Last Day of 55, Raising a Baby Genius & The Downside to Mr Fun Guy : Episode 30 Part 1

0:00 Our one wall in our great room where we spend most of our time, there's a fireplace, there's fireplace tools, there's things, there's a, there's a fencing foil, like hang in there. There's, there's, there's a bow and arrow right next to the couch, machetes, but there's stuff all over the shelves, all within reach of her. And not like I, I could care less about, she'll, she's going to break stuff and there's, okay. But I'm just worried about like, well, there's so much, there's so many hard edges. I'm like, there aren't enough pool noodles in the city for me to cover every hard edge.

0:45 This is the gray hair and daycare podcast with a combined age of 111 years and a combined IQ right in that same range. Your hosts, Frank Syrio and Carlo Russo. Welcome back. Here we are. We're back, Frankie. It is the last, it is the, this is the last time I can say, as I usually do, that I am Frank Syrio. I'm 55 years old and my little girl is six months and five days old because tomorrow's my birthday. I'm gonna be 56. Happy birthday to you, Frank. Yes, it is. It's your birthday.

1:26 You're 56 tomorrow. I'll be 56. Tomorrow is the one day of the year that we are the, well, there's two days. Yeah. Because yours is the same 13th. Yeah. This is the 13th minus the 11th. So did you know that September is the biggest birthday month of the year? You know, I didn't know that as a fact, but I always thought that because everybody I run into the majority of people go, I was born in September. I was born in September. I'm like, okay, that must be mean something. So what's nine months prior to that? Where it's really cold. It's just, it's January. Let's get, yeah, let's get comfy. That's what it is. It's either that or it's the Christmas gift for the dad. That's right. So here we are.

2:06 I am about to be 56 years old. The baby is a little baby. Josie is six months and five days old. And we have lots of, uh, lots of fun stuff to talk about and a betrayal of our equipment that has made this a hellish experience. Yeah. We have a new studio, which a lot of people have liked so far the way it looks on screen, wherever you watch your podcasts. But, uh, yeah, it looks nice. It looks nice. But the camera, the brand new camera. It keeps overheating. We don't know why it didn't do it last time. But you think you know why now? Maybe we'll see. But if not hammer. Somebody's getting a new old camera.

2:47 Man, it was awful, but we are, we are back and hopefully everything is going to keep, keep recording like it's supposed to. This looks fine. And we will go from there. So we're going to start off. Tell me. With Book Report. Now Book Report is always not a book. It's an article or something that somebody told you. Yes, it's a story that some stranger told me. You read the package. Yes. So this time Book Report is an article that I found on Psychology Today. Nice. Psychology Today has had some great articles about childhood development and things like that.

3:28 And the article is about teaching a kid how to think like a genius. And the premise, kind of the premise of the article, which I thought is timely, is AI and how powerful it's becoming and how things are changing. Kelly and I were talking about this this morning. We're talking about starting a 529 program, right? So to start saving for baby Josie's education. Bank account talk. And I'm thinking by the time she is that age, I don't even know what it's going to be like, right? Like what is higher education going to be like?

4:09 Are colleges... Because right now we're kind of, I think, at a turning point where people are starting to see that that kind of formal education is a lot of times just throwing good money after bad, right? A lot of people have seen it more as a business for the schools and educational process for us to have to go through. Right. Or worse yet, you're spending a lot of money to have your kid indoctrinated into... Oh, that's... A whole different kind of a philosophy from what you wanted to raise them with. Setting all that stuff aside, thinking about AI is good at what schools have always been focused on, right? Like when you send your kid to public school or we went to public school, it's about kind of...

4:54 The learning that you do is about kind of recall, it's memorization and kind of process-based. So it's learning how to do something or remembering certain facts. It's not about... It was a formula, right? There was like when you learn a... Yeah, I think that's basically it's recall and understanding. Understanding concepts and remembering facts. Right. AI is better than everybody at that, right? It knows everything, it understands process and it has the ultimate kind of recall. So how is baby Josie going to operate?

