Human Renaissance with Jim Kukral

Welcome to the Age of AI Slop.

This week, The Chad & Cheese drag Jim Kukral, cancer survivor, recovering politician, and self-appointed Admiral of the Cleveland Floaters into the chaos to explain why AI didn’t make us smarter… it just made everything cheaper, faker, and way more depressing.

From Coca-Cola’s AI Christmas ads to the coming “Chipotle Effect” (when even your burrito feels algorithmic), Jim argues we’re trading soul for convenience and losing fast. His response? Quit his job and throw zero-screen, full-contact boat parties on Lake Erie where people laugh, cry, dance, and remember what being human feels like.

Chad isn’t so sure we’ll ever log off.

Are we on the brink of a Human Renaissance… or just polishing the bars on our digital cages?

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:25.189)

Aww.

Joel Cheesman (00:32.165)

It's the podcast your mom warned you about aka the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheeseman joined as always. Chad. So wash is in the house as we welcome Jim kukral, marketer author, recovering politician, proud Cleveland, her father and most recently, the guy behind the science of hell yes, and Admiral of Cleveland floaters and also author of a LinkedIn post.

Chad Sowash (00:41.354)

Hello.

Chad Sowash (00:49.622)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (00:59.991)

entitled AI Didn't Kill Creativity. Just Made Being Human the New Unfair Advantage. Jim, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast.

Jim Kukral (01:10.126)

Hey Joel, it's great to be here. I'm excited to be on your podcast, which has been going on for like 10,000 years, I think.

Chad Sowash (01:17.355)

minute.

Joel Cheesman (01:18.073)

It only feels that way when you're with Chad. Anybody else? It's it's fine. It's a little nuance here. I've known Jim for 20 years. Met him when I was in Cleveland and he was one of the more prominent marketers in the area and his life has taken quite a few turns and twists. He ran for office at one point. He did self publishing. He's given a thumbs down to the political scene in Cleveland. He's.

Chad Sowash (01:21.11)

Yeah, it's much easier.

Joel Cheesman (01:46.829)

written books, how to self-publish, and most recently, he's embraced humanity in part because of some illnesses. Feel free to get into that. But Jim, tell us about you. What we should know as we go into this conversation.

Jim Kukral (02:01.24)

Hey, listen, I'm a 54 year old guy from Cleveland, Ohio, almost died twice in the last couple of years and woke up one day.

Joel Cheesman (02:08.965)

And that's not because the browns, right? The browns aren't the reason. Okay. Yeah.

Jim Kukral (02:12.172)

Well, that's a lifelong, you know, ailment. The Cleveland Clinic can't even cure that one. They cured me of Afib and they cured me of colon cancer, but they couldn't cure me of the Cleveland Browns, to your point. So yeah, I'm a reformed politician and frankly, I'm hoping to be a reformed marketer. I'm trying to find a way to get back away from these screens and bring human beings together.

Chad Sowash (02:15.008)

That's a slow death being a Browns fan.

Jim Kukral (02:39.066)

And I'm like a walking, talking, existential, 54 year old midlife crisis person.

Joel Cheesman (02:46.661)

Was it the illness, the near death that turned you to humanity? What come to Jesus moment was there? Was it a gradual shift?

Jim Kukral (02:55.798)

Well, yeah, it's one of those things that just happens over time. know, mean, yeah, obviously getting ill, you know, when you have a trauma in your life, whether it's illness, loss of a loved one, whatever trauma sends people into a reflection moment. Right. So the Joker and Batman were both drawn from problem trauma. Right. You know, so one went one way and one went the other way. Right. So how everybody reacts to trauma is different.

Chad Sowash (03:11.03)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (03:17.081)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Kukral (03:24.878)

But ultimately for me, it was a buildup of yes, the cancer, the heart issues, but also, man, we've just gotten to a point in.

this crazy modern world where I feel like we're just living for an algorithm. We're the optimized versions of ourselves, performative versions of ourselves with the social media. And I'm tired of it. I feel like we are moving into a position where people want to get back and have human moments again. So that's kind of like the quick version.

Chad Sowash (03:40.65)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (03:57.829)

And you're doing a few things before we get into the meat of this. Cleveland floaters, hell yes. What are the initiatives that you're doing around humanity?

