Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Ready, set, go.

00:00:02 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:00:07 ◼   ► Is that what we do now?

00:00:09 ◼   ► Why is that funny to you?

00:00:10 ◼   ► Why would you say "Ready, set, go"?

00:00:13 ◼   ► I'm telling me that it's time to do the show.

00:00:16 ◼   ► That's what I'm doing.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Do you usually mute yourself when you say that?

00:00:19 ◼   ► I don't usually say it, but you need some kind of mental marker that, "Okay, now the show is beginning."

00:00:24 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:00:26 ◼   ► Don't you--

00:00:27 ◼   ► I don't need to say "Ready, Set, Go" to myself. No, I don't need that.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Okay. Well, you're a better podcaster than I am.

00:00:33 ◼   ► On your marks.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Yeah. On your mark, get set, go.

00:00:39 ◼   ► [DING]

00:00:40 ◼   ► Alright, Myke. Where is my Myke Hurley vlog?

00:00:45 ◼   ► I thought these things were up on Sundays.

00:00:48 ◼   ► I understand from you, from you of all people, the incredible importance of schedules,

00:00:53 ◼   ► yet there was no vlog this weekend.

00:00:55 ◼   ► I cannot believe that you're the first person to say this to me.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Like, of everyone in the world to ask "Where's the vlog?"

00:01:02 ◼   ► I really didn't think it would be Mr. Schedule over there.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Well, here's the reason I'm asking. It's your fault for setting up these expectations

00:01:11 ◼   ► that it's there on a regular basis. I know you said you had like your little

00:01:16 ◼   ► "Get Out of Jail Free" phrase, whatever it was, you're like, "Oh,

00:01:18 ◼   ► frequent but not," or something. I don't even remember what it was that you said.

00:01:23 ◼   ► But then you go ahead and upload at like the same time on the same day for four weeks in a row

00:01:29 ◼   ► and so now you've set a schedule and so now you have failed to meet my expectations and I am disappointed.

00:01:34 ◼   ► The uploading on the Sundays was just because the only time I had to work on the videos was the weekend, right?

00:01:39 ◼   ► So it's like, well, it's done by Sunday because now I've got to get back to work on Monday.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Which is fun actually because it makes it feel more like a side project in a weird way,

00:01:48 ◼   ► like I'm stealing like my weekend evening hours to do it.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Right.

00:01:52 ◼   ► But no, I haven't done one this week because we finally have the keys to the house.

00:01:58 ◼   ► Hey!

00:01:59 ◼   ► We have the key to Cortex Cottage.

00:02:02 ◼   ► Wow. That was a hell of a Xenos paradox, getting closer and closer to those keys from iMessages that you were sending me.

00:02:12 ◼   ► It was always like, it's two months away, right? And then two months pass and it's one month away.

00:02:18 ◼   ► And then one month passes and you know, it's two weeks away. It's like we're getting closer but not right

00:02:24 ◼   ► That was that was my experience watching you go through this

00:02:27 ◼   ► I just had this like mental image of

00:02:29 ◼   ► The estate agent was handing me the keys and they would drop the keys

00:02:34 ◼   ► And then every time I went to pick up the keys I kicked them

00:02:37 ◼   ► This was like the way in my brain that this process had been

00:02:42 ◼   ► Is that just every now and then I'd been out so I've just kicked it away again and it just you know further and further

00:02:48 ◼   ► but we finally have the keys.

00:02:50 ◼   ► - Wow, that is exciting.

00:02:51 ◼   ► So are we recording from MegaOffice right now?

00:02:53 ◼   ► - We were supposed to be.

00:02:55 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:02:56 ◼   ► - Because we were supposed to record like three days ago.

00:02:59 ◼   ► But I have spent the week with contractors

00:03:04 ◼   ► and then the contractors needed more contractors,

00:03:07 ◼   ► who needed more contractors, who needed lots of things.

00:03:09 ◼   ► - Subcontractors?

00:03:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, it just kept going and going and going.

00:03:12 ◼   ► There was an apprentice at one point,

00:03:14 ◼   ► I'm being really serious.

00:03:15 ◼   ► - Oh God, that's not what you wanna hear, right?

00:03:17 ◼   ► It's like subcontractors all the way down, fine, I understand this is how you build things

00:03:24 ◼   ► and why build one when you can build two for twice the price.

00:03:27 ◼   ► But you don't want the apprentice.

00:03:29 ◼   ► The apprentice feels a bit like, I don't know anymore.

00:03:32 ◼   ► It's like your situation is so bad somebody can learn from it.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Yeah it's actually, I was just in the doctor's office and there was a big sign up saying

00:03:44 ◼   ► that there was not an apprentice, but a trainee,

00:03:46 ◼   ► but it might as well have said,

00:03:47 ◼   ► we have the magician's apprentice today.

00:03:49 ◼   ► And I was like, mm, I don't know how I feel about this.

00:03:53 ◼   ► - Also as well, I completely have faith

00:03:57 ◼   ► in the plumbers that we had,

00:03:59 ◼   ► but every now and then when I walk around the corner

00:04:00 ◼   ► and the apprentice was putting the pipes in,

00:04:02 ◼   ► I was like, mm.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Can you just not switch over

00:04:06 ◼   ► every time you hear the door open?

00:04:08 ◼   ► So I only see the fully qualified plumber

00:04:10 ◼   ► putting my pipes in, is that okay?

00:04:12 ◼   ► Can we do that, please?

00:04:13 ◼   ► Even though she knew what she was doing, at one point I walked around the corner and she

00:04:19 ◼   ► had a blowtorch and I was like, "You are a lot better at everything than I am. You're

00:04:23 ◼   ► handling a blowtorch right now and I'm not really sure why, but good luck to you."

00:04:28 ◼   ► So it has been a tough week. I had an entire set of equipment ready, including a MacBook

00:04:36 ◼   ► Adorable, which is probably the best computer in the world. That doesn't run iOS, of course,

00:04:43 ◼   ► You know the iPads are king, but that thing is it's incredible. It's it's like barely a computer. It's just nothing there

00:04:50 ◼   ► It's amazing. I love it. I love it. Wow. What a convert. I couldn't believe it

00:04:55 ◼   ► I had it for like a day and then I edited a show on it and it was fine

00:04:59 ◼   ► It's absolutely fine. And it also weighs nothing

00:05:03 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah, it's the nothingest computer you can possibly own. It's incredible and it's gold

00:05:09 ◼   ► Of course, of course, we got a gold one and has stickers on it and it looks incredible already

00:05:14 ◼   ► So I had all this equipment ready to record from there and it was gonna be this like funny episode

00:05:19 ◼   ► Where's like all this echo and it's like I'm sitting on the floor. Mm-hmm

00:05:23 ◼   ► but no we couldn't do it because the situation kept getting worse and worse and

00:05:26 ◼   ► I was there for two straight days in a room on a chair

00:05:31 ◼   ► With a little table in front of me that I've been left from the previous people on my own

00:05:37 ◼   ► with just things happening around me for two straight days.

00:05:41 ◼   ► - So just contractors coming in, people painting.

00:05:43 ◼   ► - Yep, and then having to come back

00:05:46 ◼   ► as pipes were falling out of the wall.

00:05:48 ◼   ► And it just, everything's fine and it's good now.

00:05:53 ◼   ► It was not good for a while, but like it's okay now.

00:05:56 ◼   ► But it's just meant that this week

00:05:58 ◼   ► has been an absolute disaster.

00:06:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, just so the listeners understand,

00:06:02 ◼   ► when Myke says pipes were falling out of the wall,

00:06:04 ◼   ► wall. That is not an exaggeration. There was a situation where a pipe literally fell out

00:06:09 ◼   ► of a wall.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it did. That 100% happened. He just touched it and it fell off. So it's been

00:06:18 ◼   ► a week so far. Like it's – what day is it today? Is it Thursday – Wednesday? Thursday

00:06:24 ◼   ► today?

00:06:25 ◼   ► It's Thursday. Today's Thursday.

00:06:26 ◼   ► It feels like it's next Wednesday.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Right.

00:06:28 ◼   ► I thought like it's weird in a way like the buying process was it was a time suck

00:06:33 ◼   ► But it was completely different to this one because the buying process was short bursts of my time

00:06:38 ◼   ► Spread out over an incredibly long period

00:06:41 ◼   ► Mm-hmm this this part with like the getting the house ready is intensely long periods of time over two days

00:06:49 ◼   ► It's felt way worse that way because I've looked like just completely lost

00:06:54 ◼   ► multiple days of work, but it's nearly there and not in the way of like the house buying process nearly there

00:07:00 ◼   ► Because all of the bad stuff is taken care of now

00:07:05 ◼   ► Yeah, see the thing is though

00:07:06 ◼   ► I don't even want to jinx it by saying oh when do you think you're going to be moved in?

00:07:10 ◼   ► It's just like but you never this you're still you are still deep in

00:07:15 ◼   ► Unknown unknown territory here, right?

00:07:18 ◼   ► like you think all of the bad stuff is over but now that you are actually in the house

00:07:24 ◼   ► you'll find out if that's true.

00:07:26 ◼   ► There is a thing we will be moved in give or take in four weeks because we have no choice

00:07:35 ◼   ► we have to leave this house so the house may not be ready but we can't be here anymore

00:07:41 ◼   ► so

00:07:42 ◼   ► you are going to be ejected from your current location and you need to land somewhere so

00:07:46 ◼   ► you will be in the house in four weeks

00:07:48 ◼   ► Exactly, because the house that I'm sitting in right now has been sold.

00:07:52 ◼   ► Okay.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I don't think they will want us to be here.

00:07:55 ◼   ► No, probably not.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Probably not. The new owners will not want you there.

00:08:00 ◼   ► No. Can't you see I'm recording in here? Get out.

00:08:03 ◼   ► You need to be really quiet.

00:08:05 ◼   ► I don't care that this is your bedroom. I don't care. Just get out of here.

00:08:08 ◼   ► So that is the current situation. It has been a hellacious and relatively expensive week for me

00:08:16 ◼   ► so far. Which brings us to our next item on the agenda today. We have a new t-shirt for sale!

00:08:23 ◼   ► We're bringing back the monkey brain! This is a t-shirt design that many people have asked for,

00:08:31 ◼   ► so we are bringing it back and it's currently on sale for three weeks. It is a limited edition

00:08:37 ◼   ► variation of the monkey brain shirt. We have ejected him from the circle that he was once

00:08:43 ◼   ► contained in, and he is now adorned on the chest of the shirt in monkey brain glory.

00:08:49 ◼   ► And we have a working title for the shirt called the Cortex Cottage Limited Edition

00:08:54 ◼   ► Monkey Brain T-Shirt.

00:08:56 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:08:57 ◼   ► You have to understand, listeners, Myke really has bought a house.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Yep.

00:09:02 ◼   ► And really does have expenses that need to be covered.

00:09:07 ◼   ► It's like, "do do do do do do."

00:09:08 ◼   ► I'm minding my own business.

00:09:10 ◼   ► I get messages from Myke about like, "Time for a T-shirt."

00:09:12 ◼   ► And I go, "Why?" And then I hear a long story about a boiler that ends in total horror.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Right? Total horror and large unexpected expense. And so I said, "Yes, Myke.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I think not only do we need to have a t-shirt,

00:09:28 ◼   ► but I think that this t-shirt really does need to be dedicated to the Cortex Cottage, to Myke's new house,

00:09:35 ◼   ► and solving some serious problems for him. So please, listeners, you should really buy one of these for Myke."

00:09:42 ◼   ► No, I want to make something super clear. If nobody bought this t-shirt, I would be

00:09:49 ◼   ► okay. We would be fine. But if everyone buys this t-shirt, I am in a much better situation.

00:09:56 ◼   ► It's not like Myke loses the house if you don't buy the t-shirt, but Myke will feel

00:10:00 ◼   ► a lot better if you do. We had some severely unexpected costs, and

00:10:06 ◼   ► if they are able to be covered, that would be brilliant. That would be very nice, it

00:10:11 ◼   ► it would make me super happy.

00:10:13 ◼   ► So we've made a really nice t-shirt

00:10:15 ◼   ► and there is a house icon on the back of it.

00:10:20 ◼   ► Very tiny, so you know that you have supported

00:10:22 ◼   ► Cortex Cottage.

00:10:24 ◼   ► There is distribution from the US and from the EU.

00:10:27 ◼   ► We have varying colors. - Oh, very nice.

00:10:29 ◼   ► - Yep, so people can choose.

00:10:31 ◼   ► In the past, we've done like you hit one link

00:10:33 ◼   ► and you get taken to whichever country you're in.

00:10:36 ◼   ► We're doing it slightly differently this time

00:10:37 ◼   ► 'cause there are different colors available to us

00:10:39 ◼   ► in the US and the EU.

00:10:41 ◼   ► So I'm gonna put both links in, take a look,

00:10:45 ◼   ► choose what colors you like,

00:10:46 ◼   ► see how the pricing works out for you,

00:10:47 ◼   ► and then you can choose what you want.

00:10:49 ◼   ► It's just because the supplier that we have,

00:10:50 ◼   ► they have different colors available.

00:10:52 ◼   ► So go take a look, see which ones you like,

00:10:55 ◼   ► and buy as many as you can.

00:10:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:01 ◼   ► Seriously, I want to just point out, I'm fine.

00:11:06 ◼   ► I'm totally fine, we are fine.

00:11:08 ◼   ► but if you buy a t-shirt, I would really appreciate it.

00:11:12 ◼   ► - I do like that sales pitch of,

00:11:14 ◼   ► it's like you're not necessarily going for breadth there,

00:11:16 ◼   ► you're going for depth.

00:11:17 ◼   ► Like if you're buying a t-shirt,

00:11:18 ◼   ► maybe you should consider seven.

00:11:21 ◼   ► - There's four colors, right?

00:11:23 ◼   ► Choose two of them.

00:11:25 ◼   ► - Right, there are four colors.

00:11:27 ◼   ► And yes, it really is dedicated to Myke's house.

