Ted Audio Collective
Hello everyone you're listening to after hours. I'm Felix. I'm here and I'm young me. Hi guys. Young me mooh is back
This is the last big episode before the summer break so I thought I've got to sneak my way in here before the summer arrives
It's so good to see you guys. It's so great to see you and no mega recommendation episode would be complete without young me moon
Oh, well, thank you for saying that how you guys been have you been doing well? Yeah, really well. So excited for the summer
Oh even just thinking about this episode all the things I could do
I need an eight months summer
I have to ask you since it's been so long since I've seen the two of you
What is the biggest way in which you've changed since we've last done the podcast together?
You mean other than I shaved for the special occasion
You do look good there have been some radical things. I know just buckle up. I went from 1285
Actually like an 1176. Oh my god. That is really radical 12 was the hours between eating that's gone down to 11
Yeah, it's bad and then number hours of sleep is more like seven, but the miles are six wait that's walking right?
Yeah, so how long does it take you to walk six miles? It's right around two hours. It's 20 minutes a mile
But you multitask right? Yeah, exactly exactly. You're doing a bunch of stuff. Yeah, so it's great
Wow, anyway, I think I'm gonna converge on like 999 at some point who knows
Well, you look fantastic. So clearly it's working and honestly eight hours was always too much sleep
Me here
No, it's just too unrealistic I think so what about you Felix as both of you know
I'm new to gardening yes, and in the beginning it was so much fun so much joy
But also I was so anxious about every little plant
And now I've come to realize you know things live things
Time something time something else will grow. Wow
More joyful without the anxiety. That's great. That is probably a healthier way to approach it
Yes, because it's a little bit more relaxed
And sort of it more of a lifestyle is opposed to a second child. I had no idea there was so much wisdom and gardening
That's fantastic. I tell you half the internet is just a device and gardening
And young me what about you? Well, you missed the month where I went dry completely
Successfully by the way, which was amazing good for you. I'm sort of glad I missed that yes. It's good you missed it
I was cranky at first
And then more broadly the biggest lifestyle change is I told you one of my kids has gone vegan
I had not gone vegan, but my meat consumption has pretty radically declined and as a result
I'm even more into really flavorful spicy foods
Because when you're eating a lot of plants you want them to be very very flavorful
Yeah, and I have something for both of you which is since feel expansion to does a trend and young me
You like this my youngest daughter has just gone all in on Korean food. She's gone bonkers
Every opportunity she gets she's all over it. It's been wonderful
But fantastic for you guys too because
Fantastic
It's really a Korean moment. No, it is exactly you called it
I'm a little food and movies and books and everything. Yeah, it's penetrating the 12 year old market as well
I can just assure you of that. Although I think black bink had something to do with it too
And BTS but you know growing up is at Korean American
You always felt a little bit of an inferiority complex relative to other Asian cultures
And to have this moment right now is like finally people are paying attention
Surely quite satisfied good. So I brought in a lot of recommendations guys. So they we so yeah, who I think we better get started
Okay, all right
So me here what did you bring God so much? How about should we start with watching stuff?
Because I'm kind of excited about watching some stuff. Yes, finally. I saw tar the movie. Oh
I see in this. I have oh my god
It is so crazy. That's a good word. I watched it again
And I'm still confused about it. I don't even know how I feel about it
I'm not recommending it as like the greatest movie ever got here that yeah
But it is so thought provoking. I know it stirred a lot of controversy. I
Was uncomfortable the entire time I watched it. Yeah, I don't know that I enjoyed it
I agree with everything you said though. It is thought provoking. It's disturbing
But I don't know that I would recommend it because I was so uncomfortable watching it Felix
I'm looking at your face. Oh, I really disliked it. Oh really? I thought there was a bunch of clichés
It was boring. It should have been
Now we're shorter than it was. Wow. I could not find into that movie. I was so puzzled by it. Interesting
I feel like I should mount a defense although the good news is if you're a listener you can actually make your own decision
Having heard these opposing news, but first off Cape Lenschette is
stunningly good. I love everything she's in and I thought she acted amazingly
I also just thought as a movie about art and about creativity and about
Hero worship
I don't know. I just thought it was beautiful. And here's my slightly less controversial watching suggestion
Which is Teran which is on Apple TV
So good the massage is operating inside Teran and it's crazy
And the second season had Glenn close and the third season which is going to come out is going to have Hugh Laurie
And it's all shot in Athens because they didn't actually shoot in Teran. Yeah, are these long seasons? No, they're like eight episodes each
I love that yeah, six to eight is perfect six to eight and takes place in a
Really interesting scenario. I don't know just a lovely so tar and Teran are my two things to watch for the summer
Since I haven't been on the podcast. I went through a whole bunch of things. I've watched
I'm sure you've mentioned some of these. Yeah, so I thought about succession and Barry
There's a show called jury duty, which is how
I thought about all of these shows
By the way, did you notice how I snuck all of those things?
