WBD689 Audio Transcription
Accelerating Bitcoin with Car González
Release date: Sunday 30th July
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Car González. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Car González is the co-founder of Pleb Lab, a Bitcoin accelerator in Austin. In this interview, we discuss the Bitcoin community in Austin, why he decided to start Pleb Lab, how to grow Bitcoin development and the importance of third spaces for Bitcoiners.
“When you’re just talking about monetary policy and number go up technology that doesn’t really spark the imagination, that draws in the wrong type of people… When you see builders actually building and trying to change the world for the better that’s the thing that really gets people in the door.”
— Car González
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: We're on.
Car González: Yeah, so I was at the half-price books yesterday, because I usually go to thrift shops and record stores, and I was like, "You know what, I know Pete's a big fan of music and stuff like that. I'm a huge fan of music". I found this Creative Adult vinyl and I was like, "Dude you're going to dig it".
Peter McCormack: Thank you, man.
Car González: They're kind of Joy Division-ish, kind of from that UK punk scene.
Peter McCormack: So nice you got a present. It's shames everyone who comes on the show that doesn't bring a present.
Car González: Really?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I love it, man, that's so kind of you. And I got a record player recently didn't I?
Danny Knowles: You did, you can actually play it.
Peter McCormack: I can actually play it. I got a record player, Danny set it all up for me. I keep going back to it and the kids have been on it, and I know for three reasons.
Car González: Why?
Peter McCormack: The record is still on the record player, which I would never do, I will always put it back in its sleeve; the thing's still fucking spinning with the needle going round and round at the end --
Car González: Oh, that would drive me nuts!
Peter McCormack: -- and you just hear the low hum.
Danny Knowles: Have you figured out how to change the speed on it yet?
Peter McCormack: It's underneath, isn't it?
Danny Knowles: Oh you have?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Danny Knowles: Oh there you go.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. Why are there two speeds?
Danny Knowles: I think it would traditionally have been because you have EPs and LPs, so you have the same size vinyl but fewer songs, so they make it slower so it takes up the space on the vinyl. But I don't actually know if that's the answer.
Car González: I don't know either. That sounds about right.
Peter McCormack: But I have LPs which need different speeds.
Danny Knowles: Yeah, and I think that if you run it on 33 rpm and slower, I believe it's better quality. I'm making so much shit up here; I'm guessing.
Peter McCormack: If you run it higher, they sound like the Chipmunks.
Car González: Yeah, if you get a get a copy of Dark Side of the Moon and then you switch it to the lower thing, you can really hear some cool stuff.
Peter McCormack: And if you get Judas Priest and you play it backwards…!
Car González: Yeah, I think that's a real thing.
Peter McCormack: That is a real thing.
Danny Knowles: Is that a real thing? I always thought that was a lie.
Peter McCormack: I don't know, I think it tells you to fuck the devil, or something. Have a look at, "Judas Priest, play backward"! Judas Priest. Are you actually googling it? I wonder if it's just a myth. What does it say?
Danny Knowles: He recorded, "In the dead of night, love bites" backwards for the track, Love Bites. That's kind of cool.
Peter McCormack: He recorded a song backwards?
Danny Knowles: I think just those lyrics.
Peter McCormack: All right, interesting. Have you ever seen that far side video where they've recorded the whole thing backwards?
Car González: No, what's that?
Peter McCormack: You've never seen this?
Danny Knowles: Have you ever seen -- yeah, I'll get this up.
Peter McCormack: Get this up. So, you know The Pharcyde, the hip-hop band?
Car González: No, I don't.
Peter McCormack: Oh, they're amazing.
Car González: No, tell me.
Peter McCormack: They're an unbelievable band. There will be a song you will know of theirs, but they did this video where they recorded the whole thing --
Danny Knowles: The Drop.
Peter McCormack: So they recorded the whole thing forwards with them doing everything backwards, but then play it backwards so they are moving forwards. You'll see it, look, watch this. We're going to need music. You might know the song.
[Video plays]
Car González: So, this is backwards right now?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, this is backwards.
Car González: Oh, wow!
Danny Knowles: We're getting copyright claimed on this one.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, we're going to get done. We keep getting this. It's quite incredible that they did this.
Car González: Yeah, it makes you wonder how Christopher Nolan did Tenet, you know? It's kind of the same thing, right?
Peter McCormack: But it meant they had to also rap everything backwards.
Danny Knowles: Well, lip-sync it backwards.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, lip-sync it backwards, so the lip-sync would work when they reversed it.
Car González: Yeah, that's interesting.
Peter McCormack: But it means you get those cool things where they kind of stand up off the floor.
Car González: Yeah, that's cool, that's pretty cool.
Peter McCormack: This is such a last show of the run!
Danny Knowles: Yeah, we should get into it!
Peter McCormack: This is such a last show of the run, talking shit. How have you been, Car?
Car González: I've been pretty good. Busy.
Peter McCormack: Yeah?
Car González: Busy and trying to survive the bear market, man. It's crazy.
Peter McCormack: It's not your first one, is it?
Car González: Well, working full-time in it, yeah. It's completely different than seeing it from the sidelines.
Peter McCormack: Right, talk to me about that.
Car González: Gosh, where do we start? I think for me, you kind of see who the real ones are, right? The ones that will stick through it, because this is when it gets really bad. You also see people's true colours that come out during this time, good and bad. Then you also see a more sense of collaboration. I feel like during the bull market, it was just spread out, everybody was prospering. And then you get the bull market, and it's just everybody's a little closer.
Peter McCormack: Sometimes I never know if you're really prospering or you're just mentally prospering.
Car González: That's probably what it is, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, because if you're not selling your Bitcoin, you're mentally prospering, you're going -- it's like, HODL put that tweet; drag out the one he put out.
Danny Knowles: No, I don't know which one you mean.
Peter McCormack: He put out one about bear markets, and so I think you're mentally prospering. You go, "Oh, my Bitcoin could buy me this, oh, now it can buy me this, oh, fuck now it can buy me this". And then suddenly, "Shit, it can't buy me anything" again, and so you mentally get poorer, I think.
Danny Knowles: This one?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, "Every hodler will have to face this moment. After years of hard work and sacrifice, you'll finally have enough money to be set for life. Then in a flash it will be ripped away from you. How you react to this will define your future. Your children's future as well. Godspeed". There's a personal side to it and a business side, like the podcasting. The business side is, downloads are a derivative of Bitcoin. When Bitcoin is flying, downloads are up; Bitcoin is down, downloads are dropping and going sideways. When downloads are ripping, sponsorships are up; when downloads are sideways, sponsorships are down. So there is a reality of that. You have to grind through it, work hard.
