265: Stop Collapsing Everything

know how to start this one all right so that's what we got we have follow up i read the same magazines and books that you do whatever your satisfying suggestion results are and if time remains uh was in project book Oh, please. That would be awesome.

Also, I don't understand the top three of the links that you added. Guardian, Six Reads, and Wisdom. I guess the Wisdom is probably going to be the Wisdom project, but what is Guardian and Six Reads? Well, it's the good subscription experience. Okay. Well, you should flesh those out. I shall. And I think once you've heard me say the words. Now, see, this is the problem, if it is a problem, with me putting in the links before we record it, which you generally frown upon.

I mean, if you put in a link, if you put in a link, that would be helpful. But yeah, they could be conceived as spoilers. Oh, for you? Yeah. Well, then let me nest it. I can do this. Let's see. So I'm going to make for links. I'm going to say above this spoiler alert. Can you fold bullets? I can. Can you?

You know what I'll do? Here's what I'll do. I'll say spoiler alert, and then what I'll do is, oh, I could rot 13 of them. You could just have these in a separate document and then just paste them in later. Let's see, Rod 13. Yeah, I mean, it's always made the most... Rod 13. It's always made the most sense to me. It's not that funny. I'm closing the window.

It always just seems sensible to just put the right into the CMS, but that's not how you roll. Somebody will put that in show notes you say sometimes on ATP. Somebody will put that in notes. I think we talked about this before you say, and then you say anyway. But, um, yeah, I mean, this document, I, are you deliberately unfolding or is that just something that the document? No, I'm deliberately doing that. Don't do that. Leave it alone.

Because you don't understand the system. You don't need to see it. You don't understand the system. Keep this folded. They need to be open. No, they don't. Fold it. And then I'm going to put in a F-O-L-D-E-R. F-O-L-D-E-R. Open folder icon emoji. There it is. That looks pretty good. Topics, et cetera. John, John. Stop. Just leave it unfolded. Just leave it. Stop collapsing everything.

It's like a minimalist desk. There's going to be nothing on it. It's just a bunch of collapsed things. That sounds like a new wave song from like a dance song from 1983. Stop collapsing everything. Yeah. There you go. Collapse into now. Oh, okay. What's that? Eckhart Tolle? What's that guy's name? Tolle? I don't know how you say it. No, it's an REM thing. Say it again. Collapse into now. Okay. That's from like in the 90s.

Right? 2011. It's like after the 90s, right? Yeah. A surprising number of things are after the 90s. Okay. Hey, everybody. An upsetting number of things. I know! Believe me. Believe me. I know. You wouldn't believe what I deal with every day. Hey, everybody. It's an exciting time of year.

It's that time of year where we formally ask you to give us money. Is that fair to say, John? We're formally asking them. When you say we're formally asking them. I think we passed that time of year already. Oh, what time of year is it? Is this different from other nights? Yeah, like I think, I think we, but anyway, better late than never.

Well, why don't you take this one? And you throw it at me when you're ready. We have just, you have just, if you've only been listening to directives, you have somehow passed through. the RelayFM member drive for this year because we were, we were late this year in getting our acts together and doing our member special, which we're going to talk about in a second. I thought it was like an August thing. I don't, I think we, Is it usually an August thing?

I should look at Slack. Maybe it's June or something. Anyway, they do like a pledge drive type thing where they try to encourage people to become Relay members. I think we dropped the ball on that one and encouraging people to do that. So we're going to have to, you know, better late than never. So here we are. Don't make us look good. I mean, it'll be so impressive if they're like, Oh no. And their pockets are turned out like the monopoly man on that little card, you know? And, um,

And it would make them so happy. And you know, they apparently, I don't know if you know this, John, I'm Michael. And I guess to some extent, Stephen, did you know their fancy watch guys now?

You've told me this, but this is not news to me. You're not concerned about that at all. They didn't used to be fancy watch guys, and now they're fancy. Are you a fancy watch guy? I'm not. I'm not a watch guy, period. Fancy or otherwise. Okay. Well, then I won't ask you to ask me, but I'll tell you, I'm not a fancy watch guy. No. Okay. All right. Well, assume that it helps the other creatives and content creators.

The Relay.fm family. In any case, one of the ways we try to cajole you people, you magnificent bastards, one way we try to cajole you is with excess content, extra content, extra stuff. I'm going to start over. Hey, everybody. It's a time of year when we're going to be putting out our very special annual member episode where we visit with a friend of ours and we record it.

And then we put that out so that you can listen to it. Kind of like the way you listen to the show now, if you're listening to the show. And if you're not listening to the show, I don't understand how you're hearing this. But email John. And in a minute, we're going to tell you who that guest is this year. But should we do that or make a general pitch? I'm not very good at this, John.

I'm bad at asking for money. I've always been bad at asking for money. I think I was reading Stephen Hackett's like 10 year indie blog post or somewhere. Anyways, it was describing sort of the relay experience that basically after the podcast ad. ecosystem for podcasts like ours more or less collapsed. Relay, like many other institutions, had to shore up its member system. And at this point...

The members, the people who pay monthly or annually to hear podcasts are supporting, I think, half or maybe more than half of the cost. Okay. Maybe on the popular shows. Yeah. On the unpopular shows, on the ones that are for the real heads, the cult podcasts like ours, I can just tell you, I feel pretty confident in saying that it's well at least 50%.

Or put differently, we just don't have that many ads anymore. Sometimes they're delightful. You know, I've made a relationship now with the P-Man. And we email each other. Did you know that? With the who now? The guy who makes the urination app that we...

Didn't we have that as a sponsor on here? Oh, yeah. Okay. I wasn't aware of your nickname. The app's called P. It's just the letter P. Yes. We should talk to Kieran about that because I think that's already what's called in programming an established variable.

Yeah. Anyway, I just found Stephen Hackett's 10 year indie posts. Uh, if you want a little bit of background on his life and relay and stuff like that, uh, maybe that's not where I read it, but either way we'll link it in the show notes, but yeah, membership membership makes this show happen. And that means people, you can listen to it. being a member but if you are a member you get every other episode

a whole extra episodes worth of content tacked on to the end. And also you get annual member specials, including the ability to listen to all our past member specials. Now here is the tricky bit before we talk about this most recent member special. Where are the member specials? Are they in the Rectiffs feed? They're not. They are in the crossover feed, which is when you are a relay member and you go, show me my membership feeds, you'll see.

a bunch of feeds for the members versions of the shows that you're interested in. But also you will see a feed called crossover and in the crossover feed are all the member specials for all the shows on relay.

If you're looking for the RecDiffs member specials, look for a member special that begins with reconcilable differences colon something. And the most recent one will be the most recent. But anyway, we have a whole bunch of those member specials. They're all really good, really fun. If you want to go back in time and hear.

our annual specials from years past. It's us talking to our pals, and we don't say hero, because what's a hero? But people that we like and admire and who are... I'll speak for myself anyway. It's... most fun to me, not just for the obvious selfish reason, but it's most fun to me when we get to talk to somebody who listens to the show or has listened to it like enough. So like, you know, we had Dan, Dan McCoy was last year. When was Dan?

I don't, we did do it. I have no idea what year anyone was in, but yes, we've had Dan McCoy. We've had John Roderick. You and Roderick talked about skiing. We had Max and Alex. We had Paul Sabarin from Paul and Storm, I think. Yeah, he's a nice guy. He always drives. Yeah, we've had people, I think we had the Dubai Friday crew. Yep, yep, yep. Did we do a holiday party one time?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe I'll do it by Friday. Anyways, there's lots of that. But here's the thing. And I think I know whereof I speak because I'm going to say this in a really nice way. I am and have been a member of many things. And like... Just one example. There's a pretty popular podcast network that I used to give lots of money to. And they work the same way. Once you get that feed...

that extra feed, in this case, the crossover feed, you get access to all of that stuff. So you can just download it all. And I'll do the John Syracuse point, which is you can just go download them all and then cancel your account if you want. I bet the suits would love to hear us saying that. It's a thing you can do. I mean, I'm not worried. You get access to all the member specials. You want to download them all? They're just MP3s. That's what a podcast is. I believe in America.

And a big part of my belief in America, I love the follow-up that we get, especially from listeners. Not so much from John. I love the follow-up from our listeners. That's one reason I love and believe in. No, you didn't. I just saw it today. I took a picture. I was told specifically by Jason Finn that what the hell are you saying? Chapche is really good. Well, you know, here it is. I don't know, man. Those street potato noodles.

And so I think what we do is probably worth it. For me, I mean, I... I, you would not believe if I tally up, you don't want to know what I pay on, on places every month. Um, but I would like to believe that. Oh, so anyway, what I was saying was the reason I believe in America, is that the cake guy or the funeral guy?

it's the funeral funeral guy the cake guy is that care that other character actor um yeah i think so okay and um what i want to believe about our listeners is that if you have the means i highly recommend it If you have the means, I think you do that because you like it and you want to support the show. That's what I do. I mean, honestly, like there's a lot of stuff I pay for that I don't even.

watch or listen to but i just really like the person i would love to become the kind of person uh or i'd like to become the kind of person that people feel good supporting you know for you know as much as that's This is becoming very philosophical. The main point is we need your money. You go to relay.fm slash RD slash join. That's the same uniform resource locator as previously, right, John? Mm-hmm. Say it in your voice. They like your voice better. Say it.

Yeah, I still get hung up on the letter R or letter D. Relay.fm slash RD slash join. There you go. You'll find it. It's all over the Relay side. And when you do join up, it'll say, which shows do you want to support? You just click on Reconcilable Differences. That's us. That's our show. You're listening to it now, man.

Yeah. So our member special for this year, who's our guest this year? Oh, sorry. That was my drum roll. I was, I was asking you to say, who was our guest this year? I guess this year, no, this is a returning guest, right? Yes, it is. This is a past and future guest. uh, filmography's directors. And he's a, uh, he's a friend of ours named Todd Vaziri. And John had the really good idea. Well, first of all, just having Todd on because I really just, I like Todd.

It's cool that he's a big shot at what he does. Honestly, it's very cool. It's very cool. If you go look at Todd's... But what he does isn't very nice. Is that what you wanted to say? Are you quoting Wolverine to me? I think you just quoted Wolverine to me. Snicked? Well, I probably paraphrased. I don't think I got that quote. Yeah, I'm the best at what I do and what I do. He's Canadian.

You know, he's actually, he's like five feet tall and he weighs a thousand pounds. I think a lot of people don't know that. They had fun with that in the Deadpool movie, finally, but with his adamantium, which is, you know, a retcon.

But with the way he got the adamantium, because, you know, originally he had claws in his gloves when he originally fought the Hulk in 1974. Did you know that? Mm-hmm. They were in his gloves. What kind of leverage do you get with that? Yeah. Like a Freddy Krueger type situation. You get the same problem with the bone claws, though. The leverage isn't great.

I was very, I find that my kid and I both find it very upsetting when you see his bone claws. I don't care. It's like, it's like, imagine bending back a really long finger. It's not great. Probably my favorite line. I don't know if it's my favorite line, but absolutely. Well. I have several favorite lines from X-Men movies. Have you tried not being a mutant? Obviously, I love that one. But one of my favorites is when Logan and Rogue are sitting in the pickup truck after he's just, you know.

cut a shotgun in half with his hands, his hand knives after they fly out of his skin. And she asks him, does it hurt? And you remember what Logan says? Says every time. Every time. That's the thing about Logan is that he can heal, but he still feels like all of that pain. So you can tell he's Canadian. And so I love that line.

