Philosopher Dr. Soraj Hongladarom on Buddhism, Ethics and AI [S7.E17]

Greg (00:00:03) - And on this episode, we talked with Doctor Surratt about the intersection of Buddhist ethics and artificial intelligence.

Ed (00:00:12) - So if you've ever wondered what our soon to be robot overlords would be like if they were Buddhist, you'll love this episode of the Bangkok Podcast.

Greg (00:00:36) - So what do you grab? And welcome to the Bangkok Podcast. My name is Greg Jorgensen, a Canadian who came to Thailand in 2001 on a vacation and can't leave because the place I rented my scooter from still has my passport and won't give it back until I replace the broken blinker.

Ed (00:00:52) - I hate when that happens, man.

Greg (00:00:53) - Yeah, it's been a while.

Ed (00:00:54) - And I met Knuth, an American who came to Thailand on a one year teaching contract 23 years ago, fell in love with trying to find new memes every year for how freaking hot it is during the Thai summer, so I never left.

Greg (00:01:06) - That's a funny. That's a good one, because how many times can I use that one that has like, Earth and then Bangkok and then the sun? That's right.

Ed (00:01:13) - It's like I, I catch myself reusing memes that I used the year before. So I'm, I'm looking for new ones.

Greg (00:01:20) - Right? Yeah, yeah. There's another one for Canada Day that I've used a few too many times. And it's a I think it's a beaver riding a Canadian goose and it's like got holding up to like two maple leaves and screaming, or so I thought.

Ed (00:01:31) - Okay, yeah, I've seen that. But. Right. You can't use that every year, man.

Greg (00:01:35) - I need some new ones. I get some I to generate some stuff in here, like it's a good idea.

Ed (00:01:39) - Alrighty. We want to say a quick thank you to one of our patrons, Tom Grogan, who supports us at the show. Shout out level. Stick around after we're done talking about the intersection of Thai Buddhism and artificial intelligence, to hear why our listeners may think that Greg and I are actually the OG Bangkok podcasters, but in reality, we actually have to humbly hand that ground to Tom. Yeah, we want to give a big thanks to all of our patrons who support the show.

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Greg (00:03:08) - Totally. And as always, if you have a comment, show idea or just want to say hi, head to Bangkok podcast.com and click the little microphone button on the bottom right to leave us a voicemail, and we'll play it on the show.

Greg (00:03:18) - Alrighty then. On this episode, we are going to go a little bit highbrow and again, dig into a topic that might not be the first on the mind of anyone thinking about Thailand. And that is a question of how does Thai culture and Buddhism influence ethics, and especially, how would that manifest itself? When we start talking about things like artificial intelligence? Now, for instance, you may have heard that AI and other human created computer programs inherently take on the biases of the coders who create them. So we got to thinking, how would say ChatGPT define ethical behavior if it was coded in Thailand? To answer that, we are joined by the esteemed Doctor Soraj Hongladarom, former director of the center for Ethics of Science and Technology at Chulalongkorn University and now a professor at Maha Chulalongkorn University. That's a mouthful. He is the author of such books as The Ethics of AI and robotics A Buddhist Viewpoint and The Online Self Exceptionalism, friendship, and Games Editor. I read both of those this afternoon. They're pretty good. Of course.

Greg (00:04:21) - I'm just kidding. I could barely understand the titles of those books, but I digress. So here is my very enlightening discussion on ethics, Buddhism, and AI with Doctor Soraj Hongladarom.

Well, I'm very happy to welcome to the show. Doctor Soraj Hongladarom. I hope I said that properly. I think I maybe have mispronounced it a little bit, but welcome to the Bangkok Podcast.

Dr. Soraj (00:04:51) - Yeah, yeah, nice to be here. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Greg (00:04:54) - Well, thank you for taking time over Songkran to talk to me. Now, it's interesting to have you on the show, because one of the things we do at the podcast is we like to talk about things about Bangkok that maybe not everyone knows about. For instance, we did a recent show with someone from gist, the geo Informatics and Space Technology department. Development agency. Sorry. and I think not not a lot of people would know about that if they think about Thailand. It's beaches and temples and things like that.