Peter McCormack: The personal one, I find different. It depends, I guess, if the business side isn't working and you're a Bitcoin business, you might then be selling Bitcoin to fund the operations of the business. The funny thing is, you're usually selling at the bottom, or near the bottom, because the business challenges come during the bear market and you didn't sell at the top prepping for that, because timing those events, that's fucking difficult.
Car González: Yeah, it's crazy right now. But other than that, it's going great. I can't complain, I'm living the dream, literally living the dream, man.
Peter McCormack: Tell me about that.
Car González: I'm from Corpus, but I grew up in Austin primarily, in and out my whole life. So, where PlebLab right now is, it's on 6th Street, it's six blocks away from the Commons, right in the middle is Joe Rogan's Mothership, and so we're right in the middle of it. And I remember as a young kid walking down 6th Street, and we're at the old Texas Lottery office. So, they would do the Texas Lottery, the balls and the whole thing like that. I think it was 10.00 at night on a Saturday. So, I remember seeing all these things. And then for me now to be working at a PlebLab in the same area I used to walk as a kid, it just blows my mind. It's literally a dream come true. And that to me is probably the thing I always try to, whenever things get hard or anything I'm just struggling with, mentally I'm like, "Well you're kind of living a dream life, man. What are you complaining about?" So that's kind of what I keep in the back of my head all the time.
Peter McCormack: Bitcoin makes dreams, man.
Car González: It does, it does, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Dude, I go home and I run my football team in my town.
Car González: Yeah, so you know, you know exactly what that feels like.
Peter McCormack: Every six to eight weeks, I meet up with my -- Danny's become one of my best friends in the world. He's like a brother to me now and we get together every six weeks, eight weeks. We hang out for ten days, have a beer, eat steak, record podcasts. That's fucking cool. Danny's living the dream, he gets to work with me!
Danny Knowles: I'm living the dream, but I get to work with you!
Peter McCormack: But I get to work with you! Yeah, no, look, if you work really hard and you put the time in, I think Bitcoin rewards you back. What you put in, you get out. What you take, you then have to put back in.
Car González: Yeah, no, I think that's really good advice, I think that's really true. I have found that trying to be a community leader inside the Austin area is just giving me so much rewarding friendships and rewarding just ideas. It really is, when I look at Austin, I look at all the amazing people that are here. You know, we just saw Parker right now. I see Parker almost every day, it's pretty incredible. But it's all the... Yeah, to me, I can't imagine how lucky we all are to be doing this full-time in Austin at a time right now. It just really hits home with me every time I see it.
Peter McCormack: Well, you can look at it at a micro level. It's like, "Oh, yeah, I mean I'm getting to work on Bitcoin in Austin with my cool friends", or you can look at it at this kind of weird macro level where you're like, "I get to work at the forefront of a new paradigm in money and finance, where the world is clearly going to shit, countries are hyperinflating, western liberal democracies that we thought were safe havens are on a trajectory to hyperinflate, which is going to be terrible; but we get to work on the thing that is the lifeboat, right at the forefront of it". I mean, what a what a gift.
We don't know, in 50 years, how the AI will write the history books. ChatGPT will write the history books, but there's a scenario where a history book is written and the kids taught in the future are like, "Yeah, before Bitcoin, there was this thing called fiat money and the government fucking printed loads and stole it and it caused all this shit and chaos, and this Bitcoin thing you had came from this guy, Satoshi Nakamoto, who nobody knows who it is, and all these people in Austin and Nashville and Bedford worked on making this", I'm picking those places a little bit, "worked on making this a thing". You get to be part of it.
Car González: Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why we all started Austin Bitcoin Club. We started that back in 2021, and a lot of it was just for the community in the area. And we wanted to show that, hey, some plebs can actually do something, do something of value. And I think a lot of us came from that 2020 time when Jack Mallers went on stage at the conference and lit a fire under everybody's asses. And I think you saw that go everywhere, it started off this kick. And so, when we started the Austin Bitcoin Club, out of that came PlebLab, and PlebLab is a place where developers can come and work on Bitcoin projects and stuff. And it was kind of cool because this is before we actually had the Bitcoin Commons. We didn't have a Bitcoin event space in 2021. All we had was just the Unchained building and it was very small, very tiny, so we didn't really have a place to do events.
But we got kind of lucky because we just were two guys that wanted to start a meetup in the Park, literally from the Park. We were going to do it at the Park, but I knew Gary at the time. Gary was like, "You should probably talk to Lee". And so I reached out to Lee and Lee was like, "You should probably go check out Capital Factory, they have events there. And so at that time, we went out to Capital Factory and told them like, "Hey, we're doing this Bitcoin stuff, we want to do a meetup here, it's called Austin Bitcoin Club". And from there, it started off with 30 people. And then before you knew it, we had 200, 150 people that were showing up flying in for Austin Bitcoin Club. And then what really set it on fire was Parker. Parker came to the second one, and that kicked everything off.
Then the Vice President at that time at Capital Factory, he saw our relentlessness and our passion for what we were doing, and we would come in at 8.00 in the morning, we'd stay till 8.00 at night, and this guy, he kind of got orange-pilled over the course of just hanging out with us and seeing us. And he was like, "You know, it'd be great if you guys were here all the time with those amount of people". And we were like, "Yeah, it'd be great to have an office, but all we have is just the event space". And so he basically said, he goes, "Well, ask for it. You've got to ask for the things that you want". And I was like, "Well, the way I look at it is your dad's already letting you play in the garage with your band. The last thing you want to do is ask him for the Ferrari to take out your girl". And he's like, "No, ask me for the Ferrari".
So, we went to have a meeting with him a week later, and he gave us this office space. And from there, we were able to get all these builders in there. So we got John from Zaprite, we had Michael from Oshi, we had Keon from Stacker News. This was before they did Mutiny, but we had the guys from Mutiny in there, we had Super Testnet. We had all these people just bunched in a lab, downtown financial district, and all working on projects and startups and stuff at that time. And myself, I kind of got lucky because at that time, I was looking for a job myself. So all those guys, went and reached out to Marty, it was like, "You should hire Car. Car's the guy to hire to do the producing stuff. And so luckily, I got a job with Marty and then was able to learn from him and see how he carries himself, his work ethic, all that stuff, and just learned a lot. And then from there, I think what changed for us was the Bitcoin Block Party.