00:11:30 ◼   ► I really do like the little design on the back of the shirt

00:11:34 ◼   ► that has a tiny little house

00:11:36 ◼   ► along with the sort of the serial number

00:11:38 ◼   ► a bit of the redundant t-shirt motif from before so I think it looks great and I think it would really help Myke.

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00:14:03 ◼   ► cook.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Earlier on you were complaining about the fact that I haven't put out a video.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:10 ◼   ► You've got me covered because you can't stop. You're on a kick.

00:14:13 ◼   ► No, that's not how this works.

00:14:14 ◼   ► I think it is.

00:14:15 ◼   ► That's not how this works at all.

00:14:16 ◼   ► You are in an out of character abundance of videos recently.

00:14:20 ◼   ► Ugh, am I though?

00:14:22 ◼   ► Yeah, but you are because you you've posted like a million videos across your various channels. What have you done?

00:14:27 ◼   ► I'm thinking a look now. No

00:14:29 ◼   ► Okay, look I know people say this I know people say this and I think it's part of the joke people love to be like

00:14:36 ◼   ► Oh, look, see to be gray is uploading a bunch of videos

00:14:38 ◼   ► Even even weirdly YouTube trends got in on this joke, which I thought was kind of funny really

00:14:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know if I don't know if you are aware of this

00:14:49 ◼   ► But if I don't think it's not on the main site, but if you open up YouTube on the app, yeah

00:14:54 ◼   ► There's the trending video section and I always kind of wonder about the details of this process, but some of the videos have an

00:15:01 ◼   ► editorial comment below them

00:15:04 ◼   ► like

00:15:06 ◼   ► Presumably I have no idea but presumably there's someone at YouTube who is

00:15:12 ◼   ► Vetting what goes on the trending page to make sure that they don't end up with something terrible on there

00:15:17 ◼   ► That's kind of my guess is probably what they're up to

00:15:19 ◼   ► and part of that process is

00:15:21 ◼   ► occasionally like there's an editorial comment below the trending video and

00:15:26 ◼   ► When I released one of the electoral college ones the second one or something that there was a little comment which said like

00:15:31 ◼   ► CGP Grey unusually releases two videos in a week about the electoral college

00:15:37 ◼   ► like

00:15:39 ◼   ► Okay, I guess even the structure of YouTube wants to get in on the gag that CGP Grey never releases videos very frequently

00:15:46 ◼   ► So thanks, whoever that editor was, but I still maintain that this

00:15:51 ◼   ► totally doesn't count because as far as I'm concerned I

00:15:55 ◼   ► released

00:15:58 ◼   ► Like one and a half

00:16:01 ◼   ► real videos. I released the rules for rulers video and then

00:16:05 ◼   ► The follow-up with the death and dynasties video that was whatever it was. I think maybe

00:16:11 ◼   ► eight days, ten days later, something like that.

00:16:13 ◼   ► I view that as like one and a half videos.

00:16:16 ◼   ► And then I released a bunch of nonsense and short things.

00:16:20 ◼   ► And like those are not videos.

00:16:23 ◼   ► I don't think those count as actual video releases or anything.

00:16:26 ◼   ► But everybody likes to joke about them.

00:16:28 ◼   ► So I want to just count this up here.

00:16:31 ◼   ► You released a video of a dog in a park.

00:16:34 ◼   ► I don't even know why you did that.

00:16:38 ◼   ► like a college, who's, is that your dog?

00:16:40 ◼   ► Whose dog is, anyway.

00:16:41 ◼   ► Roles for Roles, Deafened Dynasties,

00:16:44 ◼   ► an updated version of The Trouble with the Electoral College,

00:16:47 ◼   ► Re the Trouble with the Electoral College, Cities,

00:16:50 ◼   ► and then it cuts off, I can't see it

00:16:51 ◼   ► from where I am right now.

00:16:53 ◼   ► And then also a video about an Apple Book,

00:16:56 ◼   ► which is a whole other can of worms.

00:16:59 ◼   ► This is a lot, this is a lot for you, Gray.

00:17:02 ◼   ► This is, I mean, I know that you're like,

00:17:03 ◼   ► "Oh, it's a Friday video, it's a half video."

00:17:05 ◼   ► This is like six YouTube videos in a month.

00:17:10 ◼   ► - Right, okay.

00:17:11 ◼   ► - It's just, it's strange.

00:17:13 ◼   ► It's just strange to see you be so prolific.

00:17:16 ◼   ► You've clearly, there's been a few things

00:17:18 ◼   ► that you've got a lot to say about recently.

00:17:21 ◼   ► - Well, it's been a strange time,

00:17:23 ◼   ► but I will stand by my remark that a,

00:17:26 ◼   ► I think like a 19 second clip of a dog

00:17:29 ◼   ► chasing some parakeets in a park does not count as a video.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And I think a 18 second comment that just changes a number from a previous video does not count as a video.

00:17:40 ◼   ► So I am firmly standing by that notion that I've actually released one and a half videos over this length of time.

00:17:48 ◼   ► Sure. That dog video, I think I recognize a piece of hardware used to make that video.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Oh, do you?

00:17:55 ◼   ► I do, yeah. And I noticed it in another video that you tweeted. You bought the Osmo, didn't you?

00:18:00 ◼   ► Yes, I did. I was actually wondering if you were going to notice that or not.

00:18:04 ◼   ► Oh, I noticed it. I've just waited until now to tell you.

00:18:06 ◼   ► You also tweeted a video of you walking in a park, I think.

00:18:09 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

00:18:10 ◼   ► And I thought when you had the dog video that you bought it, with the walking in the park,

00:18:16 ◼   ► I could 100% tell. In case anybody doesn't know, this is a gimbal, like a steady cam type thing

00:18:22 ◼   ► that you put your phone into. I bought one and shoot some of my vlog footage on it. And I know

00:18:27 ◼   ► some of the footage that I showed you when we were all, you were very excited about it.

00:18:31 ◼   ► So I can see, I can see that you bought it. Why did you get that? You just interested?

00:18:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess we haven't talked about that gimbal on the show, I think.

00:18:40 ◼   ► No, I don't think we have.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Okay, yeah. It's, okay, so for anyone who's not aware,

00:18:45 ◼   ► a gimbal is essentially like a little handheld stabilizer.

00:18:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:49 ◼   ► And there are a bunch of them that are used specifically with phones.

00:18:54 ◼   ► So while something like the iPhone has video stabilization built into it,

00:18:58 ◼   ► they are these devices which will...

00:19:02 ◼   ► I mean it's so cool to see them in operation,

00:19:04 ◼   ► that they do their best job to hold the phone

00:19:08 ◼   ► in the same location and space as you're walking around.

00:19:11 ◼   ► And it's very interesting to see how this little mechanical arm

00:19:16 ◼   ► counteracts however you move it,

00:19:18 ◼   ► and the result is that you can get some really

00:19:20 ◼   ► fantastic looking footage if you know what you're doing with it.

00:19:23 ◼   ► Yeah, and the company that makes this one, what's called the Osmo Mobile, is DJI, which is the company that also makes all the best drones.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Mmm, I forget that they're the drone company too.

00:19:33 ◼   ► They make the Phantom and the Mavic and the Inspire, they make all of those.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I had had this on my mind for a long time as a piece of hardware that I wanted to get,

00:19:43 ◼   ► because basically there was a project that was on my mind that I wanted to do that would require

00:19:50 ◼   ► some actual

00:19:52 ◼   ► real-life footage.

00:19:54 ◼   ► And so getting a gimbal had always been in the back of my mind and

00:19:59 ◼   ► the ones I had looked at I never thought were great.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And then I was super impressed by your gimbal when I saw it in action.

00:20:05 ◼   ► And so I finally decided let me get this and let me just do some test footage with it

00:20:11 ◼   ► to see if this thing that I want to do will even work.

00:20:15 ◼   ► And I thought like right now it looks like the answer to that is

00:20:19 ◼   ► Probably not, but I definitely just wanted to get it and try it out

00:20:23 ◼   ► And so that's partly why like I have this this little video clip of a stabilized

00:20:27 ◼   ► dog chasing parakeets in the park is I was just walking around the park and kind of shooting stuff and playing around with it and

00:20:33 ◼   ► trying to get a feel for how does this work, but it is a

00:20:37 ◼   ► Fantastic piece of equipment so cool. Yeah, and and

00:20:40 ◼   ► Like it's not cheap. No, but anybody out there if you are thinking of doing any kind of logging

00:20:48 ◼   ► I feel like I can really heartily recommend this thing. Like it's going to make your footage look so much better.

00:20:54 ◼   ► And it has what I think is hilariously like the vlogger mode,

00:20:59 ◼   ► where you can have the camera pointed at yourself and it will track your face.

00:21:02 ◼   ► So you can be holding out your camera in front of you and doing the like, "Oh look at me,

00:21:09 ◼   ► I'm walking around shooting a vlog." Like I see people doing in London quite frequently.

00:21:13 ◼   ► You can you can be sure that your face will always be in the center of the frame because it's doing live facial

00:21:20 ◼   ► recognition on you and making sure to always keep your face in the center, which is

00:21:25 ◼   ► almost like magic witchcraft levels of technology now

00:21:28 ◼   ► But it's it's very cool

00:21:30 ◼   ► And I think I can even as someone who is not a vlogger like I can totally recommend this as a piece of equipment if you're

00:21:35 ◼   ► Thinking about this my favorite thing that it does you can say to it

00:21:40 ◼   ► I want a time-lapse from here to here you you move it around and say like I want you to go from this point to

00:21:46 ◼   ► This point and I want two minutes of footage and you just put it down

00:21:49 ◼   ► I've got this little stand that you can put it and you just clip it in leave it and it will just move on its

00:21:53 ◼   ► Own and it gives you the footages. That's awesome

00:21:55 ◼   ► I did some of that stuff in my island video like you're just getting like the

00:21:59 ◼   ► Kind of the time-lapse videos of the mountains and stuff. You got to put it down and I just let it go. It's brilliant

00:22:06 ◼   ► I really love it.

00:22:08 ◼   ► This is not a sponsorship.

00:22:09 ◼   ► Nope.

00:22:10 ◼   ► But DJI, we're totally open to having a sponsorship.

00:22:13 ◼   ► This isn't, but I would do one.

00:22:15 ◼   ► So give us a call.

00:22:18 ◼   ► I really love your products.

00:22:19 ◼   ► I also want a drone because of course I do.

00:22:22 ◼   ► And the Mavic looks really impressive.

00:22:24 ◼   ► So send me one.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Shameless, Myke.

00:22:29 ◼   ► Shameless.

00:22:30 ◼   ► I don't care.

00:22:31 ◼   ► I really, I think it looks cool and it's super expensive.

00:22:34 ◼   ► we have already out laid. I can't justify that right now.

00:22:40 ◼   ► So how are you doing this? How are you making all these videos? Like everybody that listens

00:22:44 ◼   ► to this show knows that it takes you forever to put a video together. Even with your new

00:22:49 ◼   ► process of having an animator, the scripts, we've established this, take you months at

00:22:54 ◼   ► best. I don't understand how you're doing this based on your own kind of very stringent

00:23:03 ◼   ► requirements that you set for yourself.

00:23:05 ◼   ► I mean, okay, well, let's just let's just take a look at the ones that I uploaded to the real YouTube channel.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Not the CGP Grey 2 YouTube channel, you know, right where I upload uninteresting things.

00:23:14 ◼   ► So this was interesting because

00:23:16 ◼   ► the two little

00:23:19 ◼   ► Electoral College follow-up videos that I did were actually now the first time I have animated something in

00:23:25 ◼   ► three videos worth of time.

00:23:28 ◼   ► You can't tell.

00:23:29 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:23:35 ◼   ► I think you really can tell.

00:23:38 ◼   ► Oh no, you can. You can tell.

00:23:41 ◼   ► I'm used to the new style now, Gray. I've gotta say.

00:23:44 ◼   ► No, the new thing is much better.

00:23:47 ◼   ► And so they weren't really animated because I was partly just pulling footage from my old videos

00:23:55 ◼   ► and laying stuff down on top of them.

00:23:58 ◼   ► So that was very easy to do.

00:23:59 ◼   ► I mean, the first one where I'm just simply commenting

00:24:01 ◼   ► on the fact that the number of times

00:24:03 ◼   ► the electoral college has had this strange result

00:24:06 ◼   ► has increased, you know, I mean,

00:24:08 ◼   ► I put that together in like an hour

00:24:12 ◼   ► the morning of the election results

00:24:15 ◼   ► from my perspective in the UK,

00:24:16 ◼   ► which would have been late night in America.

00:24:19 ◼   ► So that was really simple to do.

00:24:20 ◼   ► I mean, here's a funny thing, which is the longer video,

00:24:25 ◼   ► which is the one with the ridiculous title like "The Trouble with the Electoral College".

00:24:30 ◼   ► That was just a case of...

00:24:33 ◼   ► I was really trying to write a whole new video about the Electoral College.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Recognized that I had an enormous amount of stuff that I wanted to say about it.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Also recognized that there was...

00:24:49 ◼   ► no way that I could do this in the time frame that I would want to do it.

00:24:55 ◼   ► And I kind of shelved this big update to the Electoral College video.

00:25:02 ◼   ► But then,

00:25:04 ◼   ► but then a little bit like the rules for rulers thing that we discussed last time,

00:25:08 ◼   ► I just, like I found myself just constantly thinking about a couple of parts of that video.

00:25:17 ◼   ► And so the follow-up thing that I ended up putting up on Friday,

00:25:24 ◼   ► I feel like that video was the flip side of the same process that produced the Rules for Rulers.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Now, in the case of the Rules for Rulers, like, I'm really happy with this video that I produced

00:25:34 ◼   ► that I couldn't let go, that kind of drove me crazy for a while.

00:25:38 ◼   ► But I think that the update video is the flip side of this coin,

00:25:43 ◼   ► because it's a video that is frankly, like, not very good.

00:25:46 ◼   ► It was produced in an absurdly short period of time.

00:25:51 ◼   ► It's the kind of thing that, like, looking at it,

00:25:53 ◼   ► almost immediately after it's published,

00:25:55 ◼   ► I can see all of the writing and structural flaws with it.

