Hey pals, let's talk about everyday miracles. The mind blowing, perfectly timed stuff that makes life on earth possible. No, not the winning the lottery twice kind of miracle, but the kind that happens every single day all around us and we barely stop to notice. Think about it. Our planet sits in the perfect spot, protected by a magnetic shield and blessed with a water cycle recycling every drop like a pro. Tiny insects navigate miles without gps. Plants turn sunlight into food and Jupiter plays bodyguard chasing asteroids away. Coincidence? Luck? Or is this the universe showing off its genius? Today we're diving into 20 jaw dropping natural wonders that prove nature is the ultimate engineer and chemistry. So grab a coffee just like me and Joe. Get comfy. Let's geek out about some of the most mind boggling, reality defying wonders of the universe. I'm Curtis and my once in a lifetime miracle pal over there is Joe and we are dudes in progr. Hey Joe.
Hello Kurt, my miracle friend.
Good morning.
What is the best book or best experience that you know of with the term miracle in it other than the things we're going to talk about today?
Boy.
And you're not allowed to use the Bible, by the way.
I was just going to use the Bible.
Nope, nope, too easy.
Well, this episode was inspired by a book that I really like and an author I really like. I wasn't going to give it away yet.
Okay, well don't give it away.
What's yours? You must have a lead in.
When I think miracles and I remove the Bible stuff, there are three things that come to mind for me. One of them is the book by Hal Elrod called the Miracle Morning which he uses his savior's platform. And if you use it, it, it really is like a miracle in your life. It puts you in focus, it helps you move your goals forward. It just sets the stage for a great day if you follow the process closely. So that's the first thing that I think about. And then the second thing that I think about. I said three things. Maybe there's only two. I think about the miracle on ice. Do you remember that back in what, 1980? 81 when the US hockey team beat the Russians in the semifinals for the Olympics? And who's that announcer? He does Sunday Night Football now. Oh gosh.
Al.
Al Michaels. Yeah. Al Michaels says, do you believe in miracles? I just love that.
I love that the movie was by Disney.
When I hear about miracles, when I hear the word miracles, those are the things that come to come to my head. Plus my daughter's a bit. My youngest daughter is A bit of a miracle. She was born two weeks after we found out my wife was pregnant. That's a whole nother story, but that's certainly a miracle that we can talk about some other time.
I absolutely remember the 1981 hockey. That's the best, most important sports event in the history of the world. Yeah, I remember it. I was watching it too.
Crazy. What fun that was.
Well, we're not going to talk about any of those. This is going to be a different. This is going to be more of a natural miracles. I was going to.
Sorry to throw you off.
I'm wondering how are you feeling after traveling 67 miles an hour over the last 24 hours, Joe?
I'm whipped, man. I'm whipped. My hair is blown back and feel like I got a face. Feel like I got a facelift. 67,000 miles an hour is. That's traveling, dude.
That's how fast the Earth is traveling in its orbit right now.
Isn't that amazing?
It blows your mind. It's a miracle.
67,000 miles in the last 24 hours. I can't fathom it. You can't fathom it? You don't feel. So are you saying that it's traveled 67,000 miles in the past 24 hours or it's going 67,000 miles an hour?
Well, you'd have to multiply 67,000 times 24 because it's going that fast an hour. Wow.
That's amazing. That's amazing. Wow.
Well, I'll define a miracle for you in the context of what we're talking about here. A miracle is an extraordinary natural phenomenon where complex systems governed by precise physical laws, biological intricacies and cosmic alignments work in perfect harmony to sustain life against improbable odds.
Yeah, miracles are something else, aren't they? Throughout the Bible. I think they happen every day if we pay attention. And some of these big ones are really mind blowing. I got a glimpse at your list. I'm like, wow, this is good stuff. But I think about miracles and it's funny because the scientific community really doesn't accept miracles. They. There's some things that they just can't explain away through the typical scientific method. I think about the Big Bang and they can scientifically explain everything except for one thing. What caused it. Yeah, right. Yeah, they can. They the scientific community, and rightfully they don't believe in miracles except for one. Give us this one miracle and we'll explain the rest.
I don't think they got it all.
Figured out yet, but none of Us do. None of us do.
Let's have some fun with this one. This again was inspired by one of my favorite Christian authors, Mark Batterson. He brings a lot of science into his books. I have 20 of these, but this first one really came from him in a book that's in an intro beginning of one of his books. And I had it described as the Goldilocks zone in the Earth's perfect orbit, that precision that sustains life. So Earth isn't just the perfect distance from the sun, it's almost in an almost perfect circular orbit. To keep that distance stable, if the earth were just 1% closer to the sun, the extra heat would boil our oceans, evaporating the water, and it makes life possible. The atmosphere would become thick with carbon dioxide, triggering a runaway greenhouse effect like Venus, where temperatures would soar 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and that's hot enough to melt lead. Not only that, the Earth is just. If it was just 1% farther from the sun, the drop in temperature would freeze our water supply, covering the planet in ice and turning Earth into a frozen, lifeless desert like Mars, where average temperature hovers around minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That literally blew me away when I read that. Joe. That is the perfection of that distance is really incredible.