Greg (00:05:21) - And, another thing that that, that I thought was interesting is your area of expertise, which is sort of, I'm going to probably guess here, but sort of tech technology and cultural anthropology or something like that. Can you talk a little bit about what you do?

Dr. Soraj (00:05:37) - Yeah, my background is in philosophy and I've been teaching philosophy for more than 30 years. I graduated with a PhD in philosophy from Indiana University in the US, and that was a long time ago. That was in 1991. And, it was, kind of a technical area in philosophy, modern early modern Western philosophy. But when I came back here, I found it rather difficult to to continue working in that area. So I ended up talking with a lot of people in different areas, like medical doctors, journalists, professors, law professors and so on. So my interests, then became quite broad. And now, I used to be director of the center for science, Technology and Society. I am retired officially from Lincoln University, but I'm still quite active in, doing research.

Dr. Soraj (00:06:41) - So. Yeah, philosophy and science in society. Technology in culture.

Greg (00:06:47) - Yeah, it's a fascinating area, and I'm a huge nerd on this stuff myself, so I'm really looking forward to chatting. But specifically, I saw your name come up on an email from the Siam Society where you're going to be giving a talk on, on, on AI, artificial intelligence, ethics and how they apply to Thailand. And I thought that was a really interesting idea so broadly defined. I mean, ethics are are the rules that govern a person's behavior. But of course they vary between cultures, religions, countries, generations, etc.. So our AI ethics similar in that in that regard, or do they follow the same basic outline of how the average person would define ethics?

Dr. Soraj (00:07:26) - Yeah. basically in philosophy, you know, ethics is a branch of philosophy. what we do is, as you said, we try to find, you know, what kind of action is ethical permissible to do and what kind of action is kind of not allowed.

Dr. Soraj (00:07:45) - And certainly there are cultural differences, but but, in philosophy, we we tend to go deeper than that. we tend to look at the theory behind all these kind of judgments. For example, we, we try to find out what makes an action a good one. for example, and, philosophers have a lot of theories for that. so my work is, as you said, to look at the contribution from, basically from Buddhism, to the global discussion on, the ethics of AI and for AI, it has spread all around the world. The technology is now, you know, we can say commonplace and, and, people from different cultures tend to have different ideas, regarding AI. So, basically what I am doing is to kind of, to contribute to this global dialogue, on, ethical, regulations of AI from the Buddhist perspective. Right. yeah. When it comes to the question about, you know, sameness or differences among cultures, there are many levels. at one level, we tend to agree pretty much, you know, no matter from what culture we are, we basically every culture agrees that honesty is a good thing.

Dr. Soraj (00:09:28) - And if you cheat someone, that's a bad thing. You know, you go to every culture. They, they tend to agree on, on, on. That, records. Right? truthfulness, you know. You you say something truthful and it's, praised in all cultures and they, almost always tend to, look at, you know, people who say false things, you know? It's a bad thing to do. So, so at that level, there are agreements. But when it comes to kind of more specific action, then then we can find differences. And that is also the same with AI also. So we we want I to be truthful. I mean no matter what what that means, you know we don't want AI to kind of deceive us. and that is pretty much, kind of universal. But when it comes to more specific things, like, you know, how much personal information should I be allowed? to hold, you know, in return for something, you know, useful or whatever, then we can find, and we, we find, you know, there are differences.

Dr. Soraj (00:10:49) - And, you know, that's why we are having this global discussion going on.

Greg (00:10:55) - Right? Exactly. Well, it's a very good time to have it because, of course, AI has just exploded. It's everywhere, and it's only going to get more ubiquitous, I think. So the how I sort of tend to think of it is that, is that traditionally and maybe that's changing, but historically, coding and AI and all these giant tech companies have largely been western, Western based and Western funded. And I think a lot of the Western cultures are Judeo-Christian, based on sort of like the Ten Commandments, the Ten Commandments, and the seven deadly sins and things like that. But that's not universal, right? So if you asked someone from, you know, from the West, how do you define ethics? And they would say, oh, well, you know, you don't, you know, don't do these things and these things. But if you ask someone from Thailand, they might have a totally different basis for, for arriving at those conclusions.

Greg (00:11:45) - So how would a Thai person, playing video games or writing code or watching YouTube or writing AI? How would a Thai person have a different view of how to embed ethics into that than than a Western view?

