PodSearch

Cortex

100: Quarantime

 

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

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

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

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

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

00:00:27   Yeah.

00:00:28   Yeah.

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

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

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

00:00:45   Anything can go.

00:00:46   "We're gonna celebrate!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:01:51   I've lost myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:03:05   It's the coronavirus.

00:03:07   - Yes. - Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:03:52   to start.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:04:46   And it's like a big sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:05:38   feature of

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

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

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

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

00:06:01   Yeah.

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

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

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

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

00:06:22   Don't worry.

00:06:23   What is that?

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

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

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

00:06:34   As one does.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:07:14   I love that.

00:07:15   What a great idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:09:59   T

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

00:10:03   Like it's both.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:10:28   during those periods of time,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:11:00   You know?

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

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

00:11:12   That's perfect.

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

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

00:11:21   the whole summer.

00:11:22   I've seen too many people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:12:02   What do you mean?

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

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

00:12:10   Oh but it's like...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:12:49   That happens a lot.

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

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

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

00:12:58   than we ever have.

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

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

00:13:06   in the last three years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:14:01   Way higher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:14:27   (laughing)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:15:16   in person."

00:15:17   And it's like, "Oh, okay."

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

00:15:26   all been wiped away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:15:59   agricultural problems.

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

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

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

00:16:08   No, no, tumbleweed, right?

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

00:16:11   Nah, gotcha, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:16:44   Yeah, whatever it was.

00:16:44   Tumble time 2020.

00:16:45   Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:17:42   from a man who has plans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:18:42   Where did that come from?

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:19:17   it's bizarre.

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

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

00:19:26   my plate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:20:53   Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:21:24   [sigh]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:22:00   Is that this

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

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

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

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

00:22:22   24 hours ago

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

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

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

00:22:46   way.

00:22:47   What do you mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:23:17   is 'Breaking the Rules'!"

00:23:19   Right, yeah.

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

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

00:23:26   Now,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:23:51   - Yeah, no, no, goodbye.

00:23:54   - See ya, idea!

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

00:23:58   Just Zoom 'em up.

00:24:00   - It's exactly the same.

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

00:24:04   - Zoom 'em up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:24:40   nothing is happening today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:25:14   Yeah, I'm not there.

00:25:15   Oh boy.

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

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

00:25:27   on your favorites in Safari.

00:25:28   Jesus Christ.

00:25:29   Yeah, that's not good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:27:33   I'll check less.

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

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

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

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

00:28:09   little window into the world.

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

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

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

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

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

00:28:30   Three more weeks, yeah.

00:28:31   Three more weeks, okay.

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

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

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

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

00:28:50   permanent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:33:41   Welcome to Cortex-100!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:34:16   He just frames it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:34:40   [laughs]

00:34:41   M: Alright, so Stardew.

00:34:43   Heavily influenced by Animal Crossing.

00:34:47   But not farming.

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

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

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

00:34:55   AO; Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:35:18   is this?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:35:46   It's not like that.

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

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

00:35:55   fruit, that kind of stuff.

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

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

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

00:36:11   it's really amazing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:36:42   into the big dinosaur structures.

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

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

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

00:37:01   It's really cool.

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

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

00:37:10   We're not moving on yet.

00:37:12   Jeez.

00:37:13   We're my friends.

00:37:14   We're not done.

00:37:15   Okay, great.

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

00:37:19   Cool.

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

00:37:23   That's part of it.

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

00:37:27   Oh Jesus, okay.

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

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

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

00:37:40   you want to.

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

00:37:47   that move.

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

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

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

00:38:01   where you want.

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

00:38:07   including terraforming it.

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

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

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

00:38:19   Which is Tom Nook.

00:38:20   That's the raccoon?

00:38:21   Yeah, raccoon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:39:38   Switch.

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

00:39:44   but so is Mario.

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

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

00:39:57   Switch game of all time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:40:33   [laughter]

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

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

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

00:40:48   is the stork market.

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

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

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

00:41:01   Stork market.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:42:22   Right?

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

00:42:27   Right.

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

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

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

00:42:40   And it got delayed.

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

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

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

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

00:42:59   Come on!"

00:43:00   Right?

00:43:01   Right.

00:43:02   You know?

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

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

00:43:10   this one.

00:43:11   Right, right.

00:43:13   Huh. Should I try it?

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

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

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

00:43:36   mm-hmm because

00:43:38   It's a very very good

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

00:43:46   and it's also

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

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

00:43:56   But both me and Adina play

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:44:28   I make my house, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:45:03   It's fun like that.

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

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

00:45:15   Crossing right now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:45:52   out a little bit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:46:41   time.

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

00:46:44   It will never be discussed.

00:46:45   I will not allow it.

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

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

00:46:56   Make your next move with Squarespace, they will let you easily create a website for your

00:46:59   next idea or project.

00:47:01   You can easily register a unique domain name, take advantage of and customise award winning

00:47:05   templates and so much more.

00:47:07   Whether you want to create an online store, a portfolio, a blog, a site for your business,

00:47:12   no matter what it is, Squarespace is the all in one platform to help you do it.

00:47:16   There's nothing to install or patch or upgrade, they take care of all of that so you don't

00:47:21   have to and they back everything up with award winning 24/7 customer support so if you need

00:47:26   any help the Squarespace team will be there to help you with it.

00:47:30   Squarespace is so easy, I absolutely love making websites on Squarespace because I don't

00:47:34   have to spend days and days and days trying to get everything set up.

00:47:38   Their system is super customisable and as much as I need to do on it I can so I have

00:47:43   very frequently just start at a Squarespace website, chosen one of the templates and I'm

00:47:47   ready to go, or in other instances I've actually gone in and tweaked the fonts, tweaked

00:47:51   the colours, tweaked the spacing, tweaked the layout. No matter what it is you want

00:47:55   to do it's going to look amazing and you get the flexibility to do it.

00:47:59   Now plans start at just $12 a month but you can sign up for a trial with no credit card

00:48:03   required by going to squarespace.com/cortex and when you do that you actually get to build

00:48:09   your website in full so you can see it, you can preview it, you can make sure everything

00:48:13   is just as you want it before you sign up for one of their plans which you need to do

00:48:17   to make it live to the world. When you do that, if you use the offer code

00:48:21   Cortex you will get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support

00:48:26   for Cortex. I have been using Squarespace for over a decade now to build my websites

00:48:31   and I wouldn't choose anybody else. That is squarespace.com/cortex and the code Cortex

00:48:37   to get 10% off your first purchase.

00:48:39   Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of Relay FM.

00:48:43   Squarespace.

00:48:44   Make your next move, make your next website.

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

00:48:50   Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:50:06   system."

00:50:07   So jealous of you.

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

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

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

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

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

00:50:33   have been pushed way back.

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

00:50:37   It's impossible.

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

00:50:42   in stock."

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

00:50:45   ALICE - Interesting.

00:50:46   Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:53:12   Those are three different things.

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

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

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

00:53:24   from the other ones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:55:25   survival maps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:56:20   BEETSABER!

00:56:21   Right, yeah.

00:56:21   It's... it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:01:41   separate computer system.