And if you think about it, if you think about how incredible it really is, because if you pull back and you travel back about where we are in the Milky Way. Okay, where we are in the Milky Way, it seems rather random, right? The Earth isn't the center of anything, right?
Yeah.
It's just on this. It's on one of the arms of the Milky Way. And if you look, we're just there, but there is the absolute perfect spot. It seems so random when you look back, but right there is the absolute perfect spot. And you wouldn't think it is because it's not the center of anything. It's not. We're what? We're third. We're the third planet from the Sun. We're just there. Very mediocre, it seems, the placement, yeah, but it's the perfect spot. This blows me away, man.
That was the.
This really does.
I just blew away. I can't get my arms around that. Not only is the distance perfect, but the Earth's orbit, if it were more elliptical, we'd experience extreme heat and freezing cycles that would make life impossible.
So that orbit, it's such a razor thin margin, exactly like it was placed there.
Mark Batterson said this, summing it up, the sun is 27 million degrees Fahrenheit at its core. Yet it warms our skin with just the right touch. If the Earth were any closer or farther, life wouldn't exist. That's not luck. That's divine design. It's a miracle hidden in plain sight. Joe, every sunrise is a reminder that we are living in the perfect place at the perfect time with the perfect conditions to thrive.
And here's a perspective. We're living that miracle right now, and we're so entrenched in that miracle that we hardly recognize it. There's a real philosophical lesson there, isn't there? That we're living in that miracle right now, and we're so entrenched in it that we don't even recognize it. I wonder how many other miracles we have in our life that we just don't recognize because we're so entrenched in it. I'll bet we're going to talk about some of them here.
I got 19 more, but there are more.
All right.
How about Earth's protective magnetic field? Earth has an invisible field that blocks deadly solar radiation. Without it, solar winds would strip away our atmosphere, leaving us exposed like Mars. It's like having a cosmic force field protecting us from the Sun's worst mood swings. Yeah. So we got this protective shield around us, and then we've got the Moon's perfect size and distance. This is Earth's cosmic stabilizer. The Moon keeps Earth's tilt steady, preventing extreme climate swings. It controls ocean tides, which are crucial for marine life and weather patterns. If the Moon were slightly different in size or distance, our seasons would be chaotic. Did you know that about the Moon? You just look at it in awe at night.
Yeah. And I love the idea of the Moon's influence on our tides. And if we. When we think about the tides, Kurt, we think about the water moving over land. Right. We think about the water is moving, but that's not really what's happening. The Earth is moving through the water because we are what, whatever percent water we are. The land of the Earth is actually moving through the water. And that just blows me away to think the perspective is the water is moving, but the Earth is moving through the water. And the influence of the tides. The influence of the Moon on the tides, the influence on the Moon, of the Moon on many things, is probably a study in and of itself. Because if it can pull tides, what is it doing internally in our bodies? Right. What does that affect or influence internally in our bodies? This is a really interesting subject, and.
You totally ignored the Moon when you talked about spring last week, Joe, see how you forgot that miracle?
Yeah. What did I ignore?
It helped bring spring to us.
The movement of the moon or the orbit or.
Yeah, the seasons would be chaotic without the moon.
Yeah, I'm sorry, Moon, you should be completely dropped the ball on you.
How about Jupiter? I didn't know about this. Jupiter's massive gravity deflects asteroids and comets that might otherwise slam into Earth. We never think Jupiter at all, Joe. Without it, Earth would be like a cosmic dartboard, constantly hit by space rocks. It's like having a big brother in space who takes the punches for us, Jupiter. We forgot to thank Jupiter too.
I've always loved Jupiter. As a kid it was other than Earth because I'm here. It was always my favorite planet. I just loved how big it was. I love that big red spot. I love that it's. It seems to be the King of Planets. I always looked at it like the King of Planets and it is the Great Protector. I love how you frame that. It really is our Great Protector. And I read something about this recently about Jupiter. This role that Jupiter plays in our entire solar system was confirmed by when the comet Shoemaker slammed into Jupiter in the 1994. That comet, had it. Had it been on its. Not on a path without Jupiter would have crushed Earth, destroyed it.
I didn't know this comet Shoemaker.