What was I talking about? Todd Vaziri. Who is he? Why do we have him on our podcast? Because you look at his page and you're like, and seriously, like it's a shot I think he talked about on his podcast. You know, was it the Enterprise coming out of the water? Like he's just, he's...

composite managed artists did stuff. He works for Industrial Light and Magic doing special effects for movies. We've had him on the show before talking about that, but we have a new topic to talk to him about this time. Yeah, why would we want to bring Todd back? What's up with that? What's he doing?

Uh, we've always, I mean, he's always been a friend of the show, a friend of ours, uh, and he's a fan of podcasts and I always felt like he wanted to have his own podcast. Well, guess what? Yes. He now is on his own podcast. Finally, he's done it.

It's a group podcast. But he's still got his work. He's got all that work to do. That's right. It's an official Industrial Light and Magic podcast, which you can listen to. It's out now. We'll link to it in the notes. But they've had big deal people, we should say. They had Opie's daughter on. One time. Bryce Howard. Dallas. That's right. And all sorts of other people. Including other ILM co-workers. And I wanted to talk to Todd.

About his new side hustle career as a podcaster, in addition to, you know, doing special things for all the movies you love. And he was very gracious about talking about it. Todd is... Todd is like the dictionary drawing of imposter syndrome. I mean that in the best possible way.

In the sense that he has it, I think. I don't know if he's ever said that. But he's so tough on himself. I can't say enough good things to Todd. I love his stuff and I love him as a person. I like his family. I have photos of us bowling together if you'd like.

to see that i'd love to send those to you it's right after covid and he was gracious enough to also get into the stuff that you might think about which is like is it like politically difficult do you have to like how much do you have to vet you know, before you talk about it on a podcast, like, is this a press release? Is this an, you know what I mean? How do you, how do you navigate being on your works official podcast while still trying to make an interesting podcast? Yeah, absolutely.

And I talked more than I would like. But Todd was really, really interesting. And you ask a lot of good questions. But the main thing is we would love your money. uh and it does go to other your money will go to us partly and it goes to running it's it's basically it's i would call it a tier one membership you come in and you'll be able to

See, I was trying to make a joke. Very specific nerdy joke for this moment in time. I blew it, didn't I? You're trying to make reference to current events regarding Apple and the DMA. When you called me, I was listening. No one's going to remember in a few decades. I was listening to the end of ATP.

And I was hearing the part about how you're going to have to pay if you want people to be able to update the app. I mean, that's not so different. We got a whole different tier. That's not a CTR. That's a CTC. So just something to think about. But, you know, with this, CTF. Capture the flag. Yes. Capture. Uh-huh. Cut that fruitcake. Title.

And so we would love it if you would do that. It's unseemly to make a big deal about this. And I hope my bona fides still stand up as being somebody who, I think what I do is valuable, believe it or not. I like what I do, and I know that there are people who like it, but I've still never felt comfortable.

basically trying to escalate my relationship with people I don't necessarily know for money. And like, it always makes me feel a little squeaky, but I really, I like the people who listen to this show. They're, they're my kind of weirdos and. It's probably one of my shows that the most interesting people listen to. Or the most people who are interesting listen to.

Who's your most interesting? So probably for you. Hey, also, we're going to talk about Das Boot. Anyway, sorry to go on about this. It's difficult. You go to relay.fm slash rd slash join. And you get wallpaper, you know, so kind of killed it on that one, huh? Yep. That was our version of member drive. We are late and we are the last member special that's going to come out. And that's where we're at. Sorry for the lateness, but better late than never. Yeah. Somebody's got to be last. It's true.

um uh then we have what we got we got follow-up We got some follow up on Das Boot. Speaking of member stuff in the in the members only after show of an earlier episode, we talked about the 1981 movie Das Boot. Well done. Also, I apologize. Wolfgang Peterson's the director, not the actor. There was a point when I misspoke, and I basically catted the director and the actor, and I didn't mean to.

So anyway, Wolfgang Peterson in 1981. At the time, and then for a while, I haven't checked back in, the most expensive German movie ever made. And it's about Krieg's Marine on a U-boat. in the North Atlantic and, uh, and you liked it, right? Mostly. Yep. Uh, and the main, and I think only feedback we have gotten multiple times now concerned our pronunciation of the title of this movie.

And it brings up a meta topic, which I think fits right into the show. Oh, you know, I love that. Okay. So the title of this movie, this is a German language movie. They speak in German. Can we just start by spelling it? in the title of the movie is capital d lowercase a s das capital b lowercase o o t and lots of people want us to pronounce it like it's pronounced in german but here's the thing

I don't speak German. I don't know how to speak German. I don't know how things are pronounced in German. And there's no diacritical. It wouldn't be Bert.

right well so here's this is the problem with lots of you know the english language especially american english has lots of i think they're called loan words or whatever they're called whatever like we take words from other language and we bring them into our language but when we do that We changed the pronunciation to fit in with the vowel sounds that are prominent in American English.

Most of the time, we don't pronounce them the way they're pronounced in the language that we stole the words from. Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, there are so many words that we stole from the French. So many words the French stole from us. But we very rarely would say, instead of sweater, would we say, like, pullover.

Like, nobody's going to do that. Hamburger. Stealing from the Germans. Like, it comes over here. We steal it. We take it. We don't pronounce it the way a German person word. We pronounce it the way it fits with American English. Schadenfreude.

There was a whole Saturday Night Live sketch, maybe in the late 80s, early 90s, making fun of newscasters who, when they came upon a word, they came upon a place name. Oh, that was a thing in the 90s. That was such a thing. And hosts who would overpronounce their own name.

maria garcia um people pass on their own name because it's your own name you can say but it's just funny like boris what's his name that they would say the name of nicaragua which is how you pronounce the name of that country in uh in english but they would say closer to the Spanish way. And the thing is, if you go down that path and you say that every place name should be pronounced the way the native speakers pronounce the name of the place.

You go off the rails real fast because Nicaragua, fine, you can kind of get away with that. But it's like, oh, he's just saying Nicaragua with a Spanish accent. But there are places that are just entirely different words than the words we use for them in American English. And what do you say? It becomes very...

fraught uh and for reason fraught and i'm not saying that to say i disagree that it shouldn't be fraught but for the case of new zealand new zealand or japan do you think they call it japan in japan they don't nippon I don't speak Japanese, but I know it's not Japan. It does begin with the letter N, I believe. Why am I the only one who ever says words? Why don't you say it? How do you say Japan? I don't know.

You watch anime, John. How do you say that? I think it's N-I-P-P-O-N, but I don't know how to pronounce it. Okay. All right. You're going to be obdurate. That's fine. Anyway, the whole point is that seems like not a scalable system. Everybody says the name of place names in their own language. I just looked it up. If this is true, I am very surprised.

In France, they don't say the United States of America, because that's how you say it in English. They say it different. What was it? Los Etats Unis? I mean, I know since it's Spanish, it's Los Estados Unidos. Right. That's just the way language works. So if you're out there thinking- It's like Steve Martin says, the French, you know, it's like they got a different word for everything. That's right. Oof means egg. Chapeau means hat.

And people may think, okay, but that's fine. But for titles of things, that's a proper noun. Well, so are country names. There's no exception for proper nouns. John, I'm surprisingly interested in this because I think... And I'm sorry to keep interrupting you, but I'm excited and I love doing this show. Everybody shut up. I love this show. Shut up. But this gets so deep because then you get into it. Like I was about to say with New Zealand.

Or like, OK, the name that I know for New Zealand that I've heard was a First Nations, you know. Maori, I guess, name. I don't want to get it wrong. But I first heard it in a song about the Split Ends, and I thought it was... He says, I don't think you pronounce it that way.

But it's meaningful. Like, look what's going on with the Gulf of Mexico. Look what's going on with Denali. Like, all these kinds of things. It becomes extremely fraught, but I love your pronunciation angle. Like, when is it critical, is it ambiguous to say it a certain way? And is it culturally unkind?

to pronounce it a certain way. My point is more that it's not a scalable system to demand that all foreign words be pronounced Oh, no, no, no. No, I'm sorry. Obviously, to me, that does not work as an edict. This is the kind of thing that goes into a style guide. where you go to an entry and then you find out, you know, these are the kinds of, these are the ways we say that. And these are the way, it doesn't have to just be for a particular word. I mean, think about.

Like when I play, I'll talk about this in a minute, a new game I'm playing. But when I play what it was called, Word Bees on the New York Times app, you know, it won't take proper names unless those proper names also happen to be. an actual name of a thing. Like today, I was able to put in the word can't, as in thieves can't. You know, can't is a contraction, but C-A-N-T is also a noun, meaning a language among thieves, right?

Oh, this could, you could get real deep. And I bet you could really get up in somebody's grill about the number of things they're saying wrong. Are you going to drop? OK, I check Chatty G. You tell me what you heard. Here's the difficulty with this word. So first of all, English and German aren't that far apart. In fact, there's lots of fun videos where you can say that, like, if you want to translate German into English, just like translate these letters into those letters and remove these.

letters and basically you can tell what they're saying because English is not that far off. That sounds completely mental. It's a surprisingly good system. It does have a lot of rules, but if you remember them and apply them, you can... You criticized my umlaut suggestion a few years ago. Why are you on board with that and not with my umlaut? I'm just saying that I'm trying to say that the language relationship...

between English and German is actually pretty close. No, no, it's absolutely extremely close. To get to the point that... I don't actually think that there are any vowel sounds in the German pronunciation of the title of this movie that are not in the English language. So in this case, it's not a situation where like Chinese or something. American English does not have those sounds at all. So it's really hard.

for a native speaker of English to say anything in Chinese. I've always said Das Boot, and I've never heard anybody call it anything but Das Boot. But here's the problem with Das Boot. Even though the correct vowel sounds may be in the English language... B-O-O-T is already a word in English, and it's really asking a lot for even the name of a popular movie. Let's look for the clue. Look for the clue, which is that it's a you what?

Yeah, no, it is a U-boat, but we say U-boat, don't we? We're supposed to say das, which rhymes with boss, and boat that rhymes with boat. Is that what you got? Is that what you got? The Kronek pronunciation, I have lots of people saying it rhymes with the English word bought or close to that or whatever, but it's difficult to... Are people contacting you on the internet about this, John? Yeah. Many people have contacted us on the internet to say that we are...

It's pronouncing Das Boot wrong. And I'm here to tell you that we are pronouncing it the American way, right? Just like we pronounce Japan the American way. And just like in France, they pronounce the name of our country the French way, because that's the way language works.

Sometimes you can pull off a a like a movie title that you can get into the culture with the foreign pronunciation. It happens. I can't think of an example offhand, but I'm I'm sure it has happened. But most of the time, American English. It's going to call it Paris and not Paris, and there's not a lot you can do about it. Did you know that it's where you're supposed to say Mrs. Harris goes to Paris?

You know, it's like Mrs. Harry goes to Paris. Also, I should let you know, I try to protect you from this or shield you from it because I feel like it really annoys you. It's a topic on the list from a long time ago. I've got some creeping Britishisms.

that have really taken hold. I know that you do. Do you? It's not news to me, Mr. Lounge. Well, I don't think you've heard the really bad ones. I've heard a lot of them. Really? Okay. Think about it for a minute while I tell you a few that I think are bad. One that I picked up from No Such Thing as a Fish and has been further drilled into my head by other British people talking. Yeah, you might do.

Yep, I was just going to say that one. I really like that one. I do say called instead of named if I think it's more unambiguous. You really don't like that one, do you? I don't say torch. I'm not an animal. I feel like I'm... I might be close to moving into mint too. You gotta, you gotta fight that one. Cause it means something different in our language. I know. And, and that's how you can usually tell that something was written by a British person. When Kendall.

