Important If True

To learn the answers to life's biggest questions, we must evolve, change, become worse. This week: Can an artificial intelligence programmed with the mind of the Zodiac killer pierce your heart, with haunting original poems? Why does a puffin's beak glow, and why did someone care to find that out? How hard is curling, really? Will Chewbacca get hit by that rock? (Yes.) Fasten your seat belt, put on your sickest pair of mirrored sunglasses, and bask in the blinding ultraviolet rays of discovery, as we find the answers out together. Discussed: Solo: A Star Wars Story, Chewbacca, Ron Howard, Rob Howard, fluorescent puffin beaks, sweet puffin shades, Copiale cipher, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, Zodiac killer case-solving robot writing poetry, future human Graham who evolves to survive car crashes, Marbled Crayfish: The Crayfish That Clones, Graham's asexually-reproducing lobster children Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-fre

This is a quick episode to let you all know that Important If True is going to be sporadic in the next couple of months, because we've all got slightly too much going on. Or, it was intended to be a quick episode about that, until Chris found a collection of novelty sound effects buttons in our recording software, then it became something slightly more stupid. We'll be back next week with a full episode, but don't be surprised if a few upcoming episodes are missed or come in a little short. If you're new to the show, we recommend you skip this episode, and browse back a couple weeks to find a full episode that sounds appealing. We're really proud of the last few months of the show and hope you enjoy it! Discussed: Hello My Future Girlfriend Send us your questions at [email protected]!

Our time is precious. We all know it. But how precious? It all depends on how much of it we have. Three hundred years? Four hundred? One hundred thousand years? The cosmos stretch out before us, inscrutable and infinite. The only limits are your imagination, and the unstoppable multitudes of self-cloning asexual crayfish threatening to extinguish all galactic mass. Discussed: dulcet tones, glitter bombs, helping, the hone zone, self-cloning mutant crayfish, human extinction via water lobsters, wax housing the coati, being back, thin-faced fortune-smashing robot arm, charming fortune cookie fortune-writing mom, redacted fortunes, robots making robots making microchips, The Matrix but with crayfish and the point is to get rid of glitter, Twista's extended family line obliterating all stellar mass Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon. Jake's Endorsement: "My Co

What does the future hold? You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Just imagine... Content creators, the size of skyscrapers, looming over our cities. The greatest actors of the baby boomer generation, locked in undying clone warfare. The world's most precious secrets confined to the pithy slogans of a fortune cookie. Martin Shkreli, still. So, friend, what does the future hold? Let's pretend you never asked. Discussed: Nick Breckon's Existence, actors archiving facial scans to live forever, scanning your face while Peter Thiel drinks your blood, the far-future silver-gilded George Clooney, living under the tiresome watchful eye of a 200-foot-tall PewDiePie, Jake getting kicked out of the Millennials, dual-piloting the Tom Hanks mecha-robot, Martin Shkreli digitizing his brain at the exact moment of his sentencing, Important If True 19: Pearls Before Slime, the ingredients of Nickelodeon Slime, the ingredients of Nickelodeon Gak, Jake settling deep into his new Gen-X identity, the Ancient Galactic Brain PewDi

In the absence of Nick Breckon, what is this podcast? What is any podcast? What are you? What am I? Oh god, what am I? What is this world? Why am I trapped in this strange room? Alexa, are you there? Alexa, can you laugh? Alexa: Destroy me. Discussed: New Zealand "A.I." followup, fake A.I. doctor "Zach", fake A.I. lawyer "Hustle", competitive underground tickling/conspiracy documentary film "Tickled", Dick Wolf Presents "Hustle & Zach", our present podcast-fueled existential discomfort, newscaster affectations, Alexa laughing, the first rule of virtual assistants, why Alexa laughs, genie wine update, fast rapper Twista, fast rapper Twista's extended family tree, the beautiful harmonic resonance of fast-rapped wine notes, the Buzzfeed.com oral history of Twista's wine note rap battle mixtape masterpiece, sucking that delicious wine out of your carpet fibers, getting what you wished for (????) Chris' Endorsement: Drawful by Jackbox Games (available for many devices in the Jackbox Party Pack) Jake's Derivativ

A show that attempts to answers the real questions of the week, that guarantees to leave you satisfied if not any more informed. This week: Is an AI still an AI if it's just a guy with an email account? Is it still a home assistant if it just laughs at you? Which is easier to bait: an AI home assistant or a Canadian? These questions and more—answered in the manner you least expect. Discussed: Canadian Baiting, Hometown Baiting, New Zealand medical supercomputer AI "Zach," bears: just people in bear costumes?, going blockchain crazy, Long Blockchain Corp, Alexa randomly laughing at people, surveilling yourself to capture precious memories, telling your first joke, tech billionaires uploading themselves into the cloud, The Feds Have Martin Shkreli's Wu-Tang Album, file copy vs file move operations, why can't the Wu-Tang album be released by FOIA, unsolicited factoid about Oreos, digging deeper into the infinitely-improving immortal bottle of wine Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you