00:26:01 ◼   ► But it's like-- but it was produced in a day, essentially.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Like, I took a bunch of stuff that I had written,

00:26:07 ◼   ► I rewrote it as a different thing in the morning,

00:26:10 ◼   ► animated it in the afternoon, and then put it up on the YouTube channel.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And then I felt like, free.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Right, I feel like, "Okay Brain, you can let go of this now.

00:26:20 ◼   ► We've done a thing, it's not a very good thing,

00:26:24 ◼   ► but at least like you've, you've, you can let this go.

00:26:27 ◼   ► We can stop thinking about this for now,

00:26:29 ◼   ► and we can come back to it and do it properly at some point down the road."

00:26:35 ◼   ► Uh, but that's what was occurring here.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Also for various reasons this probably isn't the right time for that video in a weird way.

00:26:41 ◼   ► Yeah, like I can't even judge if it is or not, like who knows.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Like it's from a perspective of catching the zeitgeist, of course it is, but to do an objective video where you look at that, it's probably not the right time for it.

00:26:55 ◼   ► Yeah, it might be better to wait until a period in which nobody really cares about politics and then try to release a thing.

00:27:01 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know. I've had a bunch of thoughts about it.

00:27:05 ◼   ► But sometimes I think these things happen in the working process where you can see the

00:27:10 ◼   ► like different outcomes that result from the same process and I think the rules for rulers video and the

00:27:17 ◼   ► re the electoral college video are just like an astounding example of opposite results from the same fundamental thing

00:27:24 ◼   ► Like sometimes I can't let a thing go

00:27:26 ◼   ► Sometimes a 20 minute video pops out of that which took six months

00:27:30 ◼   ► Right. Sometimes a four and a half minute video took a day

00:27:33 ◼   ► Like yeah, it's both extremes of the same thing. Yeah, and also

00:27:38 ◼   ► wildly varying quality levels, right? Like it's it's just it's interesting to see but it's like I keep I keep sort of joking online that

00:27:46 ◼   ► that video was

00:27:48 ◼   ► way more about

00:27:50 ◼   ► Catharsis. Like I just like I need to do this so that I can let it go

00:27:54 ◼   ► Right, and then and that's and that's where we are now

00:27:57 ◼   ► So I think that is partly why there has ended up being a bunch of videos that I have put up in

00:28:03 ◼   ► A relatively short period of time. It is funny to see when you go on these bents though

00:28:07 ◼   ► You know, like I'm glad I'm glad it's funny for someone because it's not funny for me. It's like not funny, haha

00:28:14 ◼   ► Uh-huh, right, but it's it's just like every now and then I'll see you do a thing and I just know

00:28:21 ◼   ► That you're in a you're in a state

00:28:25 ◼   ► You know like you set up a whole new reddit

00:28:27 ◼   ► To help you try and combat some of this like I just I just watch you you just spiral and then you come back again

00:28:35 ◼   ► One day you're gonna fall down that hole and I don't know what I'm gonna do

00:28:39 ◼   ► Till that point. I'll just keep watching you

00:28:43 ◼   ► From I forgot that I set up the second reddit and I do like someone pointed out to me like, you know

00:28:48 ◼   ► You've done this before set up an alternative

00:28:50 ◼   ► totally forgot

00:28:54 ◼   ► Whoops

00:28:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it's you know bursts of activity and

00:29:00 ◼   ► You know right right now. I feel like a burnt out

00:29:04 ◼   ► Shell of a human being at the moment is what has happened on the other end of this

00:29:09 ◼   ► But this is this is I think an unusual amount of activity like really just a lot

00:29:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I've had a bunch of videos in a relatively short period of time. We go watch that dog video people. It's like

00:29:23 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the real money. You know, just go watch the dog video

00:29:28 ◼   ► You remember last time we were talking about Steve Jobs and the Apple board and kind of looking at how

00:29:38 ◼   ► He put his keys into place

00:29:40 ◼   ► Sasquatch Yeti on the reddit provided some some follow-up that I wanted to read

00:29:45 ◼   ► So they said I remembered reading about this in the water Isaacson biography and the story is more bold than gray had imagined

00:29:52 ◼   ► After Jobs tried to make his first change to the board and they wanted to study it for

00:29:59 ◼   ► two months before implementing it, he told them he couldn't save the company if he

00:30:02 ◼   ► wasn't going to get the support he needed. He demanded that everybody quit or he would

00:30:06 ◼   ► resign immediately. So the board all resigned at once except one guy that Jobs said could

00:30:13 ◼   ► stay. Then he replaced all of these people with people of his choosing. He knew he had

00:30:19 ◼   ► all the leverage because who wants to be on the board that brought Steve Jobs back to

00:30:24 ◼   ► Apple then lost him again.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

00:30:27 ◼   ► And the company was doing so badly at that point that they would absolutely get blamed

00:30:33 ◼   ► for it continuing to tank after letting Jobs go.

00:30:36 ◼   ► They needed him more than they even needed their own board seats.

00:30:41 ◼   ► That is a fascinating additional detail there of how was it that he was able to manipulate

00:30:50 ◼   ► the board of directors to be so on his side.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Yep, because it was just basically it's either you do what I say or the company blows up.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Right, and in addition to that the board had already brought him back and it would look

00:31:04 ◼   ► terrible if he quit and they're all calculating for their future careers.

00:31:10 ◼   ► it looks terrible for them as board members of other companies.

00:31:14 ◼   ► That is very interesting and I feel like again as an example of structures lining up so that

00:31:19 ◼   ► a thing can happen in a particular way.

00:31:22 ◼   ► That is a very interesting additional detail to the story.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Because the stars are all aligned, right?

00:31:26 ◼   ► They approved the buyout of NeXT, they acquired NeXT for its OS and then brought Jobs back

00:31:31 ◼   ► into the fold and it created this beautifully romantic story.

00:31:35 ◼   ► man coming back to save the company and then he just leaves again. Yeah you don't want

00:31:42 ◼   ► to be those people.

00:31:43 ◼   ► And that would totally have tanked the company at the time. I completely see that as just

00:31:48 ◼   ► a death knell for "we've made an acquisition and the main dude is out the door as soon

00:31:55 ◼   ► as he possibly can be".

00:31:56 ◼   ► Well you just think of like the way the stock market would have reacted, right? Jobs comes

00:32:00 ◼   ► back, sees how bad it is and decides he can't save it and leaves.

00:32:05 ◼   ► And it also brings up the interesting thing which, speaking of board of directors, I think

00:32:10 ◼   ► this is a detail that people are often unaware of, is how much CEOs are often boards of directors

00:32:20 ◼   ► for other companies.

00:32:21 ◼   ► Like how closely related lots of seemingly competitive companies are.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And then that makes sense as to why.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Why do the board of directors about Apple care a lot about protecting their reputation?

00:32:36 ◼   ► It's because they are going to be connected with a bunch of other companies that either

00:32:40 ◼   ► they are the CEOs of or that they are on the board of directors of.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Just to give a tidbit on that, if people don't know, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, he's on the

00:32:49 ◼   ► board of Nike.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Yep.

00:32:53 ◼   ► And Eddie Q, who's the Senior Vice President at Apple, he's on the board of Ferrari.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:32:58 ◼   ► Yep.

00:32:59 ◼   ► much more common than you think it is. And if you ever dig into the details of, like, pick a random

00:33:05 ◼   ► company, look at their board of directors, and it just spirals out into a web of other companies.

00:33:11 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh, okay. This makes sense as to, like, why are Apple and Nike working together on

00:33:18 ◼   ► an Apple Watch?" It's like, "Hmm, okay. Well, because their senior level people are, like,

00:33:23 ◼   ► trading positions with each other in their companies as far as how they're related." So it's,

00:33:28 ◼   ► I think it's a very interesting phenomenon of board interconnectedness among companies.

00:33:34 ◼   ► So Bob Iger, who is the CEO of Disney, was on the board at Apple.

00:33:38 ◼   ► There we go.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Wonder how that Pixar thing went down right?

00:33:42 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly. That's how this goes. That's how this goes. It's another one of the ways that

00:33:49 ◼   ► a company can distribute rewards to key supporters who are also people who are in charge of companies

00:33:56 ◼   ► that can be quite useful to the CEO of the primary company.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Like, you can just see the structure a little bit unveiled

00:34:04 ◼   ► if you ever trace the board relationships across companies.

00:34:06 ◼   ► So, seemingly competitive companies often will have key members of their boards

00:34:12 ◼   ► who are like on the other person's company.

00:34:14 ◼   ► You think, "How much are you really competing?"

00:34:16 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like maybe that much.

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00:37:44 ◼   ► We have spent a ton of time on this show talking about email.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:37:50 ◼   ► And we have, right? Like I think it's like if somebody was to really kind of outline

00:37:55 ◼   ► the major themes of this show, email has definitely been one of those things. And I think it's

00:38:00 ◼   ► because and I think there is an element that everybody can relate to because if you work

00:38:03 ◼   ► in any kind of company, email is a big part of it, right? No matter what you do, email

00:38:07 ◼   ► kind of, it just has its way of just putting its tendrils out to touch every part of your

00:38:12 ◼   ► life whether you like it or not.

00:38:14 ◼   ► Yes, it can be all-consuming. Did you hear about the disaster with the NHS and their

00:38:20 ◼   ► email system?

00:38:21 ◼   ► I saw some headlines about this.

00:38:23 ◼   ► It's funny because I saw this headline on Hacker News, I think.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And I didn't pay much attention to it, but as I mentioned, I was just recently in a doctor's

00:38:33 ◼   ► office and when I was there I was overhearing the two secretaries complaining about this

00:38:37 ◼   ► thing that occurred and I was like, "Oh, okay, I see what happened here."

00:38:41 ◼   ► Essentially somebody accidentally sent out a message to all of the two million plus members

00:38:49 ◼   ► of staff who are on the NHS email list.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Which also includes like tangentially related industry.

00:38:58 ◼   ► So like there's tons of doctors who work in private practice who would also get this message.

00:39:02 ◼   ► just like, okay, so a message went out with two million recipients and then

00:39:07 ◼   ► what everybody was caught in is "Reply All." So with two million people there

00:39:16 ◼   ► ended up being a million people replying saying, "This message wasn't supposed to

00:39:21 ◼   ► be for me," right? But they're replying all and then other and then it's like you

00:39:25 ◼   ► can see what suddenly happens and the the two secretaries I was overhearing

00:39:29 ◼   ► them say that they got a call from someone at the NHS like trying to tell everybody individually

00:39:35 ◼   ► how to sort out this problem and they're like "don't reply to any of these messages,

00:39:40 ◼   ► like we just need to delete them, we need like this is this is a terrible half-life situation,

00:39:45 ◼   ► we need to make it go down as fast as possible" but quite legitimately they were saying

00:39:50 ◼   ► that their inboxes were filled with hundreds and hundreds of irrelevant messages surrounding

00:39:57 ◼   ► the actual legitimate messages. Hundreds has to be understating it. What I mean is

00:40:04 ◼   ► hundreds between each legitimate message. Oh. Right? So this was like this was the problem.

00:40:10 ◼   ► It's like what do you do? Right? What do you do? Anyway, that's one of the joys of email.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Reply all. My favorite things is when you get caught in one of those and then somebody replies

00:40:20 ◼   ► all saying please take me off this. Yeah. You are contributing to the problem you're trying to solve.

00:40:25 ◼   ► It's infuriating and I keep saying Half-Life because like this is the real situation and I remember the graduate school that I went to

00:40:33 ◼   ► It took me years to get off some reply all email chain that had happened while I was there, right?

00:40:41 ◼   ► And it's just like, it was just like much smaller scale but a similar thing of you know, somebody sent out a message to everybody who was in the graduate school department

00:40:49 ◼   ► which ended up being just a ton of people and then people were replying all about taking me off an argument.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And it was like, you know, a big burst in the beginning,

00:40:56 ◼   ► but I remember years later,

00:40:58 ◼   ► still getting someone replying all to this entire list,

00:41:01 ◼   ► you know, complaining about the existence of the list.

00:41:03 ◼   ► It's like, you're the problem.

00:41:04 ◼   ► You're the problem.

00:41:05 ◼   ► Don't reply all.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Like if everybody just stays quiet and calm,

00:41:09 ◼   ► this can go away really fast, but it doesn't.

00:41:11 ◼   ► So I'm sure the NHS will be dealing with this

00:41:14 ◼   ► until the end of time with 2 million people.

00:41:17 ◼   ► - So the reason I brought up email today

00:41:20 ◼   ► is I found a new email app

00:41:22 ◼   ► that I think is really interesting.

00:41:24 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:41:25 ◼   ► - Me and you have spent a ton of time on this show

00:41:26 ◼   ► talking about apps that are specific

00:41:28 ◼   ► to our own preferences and needs.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Like what is that one that you use, UniBox?

00:41:33 ◼   ► - UniBox.

00:41:34 ◼   ► - That you may, you know, I can't imagine everybody

00:41:36 ◼   ► that listens to the show wants or needs the application

00:41:38 ◼   ► 'cause it deals with email in a very specific way.

00:41:41 ◼   ► But this one that I've found, this app called Notion,

00:41:44 ◼   ► it's probably the best email app that I've used

00:41:48 ◼   ► for specific features.

00:41:50 ◼   ► And those features are business email.

00:41:53 ◼   ► So it does a few things.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Now it is phone only at the moment.

00:42:00 ◼   ► They are working on tablet apps.

00:42:01 ◼   ► It's on iOS and Android

00:42:03 ◼   ► and they are using machine learning type stuff

00:42:07 ◼   ► to make your email better

00:42:10 ◼   ► and to make you react to it better.

00:42:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, explain what you mean by this, right?

00:42:15 ◼   ► I feel like machine learning is this buzzword

00:42:17 ◼   ► that everybody likes to use now.

00:42:19 ◼   ► And when you hear machine learning,

00:42:21 ◼   ► just replace it with magic?