Um, when Kendall Roy says I meant to get a mud treatment this afternoon, what he's really saying. Like he's faded to, he was born with this purpose in mind. well you know and it's like i never learned and i don't care don't tell me don't email me email john the difference between shall and will i mean i think i understand shall is like a purposeful like i'm gonna do this thing i don't quite understand it similar to that. I meant to. You don't end up saying swimming costume.

I like the way you say it. I would love for you to play an animated British mouse. There was a British family in the store the other day, and the little boy asked his sister, what's that? And she said, it's a swimming costume. Oh. I heard somebody got thrown off Love Island for racism. Is that true? No spoilers. I'm not caught up. Also, I used to know a person who was really annoying.

You know how I'm often kind of rambling on about dumb people who think that they're smart? The dumb guy stuff that people say that they think sounds smart? Like saying whom? for the subject rather than the object, just because it sounds fancier. Right. Or always saying, you know, somebody and I, even with this, even when it's an object, not a subject. Yep. Those really, but I knew this woman. And she was a rich lady.

And she did things like go to Paris to take cooking classes. She was very into food. She was into the old food culture. And she would talk about movies that they show at Cannes. the con film festival and i kept i always hear talking about con and then i hear other people talk about now i'm thinking of ricardo montoban you know i hate that thing they put in the guy's ear

I really actively hate that thing. I hate that entire scene. Todd can tell you all about, which is the ear, which is the prosthetic ear, then back to the person. Oh, as they call it, a Kansas flop. Yeah. Title. Write that down. That's pretty good. Kansas flop. And then I talked to other people and, and maybe, you know, because I got incepted by my, my ostensible stepmother-in-law that I should say con and people say, just so you know, it's pronounced camp.

Now, do you have a read on how to pronounce the film festival? I had heard that Cannes is... First of all, Cannes is the way everybody says it in this country. So there's that. There were people a while back who would say Cannes. And I've heard that in this case... Can is actually closer to the French pronunciation than con. Notice I didn't say can is closer to the quote-unquote real pronunciation. No, exactly. I said it's closer to the French pronunciation.

Yes, and that's why I say you listen through a translator, you don't speak through a translator. Well, that's BS, John. You've got to get on board. You've got to get on board with that. No, no, that is a lazy privileged Western BS thing. No, it's not. There's no value judgments. Just both statements are correct. You think that person is...

If they're speaking to a translator, it implies that they don't know what they're saying and need a translator for them. No, it implies that they are speaking to you through an intermediary that makes it so you can understand it. But that's how they are communicating with you. It's also how you are understanding them. It's a two-way. street depending on what angle you're looking at from both descriptions are correct that person is just speaking

We're the ones who are listening. But they're speaking through a translator to a destination that needs translation. The translator is what enables us to listen because we don't know how to speak French. Right. But it's also what enables them to communicate to you. It's a terrible verb agreement. It doesn't make sense. It's just a change in perception. perspective. Is it from the speaker's perspective or from the listener's perspective? Or from the privileged to the non-privileged.

Must be nice. Speaker and listener are not any more privileged than any other. Oh, I don't even see color. I'm from Boston. Everything racial is cool here. jesus christ how do you pronounce c-a-n-n-e-s as in the film festival oh stop asking your friend well that's the next item Anyway, that's Das Boot. We're going to keep saying Das Boot because that's how we say it in this country. If they wanted the German pronunciation to catch on, they should have marketed it better.

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And all of Relay FM. Can. Rhymes with man. Says it right here. Next item. I'm our own special friend that he talks to sometimes. also known as ChatGPT, also known as ChattyG. You posted a couple of your conversations with ChattyG, ostensibly, I would imagine, to show the shortcuts that you had been training ChattyG to respond to.

Do you want to just punch me in the face while I sit here, or shall I actually try to explain with some context for people who are listening? I don't think you needed that big preamble. You could have just said yes or no. Well, you could have asked a better question. You could have taken it on good faith. It was a very good question. Anyway, so please explain to me the purpose of this post with several screenshots in it. Yes. Well, I'll try to keep this short.

I have a long history of trying to get chat GPT to remember things like from, from the very beginning. It's gotten way, way better remembering things for a variety of reasons. So just kind of let's bracket that. as like it's better at remembering things. And I sometimes think to myself like, oh, there's probably more ways I could benefit for how it can remember things. In addition to which, it doesn't matter, but it matters. There's now a much...

greater, if sometimes uneven, ability to look things up from other threads without you having to even sort of ask for it. There are times you still have to remind it what it knows, but... It's still miraculous to me. But, like, for example, I do a lot of things with doing this stuff with my Synology. I have ChatGPT open. I've got a BBEdit window. And I've got Prompt, my terminal app open. And so...

frequently, you know, we joked about this, I think a few months ago. ChatGPT cannot control prompt, which is probably kind of a good idea. Oh, by the way, I got that, I got that terminal finder app thing. I think it's kind of interesting. the one you guys talked about. It's pretty neat. I'm not getting it to work very well, but I think it's a neat idea. Now, what was I talking about? ChatGPT's memory.

Why you made this post? What are you trying to say in this post? So a thing that happens a lot when I'm doing stuff like this, and there's just a huge amount of jumping between three or four apps, right? I'm doing something in BBEdit. I'm saving it to... a server but i'm also then like manipulating stuff with prompt i'm logged in remotely to my synology and uh it's telling me things to do and things to say and how to locate this folder and

Side note, another thing I love is like in this case, it knows I always use the same thread, but I don't think that even matters. But now it knows my username. It knows my paths. It knows what's installed, all that stuff. So I. Sometimes I have to remind it, but when it gives me something to type in, it gives me the path that it knows where my Plex is or the path where it knows where this config file is or whatever it is. And I'm forever having to, I'm saying essentially, okay.

I just did what you asked me to do. Please go look at what it says in prompt. There might be an easier way to do this. I don't know of an easier way to do that. And one day, just because you know me, I love taking a flyer, I just typed the letter P.

Not the app. That's a different thing. And not P as in the value. That's Karen's deal. You have to have discount or rust to be able to get that in your framework. And I just started typing the letter P. and i would sometimes say like please check prompt or whatever but it seemed to learn pretty quickly that when i typed a p and hit enter that meant go look at prompt and tell me what to do next right so for example it gives me some crazy ass thing to change the

permissions on a whole bunch of folders and i say okay add verbose to that because i want to see when it's done and dled and then i say go look at prompt or i say like i'll do like yours your ls what is it lsl capital f is that yours but i say go go look at this and it can say okay it looks like it fixed the profile privileges on that and then i can say okay well how do we test this in the other places you know i've told it

One of the things I'm frequently saying is, you know, please remember that I, whenever possible, I want to try to solve things at a higher level rather than being just a quick fix. So like, don't give me a fix that only works with radar. Give me a fix that works with my whole synology, that kind of thing. Anyways. And I realized that was, it worked. Like I tried it and it worked. I type P, it looks impromptu. So I said, says to it, I says, um, Hey, that.

thing where I type P and you know that means prompt, are there other things like that that you could suggest? And I thought this was just really interesting. By the way, I'm also totally fine to laugh about what it said, but...

what I said, are there any other things you recommend? I said, well, you could have, you're always asking me to look stuff up from other threads or you're always, you know, asking me to do this stuff. So maybe if you type CTX and then type, you know, what it is that you want.

That'll be my way of knowing that you want me to go look in other threads for something. Is that roughly what I said? I guess I could go look. You could go look, yeah. It also suggests or fix to signal you want a durable best practice solution rather than a quick workaround. This would reduce back and forth? Yes. And like I said, I'm totally ready because there's a lot that's funny about this. But I thought the examples of what I had were pretty interesting. I'm looking for... There it is. Okay.

Document really needs some work. And it says, Greenix Short Keyword System for Recurring Actions. For example, blah, blah, blah. Tell me to explicitly pull this. One of them was, I thought this was kind of fun. I used, it's called CTX, which means like add context from other threads. I said, CTX, five things I find funny in a 40-word unordered list. Dependent of dry humor, absurd specificity, self-protection. I thought those were pretty, actually pretty good. Context.

and so i'm just i was just testing this right so try this new shortcut type something incredibly random and just that i have no way of knowing if if it can even do and just see what happens ctx context funny patterns you notice and how i name devices in a 60-word unordered list. You often pick names referencing movies, Bishop and Jonesy, both from the Alien franchise. Some names feel like affectionate nicknames, Mr. Button and Rosie.

That's the captain of the ship from our flag means death and the robot on Jetsons. Pattern of personification. You avoid boring labels. Not perfect, but pretty good for a completely random one. And just for craps and...

Giggles. I said context. Syracuse's feelings about food in a 60-word unordered list. You did say that. And how would you characterize the answer? I don't want to spoil it. I would characterize it as an answer that is based on an extremely small body of information. That's the problem. There's not total information that I've given it. It'll know a lot.

Presumably. Well, it seems fair speculation on my part to say the more that it knows about something, the more it can say and provide context for it. It's kind of funny what it says, and I would love to hear what you think of it. Context. Syracuse's feelings about food in a 60-word unordered list. Here's what Chad Chepede said. Yes. Chad Chepede said in response to that. John Syracuse has a famously ambivalent relationship with food. He often describes eating as a chore rather than a pleasure.

He prefers plain, predictable meals over culinary variety. He's joked that he'd happily take a pill instead of eating. His food minimalism is a recurring theme in podcasts and interviews. So this is... completely wrong that is very i don't know if that people love to say hallucination i would say that's definitely a bit of like um fab almost like fabulism right like it's

I don't think it is, but I just... Well, tell me what you think about it. Point one. It's funny for you to tell me how it's wrong. It's funny and interesting if you tell me how you think it goes. Right. Well, at first I looked at it and I said...

how could it possibly have come up with this answer because i like i don't know all the context that it has but i can guess based on your noodling with it like what context might it have about me or anything having to do with me or food or whatever it's like

Because, just to be clear, I'm not famously ambivalent about food. I am very particular about food. I enjoy food well. We talk about food on this show all the time. I do not describe eating as a chore. I would not happily take a pill instead of eating. Okay, here's the problem. I'm going to be the dumb guy. Absolutely not. the dumb guy and say, I can find a way that all of these are true. That does not make them true. It does not make them

like good and accurate, but I can see how it got some of this stuff. I'm asking right now how it arrived at this answer. So you can see how it got. How do you think it could get some of this stuff? I think you are famously ambivalent about your relationship with food.

So can I talk about this, how I think this is true in the world, or how I think it's true from the corpus of data? Either one. In the world. Okay. In the world, I think there's a case to be made that you are famously ambivalent. You have a famously ambivalent relationship with food. For example... When's the last time you chose to eat seafood? That doesn't make my relationship with food ambivalent. It's the opposite.

Yeah, that's not really an answer to the question. Ambivalent is when you have mixed feelings or contradictory ideas, according to my dictionary. I do not have mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about seafood at all. I have a very non-ambivalent, very strong directed opinion.

Instead, you got defensive about it. But the truth is you don't eat seafood. You're ambivalent in a lot of ways. That's not ambivalence. Knowing that you do not like seafood is the opposite of ambivalence. I'm not ambivalent about seafood. I do not like it. Unambivalence. Yeah, exactly. It's surety about what I like and what I don't like. I was going to say you should write me up something for this.

Okay, I'll describe eating as a chore. I don't know exactly where they got that. Plain, predictable meals over. Yeah, I'm not sure where that comes from. Pill instead of eating. Do you remember ever having said that? I did not say that about myself, no.