Dr. Soraj (00:12:02) - Yeah, yeah, that's a very good question. And I've been teaching ethics for quite some time as, as you know, and this question almost always, tends to come up what I teach, according to the, curriculum that I, must follow is Western ethics. So it's part of the program because, the program I have been teaching is Western based. So we teach, theories based on the familiar Western theories, like Kantian theories or utilitarian ism and, and so on. So there is kind of, a difference between, the mindset of what what, these students, what my students have been brought up to, to believe on the one hand, and these, Western systems on the other, for example, the idea of, you know, equality and rule of law, these, come from the West and, and, it takes some time for, my students to kind of appreciate.

Dr. Soraj (00:13:14) - But once they do, they, they, you know, they understand and they appreciate those ideas. my my take on this, for example, equality and human rights and rule of law, and, and we can come, back to AI ethics later because we are talking more, generally at this time, these ideas, human rights and so on, even though they first appeared in Europe. I mean, this is a historical fact. that does not mean that the foundation for these ideas are entirely European. And they have been arguing this for quite some time. in fact, we can find, a foundation for these ideas in Buddhist thought. And my Chinese colleagues, have found their own foundation for these ideas in Confucian thought or in Taoist thought. So, which, points to the, idea that, perhaps, these are the human things, because, you know, we are all human beings. And as a result, you know, we we should. value equality. so when we talk about the Thai students, it's sitting in front of their computer doing their own things with the computer.

Dr. Soraj (00:14:55) - Ethics is a kind of a norm, you know? You know, something that you should adhere to. You should follow. Right? Right. And, in norm only works in a community if you live alone, like Robinson Crusoe in an island. You know, you don't need ethics, you know, but but when you live with someone else, you know, from two people up, you need ethics. You need some kind of agreement as to, you know what, what must be done. What what, is forbidden and, and and so on. So the fact of the matter is that the internet and AI and this global computer network there spans the globe. There is a kind of a global community. And then the norms that govern this community tend to be something that must be, kind of negotiated. So it's not the question of, you know, some part of the world such as Europe, you know, exporting or imposing their own views, on the other sides of the world could be like that for, a period of time, especially in the past, where, there was, you know, big disparity in power between the Europeans and non Europeans.

Dr. Soraj (00:16:23) - You know, we are talking in the Thai context about, the, the gunboats, from Britain and France coming to the JPA, coming up the river. And, you know, they were harassing the Thai authorities, but that happened in the 19th century. right now, you know, we have countries like China and Japan, and they have asserted themselves in, technological field. And, you know, you know, Thailand being a smaller country, we we tend to, you know, be diplomatic and, and we, we, look at where the wind blows, which is a typical Thai culture, maybe, you know, a bit of Thai history, you know, so, the global geopolitics is such that it is not exactly possible anymore for one region of the world to kind of, you know, have their own way in all the times and so on. Many of my colleagues in the US and in Europe, they want to find some alternatives to their own Western based system of thinking. And, they, they have found that Buddhism, for example, can, can offer such an alternative.

Dr. Soraj (00:17:46) - So, you know, there is a giving and taking. not only that, we in the non West must follow the West all the time. So.

Greg (00:17:57) - So so when Western, philosophers or coders or AI developers look are looking to Buddhism, what are they? What are they trying to import or learn from Buddhism to, to implement?

Dr. Soraj (00:18:09) - Well, we are talking about ethics, especially AI ethics. Right. And, ethics is about, what I should do or should refrain from doing, you know? Right. for whatever, for for what reasons? What the coder should learn is that they, they cannot just, you know, lock themselves away in their room and doing their own codings as if they exist in a vacuum. they there are some basic principles in AI ethics that, pretty much everybody around the world agree on. I have mentioned, like, truthfulness, honesty. Right. And there are other principles like protection of human dignity.

Greg (00:19:03) - But, you know, like, a Western ideals, sort of like, you know, all men are equal and no one person is better than the other person.