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

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

01:01:49   What do you mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:02:54   Oh, good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:03:51   go?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:04:22   that are attacking.

01:04:23   As one does.

01:04:24   Yeah.

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

01:04:29   enough space."

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:04:53   I don't know.

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

01:04:58   wow, it was really fun.

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

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

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

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

01:05:18   It's exhilarating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:06:06   there are no quests available. This episode is brought to you by DoorDash. Between never-ending

01:06:11   laundry cycles and incoming emails you've got plenty on your to-do list. Give yourself one

01:06:16   less thing to worry about, let DoorDash take care of your next meal. DoorDash is the app that brings

01:06:21   you food that you're craving right now right to your door. Ordering is so easy, just open the

01:06:27   the DoorDash app, choose what you want to eat and your food will be delivered and left

01:06:30   safely outside your door with the new contactless delivery drop-off setting. With over 300,000

01:06:37   partners in the US, Puerto Rico, Canada and Australia, you can support your local go-tos

01:06:42   or choose from your favourite national restaurants like Chipotle, Wendy's and the Cheesecake

01:06:46   Factory.

01:06:47   With so many options to choose from and an app that's easy to use, DoorDash is awesome.

01:06:52   Trust me right now, it is amazing to have food delivered directly to your home and DoorDash

01:06:56   makes it super easy to do so. Being able to select from so many different options and

01:07:01   choose exactly what I'm looking for and even being able to choose different food for different

01:07:05   people in the home and have it all brought to you is kind of amazing. Right now our listeners

01:07:10   can get $5 off their first order of $15 or more and zero delivery fees for the first

01:07:15   month when downloading the DoorDash app and using the promo code CORTEX. That's $5 off

01:07:20   your first order and zero delivery fees for a month when you download the DoorDash app

01:07:25   the app store and use the code "CORTEX". Download it now, the promo code "CORTEX"

01:07:30   and you'll get $5 off your first order from DoorDash. Our thanks to DoorDash for their

01:07:34   support of this show and Relay FM.

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

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

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

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

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

01:08:06   Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:08:31   This would probably be a good use of the app Dark Noise,

01:08:36   right, that we spoke about, the white noise application?

01:08:38   - Yeah, yeah, for sure.

01:08:39   - I should think about doing that in those times.

01:08:40   That's a good use of it for me.

01:08:42   But being able to just adjust the audio environment

01:08:47   around me. It's very useful. Noise canceling is definitely a thing I never

01:08:52   was light on use before, but way more useful now. And it's also the funny thing of I think

01:08:59   everybody is much more happy to do video conferencing than they previously used to.

01:09:04   Oh, wow. Yeah.

01:09:05   Right? But let me tell you, a thing I'm really aware of is who has good headphones and who

01:09:11   doesn't on the video conferencing because on many video conferences what you can hear is the other

01:09:18   person's partner also on a video conference in the background somewhere else like and if somebody has

01:09:24   a terrible headphone that gets picked up really well and if they have a good headphone it doesn't.

01:09:29   Also like the microphone that's attached to the headphones you mean?

01:09:32   Yeah that's what I mean like you can hear the noise in somebody else's house if they have like

01:09:37   a really crappy pair of headphones. And it's like I just keep thinking of the various things,

01:09:43   assuming this goes on for a long time, that people are going to want more of and it's like quality

01:09:49   headphones, right? Better microphones, you know, all this stuff. I was talking about this with

01:09:54   JSON on upgrade a couple of weeks ago, how technology products will be changed because of

01:10:00   this. Because people that work for the major technology companies are now understanding that

01:10:05   that their webcams are not good enough.

01:10:07   Oh my god, yeah, yeah.

01:10:08   Webcams need to get way better.

01:10:10   Stuff like that, right?

01:10:12   I think there will be these interesting knock-on effects.

01:10:14   Like, I'm using an external Logitech camera on my iMac Pro.

01:10:19   Oh, do you have the little Logitech 1080p one?

01:10:23   It's like a little...

01:10:23   Yeah, okay, I think we have the same one.

01:10:25   A lot of people have this one, right?

01:10:26   Like, I bought it for my PC, for streaming,

01:10:31   but it is a vastly better camera

01:10:33   than the one that's built into my iMac.

01:10:35   So I just shoved it in here because I'm doing way more video calls.

01:10:38   There is always this fun thing like I use my podcast microphone.

01:10:41   It's always funny to people.

01:10:43   But like that is the thing. I have this microphone.

01:10:46   I want to have good headphones, good microphone.

01:10:48   I'll just put the Logitech camera in front of me.

01:10:50   And then that's how I'm doing all my video calls.

01:10:52   Everybody wants to video call now.

01:10:54   People I used to just speak to on the phone right now want to do a video call.

01:10:59   We never did video calls before.

01:11:01   But why are we doing them now?

01:11:03   There's a lot-- I'm having more calls than I've ever had at the moment.

01:11:08   I'm sure you're experiencing a similar thing.

01:11:10   Yeah, yeah, no, people are much happier to jump on video calls now for sure.

01:11:14   But just calls in general.

01:11:16   Yeah, yeah, calls in general are up as well.

01:11:19   But yeah, it's like everybody needs better equipment for this stuff yesterday.

01:11:23   The thing is though that like video conferences, doing a video call with someone,

01:11:28   It's pretty good, but it's not great for replicating the experience of like hanging out and talking with someone.

01:11:37   And I was trying to think about why that is.

01:11:40   And I think part of the problem is when you are physically in a space with someone, it's much easier to pause.

01:11:51   So I think like if you think about when you are physically having coffee with a person,

01:12:00   I think both of you can much more naturally do the thing where in a conversation you just look away

01:12:07   for a few moments and you're thinking your separate thoughts and then the conversation

01:12:12   resumes in a few moments but you don't feel the pressure to constantly keep the conversation going

01:12:19   Whereas I think there's something about the video format that does make it feel more like

01:12:27   "I am looking right at you and you're looking right at me and we're talking."

01:12:31   And I was just trying to pin down like why is video calls not quite the same?

01:12:37   And I think that's one of the reasons is it's harder to pause.

01:12:41   - I think one of them is that you can see yourself.

01:12:43   I think that makes it a little weird.

01:12:45   - I think people fall into this category of do they notice that or do they not

01:12:49   notice that. Some people hilariously cannot stop looking at themselves in the corner,

01:12:53   which is doubly fun. It's like being in a canary and you have the mirror,

01:12:59   you keep tapping the mirror. I get often too caught in looking at myself in video calls.

01:13:04   Yeah, maybe they need to turn off your own video option or just to make it clearer.

01:13:10   I think a lot of places, a lot of things do have that, but then it's like,

01:13:15   Do I look weird?

01:13:17   Right, right.

01:13:19   Or like what's in the background?

01:13:21   Yeah, in real life you just have to deal with the fact that you look weird and there's nothing,

01:13:24   you know, you don't have the option.

01:13:25   Yeah, I'm not gonna put a mirror on the table. We should all start, we'll start doing that, right?