00:42:23 ◼   ► - One of these things that upsets a lot of people,

00:42:25 ◼   ► but I'm mostly fine with it.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Yes, your email is going to be going through

00:42:28 ◼   ► somebody else's server,

00:42:29 ◼   ► but that's pretty much how all third party email apps

00:42:31 ◼   ► work these days for notifications, et cetera.

00:42:34 ◼   ► If you don't want that, you're not gonna like this.

00:42:37 ◼   ► - Shock surprise, your email is not even as secure

00:42:41 ◼   ► as you think it is if it's not going through

00:42:42 ◼   ► one of these services.

00:42:43 ◼   ► So if you're worried about security in your email,

00:42:46 ◼   ► you're already focused on the wrong problem.

00:42:48 ◼   ► One thing that it does is it looks at your inbox

00:42:51 ◼   ► and tries to assume what's important to you.

00:42:53 ◼   ► So it takes a look at people you've replied to before

00:42:57 ◼   ► and stuff like that, it knows that,

00:42:58 ◼   ► so obviously it's gonna keep that as an important email.

00:43:01 ◼   ► People that have been to contact you for the first time

00:43:04 ◼   ► or whatever, maybe it thinks they might not be

00:43:06 ◼   ► that important to you, or like app emails or subscriptions

00:43:10 ◼   ► or newsletters and stuff like that,

00:43:11 ◼   ► and it kind of grays them out a little bit,

00:43:13 ◼   ► keeps them in the order of the inbox

00:43:14 ◼   ► but grays them out a little bit.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Then you get a number in the bottom right hand corner

00:43:17 ◼   ► that tells you how many of these emails exist,

00:43:19 ◼   ► and with one swipe you can archive all of them.

00:43:22 ◼   ► So that's really cool.

00:43:23 ◼   ► Helps you clean out junk really easily.

00:43:25 ◼   ► - So when you say it's grouping similar messages

00:43:29 ◼   ► according to the machine learning,

00:43:31 ◼   ► or grouping similar messages according to sender?

00:43:33 ◼   ► - Machine learning.

00:43:35 ◼   ► So it is assuming what it thinks are unimportant emails,

00:43:39 ◼   ► and you can get rid of all of those in a swipe.

00:43:41 ◼   ► You can very easily just with like,

00:43:43 ◼   ► do you tap a button to say, no, this is important,

00:43:46 ◼   ► and then it will learn that for future.

00:43:48 ◼   ► But it's like I'm looking at it right now

00:43:50 ◼   ► and I have nine messages in my inbox.

00:43:53 ◼   ► One of them is from Dropbox,

00:43:55 ◼   ► one of them is from my plumber asking for feedback,

00:43:59 ◼   ► and one of them is from a person who emailed me

00:44:00 ◼   ► for the first time, and it's indicated

00:44:03 ◼   ► that these three might not be that important.

00:44:05 ◼   ► And to be honest, it's got two out of three.

00:44:07 ◼   ► So it's doing a good job of that.

00:44:10 ◼   ► But it goes way more than this, this application.

00:44:13 ◼   ► This is just like the tip of the iceberg

00:44:15 ◼   ► what this thing does. And this is why it's so good for businesses. It has this thing

00:44:19 ◼   ► called Radar. Radar scans your inbox and your sent emails and highlights unanswered questions.

00:44:29 ◼   ► Hmm, that's interesting. And it uses another part of its technology of assessing all of

00:44:37 ◼   ► your communications between people. So let's say me and you, I actually don't even, you're

00:44:43 ◼   ► not even in this list because we'd never email each other, but let's just say me and you.

00:44:48 ◼   ► It will look at how long is the usual response time between me and you, from me to you, and

00:44:55 ◼   ► will assess if an email has passed that point and put it in the radar. So for example, it

00:45:02 ◼   ► may know…

00:45:03 ◼   ► This would make me very sad to see.

00:45:05 ◼   ► Yeah, you don't want to look at your outgoing points.

00:45:08 ◼   ► Oh my god, I feel like I don't want to even know those numbers. I have so many people

00:45:13 ◼   ► waiting on me for so long for so many things Myke.

00:45:15 ◼   ► - Right, but here's the thing though, right?

00:45:17 ◼   ► So this is, it knows how, the app will know

00:45:20 ◼   ► how long it takes you to usually reply to somebody.

00:45:22 ◼   ► It will only highlight something

00:45:25 ◼   ► when it's past even that point.

00:45:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:45:29 ◼   ► - To be like, hey, you should reply to this.

00:45:31 ◼   ► But what is really great is how it works on the other end.

00:45:34 ◼   ► So it knows how long it usually takes somebody

00:45:37 ◼   ► to reply to you.

00:45:38 ◼   ► And it will then highlight just the question part.

00:45:42 ◼   ► So it looks at what it thinks is the question

00:45:45 ◼   ► and it breaks them down into these little cards.

00:45:47 ◼   ► And it's like, you asked CGP Grey,

00:45:49 ◼   ► and it may be a long email,

00:45:50 ◼   ► but in that email I asked you one question

00:45:54 ◼   ► and I have not received a reply to that email,

00:45:56 ◼   ► which means you've not answered it.

00:45:58 ◼   ► And then it says, "Nudge, Grey,"

00:46:01 ◼   ► and just highlights the question.

00:46:02 ◼   ► It's fricking amazing.

00:46:04 ◼   ► - Hmm, that sounds interesting.

00:46:06 ◼   ► - And then it says, like, it has a date to them.

00:46:08 ◼   ► So like, this one person who hasn't emailed me,

00:46:12 ◼   ► I asked her, "What do you think?"

00:46:15 ◼   ► And they haven't replied, and they're late by 28 days

00:46:18 ◼   ► based on our previous communication.

00:46:19 ◼   ► It says, "Nudge this person," so you just press the button

00:46:24 ◼   ► and it opens an email for you to send again.

00:46:26 ◼   ► And then also, I have an email in my inbox

00:46:31 ◼   ► to a person that is overdue by eight days

00:46:33 ◼   ► based on our previous communication.

00:46:35 ◼   ► It's incredible.

00:46:38 ◼   ► And then also, I've asked questions of people

00:46:41 ◼   ► that it says, "I can expect this email in X amount of days

00:46:45 ◼   ► based on our previous communications."

00:46:47 ◼   ► - Oh God, that's also a thing I wouldn't want people seeing

00:46:50 ◼   ► from me on the other end.

00:46:51 ◼   ► - And then it has a people tab, and in the people tab,

00:46:55 ◼   ► you can go into an individual,

00:46:57 ◼   ► you can find out what the usual response time is

00:46:59 ◼   ► between each of them,

00:47:00 ◼   ► who is the best person at responding in that relationship.

00:47:02 ◼   ► It tells you who introduced you to that person.

00:47:07 ◼   ► - Oh, that's interesting.

00:47:09 ◼   ► - Because it like looks at the CCs

00:47:11 ◼   ► and then works out when the first email was and who it came from.

00:47:14 ◼   ► I have never seen an app do the stuff that this does.

00:47:17 ◼   ► And then it pulls in contact data and work history of the individual from

00:47:22 ◼   ► services like Twitter and LinkedIn and their websites.

00:47:24 ◼   ► Like I can look at somebody and it tells me what their personal website is

00:47:28 ◼   ► because it's either looked at it maybe from their signature field or just from

00:47:33 ◼   ► pulling in data from other services. It's incredible.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Like it really does a good job of intuiting what's important in your inbox.

00:47:41 ◼   ► But the thing that's most important for me is I will, I'm not using this as my

00:47:44 ◼   ► email app yet. When and if they put it on iPad, I may do that, but just because

00:47:49 ◼   ► some of this stuff is so powerful, but I open it every now and then just to see

00:47:53 ◼   ► like what questions are outstanding because how else do you know that?

00:47:56 ◼   ► The email goes and then you may never see a reply and you'll just forget and

00:48:01 ◼   ► they start tracking it in some other way.

00:48:02 ◼   ► But this application tells me all of my outstanding questions to people.

00:48:06 ◼   ► It's awesome.

00:48:07 ◼   ► Boy, that is very interesting.

00:48:09 ◼   ► That is very interesting.

00:48:11 ◼   ► This again highlights one of the best things about email.

00:48:15 ◼   ► That it is this cross-platform, open way of communicating.

00:48:20 ◼   ► And then it ends up that you can build specific tools for sifting through this general purpose thing.

00:48:28 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And that is very interesting to see.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Like, oh, maybe you don't use this all the time.

00:48:35 ◼   ► But it's useful to check to make sure that you haven't overlooked something.

00:48:41 ◼   ► That is a very interesting idea.

00:48:45 ◼   ► And I'm just looking at some of the screenshots from this and I have to say, yeah, this...

00:48:49 ◼   ► This looks again like maybe one of the most different email apps I've ever seen.

00:48:56 ◼   ► And from your description as well, it's like, boy...

00:48:58 ◼   ► That is worth keeping an eye on for when they come out with an iPad version.

00:49:05 ◼   ► They're also working on an Amazon Alexa skill.

00:49:09 ◼   ► I'm not sure if it's out yet,

00:49:11 ◼   ► but they've showed a video of it

00:49:12 ◼   ► and you can just do all of your email through the Alexa

00:49:15 ◼   ► and you can just, I have to say it really quietly because--

00:49:18 ◼   ► - Because Alexa is listening right now.

00:49:20 ◼   ► - My echo every now and then, like I'll say it

00:49:22 ◼   ► and then it will go like, "I didn't hear what you said."

00:49:24 ◼   ► Like from downstairs, I'm like, "Ah, listen to me."

00:49:28 ◼   ► But like their video that they showed off was like,

00:49:31 ◼   ► you can, it will do a lot of this stuff to you.

00:49:33 ◼   ► It's like Mary is waiting on an email for you.

00:49:35 ◼   ► What would you like to say?

00:49:37 ◼   ► Yeah, this app is awesome.

00:49:38 ◼   ► This is part of me, I'm trying to change a few things

00:49:42 ◼   ► about the way that I'm working.

00:49:43 ◼   ► This is probably gonna come up a lot.

00:49:46 ◼   ► I'm thinking about trying out a new to-do manager.

00:49:49 ◼   ► I'm thinking about different email apps.

00:49:54 ◼   ► I'm thinking about optimizing my life in different ways,

00:49:58 ◼   ► like for 2017, the year of less, comma me.

00:50:02 ◼   ► So this is the stuff that's gonna come up.

00:50:04 ◼   ► But I found this app and I really wanna move everything

00:50:07 ◼   ► to it just because it's so cool.

00:50:09 ◼   ► But I'm also just using it frequently

00:50:12 ◼   ► to check on some stuff that I might wanna catch up on.

00:50:14 ◼   ► So I think this one is maybe,

00:50:17 ◼   ► of all of the apps that we've spoken about,

00:50:19 ◼   ► I think that more of our listeners

00:50:21 ◼   ► might get some use out of this.

00:50:22 ◼   ► Providing that you're able to put your email

00:50:26 ◼   ► through these services.

00:50:28 ◼   ► It depends on your company and their policies, of course.

00:50:31 ◼   ► 'cause when you put your email into it,

00:50:34 ◼   ► it says we need to go away and look at this,

00:50:36 ◼   ► and then it gives you a push notification

00:50:38 ◼   ► after a period of time to say your email's now ready.

00:50:41 ◼   ► We've looked at it all, we now know what's going on.

00:50:45 ◼   ► It's really cool, man.

00:50:46 ◼   ► - Our AI bots have crunched on this for a while,

00:50:49 ◼   ► and here's what they're thinking.

00:50:50 ◼   ► - Yep, this is the world of artificial intelligence

00:50:53 ◼   ► that I like.

00:50:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:50:56 ◼   ► There are plenty of ways that machine learning,

00:51:00 ◼   ► AI neural nets and stuff like they can pull out patterns that you couldn't possibly do yourself.

00:51:04 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:51:05 ◼   ► Uh, slight sidebar here.

00:51:07 ◼   ► Like I don't exactly know what the deal is with this, but I always presume this is Apple's privacy thing.

00:51:12 ◼   ► I always feel like, "Hey Apple, I would love for you to take a look at my health data,

00:51:18 ◼   ► you know, with your little AI bots or whatever you want to do."

00:51:21 ◼   ► But you won't even pull this health data off of the phone and let it go onto an iPad or synchronize it anywhere.

00:51:28 ◼   ► It's like, "Okay, this is super locked down."

00:51:29 ◼   ► Like that seems like an area that is super ripe for all kinds of correlations and learning

00:51:36 ◼   ► in the same way that like you can do something with email which is like an enormous corpus

00:51:39 ◼   ► of data about you.

00:51:41 ◼   ► I feel a similar thing about health stuff with the phone.

00:51:43 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, come on.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Like there's no device that knows more about me than the phone.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Like surely there's something to be learned here."

00:51:50 ◼   ► But it feels like that's locked down.

00:51:51 ◼   ► That's a very private kind of thing.

00:51:53 ◼   ► That's like, that's anyway, that's a little sidebar.

00:51:55 ◼   ► That's my own personal annoyance.

00:51:56 ◼   ► I'm going to sidebar your sidebar.

00:51:58 ◼   ► So we were together recently at the All Conference, which is a great conference in Ireland.

00:52:05 ◼   ► Been planning on going for a while.

00:52:06 ◼   ► I arrive, I check in, I pick up my name badge.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Whose name badge is above mine?

00:52:11 ◼   ► CGP Grey.

00:52:14 ◼   ► And then a couple of days later, I pick up a bag and turn around and you're standing

00:52:18 ◼   ► behind me.

00:52:20 ◼   ► So that was interesting.

00:52:21 ◼   ► Anyway, so we were at this conference together and we were hanging out and I get a push notification

00:52:27 ◼   ► on my watch to tell me that Stephen Hackett wants to share his health data with me, his

00:52:30 ◼   ► activity data with me. To which you immediately saw, "We should do that too!" So I'm

00:52:37 ◼   ► now sharing activity data with a couple of people, which you can do on your Apple Watch.

00:52:41 ◼   ► And when you share this stuff with people, you feel bad about your own life. It is a

00:52:46 ◼   ► really good motivational tool. Because now I know when you're seeing that, like today,

00:52:52 ◼   ► I will have not moved very much and you're going to know that and I don't like that.