Yeah. Slammed into Jupiter in 1994 and had that. As I understand it. Had that comet went on a path that didn't engage or Jupiter didn't engage on it, I guess you would say it would have slammed into Earth and just devastated us. Thank you, Jupiter.
I didn't even know this. The rare solar eclipse. The sun is 400 times bigger than the Moon but also 400 times farther away, making them appear the same size in the sky. This perfect match creates breathtaking total solar eclipses. Something incredibly rare in the universe. It's like nature's ultimate magic trick. So precise, it seems designed. Now, the solar eclipse which we had.
Recently, I never took that into account. But the math has to work, right? In order for them. In order for there to be a solar eclipse, that math has to work. And I didn't realize it until the last solar eclipse. When was that? Last year, the year before. I was in Texas at the time, so I didn't get the full view of it, but yeah, it has to be 400. The sun is 400 times the size of the Moon and 400 times further away, which it's exact. And Earth is the only place for that. I love that man. It Is like nature's little magic trick. But it's also one of those signs that if you believe in intelligent design and that there is a creator of the universe, it's one of those signs that wouldn't necessarily involve evolution. It has nothing to do with our human experience here other than it's there.
Yeah.
And it's like God saying, check this out, man. Look what I can do.
Researching these. It definitely started to appear to me. There must be a creator. Got to add that into this conversation. Water's unique properties. Water expands when it freezes, making ice float instead of sink. If it didn't, lakes and oceans would freeze solid from the bottom up, killing everything inside. Water can absorb and release heat slowly, helping regulate Earth's temperature. It's like the thermostat of our planet, keeping temperatures stable and life thriving.
Can't live without water, can we?
That's what they look for when they're looking for life on another planet.
I read that humans can survive weeks without food, but only days without water.
That's right.
That's how important water is. Have you ever been just dramatically dehydrated, like super dehydrated, and how much that affects everything? Everything about the way we think, about the way we are, about. It affects everything. Dehydration is dangerous to us, and it's because water plays a miraculous role in our life if we get there.
I have a bonus about water.
All right.
Earth's oxygen is recycling. Trees and microscopic ocean creatures called plankton constantly produce oxygen, ensuring we never run out of this breathable air. Without them, Earth's atmosphere will run out of. Of fresh air, making life impossible. Nature is basically a giant air purifier, keeping our planet fresh. I love oxygen, too. Need that as much as we need water.
Here's an interesting little fact. Plankton in Oceans produce over 50% of the Earth's oxygen.
Wow. Yeah, I didn't.
How about that?
I'd never have thought that. Thank you, little planktons.
Yeah, like Jupiter. We don't appreciate you enough.
Aren't the whales eating them?
Isn't that funny that this great big, huge animal in the ocean eats this? They diet on the smallest animal there is. Not the smallest, but you know what I mean.
I know. I love animals, too. We could do a whole show on animals. I'm having fun with these plate tectonics. Earth's crust is broken into giant moving plates, which help regulate carbon and climate. These movements recycle nutrients and prevent Earth from becoming a frozen rock or a scorching wasteland without plate tectonics, Earth would be lifeless like Mars or Venus. Yeah, we're not just solid rock, Joe. We got moving plates. Of course they cause earthquakes.
I don't know when the tectonic plates were discovered, but it's relatively recently that we realize that we're on this kind of floating land thing. Over the molten lava, we talked about.
The seasons, but it's also due to this Earth's tilt. It tilts 23.5 degrees, giving us the seasons instead of just one extreme climate. This tilt ensures that sunlight is spread evenly, keeping weather patterns balanced. Without it, some places would never see summer or winter, and boy, that'd be a boring winter.
And we just talked about spring, right? I love where we are right now, where I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, because we really do experience all four seasons almost equally. And we get full summers, we get full springs, full autumns, or fall and full winters. And I love this perfect little spot we are for the seasons I would miss if I moved somewhere else. I would miss the season. So, yeah, I'm glad the earth is tilted 23 and a half degrees. And even, to make it even more miraculous, placed me right here where all the. All I get the full impact of all the seasons.
One more in.
Oh, I thought you said you had.
21 more in astronomy. I guess. And then I got some biological miracles. The atmosphere, in the protective layer called the ozone layer that blocks deadly UV rays, preventing skin burns and DNA damage. The atmosphere also burns up meteors, stopping space rocks before they crash into us. Helping out Jupiter. It's like Earth is wearing a helmet and a sunscreen at all times.
This has nothing to do with this fact, but it reminded me of it. Have you heard of something called the Van Allen Belt?
Maybe. Go ahead.
It seems to be this radiation belt around Earth that keeps us from actually going outside of Earth's atmosphere. Human beings. And this is where all the moon landing, anti moon landing people, the conspiracy theorist about the moon landing, this is where they talk about it and have no idea why this reminded me of that. But there we go. There's something weird to talk about.
