Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Well, it's time for episode 100.

00:00:03 ◼   ► And episode 100, I think neither of us could ever have predicted.

00:00:08 ◼   ► No, I mean, I think even on episode 99, I don't think that I thought episode 100 was

00:00:17 ◼   ► gonna be talking so heavily about how our lives have been changed by a global pandemic.

00:00:23 ◼   ► I don't think that it was what I was expecting.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:29 ◼   ► It's such a weird situation because my gut reaction for this kind of thing is always

00:00:35 ◼   ► "You don't need to talk about contemporary goings-on in the world."

00:00:40 ◼   ► Especially if you're doing something like episode 100 of Cortex, right?

00:00:45 ◼   ► Anything can go.

00:00:46 ◼   ► "We're gonna celebrate!"

00:00:47 ◼   ► Yeah, five years in the making and as a content producer, my total gut reaction is "If you

00:00:53 ◼   ► don't need to comment on contemporary things in your 100th episode, well of course you

00:00:58 ◼   ► shouldn't. It's just madness to even do that. But here we are in a situation where even I have to

00:01:07 ◼   ► cave of, like, to not discuss the outside world would be insanity and to not discuss it right

00:01:16 ◼   ► from the beginning. So it's just welcome to episode 100 of Cortex. Thank you for being here.

00:01:25 ◼   ► And yes, we're gonna talk about coronavirus right from the start.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Because as well, look, one of the things that I think is important, and I think

00:01:37 ◼   ► for as much as a podcast can, I think our show can help people in a way,

00:01:44 ◼   ► because a lot of people are gonna start and are working very differently right now.

00:01:48 ◼   ► And so I think that there's... and we'll... nah, I don't know what I'm saying anymore,

00:01:51 ◼   ► I've lost myself.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Myke even just tried to intro us into talking about this topic and then you just like,

00:01:58 ◼   ► you just sort of fail halfway through because what is it that you're even going to say? So it's, it's,

00:02:05 ◼   ► it's so hard to deal with because it's so terrible. Like it's such a global, terrible,

00:02:14 ◼   ► unique situation where everyone in the world is dealing with the exact same thing and talking

00:02:22 ◼   ► about the exact same thing, but it's also completely inescapable. And this is a show

00:02:28 ◼   ► where we talk about our working lives and so we're 100% going to talk about "hey, what have

00:02:34 ◼   ► our working lives been like since we last spoke whatever it was three weeks a month ago?"

00:02:39 ◼   ► - It was more than a month, I think.

00:02:41 ◼   ► - Well, here's one of the things about quarantine is you can't have any sense of time,

00:02:47 ◼   ► Right? It's just totally lost.

00:02:49 ◼   ► But so when we last spoke six months ago, six weeks ago, who knows? Not me.

00:02:54 ◼   ► What is the one overwhelming feature affecting both of our working lives

00:03:01 ◼   ► in a completely omnipresent way for the past several weeks?

00:03:05 ◼   ► It's the coronavirus.

00:03:07 ◼   ► - Yes. - Right?

00:03:07 ◼   ► That is the thing that has affected our lives the most.

00:03:12 ◼   ► - Yep. There is one constant over 100 episodes, right?

00:03:15 ◼   ► The show has changed in different ways, but there is one constant.

00:03:18 ◼   ► And that constant is, on Quotex, we talk about how we work.

00:03:22 ◼   ► So if we are going to actually do justice to what this show is on its 100th episode,

00:03:29 ◼   ► we need to talk about the fact that our working lives have changed more in the last month

00:03:35 ◼   ► than they maybe have in the entire five-year period in a short window.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Yeah, you know what? That's not an unfair way to present it. Like, for both of us, so

00:03:46 ◼   ► much has changed since the last time we spoke. It's like mind-boggling even to know where

00:03:52 ◼   ► to start.

00:03:53 ◼   ► This is the time where having a schedule like I do is of great benefit. Because I don't

00:03:58 ◼   ► necessarily keep track of days in the same way, right? Like, then days do feel different,

00:04:05 ◼   ► But I know where I am in the week because of the shows that I'm doing on any given day.

00:04:11 ◼   ► I know I'm towards the end of the week now because that's when we record.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And I know yesterday I recorded the Penn Addict and Connected, which I know is Wednesday,

00:04:20 ◼   ► so I know that's the middle.

00:04:21 ◼   ► And those are always there, they're every week.

00:04:24 ◼   ► So there's been a benefit that way.

00:04:26 ◼   ► But what I have noticed about myself, I have been really relaxing on weekends.

00:04:33 ◼   ► And I don't know why that is.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I think it's because my weeks are way more intense at the moment.

00:04:41 ◼   ► So when people were stopped working, the intensity stops.

00:04:46 ◼   ► And it's like a big sigh.

00:04:50 ◼   ► It's interesting you say that because I've been trying to put my finger on a feeling

00:04:55 ◼   ► that I can't quite nail down.

00:04:58 ◼   ► there is a way in which the last six weeks, let's say, have felt like they've had some of the busiest

00:05:06 ◼   ► days of my life and also some of the laziest days of my life. Like back to back? And it's very

00:05:16 ◼   ► strange like to try to figure out why, but I'm really aware like I have had some productive days,

00:05:24 ◼   ► this is like no day I have had in years and

00:05:27 ◼   ► It will be immediately followed by a day where it's like what a disgusting sloth I am, right?

00:05:34 ◼   ► It's it's very strange how this has been this consistent

00:05:38 ◼   ► feature of

00:05:41 ◼   ► busyness and then also just like a total

00:05:44 ◼   ► Downtime and I've been trying to do a little bit of what you're doing

00:05:50 ◼   ► which is I'm thinking of it in my head as respect the weekend and my wife and I basically did it

00:05:55 ◼   ► this past weekend of like, okay, let's intentionally try to have this be the downtime.

00:06:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And then have the regular workweek. I don't have the same kind of schedule that you do,

00:06:06 ◼   ► but this is one of these things I feel like I'm a crazy person, but I might actually do it. So for

00:06:11 ◼   ► a project that got canceled because of coronavirus, I happen to have a bunch of colored paper in my

00:06:16 ◼   ► house and I feel like I feel like taking these big sheets of paper.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Don't worry.

00:06:23 ◼   ► What is that?

00:06:24 ◼   ► Look, sometimes you need to buy...

00:06:24 ◼   ► Because of a project that got cancelled, I now have lots of large sheets of colored paper?

00:06:31 ◼   ► Yeah, so I ordered a bunch of colored paper sheets for a thing.

00:06:34 ◼   ► As one does.

00:06:34 ◼   ► Yeah, that I was gonna do, but because I can't go outside anymore, it can't happen.

00:06:39 ◼   ► So this was gonna be one of those like "gray in the real world" videos that required a prop, right?

00:06:44 ◼   ► Look, I might have several hundred colored pieces of paper that now I can't do anything with.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Don't worry, everyone. Episode's back to normal. Here we go. We found it. There it is.

00:06:56 ◼   ► But what I've been thinking about doing with these, because I have no regular schedule,

00:07:05 ◼   ► is making just like a giant sign to put in the middle of the house on like green paper that says

00:07:10 ◼   ► Monday, Tuesday on a giant yellow piece of paper.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I love that.

00:07:15 ◼   ► What a great idea.

00:07:16 ◼   ► I'm seriously considering doing it because I think as this thing goes on

00:07:21 ◼   ► longer and longer, losing that sense of time becomes a more concerning problem.

00:07:27 ◼   ► Right now, I would still say like it's in the area of academic interest.

00:07:32 ◼   ► I'm like, Oh, isn't it interesting how my brain is interpreting time.

00:07:36 ◼   ► But I think a month from now, that's not the situation that you want to have been in for,

00:07:42 ◼   ► you know, approaching 20% of the year to be like, I don't have any idea how long apart things were.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Every one of the 11 billion articles that have been written over the last couple of weeks about

00:07:52 ◼   ► how people work from home includes the idea of like, keep to a schedule and like, whilst I don't

00:07:59 ◼   ► necessary. I get that some people do need this.

00:08:02 ◼   ► I'm not of the like, wake up this time, shower this time.

00:08:07 ◼   ► I'm not that kind of person. Right. Like that's too much schedule for me.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Like, and I like things to be a little bit more easy.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I really think that like it is important for people to have some kind

00:08:19 ◼   ► of idea as to where they are in the week.

00:08:22 ◼   ► And of course this pretty much mostly applies to those that are in

00:08:27 ◼   ► Lockdowns, right? There are some people whose lives have to continue moving because they're in essential businesses, right?

00:08:33 ◼   ► So right, we obviously this is mostly focused at people that are now at home all of the time but weren't before

00:08:39 ◼   ► Yeah, but I think it is very important for people in those

00:08:44 ◼   ► Circumstances in those situations to have whatever it is that just helps them understand not that it's like

00:08:53 ◼   ► necessarily, "It's Tuesday today," but where are you in the week is important.

00:08:59 ◼   ► B: Yeah, I think it's the dumbest little thing, but there's a little tiny app for my Apple

00:09:04 ◼   ► Watch that I really like called Better Day. And one of the things that I've always really

00:09:09 ◼   ► liked about it is it shows a little progress marker for the whole month. And so there's

00:09:16 ◼   ► like a little dot that will move across in the circular arc for April. So I look at it

00:09:20 ◼   ► now and I say, "Oh, just by looking at the dot, I can see we're more than halfway through April."

00:09:25 ◼   ► And I genuinely feel like this tiny complication on my watch is my only anchor to time.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Oh, yes, I'm watching this dot slowly arc across the month like I did last month. And this is how I

00:09:39 ◼   ► know, "Oh, yeah, it's not April 2 anymore. It still feels like April is mostly done now. You

00:09:48 ◼   ► need to get ready for the end of April. It's very strange how quickly that sense of time slips away

00:09:55 ◼   ► and seems to be a pretty universal experience with people I talk with.

00:09:59 ◼   ► T

00:09:59 ◼   ► - I'm having that like, it's fast and slow, you know?

00:10:03 ◼   ► Like it's both.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Like it feels like it's been a million years

00:10:08 ◼   ► since we last spoke, but feels like it hasn't been that long

00:10:12 ◼   ► since I spoke to my friend James last Friday.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Like it's just like this compression

00:10:19 ◼   ► and expansion feeling is so strange.

00:10:22 ◼   ► And I feel this feeling a lot when I'm at conferences.

00:10:26 ◼   ► And I think it's because similarly

00:10:28 ◼   ► during those periods of time,

00:10:31 ◼   ► the confines of the world are not pressing in on you

00:10:35 ◼   ► in the same way like we have now,

00:10:37 ◼   ► where it's like, well, you're not getting up every day

00:10:39 ◼   ► and going to this place and having lunch here

00:10:42 ◼   ► and coming home and doing that in a five days in a row

00:10:44 ◼   ► and two off, right, so you understand where you are.

00:10:47 ◼   ► 'Cause when you're at a conference,

00:10:48 ◼   ► it's just like, well, nothing that you normally do is here.

00:10:52 ◼   ► So you're just going about your life in this time.

00:10:55 ◼   ► you get to the end of the week and it's like, I feel like I just got here but I feel like

00:10:58 ◼   ► I've been here for two years.

00:11:00 ◼   ► You know?

00:11:02 ◼   ► Yeah, that is a really good way to describe the conference feeling as well of like, yeah,

00:11:08 ◼   ► I just got here but also I've been here for two years.

00:11:12 ◼   ► That's perfect.

00:11:13 ◼   ► That's every Friday at WWDC.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Like, wow, I didn't see 20% of the people I wanted to see but also I've been here for

00:11:21 ◼   ► the whole summer.

00:11:22 ◼   ► I've seen too many people.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it's inter- it's- that's really interesting and I find my days where I've been lazy are very understandable

00:11:32 ◼   ► and I felt very fine with the lazy days where it's like some days you wake up and you're just like

00:11:37 ◼   ► "Nope, not much is gonna happen today and that's okay."

00:11:40 ◼   ► But the busy days are crazy. It feels like I'm doing three times as much on a busy day

00:11:47 ◼   ► or that like the day just pow, it's over immediately.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I think for me it's because the things that are causing my attention in that way, that are like making me busy, are really intense.

00:12:02 ◼   ► What do you mean?

00:12:04 ◼   ► Now I am the one who's like "how much detail?"

00:12:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah, now you're mystery man.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Oh but it's like...

00:12:12 ◼   ► Look this is again like for the listeners this is always this this weird position that we're both always in.

00:12:18 ◼   ► How much detail, how much do you want to talk about?

00:12:20 ◼   ► And you always have to kind of forgive us in these weird moments.

00:12:23 ◼   ► And I've just unintentionally put Myke on the spot.

00:12:26 ◼   ► And I didn't realize with how much detail he does

00:12:29 ◼   ► or doesn't want to talk about his intense times.

00:12:31 ◼   ► I think I can probably talk about this and people will understand it anyway.

00:12:34 ◼   ► OK, I run a mostly advertising supported business. Right.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Lots of companies are wanting to reduce their marketing budgets. Yeah.

00:12:42 ◼   ► So we are having lots of people need to shrink their budget

00:12:47 ◼   ► and we're working with them on that.

00:12:49 ◼   ► That happens a lot.

00:12:50 ◼   ► It happens all the time, in fact,

00:12:52 ◼   ► that companies need to readjust things.

00:12:55 ◼   ► But we are getting a lot more readjustment right now

00:12:58 ◼   ► than we ever have.

00:13:00 ◼   ► I honestly have done more readjusting of budgets

00:13:04 ◼   ► in the last month than I've maybe done

00:13:06 ◼   ► in the last three years.

00:13:08 ◼   ► Because people need to or want to change things around.

00:13:11 ◼   ► So there's an element of having to work with people

00:13:15 ◼   ► for that and then also needing to try and find advertising that can fill the gaps for

00:13:22 ◼   ► the various shows that we manage. So the level at which these intense moments are happening,

00:13:29 ◼   ► they are more frequent and with much higher stakes than I have managed ever. That is the

00:13:36 ◼   ► intensity that I'm talking about right now. From like my business running my business

00:13:43 ◼   ► is managing that. So when I am working on something like that, it is much more higher

00:13:51 ◼   ► stakes than what I am typically dealing with when it comes to advertising.

00:13:55 ◼   ► The messages that you're getting, the variance in their content is way higher.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Way higher.

00:14:02 ◼   ► Yeah, and like in both directions of like, "Oh, things have been canceled." Or like,

00:14:08 ◼   ► "Oh, we're hunting down a new sponsor."

00:14:11 ◼   ► Both of those things, the variance,

00:14:13 ◼   ► has just been cranked up a lot.

00:14:14 ◼   ► That's the experience that you're having.

00:14:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also, there's a lot of unexpected

00:14:19 ◼   ► trickle-down circumstances that are occurring

00:14:22 ◼   ► in my business, which is the same with yours.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Hence, you have piles of colored paper.