00:52:56 ◼   ► makes me very uncomfortable. I like the activity sharing in the Apple Watch. I

00:52:59 ◼   ► think it's done really well. I think it's actually done really

00:53:02 ◼   ► well in a way that protects your privacy because it didn't occur to me before but

00:53:07 ◼   ► the way they've done it is you can only see the aggregate data for the other

00:53:11 ◼   ► person. You can't see like "Oh, Myke was really busy running around between 3 and

00:53:16 ◼   ► 4 p.m." Right? You can only just see "Here is Myke's activity for the day." I do

00:53:23 ◼   ► I do get notifications right now, which I need to arrange because I just haven't yet,

00:53:28 ◼   ► of when you complete your workouts.

00:53:30 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:53:31 ◼   ► I think those notifications I think are a little bit much, so I have turned those off

00:53:36 ◼   ► for everybody because I don't really need to see when everybody completes their little

00:53:41 ◼   ► circles.

00:53:42 ◼   ► It's given me a new and interesting look into your schedule.

00:53:44 ◼   ► Wait a minute, what do you mean?

00:53:47 ◼   ► Suddenly now I have bigger privacy concerns than I did at the start of this conversation.

00:53:50 ◼   ► What do you mean?

00:53:51 ◼   ► I got a push notification from you at like 11 o'clock last night saying that you'd done

00:53:56 ◼   ► the stair stepping exercise.

00:53:58 ◼   ► I'm like what's he doing?

00:54:04 ◼   ► So there you go, I'm learning new things about you.

00:54:08 ◼   ► You work out way more than I thought and it's making me feel terrible.

00:54:11 ◼   ► I'm so happy that Cortex Cottage has a gym at the bottom.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Oh good good.

00:54:15 ◼   ► So you'll see me now like 4am, Myke has completed a run.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll be waiting for that one.

00:54:22 ◼   ► You wait for that one.

00:54:24 ◼   ► Waiting for a long time.

00:54:26 ◼   ► How is, are you on the multi-watch lifestyle now?

00:54:29 ◼   ► Like you're on that right?

00:54:30 ◼   ► How is that working for you?

00:54:32 ◼   ► Multi-watch lifestyle?

00:54:33 ◼   ► Awesome.

00:54:34 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

00:54:35 ◼   ► It's everything that I dreamed it would be.

00:54:39 ◼   ► Are you using two different generations of watch?

00:54:42 ◼   ► Yes.

00:54:43 ◼   ► I got the, what are they calling it?

00:54:45 ◼   ► Series 2?

00:54:46 ◼   ► Is that the newer one?

00:54:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:48 ◼   ► So you have the original and the Series 2.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Right, I bought the original watch when it came out, I bought a Series 2 to replace it,

00:54:56 ◼   ► which you thought was a ridiculous idea and I thought was an obvious conclusion to come to.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Yup, okay.

00:55:03 ◼   ► I heard mumbling, but I can't keep track of all of these things.

00:55:09 ◼   ► But I mean, the short version of it is I'm thrilled with the Series 2 watch.

00:55:15 ◼   ► I totally love it.

00:55:16 ◼   ► The battery life is fantastic.

00:55:20 ◼   ► It is noticeably noticeably better than the original watch.

00:55:24 ◼   ► So much so that it falls into the category for me of

00:55:28 ◼   ► "thing that I simply don't have to think about" which is amazing.

00:55:32 ◼   ► Because there's so many batteries in our lives and I hate having to be aware

00:55:36 ◼   ► vaguely of the batteries of all of these things. It's like, okay, there's the watch

00:55:40 ◼   ► battery, there's the headphone battery, there's the phone battery,

00:55:44 ◼   ► There's the gimbal battery, if you're filming something, right?

00:55:47 ◼   ► There's like a bazillion batteries in the world, and I love that the watch, I essentially never even have to think about it.

00:55:52 ◼   ► And then, combining that with the thing that I'm doing, which is at night time, I switch to the old watch,

00:56:02 ◼   ► which I simply leave in a set up night time face, so that I have it on my wrist at night, so that it helps me sleep better,

00:56:09 ◼   ► that I can check the time when I'm sort of half awake.

00:56:11 ◼   ► Doing those two things means I just like never have to think about the watch or the watch battery or how charged it is at any point in time.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Because it just like it never gets below 50% either of the two watches.

00:56:26 ◼   ► So it's fantastic. Like I wouldn't go out and buy a second watch if I didn't already have one.

00:56:32 ◼   ► But using the original as the nighttime sleep watch is great. I absolutely love having done this.

00:56:39 ◼   ► having done this.

00:56:40 ◼   ► You also mentioned a couple of weeks ago when we spoke about this that you wished that you

00:56:45 ◼   ► could get like a kind of fuzzy clock as we've mentioned before like you have this clock

00:56:50 ◼   ► on your Mac which kind of it doesn't say like 204 it's like it's five past three or something

00:56:56 ◼   ► whatever it will say you know obviously those times don't make any sense what I just said

00:57:00 ◼   ► but don't worry about that.

00:57:03 ◼   ► Some a bunch of people sent us in something called the fuzzy complication for the watch

00:57:06 ◼   ► which just tells you it's about six o'clock, stuff like that. So that thing exists. Have you tried that?

00:57:10 ◼   ► No, because I have I have no real use for this because

00:57:16 ◼   ► the way Apple sets up their watch faces, you always have to have the exact time on the watch face anyway.

00:57:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, you can't replace the clock. You can never replace the clock. You just have two clocks on the one face.

00:57:27 ◼   ► It's very confusing.

00:57:28 ◼   ► There's no version of this that allows you to just have the one clock.

00:57:31 ◼   ► This again is my eternal frustration with Apple not allowing people to design watch faces

00:57:37 ◼   ► Which I used to have I used to have I used to have great

00:57:41 ◼   ► Hope for like oh obviously Apple is going to open this up obviously. This is a thing that will change will come someday

00:57:48 ◼   ► but a couple of personal conversations combined with Apple's brand deals with Nike and Hermes

00:57:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like have have totally ripped this dream of mine away

00:58:00 ◼   ► And it's like there is no way that they are ever going to do this

00:58:03 ◼   ► So yes, people can design custom watch faces provided that they're a huge fashion brand and make their own branded watch as well

00:58:09 ◼   ► Exactly, like when grey industries is a global fashion brand

00:58:13 ◼   ► Then maybe I can get them to produce a watch face for me, right?

00:58:19 ◼   ► You just need to go back to your original dream of making your own t-shirts

00:58:22 ◼   ► Remember that when that was the thing?

00:58:25 ◼   ► Suddenly this is a more practical idea

00:58:29 ◼   ► But no, it's it is frustrating and I think I think this fuzzy clock complication is a perfect example of like there's there's

00:58:36 ◼   ► space for this

00:58:38 ◼   ► But this just this just fundamentally can't work or even I've been the past couple of days for

00:58:44 ◼   ► various reasons I don't want to get into at the moment what I have really wanted is

00:58:49 ◼   ► What I think of is like a the old pilots or flight attendant watches where

00:58:55 ◼   ► like where you can have a watch that has two clock faces on it of equivalent weight

00:59:01 ◼   ► so you can set one for one time zone and one for the other one and

00:59:05 ◼   ► I feel like I've wanted to do this

00:59:08 ◼   ► for a couple of reasons in the past few days, and it's just it's like it's not there's no great solution to this in

00:59:14 ◼   ► the setup that the watches currently have like their little complications

00:59:18 ◼   ► Just don't do what I really want like the emphasis is always on the wrong

00:59:23 ◼   ► time like I want to be able to have the main time be somewhere else and have a smaller time be the the time in

00:59:30 ◼   ► the current time zone, but it's like nope no way to do this and

00:59:33 ◼   ► This is a kind of thing like someone could create a custom watch face

00:59:37 ◼   ► Which would be awesome for people who want to kind of dual think about two time zones in a very particular way

00:59:45 ◼   ► But like never going to happen because that market is super small and Apple's not going to make a face that that does like

00:59:51 ◼   ► Exactly what you wanted to do. So I'm sad about that two watches thumbs up

00:59:56 ◼   ► lack of custom watch faces

00:59:59 ◼   ► sad-face

01:00:00 ◼   ► Not thumbs down. Yeah, I'm I'm sadder than I disapprove. That's why it's a sad face. I

01:00:06 ◼   ► Don't into the emoji very well Myke. I'm sorry. That's all right. Now. Look I'm pulling us back out again

01:00:12 ◼   ► Okay, I go back to email

01:00:15 ◼   ► Okay, I saw you tweet the other day that you have found a limit die

01:00:19 ◼   ► I didn't know existed, that apparently you can only have 100 VIPs in Apple Mail's system.

01:00:24 ◼   ► Oh my god. Oh my god.

01:00:27 ◼   ► I mean, I have some issues with the fact that you even reached this in the first place.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Okay, I'm going to have to explain what's going on here.

01:00:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you do.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Okay, the first thing that frustrates me... So, for the listeners, I was doing some email

01:00:45 ◼   ► on my computer. I was using Apple's default mail app and in there you can press a little

01:00:52 ◼   ► button next to a contact to immediately add them as a VIP. And I went to press this button

01:00:57 ◼   ► and I got the message which said something like "You are only allowed to have 100 VIPs.

01:01:04 ◼   ► Please remove some VIPs and try again." Now, this made me furious because just to start

01:01:13 ◼   ► this is such, this is such like an Apple-y message, like this, there's something that's like the idea of

01:01:19 ◼   ► "Apple knows best for you," which is always frustrating, that is embodied in this idea.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Because I look at that message and I think,

01:01:26 ◼   ► "Is there some kind of physical limit to VIPs?"

01:01:32 ◼   ► Right, like, why have you decided I'm only allowed to have 100?

01:01:37 ◼   ► I don't think there's any real reason for this.

01:01:39 ◼   ► This number is obviously clearly selected by a human.

01:01:43 ◼   ► It's not even a case where like you try to add a VIP and you get an error which says like, you know,

01:01:49 ◼   ► int value limit reached 255 VIPs max, right?

01:01:53 ◼   ► Which is like, oh, okay, someone programmed this and just never conceived of the idea that someone would have more than

01:01:58 ◼   ► 255 VIPs and this is just like a bug in a sense.

01:02:02 ◼   ► It's like, no, there was a meeting somewhere in Apple where they sat down and they said,

01:02:06 ◼   ► "How many VIPs are we going to allow people to have?"

01:02:09 ◼   ► 100. No one will ever need more than 100 VIPs. Great.

01:02:13 ◼   ► That's what we've decided. End of discussion. And that kind of stuff just infuriates me like a totally

01:02:18 ◼   ► artificial, no reason for it limit. I love the way it's written.

01:02:25 ◼   ► "A maximum of 100 VIPs is allowed.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Please remove any unused VIPs and try again." My favorite two words are "allowed" and "unused."

01:02:35 ◼   ► Like allowed, allowed?

01:02:38 ◼   ► Who are you computer?

01:02:40 ◼   ► Like what are you doing?

01:02:42 ◼   ► And then just the presumption

01:02:44 ◼   ► that you can't have more than a hundred,

01:02:46 ◼   ► surely there must be some that are unused.

01:02:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, that there's no reason for this.

01:02:50 ◼   ► So, okay, so now people are wondering, how did I get here?

01:02:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I still think that like,

01:02:57 ◼   ► even though this is a silly thing that is being coded in,

01:03:00 ◼   ► I still think that you are doing it wrong as well.

01:03:05 ◼   ► I can feel the judgment and the blame in your voice.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Okay, so here's what has happened.

01:03:12 ◼   ► I have had like this tale of woe with email stretching back close to six months now.

01:03:21 ◼   ► Where essentially at the start of my summer travels, before I went to WWDC, before I went to VidCon,

01:03:30 ◼   ► when I was just getting on the plane to go to America and start doing a bunch of stuff, family reunions, all the rest of this.

01:03:35 ◼   ► I have been terrible at email starting at that point.

01:03:41 ◼   ► So much so that I essentially went the entire summer

01:03:45 ◼   ► without really looking at email in any significant way.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And then came back at some point in September

01:03:52 ◼   ► and had

01:03:54 ◼   ► an overwhelming number of emails to reply to.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Just thousands and thousands of messages.

01:04:04 ◼   ► This is like, you know, after being filtered out, you know, trying to sort out for important stuff.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Just like an incredible amount of stuff.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Oh, after the sorting.

01:04:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, after the sorting. - Oh no.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Yeah. Now...

01:04:16 ◼   ► This is... I always feel like there's a situation like when you have problems in life,

01:04:23 ◼   ► problems always happen in these ways that end up compounding each other.

01:04:27 ◼   ► And so the problem that happened which was compounding

01:04:31 ◼   ► is that I upgraded to

01:04:34 ◼   ► iOS 10 and under iOS 10

01:04:38 ◼   ► my favorite email application

01:04:41 ◼   ► which is the perfect one to deal with this problem, UniBox,

01:04:44 ◼   ► is a little buggy and weird.

01:04:47 ◼   ► Right? There's some problems loading messages,

01:04:51 ◼   ► there's some problems sending replies, and it's like, this is the exact worst situation to try to use this under.

01:04:58 ◼   ► Right, like the application is going to be under an unusual amount of stress

01:05:03 ◼   ► with an unusually large number of messages.

01:05:06 ◼   ► I contacted the developers, they said they're working on a fix,

01:05:09 ◼   ► but it doesn't change the fact that it hasn't been available to me for the last couple months.

01:05:13 ◼   ► And when an email problem gets so enormous, it's also just very hard to psychologically even deal with it.

01:05:20 ◼   ► like maybe it'll all just go away, right? Maybe if I just don't pay any attention to this, it'll disappear. Turns out it's not true.

01:05:26 ◼   ► There is an element of it that will. You know, some people will just stop trying.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:31 ◼   ► But then more people will try.

01:05:32 ◼   ► So what I have been falling back on is trying to just use the regular built-in mail app

01:05:37 ◼   ► in terms of replying to stuff because it's like I can't fully trust the app that I want to use right now.

