Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► I was just trying your method of putting the headphone over both ears.

00:00:03 ◼   ► My method?

00:00:04 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the mic method.

00:00:06 ◼   ► If you wear the headphone over both ears, that's the mic method.

00:00:09 ◼   ► The grey method is headphone over one ear when you're recording a podcast.

00:00:13 ◼   ► I forgot about this.

00:00:14 ◼   ► And I just tried it with both ears.

00:00:16 ◼   ► It sounds awful.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Awful in what way?

00:00:18 ◼   ► What's awful about it?

00:00:19 ◼   ► It just sounds so weird.

00:00:20 ◼   ► It doesn't sound like it's supposed to sound.

00:00:22 ◼   ► I hate everything about this.

00:00:24 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:00:25 ◼   ► It's very distracting.

00:00:26 ◼   ► It's less distracting.

00:00:28 ◼   ► - You don't hear anything else.

00:00:30 ◼   ► You just hear your voice, my voice.

00:00:32 ◼   ► - I don't know, my voice is too big in my head this way.

00:00:37 ◼   ► I don't quite know how to describe it.

00:00:38 ◼   ► It's very strange.

00:00:40 ◼   ► You have to have one ear off.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Yeah, this is so much better.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Okay, I've gone back to my method

00:00:44 ◼   ► because I can hear my voice through one ear

00:00:49 ◼   ► so I can listen for microphone problems

00:00:53 ◼   ► and I can make sure that I'm close enough to the microphone.

00:00:55 ◼   ► But I'm also not distracted by the way my voice sounds on the microphone,

00:01:01 ◼   ► because I can actually just hear my voice the way it sounds when I'm normally talking.

00:01:06 ◼   ► So that's why this is the superior method, and the mic method is no good.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - Unnecessary amounts of information I'm giving you now,

00:01:13 ◼   ► in respect of the fact that maybe our entire audience will hear this, but...

00:01:18 ◼   ► I believe that if you're still using any of the equipment that you've mentioned to me

00:01:22 ◼   ► you're using in the past who could honestly tell. A lot of these things they

00:01:27 ◼   ► have a dial so like mine has a dial called pre and PC and so I can adjust the

00:01:33 ◼   ► balance between what's coming through the interface via USB so from the

00:01:38 ◼   ► computer and what's coming in from the microphone so you can adjust the balance

00:01:41 ◼   ► so less of me more of you and you can turn all the volume down and you'll be

00:01:46 ◼   ► quieter in your own ears.

00:01:48 ◼   ► But that doesn't change anything because if I just make my

00:01:51 ◼   ► own voice quieter than, then I can't hear me at all because I can't hear me through

00:01:55 ◼   ► the headphones.

00:01:56 ◼   ► But you don't need to make it so quiet that you can't hear yourself.

00:01:59 ◼   ► You have an adjustment.

00:02:00 ◼   ► You have control of the adjustment.

00:02:01 ◼   ► It's not like, you know, there is a lot of in the middle between those two things.

00:02:06 ◼   ► No, no, I know what you're saying.

00:02:07 ◼   ► I have a dial here where I can turn my microphone down.

00:02:10 ◼   ► I can do that.

00:02:11 ◼   ► No, it's not turning your microphone down.

00:02:13 ◼   ► But look, I can, I can turn here.

00:02:15 ◼   ► I could, I can mess up all of your recordings by turning my microphone down.

00:02:18 ◼   ► No, but that's not why I'm asking you to do.

00:02:20 ◼   ► I don't think you're listening to me.

00:02:22 ◼   ► What I'm saying is, I believe your hardware,

00:02:25 ◼   ► probably the same as mine,

00:02:26 ◼   ► only for using that stupid travel gear again.

00:02:30 ◼   ► - You certainly don't mean the Rode NT

00:02:33 ◼   ► that I'm recording on right now.

00:02:34 ◼   ► - Oh, then who could tell that thing

00:02:37 ◼   ► just threw it out of the window.

00:02:38 ◼   ► But if you're using any of the really expensive,

00:02:40 ◼   ► unnecessary gear that you've bought,

00:02:42 ◼   ► it would have dials on it to like adjust the balance.

00:02:47 ◼   ► It's not about turn your microphone down,

00:02:49 ◼   ► it turns down the monitoring of your own microphone,

00:02:52 ◼   ► specifically.

00:02:53 ◼   ► - Look, I understand what you're saying here, Myke.

00:02:55 ◼   ► - Do you though, Greg?

00:02:56 ◼   ► 'Cause when you say I don't wanna turn my microphone down,

00:03:00 ◼   ► that would suggest to me that you don't know what I'm saying.

00:03:03 ◼   ► - No, but that would be, what you're suggesting

00:03:05 ◼   ► is even worse.

00:03:06 ◼   ► So I get it.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I leave the microphone volume up so that I'm recording it.

00:03:10 ◼   ► And I turn the output of the microphone

00:03:14 ◼   ► and my own headphones down so that I can, I guess,

00:03:17 ◼   ► I don't know, just barely hear my own voice.

00:03:20 ◼   ► - But that's what you wanted.

00:03:21 ◼   ► You didn't want your voice to be so loud.

00:03:23 ◼   ► - But if I can just barely hear my own voice,

00:03:26 ◼   ► it's crazy. - You're the only person

00:03:28 ◼   ► saying barely, I didn't say barely.

00:03:31 ◼   ► I just said turn it down a bit.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Now you're like, oh, then I'm whispering in my own ears.

00:03:36 ◼   ► I never said to do that.

00:03:38 ◼   ► I just-- - Okay, look, look, look.

00:03:41 ◼   ► So I have adjusted the microphone ever since,

00:03:44 ◼   ► you won't even notice, Myke.

00:03:45 ◼   ► I've adjusted the microphone ever so slightly so that my voice in my ears through the headphones

00:03:53 ◼   ► only is about as loud as it sounds when I'm just talking, right?

00:03:57 ◼   ► So I've got it that way.

00:03:59 ◼   ► But it doesn't sound the same.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Like your voice doesn't sound the same through a microphone than going into headphones.

00:04:08 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:09 ◼   ► But this is okay.

00:04:11 ◼   ► This is one of those things where you have to.

00:04:13 ◼   ► - Okay, my suggestion is in a way I think about this,

00:04:15 ◼   ► sacrifice potentially my own comfort for the audience

00:04:20 ◼   ► because it does not matter how your voice sounds

00:04:24 ◼   ► in your own room for this purpose.

00:04:27 ◼   ► What matters is how your voice sounds

00:04:30 ◼   ► whilst it's being recorded.

00:04:32 ◼   ► - No, I understand that.

00:04:33 ◼   ► - I just imagine it.

00:04:35 ◼   ► I would be so distracted having just one ear to the wind.

00:04:39 ◼   ► - No, it's one ear to your own voice.

00:04:41 ◼   ► - But what's the other ear doing?

00:04:43 ◼   ► - The other ear is listening to you.

00:04:45 ◼   ► - What?

00:04:47 ◼   ► - You're coming in through the headphone that's on my ear,

00:04:50 ◼   ► and then I take the other headphone off my opposite ear,

00:04:54 ◼   ► and then I can hear my own voice through that ear.

00:04:56 ◼   ► That's the gray method.

00:04:57 ◼   ► - Right, but that's what I'm saying.

00:04:59 ◼   ► I'm only in one of your ears, right?

00:05:00 ◼   ► - No, you're in, well, if in the mic method,

00:05:03 ◼   ► you're in both of my ears.

00:05:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, which is best?

00:05:05 ◼   ► - Okay, look, I'm gonna try it.

00:05:07 ◼   ► I'm gonna try it this episode.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I'm gonna try it the mic way.

00:05:09 ◼   ► - You're gonna get surround sound.

00:05:11 ◼   ► So now mic is in both of my ears and even though I can hear my voice just fine,

00:05:17 ◼   ► psychologically it feels like talking in a very muted way somehow.

00:05:22 ◼   ► It's very uncomfortable.

00:05:24 ◼   ► But I'll try it.

00:05:26 ◼   ► It is because you're not getting the room reverberation and stuff.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Which we don't want, you know, in the audio.

00:05:34 ◼   ► So you got to think about the whole audio experience.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Right, no, but okay, but like switching between the mic version and the gray version

00:05:39 ◼   ► It doesn't change whether or not there's room echo on the mic.

00:05:43 ◼   ► No, it doesn't.

00:05:44 ◼   ► I think that you need to, like me, like step into the podcast, you know, both feet into

00:05:50 ◼   ► the podcast, you know, like both ears in, we're both in, we're in it now, we're making

00:05:54 ◼   ► it, we are like now one and the same as the podcast in our real lives, you know, like

00:06:00 ◼   ► so you just got to step in, now we're inside the podcast together, the two of us now, along

00:06:05 ◼   ► with everybody else.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Right.

00:06:07 ◼   ► I'm talking in a way that just doesn't sound like my own voice now.

00:06:11 ◼   ► So it's, it's straight.

00:06:12 ◼   ► This now sounds like the person who does those videos and does this podcast.

00:06:16 ◼   ► That's, that's his voice.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Right, but that's the important thing for this, you know?

00:06:20 ◼   ► Okay, so I just need to learn to talk with a new voice for this podcast.

00:06:24 ◼   ► No, no, don't, don't like put on an accent or something.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Just be normal.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Okay, being normal commencing now.

00:06:34 ◼   ► Look at me just being normal.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Yeah, just a regular guy. Regular guy over here. Regular Joe.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Yep. Just a person who doesn't have their own voice and is talking with a different sounding voice

00:06:50 ◼   ► that's very close to, but not quite their actual voice. How could that be weird and different?

00:06:56 ◼   ► It definitely isn't. This is all very normal.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Have you ever looked into this? This seems like something you would have looked into.

00:07:01 ◼   ► What?

00:07:02 ◼   ► the idea of how our voices sound different to us than when they're recorded and stuff.

00:07:06 ◼   ► Like, have you ever looked into it? Like, I just wonder if this is the thing that you

00:07:10 ◼   ► —

00:07:11 ◼   ► Like, what do you mean? What are you — the reason?

00:07:12 ◼   ► I think there's something about the echoing inside of your own skull or something, I think

00:07:16 ◼   ► I might have read once? Like, the way that you hear your own voice is different to how

00:07:20 ◼   ► it actually sounds, because in your own head it, like, it's amplified differently or

00:07:24 ◼   ► something.

00:07:25 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. Your own — like, your own voice is being transmitted partly through your skull

00:07:28 ◼   ► to your inner ear.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Right.

00:07:30 ◼   ► sense the way sound works, right? That the sound comes out of your mouth, so you're never

00:07:36 ◼   ► hearing the way you are directing sound, and different frequencies fall off at different

00:07:43 ◼   ► rates. So there's a bunch of reasons why it totally makes it. It's not like a weird psychological

00:07:46 ◼   ► phenomenon, it's a physics phenomenon.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Because what I like specifically about the microphone I use right now, which is called

00:07:53 ◼   ► the Neumann KMS 105 is a professional grade microphone is when I listen back I sound like

00:08:00 ◼   ► how I sound to me that's what I like about this microphone it sounds how I hear my own

00:08:07 ◼   ► voice sounding and it feels natural to me that's why I like this microphone so much

00:08:12 ◼   ► maybe this is why I can handle the two ear mic method Neumann U87 is that what you said?

00:08:16 ◼   ► No Neumann KMS 105 it should be great the microphone you are speaking into unless you've

00:08:21 ◼   ► decided to change that again.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Wait, sorry, what microphone am I supposed to be?

00:08:25 ◼   ► Oh my god, are you being serious with me right now?

00:08:27 ◼   ► Have you just changed microphone again?

00:08:29 ◼   ► I don't know if we need to discuss this on AirMyke.

00:08:32 ◼   ► Don't we?

00:08:32 ◼   ► Because you seem to bring it up a lot.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Have you changed microphone again?

00:08:36 ◼   ► Wait, wait, well, here's the problem.

00:08:39 ◼   ► I think the answer is yes, but I don't remember ever being

00:08:44 ◼   ► suggested this microphone.

00:08:45 ◼   ► This is the first time I'm ever hearing of this Neumann KMS

00:08:48 ◼   ► 104 microphone.

00:08:49 ◼   ► - What microphone are you using?

00:08:51 ◼   ► - Okay, well, so for the past two years,

00:08:53 ◼   ► I've been using a completely different microphone,

00:08:56 ◼   ► but I switched last episode to a new microphone

00:08:59 ◼   ► and I just didn't tell you about it.

00:09:01 ◼   ► I'm using the, what is it?

00:09:03 ◼   ► It's the, it says here on the side,

00:09:07 ◼   ► it's the Shure SM58.

00:09:10 ◼   ► That's the one I have in front of me right now.

00:09:11 ◼   ► - Why have you done this?

00:09:13 ◼   ► - It was in my box of microphones.

00:09:15 ◼   ► - What were you using before?

00:09:17 ◼   ► Previously, I was using the Shure SM7B microphone.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Does that mean anything to you immediately?

00:09:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I know what it is.

00:09:28 ◼   ► - Okay, I thought you might.

00:09:30 ◼   ► So I've been using that for the last, I don't know,

00:09:34 ◼   ► since the pandemic started, I think.

00:09:35 ◼   ► I think I got that from my home office set up

00:09:37 ◼   ► when I was doing a bunch of stuff.

00:09:39 ◼   ► So I switched to that a long time ago.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And only just recently, as in with the last

00:09:45 ◼   ► vacation trip that I took, decided that microphone is just more of a pain in the butt than it's

00:09:51 ◼   ► worth.

00:09:52 ◼   ► I do think it sounds really good, but it's too fiddly, and it's particularly fiddly with

00:09:57 ◼   ► having to change settings between going back and forth, between recording something for

00:10:03 ◼   ► me to use in the video and recording for us talking.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Like, I just—it doesn't matter why I can't keep the same settings for both of those situations.

00:10:10 ◼   ► They have to be different.

00:10:11 ◼   ► convinced that there was a point where I got you using the same microphone I use.

00:10:17 ◼   ► I've never heard of this microphone before in my life. But here's the thing

00:10:24 ◼   ► Myke, you're not wrong. There is a non-zero chance that at some point I was

00:10:27 ◼   ► using this microphone and I just totally forgot. I don't remember. It looks like

00:10:30 ◼   ► the one you're currently using. Do you want me to rummage around in my box of

00:10:34 ◼   ► microphones on air and see if this microphone is in there? Honestly, if you have all of your

00:10:39 ◼   ► microphones in one place, then yes, I want you to see if you have a microphone in that

00:10:43 ◼   ► box that has a little red label on the side that says Neumann, because now I feel like

00:10:48 ◼   ► I'm the one who's losing their mind.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Okay, hold on a second, I just need to take my headphones off to grab it, but within iSight

00:10:54 ◼   ► I have a little box that I keep all my audio equipment in, so let me just grab it.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Do you though? Do you keep it all in one place? I just can't imagine you keep it all in one

00:11:01 ◼   ► place.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Okay, I'm back. Headphones on and the mic method.

00:11:08 ◼   ► I actually think this is a little bit... I keep trying to think of ways to describe this.

00:11:13 ◼   ► This feels a bit like when you have a cold and your voice sounds weird.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Everything about this mic method is terrible.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Okay, so I have this microphone box. It's a smallish shoebox.

00:11:24 ◼   ► What a great place to keep all this expensive gear. Just a shoebox.

00:11:28 ◼   ► you put it by the radiator, by the leaky tap in the corner,

00:11:33 ◼   ► where does it go?

00:11:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:35 ◼   ► - Well, look, I have it all in one spot.

00:11:36 ◼   ► See, so I've got my little zoom recorders.

00:11:40 ◼   ► I've got a bunch of aux cables.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Oh, I have a spare one of those

00:11:45 ◼   ► lightning to 3.5 millimeter cables.

