Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:01 ◼   ► Oh, hi.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Sounds like I just woke you up.

00:00:04 ◼   ► So I have completed so far only half of a journey to Birmingham in Euro Truck Simulator.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I played maybe, I don't know, for like half an hour or something like that after our first

00:00:17 ◼   ► conversation about it.

00:00:18 ◼   ► I haven't come back to it yet, but I plan to.

00:00:21 ◼   ► It's a super interesting game.

00:00:23 ◼   ► It's so weird.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Do you see what I mean?

00:00:26 ◼   ► It's not exactly a game.

00:00:27 ◼   ► It's not a game.

00:00:29 ◼   ► It's a thing that you can do on the computer which is game-like, but it isn't really a

00:00:35 ◼   ► game.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Do you want to know the way that I know that this isn't a game?

00:00:38 ◼   ► How?

00:00:39 ◼   ► When I started playing it, I ran straight through a red light because I was playing

00:00:45 ◼   ► it like Grand Theft Auto.

00:00:46 ◼   ► I was just like, "Drive!"

00:00:47 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh no wait, there are rules that I have to observe which are real world

00:00:53 ◼   ► rules.

00:00:54 ◼   ► This isn't a game anymore."

00:00:55 ◼   ► When I was showing my wife Euro Truck Simulator,

00:01:00 ◼   ► the very first time it's like, okay,

00:01:02 ◼   ► I have to pull out of this garage and drive down the street

00:01:05 ◼   ► and I turn the corner and there's a red light

00:01:07 ◼   ► and I stop for a red light.

00:01:09 ◼   ► And her opinion was, you have to stop for red lights

00:01:12 ◼   ► in this virtual world.

00:01:13 ◼   ► And then she's looking around and realizing

00:01:15 ◼   ► that there's also cars here.

00:01:16 ◼   ► She's like, and there's traffic.

00:01:17 ◼   ► That was it, right?

00:01:18 ◼   ► It's like, nope, not interested in this.

00:01:20 ◼   ► - Well, this is the thing.

00:01:21 ◼   ► I was like, oh, this game is super calming

00:01:23 ◼   ► until I look at the GPS, realised there's a turn coming up, swerved to take the turn and nearly kill 20 people.

00:01:28 ◼   ► It's like, this isn't calming at all!

00:01:30 ◼   ► What are you talking about kill 20 people? This is a depopulated universe, there's no people on the sides of the roads.

00:01:36 ◼   ► A lane of cars that I nearly careered into.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Yeah, you can career into other cars, but they're fine.

00:01:41 ◼   ► What happens if you do crash into somebody?

00:01:43 ◼   ► The worst that happens is that you end up flipping the truck.

00:01:46 ◼   ► You haven't flipped the truck yet, have you?

00:01:49 ◼   ► No, what did you do to flip the truck?

00:01:51 ◼   ► If you just if you try to take too sharp of just like in real life Myke just like in real life if you try

00:01:56 ◼   ► To take too sharp of a turn

00:01:57 ◼   ► You can flip your truck and then the only thing that happens really is that you have to call this little button

00:02:04 ◼   ► Which says press e to call emergency services?

00:02:06 ◼   ► But really all that happens is they tow you to the nearest town and you lose a bunch of time and you have to pay

00:02:11 ◼   ► A bunch of money in fines, but even then it's like, okay. Let's just you know start driving again

00:02:15 ◼   ► Hopefully you aren't late with your delivery. The truck is surely damaged beyond repair at that point though

00:02:20 ◼   ► You have to pay a bunch of repairs. It's just a bunch of money that you lose.

00:02:24 ◼   ► But you know, it's not about that, Myke. It's about driving

00:02:28 ◼   ► across virtual Germany. That's what the game is.

00:02:31 ◼   ► Because you've just put out a video very recently, which we're going to talk about a little later on,

00:02:35 ◼   ► I'm assuming that right now you're in post-video video game mode.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Yeah, normally I would be. And frankly,

00:02:43 ◼   ► I really should be because I am in no mental state

00:02:47 ◼   ► mental state to do anything, not even record this very podcast that we're doing right now.

00:02:52 ◼   ► I really shouldn't be doing this because for reasons we might get to,

00:02:57 ◼   ► I am really out of my mind at the moment. But unfortunately I have just a bunch of

00:03:02 ◼   ► administrative work that I really have to catch up on before a certain deadline.

00:03:07 ◼   ► And so I'm actually still doing regular work now. So I'm not in my normal glorious

00:03:13 ◼   ► I'm gonna take a few days off and just

00:03:15 ◼   ► You know play some games mode

00:03:18 ◼   ► I am still in working mode, but it's like a work light mode for the next couple days

00:03:22 ◼   ► But I would I would genuinely be I would genuinely much rather be driving a truck right now

00:03:26 ◼   ► Is that the game that you will be playing though? Because obviously this this time this video game time will come soon ish I guess

00:03:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I think Euro Truck Simulator is all that I would be mentally capable of right now. That's that's that's why that game is attracting to me

00:03:40 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, you know, Prison Architect or Rimworld or any of these various games.

00:03:46 ◼   ► It's like, you know what, they're all too complicated.

00:03:48 ◼   ► All I can handle right now is a truck.

00:03:50 ◼   ► That's all I can do.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Have you ever played Goat Simulator?

00:03:53 ◼   ► No, it looks really dumb.

00:03:55 ◼   ► It's, uh, well, okay.

00:03:58 ◼   ► It's as dumb as Euro Truck Simulator, Gray.

00:04:00 ◼   ► You know?

00:04:01 ◼   ► Euro Truck Simulator is not dumb, and I will not stand for you saying that it is dumb.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Okay.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Well, Goat Simulator, I've been playing this, right?

00:04:09 ◼   ► because I came to the realization I bought an Apple TV right and I bought the controller the Bluetooth controller and

00:04:14 ◼   ► Then realized that the Bluetooth controller can play games on my iPad

00:04:20 ◼   ► So I've been using I've been playing some games on my iPad without Bluetooth controller. One of them is goat simulator

00:04:26 ◼   ► Wait a second. Wait a second back up back up back up when you say the Bluetooth controller

00:04:30 ◼   ► You don't mean the Apple remote, right? You mean something else? No, I bought the one that they're promoting like it's like a gamepad

00:04:37 ◼   ► and it's called the Nimbus Steel or something like that.

00:04:40 ◼   ► So on the Apple, they have in all the press shots,

00:04:42 ◼   ► like here is a Bluetooth controller

00:04:44 ◼   ► that we recommend that you buy basically.

00:04:47 ◼   ► - I'm unaware of this.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Do you have a link?

00:04:50 ◼   ► I wanna see what it looks like.

00:04:51 ◼   ► - If you just go to, hang on, I'm bringing up,

00:04:56 ◼   ► like in the time it takes me to get the link,

00:04:58 ◼   ► like you could just go to apple.com and click TV.

00:05:02 ◼   ► - Searching for Nimbus controller, that's what I'm doing.

00:05:05 ◼   ► Nimbus Steel series.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Just give me a moment.

00:05:09 ◼   ► - Where am I, Myke?

00:05:10 ◼   ► Why isn't there just a link?

00:05:11 ◼   ► - Oh God.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Is this what I'm dealing with today?

00:05:15 ◼   ► I have like a baby gray that I'm taking care of.

00:05:18 ◼   ► - This is exactly what you're dealing with today.

00:05:20 ◼   ► - Right, okay, here you go.

00:05:23 ◼   ► This is the one.

00:05:24 ◼   ► - Where are you sending this?

00:05:25 ◼   ► Is this on Skype?

00:05:26 ◼   ► - I sent, do you want an iMessage?

00:05:27 ◼   ► - Is this an iMessage?

00:05:28 ◼   ► - Send an iMessage.

00:05:29 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, all right.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Okay, so that's what you, I was just wondering.

00:05:32 ◼   ► I happened to just moments before

00:05:34 ◼   ► we started recording the podcast,

00:05:35 ◼   ► I got a delivery of my Steam controller,

00:05:38 ◼   ► which I'm curious to try out,

00:05:39 ◼   ► but I haven't actually had a chance

00:05:40 ◼   ► to even open the box yet.

00:05:42 ◼   ► - That's interesting.

00:05:43 ◼   ► - I grew up in the console world

00:05:45 ◼   ► of Super Nintendos and Nintendos.

00:05:48 ◼   ► So those were the last controllers that I ever used.

00:05:51 ◼   ► And for me, the time that the N64 came around,

00:05:55 ◼   ► which was the first like 3D dual stick,

00:05:57 ◼   ► or actually single stick controller universe came by,

00:06:01 ◼   ► I never really played much N64,

00:06:02 ◼   ► so I never really had much experience

00:06:04 ◼   ► with these kind of stick controllers because by that point I transitioned to the PC as all superior players do

00:06:11 ◼   ► and I've been using a mice and keyboard for gaming for forever

00:06:14 ◼   ► but I did order the Steam controller because I was just kind of curious about how it works

00:06:17 ◼   ► but so you're telling me this thing that you got, you can connect it over Bluetooth to your iPad

00:06:22 ◼   ► and then just like set your iPad up on the stand and play some games

00:06:27 ◼   ► Yes

00:06:28 ◼   ► That's interesting

00:06:29 ◼   ► Yeah it makes it quite an interesting just like portable game machine

00:06:32 ◼   ► And more and more games are having this type of support because the developer has to build it into their game

00:06:38 ◼   ► Hmm, but it's happening more and more

00:06:41 ◼   ► And I yeah, I've been enjoying goat simulator because it's kind of mindless. It's just stupid, right?

00:06:49 ◼   ► you are a goat and you are running around and head-butting things and then things explode and

00:06:54 ◼   ► There are so many glitches in this game because it's basically the whole game is just built on a glitchy version of the Unreal Engine

00:07:01 ◼   ► Yeah, the impression that I have gotten from various people talking about it is that this is it's almost like

00:07:06 ◼   ► It's almost like the same phenomenon as flappy bird where the game is just terrible, but that's part of the fun

00:07:11 ◼   ► Yeah, like it's just awful

00:07:13 ◼   ► They kind of built a physics engine put a goat in it and like shipped it

00:07:17 ◼   ► But they really kind of embrace that right and the company has a lot of fun with it

00:07:23 ◼   ► So I like I like they're kind of the way that they go about things

00:07:25 ◼   ► And so I played a bit of Goat Simulator and it's just become a nice way for me to spend like 10 minutes

00:07:32 ◼   ► just running around as the goat and like headbutt and stuff and trying to find little

00:07:37 ◼   ► Because there's little goals and objectives that you can that you can do and then they unlock different types of goats that you can play

00:07:44 ◼   ► As I okay, here we go. Here's here's where the mechanics comes in. Okay. Yeah, so I have spider goat right who can stick to walls

00:07:51 ◼   ► For example as you would expect I don't know what that gets me

00:07:55 ◼   ► but it just happens like no I have it.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Or there's like fancy goat which is a penguin.

00:08:00 ◼   ► A penguin is not a fancy goat.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Well but he's wearing a tuxedo right?

00:08:04 ◼   ► He's not actually but it's a penguin right?

00:08:06 ◼   ► He's wearing a tuxedo.

00:08:07 ◼   ► But it's a fancy penguin.

00:08:09 ◼   ► I really want you to try Goat Simulator.

00:08:11 ◼   ► I would just love to know if your brain could kind of reconcile with this game.

00:08:17 ◼   ► I've seen some reviews of this and I've heard some people talk about it.

00:08:20 ◼   ► This does not, this holds no attraction for me but I know maybe

00:08:24 ◼   ► Maybe for your benefit I will give it a try later on and see if Goat Simulator is entertaining.

00:08:31 ◼   ► But this seems to hold almost no attraction for me.

00:08:34 ◼   ► It might be an interesting game to test out with your Steam controller though.

00:08:38 ◼   ► I don't know, oh, I guess it's on Steam?

00:08:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:42 ◼   ► I gotta open that up. I haven't even touched it, didn't have time.

00:08:46 ◼   ► I don't know anybody that owns one of those. I'm interested that you bought that.

00:08:50 ◼   ► I got it totally as a curiosity.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I was interested and I figured actually by the shipping date would be around the time when in theory

00:08:59 ◼   ► I would be playing video games after the next video went up, but sadly that's not actually the case

00:09:04 ◼   ► So I just thought it would be something fun to try and in no small part

00:09:08 ◼   ► this is also just a curiosity that is related to

00:09:11 ◼   ► various RSI issues

00:09:14 ◼   ► Because I'm aware like oh if I'm always playing games on my computer and I also always work on my computer

00:09:19 ◼   ► It might be good to because as we've discussed on the show before

00:09:23 ◼   ► I like to rotate input devices just normally, even whenever I'm working.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Sometimes I use the trackpad, sometimes I use the pen, sometimes I use a regular mouse, sometimes I use a trackball.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And I thought, "Oh, okay, if I can, for the times that I do play games, rotate in an extra controller,

00:09:41 ◼   ► this might help even further." It's one more different way to send information to the computer.

00:09:47 ◼   ► So I'll be curious to see how it turns out. It might be terrible, but I think it's worth trying.

00:09:51 ◼   ► Yeah, if I ever play Steam games and need a controller, I actually connect my PlayStation 4 controller.

00:09:59 ◼   ► That's easy to do with the Mac, which is great.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Yeah, but this is because you're a console peasant and you have consoles all over the place.

00:10:06 ◼   ► It's funny how you say that when most major studios just ignore the PC now and just put out games that are incredibly buggy.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Isn't this the whole joke between the console peasant and PC master race? It's like a fake fight. It's not real.

00:10:18 ◼   ► It's not real. I don't think anybody's really into this. Everybody just loves to pretend.

00:10:22 ◼   ► Oh, there are some people that are super into it.

00:10:24 ◼   ► I mean, this is the thing. When a group gets large enough, there's always a crazy person who's not in on the joke.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And so there will be some people who take it seriously. But I don't know anybody who actually does take it seriously.

00:10:34 ◼   ► So you mentioning changing input devices has reminded me about the Wacom.

00:10:42 ◼   ► Because we spoke about this a long time ago, and I picked up a Wacom by your suggestion.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean you have a Wacom pen tablet?

00:10:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I have the Intuos, I'm gonna say?

00:10:52 ◼   ► One of those.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:10:54 ◼   ► Yeah, they have a million of them.

00:10:56 ◼   ► It's basically, it's a pretty simple one that I have.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes to the actual one that I own.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And I bought it and tried it out a little bit and then just put it to the side

00:11:06 ◼   ► because it wasn't as great as the MX Master.