01:05:43 ◼   ► I want to try to burn through this as most

01:05:47 ◼   ► as I can, like this is a case where reliability is going to matter more than speed.

01:05:52 ◼   ► So I'm trying to get through mail, and I've also been trying to essentially

01:05:57 ◼   ► make mail as close to unibox as I can,

01:06:02 ◼   ► which is mail allows you to have this special email inbox that shows you

01:06:07 ◼   ► just messages from your VIPs.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And the way I want to use that is I'm trying to filter out

01:06:14 ◼   ► out messages essentially from people I know and people I don't know.

01:06:20 ◼   ► Which again, I understand is a very particular problem for someone in my position.

01:06:25 ◼   ► This is not really a general purpose problem.

01:06:27 ◼   ► But nonetheless, what I really want VIPs to be in mail when I'm using it is essentially

01:06:34 ◼   ► my address book.

01:06:35 ◼   ► If there's anybody I put in my address book, I want to be able to pull their messages out

01:06:40 ◼   ► separately from the sea of messages.

01:06:43 ◼   ► And so that's why I've been going through and essentially VIPing every single person

01:06:47 ◼   ► I know who replies.

01:06:49 ◼   ► And I'm also in the unusual position of having a sort of a large group of acquaintances who

01:07:02 ◼   ► I want to have their messages elevated above as well.

01:07:07 ◼   ► So for example, like I met a bunch of people at VidCon and they'll send, they send like

01:07:11 ◼   ► a follow-up message and it's like, "Okay, great. I want to put this person in the VIP system.

01:07:15 ◼   ► We probably won't email very frequently,

01:07:18 ◼   ► but maybe six months down the road

01:07:21 ◼   ► they're going to send me a message about a thing and I would rather not have them in the same group with like

01:07:25 ◼   ► random people that I don't know." And this exact situation just happened with the exact person who I was actually trying to mark as a VIP

01:07:32 ◼   ► when that message came up. Like, someone sent me a message a while ago

01:07:35 ◼   ► and I thought, "I'm not going to be in regular contact with this person,

01:07:38 ◼   ► but I still want their message above the fray. I couldn't mark them as a VIP.

01:07:42 ◼   ► Nope, you're not allowed. And then, you know, a couple days ago, they happened to send me a question about a thing.

01:07:47 ◼   ► It's like I saw it, but it wasn't filtered the way I wanted it to be.

01:07:50 ◼   ► So this is this is how I have ended up in this position and it is extra frustrating because it is a totally artificial,

01:07:57 ◼   ► totally pointless limit that is built into the mail application for no reason.

01:08:01 ◼   ► Isn't this a thing a human could do? Isn't this something your assistant could do?

01:08:06 ◼   ► Like you just have a list of people, but I guess there's a lot to check, isn't it?

01:08:10 ◼   ► Like check every email that you receive against the list.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Yeah, this is like this is a very different thing. What I did when I came back from the summer

01:08:17 ◼   ► was I did a kind of super triage of my inbox of trying to go through and find all of the

01:08:24 ◼   ► genuinely urgent stuff that there was to deal with. And I essentially took aside two days to be like

01:08:30 ◼   ► I'm just doing email and I'm just going through a bunch of this stuff.

01:08:34 ◼   ► And so I cleared out a bunch of things from there

01:08:37 ◼   ► but the backlog is just so incredibly huge

01:08:40 ◼   ► that the rest of it is very hard to deal with

01:08:43 ◼   ► and then I'm having random stuff come in

01:08:45 ◼   ► and I'm just missing it because I'm using mail

01:08:47 ◼   ► because I'm not seeing everybody in my contacts

01:08:49 ◼   ► and then a whole bunch of other stuff

01:08:51 ◼   ► and then I was gripped by mania for the video that I want to produce

01:08:54 ◼   ► There's just been a whole bunch of compounding problems

01:08:56 ◼   ► that have led me in a situation where it's like

01:08:58 ◼   ► "Ugh, I am very sad about email"

01:09:01 ◼   ► "I'm very sad about email"

01:09:03 ◼   ► That's where I am.

01:09:05 ◼   ► But give me more VIPs, Apple.

01:09:07 ◼   ► It's not too much to ask.

01:09:08 ◼   ► That's really not going to solve your problem.

01:09:10 ◼   ► No, it totally is. That is the bottleneck here.

01:09:13 ◼   ► No, you have hit a software limit.

01:09:17 ◼   ► But they are not your problem.

01:09:20 ◼   ► I think they're my problem.

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01:11:22 ◼   ► It's everyone's favorite time, Gray.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Let's do some #AskCortex questions.

01:11:27 ◼   ► - Oh, hello.

01:11:28 ◼   ► It's been a while.

01:11:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:30 ◼   ► - Is this the one?

01:11:31 ◼   ► Oh, okay, we've got a new intro for the segment.

01:11:33 ◼   ► Hello, hello, Elaine.

01:11:34 ◼   ► What is your question?

01:11:35 ◼   ► Elaine asks, "What does Gray do

01:11:37 ◼   ► when his assistant is on vacation?

01:11:39 ◼   ► Is there a backup or is he on his own?"

01:11:42 ◼   ► I thought this was fascinating

01:11:43 ◼   ► 'cause this had never crossed my mind before.

01:11:45 ◼   ► Clearly your assistant can't work on everything forever.

01:11:48 ◼   ► What do you do?

01:11:49 ◼   ► - My assistant has some assistants

01:11:52 ◼   ► who become my assistant when she's on vacation.

01:11:55 ◼   ► You have one assistant, no no. Two assistants because one is none.

01:12:00 ◼   ► Right exactly.

01:12:02 ◼   ► That's perfect. That's such a great solution. It doesn't surprise me that this is something

01:12:06 ◼   ► that you needed, like that you would have gone through this already. Like, no.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:12:10 ◼   ► There will be no break.

01:12:12 ◼   ► It totally came up this summer when I was traveling. It turned out that I didn't actually

01:12:17 ◼   ► need to call on the additional assistant.

01:12:21 ◼   ► But I just, I wanted to have someone available if there was some kind of

01:12:26 ◼   ► problem that I was unable to deal with. And that's all it was, like a fall back of,

01:12:32 ◼   ► you know, the situation I was trying to avoid is I'm at some family event

01:12:37 ◼   ► where I can't take away time for business stuff and I really don't want to,

01:12:42 ◼   ► but maybe there's some kind of problem. Like I just, I need there to be someone

01:12:47 ◼   ► who I can at least have as an option to call on for some help.

01:12:50 ◼   ► Maybe they won't be able to do anything, but just knowing that there was someone who might be able to help

01:12:55 ◼   ► in a situation where I might be pressed on time, that was a thing that I definitely wanted to have set up.

01:13:01 ◼   ► So my assistant has an assistant who was my assistant when she was on vacation this summer.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Okay, that makes sense.

01:13:09 ◼   ► Jordan said that they were re-listening to Cortex number 10.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Long time ago.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Yeah, you mentioned that you would use Omnigraffle potentially for animations if Apple ever released

01:13:22 ◼   ► a large iPad with a stylus.

01:13:25 ◼   ► They did that.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:13:27 ◼   ► Did you do that?

01:13:28 ◼   ► No, I did not do that.

01:13:30 ◼   ► No.

01:13:31 ◼   ► I think the main thing that changed is by that point you'd basically started to transition

01:13:35 ◼   ► away from animating yourself.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Yeah, when we would have first discussed this, I was in a different sort of transition, which

01:13:44 ◼   ► was transitioning from Mac to iOS largely, which is mostly done at this point.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I think it's very unlikely I could transition more to iOS than I currently have.

01:14:01 ◼   ► And so at that stage I was really trying to think about and look for an animation solution

01:14:08 ◼   ► on my iPad.

01:14:09 ◼   ► Now, two things that I think are interesting is that even now, however long it's been since we recorded that episode,

01:14:17 ◼   ► there is nothing available for the iPad Pro that could be an adequate solution to what I really wanted.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Like that still doesn't exist and every once in a while I check in on the "how is the animation/illustration world doing on iPad?"

01:14:33 ◼   ► And it's like it's an interesting world like there's a bunch of tools that solve very narrow problems

01:14:39 ◼   ► But there's nothing that's a general-purpose solution, and I kind of wonder like what's what's going on there?

01:14:44 ◼   ► What's happening in that world? So what's the general-purpose solution on the Mac is that Inkscape? Is that what you consider?

01:14:51 ◼   ► There's a bunch of there's a bunch of different tools. I personally was using Inkscape, but you could do the same things with illustrator

01:15:00 ◼   ► You know, you have tools like Final Cut Pro and After Effects, like there's a bunch of things that you can use

01:15:05 ◼   ► to solve this problem. And I think

01:15:08 ◼   ► right now on iOS, it would still be just

01:15:13 ◼   ► incredibly time-consuming or very, very difficult to actually do a serious amount of

01:15:19 ◼   ► animation work on that platform.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Again, there's a lot of like

01:15:24 ◼   ► particular things that you can do,

01:15:27 ◼   ► but less general purpose solutions.

01:15:30 ◼   ► So it's interesting sitting here now and having someone bring up a thing from the past and realizing like, "Oh, that was a

01:15:37 ◼   ► different problem that past Gray was dealing with that wouldn't have even been solved if he had stuck with it."

01:15:44 ◼   ► And he instead went down a different path, which is now working with an animator.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Which is, as a slight sidebar here, I'm now in the process of

01:15:56 ◼   ► of trying to learn After Effects for the computer because this is the system that I'm transitioning

01:16:03 ◼   ► to away from Inkscape and Final Cut Pro and instead working with the Adobe suite of applications

01:16:11 ◼   ► to do animations partly because they're better for working in a group and partly because

01:16:17 ◼   ► I think they're just a generally better solution than what I had cobbled together for myself

01:16:21 ◼   ► over the past few years.

01:16:22 ◼   ► So you're looking at moving to After Effects and Premiere?

01:16:25 ◼   ► to After Effects from Final Cut Pro.

01:16:29 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

01:16:31 ◼   ► Huh. Is this partly because of your animator?

01:16:33 ◼   ► This is partly because this is the tool the animator is using.

01:16:37 ◼   ► It's also partly because I know people who are running serious animation outputs on After Effects.

01:16:44 ◼   ► And I've seen...

01:16:45 ◼   ► And so I've been able to see behind the scenes, like, how does this work.

01:16:49 ◼   ► And it has some really, really good solutions for some of the things that I'm trying to do.

01:16:53 ◼   ► So I think it's probably the best tool for what I am trying to accomplish.

01:16:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess Final Cut is really for just editing video together.

01:17:01 ◼   ► Final Cut is a fantastic program,

01:17:05 ◼   ► but its core skill is really stitching together pre-existing clips of video.

01:17:13 ◼   ► Like, let's say for example, you wanted to start a vlog.

01:17:17 ◼   ► Hello.

01:17:18 ◼   ► Yeah, Final Cut is exactly the tool that you would probably want to get started with.

01:17:22 ◼   ► because I think it's really easy, it's really intuitive, you can do a tremendous amount in it,

01:17:30 ◼   ► but it is also just so not designed for animation.

01:17:35 ◼   ► This is clearly not its skill set.

01:17:38 ◼   ► Whereas After Effects is much more designed for animation.

01:17:42 ◼   ► There are some things that... actually that rules for rulers video is a really good example of.

01:17:48 ◼   ► There were a couple of changes that we made at the last possible second to the video in After Effects

01:17:57 ◼   ► that would have just never ever ever been possible with Final Cut Pro.

01:18:02 ◼   ► Like the morning of we actually ended up changing the background that was used in the video.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Which might normally be like a relatively simple thing to do, except for the fact that I have this weird thing that people sometimes tune into and sometimes don't.

01:18:17 ◼   ► But the stick figures that I use, almost always their heads are actually transparent.

01:18:23 ◼   ► I don't like to fill in the heads with any color.

01:18:26 ◼   ► But so this means that there has to be like an artificial background behind some of their heads in some of the scenes.

01:18:33 ◼   ► And that kind of thing, it's like, man, if I had done this in Final Cut Pro, changing the background would be another 20 hours of work.

01:18:42 ◼   ► Whereas with the tool that is designed much more specifically for animation,

01:18:47 ◼   ► it's not nothing, but it is way easier to do because the application natively understands,

01:18:54 ◼   ► like, "This is an animation," or "This is an animatable asset,"

01:18:58 ◼   ► like, "Here are the different properties of this animatable asset."

01:19:01 ◼   ► So I'm just beginning to get into After Effects,

01:19:05 ◼   ► and that's what I'm taking a look at as almost certainly the future of how the videos are going to be produced.

01:19:11 ◼   ► Hmm, this is interesting because I have been very tempted by the Microsoft Studio, which

01:19:23 ◼   ► is Microsoft's new kind of desktop that they've made.

01:19:27 ◼   ► It's like a 28-inch screen on a pivot, which you can bring down in front of you, and it

01:19:32 ◼   ► has native stylus support.

01:19:35 ◼   ► That's the one that folds down.

01:19:36 ◼   ► It has the little thing you put on the screen.

01:19:38 ◼   ► I've just seen that one video clip everywhere.

01:19:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:41 ◼   ► and you can grab the screen and bring it down in front of you and it's like a drafting table.

01:19:44 ◼   ► Yeah, not only does it look like an iMac, it looks exactly like something Apple should have produced, but didn't.

01:19:50 ◼   ► Now I have said that like that computer is like the

01:19:56 ◼   ► perfect form factor for the way that I work on my Mac with Final Cut and with

01:20:01 ◼   ► Logic with using a pen stylus to interact with it.

01:20:06 ◼   ► And I believe if I was a user of Adobe's products,

01:20:10 ◼   ► I would be very tempted to use that machine

01:20:15 ◼   ► instead of my iMac because it fits my movement more

01:20:18 ◼   ► and the way that I edit with gestures on the track pad

01:20:21 ◼   ► and pen input for fine motion.