All right, we got some biological miracles. DNA, this is precise. The code of life carries the blueprint for all living organisms, ensuring accurate development and function itself replicates with minimal errors, allowing evolution without compromising essential traits. For example, the CRISPR gene editing technology exploits DNA's precision to treat genetic diseases. Yeah, the DNA. I wasn't discovered that long ago.
Yeah, I read something about this too. The DNA replication errors occur in fewer than one In a billion base pairs, despite billions of replications happening while daily in our body. How about that for accuracy?
There's a lot of that going on in these biological ones. The human brain. We talked a little bit about this recently. The most complex organ in existence, the human brain, processes 86 billion neurons to enable intelligence, emotions, and memories. It consumes only 20 watts of power, Outperforming supercomputers in pattern recognition. Studies in neuroplasticity show the brain's ability to rewire itself after injury, Offering new hope in stroke recovery.
Here's another interesting little fact about the brain. Despite all that power, dude, all that power being used to outperform the biggest, most complex supercomputers, the brain runs on just 20 watts of energy. Yeah, less than a light bulb. That's the biggest part of this, how efficient it is.
Right. We can only hope we can get there with artificial intelligence. Photosynthesis. Plants convert sunlight into energy, Powering the food chain for all life forms. Photosynthesis also regulates oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Algae blooms help absorb excess CO2, demonstrating the vital role photosynthesis in climate regulation.
This is one of those circle of life things that one could not survive without the other and how natural that is. Plants convert sunlight, water, and CO2 into glucose and oxygen, and that creates fuel for nearly everything on earth. Isn't that amazing?
It's a miracle.
I don't know, man. It just blows me away.
The symbiotic relationship between bees and flowers. I love this time of year of spring. You see the bees and flowers, Be nice to them. I wasn't nice to them as a kid. Because bees pollinate 75% of food crops, Enabling plant reproduction and global food production. Who would ever that number blew me away. Bees relationship with flowers has evolved over millions of years, Benefiting both species. Vanishing bee populations have already caused disruptions in agricultural yields, Emphasizing their critical role. I didn't know the bees were that important.
That's one of those myths that I'd like to investigate a little bit. First of all, I don't know what the exact study is or the relationship is, but as bees as the bee population starts to wane, it will indeed have a dramatic impact on human life. These little bees and I don't know, man, Bees contribute to pollinating the crops that make up 75% of the world's food supply. Our agriculture will collapse without them. And plus, there's a weird study that there's a weird theory or whatever it is that according to the laws of physics, bees should not be able to fly. Did you hear that one yet?
It makes sense. I got little wings.
I don't know what it is.
Yeah.
But that's what I've always heard and if I've heard it, it's fact.
That's right. I just wouldn't. I just wish they wouldn't sting me when I'm out there working in my garden.
Yeah.
Regeneration. In certain species, animals like Exolotus can regrow limbs, showcasing the body's remarkable regenerative abilities. This regeneration is driven by stem cells that transform into different cell types as needed. Researchers are studying Exolodus for human tissue regeneration, hoping to unlock new medical treatments. Don't we get a lot of great ideas from nature?
Stem cell magic is incredible and the research behind stem cells is amazing. I have a friend of mine, I that does a podcast called Spectrum and Camouflage. Actually, I coach him on a couple things and in the autism world there, there's a lot of study being done on stem cells. And we've always heard stem cells are. Will be a miraculous breakthrough once we're able to harness their power. I'm blown away by this subject.
Yeah, that one can get deep. I know as soon as I saw this was going to talk about stem cells. The monarch butterflies migration. Monarch butterflies migrate up to 3,000 miles despite no single butterfly completing the entire journey. They navigate using magnetic fields and other environmental cues passed down through generations. Declining populations due to habitat loss highlight the importance of protecting migration corridors. I think all of this to me, Joe does and of course, with your insights, reminds us we got to take care of our planet. No matter if it's the little bees or all our little creatures, they're all important to this natural wonder we have.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I saw a video about monarch butterflies in the past couple weeks and I didn't know this. There's a place in the world and I don't know where this place is, I. I don't remember. But there's a place in the world like where all monarch butterflies end up. And there's millions of them and it gets cold and they all kind of huddle together and some of them die and some of them try to get back into the group. I wish I would have looked into this a little further, but there's something there. There's something there about all the monarch butterflies flying into this one single place.
Can you imagine how many of these miracles are out there in nature though? We're just talking about the monarch butterfly. You start thinking of all the.
If we just pay attention, if we just pay attention.
Very interesting.
Yep.
Deep sea bioluminescence. Organisms in deep oceans produce bioluminescent light through communicate, hunt and evade predators. This light comes from specialized photospores that help species survive extreme conditions. Anglerfish, with its glowing lure, attracts prey in deep ocean, demonstrating bioluminescence, survival benefits and the deep oceans, even.