00:11:09 ◼   ► But then that thing basically crippled me.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know if you've mentioned it much here, but I know on some of your other podcasts you have mentioned that

00:11:20 ◼   ► Your love for the MX Master was a very torrid but also very brief love affair

00:11:26 ◼   ► Because it seems to have totally crippled your hand. Yeah, I know what I did wrong

00:11:30 ◼   ► I set up the buttons in such a way that was fantastic, but the least ergonomic that any arrangement could ever be

00:11:39 ◼   ► I was using all of the buttons along the side

00:11:41 ◼   ► with my thumb and moving my wrist in peculiar angles

00:11:44 ◼   ► to switch desktops and stuff like that.

00:11:46 ◼   ► It was a disaster.

00:11:47 ◼   ► So the mouse I still maintain is fantastic,

00:11:50 ◼   ► but don't set it up in a stupid way like I did.

00:11:53 ◼   ► So it basically put my right hand out of commission.

00:11:56 ◼   ► And this was like three or four weeks ago,

00:11:58 ◼   ► and I'm currently getting a lot better with it

00:12:01 ◼   ► because I don't use my right hand so much anymore

00:12:03 ◼   ► for input because I'm left handed.

00:12:05 ◼   ► So I use a pen tablet with my left hand,

00:12:07 ◼   ► which is extremely beneficial for me

00:12:09 ◼   ► in this resting period.

00:12:11 ◼   ► So I've been using the Wake Arm for a long time now,

00:12:15 ◼   ► and I really like this way of navigating my computer.

00:12:20 ◼   ► You are totally right on this,

00:12:22 ◼   ► but it does take commitment that I wouldn't have made

00:12:26 ◼   ► unless I had to, and it was because I had to

00:12:28 ◼   ► that I made the commitment,

00:12:29 ◼   ► because it's very, very different,

00:12:31 ◼   ► and you have to really get used to the movement.

00:12:34 ◼   ► like trying to edit podcasts initially was a nightmare

00:12:37 ◼   ► because I would be moving,

00:12:39 ◼   ► it just wasn't as precise for me initially.

00:12:41 ◼   ► So I would be like moving audio files around incorrectly

00:12:43 ◼   ► and I'd like, I'd place them

00:12:45 ◼   ► and I'd take my hand off the tablet

00:12:46 ◼   ► and it moves just a millimeter.

00:12:48 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh, what are you doing?"

00:12:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:12:50 ◼   ► That exact gesture that you mentioned,

00:12:53 ◼   ► which is the placing and then letting go of something

00:12:57 ◼   ► is a thing that you have to learn

00:12:59 ◼   ► when you're using a pen tablet

00:13:01 ◼   ► as your primary computer interface.

00:13:03 ◼   ► I have no idea why this was never a problem

00:13:05 ◼   ► of any other input method, but for some reason,

00:13:08 ◼   ► with a pen, I just can't keep things

00:13:10 ◼   ► in the place that they're meant to be.

00:13:12 ◼   ► So I kind of, I use that, and I also use a magic trackpad

00:13:15 ◼   ► with my, like I keep it on the right,

00:13:17 ◼   ► and I mainly use that for just gestures,

00:13:18 ◼   ► like zooming in and out and panning around.

00:13:21 ◼   ► That's how I've been for a few weeks,

00:13:23 ◼   ► and I'm thinking about maybe going back to a mouse

00:13:26 ◼   ► at some point, like putting a mouse back into my rotation,

00:13:28 ◼   ► but I'm probably gonna go for a gaming mouse

00:13:33 ◼   ► the suggestion of _DavidSmith. I was talking to him about this and he was like

00:13:37 ◼   ► if you want buttons on a mouse you should look at a gaming mouse because

00:13:40 ◼   ► the buttons are like super easy to press they're built that way mm-hmm so I might

00:13:44 ◼   ► look at that and they have different button configurations which might be

00:13:47 ◼   ► better for my hand placement and stuff like that so I'm gonna bring that back

00:13:51 ◼   ► in at a certain point but I think it was your suggestion was just like you got

00:13:55 ◼   ► away at least like six weeks for the damage to go away if it's ever gonna go

00:13:58 ◼   ► away. Yeah it takes it takes a while to recover from a time when you feel like

00:14:03 ◼   ► like "Ooh, you've had some really bad RSI."

00:14:06 ◼   ► I will still very strongly recommend to people out there

00:14:10 ◼   ► that if you have RSI that is related to a mouse,

00:14:14 ◼   ► I really recommend giving the pen tablet as input method

00:14:19 ◼   ► a real try, like a try for quite a while.

00:14:23 ◼   ► And while I do rotate input devices,

00:14:25 ◼   ► I would say my default is almost always the pen tablet.

00:14:28 ◼   ► I probably use the pen tablet for 60% of all work

00:14:32 ◼   ► that I do on the computer and then just sometimes I switch out to other things.

00:14:35 ◼   ► I really do think that a pen is a very natural tool to use.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Like your hand naturally wants to close around a pen. Uh, you know,

00:14:45 ◼   ► you're able to,

00:14:46 ◼   ► you're able to push down on a surface in a way without having to put your hand

00:14:51 ◼   ► in an awkward position. I really, I really like it a lot.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And I have found it extraordinarily beneficial to use a pen tablet.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Yeah. That was an excellent suggestion from you. And also, you know,

00:15:01 ◼   ► planting the seed that you're not gonna like this initially was very useful.

00:15:06 ◼   ► Yeah you have to know that you will almost certainly hate it for the first week and

00:15:11 ◼   ► as I mentioned last time that you have to put it in this tracking the screen

00:15:15 ◼   ► mode like you won't like it but when you use it for a little while then

00:15:19 ◼   ► you'll see oh okay I can I can get the hang of this quite easily like as we are

00:15:22 ◼   ► recording right now like I did all the setting up using a pen tablet so that's

00:15:25 ◼   ► always my my default input device.

00:15:29 ◼   ► And I'll tell you, if you use one of these in your daily work, you'll feel more like more of a creative professional person.

00:15:35 ◼   ► There's just something about seeing somebody use a pen tablet with a computer. Be like "they're making stuff man, look at that guy."

00:15:41 ◼   ► Yeah, look at that guy playing prison architect with his pen tablet.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Just don't look at the screen.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Yeah, don't look at the screen. Don't look at the screen. I'm not drawing roads in city skylines.

00:15:52 ◼   ► That's not that's not what I'm doing right now. I'm an artiste.

00:15:54 ◼   ► It's going back to video games.

00:15:59 ◼   ► Oh yeah, okay.

00:16:00 ◼   ► I'm playing another game right now that I like very much that I think you would like,

00:16:03 ◼   ► although I don't know if it's available for your system, which is Star Wars Battlefront.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Oh man, Myke. Myke. Myke.

00:16:11 ◼   ► I have never seen a game that has more made me think, you know what?

00:16:16 ◼   ► I should go and buy a TV and a console just to play this one game.

00:16:22 ◼   ► You should do it.

00:16:23 ◼   ► It's like, I don't know. I own none of the equipment necessary.

00:16:29 ◼   ► for Star Wars Battlefront, but everything I have ever seen about it is like this thing looks

00:16:33 ◼   ► amazing. It's absolutely amazing and it looks so good. This past summer when I was visiting

00:16:41 ◼   ► my parents, I mean my parents are not into video games at all really. I mean like in this classic

00:16:47 ◼   ► way. It's actually just really that's not entirely true like my mom does play, she does get into some

00:16:51 ◼   ► video games but nothing like first person shooter games. She will bank hundreds and hundreds of

00:16:58 ◼   ► hours into Settlers of Catan on the iPad but like she's not she's not running

00:17:03 ◼   ► around on on an ice planet shooting people right but I showed my parents one

00:17:08 ◼   ► of the intro trailers to Star Wars Battlefront and even then they were

00:17:11 ◼   ► like that looks amazing it's really good it's really good I mean there's no story

00:17:18 ◼   ► to it at all yeah maybe it's missing I mean it's nice to have some of that sort

00:17:23 ◼   ► of stuff sometimes and so it's kind of broken down into multiplayer and like

00:17:27 ◼   ► local play which is really good because you can have like if you suck at

00:17:31 ◼   ► multiplayer games which I mostly do you can have basically the entire experience

00:17:36 ◼   ► but just playing with AI and you know you can run around on all the different

00:17:40 ◼   ► planets you can command different ships and fly them around in dogfighting mode

00:17:44 ◼   ► which I love you can play as Luke and Darth Vader and yeah it's whatever

00:17:50 ◼   ► Darth Vader yes I mean obviously obviously the joy in these games is

00:17:55 ◼   ► is crushing the rebellion. That's where the pleasure is derived from these kinds of things.

00:17:59 ◼   ► Okay. Right? It's like the Star Wars games in the past, you know, they're like,

00:18:04 ◼   ► "Oh, you can play as the Rebels." It's like, "Yeah, I mean, I guess playing as Rebels is sort of fun."

00:18:08 ◼   ► But actually, TIE Fighter is where the action was. Like, the number of hours

00:18:12 ◼   ► I sunk into some of those old TIE Fighter games was just enormous. It's like, "Yes, I need to

00:18:16 ◼   ► climb the ranks in the evil empire. This is delightful!"

00:18:19 ◼   ► In video games, it's always more fun to be the bad guy because you have to be the good guy in real life.

00:18:23 ◼   ► That's interesting. Okay, so in these types of games where you need to make decisions about like your character, like in an RPG type game,

00:18:31 ◼   ► do you go down the bad route?

00:18:33 ◼   ► Oh man, yeah, always.

00:18:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel guilty going down the bad route.

00:18:37 ◼   ► Okay, look, so I mean here's the thing.

00:18:39 ◼   ► I played World of Warcraft a while back, which is a game I put off playing for many many years because I thought I would be super into it.

00:18:46 ◼   ► And actually I just found it really boring.

00:18:48 ◼   ► I played like an hour of WoW once and then never came back.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I played through the Undead campaign in World of Warcraft.

00:18:55 ◼   ► As soon as their story campaign was over, I was like, "Oh, this is boring as anything."

00:18:58 ◼   ► I just want to ride around on my horse and look at all the scenery.

00:19:00 ◼   ► But that's not really an option.

00:19:03 ◼   ► But anyway, whenever in a video game you're given the choice of picking someone,

00:19:08 ◼   ► it's like, "Okay, well obviously I'm going to be an Undead warlock."

00:19:11 ◼   ► Right? Like, that's what I'm going to do because in real life, that's not what I am.

00:19:15 ◼   ► And I always felt like, I'm suspicious of the people who choose the good guys.

00:19:19 ◼   ► good guys. Like who are the people who are like "oh I'm going to I'm going to

00:19:22 ◼   ► play a video game and I'm going to be just generic normal good person human

00:19:27 ◼   ► McNormal dude" right? I just I always find that suspicious because I feel like if I

00:19:32 ◼   ► always pick the villains because of course in real life you have to be a

00:19:35 ◼   ► good person what are you? If you're picking the good people in a video game

00:19:39 ◼   ► is it because you're secretly a psychopath? That's my suspicion.

00:19:43 ◼   ► Yes.

00:19:45 ◼   ► See? Suspicion confirmed.

00:19:47 ◼   ► I'm very nasty in real life, so I have to play the nice guy on the video games to balance that all out, you know.

00:19:53 ◼   ► Yeah, like isn't the whole point of the video game to be, you know, just doing stuff that you wouldn't normally do?

00:19:58 ◼   ► Like I'm not actually a trucker, so that's why I would play Euro Truck Simulator.

00:20:02 ◼   ► I don't imagine that there are many actual long-haul truckers who get home from their busy day of long-haul trucking and boot up Euro Truck Simulator.

00:20:09 ◼   ► I don't think there are many people who do that.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Yeah, there was a couple of people in the Reddit when we originally spoke about this that do drive for a living and said that this game was like hell to them.

00:20:17 ◼   ► - Naturally. - Yeah, exactly. It's like I would not play

00:20:20 ◼   ► YouTube Simulator 5000 as a video game, right? Like that would not be fun for me.

00:20:25 ◼   ► I feel like I play that every time I upload a video.

00:20:28 ◼   ► It throws different challenges to me every single time.

00:20:31 ◼   ► I would say though that being with a lot of video games that I play,

00:20:35 ◼   ► I'm already doing something that's not my life, so I can still play the good guy.

00:20:39 ◼   ► Like I'm not actually commanding a space fleet, but I can still play the good guy.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. I still feel like people who play the heroic underdogs...

00:20:49 ◼   ► I feel like they have a...

00:20:52 ◼   ► A dark secret.

00:20:53 ◼   ► No, no, it's like if they don't have a dark secret,

00:20:57 ◼   ► it's like they have an overly idealized view of themselves.

00:21:02 ◼   ► That's my feeling on this.

00:21:03 ◼   ► Man, I cannot wait to see what the feedback will look like for that statement.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Come on, playing the villain is so much more fun.

00:21:13 ◼   ► It's it's it's way more fun. It's like if I was a movie actor

00:21:16 ◼   ► What do you want to do you want to play the hero or you want to play the villain?

00:21:20 ◼   ► No, obviously you want to play the villain as the always the better role. You would only be cast in villainous roles anyway

00:21:25 ◼   ► Because because of your voice. I

00:21:28 ◼   ► Don't think I have a villainous voice. You do have a villainous voice. It's just deep and booming

00:21:33 ◼   ► Yeah, but it could be the voice of God Myke. All right

00:21:37 ◼   ► Someone's had a lot of coffee today

00:21:42 ◼   ► Just say for me like something like

00:21:44 ◼   ► No, I'm not gonna do this. I'm not your monkey. Okay, I'm gonna try and make you

00:21:49 ◼   ► Inadvertently say something evil during today's episode. Okay, you can try to do that

00:21:54 ◼   ► One of the reasons that we originally spoke about Eurotruck Simulator was because you do it when

00:21:59 ◼   ► At times to relax or like when you're editing and stuff like that, right? Mm-hmm

00:22:03 ◼   ► So something that I do which isn't video game related is adult coloring. Are you familiar with the trend of adult coloring?

00:22:10 ◼   ► No, so this is the thing that has begun now where there are coloring books made for adults. Oh

00:22:17 ◼   ► Yeah, yep, and it is something that I do

00:22:20 ◼   ► When I edit this show mainly I get my coloring book

00:22:24 ◼   ► Do you mean like adults like you like this is adults entertainment coloring books. Is that what you know?