Are you really done? Instead I have two recommendations that are both somewhat different the first is a somewhat
quieter show
It's called somebody somewhere and it's on HBO. That was one of my recommendations
Oh, so let's talk about it together
So I'll describe it and then Felix you jump in. Yeah, please so it stars Bridget Everett who is
spectacular what a force
As someone who has to return
To her hometown in Kansas to take care of her sister and then tries to build a life in this hometown she grew up in after her sister passes away
and
It's a show about so many things that could come across
Much more aggressively and much more harshly. It's a show about dislocation
It's a show about the clash between progressive and conservative culture
But instead of it feeling harsh and angry
It is so warm and it is filled with so much humanity
It's subversive but in the most gentle way. I find the show to be so soothing
This was the perfect description
In a way it could have turned demoralizing so easily. Yes, the main character is stuck geographically is stuck
career-wise is stuck not really knowing what to do with life and how to achieve some modest amount of happiness
And when you think about all of these things and oh my god, this is gonna be horrible to watch
And I think so much of it is due to Bridget Everett's acting. She's spectacular. She's so good so human
And very often the camera is on her
She doesn't speak at all and you just see an entire story
How her mood changes how she
Swings from one emotion to the next and all without dialogue. Yeah, it's fantastic
And then it's a major Jeff Hiller who is the other person who also somehow doesn't really fit in
But he's much better at dealing with it. Yes, they went to high school together
But she doesn't remember him and then his first response is yeah, of course no one ever remembers me
They take out the earball in fact. They find him they were in the same year
But he is so joyful. Oh so
upbeat
Yeah, and then also fragile at one at the same time that you really fear for him and his happiness. Yeah, it's brilliant
It's really fantastic. Wow. Are we selling it me here? You're selling it really well
Wow so happy to see that it got renewed for a third season me here. You have to check it out
I hadn't even heard of it and then I have something very different
It's a documentary called ascension on Paramount Plus. Have you guys heard of this?
It's this incredible documentary by Jessica Kingdom
There's no narration. There's no narrative
It's just a series of video vignettes with natural sound from different slices of life in China
So you see everything from
Chinese social influencers
You look inside factories and vacation spots and restaurants
It is such a sweeping look at the breadth of the Chinese economy. I found it to be utterly
Hypnotic. So is there a narration? None nothing. Okay. It's just video after video
Yet it's absorbing and it provides such a
Contrast to more reductive characterizations of China. I found it to be so rich and so textured
It takes you into a class where
Women are trying to learn business etiquette
Mm-hmm. So they can engage in business with Westerners
It takes you into a factory where they're creating the most realistic sex dolls. You can even imagine
It takes you behind the scenes of Chinese social influencers
While they are pushing product at an astronomical rate. I mean, it's just one vignette after another
You should check it out. It's called ascension by Jessica Kingdom. That sounds great. Really wonderful
Felix, what do you have?
In addition to somebody somewhere I have an episode of the Ezra Klein podcast which I find generally just really amazing
The guests he has the way he interacts with guests. It's really quite remarkable
But one of my favorite episodes is one with Farid Sakharia
And they talk geopolitics as you might imagine and the first part of the episode is about Ukraine and Russia
And it's maybe sort of what you would expect. It's not that remarkable
But then almost the entire second half of the show is about China
And they disagree on everything
But they disagree in the smartest most respectful way you can possibly imagine
I have not heard a conversation about China as smart as that conversation
So how they talk a little bit about Huawei and you know one argument is well
This is just putting China down because Huawei didn't do anything wrong
And then there's a very smart counter or they talk about the chips war and they come out looking at the issue in completely different ways
And what's so fascinating about the conversation is you find yourself nodding for 30 minutes
You agree with the first set of arguments
You agree with the second set of arguments just because it's smart. It's so different from
Wow 99% of what we hear about China at this moment in time. Yeah, he is very good
I agree with you that he's a very good podcast host. Yeah. All right. So young me. What do you have should we do books next?