When we did the Bitcoin Block Party in 2021, that set Austin on fire because we literally took over a block of Rainey Street down here with Michael from Oshi and everybody came, the whole community came to support it, and it was crazy. It was 800 people, bitcoiners, all excited about this product called Oshi and what it could do for grassroots adoption and stuff like that, and it just shot off. And shortly after that, people started coming up to us and were like, "Well, are you guys going to be a company?" People were coming about PlebLab and we're like, "We didn't know we could". We were just a couple of plebs, starting this grassroots movement from the inside and just trying to help our friends achieve their dreams. And so we were lucky enough to get a small, little cheque to go out and build PlebLab downtown. And that's what we did. And so in February, I took over as the CEO to get us all the way there. Kyle, I don't know if you ever met Kyle.
Peter McCormack: We met Kyle, we met him last time we were here, right?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, I met him a few times.
Car González: He had to step down because he had a family, kids, all those sorts of responsibilities. And PlebLab, you kind of have to do full-time, 24/7/365. It's really, you have to be hands-on for it. And so that's kind of where I'm at now.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, we liked Kyle, cool guy.
Car González: Yeah, he's a great guy.
Peter McCormack: We wish him the best, man. So, you've accidentally created a business?
Car González: I would say, at least since I've taken over, I've been more business-focused, kind of what you were talking about with downloads and all that stuff. I really think there's a world of possibility for hackerspaces. And so when I took over, I wanted to focus more on the hackerspace part of it, because at least here in Austin, I can't speak to other places, but at least here in Austin, we have the Bitcoin Commons, and it's a great hub for bitcoiners. It's where people go for events, it's where we even do our own hackathons there, and Unchained has been gracious enough to allow us to do that there. And so we have all the meetups there.
But you still need another place, a hackerspace, for these developers that are here and they require a lot of support. So, you need another place where people can actually go who are aspiring developers, whether they worked for PayPal or whether they worked for Visa, MasterCard or whoever, can come learn about Bitcoin on the development side, and that's kind of what we do. So right now in the lab, we have Nifty from Base58, she's in the Lab; we have Kion from Stacker News in the Lab; we have Zaprite in the lab; we have Super Testnet and he works on a lot of FOSS stuff; and then we have some regular engineers from Bitcoin companies working in there as well too. And then we have like, we do this other thing for startups.
So, we usually get 20 to 50 applicants a month, where people are aspiring builders in the space that want to do projects. Not all of them are willing to move to Austin or are willing to do stuff like that, but there are a few of them that do. And when those people come in contact with us, we do the same thing that we did for all those companies in 2021, like Zaprite. When I met John, that guy for example, we helped him as much as we could, just two plebs, just with my media background and all that kind of stuff, and then Kyle with his leadership qualities and connections and stuff. And then from there, we just helped him as much as we could.
We're a little bit different now where we're a little bit more focused, more business-focused on getting the right connections in place and really trying to kind of cater it more to the individual as opposed to you. I mean, because if you look at accelerators in the world, there's really only one place that does acceleration really, really well, and that's Y Combinator, just because Paul Graham's a mad genius. And being on calls with people, I've come to the realisation that what we have at PlebLab is minimal viable product of an acceleration program. And it's more of a community accelerator. It's more like everybody in the Lab wants that person to succeed and we all try to help them. And so to get back to the point of asking, did we create a business, I think in the long term we have, I think in the short term, I look at it kind of the same way Balaji looks at this kind of world that we're creating with network stakes, and I think he was talking to you about that.
I think there's going to be an enormous potential for Lightning-enabled buildings, and I think that's kind of the stuff that we're working on in the Lab right now. So we have this thing called Lightning Door. You can tap it, and it'll go through and it'll open the door. The guys are working on something called Lightning Box. So when I look at PlebLab, it's kind of one of these things where it could be Pixar in the early days, where it's just doing all this cool computer animation, all this cool software with all these different brilliant engineers, and then they realise they make motion pictures, right? It could be that, or it could be kind of what it is right now, where it's this hackerspace and they're just creating cutting-edge stuff and then it'll turn into what it turns into.
But I think the thing that I'm seeing now is just the Lightning-enabled aspects of the physical space, because when I when I look at the previous world, because I'm an old man, I'm in my 40s now, but when I look --
Peter McCormack: Where in your 40s?
Car González: I'm 40.
Peter McCormack: Dude, I'm older than you, I'm 44.
Car González: Well, so when the internet came out in the 1990s, I'm old enough to remember that it was just internet cafés and these internet hubs, remember that?
Peter McCormack: Of course, man.
Car González: And then what happened later was just Starbucks, right, just Starbucks were everywhere. And I think we're at that same point now where it's just Lightning Bitcoin places, you're seeing it pop up everywhere. And at some point, it's just going to be a whatever that is. But I think right now, the more Lightning-enabled stuff that you can have in the physical space is where everything's headed, and I think that can only happen once you get to the fostering part of the community. I think you can manifest the community, but once you get to the fostering part, that's when you can start enabling some of this stuff that's a little bit cooler.
Peter McCormack: How do you financially make the whole thing work?
Car González: What do you mean; for PlebLab?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Car González: Right now, we are covering costs with the funding that we had from the little, small cheque that we had, and then we also work on some consulting and stuff like that, and then we have the membership. So, we have three different tiers of memberships. We have a Drop-in pass, you scan the Lightning door, hang out with the builders for the day. We also have the Nomad pass. I think, I don't know if you, do you have a hub there in Bedford?
Peter McCormack: Not yet, I'll come back to that and I'll tell you what my plan is.
Car González: Okay, cool, yeah. So, we have this Nomad pass and that's just for, I guess, the equivalent of a membership. And so, this is just for anybody who's a bitcoiner that wants to come in. But if you want to be a builder, you get a Hackerspace membership and then that gives you a dedicated desk, you get access and rewards and stuff that.
Peter McCormack: How much are these?
Car González: Right now, I think we have the Drop-in pass at $21 fiat, unless you pay in Bitcoin, it's $10; and then we have the Nomad pass at $129, and then if you're paying in Bitcoin on Oshi, you get that at discount; and then our Hackerspace is at $300 right now, and we've raised prices since I've taken over as well, too. But the way I look at it, it's more about getting the people in the in the space, it's more about getting the devs in the space, you need to have an easy onboarding forum.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so Bedford's a bit trickier in that we have one we have two good assets, in that we have a known Bitcoin podcast where the host is from the town, which is me, and we have a football team. And if I put an event on, people will come, but they come from all over the country, sometimes Europe. And if the football team is playing, we have a meetup, again they'll come in. But in terms of actual bitcoiners in the town, I mean I've met two or three people. Some guy came up to me in my bar the other day and he was like, "Oh, are you Pete McCormack?" I said, "Yeah", he was like, "I listen to your podcast". So there's a handful of people that, but there is no Bitcoin community really, there's no one really building anything. So I'm trying to think about it slightly differently.