00:22:30 ◼   ► It's not not like sorted

00:22:31 ◼   ► This is the problem with the trend is called like adult coloring which makes it sound like it's like

00:22:36 ◼   ► Triple X coloring, but it's not right. It's I'm coloring in pictures of flowers, basically

00:22:41 ◼   ► But the name of it is all kind of wrong on the pan addict week

00:22:46 ◼   ► We now refer to it as grown-up coloring, which is maybe a little bit better

00:22:49 ◼   ► But there's no kind of easy way to say this, but I have a book called see this doesn't help. It's called secret garden

00:22:56 ◼   ► Yeah, you keep you keep digging just digging like well, yeah

00:23:02 ◼   ► I'm gonna put some pictures in our show notes of some of the artwork that I have created whilst editing this show and it is an

00:23:07 ◼   ► Incredibly, but wait, you mean you mean you're coloring coloring. You're not drawing a thing. I mean, yeah, but I'm choosing the colors

00:23:14 ◼   ► Like I've got some pictures here, right? But if I do if I do a paint by number thing of

00:23:20 ◼   ► Starry night. I'm not going to say I have painted starry night

00:23:24 ◼   ► Why are you trying to take away my my achievements because this isn't an achievement

00:23:28 ◼   ► You've colored something. - Take a look at this Instagram picture.

00:23:30 ◼   ► You might enjoy it, right? You might get pleasure out of it, you might enjoy it, you might find it quite relaxing.

00:23:35 ◼   ► I will agree with all of those points. But it's not an achievement. Like I'm not going to give you a trophy for completing a coloring book.

00:23:40 ◼   ► You should do. Take a look at my... Take a look at this Instagram picture.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Okay, where are you linking me to this thing?

00:23:46 ◼   ► It's in our show notes. It's in the document that is obviously in front of you right now.

00:23:49 ◼   ► What? Oh. Sorry, I got distracted by the Nimbus.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Yes. Did you buy one yet?

00:23:56 ◼   ► No.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Yeah, okay, so I'm looking at this picture

00:24:00 ◼   ► and I would think, "Oh wow, Myke drew

00:24:02 ◼   ► all of these hippie flowers," but you didn't draw them,

00:24:04 ◼   ► you colored them.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Yeah, but I chose the colors.

00:24:07 ◼   ► Okay, yeah.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Well anyway, this is something that I do

00:24:10 ◼   ► in these scenarios, and the reason

00:24:12 ◼   ► that I do this is because when I'm editing

00:24:14 ◼   ► Cortex, I have to be more

00:24:16 ◼   ► hands-on, right? Because I'm doing

00:24:18 ◼   ► the first edit, and we don't

00:24:20 ◼   ► do the 12 edits that you do to Hello Internet.

00:24:22 ◼   ► So I do the

00:24:24 ◼   ► first edit I don't do like any of the subsequent stuff so I'm going in and

00:24:28 ◼   ► being more frequent to change things so I put my coloring book in front of my

00:24:30 ◼   ► keyboard I do some coloring every time one of us says something that we need to

00:24:34 ◼   ► cut I pause it go in fix it and then go back to coloring again. I'm glad that you

00:24:40 ◼   ► have something to do while you edit like as we said before like this is this is

00:24:44 ◼   ► like I think I think this kind of thing when you're working with audio some

00:24:47 ◼   ► people definitely need like you need to doodle or you need to do something

00:24:50 ◼   ► because you'll go crazy.

00:24:51 ◼   ► And for me sometimes that's video games

00:24:54 ◼   ► and for you that's coloring.

00:24:57 ◼   ► I'm glad there are adult coloring books for you.

00:24:59 ◼   ► - 'Cause I know a lot of people that are,

00:25:02 ◼   ► this is a big trend right now,

00:25:03 ◼   ► but I know a lot of people that are doing this

00:25:05 ◼   ► is just a way to relax.

00:25:06 ◼   ► I'm telling you, next time you're in a bookshop, great.

00:25:08 ◼   ► - Listen, listen, listen, listen.

00:25:10 ◼   ► It's always with these things, it's a big trend.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Qualify those numbers for me.

00:25:14 ◼   ► Like what do you mean by big trend?

00:25:16 ◼   ► Like Harry Potter, is that what you mean?

00:25:18 ◼   ► - I'm gonna say yes.

00:25:19 ◼   ► If you go into any bookstore right now, you will see tables and tables of coloring books.

00:25:25 ◼   ► This is a big thing. This is a big thing.

00:25:27 ◼   ► I mean, it's a big thing in bookstores, but aren't bookstores on the way out?

00:25:31 ◼   ► I haven't been in a bookstore in years.

00:25:33 ◼   ► All right, supermarkets have them, and I know that for a fact.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Okay.

00:25:36 ◼   ► This is a thing, Gray. You can, you know...

00:25:39 ◼   ► I am not denying that it is a thing. I just, I am dubious of your words. Like, it's a big trend.

00:25:44 ◼   ► In bringing this up, what I never expected was that I was going to be convincing you to do this.

00:25:51 ◼   ► That was never even entered my mind.

00:25:54 ◼   ► I just wanted to let the listeners know that such a thing exists now,

00:25:57 ◼   ► and I recommend it as a calming activity that I think people should be looking to.

00:26:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I wasn't thinking that you were trying to convince me to do it either.

00:26:06 ◼   ► But I can definitely say that yeah, I can see that for many kinds of work,

00:26:10 ◼   ► this is a helpful thing to do while you are doing the work.

00:26:14 ◼   ► I can I can totally understand that.

00:26:15 ◼   ► So I just put down my coloring pens, seriously here they are.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Just don't want to put them down for just long enough to talk to you about igloo.

00:26:23 ◼   ► They are sponsoring this week's episode of Cortex.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Igloo makes the internet you'll actually like.

00:26:29 ◼   ► So many of us have used intranets, I used to use one every single day in my old corporate job.

00:26:34 ◼   ► As a way to get information and share stuff with everybody inside of your company.

00:26:38 ◼   ► But the problem with so many intranet products is that they feel like they were built a long long time ago

00:26:44 ◼   ► by people who didn't understand what the web was going to be like in 20 years because

00:26:48 ◼   ► obviously they couldn't see into the future. But we are here now in the future. The future

00:26:52 ◼   ► is now everybody. And this is igloo. Igloo is built from the ground up to fit in today's

00:26:59 ◼   ► modern internet world. You can access your igloo intranet from any device no matter how

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00:27:12 ◼   ► you need to get your work done like your task list, maybe document collaboration and sharing

00:27:18 ◼   ► with everybody. Maybe you want to just have a little microblog, you know like a kind of

00:27:22 ◼   ► Twitter type thing where you can update everybody on what the progress is of that current project

00:27:26 ◼   ► that you're working on, people can like it and comment it and that kind of stuff. It

00:27:30 ◼   ► really does work just like you would expect the internet to work today. You can customize

00:27:35 ◼   ► your igloo to look and feel exactly how you like and it will fit nicely within your company.

00:27:41 ◼   ► They also have something called group spaces which allows you to customize different areas

00:27:45 ◼   ► of your igloo and give access to different types of people.

00:27:48 ◼   ► So for example you can customize what the accounting team sees, you can customize what

00:27:51 ◼   ► the sales team sees just so they get the tools that they need and everything is done by a

00:27:56 ◼   ► real simple drag and drop widget editor.

00:27:58 ◼   ► They integrate with Box, Google Drive and Dropbox.

00:28:01 ◼   ► They put that all into their big easy to secure platform so it stops people from taking company

00:28:05 ◼   ► documents and putting them in their own accounts and stuff like that because that can be a

00:28:08 ◼   ► bit of a security risk.

00:28:09 ◼   ► so you can integrate it all within igloo so people can use the apps and services they like

00:28:14 ◼   ► keeping you nice and secure. They also have their own document collaboration engine as well which

00:28:19 ◼   ► has red receipts. This can be super useful for tracking that critical information that's been

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00:28:28 ◼   ► internet you hate. Go and sign up for igloo right now and you can try it for free for any team of

00:28:33 ◼   ► up to 10 people for as long as you like. Go to igloosoftware.com/cortex. Thank you so

00:28:39 ◼   ► much to igloo for their support of this show and relay FM. Now I'm going to get back to

00:28:43 ◼   ► doing my coloring and editing what you're about to hear.

00:28:46 ◼   ► I've totally lost the show notes. I'm so incompetent today.

00:28:49 ◼   ► It tells me that you're in the document. So it's there somewhere.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Okay. Uh, okay. I found it. I found it again. There we go. Let me pull this up.

00:28:56 ◼   ► You're doing well by the way.

00:28:57 ◼   ► I am not. I am. I am barely holding together my brain today.

00:29:02 ◼   ► [LAUGHS]

00:29:05 ◼   ► It's a rough day, Myke.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I know, mate.

00:29:07 ◼   ► I know.

00:29:07 ◼   ► [LAUGHS]

00:29:09 ◼   ► All right.

00:29:10 ◼   ► So we're looking at something in the follow-up here.

00:29:12 ◼   ► We're going back to the Podcast Universe again.

00:29:15 ◼   ► And because we have found--

00:29:17 ◼   ► a map has come across my path by somebody called EJ, who has created--

00:29:24 ◼   ► I think this is definitely the most complete and best looking

00:29:28 ◼   ► of the podcast universe maps that I have seen.

00:29:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is quite astounding.

00:29:35 ◼   ► So this is on the muffin.works website,

00:29:39 ◼   ► which I like as a URL.

00:29:40 ◼   ► We'll put the link in the show notes.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Sometimes, I don't know why, that just works together.

00:29:45 ◼   ► Like muffin.works, oh yeah, that sounds reasonable.

00:29:47 ◼   ► I can believe in that as a website.

00:29:49 ◼   ► But yeah, they have put together this map,

00:29:54 ◼   ► as we discussed on earlier episodes,

00:29:55 ◼   ► trying to link together all of the various pieces

00:29:58 ◼   ► of the podcast universe.

00:29:59 ◼   ► And this is quite amazing because, I mean, I don't know,

00:30:04 ◼   ► they must, I mean, how many podcasts do you think

00:30:07 ◼   ► are on here?

00:30:08 ◼   ► 200 podcasts?

00:30:09 ◼   ► I don't know. - Yeah, there's a good

00:30:10 ◼   ► few hundred in here.

00:30:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's say it's a couple hundred that are listed.

00:30:13 ◼   ► And the problem with designing something like this

00:30:17 ◼   ► is it just gets so visually complex so fast

00:30:21 ◼   ► that it just becomes overwhelming

00:30:22 ◼   ► and it looks like a big mess.

00:30:23 ◼   ► - The information density can go wrong incredibly fast.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very very hard to show a lot of information in a way that is possible to take in.

00:30:33 ◼   ► But what I like that this person has done is they have this gigantic map.

00:30:38 ◼   ► You really do need to click on the link in the show notes, people. It's quite impressive.

00:30:41 ◼   ► But they have subdivided it so that in the podcast universe, they have color-coded the various galaxies that exist.

00:30:50 ◼   ► And so you can go around and it's like, "Oh, here's the maximum fun network, and it's in purple and it's all on the bottom."

00:30:56 ◼   ► Or you can go over to the other side and there's the NPR universe, right?

00:31:01 ◼   ► And that's colored in a different one. So you can get a sense of

00:31:03 ◼   ► very easily visually like which podcasts are related to each other

00:31:08 ◼   ► and still track the individual connections across the map

00:31:12 ◼   ► to get from, you know, like, to get from Radiotopia to like The Incomparable

00:31:18 ◼   ► and then to the Myke Hurley universe and Relay.

00:31:22 ◼   ► It's really well done. It's quite impressive.

00:31:25 ◼   ► I don't know how long it must have taken, but it must have been forever.

00:31:29 ◼   ► And the little detail that I quite like is that right on the edge of the map,

00:31:33 ◼   ► just peeking in, peeking in from the side, there is the YouTube universe.

00:31:39 ◼   ► And so through me basically, and through Hank and John Green, there's like this little connection

00:31:46 ◼   ► going into the YouTube universe. We can go from Myke Hurley, right, to CGP Grey, to Brady Haran.

00:31:53 ◼   ► And now someone could make a whole other thing that just maps out all of the various connections in the YouTube universe

00:32:00 ◼   ► So it's extraordinarily well done. I've got to give this person a lot of credit for this. Yeah, it's

00:32:05 ◼   ► The idea of the color coding is what really benefits this over any other

00:32:11 ◼   ► The any other example that I've seen yeah, take out the colors and this would be a mess

00:32:16 ◼   ► It would be impossible to follow. Yeah, it was really it was a really smart thing to do

00:32:21 ◼   ► Yeah, quite like it. Big thumbs up, big thumbs up. Yeah, now I just need to start

00:32:26 ◼   ► I need to start mapping the whole of the YouTube universe as well

00:32:28 ◼   ► There's enough youtubers who do podcasts now that there are enough connection points here

00:32:31 ◼   ► Yeah, eventually we'll just we'll just connect up the whole world of media

00:32:36 ◼   ► You know YouTube universe can connect into the TV universe and then it's that it's we have six degrees of Myke

00:32:41 ◼   ► Can make connections with six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Yeah, I wonder how many degrees there are between me and Kevin Bacon

00:32:49 ◼   ► I guess six right? Yeah, it's almost certainly gonna be less than six. Someone will figure it out

00:32:53 ◼   ► Do you remember last time I was talking about the applesauce and I mentioned to you that they have money in the in the tables

00:33:00 ◼   ► And you'd laughed it off. Yeah. Yeah, that's not real

00:33:03 ◼   ► An app an example employee by the name of Duff in the reddit confirm this. Oh

00:33:08 ◼   ► Yeah, yep, and then somebody I don't have this in the show notes

00:33:12 ◼   ► Maybe I can try and find it

00:33:14 ◼   ► Somebody sent me a picture of that they took of somebody where they were taking money out of the table

00:33:18 ◼   ► Okay, so I was gonna ask, you have photographic proof that there's money in those tables?

00:33:23 ◼   ► Somewhere. I'm gonna have to try and find it now, but somebody did send me that.

00:33:27 ◼   ► I'm quite surprised.

00:33:28 ◼   ► You're gonna have to just trust me, Gray. Do you trust me?

00:33:31 ◼   ► I will trust you that you saw a picture of someone taking money out at the Apple table.

00:33:35 ◼   ► Ah, you find these ways to phrase things.

00:33:38 ◼   ► What's wrong with my phrasing there?

00:33:40 ◼   ► I trust that you saw it. Not that I trust that it actually happened or that it's true.

00:33:46 ◼   ► I trust that your eyes came upon this.

00:33:49 ◼   ► But what else am I supposed to say?