00:11:49 ◼   ► - Oh, we'll be talking about those later on.

00:11:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, which is without a doubt the product

00:11:53 ◼   ► that Apple makes the largest margins on

00:11:54 ◼   ► of anything they sell.

00:11:56 ◼   ► That is outrageous.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Oh, there's another microphone in here at the bottom of the shoebox.

00:12:02 ◼   ► No, but it's not this one.

00:12:03 ◼   ► So it's the Shure Beta 87C.

00:12:06 ◼   ► - Okay, there are no more microphones?

00:12:10 ◼   ► - There are no more microphones in my audio box, no.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Myke, can I just be clear here for a second?

00:12:16 ◼   ► Are you wanting me to buy another microphone to swap out and to use on the podcast?

00:12:21 ◼   ► Is that what you're saying? - At this point, no.

00:12:23 ◼   ► - Is that what you're suggesting?

00:12:24 ◼   ► - Because I am convinced that I made you do this.

00:12:27 ◼   ► I strongly suggested that you get the same microphone as me because it's very reliable

00:12:33 ◼   ► and I am convinced that you bought this microphone and have used it because I remember this being a

00:12:41 ◼   ► thing of like oh Grey's audio is so much better now because I made him get the good microphone

00:12:46 ◼   ► this is a thing that has happened and then what I expect has happened over time

00:12:51 ◼   ► is you've moved around to whatever you've moved around but you're in the monolith now

00:12:57 ◼   ► Which is gonna make pretty much any half decent microphone sound good because it's so horrifically sound-defening inside of that thing.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Every time I think about what it's like to stand inside of that little construction you've built for yourself, it's like even I can't even hear myself thinking there. It's horrible.

00:13:17 ◼   ► It's so funny. I have become completely immune to the difference between the rooms where even when I am not in the middle of my recording setup, it's just in my home office.

00:13:25 ◼   ► But my wife just does not want to spend more than a second necessary in my home office because of how physically uncomfortable she feels

00:13:33 ◼   ► With just the amount of sound editing equipment that's in here.

00:13:37 ◼   ► I'm convinced that I convinced you to buy this microphone and now

00:13:41 ◼   ► now I feel like

00:13:44 ◼   ► Something as bad has happened to me that I can't that this seems to not be the case

00:13:49 ◼   ► I don't think this has happened. There's no record of us talking about our audio setups at any point in time on the show

00:13:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, but the thing is though,

00:13:57 ◼   ► is I feel like you would hide things from me.

00:13:59 ◼   ► - What?

00:14:00 ◼   ► That's outrageous.

00:14:01 ◼   ► - As it's been proven.

00:14:03 ◼   ► Right, so like I could say to you,

00:14:05 ◼   ► get this microphone and you go, okay.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Right, and then never do it.

00:14:08 ◼   ► In the sense of like I just found out that

00:14:11 ◼   ► inexplicably you changed microphone two episodes ago.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Hang on a minute.

00:14:16 ◼   ► - What?

00:14:17 ◼   ► - Hang on a minute.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Two episodes ago?

00:14:19 ◼   ► - No, the last episode.

00:14:20 ◼   ► Last episode is the one I swapped.

00:14:22 ◼   ► - All right, you knew what I was gonna say then.

00:14:24 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

00:14:54 ◼   ► seen any interview show on YouTube where someone is talking to someone else, they all use that

00:15:00 ◼   ► microphone.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Yeah, all video podcasts with a set have these microphones.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Every single one of them uses it.

00:15:06 ◼   ► And I don't know why because that microphone is a real pain. This is known. And also as

00:15:11 ◼   ► well, the SM7B only works with certain people's voices. Like it doesn't sound great for most

00:15:19 ◼   ► people. I don't know what Shure have done. I think it's like the professional look of

00:15:25 ◼   ► it, like it looks like a professional microphone so everyone just gets it. Like, it's weird.

00:15:32 ◼   ► I got it at the start of the pandemic, partly because I had seen a ton of people using it,

00:15:37 ◼   ► right? I was completely influenced by seeing other people use it. I got it, I tried it

00:15:42 ◼   ► I did like it better with my voice.

00:15:44 ◼   ► And so I did keep it, but I am convinced,

00:15:48 ◼   ► especially after my two years of what a pain in the butt

00:15:51 ◼   ► this microphone is and how finicky it can be,

00:15:55 ◼   ► I'm convinced that the physical look of it

00:15:57 ◼   ► is a huge reason why on every podcast

00:16:01 ◼   ► that has a video component, you see it.

00:16:03 ◼   ► Because otherwise, like the microphone I'm using right now,

00:16:07 ◼   ► microphone arm, oops, let me not bump everything.

00:16:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:12 ◼   ► - Bang!

00:16:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:13 ◼   ► No problem here.

00:16:14 ◼   ► - If you're trying to do an interview with two people

00:16:16 ◼   ► and you're visually recording it,

00:16:18 ◼   ► microphone arms are big, chunky equipment.

00:16:22 ◼   ► And I think it can look a little weird

00:16:25 ◼   ► to then have a dinky microphone on the end of it.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Like the microphone I'm using now

00:16:29 ◼   ► is just a regular little microphone.

00:16:31 ◼   ► - It's the one thing I don't like

00:16:32 ◼   ► about my amazing microphone,

00:16:33 ◼   ► is it looks like a singer's microphone.

00:16:36 ◼   ► - Yes. - I don't like that.

00:16:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I totally get that.

00:16:39 ◼   ► So I suspect that's the reason why everyone uses it.

00:16:42 ◼   ► But anyway, the thing that really put me over the edge is when I did my

00:16:47 ◼   ► Gracation and obviously to record the audio for the Interstate video,

00:16:52 ◼   ► I was not going to bring that giant chunky Shure SM7B with me while traveling.

00:16:58 ◼   ► So I just took my travel microphone, which is this, the 58, which looks

00:17:02 ◼   ► like a little singer's microphone.

00:17:03 ◼   ► And it's been a long time since I recorded a video in a travel location.

00:17:10 ◼   ► And having done that, I thought, "This is totally fine."

00:17:15 ◼   ► Like, I don't know why I thought, "Oh, let me try to squeeze out the last 3% of audio quality

00:17:22 ◼   ► with a microphone that is 10 times more annoying than a simpler microphone."

00:17:27 ◼   ► So that was really the final, final thing that made me say, "What the heck am I doing?

00:17:33 ◼   ► I'm going to just stop using this giant chunky microphone and I'm going to go back to something simpler.

00:17:37 ◼   ► I recorded a very popular video with this simpler microphone and nobody noticed or cared.

00:17:44 ◼   ► It makes no difference to any of the viewers, so...

00:17:47 ◼   ► The SM58 is a great microphone. I've used them a bunch.

00:17:53 ◼   ► The reason I don't use the SM58 is it makes me sound a little too bassy.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Like we used to use them for, I believe, I'm pretty sure we used to use the SM58s for live stuff.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And I think I have one here as well, like for if I would go traveling I would take an SM58.

00:18:10 ◼   ► I think that's the one I would have.

00:18:11 ◼   ► I do a bit of post-processing on my voice, particularly for the videos to

00:18:15 ◼   ► debase them so it sounds clearer, so I can completely understand that.

00:18:19 ◼   ► It can make someone's voice sound a bit too bassy.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Anyway, this is microphone talk!

00:18:23 ◼   ► I don't understand. I don't understand what has happened.

00:18:27 ◼   ► I don't know why this microphone has disappeared.

00:18:32 ◼   ► I never had this microphone. I never had this one.

00:18:35 ◼   ► But I also don't believe that that box contains every microphone you've ever owned.

00:18:40 ◼   ► I guarantee you it does. I guarantee you it does.

00:18:42 ◼   ► No, because you used to use a really bad microphone.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Oh wait, every microphone I've ever owned?

00:18:47 ◼   ► Yeah, because I just think that you've used the one that I asked you to buy.

00:18:50 ◼   ► I mean sure, yeah, I don't have my old Yeti Blue microphone in this box.

00:18:56 ◼   ► like some of the old microphones I've gotten rid of, but no, this never happened, Myke.

00:19:00 ◼   ► This was all in your head.

00:19:01 ◼   ► I feel like I'm talking so loud into this microphone because I can't hear myself.

00:19:09 ◼   ► - What is this show now?

00:19:11 ◼   ► - Am I crazy?

00:19:12 ◼   ► - What are we doing?

00:19:12 ◼   ► - Do I sound like I'm so much louder to you?

00:19:15 ◼   ► - No, of course you don't.

00:19:17 ◼   ► - It's like I'm deaf in my own head and I can still hear me.

00:19:21 ◼   ► - It's like one of those things where like, what is it?

00:19:23 ◼   ► Like it's like object impermanence in babies.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Because you're hearing yourself louder, you think you're louder to me,

00:19:30 ◼   ► like now I'm like, "Oh, he's too loud, turn him down."

00:19:33 ◼   ► - No, I feel like I'm straining my voice talking to you

00:19:37 ◼   ► because I'm now trying to hear my own voice.

00:19:40 ◼   ► - Gray? - Yeah.

00:19:41 ◼   ► - Just take the headphone off.

00:19:43 ◼   ► - No, I refuse to do this now.

00:19:45 ◼   ► - Well, then stop complaining.

00:19:46 ◼   ► Stop complaining, you know?

00:19:48 ◼   ► Do one or the other.

00:19:50 ◼   ► - No, I'm gonna do it your way and I'm going to complain.

00:19:53 ◼   ► - I feel like I should just give up, you know?

00:19:54 ◼   ► I feel like people have been listening to me

00:19:57 ◼   ► over the last maybe 18 months, I think.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Just like every episode, some level of despair.

00:20:03 ◼   ► And now just like the pure fundamentals

00:20:05 ◼   ► of what I believed was the audio gear is not true anymore.

00:20:08 ◼   ► So I don't even know, you know, like at this point,

00:20:11 ◼   ► why do I put all this emotional energy

00:20:13 ◼   ► into just trying to make sure that my podcast co-host

00:20:17 ◼   ► has a halfway competent setup or a reliable one

00:20:21 ◼   ► or isn't just changing gear on me left, right, and center.

00:20:25 ◼   ► So I should just give up on it.

00:20:26 ◼   ► But I feel like if I give up,

00:20:28 ◼   ► you'll give up from whatever it is you're currently doing,

00:20:31 ◼   ► and then you just use like an iPhone headset or something.

00:20:35 ◼   ► - No, I would never do something like that.

00:20:37 ◼   ► I want high quality for the recording.

00:20:39 ◼   ► That's why I have all this equipment.

00:20:40 ◼   ► - If you want high quality,

00:20:41 ◼   ► I'm gonna send you a link later on,

00:20:43 ◼   ► you buy the microphone that I already know you bought,

00:20:46 ◼   ► and then you can have another one.

00:20:47 ◼   ► - You want me to buy it?

00:20:48 ◼   ► Oh, I was like, you want me to buy a duplicate

00:20:51 ◼   ► of the one I have now and record with two microphones,

00:20:53 ◼   ► but no, you want me to record with this Neumann KMS 105.

00:20:57 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:20:58 ◼   ► - I'll consider it.

00:21:01 ◼   ► - Or just find the one that you already bought.

00:21:03 ◼   ► - I didn't buy one of these.

00:21:05 ◼   ► - Just find it.

00:21:06 ◼   ► Can you search your email?

00:21:08 ◼   ► - God damn it, okay, all right, hold on.

00:21:10 ◼   ► Let me search my email.

00:21:11 ◼   ► - Just search Neumann, N-E-U-M-A-N-N.

00:21:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it, I got it.

00:21:16 ◼   ► - No, you don't, how do you know you got it?

00:21:18 ◼   ► Was that how you would have spelt Neumann?

00:21:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, John von Neumann, like I know Neumann.

00:21:22 ◼   ► - Who's that?

00:21:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:23 ◼   ► Who's this now?

00:21:25 ◼   ► Who's this character?

00:21:26 ◼   ► - Okay, you Google for John von Neumann

00:21:28 ◼   ► and I'm gonna look up this KM184 Neumann microphone.

00:21:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:34 ◼   ► - We have real things to talk about today.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Why are we doing this?

00:21:38 ◼   ► John von Neumann was a Hungarian American mathematician,

00:21:42 ◼   ► physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath.

00:21:45 ◼   ► - Probably one of the smartest human beings

00:21:47 ◼   ► who's ever lived.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Probably, I don't know, develop the Neumann microphone.

00:21:51 ◼   ► And anyway, I've got zero hits in my email for Neumann.

00:21:55 ◼   ► - But can your email be trusted anyway?

00:21:58 ◼   ► - Probably not.

00:21:59 ◼   ► - Look, Myke, what is true?

00:22:02 ◼   ► No one knows. - No one knows.

00:22:03 ◼   ► Talking about mathematician, I found out yesterday

00:22:06 ◼   ► that the Romanian word for mathematician is matamaticen,

00:22:09 ◼   ► and I think that's very funny.

00:22:10 ◼   ► - Why?

00:22:11 ◼   ► - It just sounds very funny to me, matamaticen.

00:22:13 ◼   ► - It sounds cute.

00:22:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I like it a lot.

00:22:15 ◼   ► It sounds like this isn't gonna be as funny for you

00:22:17 ◼   ► particularly, but for math, mathematics, and mathematician, it's, uh, is it Matty,

00:22:23 ◼   ► and then Matty Matyka and Matty Matychan, it sounds like a Pokemon evolution.

00:22:27 ◼   ► And I find that very, very adorable.

00:22:31 ◼   ► I found this out yesterday.

00:22:32 ◼   ► It does.

00:22:32 ◼   ► It does sound like a Pokemon evolution.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Onto the show.

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00:24:11 ◼   ► Let's talk about our travel bags because we're going on trips.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Yes, you are going to Tennessee.

00:24:21 ◼   ► And I am going to the other side of the earth.

00:24:26 ◼   ► So we have trips in front of us.

00:24:29 ◼   ► So you're going to be in Hawaii for the next year?

00:24:32 ◼   ► No, no.

00:24:35 ◼   ► I'm going to be in Hawaii for just barely over eight weeks.

00:24:41 ◼   ► That's how long I'm going to be in Hawaii.

00:24:43 ◼   ► It's going to be a real great vacation for you.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Ahh, well...

00:24:47 ◼   ► No, I'm just messing around, you know.

00:24:49 ◼   ► My reasoning here was going to Hawaii for a short period of time

00:24:54 ◼   ► is significantly worse than going for a long period of time

00:24:57 ◼   ► because the jet lag back and forth and adjusting, I was like,

00:25:02 ◼   ► Man, if I go to Hawaii for 10 days, that is going to just completely destroy like a month's worth of work.

00:25:10 ◼   ► So I'd rather just like, okay, let's go for a long time and then I can, I mean, this is the plan anyway.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Hopefully actually get real work done while I'm in Hawaii.

00:25:24 ◼   ► That's the idea. That's part of the reason why it ended up being such a long trip is

00:25:29 ◼   ► If I'm going to the other side of the earth, it is not going to be for a short period of

00:25:34 ◼   ► time, it is going to be for a long period of time.

00:25:36 ◼   ► Because you're doing family stuff, it's not like you're not just gonna be sitting

00:25:39 ◼   ► on a beach drinking Mai Tais for six weeks or whatever.

00:25:42 ◼   ► Oh no, yeah, no, this is entirely a family trip, like that is the reason for this trip,

00:25:48 ◼   ► there has been scheduled like a rota of family members who are coming in and out over this

00:25:53 ◼   ► whole period of time.

00:25:54 ◼   ► Yeah, so this is after all of this time to finally catch up on a bunch of family stuff

00:26:01 ◼   ► that has been delayed for literally years because of the pandemic.