The football is the centre point, and that is our thing. What I need to build is a training facility. Have you got the graphic I sent you for that? I was playing with Midjourney to get design concepts, but basically, because we've now got the men's team, ladies' team, all the youth teams on the girls' side, which is 20, 22 teams, and then a partnership with the boys' youth team. We basically need a footballing centre. I need a grass pitch, I need two all-weather pitches, I need a couple of nine-a-side pitches, seven-a-side pitch, then I need a clubhouse where people can get trained. Yeah, so I played with Midjourney.
Car González: Oh, cool!
Peter McCormack: This is the kind of thing we need. Obviously, architecturally, we probably won't do that because it'll cost too much. But my idea is that the building serves a couple of purposes. Firstly, you can get changed, you can play sports, but I'd to build a coworking space there as well. It won't be a hackerspace for bitcoiners because there aren't enough around, but it could be a place where, a bit like Bitcoin Park and they do their talks, we do the same. But I think it needs to be more than Bitcoin. I think it would have to be a bit more kind of broader, business advice, how to set up a business, how to think about money, how to think about social media. Maybe there'll be some things to do with food and diet. So, more of a broad, you know all those topics that bitcoiners care about? It might be that. So, that's my goal.
Car González: That's a pretty cool goal, man. The way I look at it is, I think we're really focused on developers, because that's where we started, working with developers and working with startups and builders, so I wouldn't know how to create something that. Does that make sense? I wouldn't know how to create that type of place, but I know how to create a hackerspace, right, I know how to create something for the devs. And to me, that's where we're primarily focused. One of the things I think that we've been able to do to get more developers in the space, or at least in the building, is having workshops on the weekend. That really gets people there.
Also the Lightning-enabled stuff, whenever we do a -- we had the Lightning Door workshop or a ChatGPT Bitcoin workshop that we had, it was filled to the brim with so many different people, and these are people that work here in town, from Apple or PayPal or wherever they're from. You have to show the wonderment. I think that's the biggest thing that I've realised is just wonder. If you can spark the imagination, then you can bring over those people. Right now, when we're just talking about monetary policy, Number Go Up technology, that doesn't really spark the imagination, that draws in the wrong type of people. But when you have something that's actually, when you see builders actually building and trying to change the world for the better, I think that's the thing that really gets people in the door, at least for developers, creatives.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I think you have to meet people where they're at, right? In a little town like Bedford, it's going to be one of the last places in the UK that will adopt a Bitcoin. It's going to start in London, and then Leeds and Manchester and Birmingham. There's probably meetups in all of those, maybe Cambridge. In a place like Bedford, that's not going to happen.
Danny Knowles: I think you could be wrong there.
Peter McCormack: Well, what I'm saying is the density of people. If I just decided one day I was going to do Bitcoin Park in Bedford, I just wouldn't be able to make it commercially work the way they've made it commercially work. I could do a meetup and maybe that starts with 20 people, goes to 50 to 100 and do different talks. But what I can do is buy a football team, make them the Bitcoin team and use that as a Trojan horse. People come down because they want to watch football and, "Oh, what's this Bitcoin thing about? Oh there's a meet up before that game, I'll come to the meet up. Oh there's a co-working space, oh I need an office, I'm always sat in Starbucks. I could use that". And then with that, we can start putting events on like they do at Bitcoin Park, which would bring people in.
I think what I'm hoping, I've said it a few times on this run, so if you listen to every show like a psycho, you've heard me say this a few times, but not everyone's got the football thing and some people are starting to get it, but what I've said is, "Just forget that it's a football thing". In your community, you can do any type of project. You could have a running club, you might be a runner, you go running all the time, you could start a running club and it's 25 people or 50 people and at the end of it, you sit down and have a Bitcoin meetup or have a meetup to discuss monetary policy or whatever. But you can be in London and you can do London BitDevs, or you can be in Manchester and you can do a Bitcoin meetup. You can make something work wherever you are, either make it directly about Bitcoin or indirectly but around something you like and bring people in, and I think we're on the verge of an explosion of these things, and I think that's great.
Car González: Absolutely. When you had Balaji on the pod, it was interesting hearing him say all these things. I was like, "Wow, he's literally talking about some of the stuff that a lot of us have been thinking about for the past two years, and it's cool that it's finally reached a person like that to really see this through", because I think the community aspect is really important right now, right? If you look back a century ago, it was the Spanish Flu and everybody kind of closed in and out of that came these roaring 20s, right? And you saw jazz pop out of that and all these cultural centres, like New York. And so when I look at what happened to us in 2020, it's the same thing. It's just now, it's going to become the roaring 20s where there's just a lot of prosperity and a lot of hurt at the same time.
But if you have these hubs and these hackerspaces all over the world, this could really change the course of history. And I think when I look at PlebLab and what we're doing there, it really feels like that kind of movement happening, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Well, they're nodes in this network. It's a funny thing to say, but you can just travel through the world. You could go up to, I don't know, LA, the Swamp People put an event on usually, and go and hang out with them; then you could go to Austin and go to the Commons and come to PlebLab; then you go to Nashville and go to Bitcoin Park and I'm sure something's going to come in Miami; you could head down to El Salvador and go to El Zonte and go surfing and play with Bitcoin; you could go to Bitcoin Jungle in Brazil, all the shit that's going down in Costa Rica; you can catch a flight over to the UK and come watch a football match and hang out at Bedford; you can go to Lisbon, hang out with the Bitcoin community there; you can go to Berlin, Berlin's roaring Bitcoin community; you can fly to Indonesia.
Car González: Lugano's coming too.
Peter McCormack: Lugano, yeah, I went there, those guys are killing it. It's a great place, by the way.
Car González: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: But you can go to Indonesia, you can pop to Australia and see Danny. Like, more and more, it's like the start of Lightning Network. You've got these nodes of open channels with each other and they're just going to grow and grow and grow and you can just move around. And there's a certain inevitability to it.
Car González: Yeah, totally. And it's interesting that you said all these places, because when I see it for what it is, I'm like, "Wow!" It's incredible to imagine that we went from Bitcoin on-chain, Lightning explosion happening in 2018, and then it really snuck off. Now you're seeing all these Bitcoin companies coming from out of that, and then now you're seeing these hubs, and those are getting built by individuals that really want to do this for the right reasons.
But then you look over on the crypto side, Peter. You see the crypto side, and they're trying to do the same thing bitcoiners are doing. The only difference is they're using it to push their NFTs, or they're using it to push their token in order to get access to these places. No one checks your Bitcoin card to go to the Commons or to PlebLab, right? We're just inviting, or even to Bedford, I would imagine.