01:20:23 ◼   ► If you are moving to something like Adobe suite of products,

01:20:28 ◼   ► would you be more tempted to try something like this?

01:20:31 ◼   ► Because we both edit in the same way

01:20:35 ◼   ► And this would be like direct on-screen manipulation

01:20:38 ◼   ► of the work as opposed to augmenting it

01:20:41 ◼   ► to a stylus and pad next to you.

01:20:45 ◼   ► - I mean, as crazy as it sounds in some ways,

01:20:47 ◼   ► like yes, it is totally a tempting, interesting thing.

01:20:52 ◼   ► - Especially because of the way we use our Macs

01:20:54 ◼   ► as like function machines.

01:20:56 ◼   ► - For us, the Mac is like, this is a toaster, right?

01:20:59 ◼   ► It is a machine that does a particular thing

01:21:02 ◼   ► and I don't really care about it

01:21:04 ◼   ► outside of that particular thing.

01:21:06 ◼   ► And in addition, this gets over one of the main problems

01:21:10 ◼   ► I'm always talking about, which is transition costs.

01:21:13 ◼   ► And it's like, well, the transition cost of learning

01:21:18 ◼   ► a new way of animating is something

01:21:21 ◼   ► that I have to go through anyway.

01:21:23 ◼   ► Like, I have to pay that price now.

01:21:26 ◼   ► But if I'm switching to a tool

01:21:29 ◼   ► that is actually cross-platform,

01:21:31 ◼   ► well, then it matters way less.

01:21:33 ◼   ► Like, what is the operating system running underneath it?

01:21:37 ◼   ► Like, at that perspective, it's like, well, this Microsoft computer, from my production perspective,

01:21:43 ◼   ► is essentially just an Adobe machine, right? It's the machine that runs Adobe stuff.

01:21:49 ◼   ► And it's funny you mention that, because it's been vaguely crossing my mind of like,

01:21:54 ◼   ► "Well, I'm using Logic to edit all my podcasts, but I think Adobe has some kind of audio editing tool."

01:22:02 ◼   ► It's called Audition.

01:22:03 ◼   ► Yeah, like maybe I should look into that.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Like I've heard it's much better for doing podcasts.

01:22:07 ◼   ► And you know what the only roadblock in that is?

01:22:11 ◼   ► That's you, Myke.

01:22:13 ◼   ► The other person I work with who we need to share compatible file formats.

01:22:17 ◼   ► But it's just a thing, like you can see how

01:22:21 ◼   ► if I'm transitioning to a layer above the operating system

01:22:26 ◼   ► for my production stuff

01:22:30 ◼   ► then it totally makes a transition to Windows way more likely for a production machine.

01:22:37 ◼   ► Like, I will always personally be using iOS devices and so be personally much more connected into the Apple operating system.

01:22:46 ◼   ► But it's like, I can very easily imagine having an office in the future where I have a machine that is an Adobe machine.

01:22:54 ◼   ► And then something interesting like this Microsoft drafting table makes that a much more tempting option than otherwise

01:23:01 ◼   ► And maybe Myke learns Adobe Audition.

01:23:04 ◼   ► I use Audition for a few things

01:23:07 ◼   ► Processing wise like pre-processing of audio and some of the stuff that it does is brilliant. I don't understand how to edit using it

01:23:15 ◼   ► Like I've looked at it and I just can't get it. It's like it doesn't just transfer easily to my brain

01:23:22 ◼   ► Maybe one day. Maybe I'll learn I'll give you a crash course

01:23:26 ◼   ► The only way I'm ever moving this show to after effects is if you do provide a training course for me

01:23:34 ◼   ► Just so you know same as when I took the videos over

01:23:37 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. You made that great little screen cast and then everything was great. It's all fun. Who knows?

01:23:42 ◼   ► Maybe we're running a show on Windows in a year. Oh, can you imagine?

01:23:45 ◼   ► The reddit would be happy at least

01:23:49 ◼   ► No, but you know, but you don't understand you net like listen, here's a key thing

01:23:53 ◼   ► You're never going to make the people on the internet happy

01:23:55 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, because we would make the people happy that say we should switch to the surface

01:23:59 ◼   ► But then we just upset all the people that use Mac OS

01:24:01 ◼   ► Exactly, right? That's that's all that happens

01:24:03 ◼   ► Like all you're ever doing is trading one group of angry people for another group of angry people

01:24:08 ◼   ► So if you use Apple stuff, you're going to hear from all the windows people if you use a windows

01:24:11 ◼   ► You're going to hear from all the Apple people, right? So it's it's it's not about them Myke

01:24:15 ◼   ► It's about you and what do you want to do? All right

01:24:18 ◼   ► There's a bunch of questions that came from Twillis537 on Reddit, great Reddit name, that

01:24:27 ◼   ► are meta questions about this show. And I get these every now and then, like one or

01:24:32 ◼   ► two of them, but this individual just gave a bunch. So I think it might answer a lot

01:24:37 ◼   ► of questions and/or make more questions, who knows, but it might at least suffice people

01:24:41 ◼   ► who are interested in this stuff, like about Cortex. So they start with, "What is the

01:24:46 ◼   ► usual time spent recording an episode. This is the most interesting part to me, because

01:24:53 ◼   ► we probably record for on average about 4 hours we're on the phone together. Would you

01:25:01 ◼   ► agree that feels about right?

01:25:03 ◼   ► That feels about right.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Sometimes it's less, but sometimes it's like 6.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:08 ◼   ► I'm not exaggerating.

01:25:10 ◼   ► That is not an exaggeration. Not an exaggeration at all. But do you want to explain to the

01:25:16 ◼   ► people why it is that it's four or six hours when they're listening to a show that's maybe

01:25:22 ◼   ► an hour and 20 to two hours long. I feel like we should because otherwise people are going to ask

01:25:28 ◼   ► for all of it. There is a probably on average about 45 to 60 minutes before the show begins

01:25:36 ◼   ► where we're booting up. Yeah. Right? Where we're just like preparing for the show like this is the

01:25:44 ◼   ► the stuff we're going to talk about. A lot of the time we'll look at the document together

01:25:48 ◼   ► that we prepared and we'll trim and we'll rearrange. Then there's just like a little

01:25:52 ◼   ► bit of just gassing where we're just getting ready. Then about 15 minutes of saying I'm

01:25:57 ◼   ► ready now, are you ready now? Yes, I'm ready now, are you ready now? We do that a bunch.

01:26:01 ◼   ► Then you'll go get another coffee because you're usually done by that point. There are

01:26:07 ◼   ► usually breaks in the middle that we take. One day we took like a two hour break in the

01:26:12 ◼   ► middle do you remember that? And then usually after the show's done there's just a bit of

01:26:18 ◼   ► decompressing time. It's not interesting in any way but it exists.

01:26:24 ◼   ► Yeah I find it interesting like I don't have this with anything else but there is a kind of,

01:26:30 ◼   ► we were actually discussing it today just sort of unrelated to this, but for this show I don't

01:26:37 ◼   ► know what it is but and we both agree that this is the case that we kind of

01:26:42 ◼   ► feel like we need to talk to each other about nothing in particular for a while

01:26:46 ◼   ► yeah before either of us is kind of set to go mm-hmm and and that's a that's a

01:26:52 ◼   ► strange thing like it doesn't happen to me with other things you know you said

01:26:57 ◼   ► you don't have the same thing with other shows nothing I don't know what it is

01:27:01 ◼   ► but for some reason I know that I could not possibly just walk into an episode cold.

01:27:08 ◼   ► That there is this phase of warming up that is absolutely required.

01:27:13 ◼   ► And sometimes is hilariously long.

01:27:17 ◼   ► And when you're saying about that there comes a moment where we're both saying like,

01:27:21 ◼   ► "Are you ready? Are you ready?"

01:27:22 ◼   ► I am always aware of how often we then have another little diversion after that point,

01:27:28 ◼   ► where it's like, "Oh, all the recording equipment setting up, like, okay, we're great."

01:27:31 ◼   ► And in theory we should start the show at that moment, but one or the other of us just brings up something that we end up talking about for a while.

01:27:39 ◼   ► It is really strange and it is why, honestly, I set my entire day.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Like, nothing else will go in the diary on Thursdays because it just takes that amount of time and I'm really proud of the show and I believe that it takes six hours for us to get 90 minutes.

01:27:57 ◼   ► And if that's what it takes, then I'll keep giving it that.

01:28:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's why this can be on the easy week for you. It's like this is the only thing that you have to do

01:28:04 ◼   ► Yeah, no, you know, it's still got that right. Yeah, I'll task

01:28:07 ◼   ► Quiet week super quiet week super quiet week

01:28:11 ◼   ► How long is the gap usually between recording and posting?

01:28:15 ◼   ► So typically we record on Thursday and release on Monday

01:28:21 ◼   ► Typically if we don't release on Monday

01:28:25 ◼   ► It's probably been 24 hours since you recorded

01:28:29 ◼   ► That tends to be the way that it goes, right?

01:28:32 ◼   ► Like we're recording this, it's Thursday, and it'll probably be out on Friday.

01:28:38 ◼   ► Because if we haven't, because we're late, we're super late, like we're really late this

01:28:43 ◼   ► week, like a week late at this point.

01:28:44 ◼   ► But yeah, that tends to be how it goes, right?

01:28:47 ◼   ► We kind of get it out over a weekend, mostly.

01:28:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like these are the two modes.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Myke is happy with the schedule mode, which is we record on Thursday and it goes up on

01:28:58 ◼   ► And then there's "Oh no, we need a cortex" and there was some reason why the regular schedule didn't work.

01:29:06 ◼   ► And then because, in particular, like your schedule is very booked, like it's hard for you to necessarily find time to record like a random other show that's going to suck up your entire day.

01:29:18 ◼   ► But yes, otherwise we have shows that are like, recorded one day and then put up the

01:29:24 ◼   ► next day.

01:29:25 ◼   ► And this show is going to be that case, and the previous one we recorded was the same

01:29:29 ◼   ► as well, I think, right?

01:29:30 ◼   ► Like we recorded it and then it was up the following day.

01:29:33 ◼   ► I don't even know anymore.

01:29:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm pretty sure the last one was up less than 24 hours after we recorded it.

01:29:41 ◼   ► So yes, those are the two ways that this is done.

01:29:45 ◼   ► I much prefer the other way because what's going to happen today is we will finish recording,

01:29:51 ◼   ► I will take a break for an hour, and then I will listen back to what we just recorded.

01:29:57 ◼   ► That's tough, man. That's tough to relive the conversation you just had.

01:30:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I have to say for anyone who doesn't do this kind of work, like I have had to do

01:30:09 ◼   ► that with podcasts a number of times where it's like you've just spent three hours recording

01:30:14 ◼   ► and now you have to edit you talking for the previous three hours.

01:30:18 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:30:18 ◼   ► It is not fun. Like, it is not fun at all.

01:30:22 ◼   ► Partly because you don't necessarily have a lot of distance from the conversation that you have just had.

01:30:27 ◼   ► And so I think it is much harder to edit immediately after.

01:30:32 ◼   ► It is.

01:30:32 ◼   ► And I find when I do that I am vastly more aware of all of the kind of ways that conversations go

01:30:40 ◼   ► when you're not good at explaining yourself or like you think you said a thing.

01:30:43 ◼   ► in a correct way and you realize like, "Oh, I actually did a terrible job explaining what I was trying to say."

01:30:48 ◼   ► I find if I edit a show immediately after recording, all of that stuff is way worse.

01:30:53 ◼   ► Like, I'm just much more aware of it.

01:30:55 ◼   ► And it is harder because you don't have a little bit of distance from the show itself.

01:30:59 ◼   ► If anyone ever records a podcast out there and they edit it later,

01:31:02 ◼   ► I really recommend giving it at least one day.

01:31:05 ◼   ► Like, one sleep cycle before you go into the editing process.

01:31:11 ◼   ► I think that really helps just to give yourself a little bit of distance from the thing that you have just made

01:31:16 ◼   ► So I'll add an addendum here, which is it depends on the show

01:31:20 ◼   ► So all of pretty much all of my other shows they're posted on the same day that they're recorded

01:31:26 ◼   ► But I edit them differently. So that's it. It's a very different editing parents for what for the other thing

01:31:31 ◼   ► So say with one of my shows like

01:31:33 ◼   ► Connected or upgrade they're like news focus shows the way that I edit those shows is whilst I'm recording I take notes

01:31:40 ◼   ► of the parts that need to be fixed.

01:31:42 ◼   ► Maybe we talked over each other

01:31:44 ◼   ► or where somebody kind of stumbled a little bit.

01:31:47 ◼   ► And then I'll go in and I'll just fix those specific parts.

01:31:51 ◼   ► So I can edit a 90 minute show in 15, 20 minutes

01:31:56 ◼   ► because all I'm doing is just cleaning up specific parts.

01:31:59 ◼   ► And the way that we edit this show,

01:32:00 ◼   ► which is the next question is

01:32:01 ◼   ► how long does the editing process take?

01:32:04 ◼   ► With this show, and I do this

01:32:05 ◼   ► with maybe one or two other shows,

01:32:07 ◼   ► I and we listen to the whole show and edit all of the audio.

01:32:12 ◼   ► So this can be like restructuring things, cutting parts out,

01:32:17 ◼   ► snipping out words, cutting out ums and ahs and stuff like that.

01:32:20 ◼   ► That is a very different style of editing and it is nicer to have a break

01:32:25 ◼   ► between those. And for me,

01:32:27 ◼   ► one of the benefits that I have from the break is let's say I take like a day or

01:32:31 ◼   ► two before I'll come back to it.

01:32:33 ◼   ► It just percolates in my brain a little bit.

01:32:35 ◼   ► And I'll just be like, I'll be doing something

01:32:38 ◼   ► and a part of the conversation will pop into my brain

01:32:40 ◼   ► and I'll be like, yeah, I've got to cut that bit.

01:32:43 ◼   ► And then when I come back to it,

01:32:44 ◼   ► I've already had the thoughts

01:32:45 ◼   ► and it's easier for me to do it.