00:14:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:29 ◼   ► - Well, look, I mean, that's just like,

00:14:32 ◼   ► probably dead for a fairly long time project.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I don't have the variance that you've had in the same way, but I think even a thing

00:14:42 ◼   ► that I've only really started to truly internalize over, say, the past 10 days, or who knows

00:14:49 ◼   ► in this time, is just like, I think I mentioned it kind of briefly the last time we talked,

00:14:57 ◼   ► but I had an unusually long summer of travel planned for this year.

00:15:04 ◼   ► And part of the reason for that is because I had put together a whole bunch of projects

00:15:11 ◼   ► that I thought like, "Oh, these would be cool things to do, but they require me to be there

00:15:16 ◼   ► in person."

00:15:17 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh, okay."

00:15:20 ◼   ► This whole slate of ideas that I had lined up for the next year of production, they've

00:15:26 ◼   ► all been wiped away.

00:15:28 ◼   ► And it's strange to think about.

00:15:32 ◼   ► And I keep having this really surreal experience where I can talk about a project in advance

00:15:38 ◼   ► now because the project is not very interesting and it's very likely to be out by the time

00:15:41 ◼   ► this episode is out and it doesn't matter if it isn't anyway.

00:15:45 ◼   ► But like I made you bleep last time, I, as part of the Tumbleweed Project, I flew to

00:15:53 ◼   ► this weed research center out in Denver, Colorado that focuses on tumbleweed and all kinds of

00:15:59 ◼   ► agricultural problems.

00:16:00 ◼   ► - Just that first sentence is so fun though.

00:16:03 ◼   ► The weed research center in Denver, Colorado.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Everyone expects it's marijuana.

00:16:08 ◼   ► No, no, tumbleweed, right?

00:16:10 ◼   ► 'Cause it's like, here's the perfect place.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Nah, gotcha, right?

00:16:13 ◼   ► So it's fun. - Yeah, I know.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Yeah, it is fun, it is ridiculous.

00:16:17 ◼   ► But they are also one of the top centers

00:16:20 ◼   ► in the whole of the world for researching weed.

00:16:23 ◼   ► - I can't imagine there's many of them.

00:16:25 ◼   ► So like in my mind, like the only place is the top place.

00:16:28 ◼   ► How many places are researching tumbleweed?

00:16:30 ◼   ► Well, so I mean, there's conferences.

00:16:32 ◼   ► I discovered this that like shortly, shortly after that I was there,

00:16:37 ◼   ► they were all heading off to like the annual global weed getting together conference thing.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Yeah, whatever it was.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Tumble time 2020.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:47 ◼   ► And it's like, it was a big thing.

00:16:49 ◼   ► So, you know, this, this is what I love about the world is everything is a world unto itself.

00:16:54 ◼   ► You can pick anything and there's going to be an economy of thousands of people involved in whatever it is.

00:17:01 ◼   ► We know there are tens of thousands of people that love home screens.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Yeah, no, this stuff is endless.

00:17:10 ◼   ► But so I went there and I did this and I had this whole experience of talking to the experts

00:17:15 ◼   ► and this is a thing that I was doing more over the past year and I was kind of like toying around with this idea.

00:17:24 ◼   ► and I had a bunch of this stuff planned for the upcoming year

00:17:28 ◼   ► and now I'm in this just totally bizarre situation where I've spent

00:17:33 ◼   ► many of my afternoons editing this footage

00:17:36 ◼   ► and it feels like... it feels like I'm editing something from another lifetime

00:17:42 ◼   ► from a man who has plans

00:17:47 ◼   ► that mean nothing to the current person.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Have you experienced this feeling of watching a YouTube video that was clearly shot a long time ago and feeling weird about it?

00:17:57 ◼   ► Well, that's it. But that's exactly what I'm editing, right? And so that's what I mean. So

00:18:02 ◼   ► I'm just wondering because a viewer have you experienced it like, you know, I see YouTube channels that like that

00:18:09 ◼   ► This is I'm sure for a lot of channels is very normal

00:18:12 ◼   ► They do some content that is produced within like the last couple of days and they have some stuff which is banked

00:18:18 ◼   ► which is taking longer to work on over.

00:18:20 ◼   ► You would know this, right?

00:18:21 ◼   ► Like this is the thing that you do.

00:18:23 ◼   ► But it's less obvious than yours

00:18:25 ◼   ► 'cause when you use the animation,

00:18:26 ◼   ► you can't tell or whatever, you can't place it in time.

00:18:29 ◼   ► But like it's funny to see, like I watch a video

00:18:31 ◼   ► which is being shot at home and I'm like,

00:18:34 ◼   ► oh yeah, they're at home now, that's their iPhone,

00:18:36 ◼   ► like whatever, and then they have a video the next day

00:18:39 ◼   ► which is like shot in a restaurant

00:18:40 ◼   ► and it's like, hang on a minute, whoa!

00:18:42 ◼   ► Where did that come from?

00:18:43 ◼   ► It's a very weird, it's very weird.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Yeah, and the thing that makes this one extra strange to be editing is

00:18:53 ◼   ► I'd already, you know, very shortly after I came back, I put together a little intro that I liked

00:18:59 ◼   ► but the intro is entirely shots of

00:19:02 ◼   ► "Oh, here's me getting on the train to go on the plane to get to the airport to change airports to get on the other plane to rent a car to go to the plane"

00:19:11 ◼   ► And it's like, every time I rewatch that to try to edit it and trim it down a little bit,

00:19:17 ◼   ► it's bizarre.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Like, I can't even describe what the feeling is like putting this together.

00:19:22 ◼   ► And it's like, I want to complete this video so it's just done and I get it kind of off

00:19:26 ◼   ► my plate.

00:19:27 ◼   ► But this is part of this strangeness of things changing.

00:19:34 ◼   ► Because the Grey who was filming this was doing it as, "Okay, I've done enough talking

00:19:41 ◼   ► to experts in real life that I feel comfortable enough filming something while I'm doing this

00:19:47 ◼   ► to try to turn it into a little video and this is something that I want to try to do

00:19:53 ◼   ► more in the future." Well, when's the next time you're gonna get on a plane, right? When

00:19:59 ◼   ► is the next time you can even possibly do a project like this? Right? So it's very odd.

00:20:06 ◼   ► I am like so heavily trying to avoid the word unprecedented. Yeah, but it is unprecedented

00:20:12 ◼   ► I feel like I can't hear that word anymore

00:20:14 ◼   ► But it is right like that's the reason I'm hearing it so much, but I feel like I hear it like 25 times a day

00:20:21 ◼   ► And you know as well if you email if you if you are a person who emails people like I do

00:20:28 ◼   ► You know the way people are talking to each other is even so peculiar now

00:20:32 ◼   ► Can you give me an example?

00:20:34 ◼   ► Every email exchange is including like a message of like,

00:20:39 ◼   ► "I hope you're doing well, I hope you're healthy," you know, like and it's such a odd thing, right?

00:20:46 ◼   ► But like these are these like new normals that are already starting to establish themselves.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Like one of them is, well trains and planes are weird.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:54 ◼   ► And the other is, we all need to show each other that we understand the situation that we're all in.

00:21:01 ◼   ► It's hard to conceptualize sometimes, but this is the one where I feel it the most strongly.

00:21:08 ◼   ► And it's also why I'm really determined to just try to finish this video as fast as I possibly can,

00:21:12 ◼   ► because it's like, I don't want to think about this anymore.

00:21:14 ◼   ► - Are you gonna put a note in?

00:21:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm gonna– I have to put it in the description of like, "Oh, this was filmed forever ago."

00:21:22 ◼   ► - I would put it in the video, man.

00:21:24 ◼   ► [sigh]

00:21:26 ◼   ► It's too weird! As a viewer, I need to know, right?

00:21:31 ◼   ► Because I'm gonna be like, "When did he do--"

00:21:34 ◼   ► No, but Myke, you don't comment on contemporary happenings in the outside world

00:21:38 ◼   ► for a YouTube video that's gonna live for 10 years on the channel, right?

00:21:42 ◼   ► 10 years from now, people won't care.

00:21:44 ◼   ► I've been thinking about this, right?

00:21:46 ◼   ► Because, you know, all the podcasts, all the TV shows, everything, everyone, everywhere

00:21:53 ◼   ► is contextualizing right now, right?

00:21:56 ◼   ► That's just going to be part of the history of this time

00:22:00 ◼   ► Is that this

00:22:04 ◼   ► acknowledgement of what we are going through is

00:22:08 ◼   ► Like locked in now like that's just like

00:22:14 ◼   ► Part of the history of this time in humanity now

00:22:18 ◼   ► I'm just gonna start a video BAM shot of me on a plane. There won't be any questions

00:22:22 ◼   ► 24 hours ago

00:22:25 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's editing that is surreal and is also part of this time dilation of I can't

00:22:34 ◼   ► believe this feels like editing something from five years ago.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like it is a like an understanding of rules in people that make them feel this

00:22:46 ◼   ► way.

00:22:47 ◼   ► What do you mean?

00:22:48 ◼   ► You know the rules now are that you do not go on public transport.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Right, I see what you mean.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Like in retrospect, it's now become, "Oh, look at all of this filming of 'Breaking

00:23:00 ◼   ► the Rules', even though it wasn't 'Breaking the Rules' at the time."

00:23:02 ◼   ► So even though it wasn't long ago, even though four weeks ago you wouldn't have bought

00:23:05 ◼   ► an eyelid at this video, what you know now is what the rules are, the rules of society.

00:23:11 ◼   ► And the rules of society are that you don't do these things, so seeing them is like, "This

00:23:17 ◼   ► is 'Breaking the Rules'!"

00:23:19 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

00:23:20 ◼   ► It just changed, it just really

00:23:23 ◼   ► changes so much, like, "Oh, okay."

00:23:26 ◼   ► Now,

00:23:27 ◼   ► not like this was gonna be a redirection or anything, but it's like,

00:23:30 ◼   ► "Oh, this is something I wanted to do in addition

00:23:33 ◼   ► to the stuff that I normally do," but it's like, "Okay, I gotta change course on that."

00:23:37 ◼   ► You know, "This stuff isn't happening."

00:23:39 ◼   ► So can I just confirm, like, it was including interviews with people?

00:23:42 ◼   ► Is that, like, a thing that you were toying with? Is that what you're saying?

00:23:45 ◼   ► I just had little clips of some of the experts talking.

00:23:48 ◼   ► - Right, that's cool, that's a good idea.

00:23:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, no, goodbye.

00:23:54 ◼   ► - See ya, idea!

00:23:55 ◼   ► Just do 'em all over Zoom, man.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Just Zoom 'em up.

00:24:00 ◼   ► - It's exactly the same.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Doing it all over, doing it remotely is exactly the same.

00:24:04 ◼   ► - Zoom 'em up.

00:24:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I'm not gonna Zoom 'em up.

00:24:07 ◼   ► So anyway, that's like a thing

00:24:10 ◼   ► that I can't wait to be done with

00:24:12 ◼   ► so I can stop thinking about it

00:24:14 ◼   ► because it feels like this legacy from a previous person.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I'm like, okay, time to get rid of this as fast as possible.

00:24:23 ◼   ► But yeah, so it's like, I've had these really busy days

00:24:25 ◼   ► where it's like, okay, great, I'm working on this.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And I've got, depending on how you want to count it,

00:24:29 ◼   ► like two or three other videos that are working in parallel

00:24:33 ◼   ► that are coming along like really great.

00:24:36 ◼   ► And it's like busy, busy, busy day.

00:24:38 ◼   ► And then some days I wake up and it's just like,

00:24:40 ◼   ► nothing is happening today.

00:24:42 ◼   ► - Or, I mean, I don't know about you,

00:24:43 ◼   ► There are days where I wake up and it's like, I can't.

00:24:45 ◼   ► - I think my experience of I can't

00:24:49 ◼   ► is much more just the outside world.

00:24:53 ◼   ► I don't know at what point,

00:24:57 ◼   ► at what point, 'cause again, time means nothing,

00:25:01 ◼   ► but at some point, I was like, you know what?

00:25:04 ◼   ► I don't need to check the numbers every morning.

00:25:07 ◼   ► You know what we can start doing?

00:25:09 ◼   ► we can start battening down the informational hatches here.

00:25:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not there.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:25:17 ◼   ► I think it's something everyone has to do.

00:25:20 ◼   ► It's not-- you know things have changed when BBC News is the left most icon

00:25:27 ◼   ► on your favorites in Safari.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Jesus Christ.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Yeah, that's not good.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Your boy over here can't stop, Gray.

00:25:35 ◼   ► We've spoken about this many times, right?

00:25:37 ◼   ► like anyone that again, episode 100, right?

00:25:41 ◼   ► Like we're referring to things from the past.

00:25:43 ◼   ► A theme is that we you'd like to not check the news.

00:25:47 ◼   ► Like we don't like to read the news, but like

00:25:49 ◼   ► my typical rule on this stuff, my unspoken rule

00:25:53 ◼   ► sometimes is like unless I feel I need to.

00:25:57 ◼   ► And right now I have a compulsion multiple times a day

00:26:02 ◼   ► to just check what the headlines are.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And I feel like I'm restraining myself. It's one website, right? I'm not like going and corroborating

00:26:14 ◼   ► news reports all over the place, right? And I'm doing it a few times a day, but whilst a lot of

00:26:21 ◼   ► the time it makes me feel worse, it also relieves something which I need to feel relieved about,

00:26:27 ◼   ► which is I understand what's happening. I mean, I get that. If you feel like this is a thing that

00:26:32 ◼   ► you need to do. I'm not going to be one to tell you not to. I just think it's something

00:26:37 ◼   ► that's useful to keep an eye on. Oh, I've done that, right? Like, I'm keeping an eye on it,

00:26:44 ◼   ► and I know my habits, and I know that I will calm down. You know, like, it's the same for me for

00:26:52 ◼   ► Brexit, right? When, like, do you remember that? Yeah, poor Myke. But, you know, when everything

00:26:59 ◼   ► was kicking off then, like recently, right? Like when the German election stuff was all going down,

00:27:06 ◼   ► I was checking very frequently and then after a couple of weeks it was like, well,

00:27:10 ◼   ► I feel like I understand the flow of things now and I'll stop. And that, you know, right now we're

00:27:16 ◼   ► just in the everything's changing every day phase and I'm trying to just kind of keep abreast of

00:27:23 ◼   ► that but I expect within a period of time things become more normal, you know, as we adapt and then

00:27:33 ◼   ► I'll check less.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Yeah and I think just like we recorded the last episode right at the time where it felt like the world was beginning to take it seriously,

00:27:44 ◼   ► I feel a little bit like we're recording now at the time where all of the temporary measures

00:27:52 ◼   ► are being reassessed, and it's like, "Okay, what is the new normal?" And so we don't know

00:28:01 ◼   ► what that's going to be, but that's what this time right now feels like, at least from my

00:28:09 ◼   ► little window into the world.