Peter McCormack: No, you don't.
Car González: But the Web3 guys are like, "Oh, you need to have an NFT to get in". There's this big, kind of gated community. It's interesting to see these two things happen side by side. Of course, they're going to copy what bitcoiners are doing, but they're going to do it a completely different way.
Peter McCormack: That's happened in football. So, when we bought our team, made them Real Bedford, a bunch of shitcoiners, a couple of shitcoiners, bought a team called Crawley Town.
Car González: Okay.
Peter McCormack: Really, much higher, they were a League team then, League Two, so three down from the Premier League. Great history, really well-liked club, bought by these shitcoiners, and basically day one, I remember seeing all these people outside, I don't know, I guess the training ground or the ground or something, buying NFTs. They'd come to get their NFTs, their NFTs aren't worth shit now. The running of the club was complete chaos, they nearly got relegated, they went through three managers. There was one moment where the chairman was in the dugout, which by the way is a big fucking no-no. You're a chairman, you're everything off the pitch. Let the manager do his job. It's been an absolute disaster. If you search for Crawley Town now on Twitter, you'll find a bunch of shit, it's just been a disaster.
Whereas with the Bitcoin team, and look, yeah, some of our sponsors have crypto products, and yeah, we're not pure in that way, but we're Bitcoin only. You can buy your tickets, your burgers, everything in Bitcoin, and I think the thing is, the crypto stuff leads you down a path of distraction. With the Bitcoin, it leads you down a path of focus, and that analogy totally works out. But the problem I think the crypto people have is, whether you go to PlebLab, Commons, Bitcoin Park, you're going to meet the same people with the same core principles having the same conversations, you might not completely agree on everything, but there is a commonality.
Car González: Absolutely.
Peter McCormack: If you went to Solana Lab in New York --
Car González: Wait, do they have that?
Peter McCormack: Fuck knows, I just made it up! Or, I don't know, Dentacoin Park in, I don't know, Vancouver, they're going to be completely different people and there is no commonality. I'm not going to completely hate on them. One thing I think they are really good t, they've been really good at raising money for charity and things, really, impressive things. Like in minutes, they've raised -- some guy plays a guitar on a stream and it turns out he's broke and they send him $600,000 of shitcoin. It's like, "Well, that's pretty impressive". But there isn't that common thread.
The bigger problem they have is Solana might not exist in four years, so what happens to Solana Lab or Crypto Lab? We're going to be here in four years and eight years, and so I think it's that common goal that the crypto people miss. And they will go, "Oh, the maxis, you're tribal, you're this, you're that", they just don't get it. They've missed exactly what's going on with Bitcoin. It's like, that's fine.
Car González: Yeah, it's unfortunate. You see it all the time too. It's like when we were in Capital Factory, because there's 15, 10 accelerators in Austin, and we're the only Bitcoin-focused community accelerator, we do it a little bit different. And when we were at Capital Factory, Capital Factory technically is an accelerator. And the type of people that you would see walk in there and ask the most boneheaded questions about Bitcoin, it could be frustrating. But I think I've come to realise over time, and I think Carvalho said it best when I had a conversation with him, he was like, "You know, Car, just meet them where they're at, and then you can take them along".
I think doing that at PlebLab, we get some developers from all sorts of backgrounds, you can kind of see it. And then before you know it, like we have a guy right now, he's from PayPal. And when he came in first, he was a little bit like, "Oh, who are these Bitcoiners? They're a little bit more rough around the edges". And then once he starts hanging out with us, he's like, "Oh, wow", and then he recently did a workshop, and you can see his growth from what he used to be to where he is now, and that's where I realised it's just meet them where they're at.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, you've got to meet people where they're at. And I mean, this is what the podcast is, this is what it's designed for, is to meet people where they're at. So, it has to meet people where they're at if they're in the UK and they're crazy lefty liberal, and has to meet them where they're at if they're in the US and they're from the right, and has to meet them where they're at if they're a Swedish libertarian. Whatever you are, you've got to try and meet people where they're at, and that requires some patience amongst bitcoiners to understand that people are different, and people will have a different timeline for grokking Bitcoin, they have a different cultural, historical, geographical background that they bring with them.
Not everyone's going to arrive at the same way, but you just meet them where they're at and help them along the way, and most people end up in the same place-ish.
Car González: Yeah, I think so. I think at least for us, the way we've seen it here, at the Commons, when we do Austin Bitcoin Club or BitDevs, or anything like that, we always have dumb questions, or you always have questions that oppose the view in the room, or something. And I always try, at least for me, I always try to take the time to talk to them afterwards. Even though I'm not the one leading the discussion or anything, I just want to know the individual and let them know, "Hey, there's somebody in the room that wants to hear what you have to say". I don't mind being that. And I look at how we do it here in Austin, there's a lot of that. A lot of us collaborate and work with each other.
That's where, when I look at places like Nashville, it's awesome to see them kind of manifest this from absolutely nothing. And in Austin, I think we're past the point of manifesting it; now we're at the point of fostering it, and that requires collaboration and that requires nurturing and making sure that we're all on the same page with things. And it starts with a solid foundation, whether it's a football team or if it's a park or whatever it is. Here in Austin, it was Unchained Capital. Once Parker came in, in 2018, he turned that place around and that was the anchor for bitcoiners. And then from there, you're just kind of building on top of it. And when I look at other places in the world, I think we're going to have that in New York, we'll have that in LA and Miami, it just starts with that anchor first.
Peter McCormack: We've got that in New York. I missed out, Pubkey.
Car González: Oh, Pubkey, oh, perfect.
Peter McCormack: Have you been to Pubkey?
Peter McCormack: No, I haven't been yet.
Peter McCormack: Dude, when you get to New York, you've got to go to Pubkey. I mean, again, it's just another brilliant anchor. It's a pub. Everyone likes going to the pub, most of us like beer. If you don't, you do a Smashburger. Their Smashburger is so fucking good. Their Smashburger and their fries, their waffle fries with that cheese dip, we had it every day. But they do that, right? Their anchor is a pub, but they've got events on there. So you go along, you can go along, just hang out with Thomas, have a beer, talk about Bitcoin. You can you turn up most evenings or once a week, whatever, they've got events on. The anchor can be literally anything. It can be an accelerator, it can be a pub, I think we'll get a lot of the pubs, it could be a fucking football team, it could be a concert venue, it could be a running club, literally anyone listening think, "I want to do that", just create an anchor and bring people in. I love it.