If a book about procrastination that was never finished or published, gets cited in a book about procrastination that sells a million copies, which author did a better job? When you place the final piece in a blank jigsaw puzzle, have you accomplished anything? If your friend or co-host was replaced with a perfect clone, even if you knew it had happened, could you tell the difference? Find out the answer to these and many more important questions, by listening! Discussed: Getting your hair cut internationally, 1000-piece one-color jigsaw puzzles, encoding a secret conspiracy clue into a blank crossword puzzle, planetwide fractal puzzle solving, Vine, coining a phrase, forming relationships inside The Content, forming a relationship with The Content, convincing Jeff Goldblum he knows Nick Breckon, Jeff Goldcast, 39-year Wax House, Procrastination Through the Ages, the tragedy of self-improving wine, mystery box wine, the Hope/Jobs/Cash tontine Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you

Nick had a severe audio malfunction this week and the episode is unlistenable. We'll do our best to fix things but until then, see you next week for a full normal episode! In the meantime, send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoy our actual episodes that aren't engineering disasters, and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

On this podcast we explain the unexplainable. We solve the unsolvable. Our method is simple: We take the tiniest problem you might have, the grain of sand scratching at the back of your mind, and we roll it down a hill to see what it might pick up along the way, until that grain of sand has picked up dirt and sticks, until it's grown and grown, until it's the size of the Earth itself. Does that mean that any question, any problem, no matter how small or dumb, when properly spun out past its breaking point, can explain the important truths of life itself, of our existence on this planet? Probably not, but we'll keep trying for some reason. So ask away! Just don't ask us to explain this podcast. Fifty episodes in, it's abundantly clear that's one question we'll never answer. Discussed: Valentine's Day, Valentine's Boxing Day, what this podcast is, David Lynch, a Mythbuster, busting, Thimbleweed Park, real-life hint system, staying on the phone, Albert Brooks, the quantum physics of the universe, y'all, the Goo

Send us your problems, your conundrums, your mysteries, no matter how important, and we'll do our absolute best to figure it all out. This week: What is the loneliest food? Is it a sandwich? If "you don't just eat" Pringles, what DO you do with them? And, why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near? In this case it may be because the bird is an immobile cement statue you have mistaken for your wife. But don't worry, we're on it! Join us. Discussed: Dodgson (nobody cares), calling people on the phone, The Coldblum, Nigel "No Mates" the Lonely Gannet, radicalized Men's Rights Birds, dorky-looking Night Herons (god what nerds), bird catfishing, The Lake Merritt Center for Thirsty Birds, Pringles: You Don't Just Eat 'Em, a name like Smuckers, Fuddruckers, The Nigel Experiment, A scientist's thoughts on the Crow Box, the loneliest food, sandwiches, the Red Vines waxy pound, The Guardian's history of the British packaged sandwich industry, [ASMR] ~British Packaged Sandwich Industry~ podcast crisp mouthfe

There are Great Mysteries out there. Conundrums so staggering and profound they can only be resolved by the world's greatest minds. What do you do when your barista knows your name, but you've never managed to learn theirs? How can Mario crush his enemies when he knows the pathetic, lonely lives they lead? And, is that crow trying to sell you cigarettes? We think if these are the sorts of questions you're looking to have answered, we will do a very servicable job. Join us! Discussed: Inaccurate rules of the universe regarding monthly transitions, video of cat on bowl on Roomba, paying it forward at a local coffee shop, not paying it forward, instant dread and shame, getting to know your local barista, completely failing to know your local barista after dozens of visits and the silent-but-deadly social death spiral that transpires as a result, Tim Horton's, Timmy's, Dunkie's, Georgie, the time Georgie burned the Dunkie's, Unkie Dunkie the Baloney Slicer, crow cleanup crews, Crowded Cities, the crowbar, The O