5:34 Because that stuff becomes kind of meaningless, right? If you're good at what they're teaching you at school, it's already in your phone, right? Somebody that... All that AI is so much better than an average human. And we're at the top of... We're at the beginning of AI. Yeah, so... She's going to see... She's going to be living AI. Completely different world. So what the article talks about is what AI doesn't do is the kind of genius thinking and the model that they use is Da Vinci. And they're thinking that really a genius connects knowledge across disciplines, right? So a large language model, AI stuff is good at knowing specific things and particular things, but it doesn't necessarily make connections across disciplines.

6:22 When you think about Da Vinci, it was art and he connected art to anatomy. And understanding anatomy informed his art. And understanding arithmetic informed his engineering. It was the idea of he would make these connections, these leaps between sciences. AI will definitely do that eventually. Eventually it will, but right now it's much more... Right? Which is great, but it's not going to come up with those creative leaps. Maybe someday it will, but right now it doesn't. So getting kids to focus on and educating them in a way that makes those connections.

7:07 And the example that they gave was kind of like a Montessori school where they give kids a project and say, break the kids up into teams and they're going to design a catapult. So it allows them to... Then they go and they study history and they look at ancient war machines and catapults and trebuchets and all these things. And then they study the physics of how it works. And then they understand the math and they start to look at the length of the arm and the difference in how far it can throw something. And then they look at communication and they graph out their results and they can create a presentation. At the same time, they're building their brain. I mean, they're creating... They're learning all these things, but they're also learning to connect history and physics and mathematics and communication across disciplines in a very unique way.

7:57 What is different between what AI is doing, collecting all information? Because that's what it's doing, right? AI is collecting everything that's ever been said or done to this project, to this idea that you give it. I think... So it's grabbing everything, right? A good example, I think, is like I was using AI just the other day for work. And what I'm doing is I'm looking at different locations, potential locations for the company I work for. And I was telling... I was basically telling AI, look, I have these five locations and this is how they perform. And I'm looking at these other five locations as a potential for the next location, which one's best? And it gave me some answers, but the answers were only as good as the detail that I gave it.

8:42 It didn't make connections that I didn't ask it for. It didn't go beyond what you said. Right. I told it, these are the sales and these are the cities in which those sales happened. Now look at these cities and tell me which one's going to be a better place for me to open a new venue. And it just superficially, that was it. Oh, here, because it made some assumptions about the demographics of the market and how much available income those people have. And that must be what it is. Where I started to then give it different breakdowns. And no, I want you to look at the population in a wider area.

9:26 You were creating its search. Essentially, I have to inform it. And that's what... What to do. There's whole curriculums now around how you build queries for AI. Right. Prompt building for AI. So right now, as powerful as it is, it's only as good as the mind that's guiding it. And it's not going to make those leaps of connections. If a person tells it to, then yes, it will. Do you think AI will never be... It's going to be probably a lot. It's going to be all over the place. Do you think the difference is because I heard a lot...

10:07 It's never going to be really what we fear because it's soulless? I don't know. Do you think that's going to... I don't know about all of those. I don't know about any of those things because I don't understand. I think ultimately what I always come back to when I think about that stuff is our faith. Right. It's not a person. It doesn't have a soul. That's what I mean. It can only think it has a soul. I don't have a good answer for that. I do think though, with the way it grows and how quickly things accelerate with that stuff, it's going to be in our lifetime. It'll be scary. Right. Yeah. It already can be. Yeah. I was talking to my son who's 24 and he says 99% of whatever he's doing is AI stuff.

10:51 Oh yeah. I'm not surprised at all. And he's 24. So he's, God willing, has a long life ahead of him and they're already thrown into this and they understand it. They understand it like they were born with it and they weren't. I think they're just younger. Their brain can kind of. They're used to that. Yeah. They grew up with the internet. We're still like, well, okay. You ask a 50 something year old about AI. If you're not like you were looking into it and all that, you're going to be like me. Yeah. I know it does a lot of stuff. Right. Now it's just like. Everything. Yeah. Everything you do here. Almost everything we do for the podcast. Basically, I take the recording. It transcribes it. I take that transcription. I give it to a different AI.