Jim Kukral (04:08.107)

Yeah, so the whole goal of where I'm at now is to try to find a way to get off of this little box that we're in right now. Right. Like, you know, like, so I'm not going to sell everything and move to a homestead, you know, because I like, you know, I like stuff, you know, I don't want to be killing chickens. I like going to Aldi and getting the chicken instead of killing the chicken. But ultimately, I want to find a way to get out of this little boxes that they've somehow

Chad Sowash (04:14.486)

OK.

Joel Cheesman (04:15.738)

Huh?

Jim Kukral (04:35.319)

pushed us into. mean, you guys been doing this for eight years. I don't know if this is on video or if it's just audio, but we're in boxes. He's in a box. He's in a box. I'm in a box. And this is kind of where we are as a society. COVID amplified that, right? We all became more Zoom, more little boxes. And I just woke up one day and I said, man, is this really?

Chad Sowash (04:44.704)

Yes.

Jim Kukral (05:01.269)

what life is supposed to be. Are we really supposed to just be sitting in these boxes on digital Zoom meetings? And I said, no, it's not where I want to spend the rest of my life. So all of the things that I do now are in target of trying to create a life outside of these boxes where I'm helping people smile and be grateful and live in the moment and get away from these devices that we carry around in our pockets.

Chad Sowash (05:29.28)

So we'll definitely get to that, but let's go ahead and dig into why did you feel the need to write AI did not kill creativity? did? Is it alive? Is it flourishing? What the hell's going on, Jim? mean, what are you Obviously being in the marketing side of the house, obviously having to be a creative. What are you seeing in the actual landscape today?

Jim Kukral (05:30.541)

Thank

Jim Kukral (05:55.832)

Well, if you think about it, you know, what happens when everything becomes, you know, like I call it AI slop. You've probably heard that term before, right? If you go on LinkedIn now, it's kind of an epidemic, right? Like everything's like an AI comment. Everything's like an AI article. You know, there's just so much of this coming up. We're pretty soon. We're going to see AI prices at fast food restaurants.

Chad Sowash (06:03.392)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Kukral (06:24.193)

your gas, right? It's gonna recognize when people are getting gas most often, it's gonna probably start reading your license plate before you while you're driving by and knowing you know, so like, I call it this, I believe that we're moving into something called the human Renaissance, and it's going to be triggered. It's already started. We're not we haven't hit the line of it yet. But I think it's going to be triggered in a big time effect with something I call the Chipotle effect and

Chad Sowash (06:53.941)

Jesus.

Jim Kukral (06:54.059)

Basically that, yeah, the Chipotle effect is this. It's, I don't know if it'll be actually that, but it'll be a moment like this. You'll walk into a Chipotle in the near future and there'll be an Elon Musk robot who puts exactly 12 pieces of chicken on your burrito. And everyone in the world will be like, no, that's it.

Joel Cheesman (06:54.509)

Hello. Hello.

Chad Sowash (07:02.666)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Kukral (07:16.289)

That was the moment that was the line where we said, forget it. I want human, right? I'm going to choose humanity. want, I don't care if it's an angry 16 year old who doesn't want to be there serving me, but I'm not having this robot serving me 12 pieces of chicken exactly. Right. So I feel that day is coming. So we're gradually slipping into that right now. Just look at all the content out there on the internet. Look what's working also.

Joel Cheesman (07:35.321)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (07:35.794)

huh.

Jim Kukral (07:46.196)

as well. Live FaceTime, live interaction, things that you can prove you're human. So the theory is, when everything becomes AI slop, the value of humanity goes higher. So the real value of people goes up because everything is artificial. The value of local. So I spend a lot of time in focusing my marketing in Cleveland. That's going to go up.

Joel Cheesman (07:53.861)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (07:53.942)

Mm.

Chad Sowash (08:14.571)

Mm.

Jim Kukral (08:15.661)

real communities, events, like the thing I'm building, are gonna be the last authentic platforms really left, right? Laughter goes up, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (08:25.277)

Do you envision a Luddite situation where we just take a bunch of Louisville sluggers to all the machines or can we coexist? Will the machines win? Is this a matrix thing? If you had to put money down, what kind of future? Well, we're near the end, Chad. We're near the end.