00:28:11 ◼   ► I just, you know, Open BBC News, while we're recording, because I figured this was going

00:28:16 ◼   ► to be happening, because as you just said it, right, like, our "temporary measures

00:28:21 ◼   ► of lockdown have just been extended for exactly the same amount of time that they were initially

00:28:25 ◼   ► put into place. It's not temporary anymore, is it?

00:28:28 ◼   ► So what was it? What is it, three more weeks?

00:28:30 ◼   ► Three more weeks, yeah.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Three more weeks, okay.

00:28:32 ◼   ► So it's like, it is the exact – and I figured I would check now because I knew I would be

00:28:37 ◼   ► able to say, like, "It is what you just said has happened."

00:28:40 ◼   ► Okay, right. So my assessment there wasn't too far off.

00:28:43 ◼   ► No, we are quite literally recording at the time in which the temporary measures are becoming

00:28:50 ◼   ► permanent.

00:28:51 ◼   ► And so again, it's very hard to know how to think about this, and we have some things to talk about,

00:28:58 ◼   ► you know, but it's also just like, just as time can feel both like really busy and really lazy,

00:29:06 ◼   ► or things can feel like they take a really long time or they take a really short time,

00:29:11 ◼   ► one of the things that I have like this weird difficulty in trying to talk about the current

00:29:17 ◼   ► situation to just like underlay the conversation. For me personally, it's both like this is really

00:29:24 ◼   ► bad and also kind of nice. It's hard to describe because it's like, oh, well, because of my wife's

00:29:35 ◼   ► health, we in the gray household, we know that this quarantine has to be way harder and has to be

00:29:44 ◼   ► way longer than whatever the regular recommendations are. So there's one way in which we're like,

00:29:53 ◼   ► "We are in the most serious kind of situation that we can possibly be."

00:29:59 ◼   ► That's just the background radiation of your life. All of these external obligations have gone away.

00:30:08 ◼   ► There's no guilt because the whole world is on pause.

00:30:11 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh, okay, you can spend quality time with each other."

00:30:17 ◼   ► Or like, "I can have these days where I just focus on some work and I can do the things that

00:30:22 ◼   ► I want to do and I don't have to worry about the outside world."

00:30:26 ◼   ► Or it's like, "Oh, we're gonna take a day off and be lazy and it's fine."

00:30:30 ◼   ► And so it's a dichotomy that is hard to talk about of like,

00:30:37 ◼   ► one of the most serious things that has ever happened in my life, and also kind of cozy and

00:30:47 ◼   ► nice? I don't know, there's this thing I keep thinking about, like in the previous shows,

00:30:52 ◼   ► you know, I've been talking for months about how like, "Oh, I'm trying to get an office outside

00:30:56 ◼   ► the house and I was really frustrated with working inside the house. But there's totally

00:31:01 ◼   ► this psychological effect for humans that sometimes by taking away options, things just

00:31:06 ◼   ► become easier. Because of the strictness of our quarantine, my wife and I are not and have not

00:31:14 ◼   ► left the house since we recorded. We're not going outside at all. And that should be terrible,

00:31:24 ◼   ► but there's a way in which like, oh, because there's not the option of like,

00:31:28 ◼   ► I'm trying to find the perfect office. It's like, no, no, you have this office here,

00:31:33 ◼   ► and you're going to rework the space to make sense for you. And, and that's it. Like, this is the

00:31:39 ◼   ► extent of your options. And there's a way in which that's just sort of easier to deal with. And so,

00:31:47 ◼   ► yeah, I don't know, it's, it's, again, this, this hard thing to talk about of like,

00:31:53 ◼   ► everything is both sides of the scale. It's deadly serious, but also we've used the phrase

00:32:01 ◼   ► "cozy quarantine", like we're trying to have a cozy quarantine. And it's like such a strange

00:32:07 ◼   ► way to talk about it, but I do think those are words that are exactly correct.

00:32:12 ◼   ► It is not fair to say that we are not allowed our humanity,

00:32:20 ◼   ► right? And everybody has to accept it, that it's okay. You can respect what's happening. You can

00:32:30 ◼   ► feel terrible for people that are going through truly terrible things, whilst also being able to

00:32:38 ◼   ► enjoy time with yourself, enjoy time with people you care about. Playing Animal Crossing,

00:32:46 ◼   ► you know, like, whatever your thing is right now, like, because that's what we can do during a time like this

00:32:56 ◼   ► and it's what we should all be focusing on so it means that we are staying at home because that helps people.

00:33:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's like, it is just such a weird thing of this deadly seriousness and incredible impact on lives all over the world

00:33:12 ◼   ► but also I genuinely want to know about what the deal is with Animal Crossing and why you love it

00:33:18 ◼   ► so much and are so upset like it's so- but that's what we're gonna do. Like, we're gonna- we're gonna

00:33:22 ◼   ► talk about what has- what has like been going on with us and- and that's what I want to know, like,

00:33:30 ◼   ► what's been going on with you and I've got some things to tell you about what's been going on with

00:33:35 ◼   ► me and like let's talk about it. - This was the longest introduction to an episode ever.

00:33:41 ◼   ► Welcome to Cortex-100!

00:33:44 ◼   ► So what have you been doing on the weekends, Myke?

00:33:46 ◼   ► Well, it's not just the weekends, it's every day. Animal Crossing, baby! Oh my god. Wow. Love

00:33:54 ◼   ► this game. Alright, do you know anything about Animal Crossing?

00:33:57 ◼   ► The only thing I know about Animal Crossing is one of my YouTube heroes, Yahtzee, who does

00:34:03 ◼   ► zero punctuation, seven or eight years ago did a review of some version of Animal Crossing and

00:34:10 ◼   ► And to this day, I think it's the best video he's ever done.

00:34:13 ◼   ► And he makes it sound hilarious.

00:34:16 ◼   ► He just frames it.

00:34:18 ◼   ► He turns, like, Animal Crossing into existential dread about the meaning of life

00:34:23 ◼   ► and what it means to be in debt to a raccoon.

00:34:26 ◼   ► And I was like, "I've never played the game.

00:34:30 ◼   ► I've never seen a single screenshot of the game.

00:34:32 ◼   ► That's my entire knowledge is like, you owe money to a raccoon,

00:34:36 ◼   ► and so you need to go fishing.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Like, that's my understanding.

00:34:40 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:34:41 ◼   ► M: Alright, so Stardew.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Heavily influenced by Animal Crossing.

00:34:47 ◼   ► But not farming.

00:34:48 ◼   ► AO; Do you need an animal wife in Animal Crossing?

00:34:51 ◼   ► Do you get, like, an animal wife?

00:34:52 ◼   ► M; There's no romantic relationships.

00:34:55 ◼   ► AO; Okay.

00:34:56 ◼   ► That was the worst part of Stardew.

00:34:57 ◼   ► I gotta figure out what these people want me to give them as gifts.

00:35:00 ◼   ► M; Yeah, so this is like a good meme that I saw, like, a key difference between Animal

00:35:04 ◼   ► Crossing and Stardew Valley, right?

00:35:07 ◼   ► In study valley, you have to study charts and graphs to try and work out what somebody

00:35:12 ◼   ► might enjoy, and you make them this gourmet mayonnaise and they're like "what the fuck

00:35:18 ◼   ► is this?"

00:35:19 ◼   ► But in Animal Crossing, you give people a stick and they applaud you.

00:35:25 ◼   ► So like those types of elements, like there is a personality element, it's very fun, it's

00:35:29 ◼   ► very cutesy in that way and it's enjoyable, but you don't have to worry about your heart

00:35:35 ◼   ► level of every individual and how that affects your place in the social standing.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Right, yeah, like the shop owner won't sell you the correct potion unless you've brought

00:35:44 ◼   ► them the right gift that they like.

00:35:46 ◼   ► It's not like that.

00:35:48 ◼   ► But there is all the core elements.

00:35:50 ◼   ► It's not farming, but there's the core elements like fishing, you collect bugs, you collect

00:35:55 ◼   ► fruit, that kind of stuff.

00:35:57 ◼   ► And these are the things that you will do to help you make money and you donate specimens

00:36:02 ◼   ► to the museum and the museum is amazing in this game like everything you donate goes

00:36:07 ◼   ► into this museum and you can go around and look at it all and it looks like a real museum

00:36:11 ◼   ► it's really amazing.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Okay so they're hitting the like collect things impulse in people?

00:36:17 ◼   ► And the way they display the collections is so much better than any other game because

00:36:22 ◼   ► like it's advanced you know like with technology but like the fish are in this like massive

00:36:27 ◼   ► aquarium you know it's like floor to ceiling aquariums that you see they have made one

00:36:32 ◼   ► of those in the game in the museum. So you go in and you can see all the fish you've

00:36:35 ◼   ► collected swimming around in it, right? The fossils that you can collect, they make them

00:36:42 ◼   ► into the big dinosaur structures.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Oh, okay. So they build it up. That's nice. That's a nice touch.

00:36:47 ◼   ► And you collect them in pieces. So you collect like a stegosaurus tail and a head, and over

00:36:54 ◼   ► time it builds up, right? And you end up with the entire skeletal structure in the museum.

00:37:01 ◼   ► It's really cool.

00:37:02 ◼   ► So you highly recommend it as quarantine activity?

00:37:06 ◼   ► Oh great, I have just scratched the surface of this game.

00:37:10 ◼   ► We're not moving on yet.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Jeez.

00:37:13 ◼   ► We're my friends.

00:37:14 ◼   ► We're not done.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Okay, great.

00:37:16 ◼   ► You collect bones, the bones get built into a dinosaur.

00:37:19 ◼   ► Cool.

00:37:20 ◼   ► You like two thumbs up from Myke?

00:37:23 ◼   ► That's part of it.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Then you've got like the fashion aspect of it.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Oh Jesus, okay.

00:37:28 ◼   ► But again, you choose what you want to participate in, but like there's a clothing store, you

00:37:33 ◼   ► can go and buy new looks, and the fashion is amazing in this game.

00:37:36 ◼   ► But there's also furniture, and you can decorate your home the way that you want to, however

00:37:40 ◼   ► you want to.

00:37:41 ◼   ► And some of the furniture is like super crazy, and like you can get like these weird wallpapers

00:37:47 ◼   ► that move.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Like I have one that makes it look like the room that I'm in is the top of a 60 foot skyscraper

00:37:54 ◼   ► and is a parallax effect as you walk around the room.

00:37:56 ◼   ► There's these quirky things as well as like, you can get a sofa that you like and put it

00:38:01 ◼   ► where you want.

00:38:02 ◼   ► But in this game, you can also, which is new for the franchise, decorate the entire town,

00:38:07 ◼   ► including terraforming it.

00:38:09 ◼   ► You can like flatten the entire island and build it back up with the levels that you

00:38:14 ◼   ► want and put the rivers where you want them to be.

00:38:17 ◼   ► But the whole time you're indebted to the tanuki.

00:38:19 ◼   ► Which is Tom Nook.

00:38:20 ◼   ► That's the raccoon?

00:38:21 ◼   ► Yeah, raccoon.

00:38:22 ◼   ► bells, like bells of the economy, and you make the money by like selling the fruit to the store

00:38:29 ◼   ► and then you take the money you've made and you can buy new furniture with it and then also pay

00:38:32 ◼   ► off some of your debt to Tom Nook. It's a little on the nose in this comparison.

00:38:38 ◼   ► Is it like a metaphor about capitalism or something?

00:38:41 ◼   ► No, I mean, well, that's the whole thing. But like what I'm about to say, right? Like,

00:38:45 ◼   ► it's a little on the nose to be like, isn't it amazing to have a game which is like you

00:38:49 ◼   ► going outside and doing things at a time where you can't go outside but I genuinely think

00:38:55 ◼   ► it's why Animal Crossing has hit so hard with so many people right now. The success that

00:39:00 ◼   ► this game is getting is, this was always going to be a successful game because the Animal

00:39:05 ◼   ► Crossing franchise is a very popular franchise for Nintendo. But the reception this game

00:39:12 ◼   ► has had is much higher than it was expected.

00:39:17 ◼   ► For example, in its first weekend of being available in Japan, Nintendo had its highest

00:39:25 ◼   ► Switch console sales number that it has ever had, including launch weekend.

00:39:31 ◼   ► They sold more consoles in a weekend period than they did in the launch weekend in a Nintendo

00:39:38 ◼   ► Switch.

00:39:39 ◼   ► There are a lot of factors at play. Animal Crossing is very popular in Japan anyway,

00:39:44 ◼   ► but so is Mario.

00:39:46 ◼   ► Right, yeah. I think Mario does pretty well.

00:39:50 ◼   ► And also, just the sales numbers of this game could put it at potentially the best selling

00:39:57 ◼   ► Switch game of all time.

00:39:58 ◼   ► Okay, so this sounds ridiculous if you're not really that up on the game, but it runs

00:40:04 ◼   ► in real time, right? Which is nice. So every day is a new day. There are things that happen

00:40:09 ◼   ► on different days, there are things that happen at different times of the day, different times

00:40:14 ◼   ► of the week, the month. Animal Crossing is legitimately helping me with my schedule.

00:40:20 ◼   ► Right. Right. So you have a giant piece of paper that says "Wednesday fishing hole is

00:40:27 ◼   ► open 8-7." I don't have that yet, but I have put some things on my calendar.

00:40:33 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:40:34 ◼   ► Okay, right, that's getting pretty serious.

00:40:36 ◼   ► And also there's a great meme in the Animal Crossing subreddit, so on Sundays, the turnip

00:40:41 ◼   ► salesperson comes to the town, and the turnip salesperson is a stork, because this grey

00:40:48 ◼   ► is the stork market.

00:40:50 ◼   ► You buy turnips, the turnip price fluctuates through the week.

00:40:54 ◼   ► You have six days to sell your turnips, and you're taking bets on whether the price of

00:40:58 ◼   ► turnips is going to go up or down.

00:41:01 ◼   ► Stork market.

00:41:02 ◼   ► good, very good pun, love it. But there is a meme of like, "Oh, it's Monday today."

00:41:08 ◼   ► I don't know what Monday is. This is the day after Turnip Day. We're all like, "How soon

00:41:14 ◼   ► and far away are we from Turnip Day?"

00:41:16 ◼   ► Okay, so this is actually interesting because I can genuinely see that having it run in

00:41:23 ◼   ► real time during a global pandemic when everyone is inside also has a like concentrating, congealing

00:41:33 ◼   ► effect of yeah there's a huge number of people that are keeping track of days since and days

00:41:40 ◼   ► until turnip day. That's a really interesting addition to a game mechanism to be running

00:41:45 ◼   ► in real time especially during a time like now.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Animal Crossing New Horizons is going to be considered in history as a very important

00:41:53 ◼   ► video game, like in the history of video games.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Like, you know, I've heard people say this, like the McElroys were talking about this

00:42:00 ◼   ► on a show they do called The Besties, which I love, where they were saying, like, they

00:42:04 ◼   ► consider this to be, and it's quite a big statement, but like probably the most important

00:42:10 ◼   ► video game of all time, in the sense of when it came for people, right?