00:33:51 ◼   ► Say "I believe you, Myke. That it's true."

00:33:54 ◼   ► But that... no, that's a different statement.

00:33:57 ◼   ► I know, but that's what I want you to say.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Like, whether you say that or not is one thing.

00:34:01 ◼   ► That's what I want.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Right. Okay. Well, we don't always get what we want.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Well, now I'm searching the Reddit.

00:34:07 ◼   ► Found it! Found it!

00:34:09 ◼   ► Ha ha! Ha ha!

00:34:11 ◼   ► There you go. Now it's in the show notes.

00:34:13 ◼   ► The listeners know this already.

00:34:15 ◼   ► Do you see?

00:34:16 ◼   ► Well, there's no money in this picture, but there is...

00:34:19 ◼   ► Oh, there is money.

00:34:21 ◼   ► There's a cash register thing that's popping out of it.

00:34:23 ◼   ► There's got to be money in there, yeah.

00:34:25 ◼   ► See? I told you that I'd seen this.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Huh. Maybe next time I go into the Apple store,

00:34:29 ◼   ► I will try to pay something in cash

00:34:31 ◼   ► just to see if I can get them to pop open one of those drawers.

00:34:34 ◼   ► And Duff told me that apparently it's,

00:34:37 ◼   ► you know the little terminals that they have?

00:34:38 ◼   ► They have these little chips in them or something,

00:34:40 ◼   ► and you can wave, they wave them under and the tables open.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I've definitely seen them do that for the Apple watches,

00:34:45 ◼   ► where they have to open them up with the terminals.

00:34:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it's the same thing

00:34:48 ◼   ► to get the cache to come out too.

00:34:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, so if you're planning your Apple Store heist,

00:34:53 ◼   ► one of the key components here

00:34:54 ◼   ► is you need to get your hands

00:34:55 ◼   ► on one of their little iPod terminals

00:34:58 ◼   ► so that you can open up all the tables.

00:34:59 ◼   ► - At this point, it really does sound like

00:35:00 ◼   ► we're preparing for something like that.

00:35:02 ◼   ► Oceans too.

00:35:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:35:05 ◼   ► Me and you, man.

00:35:06 ◼   ► We're going for those Apple Pencils.

00:35:08 ◼   ► There's nothing they can do about it.

00:35:09 ◼   ► We know they're in there.

00:35:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'll sell them on eBay and make a fortune.

00:35:12 ◼   ► - That's the bounty.

00:35:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:15 ◼   ► A couple of weeks ago, on one of our excursions in London, I took you to a hipster coffee

00:35:21 ◼   ► place.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Oh, so hipster.

00:35:23 ◼   ► So hipster.

00:35:24 ◼   ► It is one of the most hipster coffee places that I've ever been to, which says a lot.

00:35:27 ◼   ► I think it does, because I'm not even sure that you're able to perceive hipsterness in

00:35:31 ◼   ► the way that other people do.

00:35:33 ◼   ► You know, it's like you're a fish swimming in the water.

00:35:35 ◼   ► Like, what do you mean?

00:35:36 ◼   ► Where's the water?

00:35:37 ◼   ► I'm too far in now.

00:35:38 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:35:39 ◼   ► So I took you to this place.

00:35:41 ◼   ► It's like all white inside with just black furniture and things are written on a chalkboard and that kind of thing

00:35:46 ◼   ► And I asked you what you wanted to drink. I got a latte for you and you're not a latte drinker, are you?

00:35:50 ◼   ► I am NOT a latte drinker so much anymore, but that's it's not entirely correct to say that I won't drink lattes

00:35:57 ◼   ► But I bought you a latte and we sat and drank the latte and it came in a really tiny cup as these things do

00:36:03 ◼   ► Because the coffee is always really really strong. Mm-hmm, and I am interested in what you thought of this

00:36:09 ◼   ► Experience and this location this place that I took you to

00:36:11 ◼   ► Yeah, well well this just happened to work out because

00:36:17 ◼   ► We were meeting up briefly and also that was the day that I very briefly met Federico Vitici with whom you do several other

00:36:26 ◼   ► podcasts on the relay FM Network

00:36:28 ◼   ► And so we needed to meet up someplace

00:36:31 ◼   ► Beforehand before meeting him on some special business that he was in London for and yeah, so you took me to this place

00:36:37 ◼   ► You were trying to direct me there and you told me its ridiculous hipster name and as I rolled my eyes as I received the text

00:36:43 ◼   ► Message like of course, of course. This place has this name

00:36:46 ◼   ► That's just so pretentious. I can hardly believe it. But anyway, yeah

00:36:50 ◼   ► It's part of the fun you feel like you're trying to convince me to drink better coffee

00:36:56 ◼   ► but

00:36:57 ◼   ► My take on this is for many many years. I tried to avoid

00:37:01 ◼   ► Really understanding what better coffee was because my feeling was coffee is a tool in my life

00:37:07 ◼   ► And I really don't want to go down the road of being one of these people who starts getting really picky about their coffee.

00:37:12 ◼   ► No, you see? This is why I don't buy that.

00:37:15 ◼   ► If you consider it a tool, why would you not want the best tool?

00:37:19 ◼   ► You do that in many other things in your life, you pick the best thing.

00:37:23 ◼   ► We've had this conversation, this exact conversation, about spending the extra money to get the right thing, the best thing.

00:37:30 ◼   ► So why would you not go for the best coffee, Gray?

00:37:32 ◼   ► Because there are many situations where, you know what, I don't want to have to hunt down some local hipster place to get my coffee.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Like, I just want to be able to get coffee that is acceptable and the same every time.

00:37:43 ◼   ► - Like, that is the value. - But you still have that.

00:37:45 ◼   ► Right, so I still go to Starbucks sometimes for that exact reason.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Right, but if my tastes were such so that I was not able to perceive the difference between Starbucks coffee and other coffees,

00:37:55 ◼   ► like, "Oh, this is even better. This is a blindfold I'm happy to willingly wear."

00:38:00 ◼   ► But all of this started unraveling for me maybe a year ago

00:38:06 ◼   ► when my wife and I took a trip up to York

00:38:09 ◼   ► and we went to this fancy famous restaurant in the center of York

00:38:13 ◼   ► and I had Blue Mountain Thunder coffee

00:38:19 ◼   ► and that was one of the first times I was like, "Oh, right, this coffee is so good

00:38:23 ◼   ► that I can obviously taste the difference between this and just regular coffee."

00:38:27 ◼   ► What is Blue Mountain Thunder coffee?

00:38:29 ◼   ► I'm not saying that right. Is it just blue thunder?

00:38:31 ◼   ► Blue ridge mount? No.

00:38:33 ◼   ► No no no.

00:38:35 ◼   ► Or is it mountain thunder?

00:38:37 ◼   ► It's the coffee that I smuggled many many bags of

00:38:41 ◼   ► back from America.

00:38:44 ◼   ► Yeah it's just called mountain thunder.

00:38:46 ◼   ► This is the one that you had that whole separate suitcase full of coffee.

00:38:49 ◼   ► Yeah yeah. Had a whole suitcase full of coffee.

00:38:51 ◼   ► I was genuinely afraid that drug sniffing dogs were gonna pull aside

00:38:54 ◼   ► and I was gonna have some awkward conversations.

00:38:56 ◼   ► I'm like, why do you have 200 pounds worth of coffee in your bag?

00:38:59 ◼   ► It's like, I swear to God, it's just for my wife.

00:39:01 ◼   ► That's Hawaiian stuff, right?

00:39:03 ◼   ► Yes, it's Hawaiian stuff.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:05 ◼   ► And it's so much obviously better than other coffee.

00:39:08 ◼   ► But since I was having that, I was like, oh, okay.

00:39:11 ◼   ► And then we went back again and I had another one that's from this Jamaican coffee place, which is also very well known.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, these coffees obviously taste better.

00:39:19 ◼   ► I can understand the difference now.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Oh great, now this whole world of not being able to appreciate better coffee that I have intentionally constructed for myself is unraveling

00:39:28 ◼   ► And so that this has been the story of my life over the past year and it has been this thing where it's like, okay

00:39:32 ◼   ► Well, what coffee do my wife and I make in the house? Like what coffee beans do we have?

00:39:36 ◼   ► It never used to be a problem. But now now that I can taste the difference it's like oh great now

00:39:41 ◼   ► This is a problem every time about oh

00:39:42 ◼   ► Sometimes the coffee isn't as good as other times and I never used to know and I didn't I didn't want to know but

00:39:48 ◼   ► This is where I am now

00:39:50 ◼   ► But if you're drinking the coffee every day, it makes everything a little bit better.

00:39:54 ◼   ► But I was fine before. I was fine before I knew.

00:39:57 ◼   ► And now sometimes it's like, "Oh, this coffee is really disappointing."

00:40:01 ◼   ► And suddenly I'm like a coffee snob and I never wanted to be here.

00:40:04 ◼   ► You know, I wanted to be like a man of the people with my coffee.

00:40:08 ◼   ► I do not want to be a coffee snob. You can't always control these things.

00:40:11 ◼   ► So what did you think of the hipster coffee then?

00:40:13 ◼   ► It's good. Like it's obviously way better than a latte at Starbucks.

00:40:17 ◼   ► I'm not making the argument that it isn't and as you well know, Mr. Ooh, how did you like it?

00:40:27 ◼   ► You know that I've been back there several times.

00:40:29 ◼   ► Several times! I only know of one time.

00:40:31 ◼   ► I was actually just there yesterday.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Yesterday! Wow, look at that.

00:40:35 ◼   ► Well, lucky for you, this happens to be in a location which is very convenient for me that I'm always passing by it anyway.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Great, it's lucky for you.

00:40:42 ◼   ► I don't know if it is, but I was there yesterday and of course I wanted to pay and this, you know,

00:40:47 ◼   ► just like I would expect at one of these hipster places, it's like I just want to pay for my coffee, but ahead of me

00:40:52 ◼   ► the woman behind the counter is talking to the woman in front of me for like 10 minutes about the various brews

00:40:59 ◼   ► and how they grind the beans and all the rest of it, and it's like Jesus, it's like I'm in some episode of Portlandia here

00:41:04 ◼   ► where it's like can I just pay for the coffee please? But no, like you have to talk about how the farmers were feeling

00:41:11 ◼   ► when they were pulling these beans off of the trees.

00:41:14 ◼   ► It's like, "Ahh! So frustrating."

00:41:16 ◼   ► If you follow the potential trend lines in six months, that'll be you.

00:41:18 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:41:20 ◼   ► No, this is exactly it.

00:41:22 ◼   ► Like, I don't want to be this guy.

00:41:23 ◼   ► I really don't want to be this guy.

00:41:24 ◼   ► So I finally got you to look at coffee in this way.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I do like the fancy coffee.

00:41:29 ◼   ► You know, but the coffee is a tool, Myke.

00:41:31 ◼   ► I just want to be able to drink it without having to constantly think of like,

00:41:34 ◼   ► "Mmm, could this coffee be better?"

00:41:37 ◼   ► I don't want to have to think that.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Small victories, Gray.

00:41:40 ◼   ► No, this is a small defeat. My life is worse now than it was before.

00:41:43 ◼   ► No way. You're looking at it from the wrong perspective.

00:41:47 ◼   ► You don't understand how much coffee I drink.

00:41:48 ◼   ► That's a good point.

00:41:49 ◼   ► You have no idea. Like, this is a slow, non-working day for me, and I'm already on my fourth cup of coffee.

00:41:55 ◼   ► Whoa! Wow! But you're drinking the good stuff at home, though.

00:42:00 ◼   ► My wife does all the coffee blending at prep. I actually have no idea what comes through the house anymore.

00:42:05 ◼   ► I don't even know what the situation is.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I have some other good home coffee recommendations I can make to you at some point.

00:42:11 ◼   ► You're gonna require that I use some fancy equipment. I don't want any of this.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Use an AeroPress, man.

00:42:15 ◼   ► No, oh yeah, everybody, "Oh, use an AeroPress, it's so simple!"

00:42:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I've seen those things. It just explodes everywhere with grinds.

00:42:23 ◼   ► No, it's not as simple as everybody likes to pretend it is.

00:42:25 ◼   ► That's only ever happened to me once.

00:42:27 ◼   ► I mean, I did end up with burning hot coffee grinds on my face.

00:42:30 ◼   ► And all over the kitchen walls.

00:42:35 ◼   ► But it only happened one time.

00:42:37 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's also the AeroPress. It's like this tiny little thing. It's like, no, you don't understand.

00:42:41 ◼   ► I'm making drip coffee by the pot at home, and I'm drinking pots of coffee.

00:42:45 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the thing. It makes me one coffee at a time.

00:42:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't... I can't live like that, Myke. It's just awful.

00:42:51 ◼   ► I used to drink instant coffee for years, and I resisted the move to even filter coffee.

00:42:57 ◼   ► So did I. But like, I'm just gonna remind you, you know, you literacy is a tool. Get the best you can get.

00:43:02 ◼   ► All this good coffee has more... has more caffeine in it.

00:43:06 ◼   ► You have to think of best in a holistic sense here, Myke.

00:43:08 ◼   ► Best includes time for preparation.

00:43:11 ◼   ► It includes many, many things.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Alright? It doesn't just mean like, "Oh, is this the best tasting coffee in the world?"

00:43:17 ◼   ► That is not how you measure a tool.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Like, best involves more than just one thing.

00:43:22 ◼   ► And for me, best is...

00:43:24 ◼   ► also has to do with consistency, right?

00:43:27 ◼   ► And availability and ease of preparation

00:43:29 ◼   ► and not having to think about it in this.

00:43:31 ◼   ► This is the holistic view of best.

00:43:34 ◼   ► You can't argue with that.

00:43:36 ◼   ► I can. But not well. It doesn't taste as nice.

00:43:43 ◼   ► Hello listeners. This is future CGP Grey recording from an undisclosed location. No, it's not

00:43:50 ◼   ► a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, at least not yet anyway, but it is my own little version

00:43:55 ◼   ► of that. I ended up deciding to take a little break at the last minute, actually the very

00:44:00 ◼   ► day after Myke and I recorded that show and I have been elsewhere. It's very much an offline

00:44:05 ◼   ► vacation and so one of the things I have

00:44:07 ◼   ► been doing is reading books. And I've

00:44:09 ◼   ► been reading a book called Essentialism.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Oh, this is the audible ad in case you

00:44:14 ◼   ► hadn't guessed already.