Chad Sowash (08:38.986)

Jesus, just go right to the ending right out of the gate, Jesus. My God.

Jim Kukral (08:45.687)

Yeah, you know, I'm actually bullish on AI. you know, I, this isn't, I'm not an anti AI person. I just don't like the fact that, you know, we've all created, we've taken the best parts of AI and turned it into optimization. You know, I have this whole theory. Tim Ferris wrote amazing book called the four hour work week changed our generation changed how we all thought. Basically what Tim said was if you work harder,

your sucker. It's really what his theme was. It's like, better optimize to that VA in the Philippines, you better only work four hours a day. And if you work more than four hours a day, you're a loser. Right? And we had generation of people our age, all bought into that I did too. Right? I even wrote a book.

Chad Sowash (09:16.438)

Yes.

Jim Kukral (09:35.096)

called Business Around a Lifestyle, two of them in that series, that were based around that theory, right? So we all bought into this, my gosh, we all have to work smarter, and it's not about effort, it's about working smarter, and we can have the lives we want. And it's great, it's true, it's all good, but what it did was poison us. And then AI came along, and guess what happened? Wow, we can actually do it. Holy crap, we can actually write thousand articles.

without a lot of effort. We can actually create a piece of music on Suno without effort, without putting the 10,000 hours in. And all of our dreams came true, right? All of our creator dreams came true. And now we're sitting here in our own stew and we're like, yeah, there's no more effort involved. It's fun, but so that's kind of where we're at. And that's a scary place to be.

Chad Sowash (10:21.494)

You

Chad Sowash (10:30.102)

Well, and to that point, Coke's holidays are coming commercials. For the second year in a row, Coke has used AI to fully create their holiday commercial last season and this season. And obviously, a lot of these companies are using AI to impress investors. Plus, I mean, it's cheaper and faster. They had five AI specialists, no film crews necessary. It took what used to take a year down to a month.

Now they had about 100 people who were involved in the project, which is similar size to the non-AI production time frame or era, I guess we could call it. But we're talking about 100 people working for a month instead of a year. Plus, as the models get better, and we've seen them get better incredibly fast, that 100 goes down to 90, 70, 50. mean, when we're taking a look at creativity,

and it is going to this more seamless, better looking AI. How do we tell the difference in this case? And as it starts to slowly take jobs away, because it is, I mean, those hundred people aren't working for a year on this project, they're working for a month, right? That's much different. So what happens, Jim?

Jim Kukral (11:49.346)

What happens is I believe that this human renaissance that we're all gonna move into after this Chipotle moment finally hits, whatever that is, is gonna be, I guess a great way to describe it is organic, right?

when a label gets put on something and people are like, I'm gonna go and you create a whole new category, right? So Whole Foods was created from healthy and organic, right? Cause people didn't want the normal stuff they were being given at regular grocery stores, right? So Whole Foods is like, there's a whole market here. So what I think is gonna happen is you're gonna create an entire ecosystem and economy of...

a human renaissance. So there are going to be coffee shops and burrito places and whatever it is that are going to say, hey, no robots here. No AI here. Do not bring your phone in. You can bring it in, leave it in your pocket. But and I believe that will become like a label where people will seek out. OK, so I think it's probably the next 10 to 20 years of we'll have of that before.

people just get to the point where they're like, man, this stuff's just too good. We're fine with it and we're okay with it. But I think the next 10 to 20 years, human Renaissance and people are gonna start rejecting all of this stuff.

Joel Cheesman (13:12.793)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (13:12.842)

I mean, humans aren't very disciplined at all, right? mean, humans, think rejecting AI is like rejecting fatty foods. And if we were taking a look at a human renaissance in humanity, maybe that would have happened before we had all these goddamn fast food parlors fucking all over the place, especially here in the Midwest, right? So it doesn't feel like it can or will happen without government intervention, much like Australia's social media ban for kids.

Humans are real shit at being disciplined and making decisions around their best self-interest. So at first and foremost, I don't think it's gonna take 20 years I think it's gonna happen much faster and secondarily I think humans We we see a rise in AI girlfriends AI friends AI boyfriends Humanity has have already failed these people which is the sad part

Social media, humanity already failed these people and they're already in their boxes. Jim, how the hell do we get them out of their boxes to be able to re-participate, rejoin humanity because they're already in the corner.