Greg (00:19:10) - I mean, generally speaking, those are pretty accepted. But I think in countries like, like Thailand and other Asian countries, maybe that some people might not agree with that 100%. I mean, there's certainly, you know, countries like India, there's the caste system and things like that. So, so, you know, when when a Thai person looks at, at how a Westerner would define these sort of things, that they might not agree with them and they might like, if I was a Thai, I. Or maybe I would sort of try to tweak that a little bit or change those rules a little bit where it's like, well, no, not not everyone is equal. It's like that old George Orwell novel Animal Farm. You know, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others, you know? So is there, is there an element of that if, if, if we can imagine like a Thai influence on these sort of things.

Dr. Soraj (00:19:56) - it's, going down very fast.

Dr. Soraj (00:19:59) - And, you know, everyone who follows, you know, Thai politics for a while. They, they, they, they will see that, there is a fight, a struggle going on, for many years now between the, you know, the younger generations and the older generations who try to hold on to whatever they, they find valuable and they don't want to lose it. Basically one important aspect in this fight is about what you just said. It's about the idea of equality of of, human beings. Traditionally in all Siam, you know, the society was strictly hierarchical. The king was on top, you know, below him, it's the royal family. below them are the noblemen, the high ranking officials, and so on. and below them, you know, the middle ranking, so on down to the, the PRI, the very common people, the farmers and so on. This idea kind of was, ingrained in, in Thai culture for a long time. But what is very interesting, if you look at, you know, what is unfolding in, the Thai political and cultural scene at this very moment is that this picture is very it's being dismantled.

Dr. Soraj (00:21:31) - It's being challenged. Yeah. especially by the younger generations. And it's the younger generations who are sitting in front of the computer, you know, doing AI coding. are they blindly following the direction of the West? I don't think so. But, they would like to, create a new Thailand, so to speak. You know, this phrase to create a new Thailand was kind of a taboo, just a few years ago. it's almost illegal to, to talk about that, but, but now the atmosphere is changing so that, you know, it has become more commonplace. So I can talk about that, but, but, these people, they on the one hand, they are fully conscious of their national and cultural identity and and they want to assert, to put Thailand more, so that Thailand becomes more visible on the map. Could be a map map of, you know, people doing AI and so on. Right. And, and and these people are, doing that. So, so it's not a matter of, following the West, in all aspects, but they might have their own reason or their own ideas about how I, should be governed.

Dr. Soraj (00:23:04) - How how, you know, the system of governance of AI should be should be implemented and they can find themselves, arguing with their colleagues from the US or Europe as to how I should be governed.

Greg (00:23:22) - It's interesting to think of, of of, you know, I mean, there's a lot of really, really high tech startups in Thailand doing some really cutting edge stuff, and they're getting a lot of VC investment and overseas investment. But so it's interesting to think of, of them, embedding Chinese into those sort of things, you know, I mean, we often hear the Ministry of Culture talking about China's, even though it's really hard to define and things like that. But you don't often think of China's being embedded in this, in these like high tech, like fintech solutions or transportation solutions or things like that. But we're starting to see it, as you said, the the younger generation are really sort of starting to carve out their own identity. The old generations be damned. You know, they're going to do it their way.

Greg (00:24:05) - Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Soraj (00:24:07) - well, I tend to be, optimistic. And, you know, it's my personality and I tend to be, you know, conciliatory. I don't want to see kind of, you know, black and white, conflicts. You know, one side must be the other to the death.

Dr. Soraj (00:24:27) - So, in the end, maybe this is what I hope, there could be a kind of a mixture. A blend between the old and new. I don't know how that will look like, as yet, but. But if we can, search for an example, I think what is happening in Japan could be an example. on the one hand, Japan can be, you know, they have retained many aspects. Of their traditional rituals and, you know, activities like they still have. The emperor and all kinds of rituals surrounding the emperor, because the emperor is kind of a high priest of the Shinto religion. But, on the other hand, as we know. Right, Japan is a very technologically advanced country.

Dr. Soraj (00:25:19) - So one way is to look at Japan as an example. But, maybe Thailand will find its own way. But in any case, it must be, a mixture, a blend, between the old and the new in such a way that, the old is still there, you know, because this is for the interests of everybody, for the country to advance itself cannot set itself, you know, like a hermit. That's not possible.