Yeah, please this is so hard because
But so many good books
So I boiled it down to four and then I boiled it down to three
And I'll do them very very quickly
So the first one I decided to talk about was a book called trust
By Han and Diaz that was gonna be one of mine. Oh my god
You go and then I'll join in. Okay, so just one the Pulitzer
It's a book that reads like a literary puzzle and by that I mean it has four parts
Each part is very different and because I had read very little about the book when I picked it up
It actually took me a while to figure out what the four parts had to do with each other right and as you start to figure it out
It all starts to make sense
The book takes place in the 1920s and 30s so the roaring 20s the great depression
And if you ask me what it's about it's about money. It's about status. It's about gender. It's about
Class the title is a bit of a play on words. It's called
Trust so that refers to trust is the financial instrument a trust right but also trust in betrayal like who can you trust?
How much can you even trust what you're reading?
Can you even trust?
The author of this thing that you're reading right now
It plays mind games with you as you're reading it
It's not only very clever in its construction. It's so absorbing. I think you're exactly right and I would just have one thing about it
Which is it's just really hard to write great fiction about business and finance and this is great great fiction
About all the things you said, but it's centered on these issues of money
Yes, part of the reason I was drawn to it and I wanted to recommend it is for folks who are interested in thinking about
Business and society, but also how it gets portrayed. Yeah, I can't think of a better effort to really fictionalize what capitalism is about and the role of money in our lives
It's just fantastic and the stories we tell ourselves about money and how we end up
Creating these icons in our mind and these great figures of business and how that happens and
How much truth there is to that and how much of that is fiction? Yeah, really stays with you exactly
That was my first my second is a book called evicted
by Matthew Desmond his
Sociologist this book to one that Pulitzer
It's in ethnography of these eight families in Milwaukee as a try to prevent from being evicted
And it's an astonishing book as a work of sociology. Yeah amazing
And you will never think about home ownership or having a roof ever your head in the same way again after you read this book because
It takes you through the cycle of eviction and unemployment and then having your children fall behind in their schooling and how all of these things are connected
And so many of the absurd contradictions within our housing and rental markets and how that can cascade
Yeah, to every aspect of our lives
It was so compelling. Yeah, and then the last one is a book called impossible owls by Brian Phillips
This is some of the best essay writing. I've read in such a long time. I fell in love with this guy
It's quirky. It's strange. It's eclectic. It's absolutely wonderful
It's one of those books where every essay you're just savoring every sentence every paragraph
Loved it impossible owls Brian Phillips. Wow. I love essays essays are such a great form
And it's hard to find people who do it well. That's how it's like a snack like right before a bed
Right. Yeah, it's self-contained. It's so perfect. Yeah fantastic. So Felix, what do you have?
Yeah, the first one that I wanted to recommend is by Greg Golding and Sam Lubell
Never build New York and it's a book about architectural plans
By famous architects by architects you have never heard of that wanted to build particular projects in New York
And it takes you through the stories why these things in the end were and built. So it's a confluence sometimes tastes sometimes local opposition
Sometimes you wanted to build a really big office tower and then guess what the market for offices was relatively weak
And so they scrapped it and it does two things really beautifully the first is I like to look at architectural drawings
And I like to look at models that they build
It's beautiful. It's as much looking as reading but also
You think the built environment is sort of what it is yeah, and you walk away with a sense that oh my god
The city could have looked so different right it could have done very different things
Over the course of the 20th century there were so many ideas around more communal forms of living
That came very close to being implemented and then the mayor changes or there is a crisis or the architectural firm gets into trouble
And you walk away with a sense of the fluidity of the urban landscape and how close we came to creating a city
That would have felt quite different than many dimensions. So I really loved that book. That sounds great
They did one for LA first. I have never looked at the one for LA, but I'm guessing that's equally interesting
But Felix are these like coffee table books?