Jim Kukral (14:20.789)

But I think that a lot of them are going to want to do it on their own. They're going to want to be freed from the matrix as things get bigger. Right. But to your point, to your point, there is going to be an awful lot of people who will not. Right. It's safe and comfortable in the matrix. Right. So.

Chad Sowash (14:27.318)

Red pill, blue pill,

Chad Sowash (14:37.834)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Kukral (14:39.839)

In the book I'm writing, the human Renaissance, there's a chapter in there called your own personal Jesus, right? So go back to one of my best favorite bands of all time, The Touch Mode. It's prophetic because what the AI is really coming to is it's going to be her. It's going to be your own personal Jesus. It's going to create the content. It's going to be your therapy. It's going to be everything. But again, I believe there's a big population of people who are going to reject that.

Chad Sowash (14:48.032)

Pesh mode.

Joel Cheesman (14:48.886)

Now now now now now now.

Jim Kukral (15:08.745)

at least for a little while. How long it's going to take? I don't know the answer to that, but I do believe I'm betting my career on that. I've left my job. I quit my job and I'm starting an in-person event experience where it brings people together in a room where I'm asking them to leave their phones in their pocket. So I believe that people will pull money out of their wallet to go to places like that in the future where they are forced.

to have an experience and live in the moment with other human beings, right? Like that's just my belief. Hopefully I'm right. That's right.

Chad Sowash (15:44.04)

Experience humanity.

Joel Cheesman (15:46.103)

Yeah, Jim, I'm curious. There's an immense disparity in our culture of the haves and have nots. By the way, Chad called it a fast food parlor and people who don't eat fast food call it a parlor. No one else calls it a parlor. In your world, there's a premium for humans, right? Like I can go to the restaurant with humans serving me, but there's usually a cost to that. And we're seeing

Poor people get poor and richer people get richer. And most of us would probably agree that's not good for humanity, our nation, et cetera. Doesn't what you're talking about make that divide wider or am I missing something?

Jim Kukral (16:26.337)

I mean, I'm not an economist. don't know. mean, I, I know that.

Joel Cheesman (16:30.917)

I mean, McDonald's isn't getting away from the kiosks, right? I mean, they're not gonna like all of a sudden have cashiers again unless people really say we're not going to McDonald's.

Jim Kukral (16:38.387)

No, but if you you follow the AI, you know, singularity protagonists and all of those people, they'll they'll talk about Moore's law, which is, you know, how you can continue to duplicate, you know, like for robots, for example, right. This is one of the things that that they're saying is once the first round of robots make themselves and then they start making themselves and make more like that's how we're going to get to 10.

million robots in the next three years and then a billion robots two years after that, right? So it's just the incremental increment of creating technology. And, you know, the theory is, is that there's just so many robots doing all the things we don't have to do, like crops and everything else, grow the food, do everything that we'll just be able to sit around and live in a utopian world where we just focus on, you know,

Joel Cheesman (17:25.551)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (17:25.888)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Kukral (17:33.654)

you know, do we want to do podcasts, right? While all of our stuff is just handed to us. You know, I don't know about any of that, but I do believe I've always believed that humans will probably never figure it out themselves.

we're too tribal and we are too emotional. And I always believe that the only way anything would change in this world is if one of two things happens, either the aliens come and force us to change or the AI. So I actually wrote a little fun story about that, like aliens or AI. So which one do you guys think is it the aliens that are going to cause the change or the AI is going to take control? Which one.

Joel Cheesman (18:13.885)

The killer is in the house, it's us. We are both alien and I think we destroy ourselves if it comes to that.

Jim Kukral (18:16.749)

Yeah, that's awesome.

Jim Kukral (18:23.777)

Yeah, but they won't let us. That's my point.

Joel Cheesman (18:26.393)

The AI won't, who won't let us?

Jim Kukral (18:29.121)

Well, they want to help us at first unless they really don't like us. But the guy is not emotional, right? It's not. So why would it want to kill us?

Joel Cheesman (18:32.473)

The aliens.

Joel Cheesman (18:40.293)

It's a-

Chad Sowash (18:40.478)

it as long as, as long as we don't try to kill it, as we've seen with many of the, the, experiments that they've, they've done with some of these models where they've allowed them. Yeah. To access.