01:13:29   Like, in the post-quarantine time we will take mirrors out to restaurants and put them on the

01:13:33   table so we can see ourselves in the corner of our view.

01:13:36   Right, this is how I communicate with humans now, I don't understand.

01:13:40   We all need to know how we look while we're talking.

01:13:43   Yeah, of course.

01:13:43   But one of the biggest problems with video conferences...

01:13:46   I need a haircut.

01:13:47   Big time.

01:13:49   Well, you know where you're getting it from.

01:13:52   Oh no.

01:13:53   But that's also part of the problem, isn't it?

01:13:56   Okay.

01:13:57   Right?

01:13:58   Home haircuts...

01:14:00   not good.

01:14:01   Typically.

01:14:02   We're all going to look a little dopey for a while and that's fine.

01:14:05   But I don't know what to do, Gray.

01:14:07   I don't know what to do about my beard.

01:14:09   I guess the problem is you're a very stylish man.

01:14:11   Don't, please don't.

01:14:12   I don't know what to do about my beard, right? I'm not shaving it off. I can trim it like of

01:14:19   scissors and stuff every now and then but like there's a lot of it. I just don't know what to do

01:14:25   with it. I really can't help you in this situation. Beard oil, is beard oil what you need? I don't

01:14:31   know. Beard oil doesn't, it's not gonna help me. I'm not looking for your help. Yeah, like of

01:14:36   everyone, you are not the person I'm coming to for advice on this one but it is just something that

01:14:42   I'm becoming increasingly aware of, I am becoming more mountain man.

01:14:46   Right, I don't think you're alone.

01:14:47   No I'm not, but there is an increasing amount of video calls, right?

01:14:51   And it's like, when I'm progressively more mountain man, I would like less video,

01:14:56   that's the thing, but now I have more video.

01:14:59   So I need a solution, I don't know what it is.

01:15:02   I don't know, I don't know what to tell you man.

01:15:07   Shave it all off.

01:15:10   You need a different life during quarantine time. You can shave off the beard.

01:15:14   I can't imagine I could buy a clipper right now.

01:15:16   Oh yeah, but clippers are going to be in that same category.

01:15:21   What I'm just trying to think at the end of this podcast is now,

01:15:25   okay, I got stuff that I thought would be useful for the next upcoming months.

01:15:32   But like, what might a year from now Gray want that he isn't currently thinking about?

01:15:40   I think this is the next level that I need to start strategizing on.

01:15:44   Yeah, can you let me know the next entertainment-based product that you pre-buy?

01:15:49   Because I would have loved to have considered the Oculus Quest when you did.

01:15:55   So if you could just give me a quick heads up, I would appreciate that.

01:15:58   No, I kept it quiet. I had to order stuff in secret.

01:16:01   You can buy yours first.

01:16:02   I need to make sure it's at the house and then I'll let you know.

01:16:05   - Yeah, you go ahead and buy your own stuff.

01:16:08   Like you get all of what you need,

01:16:10   place your orders, wait for them to arrive,

01:16:12   and just give me a quick heads up

01:16:14   in case there's anything that I have not

01:16:17   used my insight to procure.

01:16:19   (laughing)

01:16:20   - Okay, I'll keep you in mind.

01:16:22   - This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN.

01:16:25   We all know how a VPN can protect your privacy

01:16:28   and security online, but it can also take your content

01:16:30   watching to the next level by unlocking movies and shows

01:16:33   that are only available in other countries.

01:16:36   Now that many of us are spending more time at home,

01:16:38   it's only a matter of time before we run out of stuff

01:16:40   to watch on our own Netflix.

01:16:42   Well, you can use ExpressVPN to binge on whatever you want.

01:16:45   You could watch "Doctor Who" or "Star Trek"

01:16:47   on the UK Netflix.

01:16:48   It's super simple, just fire up the ExpressVPN app,

01:16:51   change your location to the UK,

01:16:53   then refresh Netflix and that's it.

01:16:54   ExpressVPN hides your IP address,

01:16:57   so you can control where you want sites

01:16:58   to think you're located,

01:17:00   and you can choose from almost 100 different countries.

01:17:03   That's a lot of Netflix libraries you can go through.

01:17:05   So if you love anime, you can use ExpressVPN to access Japanese Netflix.

01:17:09   And it's not just Netflix, ExpressVPN works with any streaming service.

01:17:12   Hulu, BBC iPlayer, YouTube, whatever you want.

01:17:15   There are hundreds of VPNs out there, but ExpressVPN is ridiculously fast,

01:17:19   which you want when you're watching shows.

01:17:21   There's no buffering, no lag, you can stream as normal in HD.

01:17:24   ExpressVPN is also compatible with all of your devices, phones, media consoles, smart TVs, and more,

01:17:30   so you can watch what you want, wherever you want.

01:17:33   Now for myself, I'm a big Terrace House fan,

01:17:35   and I was left on a big cliffhanger recently

01:17:38   with one of the seasons,

01:17:39   but then had the next episode up in Japan.

01:17:41   So we were able to switch over to Japan using ExpressVPN

01:17:45   and we could catch up on that episode

01:17:47   and the cliffhanger was taken care of.

01:17:49   It's awesome, super fast, super easy.

01:17:51   If you go to expressvpn.com/cortex,

01:17:54   you can get three extra months of ExpressVPN for free.

01:17:57   Support this show, watch what you want

01:17:59   and protect yourself by going to expressvpn.com/cortex.

01:18:04   It's expressvpn.com/cortex

01:18:08   for three extra months of ExpressVPN for free.

01:18:11   Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show

01:18:14   and all of Relay FM.

01:18:15   (logo dings)

01:18:16   Episode 100, which means we will talk about yearly themes.

01:18:20   - Yearly themes.

01:18:21   - Oh.

01:18:24   - I can easily imagine that there are quite a lot of people

01:18:29   who have discovered that they need to readjust their yearly theme.

01:18:34   Yeah, and this is the thing, this has been a great conversation about this in the subreddit.

01:18:39   It is like a, this is a perfect example of why we encourage people to allow flexibility in their themes.

01:18:49   So my year of refinement, I've adapted it.

01:18:55   And I've put some elements on pause.

01:18:59   So for me, one of the things that I'm really trying to do

01:19:02   is to engage more with interesting people

01:19:06   and learn new things.

01:19:08   That's the thing that I'm trying to focus on right now

01:19:10   more than before.

01:19:11   So the classes that I wanted to take,

01:19:15   the hobbies that I wanted to embark upon,

01:19:18   they all have to be paused.

01:19:20   But that doesn't mean that the year of refinement is over.

01:19:24   And a friend mentioned to me a phrase

01:19:28   that I'm trying to embody for right now.

01:19:31   We've put it on the fridge and I think it really matches

01:19:34   that the year of refinement is,

01:19:36   when I come out of this better than when I started.

01:19:38   And that is what I'm kind of embodying now

01:19:44   for the year of refinement.

01:19:45   Is I wanna come out of this process

01:19:47   being a more refined individual

01:19:49   in how I live my life in different ways.

01:19:52   And one of those things is thinking about like,

01:19:54   what is my future like?

