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better music, we had better movies, we even had better games.
0:03
We had lawn darts for goodness sakes.
0:06
The boomers, the second greatest generation to walk,
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planet earth, we are misunderstood.
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The ex generations, the wild generations,
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and yet the millennials, they misunderstand us,
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we may think so much better, and yet somehow, so much worse.
0:23
The short podcast, trying to bridge the gap
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of all the generations from a boomer's perspective,
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it's death by boomer with Jeff Stiles right here
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on during the break podcast,
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powered by Guardian Investment Advisors.
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Today is April Fool's Day, 2026, April 1st,
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That is of absolutely no importance.
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The only reason to this date is truly important
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is because 50 years ago today,
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ladies and gentlemen, let me say it again,
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Apple was launched from a garage,
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Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak,
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and whoever the third guy was,
1:03
nobody ever remembers his name, poor dude,
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was launched from a garage literally becoming
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in a very short amount of time,
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one of the most profitable,
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one of the most successful businesses,
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startup businesses, tech businesses,
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any kind of business that anybody could ever remember.
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Let me give you a quick rundown in this death by boomer,
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Jeff Stiles with a Y, your host,
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every Wednesday here during the break podcast.
1:25
Let me give you a quick rundown,
1:26
a quick timetable of my reference,
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my interface, my history with computers.
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It won't take long, I promise you.
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In 1984, I was watching the Super Bowl,
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done in Wonder Robbins, Georgia,
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where I was working there in the Macon area,
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and I was with a good friend of mine,
1:47
my next one neighbor at the Little Duplex,
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I lived in apartment complex,
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named Sergeant George Mills,
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and we were watching the Super Bowl game,
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and in the middle of the game,
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I think it was during halftime.
2:00
I don't remember the exact timing of the spot,
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a rather remarkable commercial came on,
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and most of you guys remember it,
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at least you've heard of it before,
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and it was the 1984 commercial from Apple,
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and it was a 60 second spot,
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which was very, very rare.
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It had no voiceover, no narrator,
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no talking, no verbal communication whatsoever.
2:23
It took it sweet time,
2:25
and basically painting a quick portrait.
2:28
It was images taken from the George Orwell book, 1984,
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a huge group of people sitting,
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watching a screen with big brother yapping at them,
2:36
looking very much like Vladimir Linnon,
2:39
and here comes this beautiful young woman,
2:41
with short blonde crop hair, incredibly athletic,
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and she's running down the middle of these drones,
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these men and dark gray and black staring at the screen,
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and she's carrying an Olympic throw hammer.
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What the hell is she gonna do with that?
2:56
Well, I'll tell you what she's gonna do with that.
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She's gonna get down to the end of this group of folks,
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and start whipping the hammer around,
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just like Olympians do when they do the hammer throw,
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and whips it into the screen.
3:06
The screen shatters into a million pieces,
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and all of these poor, drabbed dead in their souls,
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and dead in their eyes, men,
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look up in their mouths open, and they go,
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whoa, and that was the beginning of the Apple era,
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for the most part, most of us remember that,
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and that was when they were launching
3:22
their brand new personal computer.
3:24
Okay, 1984, I'm still in that same apartment.
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I'm still in my buddy, Sergeant George Mills,
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with a US Air Force, and one of Robin's Air Force Base,
3:32
and he actually owns a computer.
3:34
So I ask him, why do you own this computer?
3:38
And he tells me, in a few years,
3:40
everyone will have one of these in their homes.
3:42
And after I get up off the floor
3:44
from where I was laughing and holding my sides,
3:47
and just rolling around and relicking
3:49
as I just totaled away, I would say,
3:51
that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
3:54
Why would anybody need a computer in their house?
3:57
Nobody needs a computer?
4:00
That's my crystal ball,
4:01
pretty much a track record for you right there,
4:05
Listen to me when I talk about the stock market,
4:06
it's exactly the opposite, you'll do okay.
4:09
So by the time 1990 rolls around,
4:11
I actually had what we called a computer in our home.
4:15
I was living in Flintstone, George,
4:17
and a renovated barn.
4:18
My son Lucas had just been born,
4:20
and my wife declared we need a computer.
4:22
So we went out and we bought a word processor.
4:25
We didn't really think there was a difference.
4:27
It had a little box that powered it up.
4:30
It stored information on a glowing screen.
4:36
I hate those meces to pieces.
4:38
Back in the day, it was just literally a keyboard
4:41
and a storage device, an information data storage device,
4:44
and a glowing screen.
4:45
It was a computer, right?
4:46
And let me give you this little detail too.
4:49
It was not an inkjet printer.
4:51
It was a flywheel printer,
4:53
which was the most high-tech thing
4:55
I had ever owned at the time.
4:57
It looks like it's a little metallic orb.
4:59
It has the Clackety Clack little arms
5:01
that actually print in ink the letters
5:05
and the numbers that you're typing out on the page.
5:07
It actually goes quite, quite, quite,
5:09
quite these little arms going.
5:10
They actually physically hit the paper.
5:14
It would spin around like something
5:15
out of a science fiction movie,
5:16
like some sort of death, you know, satellite.
5:19
You know, it would spin around, it would just,
5:20
like that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that,
5:23
that was the sound it made when it was printing,
5:25
which was the sound of technology
5:27
as far as I was concerned.
5:28
Now, we know now that that's not really a computer,
5:30
but that's what we thought it was
5:32
and that's what we said it was and nobody argued with us.
5:34
I remember my wife actually sat down
5:36
and she left in her little folder
5:38
the very first thing she ever wrote on a computer
5:41
and it was, oh my God, I love it already.
5:44
So that was kind of a sign of things to come.
5:46
I did not love it, but I tolerated it
5:48
and I did use it inside the home.
