continue. Niki Black (34:19): All right. Jared Correia (34:20): Lieutenant Barkley, who I have no idea who he is, full disclosure, or she, Niki Black (34:23): You don't. Jared Correia (34:23): Mistakenly Awakes Moriarty in the Forgotten Holodeck program, who then makes his demands clear and unforgettable. So this is Star Trek, the next Generation season six. Niki Black (34:39): Yeah, I mean, star Trek Next Generation has so many seasons. Jared Correia (34:43): All right, so this one's called Ship in a Bottle. Ship in a Bottle is the name of the episode. I'm going to give that one to you because you're a Star Trek super fan. All right, I got a few more. I'm having fun. At least this one I think is pretty somewhat obvious. But this is a movie. Here's the IMDB Logline. A computer hacker is abducted into a digital world and forced to participate in gladiatorial games where his only chance of escape is with the help of a heroic security program. Niki Black (35:20): Is this one of the old ones that I don't want necessarily know? Jared Correia (35:22): This is an older, I'll give you a hint. This is Niki Black (35:25): War Games. Is it working? Jared Correia (35:27): There's, there's currently a Disney World ride now based on this movie. I'll throw another one at you. It also had a sequel recently as Niki Black (35:37): Well. It's not Back to the Future. That doesn't put you with any of that. Jared Correia (35:39): No, but around the same time period, a little earlier. Niki Black (35:45): See, I didn't watch sci-fi back then. I liked to watch Back to the Future, but I didn't watch all the other ones. Jared Correia (35:49): So you were any sci-fi pre, I dunno. Pre 85 is off the board for you. It sounds like. This one's 82. Niki Black (35:59): 82. So I was 82. Jared Correia (36:02): Lemme throw one more thing at you as well. Jeff Bridges. Niki Black (36:05): It's not et Jared Correia (36:06): No, no, no, no, no. Not quite Bridge. That's what I think Niki Black (36:09): Back then. Jeff Bridges Jared Correia (36:09): That ring a bell? Niki Black (36:11): No, Jeff Bridges one. Jared Correia (36:13): It is Tron. Tron. Niki Black (36:17): I don't even know. Use the name of it. No, Jared Correia (36:18): Really. Oh, alright. Niki Black (36:19): TRN, right? Jared Correia (36:21): Yeah. This is on the watch list Now. He basically designs a computer game and then he gets trapped inside of it, and he's riding around Niki Black (36:29): Motorcycle. I would like Ready Player one or something. Jared Correia (36:31): Oh, you would love Tron. Okay, so this is good. So we got a recommendation for you, Tron. All right, let's do another one. I got a couple more for you. (36:41): This is a TV show, which I think is a TV show you watch, but we'll see. This one has a really long log line giving away lots of information. So we'll see how this goes. Here we go. Kara meets a pianist who reminds her of her father. She tries to play a melancholy melody she remembers from her childhood and a drawing made by her helps her. Meanwhile, boomer is to be tried for treason. There's a lot going on here. Tyrell takes her side and helps her escape. I don't anticipate you knowing the episode name, but is this a TV show you're familiar with? Niki Black (37:25): I mean Boomers in Battlestar Galactic, but I don't recognize the rest of it Jared Correia (37:30): On the right path here because it is Battlestar Galactica. They had a season four episode called Someone to Watch Over Me, which was a simulation episode. I've never seen a single episode of Battlestar Niki Black (37:46): Gala would be recommended, watched the mini series. Yeah, I've watched the entire series itself multiple times. I've watched Capric, which was a series that came out afterwards. It was like Jared Correia (37:54): Pre got a couple more. We'll see which ones stay in the show and which ones we cut. This one's a movie, and then I got a TV show to round it out. Here's the I Am DB log line for the movie, which is post 1985. New Speaker (38:10): So Jared Correia (38:10): This should be in your wheelhouse when a man goes in to have virtual vacation memories of the planet. Mars implanted in his