01:19:56   You know, like I'm being forced to think about it

01:19:59   in ways that I hadn't before,

01:20:01   just because of the sheer nature of where we are right now.

01:20:05   You know, like, what is your future?

01:20:07   I'm thinking about that more.

01:20:08   And I think that's gonna be something

01:20:10   I wanna spend more time thinking about

01:20:11   over the next six months.

01:20:13   'Cause before this period of time,

01:20:15   I'd kind of, I think I'd kind of allowed myself

01:20:18   to be in a little bit more of a devil may care attitude.

01:20:21   to my future, my creative future, what I do with my career.

01:20:26   I kind of allowed myself to be like,

01:20:30   I don't know, let's see how it goes.

01:20:32   And I think I wanna wrestle that control

01:20:34   back to me a little bit now,

01:20:36   thinking about what I want my future to look like.

01:20:38   So refining that out more.

01:20:40   'Cause I felt like I kind of got into the habit of,

01:20:45   and I was fine with this, I'm not criticising it,

01:20:47   of taking more bets and just seeing what worked out.

01:20:50   when now I want to be more calculated, really like consider things differently.

01:20:57   Yeah, but that's the example of the environment changing around you.

01:21:00   Exactly.

01:21:00   Right, like the more stable an environment is, the more you're willing to take bets,

01:21:06   and the more uncertain an environment becomes, the more you want security beneath you.

01:21:12   And it makes total sense.

01:21:14   Exactly, so like I'm happy to accept the reason in which it's happened,

01:21:17   But now I want to embrace it and make that a part of who I am now and what I am refining in my life.

01:21:26   And that's definitely a big part of that.

01:21:29   And the other part is really focusing in, zeroing in on the idea of learning more about the world in different ways.

01:21:36   These are the things that I'm now kind of embodying in my themes.

01:21:40   The point about coming out better than before.

01:21:42   Like, I've been working on a thing-- that point is so vital.

01:21:50   It's always true that you have this question of,

01:21:54   "Oh, at the end of the year, are you gonna be better off or worse off than you are right now?"

01:21:59   Like, that's always true. That's never not true.

01:22:00   But this quarantine is such a time out of time that it really highlights this situation.

01:22:10   And I am, you know, there are many things to be concerned about in this time.

01:22:18   And, but one of the things I'm concerned about is that for a lot of people, I think it's very

01:22:25   easy to slip into a situation where at the end of this, you're way worse off than you were at the,

01:22:31   at the start of it. And I really have this feeling like I want people to take this time

01:22:37   seriously because it is a serious situation and very, very few people are going to come out of

01:22:45   a long-term quarantine the same as when they went in. You're going to come out better or

01:22:51   you're going to come out worse and you really want to focus on being on the right side of that.

01:22:56   And especially if you're isolated, like it is just way too easy to start slipping down like

01:23:05   that accelerated negative path. And so I think if you find yourself with a theme that's like,

01:23:12   "Oh, this isn't really quite working out," you know, substituting whatever you were thinking of

01:23:18   with the current idea of like, "Come out of quarantine better," you know, that's,

01:23:25   I think that's a really good way to focus on things. And I think it's really important to be

01:23:33   very serious about that and we've talked many times about not loving exercise on this show,

01:23:40   but that is one of these things that even for me on days that I'm being lazy, like I am taking

01:23:48   exercise deadly serious now at this point of like, okay, you're in this really limited environment,

01:23:58   Everything you know about how the human body and brain works tells you that the most effective thing that you can do is to stay physically active.

01:24:09   And so it's like...

01:24:11   That is like one of these things that has changed for me is I've been increasingly more serious about physical health as time has gone on,

01:24:21   But now this is like...

01:24:23   It's like...

01:24:25   deadly, serious, required, daily medicine.

01:24:29   Like, that's the kind of reframing during quarantine.

01:24:33   And I really suggest that lots of people should think about it this way, like...

01:24:38   whatever you can do in terms of physical exercise,

01:24:42   it's the most effective thing that you can possibly do, and...

01:24:45   At least for me personally, it's...

01:24:47   This again is this weird duality of quarantine, but...

01:24:50   I honestly think another month of this, and I'm gonna be in the best physical shape of my life,

01:24:55   because my daily activity is just so consistent and way higher than it was in the months before

01:25:03   quarantine that it clearly just has such a positive impact. And so it's like, yes,

01:25:08   this is the foundation of everything and I'm taking it super seriously. And I just kind of

01:25:14   mentioned that for anybody else who, if they feel adrift and they feel without a theme, like, these

01:25:19   are things to really think about and focus on. I think it's the best thing that you can possibly do.

01:25:23   But my poor little Apple Watch, I've had to go back to swapping between two Apple Watches,

01:25:28   because of just the workout stuff, draining it down too much. It's just a funny thing if I

01:25:35   notice like, "Oh, I'm cutting it too close on the batteries." I need to switch back and forth

01:25:39   between the two of these things. But we've set up a dedicated part in the house to be both the

01:25:45   exercise area for for my wife and I and it's like yes this is part of the life now. For whatever

01:25:51   your themes are incorporate physical activity into it much more and right now it would be one

01:25:59   of my main suggestions. Mega Studio.

01:26:03   How's Mega Studio going Myke?

01:26:10   Okay, let me rephrase that.

01:26:12   When was the last time you were at Mega Studio?

01:26:15   And how long do you think is going to be until the next time you're at Mega Studio?

01:26:20   The last time I was there was like a couple of days after we last spoke.

01:26:24   Okay.

01:26:25   It's like four weeks ago now.

01:26:27   March 19th was my last day there.

01:26:32   And that was the day, I kid you not, in which it was finally ready to record.

01:26:39   [inhales]

01:26:41   Just in time.

01:26:42   Yeah.

01:26:43   We...

01:26:44   had the panels in,

01:26:46   we had the blankets come in, the stuff that I was talking about

01:26:48   a couple of episodes ago,

01:26:50   and it was finally—I did some tests—

01:26:52   it was finally at a stage where, like, I would have been happy

01:26:54   to start recording there.

01:26:56   We haven't been there since.

01:26:58   And won't be.

01:26:59   Like, our building is closed down.

01:27:02   Oh, okay. So this isn't even your decision.

01:27:04   This is the—the building has closed down for lockdown.

01:27:07   Yeah, you have to prove that your work is essential to them.

01:27:12   And I do not disagree with this.

01:27:14   It hurts to be paying rent.

01:27:17   However, I will say a piece of very good news.

01:27:21   This morning, the company that owns our building

01:27:23   wrote to all of the tenants, and they're cutting our rent

01:27:26   in half, which I think is great.

01:27:30   That's what I wanted.

01:27:31   That felt acceptable to me of like,

01:27:34   let's do this at cost, shall we?

01:27:36   I'm not there, right?

01:27:38   You're not having to pay all of the things

01:27:41   that mean I have to be there, right?

01:27:43   The buildings will shut down.

01:27:45   Let's try and find something that makes sense

01:27:48   for all of us, right?

01:27:49   Where like, I know I have a contract,

01:27:52   so like I'm not saying I don't think I should pay anything.