00:42:16 ◼   ► There has never been a game that has been as important at a time in which it's released.

00:42:22 ◼   ► Right?

00:42:23 ◼   ► Where like the people that like this type of game really need it now.

00:42:27 ◼   ► Right.

00:42:28 ◼   ► You know, like it is like the perfect match.

00:42:32 ◼   ► And then, you know, like history will tell of this game being in the in the fact that

00:42:36 ◼   ► it was purely accidental because it was supposed to come out last October.

00:42:40 ◼   ► And it got delayed.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And its launch date was like the day that a lot of people went into lockdown or had

00:42:49 ◼   ► been in for like a couple of days, right?

00:42:51 ◼   ► Because there was like a big meme running of like, you know, like we had it for like

00:42:54 ◼   ► a week of like, "Release the game, Nintendo.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Come on!"

00:43:00 ◼   ► Right?

00:43:01 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:02 ◼   ► You know?

00:43:03 ◼   ► And so like, it's like the perfect game for right now.

00:43:05 ◼   ► But I don't know if I have ever experienced a perfect game for right now as strong as

00:43:10 ◼   ► this one.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Huh. Should I try it?

00:43:17 ◼   ► You know what, yeah, because the only reason I would say not to is in case like you

00:43:24 ◼   ► obliterate my hopes and dreams, but like I've already experienced it because I was like so convinced you were gonna love starred you and you didn't

00:43:31 ◼   ► But I actually think this one might be worth at least a go

00:43:36 ◼   ► mm-hmm because

00:43:38 ◼   ► It's a very very good

00:43:41 ◼   ► fill your time with mindless activity game

00:43:46 ◼   ► and it's also

00:43:49 ◼   ► What I love said this many times about video games on the show

00:43:52 ◼   ► I love games where I can make my own game within the game

00:43:56 ◼   ► But both me and Adina play

00:43:58 ◼   ► and she's playing on her switch, I'm playing on my switch and

00:44:02 ◼   ► We're playing completely different games a lot of the time like a couple nights ago

00:44:07 ◼   ► ago, I was just making fish bait and fishing, because that was what I wanted to do, whilst

00:44:11 ◼   ► she was digging into cliffs to make a new place for our home to be.

00:44:16 ◼   ► They are completely different games that we are playing within the game, right?

00:44:20 ◼   ► So there are a lot of mindless activities you could do.

00:44:23 ◼   ► You could, you can participate, and I'm sure you will, in the idea of like, how big can

00:44:28 ◼   ► I make my house, right?

00:44:29 ◼   ► I can pay it all off as fast as possible to Tom Nook.

00:44:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't want to be in debt to a raccoon. That sounds like a terrible situation.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Right, you can speedrun the debt, you know, you can pay it off as fast as you want if

00:44:42 ◼   ► you focus solely on that, right? Like, I'm not buying any furniture, I'm paying my mortgage.

00:44:48 ◼   ► And it's also very fun in the sense that the game knows what it is and pokes fun at itself

00:44:52 ◼   ► in that way, right? That as soon as you pay off your mortgage, Tom looks like, "Oh hey,

00:44:58 ◼   ► You want a bigger house, right?

00:45:00 ◼   ► How about another loan of an increasing number?

00:45:03 ◼   ► It's fun like that.

00:45:06 ◼   ► I love this game, I've loved this game series for a long time, I was looking forward to

00:45:10 ◼   ► it anyway, but I don't think I've ever felt the feeling that I'm feeling about Animal

00:45:15 ◼   ► Crossing right now.

00:45:16 ◼   ► It's like, I don't just want you, Animal Crossing, I need you.

00:45:22 ◼   ► I usually want video games, very much, and love them.

00:45:26 ◼   ► But this game is like, when we wake up in the morning, it's like, "Great!

00:45:31 ◼   ► Time to check what's in Nook's store today!"

00:45:35 ◼   ► And it's a great way to start my day.

00:45:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm interested from your description just about the global synchroniseness of it.

00:45:48 ◼   ► Like I've never had that element in a game, and that just sounds interesting just to check

00:45:52 ◼   ► out a little bit.

00:45:53 ◼   ► you participate in the social element of it in the sense of like you know like I

00:45:59 ◼   ► have subscribed to the subreddits I follow a bunch of people that play the game like

00:46:02 ◼   ► there are events that happen on certain days so people that are playing Animal

00:46:08 ◼   ► Crossing know that like whatever event is occurring today we're all

00:46:12 ◼   ► participating in that event so there's like a community aspect of it and I am

00:46:19 ◼   ► enjoying having a really meaningless thing to pour my time and attention into.

00:46:27 ◼   ► And it's really good for that, because this is definitely a game that however much time

00:46:32 ◼   ► you have to give to it, it will take it.

00:46:35 ◼   ► Okay, I'll check it out and then we can talk about Animal Crossing and Mario Odyssey next

00:46:41 ◼   ► time.

00:46:42 ◼   ► We're never gonna talk about Mario Odyssey on the show.

00:46:44 ◼   ► It will never be discussed.

00:46:45 ◼   ► I will not allow it.

00:46:47 ◼   ► We will never talk about your opinions as if it were Mario Odyssey.

00:46:52 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Squarespace.

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00:48:46 ◼   ► There is a note in this document that I have been so excited to talk about.

00:48:50 ◼   ► Okay.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Which is "Grey revisits VR".

00:48:55 ◼   ► Yeah, so when lockdown was coming, I tried to make a bet because I think,

00:49:02 ◼   ► I think because of, you know, some some informed people I'd spoken to,

00:49:05 ◼   ► I was just a little ahead of how long is this really gonna be.

00:49:10 ◼   ► And partly because of just what I was trying to figure out,

00:49:14 ◼   ► and partly because of our own situation, I was like,

00:49:16 ◼   ► "I think this is gonna be a long time.

00:49:19 ◼   ► This is not gonna be the two weeks that people were thinking of in their--

00:49:24 ◼   ► back in the early days, in the mists of time."

00:49:26 ◼   ► Honestly, I feel like we should set whatever it was,

00:49:31 ◼   ► February 15th, you know, lockdown day is like year zero, right? We're just starting the freaking

00:49:38 ◼   ► clock over from whenever that is. But at the dawn of year zero, like I felt, I tried to sit down and

00:49:44 ◼   ► think long term about what should I order now that people might start thinking about in two weeks.

00:49:54 ◼   ► And so I ordered a bunch of physical equipment, a bunch of like exercise equipment, but one of

00:50:00 ◼   ► One of the things I was like, "You know what? It's time to order an Oculus Quest. The VR

00:50:06 ◼   ► system."

00:50:07 ◼   ► So jealous of you.

00:50:08 ◼   ► I'd been, the Oculus Quest had been on my radar for a while, but my original plan was

00:50:14 ◼   ► to wait until whatever the second generation was going to be. Like I thought, I'll, you

00:50:18 ◼   ► know, I'll pass on the first one and I'll wait until the second one. But when lockdown

00:50:22 ◼   ► came, I thought, "Nope, this is the time. Buy right now." And it was like, "Great, 24

00:50:27 ◼   ► delivery, the thing arrives, and I'm very willing to estimate that those delivery dates

00:50:33 ◼   ► have been pushed way back.

00:50:34 ◼   ► LINDSEY - Oh, it's completely out of stock everywhere.

00:50:37 ◼   ► It's impossible.

00:50:38 ◼   ► Like, at this point, the Oculus Quest is just like, "We'll tell you when we have them back

00:50:42 ◼   ► in stock."

00:50:43 ◼   ► Like, you can't even buy them.

00:50:45 ◼   ► ALICE - Interesting.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:50:47 ◼   ► So, the thing about the Oculus Quest and the reason that it was on my radar, I know that

00:50:50 ◼   ► you've dabbled more with this than I have.

00:50:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have an Oculus Rift, the standard one that you plug into a gaming PC.

00:50:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, but like, that's the thing that I never wanted to deal with. I felt like,

00:51:00 ◼   ► I don't want a PC, and I don't want a wire trailing out the back of my head. Like,

00:51:06 ◼   ► I'm gonna wait to revisit this technology until it can be a standalone system that

00:51:12 ◼   ► I don't have to connect to anything else. - And that's what sets the Quest apart, by the way.

00:51:16 ◼   ► That is the defining feature of the quest.

00:51:19 ◼   ► Like, it greatly compromises on graphical quality and the number of games that it can run,

00:51:25 ◼   ► and all sorts- how long it can run. It has many, many compromises.

00:51:30 ◼   ► But the main advantage is it's self-contained and you're not physically connected to anything else.

00:51:37 ◼   ► And it's just interesting because I had not put on a VR headset since the time that you and I

00:51:44 ◼   ► tested out the pre-production thing that they had at Facebook years ago.

00:51:49 ◼   ► That was the last time I had on a VR headset until, uh, whatever it is, until the Quest arrived in my house, and...

00:51:56 ◼   ► I don't know how accurate my memory is, but my guess...

00:52:01 ◼   ► is I think the Quest now is probably graphically on par with the system that we saw

00:52:08 ◼   ► all that time ago that was running on like a computer the size of a room to go through a cable to us.

00:52:14 ◼   ► But the reason that I got it is because I thought, if lockdown and quarantine time is going to be a long time,

00:52:20 ◼   ► that experience in VR was the first type of new experience in life,

00:52:28 ◼   ► and I had had in a long time of like, this is a new kind of thing.

00:52:31 ◼   ► This isn't like reading a book.

00:52:33 ◼   ► - It's episode 100, so we'll say it. - Yeah.

00:52:35 ◼   ► Classic episode of Cortex, where me and you spoke about what it was like to do VR for the first time after we experienced it.

00:52:44 ◼   ► and by actually going there and trying it out with them.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And it was an incredible experience that we had.

00:52:51 ◼   ► Yeah, it totally was. It was really memorable. There's a clip of me

00:52:56 ◼   ► scaring you on our YouTube channel. It was my memory of that, of like,

00:52:59 ◼   ► that was the first time I'd had this different media experience of,

00:53:03 ◼   ► you can get really involved in a movie, you can get really involved in a book,

00:53:08 ◼   ► you can get really involved in a video game.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Those are three different things.

00:53:14 ◼   ► And then VR was added as this fourth different experience

00:53:18 ◼   ► of like, yes, it's a video game,

00:53:21 ◼   ► but the immersion makes this fundamentally different

00:53:24 ◼   ► from the other ones.

00:53:26 ◼   ► And so that's what I was hoping when I got the Quest.

00:53:29 ◼   ► So I got it and I tried it out

00:53:30 ◼   ► and it's like everything that I hoped it would be.

00:53:34 ◼   ► I've been playing some of the games

00:53:36 ◼   ► and I think, again, for long-term quarantine isolation situation that I'm thinking here,

00:53:43 ◼   ► it's like, I think this is actually an important tool,

00:53:46 ◼   ► because both my wife and I have been using it on a pretty regular basis.

00:53:52 ◼   ► And it really does trick your brain into this feeling of, "I have been somewhere else."

00:54:01 ◼   ► It's the same thing that I remembered last time, that like, your brain is just

00:54:06 ◼   ► willing to go along and it is willing to be tricked in the feeling of otherness or like

00:54:14 ◼   ► I've been to this other place and yeah it's just kind of fascinating to play around with it again

00:54:23 ◼   ► and the first thing I was playing was Arizona Sunshine which is like this zombie survival game

00:54:31 ◼   ► No, but it's great, Myke. It's fantastic.

00:54:34 ◼   ► No, I'm really not good with... I've learned this about myself.

00:54:39 ◼   ► Really tense VR games don't work for me. It's too much. It's like, I really wanted to play

00:54:46 ◼   ► Half-Life Alyx, but I've watched some footage and I know I wouldn't be able to handle it.

00:54:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you know, this is where you always have to know yourself as a player.

00:54:57 ◼   ► I tried a couple of games where there's high intensity and I just can't detach myself.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Anything jumping at me, it's too intense.

00:55:09 ◼   ► My experience of this is like, the two things that have worked for me the best is Arizona

00:55:15 ◼   ► Sunshine and developers of Arizona Sunshine.

00:55:19 ◼   ► If you're listening, I will pay you anything for some downloadable content that's more

00:55:25 ◼   ► survival maps.

00:55:26 ◼   ► I don't want more campaigns. I want more maps where it's just me and you throw zombies at

00:55:31 ◼   ► me until I inevitably die. Right. But the thing about that experience that's, that's

00:55:38 ◼   ► interesting and what I think is like good for your brain is, is for me, it's like the

00:55:43 ◼   ► experience of getting good at something in a way that feels physical. And so it's like,

00:55:52 ◼   ► the reason why- like there's a million shooter video games, but it's like, "Oh, this one is

00:55:57 ◼   ► great because the mechanics of the gun, they handle really well." And it like, it tricks your

00:56:02 ◼   ► brain into feeling like, "Oh, okay. These different weapons, I know what to do with each of these."

00:56:08 ◼   ► And like, you're gaining a skill. And then the other one, which has really been quite fascinating,

00:56:15 ◼   ► so the most popular game by a huge margin is Beat Saber.

00:56:20 ◼   ► BEETSABER!

00:56:21 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

00:56:21 ◼   ► It's... it.

00:56:23 ◼   ► Right, like, you could buy a quest, only ever play Beat Saber, and you'd be happy.

00:56:28 ◼   ► My wife and I were just saying this the other day, like, the quest was worth it just for Beat Saber,

00:56:33 ◼   ► in the same way that when I got the Switch, it's like, this is a Mario Kart machine,

00:56:37 ◼   ► and I'm completely satisfied.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Right, like, money well spent.

00:56:41 ◼   ► So the thing with Beat Saber is...

00:56:42 ◼   ► Okay, so it is marketed as a rhythm game of, like, there's music,

00:56:48 ◼   ► and there are blocks that are coming at your face and you need to hit the blocks in a certain pattern along with them.

00:56:53 ◼   ► And then, like, I played it a few times and I was like, "This is just not clicking for me. This just isn't working."

00:56:59 ◼   ► But a friend of mine was really pushing me on this. I was like, "No, no, you gotta try it in this certain way."

00:57:05 ◼   ► And what I realized is, "Oh, okay.

00:57:08 ◼   ► There are these Expert Plus levels on Beat Saber,

00:57:13 ◼   ► which if you watch a video of them on YouTube, it looks like they're humanly impossible to do.

00:57:18 ◼   ► EO: They seem impossible, yeah. Like, you watch somebody play an expert level,

00:57:23 ◼   ► but even when you first see the blocks coming at you… I don't know if you've explained it.

00:57:28 ◼   ► It's basically like you're holding two lightsabers and you have these blocks coming at you and you

00:57:33 ◼   ► have to hit them. And it's a rhythm game that's almost like drumming is the closest thing you

00:57:39 ◼   ► could maybe describe it to you from a movement perspective. But you are moving your arms to hit

00:57:45 ◼   ► blocks which make noises, you know, like you're hitting along to a beat as it were.