This was always weird to me. We think of natural light as coming from the sun, right? That's the most natural of natural light coming from the sun. But you have bioluminescence, which is light. And how those two are connected, we don't know. Why do they know that light is required? And how did they know that they had to evolve. If you want, we want to talk about evolution. Had to evolve with light, even though they have no natural light. I don't know if you're tracking with me or not, but there's something weird there. There's something weird there. That bioluminescence developed without any influence from the great source of natural light.
They didn't even know they needed light. Somehow they knew. Bacteria in hydrothermal vents. Microorganisms thrive near hydrothermal vents where heat and pressure are extreme. They rely on chemosynthesis, using chemicals like hydrogen sulfide to produce energy in the absence of sunlight. The discovery of life forms at the Mariana Trench vents reshapes our understanding of life beyond Earth.
This was a huge scientific discovery. When they discovered these microorganisms and the degree of heat that they can withstand and the harsh environment that they can withstand reset and made us. It forced us to rethink where life can, where we can find life.
I was. One of the amazing things, somewhat related you talk about resisting heat was when they rescued the astronauts and they were talking about the reentry into our orbit with the space shuttle, whatever it's called, spaceship. And the heat that. I don't know how the heat shields that they have there are able to resist that heat. I don't know what material they're using, but it's incredible amounts of heat. Thousands and thousands of degrees. The adaptability of mimicry and camouflage. Animals like octopuses and chameleons can change color and texture instantly for survival. This ability helps them avoid predators and hunt prey in dynamic environments. The cuttlefish's color shifting cells have inspired new technologies in adaptive camouflage.
Have you ever seen those videos of the octa of the octopus or the cuttlefish changing completely how it looks from one place to another?
It's amazing.
Yeah, it is amazing. It's almost like it. It's almost like you think, okay, this has been edited. This can't happen in nature. Because one at one moment you are looking at an octopus swimming through the ocean, and in less than a blink of an eye, it's a rock. And you're like, what happened here? This mimicry and camouflage in the animal kingdom blows me away. We were talking about butterflies before. Even if you look at the pattern on a butterfly, when it has its wings spread, it. It has eyeballs and it looks like another animal staring back at you, which is a protective. Which is a protective measure. Now, how did that happen without it just being miraculous?
We just take it for granted, too. Some of these miracles, the delicate balance of the food chain. Species play vital roles in maintaining ecological stability, from predators to decomposers. The removal of gray wolves in Yellowstone led to an overpopulation of elk, which devastated plant life and river ecosystems. Reintroducing wolves helped restore balance, showing the delicate interdependence with ecosystems. And this goes for everything. I think even us humans are relying upon each other every single day, Joe. It's such a balance. But, yeah, in the food chain. You can't forget this balance too.
Yeah. I kind of alluded to this earlier about the food chain and this balance and this dance that kind of we do with nature and how careful we have to be of how much of an impact we have on nature and animals that we introduce to certain parts of the world that don't really belong there. I was reading about the pythons. Yeah, the pythons. Is there one bigger than a python?
I don't think so.
Anacondas, I think pythons are one of the big snakes. Were introduced to Florida by people having them as pets and then just releasing them because they didn't want them anymore. And all of a sudden there's this. They have become the apex predator down there in the. I guess in the marshes of Florida. And now they're a real problem because there's hundreds of thousands of them. They can't get rid of them and they're killing everything. So we have to be careful with this delicate balance. And the miracle is that this delicate balance exists. And the shame is that we can have a negative impact on this delicate balance if we're not careful. We do have to take care of our earth.
Yeah. Because we're inconvenienced by something. I mentioned a bee sting or my fear of sharks in the ocean.
Yeah.
The shark plays an important role in the balance of the oceans, doesn't it?
Pick your poison, dude. I'll bet you More people die every day from bee stings than shark bites.
That's probably the truth. Hey, I'll give you one bonus one. This is my opportunity to mention Disney World. They opened up a new attraction in Epcot, the Moana. And they described the water cycle. And you can play with the water. It's a fun thing. If you can read through it, it's great. But the water cycle is the perfect recycling system. Water evaporates from oceans, lakes, rivers, turning into vapor. It condenses into clouds, then falls as rain, snow or hail, refilling rivers and underground water. And I love this part, especially when my dog goes out to pee. This system never stops. It's like a giant earth sized recycling machine. I always wonder about that when he's peeing out my front yard and it goes into my.
Well, I did hear an interesting little tidbit about this. That at the atomic level, somewhere in our water is dinosaur pee.
I think that's one of those myths your grandmother told you.