Yes, it's sort of coffee table plus because it takes you into the stories
What exactly happened? Who was in favor? Who was against? Yeah, so it gives you the stories why things were not built
I love it the second recommendation that I have is the Atlantic magazine
There's something which I find actually quite interesting. They pick old articles that they send out by email
That in their view at least stood the test of time
I'm contribute to something that we're thinking about at this moment
And so it was literally the same day that I picked up a book about
Family and family forms and then I saw in my email this much shorter article by David Brooks
titled The Nuclear Family was a mistake
And Brooks talked about the history of the nuclear family and in particular about all the things that are
Correlated with current issues
One devastating statistic that I had no idea of 15% of kids before they're 20
They have multiple changes in parents because of divorce because of
People finding new partners
And it was sort of an interesting coincidence because I had just started reading this book by Kristen Gotsey
Called everyday utopia in praise of radical alternatives to the traditional family home
And there you get an even bigger sense that the nuclear family the way we celebrate it
It's such a historical aberration. Yeah, basically it hasn't existed in US history
But it exists nowhere else totally other than in western countries for really historically speaking just a little while
Yeah, there was this blip in the 50s and 60s when it seemed to work and then I think we have now seen all these pretty dramatic downsides to
Living isolated living in small groups as opposed to the more communal living and she makes the good point that
We still have it in parts
So when you go to college well that's basically very communal and often until you can afford your own apartment
You have roommates and then when you're old a typical form is much more communal living
But at the time when people have say young kids and really urgently need all the help they can possibly get
That's exactly the time when we sort of engineer the form of loneliness
That is great. I love this because as my children get further into adulthood
I'm constantly looking for excuses to move in with them
This is the perfect excuse and particularly if they ever have kids
You want to keep that extended family together and yeah
All the relatives and cousins and everybody under the same roof
Yeah, and also thinking beyond kinship so for instance
Platonic parenting yeah, where the two people get together to raise a child and it's not related to a romantic love for
kinship at all so I have not really thought about just how
Uncommon it is what I have taken for granted for a long time right
I love when these things that you just completely take for granted as being the norm
Yeah, all of a sudden you realize no, it's not and historically especially if you look as you point out
It's a complete aberration. Yeah, both those things sound fantastic
Me here. Did you have another book in addition to the trust?
My other recommendation is a nonfiction piece called an immense world by Ed Yong
He has written this book which is all about sensory perception
But it's largely about animals and how they perceive the world
Hmm in particular animals have various ways to perceive the world that we don't have
So think about about who uses sonar
He goes through this
Litany of the ways in which animals experience the environment and in that process
He makes you understand that what you experience in the world is just some small fraction of what there is to be experienced
Yeah, yeah, and even this kind of sense of five senses which we've lived with for two to three thousand years
It's just not true
Many more senses there are senses that are kind of mixes of other different kinds of senses
And then these animals have different other kinds of senses
So in this process of opening up the animal world which is kind of fantastic
Just in its own very to appreciate animals and what they are able to experience that we're not
He makes you appreciate
The natural world all the more because you come to realize you're getting some tiny little
Slipper yeah of what is actually going on in the world. I love that the other nice thing about it is he writes in a way that I find quite inspiring
Actually, he takes the reader along and you know
He's explaining very complex stuff sometimes
But you feel like he's your companion
He's kind of holding your hand through some pretty complex material
And he does it in this really skillful way because that can become so trite and so old
And he's just always uncovering mysteries and he's like I know what you're thinking about and you're thinking it's confusing
Let me tell you why it's it's okay. It was just fantastic
So in immense world by Ed Young is a great nonfiction read for the summer. Let's take a break
I mean I haven't done this in a long time. I need a break
Felix another recommendation. What do you have? Oh, I'm moving on to
culinary issues
Okay, so one of the great joys for me even just when I think about summer
I love any anis based drink. Yes, pasties in France
Uzu in Greece rocket in turkey sitting outside the summer experience you relax
I love that moment when the drink goes from clear to cloudy when you add water in uzo. Yeah
If you have a chance this summer to me, it's the perfect summer drink. Oh
I like it's also a great after dinner thing exactly a nice digestive for those who don't drink alcohol
Just any seeds are used in India as an after dinner kind of mint
And they are also fantastic. Anis is just a great flavor profile. Yeah, love it
What do you have for us young me? I have become obsessed with Patagonia's tin fish
One of you guys me here was I
Yes, yes, so can I re recommend that because please do first of all I do think that the number of varieties has increased
They've really expanded their portfolio of tin fish
They have different flavored anchovies and mackerel and salmon and mussels
And you can do so many things with them. Yeah, Sandwiches salads appetizers
I recommend eating them with something pickled. It could be pickled onions or pickled cucumbers
And some lemon something acidic. What else can you eat out of a can and yet more classy
You're living large. Yeah, you are living large the other part that I really love about this story is when we teach corporate strategy
We often talk about how a capability that you have inside your organization might lend itself to very different businesses that don't look that related at first glance
And we don't really have a ton of fabulous examples
But I've always loved the fact how you went from fleece to tin fish and essentially built on a very particular capability having to do with quality control in your supply chain
Where it turns out the kinds of things that matter for the production of their core products
Yeah, are exactly the kinds of things that you would pay a lot of attention to if you were to serve food
And so also the little corporate northern meat just things like oh my god
This is a wonderful more ingenious and fun example
Me here what food thing are you obsessed with lately?