01:32:47 ◼   ► But when I'm just going straight back in again,

01:32:49 ◼   ► I have to make a lot of those decisions

01:32:50 ◼   ► as they're happening, which is a bit trickier for me.

01:32:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is the number one benefit

01:32:55 ◼   ► that you get from time away from a project

01:32:58 ◼   ► is it's easier to recognize what parts don't belong,

01:33:01 ◼   ► Which, actually to tie this back to the very thing that I was talking about in the beginning,

01:33:06 ◼   ► is part of the reason why, like, one of the videos I released, the re-Electoral College video,

01:33:12 ◼   ► it's not as good and I can see it's not as good because I never had any time away from that.

01:33:16 ◼   ► To realize, like, "Oh, I can restructure this and move this around,"

01:33:20 ◼   ► or like, "This thing in the beginning is obviously, like, nobody cares why you're even talking about it."

01:33:24 ◼   ► But like, when you're just doing a thing immediately, it's way harder to see that.

01:33:29 ◼   ► And so yeah, I'll back that up entirely. Like, more distance between the editing and creation phase results in better products by far.

01:33:37 ◼   ► And I do think it's funny that you don't take notes for this show about what needs fixing because in a way it's like all of it needs fixing, right?

01:33:48 ◼   ► You know, you're recording it in a very different way.

01:33:51 ◼   ► There's a reason all of my shows are done in this kind of very heavy editing intense fashion because

01:33:58 ◼   ► I'm not necessarily the best extemporaneous speaker in the world

01:34:02 ◼   ► and so this helps make the show easier for the listener to digest, right?

01:34:08 ◼   ► Rather than easier for the producer to produce.

01:34:12 ◼   ► That is self-fulfilling in a way, the extemporaneous part

01:34:17 ◼   ► because you lean into the fact that you know the edit's happening.

01:34:22 ◼   ► It's just a subconscious thing because for example, I am way worse extemporaneously

01:34:27 ◼   ► talking on this show than any of my other shows because I know there's something in

01:34:31 ◼   ► the back of my brain that tells me it can just be fixed later. I need to cut myself on this show

01:34:37 ◼   ► in ways that just doesn't happen on my other shows. It's very strange, but it's like,

01:34:42 ◼   ► This is what it is and I prefer this show cut that way

01:34:45 ◼   ► But it is a strange thing that my brain does

01:34:48 ◼   ► There's like two maybe two or three shows that I do where somebody will listen before it's done and I am way worse

01:34:55 ◼   ► expressing myself in those shows in a coherent manner

01:34:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean this is this is this is a whole other topic for a whole other time, but there's there is a huge difference between

01:35:04 ◼   ► reducing something

01:35:07 ◼   ► live when you know an audience is listening and producing something when you know that it is not live and it is going to be heavily

01:35:14 ◼   ► edited later and

01:35:15 ◼   ► I think that my skill sets do not line up very well with the live production and line up much better with the heavy

01:35:23 ◼   ► Post-production and that that's part of the way I do that this way. There is only one time that me and you have recorded live

01:35:29 ◼   ► Right, which was when we did the when you were part of the relay con connected event that we did in San Francisco

01:35:37 ◼   ► And it wasn't Cortex. It was something completely different.

01:35:42 ◼   ► Yeah, go to the link in the show notes for anyone who hasn't heard that to hear a totally different version of me in public.

01:35:52 ◼   ► It was effectively Cortex Live. It was like a totally different thing. It was a performance. It was very strange.

01:35:58 ◼   ► It was good, but totally different to this show.

01:36:02 ◼   ► Yeah, and had a mic totally on edge the whole time.

01:36:06 ◼   ► whole time.

01:36:07 ◼   ► I was railroaded.

01:36:08 ◼   ► Yeah, which was somewhat delightful to me, but not necessarily a thing I want to reproduce

01:36:11 ◼   ► all the time.

01:36:12 ◼   ► No, I don't.

01:36:13 ◼   ► My heart couldn't take that.

01:36:15 ◼   ► I have no idea what you were going to do.

01:36:16 ◼   ► It was terrifying.

01:36:17 ◼   ► But the question from Tawadas was, "How long does the editing process take?"

01:36:21 ◼   ► Now for me, it takes effectively two minutes to every minute that you hear.

01:36:27 ◼   ► So if it is an hour long, it took me about two hours to do.

01:36:32 ◼   ► That's kind of like a good average.

01:36:33 ◼   ► takes me about twice the amount of time to get the edit done.

01:36:37 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:36:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and then when you're done with the edit, it's passed to me through Dropbox for editing

01:36:42 ◼   ► in Logic, and I do another listen-through, and because you have done the heavy lifting

01:36:50 ◼   ► in the edit, it probably takes me about a minute and ten seconds on average for every

01:36:55 ◼   ► minute of actual content.

01:36:57 ◼   ► So I'm mostly listening through to the show and making a few minor changes or cutting

01:37:03 ◼   ► out a few things but it's not remotely the amount of work that you're doing and that's

01:37:08 ◼   ► why it can take me much less time to do the edit than it takes you to do.

01:37:13 ◼   ► Besides YouTube uploading, what is the least liked part of creating and posting an episode?

01:37:19 ◼   ► What's your answer to this, Myke?

01:37:20 ◼   ► For me, it's the actual posting of the audio. Nothing's ever gone wrong, but eventually

01:37:28 ◼   ► it will and the fact that we've posted this will be the 40th time and there's never been

01:37:35 ◼   ► a disaster means it's only getting closer until the point where like the audio is out

01:37:40 ◼   ► of sync or something like that and it doesn't matter I know it doesn't matter how many times

01:37:44 ◼   ► I check it which I do many many times eventually I'm gonna get it wrong that's the worst part

01:37:49 ◼   ► it is like the immediate 30 minutes after posting to just wait if I did it wrong.

01:37:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is so easy to mess up at the last second

01:37:58 ◼   ► when you're doing an export with audio.

01:38:00 ◼   ► - Well, especially with our like,

01:38:02 ◼   ► insane house of cards that we've set.

01:38:04 ◼   ► Because recently we've come across this bug

01:38:06 ◼   ► that when Gray sends me back the audio,

01:38:09 ◼   ► there's like this horrific noise gate compression put on it

01:38:11 ◼   ► that I have to fix.

01:38:13 ◼   ► And we cannot work out why this is happening, but it is.

01:38:16 ◼   ► And it's like, there's all these little things that,

01:38:19 ◼   ► we are using logic in a way that it shouldn't be used

01:38:22 ◼   ► with like two people working on the same file.

01:38:25 ◼   ► Yeah, it is obviously not designed for this and we have obviously run into bugs where it's like there's something about the fact that we're sharing this file that is messing it up.

01:38:35 ◼   ► And so, listeners, if one day my voice sounds like terrible quality in the podcast, you know what happened, right?

01:38:44 ◼   ► It's like this thing that we have to manually fix each time that we can't figure out why it occurs, like we missed it this time.

01:38:50 ◼   ► It's just going to happen. It's going to happen one of these days.

01:38:53 ◼   ► days.

01:38:54 ◼   ► There are like these little things that we have to do where we have to confirm to each

01:38:57 ◼   ► other the size of the file before it's sent backwards and forwards because it's just,

01:39:01 ◼   ► yeah, we're really kind of stretching it to its limit.

01:39:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it shouldn't be used this way.

01:39:07 ◼   ► We should probably be switching to something like the Adobe Suite maybe.

01:39:11 ◼   ► Is it collaborative audio editing?

01:39:13 ◼   ► I doubt it.

01:39:14 ◼   ► They do.

01:39:15 ◼   ► They have a whole section for team projects.

01:39:16 ◼   ► Really?

01:39:17 ◼   ► Yeah, really.

01:39:18 ◼   ► Well, we could talk about it later.

01:39:20 ◼   ► Oh, okay then.

01:39:22 ◼   ► well my ears just pricked up. I was just investigating this this morning but they

01:39:26 ◼   ► have a whole section for cloud-based collaboration projects between teams.

01:39:31 ◼   ► Okay we could edit at the same time. Oh can you imagine? That would be a nightmare.

01:39:37 ◼   ► Let's not do that. What's your least liked part? My least favorite part is that

01:39:41 ◼   ► you are a slave driver with the schedule. Yeah I I I I don't like schedules. If

01:39:48 ◼   ► If that's not clear to my audience by now,

01:39:51 ◼   ► I don't know what could possibly make it more clear,

01:39:53 ◼   ► but good God, do I not like schedules.

01:39:55 ◼   ► I think schedules are anti-creative.

01:39:58 ◼   ► I just personally don't like them.

01:40:00 ◼   ► And Myke over here is a task driver.

01:40:03 ◼   ► He's always got the whip out.

01:40:05 ◼   ► He's like, "It's time to record another Cortex."

01:40:07 ◼   ► I'm always like, "We just recorded a Cortex."

01:40:09 ◼   ► And he's like, "No, it's actually been two weeks."

01:40:11 ◼   ► But there's something about the regularness of it

01:40:14 ◼   ► that it really does slowly drive me crazy

01:40:17 ◼   ► and eat me alive inside.

01:40:18 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:40:19 ◼   ► I think the show's better for it, personally.

01:40:23 ◼   ► - The show is more frequent for it, that's for sure.

01:40:27 ◼   ► - What are some backstage horror stories

01:40:30 ◼   ► about the creation of anything Cortex related?

01:40:33 ◼   ► - I think you have to answer this

01:40:34 ◼   ► because from my perspective, everything is smooth,

01:40:36 ◼   ► but that's because I do a vastly smaller portion

01:40:40 ◼   ► of the work.

01:40:41 ◼   ► - All right, well, I have one.

01:40:42 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:40:43 ◼   ► - There was an episode recorded last summer.

01:40:47 ◼   ► I think it was the one before we were complaining

01:40:50 ◼   ► about how hot it was.

01:40:51 ◼   ► So there was one episode where me and you

01:40:54 ◼   ► spent an amount of time complaining about the heat.

01:40:56 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:40:57 ◼   ► - Because I wouldn't let you have your air conditioning on.

01:41:00 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:41:00 ◼   ► - Because the episode the week before,

01:41:02 ◼   ► 'cause I think this was in our first 10 maybe,

01:41:04 ◼   ► or like the one previous,

01:41:06 ◼   ► you left your air conditioning on.

01:41:08 ◼   ► And it could be clearly heard in the audio.

01:41:12 ◼   ► And I tried to minimize that.

01:41:15 ◼   ► And I was trying to fix that edit from the early afternoon

01:41:19 ◼   ► until about 2 a.m. trying to get the audio to be cleaner

01:41:24 ◼   ► than what you'd given me.

01:41:25 ◼   ► And I have a very clear memory of sitting downstairs

01:41:30 ◼   ► in my current house on the sofa

01:41:34 ◼   ► because I couldn't be in the bedroom anymore

01:41:37 ◼   ► because Adina was sleeping.

01:41:39 ◼   ► And I was sweating out of heat and frustration at 2 a.m.

01:41:44 ◼   ► 2am trying to make your audio possible.

01:41:50 ◼   ► That is the biggest horror story and that is why I will not let Grey have the air conditioning

01:41:54 ◼   ► on anymore.

01:41:55 ◼   ► I can add that to my list of least favorite things about creating the show, is that Myke

01:41:59 ◼   ► won't let me run my air conditioning while we're recording.

01:42:01 ◼   ► This is for you, listener, because that episode, I hate the way that one sounds, because you

01:42:07 ◼   ► can hear the air conditioning and it cuts in and out every now and then.

01:42:10 ◼   ► It's... oh, it's terrible.

01:42:13 ◼   ► But I was 30% more comfortable.

01:42:15 ◼   ► It's not worth it.

01:42:17 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:42:19 ◼   ► I could really hear the emotion in your voice there, Myke.

01:42:23 ◼   ► It's just not... If you were like 90% more, then maybe I could swing it.

01:42:27 ◼   ► 30% is not enough, man.

01:42:29 ◼   ► Okay.

01:42:31 ◼   ► On average, how much of the raw recording is posted?

01:42:34 ◼   ► Well, as you said, if you see 90 minutes,

01:42:36 ◼   ► there was like three and a half hours of stuff that's unusable.

01:42:40 ◼   ► Yeah, however, I think we have a pretty good ratio of when we actually seriously start recording the show and when we seriously stop recording the show.

01:42:49 ◼   ► I think, I mean, that ratio has to be like 90% of what we record really for the show makes it in.

01:42:56 ◼   ► These days, it's probably about max 10 minutes get cut.

01:43:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:43:02 ◼   ► We have a very focused show when we begin.

01:43:07 ◼   ► But I think it's the focus is aided by the fact

01:43:11 ◼   ► that we have gassed for a while.

01:43:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:43:15 ◼   ► - 'Cause I believe in this show being focused

01:43:18 ◼   ► because of the underlining thing that we're talking about,

01:43:21 ◼   ► which is productivity, right?

01:43:24 ◼   ► The way that we work and the way that people work.

01:43:28 ◼   ► I think having a focused show with a nice outline,

01:43:32 ◼   ► that feels right to me.

01:43:33 ◼   ► How do you feel?

01:43:36 ◼   ► I mean, I love the fact that you have a bunch of topics that you outline because, again,

01:43:46 ◼   ► as the theme with the entirety of the behind the scenes production of the show, it means

01:43:49 ◼   ► that I can do less, which is one of the reasons why the show can exist in the first place.

01:43:55 ◼   ► This is the thing, right? Like, I will write the outline, I will prepare, I will take the

01:44:01 ◼   ► first edit, post the show, make the YouTube video, all you need to do is show up every

01:44:05 ◼   ► second Thursday. It's not hard.

01:44:10 ◼   ► In case you can't tell, listeners, Myke is driving at a thing that we've been talking

01:44:15 ◼   ► about. Making his little points on the show. It's all he wants.

01:44:23 ◼   ► Every second Thursday, you know, you just show up.

01:44:25 ◼   ► Every second Thursday.

01:44:26 ◼   ► And it's all taken care of.

01:44:28 ◼   ► So nice. So frequent.

01:44:31 ◼   ► Happy Cortexmas everybody.