Greg (00:25:47) - Yeah. That's right. I as we're wrapping up here, I want you to sort of try to imagine something with me. there's a really interesting novel by an author called Paulo Baca called The Wind Up Girl. And it takes place in a in a future Bangkok, you know, 3 or 400 years in the future in Bangkok. Yeah, it's it's very, very it's a very cool book. I must look inside. Yeah. And in that book, Thailand has emerged to become the global leader in, genetic seed banks. And they control the sort of gene futures of all the crops around the world, and plants and medicines and things like that.

Greg (00:26:25) - so. Imagine for, for a minute that that these AI programs, these gigantic companies had been based in Thailand and had evolved out of Thailand and had been inspired by Thailand's ethics and culture. How would they be different from what exists today? It's a big question. I know that's a big one.

Dr. Soraj (00:26:46) - If yeah, it's a big question, as you said, I think, what will happen? And we can look at, the, the company in the future, being imbued with the values that we get from Buddhism, compassion, not harming other sentient beings and the desire for all sentient beings to be happy and the the commitment to create happy conditions for everyone. I think that is Buddhism. And that is what, Buddhism can offer to the world. So, if such company is kind of their values, informed by Buddhism, that can create a kind of a, a big difference.

Greg (00:27:39) - I think a lot of these AI programs would probably be more fun to use if they had a little bit of sanuk, embedded in them, you know.

Dr. Soraj (00:27:47) - Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Greg (00:27:50) - So, so last question then just really quick, you said you were an optimist, on these kind of things. Are you are you, sort of, optimistic about, you know, ethics and Thailand and where they intersect and technology in Thailand going forward. I know there's some websites that are not available in Thailand. There's some things we're not allowed to talk about. are you are you optimistic about how those things will develop and the opportunities they'll give to people in Thailand?

Dr. Soraj (00:28:15) - Oh, yes. Yes. only that we need a bit more time. But but if we look at how the situation has been unfolding, you know, right now and compare that to like ten years ago, 20 years ago, there is a lot of change. And, much of this change has been in the on the positive side, the Parliament just passed the law, you know, allowing same sex marriage. Yeah. So it's a total, go ahead in into that direction.

Dr. Soraj (00:28:52) - And, I cannot imagine this happening like, just like five years or ten years ago. Just, you know, the change is, is, very fast. So. So, yeah, I'm kind of optimistic, but we only we want what we need to do to do is to convince maybe the, the old vanguards, so to speak, who holds still hold a lot of power to convince them. We need to convince them that, you know, Thailand is not going to go away. you know, the country is still here. Thai people are still here. The culture is still here. we only change, so that we can still be a player in the contemporary world. So if we convince them, then I think, the change can be much smoother.

Greg (00:29:42) - Technology is a solution. There we go. We can use that to affect change.

Dr. Soraj (00:29:45) - Yeah. Right. Right.

Greg (00:29:47) - Well thank you so much for for chatting. It's very interesting. I don't often my mind doesn't automatically go to philosophy and technology when I think of Thailand, but I think there's some really interesting discussions to be had around it.

Greg (00:30:00) - So thank you for for chatting.

Dr. Soraj (00:30:03) - Yeah yeah yeah yeah I enjoyed talking.

Greg (00:30:06) - Oh my it was my pleasure. And enjoy your retirement. Don't work too hard even though you're still going around doing all these interesting talks and things like that.

Speaker 6 (00:30:12) - Right.

Greg (00:30:13) - Okay. Thank you so much.

Dr. Soraj (00:30:15) - Yeah yeah yeah. You're welcome.

Ed (00:30:26) - Dude, I should have been the one to do this interview. I actually teach an ethics class, dude.

Greg (00:30:31) - I know, I know. It came together quickly and he was available and I was available. So we jumped online and did it. So behind.

Ed (00:30:36) - My back.

Greg (00:30:37) - Behind your back.

Ed (00:30:37) - Cheating on me. You're cheating on me. Behind my back.

Greg (00:30:39) - I'm cheating on you with an ethics professor. That's right. But it would have been interesting to get to get your insights in that, too. But, I mean, Doctor Surratt is is very, very experienced and really knows a lot about this stuff. His books are.

Ed (00:30:52) - Well, I want to, I mean, I want to talk to him.

Ed (00:30:55) - I think I would have different questions than you had. I mean, not that there was something wrong with yours, but, you know, I, I, I teach I have to teach some Buddhism in, in my philosophy class, and then I, I do teach an ethics class. I've never really taught anything about AI. but I do try to keep up with it. it's such an interesting topic. And he seemed like a really nice guy.