00:44:15 ◼   ► It's a book that is very relevant to the

00:44:18 ◼   ► conversation on this episode and on the

00:44:20 ◼   ► last episode about dialing down and

00:44:23 ◼   ► narrowing your focus on just a few

00:44:26 ◼   ► projects. If these conversations on

00:44:29 ◼   ► Cortex have resonated with you, you are

00:44:33 ◼   ► going to want to check out Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, written and read

00:44:40 ◼   ► by Greg McKeown. I think it's a book that many Cortex listeners could get something

00:44:45 ◼   ► valuable out of. So if you want to listen to that book, you're going to go to audible.com/cortex

00:44:52 ◼   ► and get a free 30-day trial membership. If Essentialism isn't up your alley, don't worry,

00:44:59 ◼   ► Audible has more than 180,000 audio programs for you to listen to.

00:45:05 ◼   ► That's a lot of books.

00:45:06 ◼   ► There's going to be something there for you.

00:45:08 ◼   ► Audible is the place that I use for audiobooks.

00:45:11 ◼   ► They don't often promote it, but I really do like to mention their return policy, that

00:45:15 ◼   ► if you download a book and it stinks, which I have done many times, you can just return

00:45:20 ◼   ► it and get your money back.

00:45:21 ◼   ► It's really a great feature.

00:45:23 ◼   ► It makes trying out stuff just so much more of a freeing experience.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Does it sound interesting?

00:45:28 ◼   ► click it, download it, and give it a shot.

00:45:31 ◼   ► So once again, we want to thank Audible for their support of Cortex and all of Relay FM.

00:45:36 ◼   ► And you should go to audible.com/cortex to start your 30-day free trial today.

00:45:43 ◼   ► So we spoke about you being super tired.

00:45:45 ◼   ► Yes.

00:45:47 ◼   ► And that's because you put out a new video.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Yeah, super tired and apparently, as this conversation has revealed, slightly grumpy.

00:45:53 ◼   ► Oh, I like grumpy gray.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Oh good, good. I'm glad this is for your entertainment.

00:45:58 ◼   ► It's not because of my entertainment, it's the entertainment of the people.

00:46:02 ◼   ► Oh, even better. Even better.

00:46:06 ◼   ► You made a new video, right?

00:46:10 ◼   ► From our perspective doing this recording, the video went up

00:46:14 ◼   ► what, two days ago? I don't know.

00:46:18 ◼   ► And this video is very different

00:46:22 ◼   ► to previous videos. It is definitely a

00:46:26 ◼   ► different style than what I've done before.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And I find this video very interesting because

00:46:33 ◼   ► I had a bit of a sneak preview to it, which

00:46:36 ◼   ► I was privileged to receive. Yeah, you lucked out with

00:46:40 ◼   ► some timing on this. I did. Because

00:46:43 ◼   ► people who follow the way I work will be aware that I

00:46:47 ◼   ► do not like to talk about projects before they're released.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Like, I never ask. I've just learned to never ask.

00:46:53 ◼   ► You never ask, all the people in my life never ask.

00:46:57 ◼   ► My wife knows she just never asks ever what I'm working on.

00:47:01 ◼   ► Why is that extra funny?

00:47:04 ◼   ► Just think of everybody in your life that you might share stuff with.

00:47:07 ◼   ► And I've discussed before, one of the reasons why I don't like to do that is because I often find that discussing it ahead of time

00:47:13 ◼   ► just kind of removes a lot of incentive to actually make the thing.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Or, I don't know, I feel like I almost talk myself out of projects sometimes when I talk to other people.

00:47:22 ◼   ► There's just a variety of reasons why. I don't do it because I'm like a secretive paranoid freak

00:47:28 ◼   ► I don't do it because I have consistently found that it is

00:47:33 ◼   ► Detrimental to the process of production so that like that's why I don't do it

00:47:37 ◼   ► However, there is a very narrow window of time where

00:47:43 ◼   ► When I have a script that is like 95% done

00:47:50 ◼   ► then sometimes I will talk to people I know about it

00:47:55 ◼   ► because it's useful to occasionally run stuff by people

00:47:58 ◼   ► and see like how do people react to this topic?

00:48:00 ◼   ► Let me ask some questions, let me see what the other person is confused about

00:48:05 ◼   ► because when the script is almost entirely done, like in theory I could record it

00:48:10 ◼   ► but I'm still just trying to do some edits on it

00:48:13 ◼   ► at that point to me it feels like I'm over this hill of inevitability

00:48:16 ◼   ► inevitability like there's no way I'm not going to make the video anymore so I

00:48:20 ◼   ► might as well just work on it and so from from like the second to last draft

00:48:25 ◼   ► through the animation phase then I'm much more willing to talk about what I'm

00:48:28 ◼   ► working on when people ask me and you just happen to catch me we just happen

00:48:34 ◼   ► to meet up with each other in London basically right at that point where it's

00:48:38 ◼   ► like there's no way I'm not making this video and so I thought oh let me

00:48:42 ◼   ► Let me experiment on Myke a little bit. Let me run through this topic with him and see what is he confused about?

00:48:49 ◼   ► What does he ask questions about? And make some notes and maybe tweak the script a little bit based on that.

00:48:54 ◼   ► Did I pass the test?

00:48:55 ◼   ► There's no test.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I could have just gone "duh"

00:48:59 ◼   ► You know? That's useless. It's absolutely useless to you.

00:49:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. I feel like...

00:49:04 ◼   ► I've never had that happen when I run a topic by people.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Where they just sit there like a drooling idiot.

00:49:09 ◼   ► So that has that has not yet occurred. Like I said, it's more of a

00:49:15 ◼   ► It's more of a trying to gauge where confusing points are or where someone asks a question

00:49:22 ◼   ► And so that like that's actually what I'm looking for

00:49:25 ◼   ► It's not like I'm trying to see like how interested is the person in this thing the time for that has long passed

00:49:30 ◼   ► It's more an issue of trying to look for points for

00:49:32 ◼   ► Confusion and so that's why sometimes at the very last minute. I'll talk about a video with with somebody else

00:49:39 ◼   ► But yeah, no, it was it was useful to do a quick run through you with that and I think I recorded the

00:49:45 ◼   ► Record the audio the next day or the two days after that something something along those lines and then started on the whole animation process

00:49:52 ◼   ► I was kind of surprised how quickly it was from conversation to the video being released

00:49:56 ◼   ► It was like five or six days something like that. Yeah, that sounds about right

00:49:58 ◼   ► I just just interesting to me like it just it really I think

00:50:03 ◼   ► Further demonstrates where the bottleneck is which is the script writing.

00:50:06 ◼   ► The getting the script to the place where I can record it

00:50:09 ◼   ► That is the hard part and I was thinking this morning because so the video that I put up is I call it America pox

00:50:17 ◼   ► I don't know how to describe it. Broadly speaking. It's it's the answer to this question of

00:50:22 ◼   ► Why is it that when like Columbus visited the New World?

00:50:28 ◼   ► There's this thing that historians called the Columbian Exchange which is like Columbus and other explorers

00:50:33 ◼   ► Brought over all of these diseases and all of the Native Americans got sick. The question is like why didn't

00:50:40 ◼   ► Why didn't the European explorers get sick?

00:50:42 ◼   ► It's trying to answer that question

00:50:46 ◼   ► and

00:50:49 ◼   ► This is a video topic that

00:50:51 ◼   ► for the past two

00:50:54 ◼   ► Thanksgivings I had attempted to make this video in time for so

00:50:58 ◼   ► This one is is quite old and I was I was trying to estimate this morning

00:51:04 ◼   ► I'm going to guess that between this Thanksgiving where I finally got it done last Thanksgiving and the Thanksgiving before that

00:51:11 ◼   ► Where which were all times when I was working on the script

00:51:14 ◼   ► I'm gonna guess that means what over three years there might have been something like 50 drafts of this script before I decided to record it

00:51:24 ◼   ► And it's in no small part because like

00:51:26 ◼   ► people hear that and they they often just go immediately to like the

00:51:30 ◼   ► Perfectionist thing was like oh, no, that's that's not my perception of this at all. It's just like I

00:51:34 ◼   ► am NOT a very good writer, but I think that my skill is in editing and this is just a complicated and

00:51:41 ◼   ► somewhat sensitive topic and it's like boy it just required a lot of drafts and a lot of rewrites to get it to a place

00:51:47 ◼   ► Where I felt like okay. Yes, this is like this is telling a story in an understandable way

00:51:53 ◼   ► Like it's a complicated thing. There's lots of moving parts here

00:51:56 ◼   ► this is not a video where I can just

00:51:59 ◼   ► Blast through some areas like in many of my videos

00:52:03 ◼   ► There's lots of sections where it's like I can just kind of skip a whole bunch of stuff

00:52:07 ◼   ► But it's like not with this one like this you need to go through this step by step by step

00:52:10 ◼   ► Well, it's like when we were talking about like the videos 12 minutes long and when we were talking about it

00:52:14 ◼   ► It maybe took about an hour for me to actually understand. Yeah. Yeah, it's very complex as a thing

00:52:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it's it's a complex topic and it also took us much longer in person to go through it because I was also talking to

00:52:27 ◼   ► You about a lot of the stuff that's probably gonna be in the part two section as well

00:52:30 ◼   ► and that was also what was useful for me as I was trying to figure out like how much of part two do I need

00:52:36 ◼   ► to pull out and

00:52:37 ◼   ► Talking to a real live human about it in person was like, oh, right all of it

00:52:42 ◼   ► like everything that could be in part two I should put in part two and it's very obvious once I'm talking to someone that that

00:52:48 ◼   ► that has to be the way that it's going to be.

00:52:50 ◼   ► So this was the first video post-dialing down.

00:52:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:52:55 ◼   ► And I wondered what kind of impact that actually made on the process.

00:52:58 ◼   ► Because I hope that it made some.

00:53:00 ◼   ► Yeah, the dialing down thing has been a very interesting experience.

00:53:08 ◼   ► And the most direct thing that I can say is that

00:53:12 ◼   ► part of the dialing down thing that I have been doing,

00:53:17 ◼   ► which is not explicitly part of this like staying off Twitter thing, but as a side effect, I've been

00:53:22 ◼   ► very much focused on only working on two videos at a time and

00:53:27 ◼   ► when I have

00:53:30 ◼   ► When I have this feeling of like, "Ooh, I want to go work on something else now"

00:53:34 ◼   ► I'm trying to clamp it down and be like, "No, you can't

00:53:36 ◼   ► You can't do this brain. Like you can't start writing another script for another thing." Like there's two videos that I'm working on and

00:53:44 ◼   ► That's it. So one of them was the one that just went up and the other one is one that's still in

00:53:49 ◼   ► Progress when you get those ideas though, do you still record them?

00:53:53 ◼   ► Or do you let them go like so you have an idea for something else? Do you just like oh, yeah walk away

00:53:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it's this is a habit that is ingrained in me

00:54:02 ◼   ► very thoroughly now is that when I have an idea about something I just write it down and

00:54:07 ◼   ► Maybe I'll do something with that later

00:54:09 ◼   ► maybe I won't but I will write it down and I will make a record of it and

00:54:13 ◼   ► Eventually that gets filtered through a bunch of reviews and systems and like maybe it turns into a thing or maybe it doesn't

00:54:18 ◼   ► Because if I don't write it down, then my brain really won't let it go

00:54:22 ◼   ► We're just like oh we have to hold on to this amazing idea. It's like no brain. It's okay

00:54:25 ◼   ► We made a note it's there and we'll get to it later

00:54:28 ◼   ► And then the brain can kind of relax about that, but what I mean more is I would have

00:54:32 ◼   ► Very often I feel like I want to

00:54:37 ◼   ► write

00:54:39 ◼   ► about some topic and

00:54:41 ◼   ► That's the thing that I'm much more curtailing on. It's like, look,

00:54:44 ◼   ► You're going to spend the majority of your mornings writing on these two videos only.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And you can't spend a whole morning writing on

00:54:55 ◼   ► another video because like I'm trying to set like I have

00:54:58 ◼   ► pre-decided these two videos are the ones that I am working on and I have two slots available and when one of those slots frees up

00:55:06 ◼   ► like then the next video that I will make a decision about will go in that free slot. So I'll have two

00:55:11 ◼   ► Two on the burners at once, but no more than two.

00:55:14 ◼   ► As opposed to previously when I was just like jumping around all of the time.

00:55:18 ◼   ► And as we discussed in the last episode, I think the jumping around was related to my media consumption.

00:55:24 ◼   ► So I think that that is definitely related.

00:55:27 ◼   ► But in a more direct way, something that I thought was interesting.

00:55:32 ◼   ► So when I put the video up, I did relax a lot of my controls about like,

00:55:40 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm not going to go on social media," simply because the video is so fundamental

00:55:45 ◼   ► to my business and it is so important. It's like, okay, it would just be stupid not to be

00:55:49 ◼   ► on Reddit today.

00:55:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm pleased you said that because that would have been a bit ridiculous.

00:55:54 ◼   ► You would have been cutting your nose off to spite your face in that scenario.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Right. And that's why, again, when I wrote that article,

00:56:01 ◼   ► I talked about dialing down because it is not a question of elimination. It's a question of reduction

00:56:06 ◼   ► It's being there when you need to and not when you don't right and so what I also did was I decided that it was okay

00:56:14 ◼   ► To be looking at at mentions on Twitter, so I didn't post anything on Twitter. So like you were looking for disaster disaster

00:56:21 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly right. Like if I just want to see if there's anything coming across the radar

00:56:28 ◼   ► that's a real problem or anything that's unexpectedly good and

00:56:32 ◼   ► To not be on Twitter would would just be stupid. It would just be dumb. It's like I'm releasing a video

00:56:39 ◼   ► There might be hundreds of thousands of people watching it today

00:56:41 ◼   ► Like today is not the day to say like oh

00:56:43 ◼   ► I'm just gonna sit here in the park and read a book and and pay attention to nothing

00:56:48 ◼   ► Like it's just it's not a good idea. It's it's there's nothing about that. That's good

00:56:51 ◼   ► So I still didn't post on Twitter except for just the self-promotion stuff as per normal

00:56:56 ◼   ► But I was looking at @mentions coming in and I was looking at the Reddit and seeing

00:57:00 ◼   ► Conversations that were going on there and as I do on a video day, I like to see

00:57:04 ◼   ► Because you know, I'm always very interested in like, okay

00:57:07 ◼   ► What does the CGP Grey subreddit have to say about this? Like here are the people who like the work that I do

00:57:12 ◼   ► What do they have to say?