mind, an unexpected and harrowing series of events forces him to go to the planet. For real? Or does he? What movie is this? Niki Black (38:29): This is a movie. Jared Correia (38:31): Yeah, Niki Black (38:33): I don't know. Jared Correia (38:35): Arnold Schwarzenegger. Niki Black (38:39): Total recall. Total Recall, Jared Correia (38:42): Yes. Niki Black (38:43): Total Recall. Jared Correia (38:43): Total. I'm going to give that one to you too. You performing Admirably? I'm impressed. Niki Black (38:47): I watched. I think I've watched Total Recall. I just don't remember it. Jared Correia (38:51): Didn't do it for you. Watched Niki Black (38:52): It, Jared Correia (38:53): Alright. Niki Black (38:53): Yeah. Jared Correia (38:54): Maybe in another simulation. You've watched Total Recall and loved it. I don't know. New Speaker (38:59): Probably. Jared Correia (39:00): All right, last one. Last one last. INDV Logline. This is from an episode of a TV series. I realize it's cruel to ask you to name the episode title. So let's just go with what is the TV series? Mike Ferris finds himself alone in the small Oakwood town, and without recollection about his name, where he is or who he is, Mike wanders through the town trying to find a single living soul. What TV show is this? Niki Black (39:30): I'm sure I've watched it, but I can't. Jared Correia (39:32): It's another anthology show. Niki Black (39:34): Another anthology show of Jared Correia (39:35): Which you may be aware. Pretty famous. Niki Black (39:40): Is it Twilight Zone? I mean, I can't, Jared Correia (39:43): This is, so the very first episode of the Twilight Zone was the simulation episode. Niki Black (39:49): Oh, really? Jared Correia (39:49): Yeah. Niki Black (39:50): Is that what this is? Jared Correia (39:51): It's called Where Is Everybody? So basically the way it happened is they have an astronaut who is training to go to Mars and they're trying to train him to be isolated. So they send them into an isolation into a simulated town, which doesn't really exist, and he goes nuts. And that's the end of the episode. Niki Black (40:09): Interesting. I definitely watched a lot of Twilight Zone, but I didn't start from start to finish. I definitely didn't Jared Correia (40:16): Catch it Niki Black (40:16): When it was on tv back in the days when it was on tv. Jared Correia (40:19): I don't have a lot going on, so I recently did though I rewatched every Twilight Zone episode from start Niki Black (40:24): To Was it good? Jared Correia (40:25): It was good. Niki Black (40:26): Watching Jared Correia (40:27): Of them were Niki Black (40:27): Just bulky. Jared Correia (40:29): No, they were really good and most of them were really good. The general quality is pretty good. So there were not a lot of clunkers, although there were some. Niki Black (40:39): The one I remember the most is that one where there's a guy on the plane trashing the wing, Jared Correia (40:43): Which Niki Black (40:43): Whenever I'm flying, which I do a lot, wonder if it's like a dude on the plane. Jared Correia (40:47): There's something on the wing. Yeah. William Shaher is finest. That's a Star Trek guy. You must love that. Niki Black (40:56): I didn't like the original Star Trek. I liked all the only ones that followed. Jared Correia (40:59): You did not like the original Star Trek? Niki Black (41:01): No. It was sexist and awful. And that's what draws me to sci-fi is that it isn't usually sexist and it's usually very representative and diverse across the board because half the name's aliens and color doesn't matter and everyone lives in harmony or else the machines are killing us, but it's the ones extreme or the other. But I just feel like it's women have strong substantive roles and it's one of the few places I can consistently go and see that. Jared Correia (41:28): That was beautiful. Next time we'll have the Nikki, who likes the original Star Trek on in that simulation. You can debate each other. Thanks for coming on today. I had a lot of fun personally. This is great. I did too. Hopefully. New Speaker (41:44): Ew. All right. Jared Correia (42:59): I'm going to go have a bush light.