Well, I'm gonna be a little bit on Felix's line, which is a drink
Okay, I think I've recommended drinks before like chandies and dirty martinis and I think this summer
I'm gonna go a little more lower brow, but it's just a great drink and a particular version that I've had at momofuku
Which is this great chain in New York
It is spicy margaritas. Oh, I love those spicy margaritas and they're really amped up
So the one you get at momofuku hits you nice and hard
Man on a hot day
Having a spicy
With full pieces of jalapeno
They use a fair amount of very concentrated peppers and slice them up like five chili peppers in each drink
Man that will just wake you up and then the flavor profile is amazing. So
Spicy margaritas. There is nothing that gets your appetite going if you sit down at a table
And you drink something that has that sweet sour spicy to it with all that acid
Your appetite is ready to go. I mean it. It's really nice. I agree with you. That's a good one
Yeah, that's so nobody actually well you came close this young me to actually providing a food recommendation
Feel us in on
More drinks. I do have a food recommendation that's current during the middle of rhubarb season
So I don't know if the two of you love rhubarb but rhubarb pies
I like the dessert version of rhubarb, but it's just amazing. Yeah, really good. So if you have a chance
Tarts pies rhubarb seasons upon us. That's great. So I don't know how to eat rhubarb
I would need some suggestions on what to do with rhubarb very common is rhubarb tarts
People often make jam out of rhubarb also and you will like this when I grew up we ate rhubarb on toasted bread with whipped cream
Toast rhubarb
Whipped cream lots of sugar. Oh my god. I mean, that is great. Okay, so I'll put on my list
I'll try rhubarb this summer perfect
Okay, I have another recommendation of something to do this summer
I think this is a sign that I'm getting old because I remember when I was young
And I would be in a park or something in I would look at birdwatchers. I would just think oh my god
How boring
Incredibly boring thing to do how lame right now I'll walk through a park and I'll stop my ass
I was like wait is that a black cap chickadee
So birdwatching is something that I'm beginning to dabble with and
In my particular case a little bit of technology has really pushed me along
I got a bird feeder called the bird buddy
And it's incredible. It's a bird buddy that you put in your backyard and it connects to your Wi-Fi
and it's got a really good camera in it
And whenever a bird comes in lands and eats it begins to take video and photos
And it uses artificial intelligence to identify the type of bird it is
Oh my god. Okay. And you get a little ping and alert on your phone
And you open up your phone and you've got this bird looking right at you
Eating your bird seed and it's identified what the bird is and the first time it happens
It's thrilling
It's like collecting Pokemon you're collecting all the different birds that have come to your bird feeder
And then the cool thing is is you can follow other people who have bird buddies around the world
They're people in Australia and people in Asia they have these bird buddies
Oh, that's nice. Yeah. And you can see the different types of birds that are
Landing on their bird feeders and you can build your collection that way
That's amazing. And sometimes you can see a little drama
I had this chickadee that was eating some bird seed and then another one landed right next to it
And then the first one kind of fought it off a little bit
And so there was a little bit of a tussle. It's it's that's great. Very dramatic
So that's my recommendation part of why I love the story young me is
You know how in many ways and maybe this is when you're young you feel sort of
You're different your special
You can't really imagine doing things that many other and in particular older people do
And then there's this perfectly predictable trajectories
So cliche I know I started doing a cliche
Not really paying attention to nature and I had to laugh because I wanted to recommend planet net app
Which is a plant recognition app which turns out to be a much more difficult AI problem than animals
In part because you can't see the whole plant very often and many leaves look quite similar
If you use say Google image recognition or any one of these services
They're mostly getting it wrong
What's really nice about planet net app is exactly this communal aspect that you describe for the birds
People take pictures of their plants and people compare it and there's endless conversations
Is it a weed is it not a weed is it a real plant could it survive maybe it's an animal who knows
So I think our trajectories
Me here you have to hold down the cool factor because Felix and I have gone full blown
We're just aging by the day
Well, I appreciate both of your recommendations and I have to say young me I've fallen for the bird thing a little bit too
There's been like these owls that have been tracking in the city and it's just been really fun to be a part of that and watch some of that
But if you are out walking around and doing some of these things my recommendation is for you which is