00:57:13 ◼   ► But I'm also very interested to go around on Reddit and if there are conversations happening in different corners

00:57:19 ◼   ► Like where people don't know who I am like they're just discussing the video

00:57:22 ◼   ► That is also a very useful kind of feedback to see and to get.

00:57:27 ◼   ► A subjective.

00:57:28 ◼   ► Yeah, it's much more objective when people are less aware of who I am as a person

00:57:33 ◼   ► and they're just like they're looking at a video and making some thoughts about it.

00:57:37 ◼   ► So, I definitely still did that.

00:57:40 ◼   ► But what I was gonna say that was connected to the dialing down is like, okay, so I let the gates open this day.

00:57:45 ◼   ► But what was really interesting was that I saw at least three different

00:57:52 ◼   ► sources where people pointed out to me other

00:57:55 ◼   ► places where other people had done

00:57:58 ◼   ► not the same topic, but I would say adjacent topics just in like the last week and

00:58:05 ◼   ► Wow, so this to me was a perfect example of man. I

00:58:12 ◼   ► Am so glad I didn't know this now

00:58:15 ◼   ► None of the things that people sent to me would have been showstoppers because nobody was doing the exact same thing

00:58:21 ◼   ► But all of them were just very close and I feel like that would have I'm glad I didn't even know about things that were

00:58:28 ◼   ► Close were they places that you potentially would have seen them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, definitely. Oh, wow. Okay

00:58:34 ◼   ► So yeah, this could have been a showstopper then none of them would have been showstoppers

00:58:38 ◼   ► but what might what might have happened it had I not done the dialing down thing is that

00:58:43 ◼   ► Had I seen these things?

00:58:45 ◼   ► I think it's pretty likely that I would have been less motivated to make the video

00:58:51 ◼   ► so I would have been working on it more slowly and

00:58:54 ◼   ► Then it's also possible that that means I might have missed like the Thanksgiving deadline again

00:59:00 ◼   ► And then push it on to year four, right?

00:59:04 ◼   ► Right, and then like this is the this is the problem that I have is like if I'm trying to make a video

00:59:07 ◼   ► For a deadline and I missed the deadline

00:59:11 ◼   ► Well, these things take a long time and this is sometimes why like there's huge gaps in video upload schedules

00:59:17 ◼   ► It's like oh I spent several weeks on this thing. I didn't quite make it in time like oh well like there we go

00:59:22 ◼   ► like that actually happened with the brief history of the royal family video there were a couple of

00:59:28 ◼   ► Royal related events that that video was originally intended for so that was another one that went over a couple of

00:59:36 ◼   ► scripts over a couple of different times and

00:59:40 ◼   ► I eventually made it for the Queen Elizabeth "reigning longer than Queen Victoria" deadline

00:59:46 ◼   ► because I really did feel like this is the final one, like if you're ever gonna do this video, this is the week to do this video

00:59:51 ◼   ► but there were some other royal related events that that one was originally intended for that I missed

00:59:56 ◼   ► but, so anyway, the bottom line is that I am glad that I was unaware of the work of other education professionals

01:00:07 ◼   ► during the production of this video.

01:00:09 ◼   ► So it's a thumbs up.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Thumbs up on dialing down.

01:00:13 ◼   ► So whilst that's a success,

01:00:15 ◼   ► the other part of this that is

01:00:17 ◼   ► a question mark in my mind is

01:00:19 ◼   ► does this type of success

01:00:21 ◼   ► potentially lead to a scenario where you

01:00:23 ◼   ► remain dialed down

01:00:25 ◼   ► for a longer period of time?

01:00:27 ◼   ► Because I see this sort of stuff and it's like

01:00:29 ◼   ► "winning!" and it's like, that is

01:00:31 ◼   ► I think as much a worry as it

01:00:33 ◼   ► is a good thing depending on your outlook.

01:00:35 ◼   ► Again, we are recording this towards the end of November

01:00:39 ◼   ► and I can say without a doubt I have already decided

01:00:42 ◼   ► that I'm going to extend this for another month.

01:00:45 ◼   ► - So you're gonna go to the end of the year?

01:00:46 ◼   ► - So I'm gonna go to the end of the year.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Like I think we discussed in the last episode,

01:00:49 ◼   ► is that's a possibility?

01:00:50 ◼   ► Whereas now I can say that's a definite.

01:00:53 ◼   ► And in some ways it has had less of an effect

01:00:56 ◼   ► on my daily life than I would have originally expected.

01:00:59 ◼   ► And let's say I wanted to sit down

01:01:01 ◼   ► and write an article for my website,

01:01:03 ◼   ► which is like the follow-up to a month of reduced internet.

01:01:08 ◼   ► I don't feel like I have any conclusions yet

01:01:11 ◼   ► to write about that.

01:01:12 ◼   ► I still feel very strongly like I am in the middle

01:01:15 ◼   ► of this thing still, and I don't really understand it.

01:01:19 ◼   ► So if I was to sit down and try to say like,

01:01:20 ◼   ► here's what I figured out from this month-long experiment,

01:01:23 ◼   ► I would not have a good article to write about that

01:01:26 ◼   ► because I just don't know what the conclusions are.

01:01:29 ◼   ► So I am definitely intending to extend this

01:01:32 ◼   ► for a longer period of time.

01:01:34 ◼   ► And one of the things about extending it over December

01:01:36 ◼   ► is that I'm going to be taking some time off.

01:01:40 ◼   ► And that's going to be interesting

01:01:41 ◼   ► because it means I will have stretches of time

01:01:44 ◼   ► where like on past vacations,

01:01:46 ◼   ► it would be very likely like,

01:01:48 ◼   ► oh, I'll spend the day on social media and on Twitter

01:01:50 ◼   ► and just because I enjoy these things.

01:01:52 ◼   ► But I want to have like a series of days

01:01:55 ◼   ► where I'm deciding like, no, this is not an option

01:01:57 ◼   ► and I need to engage in other activities

01:01:59 ◼   ► and see how that goes.

01:02:00 ◼   ► So I think extending it to the end of the year also provides more feedback on what this means in different kind of scenarios.

01:02:08 ◼   ► Like if I'm taking a week off, what does it mean to not be working and have a week off and also not be going on social media?

01:02:17 ◼   ► Like I don't know the answer to that right now. I don't know how that will be.

01:02:20 ◼   ► Did you feel any difference when you were actually preparing the video?

01:02:23 ◼   ► I felt more focused in the mornings.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Like this is definitely my conclusion from this is that

01:02:29 ◼   ► the morning isolation is extremely beneficial.

01:02:35 ◼   ► I think it really helps with not having mornings

01:02:38 ◼   ► unintentionally derailed and it helps with focusing on

01:02:42 ◼   ► this limited number of projects.

01:02:44 ◼   ► So that is definitely good.

01:02:46 ◼   ► However, the hardest thing was

01:02:49 ◼   ► when I was doing the animating,

01:02:53 ◼   ► I felt like I was losing my mind because

01:02:57 ◼   ► the animating, as I've often mentioned, is this process that I find very tedious

01:03:02 ◼   ► and very hard

01:03:03 ◼   ► and I've often used Twitter as a kind of steam valve to release

01:03:07 ◼   ► just a lot of... I don't even know, I don't even want to say frustration is exactly it

01:03:11 ◼   ► but it's almost like

01:03:13 ◼   ► I have a need for greater stimulus when I'm doing the animation

01:03:17 ◼   ► Somebody please save me from what I'm doing right now

01:03:20 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what it is.

01:03:23 ◼   ► And you were on the receiving end of that

01:03:25 ◼   ► because I was instant messaging you much more

01:03:27 ◼   ► than I would normally do because it's like--

01:03:29 ◼   ► You were, you really were.

01:03:31 ◼   ► It was fine because I knew what was going on

01:03:33 ◼   ► and I was happy to help.

01:03:35 ◼   ► But yeah, you were very chatty.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Yeah, and it was like, I am not a chatty person.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Even people I instant message with

01:03:41 ◼   ► know that I am not a chatty person in the least.

01:03:43 ◼   ► But I was like, I think Myke will put up with this.

01:03:46 ◼   ► Like, hi Myke, let me look at this ridiculous

01:03:48 ◼   ► stock footage that I found, right?

01:03:49 ◼   ► It's like, look at this buffalo.

01:03:51 ◼   ► I'm like, okay, great.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:03:54 ◼   ► So I have to say that that was interesting because

01:04:00 ◼   ► I genuinely don't think that the,

01:04:07 ◼   ► like being on Twitter slows me down

01:04:09 ◼   ► during the animation phase.

01:04:12 ◼   ► If it does slow me down, it's something small.

01:04:14 ◼   ► It's like 5% or 10% slower at most.

01:04:18 ◼   ► But I can say that being on Twitter makes the animation phase 75% more tolerable, is the way to put it.

01:04:26 ◼   ► So that was a real frustration.

01:04:30 ◼   ► And I mean, this video, because it was longer, it took a much longer time to animate than most videos.

01:04:36 ◼   ► It was probably about four full days of animating.

01:04:40 ◼   ► And I mean really full days of animating.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Yeah, what time are you up to until the last night?

01:04:44 ◼   ► I feel like you sent me a message at like 5am or something.

01:04:47 ◼   ► It felt something like that anyway.

01:04:48 ◼   ► So I posted the video on Monday and

01:04:52 ◼   ► Sunday was the final push where I was like

01:04:55 ◼   ► I want this video up on Monday for a variety of reasons

01:04:58 ◼   ► and I want it up early in the morning America time on Monday

01:05:01 ◼   ► and like I'm going to hit this goal

01:05:03 ◼   ► and I'm not going to go to sleep until this is done.

01:05:06 ◼   ► And so Sunday I woke up at about 7 in the morning

01:05:12 ◼   ► and then yeah, I sent a message to you

01:05:16 ◼   ► And I did a couple of things I looked at the clock and I went to bed at

01:05:19 ◼   ► 530 in the morning on Monday

01:05:22 ◼   ► and then I slept from 530 until about 730 on Monday morning and then got up and

01:05:29 ◼   ► At that point the video was done like the animation was finished at 530 in the morning

01:05:34 ◼   ► But as you know from YouTube like there are many things that you need to do to get the video ready to upload and especially when

01:05:40 ◼   ► You're uploading a really big file

01:05:42 ◼   ► Like a 4k thing and I want to put in annotations and like hidden links for people

01:05:46 ◼   ► It's like if you're doing something important like I can imagine how this takes hours

01:05:50 ◼   ► Like all I'm doing is uploading an audio file with an image

01:05:53 ◼   ► Yeah to a not very like you're not massively in popular channel either right? Yeah, like if I screwed something up

01:06:00 ◼   ► There's not a lot of people that are gonna see it and also not a lot of people that would really care so much like

01:06:04 ◼   ► Even if everybody saw it nobody's gonna be like super upset about it

01:06:07 ◼   ► But and also because it doesn't make us a lot of money

01:06:10 ◼   ► Like if you screw something up on your videos, that's like a big problem. Yeah the the YouTube

01:06:16 ◼   ► The YouTube is definitely the absolute center of my business, right?

01:06:21 ◼   ► Even though I upload videos less frequently than I do podcasts. The YouTube is definitely still the central thing

01:06:26 ◼   ► So there's a problem with the YouTube video

01:06:28 ◼   ► It's a big problem and the infrequency adds to the bigness of the problem like this has to go

01:06:34 ◼   ► Right you are afforded less mistakes. Yeah, because you don't publish every week

01:06:39 ◼   ► Yeah, and there's also just a lot of stuff to do

01:06:41 ◼   ► So I have this whole checklist that I run through where it's like, okay, really you have a checklist

01:06:46 ◼   ► I do but the people who support me on patreon, it's like okay

01:06:49 ◼   ► I have this wall of thanks on my website

01:06:50 ◼   ► Like I want to go through and I have to update the wall of thanks make sure all of that's in place

01:06:54 ◼   ► Make sure that the people who get special thanks in the video description like make sure they're in there

01:06:58 ◼   ► So it's like I have to get things ready to go on like three platforms. It's YouTube

01:07:02 ◼   ► I have to have all the patreon stuff in place, and then I also upload it to the podcast RSS feed as well

01:07:08 ◼   ► So it's like okay. I have to have all of this ready to go so anyway Monday morning

01:07:13 ◼   ► I got up at about 7 and I was ready to go at 11

01:07:16 ◼   ► And I started slowly rolling it out in a couple of different places at starting at about 11 30, but

01:07:23 ◼   ► but yeah, so

01:07:25 ◼   ► the animation days were were very very long and very very tiring and this is

01:07:32 ◼   ► This is the case where I feel like right now I'm going almost through jet lag without flying like

01:07:38 ◼   ► Really yesterday. I was not in a very good state of things

01:07:42 ◼   ► It's like I was just way over tired and not thinking super clearly and today

01:07:46 ◼   ► I'm starting to become much more like a normal person

01:07:48 ◼   ► but yeah big animation pushes take a lot out of me and

01:07:52 ◼   ► I'm very glad that I got this done and like and it was up and it was there in time

01:07:56 ◼   ► But yeah, this this was uh, this was much more animation than than normal

01:08:01 ◼   ► I'm gonna try not to animate 12 minutes worth of stuff in that short time frame ever again if I can avoid it.

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01:10:44 ◼   ► There's a lot of different stuff in this video though.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Your tone was different, you had the background music, it was really dramatic.

01:10:52 ◼   ► It was very different. I really liked it, but it was very different.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Yeah, so...

01:11:00 ◼   ► I mean, this is a bit of a broader topic in some way, like making things for the internet.

01:11:06 ◼   ► And I think "Humans need not apply" was the first thing like this that I did that was different.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Yeah, there was a lot of stuff going on there.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Yeah, where I had been known for making

01:11:20 ◼   ► brief, fast-talking videos and then

01:11:23 ◼   ► I made "Humans Need Not Apply"

01:11:26 ◼   ► and that was the first time I tried something different.

01:11:28 ◼   ► I still think that that is probably my best work to date.

01:11:31 ◼   ► When I look at it now, there are things that I would change or that I would do differently,

01:11:34 ◼   ► but I'm pretty happy with the way that it came out.

01:11:36 ◼   ► So that was the first time I wasn't talking super fast in a video.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And with this one, as I was writing the script for this,

01:11:47 ◼   ► I just became more and more aware that my normal style of fast and breezy and like,

01:11:54 ◼   ► "Let's just talk about these things!"

01:11:55 ◼   ► And doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo

01:11:57 ◼   ► Like, this doesn't work when you're talking about a kind of unintentional genocide.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Like, it's just like, you know what, there's no way to be super breezy

01:12:06 ◼   ► about the death of tens of millions of people.