11:33 That AI comes up with a creative title to use for the video file. It gives me a description. It goes chapter markers with a little funny comment. Like it's like I could never do. It would take a team of 10 people to do this podcast. So to get back to the article, are we, as this goes higher, are people going to get less educated, like smarter? Because we now just have to. I think. We now speak in AI prompts. I just read an article of the guy who really was one of the founding fathers of the technology behind AI basically says he believes it's going to create unemployment on a scale that people can't even imagine because it will in many ways.

12:20 It already does. Like we always thought, and I think we've said this before on the podcast. We always thought the robots were going to take over the factory jobs. Yeah. Right. We've said that for. No, the robots, the AI, now it eliminates. Robots. It eliminates graphic designers. I know. Copywriters. We're worried about factory work. Yeah. Copywriters, movie editors, writers, a lot more creative stuff or skill-based in the creative arts. Yeah. So I don't know. I would like to believe that it's going to free people up to be even. To do what? To be even more creative.

13:01 But I think in all likelihood, it's going to change the economics of how our world works because being smarter than the next guy will start to mean less. Yeah. Which can be good in many ways because I would like to think, well, you know, it's never going to be able to create music or art or things, but it, but it kind of already in many ways is. It's going to get so much better than what. Right. You're hearing now. Yeah. So five years from now, we're not going to know what the difference between a song. Five years for that kind of technology is like. A hundred. Is hundreds of years for people. Just between the time that we heard about AI.

13:43 Yeah. And now the difference that we've seen like before is like, you can tell that's AI and yes, you can still do, but it's gotten so much better and quicker. And like you said, things that we use just on a normal podcast. Yeah. That you would have to have a staff of people before. Editing. In the time. Drawing. In the time that we went and over our lifetime, we went from VCRs to streaming. Yeah. Right. Now there was all those steps. It was VCRs and then it was, and then there was a, then there were DVDs and then there were Blu-rays and then eventually it was streaming. So that took however long it took. In that 25 years, AI is going to do things that we can't even imagine.

14:24 Oh my God. 25 years. We can't even imagine what it's going to do. So for her, like, so my point was when I was talking with Kelly earlier, I'm like, if we're going to put money into a 529 and all it can do is, and then all you can do with that money is formal like college education, I would rather just invest money for her. I would rather, that's one thing I believe I learned. Yeah. Because the world will be different. I learned too late in life. I think the only way you're going to survive in this new economy, whatever it becomes, is if you are doing something, if you, if you're working for yourself. If I had met my boss that I work for now for, I've worked for him for 12 years.

15:06 If I had met him when I was 20, 25, instead of 45, I would have, I would, I would be in a very different position now because it is the, his risk tolerance and his, I mean, he's a brilliant guy to begin with, but he was willing to take chances that when I was the same age he was, when he started really rolling the dice on his own talent, I would never near, I would never have tried that opportunity. No, I just, I never, I would never have taken a chance, the chances that he took, but as a result, he's built himself a heck of a lot.

15:46 Easier than us, hopefully. Absolutely. So for her, I would much rather put a big pile of money in front of her and say, you want to, you want to go to, you want to go to college and you want to, you want to get a master's, you want to go be a doctor? Here you go. Or do you want to start a business? There you go. Or. Or, or we're just talking about, I say or a lot. Yeah. Some of my friends don't like it. I don't like it at all. Luckily the ones who don't, don't watch. Yeah. But college, like you're, you're thinking with our brain now, college might not even be an option 18 years from now. It might be like, or that is an option, but no one's doing it anymore.