01:27:55   But I wanted to have some kind of like,

01:27:58   let's meet in the middle.

01:28:00   And we're meeting exactly in the middle.

01:28:02   So I think that's a nice gesture from the building owner

01:28:05   and I'm happy to keep going.

01:28:09   You know, it hurts to be paying a large amount of money

01:28:12   for something that I can't use at a time

01:28:15   where money is ever more considered

01:28:18   as a valuable resource, right?

01:28:20   - Yes, yes.

01:28:21   - And so having to watch that money

01:28:23   leave my bank account every month hurts

01:28:27   because I had also, I'm very aware of the amount of money

01:28:31   I poured into that studio in equipment

01:28:35   that I can't get to.

01:28:37   - Yeah, I wasn't even thinking about the equipment.

01:28:40   - So, you know, and there's also stuff that we have bought,

01:28:43   which is in limbo, right?

01:28:45   Like delivery limbo right now.

01:28:47   I don't know when I'm gonna be able to go there again,

01:28:50   and even when I can, I can't move there.

01:28:54   Because let's imagine in three months time,

01:28:57   restrictions are lifted a bit, and I'm able to go there.

01:29:02   Well, I can't move to it in case the restrictions come back

01:29:05   again.

01:29:07   Right.

01:29:07   Right?

01:29:08   So--

01:29:08   Right.

01:29:09   Yeah, OK.

01:29:09   I see what you're saying.

01:29:10   You can't completely set that up as your working environment

01:29:14   because you always need to have the fallback of your home.

01:29:17   Yeah.

01:29:17   Right.

01:29:18   OK.

01:29:20   So depending on how things go, I might move everything

01:29:26   and have what I would consider to be all of my travel gear

01:29:29   at home so I can still do everything as normal but that's it's too far away for

01:29:34   me to know that you know at least at this time like because I can't use the

01:29:38   studio like I'm not buying more equipment for the studio so like mmm

01:29:43   because it was a large financial outlay to get that to the point that it's even

01:29:48   at so I was stretching myself a bit so now that's come back in again because I

01:29:54   can't spend any more money on it because I can't go to it it's very unfortunate

01:29:59   in timing but also at the same time fortunate in that I hadn't moved

01:30:04   everything because that would have been really difficult if I had moved all of

01:30:08   my gear to that studio it would have been very tricky because if you know if

01:30:15   things would have happened quickly which they did I don't know how fast I would

01:30:18   have been able to get what I need out of there so you know I know that that place

01:30:25   out there is mine and it's waiting for me right and I genuinely hope that like

01:30:31   at some point in the next few months we might be able to visit and spend time

01:30:35   working there but I don't really know I don't even know if I want to I mean I

01:30:41   don't really know what it's gonna be like I don't know how I'm gonna feel

01:30:44   about leaving the home right like so right now it is a is a financial burden

01:30:52   but at least half of that burden and

01:30:54   This is a this is just how it's all played out. Mmm

01:31:01   I think this this is another just another case of where

01:31:06   It's difficult to make decisions under uncertainty

01:31:11   because that just didn't it just didn't even occur to me that you have this problem of where is your equipment and

01:31:18   Even if the restrictions get lifted

01:31:21   you don't want to be in a situation where you're like caught out or yeah so

01:31:28   I don't want to be in between yeah you don't want to be in between and but like

01:31:33   you know I I can I can do a a minimized version of it so you know like I can

01:31:38   have just a laptop there right and that's you know which is what I wanted

01:31:43   anyway but not move my iMac right but you need to take public transport to get

01:31:47   to the office, right?

01:31:48   It's not within walking distance.

01:31:49   - Yeah, you see that's, when I say, right,

01:31:53   like will I want to, that's the problem.

01:31:56   - Yeah.

01:31:57   - Now, the amount of public transport that we need to take

01:32:00   is actually minimal.

01:32:02   I can get on one train for 10 minutes

01:32:04   and then it's, you know, there is a few, multiple routes.

01:32:07   One of them is walk for 10 minutes, train for 10 minutes,

01:32:10   walk for 20.

01:32:12   And that's probably the one that we would take, right?

01:32:15   - Yeah.

01:32:16   I'm much more comfortable walking down a street

01:32:18   than I am being on a train car.

01:32:20   - Yeah, yeah.

01:32:21   - You know, that feels like a better,

01:32:23   even though you're in theory walking past more people,

01:32:28   that just feels better to me

01:32:29   than being in an enclosed place.

01:32:31   - Yeah, it's the enclosed environment that's no good.

01:32:35   - Irrespective of the science of it,

01:32:37   I'm talking about what makes me feel comfortable, right?

01:32:40   - Yeah.

01:32:41   - So in that instance, like that's not the worst thing.

01:32:43   And as long as we planned correctly,

01:32:45   'Cause this is, that day that we were there,

01:32:48   we knew things were going on,

01:32:49   but we had deliveries that needed to come

01:32:51   and they weren't being rescheduled.

01:32:53   So we left the house at 10.30,

01:32:56   which meant we missed all the rush hour.

01:32:59   We got on that train for 10 minutes.

01:33:01   We were way over past this six feet

01:33:05   away from everybody thing,

01:33:07   because there was so few people on the train.

01:33:08   And then we did the same on the way back.

01:33:10   We left at 3.30.

01:33:12   So again, didn't really interact

01:33:13   with any people on the public transport.

01:33:14   Like that's what we would try and do, I guess, but like, I don't really want to roll the dice a bunch of times.

01:33:22   So it all just depends.

01:33:24   I mean, it's like, it's again, right?

01:33:26   Like you look at these things and the time in which they're made, we just don't really know what it's going to be like in a few months time.

01:33:31   Things will be different to what they are now, but I don't know in what direction.

01:33:36   But until then, that's three months of rent I'll be paying.

01:33:41   You know, like there is a possibility, like, do I cancel the office space, right?

01:33:46   Like I have a six month break clause, but then where does all the stuff go?

01:33:50   Yeah.

01:33:51   Yeah.

01:33:52   That's, that's the problem is all, it's all gotta go somewhere and it's not, it's not

01:33:55   all coming back to your apartment.

01:33:57   Well, and I can't go and do anything about any of it.

01:34:00   Yeah.

01:34:00   So, you know, this is one thing where I'm just, at the moment, I'm going to be in a

01:34:06   wait and see on it and and will be you know like I was preparing and working

01:34:11   out how I'm gonna pay the rent and not make an impact well I've now doubled the

01:34:16   amount of time I can do that because my rents been cut in half so all my

01:34:19   planning that I was doing right I've been given an extension on that anyway

01:34:24   so I will take advantage of that and and sit tight. This episode of Cortex is

01:34:28   brought to you by Fitbud. Fitbud is the fitness app that provides a personalized

01:34:33   exercise plan for you designed to push your limits. Fitbod has been fine tuned by certified

01:34:39   personal trainers to bring the best practices of strength training directly to you. Your

01:34:44   workout program is tailored exactly to your needs, making it perfectly suited to your

01:34:49   unique body, experience, environment and goals. It can be hard to know exactly how much you

01:34:54   should be doing whilst exercising, but Fitbod figures all of that out so you don't have

01:34:58   to worry about under or over training. Fitbod will also mix up muscle groups, exercises,

01:35:04   sets, reps and weight over time to keep you on top form and to keep everything balanced.