01:12:09 ◼   ► It's like, you can't make a funny video about how did the Holocaust happen

01:12:14 ◼   ► and this is like a similar kind of topic when you're just talking about many people died

01:12:19 ◼   ► and let's talk about why that happened.

01:12:21 ◼   ► You just can't do that with like upbeat music in the background.

01:12:25 ◼   ► It just doesn't work. It doesn't work at all.

01:12:27 ◼   ► I think maybe one of the reasons why I never quite got the video ready for earlier Thanksgivings

01:12:33 ◼   ► is that the earlier scripts were still much more in my style

01:12:37 ◼   ► and it was this year and this time trying to get it done that I realized like,

01:12:43 ◼   ► "I know I need to change this whole thing around, like the whole way that I'm approaching it just won't work."

01:12:47 ◼   ► And so that's why I slowed it way down.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Like I talk slower in this than I talk in "Humans need not apply"

01:12:54 ◼   ► and "Humans need not apply" is already much slower than my normal style.

01:12:58 ◼   ► And that was a very deliberate choice to try to match the tone of this thing.

01:13:04 ◼   ► But...

01:13:06 ◼   ► So I am very happy with the way it came out. I feel like I

01:13:11 ◼   ► achieved the tone and the style that I was setting out to achieve.

01:13:17 ◼   ► I also think it's very good if you are making things for the internet.

01:13:27 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know. I don't know if everyone feels this way,

01:13:31 ◼   ► but I definitely feel this way that sometimes I want to

01:13:34 ◼   ► intentionally butt against the trend that I am setting for myself.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Like I don't...

01:13:43 ◼   ► I don't always want to do the style of video that people are expecting that I do.

01:13:48 ◼   ► Like I think doing things that are different is

01:13:51 ◼   ► beneficial for a long-term career.

01:13:54 ◼   ► And so

01:13:58 ◼   ► It would not surprise me if this video ends up being not as popular as the others because I

01:14:04 ◼   ► Think both the style and the content work against virality

01:14:09 ◼   ► this is not sailing with the winds of what spreads well on the internet like this is sailing against the winds, but I

01:14:16 ◼   ► Think it's it's good as a creator to do something

01:14:19 ◼   ► Different and I feel like I have achieved that you've got to be able to grow and adapt

01:14:27 ◼   ► Yeah, or not even just grow and adapt, but it's this feeling of like it's easy to become a parody of yourself

01:14:33 ◼   ► especially if you have a known style and that that's the kind of thing that I'm just trying to I

01:14:40 ◼   ► Don't want to even say I'm trying to avoid because I like doing the videos in my normal style

01:14:45 ◼   ► Like I think I'm I think I'm good at that. I'm not saying that I'm trying to avoid that

01:14:49 ◼   ► It's not like oh, I'm gonna make serious videos from now on because I'm a serious video makers

01:14:53 ◼   ► I think at the point when people start to refer to a video as a CGP Grey style video

01:14:58 ◼   ► Like indicates that you need to make sure that you don't do that too often. I think

01:15:03 ◼   ► yeah, and and it's just like

01:15:06 ◼   ► so I

01:15:09 ◼   ► Mean I have a rough timeline for videos that are going to come out. I mean excluding this part two video

01:15:14 ◼   ► Like the third thing that's up on my on my like mental cue of what's probably going to happen next is that I will have

01:15:20 ◼   ► another sort of very normal CGP Grey style video. Like I'm not avoiding that at all.

01:15:26 ◼   ► But I just think it's good to do stuff that's different sometimes because it's one of the

01:15:31 ◼   ► reasons why like when I made a YouTube channel I specifically used the channel that was just

01:15:35 ◼   ► my name and I didn't use a channel that was called like "Fast Talking Geography Vids"

01:15:40 ◼   ► because then you're locking yourself into this thing. And even before I had a public

01:15:47 ◼   ► I was very aware of like, man, I never want to lock myself into this specific thing.

01:15:53 ◼   ► And, I mean, that's one of the reasons why even any of the projects that I do online, like Hello Internet.

01:15:59 ◼   ► What does the title Hello Internet mean? Nothing. Right?

01:16:03 ◼   ► Or what does the title Cortex mean? Nothing. Right?

01:16:05 ◼   ► It can be anything because I never want to feel like something is locked into what you decide it's going to be at the start.

01:16:13 ◼   ► the start. Yeah, I'm very much subscribed to that. So like the names of my shows with maybe like one exception

01:16:19 ◼   ► they are made to be

01:16:22 ◼   ► Obtuse enough that the show can adapt and change without needing to rebrand

01:16:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I want to be clear for anybody who's thinking about starting something this strategy of like the rebranding strategy

01:16:33 ◼   ► it is not necessarily the correct one and I

01:16:38 ◼   ► Actually think that when you are

01:16:40 ◼   ► starting

01:16:42 ◼   ► Picking something specific gives you a lot of advantages

01:16:46 ◼   ► You are much more likely to get things like conference invitations, right? You have a much more clear

01:16:55 ◼   ► group of people who might be interested in you if for your project you pick a

01:17:01 ◼   ► specific title that says what it is that you do. And I see that very clearly

01:17:07 ◼   ► So I'm I just want to say like I'm not saying that this is the right strategy for everyone

01:17:13 ◼   ► I'm just saying that like I know my own personality well enough that I would feel really hemmed in

01:17:19 ◼   ► By that if I had projects that had names that said exactly

01:17:24 ◼   ► What they are, you know, that's the reason why this podcast is not called Myke and gray talk about work for exactly 90 minutes podcast

01:17:32 ◼   ► I couldn't possibly do that. It would it's just like I feel so so claustrophobic

01:17:36 ◼   ► It's like get me out of this box. I can't I can't be in here. This is no good

01:17:40 ◼   ► So so I guess this this video was an example of me

01:17:43 ◼   ► Picking a topic that I have always found really really interesting

01:17:48 ◼   ► working on it for a while

01:17:51 ◼   ► realizing that it needs a different style than my normal videos do and then from my perspective like

01:17:58 ◼   ► Successfully achieving a certain feeling with this video

01:18:03 ◼   ► So I have to say I'm pretty I am pretty pleased with it

01:18:06 ◼   ► And if as I guess it is not as popular as some of my other videos, I feel like yeah, you know, that's fine

01:18:11 ◼   ► You know, not everything's always going to be super popular and I'm very happy with the thing that I have made here

01:18:17 ◼   ► It's doing well, though

01:18:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it's it's always hard to know this early

01:18:23 ◼   ► Like it seems to be doing fine

01:18:27 ◼   ► But I think I don't I won't have a real good sense until like a month in

01:18:31 ◼   ► One of the ways I view how successful videos are is how many views do they still get

01:18:38 ◼   ► long after they were published. Like I'm much more interested in how many views does a video get six months from now

01:18:46 ◼   ► than I am about like what was the opening weekend. When I look at any of the stats on my channel

01:18:51 ◼   ► I really like to look at

01:18:53 ◼   ► like what videos are the most popular in the last 365 days

01:18:59 ◼   ► that were not published in the last 365 days

01:19:03 ◼   ► that to me is a real measure of like, oh this is a video that obviously is sticking with people

01:19:08 ◼   ► What do you learn from that?

01:19:09 ◼   ► I don't know what I learned from that

01:19:11 ◼   ► That's a kind of thing that I don't think is actionable information

01:19:16 ◼   ► It's like if I was to just take, I'm looking at your page right now, I'm looking at the numbers, right?

01:19:20 ◼   ► And the difference, you know, the UK Explained video is your most popular video

01:19:25 ◼   ► You're approaching 8 million views on that video, right?

01:19:28 ◼   ► But then humans need not apply which is not even where it's about a year old now is five and a half million

01:19:34 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. So like that really tells me like if I'm to look at those two things I

01:19:39 ◼   ► Would say that you should make more videos like humans need not apply like that is what I see

01:19:46 ◼   ► My personal assessment is that humans need not apply is my is my best video and that also matches up with the

01:19:54 ◼   ► How many people are still watching this video long after it's published?

01:19:57 ◼   ► Depending on how you look at it, depending on what your measure of it is, it's your most successful YouTube video.

01:20:03 ◼   ► By the ways that I would measure success, it's the most successful one.

01:20:06 ◼   ► This is the way I like to look at stuff is over the long term. And so that's why

01:20:11 ◼   ► yeah, like the

01:20:14 ◼   ► The America Pox video is doing fine, you know for the first couple of days

01:20:18 ◼   ► But I really just feel like I won't know until much further in the future

01:20:22 ◼   ► Like how how well does this video do does this is this a video that people are still interested in?

01:20:26 ◼   ► Six months from now like that's that's what I want as a as a successful video and yeah looking

01:20:32 ◼   ► I have the stats now in front of me likes

01:20:34 ◼   ► my

01:20:36 ◼   ► Like videos that are doing really well that were not published recently. It's like humans need not apply the Lord of the Rings videos

01:20:44 ◼   ► The this video will make you

01:20:47 ◼   ► angry one. Like those are videos that seem to be sticking with people over a long period of time

01:20:54 ◼   ► that they're still really interested in

01:20:57 ◼   ► even after they've been published. So I don't think there's anything super actionable to be drawn from that.

01:21:03 ◼   ► It's just a thing that I

01:21:05 ◼   ► like to be aware of.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Well, the action comes in trends. Like, so if America pox goes the same way as humans need not apply,

01:21:14 ◼   ► I think that does tell you something.

01:21:16 ◼   ► [SIGHS]

01:21:18 ◼   ► Serious long videos with stock footage in them.

01:21:21 ◼   ► That's the two things that match those videos up, right?

01:21:25 ◼   ► They're longer, they're more serious, and the presentation is different?

01:21:28 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I guess you're right. There would be something to be drawn from that

01:21:32 ◼   ► if humans need not apply and America Pox have similar trends over the long scale.

01:21:37 ◼   ► I guess the reason why I'm saying that it's not actionable is because

01:21:41 ◼   ► because I feel like I am not in control of the topics that I work on

01:21:46 ◼   ► in the sense that I can't set out to make a video that is a long video on a serious topic

01:21:54 ◼   ► It's like, I work on the projects that are interesting to me

01:21:59 ◼   ► and that somewhat dictates the way that the videos end up

01:22:04 ◼   ► as how I'm choosing to explain these things

01:22:06 ◼   ► But if I was setting out to attempt to do a long, serious video, I don't think I could just do that

01:22:16 ◼   ► Where it's like, "Oh, I'm gonna pick a topic and do this thing"

01:22:18 ◼   ► So that's what I mean by "It's not actionable"

01:22:20 ◼   ► It's just like, "Okay, well, some video topics will naturally reveal themselves over time to be longer things, and some won't"

01:22:29 ◼   ► And I am just very fortunate that I am in the position where I am able to work on the videos that are of interest to me and the topics that are of interest to me.

01:22:38 ◼   ► And I don't have someone, I don't have a boss who is the CEO of the CGP Grey company who's yelling at me saying like "Ah, the metrics say, right, long videos, right, so your job now is to work for eight hours a day on long videos."

01:22:52 ◼   ► It's like that's just, that's not the position that I'm in and so that's not what I'm going to do.

01:22:56 ◼   ► So everybody that's kind of subscribed to your channel is used to your style, right?

01:23:01 ◼   ► They're used to like, "Hey everyone, it's CGP Grey!" You know, like it's, you know, it's

01:23:05 ◼   ► "jolly-ish" I guess you would maybe describe it in most scenarios.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm like the Internet Santa. I'm just a jolly man.

01:23:13 ◼   ► And you only come once a year.

01:23:15 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

01:23:17 ◼   ► And, uh,

01:23:19 ◼   ► So they're used to a specific type of video from you, right?

01:23:23 ◼   ► When they see a video pop up, they have an idea of what they're going to be getting.

01:23:26 ◼   ► And this video kind of isn't that.

01:23:28 ◼   ► Immediately it's like a punch in the gut.

01:23:30 ◼   ► It's like, this is super serious. Listen to how dramatic that music is.

01:23:34 ◼   ► How did people take to that?

01:23:36 ◼   ► Have you had feedback that tells you one way or another what people think of it?

01:23:40 ◼   ► If you look in the YouTube comments, which I normally stay away from,

01:23:44 ◼   ► but having done something that's different, it's like,

01:23:45 ◼   ► "Oh, I want to try to draw feedback from as wide of a net as I can cast,

01:23:50 ◼   ► you know, to see what do people think about this."

01:23:52 ◼   ► So I even looked in the YouTube comments and between YouTube and Reddit and all the various places

01:23:58 ◼   ► It's like the number of people who are

01:24:01 ◼   ► Freaking out over how slow the narration is. Yeah, very high. Oh my very look at this

01:24:08 ◼   ► This is so weird

01:24:11 ◼   ► Are you looking at it now? Yeah, I

01:24:16 ◼   ► I mean, it is slow.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And so you sent me the audio beforehand and I noticed that.

01:24:21 ◼   ► And I played it for Adina too.

01:24:22 ◼   ► We were listening to it together.

01:24:24 ◼   ► 'Cause I knew the story and I wanted to see

01:24:26 ◼   ► if she could understand the story

01:24:27 ◼   ► just listening to your audio.

01:24:29 ◼   ► - Right.

01:24:30 ◼   ► - And it is different.

01:24:33 ◼   ► It's very different.

01:24:34 ◼   ► And you are speaking very slowly.

01:24:36 ◼   ► But I found that personally helpful

01:24:38 ◼   ► because this is a very deep and confusing topic.

01:24:42 ◼   ► So talking slowly, I think helped.

01:24:45 ◼   ► And also, if you talk quickly, you do always sound like Jolly Gray.

01:24:50 ◼   ► You know, like the presentation style, if you were speaking fast,

01:24:54 ◼   ► I think it would have sounded like you were maybe making light of this situation.

01:24:58 ◼   ► If you're talking fast, people almost always assume that it's lighter, right?

01:25:03 ◼   ► It's very hard to talk fast and talk serious.

01:25:07 ◼   ► I don't think I could pull that off.

01:25:09 ◼   ► There has to be a thousand comments of people complaining that it's too slow.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Like, that's not an exaggeration.

01:25:16 ◼   ► I mean easily a thousand literal comments

01:25:19 ◼   ► of people saying that it's too slow

01:25:20 ◼   ► between all the various places that I've received feedback.