16:28 I don't think anybody, I honestly think that's what it's going to be. People are understanding that, look, the best employee I have, the best employee I have ever had has never set foot in a school his entire life. Right now he's a unique person and he has his own unique gifts and talents. Not everybody might be able to do that, but the resources that are available now online, even without talking about AI, just the, your access to information, it's, it's such a different world. I don't think people are going to place value on, you know, on that stuff the way they did. But I think in teaching a child, I think about it all the time when I'm, I'm looking at, especially at this, she's only six months old, but I look at her and I see, we're like a lot of times in the morning when we wake up, Kelly will take her out of the cradle wise and put her in bed between us.

17:24 And the other day she's laying there and she looks at, she looks at Kelly and then she'll roll over and she'll look at me and then she just takes her hand and she goes, and she's going, looking at her hand and doing it. And she's just figuring things out. And I, and I'm watching her just, it just every day, it's something new she's doing and figuring out and she's watching and paying attention. And it's so ground level at that. There's no computers. It's like, what is this? Yeah, this is just, oh, I can reach my feet and I can think I can get that in my mouth. Right. It's, it's, I don't even know what a mouth is. I'm like, I'm going to get that hole.

18:05 Yeah. Yeah. Like we're giving her, we're doing this thing called baby led weaning. Have you ever heard of that? Baby what? Baby led weaning. Nope. This is fascinating. You're going to learn all about it. You can start it with a tally. It's a little late, but Nick's up. So you're watching her figuring things out. And I think about, look, I want to be able to do this stuff. And luckily I'm interested in and do, I love to do lots of things. So I can't wait to be like plop her down and be like, here, this is how you edit a podcast. And that's so much more different. Like from our parents. Yeah. I was just like, I had some of that stuff with my dad only as far as educational wise.

18:48 Like, well, it wasn't like it was on purpose. It was, he needed somebody to hold the lumber while he was working on it. Ours was more like labor. You're the human vice. Yeah. I learned a lot by watching him, but it was only because I was bored. And, but it wasn't because he was like, so this is how you do this. It was hold this. And I had to hold it. My favorite thing was when he was, I always remember my father doing something with plumbing. And of course it was all copper plumbing. So he's, he's, you know, doing the solder and I'm holding the pipe and it's getting warmer and the solder is dripping on my hand. And I'm like, hold it still.

19:30 Like it was always stuff like that. There was always an element of danger, but, but I did, I did learn a lot that way, but it was not, it was more like, it wasn't instructional at all. It was just like, Oh, watching. Oh, this is what he's doing. I get it. Two by four, hold this here. Don't let it move. I'll show you how to make a garden. So yeah. Being able to do that stuff, I'm looking forward to. And then thinking about, I do want to put it into kind of these, it's good for me to read that article and think about, okay. Cause I would be, I'm, I say I'm awful with history and natural, like natural sciences. Kelly is like, has an encyclopedic knowledge of nature and plants and birds.

20:15 And it's like, she's God, I'm dumb. She's knows all this stuff. She makes me feel like I have no idea. She always says, everybody knows this. I'm like, no, everyone does not know these things. Everybody knows this. Did you read that in third grade? Third grade? Third grade. I was staring out the window from second to fifth. I was watching squirrels. Yeah, I was staring at a bird for an hour and a half out our window. So anyway, but I think it was a great article, psychology today, online, teaching a kid to think like a genius. I thought it was, it was very valuable. So that is our book report. Don't miss any of the fun.

20:56 Subscribe on YouTube. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and tech doc. And now what's next? One of my favorites, just because I like the name, the silver Fox mailbox. So for the silver Fox mailbox, uh, what do we got? What do we got? Our super fan, Christine, Christine, what's going on? She's always right there. I can't tell you how much it's comforting to know that there's, she's always going to have something for us. She really does communicate to us. It is. It's nice. More people need to join in. So we got both, we both got high fives from virtual high fives from Christine, me for sticking up for my wife when her mother was kind of mean to her, she felt like that was the right thing to do.