Car González: Exactly, right? And how it happens now, and even here, in the central Texas area, we're really kind of seeing it with Jason, who's running the Round Rock up here up north, he's running that meetup. And I went there last week and I was talking to him and I was like, "So what's the plan? Where else are you going with this? Because I want to know, what can we do to help?" And he's like, "Oh, I want to get a place up there, maybe a farmer's market type of place". And I was like, "That's dope, we need that, we need that in our community". Then, I'll talk to somebody like Ge, who's running San Antonio, and I'm like, "Where are you going with this? What's the next step?" He's like, "Yeah, I want to build a little hub downtown next to the Riverwalk". I'm like, "Perfect".
So you're really kind of seeing it, once you start having a city, let's say Nashville, that is doing the Bitcoin Park, you'll start seeing stuff pop up all over the place now. And then before you know it, it just turns the whole place orange. And we're seeing that with Texas right now. You have the Houston meetup.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, the Houston meetup is great.
Car González: That's why I'm saying it literally just starts with a group of individuals that want to go out and do this. And then before it, you have these other orange spots popping up all over the state. And I think, go back to, I keep bringing up that guy's name, but I think Balaji's right. We're seeing it in Texas and we're seeing it in Tennessee, you know, and now New York, right? Like, this is inevitable. It's really bullish, man.
Peter McCormack: Do you think in some ways, PlebLab could be something that kind of franchises out as well?
Car González: I think, if I could have it my way, Peter, I would love to see a hackerspace in every city, and I would love to allow people to create PlebLab. The guys talk about it in the Lab all the time. They're like, "Car, PlebLab is a state of mind". And I was like, "What does that mean? I don't even know what that means". But since stepping into this role, I've come to realise a lot more people care about PlebLab than I first realised. I didn't realise the emotional connection that they have to the brand and what they're trying to do. Because a lot of it, these are just plebs that see themselves wanting to build.
We're doing a startup day next month during BitBlockBoom! week, and we have some builders coming in who are going to be probably the next generation companies, right? And when I talked to this one kid, he was telling me, I was like, "Where did you get this idea from?" And he's like, "Oh, I got it from DerGigi, reading his stuff". And then I'm talking to him, I'm like, "How did you get into Bitcoin?" He's like, "Oh, I read Jimmy Song's book and started hacking and doing all this stuff. And then I came to Bitcoin++, the thing that Nifty throws with Base58". And then I was like, "Well then, where do you plan on going with this?" And he was like, "Well, I want to keep building. I love working on Bitcoin". And he's a new bitcoiner, he's only been doing it for like six months.
Then I was like, "Well, come to PlebLab so you can show what you're working on and then we'll see what happens". And now he's bringing his mom and the family and stuff. And it's kind of like, "Wow!", all the people that have helped him in that process, whether it was Jimmy and his book, whether it was Nifty and that conference, it just kind of shows that we're all helping each other. It's working, Peter. This kind of network that we've created with these nodes, it's working and it's happening and it just facilitates more and more builders, more and more creators, more and more companies.
Peter McCormack: I guess that happens because you've embedded some kind of culture there.
Car González: What do you mean?
Peter McCormack: Like, the culture of the experience, the culture of what bitcoiners are, what they stand for. When people come along, it's not like a -- because it sounds part of it, it's like a coworking facility, but it's more than that. I've had coworking facilities. My first ever company I set up, I used to build websites, right? My coworking facility, it was a little private room on my own. I'm going on my computer, I'd sit all day, occasionally I'll go and get a cup of tea and I would talk to somebody and I think I maybe knew the person next door. But there was nothing, there was no culture in the place. The only thing we had in common is we worked in the same building in Bedford.
We had a WeWork in London, right? And the WeWorks are different in that we had a bigger space and there was eight of us in there, and there were all these other companies and we had these community areas. Nobody spoke, and they would put these events on, dude. Okay, they'd put on the events, it would be fucking someone to come and play their violin or someone do a poetry reading or give a talk, and everyone would go and sit in their group of people and watch it and leave. In a coworking space with common areas, where you could get a beer or a Coke or whatever, a bottle of water, no one mixed. There was no culture of mixing together. But I could not imagine that in PlebLab. I've not been, but I don't imagine everyone goes into their own space.
Car González: It's interesting because we started at Capital Factory and it's exactly what you're describing, it's very much that. And so we saw all the, if you want to call them mistakes, or whatever that is, front and centre, right? And as Bitcoiners, we'd all be siloed in this little office and we'd all complain about it together like, "Oh, look how they do this. Look how they have this, for privacy and all this stuff". And so when we created PlebLab, it was like, we want to do the complete opposite of that, it needs to be geared towards Bitcoin developers, geared towards those individuals. And that to me is just a testament to that, right?
You brought up WeWork and what's the culture there? There is no culture. It's just you go and pay your latte, or whatever, and you just work by yourself. You even see the TikTok videos where they're like, "Oh, a day in the life of an entrepreneur. This is what I do", and it's just kind of ridiculous. It's very alone, no one's helping you, it just sounds awful. And when I look at places Bitcoin Park, etc, and the Commons and hopefully Bedford soon, you'll be able to experience a community, an inviting community, and being able to have the people around you that you can ask questions with and get more ideas and they can come and help you. And before you know it, it just manifests, right, whatever your vision was for whatever you're building.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and it's interesting you say about that farmer's market because one of the coolest things, one of the real lightbulb moments for me was when we were at Bitcoin Park and Texas Slim was there, right? And I know he's a bitcoiner, but he's not really there to talk about Bitcoin, he's there to talk about food. I'm trying to remember exactly how he explained it, but part of the processing of the meat is handled by a certain bunch of companies, and most of the food is controlled by a certain bunch of companies. We know most food is fucking shit. We should be getting fresh, we should be buying direct. And what ended up happening is this became a thing that's tangential to bitcoiners. We all like steak, most of us. Go to your local farmer, shake his hand, buy your beef locally, they'll take Bitcoin. I know people are buying a quarter of a cow and half a cow. I was like, this is the next step.
It's kind of weird, Peter Schiff has a gold podcast, it would definitely be weird if there's a dollar podcast, and there'll come a day when there aren't Bitcoin podcasts, and there'll come a day where it's just ubiquitous, everywhere, right? And so we're starting to see that bridge now, where it's jumping, these communities are jumping beyond Bitcoin, they're connecting with farmers and they're teaching farmers about Bitcoin, but the people who are connecting with the farmer are getting good, quality food. So that next leap in community where we spread out, and you talked about these spokes, right; you had the Bitcoin Commons, then you had the Houston Meetup. But Texas Slim is a spoke. And the access to local farmers are the spokes outside of Bitcoin.