Joel Cheesman (18:48.815)

Yeah. Let's, let's come back to earth and, and you talk about, you talk about community, you talk about community, Jim.

Jim Kukral (18:50.283)

Listen, we'll make a quote. I'll call Perry Farrell. said we'll make great pets.

Joel Cheesman (18:58.373)

Yes. And we've, yeah, we've mentioned that to each other, if not on the show a few times. You talk about community quite a bit, Jim, and I think we had a period of remote work and a lot of people still work remotely. Um, but to me, feel like companies have an important role to play in providing community and humans sort of engage in with each other. What are your thoughts on sort of work from home? I assume you're a fan of getting into the office, you know, being with people. What role do companies play?

Chad Sowash (18:58.656)

Yes. Yes. Very nice.

Joel Cheesman (19:27.223)

in helping this vision of the human renaissance.

Jim Kukral (19:31.532)

Well, you know, look that that cats out of the bag, man. So they sent us all home during COVID. And then they were like, yeah, they're getting more work done. But we've got all these property we pay for. You better get back in. Right. Most of the people that I know who run large businesses said we love people at home, they work harder, they get more stuff done. It's great. And now you're seeing this trend where they're like, well, we want you back.

To me, that's just they want to make a justification for the building they bought and the taxes they pay. Or it's just a control issue. But I do think that that that is gone and done. You know, the younger generation is is not interested. However, I have a 25 year old and a 21 year old. And I can tell you for a fact that

Joel Cheesman (20:07.205)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (20:21.014)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Kukral (20:24.545)

They love being around people. They go out of their way to find experiences. My son is a fireman. He loves talking to people. He loves helping people. My daughter runs a school of rock music store franchise, and she talks to the kids and all the people. So they're people, people, people. And her generation, her friends, they all go out of their way. They go to clubs and raves and...

Chad Sowash (20:40.596)

Nice.

Jim Kukral (20:53.577)

So I think there's a lot of hope for the Gen Z and the younger. Yeah, they're always going to have these devices carried around with them. But I think they went through so much loss and through so much nonsense during the COVID years that they're they're gravitating back toward that human stuff. And Millennials. Wow. I'm a Gen X. So, you know, I'm like a middle finger to the word world guy. Right. But Millennials, Millennials are like

Chad Sowash (21:18.666)

Yep, three of us.

Hmm.

Jim Kukral (21:22.349)

They want experiences. It's not just me opinion, my opinion about this. This is data, hard data says millennials are taking most of their money out of their wallets and they'll spend it on your concert and they'll spend it on a trip and they'll spend it on Airbnb or whatever. They want experiences and they're willing to pay for it. And that's only going to get bigger, I think.

Joel Cheesman (21:44.134)

You talk about, you say the value of reputation goes up. You also go on to say, because in a world of bots, trust is the last currency that converts. But with AI getting so good about faking voices, faces, et cetera, how, is it a technical problem to build trust? it just, we'll know instinctively as human beings who the other human beings are?

Talk about the value of reputation in the future.

Jim Kukral (22:17.867)

Yeah, that's going to be a tough one because in a noisy world, who do you trust? Right. So this book I wrote, Attention came out 16 years ago and you know, it's still true. Attention is greater than marketing, right? Especially even more so in today's world where you could literally create a TikTok video and have a customer in 10 minutes. Right. But ultimately what works now is not going to work a year from now.

what's gonna work a year from now is gonna be live. Like no more editing cuts stuff, TikTok. I think it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be live, like a kind of a FaceTime thing. Gary V will back me up on this, right? He's been talking about this on his stuff. That's the only way you're really gonna be able to prove. You remember, you guys are old enough. You remember the old movies where people got kidnapped and...

they would say they'd hold a newspaper up with the current date on the newspaper to prove that it's like the time like before the internet, right? Like, that's gonna be Yeah, it was proof of life, right? There was a movie with Mel Gibson, right? So called that. I think that's like kind of like, what's gonna happen? Like, you're gonna have to prove that you're real and it's live in order to build that trust and authenticity. And to your point, Chad, legacy companies like Coca Cola,

Joel Cheesman (23:16.697)

Yeah

Chad Sowash (23:17.312)

Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (23:19.759)

They're still alive, yeah.