21:36 And I, I sincerely appreciate hearing that from another wife. Interestingly enough, I think, I don't think anything that things have, things haven't improved really for between me and her parents, but I think things are good and I can see things are better. Like they're talking, so Kelly and her mom and her dad are communicating regularly. Again, I'm sure they're not asking how I am probably. Your invitation probably won't be in the mail. No, and that's okay. But because look, it comes down to, it's a, it's a pretty simple equation for me. My daughter is impacted by how Kelly is feeling and Kelly, her energy, Kelly feels better now because of what has happened and keeping that, those relationships framed the way they are than she did otherwise.

22:33 Good. And that's all I care about. A little high five on that. Yeah. So that was, that was good. The high five for you was, I think you, you had commented how, I think it was, I think it might've been Natalia that went away on a trip and you, or it might've been Nick and you were calling like, call me when you get to the airport, call me when you land, all that. And she's like, good job. Let me tell you something. Whatever they do. The other day, the other day I was watching NFL started and I was watching, my team is the Buffalo Bills and, and you're going to hear this a couple of weeks, but game one, we had the comeback of the year, the game of the year. That was something. That was something. I just, I know nothing about football.

23:14 I don't watch, but the girl on the morning news the next day was just talking. She was kind of talking through it. And I'm like, wow, this sounds like it would, I kind of felt like I wanted to watch. I'm going to, I'm going to show you a video if you haven't seen it yet that I did. Oh, no, I haven't seen it. As a Buffalo Bills fan. Okay. And you'll have the whole experience through this video. You guys can watch it. Watching you. It's called every Buffalo Bill fan watching the game. That's what I labeled it. That's awesome. Can't wait to see it. Speaking about the high five, my sons, because of me, I've become obviously Buffalo Bill fans. So my other son was in college, Nicholas. He was calling me. Are you seeing what's going on? And then I realized I haven't heard anything from my oldest son, Natale.

23:58 Right. I heard from him at 746 saying, dad, are you ready for the game? I'm like, absolutely. Great. And then throughout the whole game, there was no, like, this sucks. Oh, my God, we're getting beat. Oh, I knew this. And I wasn't even thinking of it. You know, Nick was coming back and forth a couple of times, but nothing major. And then the big comeback and they win. And I realized, wait a minute, I haven't heard from my son Natale since 746. And this is a huge game. There is no way. That he's not interested. That he's not interested or not watching. So now my brain totally goes to the bad place. Right. Absolutely.

24:38 I don't even give it a second. Something must be wrong. Because you know your family, you know your kids. This is a huge comeback. This is a huge game. First game of the year. My other son, who's in college, is calling me doing videos and all that. And I'm like, OK, what is going on? And for three hours, I freaked out. And I had to fall asleep not knowing. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, because it was it's late. The game gets over. The game was over like 1130, 12. So I call his I call his living girlfriend. She's not home. She's away at a wedding or what they call a bachelorette party out of town. OK, so she did come for me and say, well, I did.

25:22 He did text me at 10. He might have fell asleep because we were losing. Right. But I went to bed. So it doesn't end ever. Never, ever, ever, never. Never ends. So, yeah, I tell them to call me every minute you go away. You're driving your airlines. Call me the minute I become my mother. That's funny. That's not going to stop. That was exactly what she commended you for. Like, that's what that's what a parent's job is. Keep your finger on that pulse. I wish I don't go right to horror. Yeah, that's got to be the worst part. I go right to something's wrong. Like somebody fell asleep. He's only been dead for two hours. Well, yeah, she was. Exactly.

26:02 So I wish my mind can go. Well, you probably fell asleep. Yeah, but it doesn't. And well, welcome to this world. Is that what it was? He just fell asleep on the couch. I missed it. So so there was always great stuff from Christine. Thank you, Christine. Lots of positive. We did get lots of positive comments on the new our new set. Yes. And people liking that. It's a little more normal, warm looking. And we got a little more space. You feel like we're out. Yeah, there's more we can spread out a little bit. There was a comment from Trina. Trina was entertained by my strategy to fade into the hedges to fade back during the vaccination process.