This is a little bit of a recommendation and a mech culpa. So the recommendation is
I went to buy new sneakers and I went to a store called fleet feet and they did a scan of my foot
So first off these foot scans are fantastic and then second
I realized I was wearing the wrong size shoe
I was like a full size off
And so my recommendation is first take care of your feet and go get a foot scan and like think about whether you're wearing
Young knee you might remember the last time we were together. I was down on chunky sneakers
You were yes, and I just mech culpa. I was wrong
I told you I bought a pair of these new balance moors which are a foam sneaker
It's even bigger than some of the hokas. Well, they're more they're more indeed and let me tell you
Fantastic, I was just wrong wrong wrong. You feel superhuman in them. You feel fantastic
So just take care of your feet consider like buying a bigger shoe and think about the chunky sneakers
Which I just in an earlier podcast. I'm totally reversing myself
If this was network TV
We will now have five ads on some medications that helps you exactly maintain memory
If you fall down and you need to get up
My god, okay, I have another recommendation for things to do
In the past year, I've spent a lot of time in Asia one of my favorite things
When I'm in career or Japan or Singapore or wherever is to visit the night markets
I had always sort of assumed it was one of those things that I can only do when I travel but
Someone called me in recently that in New York City
In the summer there are never places where you can go and they have these night markets
And I have never been and I'm gonna try them out. So apparently Brooklyn has a night market
Queens has one Harlem apparently Manhattan Central Park in the summer. There's a new vegan night market
That they are gonna be doing this summer. So I would absolutely recommend that people check these things out
Because the more people go the more likely they are disassaying themselves and do them on a regular basis
But it is one of the things I'm looking forward to doing this summer. I too associated them with Asia
Yeah, I mean chasing owls and identifying plants
What other recommendations you have so I wanted to recommend a product actually okay
You guys use laundry strips
Strips is essentially a sheet of paper
That replaces the laundry detergent that you would normally use and it's amazing
Oh, I have to say the cleanliness of clothes is probably the same as your general laundry detergent
But it does away with so many problems. So for instance, there's no plastic
You don't lug around these unique juxtaposed laundry detergent
If you compare it to pots yeah laundry pots in our popular
They have the problem that often microplastics don't completely dissolve in the water. It's just
Such a brilliant idea so much better for the environment without
Any loss in the quality of the laundry. If you look so I'm just looking at it online
It doesn't look like any the larger detergent companies have caught on. I don't actually know
It's a great question to ask
I've never really looked and where's our larger companies are making them they look
Yes, where you look at it and you go why did it take so long right to figure out that you could do laundry that way
I am familiar with the tablets and it is a completely dissolve away or what comes out really dissolves away
Okay, it's a little bit what you use in the tumbler remember we have these tumbler sheets
But they're a little more rigid nice Felix that's a great recommendation and you said you had to oh
Yes, I have
I don't know if you guys ever look at recipes online. I often do like when you know
I have a particular set of ingredients in the fridge and I think oh well, could I make with this while let the internet help me
And I have to say looking at recipes online is always
mildly irritating in part because these web pages are so long yeah, there's a long introduction
Then there's the 15 steps to boiling water and then
Like half an hour later you find the list of ingredients
Yeah, and then much much later basically the steps how you make it so
copy me that is
Amazing so you open the app. There's a built-in browser as if you were to search the web you see some web page
And then if the recipe looks good you click copy me that and then all it attracts is a picture
The list of ingredients and the steps how to make it everything else gets stripped out
And you can add it to your collection of recipes. Oh, I've never had an experience
Where it
Extracted something that I didn't want that wasn't part of the recipe or where it imported a paragraph that was not necessary
It's really good at recognizing the structure of recipes and then just distilling the essentials
So copy me that is really amazing. That's fantastic. Oh, that is so good
So there's this lovely website called reasons to be cheerful that has been pioneered by David burn
Oh really at least I know Felix you really like and I love and this website is just fantastic
So it's exactly what you would think it is which is reasons to be cheerful and it has stories that are really
Truly inspiring. I'm just gonna read you a couple of the headlines that are up right now because it'll give you a flavor for what it is