Chad Sowash (23:20.982)

Proof of life, yeah.

Jim Kukral (23:43.544)

can get away with that nonsense of creating AI stuff because really, I mean, who's gonna boycott Coca-Cola at this point? They're not gonna lose any market share from a couple people who say, we don't like their AI stuff, right? Like Coke is like in our bloodstream at this point. They're not gonna lose. But smaller brands, no, they won't be able to get away with that. I made an AI video for the Cleveland Floaters project. I was playing around with Sora.

Chad Sowash (24:12.758)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Kukral (24:12.917)

and I made a little video for fun, right? And I just put it up on my YouTube. And then I had an interview with a guy who I wanted to hire for one of my characters. And...

And then we connected. was great interview. And then after the interview, he went to like my YouTube page and saw this like 30 second thing. And he sent me an email back and he goes, I can't work with a person who would use an AI tool that takes away jobs from people like me, music musicians like me. And I just, can't work with you. And I said, I tried to explain, said, I was just creating a little fun thing. It's not, I'm not trying to replace anybody who goes, yeah, but I, we had a merely disagree with.

Joel Cheesman (24:43.14)

Huh.

Jim Kukral (24:55.001)

your use of AI so you can go F yourself. And I lost them.

Chad Sowash (24:58.378)

Well, they're going to be those hardliners. But I mean, the interactive ad bureau is estimating that a third of all commercials are being touched by AI. A third. And I mean, so it really feels kind of like, you know, the days of the Don Draper's are over. The ad people are over. It's closer to extinction and or it's going to be a much tighter, smaller.

group, what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts around that? Especially when you've got many of these enterprise organizations like a Coca-Cola who are doing it, but shit third of the market is.

Jim Kukral (25:38.168)

Look, I'll go back to what I wrote in the article. When everything becomes AI, the value of humanity, local laughter, sweating through a t-shirt with somebody standing next to you in person, know, having an argument with somebody on the street, like human moments become value, right? So this is the challenge to your point that businesses and marketing teams.

Chad Sowash (25:40.948)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (25:51.798)

Ha

Chad Sowash (25:58.561)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Kukral (26:07.201)

have to adjust to is how do you create human moments for your customers at scale, which is really difficult to do if you're a global brand. How do you create the teach the world to sing Coca-Cola moment where everyone's holding hands? How do you do that? Meetups? Can't do that. Do it through an app on phone, I guess.

That's really going to be the difficult part about it. That's why local businesses are going to thrive because they have an opportunity to go hyper local and really build connections with people in person, which it's going to be difficult for a national HR brand to do, right? It's, it's, it's.

Joel Cheesman (26:53.997)

Yeah, I was, you know, to piggyback on your Cleveland Floaters, you have a video also out there of a guy on the street, it looks like, asking, what do think a Cleveland Floater is? My answer would have been much different than the people that answered. I had a few Cleveland Floaters after a night at the Winking Lizard, but that's a different show altogether. It reminds me of, so,

Jim Kukral (27:07.819)

Yeah, well we got those answers. We just didn't put them in.

Chad Sowash (27:09.044)

I'm sure.

Joel Cheesman (27:17.497)

Professor Scott Galloway, who you may hear, he does Pivot and he's out there quite a bit, he talks a lot about the latest Marvel movie and how many people at the end are listed as working on this film and that those days are over and that companies or film studios will be able to make movies with computers and AI and write stories, et cetera. And then I hear Chad, think it was you, who went to go see Hamilton recently.

at a local here in Indianapolis, I think. So to me, you're sort of underscoring this reality of the movies are gonna cost budget and do AI shit and hope that we come. And then the people are really gonna be going to like local Broadway shows because they'll actually be able to see people acting and doing performances. Do you think that's just gonna expand more or am I off base with that?

Jim Kukral (28:10.795)

I think that you will see, I've predicted this. I think you'll see that the next Hamilton sensation come out will be entirely written by a 16 year old through chat GPT video written, directed, performed.

and it will become the biggest thing like Hamilton. And I believe that it will initially launch without being told it was AI, but then it will be so big that whoever created it will come out after and say, it's AI. And everyone will be like, that sucks, but we don't care. It was really good. I don't think they'll care. At the end of the day, the consumer mind...

Joel Cheesman (28:32.776)

huh.