Greg (00:31:17) - Yeah. And again, I was I was really fascinated about the idea of like, you know, we grew up in Western cultures with the all men are created equal kind of thing. Sure. I'm not sure. Does that translate fairly across in in like Thai thought and Thai culture and Asian culture? You know, I couldn't help but thinking about like I mentioned in the interview, of like the caste system in India, you know, that's definitely not true. Well.

Ed (00:31:42) - In general, I think that Asian culture is more hierarchical, although that stuff definitely did exist in the past in the West.

Ed (00:31:51) - It's more of a an enlightenment thing. The last 300 years in Europe, the whole everyone's equal thing. But but I do think it's less true in Asia. I mean, it's not just India, it's also in Confucianism. There's there's a lot of hierarchical pairs like husband and wife. And it's always it's always someone ranked above someone else. So I do think that is the difference. But I don't know. It's like, you know, with my students, since they're studying in English and they're actually learning about the West, I feel like they've absorbed a lot of Western ideas.

Greg (00:32:23) - That was one of my takeaways from this, too. Now I was sort of I really wanted to get to the differences between Eastern and Western ideas about ethics and AI and things like that, but the more we talked about it, the more I started thinking like, well, maybe they're sort of like they're starting to converge because the concept of like, you know, respect and equality and treating people equally as sort of becoming.

Greg (00:32:46) - Do you think it's much more. Yeah. I mean, the.

Ed (00:32:47) - The, the world definitely is just more globalized and connected. And so those, those ideas do transfer more. so I don't know, man. It might have helped if you had someone who actually taught ethics who was actually in the interview, you know, and could ask appropriate questions. That might have been interesting.

Greg (00:33:03) - Was it unethical of me to not wait for you to be to be available?

Ed (00:33:07) - I think it was. And that's just my take after having taught ethics for like ten years. But, you know, that's just my opinion. What would.

Greg (00:33:13) - I know? I've just taught ethics for ten years.

Ed (00:33:16) - I mean, really, I don't know. Anyway, super nice guy. So I want to say thank you to him and hopefully I'll get to meet him in the future at some point.

Greg (00:33:22) - Yeah, that would be cool. Thank you, Doctor Surratt, for coming on the show. A pleasure to talk to you.

Greg (00:33:26) - And, maybe we'll have a chat again one day. Cool. All right. Let's get into some lovely weather. Live with where one of us picks a particular aspect of living in Bangkok, which we discussed to decide if it's something we love about living here, loathe about living here, or have come to accept as something that we just have to learn to live with no matter how we feel about it. And this week, I got something for you, Ed. Right off the bat. Cool. I was picking up my boy from school today, and we got a taxi coming home in the taxi, and he had a, sort of an iPad mini thing on his dashboard playing a Thai soap opera. And he was sort of glancing as he drove. What do you think of this? Does this unnerve you? Do you find it sort of like, funny and charming or.

Ed (00:34:06) - No, it's bad. I know exactly what you're talking about. As we actually. Yeah. I feel like we went through a phase where we talked a lot about taxis.

Ed (00:34:13) - That was. It's been a couple of years now.

Greg (00:34:14) - Yeah, yeah, we had a whole taxi, growth spurt.

Ed (00:34:18) - Yeah. We haven't talked about taxi so much, but I still take taxis almost every day. And, I think it's horrible. I know exactly what you're talking about. They have a screen sometimes it's just their phone, but then sometimes it's like a cheap, almost like mini flat screen TV. Sometimes it is something like an iPad mini. And they'll and again, it's usually soap operas that they're watching while they're driving. It's it's horrible. I'm guessing it's actually against the law, you know. You know, as we've said many times, Thailand talent's laws usually are reasonable. It's just they're not enforced. So I'm guessing it's not legal to use another screen while you're driving. Yeah, I would agree. so I've never, you know, I've never had a problem. As far as I know, it's never caused an accident. But I find it awkward because I, I, you know, what do you do? What do you do when you, when a when a taxi driver is, is kind of doing something you don't like? I always feel limited and like I really want to tell him, like, could you please watch the road? But if they haven't made a mistake, if there hasn't been a near accident at.