00:57:50 ◼   ► - But yeah, when and they like they have to be cut in a certain direction and yeah, but when you see

00:57:57 ◼   ► like these Expert Plus levels, it's like, oh, they'll play a three minute song and in the

00:58:02 ◼   ► course of the three minute song, there's 700 blocks that you need to hit, you know,

00:58:07 ◼   ► in the course of this. And it really does look super human when you see someone do this.

00:58:13 ◼   ► So I played the regular Beat Saber and I was like, "I don't really care about the rhythm

00:58:18 ◼   ► aspect of this, like hitting the blocks, whatever."

00:58:20 ◼   ► But the experience that I was looking for was like, "Oh, okay, there are these crazy hard levels,

00:58:29 ◼   ► but what you can also do is you can turn down the speed. So you can be like, "Okay,

00:58:36 ◼   ► This level looks inhuman for someone to do, but you can start off with playing the song at 50% speed.

00:58:43 ◼   ► And there, it's like, this is the VR experience that is hard to describe, but it's like, "Oh!

00:58:51 ◼   ► Fantastic!" This can obsess this part of my brain that is really interested in patterns.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And there's something about adding a pattern to physical motion that is really satisfying.

00:59:10 ◼   ► And by doing this at 50% speed, it's like, okay, it's just fast enough that what looks like a

00:59:19 ◼   ► million blocks flying at your face that you cannot possibly discern from one another,

00:59:23 ◼   ► you can start to pick up like, okay, it's up, up, over, you know, loop this way, loop back down

00:59:30 ◼   ► that way. And what I really like about these super hard levels is you have to learn the pattern of

00:59:38 ◼   ► not just hitting the blocks but which way to follow through with your hand so that your hand

00:59:43 ◼   ► is in the right position to hit the next one that's coming up. And it's like, "Man, does my

00:59:49 ◼   ► brain just lock into this." And so my quarantine project is there's a couple of songs where it's

00:59:56 ◼   ► like, "I am going to get through this at the Expert Plus level at full speed eventually,"

01:00:01 ◼   ► and like, I'm just training my brain for like, "Here's the patterns." Like, boom boom boom boom

01:00:06 ◼   ► and it's- I'm just so glad I got it because it really does add variety to the experiences that

01:00:17 ◼   ► you can have in a confined environment when you're not going outside. Like, it adds that feeling of,

01:00:24 ◼   ► "Oh, where have I been? I've been in Beat Saber for the past hour."

01:00:29 ◼   ► Right? Or "I have been in Arizona holding off the Horde for the past hour."

01:00:35 ◼   ► Like it's just really interesting and I've been trying out a bunch of different stuff and like

01:00:39 ◼   ► some things work better and some things work worse, but everything I've tried at least has been

01:00:45 ◼   ► worth it for the experience of "Oh, what is it like to explore this Russian base

01:00:53 ◼   ► in this - on Mars in this video game called Red Matter. It's like, "Oh, the motion doesn't really

01:00:59 ◼   ► work for me and it kind of makes me feel sick, but it was interesting to be somewhere else for

01:01:04 ◼   ► a little while and to try it." So, yeah, I'm gonna say it's probably some of the best dollars per

01:01:14 ◼   ► experience of anything I've purchased in advance of long-term lockdown. So, it's been really

01:01:21 ◼   ► interesting and I can see why people have been pushing VR as a real gaming platform

01:01:26 ◼   ► for a while and I was just hesitant until it was a self-contained unit.

01:01:30 ◼   ► This for me is the same thing. Like, boy am I glad the Oculus Quest existed before quarantine

01:01:36 ◼   ► started. And because I just would never have done this if it needed to be hooked up to a whole

01:01:41 ◼   ► separate computer system.

01:01:42 ◼   ► MATT: Yeah, I hesitated on getting one of these. I have a Rift and what I need to do is just...

01:01:47 ◼   ► I need to set it up better.

01:01:49 ◼   ► What do you mean?

01:01:50 ◼   ► It's just the space is not really configured very well.

01:01:54 ◼   ► What I need to do and what I will do is move some stuff around this office to give myself

01:01:58 ◼   ► a little bit more space to be able to play it because I absolutely love it.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And really the only downside for me over the Quest is just that there's cables there.

01:02:08 ◼   ► But honestly, you don't move around that much that it's too much of an issue, but the Quest

01:02:13 ◼   ► is just good because you don't need to worry about where you are.

01:02:17 ◼   ► You can play in living room, play in the bedroom, play in the office, play in the hallway.

01:02:21 ◼   ► And that's the thing I would be missing about it.

01:02:23 ◼   ► But the benefit that I would get is that my headset has slightly better visual quality.

01:02:29 ◼   ► But I hesitated on the Quest and I kind of wish that I had gotten one because it's still

01:02:35 ◼   ► like for me to play this thing I have to boot up the gaming PC and it's just more of a pain.

01:02:40 ◼   ► But we have been talking, because me and Niddin are absolutely adore Beat Saber and I think

01:02:45 ◼   ► It's just something that I want to get back into playing more.

01:02:48 ◼   ► I want to give you a recommendation for a game called Superhot.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, Superhot's great.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Oh, good.

01:02:55 ◼   ► Superhot makes me think of that first experience we had at Facebook.

01:02:58 ◼   ► I know it wasn't remotely the same, but it does.

01:03:01 ◼   ► That is very like slow motion fun.

01:03:04 ◼   ► And a thinker, as a real thinker, you know, like that game will

01:03:08 ◼   ► really get you to understand why virtual reality is different

01:03:13 ◼   ► in that you've got to keep your eye on what's going on around you.

01:03:16 ◼   ► Yeah. It's not just on rails, right?

01:03:18 ◼   ► Like there are people coming at you from all sides and you've got to

01:03:21 ◼   ► keep that in mind as you're planning out your move. That's a great game.

01:03:24 ◼   ► Yeah. It is interesting because one of the things that I have run into is it's clear that some of

01:03:30 ◼   ► the games have been designed with the quest in mind and the fact that you can move around, but

01:03:36 ◼   ► our apartment is not big enough for those games. So like every time I draw it like that, so when

01:03:42 ◼   ► When you boot up the quest, you draw out this little space of like, "How much room do you

01:03:46 ◼   ► have around you to move in?

01:03:47 ◼   ► What is the space in which you can safely move and beyond which your hands should not

01:03:51 ◼   ► go?"

01:03:52 ◼   ► And of course, what they're setting this up for is, "Draw a line in front of your TV so

01:03:57 ◼   ► that you do not punch your TV."

01:03:59 ◼   ► And for most games, it works just fine.

01:04:03 ◼   ► But whenever I put on the quest, it always throws up this warning, which is like, "You

01:04:07 ◼   ► know, you don't have the amount of space we really recommend for you to use this system.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Are you sure?" and I'm like "Yeah, yeah, it's fine."

01:04:14 ◼   ► And for most games it doesn't matter, but it is interesting to see that there's a couple

01:04:18 ◼   ► games - so like there's a ninja game where you have to like defend your dojo from ninjas

01:04:22 ◼   ► that are attacking.

01:04:23 ◼   ► As one does.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:25 ◼   ► The game is amazing, but I realized very quickly like "Oh, I just don't physically have a large

01:04:29 ◼   ► enough space."

01:04:31 ◼   ► Because they're taking total advantage of the quest of like 360 degrees around you,

01:04:37 ◼   ► You constantly have to be turning and also you have to move forward and back a lot and

01:04:42 ◼   ► like swing in front of you kind of stuff.

01:04:44 ◼   ► And it's like, whoa, I do not have enough space for this.

01:04:48 ◼   ► But Beat Saber is great because you need very little space.

01:04:51 ◼   ► You just need the space in front of you.

01:04:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:04:54 ◼   ► It was also just such an amazing experience because this sounds so strange, but it's like,

01:04:58 ◼   ► wow, it was really fun.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And I don't feel like fun is an experience that I have a lot.

01:05:05 ◼   ► Like, when I loaded up a custom song which was the Shia LaBeouf song,

01:05:09 ◼   ► and like the guy who did the map design for that did an amazing job,

01:05:12 ◼   ► I was like, "Wow, beating that was really fun in this way that I sort of rarely experience."

01:05:18 ◼   ► It's exhilarating.

01:05:20 ◼   ► I wish I could just put my finger on it better, but it's like, there's something about

01:05:24 ◼   ► the patterns along with physical motion, right?

01:05:29 ◼   ► Or it's the same thing even with the zombie game.

01:05:31 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, okay. Patterns of recognizing the kinds of zombies. Here's the pattern for reloading

01:05:38 ◼   ► the gun, right, and like doing all of these various things." And with Beat Saber, I found

01:05:43 ◼   ► myself wondering like, "Oh, is this why people like dance?" Right? It's like, is this what people

01:05:50 ◼   ► who enjoy dance are getting something out of it? It's like, there's a pattern, and there's the music,

01:05:55 ◼   ► and it's repeated. Yeah, it's great to have this portal to another universe inside my house to take

01:06:01 ◼   ► advantage of during quarantine time so I'd recommend everybody gets a quest but apparently

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01:07:36 ◼   ► You're talking about that portal into another world. You reminded me of what you were saying

01:07:42 ◼   ► about AirPods Pro a while ago. You know how the noise cancelling can adjust and disrupt

01:07:48 ◼   ► your sense of where you are out in the world.

01:07:52 ◼   ► Noise cancelling is really useful in these situations because me and my wife are attempting

01:07:58 ◼   ► to live our lives as much as we can in the confines of our home all the time.

01:08:06 ◼   ► Right?

01:08:07 ◼   ► You need to be very sensitive about the needs of the other person in these times.

01:08:11 ◼   ► But I would say being able to use noise cancelling so I'm not being distracted by a conversation

01:08:19 ◼   ► that's happening in another room is really good.

01:08:23 ◼   ► And like, I'm listening to music and stuff,

01:08:25 ◼   ► but sometimes I'm just putting my AirPods Pro in

01:08:27 ◼   ► and turning on the noise cancellation with nothing.

01:08:31 ◼   ► This would probably be a good use of the app Dark Noise,

01:08:36 ◼   ► right, that we spoke about, the white noise application?

01:08:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, for sure.

01:08:39 ◼   ► - I should think about doing that in those times.

01:08:40 ◼   ► That's a good use of it for me.

01:08:42 ◼   ► But being able to just adjust the audio environment

01:08:47 ◼   ► around me. It's very useful. Noise canceling is definitely a thing I never

01:08:52 ◼   ► was light on use before, but way more useful now. And it's also the funny thing of I think

01:08:59 ◼   ► everybody is much more happy to do video conferencing than they previously used to.

01:09:04 ◼   ► Oh, wow. Yeah.

01:09:05 ◼   ► Right? But let me tell you, a thing I'm really aware of is who has good headphones and who

01:09:11 ◼   ► doesn't on the video conferencing because on many video conferences what you can hear is the other

01:09:18 ◼   ► person's partner also on a video conference in the background somewhere else like and if somebody has

01:09:24 ◼   ► a terrible headphone that gets picked up really well and if they have a good headphone it doesn't.

01:09:29 ◼   ► Also like the microphone that's attached to the headphones you mean?

01:09:32 ◼   ► Yeah that's what I mean like you can hear the noise in somebody else's house if they have like

01:09:37 ◼   ► a really crappy pair of headphones. And it's like I just keep thinking of the various things,

01:09:43 ◼   ► assuming this goes on for a long time, that people are going to want more of and it's like quality

01:09:49 ◼   ► headphones, right? Better microphones, you know, all this stuff. I was talking about this with

01:09:54 ◼   ► JSON on upgrade a couple of weeks ago, how technology products will be changed because of

01:10:00 ◼   ► this. Because people that work for the major technology companies are now understanding that

01:10:05 ◼   ► that their webcams are not good enough.

01:10:07 ◼   ► Oh my god, yeah, yeah.

01:10:08 ◼   ► Webcams need to get way better.

01:10:10 ◼   ► Stuff like that, right?

01:10:12 ◼   ► I think there will be these interesting knock-on effects.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Like, I'm using an external Logitech camera on my iMac Pro.

01:10:19 ◼   ► Oh, do you have the little Logitech 1080p one?

01:10:23 ◼   ► It's like a little...

01:10:23 ◼   ► Yeah, okay, I think we have the same one.

01:10:25 ◼   ► A lot of people have this one, right?

01:10:26 ◼   ► Like, I bought it for my PC, for streaming,

01:10:31 ◼   ► but it is a vastly better camera

01:10:33 ◼   ► than the one that's built into my iMac.

01:10:35 ◼   ► So I just shoved it in here because I'm doing way more video calls.

01:10:38 ◼   ► There is always this fun thing like I use my podcast microphone.

01:10:41 ◼   ► It's always funny to people.

01:10:43 ◼   ► But like that is the thing. I have this microphone.

01:10:46 ◼   ► I want to have good headphones, good microphone.

01:10:48 ◼   ► I'll just put the Logitech camera in front of me.

01:10:50 ◼   ► And then that's how I'm doing all my video calls.

01:10:52 ◼   ► Everybody wants to video call now.

01:10:54 ◼   ► People I used to just speak to on the phone right now want to do a video call.

01:10:59 ◼   ► We never did video calls before.

01:11:01 ◼   ► But why are we doing them now?

01:11:03 ◼   ► There's a lot-- I'm having more calls than I've ever had at the moment.

01:11:08 ◼   ► I'm sure you're experiencing a similar thing.

01:11:10 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, no, people are much happier to jump on video calls now for sure.

01:11:14 ◼   ► But just calls in general.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, calls in general are up as well.

01:11:19 ◼   ► But yeah, it's like everybody needs better equipment for this stuff yesterday.

01:11:23 ◼   ► The thing is though that like video conferences, doing a video call with someone,

01:11:28 ◼   ► It's pretty good, but it's not great for replicating the experience of like hanging out and talking with someone.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And I was trying to think about why that is.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And I think part of the problem is when you are physically in a space with someone, it's much easier to pause.

01:11:51 ◼   ► So I think like if you think about when you are physically having coffee with a person,

01:12:00 ◼   ► I think both of you can much more naturally do the thing where in a conversation you just look away

01:12:07 ◼   ► for a few moments and you're thinking your separate thoughts and then the conversation

01:12:12 ◼   ► resumes in a few moments but you don't feel the pressure to constantly keep the conversation going

01:12:19 ◼   ► Whereas I think there's something about the video format that does make it feel more like

01:12:27 ◼   ► "I am looking right at you and you're looking right at me and we're talking."

01:12:31 ◼   ► And I was just trying to pin down like why is video calls not quite the same?

01:12:37 ◼   ► And I think that's one of the reasons is it's harder to pause.

01:12:41 ◼   ► - I think one of them is that you can see yourself.

01:12:43 ◼   ► I think that makes it a little weird.

01:12:45 ◼   ► - I think people fall into this category of do they notice that or do they not

01:12:49 ◼   ► notice that. Some people hilariously cannot stop looking at themselves in the corner,

01:12:53 ◼   ► which is doubly fun. It's like being in a canary and you have the mirror,

01:12:59 ◼   ► you keep tapping the mirror. I get often too caught in looking at myself in video calls.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe they need to turn off your own video option or just to make it clearer.