I mean, that, when you start to kind of envisage a peer-to-peer network, you've got these Bitcoin hubs, and then you've got these other hubs connected, which I think then is also super-powerful.
Car González: Absolutely. And Slim and what Cole is doing with the Beef Initiative and he has his K&C Cattle thing, it's phenomenal because you're seeing it happen in other places. I talked to Wesley in Tampa and they're trying to do similar things, right, they're trying to create a hub there. He's asking for advice and stuff. And you're seeing what they're trying to create with their culture there. It's this food, grassroots kind of thing, and it's really cool to see it. But yeah, I totally agree. I think you need those folks, you need those hubs and I think it eventually just kind of becomes a flywheel for bitcoiners to come into the space.
Peter McCormack: So what would help you; what would help PlebLab do more?
Car González: Gosh, right now, if I'm being completely honest, it's funding.
Peter McCormack: What's the reality of the funding of something like this?
Car González: I can't talk numbers, I don't like talking numbers. That's one thing I try to be is very honest and transparent all the time. So when we originally started the thing, I think we had a $25,000 burn every month. Now, I've got it down to $15,000 and I think I can get even lower than that. So, it requires very little funding to run a hackerspace. So, that was another thing, where I've come to realise running a hackerspace is really inexpensive. It's probably the most expensive version of these kind of hubs that you can have out there, compared to other places. And then we just brought on Teresa, Teresa Martin, she used to work with the Beef Initiative and stuff like that, so she's taken over all the finances and brought a good sense of business acumen to our Lab.
Then we have our design guy, Toshi. Toshi's this brilliant in-house designer, does everything for BitBlockBoom, all those kinds of images and stuff that. Then we have Logan as well. Logan's been a part of PlebLab and also Bitcoin Club from the very beginning. As you know, he works with Marty now, and even his level has stepped up tremendously. We're about to release this NostrDevs course and stuff that he's been working on with the guys. And right now, it's just primarily funding to keep this thing going until we can get to the break-even.
Peter McCormack: How long do you think that will take?
Car González: To get to break-even?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Car González: I'd have to go back and look at the numbers.
Peter McCormack: A bull market would help!
Car González: Bull market would help, yeah. I think what's helping us right now is a lot of the consulting that we're doing, because a lot of people see what we're doing and they want to create the same thing, so we're being consultants to that. But yeah, I would say if you're interested, whoever's out there listening right now, if you're interested definitely reach out to me, we'd love to have you support us.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean look, it is super-important to try and make these things work. The Bitcoin Commons has Unchained, which is cool; they have the space, that's great. Bitcoin Park is an independent commercial venture, we're desperate for them to make that work. Let's be honest, they're making it work. They have their events on, they have their members, we became members. It's important for these things to work. It's important for PlebLab to work. So yeah, people are listening. Have you got a thing remote, people can become remote members?
Car González: So we do, we're working on something right now. I have one of the guys in the lab, we're trying to build out this kind of hacker kind of community online. So, you'll be able to do these hackathons. Right now, we have bolt.fun and they're the only people that are doing hackathons online. I think my vision for PlebLab is being able to grow it globally, so hackathons on a continuous basis makes more sense and it gets more builders into the space faster. And I think just focusing on the dev and the hacker model at PlebLab is primarily what I'm trying to do now since I've taken over, as opposed to before, it was just trying to be startups only, that type of thing, and now it's more like, no, let's just support developers, let's get more developers in there. I think getting Nifty from Base58 inside of PlebLab, she's also helping with that too.
So I think eventually, once we have all those things in place, all that's going to attribute to revenue that comes in, either through courses or through education or through hackathons or through sponsorships or even just at the base level with memberships and stuff like that. But I think over time, that will lead to a very prosperous PlebLab. And then, my back pocket thing is the Lightning-enabled stuff, because our building right now is stacking sats every day, whether it's through the fridge, or whether it's at the door, we make this Lightning Box, that's going to be another thing. So, I think once that happens, I think then you're going to start seeing this real estate become the next big thing that people are going to want to do, because they're going to be like, "Well, we can start putting Lightning into these areas that people aren't really thinking about right now, and then you're building and staying humble stacking sats.
Peter McCormack: So you've got to pay to open the door!
Car González: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: You've got to pay to take a shit!
Car González: No, not yet!
Peter McCormack: You should put that in!
Car González: I mean, it's a reasonable 21 sats, right? It's just those little things. I think over time, I think that kind of takes off.
Peter McCormack: I mean, look, a bull run always helps because you just get this massive increase in awareness, desire and want for Bitcoin, learn about Bitcoin, access Bitcoin, work on Bitcoin. You've already got a big community here, you would naturally see a big boost in that. I mean, I think that would be a be a good thing for you guys, but I think, look, it's so cool what you're doing.
Car González: Thanks, Peter.
Peter McCormack: We're not embedded in the pleb culture, most of them hate me.
Car González: No, they don't hate you. I was telling them, because Danny messaged me last week and I was telling the guys, "Hey, so I'm going on What Bitcoin Did, what do you all think?"
Peter McCormack: They're like, "Fuck you, man".
Car González: No, they're like, "That's good. Just make sure you go there and talk about PlebLab", and I was like, "Cool, I'll talk about PlebLab".
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you're doing the eyes, I can see the eyes, "Yeah, that's good, it's good for us!". We haven't really embedded ourselves in it as much. We want to support as much as possible. In fairness, well not we, it's unfair for me to answer for Danny, it's not Danny, it's me; I've not paid enough attention and given enough support, not supported enough projects. We had Tony in yesterday.
Car González: Oh, Tony, yeah.
Peter McCormack: We've done Mutiny. We're going to support him and help him a bit with that. If we can help you in any way, let us know. But we kind of realised, look, this podcast has done well, we need to give something back and supporting plebs --
Car González: Thank you for having me on today, I appreciate it. Yeah, that's what we try to do as well, is just be a platform for these builders and just allow them to come talk about their projects, because I don't think there's enough of that right now. I remember being a pleb and not knowing where to even go, right, especially if you have aspirations of building in the space, but we need more platforms like that and hats off to you for wanting to do that.
Peter McCormack: No, dude, anything we can do to help, just reach out to me or Danny, give us a shout. We should come and see it; we can't see it because we're both off.
Car González: You guys are about to leave, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, we're both about set off.
Car González: Are you coming back for BitBlockBoom?