No, I'll bet you it's true. At the atomic level. Understand what I mean? If we're, if we live in this water cycle, right? It's. We don't have, we don't have any. We don't have any more or less water on the earth than we did millions of years ago. Maybe some of it has evaporated into the atmosphere, but very little. It's all this giant recycling process. And so if you think about it, at the atomic level, we're drinking dinosaur pee.
So we'll leave you with that as you have your required 32 ounces of water or whatever, 64 ounces of water today. Enjoy your dinosaur pee that you didn't know yet.
Funny. This was a good show. I like this stuff.
Thanks for, you know, a little bit about everything, Joe. So I appreciate your commentary. Let's finish up with your win for the week, our resource and quote.
Well, my win for the week is comes from work. And we have an initiative to sell a certain product, a certain dollar value of product by the end of this month. And we realized that about a week ago that our tracking was off and we didn't have nearly the amount of sales that we had in this particular product line. And so I pulled the team together and we put together a quick sales plan. Kurt, one thing that I'm really good at and this is, and I coach people on this, is focusing on the vital few versus the trivial many. And I've said that before, and we had to come up with a short little. With a short Sales campaign, literally three and a half days. And so we had to hyper focus only on those most important opportunities that we know will move the needle. And we're crushing it. We're within spitting distance of the goal with two days left. And that's just a matter of focus and being able to look at a process and look at a goal and boiling it down to, I guess you would call it the least common denominator or those vital few in eliminating the trivial many and really focusing on those items that will really move the needle. And we can do that anywhere in our life. This is why this is a microcosm of our life. We can do this anywhere in our life. Wherever we think we need help, wherever we think we need to make progress, wherever we think we need to reach a goal. If we just focus on those vital few things, we will reach that goal and get rid of the. Get rid of the trivial many.
Speaking of miracles, that's where they can show up. Yeah, that focus, constant attention to that. Love it. Well, last week I talked about a hundred dollar gift card. Not less than a few days later, a $50 gift card showed up.
Very cool.
They're coming in droves. And this time I usually use the option of Amazon or Lowe's for my gift card rewards. And this time I thought I'd freshen up my grill accessories. I have a Blackstone grill that I absolutely love. And speaking of spring, that's one of the things I enjoy doing. Getting out and cooking outdoors. And I was very interested. I had some steak, shave steak in the freezer that has been there all winter. So I went out, they had a clearance on. You know, you can get that kind of pack of grill accessories. They had one with like a little shovel that I hadn't seen before and it had some mats and a big water bottle. But obviously the, what do you call, spatulas, a couple of spatulas. And that was only $40 on sale from $50. Then I also added with the $50, I got a grill scraper which I didn't have. A real nice heavy duty. And these are ones that I could leave them outside. Probably they're not. They don't have any wood in them. And I think they're going to last a long time. They're real good quality. I ended up buying a couple extras too. I got a big hamburger one later on I got so excited about having new grill accessories. So I'm all set, Joe. I'm going to be cooking outdoors and I got some great accessories. I've Got a little basket so I can bring them in and out of the house.
Well, I'll see you next weekend.
I love it.
I'll bring the.
I'll bring.
Bring the hamburger. When you say Blackstone is. That's the. That's that flat griddle that's really popular right now.
Correct?
There's not exactly. They're not. It's not a grill with grates. It's a flat. It's a flat griddle. Griddle.
It's a griddle.
Yeah. Those are really popular. Those are really popular. I've not taken that dive yet, but those are really popular. There's a part of me that still loves the old charcoal stuff. You. You spray three or four bottles of propane over the charcoal briquettes and pull it about 50ft from your house, light it on fire, and burn your hot dogs.
No, I do not. So I have the Weber kettle grill. I use a mixture of three. My Blackstone grill, the Weber kettle grill, depending on what I'm doing. I like doing burgers on my kettle grill still. And chicken wings. I like doing my chicken wings on my kettle grill. I do not use propane on it. I use. I have a chimney smoke that you put some newspaper and you let it burn naturally so you don't get any of that. Chance of any of that flavor in there. And of course, I have my 55 gallon drum smoker that I made and I do my ribs. But yeah, you're right. The Blackstone griddle, if you don't have one and you're interested, man, they are fantastic. I did some onions on there and the shaved. Yeah, the shaved meat, and it's great for stuff like that. Those great burgers, too.
Awesome. How'd the Yankees do yesterday, Kurt?
They won. You know, the funny thing is, I didn't even know the season had opened so early. I'm thinking April, and we're still into March. I didn't even know I was. I thought I was still. I don't know. I got a note on my phone saying that the catcher hit a home run, which. First time ever that a catcher hit a home run to lead off a game. Lead off the season.
Wow.
Yeah, something like that.