In detail, explain how you arrived at the description. No, no, don't spoil it. I'll tell you, because I have a theory. Well, okay, I promise I won't spoil it until you say it. All right, so here's my theory. My theory is that you have fed ChatGPT transcripts of this program in the past. But they still exist somewhere in the memory system of whatever ChatGPT's current memory thread conversation thing. Right, exactly. Because these bullet points are actually...

a fairly accurate description of my mother's relationship with food. I was going to say Marco. Not Marco, my mother. My mother has said she would take a pill. Do you think your mother would take a pill if she could? Yeah. My mother. If it was a healthy pill. Right.

sometimes thinks eating isn't sure. And I've also said on the same program, despite the fact that she loves her desserts and loves to eat chocolate, most of the food, these bullet points are very close to being non-exaggeratedly true about my mother.

And if you fed in the episode where I said that about my mother, it makes some amount of sense that ChatGPT would get confused and think because I was the one speaking that I was talking about myself and not my mother, despite the fact that I'm sure I specified it's my mother. Ah, you know what?

I totally buy that. Whereas it's almost the equivalent of like putting a, putting a block of ice into a box and saying that like the box is cold, you know, because it's a box. It's like, no, that's just the cube. I mean, it's an interesting failure mode because it got a lot of the points, but the importance of it being about my mother and not me. I love that explanation, though. Okay.

like maybe I didn't say it enough or didn't emphasize it or I mumbled that word and it didn't get transcribed or whatever but like if I if I only mentioned that like very often in the show Like earlier, when we were making comments about the Trader Joe's package of Japche that I messaged you.

Yeah, there was insufficient context in the spoken words of the podcast for someone listening to understand that's what we were talking about. But in fact, I know that you and I have differing opinions on street potatoes. Yeah, I went to Trader Joe's today. I saw the Korean Japchae fried rice. I took a picture of it. I sent it to Merlin.

he commented on it in passing but there wasn't enough context in the transcript for you to know that okay so very often there's not enough spoken context for even a human to follow what we're talking about so in this case there wasn't enough context for chat gbd to realize it wasn't and it's also pulling the things it's it is this is not

exactly a spoiler but i was i'm very impressed it is actually pulling stuff from other places not just what i've said about you oh yeah sure no or it claims that's what it's doing you know what i mean Yeah, I mean, it'll find food posts on my blog or whatever. When you're done, I'm going to do a big reveal here.

Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so the failure mode is fun because it is, you know, as with any kind of chat GPT LM thing, it will just spit out word after word and just say this is what it is, even though it has missed the most important point, which is that I was talking about my mother and not myself. There's a bit that Pete Davidson does on SNL. I think his name's Chad. And he's that guy that's like, okay, okay, my bad.

You know, and there's the one where John Mulaney is a murderer who's like a mask or what's that called? Screen style murderer guy who's like stalking Pete Davidson. He just doesn't get upset by anything. Okay. Okay. He says, my bad. That's what it reminds me of. I'm like, well, actually, you know, that's I know, John. And that's that to me seems like the polar opposite of what you would get. Tell me how you derive that. It'll go like I searched the Internet and my bad. laughter laughter

Which is, I think, what people get a lot. You get an apology for, like, because it doesn't know how it knows. People should know this. As soon as you push back a little bit, it will retreat and say, oh, no, you're totally right. I got that exactly wrong. Oh, you really need to push back. It's so eager to please.

you get that in programming a lot because it'll it'll put like an api that doesn't exist and be like actually that api doesn't exist it's like oh you're totally right that api doesn't exist here's the corrected api with a real api that does exist and it's wrong i love but don't you love it when it does that i today it sent me to a

Well, send me to an area of a website that involves an app that wasn't available in the US. And I said, blah, blah. And I basically just sent it. It's just easier to send a screenshot. You know, just like command shift five, drag, enter. And it knows the context for why I'm telling it that.

I just, all day long, I'm doing that. But I love how quickly mine, anyway, it's starting to feel a little bit like the Google experience. I mean, like the classic Google experience of your results are different from other people's results.

Um, okay. Let me, let me, if I may, man, just real quick. Uh, I said in detail, this is just now in detail, explain how you arrived at the description of Syracuse's relationship with food. And there are, it gave me five bullets, which is perfect. Longstanding public statements. And these all have sub bullets if you want to hear them. Number one, longstanding public statements. Number two.

Preference for bland or predictable meals. Three, podcast humor and self-deprecation. Four, pattern of discussing chores versus pleasures. Five, public records and references. Mm-hmm. So I don't know if any of those appeal to you. Here's one. Okay. Longstanding public statements over many years on accidental tech podcast. Syracuse has repeatedly discussed eating as an obligation, not a pleasure. He said things like.

He said things like, okay, if there were a pill I could take instead of food, I would, unquote. This theme has come up during many ATP episodes, especially when Marco or Casey talk about cooking or enjoying restaurants. Now it's throwing off my theory because I was sure that I talked about my mom. Now you know it's just bull. My mom and her attitude towards food on this show, not on ATP. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow. Just other quickies. Let's see. He's often explained he doesn't need variety or novelty. He has called his approach, quote, nutritional minimalism. Does that sound like you? He frequently frames his views as partly comedic, acknowledging that many people find them odd. Show me the lie. The other ATP hosts tease him about how unenthusiastic he is about food, which reinforces it.

But no, okay, so like I know you're hyper. How much I care too much about certain kinds of food, but that's totally different. I realize you're hyper-focused on the chat GPT. like is dumb part of this, but I, I wish that you could occasionally just pause with me to realize how amazing it is. First of all, that we're friends. It's wild. Like, you know, I think we're friends. I hope we're friends. You know, you're talking about you and chat GPT. Well,

You know, I've always admired you. I don't like you personally, but I do admire you. I used to admire you. I'm glad to be here. It's just so funny to me to be able to be in this. It's so strange to me, John. Can't you just see the 1993 version of you seeing this and being like, what is happening? How does it know my friends and what they're like? By searching a computer network, it's just completely bananas. Or not know them, as the case may be. Okay. Oh, my gosh.

It's like, I mean, this is like what people used to say about Wikipedia. Have you, have you, I mean, you're probably on the other side of this, but have you. been on my side of it where you will ask a question and then someone in your household will ask chat gpt and then tell you what it said as if it's the answer has that happened to you yet i'm mainly the one who does that it's terrible but doctor needs to stop doctor Bye.

No, I do that. What happened on the show, on a program I do on Monday, where I wanted to find out what it cost to buy a pack of cigarettes in San Francisco. And Roderick, who in my mind's eye is not as good at this stuff as I am. if I'm being honest, he had the answer, the rough answer before I did. He found 10 bucks. I found 14 bucks and he found it before I did. But I will, yes, I will very gladly announce people's heights. How did he, how did he get the answer? Didn't say, didn't say.

Finally, let's close this up. We've got other stuff to do. I said citations, please. I couldn't find direct quotes or timestamps. I'm just reading this to you because I need you to just be with me as an enthusiastic. living person for a minute and appreciate just how bananas and funny it is that I have a computer that connects to a computer network that comes up with things like

Syracuse is a sec wording about preferring a pill over food. The overall characterization draws from numerous accidental tech podcast episodes like food comes from cans. episode five to six and current host commentary where he treats eating as a routine chore favoring plane. So, and then I, it went some more and I said, it said, uh, here's what it says. If you'd like, I can pull specific episodes or timestamps. Oh, please do. Okay. I thought for a few seconds. You want to know what it said?

I'll tell you what it says. It says, I wasn't able to locate a direct quote of Syracuse saying, I take a pill instead of food. But his attitudes are still well documented in public forums. It's very brave. ATP 526 food comes from cans. The host joke about Syracuse. to treating food as utilitarian on Mastodon. Fans comment. Fans.

Comment on his narrow food preferences, noting that listening to, quote, the food episodes just make me sad for his narrow definition of acceptable food types, unquote. It is illegal for you to ask me that. The recurring, the final one, nature or the recurring nature of titles like Eat Your Vegetables ATP 181 suggests food. I like what's going on based off of titles. This is catastrophically dumb.

But yet, you know, it keeps trying. It's like a dog that's trying to balance your checkbook. What was the old joke? Wasn't there an old joke? Maybe it's The Simpsons. Well, there's the one with the mule with the spinning wheel. But there's the one of like when... when a when a when a food does the bar elephant can dance maybe i was gonna say like a chimp it's something like if when the food does the bar elephant can dance doesn't do a good job and then what's the second part

You should just be amazed. It doesn't, it doesn't do a good job, but you're just impressed. It can do it at all. Something like that. That's catchy. I'm going to put the recurring nature of a practical domain, then a pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. So.

I mean, this is the, what's the name of the thing? I'm going to do more follow-up on this. What's the name of the thing, the newspaper-based thing where it's like you think people are smart and so you read them right about, when they write about a topic that you know something about and now you think they're dumb? What's that one called? Um, no. The plumber problem. No, no, it's a different one. Wait, is that like a known as a name for this?

Yeah, it's like something's law or whatever. It's basically... If you think of it, tell me because that's... You read news stories and you believe most of them until there's a news story on a topic that you know a lot about. Oh, I mean, I have at least from a personal... pseudo rational standpoint i have no problem everything that's ever been written about me had a very at least one very obvious major thing that i feel like they got wrong

And then numerous small things that just changed the context of what I said. That's why you should never talk. So that's why, you know, usually it's thought of in this time. and the concept of like, well, you know, I'm a doctor and I read this and I think the person was real smart until they wrote about medical stuff. And I was like, well, that was a topic that I know about. So now I think they're dumb. It's Murray, Gell, Man, Amnesia. I struggle with that. Are you...

You're not current on Blank Check, right? Definitely not. I like this guest from the latest episode, but it's so funny to listen to fun and funny, entertaining to listen to a... probably young millennial. I hate all those phrases. Somebody who's like around 20, 30, you know, in their twenties and thirties. But like, she's a, she's a writer. She's worked on a ton of shows. She's really funny. She's really interesting. They're talking about.

uh i forget doesn't matter what but um but there's just it's so weird to hear the two of them who are younger than i talking to somebody that's younger than them And just like, there's just whole, not blind spots. How do you put it? There's just whole areas of what used to be. the culture of all of us that this person just, like movies or stuff that this person, it's kind of like dealing with Marco in some ways.

here's the wikipedia page on this uh the gel hyphen man spelled like your last name the gel man amnesia effect is a cognitive bias describing the tendency of individuals to critically assess media reports in a domain they are knowledgeable about yet to continue to trust reporting in other areas despite recognizing similar potential inaccuracies. This leads to our topic.

And so this doesn't often happen. I mentioned the thing about doctor and medical stuff. People's stuff happens with professionals. But what doesn't often happen is you read something about yourself. That only happens if there's going to be media about you.

is the best case scenario of a topic that you feel like you're an expert on yourself. So if anyone ever writes anything about yourself and you look at it, suddenly you're going to have that girl man amnesia effect where you're going to be like, this is terrible. But then when you.

ask it later a question about how much the pack of cigarettes cost. You're like, well, it didn't know anything about me, but I'm sure it knows about the cigarettes. So if Car and Driver did a piece about you and it was this bananas, that would be really frustrating to you. Because, like, you enjoy your small magazine. Large magazine? Is it large magazine now? No, it's getting smaller. You know how it is. I do now. I do now.

but yeah no i mean you know it's it's like i was saying some of my online friends today um super secret private text channel i think other people just aren't as good at this as i am in the sense of how to use this in a generative, truly generative way, not just generative as in LLM, but in a creative way, but also to be deeply aware of the risks associated.