01:35:10   You don't need to spend hours researching the best exercise or workout strategies to

01:35:14   get results, Fitbod does all of that for you. And to help you stay healthy at home right

01:35:19   now, Fitbod has a bunch of body weight only workouts so you can get in shape without needing

01:35:25   to go to a gym or have gym equipment. I wasn't as smart as Grey, I didn't get any gym equipment

01:35:30   so I have been using Fitbod's bodyweight only exercises and they have been awesome.

01:35:35   Signing up and first using the app is super easy, it walks you through everything and

01:35:39   lets you choose exactly what you want to focus on and how frequently you want to be exercising.

01:35:43   It will then notify you and I love that the notification gives you a preview of the exercises

01:35:48   you're going to be doing. It syncs with Apple Health on iOS so it has all of the information

01:35:52   needs about me. I didn't need to enter anything. It could get my height, my weight, my age,

01:35:56   all of that. I get to tell Fitbod what I want to work on exactly but it also keeps track of what

01:36:02   I'm doing. So I was saying I want to do some extra work on my neck and my arms because they're areas

01:36:07   that I want to strengthen but it also makes sure that I'm getting an overall workout experience and

01:36:12   not overworking any area which is something that's great because I wouldn't know how to balance that

01:36:17   myself. Every exercise has instructional gifts and a bunch of text so I can work out exactly

01:36:23   how to do them, but I don't have to watch these every time, so when I'm doing the different sets

01:36:27   or on different days I might remember an exercise so I can just go ahead and do it, but if I need a

01:36:32   refresher the information is right there. When it comes to working out I don't know what I'm doing

01:36:37   or why, but Fitbod helps me understand the reason for each workout, what I would achieve,

01:36:42   and also provides me everything I need to be able to complete it.

01:36:45   You can get started right now by going to fitbod.me/cortex to get Fitbod for free until June 1st.

01:36:53   That's F I T B O D dot me slash cortex to use Fitbod totally free until June 1st.

01:37:00   This is an amazing deal, especially if you're at home right now,

01:37:04   download Fitbod and give it a try, you will not regret it.

01:37:07   That's fitbod.me/cortex, I completely know now why Gray was recommending this application to me,

01:37:13   It's awesome. Our thanks to Fitbod for their support of this show and Relay FM.

01:37:17   Let's get back on an ascent of this rollercoaster of an episode.

01:37:22   This show, of course, I feel like we have to have a little mushy moment here.

01:37:28   It's been successful and is a great project in part because of the Cortexians, our listeners,

01:37:33   right? We can't... We could make this show without any listeners, but I think it would

01:37:37   have gone past 10 episodes at that point.

01:37:40   Yeah, if a podcast downloads on a player and there's no one around to hear it, does it

01:37:45   even exist?

01:37:46   The answer is no.

01:37:47   No it doesn't.

01:37:48   Eventually it won't because people stop losing the will to make it.

01:37:51   It kind of feels fitting to me to do some Ask Cortex of this show.

01:37:56   So I put the call out on Twitter and I got a lot of questions and I tried to pick a selection

01:38:01   of questions that are either kind of meta questions or thematic for our run of episodes

01:38:10   so far. And I think we cannot start with a better question than the one from Pavel who

01:38:14   asks is Evernote still a thing for the two of you? Because if anything it gives me an

01:38:21   excuse to right now use what is probably our best custom show art work. So if you use a

01:38:28   podcast player that supports it you are currently seeing the Evercore show art work.

01:38:33   It's still my favorite of all the show arts for sure. I mean do you still use it Myke?

01:38:38   No, I'm all in on that Notion train, baby.

01:38:41   You're on the Notion train, you're one of those, you're one of the Notion heads?

01:38:45   I am one of the least effective Notion users, where I just have a bunch of, I don't know,

01:38:52   sections which has some... I don't really understand how to use Notion,

01:38:56   but all I know is its app experience is better for me than Evernote.

01:39:03   Okay, all right, you're all in on Notion. Of course, I'm forever entangled in the trunk of

01:39:11   Evernote, and I don't think I will escape. Although, I came very close to making a super

01:39:22   annoyed video for CGP Grey 2 about how something in Evernote doesn't work at all.

01:39:29   right? Where it's like, "How can I get their attention to fix this thing?"

01:39:33   Which is like, okay, so I'm just going to describe it here now.

01:39:36   So for the Tumbleweed video, I had a bunch of these PDFs that I was doing highlights in,

01:39:42   where it's like, okay, I downloaded the 1898 agricultural magazine or whatever,

01:39:50   and it's hundreds of pages long and I'm just trying to highlight this one article that's in it.

01:39:55   But so the way Evernote works with PDFs is.

01:40:00   In order to do a highlight,

01:40:04   you have to put it in like an edit mode.

01:40:07   So you can't just say, yeah, I want to do highlights.

01:40:10   It's like, no, no, no, I'm editing this PDF.

01:40:14   And one of the things that I can do is highlights.

01:40:17   But so it has to stay in this edit mode

01:40:23   for the duration of the time that you want to highlight, which is of course the entire freaking

01:40:28   time that I'm reading the PDF. So I'm like there, "Doop-a-doop-a-doo!" Okay, I'll put it in edit mode

01:40:35   and I'll highlight, I'll highlight, I'll highlight. But it doesn't automatically save those highlights

01:40:43   until you say, "I'm done with editing mode." And you know what takes up a lot of memory on your device

01:40:53   is a several hundred page PDF that's nothing but scanned images that's open.

01:40:58   And so, as I discovered painfully many times, like, "Oh, my lovely research pad that I totally

01:41:07   like using. Oh, I'm highlighting this thing. Let me just quickly check something in Safari.

01:41:12   Swipe over to Safari. Oh, okay, I've checked the thing. Interesting. Swipe back to Evernote. Oh,

01:41:19   I see the startup screen for Evernote because it got booted out of memory,

01:41:23   and everything that I had highlighted is gone because I didn't click "Done" on the editing mode.

01:41:29   - That's 2004 over there. - Yeah, it's crazy making. And so, yes,

01:41:36   I do still use Evernote. It is still the best tool for what I use, and it has, yes,

01:41:43   gotten much better since I first complained about it forever ago. But I've come across this new,

01:41:48   infuriating thing which is like guys guys auto save what i'm doing while i'm doing it it's like

01:41:56   not since whatever whatever it was mac osx tiger right then we switched to lion and they're like

01:42:04   saving this saving is not a thing we need to do anymore and this happened back in 1974 and we

01:42:10   like we haven't saved documents since then and it's worked out great but not for Evernote and

01:42:15   for highlights. So if I hadn't been preoccupied with trying to do the first director's commentary

01:42:21   thing, I was totally gonna make a video on my second channel trying to blast and shame Evernote

01:42:27   into fixing this problem. So Evernote, you're on notice. I like the idea that you think that

01:42:34   they'll fix anything you want them to fix. I think they'll fix it. No, they kind of,

01:42:38   they, I know they listen. They're gonna fix it. They have to.