00:26:06 ◼   ► So that is the big Hawaii trip and that's why there's a lot of logistics around this.

00:26:11 ◼   ► But yes, it also does make it an interesting experiment and challenge to think about how

00:26:17 ◼   ► am I going to be working on that trip.

00:26:20 ◼   ► But you are doing a much shorter trip.

00:26:23 ◼   ► Much shorter.

00:26:24 ◼   ► magnitude sure I think. We're just gonna be away for eight days so every year me and my co-founder

00:26:30 ◼   ► the Real FM co-founder Stephen Hackett we would get together every year just spend time together

00:26:35 ◼   ► go over some business stuff but really just be in each other's company it's like an important thing

00:26:39 ◼   ► you know he's one of my very best friends on the entire planet like I wanted to be in his company

00:26:44 ◼   ► but also we work together right like we've run this thing together for seven years eight years

00:26:48 ◼   ► I don't know who could tell at this point and we like to get together and like just go over stuff and being in each other's company

00:26:56 ◼   ► New ideas would just form naturally like it became like a really important part of our year to spend that time together

00:27:02 ◼   ► Well, we obviously haven't done it since 2019

00:27:05 ◼   ► I think this has been the longest time that we have not seen each other

00:27:10 ◼   ► Since we first met Wow, like I think from us first like having an interaction online

00:27:18 ◼   ► to me going to Memphis for the first time,

00:27:20 ◼   ► which is a shorter period of time,

00:27:22 ◼   ► than it has been since,

00:27:24 ◼   ► I think I lost the room in September.

00:27:26 ◼   ► It's the first podcast of them.

00:27:27 ◼   ► That was the last time we saw each other.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Which that feels like eons ago.

00:27:33 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Podcast of someone.

00:27:35 ◼   ► Yeah, so I'm really excited.

00:27:38 ◼   ► Speaking of which, I'm gonna be going

00:27:39 ◼   ► and seeing the team at St. Jude

00:27:41 ◼   ► and we're gonna be doing a bunch of stuff together

00:27:42 ◼   ► 'cause I haven't seen any of them for ages, right?

00:27:45 ◼   ► Two years or whatever.

00:27:46 ◼   ► and we've been working together on this project

00:27:48 ◼   ► for that amount of time.

00:27:49 ◼   ► I'm really excited, genuinely really excited about it.

00:27:52 ◼   ► I cannot wait for this trip.

00:27:54 ◼   ► But because we are both going on trips

00:27:56 ◼   ► at about the same time,

00:27:58 ◼   ► I thought it would be nice to look again

00:28:01 ◼   ► at our travel bag situation.

00:28:03 ◼   ► Now, I know we first spoke about,

00:28:06 ◼   ► like gave like an in-depth look at what we put in our bags

00:28:09 ◼   ► all the way back in January, 2016 for episode 20.

00:28:15 ◼   ► I don't remember if we've ever covered it since, so.

00:28:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't feel like we have.

00:28:20 ◼   ► And also, frankly, I'm hoping to crib from you a little bit

00:28:24 ◼   ► because I have felt just bizarrely panicked still about--

00:28:28 ◼   ► - Okay, this isn't good then because I was hoping

00:28:31 ◼   ► that you were gonna come in here

00:28:33 ◼   ► and give me a bunch of great ideas.

00:28:37 ◼   ► - But that's how I, like, okay,

00:28:40 ◼   ► so I know that I went to America, right?

00:28:43 ◼   ► I did that whole trip to Cherokee,

00:28:44 ◼   ► But I have this mental feeling like, I don't know,

00:28:48 ◼   ► like I was like a cartoon character

00:28:51 ◼   ► with just like bits falling off and just like looking crazy

00:28:55 ◼   ► and not having anything in order for that trip.

00:28:58 ◼   ► It felt very slapdash for what is my actual equipment.

00:29:03 ◼   ► I've tried to do something a little bit better

00:29:06 ◼   ► for this time, but I was thinking,

00:29:07 ◼   ► oh great, Myke is going to tell me a bunch of stuff.

00:29:11 ◼   ► - Okay, well then my hope now is,

00:29:14 ◼   ► Maybe between the two of us?

00:29:16 ◼   ► Right, between two internet professionals we can assemble a backpack.

00:29:23 ◼   ► A half-way decent bag.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Alright, let's try to do that.

00:29:28 ◼   ► The problem is, and I think we touched on this a little while before,

00:29:32 ◼   ► late last year when we both did some traveling, is during our long stint of no travel,

00:29:39 ◼   ► and I knew a lot of people did this, that slowly dismantled their travel bag,

00:29:43 ◼   ► you like grab a dongle from here, grab a cable from here.

00:29:46 ◼   ► And then also at the same time, our needs changed,

00:29:50 ◼   ► but the travel bags stayed like in stasis, right?

00:29:54 ◼   ► So like one of the things that changed

00:29:56 ◼   ► is USB-C just became more and more prevalent.

00:29:59 ◼   ► And we both came to this decision,

00:30:01 ◼   ► like many people I'm sure listen to this show,

00:30:03 ◼   ► I just don't want USB-A in my life anymore

00:30:05 ◼   ► for as much as I can have it,

00:30:06 ◼   ► I'm gonna start replacing all my cables.

00:30:08 ◼   ► So like this was when I then started traveling again,

00:30:11 ◼   ► I realized that is an untenable way to live

00:30:15 ◼   ► if you're traveling.

00:30:16 ◼   ► So I'll tell you the big thing that I noticed

00:30:18 ◼   ► was I was going to hotels

00:30:20 ◼   ► and I would get the cables out of my bag

00:30:22 ◼   ► and I would need say, on the bedside table,

00:30:25 ◼   ► at least one cable for my phone to charge,

00:30:29 ◼   ► one cable for my Apple Watch to charge, right?

00:30:32 ◼   ► All hotels have USB-A ports now, it feels like.

00:30:37 ◼   ► So going all USB-C, that tends to not work

00:30:40 ◼   ► because then I can only plug one thing in at a time.

00:30:44 ◼   ► Because all, seems like all hotel have like,

00:30:47 ◼   ► all hotels just have like one plug socket by the bed,

00:30:50 ◼   ► and then they have USB sockets.

00:30:52 ◼   ► So that doesn't work.

00:30:53 ◼   ► So now in my travel kit,

00:30:54 ◼   ► I do have one USB-A to lightning cable.

00:30:57 ◼   ► So I can charge my phone from just the USB port in the wall

00:31:02 ◼   ► and then plug my Apple Watch in or something like that.

00:31:05 ◼   ► That might honestly be my top tip for someone

00:31:07 ◼   ► who is trying to get back to thinking about traveling again.

00:31:10 ◼   ► make sure that you're at least keeping one USB-A

00:31:12 ◼   ► to something cable around so you can take advantage

00:31:15 ◼   ► of the old technology that's now embedded into hotel walls.

00:31:19 ◼   ► 'Cause that's not gonna change for a really long time.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Like how sometimes you go to hotels

00:31:23 ◼   ► and they have alarm clocks with the 30-pin iPod

00:31:26 ◼   ► dock connector on them.

00:31:27 ◼   ► - Yes, I always enjoy that. - Like that's still a thing.

00:31:28 ◼   ► So USB-A is not going away in those scenarios

00:31:31 ◼   ► for a really long time.

00:31:33 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah, so you mentioning USB-C did feel like,

00:31:36 ◼   ► for me in the past few days of trying to get ready

00:31:40 ◼   ► for this trip, which is coming up alarmingly fast.

00:31:43 ◼   ► Realizing, okay, USB-C is the main change about this,

00:31:47 ◼   ► and years ago when I was traveling,

00:31:49 ◼   ► I'm trying to build for myself a consistent,

00:31:51 ◼   ► like, okay, how is everything going to work?

00:31:53 ◼   ► Oh, I know, I'll have a hub of USB-A plugins

00:31:58 ◼   ► that I can put on the desk, and I can have like eight slots.

00:32:01 ◼   ► Won't that be great?

00:32:02 ◼   ► I can plug everything in and just run one wire to the wall,

00:32:05 ◼   ► And I just imagined that our USB-C future would be like that,

00:32:11 ◼   ► but it just isn't because there's no charger like that.

00:32:14 ◼   ► There's no hub like that where you can take one USB-C cable

00:32:18 ◼   ► and turn it into eight plugs, which is still very frustrating.

00:32:22 ◼   ► I feel like, hey, could someone could just make that,

00:32:24 ◼   ► even if each one of those slots only did 10 watts,

00:32:28 ◼   ► I would be very happy, but that doesn't exist.

00:32:30 ◼   ► So for me, trying to plan this trip,

00:32:33 ◼   ► The place where it actually started is,

00:32:36 ◼   ► what is the thing that is going to do the charging?

00:32:39 ◼   ► And so what I did is I thought, okay,

00:32:43 ◼   ► I have a bunch of these USB-C plugs for the wall,

00:32:46 ◼   ► but it's incredibly frustrating that most of them

00:32:48 ◼   ► only have a single USB-C cable.

00:32:51 ◼   ► I thought, there must be ones that exist with multiples.

00:32:55 ◼   ► I wanna find something that I can use for travel.

00:32:58 ◼   ► I want something that's relatively small.

00:33:00 ◼   ► I went on Amazon and ordered like 10 different versions of these things to try and I'm sending

00:33:07 ◼   ► to you now, this is my number one pick for traveling.

00:33:11 ◼   ► I found this little wall charger called the Mini X.

00:33:16 ◼   ► So this is a relatively small wall charger.

00:33:19 ◼   ► It has two USB C outputs that go up to 65 watts.

00:33:24 ◼   ► It has a USB-A slot, and you can swap out the front of it for US plugs and UK plugs.

00:33:33 ◼   ► This is good.

00:33:34 ◼   ► This must be a GaN.

00:33:35 ◼   ► Yeah, this is a GaN.

00:33:37 ◼   ► What's a GaN?

00:33:38 ◼   ► Gallium nitride.

00:33:39 ◼   ► GaN technology.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Anker used this a lot.

00:33:43 ◼   ► It's a more efficient way to charge, which is why these things can be so small.

00:33:48 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:33:49 ◼   ► I never really thought about what's inside.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Presumably it must be a transformer that doesn't heat up too much, I'm guessing?

00:33:55 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:56 ◼   ► Well I can tell you it's gallium nitride.

00:34:00 ◼   ► I can tell you nothing more.

00:34:02 ◼   ► I was just wildly speculating.

00:34:03 ◼   ► I know nothing about the technology.

00:34:06 ◼   ► So this is the core of my traveling.

00:34:11 ◼   ► Because this has always been the problem of what are you going to plug actual wires into.

00:34:14 ◼   ► I do always want to be able to have chargers that I can just switch between EU, UK, and

00:34:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, this does make this one a bit of a winner.

00:34:23 ◼   ► Because I like Anker's products for this stuff

00:34:27 ◼   ► and they make a lot of similar products.

00:34:29 ◼   ► I try and, but you know what I'm like,

00:34:30 ◼   ► I try and not go with companies that I don't already know

00:34:33 ◼   ► and trust in some way.

00:34:35 ◼   ► And I've never heard of Mini-X until now,

00:34:37 ◼   ► which makes me a little bit like, I'm not sure.

00:34:40 ◼   ► But I don't know if I've found an Anker product like this

00:34:43 ◼   ► which has the ease of swapping out the plug adapters

00:34:47 ◼   ► for different locations.

00:34:48 ◼   ► That's a bit of a winner on this one.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Yeah, so I bought a bunch of them off of Amazon so that I can have them.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And that's what I'm building my whole system around.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Now I'm using this for everything, right?

00:34:59 ◼   ► I just want to have a plug.

00:35:00 ◼   ► So 65 Watts is not fast enough to charge my laptop when it's running at full capacity.

00:35:08 ◼   ► But I've played around with it and I've tested it out and it's like, I can still render out a

00:35:13 ◼   ► video using this lower power cable and it's fine.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Like the battery runs down, but that machine is still good enough that I can get to the end of the video with

00:35:22 ◼   ► tons of margin on the actual like bottoming out. So there's no problem with that and then it will just

00:35:29 ◼   ► slowly build backup charge over time because the machine normally isn't actually running at over 65 watts.

00:35:36 ◼   ► So this is my base and for me in particular, the important thing is that everything in my life is

00:35:44 ◼   ► USB-C now,

00:35:46 ◼   ► except for a single thing that I can't get rid of,

00:35:50 ◼   ► which is the electric toothbrush that I use,

00:35:53 ◼   ► charges with the USB-A plug on the end.

00:35:57 ◼   ► And so that's why this is also great for me

00:36:00 ◼   ► because there is one slot for that USB-A

00:36:02 ◼   ► where I can still plug in my old electric toothbrush

00:36:05 ◼   ► and so this is perfect.

00:36:07 ◼   ► - Well, what's on the other end

00:36:08 ◼   ► of the electric toothbrush?

00:36:10 ◼   ► - The toothbrush.

00:36:11 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:36:12 ◼   ► 'Cause I have a toothbrush which you can charge it

00:36:14 ◼   ► of like a USB mini or something in the case.

00:36:18 ◼   ► - Right, right, yes.

00:36:19 ◼   ► - And so I just could swap that over from C to mini, but.

00:36:22 ◼   ► - No, the one that I use, it charges in the case

00:36:25 ◼   ► and the case has to be plugged into a USB-A connector.

00:36:28 ◼   ► - Right.

00:36:29 ◼   ► - So this now covers all of my needs.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I'm very happy to have found it

00:36:34 ◼   ► and I'm gonna be taking, I don't know,

00:36:36 ◼   ► between my wife and I, I think we're gonna have

00:36:37 ◼   ► like five of these with us on the trip.

00:36:39 ◼   ► - I'm really tempted by it.

00:36:41 ◼   ► - I can give you a long-term report later on after I've,

00:36:44 ◼   ► We can see if it holds up in hot and humid Hawaii or if it dies under those conditions,

00:36:50 ◼   ► which in my experience, many electronics do.

00:36:53 ◼   ► So here's my biggest issue with my travel situation is the charging cables and bricks.

00:37:01 ◼   ► So at the moment, I have two kind of pouches that I'm using.

00:37:06 ◼   ► They're both from Bellroy, which is a company that I like.

00:37:09 ◼   ► I previously mentioned I use one of their bags as my daily bag.

00:37:12 ◼   ► It's the tote pack that they have.

00:37:14 ◼   ► I really like this stuff. I have a wallet of theirs, it's just really nice. Nicely made,

00:37:18 ◼   ► nicely designed. And I use the Bellroy tech kit and the Bellroy pouch. Now ideally I just

00:37:26 ◼   ► want to use the tech kit, but I have a couple of issues that are preventing me from doing

00:37:31 ◼   ► so. So one is the obscene size of the MacBook Pro charging brick. That thing is massive.

00:37:43 ◼   ► And I want to have it with me for the reason that you have described where like, I mean,

00:37:49 ◼   ► it's unlikely that I'm going to be pushing it at full power, but I don't want to, I don't

00:37:54 ◼   ► want to be in a situation where I have like 20% battery life and I need to sit down and

00:37:58 ◼   ► record a view and it's not charged and it just won't keep charge, right?

00:38:01 ◼   ► Yeah, that's understandable.

00:38:03 ◼   ► And then the other part is just how big UK plug adapters can be physically.

00:38:09 ◼   ► They're large and they're bulky.

00:38:11 ◼   ► And so the combination of that with Apple's whole package makes it really large.

00:38:16 ◼   ► So then when I'm at the point where I've got to take a couple of these bricks with me,

00:38:21 ◼   ► because I want like my charger for my iPhone, say, and a charger for my Mac, and then I've

00:38:27 ◼   ► got like a bunch of cables, and maybe an adapter or two, because I like to make sure I have

00:38:32 ◼   ► enough adapters for me and Adina, like if she doesn't have something, I'll be like,

00:38:36 ◼   ► "Don't worry, I've got an adapter, we can sort it out."