01:25:24 ◼   ► Trying to broaden this out, but just,

01:25:25 ◼   ► this to me is like an interesting learning point for,

01:25:28 ◼   ► again, anybody who's listening

01:25:29 ◼   ► who wants to make things for the internet.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Like, no matter what it is you're trying to make,

01:25:35 ◼   ► like if you were trying to make something

01:25:37 ◼   ► that you wanted to be popular in any sense,

01:25:42 ◼   ► There are many, many things that you need to figure out about feedback from people

01:25:48 ◼   ► Like how to handle the internet and the way that it responds to what you do

01:25:53 ◼   ► And there's a couple things to pull out from here

01:25:55 ◼   ► So if you look at any of my other videos, you will often see many people complaining that I talk too fast

01:26:01 ◼   ► So it's like, you look on lots of videos and it's like "Oh man, this video would be great if he could just talk slower"

01:26:07 ◼   ► And I think especially the last one that I just did,

01:26:11 ◼   ► the royal family one, the history of the royal family one,

01:26:15 ◼   ► I think that one got a disproportionate number of comments

01:26:17 ◼   ► where people were saying, "This is just too fast."

01:26:19 ◼   ► - You were going a mile a minute.

01:26:21 ◼   ► But that was, I think on that one,

01:26:23 ◼   ► a lot of the stuff was actually just not important.

01:26:25 ◼   ► - But that's precisely why.

01:26:26 ◼   ► I made a decision to go almost as fast

01:26:28 ◼   ► as I could clearly talk on that one.

01:26:31 ◼   ► What are you laughing at?

01:26:32 ◼   ► - It's just funny.

01:26:34 ◼   ► I could just imagine you just really trying to speed it up.

01:26:37 ◼   ► But it kind of made sense for me in that one because it was the point of it, right?

01:26:40 ◼   ► Like this is a ton of stuff, which is not really important, which will get me to the end.

01:26:44 ◼   ► The point of it is the structure of the whole thing, not the details of any particular branch.

01:26:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:50 ◼   ► That's why I can go fast.

01:26:51 ◼   ► Like it doesn't matter that there were four kids and two of them...

01:26:54 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you know, it matters if you think about it from a human perspective, but just looking at the statistics,

01:26:58 ◼   ► it doesn't matter that there were four kids and two of them died.

01:27:01 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly and that's why like on so many of those branches of the family tree

01:27:05 ◼   ► Like I don't even mention most of the children like because it just doesn't like we're just trying to get to the end here

01:27:09 ◼   ► Right, we're just like we're trying to get to Queen Elizabeth like it. Let's go. So that's why I can go fast, but

01:27:14 ◼   ► so here is the thing that I think I

01:27:17 ◼   ► sometimes see people get really maddened by this and

01:27:21 ◼   ► Even even just when people are leaving discussions and read it

01:27:25 ◼   ► Like let's say that people are arguing about anything on reddit. I see people lose their mind because

01:27:30 ◼   ► They feel like they're arguing with some kind of consistent entity when they're arguing with the internet

01:27:36 ◼   ► And it is not a consistent entity and so the the important thing here with feedback is like okay listen the last video

01:27:42 ◼   ► I made or two videos ago people were complaining is too fast and now I make a video

01:27:45 ◼   ► That's slow and people are are freaking out that it's too slow

01:27:49 ◼   ► Lesson number one from the internet is you have to realize there's no there's no consistency here, right?

01:27:54 ◼   ► It's it's different people who are complaining about different things. That's just what's going to happen

01:27:59 ◼   ► So like lesson number one is if you are trying to make things in such a way so that you don't receive

01:28:07 ◼   ► Negative feedback you are always going to lose that game

01:28:11 ◼   ► You just you just can't make a thing and put it on the internet and expect that everyone is going to like it

01:28:18 ◼   ► It's just not possible. Like if your goal if you want to be like, oh, I've crafted this thing and here internet

01:28:26 ◼   ► Let me put it out for you to love and adore

01:28:29 ◼   ► If that's your thought process, I think you shouldn't make things for the internet

01:28:34 ◼   ► if you want everyone to like them.

01:28:36 ◼   ► Because it's just not going to happen if any number of people see the things that you make.

01:28:43 ◼   ► And you have to learn to be okay with situations where it's like, listen,

01:28:47 ◼   ► this example with the narration pace.

01:28:49 ◼   ► If you are making a video, you will never, ever find a narration pace that makes everybody happy.

01:28:57 ◼   ► It's just it's just not going to happen no matter what you do

01:29:00 ◼   ► You know if you try to hit hit it exactly like someone is going to complain

01:29:03 ◼   ► It's either too fast or too slow because they're different people like you're just you're crossing various people's boundaries about what is acceptable

01:29:11 ◼   ► What is too fast or what is too slow and this goes for absolutely anything that you make I think in the in the podcasting world

01:29:17 ◼   ► there's something similar to this which is talking about the length of podcasts and

01:29:21 ◼   ► You hear this in the industry where it's like people complain that the podcasts are too long

01:29:25 ◼   ► And then you make them short and people go "Oh the podcasts are too short now"

01:29:28 ◼   ► You know or you you do a podcast and it's like oh, this is a big serious podcast

01:29:33 ◼   ► That's talking about a topic and and so people go like "Oh, it's not fun anymore"

01:29:36 ◼   ► Like you're talking about this big serious thing

01:29:38 ◼   ► And then if you do a podcast that has a bunch of like little things people go "Oh, I miss the topics" right?

01:29:42 ◼   ► You you can never ever expect to make something that everybody likes and you just you have to like walk into the internet

01:29:52 ◼   ► Understanding and accepting that like it's okay. It's okay that not everybody likes the thing that you have made

01:29:58 ◼   ► It is it is a kind of lunacy to expect otherwise yet

01:30:04 ◼   ► I see people all the time who make things for the internet and then

01:30:07 ◼   ► They seem to get deeply upset and wounded that not everybody likes the thing that they have made like it's just it's just never ever

01:30:15 ◼   ► Ever going to happen like that

01:30:17 ◼   ► So how have you felt in general about the feedback that you've received for this video then?

01:30:22 ◼   ► So I think maybe this is a good stage for like lesson two about receiving feedback on the internet

01:30:29 ◼   ► which is that if you make things for the internet, it has to be you that judges the validity of any complaints that people have

01:30:41 ◼   ► and so, again, I try to think about this, like you have to map out the various actions

01:30:46 ◼   ► Like, let's say you make something for the internet,

01:30:48 ◼   ► and you are very happy with the thing that you have made,

01:30:52 ◼   ► and you want it to be super popular,

01:30:54 ◼   ► but when you put it out on the internet,

01:30:56 ◼   ► everybody hates it,

01:30:58 ◼   ► and it gets a very low number of views.

01:31:02 ◼   ► Okay, that's like a sad moment

01:31:04 ◼   ► for anybody who's trying to be a professional creator.

01:31:07 ◼   ► It's like, nobody likes it,

01:31:09 ◼   ► and very few people watch it.

01:31:10 ◼   ► Like, it's, oh, that's very sad.

01:31:12 ◼   ► The thing to learn from that is

01:31:14 ◼   ► your assessment of the thing being good was not correct.

01:31:20 ◼   ► Like, you were miscalibrated for how good this thing really was.

01:31:26 ◼   ► But if you make something and lots of people see it,

01:31:29 ◼   ► and there is some segment of people who don't like the thing.

01:31:34 ◼   ► So for example, we'll take all of the "your narration was too slow" on this last video feedback.

01:31:39 ◼   ► That feedback doesn't affect me because like my own assessment of it was no.

01:31:46 ◼   ► This was the correct pace for this video.

01:31:50 ◼   ► And so now this is a situation where it's like, "Oh, okay. I think that I did the right thing,

01:31:55 ◼   ► and the video seems to be doing okay in terms of popularity."

01:31:59 ◼   ► And so the criticism from the two slowness, like, "Ew, this is--this doesn't affect me."

01:32:05 ◼   ► Right? "This is not relevant."

01:32:06 ◼   ► relevant because going back to rule number one like you can't make everybody happy and

01:32:11 ◼   ► That means like you as the creator of a thing you are the person

01:32:16 ◼   ► Who decides what criticism is valid and what criticism isn't valid?

01:32:22 ◼   ► Implicitly here what I'm trying to argue against is is sometimes there's an attitude that creators have which is like

01:32:28 ◼   ► just ignore all of the feedback right don't you know you just make a thing and

01:32:34 ◼   ► People will be mean and just ignore all of the feedback and don't pay any attention to that and I don't take that position

01:32:40 ◼   ► I think that it is good to look at the feedback and if if you shut out the whole rest of the world

01:32:47 ◼   ► You become like an isolated crazy king in a castle where it's just like oh

01:32:52 ◼   ► I am living in this in this world of my own creation and I am deciding that everything that I do is great

01:32:58 ◼   ► And so you have to let feedback in into

01:33:01 ◼   ► your world. You have to look at the comments, you have to look at what people are saying.

01:33:04 ◼   ► But it doesn't mean that you have to accept

01:33:08 ◼   ► every criticism as valid. And I think that's one of the things that I see with newer creators, is

01:33:15 ◼   ► they make the mistake of assuming that all criticism is valid. And that's not the case.

01:33:21 ◼   ► Like, you have to decide when the criticism is valid. Like as an example,

01:33:26 ◼   ► I have received criticism sometimes that people don't like the background music that I do in the videos

01:33:33 ◼   ► that is an example of I saw people being critical about that and I thought about it and

01:33:39 ◼   ► I came to the conclusion that like I agree with that criticism. I wouldn't have thought of that on my own because

01:33:45 ◼   ► Frankly, I don't often really think a lot about the background music. It's always like oh great

01:33:50 ◼   ► I have to do this thing now right with a stupid background music and just kind of throw it on at the end

01:33:54 ◼   ► But it's like oh no that criticism was correct

01:33:57 ◼   ► But like I am the one judging that like yes this person has pointed out a thing in my videos

01:34:02 ◼   ► That could be better, and I think they're right on that and so that's the thing was like okay

01:34:08 ◼   ► I've taken that on board and I have tried to spend more time

01:34:11 ◼   ► Selecting music or like for this video. This is a time where like I commissioned custom music to be made for it

01:34:19 ◼   ► Because it's like no this is never going to work if I just try at the last moment

01:34:23 ◼   ► Just to get some some random music underneath this you shouldn't shut yourself off from all

01:34:29 ◼   ► Criticism but it's like you are the one who has to make decisions about whether or not the criticism is valid or it's invalid

01:34:37 ◼   ► And like like this is this is the process of being a person who makes things for the internet

01:34:43 ◼   ► I like the music. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was done

01:34:46 ◼   ► I got Alan Key on YouTube to put it together for me and he did a he did a great job

01:34:51 ◼   ► He did a really great job and the music was so good that one of the things I actually did was I didn't know exactly

01:34:58 ◼   ► What pieces I was going to use where but when I was doing the audio recording on the day

01:35:03 ◼   ► I actually had some of the sections of the music playing very softly in my headphones while I was recording the audio

01:35:10 ◼   ► That's a clever technique. It was really helpful because it also helped

01:35:15 ◼   ► It helped me try to match the slowness pitch to what the music was going to sound like.

01:35:22 ◼   ► Here's a particular segment of music and you want to hear this and talk through it at an appropriate pace.

01:35:30 ◼   ► And like that's something I never would have done a while ago.

01:35:33 ◼   ► Well if the music is set in the tone, then it is very helpful for you to hear that when you're recording.

01:35:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that is something I've never done before. It was a very interesting experience.

01:35:43 ◼   ► I don't think I always need to do that.

01:35:46 ◼   ► But like, oh this is now another tool in like the tool chest of making things.

01:35:52 ◼   ► Like okay, for some videos if you can get music ahead of time,

01:35:56 ◼   ► like maybe it's helpful to hear that while you're actually recording the audio.

01:36:00 ◼   ► I don't think it matters all the time,

01:36:02 ◼   ► but I can definitely see for some future projects that I'm thinking of.

01:36:05 ◼   ► Like oh yes, this is a thing that I might want to do in the future.

01:36:08 ◼   ► And then like okay, this is definitely a place where the videos get stronger then,

01:36:11 ◼   ► because if the narration matches the music in the background even better, like, now the whole thing is better.

01:36:17 ◼   ► And this, like, this is an improvement that has grown out of a criticism that would not have occurred to me on my own.

01:36:25 ◼   ► So the next video is already set, isn't it?

01:36:28 ◼   ► Well, well here's the thing, Myke. Here's the thing, Myke.

01:36:31 ◼   ► There is no such thing as set.

01:36:33 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:36:37 ◼   ► When you're me, Myke.

01:36:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:39 ◼   ► this would not be the first time that I have promised a second part to something and taken a very

01:36:46 ◼   ► very long time to deliver on that that second part and

01:36:50 ◼   ► even when

01:36:52 ◼   ► Towards the end when I was discussing the project with my wife and I mentioned like oh

01:36:57 ◼   ► This is the here like she was listening to some of the early audio and I was like, okay

01:37:00 ◼   ► this is where I'm gonna mention part two and she looked at me and she said

01:37:03 ◼   ► Didn't you swear to me that you were never ever going to promise a part two ever again?

01:37:09 ◼   ► because it's always worked out disastrously when you do that.

01:37:12 ◼   ► And I was like, "Yeah, I have said that, but this time is going to be totally different, I swear."

01:37:16 ◼   ► Uh-uh, uh-uh.

01:37:18 ◼   ► Now I feel bad.

01:37:20 ◼   ► Like, I feel like now there's a but.

01:37:22 ◼   ► So, what I said before about this thing that I'm trying now, which is to work on only two projects at a time.

01:37:28 ◼   ► Now that the America Pox video is up,

01:37:32 ◼   ► I'm going to put part two in the slot that was the America Pox part.

01:37:38 ◼   ► part. But that doesn't mean that the other video that I'm working on might come out before part two comes out.

01:37:47 ◼   ► So like I'm not making any promises that part two is going to be the next video.

01:37:53 ◼   ► It may just happen to be that as I'm working on these two, the other one comes close to completion much faster in an unexpected way.

01:38:00 ◼   ► And also, well, you'll see when it goes out, but that's another video that's going to be a little bit different than normal stuff.

01:38:07 ◼   ► So it may happen to come out sooner than part two, but I shouldn't say it's out loud, but I like I feel

01:38:14 ◼   ► very confident that I won't run into any last-minute problems with part two that

01:38:20 ◼   ► Derail it for years and years like has happened in the past. Why are you saying this? Like what?

01:38:25 ◼   ► Of everybody that I know you'd be the person least likely to say something like this

01:38:31 ◼   ► I am very tired and I am very overconfident

01:38:35 ◼   ► so I, at this moment, cannot foresee even the potential of future problems in the production process.