Yeah. I knew the Yankees won. I thought you might throw that in as your win for the week because you're a big Yankees fan, but you didn't even know it was opening day.
I totally didn't even know it was opening day.
Opening day in Cincinnati is a holiday. We have a big parade and we have a big thing going on, it's a big deal, but we lost in the bottom of the ninth or top of the ninth.
Okay. Was it home?
We were leading three to one, and they ended up. We ended up losing six to four.
Yeah, See, the Yankees won four to two. It was interesting. I have a Yankees jacket. When I went into work on Wednesday, this guy I don't even know walked up to me and started a conversation wondering if I was a Yankee fan. He said he's been a Yankee fan for 30 from 40 years, something like that. And he said, what do you. How do you feel about the Yankees this year? And I said, I don't feel very good because we've had some very serious injuries. We lost Juan Soto, so probably any other team would love the roster that they have, but we lost our best pitcher, and another pitcher is out, and we lost Juan Soto to the Mets. And so we've been feeling a little bit in trouble. So we'll see, though. I was looking at the team that's out there on the field. They're pretty dar gun good, so we'll see how it works out. But the east, the American League east is very competitive. The Red Sox are looking good. The Orioles are looking good. And Tampa and of course, Toronto are always pretty good competitive, too. It's a really competitive league, so it'll be interesting.
Sorry. Sorry to take us off track there, bud, but I was a little surprised that you didn't call out the Yankees win as your win for the week.
Well, you call me out for.
Not that you have everything that you.
Call me out, because I didn't even know it started till it started.
I'm really surprised by that, but shame on you. Shame on you. All right, let's move. Let's move on.
What's your resource?
My resource for the week. So I've used CHAT GPT as a resource a couple times, and I. When I find new cool stuff and new ways to use it, I will certainly bring it up, because ChatGPT is more than just ChatGPT. There's so much you could do on it, and it is becoming so intelligent and powerful that I'm finding new things every day. Well, ChatGPT just released a new image generator, and that was always. Chat GPT's weakness is they didn't do a very good job generating images. There were other AI models out there that did a really good job, And I think ChatGPT may have caught up or maybe even exceeded some of the. Some of the other models. One, the one problem that ChatGPT always had was duplicating human appearance. It always looked very cartoonish. You could tell. Not anymore.
Wow.
It is generating human beings, the look of a human being. In fact, I took a photo of me, one of the headshots that I use for business. I took a photo of me and I uploaded it to Chat GPT and I said, take my face and put it on a motorcycle from the 1970s, in 1970s Motorcycle gang attire with a bowler hat on my head sitting in front of a 1970s style gas station. It was a prompt like that. And when you look at what it generated, you're like, holy smoke, wow. The weakness in that is, first of all, it looks like a real person on a bike sitting in front of a gas station with a bowler hat on. And when you think about miracles in a way, that image doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. Anywhere else. And it will never exist anywhere else in the world other than if I duplicate it and send it out. That's the very first image like that. And when you look at the face, you think, wow, that looks like me. Not quite. There's a little. There's a little weakness there. But it definitely looks like it could be a brother or an uncle, some. Somebody very closely related to me. And it is really cool, man. ChatGPT, the new image generator is really going to do great things for that world. And I believe that using ChatGPT to create art is as much of. Is as much being an artist as somebody with paint and canvas or a photographer. You're just generating. You're using it in a different way, but you're still. You're using your imagination. You have to drive it and prompt it the right way. It's just a different palette. I really like it a lot.
Is that only available to the paid version?
I don't know. I have the. I don't have the pro version. There's a Pro version of ChatGPT that is $200 a month or premium version? One of the two. But there's one that's 201. That's 20. I have the $20 a month version.
I'm going to check that out. That's fascinating and you'll have to show me.
It's pretty crazy, man. It's pretty crazy.
We had a session on a Saturday, remember Joe, where we were prompting ChatGPT in a bunch of ways to put a construction helmet on the guys and we're making all these kinds of prompts. They kept messing it up too. Do you think it does a better Job.
I think it'll do a thousand times better job right now.
Okay, very interesting. Let the fool of that. Maybe tomorrow I'd like to see those images.
Yeah, yeah. That was part of our. That was part of our mastermind group. We were helping Clay create some images for some work he was doing. And ChatGPT was coming close, but not quite. But I think this would be. This will do much a thousand times better, this new upgrade.
I'm on a team that's putting out a hackathon at work. It's a two day. Well, it's a 24 hour event at work and we lost the person who did our images last year. Our logo is not on our team this year. And the guy who's running it, we don't have. I don't think we have a lot of good designers on our team. But ChatGPT provided the logo and it came out pretty good. So there is that for us.
Very cool.
That lack this talent.
I wouldn't even say that, man. It is a talent. Because if you're trying to develop something that. Think about this. There was a time that artists, in order to get the colors that they wanted, the proper colors that they wanted, they would have to go out into nature, dig up plants, dig up animal, or kill animals to get whatever natural stuff that they wanted they. They needed to get. And I don't know what it is, I'm just making it up, but I can imagine that natural dyes came from plants and animals and I guess that's all there really is, but in Earth. And they had to go out and develop all these colors right from nature. They had to go out there and that was part of the artistic process. They would look at an artist now that can go to Walmart and buy a thousand colors of paint. And they would say that's cheating. They would say, come on, that's not being an artist. Being an artist, you got to go and pull your own stuff together. This is the same thing to me.
Interesting.
You have to. It's painting with words and using just a completely different medium. It's going to reach a point where we're going to be able to. And it has reached a point already where AI will. You can use it as we've reached that point where AI you can use it as an artistic medium to the fullest extent. And some artists are really mad about that for sure.
You gave me inspiration just on this chat because I struggle in application building. Like I'm building a form and I have to use colors in that form. And where on the header is this color going to be? And on the left side and the input fields that are there, what are those colors? I've been working on an application and I have a designer helping me right now. She gave me some mock ups and I was just thinking, wow, I could take these colors, explain. Maybe I could explain the whole application and ask them to lay it out for me in a mock up, including the colors. I'm going to try that, Joe. That would help me because I'm really bad at that. My resource was the inspiration for this episode. I saw one of my favorite authors had a new book come out. It's called A Million Little Miracles from Mark Batterson. I just picked it up, started reading it. Actually. My rewards from work paid for that book, thank you very much. And I'm only a chapter into it, but that was the inspiration for this. So I'm looking forward. I can't comment on the book yet so far, but maybe I will as I get into it if I find anything really interesting in it. But the book is called A Million Little Miracles. Mark Batterson, and again, he's a Christian author. He brings a lot of science into his. He's a pastor. He has a podcast out there too. So if you're interested, he's probably my second favorite Christian author. Mark Batterson, A Million Little Miracles.
I'll check it out. No doubt about that. If it was the catalyst for this show, then yeah, I'll definitely check it out.
I think you'd enjoy his writing. Very simple, easy to read, but some really nice, a lot of great funds. His famous book is called the Circle Maker, I believe, Talking about and it's about scripture, about that focus that you talked about, prayers and circles circling and praying about something very specific consistently. It's one of his biggest sellers. All right, Joe, what's your quote for this week?
My quote comes from St. Augustine and I really like what it said here. Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.
I love that.
Miracles are a natural occurrence. Think about that. I know it doesn't exactly meet the definition that you presented to us in the beginning of the show, but miracles are a natural occurrence and we need to accept miracles for what they are. They're a part of what we. They're a part of what we experience. We may not be able to explain it right away, but they're there and we may never be able to explain it because I think the supernatural is a part of the natural. It's all natural, supernatural Is all natural. We just don't know about it yet. And so miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.
I think that awareness of miracles is so important. If you don't get anything out of this episode, think about that. Are you more aware of the miracles already all around us? My quote is, there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle, and the other is as though everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein.
Now, think about that quote. Here's a guy that had one of the great scientific minds of our time, and. And he recognizes that we have a choice when it comes to miracles. We can ignore them, or we can recognize them. If we recognize them, let's just recognize everything as a miracle, because that's what it is. Even the fact that we're here on this earth, like you said before, Kurt, is a miracle. So that fact in and of itself, if that's the foundational miracle, then everything we experience is miraculous. I love this quote. Dude, thank you for bringing this.
Well, you start off saying how scientists only think of one miracle, the big bang, but here's one of our most famous scientists totally disagreeing with you. Yep. Love it. All right, take us home.
Well, of course, our website is dudesinprogress.com dudesinprogress.com if you want to reach out to us, you can certainly do that by emailing us@dudesudesinprogress.com dudesudesinprogress.com if you want to ask us questions, if you want to inquire about coaching, if you want to talk about the show, if you have an idea for the show, we can certainly help you dudes@dudesinprogress.com Miracles are cool, man. Aren't they? I love the idea of miracles. I love not understanding something and being comfortable with not understanding it, because not everything's perfect, Curt. Not everything fits in this perfect little box. Miracles, like everything else, it's about making progress in our life. It's recognizing those things in our life that. That may not be perfect, but we're still making progress, because progress is always better than perfection. We just got to keep moving forward.
I love thinking and talking about miracles because I think the more you appreciate them, the more you think about them. And really, I think you're going to experience more miracles this week if you really focus on what already is a miracle. And I think more will come to you, and I hope that does for everyone. Have a great week, guys.
Sa.