00:38:40 ◼   ► all too much to go in one of these pouches but I only want one pouch because so in the

00:38:47 ◼   ► Bellroy tech kit I have basically the minimum amount of cables that I need and then the

00:38:52 ◼   ► MacBook Pro charger and maybe like one other smaller charger but then in the little pouch

00:38:57 ◼   ► is where I have a few more cables I have some international adapters I have an HDMI cable

00:39:02 ◼   ► which is actually pretty useful and I also have the AirPods Max cable which is that thing

00:39:07 ◼   ► that we were referencing earlier.

00:39:09 ◼   ► But I really want to be able to compress these down

00:39:11 ◼   ► to just one pouch, but I have yet to find a way

00:39:15 ◼   ► that I can efficiently do this

00:39:17 ◼   ► while also feeling like I have everything covered.

00:39:20 ◼   ► This is just like a problem that I'm having at the moment.

00:39:23 ◼   ► So I'm hoping that maybe if this thing,

00:39:25 ◼   ► if these little guys are nice and powerful,

00:39:27 ◼   ► then maybe that would work for me enough.

00:39:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:39:31 ◼   ► I'm not looking for a solution here

00:39:32 ◼   ► 'cause I actually don't think there is one.

00:39:34 ◼   ► I think the way to solve this is I need to just pare it all down and hope that it will

00:39:39 ◼   ► be enough.

00:39:40 ◼   ► But I just don't feel comfortable with that.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Yeah, this is always the problem with traveling is you want to minimize the amount of equipment

00:39:48 ◼   ► that you need.

00:39:49 ◼   ► But then that always has the risk of, oh, you don't have enough of whatever this thing

00:39:54 ◼   ► is.

00:39:55 ◼   ► And obviously, it's worse to not have enough.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Even on my most recent vacation where I was just working, I thought I was totally fine

00:40:04 ◼   ► with the number of USB-C wires that I had, just four things.

00:40:08 ◼   ► But it's always like, no, no, you underestimate

00:40:10 ◼   ► how many wires you're actually going to need

00:40:12 ◼   ► at any particular moment.

00:40:14 ◼   ► And it's just very easy to do.

00:40:16 ◼   ► And then that is super frustrating to be on a trip

00:40:18 ◼   ► and like swapping stuff back and forth

00:40:21 ◼   ► and just making your life way more annoying.

00:40:23 ◼   ► But I don't have a good tech pouch.

00:40:26 ◼   ► So do you like the Bellroy tech kit?

00:40:28 ◼   ► - Oh, I love this thing.

00:40:29 ◼   ► It's great. - Okay.

00:40:30 ◼   ► Well, I am on Amazon right now.

00:40:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, they have them on Amazon.

00:40:34 ◼   ► They have an Amazon store.

00:40:35 ◼   ► So here's the biggest thing for me.

00:40:37 ◼   ► I know that I could make this easier for myself

00:40:40 ◼   ► if I got rid of one thing,

00:40:42 ◼   ► but getting rid of this one thing,

00:40:44 ◼   ► I feel like I have to accept a bunch of other things.

00:40:47 ◼   ► - What's the one thing?

00:40:48 ◼   ► - It is whether I take an external battery

00:40:52 ◼   ► on trips anymore or not.

00:40:53 ◼   ► - Oh, Myke.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Myke, I suggest that you don't,

00:40:57 ◼   ► but tell me what you're thinking here.

00:40:59 ◼   ► - So I have, I just replaced my battery

00:41:02 ◼   ► 'cause I took my battery out of the bag

00:41:04 ◼   ► and it's swollen a little bit.

00:41:06 ◼   ► And I was like, "Uh-oh, time to say goodbye to you,

00:41:09 ◼   ► "my friend, and replace you."

00:41:10 ◼   ► So I now own an Anker Power Bank PowerCore 3 Elite.

00:41:15 ◼   ► - Whoa, that is a serious name there.

00:41:18 ◼   ► - But again, this is like one of those huge chunky batteries

00:41:20 ◼   ► like it's got 65 watts power delivery,

00:41:23 ◼   ► it could charge my entire laptop and life for two days.

00:41:27 ◼   ► 'Cause here's the thing,

00:41:29 ◼   ► - I don't remember the last time I used one of these.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Right? Like I've had one in my bag for years.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Like even before the pandemic, right?

00:41:37 ◼   ► I feel like I had not used one of these things in forever

00:41:40 ◼   ► because it's actually becoming easier and easier and easier

00:41:44 ◼   ► to find power on trips at the same time

00:41:47 ◼   ► when the batteries of my devices are getting better.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Like my iPhone, I can go across the world now.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And as long as I have it on low power mode

00:41:56 ◼   ► and put it into airplane mode and I'm on the plane,

00:41:59 ◼   ► it will last the entire time, my iPhone.

00:42:01 ◼   ► Like I have no problem with that anymore.

00:42:03 ◼   ► But my concern with this,

00:42:05 ◼   ► this feels like one of those times where

00:42:07 ◼   ► as soon as I stop taking it,

00:42:10 ◼   ► next trip, I'm gonna be stuck somewhere

00:42:13 ◼   ► and I need Pat, you know,

00:42:14 ◼   ► like this is the issue with this one.

00:42:16 ◼   ► It's like I have to,

00:42:17 ◼   ► I feel if I can let this go,

00:42:19 ◼   ► I can probably condense enough

00:42:23 ◼   ► with a little bit of swapping around for each trip.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Like because in that little pouch

00:42:28 ◼   ► where I have adapters.

00:42:30 ◼   ► I just keep all of my Europe and US adapters

00:42:33 ◼   ► just in that pouch and just keep it in my bag.

00:42:36 ◼   ► But if I was to just take the ones I needed for each trip,

00:42:39 ◼   ► then I would probably be able to then put it all

00:42:41 ◼   ► into the one tech kit.

00:42:43 ◼   ► If I didn't take the external battery anymore,

00:42:47 ◼   ► then I would be happier,

00:42:48 ◼   ► but then I'm taking a gamble, you know?

00:42:50 ◼   ► - I have a lot of sympathy for you in this situation.

00:42:54 ◼   ► You don't want to put yourself in a situation

00:42:59 ◼   ► where you're tempting the universe to cause you a problem.

00:43:04 ◼   ► I think about that with a lot of different situations

00:43:07 ◼   ► where if you find yourself in a moment

00:43:10 ◼   ► where you're thinking, "Yeah, it'll probably be fine."

00:43:14 ◼   ► I think it's good to anthropomorphize the universe

00:43:19 ◼   ► as a thing which goes, "Oh yeah?

00:43:22 ◼   ► this is the time that the bad thing is gonna happen.

00:43:25 ◼   ► - We'll see about that, won't we?

00:43:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:43:28 ◼   ► There's just a lot of situations where I think

00:43:31 ◼   ► this is really the case, that I'm not saying it's true,

00:43:35 ◼   ► but I'm saying that I believe it, that, say,

00:43:40 ◼   ► if you did something like, "Oh, today,

00:43:42 ◼   ► "I'm going to drive my car,

00:43:45 ◼   ► "and I'm not going to wear a seatbelt."

00:43:47 ◼   ► Now, mathematically, has the chance of you getting

00:43:52 ◼   ► into an accident, gone up.

00:43:55 ◼   ► No, it hasn't.

00:43:56 ◼   ► But I believe that it has.

00:43:59 ◼   ► I believe that the universe looks at you and goes,

00:44:02 ◼   ► "Huh, well isn't that funny?"

00:44:04 ◼   ► Right, like that's how I think the universe operates.

00:44:07 ◼   ► - Let me give you my feeling on this.

00:44:09 ◼   ► I have that in the back of my mind too,

00:44:11 ◼   ► like you know, you're tempting fate.

00:44:13 ◼   ► But what I know for me is if I was in a situation

00:44:18 ◼   ► and didn't have power, but did have the battery pack

00:44:21 ◼   ► with me and it's this imagine it even ran out.

00:44:23 ◼   ► It's like, well, there's nothing I can do about this.

00:44:25 ◼   ► I tried my best.

00:44:26 ◼   ► But if I was in a situation where I had made a choice,

00:44:30 ◼   ► and then the thing happened to me, I get angry at myself.

00:44:33 ◼   ► That's my biggest problem.

00:44:35 ◼   ► - Right, okay.

00:44:36 ◼   ► - Where I'm like, if I cannot blame myself,

00:44:38 ◼   ► well, there's nothing, I could just blame the universe

00:44:41 ◼   ► and I don't feel so bad about it.

00:44:42 ◼   ► If I have the opportunity to blame myself,

00:44:45 ◼   ► then it's a lot worse for me.

00:44:47 ◼   ► - Okay, well, that's your problem.

00:44:49 ◼   ► - That's my problem, yeah.

00:44:51 ◼   ► I don't agree with that conceptually.

00:44:53 ◼   ► - But conceptually you do agree with the idea

00:44:55 ◼   ► that the universe is against you?

00:44:57 ◼   ► - Against is too strong.

00:45:00 ◼   ► - Out to get you?

00:45:01 ◼   ► Likes to tease you.

00:45:05 ◼   ► Which one is it?

00:45:07 ◼   ► - The universe is cruelly indifferent.

00:45:10 ◼   ► That's what the universe is.

00:45:13 ◼   ► And I just believe that part of its mechanism

00:45:17 ◼   ► is engage in risky behavior

00:45:20 ◼   ► and the chance of disaster goes up.

00:45:24 ◼   ► The day you leave your house with the phone on low charge

00:45:28 ◼   ► because you think, oh, I'm just going to run

00:45:32 ◼   ► this short errand is the day that you get swept up

00:45:35 ◼   ► into some big thing where you definitely need your phone

00:45:38 ◼   ► on full charge.

00:45:38 ◼   ► That's just how the universe works.

00:45:41 ◼   ► All of this is a preface to say,

00:45:43 ◼   ► even I, very cautious man, have made the decision

00:45:48 ◼   ► that carrying these extra battery packs

00:45:51 ◼   ► are no longer worth it.

00:45:53 ◼   ► This was one of the things that I cut

00:45:56 ◼   ► in trying to put together my own travel for this time,

00:45:59 ◼   ► is I was going, you know what?

00:46:00 ◼   ► This is not worth it.

00:46:01 ◼   ► - Okay, I'm gonna do it.

00:46:03 ◼   ► - Wow, okay.

00:46:04 ◼   ► - So I'm gonna go home today when we're done,

00:46:08 ◼   ► and I'm gonna remove that from the tech kit,

00:46:11 ◼   ► and I'm gonna do everything possible

00:46:13 ◼   ► to get all of my stuff inside of that one tech kit.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Great. And as an extra bonus here, now if you are in a situation when you are traveling

00:46:23 ◼   ► and you run out of charge, you can blame me instead of blaming yourself.

00:46:27 ◼   ► Oh 100% that was what took me over. You saying it was like great I can blame Gray now. And

00:46:32 ◼   ► then also the other thing I'll have is, oh and if I do get in this situation, at least

00:46:36 ◼   ► it'll be a funny story for the show. So you know, it'll benefit me somehow.

00:46:41 ◼   ► To anyone out there who is still traveling with one of these things, you can let it go

00:46:46 ◼   ► and you can blame Gray.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Now with all that said, what I haven't told you

00:46:49 ◼   ► is that I did replace this with something,

00:46:52 ◼   ► which is I am bringing Apple's weirdest product

00:46:56 ◼   ► ever created, which is their little extra battery

00:47:00 ◼   ► that goes on the back of the phone.

00:47:01 ◼   ► - MagSafe battery pack.

00:47:03 ◼   ► - Yes, the MagSafe battery pack,

00:47:05 ◼   ► a product that I find completely baffling

00:47:08 ◼   ► in almost every respect.

00:47:10 ◼   ► But my calculation here is really the only thing

00:47:15 ◼   ► that you absolutely can't have run out of charge,

00:47:18 ◼   ► that you want to have a backup for, is the actual phone.

00:47:22 ◼   ► That's the critical point of failure.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Everything else can survive.

00:47:27 ◼   ► And Apple's little MagSafe battery pack thing

00:47:30 ◼   ► is way smaller and way lighter

00:47:33 ◼   ► than any of these external batteries.

00:47:35 ◼   ► And you can just slide it somewhere in your backpack

00:47:38 ◼   ► and just totally forget about its existence.

00:47:41 ◼   ► So I do have one of these that I'm bringing along with me.

00:47:44 ◼   ► This only works if you don't put a popsocket directly on the back of your phone, like I do.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Yes, but I think you should rephrase this in your mind as this is the emergency backup for your phone has totally run out.

00:47:56 ◼   ► And in that situation, it's going to be worth it to take your popsocket off, right?

00:48:00 ◼   ► Or even if you have some funny case, to take the funny case off and use this.

00:48:05 ◼   ► That's what this is. It's the fallback.

00:48:06 ◼   ► It would be easier if I had the case, right?

00:48:08 ◼   ► But yeah, I can understand, like, this would be like, so bad, remove the popsocket.

00:48:12 ◼   ► - Here's what, I'm not gonna get one of these

00:48:14 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like I understand the trip enough

00:48:16 ◼   ► that I'm not worried too much

00:48:17 ◼   ► and I won't be on my own, right?

00:48:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:48:19 ◼   ► - You know, most of the places where I could imagine

00:48:21 ◼   ► being in these situations is like travel hubs.

00:48:25 ◼   ► And most travel hubs these days

00:48:28 ◼   ► have these types of products available for you to buy

00:48:31 ◼   ► for this exact reason, right?

00:48:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:48:33 ◼   ► - Every airport has the ability

00:48:36 ◼   ► for you to buy a little power bank.

00:48:37 ◼   ► So I'm just saying like that would have been my

00:48:38 ◼   ► in case of emergency type situation.

00:48:41 ◼   ► I do like what you're saying.

00:48:43 ◼   ► If I had the ability, if I,

00:48:45 ◼   ► if it was more convenient for me

00:48:47 ◼   ► to charge one of those things, I would get one,

00:48:50 ◼   ► but I am gonna go this time, no power bank.

00:48:53 ◼   ► - We have one of these in the house

00:48:55 ◼   ► because an unspecified member of the house

00:48:59 ◼   ► often neglects to keep her phone charged up.

00:49:03 ◼   ► - Their phone, right?

00:49:04 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:49:05 ◼   ► - We're not specifying, remember?

00:49:07 ◼   ► - Yes, an unspecified member of the house

00:49:11 ◼   ► neglects to keep their phone charged up and when the charging fairy isn't always on top

00:49:18 ◼   ► of his job of making sure that the phone is charged, we can be in a situation where this

00:49:25 ◼   ► unspecified person needs to go somewhere and the phone is at 3%.

00:49:29 ◼   ► So I keep in my office always fully charged up and plugged in one of these extra Apple

00:49:35 ◼   ► MagSafe batteries so it can just be grabbed at any moment and brought out.

00:49:39 ◼   ► I will just say, I appreciate that Apple made this product.

00:49:42 ◼   ► This is a way better idea than every year

00:49:45 ◼   ► having a different case.

00:49:47 ◼   ► - Yes, I agree with that.

00:49:48 ◼   ► - That also always took them like six or seven months

00:49:52 ◼   ► to even make.

00:49:53 ◼   ► - That was the same with this one though.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Like the phone was out with MagSafe

00:49:56 ◼   ► for the best part of a year

00:49:57 ◼   ► before they introduced the MagSafe battery pack.