Ed (00:35:25) - I don't know if it if it's the right thing to do.

Greg (00:35:28) - I hate I hate the person I become in the back of a taxi because I become all nervous, like, oh, I didn't do the seatbelt yet. So. But if I do it up now, he's going to think that it's a reaction to something he's doing and maybe get mad at me like.

Ed (00:35:41) - That's right, that's right.

Greg (00:35:42) - one of my friends with his, his solution was if the driver was driving erratically or like stopping and starting too much, he would just say excuse like, can you drive a bit better because I'm going to be sick. And then. Right. It's like an immediate improvement.

Ed (00:35:55) - Occasionally I tell them to slow down if they're driving really crazy. Yeah, yeah.

Greg (00:35:59) - You know. Yeah, I would too. But for the TVs, I mean, my knee jerk reaction would be hard loathe, because that's extremely dangerous and stupid. But on the other hand, I never tell him to turn it off.

Greg (00:36:09) - So, yeah, I.

Ed (00:36:10) - Mean, I'm going to say I'm with you. I'm I'm a loathe on principle just because it's unsafe. But I've never said I've never said anything about it. Yeah, but it's it's just it's wrong. Yeah. The only, the only thing to say about it, it's just wrong. Yeah I agree Carlos. Double low. Double low. Alrighty. So as we mentioned at the beginning of the show, we'd like to say thank you to Tom Grogan for lending us his support at the show. Shout out level. Greg, what did you find out about Tom?

Greg (00:36:36) - Well, I found out something quite interesting about our buddy Tom, and, surprised me because I thought that you and I, we've been doing this podcast for seven seasons now, and before you, there was a few more seasons. So in total, we've been we've been on the air for 13 years. Oh my God. And, you know, you do that for any, any amount of time and you sort of start to think that I think I got this wrapped up.

Greg (00:36:56) - I was the originator, the OG. But. Right. Not the case. Not the case. Tom said he sent me a message and he says, I've been a listener lurker from the beginning. Way back in your season one, episode one, when it was you and Tony. Wow. He's been around for a long time. Longtime are here like yourselves, and I believe Ed and I share a tie relocation anniversary. The question mark, when did you come to Thailand?

Ed (00:37:19) - August 2000.

Greg (00:37:21) - Okay. Well, he said I moved to Thailand in October of 2001 for a teaching contract. And much like you guys just never left. In fact, I used to do a podcast of my own back in the day that I started in 2008.

Ed (00:37:34) - Hum. Wow. It's got got you beat, dude.

Greg (00:37:36) - Cosby by two years. it was more of a personal journal format, so the family back home could keep up with what I was doing with my life. Here is there were no smartphones, Facebook or Google Maps.

Greg (00:37:46) - I don't know how we survived. You guys started the podcast in 2010, and I think I did my last episode in 2012. I've always enjoyed your show when I figured it was high time to contribute. Big love to you guys from a longtime fan, you know, nice.

Ed (00:37:58) - Very cool, very nice of him. And we got to give him credit. He did start before we did.

Greg (00:38:02) - So he was like already a podcast old hand and shutting things down. That's right. When me and me and Evo were just babies, actually me and Tony were still in there in 2012. We were just babies, just still trying to figure out what we were doing, talking through pantyhose filters into some old crappy microphones we bought. So, Tom, we bow down to you, the OG podcaster, for sure.

Ed (00:38:23) - For sure. Thanks, Tom.

Greg (00:38:24) - Yeah, thanks for your support, Matt.

Ed (00:38:26) - Alrighty, a final thanks to all of our patrons who support the show. Patrons get a ton of cool perks and the warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that they're helping and are never ending.

Ed (00:38:33) - Quest for cool content? Find out more by clicking support on our website and connect with us online. Where Bangkok podcasts on social media Bangkok podcast.com on the web or simply Bangkok Podcast at gmail.com. We love hearing from our listeners and always reply to our messages.

Greg (00:38:52) - That's right. You can also listen to each episode on YouTube. You can send us a voicemail through our website that will feature on the show. Hit me up on threads at K.K.. Greg, thank you for listening. Everyone. Take it easy out there. Welcome back to the office after Songkran. We'll see you back here next week.