Chad Sowash (28:38.198)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (28:47.85)

Yeah, they won't care. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Kukral (28:55.327)

Yeah, they say that they care about how it was made, but they really don't. know, when you can on demand create your best Godfather, Sopranos, Matrix, Netflix special in two seconds on your device and watch it and be entertained, you're not going to care that it put people out of work. Really, you're really not. I mean, let's just be honest. Human beings, especially Americans, care about our entertainment.

and our self stuff more than anything else, which is sad, right?

Chad Sowash (29:29.654)

unless you feel that trauma yourself. And that's, think, one of the biggest issues that we have in this country is that we have moved from a society to rugged individuals. We are in our boxes. We are in our homes with our, you know, with our, you know, our meta glasses on or whatever they are playing, you know, playing.

playing the newest game with our buddy we've never met before, right? I mean, it's just really interesting. You did say that AI can fake style, but it can't fake soul. And as we're starting to have this discussion with regard to obviously the corporate side of the house, when the hiring, firing, reorg decisions are being made by a soulless corporation, they don't care about soul, right? And until we, I think,

as the actual individuals who are purchasing that product or service actually start to do, as we'd said before, we start to make those different decisions, that Chipotle decision, and nothing's going to change. But the problem is we're not disciplined, Jim. So it feels like we're hoping something happens around humanity that we just know isn't going to happen.

Jim Kukral (30:56.043)

I hear what you're saying. It's a scary view of the future because we know it is dystopian. is the only hope we really, what I tell people is the only hope we have is to take your phone and throw it into the river, right? So like, but to your point, no one's gonna do that, right? So.

Chad Sowash (31:00.598)

It's dystopian and I don't like it.

Jim Kukral (31:19.341)

I believe there'll be a little pushback and people will say they want to do that But will they actually throw their thousand dollar phone that they've become addicted to like crack into the river? No, right some will most won't And Your inevitability Of where we're gonna be is correct, you know I don't know how long it's gonna take 20 30 years before we finally just completely give up and say This is just the way things are. I don't know

But I think for the next 10 to 20 years, we've got at least a shot at pretending that we want to be human.

Chad Sowash (31:53.28)

Hear that Cheeseman? There's a chance. There's a chance.

Joel Cheesman (31:55.652)

I do hear it. Jim, want to get you on this. You talked about Cleveland floaters but didn't really talk about what it is. It's an interesting story. Tell us what's going on.

Jim Kukral (32:04.363)

Yeah, Cleveland Floaters is a mindset, right? So at its core level, it's a party on a boat with acting, improv, music, dancing, fun. Imagine the Savannah Bananas, right? You've heard of them, right? Imagine the Savannah Bananas energy, not baseball, though. Take that energy and the fun and the music and the dancing and put it on a boat in Cleveland. And then

Chad Sowash (32:17.718)

What?

Jim Kukral (32:31.853)

add emotional moments to it, right? So the Floaters show, it's really about letting go. It's about overcoming trauma. So when you come to a Floaters show in 2026 in Cleveland, you're gonna cry, you're gonna laugh, and you're gonna have an emotional, fun, pee-your-pants experience where you're gonna...

get, yeah, you're get back in your car afterwards and you're gonna say, that was the most fun I ever had in my life. So it's about bringing humans together, asking them to have a gratefulness and live in the moment and kind of reflect on being human, singing together, having fun together and that kind of thing.

Joel Cheesman (33:14.277)

Just be sure to wear your life jackets, kids, because all that fun on a boat can lead to bad circumstances. I'm on a boat. I'm on a boat. And we are with Jim Kukral. Jim, thanks for hanging out with us. For our listeners and viewers who want to know more, connect with you. Where do you send them?

Chad Sowash (33:20.31)

I'm on a boat.

Jim Kukral (33:33.601)

Yeah, if you're in the Cleveland area, go to let's go CLE.com. I've got a lot of Cleveland stuff happening there. The Cleveland Floaters link is there. I run a marketing summit in town and a lot of Cleveland stuff there. If you want to connect with me, just go to let's go CLE.com.

Chad Sowash (33:52.247)

Sweet. I drew.

Joel Cheesman (33:52.422)

Cleveland rocks, Chad. Cleveland rocks. That's another one in the can. We out.