01:42:43   Nate wants to know, how did Myke and Gray meet?

01:42:46   We've said this before.

01:42:47   Of course we have.

01:42:48   I sent you an email and then we met up for coffee.

01:42:51   There was the first time that we met, which was you had emailed me after I

01:42:58   announced that I was becoming self-employed, Relay FM existed, and I was

01:43:04   becoming self-employed and you emailed me to congratulate me and suggested that we

01:43:08   meet for coffee.

01:43:09   This wasn't the first communication that we'd had.

01:43:11   The first communication that we had was when I emailed you asking to interview you for

01:43:15   a show that I was doing and you said no.

01:43:19   Which is a classic moment in our history which I will find the screenshot that I have posted

01:43:24   in the past and put that into the show notes.

01:43:27   Because it's just a fun little thing.

01:43:29   The day I convinced you that we should create a podcast together was the day that we were

01:43:35   were launching a show on the network called Mac Power Users, which we were

01:43:41   importing hundreds of episodes.

01:43:42   It was a show that existed in the past and the combination of a show that already

01:43:48   has hundreds of episodes and thousands and thousands of people subscribing to

01:43:52   the new feed put a stress test on our system that had hitherto not been

01:43:57   tempted.

01:43:58   And whilst I was convincing you that this was a great idea for the both of us in

01:44:03   the background our website was on fire.

01:44:07   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:44:08   (laughs)

01:44:10   - Vaj wants to know, when it comes to editing the show,

01:44:13   how does your decision making process go

01:44:15   regarding what to cut and what to keep?

01:44:18   - Well, this is all you, Myke.

01:44:20   - I think it is now, right?

01:44:21   Like, kind of the way the show was produced is,

01:44:24   we record it, I edit, I send it to Gray,

01:44:28   Gray listens through and edits and sends it back to me,

01:44:31   and then I finish it up and post the show.

01:44:33   Now in the early days, Gray's edit was very heavy,

01:44:36   and you would take out a lot of stuff.

01:44:38   But I think these days you take out very little.

01:44:41   - Yeah, for sure.

01:44:42   Well, it's also like we were figuring out more

01:44:45   in the beginning, like what is this,

01:44:47   what works or what doesn't work?

01:44:49   - Right, but I also was, well, I mean, you maybe don't know,

01:44:51   I take out a lot more than I used to.

01:44:54   You know, like you don't see it now,

01:44:55   but like in the early days,

01:44:57   I was basically just hiding it up,

01:44:58   'cause I didn't know what to cut and what to keep,

01:45:00   because it was a very different way of editing for me.

01:45:03   - Yeah, yeah, well, it was like we had conversations

01:45:06   where it was like, no, no, the number of cuts

01:45:08   needs to be four times as many cuts, right?

01:45:12   - And those cuts are thousands.

01:45:14   (laughing)

01:45:16   I think a couple of episodes ago,

01:45:18   I put a screenshot in the show notes

01:45:21   of what the edit looked like to that point.

01:45:24   It's thousands and thousands of cuts.

01:45:25   And most of those are just tidying up things.

01:45:28   if we repeat words, if we um and are in ways that I think are just distracting.

01:45:32   But there are a lot of content cuts that I make now, which are like, I make a point,

01:45:38   Gray makes a point. It's like, that didn't add anything, right? Like, all we've done is made

01:45:42   this point twice as long. It's like, well, I take those out. And that is just a skill that I have

01:45:46   learned over the last five years of being able to edit in that way. Because I didn't edit any of my

01:45:52   other shows that way. There's now, you know, every now and then I will have a project where I do

01:45:57   edit like that, but this is the only show that I do where I edit to the level that I edit.

01:46:03   It's very heavy and really the reason I take something out is if it just wasn't interesting.

01:46:07   I heard Justin McElroy say once, if you keep a minute in a show which wasn't worth it,

01:46:14   you've wasted tens or hundreds of thousands of Earth minutes.

01:46:18   And that really stuck with me. And so it's like, okay, let me see what I can take out of this show

01:46:25   when I take out so I'm trying to waste less time in the world.

01:46:29   Yeah, yeah. Multiplying those little changes across the audience

01:46:32   is a way that makes it feel quite impactful.

01:46:36   I'm like, "Oh no, I don't want to waste all these people's time."

01:46:40   And Andrew asks, "If you could only use four iOS apps for a week,

01:46:45   what would they be?" Am I allowed to compensate with my Mac? I don't

01:46:50   understand this question. Let's just go four apps. You have four apps.

01:46:54   They're the only apps you can use for a week.

01:46:56   - Okay, four apps.

01:46:57   - Yeah, let's go with that.

01:46:58   I'm gonna mold it because as usual,

01:47:01   you've tried to find a way to break the confines

01:47:03   of the question.

01:47:04   - Well, yeah, listen, you gotta be really careful

01:47:07   with when questions and genies and wishes

01:47:09   and all this kind of stuff.

01:47:10   - Well, let me, actually, you know what,

01:47:11   'cause I wanna talk about iOS apps here.

01:47:14   'Cause otherwise you're gonna find a way to cheat.

01:47:16   So what I wanna say is you have a week

01:47:19   where you're only working on your iOS devices, right?

01:47:22   - Okay.

01:47:23   confining this to iOS work only.

01:47:25   You have four apps you can use on those devices.

01:47:28   What are they?

01:47:30   OK, that's actually pretty easy.

01:47:31   It's OmniFocus, Ulysses, Evernote, Safari.

01:47:36   Those would be the four.

01:47:37   Oh, Evernote, man, you love that app so much.

01:47:40   Snuck in there.

01:47:41   It's necessary for my work.

01:47:43   Like I'm just I'm trying to think like, what do I need most to keep my work

01:47:46   going for a week?

01:47:47   If it's a longer period of time, if they said like, oh, for all of quarantine,

01:47:52   I would probably have to swap Evernote for Slack or email. Like, I'd have to think about that.

01:48:00   But, like, one of them would have to be communication with the outside world.

01:48:04   - Right, but you think you could do... I mean, who am I talking to here? You think you could do a week

01:48:08   without Slack? - Like, please. Like, do you have any idea what I can make my life like if I need

01:48:16   to. Like, I can shut off from the outside world completely for long periods of time.

01:48:21   So a week is like, pfft, it's trivial. I could do without Slack for a week, for sure.

01:48:25   But I do also think that 10 days is about the limit where I could start to run into some problems

01:48:36   if there's literally zero communication with the outside world.

01:48:39   The worlds are going to start falling off at that point.

01:48:41   Yeah, as I'm saying it now, it would have to be email.

01:48:45   I would I would have to fall back on email as the communication tool.

01:48:49   I'd move everything in Slack to email.

01:48:51   And then email also allows me to be in touch with people

01:48:55   I need to be in touch with and also reach out to new people.

01:48:58   So that's what it would be if it was longer than a week.

01:49:00   OK, what about you?