Peter McCormack: No, I was talking to Parker about this. The problem with BitBlockBoom for me is it's always when I'm taking my kids on holiday. End of August is when we have our family holiday and I managed to go for one day, one year, and I really hate the fact I can't get there because I think Gary does such an incredible job. He is so cool, he deserves backing. We haven't booked a holiday yet. It's a series of events. I've got to get the football season fixtures, I'm meant to be in the UK all of August apart from my holiday with my kids. Sometimes I thought, "Oh, can I go on holiday and then take the kids to Texas and take them to BitBlockBoom?" because I'd love to take them to an event together and see Bitcoin culture, and I'd love them to see Texas. But also, they kind of want to sit on the beach as well, because I'm away a lot and they want to have dad time. So, just making it work is always difficult. If I could be there, I would. I back Gary, I think he's such a great guy, but it's most likely I won't be, which again, every time I miss it, I feel really sad.
Car González: Yeah. The two main weeks in Austin are the South By week, so Commons, PlebLab, we always throw big events, there's hackathons and stuff. And then BitBlockBoom Week, now that Gary's moved it over here, there's going to be a slew of events. I think Kaily has some stuff booked at the Commons too. So, it's going to be incredible, dude, that whole week's going to be fun, I'm looking forward to it.
Peter McCormack: What was it like here during Consensus?
Car González: Oh, so great thing about Nifty, she created Bitcoin++, so we have that option now. So, there's two developer conferences that I know of: Bitcoin++ and TABConf, and Nifty was able to create that so that bitcoiners can go to that instead of Consensus, which is great!
Peter McCormack: Did you manage -- because there will be bitcoiners going to Consensus, or bitcoiners who hold shitcoins.
Car González: Yeah, I think some of the guys, I don't want to call anybody out, but I think they were there at least talking about Lightning, at least one voice talking about Lightning.
Peter McCormack: No, I mean I think people should.
Car González: Oh, you mean they should go?
Peter McCormack: Well, no, I'm thinking both ways. Were you a kind of shelter for the bitcoiners who went to Consensus and got sick of seeing TRON and other bullshit there? But actually, I also think these shitcoin conferences, go there, talk to people about Bitcoin.
Car González: I got invited to go to the Coin Center Gala this year, was the first time I was ever able to go to something that. And we were the only Bitcoin table at the front.
Peter McCormack: Great.
Car González: And everybody else was just nothing but crypto people. So, yeah, I think you're right. I think you have to get out there to at least talk about it.
Peter McCormack: Well, listen, you made a bunch of money on Solana, put some of it in Bitcoin. Don't regret that shit. Anything I've not asked you about, you wish I had, or you want to talk about?
Car González: No, that was it. I appreciate you having me on and I hope you enjoy that record. And next time you're in Texas, come through.
Peter McCormack: We will always come through. We'll come and see it. Where do you want to send people?
Car González: Yeah, pleblab.com, that's there. Also, we're on Nostr. You're on Nostr, right?
Peter McCormack: I'm on Nostr, yeah.
Car González: Okay, cool. Are you on Nostr, Danny?
Danny Knowles: I'm on Nostr, yeah.
Car González: Okay, cool. Yeah, check us out, PlebLab on Nostr, PlebLab on Twitter and pleblab.com.
Peter McCormack: Do you Nost?
Danny Knowles: I think I've literally posted once.
Peter McCormack: What did you say?
Danny Knowles: What Aliens Did!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, we've got a show coming out with Matthew Pines. Do you know he's deep in the whole alien shit?
Car González: No.
Peter McCormack: So, every time we make a show with him, people kept saying, "Did you talk to him about aliens?" We're like, "No". So, we just ripped two-and-a-half hours the other day with him all about aliens.
Car González: Wow. Are they real; do we know? I don't watch that, I don't pay attention to any of that stuff.
Peter McCormack: I mean, it depends who you ask. You've got to listen to it, but what Matthew would say is, there are lots of congressional investigations, congressional whatevers, who want to know what's going on in these secret things. I'm not going to tell you the whole show, but there's a lot of things pointed towards the fact that maybe they've got aircraft, maybe they've got biological stuff. Also, it could be a huge fucking PSYOP as it is, but everything's a PSYOP, but it's well worth listening to.
Car González: I'll check it out.
Danny Knowles: They're real and they're here!
Car González: What do you think, Danny, do you think they're real?
Danny Knowles: I mean, Matthew's argument is pretty persuasive. If I had to say, I think I'd go yeah.
Car González: Wow!
Peter McCormack: I mean, I've always thought they were real.
Car González: Really?
Peter McCormack: I mean, mathematically.
Car González: I have friends that have seen aircraft and experienced stuff, but yeah.
Peter McCormack: I mean, mathematically, if you try and understand the size of the universe.
Car González: So, have you got aliens out there in Bedford?
Peter McCormack: Some people look like aliens in Bedford! The sheer volume of galaxies in the Universe, and the sheer number of suns within each -- there's like two trillion galaxies, which is a ridiculous number, and each one has like a billion suns, and half of those have got planets rotating around them. So, mathematically, there are going to be planets in the Goldilocks Zone, I don't know if you know it's called that --
Car González: Yeah, around the Earth, yeah.
Peter McCormack: -- which is the zone where you can inhabit life.
Car González: I can see more -- did you ever see that movie, Contact?
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Car González: Yeah, I can see more of a reality like that, where we get a sound from wherever, from a star or something. I can see that reality happening.
Peter McCormack: I have a bias to want it. My favourite film's E.T. and I absolutely love Arrival. Did you watch Arrival?
Car González: Yeah, I love Arrival.
Peter McCormack: I love that film.
Car González: You should check out, did you ever read Childhood's End?
Peter McCormack: No, Childhood's End?
Car González: Yeah, I forget the author. They have a book, but a lot of these stories and these movies come from Childhood's End.
Peter McCormack: Childhood's End?
Car González: Yeah. It was it's a whole --
Peter McCormack: Arthur C Clarke.
Car González: Yeah, Arthur C Clarke, yeah, he wrote it. And he's the one that did Space Odyssey. But I think there might be a movie about it somewhere, I'm sure. But that is kind of really creepy, if it turns out to be that, because that actually shows you --
Peter McCormack: Are you going to spoil the plot?
Car González: No, I won't bring up anything. You just watch it, and you'll just be like, "So, that would, I guess, make sense", but it just kind of sucks! There's no hope there, but I think with Contact, I think there's a little bit more hope, a little more hope in Contact.
Peter McCormack: Oh, man, well listen, check out Matthew Barnes when that comes out, What Aliens Did!
Car González: Nice.
Peter McCormack: Good to see you, man, thank you.
Car González: Good to see you too, thank you.
Peter McCormack: Appreciate the present, and good luck. Anything we can help, you just give us a shout.
Car González: Will do.
Peter McCormack: We're always here for you.
Car González: Thank you.