00:49:59 ◼   ► - But the difference is now that MagSafe

00:50:01 ◼   ► is an existing thing, presumably you'll be able

00:50:04 ◼   ► to use this same case on the next phone, right?

00:50:06 ◼   ► It's not the situation where,

00:50:08 ◼   ► "Oh, you're just out of luck for a battery case for six months."

00:50:10 ◼   ► - This will last multiple years. - Yeah.

00:50:12 ◼   ► So, I'm very glad they made it, but I do just find it such a strange product,

00:50:17 ◼   ► and the number one thing that drives me crazy is,

00:50:21 ◼   ► why doesn't it have a USB-C connector on it?

00:50:25 ◼   ► It should have a USB-C connector.

00:50:28 ◼   ► And then this way, oh look, you can charge your phone,

00:50:31 ◼   ► whether you have a lightning cable, and you can plug it into the phone,

00:50:35 ◼   ► or a USB-C connector and plug it into this.

00:50:38 ◼   ► Every time I use it, it's baffling to me,

00:50:40 ◼   ► and I can't, like I psychologically cannot remember

00:50:44 ◼   ► that this is a lightning device,

00:50:46 ◼   ► and it's such a strange decision on Apple's part.

00:50:49 ◼   ► But this is the world that we are in.

00:50:51 ◼   ► There are two cables, there's USB-C,

00:50:54 ◼   ► and then there's lightning for an annoying amount

00:50:58 ◼   ► of iPhone peripherals in a whole bunch of ways

00:51:02 ◼   ► that they don't need to be,

00:51:03 ◼   ► and is very annoying for cable management,

00:51:05 ◼   ► especially when traveling.

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00:53:16 ◼   ► support of this show and relay FM. Alright so we've spoken about dongles and dongle bags in our

00:53:22 ◼   ► travel bag section without actually talking about the travel bags themselves. This is

00:53:28 ◼   ► like another thing for me where I'm a little frustrated at my bag. So I use and have continued

00:53:34 ◼   ► to use, I mean I've had this bag for a long time now, the Peak Design Backpack.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Okay, which one of the Peak Design ones though?

00:53:40 ◼   ► Okay, so I have the small one and I have the previous generation one.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Are you, but do you mean the everyday backpack?

00:53:49 ◼   ► The everyday backpack. Okay, it's the everyday backpack.

00:53:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, sorry, that's the other thing that's changed

00:53:51 ◼   ► is now they have a million bags.

00:53:53 ◼   ► When I bought this, Peak Design had one bag, right?

00:53:56 ◼   ► It was one backpack, I should say,

00:53:58 ◼   ► and it was the everyday backpack.

00:54:00 ◼   ► And they've made some tweaks to the everyday backpack,

00:54:05 ◼   ► like they've changed some of the inside organization

00:54:08 ◼   ► and stuff, like they've changed that around a little bit

00:54:11 ◼   ► in the modern version of it,

00:54:13 ◼   ► but it's by and large the same bag.

00:54:16 ◼   ► The frustration I have is I really like this bag,

00:54:19 ◼   ► Like the construction of the bag,

00:54:20 ◼   ► the way that you get in and out of the bag,

00:54:22 ◼   ► like I like all that stuff.

00:54:24 ◼   ► It's just, I wished I had a little more space,

00:54:28 ◼   ► but I don't want the bigger one

00:54:31 ◼   ► because that looks like a really big bag.

00:54:34 ◼   ► So this is the frustration that I have at the moment,

00:54:37 ◼   ► which is my current bag, I want a little more space.

00:54:40 ◼   ► However, that may be made better

00:54:41 ◼   ► if I can actually do what I want to do

00:54:43 ◼   ► and combine all the dongle bags into one little pouch.

00:54:47 ◼   ► Maybe that will help.

00:54:48 ◼   ► but I wish I just had a little bit more.

00:54:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I have the same backpack.

00:54:53 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:54:54 ◼   ► - You can see it in some of my vlogs.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Like I love this bag.

00:54:56 ◼   ► I think it is fantastic for very many reasons.

00:54:59 ◼   ► The main one for me is the side accessibility,

00:55:03 ◼   ► the way that you can just unzip it from the side

00:55:06 ◼   ► and instantly get access to everything that's in there.

00:55:09 ◼   ► That's one of those features I feel like

00:55:11 ◼   ► I never knew that I wanted it.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And now I can't unsee needing this feature

00:55:16 ◼   ► in every backpack that I'm ever going to use.

00:55:19 ◼   ► Like it's just so great.

00:55:21 ◼   ► I love being able to just throw this thing on a table

00:55:23 ◼   ► sideways, open it up, and also be able to open it up

00:55:26 ◼   ► from either side, which again is surprisingly useful

00:55:30 ◼   ► under some circumstances.

00:55:31 ◼   ► But I'm with you 100%.

00:55:32 ◼   ► I really like Peak Design as a company.

00:55:35 ◼   ► They have a bunch of just great stuff.

00:55:37 ◼   ► Also on my own travel list is it took me forever

00:55:40 ◼   ► to find a new iPhone case.

00:55:43 ◼   ► And I totally love their new iPhone case.

00:55:46 ◼   ► their MagSafe adapter one.

00:55:47 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:55:48 ◼   ► They're a really great company.

00:55:50 ◼   ► - Oh, did that come out?

00:55:51 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, that was a Kickstarter project and it came out.

00:55:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause I remember being concerned

00:55:55 ◼   ► about that project, 'cause they announced it

00:55:57 ◼   ► like a week before the iPhone shipped with MagSafe.

00:55:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, so they adapted it so that it's MagSafe compatible.

00:56:02 ◼   ► I can use the battery with that case.

00:56:05 ◼   ► It's fantastic. - That's cool.

00:56:06 ◼   ► - Oh, also, I didn't realize, for you,

00:56:08 ◼   ► one of the reasons you might like it

00:56:11 ◼   ► is the case has a little loop on the back of it

00:56:15 ◼   ► that you can put your fingers through.

00:56:17 ◼   ► So for me, this has replaced the pop socket.

00:56:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I don't like cases on my phones anymore either.

00:56:23 ◼   ► - Okay, well if you don't want a case, then that's--

00:56:25 ◼   ► - When you said that, my ears perked up,

00:56:27 ◼   ► but then I remembered I prefer

00:56:29 ◼   ► to have no case on my phone now.

00:56:31 ◼   ► This is one of my things that got spoiled on lockdown.

00:56:33 ◼   ► I was like, lockdown starts,

00:56:34 ◼   ► I'm just gonna take the case off my phone,

00:56:36 ◼   ► and now I never wanna put a case back on my phone again.

00:56:39 ◼   ► I like it too much.

00:56:40 ◼   ► - I get it, the caseless phone is really nice.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Sorry, we're getting derailed here.

00:56:43 ◼   ► I have something else to say about cases.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Let me just find the name of the other one.

00:56:47 ◼   ► - Well, what I'll say before you're finding that

00:56:49 ◼   ► is I think one of the things,

00:56:50 ◼   ► one of the issues I have with these types of phone cases too

00:56:55 ◼   ► is once you're in on this system,

00:56:57 ◼   ► you have to hope that they're gonna have cases ready in time

00:57:00 ◼   ► for the new phones.

00:57:02 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, that is always a problem.

00:57:03 ◼   ► - Some companies make that work.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Some companies make it work because Apple helped them,

00:57:08 ◼   ► like AutoBox.

00:57:09 ◼   ► So like, that's one of the things

00:57:11 ◼   ► that actually makes Popsockets pretty cool

00:57:12 ◼   ► is Otobox is one of the companies like Belkin,

00:57:15 ◼   ► I believe that Apple give the files to in advance,

00:57:19 ◼   ► because they have their cases out really quickly,

00:57:22 ◼   ► and they always have a pop socket compatible case.

00:57:25 ◼   ► And that comes out pretty much at the same time

00:57:28 ◼   ► as the new iPhones.

00:57:30 ◼   ► And so I would hope that Peak Design can get to that point,

00:57:33 ◼   ► but like, because they have this whole system,

00:57:35 ◼   ► like it's not just that it's MagSafe compatible,

00:57:37 ◼   ► they have their own magnetic system, right?

00:57:39 ◼   ► They have a bunch of accessories.

00:57:41 ◼   ► If you go all in on this lifestyle,

00:57:43 ◼   ► you've got to hope that they,

00:57:44 ◼   ► if you are a person who updates their phone every year,

00:57:47 ◼   ► you've got to hope then that they'll update the cases.

00:57:50 ◼   ► They will update them every year, but will they do it soon?

00:57:53 ◼   ► Will you have to put a pre-order down

00:57:55 ◼   ► and wait three weeks, a month, two months?

00:57:57 ◼   ► You know, like that's,

00:57:58 ◼   ► - Yeah. - that's the,

00:57:58 ◼   ► I think can be the problem with these types of things.

00:58:00 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, no, totally.

00:58:02 ◼   ► And for me, the only connector I'm using

00:58:04 ◼   ► is the one for the bike.

00:58:05 ◼   ► They have like a bike connector

00:58:06 ◼   ► that works with this case, which is great.

00:58:07 ◼   ► - It's really cool.

00:58:08 ◼   ► The whole system that they built is very cool

00:58:11 ◼   ► and impressive. Like they have like a wallet that I've seen people really dig.

00:58:14 ◼   ► Yeah, so tangents to iPhone cases. I was just having a really hard time finding an iPhone

00:58:19 ◼   ► case that I like this year, but I really like peak designs and a big reason I like it is

00:58:23 ◼   ► because of the little loop on the back for your hand. So for me it's very comfortable

00:58:27 ◼   ► to just slide my ring finger in and then have a better grip on the phone. But I'm actually

00:58:32 ◼   ► bringing two different phone cases with me. And the other one that I really like is Polar

00:58:38 ◼   ► Pro's phone case. I think they call it the Light Chaser. Yeah, here we go. Here's the

00:58:43 ◼   ► link for it. Light Chaser. Yeah, that's it's a cool name. Or I think that's the name of

00:58:47 ◼   ► their their different system. Whoa, what is this? So it is a just a good phone case. But

00:58:54 ◼   ► what I really like about it is that they have a like a grip that you can put on the outside

00:59:01 ◼   ► of the phone and you can put this grip anywhere. It's a little bit like a pop socket, except

00:59:06 ◼   ► a million times more secure because it's physically locking into the grip.

00:59:11 ◼   ► This webpage is really hard to understand what the product is.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Yes.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Can you explain to me, because all I see, I can't understand what you've got.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Okay, so the company is called PolarPro, and one of the reasons I was looking into them

00:59:26 ◼   ► is I've been thinking more and more about some of the Grey Goes Outside stuff, and it's

00:59:31 ◼   ► really important to me that I just want to be able to always have a very simple and compact

00:59:37 ◼   ► filming setup. And so, obviously, build around the iPhone for that. And so the Tesla video

00:59:43 ◼   ► that I shot in North Carolina was shot entirely on my iPhone, and I used this case as part

00:59:52 ◼   ► of that system. And so it is a case, but it has two key features, one of which is there's

00:59:59 ◼   ► is an area over the actual camera lenses where you can lock on accessories. So you can either

01:00:06 ◼   ► get a different lens to put over the front, which I don't really have any interest in

01:00:11 ◼   ► using different lenses. What I cared about is you can also put on what's called an ND

01:00:17 ◼   ► filter. Basically, this is a thing that makes filming outside look a little nicer when you're

01:00:22 ◼   ► in super bright sunlight. It kind of tones down the light from the sky, but it keeps

01:00:27 ◼   ► the ground light and it just, you get less blown out skies, the video can look a little

01:00:31 ◼   ► bit smoother.

01:00:32 ◼   ► It's just one of these little tricks for how do you make video look better if you want

01:00:36 ◼   ► to put a bit of effort into it.

01:00:39 ◼   ► That's nice, but the real selling feature to me of this case is that they have just

01:00:45 ◼   ► this chunky grip that you can put on the side.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And it was really interesting using this on the last trip because the grip is very big,

01:00:56 ◼   ► But it lets you hold the phone much more comfortably like it's an actual real camera.

01:01:03 ◼   ► Like if you think about the way Canon and Nikon design their cameras, they have a very

01:01:07 ◼   ► particular – almost all of them have like a grip that's on the side in the same shape

01:01:12 ◼   ► because it's a very comfortable way for a professional to hold a camera.

01:01:17 ◼   ► And this case with the grip accessory replicates that experience as closely as you can of how

01:01:25 ◼   ► would you hold an iPhone like it's a professional camera?" And I cannot tell you how much I

01:01:31 ◼   ► loved having the grip on the phone when I'm using it really as a working device. And there

01:01:39 ◼   ► was an unexpected way that I loved it, which is why I mention it for travel. So I ended

01:01:46 ◼   ► up using this case on the phone with the grip while traveling, because what I really liked

01:01:53 ◼   ► doing is I could put the phone in my pocket, but the grip would just stick out of my pocket.

01:02:01 ◼   ► So I could very easily always take my phone out and put it back in my pocket without having

01:02:07 ◼   ► to actually reach into my pocket to get the phone. And when you're traveling and you need

01:02:12 ◼   ► to constantly show your boarding pass or you're always paying for stuff like I freaking loved

01:02:18 ◼   ► using this grip as just an easier way to get my phone in and out of my pocket while traveling.

01:02:25 ◼   ► So this is also one of my recommendations. It's a weird case, but I can really recommend

01:02:30 ◼   ► it.

01:02:31 ◼   ► Okay, I'm looking at the video they have on their page now and now I can actually see

01:02:35 ◼   ► what on earth the grip is. The product photography is not great.

01:02:39 ◼   ► Yeah, they're doing that thing where it's like when you're trying to check out a hotel

01:02:42 ◼   ► and they have nothing but close-up photos of everything. You're like, "Dude, just show

01:02:45 ◼   ► me the thing!"

01:02:46 ◼   ► just showing it in action. There isn't a clear photo on their website of what the grip

01:02:53 ◼   ► looks like because people are just holding it. I can't see it, but I see now. Does it

01:02:58 ◼   ► have a shutter button on it?

01:02:59 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's an option that connects with a Bluetooth. I personally don't happen

01:03:02 ◼   ► to have that one, but you can make it work as a Bluetooth remote to actually start and

01:03:06 ◼   ► stop video or to take pictures.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Does it have a loop of any kind so you can attach it to your wrist or anything?

01:03:14 ◼   ► Yeah, so that is another one of the features.

01:03:16 ◼   ► There's a bunch of slots where you can put a lanyard through.

01:03:18 ◼   ► And again, like with a case from Peak Design,

01:03:21 ◼   ► I feel especially when you're traveling,

01:03:23 ◼   ► you want to be able to have a more solid grip on your phone.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Like again, you're daring the universe to drop and break your phone when you're traveling.

01:03:32 ◼   ► And so I do use the Polar Pro case with the lanyard on it.

01:03:36 ◼   ► And again, it is one of those things that I thought,

01:03:39 ◼   ► I don't know how much I'm going to care about this,

01:03:41 ◼   ► but I actually really liked having that as an option when I'm using it.

01:03:44 ◼   ► Oh, and I realized there's one more thing here, which is that the bottom of that case

01:03:48 ◼   ► works really well with another thing that I bring with me while traveling,

01:03:54 ◼   ► which is another Peak Design product, which is their travel tripod.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Peak Design makes this travel tripod, and I got the carbon fiber one,

01:04:04 ◼   ► and it is one of the best video accessories I have ever bought.

01:04:10 ◼   ► It's a real full-size tripod, but the carbon fiber makes it reasonably light.

01:04:15 ◼   ► It's as easy to travel with as something like this can be.

01:04:20 ◼   ► You can set it up to be just a ton of different heights,

01:04:23 ◼   ► and it's designed to work really well with an iPhone.

01:04:26 ◼   ► They have a native way where you can plug your phone in,

01:04:29 ◼   ► but the PolarPro case lets me sort of screw it in and attach it more securely.

01:04:33 ◼   ► So, again, not that I do a ton of this stuff, but this is like my version of optionality.

01:04:38 ◼   ► I want to have the option to be able to film something with my iPhone if something interesting comes up.

01:04:45 ◼   ► And so I do always now want to keep a tripod with me.

01:04:49 ◼   ► I keep this Peak Design tripod with me.

01:04:52 ◼   ► And then I need some way to be able to use my phone as a reasonable filming solution with that as well.

01:04:57 ◼   ► And so I was looking into cases and so the Light Chaser Pro is the best like filming case for an iPhone.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Man I wish someone was doing stuff like this in audio.

01:05:06 ◼   ► I know what you mean. Yeah.

01:05:08 ◼   ► I wish that there was like a brand who was making a really strong, lightweight microphone arm that I could attach to a hotel table

01:05:15 ◼   ► Rather than me needing to take this thing with this silly weight on it

01:05:19 ◼   ► I totally understand that

01:05:20 ◼   ► Video is just cool

01:05:22 ◼   ► Video is cool, it also has the ability that you can show off your product in a cool video, right?

01:05:28 ◼   ► Like it's sort of a product that sells itself in that way

01:05:31 ◼   ► - I mean, it's also, it's aspirational,

01:05:33 ◼   ► and also if you're like a parent,

01:05:36 ◼   ► you can have this way better thing

01:05:38 ◼   ► of catching your family memories.

01:05:39 ◼   ► I get why, like, it's like a thing, you know?

01:05:42 ◼   ► But it just, I wished that I could have that thing

01:05:46 ◼   ► in the stuff that I want it in.

01:05:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I completely get it.

01:05:48 ◼   ► And also the market for travel audio needs

01:05:53 ◼   ► is just so much smaller, right?

01:05:56 ◼   ► It just really is.

01:05:57 ◼   ► - It's minuscule compared to video.

01:05:59 ◼   ► I know, I just wish there was someone doing it.

01:06:01 ◼   ► But I completely agree where the audio stuff traveling with it still feels very clunky.

01:06:06 ◼   ► I think it will always be clunky just because of the size of the market.

01:06:10 ◼   ► But I mean for me now, that trip to North Carolina for the Tesla stuff was like an interesting

01:06:16 ◼   ► test for me of what can a mobile setup be like.

01:06:21 ◼   ► And on the video side, I feel like, oh, I've totally solved the minimum viable filming

01:06:27 ◼   ► solution which is this case and this tripod. It's actually it's a funny thing

01:06:33 ◼   ► but on that Tesla video the shots that are done sort of from the back seat

01:06:37 ◼   ► where you can see the driver's seat and then also you can see out the windshield

01:06:42 ◼   ► all of that stuff was done by taking my phone and sticking it into the tripod

01:06:48 ◼   ► and I had the tripod in the back seat I just spread the legs out in this very

01:06:53 ◼   ► weird way, but that tripod like lets you have all the legs at different angles and lock

01:06:58 ◼   ► them in super solidly. So it's like, yep, I can just throw this thing in anywhere and

01:07:03 ◼   ► now I can mount the phone at a perfect spot to take these like point of view rear seat

01:07:10 ◼   ► shots that fit both like the steering wheel and everything out the front window. So it's

01:07:16 ◼   ► like, yes, this is great. I love this as a travel accessory.

01:07:18 ◼   ► That's cool. I didn't necessarily think about the fact that any of that might have been shot on an iPhone.

01:07:23 ◼   ► The whole thing was shot on the iPhone, with the exception of some of the... I have some dashcam stuff,

01:07:27 ◼   ► like the purely out the front window stuff was from the dashcam, but

01:07:31 ◼   ► everything else was shot on an iPhone and then...

01:07:35 ◼   ► I think there's two shots that are on my DJI, the little pocket gimbal thing,

01:07:43 ◼   ► but it's basically an iPhone video, which is also why I made the mistake of shooting it in HDR.

01:07:47 ◼   ► I was like, "Ooh, let me try this too."

01:07:49 ◼   ► And that was a terrible mistake.

01:07:50 ◼   ► - No, don't do that.

01:07:52 ◼   ► Nothing can accept that, really.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Very well.

01:07:55 ◼   ► Except just, if only you were to watch it back yourself

01:07:57 ◼   ► on your own iPhone, you'd be fine.

01:07:59 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly.

01:08:00 ◼   ► But no, that was, you have to try things and learn stuff.

01:08:03 ◼   ► Setup, great.

01:08:05 ◼   ► Shooting in HDR, terrible.

01:08:07 ◼   ► - So we're both using the Peak Design.

01:08:09 ◼   ► I mean, for me, these days, it's my MacBook Pro

01:08:12 ◼   ► or my iPad Mini are the two things

01:08:14 ◼   ► that are going in that back pocket,

01:08:16 ◼   ► like the computer pocket area.

01:08:18 ◼   ► And that mixture works pretty nicely,

01:08:20 ◼   ► especially as the MacBook Pro is pretty big

01:08:24 ◼   ► in all dimensions.

01:08:25 ◼   ► So having the iPad mini is like the perfect compliment

01:08:28 ◼   ► for it because in the peak design,

01:08:30 ◼   ► it basically sits where like a Kindle is supposed to go.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Like it's like a very small pocket

01:08:35 ◼   ► that's in the top of that area.

01:08:36 ◼   ► So that fits in really nicely for me.

01:08:38 ◼   ► One of the biggest changes of course is air tax.

01:08:40 ◼   ► You know, I have an air tag on the backpack,

01:08:41 ◼   ► which is just great.

01:08:42 ◼   ► Outside of that, I mean,

01:08:44 ◼   ► It's the usual little bits and bobs like allergy medicine.

01:08:48 ◼   ► Well, now I have face masks and antibacterial wipes,

01:08:51 ◼   ► which wasn't a thing that I had before in my bag.

01:08:53 ◼   ► AirPods Max.

01:08:54 ◼   ► - Yes, AirPods Max. - My headphones.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And I keep them in this hard case

01:08:57 ◼   ► that friend of the show, underscore Widget Smith,

01:09:00 ◼   ► suggested to me, which was, he found it on Amazon.

01:09:04 ◼   ► Like they found it on Amazon,

01:09:06 ◼   ► and he came over to the studio one day

01:09:08 ◼   ► and took this out of his bag.

01:09:09 ◼   ► I was like, what is that case?

01:09:11 ◼   ► It's just called Smart Case for Apple AirPods Max.

01:09:14 ◼   ► And it is just a hard case which covers it fully,

01:09:17 ◼   ► but also has magnets built into the case,

01:09:20 ◼   ► so it can do like the sending them to sleep kind of thing.

01:09:23 ◼   ► And it was a relatively cheap case,

01:09:25 ◼   ► and I like that it completely like covers the AirPods Max.

01:09:30 ◼   ► But the problem is it's massive.

01:09:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:09:34 ◼   ► - Because the AirPods Max are massive and they don't fold.

01:09:36 ◼   ► If Apple ever makes another version of these headphones,

01:09:39 ◼   ► I desperately hope that they make them folding.

01:09:42 ◼   ► - Oh, I'm with you so hard on this.

01:09:44 ◼   ► I really love the AirPods Max.

01:09:46 ◼   ► - I think they're fantastic, I love them.

01:09:48 ◼   ► - They are my favorite headphones.

01:09:50 ◼   ► They've just been a real surprising winner,

01:09:53 ◼   ► how much I like them.

01:09:54 ◼   ► And it just kills me how bad they are at traveling.

01:09:59 ◼   ► It's just awful.

01:10:01 ◼   ► - When it feels like that is their entire purpose.

01:10:03 ◼   ► - I disagree, I think Apple's vision of this

01:10:05 ◼   ► is these are the headphones you use

01:10:07 ◼   ► in front of your computer.

01:10:08 ◼   ► It just, everything about them feels that way.

01:10:11 ◼   ► I understand that.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Or if you're like Federico Viticci and you're someone who just sits in a chair

01:10:16 ◼   ► and listens to music and that's the only thing you're doing, like that actually

01:10:20 ◼   ► might be their ideal use case is, oh.

01:10:23 ◼   ► I'm mixing that up.

01:10:23 ◼   ► That is my entire purpose for them, right?

01:10:26 ◼   ► I only want headphones like this for traveling.

01:10:28 ◼   ► Otherwise AirPods Pro is all I want and need.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Right.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:30 ◼   ► But I think Apple just wants you to sit down with them and close your eyes and

01:10:34 ◼   ► listen to some beautiful spatialized audio and that's their vision.

01:10:37 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Apple, please make them fold.

01:10:40 ◼   ► Please, it's awful."

01:10:42 ◼   ► I looked at some of the cases for these things for traveling

01:10:45 ◼   ► and my decision was absolutely none of them

01:10:48 ◼   ► are worth the space they take up.

01:10:49 ◼   ► It's just too much.

01:10:51 ◼   ► - It is a lot.

01:10:51 ◼   ► - You know what?

01:10:52 ◼   ► I'm just gonna throw these headphones into my backpack

01:10:55 ◼   ► and if they get trashed, that's the price I'm gonna pay,

01:10:58 ◼   ► but I'm not gonna give up like 30% of the space

01:11:02 ◼   ► in my backpack for a case for these headphones.

01:11:05 ◼   ► Like it's just not gonna happen.

01:11:05 ◼   ► I want my bag to be a little bit bigger.

01:11:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I get it.

01:11:08 ◼   ► - Right, this is why.

01:11:09 ◼   ► - Listen, peak design, peak design.

01:11:11 ◼   ► If you're listening, here's my pitch

01:11:13 ◼   ► for the next version of the everyday backpack

01:11:16 ◼   ► you should make.

01:11:17 ◼   ► I think you should make an everyday backpack light.

01:11:22 ◼   ► And the only thing you really need to change

01:11:25 ◼   ► is taking out a lot of the padding that's in this backpack.

01:11:29 ◼   ► Because the version that currently exists,

01:11:32 ◼   ► the reason it's designed the way it's designed

01:11:34 ◼   ► is to protect expensive camera gear.

01:11:38 ◼   ► And it just so happens to be

01:11:39 ◼   ► one of the most amazing backpacks ever made.

01:11:43 ◼   ► But if you think of the use case of a lot of people

01:11:46 ◼   ► are using this backpack

01:11:47 ◼   ► and they're not worried about protecting their $6,000 lens,

01:11:52 ◼   ► I think if they simply took out a ton of the padding,

01:11:57 ◼   ► they could make the backpack lighter

01:11:59 ◼   ► and give it just a little bit more space

01:12:03 ◼   ► and it would be perfect.

01:12:04 ◼   ► So that's what I want.

01:12:05 ◼   ► Like, everyday backpack light.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Take out some of the weight,

01:12:09 ◼   ► and just like 5% bigger would make

01:12:13 ◼   ► all of the difference in the world.

01:12:14 ◼   ► - And also, if it's Peak Design and Honest N'ing,

01:12:16 ◼   ► just a better way to put a water bottle

01:12:18 ◼   ► on the outside of the bag.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Like, the little pocket thing that they have right now,

01:12:23 ◼   ► that isn't what I want.

01:12:24 ◼   ► I want something that doesn't need, again,

01:12:26 ◼   ► to be protective or whatever,

01:12:28 ◼   ► just like a net or something.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Like, way more stretchy.

01:12:32 ◼   ► 'Cause when the bag is full,

01:12:35 ◼   ► I can't get a water bottle into the pockets on the outside.

01:12:39 ◼   ► That's my only other gripe with the bag.

01:12:41 ◼   ► Like if my bag is like completely fit to burst,

01:12:44 ◼   ► trying to shove a water bottle

01:12:46 ◼   ► into the side of those pockets is almost impossible.

01:12:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, for any listeners,

01:12:51 ◼   ► one of the reasons why this backpack

01:12:53 ◼   ► ends up stuffed to the brim

01:12:54 ◼   ► is they've made this genius decision

01:12:56 ◼   ► about the way that it latches on the top,

01:12:59 ◼   ► where the backpack is very expandable,

01:13:03 ◼   ► but that also then just begs you to keep going,

01:13:06 ◼   ► "Oh, I can put a little more in."

01:13:08 ◼   ► - Just a little more. - Like, "I could just

01:13:09 ◼   ► put a little more in."

01:13:10 ◼   ► You don't have it clear of a limit of,

01:13:14 ◼   ► "When does this bag say no?"

01:13:17 ◼   ► It's not as clear as with other backpacks.

01:13:19 ◼   ► And so you just always end up putting in,

01:13:22 ◼   ► "Oh, just a little bit more, just a little bit more.

01:13:25 ◼   ► I can have it closer."

01:13:26 ◼   ► And so you do end up with like this bursting back.

01:13:30 ◼   ► And yes, then the outside pocket to put a water bottle in

01:13:33 ◼   ► becomes completely useless

01:13:35 ◼   ► as this thing is just bursting at the seams.

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01:15:43 ◼   ► So over the last few months, there's been a couple of things we've been talking about

01:15:47 ◼   ► with YouTube that I think are coming together a little bit and something I want to talk

01:15:51 ◼   ► about today.

01:15:52 ◼   ► So we were talking about the fact that we were tinkering around with the Cortex channel

01:15:56 ◼   ► a bit and some of Cortex animated and, you know, we were changing around.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Actually, did we talk about this on the show?

01:16:02 ◼   ► You're saying that I'm not sure we've explicitly talked about it.

01:16:06 ◼   ► I think we might have mentioned it a bit in passing on Moretex, but no, I don't think

01:16:12 ◼   ► ever had an explicit conversation that... Because I have a memory of a conversation

01:16:17 ◼   ► that I think was on the show which was where you were changing the names and I didn't understand

01:16:23 ◼   ► what had happened. Yes, I think we did discuss that.

01:16:26 ◼   ► Yeah, so we've been doing some stuff like making the Cortex animated videos maybe a

01:16:31 ◼   ► little bit more clear as to what they were by not calling them Cortex animated episode

01:16:37 ◼   ► blah blah blah, right, which is what I used to call them before. We actually give them

01:16:40 ◼   ► titles now so they're maybe just more like enticing to watch as videos and

01:16:45 ◼   ► then also we've been talking about the fact that you have kind of made the

01:16:49 ◼   ► choice this year as part of new decades dawn again which is your year theme of

01:16:55 ◼   ► truly just embracing YouTube and doing more of what that system is wanting from

01:17:02 ◼   ► you which is changing titles and thumbnails and just trying to make that

01:17:06 ◼   ► overall rapping of the videos more enticing to people. So while we've been

01:17:12 ◼   ► doing that I've been seeing you know like as I managed we both managed the

01:17:16 ◼   ► Cortex channel as you've been doing that stuff I've been seeing that like some of

01:17:20 ◼   ► these videos they're really catching on and recently we had a video which is the

01:17:26 ◼   ► video which is talking about the working week with weekend Wednesdays at the

01:17:32 ◼   ► moment is called like the seven day week is dumb or something.

01:17:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:35 ◼   ► It has now become our most watched video on the cortex channel overtaking any of

01:17:41 ◼   ► the actual episodes themselves, including episode one, which episode one would have

01:17:48 ◼   ► a lot of views on it for a couple of reasons.

01:17:50 ◼   ► One, it is episode one of the show.

01:17:54 ◼   ► And also it's the video that just auto plays when someone comes to the channel.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Right.

01:17:58 ◼   ► So, but now that video is currently 179,000 views.

01:18:02 ◼   ► The seven day week is done animated video is 193,000 views,

01:18:06 ◼   ► which is in my mind unbelievable.

01:18:08 ◼   ► This is wild.