01:49:02   I'm struggling. I'm struggling. All right.

01:49:04   So I'll tell you the ones that are easy for me.

01:49:06   Slack to do ist spark because I couldn't survive without those.

01:49:11   All right. OK, because that's communication within the company.

01:49:14   Right. Communication with the outside world.

01:49:17   I do not want to move all of Slack to email. Right.

01:49:21   And you're and you're in a different situation where you just couldn't.

01:49:23   That's not practical. Yeah.

01:49:24   With Relay, it just couldn't happen.

01:49:26   Slack and Spark, they are non-negotiable. Right.

01:49:29   Because otherwise I cannot do my business.

01:49:31   I cannot do my work without those two.

01:49:33   Todoist I have to keep because I need my to do list. Right.

01:49:39   However, so what so then I'm I'm in an R and on like the fourth right which is Twitter because

01:49:46   Weirder, oh, you know what? No, sorry. I forget I forget how useful this is to you to be for your work as well

01:49:52   Like well, so it's okay, but then I could I could say reader because my RSS experiment has remained by the way

01:49:58   So I checked with a less now than I ever did

01:50:02   I'm still on it a lot but it's not as much and I and I use RSS feeds now to get my news

01:50:07   So in theory, I could Twitter and reader could be interchangeable in this

01:50:10   I'd probably go with Twitter because it will allow me to cost my net wider

01:50:15   Then reader would if I mean I'm in like a constraint

01:50:19   So that's this is like for now right like slack to doist spark Twitter

01:50:24   But I don't know if I could go a week without my calendar

01:50:28   So I didn't fantastic how sneaks in now, but you get you could replicate your calendar with to doists

01:50:33   Like you could make that work.

01:50:34   Haha.

01:50:35   Or I could enable the Todoist support inside of FantasticOwl.

01:50:39   Yeah, I think that's fine.

01:50:40   So I think that's what I'm going to go with.

01:50:42   Twitter, Slack, Spark and FantasticOwl with the Todoist integration turned on.

01:50:47   Right. OK.

01:50:48   Oh, but what about no, I could I could.

01:50:50   What about time tracking?

01:50:52   I could live about a week with it.

01:50:54   Yeah, but that's the same that you could.

01:50:56   That's why it wasn't on my list.

01:50:57   You could live with that time tracking for.

01:50:58   Yeah, it doesn't affect my work as such.

01:51:01   And look, you've only got four apps to track anyway, right?

01:51:04   That's true.

01:51:04   What do you time track?

01:51:05   I could just write it down.

01:51:06   Yeah, you could do that on a piece of paper.

01:51:08   I send an email to myself every time.

01:51:10   So wait, what was your final four?

01:51:14   It's Twitter, Spark, Slack, and FantasticL.

01:51:18   OK, interesting.

01:51:19   Oh, but what about Notes, though?

01:51:21   You can do without Notes for a week.

01:51:23   Again, you can write down things on a piece of actual paper.

01:51:25   OK.

01:51:26   You're looking here for the stuff that's non-replicable, right?

01:51:30   It's like, this is why I chose Ulysses as the writing app,

01:51:33   because the amount of stuff that's in there to work with is non replicable.

01:51:38   Same with Evernote. It's like the database is non replicable. OmniFocus,

01:51:43   here's everything I need to do.

01:51:44   Non replicable and Safari connecting me to the outside world.

01:51:49   Non replicable for research. So that's, that's why like you think in notes,

01:51:53   now you're quickly devolving into just stuff you'd like to have. That's,

01:51:57   that's what you're doing there. I think you're,

01:51:58   I think your initial four, those seem pretty solid in this arbitrary world.

01:52:01   IAN: Noah wants to know, "Do either of you believe that this podcast has made you better

01:52:06   at what you do?"

01:52:07   BRANDON Oh, for sure.

01:52:08   IAN Oh, I was pleased you said that. I was wondering

01:52:11   if you were going to be like, "Ah, hell no!"

01:52:14   [laughter]

01:52:15   BRANDON I was like, "To keep you surprised, Myke."

01:52:20   But I mean, obviously, that's sort of odd as one of the people on it to mention that.

01:52:24   But why did we meet up regularly for coffee in the time before year zero is it's useful

01:52:34   to talk to another person about what it is that you do or like what you're working on

01:52:42   or how you're thinking about things.

01:52:45   And it's also the thing that I've always said with this podcast that even if we're not talking

01:52:50   about specifically work things, I really think that there is a way in which hearing the way

01:52:59   other people think through and talk through something is a way to help you think through

01:53:05   things. So yeah, this has been helpful because it's also a way to stay more mindful about

01:53:12   what it is that I'm actually doing. There's not like a metric that I can point to, but

01:53:17   But I can totally say that this is useful because it causes self-reflection in the work

01:53:23   itself and it's useful to be able to talk to someone else and to be able to also like

01:53:31   hear your thoughts on various things and like that back and forth is a positive loop even

01:53:40   if there isn't like a thing specifically to point to to say like "oh this is 5% better

01:53:45   because of that. So for sure, I think this podcast has made me better at what I do.

01:53:49   Yeah. I mean, it's a very similar thing for me, right? Where one of the reasons

01:53:54   that I wanted to do this show in the first place is I found the conversations

01:53:58   that we had were very stimulating for me and encouraging and would help me

01:54:04   come up with new ideas and new ways of wanting to progress my creative work.

01:54:11   And I felt like that some of those conversations were too good not to share.

01:54:15   It was just felt like we would enjoy these conversations so much that I just

01:54:22   figured that they were inherently enjoyable.

01:54:24   And, you know, I think by this point we've proven that out.

01:54:30   Right?

01:54:30   That like people, there are people that find this show both entertaining and

01:54:35   informative, and that's exactly what I want it to be.

01:54:37   And you can take whatever mixture you want from that.

01:54:40   but I just hope that you take a combination of both of them,

01:54:43   because I think that's what makes it special for me.

01:54:46   That's a hundred episodes.

01:54:47   Yep.

01:54:48   This was not the 100th episode we were expecting.

01:54:51   Nope.

01:54:53   It was not.

01:54:54   But it's the one we got.

01:54:55   Yes, it's the one we got.

01:54:58   Yeah.

01:54:58   And it's ten times more episodes than we estimated at the beginning.

01:55:04   That's true.

01:55:05   Well, I always do that a few more.

01:55:09   so confident you are so confident i was confident that's what i was saying right like

01:55:14   i knew that there was a good show in the idea so i was very confident that we would make it past 10

01:55:21   i honestly though i don't know if i would have expected we would have got to 100

01:55:26   i also don't think i would have expected 100 to have taken as long as it's taken to get to

01:55:37   I think those two things are related, right?

01:55:39   It's like, oh, Cortex.

01:55:40   Nice leisurely pace.

01:55:42   Yeah.

01:55:42   But I'm glad to have done these 100 episodes with you, Myke.

01:55:46   And thank you to the listeners for coming along with us for these 100.

01:55:52   Stay safe, everyone.

01:55:55   And healthy, happy.

01:55:56   Focus on all of it.