01:13:10 ◼   ► I think a lot of places, a lot of things do have that, but then it's like,

01:13:15 ◼   ► Do I look weird?

01:13:17 ◼   ► Right, right.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Or like what's in the background?

01:13:21 ◼   ► Yeah, in real life you just have to deal with the fact that you look weird and there's nothing,

01:13:24 ◼   ► you know, you don't have the option.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not gonna put a mirror on the table. We should all start, we'll start doing that, right?

01:13:29 ◼   ► Like, in the post-quarantine time we will take mirrors out to restaurants and put them on the

01:13:33 ◼   ► table so we can see ourselves in the corner of our view.

01:13:36 ◼   ► Right, this is how I communicate with humans now, I don't understand.

01:13:40 ◼   ► We all need to know how we look while we're talking.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Yeah, of course.

01:13:43 ◼   ► But one of the biggest problems with video conferences...

01:13:46 ◼   ► I need a haircut.

01:13:47 ◼   ► Big time.

01:13:49 ◼   ► Well, you know where you're getting it from.

01:13:52 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:13:53 ◼   ► But that's also part of the problem, isn't it?

01:13:56 ◼   ► Okay.

01:13:57 ◼   ► Right?

01:13:58 ◼   ► Home haircuts...

01:14:00 ◼   ► not good.

01:14:01 ◼   ► Typically.

01:14:02 ◼   ► We're all going to look a little dopey for a while and that's fine.

01:14:05 ◼   ► But I don't know what to do, Gray.

01:14:07 ◼   ► I don't know what to do about my beard.

01:14:09 ◼   ► I guess the problem is you're a very stylish man.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Don't, please don't.

01:14:12 ◼   ► I don't know what to do about my beard, right? I'm not shaving it off. I can trim it like of

01:14:19 ◼   ► scissors and stuff every now and then but like there's a lot of it. I just don't know what to do

01:14:25 ◼   ► with it. I really can't help you in this situation. Beard oil, is beard oil what you need? I don't

01:14:31 ◼   ► know. Beard oil doesn't, it's not gonna help me. I'm not looking for your help. Yeah, like of

01:14:36 ◼   ► everyone, you are not the person I'm coming to for advice on this one but it is just something that

01:14:42 ◼   ► I'm becoming increasingly aware of, I am becoming more mountain man.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Right, I don't think you're alone.

01:14:47 ◼   ► No I'm not, but there is an increasing amount of video calls, right?

01:14:51 ◼   ► And it's like, when I'm progressively more mountain man, I would like less video,

01:14:56 ◼   ► that's the thing, but now I have more video.

01:14:59 ◼   ► So I need a solution, I don't know what it is.

01:15:02 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't know what to tell you man.

01:15:07 ◼   ► Shave it all off.

01:15:10 ◼   ► You need a different life during quarantine time. You can shave off the beard.

01:15:14 ◼   ► I can't imagine I could buy a clipper right now.

01:15:16 ◼   ► Oh yeah, but clippers are going to be in that same category.

01:15:21 ◼   ► What I'm just trying to think at the end of this podcast is now,

01:15:25 ◼   ► okay, I got stuff that I thought would be useful for the next upcoming months.

01:15:32 ◼   ► But like, what might a year from now Gray want that he isn't currently thinking about?

01:15:40 ◼   ► I think this is the next level that I need to start strategizing on.

01:15:44 ◼   ► Yeah, can you let me know the next entertainment-based product that you pre-buy?

01:15:49 ◼   ► Because I would have loved to have considered the Oculus Quest when you did.

01:15:55 ◼   ► So if you could just give me a quick heads up, I would appreciate that.

01:15:58 ◼   ► No, I kept it quiet. I had to order stuff in secret.

01:16:01 ◼   ► You can buy yours first.

01:16:02 ◼   ► I need to make sure it's at the house and then I'll let you know.

01:16:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, you go ahead and buy your own stuff.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Like you get all of what you need,

01:16:10 ◼   ► place your orders, wait for them to arrive,

01:16:12 ◼   ► and just give me a quick heads up

01:16:14 ◼   ► in case there's anything that I have not

01:16:17 ◼   ► used my insight to procure.

01:16:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:16:20 ◼   ► - Okay, I'll keep you in mind.

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01:18:15 ◼   ► (logo dings)

01:18:16 ◼   ► Episode 100, which means we will talk about yearly themes.

01:18:20 ◼   ► - Yearly themes.

01:18:21 ◼   ► - Oh.

01:18:24 ◼   ► - I can easily imagine that there are quite a lot of people

01:18:29 ◼   ► who have discovered that they need to readjust their yearly theme.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Yeah, and this is the thing, this has been a great conversation about this in the subreddit.

01:18:39 ◼   ► It is like a, this is a perfect example of why we encourage people to allow flexibility in their themes.

01:18:49 ◼   ► So my year of refinement, I've adapted it.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And I've put some elements on pause.

01:18:59 ◼   ► So for me, one of the things that I'm really trying to do

01:19:02 ◼   ► is to engage more with interesting people

01:19:06 ◼   ► and learn new things.

01:19:08 ◼   ► That's the thing that I'm trying to focus on right now

01:19:10 ◼   ► more than before.

01:19:11 ◼   ► So the classes that I wanted to take,

01:19:15 ◼   ► the hobbies that I wanted to embark upon,

01:19:18 ◼   ► they all have to be paused.

01:19:20 ◼   ► But that doesn't mean that the year of refinement is over.

01:19:24 ◼   ► And a friend mentioned to me a phrase

01:19:28 ◼   ► that I'm trying to embody for right now.

01:19:31 ◼   ► We've put it on the fridge and I think it really matches

01:19:34 ◼   ► that the year of refinement is,

01:19:36 ◼   ► when I come out of this better than when I started.

01:19:38 ◼   ► And that is what I'm kind of embodying now

01:19:44 ◼   ► for the year of refinement.

01:19:45 ◼   ► Is I wanna come out of this process

01:19:47 ◼   ► being a more refined individual

01:19:49 ◼   ► in how I live my life in different ways.

01:19:52 ◼   ► And one of those things is thinking about like,

01:19:54 ◼   ► what is my future like?

01:19:56 ◼   ► You know, like I'm being forced to think about it

01:19:59 ◼   ► in ways that I hadn't before,

01:20:01 ◼   ► just because of the sheer nature of where we are right now.

01:20:05 ◼   ► You know, like, what is your future?

01:20:07 ◼   ► I'm thinking about that more.

01:20:08 ◼   ► And I think that's gonna be something

01:20:10 ◼   ► I wanna spend more time thinking about

01:20:11 ◼   ► over the next six months.

01:20:13 ◼   ► 'Cause before this period of time,

01:20:15 ◼   ► I'd kind of, I think I'd kind of allowed myself

01:20:18 ◼   ► to be in a little bit more of a devil may care attitude.

01:20:21 ◼   ► to my future, my creative future, what I do with my career.

01:20:26 ◼   ► I kind of allowed myself to be like,

01:20:30 ◼   ► I don't know, let's see how it goes.

01:20:32 ◼   ► And I think I wanna wrestle that control

01:20:34 ◼   ► back to me a little bit now,

01:20:36 ◼   ► thinking about what I want my future to look like.

01:20:38 ◼   ► So refining that out more.

01:20:40 ◼   ► 'Cause I felt like I kind of got into the habit of,

01:20:45 ◼   ► and I was fine with this, I'm not criticising it,

01:20:47 ◼   ► of taking more bets and just seeing what worked out.

01:20:50 ◼   ► when now I want to be more calculated, really like consider things differently.

01:20:57 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's the example of the environment changing around you.

01:21:00 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:21:00 ◼   ► Right, like the more stable an environment is, the more you're willing to take bets,

01:21:06 ◼   ► and the more uncertain an environment becomes, the more you want security beneath you.

01:21:12 ◼   ► And it makes total sense.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Exactly, so like I'm happy to accept the reason in which it's happened,

01:21:17 ◼   ► But now I want to embrace it and make that a part of who I am now and what I am refining in my life.

01:21:26 ◼   ► And that's definitely a big part of that.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And the other part is really focusing in, zeroing in on the idea of learning more about the world in different ways.

01:21:36 ◼   ► These are the things that I'm now kind of embodying in my themes.

01:21:40 ◼   ► The point about coming out better than before.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Like, I've been working on a thing-- that point is so vital.

01:21:50 ◼   ► It's always true that you have this question of,

01:21:54 ◼   ► "Oh, at the end of the year, are you gonna be better off or worse off than you are right now?"

01:21:59 ◼   ► Like, that's always true. That's never not true.

01:22:00 ◼   ► But this quarantine is such a time out of time that it really highlights this situation.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And I am, you know, there are many things to be concerned about in this time.

01:22:18 ◼   ► And, but one of the things I'm concerned about is that for a lot of people, I think it's very

01:22:25 ◼   ► easy to slip into a situation where at the end of this, you're way worse off than you were at the,

01:22:31 ◼   ► at the start of it. And I really have this feeling like I want people to take this time

01:22:37 ◼   ► seriously because it is a serious situation and very, very few people are going to come out of

01:22:45 ◼   ► a long-term quarantine the same as when they went in. You're going to come out better or

01:22:51 ◼   ► you're going to come out worse and you really want to focus on being on the right side of that.

01:22:56 ◼   ► And especially if you're isolated, like it is just way too easy to start slipping down like

01:23:05 ◼   ► that accelerated negative path. And so I think if you find yourself with a theme that's like,

01:23:12 ◼   ► "Oh, this isn't really quite working out," you know, substituting whatever you were thinking of

01:23:18 ◼   ► with the current idea of like, "Come out of quarantine better," you know, that's,

01:23:25 ◼   ► I think that's a really good way to focus on things. And I think it's really important to be

01:23:33 ◼   ► very serious about that and we've talked many times about not loving exercise on this show,

01:23:40 ◼   ► but that is one of these things that even for me on days that I'm being lazy, like I am taking

01:23:48 ◼   ► exercise deadly serious now at this point of like, okay, you're in this really limited environment,

01:23:58 ◼   ► Everything you know about how the human body and brain works tells you that the most effective thing that you can do is to stay physically active.

01:24:09 ◼   ► And so it's like...

01:24:11 ◼   ► That is like one of these things that has changed for me is I've been increasingly more serious about physical health as time has gone on,

01:24:21 ◼   ► But now this is like...

01:24:23 ◼   ► It's like...

01:24:25 ◼   ► deadly, serious, required, daily medicine.

01:24:29 ◼   ► Like, that's the kind of reframing during quarantine.

01:24:33 ◼   ► And I really suggest that lots of people should think about it this way, like...

01:24:38 ◼   ► whatever you can do in terms of physical exercise,

01:24:42 ◼   ► it's the most effective thing that you can possibly do, and...

01:24:45 ◼   ► At least for me personally, it's...

01:24:47 ◼   ► This again is this weird duality of quarantine, but...

01:24:50 ◼   ► I honestly think another month of this, and I'm gonna be in the best physical shape of my life,

01:24:55 ◼   ► because my daily activity is just so consistent and way higher than it was in the months before

01:25:03 ◼   ► quarantine that it clearly just has such a positive impact. And so it's like, yes,

01:25:08 ◼   ► this is the foundation of everything and I'm taking it super seriously. And I just kind of

01:25:14 ◼   ► mentioned that for anybody else who, if they feel adrift and they feel without a theme, like, these

01:25:19 ◼   ► are things to really think about and focus on. I think it's the best thing that you can possibly do.

01:25:23 ◼   ► But my poor little Apple Watch, I've had to go back to swapping between two Apple Watches,

01:25:28 ◼   ► because of just the workout stuff, draining it down too much. It's just a funny thing if I

01:25:35 ◼   ► notice like, "Oh, I'm cutting it too close on the batteries." I need to switch back and forth

01:25:39 ◼   ► between the two of these things. But we've set up a dedicated part in the house to be both the

01:25:45 ◼   ► exercise area for for my wife and I and it's like yes this is part of the life now. For whatever

01:25:51 ◼   ► your themes are incorporate physical activity into it much more and right now it would be one

01:25:59 ◼   ► of my main suggestions. Mega Studio.

01:26:03 ◼   ► How's Mega Studio going Myke?

01:26:10 ◼   ► Okay, let me rephrase that.

01:26:12 ◼   ► When was the last time you were at Mega Studio?

01:26:15 ◼   ► And how long do you think is going to be until the next time you're at Mega Studio?

01:26:20 ◼   ► The last time I was there was like a couple of days after we last spoke.

01:26:24 ◼   ► Okay.

01:26:25 ◼   ► It's like four weeks ago now.

01:26:27 ◼   ► March 19th was my last day there.

01:26:32 ◼   ► And that was the day, I kid you not, in which it was finally ready to record.

01:26:39 ◼   ► [inhales]

01:26:41 ◼   ► Just in time.

01:26:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:43 ◼   ► We...

01:26:44 ◼   ► had the panels in,

01:26:46 ◼   ► we had the blankets come in, the stuff that I was talking about

01:26:48 ◼   ► a couple of episodes ago,

01:26:50 ◼   ► and it was finally—I did some tests—

01:26:52 ◼   ► it was finally at a stage where, like, I would have been happy

01:26:54 ◼   ► to start recording there.

01:26:56 ◼   ► We haven't been there since.

01:26:58 ◼   ► And won't be.

01:26:59 ◼   ► Like, our building is closed down.

01:27:02 ◼   ► Oh, okay. So this isn't even your decision.

01:27:04 ◼   ► This is the—the building has closed down for lockdown.

01:27:07 ◼   ► Yeah, you have to prove that your work is essential to them.

01:27:12 ◼   ► And I do not disagree with this.

01:27:14 ◼   ► It hurts to be paying rent.

01:27:17 ◼   ► However, I will say a piece of very good news.

01:27:21 ◼   ► This morning, the company that owns our building

01:27:23 ◼   ► wrote to all of the tenants, and they're cutting our rent

01:27:26 ◼   ► in half, which I think is great.

01:27:30 ◼   ► That's what I wanted.

01:27:31 ◼   ► That felt acceptable to me of like,

01:27:34 ◼   ► let's do this at cost, shall we?

01:27:36 ◼   ► I'm not there, right?

01:27:38 ◼   ► You're not having to pay all of the things

01:27:41 ◼   ► that mean I have to be there, right?

01:27:43 ◼   ► The buildings will shut down.

01:27:45 ◼   ► Let's try and find something that makes sense

01:27:48 ◼   ► for all of us, right?

01:27:49 ◼   ► Where like, I know I have a contract,

01:27:52 ◼   ► so like I'm not saying I don't think I should pay anything.

01:27:55 ◼   ► But I wanted to have some kind of like,

01:27:58 ◼   ► let's meet in the middle.

01:28:00 ◼   ► And we're meeting exactly in the middle.