01:18:10 ◼   ► And so with that, I've been kind of like thinking,

01:18:14 ◼   ► just poking around, just swapping out the titles

01:18:18 ◼   ► and thumbnails every now and then

01:18:19 ◼   ► to see if it gives a boost to any of the videos.

01:18:21 ◼   ► I've been doing that maybe over the last month myself,

01:18:23 ◼   ► just like tweaking them here and there.

01:18:25 ◼   ► And basically my answer is like,

01:18:27 ◼   ► Does it make a difference? Yes, sometimes.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And it is the sometimes part that I'm really struggling with.

01:18:34 ◼   ► So what I can see is that changing titles and thumbnails

01:18:38 ◼   ► does have a pretty huge effect on views.

01:18:40 ◼   ► For us as well, sometimes weeks after posting.

01:18:44 ◼   ► And that's really weird to me.

01:18:46 ◼   ► Like we have a video that went up recently,

01:18:49 ◼   ► the anime that went up for episode 124,

01:18:52 ◼   ► where you were talking about

01:18:53 ◼   ► how you love to watch progress bars.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And about a week ago, I changed the title and thumbnail on that one.

01:18:58 ◼   ► It's now like an image of you flailing around and the video is called "Progress

01:19:03 ◼   ► Bar Disease." And the video views just started shooting up again.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And now that one is at like 40,000 views.

01:19:10 ◼   ► And it was like previously at like 15,000.

01:19:13 ◼   ► I think this has been interesting because obviously YouTube knows I'm interested

01:19:17 ◼   ► in what's going on on the Cortex channel.

01:19:19 ◼   ► So I think whenever you change something, the Cortex animated stuff shows up in my

01:19:22 ◼   ► recommendations very fast.

01:19:24 ◼   ► But it's been interesting to see you play with this a little bit.

01:19:28 ◼   ► And I really think we have an interesting example where the animated episode called

01:19:33 ◼   ► "Why is this still happening?" to me is actually the biggest outlier.

01:19:36 ◼   ► - This is the one that I was gonna get to in a minute because it's the one that's gone weirdest.

01:19:40 ◼   ► But again, like, as I was saying, currently called, that's what I think is like an important thing right now,

01:19:45 ◼   ► is it's currently called "Why is this still happening?"

01:19:48 ◼   ► - Yeah. But that one is the biggest outlier by far,

01:19:52 ◼   ► where at the time of recording, it went up a month ago,

01:19:57 ◼   ► and it's just crossed 100,000 views,

01:20:00 ◼   ► which makes it the fifth most viewed video

01:20:03 ◼   ► on the whole channel.

01:20:05 ◼   ► And also for listener comparison here,

01:20:08 ◼   ► the Cortex YouTube channel has 50,000 subscribers.

01:20:12 ◼   ► So this has done twice as many views

01:20:16 ◼   ► as Cortex has subscribers on YouTube in a month.

01:20:21 ◼   ► And unlike something like the seven day week is dumb, where I link to that at the end of

01:20:29 ◼   ► my video about Weekend Wednesday, and so like there's a lot of people we can see through

01:20:32 ◼   ► the analytics that are coming through clicking on the end card to get that.

01:20:36 ◼   ► So that one makes sense.

01:20:38 ◼   ► But the "why is this still happening" video digging around in the analytics is clearly

01:20:44 ◼   ► a case of the YouTube algorithm just woke up and decided to show this video to a bunch

01:20:51 ◼   ► of people who are not Cortex subscribers. It's interesting and it's also been fun kind of seeing

01:20:57 ◼   ► Myke have some first-hand experience of the insanity of the algorithm and how it can get

01:21:05 ◼   ► in your head and you start going "Oh, I'd like more of this please. What are the reasons this

01:21:10 ◼   ► happened?" Oh, that's a much harder question to answer. So like, this is where I am right now.

01:21:18 ◼   ► Because it's the same with the video now currently called "Progress with Biodisease"

01:21:22 ◼   ► where most of the views are coming from the YouTube system.

01:21:26 ◼   ► And that one has just crossed 40,000 views.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And that one went up 19 days ago.

01:21:32 ◼   ► And so it's like a big difference.

01:21:34 ◼   ► And just to say, we changed something.

01:21:36 ◼   ► I think we changed the title and thumbnail for the "Why is this still happening" video.

01:21:40 ◼   ► It was at 18,000 views or so and it had been that way for the best part of two weeks.

01:21:45 ◼   ► It was just like trickling up.

01:21:46 ◼   ► and then just exploded. In 11 days it got like 75,000 views or something.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Yeah that video had been shown to everyone who was interested in Cortex and was over,

01:21:57 ◼   ► and then a title and thumbnail change quintupled the number of views on it.

01:22:01 ◼   ► Yep. The problem is I don't know really truly what's causing the effect. Like even if I wanted

01:22:08 ◼   ► to do this to a video I don't know how to optimize it. Like I understand that at a basic level

01:22:15 ◼   ► what's doing it is the title and the thumbnail being different. My expectation is what's happening

01:22:21 ◼   ► is it's going to some people who may have already seen the video and they think it's a new one

01:22:27 ◼   ► and so they click it and it's or it's going to people that have never seen this video for whatever

01:22:33 ◼   ► reason and they click it and it's in those people showing interest the system grabs it and starts

01:22:39 ◼   ► showing it to more people and then more and more people come and view it. That's my kind of like

01:22:44 ◼   ► like what I expect is happening here.

01:22:47 ◼   ► But the problem is I don't know how to make that happen.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Like I feel like I understand what's happening, kind of,

01:22:53 ◼   ► but I don't know how to like get YouTube to grab it.

01:22:57 ◼   ► - I'll just point out a quick thing

01:22:58 ◼   ► looking through some of the statistics

01:22:59 ◼   ► so that people can understand this.

01:23:01 ◼   ► I think people have the idea in their head,

01:23:05 ◼   ► because I think Netflix does this,

01:23:07 ◼   ► that changing the thumbnails on YouTube

01:23:09 ◼   ► is like tricking people who have already seen the thing

01:23:13 ◼   ► into thinking it's something new and watching it.

01:23:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, Netflix does do this.

01:23:17 ◼   ► - Right, 100% Netflix does that.

01:23:19 ◼   ► But I can say on YouTube, looking at the analytics,

01:23:22 ◼   ► the analytics do not support that

01:23:24 ◼   ► as what has actually occurred.

01:23:26 ◼   ► And so, like the video, "Why is this still happening?"

01:23:29 ◼   ► That animated one, you can pull up the data

01:23:33 ◼   ► and see what percentage of people watching this

01:23:35 ◼   ► are new viewers versus existing viewers.

01:23:38 ◼   ► And that means not even people who are subscribed to you,

01:23:41 ◼   ► but people who just were on the channel previously.

01:23:45 ◼   ► And when the algorithm picked that video up,

01:23:48 ◼   ► it's almost entirely new people who are watching that video.

01:23:52 ◼   ► It's not getting shown to the existing audience.

01:23:55 ◼   ► I think people to understand

01:23:56 ◼   ► like what is going on here on YouTube,

01:23:59 ◼   ► for a video that for us now is crossing 100,000 views,

01:24:04 ◼   ► the analytics show that YouTube has shown that video

01:24:09 ◼   ► 500,000 times across the platform.

01:24:14 ◼   ► Like, that's these kind of very strange things to understand.

01:24:17 ◼   ► Like, why did YouTube all of a sudden decide to promote this video to the tune of half a million impressions

01:24:29 ◼   ► almost entirely to people who have never been on the Cortex channel before?

01:24:35 ◼   ► It can be completely crazy making to think about some of this stuff.

01:24:39 ◼   ► So I think there's a lesson that YouTube says that it wants people to learn.

01:24:46 ◼   ► And that lesson, I think I would summarize as, you should make videos that are enticing to watch

01:24:54 ◼   ► with the combination of their title and their thumbnail.

01:24:57 ◼   ► And so we did that with the Cortex animated stuff.

01:25:00 ◼   ► Saying Cortex animated and a number was un-inticing to anyone who was new.

01:25:08 ◼   ► And so that seems like an obvious change. Oh, give it a title that just is a fun title. So this is

01:25:14 ◼   ► much more welcoming to people who are new. That's fine. I can understand that. That's a good lesson.

01:25:19 ◼   ► That's actually a lesson we should have learned years ago with the Cortex animated videos,

01:25:25 ◼   ► but we just didn't like it just didn't really occur to either of us. But the frustrating thing

01:25:31 ◼   ► is that you can make that obvious change, and there is an overall improvement. But then

01:25:39 ◼   ► within those changes, for reasons that make no sense at all, there are huge order of magnitude

01:25:47 ◼   ► differences that seem to come out of absolutely nowhere in terms of how many people will YouTube

01:25:54 ◼   ► show this video to?

01:25:55 ◼   ► Like there's a thing in the YouTube studio app, right?

01:25:59 ◼   ► And the analytics tab right now, and it says, keep it up.

01:26:02 ◼   ► Your channel got 484% more views than usual

01:26:05 ◼   ► in the last 28 days.

01:26:07 ◼   ► What is it?

01:26:09 ◼   ► What is it that I have to keep up?

01:26:11 ◼   ► What if I said, why don't you keep it up, YouTube?

01:26:14 ◼   ► You're the one doing it, not me.

01:26:16 ◼   ► You keep it up, I am keeping it up.

01:26:18 ◼   ► I've been doing it for ages.

01:26:20 ◼   ► You know, this channel has been around for years.

01:26:22 ◼   ► We've been doing the animated videos for years, you know?

01:26:24 ◼   ► I'm like, "You keep it up." (laughs)

01:26:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, keep it up for the behind the scenes stuff.

01:26:29 ◼   ► YouTube does, they have increasingly started trying

01:26:34 ◼   ► to put in these natural language generated sentences

01:26:39 ◼   ► around how your videos are doing.

01:26:41 ◼   ► And this is one of those things where you'll log in

01:26:43 ◼   ► and they'll say, "Keep it up."

01:26:45 ◼   ► Or there's just so many of these that are weird

01:26:49 ◼   ► and frustrating when YouTube says like,

01:26:51 ◼   ► "Oh, more people are interested in this video than normal,

01:26:56 ◼   ► so it is being promoted across YouTube more than normal."

01:26:59 ◼   ► Or like, "A higher percentage of your viewers

01:27:02 ◼   ► are watching this video."

01:27:04 ◼   ► There are sentences that are useful,

01:27:06 ◼   ► but never in any way that's actually helpful for like,

01:27:09 ◼   ► why does weird random stuff happen?

01:27:13 ◼   ► So how have you been feeling about all of this, Myke?

01:27:14 ◼   ► - So there's a couple of things.

01:27:16 ◼   ► One, at the moment, it's fun.

01:27:18 ◼   ► Like, I'm finding it fun.

01:27:20 ◼   ► I worry about like that fun leading into like obsessiveness.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Right, so I'm trying to keep that in my mind.

01:27:27 ◼   ► But like at the moment, it's just fun for me to log in

01:27:29 ◼   ► and be like, wow, we have had 368,000 views on the channel

01:27:34 ◼   ► in the last 28 days, which is just like,

01:27:38 ◼   ► wow, that's super cool for me.

01:27:39 ◼   ► Like, I've never been involved in a video project

01:27:43 ◼   ► of this kind of magnitude, right?

01:27:45 ◼   ► Like it's like, oh, this is so cool.

01:27:46 ◼   ► This is so many thousands of subscribers

01:27:49 ◼   ► and hundreds of thousands of views.

01:27:51 ◼   ► It's like, wow, that's like just an interesting thing.

01:27:53 ◼   ► And it's also fun to like change a thumbnail

01:27:57 ◼   ► or a title and like come back to it in a couple of days

01:27:59 ◼   ► and you can see the little chart and it goes, boop.

01:28:01 ◼   ► And you're like, oh, okay, that one worked.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And every time I like, I learn a little bit more, you know?

01:28:06 ◼   ► It's like, I think one of the reasons

01:28:08 ◼   ► that the thumbnail for the,

01:28:10 ◼   ► why is this still happening video

01:28:12 ◼   ► looks like it's one of your videos.

01:28:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually, you know what?

01:28:17 ◼   ► I hadn't thought about that,

01:28:18 ◼   ► but I just realized, yeah, the stick figure girls

01:28:21 ◼   ► are in that.

01:28:22 ◼   ► That hadn't crossed my mind,

01:28:23 ◼   ► but I think you might be right about that.

01:28:24 ◼   ► - I think that might help, but that's not necessarily it,

01:28:29 ◼   ► because we've had other videos that haven't done that well,

01:28:32 ◼   ► but are doing really well.

01:28:34 ◼   ► This is the thing, I don't know any of it,

01:28:35 ◼   ► I'm just, it's all stuff that I'm pulling out of nowhere,

01:28:37 ◼   ► because I don't get any actual actionable information,

01:28:39 ◼   ► just like this one did good, oh great.

01:28:42 ◼   ► But what I'm thinking though now is like something

01:28:44 ◼   ► that I'm gonna do is be more intentional

01:28:46 ◼   ► about the thumbnails that we're using.

01:28:48 ◼   ► Because the way I've always done it in the past is,

01:28:51 ◼   ► when you upload a video to YouTube,

01:28:53 ◼   ► it suggests some thumbnails for you.

01:28:56 ◼   ► I don't know exactly what it's doing

01:28:58 ◼   ► to pull out some screenshots basically of the video

01:29:01 ◼   ► as it's uploading them and it gives you three options.

01:29:04 ◼   ► And I've always just chosen the one I like the most

01:29:05 ◼   ► and go with it from there.

01:29:07 ◼   ► Now I am going to actually be taking some images

01:29:11 ◼   ► from some frames from the video

01:29:14 ◼   ► and I will use one that I like and keep a couple in reserve

01:29:18 ◼   ► and then maybe swap it out after a couple of days,

01:29:20 ◼   ► see what happens.

01:29:21 ◼   ► And that's like part of the intention on this of it.

01:29:23 ◼   ► And the same, like the titles I'm doing,

01:29:26 ◼   ► and as you've been doing,

01:29:27 ◼   ► similar to what we do with the podcast,

01:29:29 ◼   ► the titles of the videos are pulled from a line

01:29:33 ◼   ► that's in the video.

01:29:34 ◼   ► I think by and large, I want to keep it to that too.

01:29:38 ◼   ► It's what I'm trying to not do,

01:29:40 ◼   ► something I don't want to do is,

01:29:41 ◼   ► I don't want this to just be like clickbait.

01:29:44 ◼   ► I don't want to make every single one,

01:29:47 ◼   ► like we've had a couple like,

01:29:48 ◼   ► I can't believe this is still happening,

01:29:49 ◼   ► when it actually says, we say it in the video, right?

01:29:51 ◼   ► So like, I'm cool with that.

01:29:53 ◼   ► I don't want that to be like the,

01:29:54 ◼   ► you'll never guess, oh my God, no way.

01:29:56 ◼   ► Like I don't want them to become that.

01:29:57 ◼   ► 'Cause that's just like, that feels pointless to me.

01:30:00 ◼   ► But I want to see if there's like,

01:30:02 ◼   ► what can I learn about making these things

01:30:04 ◼   ► seem more enticing?

01:30:06 ◼   ► And like similarly with your guidance,

01:30:08 ◼   ► we've been doing this a little bit more

01:30:09 ◼   ► with the podcast episodes uploaded to YouTube,

01:30:12 ◼   ► where every now and then we just give it a name.

01:30:15 ◼   ► Like it doesn't have episode, blah, blah, blah.

01:30:18 ◼   ► It's just the name of the episode,

01:30:21 ◼   ► which I don't think we need to do every time,

01:30:23 ◼   ► but there are certain times where that makes sense.