To really think hard about how you process its responses and having a constant sense of, like when I told my mom about this and I was able to do. insane summaries of all of her various medical records in like three minutes. You know, just send me these 30 pages, take photos. I enter it all in. And now I've got an entire thing. I've created a portfolio that includes directions on how to get to the doctor, who she has to call, what time.

Because again, I'm not using ChachiPT in that instance. I'm not using ChachiPT to find out if John Syracuse of the Lake Shrimp is scampi. I'm asking it to like collate. to gather and collate a lot of publicly available information and to format it. That's just...

a lot of what I do. I don't know. But you're still assuming it's doing it somewhat accurately. If you follow the directions and end up at the wrong doctor, that would be bad. Especially if I were a direction maker. Like if I were a... what else what did i what did i send to the boys oh yeah um pack of cigarettes 14 that's one see like for example i just go in and i say like okay the the guitar strings on my guitar are really old number one

See, this is where we talk about a lifestyle. This is very different from things that I've done before, excepting, I guess, things like Delicious Library. I say, I take a photo. of the hole on my guitar, which then also shows the model and the serial number. And I say, I bought this guitar in June of 2018. I want to change the strings. It still has the original strings. What are my options for strings?

that are similar compatible gauge with these, but are maybe a little bit lighter, a little bit more slinky. And it totally goes, oh yeah, D'Addario EJ16 Light Phosphor Bronze 12-53. I installed them today. It worked a treat. It was all great. That kind of stuff. Actors who've been, I'm watching Wolf Hall. I'm just jamming down on Wolf Hall right now. Actresses who've been in Game of Thrones and Wolf Hall. And it didn't get all of them. But it got a lot of them.

And now I know I learned what it is capable of. This example I feel like I want to keep coming back to is like today a big strong man from Russia came to my house. His name is Nick. We did not communicate great.

Nick came over and he diagnosed the problem with our freezer. Now, oh, I'm going to avoid an entire area here, which is like... ample stories exist on this program of me calling somebody who quote actually knows what to do and they break my kitchen that's a thing like I there's a risk I feel a risk calling anybody to do anything

And on top of it all, like fixing our freezer, just basically replacing the motor in our freezer is going to cost $400. So it benefits me to go in and learn a little bit about this and kind of know. what to look for. But the part I want to keep coming back to, it also means knowing when that's, Hey, that's something above my pay grade. I watched the instructions. I found, I always get the manual. I looked at everything. I could replace the motor.

on this myself i could replace the thermostat on this myself but you've probably had this feeling where you just look at the thumbnails for a how-to and you're like okay this page is too long and there's too many things with wires New dealer. And I go like, and I call and Nick, the Russian man is going to come out and fix it. That's part of it. Part of it is that just because you have all this information doesn't mean you have to change what you do.

Having information, I mean, part of that is in processing, like, how much of this can I, like, trust or whatever. But, like, I just don't run into, as far as I know, I don't run into that much stuff that's just completely bananas. As far as you know. How did you know that it didn't get all the actors from that thing?

because one of the ones I had come there to look for was not mentioned. It's the lawyer technique. Don't ask questions you don't already know the answer to. It's useful when talking to LLMs as well. If you already know some of the actors and you're asking... But John, I now know five or six actors.

in those two things that I didn't know about before. How do you know those are accurate? Because I was watching the show. Right, but when they said the actress name, you're like, oh, I recognize that person. No, no, I just, I mean, you're...

I'm being very gentle with you, and I'm taking your point even though you're being obdurate about trying to understand mine. You want to argue and be right, and that's fine because that's your brand. What I'm trying to say to you is I end up through a half week. period, I end up approximately quadrupling the information that is available to me about how to deal with something. Usually something dumb, like mounting a birdhouse. But I don't have...

I'm going to really frustrate you and maybe kind of make you not like me as much by saying I'm not as worried about it as other people are. I understand why the people are worried. But do you think for a minute that I don't check pretty important stuff?

Well, I do. That's what I was getting at. When you check the important stuff, you're checking it anyway. It's like, why not go to the place where you check? John, how would you find out how to diagnose why your freezer rarely gets above, gets below nine degrees Fahrenheit? How would you decide to fix that problem? I would probably search for my make and model on the symptoms and see if other people had similar problems. And you would do that with the google.com website? Yeah, or YouTube.

Because then you'll see somebody and you'll see, I'll be able to see with my eyes. I'll tell you, that's, that's very smart. And I'll tell you, but I'll tell you what frustrates me. And I do, if I seem like I'm becoming kind of radicalized, it's because I absolutely am becoming kind of radicalized about a variety of things in this world. And one of those is...

Let's take it all the way back to every day somebody's born who's never seen the Flintstones, right? Like, I don't find it particularly impressive when somebody goes, oh, I knew that. I go like, hey, here's the thing. I didn't have a birdhouse before and now I do. I'm happy today. And they go, oh, well, you know, that's even the wrong drill and the wrong blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, you're getting terrible directions here. And it's like, okay, I...

I understand that. But from my high school counselors, through my therapist, through my wife, through you, every relationship I have with somebody, I have to parse the theory of mind. I have to think about what they think about what I'm thinking.

And make sure that I'm communicating what I think I want to communicate. You can make fun of that, but like, it's really true. I'm, everybody is constantly having to evaluate the tone that was the young people say the vibe of what's going on. I just, I have not found this to be extremely dangerous.

My birdhouse is still up and working fine, and it wasn't there before. What changed? Well, two things changed, neither of which people really want to talk about. Change number one is I found the information I needed to do that. Number two, I found that that was something I can do.

I would not have called the fridge guy, the freezer guy, to come and fix our freezer if I hadn't previously had great success replacing our ice maker. Well... I don't want to be too dim about this, John, but the fact that I was able to figure out what's wrong with our ice maker and replace it, is that without value because I don't know everything about freezers?

No, I have no problem using this thing to help you accomplish something. But how is this any different from anything? How is this different from the internet? I have a big problem when you're trying to look up information. It's like asking your friend. What is your solution to that where you could find out a little thing you need to know and then get back to something more important? What is your solution for that? And if you tell me Google, I'm going to be frustrated.

Well, so look, if I don't care if the answer is right, I can ask a friend. Because it really is very much like asking a friend. Say you wanted to know something. That's completely... Okay. You want to know something and you have a friend who actually knows a lot about this. You've done it. You've cracked the system. You know what the solution is? Learn Pearl from the metal up and have friends you can ask questions to. What if I don't want to know that much about that topic?

costs these days i could ask a friend while you're live on a podcast yeah i i could ask a friend while you're live on a podcast we're live on a podcast and they could tell me And yeah, I could just text them. And they could tell me. Oh, you text them during the podcast to ask how much cigarettes cost. Oh, yeah, it's normal. And then I could say, I think it costs as much, right? But very often when there is something like this. And how do you know they're right? Well, that's what I'm saying.

But I asked a friend and maybe I think the friend knows because they smoke or used to smoke or they know a relative or smoke. Maybe I think they have a reason for knowing. Okay.

Yeah. Very often, the reason we go to our phones in this modern era is there's some debate about something. I think cigarettes cost us much. I think it costs them such blah, blah, blah. A classic one would be like, what year did this movie come out? Yeah. Someone tries to sell it. They take out their phone. Back in the old days, they would.

google for the answer and they would hold up their phone and say here a blade runner came out in 1980 whatever right and they would show something on their phone that they meant to be

the settling the, the situation, the definitive answer. If you don't care what the answer is and you just want something that's close or you think it's probably right, you could just ask your friends. I just don't understand about the existence of what is the, well, show me the existence of these things that efficiently.

and quickly give you an answer that you know is correct and don't need to check. But ChatGBT does not do that. And so give me a recent example that'll make me look really dumb. Give me a recent example from the last week where you needed to know something.

And maybe let's just say like some of this, you were alone by yourself with a computer. How did you know, how did you know where to go? And then how did you know that was true? Also, here's the thing. If you don't care, let's give an example of that.

If you don't care whether it's true, you can go almost anywhere. But if you do care whether it's true and you don't have a good way to test it. That's what I'm saying. I'm assuming you do care that it's true. Where do you go to find true information? Not always. For example, programming.

I almost never care whether it's true programming. I wish you'd answer the questions instead of just doing a speech. You're not answering my question, which is like, give me an example. Give me an example. I'm not trying to be a dick about it, but you sound very... sure about this in a way that reflects the fact that you are very good at saying no and rarely as good at saying maybe.

Well, all I'm getting is that I find it frustrating when people go to ChatGPT for an answer and accept its answer as fact and convey it as fact. So much so that whenever someone looks something up on their phone and tells me I looked it up and the answer is X, I always have to ask them, did you read the top AI?

from the google page because if that's where they got it from i say please scroll down and try like the wikipedia entry or something else that you can at least source i'm old enough to remember when everybody's like don't look at wikipedia

Yeah. Well, I mean, here's the thing. I got into argument with somebody that's on Macedon. Citing Wikipedia is a thing. Then you can... Nah, that's not cool. Then you can figure out, okay, is Wikipedia right or is it wrong? I used to chat GPT to find the original. At the very least, you do know one thing. That Wikipedia said this. Because you can go to wikipedia.org and you can see it there. Is Wikipedia right?

Maybe, maybe not. But you are citing Wikipedia. It's just the whole stupid Wikipedia thing, verifiability. Which is crazy and funny in like three different ways. One of which is the whole original idea of Wikipedia, not so much today, was that it is completely editable by anybody anytime.

It's like citing a chalkboard. Yeah, well, their whole thing is they want verifiable. Wikipedia itself, verifiable sources, blah, blah, blah. But anyway, citing a thing. But the thing is, you can't cite Google search results. Because you don't know how Google came up with those results. You have to click the links to see. Even if they have a link to Wikipedia.

And they have the little sentence underneath it. Yeah. Do you know for sure that that sentence underneath the search result is from the page or if it's like a summary or I absolutely would not know.

Right. Like sometimes it is a snippet. Sometimes it's a summary. I don't, I don't, it would be careless for me to say that I don't care, but I want to say something close enough to I don't care, which is something like, does this seem effective? For what I'm trying to do right now, does this seem effective? And if I catch, just like I would in any other part of life, the part I'm fighting you about is you seem to have...

You trust very deeply in your own skepticism about information, which I think is very, very healthy, mostly. What I'm trying to say to you is we're just different about this. Well, no, because you think I'm poo-pooing you learning how to put up a bird feeder, and I'm totally not.

I'm not saying that at all. I think you're saying don't rely on this for facts in particular. Yeah, because when you do things like tell me the name of all the actors and these things and you know that it missed a few because you recognize them, aren't you immediately suspect of the ones that it told you that you didn't recognize? Oh, new information. Not that it matters because who cares what the actors are? No, because I collaborate with it and I say, yeah, what about the guy who played Jojen?

Like he's in it too. And they go, that's right. And I said, well, so when I was an idiot a long time ago, I would say, now tell me why you got that wrong. Well, that's stupid. That's not how it's, it's math. I don't know if that's going to help anything.

No, it doesn't. No, no, no. No, that's what I'm trying to tell you. You're basically, now you're talking to a chalkboard. But what I can say is, dig deeper on this. And the thing that I see over and over and over, and it's ridiculous to try and defend this to people who have to use it for dumb shit. and then get mad at people who use it for cool stuff. But like...

It has gotten so much better as so many different things. Yes, being skeptical is fine. I think it's great. I just I hate this being swept up in this entire idea of like, well, I'm an incurious person who's nervous about their job. And instead of going like, well. This thing is here. It's not all AI. All AI is not this, and this is not all AI. What this is is I want to find out who this English actor is and what else they were in. The stakes for that are impossibly low.

I'm not using it to diagnose my own cold and cancer. I'm using it to figure out how many things Anton Lesser is in. And if it misses some of those, forgive me for saying, it really doesn't bother me that much. But you did put your mom's health records into it. Absolutely. And you asked it to summarize those. I mean, maybe it's still low stakes because it's not your health records and it's not you making decisions about this stuff. I mean, okay. It's not a very nice thing to say.

No, I care very deeply, John, but you have to do trade-offs in these things. You're usually such a big fan of talking about trade-offs. Well, one trade-off is my mom has a grave terminal illness, and I need to help her understand why it's important that she book this on Tuesday.

Are they going to get every single thing in that right? Am I, am I going to be able to find out the kind of thing that she has so that I can tell Madeline and then Madeline can, and then I can, I look at it and I go, she's got deedly deedly deedly deed. One on this side, one on that side. And I go, and I look in the records, and you know, that was correct. I feel comfortable saying that. I don't want to be histrionic about it. I know that's frustrating to you as well. All I'm trying to say...

is like i have a much lower bar for how much this bothers me and if there's anything that gets under my skin at this moment it's You so rarely will answer a specific question about a specific thing, whether that's how to pronounce your name or whatever. In this instance, where is it besides Google that you go to find this elusive fact?

I just don't understand. Because Google is not a way. Again, that's like citing Wikipedia. That's what I'm trying to get at. It's not about finding a fact. It's about getting something that you have some familiarity with. An example of that would be what?

You don't want to finish your sentence. Getting something that you have some conception of its accuracy that is founded that you feel confident with. So, for example, Wikipedia. How much do you trust Wikipedia? Everyone has a different opinion on that. But their opinion at this point is founded by potentially years of experience with Wikipedia and its success rate. And years of Wikipedia being close enough. Or like, you know, whatever it is, people, maybe some people really distrust it.

Maybe some people really trust it. Maybe some people have gel man amnesia about it, where they trusted about stuff they don't know about, but don't trust about stuff they do know about. But either way, it is a more noble entity than something like an LM, which nobody really has any idea.

you know, how they work or what's spitting out of them. Like there's not a good way to sort of build up a confidence in what it knows and what it doesn't know and why it knows it and how it may phrase that. That's absolutely true. Yes. Right. So. But then, but what is the answer to the question? If I, if I asked you, if I asked you, if I said to you, your, your task, I'm just pulling this out of my ass is, um, off your, off the top of your head, do you happen to know, uh, which actors?

have appeared in both any episode of Game of Thrones and any episode of Wolf Hall. So where do you go to find that? I would probably go to Call Sheet or IMDb. How do you find the overlap? You just have to look at both lists and then cross-reference them in your head. And how long will that take? Copy and paste them into thing.

I don't know, but when I'm done with it, I'll have an answer that I'll at least know that according to... And I just don't care as much as you, and it feels careless to say that. But that's fine. You keep strawmanning me into thinking that I'm telling you you can't use it for the things you find fun to use it for. That's not what I'm saying at all.

No, you're strawmanning me into constantly going down some corridor where you sneak away from a question about how you actually fix the problem instead of think that it's bad. Because here, look. Yeah. I'm not mad. I love being here. You go right from. How tall is this actor, which who cares, whatever, fun, or making a birdhouse? To my mother's health records.

Yes, which is like, whoa, suddenly you've crossed over from one thing way into the other side of things where one thing it's like, great, cool. That's that's helping you. First of all, it's fun. Second of all, it's interesting to do. Third of all, you're accomplishing stuff. It's all good. It's like me using it for programming. It's wrong so much with programming. And I'm talking to it all day long about programming. Who's not wrong about programming, John? Answer the question. Who's not wrong?

But why do I do it? Because I find it useful, like you said. You said it's because it creates results that you can immediately test. And I think your response has been, I can find out if it works. And because often, as you noted before, it is the most efficient way to do it. Because there are other ways I could do the same thing, and it is the most efficient way to do it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But...

When people have a bar bet about how tall Mount Everest is and someone asks ChatGPT and holds it up and says this settles the bet, I say no, that doesn't settle the bet. And you say no because they should have gone to where? anywhere literally anywhere else okay but you're you're you're google maps you're wikipedia mount everest.com literally so the answer to that is the answer to that factually then you saying i don't know

Because when they say that- How would you find out where to go? I would say how tall is mine ever since a Google search box. And I would scroll past the AI search result and find probably the Wikipedia page that would give the height and feet. So Wikipedia passes your bar for this.

For the height of Mount Everest, absolutely. Way more than ChatGPT, because ChatGPT is just like I asked my friends. And just to be clear, I'm not here to defend ChatGPT. I mean, what I use it for, it's so frustrating to me that I don't get more of an opportunity to talk to people about it.

who are interested in how I actually use it, which is apparently bizarrely different from every, everybody else is apparently just cheating on tests. No, you're using it in a way more discipline way than most people. They're using people, other people using it as their, as their therapist and friend and are doing incredibly dangerous things.

with it you are just i don't know i guess so you think that happens yeah 17 year old stories what what non-technical people you know what hey john can i just say yeah i've seen the stories how do you know they're true

That's true. But, you know, they're in reputable publications. I'm not trying to fight with you, John, and I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I appreciate how you are. That's why I'm here. But what I would also just like to get out there is, like, there's a certain attitude about this that is extreme.

extremely privileged and deeply incurious. And that frustrates me. And I just, I feel like I run up against a lot, even with you, my dear friend, I run up a lot of, against a lot of the stuff that like, it's just mainly like this, um, scarlet letter.

type thing where you're like, well, all I can tell is that you're sinning and you're like, okay, well, what would you like me to do? Well, stop sinning. And you're like, okay, but like, where does this fluid go? But in this instance, it's like, it's just, it's not.

Now I feel dumb that I told this thing about my mom because if I screenshotted you my side rail, you'd think it's insane because it's basically like your Google history. It's just that then I take it and I turn it into other things. I turn it into tables of... comparisons. I turn it into PDFs that I can print it out. And all of that stuff is well within the range of stuff I feel like I can tolerate not being exactly right. I mean, I think that's what it comes down to is tolerance.

That's yeah. Well, I don't. So I'd also John awareness, just awareness. And like, so that's why, like I said to my mom, I mean, I think you're totally aware. I think it's come down to tolerance because here's the thing.

When I get frustrated at things like this, or when anyone gets frustrated at things like this, what they're basically doing is saying, if I were you, I would do it differently. But you're not them. You're mapping your own tolerances onto other people. When strangers do a thing that you wouldn't do yourself, you condemn this.

stranger for not looking both ways when they cross the streets. If I was walking across the street, I'd look both, whatever. That's because every American wants to be applauded for their good. And that's, that's essentially what I'm doing to you. When I, when I say essentially.

If I were you, my tolerance would not allow me to do that. And then it turns into me telling you. You're also a maximalist about some of these things in a way that I'm not. And I don't think that's a bad thing at all. I don't think either of us needs to be criticized or changed.

But, like, I think it's fair to say that, like, you can be extremely doctrinaire about certain kinds of things about the negativity angle of, like, what this isn't good for or what it shouldn't be used for. Did you call me ambivalent about AI? I would call you consistently ambivalent. And what was that episode? Salads and Goose Concerts? I forget what it's called. I forget what episode it is. Anyways.

Yeah, I want to, I actually am, just for my own entertainment, and I'll come back with the results. I'm going to dig in a little bit about how I came up with this. So the answer is, the answer is the closest I can come up with. The surprising answer is, wow, it looks good.

tried to pull a bunch of stuff from the internet. It was pretty impressive. At least it knows who Marco and Casey are. That's kind of impressive. But also, I created a project, a literal chat GPT project, where I was trying desperately to get... transcript stuff to work. And I kept getting hung up on, you know, things have gotten a lot better since I did that. But I, like my friend Alex, I think I'm very interested in seeing what would happen if I fed transcripts of all of my programs.

into things for one thing it makes show notes easier honestly google um notebook llm has been way better for that but um yeah it's

it bums me out though also that like the the dumb stuff that people are doing with this you're like the things where lawyers keep using it to look up things and it says that would be an example of a scenario where i would say uh Whether or not it is true or exists, shouldn't that be a man gelman? And your tolerance as a lawyer for assuming what ChatGP put out is an actual case should be very low. I agree. I'm not a lawyer and I don't do that.

So, you know, I hope I get an exemption on that one. I do have a birdhouse, and my guitar is tuned. And my ice maker works. And I was able to do the results of what I've gotten out of all this potentially extremely dangerous application have been really beneficial. And also. But I think in the lawyer case, you're in my shoes now where you would say to a lawyer, say, hey, if I were a lawyer, my tolerance for accepting court citations from chat GPT would be.

really low like i would check every single one of them before i submitted it to the judge and that lawyer would be like well i mean not not i'm not trying to kobayashi maru here but like well it's you know I hate to be so simple about this. You know, maybe this is not the best way for you to write a legal brief.

Like, let's just, can we pop up a couple levels and go like, hey, you know, maybe one reason AI is so bad is people are using it for extremely dumb stuff and extremely dangerous stuff. Like what about Wimbledon? Now everybody's going to be mad at AI because they did this ding-a-ling thing.

We're trying to see if the ball... Did you see this? Did you see this coverage? No, I'm not caught up on the goings-on in Wimbledon. I only read headlines about this. I don't follow sports. But apparently at Wimbledon, there is some AI assist with verifying whether something... like, you know, was in or out. Oh, don't get me started on Hawkeye. I guess, I don't know what it's called, but like, and so it's apparently been doing what a lot of people regard as bad calls.

also known as just bad calls but then it also like didn't activate at the right time during a point and it's now that bums me out because hey you know what get your head out of your ass i'm not an idiot I understand. I'm not going to use this. Like to make a car bomb or something. I'm not going to use this to write a thesis. I'm not going to use this to get my kid into college. That's okay. I'm going to use this to make pictures of chimps and capybaras and find out how to use my drill.

Um, but it, it is, it is maddening to me that now there's this, you know, AI, AI gets all this stuff gets lumped into it. Most of AI is frustrating BS. that will either be very damaging or very unnecessarily costly. No question. Most of it. I just get a lot of value out of this thing that I'm using. And at least so far, I'm satisfied with my relationship with the bar.

Not the bar of California. I've never taken the bar. I know. But the reason I gave you the lawyer example is the feeling you feel about the lawyer who makes the fake citations and sends them to a judge. How could you even do that? Right. Because there's like, well, I wouldn't use it for that, but whatever floats your boat. But then that goes over.

Everyone has a line where they say, OK, well, now I'm going to cross over the line. I'm going to say you, sir, shouldn't be doing that. And sometimes when I see people out in the world looking up facts on ChatGPT.

or looking at the top AI Google results instead of scrolling down past them to find an actual citation. I get that feeling as well. And I say, well, this is not just a matter of you do whatever you want. Now you're trying to basically say, well, my friend said Mount Everest is this tall. And I'm like, well, I don't care what your friend said. Give me a citation. cite something cite anything I mean at the heart of it I don't highlights magazine I don't disagree with what I

at all with what I take to be your point, which is like, don't trust this stuff. Like, especially for facts. The part that I'm frustrated about is I'm still not satisfied. I don't want to argue about it anymore. We should talk about other stuff. But I also, I'm just not satisfied that you've given us a satisfactory answer.

about how you can casually learn about something you just need a little information about. Because when you say Google... How did we all do it before ChatGPT? There were ways. That's not my point. Your point is because this thing that I'm using... Cannot be trusted to absolutely get every fact right. I need to find sources that will get the fact exactly right. And my frustration comes from you citing a single example of something.

So you want to find out how tall a mountain is, you go to Wikipedia. That's your answer. That's so much better than chat GPT. I would Google for it and then I would look for the results. I know you'd Google for it, but Google's garbage. It's not Google. I mean, like Google became part of our infrastructure and I use it.

Obviously, it's my most used website by a million times. But it's a little frustrating to me that you seem so forgiving of the vagaries of whatever Google presents. You don't like the reality. It is annoying, but the thing is... It's awful terrible, John. When I scroll through the results, I at least get to choose, am I going to click the link to New York Times? Am I going to click the Wikipedia, the National Geographic link? For those kinds of searches, I'm really looking at the excerpt.

Honestly, of course, I'm looking at the time. Well, you hope it's an excerpt and not an AI summary. Okay, but... All right, but... Can we talk about the world instead of the 1% of the world for a second? Most of what you hit, you can...

Whatever it is you're searching for, if you have slight domain knowledge about it, you're going to see websites. You might see some that are familiar to you. You might see some that are not familiar to you but seem related. And you're probably going to see some that... in that set of the familiar ones you're going to see ones where you're like yeah i'm not gonna yeah i'll just skip that one right and so but like then i feel like sometimes the what what appears in the excerpt is a great clue

Because that's where you start to see SEO keyword stuffing, you know, whatever the new modern version of that is. That's what we called it 20 years ago. But no, I mean, again, I don't have an answer to that. And I think you don't have an answer to that. I mean, I do because it's what I actually do. How do you get anything done, John, if you have to wait until you find the certified fact before you move on? It's not about certification. Put it this way. You're a liberal arts student.

If you wrote a paper, if you were in New College today and you were that young and you had to write a paper and you tried to cite the Google results page rather than clicking through on the link and citing the thing at the end of the link, do you think your teacher would accept that as a citation?

Here's the excerpt from the Google search results page. I would hop into ChatGPT and ask it to give me an MLA 9 formatted citation for the original book or paper, which it knows to do. And if you're handing it to the teacher, wouldn't you maybe check that the citation it gave you is a real book?

I mean, I don't know why we're arguing like hens about this. The differences that we have about this will not be settled, and they're not a big deal. If I were at New College and writing a paper, no, I wouldn't. And can I just say, it's dumb to do that today, too. That's my only point. You can't cite the Google results page. You can't cite ChatGPT unless you're doing a paper on ChatGPT. I'm not, but can't I use ChatGPT to find out the citation?

Well, where do I go for that? But then you have to check that it's real. I go to JSTOR? Like, where do I go? But the thing is, John, there's only so many hours in the day, and I have no interest in learning things as deeply as you do. But just like the lawyer thing, then you've got to check that it's real. And it can, like, asking a programming question is...

giving fantastic advice for our listeners and i think people will be very very happy with it i think what they said about your food stuff is inexcusable and i'm sorry it was on the program i'm gonna find out more about how it thinks this though

I really wish that it had said that it got it from a rectus episode where I talked to my mom because I have no idea what's going on about ATP unless I talked about my mom and ATP, but I can't remember. At Waffle House, what number does ham...

mean. At Waffle House, what number? These are leading questions. You are leading it to... Well, that's because... Wouldn't you give a leading question to the person you're asking, John? You're so bizarre about this. Now, it says here, I think this is incorrect, it says Hamas 2. I heard ham is one. It didn't actually say ham is two, did it? I thought ham is one was, was from the, they say sausage, ham, bacon. Maybe it doesn't have the right. What is the magic markup?

for a BLT with fries and no mayo. See, now we have a problem because I don't know the answer to that question. Do you? No, not at all. That's why I'm searching on the internet for it. Magic markings of a BLT, a tomato slice on the plate, fries. Oh, John. Oh my gosh, John, this really takes me back. Do you remember that episode? I do, but I don't know if that answer is right.

I don't find it. Here's the thing. I don't care, John. I just want to have fun. Can't I just be happy for a minute? I know, but I don't, see, that's the thing. I don't find those answers. I don't find those answers satisfying. Like that's, is that a failing in me? Maybe it's a failing in me. I know where the packet goes. I have the plate at six o'clock.

No mayo. You place a mayo packet upside down on the plate. If I actually wanted to know the answer to that, and I got an answer from LLM, I would look at it and just be sad. And if this were vital to someone's health and safety? I wouldn't even read it to you. Yeah. The thing is, the answer delights you, but it makes me sad. Okay, but is there no part of your mind...

The beautiful fecundity of your young mind has become so wizened and bizarre with your movement disorders and your dumb programming. It's made you so weird. There's no way for you to just take a moment and go, it's insane that I type one sentence and it knows about the magic mark. That doesn't just blow your mind. Like in seconds, that just comes right up. What's my movement disorder? Oh, you know, with your RSI.

I guess that's a movement disorder. Oh, it absolutely is. I haven't heard it referred to as a movement disorder. Yeah, well, no, it's like an elephant man type situation. I was just listening to that episode with Alex Ross Perry.

Alex Ross Perry of Past the Future Guest, Alex Ross Perry, he also directed the documentary about pavement. Also, also, do you still listen to Blank Check sometimes? I'm going to go back to it soon. I did a big, long run on it, but now I'm trying to get killed. It's okay. The big point is this. Really, really, really start listening for David's K sound. On Jaren's.

I mean, is that a recent thing as in past year? It's recently accelerated. It might be the twins. All right. Well, if I listen to some recent episodes, I was. Well, no, but like there was one. Oh, OK. So like a recent episode. And this is not a criticism. I mean, I don't imagine David and I could hang. I don't think we'd get along. I think I would really enjoy meeting the other guy. What's his name? Are they all named Griffin? What's he called? Isn't he meant to be Griffin?

You know what he said? He was talking about a movie with Christy Alley and John Travolta called Look Who's Talking. And he kept saying... He kept flipping, like a flick of the finger, like, ah, look who's talking. It's ridiculous. You definitely start drifting into, what's his name, from Godfather every time you make sounds. That's all I can think about. I'm going to take a nap.

And when I wake up, it's going to be so close. It's going to be so close. When I wake up, if there's a bag of money on my table, I'll know I have a partner. Partner. Doesn't it say partner? I don't know. Oh, man. What was I watching? I was watching something with some amazing... accents that you would love i'll try to remember it but um yeah you know what's funny that supposedly that was his first role in a movie have you ever no here okay all right all right john pause

Um, his name is Lee. Are you typing? Jim, Jim, take that typing and triplet. I want people to hear his name is Lee. Hyman Roth. Lee. Character name. Lee. Played by Lee Strasberg. Lee Greenwood. Lee Strasberg. Who we know taught. method right the meisner method or whatever it was he taught american acting coach yes and you'll find if you go look for photos on google i guess or you can find photos of him like with a lot of really famous actors and actresses and he he basically you know

personally taught a lot of the great method actors of the 50s and 60s. He looks very different. I guess a lot of these are older. He looks different than what I guess in the movie. So then in 1970, well, it was released in 74. I don't know what year it came out. I guess it was probably filmed in 73. He's got a TV Tropes page, too. Oh, no kidding. I love that page. I love those pages. Now, here's what I'm going to ask you, John.

And you're probably already Googling for it with your Google. But how do you find out? Well, okay, let's put it in your terms. What was Lee Strasberg's first credited film? uh i mean i'm on the wikipedia page with the early years let's see if they have a career section and so and so like you would like maybe like go to indb or wikipedia and like just acting director and teacher personal life legacy film credits um

Let's see. Film credits, 1937. Parnell as Pat, uncredited. Credited as China Venture, 1953. Patterson as Patterson. I am getting Godfather 2. Let's see. It was directed by Don Siegel. Who was he? He was Patterson. Yeah. Well, anyway, it says he was Patterson in this movie on this Wikipedia page. You know, it was tough. People look back and they think they really want to live in the 50s. You know, mostly because of racism.

Um, but you know, it wasn't, there was a lot about the fifties that were not that fun. Are you aware of this? I read David Halberstam's the fifties and I thought it was a really good book. He's a good, he's a really good writer. Probably maybe not. Maybe like a somewhat selected slice, let's say, of the entirety of the 50s, but for the selected slice that did become entertaining.

I am a couple of days ago, I started the Jane Jacobs books, the great cities book. And I've been reading through the Robert Moses parts. She's got some things. Jane Jacobs has some things to say, as you might expect. You might remember her having popped up. Yeah, I think maybe Hal Bushnam touched on Robert Moses as well. I think that was part of the synergy. No kidding. I got like four index cards in the book already. Yeah. And how do you feel about...

learning that Casey has never seen Dust Boat. How do you feel about learning? Casey has. Casey was on the... He told at the top of the show he made a reference to this show in your pre-show, if you don't mind my saying. And he said something about that. We were talking about that. And I thought he said that he'd never seen Dust Boat. No, he just watched it for The Incomparable. And there's an Incomparable episode with him on it where he talks about it.

Isn't he the submarine movie guy? Oh, well, you know, like, I'm not going to fault him for not seeing Das Boot. Come on. I mean, like, that's. How do you think I'm faulting him? You're kind of a bad person sometimes. I'm not faulting him. See, you don't choose your words carefully. I'm not as surprised as you seem to be. How could he have not seen that? Shocked but not surprised.

I'm not shocked at all. No, I'm not shocked and I'm not surprised. He's not a cinephile, so I don't expect him to have seen Dotspot. Compulsive answers to everything. And why do you think he's the submarine guy? Although he does like Crimson Tide, too. So he likes, Hunt for October is his favorite movie. He likes Crimson Tide as well. So I guess that's too submarine. Well, I hate to break it to you, but I feel like there might be one way to find out. Does Casey? bliss like submarine movies

I don't have to ask that. I actually know Casey Liss. Tip me over. Pour me out. Yes. Casey Liss is a big fan of submarine movies. Oh, and then the emoji is a clapper, like from his icon. Here's the evidence on his blog. He says, the hunt for red October will always be my favorite sub movie. So he's seen enough. What? I just said that. Yeah, you said that, but you hadn't fact checked it.

I didn't have to. I know the person. What does that mean? Why do you trust your firm more than others? I'm a primary source. That's why I can't write it into Wikipedia. Only Wikipedia only takes tertiary sources. If I write about it in the New York Times. Tertiary sources? That's all Wikipedia accepts. Wait. If I know Casey and I know Hunt for October's favorite movie. What the hell is a tertiary source? I have to write. That sounds like somebody who misunderstood.

third-party software. I have to write in the New York Times, the Casey List writes it, and then someone else can go to Wikipedia and cite me saying it in the New York Times. I'll get the sources. He says that will always be my favorite sub movie and perhaps my favorite movie bar none. I have always loved Crimson Tide.

And the citation there is caseyliss.com. It says here at bullet two, he chose The Hunt for Red October 1990 for a special movie discussion on the Accidental Tech Podcast Movie Club. Third and finally, back in 2015, on the incomparable bonus track episode, Submarine Pictures, he talked about, quote, why submarine movies are the best movies.

alongside Dan Morin and Jason Snow. So yeah, it says, new paragraph. He absolutely digs submarine flicks. Yeah, but I'm not surprised that he hadn't seen Das Boot. Yeah. So do you think he liked it?