26:47 That is so I didn't get I didn't want. Oh, you mean when you were in the room with a baby? Me and her comment does make sense. It made me think because her comment was, you're just setting it up so that baby Josie is going to think that when she needs to be comforted, that you're nowhere to be found, that it's that mom is the one. And I thought that's true that that is true. You know, we're near her. I'm never around when anything bad happens. True. So pain is not on your side. I'm equal pain. I'm Mr. Fun guy. Huh? That's it. So I think you're going to lose something.

27:27 Right. She may be right. So maybe next time I'll try to help. I'll begin or I'll just when it's happening, not yet. And then show up immediately afterwards to console her. That's going to be my strategy. How did mommy do this to you? Why did mommy? I don't know why I'll just push her away. Yeah, let me get you on that. So but so I had that comment, which I appreciate it. Yeah, I always have a plan. That's not always good. But now for for this particular episode of the Silver Fox Mailbox, I have an ask. I want to ask everybody to give me your input. Like you guys, a lot of times will give a have given us suggestions or comments or thoughts on what we've talked about.

28:11 One of the things that's coming up as I'm watching and we'll talk about it more later. Baby Josie is starting to move around a lot more than so. It's only a matter of time before she is no longer under our control. Oh, my God. And my house, I love my house. But I have and like I have lived on my own, surrounded by my own stuff and adult stuff for a while. I've never had to worry about things being in certain places. I have probably the least baby proof house. There are dangerous things everywhere, right?

28:52 Like so I'm like it's going to be a major project to baby proof this house. Yes. In a way that we'll be able to keep her safe. So that is my my tires on stands. There's a lot right in our head. There are things just everywhere. Yeah, like there's things that you don't even you wouldn't even think of. No, just on our boat. Like we have our one wall in our great room where we spend most of our time. There's a fireplace. There's fireplace tools. There's things that there's a there's a fencing foil that hang like hang in there. There's there's there's a bow and arrow right next to the couch. Machetes. But there's stuff all over the shelves, all within reach of her.

29:34 Yeah. And not like I care less about she's going to break stuff. And there's OK, but I'm just worried about it. Like, well, there's so much there's so many hard edges. I'm like, there aren't enough pool noodles in the city for me to cover every hard edge in in my place. So what I want is give me your best baby proofing recommendations because my house is going to need a lot of it. Well, what we did, you take the obvious, the obvious stuff gone, right? I mean, just, you know, the obvious walk through and collect it all and get it out. No, this is the sword is not going to get tired is whatever you take the obvious stuff up. Then. Then you go around, go potential stuff, height.

30:17 OK, that's probably not good to have you wait there or whatever it is. Yeah. Then the other thing is then you just follow the baby and they will show you what. Oh, yeah, they're going to lead you right to the exactly. Yeah. So when you're when you take the obvious stuff out there and you take the the not so obvious, but you can kind of see it. But you still got to watch. Then you let the baby lead you to the promised land and you remove it and it's gone. So that worked for me. You have a bigger house than we did when we had our kids. I think we'll be able to have zones that we know are safe. Yeah. But it's going to be some work. So that's my ask. Let us know. Let me know what your baby proofing hacks are.

30:59 I would appreciate that. But that is our Silver Fox mailbox. Thanks again for joining us. We've covered a lot of ground and there's even more to come. But we're going to close for now. We hope you can join us next week and hear everything else that's been going on with baby Josie. And subscribe to this show on YouTube and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. We'll see you next week. Well, folks, that's another episode of the Gray Hair and Daycare podcast in the books. Thanks very much for tuning in and spending this time with us. We hope it was fun. If you enjoyed this week's descent into the madness of dadness, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss any of our future adventures.

31:40 While you're at it, give us a like and share the cast with your friends on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, carrier pigeon, whatever you crazy kids are using. Have any hilarious parenting stories of your own? Questions about navigating fatherhood later in life or even when normal people do it? Email us at ghdc.podcast at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed.