Creativity Wasted

Idea: A movie about an old man and his dog who travel together and where the old man gains wisdom from a mushroom trip. Also: the dog talks to the man during his trip and has a pretty southern belle accent; Wes is hesitant to reveal plot details; finishing a script as a scriptwriting learning exercise; a brief discussion of the other guests' script ideas and scriptwriting class experience  We...

Idea: Genetically-engineered miniature goats that live in your house as pets and only need to be fed the boxes and packing materials from your Amazon deliveries. Also: Amazon could use hay as packing materials if it knows you ordered one of their goats, and/or they could automatically ship you nutrition supplements and give you veterinary reminders to make it easy to care for the goats; maybe you...

Idea: Holograms that perform improv with you, so you can do improv if you don't have friends or it's too difficult to coordinate with them (and so you don't have to bug stand-up comics to do improv). Also: the holograms could be AI, could be controlled remotely by a real person in another location, could disguise a real person who's actually there, and could be things like horses that move around...

A loose conversation about pranking telemarketers/scammers and pranks in general, including a couple ideas for pranks and Michela's style of pranking telemarketers which risks her getting SWAT'd by the police. Also: examples of military pranks; an idea for a software prank ("Easter egg") where you trick someone into putting their head up next to a computer to listen for something and the...

Idea: To become a scam therapist for pet reptiles. Also: a TV show like "The Dog Whisperer" for reptiles, but where you actually whisper to the reptiles, with your head right next to an alligator's jaws; Tim's anecdote of accidentally traumatizing a reptile; to make money helping reptiles relax before being "factory farmed" (so the meat tastes better) or before being smuggled i...

Idea: A camera on a thumb glove that you wear while brushing or flossing which pairs to a tablet or smart mirror to show you live video of the inside of your mouth so you can see where you're failing to clean properly (stuck food, receding gums, etc.) so you don't develop a cavity there over time. Also: you'd probably momentarily pause brushing/flossing to look inside your mouth and then resume br...

Idea: Harnesses to keep kids strapped into the seats on school busses for safety during accidents and to reduce misbehaving. Also: you could put TV screens on the back of the seats that pair to the kids' phones and don't turn on until they strap into the seat; the bus driver could drive recklessly on purpose for fun if the kids were strapped into the seats; bus driver stories of kids fighting or m...

Idea: A remote-driving system for school busses so the school bus drivers can casually and conveniently drive the bus from home. Also: a minimum-wage bus monitor could be hired if the kids get rowdy on the bus; self-driving and remotely-driven cars like Waymo and how a bus could stop on the train tracks if it loses the Internet connection to the remote driver; anecdotes of riding the school bus as...

Idea: An AI-powered hidden earpiece that helps you do better in important or awkward conversations, such as job interviews, conversations with the police, fish-out-of-water social situations, "code switching", etc. Also: having it shock you or warn you if you start saying something stupid or something you'd regret; questioning whether it could help you avoid arguing with a spouse even if...

Idea: A social media and digital media app/site where when you post, you must classify the post as either 1) free, 2) a post meant to give other people enjoyment (they "take" selfish enjoyment) and therefore they must pay to consume it, or 3) a post that other people earn a micropayment/karma when they read or respond to it (i.e. they "give" advice/effort/attention). Also: all...

Idea: For movie theaters to show a movie in the morning specifically for senior citizens, including discounts and special accommodations. Also: special accommodations could include selling Werther's and prune juice as snacks, having large-text subtitles, having an intermission to explain the plot of the movie to those who have questions, having defibrillators on standby, etc.; some movies would st...

Idea: To create a new A1 BBQ beef flavor of Ritz crackers. Also: the lack of variety of cracker flavors compared to chips; the risk of a "classy" brand like Ritz losing it's high-class image if it has too many flavors; if you're gonna blow through a bunch of calories, you want to get more enjoyment out of it than by eating plain crackers; putting chili-flavored Fritos on chili dogs and e...

Idea: For restaurants to have enclosed private booths with a small table and a video screen on which to videochat with someone in another videochat booth at another restaurant (usually in a different city). Also: people who can't agree on which restaurant to go to could go to different restaurants and still kind of eat together; the video of you eating could be livestreamed and/or saved so you can...

Idea: Side windows of a car (and maybe also windshield) that are not actually windows, and instead are actually video screens that disguise the driver by making them look like someone else to the people outside of the car. Also: you could look like a cool person when dropping your kids off at school (and how even Eddie Van Halen's kids are embarrassed by him when he drops them off at school); a pe...

Idea: As inspired by the restaurants located above highways in Illinois, there should be groups of food trucks on some existing highway overpasses. Also: they could use carpool parking lots near highway on-ramps for customer parking, and could put barriers up on the sides of the overpass so kids can't fall onto the highway; they could vary the selection of food trucks, and the food trucks could ha...

Idea: A pillow (or possibly a car headrest) that reads your mind while you sleep (or drive), and collects and filters out useful thoughts, such as invention ideas or good jokes, so they can be obtained later instead of being forgotten. Also: mind-reading gadgets that currently exist, such as a "Jedi mind trick" floating ball toy; wondering if jokes you found funny in your dreams would be...

Idea: A museum based on the ideas that were brainstormed on this podcast, including a "Wes Wing" for Wes's ideas. Also: a few new ideas to put in the Wes Wing, including a toaster that stamps designs on your toast, a chainsaw whose speed is dependent on the volume of your screams, an alarm that wakes you up by insulting you, Bluetooth underwear, etc.; a museum/store for both silly patent...

Idea: Swim goggles to wear while exercising that use VR or augmented reality to make it look like you're being chased by a shark (or zombie or clown or whatever) to scare you to make you run or swim faster. Also: unlike a VR headset, you won't sweat in them and they won't break if you fall down; if you wore them in the ocean, you might misinterpret a real shark as a fake shark and get eaten, or th...

Idea: To see how many clowns fit in a school bus and/or for clown cars/busses to be used for public transportation. Also: lots of dark humor about clowns; environmentally-friendly clown mass transit where you replace your carbon footprint with a giant clown shoe footprint; that time a group of clowns came to a local standup comedy open mic Sherry Hoenicke ( instagram.com/hobcomedy facebook.com/she...

Idea: A horn for bicycles which is less rude than a normal bike horn but also louder than a normal bike horn to get drivers to better notice the bicyclist for safety reasons. Also: maybe you need a quiet "excuse me" horn and a loud "oh, crap" horn; tricking out a bicycle with weapons like a James Bond car; poor sidewalks, traffic, and the danger of bicycling in the city; questi...

Idea: A cell phone that is used exactly like an old-fashioned cordless phone or rotary phone so boomers who don't understand cell phones can still use the phone in nursing homes without land lines. Also: it would be better than kludging together Magic Jack with WiFi or a cell phone paired with a Bluetooth cordless phone; hipsters and recovering cell phone addicts might also want to use it; nursing...

An episode where the idea was a short story about a woman with a unibrow, but we mostly forgot to talk about the story and instead comedically riffed about unibrows the entire time. Also: the character with the unibrow could be the unwanted person who holds people together (just like the hair connecting their eyebrows); nose hair that sticks out and becomes part of a mustache; having a unibrow is...

Idea: Mini local surveillance networks where people in a neighborhood share access to their outdoor cameras with each other and use state-of-the-art software to detect gunshots, follow people from camera to camera, etc. The police wouldn't have direct access to the video, but the people could manually send video to the police if they choose to do so. Also: it is meant to be the opposite of "b...

Brainstorming ideas to slow lawn growth so you don't have to mow the lawn as often, such as pouring coffee on it, having weedwackers that come out of the ground, shocking the grass with freezing cold water, etc. Also: people in the past and people in the future will be shocked that we spent so much time and labor on our lawns; using humanoid robots to do Flintstones-like manual labor (like using &...

Idea: An app in which you electronically connect with (or match with) nearby strangers when you're in a public social venue (like a bar) so then you can more easily physically approach them to chat, make friends, flirt, etc. Also: there could be a feature to pay the stranger to talk to you (instead of buying them a beer); the app could have venue-specific features such as to join a group at a &quo...