01:28:02 ◼   ► So I think that's a nice gesture from the building owner

01:28:05 ◼   ► and I'm happy to keep going.

01:28:09 ◼   ► You know, it hurts to be paying a large amount of money

01:28:12 ◼   ► for something that I can't use at a time

01:28:15 ◼   ► where money is ever more considered

01:28:18 ◼   ► as a valuable resource, right?

01:28:20 ◼   ► - Yes, yes.

01:28:21 ◼   ► - And so having to watch that money

01:28:23 ◼   ► leave my bank account every month hurts

01:28:27 ◼   ► because I had also, I'm very aware of the amount of money

01:28:31 ◼   ► I poured into that studio in equipment

01:28:35 ◼   ► that I can't get to.

01:28:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wasn't even thinking about the equipment.

01:28:40 ◼   ► - So, you know, and there's also stuff that we have bought,

01:28:43 ◼   ► which is in limbo, right?

01:28:45 ◼   ► Like delivery limbo right now.

01:28:47 ◼   ► I don't know when I'm gonna be able to go there again,

01:28:50 ◼   ► and even when I can, I can't move there.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Because let's imagine in three months time,

01:28:57 ◼   ► restrictions are lifted a bit, and I'm able to go there.

01:29:02 ◼   ► Well, I can't move to it in case the restrictions come back

01:29:05 ◼   ► again.

01:29:07 ◼   ► Right.

01:29:07 ◼   ► Right?

01:29:08 ◼   ► So--

01:29:08 ◼   ► Right.

01:29:09 ◼   ► Yeah, OK.

01:29:09 ◼   ► I see what you're saying.

01:29:10 ◼   ► You can't completely set that up as your working environment

01:29:14 ◼   ► because you always need to have the fallback of your home.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Right.

01:29:18 ◼   ► OK.

01:29:20 ◼   ► So depending on how things go, I might move everything

01:29:26 ◼   ► and have what I would consider to be all of my travel gear

01:29:29 ◼   ► at home so I can still do everything as normal but that's it's too far away for

01:29:34 ◼   ► me to know that you know at least at this time like because I can't use the

01:29:38 ◼   ► studio like I'm not buying more equipment for the studio so like mmm

01:29:43 ◼   ► because it was a large financial outlay to get that to the point that it's even

01:29:48 ◼   ► at so I was stretching myself a bit so now that's come back in again because I

01:29:54 ◼   ► can't spend any more money on it because I can't go to it it's very unfortunate

01:29:59 ◼   ► in timing but also at the same time fortunate in that I hadn't moved

01:30:04 ◼   ► everything because that would have been really difficult if I had moved all of

01:30:08 ◼   ► my gear to that studio it would have been very tricky because if you know if

01:30:15 ◼   ► things would have happened quickly which they did I don't know how fast I would

01:30:18 ◼   ► have been able to get what I need out of there so you know I know that that place

01:30:25 ◼   ► out there is mine and it's waiting for me right and I genuinely hope that like

01:30:31 ◼   ► at some point in the next few months we might be able to visit and spend time

01:30:35 ◼   ► working there but I don't really know I don't even know if I want to I mean I

01:30:41 ◼   ► don't really know what it's gonna be like I don't know how I'm gonna feel

01:30:44 ◼   ► about leaving the home right like so right now it is a is a financial burden

01:30:52 ◼   ► but at least half of that burden and

01:30:54 ◼   ► This is a this is just how it's all played out. Mmm

01:31:01 ◼   ► I think this this is another just another case of where

01:31:06 ◼   ► It's difficult to make decisions under uncertainty

01:31:11 ◼   ► because that just didn't it just didn't even occur to me that you have this problem of where is your equipment and

01:31:18 ◼   ► Even if the restrictions get lifted

01:31:21 ◼   ► you don't want to be in a situation where you're like caught out or yeah so

01:31:28 ◼   ► I don't want to be in between yeah you don't want to be in between and but like

01:31:33 ◼   ► you know I I can I can do a a minimized version of it so you know like I can

01:31:38 ◼   ► have just a laptop there right and that's you know which is what I wanted

01:31:43 ◼   ► anyway but not move my iMac right but you need to take public transport to get

01:31:47 ◼   ► to the office, right?

01:31:48 ◼   ► It's not within walking distance.

01:31:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, you see that's, when I say, right,

01:31:53 ◼   ► like will I want to, that's the problem.

01:31:56 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:31:57 ◼   ► - Now, the amount of public transport that we need to take

01:32:00 ◼   ► is actually minimal.

01:32:02 ◼   ► I can get on one train for 10 minutes

01:32:04 ◼   ► and then it's, you know, there is a few, multiple routes.

01:32:07 ◼   ► One of them is walk for 10 minutes, train for 10 minutes,

01:32:10 ◼   ► walk for 20.

01:32:12 ◼   ► And that's probably the one that we would take, right?

01:32:15 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:32:16 ◼   ► I'm much more comfortable walking down a street

01:32:18 ◼   ► than I am being on a train car.

01:32:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:32:21 ◼   ► - You know, that feels like a better,

01:32:23 ◼   ► even though you're in theory walking past more people,

01:32:28 ◼   ► that just feels better to me

01:32:29 ◼   ► than being in an enclosed place.

01:32:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the enclosed environment that's no good.

01:32:35 ◼   ► - Irrespective of the science of it,

01:32:37 ◼   ► I'm talking about what makes me feel comfortable, right?

01:32:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:32:41 ◼   ► - So in that instance, like that's not the worst thing.

01:32:43 ◼   ► And as long as we planned correctly,

01:32:45 ◼   ► 'Cause this is, that day that we were there,

01:32:48 ◼   ► we knew things were going on,

01:32:49 ◼   ► but we had deliveries that needed to come

01:32:51 ◼   ► and they weren't being rescheduled.

01:32:53 ◼   ► So we left the house at 10.30,

01:32:56 ◼   ► which meant we missed all the rush hour.

01:32:59 ◼   ► We got on that train for 10 minutes.

01:33:01 ◼   ► We were way over past this six feet

01:33:05 ◼   ► away from everybody thing,

01:33:07 ◼   ► because there was so few people on the train.

01:33:08 ◼   ► And then we did the same on the way back.

01:33:10 ◼   ► We left at 3.30.

01:33:12 ◼   ► So again, didn't really interact

01:33:13 ◼   ► with any people on the public transport.

01:33:14 ◼   ► Like that's what we would try and do, I guess, but like, I don't really want to roll the dice a bunch of times.

01:33:22 ◼   ► So it all just depends.

01:33:24 ◼   ► I mean, it's like, it's again, right?

01:33:26 ◼   ► Like you look at these things and the time in which they're made, we just don't really know what it's going to be like in a few months time.

01:33:31 ◼   ► Things will be different to what they are now, but I don't know in what direction.

01:33:36 ◼   ► But until then, that's three months of rent I'll be paying.

01:33:41 ◼   ► You know, like there is a possibility, like, do I cancel the office space, right?

01:33:46 ◼   ► Like I have a six month break clause, but then where does all the stuff go?

01:33:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:52 ◼   ► That's, that's the problem is all, it's all gotta go somewhere and it's not, it's not

01:33:55 ◼   ► all coming back to your apartment.

01:33:57 ◼   ► Well, and I can't go and do anything about any of it.

01:34:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:00 ◼   ► So, you know, this is one thing where I'm just, at the moment, I'm going to be in a

01:34:06 ◼   ► wait and see on it and and will be you know like I was preparing and working

01:34:11 ◼   ► out how I'm gonna pay the rent and not make an impact well I've now doubled the

01:34:16 ◼   ► amount of time I can do that because my rents been cut in half so all my

01:34:19 ◼   ► planning that I was doing right I've been given an extension on that anyway

01:34:24 ◼   ► so I will take advantage of that and and sit tight. This episode of Cortex is

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01:37:17 ◼   ► Let's get back on an ascent of this rollercoaster of an episode.

01:37:22 ◼   ► This show, of course, I feel like we have to have a little mushy moment here.

01:37:28 ◼   ► It's been successful and is a great project in part because of the Cortexians, our listeners,

01:37:33 ◼   ► right? We can't... We could make this show without any listeners, but I think it would

01:37:37 ◼   ► have gone past 10 episodes at that point.

01:37:40 ◼   ► Yeah, if a podcast downloads on a player and there's no one around to hear it, does it

01:37:45 ◼   ► even exist?

01:37:46 ◼   ► The answer is no.

01:37:47 ◼   ► No it doesn't.

01:37:48 ◼   ► Eventually it won't because people stop losing the will to make it.

01:37:51 ◼   ► It kind of feels fitting to me to do some Ask Cortex of this show.

01:37:56 ◼   ► So I put the call out on Twitter and I got a lot of questions and I tried to pick a selection

01:38:01 ◼   ► of questions that are either kind of meta questions or thematic for our run of episodes

01:38:10 ◼   ► so far. And I think we cannot start with a better question than the one from Pavel who

01:38:14 ◼   ► asks is Evernote still a thing for the two of you? Because if anything it gives me an

01:38:21 ◼   ► excuse to right now use what is probably our best custom show art work. So if you use a

01:38:28 ◼   ► podcast player that supports it you are currently seeing the Evercore show art work.

01:38:33 ◼   ► It's still my favorite of all the show arts for sure. I mean do you still use it Myke?

01:38:38 ◼   ► No, I'm all in on that Notion train, baby.

01:38:41 ◼   ► You're on the Notion train, you're one of those, you're one of the Notion heads?

01:38:45 ◼   ► I am one of the least effective Notion users, where I just have a bunch of, I don't know,

01:38:52 ◼   ► sections which has some... I don't really understand how to use Notion,

01:38:56 ◼   ► but all I know is its app experience is better for me than Evernote.

01:39:03 ◼   ► Okay, all right, you're all in on Notion. Of course, I'm forever entangled in the trunk of

01:39:11 ◼   ► Evernote, and I don't think I will escape. Although, I came very close to making a super

01:39:22 ◼   ► annoyed video for CGP Grey 2 about how something in Evernote doesn't work at all.

01:39:29 ◼   ► right? Where it's like, "How can I get their attention to fix this thing?"

01:39:33 ◼   ► Which is like, okay, so I'm just going to describe it here now.

01:39:36 ◼   ► So for the Tumbleweed video, I had a bunch of these PDFs that I was doing highlights in,

01:39:42 ◼   ► where it's like, okay, I downloaded the 1898 agricultural magazine or whatever,

01:39:50 ◼   ► and it's hundreds of pages long and I'm just trying to highlight this one article that's in it.

01:39:55 ◼   ► But so the way Evernote works with PDFs is.

01:40:00 ◼   ► In order to do a highlight,

01:40:04 ◼   ► you have to put it in like an edit mode.

01:40:07 ◼   ► So you can't just say, yeah, I want to do highlights.

01:40:10 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, no, I'm editing this PDF.

01:40:14 ◼   ► And one of the things that I can do is highlights.

01:40:17 ◼   ► But so it has to stay in this edit mode

01:40:23 ◼   ► for the duration of the time that you want to highlight, which is of course the entire freaking

01:40:28 ◼   ► time that I'm reading the PDF. So I'm like there, "Doop-a-doop-a-doo!" Okay, I'll put it in edit mode

01:40:35 ◼   ► and I'll highlight, I'll highlight, I'll highlight. But it doesn't automatically save those highlights

01:40:43 ◼   ► until you say, "I'm done with editing mode." And you know what takes up a lot of memory on your device

01:40:53 ◼   ► is a several hundred page PDF that's nothing but scanned images that's open.

01:40:58 ◼   ► And so, as I discovered painfully many times, like, "Oh, my lovely research pad that I totally

01:41:07 ◼   ► like using. Oh, I'm highlighting this thing. Let me just quickly check something in Safari.

01:41:12 ◼   ► Swipe over to Safari. Oh, okay, I've checked the thing. Interesting. Swipe back to Evernote. Oh,

01:41:19 ◼   ► I see the startup screen for Evernote because it got booted out of memory,

01:41:23 ◼   ► and everything that I had highlighted is gone because I didn't click "Done" on the editing mode.

01:41:29 ◼   ► - That's 2004 over there. - Yeah, it's crazy making. And so, yes,

01:41:36 ◼   ► I do still use Evernote. It is still the best tool for what I use, and it has, yes,

01:41:43 ◼   ► gotten much better since I first complained about it forever ago. But I've come across this new,

01:41:48 ◼   ► infuriating thing which is like guys guys auto save what i'm doing while i'm doing it it's like

01:41:56 ◼   ► not since whatever whatever it was mac osx tiger right then we switched to lion and they're like

01:42:04 ◼   ► saving this saving is not a thing we need to do anymore and this happened back in 1974 and we

01:42:10 ◼   ► like we haven't saved documents since then and it's worked out great but not for Evernote and

01:42:15 ◼   ► for highlights. So if I hadn't been preoccupied with trying to do the first director's commentary

01:42:21 ◼   ► thing, I was totally gonna make a video on my second channel trying to blast and shame Evernote

01:42:27 ◼   ► into fixing this problem. So Evernote, you're on notice. I like the idea that you think that

01:42:34 ◼   ► they'll fix anything you want them to fix. I think they'll fix it. No, they kind of,

01:42:38 ◼   ► they, I know they listen. They're gonna fix it. They have to.

01:42:43 ◼   ► Nate wants to know, how did Myke and Gray meet?

01:42:46 ◼   ► We've said this before.

01:42:47 ◼   ► Of course we have.

01:42:48 ◼   ► I sent you an email and then we met up for coffee.

01:42:51 ◼   ► There was the first time that we met, which was you had emailed me after I

01:42:58 ◼   ► announced that I was becoming self-employed, Relay FM existed, and I was

01:43:04 ◼   ► becoming self-employed and you emailed me to congratulate me and suggested that we

01:43:08 ◼   ► meet for coffee.

01:43:09 ◼   ► This wasn't the first communication that we'd had.

01:43:11 ◼   ► The first communication that we had was when I emailed you asking to interview you for

01:43:15 ◼   ► a show that I was doing and you said no.

01:43:19 ◼   ► Which is a classic moment in our history which I will find the screenshot that I have posted

01:43:24 ◼   ► in the past and put that into the show notes.

01:43:27 ◼   ► Because it's just a fun little thing.

01:43:29 ◼   ► The day I convinced you that we should create a podcast together was the day that we were

01:43:35 ◼   ► were launching a show on the network called Mac Power Users, which we were

01:43:41 ◼   ► importing hundreds of episodes.

01:43:42 ◼   ► It was a show that existed in the past and the combination of a show that already

01:43:48 ◼   ► has hundreds of episodes and thousands and thousands of people subscribing to

01:43:52 ◼   ► the new feed put a stress test on our system that had hitherto not been

01:43:57 ◼   ► tempted.

01:43:58 ◼   ► And whilst I was convincing you that this was a great idea for the both of us in

01:44:03 ◼   ► the background our website was on fire.