I haven't listened to the episode yet. I'm assuming he did. Although he might have found it a little weird because it's a long, you know, like you were talking a lot about how long it is and that's never something I've. Like I say, Godfather is a movie I think of as long. I don't ever think of it, you said particularly the director's cut. I don't think about it that way. I think about it just more like over those two plus hours.

It is a lot to take in. I mean, you get pretty whipped around. There are a lot of events. Put it that way. What's interesting, though, is I use that phrase that could seem inappropriate. I called it a 1981 submarine epic. I think I said, which is a very strange way to put that movie in one way. Like, what is it that makes it crazy to call a submarine movie an epic?

It all takes place in like an 80-foot tube. The scope seems small. Yeah, right. Almost all of it. And yet, of course, like I said, the first act has a lot of stuff. I mean, the ocean is big. And they go to that boat. That's true. You know what? That's true. They do get off. They do get off. That's right. And wherever they were. And they go to, yeah, they go to that, uh, the fancy lad party.

Yeah. I watched something on YouTube. I didn't check this with facts yet, but I heard that they often had people on boats that were proselytizing Hitler's way and they did not like it. Kriegsmarine were not into that stuff. So yeah, he absolutely digs submarine flicks. i just got a i got a blu-ray today i'm gonna watch i got a blu-ray of a tarkovsky movie i figure it's gonna finally make finally make me watch it all the way through which one is that um it's the did i get the mirror

Which one was it? Um, I got, um, God, the one that almost killed him stalker, which I think might be his last movie. Did you ever see Solaris? He did that. I don't even think I saw the George Clooney one or whatever the remake was. His movies, I will say, with love, are probably not your thing. And yet, what I will say is, if you... Like we're saying on the, hey, hey, everybody, really.fm slash RD slash join. Like I was saying to Todd, you know, the certain YouTube.

I dislike that phrase, YouTuber. There are YouTube essayists that I really like, you know, like Thomas Flight, like, pause, like Stories of Old, you know, Movies with Mikey. uh, Patrick H. Willems. There's a lot of those movie folks that I like. And I, that's right. I mean, I think like a lot of us, right. That's where you like learn about stuff. And there's, there's some, especially the stories of old guy.

He does that. Can you remind me to put in the Werner Herzog one, please? There's two of his Werner Herzogs. Would you type that, please? Put in two of what? The Werner Herzog documentaries? There are two videos about Werner Herzog. Just put two stories of old videos. You know what? I can type it too. No, I'm just involved. You know, I love doing the show. It's Prime Day. Did you do anything for Prime Day?

Anything special? Anything different? I looked at a couple of the lists of products that were... I'm buying electronics for my son. None of them appealed to me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, and I went in there like, you know, they're just constantly in your face and everybody's, forgive my saying, pimping it. And so I went and looked at the like, hey, deals that are available before the day. And it was all just garbage Amazon stuff.

If you're in the market for one of the things... No, I mean, it's just their company. They can do whatever they want with it, but I didn't find anything particularly tuned for my interest. Like, you know, I bought... all of my Sonos speakers from you. So you should know that I don't need any of this, but I know that doesn't factor in because it's really just about jamming Chinese garbage in people's faces. With respect, it's stalker.

Let me find, let's see. I think I got my big SSDs on Prime Day like a couple of years ago. Some of the deals seem, yeah. You know what it is? It's so funny. Not that I mind spending money. It's that like I have this weird. To your point from when we were arguing a little bit ago, I get this feeling, this itch.

of like, you know, are they trying to screw me? Like, is there anything about this that's weird? Oh yeah. Yeah. There's so many times, like I just ordered stuff and like, you know, and then like, if you're doing it just to like go spend money. Like you're at the Travis Scott show and you just want some merch, you know, wait in line for six hours. Like, okay, well, great. You got an Amazon fan for $3. So now what? It's like, boy, talk about an empty feeling. Whereas with Tarkovsky...

This is a no-fiel summary of Stalker in 1979. Three men, the writer, the professor, and the stalker, traveling to a mysterious restricted area called The Zone, which contains a room said to grant a person's deepest desire. The stalker guides the others past strange...

landscapes and invisible traps. Along the way, they confront their fears, doubts, and the meaning of their own quests. When they finally reach the threshold of the room, none of them can bring themselves to enter. It's slow, atmospheric, and a philosophical film by Andrei Tarkovsky. Is that something you want to watch? Not that I was planning on watching it, which is why I let you read me the synopsis. No. That's not your thing. No.

Although I did, I almost got through, I'll probably finish it someday. I almost got through, what is that terrible Russian war movie? The Stalingrad sniper movie? No, no. I have to look it up. That's okay. There's a terrible Russian war movie. That is my Google search. Ready? It'll eventually learn. Yeah. I'm going to add the word grim to the end of it.

uh yep i got it second hit come and see 1985 oh my god okay i typed terrible russian or john john john john john you know i have you know i have a list on letterboxd called Weird Movies for Weirdos. And then a bunch of people were like, oh, this is all just like, oh, this is for little kids or whatever. I'm like, okay, fine. And forgive me, Jim.

Did you see what the other one is called? Just put come and see on there. I said some next level was the name of list. And that movie goes on there. And that movie is pretty rough. to watch but but i don't think it's exploitative i think it's it's one of the toughest movies you'll ever watch because you don't know how bad it was there

You really, you really, I watched a video the other night about a guy, you know, at one point, you know, Hitler working with, sorry, the painter, we call him the painter. Wait, was there a painter in this story? Stalker, professor, writer? No. The painter really, along with Albert Speer, really wanted to remake Berlin, you know, and do like, create this like a dome that was so large it had its own weather system. And there were all these plans. One thing Hitler loved was pink granite.

And pink granite's pretty hard to get, especially in the sizes you need for his massive halls he wanted to build. So they found a place in, I want to say Tbilisi, that's probably not right, but somewhere, I think it's Slovak country. They found a place that had a great... basically waiting to be mined quarry and you ever seen pink granite like it's it's really it is really kind of beautiful when you polish it they found this place with a ridiculous amount of pink

Granted, so they built a work camp there. And they just took a whole bunch of people, and that's why I say this stuff is important. The thing we talk about, the horrible thing we talk about, the... Six million people that we talk about is certainly something to talk about. But, you know, almost all of those, probably a lot of those six million people also had every single thing they've ever owned.

taken away from them. If you wanted to leave in 33, you had to have enough money to pay to leave, and you had to leave, you had to agree to leave your business and your house and all of your possessions except what you could carry. Like, that part gets left out of the story, that a lot of this, yeah, yeah, they did not like those people, and they did not like Slovakian and Russian people at all, but they really, Hermann Goering, loved all the paintings.

You know what I mean? And focusing on that does not make the six million people thing less bad. It makes all of it more bad because it was all driven. by this system where then they created, I guess just to finish the thought, if it isn't obvious, y'all have seen it in the X-Men movie. You know what it's like in Auschwitz. It's no fun. They pile glasses. It's no good. That comic, by the way, that comic about Magneto's origin story is really good.

But you go and you build a slave camp by where there's pink granite and you work those people to death. And then there are these people over here, and you've seen Schindler's List, you know what happens. The amount of slave labor, you could not have had the dysfunctional... horrible long slog of the second half, really the post-41, post-42 war could not have been so challenging except that they had millions of people enslaved.

to do whatever they want, including you go here, you're going to mine pink granite until you die. You know, be careful with your clogs. You won't get replacements. And that's like, I think that's why you need to watch stuff like Come and See. I think you, you really got to see what it was actually like. And isn't that kid amazing? Isn't he such a good actor? Yeah, I guess I didn't make it all the way through, but, uh.

I may return to it. Although speaking, speaking of what you just described, what was that TV show is another, what was that thing? What was that? There was a TV show. There was an adaptation of a book. There was a story very much like what you just described, but.

with an ending that is not as terrible as I imagine the ending of Come and See is going to be. Again, no spoilers. I haven't seen it. What was it called? It was like people doing slave labor. I've got a bunch of- Yeah, it was focused on a family in Poland who didn't get out. Um, I, you know, I could look, but I will just say, A, we'll probably figure out what it was, but B, it would be nice if you guys wanted to, um, mastodon us, uh, what that is. It'll occur to me later.

I got it. Here, you want to hear my Google query where it came up as the first result? Yes. Poland Nazi family TV show. Oh, Netflix. The ones who left. We were the lucky ones. That's it. Okay. No, I didn't. Was it good? It looked a little soft.

It was OK, but it had a lot of the things you just described is like, well, what if you were a family that maybe they could have afforded to get up? But the thing is, they didn't and they waited too long. And what does that look like? And you assume that it's going to be the saddest stories you've ever seen. I've heard that about.

it yeah yeah maybe that's what i'm thinking but it is incredibly sad but it is based on a true story and it ends in way in a way you would not expect okay yeah um there's i'm gonna send you this this is a new list i started in drafts uh today

Yesterday called a B plus TV shows, because I know we're supposed to say mid, but really like there's just, that feels like a B plus TV show. That's from now on. That is a good description of it. When I watch, when I watch. Something like the waterfront. And to quote Greg Davis, and you can thank me. And you can thank me for the B+. Duster. Woof.

I wanted that to be so good. I love Sawyer. It's got JJ. It's got Greg. What's his name? That's in all the JJ stuff. It's got car stuff. Guys, you know what else is going on? Let's write this second. Murderbot. I do. I've tried three times and I still, I think it's so dumb. I think it's so dumb. I watched three episodes.

Maybe miscast. And I love that guy. And I love the cast and I love the concept. I mean, what is it? It's kind of like a Guardians of the Galaxy meets Galaxy Quest. Do you think the lead role is miscast? I do. I think he's often miscast. There's a bunch of people I can think of. Do you think they kind of started with like, you know, who's an interesting actor right now who kind of looks like they should be in a Verhoeven movie?

That's kind of his vibe. Peter Skarsgård, is that his name? He's one of them, yeah. I don't know which one he is. Well, you know I have a list. That's okay. I do have a list of all the Scandinavian actors. Bill. Bill? No, Bill's his brother. Bill's, Bill's, Bill's, that's Nosferatu. Scars, Gar. Do you think this started with wanting to cast kind of a big Aryan, large featured guy?

I mean, I haven't read the source materials. For all I know, that is accurate. Billy has. Billy's read them both. Yeah. What does he think about it? He won't watch it. I'm going to see if I can send you this. You want to sully the purity of the source? I wish I could send this to you. Darn it. I said, make a list of these actors. That's Michael Nykvist, Stellan and Alexander Skarsgård, the Mickelsons, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I was like, each of these actors, where they were born.

and who they're related to. This is the kind of stuff that I kind of live for, honestly. So Alexander Skarsgård. Oh, 1976. Oh, that sees Eric Northman in True Blood. He's the son of Stellan Skarsgård, it says here on ChatGPT. And the brother, I didn't check this. I think he does a good job on the show, by the way. No, I do too. I do too. But I mean, it's weird because like the three of the things I've seen and enjoyed him in.

He's really weird in like, you know, not, not in like a, I liked him in true blood too. I don't know. It's not a vampire show. Yeah. Um, I thought he was good in succession because he really was good as doing that. Elon spectrum. kind of thing. Yeah, he was good. He was good in that. I know, I sometimes get defensive about this for absolutely zero reason. One of my favorite episodes, not the favorite, one of my favorite episodes of the documentary now is a parody of Wolfgang, or sorry, of...

What was the director I like? I said his name earlier. Of Rainier Wolf Castle. Yeah, Rainier Wolf Castle. It's Werner Herzog. Wolfgang Petersen? Pear pimples for hairy fish nuts?