Woodworking and hugs inside the mental health movement for men
Nerf guns and Einstein roleplay how australia is amping up science education
The Portland art of feel good densification
Japan's newest vending machines are stocked for disaster relief
It's just filled with weird little ideas that are making the world a little bit better
And I have to say I think I once have recommended caughtkey.org
This is even better just a website filled with these wonderful little ideas and it's kind of got that David burn imprint on it too
Which I'm all for but just a lovely website with tons of interesting content
Mm-hmm. It's refreshes pretty frequently and it's always written really thoughtfully and stuff you haven't heard of
At least I haven't heard of and it sounds like the topics can be quite serious
So it's not only progress on something funny or something that made you smile. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah
Wonderful. What an antidote to all the other news
Indeed, okay, I have one more that you're not allowed to make fun of me. I mean, we're totally gonna make fun of her field
No, it's an app for people who spent a lot of time thinking about UFOs
The app is called enigma as you know
There have been hundreds of thousands of so-called sightings of UFOs
And some of them have even been recorded by video or by fighter jets
some murky
Video where you see a little dot flying in the sky
Wouldn't it be amazing if there was an app that had all of that stuff against a map of the world?
So you could see we're spotted and when it was spotted with all the dates and
Who spotted it and whether it was verified or not?
All the data associated with any sighting along with how
credible the sighting was and all of that and
Then combine it with the ability to upload anything you capture on your own smartphone
And you can say I was in my backyard and I saw this thing and I pulled my phone out and here it is
And it looked like this and this is how it behaved and this is what I captured
This is the app that does that and it was just released and it's called enigma apps
And when you open it up you get a globe and you can see
All the sightings from your area and what date they happen you can look at historical
sightings
I started playing with this app and I got completely lost in the app and what's cool about it is that
This is like an early early beta version of the app
They're working with the military for example to upload all of their sight
You know the military is released a whole bunch of information about this
And so me here I could see you smiling over there. So am I crazy?
This kind of interesting no
So do you believe in UFOs?
Well, UFO is simply an unidentified flying object so
Well, yes, so
I'm open minded
I have a whole of this stuff
I am too open minded
With everything else I'm super curious
Here's what's really interesting because I've been thinking a lot about this
The military industrial complex as it were
For decades has tried to convince us that UFOs didn't exist
And any kind of speculation about it was absolute nonsense
And I think what's really interesting is it feels like in the last 12 months
The stance on that has changed
Either they have decided that they want Americans to believe there's something there
Or they actually believe there's something there
I'm not sure which is true
But it's incredible how much they're releasing and how openly they're talking about it
And it's almost like they want to get it on our radar
They want us talking about it
And I'm not sure why that is
Yeah, what's changed
If they want to distract us from everything else they're doing
Or whether or not they truly believe it
I have no idea
You know, I didn't put this first on my list of things to talk about in this podcast
But it's a nice one to put at the end
Yeah, very nice
So that last day of summer
You ran out of all ideas
What to do, what to look at
It's like in an act of desperation
Yes
You might fire up Enigma
Exactly
Enigma
But I think it's totally reasonable young meat
I guess the way I feel about this is
I think almost all supposed sightings are not
But you can still be very much open to the possibility
That's how I feel about it
Yeah
For example, I look at some of this stuff on this app
And I think, oh come on
That's a rather ballooner
Oh, please
And almost all the stuff
But does that mean I'm not still curious
It's a distraction
And it's fun
That's a good summer distraction
Exactly
Yeah
So that was fun guys
Yeah, so good to have you
Thanks for having me back
Yes
One final recommendation
I think young me should come back
More often
Well, are you guys going to start up again in the fall?
I imagine
Yes
So this is our very last episode of this season
And we'll be back sometime in September
But at this time it'll be a little quiet
Around after hours
And we can't end this season without thinking
The man who makes it all happen
Peter Linne
Our wonderful sound engineer
Thank you Peter
We're really just grateful to him of course
But also to all of the folks who listen to the podcast
Who make this so much fun for all of us
Thanks everyone
Have a great summer
This was it for tonight
You were listening to after hours
From the TED Audio Collective