01:44:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:44:08 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:44:10 ◼   ► - Vaj wants to know, when it comes to editing the show,

01:44:13 ◼   ► how does your decision making process go

01:44:15 ◼   ► regarding what to cut and what to keep?

01:44:18 ◼   ► - Well, this is all you, Myke.

01:44:20 ◼   ► - I think it is now, right?

01:44:21 ◼   ► Like, kind of the way the show was produced is,

01:44:24 ◼   ► we record it, I edit, I send it to Gray,

01:44:28 ◼   ► Gray listens through and edits and sends it back to me,

01:44:31 ◼   ► and then I finish it up and post the show.

01:44:33 ◼   ► Now in the early days, Gray's edit was very heavy,

01:44:36 ◼   ► and you would take out a lot of stuff.

01:44:38 ◼   ► But I think these days you take out very little.

01:44:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, for sure.

01:44:42 ◼   ► Well, it's also like we were figuring out more

01:44:45 ◼   ► in the beginning, like what is this,

01:44:47 ◼   ► what works or what doesn't work?

01:44:49 ◼   ► - Right, but I also was, well, I mean, you maybe don't know,

01:44:51 ◼   ► I take out a lot more than I used to.

01:44:54 ◼   ► You know, like you don't see it now,

01:44:55 ◼   ► but like in the early days,

01:44:57 ◼   ► I was basically just hiding it up,

01:44:58 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't know what to cut and what to keep,

01:45:00 ◼   ► because it was a very different way of editing for me.

01:45:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, well, it was like we had conversations

01:45:06 ◼   ► where it was like, no, no, the number of cuts

01:45:08 ◼   ► needs to be four times as many cuts, right?

01:45:12 ◼   ► - And those cuts are thousands.

01:45:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:45:16 ◼   ► I think a couple of episodes ago,

01:45:18 ◼   ► I put a screenshot in the show notes

01:45:21 ◼   ► of what the edit looked like to that point.

01:45:24 ◼   ► It's thousands and thousands of cuts.

01:45:25 ◼   ► And most of those are just tidying up things.

01:45:28 ◼   ► if we repeat words, if we um and are in ways that I think are just distracting.

01:45:32 ◼   ► But there are a lot of content cuts that I make now, which are like, I make a point,

01:45:38 ◼   ► Gray makes a point. It's like, that didn't add anything, right? Like, all we've done is made

01:45:42 ◼   ► this point twice as long. It's like, well, I take those out. And that is just a skill that I have

01:45:46 ◼   ► learned over the last five years of being able to edit in that way. Because I didn't edit any of my

01:45:52 ◼   ► other shows that way. There's now, you know, every now and then I will have a project where I do

01:45:57 ◼   ► edit like that, but this is the only show that I do where I edit to the level that I edit.

01:46:03 ◼   ► It's very heavy and really the reason I take something out is if it just wasn't interesting.

01:46:07 ◼   ► I heard Justin McElroy say once, if you keep a minute in a show which wasn't worth it,

01:46:14 ◼   ► you've wasted tens or hundreds of thousands of Earth minutes.

01:46:18 ◼   ► And that really stuck with me. And so it's like, okay, let me see what I can take out of this show

01:46:25 ◼   ► when I take out so I'm trying to waste less time in the world.

01:46:29 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. Multiplying those little changes across the audience

01:46:32 ◼   ► is a way that makes it feel quite impactful.

01:46:36 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh no, I don't want to waste all these people's time."

01:46:40 ◼   ► And Andrew asks, "If you could only use four iOS apps for a week,

01:46:45 ◼   ► what would they be?" Am I allowed to compensate with my Mac? I don't

01:46:50 ◼   ► understand this question. Let's just go four apps. You have four apps.

01:46:54 ◼   ► They're the only apps you can use for a week.

01:46:56 ◼   ► - Okay, four apps.

01:46:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's go with that.

01:46:58 ◼   ► I'm gonna mold it because as usual,

01:47:01 ◼   ► you've tried to find a way to break the confines

01:47:03 ◼   ► of the question.

01:47:04 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, listen, you gotta be really careful

01:47:07 ◼   ► with when questions and genies and wishes

01:47:09 ◼   ► and all this kind of stuff.

01:47:10 ◼   ► - Well, let me, actually, you know what,

01:47:11 ◼   ► 'cause I wanna talk about iOS apps here.

01:47:14 ◼   ► 'Cause otherwise you're gonna find a way to cheat.

01:47:16 ◼   ► So what I wanna say is you have a week

01:47:19 ◼   ► where you're only working on your iOS devices, right?

01:47:22 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:47:23 ◼   ► confining this to iOS work only.

01:47:25 ◼   ► You have four apps you can use on those devices.

01:47:28 ◼   ► What are they?

01:47:30 ◼   ► OK, that's actually pretty easy.

01:47:31 ◼   ► It's OmniFocus, Ulysses, Evernote, Safari.

01:47:36 ◼   ► Those would be the four.

01:47:37 ◼   ► Oh, Evernote, man, you love that app so much.

01:47:40 ◼   ► Snuck in there.

01:47:41 ◼   ► It's necessary for my work.

01:47:43 ◼   ► Like I'm just I'm trying to think like, what do I need most to keep my work

01:47:46 ◼   ► going for a week?

01:47:47 ◼   ► If it's a longer period of time, if they said like, oh, for all of quarantine,

01:47:52 ◼   ► I would probably have to swap Evernote for Slack or email. Like, I'd have to think about that.

01:48:00 ◼   ► But, like, one of them would have to be communication with the outside world.

01:48:04 ◼   ► - Right, but you think you could do... I mean, who am I talking to here? You think you could do a week

01:48:08 ◼   ► without Slack? - Like, please. Like, do you have any idea what I can make my life like if I need

01:48:16 ◼   ► to. Like, I can shut off from the outside world completely for long periods of time.

01:48:21 ◼   ► So a week is like, pfft, it's trivial. I could do without Slack for a week, for sure.

01:48:25 ◼   ► But I do also think that 10 days is about the limit where I could start to run into some problems

01:48:36 ◼   ► if there's literally zero communication with the outside world.

01:48:39 ◼   ► The worlds are going to start falling off at that point.

01:48:41 ◼   ► Yeah, as I'm saying it now, it would have to be email.

01:48:45 ◼   ► I would I would have to fall back on email as the communication tool.

01:48:49 ◼   ► I'd move everything in Slack to email.

01:48:51 ◼   ► And then email also allows me to be in touch with people

01:48:55 ◼   ► I need to be in touch with and also reach out to new people.

01:48:58 ◼   ► So that's what it would be if it was longer than a week.

01:49:00 ◼   ► OK, what about you?

01:49:02 ◼   ► I'm struggling. I'm struggling. All right.

01:49:04 ◼   ► So I'll tell you the ones that are easy for me.

01:49:06 ◼   ► Slack to do ist spark because I couldn't survive without those.

01:49:11 ◼   ► All right. OK, because that's communication within the company.

01:49:14 ◼   ► Right. Communication with the outside world.

01:49:17 ◼   ► I do not want to move all of Slack to email. Right.

01:49:21 ◼   ► And you're and you're in a different situation where you just couldn't.

01:49:23 ◼   ► That's not practical. Yeah.

01:49:24 ◼   ► With Relay, it just couldn't happen.

01:49:26 ◼   ► Slack and Spark, they are non-negotiable. Right.

01:49:29 ◼   ► Because otherwise I cannot do my business.

01:49:31 ◼   ► I cannot do my work without those two.

01:49:33 ◼   ► Todoist I have to keep because I need my to do list. Right.

01:49:39 ◼   ► However, so what so then I'm I'm in an R and on like the fourth right which is Twitter because

01:49:46 ◼   ► Weirder, oh, you know what? No, sorry. I forget I forget how useful this is to you to be for your work as well

01:49:52 ◼   ► Like well, so it's okay, but then I could I could say reader because my RSS experiment has remained by the way

01:49:58 ◼   ► So I checked with a less now than I ever did

01:50:02 ◼   ► I'm still on it a lot but it's not as much and I and I use RSS feeds now to get my news

01:50:07 ◼   ► So in theory, I could Twitter and reader could be interchangeable in this

01:50:10 ◼   ► I'd probably go with Twitter because it will allow me to cost my net wider

01:50:15 ◼   ► Then reader would if I mean I'm in like a constraint

01:50:19 ◼   ► So that's this is like for now right like slack to doist spark Twitter

01:50:24 ◼   ► But I don't know if I could go a week without my calendar

01:50:28 ◼   ► So I didn't fantastic how sneaks in now, but you get you could replicate your calendar with to doists

01:50:33 ◼   ► Like you could make that work.

01:50:34 ◼   ► Haha.

01:50:35 ◼   ► Or I could enable the Todoist support inside of FantasticOwl.

01:50:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's fine.

01:50:40 ◼   ► So I think that's what I'm going to go with.

01:50:42 ◼   ► Twitter, Slack, Spark and FantasticOwl with the Todoist integration turned on.

01:50:47 ◼   ► Right. OK.

01:50:48 ◼   ► Oh, but what about no, I could I could.

01:50:50 ◼   ► What about time tracking?

01:50:52 ◼   ► I could live about a week with it.

01:50:54 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's the same that you could.

01:50:56 ◼   ► That's why it wasn't on my list.

01:50:57 ◼   ► You could live with that time tracking for.

01:50:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it doesn't affect my work as such.

01:51:01 ◼   ► And look, you've only got four apps to track anyway, right?

01:51:04 ◼   ► That's true.

01:51:04 ◼   ► What do you time track?

01:51:05 ◼   ► I could just write it down.

01:51:06 ◼   ► Yeah, you could do that on a piece of paper.

01:51:08 ◼   ► I send an email to myself every time.

01:51:10 ◼   ► So wait, what was your final four?

01:51:14 ◼   ► It's Twitter, Spark, Slack, and FantasticL.

01:51:18 ◼   ► OK, interesting.

01:51:19 ◼   ► Oh, but what about Notes, though?

01:51:21 ◼   ► You can do without Notes for a week.

01:51:23 ◼   ► Again, you can write down things on a piece of actual paper.

01:51:25 ◼   ► OK.

01:51:26 ◼   ► You're looking here for the stuff that's non-replicable, right?

01:51:30 ◼   ► It's like, this is why I chose Ulysses as the writing app,

01:51:33 ◼   ► because the amount of stuff that's in there to work with is non replicable.

01:51:38 ◼   ► Same with Evernote. It's like the database is non replicable. OmniFocus,

01:51:43 ◼   ► here's everything I need to do.

01:51:44 ◼   ► Non replicable and Safari connecting me to the outside world.

01:51:49 ◼   ► Non replicable for research. So that's, that's why like you think in notes,

01:51:53 ◼   ► now you're quickly devolving into just stuff you'd like to have. That's,

01:51:57 ◼   ► that's what you're doing there. I think you're,

01:51:58 ◼   ► I think your initial four, those seem pretty solid in this arbitrary world.

01:52:01 ◼   ► IAN: Noah wants to know, "Do either of you believe that this podcast has made you better

01:52:06 ◼   ► at what you do?"

01:52:07 ◼   ► BRANDON Oh, for sure.

01:52:08 ◼   ► IAN Oh, I was pleased you said that. I was wondering

01:52:11 ◼   ► if you were going to be like, "Ah, hell no!"

01:52:14 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:52:15 ◼   ► BRANDON I was like, "To keep you surprised, Myke."

01:52:20 ◼   ► But I mean, obviously, that's sort of odd as one of the people on it to mention that.

01:52:24 ◼   ► But why did we meet up regularly for coffee in the time before year zero is it's useful

01:52:34 ◼   ► to talk to another person about what it is that you do or like what you're working on

01:52:42 ◼   ► or how you're thinking about things.

01:52:45 ◼   ► And it's also the thing that I've always said with this podcast that even if we're not talking

01:52:50 ◼   ► about specifically work things, I really think that there is a way in which hearing the way

01:52:59 ◼   ► other people think through and talk through something is a way to help you think through

01:53:05 ◼   ► things. So yeah, this has been helpful because it's also a way to stay more mindful about

01:53:12 ◼   ► what it is that I'm actually doing. There's not like a metric that I can point to, but

01:53:17 ◼   ► But I can totally say that this is useful because it causes self-reflection in the work

01:53:23 ◼   ► itself and it's useful to be able to talk to someone else and to be able to also like

01:53:31 ◼   ► hear your thoughts on various things and like that back and forth is a positive loop even

01:53:40 ◼   ► if there isn't like a thing specifically to point to to say like "oh this is 5% better

01:53:45 ◼   ► because of that. So for sure, I think this podcast has made me better at what I do.

01:53:49 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, it's a very similar thing for me, right? Where one of the reasons

01:53:54 ◼   ► that I wanted to do this show in the first place is I found the conversations

01:53:58 ◼   ► that we had were very stimulating for me and encouraging and would help me

01:54:04 ◼   ► come up with new ideas and new ways of wanting to progress my creative work.

01:54:11 ◼   ► And I felt like that some of those conversations were too good not to share.

01:54:15 ◼   ► It was just felt like we would enjoy these conversations so much that I just

01:54:22 ◼   ► figured that they were inherently enjoyable.

01:54:24 ◼   ► And, you know, I think by this point we've proven that out.

01:54:30 ◼   ► Right?

01:54:30 ◼   ► That like people, there are people that find this show both entertaining and

01:54:35 ◼   ► informative, and that's exactly what I want it to be.

01:54:37 ◼   ► And you can take whatever mixture you want from that.

01:54:40 ◼   ► but I just hope that you take a combination of both of them,

01:54:43 ◼   ► because I think that's what makes it special for me.

01:54:46 ◼   ► That's a hundred episodes.

01:54:47 ◼   ► Yep.

01:54:48 ◼   ► This was not the 100th episode we were expecting.

01:54:51 ◼   ► Nope.

01:54:53 ◼   ► It was not.

01:54:54 ◼   ► But it's the one we got.

01:54:55 ◼   ► Yes, it's the one we got.

01:54:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:54:58 ◼   ► And it's ten times more episodes than we estimated at the beginning.

01:55:04 ◼   ► That's true.

01:55:05 ◼   ► Well, I always do that a few more.

01:55:09 ◼   ► so confident you are so confident i was confident that's what i was saying right like

01:55:14 ◼   ► i knew that there was a good show in the idea so i was very confident that we would make it past 10

01:55:21 ◼   ► i honestly though i don't know if i would have expected we would have got to 100

01:55:26 ◼   ► i also don't think i would have expected 100 to have taken as long as it's taken to get to

01:55:37 ◼   ► I think those two things are related, right?

01:55:39 ◼   ► It's like, oh, Cortex.

01:55:40 ◼   ► Nice leisurely pace.

01:55:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:55:42 ◼   ► But I'm glad to have done these 100 episodes with you, Myke.

01:55:46 ◼   ► And thank you to the listeners for coming along with us for these 100.

01:55:52 ◼   ► Stay safe, everyone.

01:55:55 ◼   ► And healthy, happy.

01:55:56 ◼   ► Focus on all of it.