01:30:26 ◼   ► Like the one we just put up last time,

01:30:28 ◼   ► making the interstates forgotten code,

01:30:30 ◼   ► like that was the name of the podcast episode.

01:30:32 ◼   ► And we just took the number off and you made a,

01:30:35 ◼   ► you had like a special thumbnail made for it.

01:30:37 ◼   ► And then that worked really nicely

01:30:38 ◼   ► and that video was performed very well,

01:30:39 ◼   ► I think for that reason.

01:30:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I completely agree with you.

01:30:42 ◼   ► There's always this question of clickbaiting stuff.

01:30:44 ◼   ► With that last episode, we unintentionally made an episode

01:30:48 ◼   ► that almost entirely just talked about the behind the scenes of that video.

01:30:52 ◼   ► And so then it felt like, oh, this makes sense to have a custom thumbnail

01:30:58 ◼   ► on the podcast episode that makes it more visually clear this is related to the interstates.

01:31:05 ◼   ► So if you've watched this interstate video, you might want to listen to this podcast,

01:31:09 ◼   ► which talks about that video itself.

01:31:12 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't think that makes sense to do all the time, it just happened to work

01:31:16 ◼   ► out very well last time to do with the actual podcast itself.

01:31:20 ◼   ► And I can imagine there are listeners that are like, "But Myke, why? Why are you doing

01:31:24 ◼   ► this?" So I have two reasons why I think that this is, it could be something that I

01:31:28 ◼   ► want to just keep my eye on more, and like that the two of us can just keep working on.

01:31:32 ◼   ► Now the channel is actually making a little bit of money, which it wasn't before. Now,

01:31:38 ◼   ► I will tell you, listeners…

01:31:41 ◼   ► say a little bit. We have had 368,400 views in the last 28 days. That has equated to $677

01:31:50 ◼   ► of YouTube revenue. That is not no money, but compared to how many people have been

01:31:56 ◼   ► served ads, that's not a lot of money. You know, where I come from in the podcast world,

01:32:02 ◼   ► those kinds of listeners would equate to a much, much higher amount of money. Yeah. That

01:32:08 ◼   ► amount of listenership in a podcast is astounding, right? And on YouTube it's not.

01:32:16 ◼   ► But that amount of money, like $600 in a month, will go quite a long way to, well, one, funding

01:32:24 ◼   ► the creation of the videos, the animated videos themselves. It will help contribute towards

01:32:29 ◼   ► that, which prior we've just been paying out of Cortex brand money, like we just, we pay

01:32:34 ◼   ► our animator out that well this actually helps pay for that which is nice and also just like

01:32:38 ◼   ► can contribute towards some general business bills that we have so it's like great like

01:32:43 ◼   ► this is a not nothing amount of money where like previously we didn't even have ads on

01:32:48 ◼   ► the channel at all like for a long time yeah well one because we were told that we were

01:32:54 ◼   ► re-uploading someone's content i think at one point which is like very funny to me so

01:32:59 ◼   ► like we hit some flag somewhere but we ended up getting that resolved so yes our own content

01:33:03 ◼   ► - It's what we're uploading.

01:33:05 ◼   ► - Yes, this does exist elsewhere where we make it.

01:33:09 ◼   ► - It's like we can or cannot give it to you, YouTube.

01:33:11 ◼   ► It's up to you, what do you want?

01:33:12 ◼   ► And then also I do think that there is a way

01:33:15 ◼   ► that this helps more people find out

01:33:18 ◼   ► about the podcast in general.

01:33:20 ◼   ► So I saw this quote go by my Twitter feed the other day

01:33:24 ◼   ► where MKBHD was giving,

01:33:27 ◼   ► he was on a panel at a podcast summit

01:33:29 ◼   ► and he said more than 50% of our podcast audience

01:33:32 ◼   ► comes from YouTube.

01:33:33 ◼   ► And I was like, "Interesting."

01:33:35 ◼   ► So Marquez has a podcast called Waveform,

01:33:39 ◼   ► which was at first just a audio podcast.

01:33:43 ◼   ► Then they built a studio and made a video podcast.

01:33:46 ◼   ► And then they have like clips and stuff as well

01:33:49 ◼   ► that they do.

01:33:50 ◼   ► Like it's not just the full episode.

01:33:51 ◼   ► They also do clips,

01:33:52 ◼   ► which for me is kind of like the animated videos.

01:33:54 ◼   ► They're like clips, right?

01:33:56 ◼   ► 'Cause there's not really much point

01:33:57 ◼   ► of us doing a clips channel because there's no visuals,

01:34:00 ◼   ► right?

01:34:01 ◼   ► Like I think it helps because they're actually in a studio

01:34:03 ◼   ► recording themselves and obviously we wouldn't do that for some pretty key reasons but also

01:34:09 ◼   ► it's just not what I would want this show to be anyway even if you weren't a person

01:34:13 ◼   ► who was an animated character on the internet you know but we can do this stuff and as you

01:34:20 ◼   ► said we have videos that have 100,000 views right and we have 56,000 subscribers to the

01:34:25 ◼   ► channel so there are definitely people that their first interaction with Cortex is one

01:34:30 ◼   ► of these videos, maybe they check out some of the other stuff and they're like, "Well,

01:34:35 ◼   ► what does this come from?" Or, "I didn't know that these guys had a podcast together."

01:34:40 ◼   ► Right? Like, and then they maybe find the show. So that is just like an extra little

01:34:44 ◼   ► thing in a way which is kind of for me, I felt like maybe years ago, like there kind

01:34:51 ◼   ► of isn't a way to grow the show anymore. Like we'd found an audience which is a fantastic

01:34:56 ◼   ► audience size, like I'm super happy. So I also was kind of like, well there's nothing,

01:35:01 ◼   ► I don't really know what more to do. I'm really happy with where we are. I'll kind of just

01:35:05 ◼   ► leave it there. But now this is like, oh, hang on a minute. There is a way to maybe

01:35:10 ◼   ► try and get to more people. And it's in a thing we're already doing. I don't have to

01:35:15 ◼   ► do any more work or we don't have to do anything extra for this. All we need to do is just

01:35:21 ◼   ► make the animated videos we're already making just maybe a little bit more enticing to people.

01:35:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I think something people underestimate is the difficulty of getting a podcast audience.

01:35:35 ◼   ► Podcasts are built on the old school RSS part of the internet, and they're intrinsically

01:35:42 ◼   ► harder to grow an audience.

01:35:44 ◼   ► I think this is one area that YouTube really should get into and really try to push harder,

01:35:51 ◼   ► is actually having podcasts much more on YouTube.

01:35:55 ◼   ► You see more people doing it in the past years, and I think one of the biggest reasons is

01:36:00 ◼   ► it does make sense as a place to try to actually get your podcast to people who don't know

01:36:07 ◼   ► about it already.

01:36:08 ◼   ► I think this is interesting.

01:36:09 ◼   ► I didn't realize that MKBHD put Waveform up on YouTube.

01:36:14 ◼   ► Also guess what microphone is in their studio?

01:36:17 ◼   ► I know.

01:36:18 ◼   ► It's the Shure SM7B.

01:36:21 ◼   ► There it is, because it looks great on camera.

01:36:23 ◼   ► Of course it is!

01:36:24 ◼   ► It just made me laugh.

01:36:25 ◼   ► Like I click on the thumbnail right away and it's like, "Oh, there it is.

01:36:28 ◼   ► There's the microphone."

01:36:29 ◼   ► I really think YouTube should try to add in more features that explicitly work well with

01:36:35 ◼   ► audio that people are listening to, even if it happens to have visual content as well.

01:36:39 ◼   ► Like, I actually think this is a good area for growth because there's a huge number of

01:36:44 ◼   ► podcasts which all want to solve this same problem of where is a place that I can try

01:36:49 ◼   ► to reach people who might not already know about the existence of this thing?

01:36:54 ◼   ► And YouTube is one of those places.

01:36:55 ◼   ► And it's interesting, like, we've done the Cortex animated stuff for a long time, and

01:37:00 ◼   ► it was vaguely along these lines of, "Oh, this can be a good place for people to get

01:37:06 ◼   ► an introduction to the show as an onboarding process of like, 'Oh, do you like these animated

01:37:11 ◼   ► things?

01:37:12 ◼   ► Then listen to the whole show, maybe.'"

01:37:14 ◼   ► But we've only recently been strategic about it, and it's only recently starting to actually

01:37:20 ◼   ► show up as an effective thing that, "Oh, YouTube really is recommending this to more people."

01:37:28 ◼   ► I also really do have a suspicion that we only recently monetized the YouTube channel

01:37:33 ◼   ► as well, and no matter how much YouTube denies it, I believe that, sure, the algorithm doesn't

01:37:43 ◼   ► directly take into account if the video is monetized about do they show it to more people,

01:37:49 ◼   ► But I think that algorithm is smart enough to know if a video is monetized even if YouTube

01:37:55 ◼   ► doesn't directly tell them and it still comes into account.

01:37:58 ◼   ► It's more of a benefit to them, why would they not do that?

01:38:00 ◼   ► Yeah, again, they explicitly deny that monetization status has anything to do with it.

01:38:06 ◼   ► And I think this is one of those ways where they are saying a thing that is technically

01:38:11 ◼   ► true, but it is also true that once you monetize your channel, you're going to get recommended

01:38:19 ◼   ► more. Those two things can both be true. And I so anyway, that is also one of my suspicions.

01:38:25 ◼   ► It's like, oh, these videos are getting recommended to way more new people than they were previously.

01:38:29 ◼   ► That seems to have been happening roughly on like a four month timeline. When did we

01:38:34 ◼   ► monetize the channel? Ooh, about four months ago. Just, you know, it's a little suspicious.

01:38:39 ◼   ► All of this is kind of funny because it has helped guide my decision making with a project that I've

01:38:46 ◼   ► that I've been working on,

01:38:46 ◼   ► I actually haven't told you about.

01:38:48 ◼   ► So, Austin Evans and I have been producing a show

01:38:51 ◼   ► called The Test Drivers for the last year.

01:38:54 ◼   ► - Right.

01:38:55 ◼   ► - And it's mostly a tech show, like tech news show.

01:38:58 ◼   ► And as is normal with many podcast projects,

01:39:01 ◼   ► over time, the thing that you wanna talk about

01:39:03 ◼   ► starts to shift.

01:39:05 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:39:06 ◼   ► - And ultimately, all me and Austin wanna talk about

01:39:08 ◼   ► is Formula One.

01:39:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:39:11 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:39:12 ◼   ► - We've been bringing it into the show

01:39:13 ◼   ► and like it's all we wanna talk about.

01:39:14 ◼   ► About around the time this episode goes out,

01:39:17 ◼   ► we were announcing that we are completely changing

01:39:19 ◼   ► the test drivers.

01:39:21 ◼   ► So we're giving it a new brand, a new name, a new show.

01:39:24 ◼   ► It's being called the Backmarkers and it's Formula One.

01:39:27 ◼   ► - Oh, that's great.

01:39:28 ◼   ► - And what we're gonna do is we're gonna stream on YouTube

01:39:32 ◼   ► live after every race.

01:39:34 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:39:36 ◼   ► - And it's all gonna be video.

01:39:38 ◼   ► - Oh, really?

01:39:38 ◼   ► Okay, interesting.

01:39:39 ◼   ► - We will have an audio podcast,

01:39:41 ◼   ► but the show's primary focus is video.

01:39:45 ◼   ► So we will stream and then we will upload the video

01:39:49 ◼   ► afterwards to YouTube.

01:39:50 ◼   ► It's all gonna be streamed on YouTube

01:39:52 ◼   ► and the video is gonna be on YouTube.

01:39:54 ◼   ► And part of the reason we're doing this,

01:39:56 ◼   ► one, I wanna just play around with this,

01:39:58 ◼   ► Austin knows video more than audio, right?

01:40:01 ◼   ► And so we're gonna work together on how we try

01:40:04 ◼   ► and make this the best it can be.

01:40:05 ◼   ► I'm starting to see that like,

01:40:07 ◼   ► you can get into the algorithm if you play it right

01:40:10 ◼   ► and you're smart with it.

01:40:12 ◼   ► And I know that our combined audiences for Formula One

01:40:17 ◼   ► is so much smaller than our combined audiences

01:40:21 ◼   ► for technology.

01:40:23 ◼   ► So the amount of people that will probably be in me

01:40:26 ◼   ► and Austin's existing listenership or viewership

01:40:28 ◼   ► that care about Formula One is tiny.

01:40:31 ◼   ► So if we actually wanna make it something

01:40:32 ◼   ► that people can find out about,

01:40:34 ◼   ► probably YouTube is a good place to put that content.

01:40:37 ◼   ► Because the algorithm can maybe get it

01:40:39 ◼   ► in front of other people.

01:40:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's totally the case,

01:40:42 ◼   ► that you would need the algorithm to help find the people

01:40:47 ◼   ► who are interested in Formula One commentary.

01:40:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so I even expect that it will help,

01:40:53 ◼   ► say, the people in Austin's audience

01:40:56 ◼   ► that care find it as well.

01:40:58 ◼   ► This is the area that I would like us to work together on,

01:41:02 ◼   ► me and Austin, and then I'm like, well, hang on,

01:41:05 ◼   ► there's, you know, when we were talking about

01:41:07 ◼   ► we would do this, I was like,

01:41:08 ◼   ► "Well, why don't we just do video?"

01:41:10 ◼   ► I like the idea of doing a stream after race day.

01:41:13 ◼   ► So it's basically a reaction podcast, really.

01:41:16 ◼   ► We will be reacting to the race we just watched.

01:41:19 ◼   ► And it just seems like a fun thing to do

01:41:21 ◼   ► and I'm planning things a little bit differently.

01:41:24 ◼   ► Like we've been working on all the branding

01:41:25 ◼   ► and having like video assets made and stuff.

01:41:28 ◼   ► And I'm gonna maybe try this again

01:41:30 ◼   ► as like another project of trying to understand YouTube a bit

01:41:34 ◼   ► and with the great benefit of,

01:41:35 ◼   ► like I have you as my guide for our channel,

01:41:39 ◼   ► Austin is my guide for this.

01:41:41 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't really know what I'm doing, right?

01:41:44 ◼   ► I'm just like a bear, just like lumbering around

01:41:47 ◼   ► inside of these channels, like bumping into things

01:41:49 ◼   ► and sometimes there's an effect.

01:41:51 ◼   ► But like, you know, I listened to you talk

01:41:53 ◼   ► as into him talking, there's like,

01:41:55 ◼   ► just a greater understanding about all of this stuff.

01:41:58 ◼   ► Austin was like, what do you wanna do with the thumbnails?

01:42:01 ◼   ► Do you want me to make them?

01:42:02 ◼   ► I'm like, yes, I want you to make the thumbnails.

01:42:05 ◼   ► What do you think I'm gonna do?

01:42:06 ◼   ► It's just like a picture of me with my thumb up like,

01:42:08 ◼   ► hey, it's a race.

01:42:09 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I don't know what I'm doing.

01:42:10 ◼   ► - I would strongly suggest that you have Austin

01:42:13 ◼   ► make the thumbnail. - Oh yeah.

01:42:14 ◼   ► I mean, he mocked some up for me and I'm like,

01:42:16 ◼   ► oh wow, yeah, you know what you're doing.

01:42:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:42:18 ◼   ► It's like the titles as well.

01:42:19 ◼   ► I was like, yes, Austin, I would like you to come up

01:42:21 ◼   ► with the titles for these videos.

01:42:23 ◼   ► What is this gonna be?

01:42:24 ◼   ► I don't know, but this is kind of where I wanna go.

01:42:27 ◼   ► And also if I do bring it back to my yearly theme

01:42:30 ◼   ► a little bit, 'cause you'll be like,

01:42:31 ◼   ► hey, Myke, what are you doing?