5:50
Now, the splash forward just a little bit to 1991.
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I've been an advertising agency business
5:56
for quite some time.
5:57
And the people who actually had computers,
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the designer and the guy that ran the business
6:03
in my ad agency literally would not let me sit down
6:08
in their chairs at their workstations, at their desks
6:12
because it was already well known.
6:14
It was an obvious observable fat,
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incontrovertible fat that my very presence
6:20
near a computer would cause the computer to mess up.
6:23
Talk to Margie Cobus who is still with us.
6:26
You could talk to Scott Sullivan who is not,
6:28
maybe you could reach him in a science
6:29
or maybe even talk to his kids, they might remember this.
6:31
They literally did not want my presence, my aura,
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my personal EMP, electromagnetic pulse,
6:38
could be anywhere near the computer
6:39
because it would mess up.
6:41
So I had never had laid a hands on a computer,
6:44
never had laid a hands on a computer mouse.
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The only keyboard I'd ever worked at
6:47
was at an electric typewriter or the word processor.
6:50
And the situation in my life, the scenario changed around me,
6:55
I had to leave China to go move the Knoxville.
6:57
And I moved to an ad agency as their head copywriter.
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And they sat me down behind a computer with a mouse.
7:04
After they'd already hired me,
7:05
I had pretty much already moved up to,
7:07
I was living in an apartment,
7:08
but we were soon to buy a house.
7:10
And I said, I have never used one of these things before.
7:13
And the receptionist for the ad agency
7:16
had to come show me how to use the mouse and move it around
7:20
and make it do the things that I wanted it to do.
7:22
I was so confused, I was so lost.
7:25
The receptionist was rolling her eyes and shrugging
7:28
and had that WTF, what am I gonna do with this guy look?
7:32
And I have a feeling that at that moment,
7:34
my very first day at the job, they probably realized
7:37
we have made a terrible hire.
7:39
This was a bad move.
7:41
This guy has so far behind the A-Bull.
7:44
He's so far behind the flow of society and technology
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that he's never gonna be able to catch up
7:50
and we've really screwed up here.
7:51
Now I struggled with it and I learned how to use a mouse
7:54
and I learned how to write down
7:56
my thoughts on a computer with the glowing screen
7:58
and print them out with an inkjet printer and life went on.
8:02
But since then, I've owned a couple of computers.
8:05
I've worked at a bunch of them.
8:06
As I've right now, I do not own one.
8:10
I do not own a computer.
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You're saying, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff,
8:12
how can you live in this day and age
8:14
and not own a computer?
8:16
Flashback to 1984 and I said,
8:18
they would be the dumbest thing I could ever possibly imagine.
8:21
The only computer I own is in my hand right now.
8:23
It is my phone and it checks my email.
8:25
It sends and takes text.
8:27
It lets me surf the web.
8:28
It lets me, you know, surf for music.
8:31
And have I become more tech savvy?
8:33
Well, yeah, because I had to.
8:35
Now, because I wanted to, now my wife has two laptops
8:38
and a huge monitor, the size of a Volkswagen
8:41
in the corner of our kitchen, which serves as her office.
8:45
Again, I have never sat down at that desk
8:47
and never touched that computer,
8:49
either one of our laptops,
8:50
or done anything with the monitor, none whatsoever.
8:52
I live computer free with the exception of this phone
8:56
and I'm very comfortable with it.
8:57
I've learned how to spot AI videos and AI stories.
9:02
Unfortunately, most of the people around me have not.
9:05
In my circle of peers and family and friends,
9:08
I'm constantly being, you know, people are sharing with me,
9:12
AI generated videos, movie trailers are the worst.
9:15
You know, music, I can spot it a mile away.
9:19
A movie trailer looks so real.
9:20
It looks so real and I tap into it and I realize
9:23
this is not even close to being correct.
9:25
There's nothing true about this.
9:26
But stories, headlines, actually sometimes,
9:29
masquerading as a real story from a real news outlet.
9:33
I've gotten pretty good at detecting those.
9:35
I wish those around me had done the same
9:37
to be honest with you.
9:38
But no, I'm doing just fine.
9:40
You know, when somebody says,
9:41
well, you need to go check the website.
9:44
You know, I've talked about this before.
9:45
My chart, the new abomination
9:48
that the urlanger healthcare system
9:51
is leading on so heavily, I despise it.
9:54
I was at the doctor yesterday and I said
9:57
that stupid dumbass, my chart thing,
9:59
that abomination and the eyes of the Lord
10:02
that horrific, satanic thing that you force us to go to.
10:06
And literally everybody was laughing in the little area
10:09
out there where the nurses and the staffers,
10:11
you know, all sit and occupy space at the doctor's office.
10:15
Half of them were looking at me like,
10:17
they couldn't believe I was saying this out loud.
10:19
This was anathema, this was sacrilege.
10:21
This was, you know, just this cannot be done.
10:26
The others were nodding up and down fiercely.
10:29
And yes, you could see the age divide very, very clearly.
10:32
So I am forced to use it.
10:34
And that is when I will use it,
10:37
it being the world of computers.
10:39
And what will happen from this point forward,
10:41
what will happen in the next 50 years,
10:43
the next, you know, 50 months,
10:44
the next five weeks, the next five days,
10:48
I have no idea, it'll be a lot
10:49
and it will happen without me.
10:51
That's a 100% guarantee.
10:54
Join us every Wednesday for death by Boomer with Jeff Stiles.
10:58
And don't miss us every Monday
10:59
for the up front wrap up and every Friday
11:03
for the weekend windup with Jeff Stiles.
11:05
And if you're on Apple,
11:06
leave us a review and rating.
11:08
It just goes to hardcast.
11:10
See you later, everybody.