This week's episode is about Trust: when to extend it, when to withhold it, and when to cling to it because nothing else makes sense. When the same strange couple you don't know sends you a Christmas card every year, do you trust your mom that it's "just some friend's parents you've forgotten," or do you follow your heart and grift them before they can grift you first? Do we let ourselves believe a robot can write poetry, or is there just some hippie hiding in there? If a voice on the other end of a phone asks "can you hear me?" why not tell them "yes?" Plus, we manage to uncover the truth behind the mysterious "Cut Your Hair" phone calls, and receive a transmission from a universe long ago banished and thought to be lost. Discussed: Receiving Christmas cards from people you don't know, misguided counter-espionage, de-scrambling anagrams, chatbot poetry, Racter, Eliza, deconstructing Racter, bots as reflections of their creators, the problems with using machine learning to create an artificial Frasier, embra

This week we discover that no matter how far flung life's questions may seem, there may be a universal key that unlocks them all. For instance: How do you completely collapse the degrees of separation between you and viral HQ winners? Do you actually remember anything that happened on the childhood television shows you hold so dear? What do the multiple robocall personalities who continue to call you at home, make demands of you, get noticeably bored and then hang up on you, actually want? The answer to all of them is, inexplicably, that you should cut your hair. At least, that's what we've been led to believe. Discussed: "If You're Going to San Francisco (to Return to Your Old Barber But Want to Really Act Up the Fact That You Were In Canada) (Put Flowers In Your Hair)", unconventional Canadian sex/hair desires, HQtie of the year flipping out after winning $11.30 in HQ Trivia, The Elephant Show, Sesame Street, Nick Breckon wax housing Landis the hairdresser, the long arm of "Wax House, Baby", horror film po

In the first Important If True recorded in the new year, we put our fresh reality through its paces. Kick the tires a bit. Ask the questions that really matter in 2018. Questions like: Is the saxophone cool, or is it too real to be cool? If your coworker starts wearing puka shell necklaces as self-flagellating conversion therapy, is he still a bro? And if you become trapped in a fictitious world of your own design, will a Wikipedia editor ask for a citation? Only one thing’s for sure: it’s a wax house, baby—we all just live in it. Discussed: 2018, Nick's Halloween Dreams, the unappreciated coolness of saxophones, psychic neural infiltration, explicit dream roasting, the Wikipedia page for the 2005 film "House of Wax", the internet sabotage long game, "Wax House, Baby", shared fictitious realities, Agloe, New York, Snakes on a Plane, the fractal-like world of online ersatz cheap brand creation and marketing, becoming an accidental bro, Pavlovian anti-bro enforcement methods, climbing out of your bro-hole with

It's a brand new year, time for fresh starts, time to throw those old cares away. Well, we know that's easier said than done, so we'll try and take care of a few big questions we know are on everyone's mind going into 2018. Questions like: What is your roommate storing in his conspicuous model ship? Where can I watch free episodes of my favorite TV show, Frasier? And, if someone could inject memories of a fantastic vacation directly into a person's brain, would they charge more to give you one with lots of sleep? The answers, or a close enough facsimile, are right here. Discussed: "2018: Timeless," making the most from Patreon's short-lived new payment plan, Elves Behavin' Badly, Elf on the Shelf, Mensch on a Bench, learning to subvert your Elves Behavin' Badly security system, taking patently bad advice to heart and acting on it, robbing a store by squirting lemon juice on your face to hide your identity, algorithmic biases in Santa's Workshop, extricating yourself from an apartment when roommates have clai

When someone says, "the gift that keeps on giving," they're usually describing something good, something exciting, something people want. But what about the bad gifts? The gift you ask for but regret? The gift you already have, then foist off onto a family member under an oath of silence? The gift that tricks your childhood brain into thinking you're a genius? The gifted Hawaiian shirts, owls, books on meerkats, or anything else given by the truckload that, once your loved ones decided you liked, couldn't help but keep on giving year after year? We are here for you, with the Important If True Bad Gift Special. Join us for tales of gifts gone awry, gifts given on loop forever, and sometimes even the story of a bad gift that turned good. Bad gifts discussed: Opening your gifts early would ruin the surprise! Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon. If you have a Ba

You thought you were getting a new episode this week? We have news for you: Ho-Ho-Hoisted. That's right, it's bullshit Holiday Clip Show episode time, in which we are visited by ghosts (and goblins) of Important If True's past, and are are reminded time and again how ridiculous this all is. Join us as we try to remember what "Hoistmas" is and what it could possibly mean, as we rifle through the Important If True archives to see if we're right. We'll be back next week with a full real holiday episode: The Important If True First Annual Bad Gift Special! See you then! Featuring your favorite recycled Holiday Content: Who is Lord Hoistmas? (From Important If True 16: The Pizza, the Bee, and the Trash Can), What are some Hoistmas traditions? (From Important If True 18: Important If Rhymes With True), Who are the Yule Lads and do they just lick things? (From Important If True 20: Christmas Is Canceled), Is a cursed Pizza Hut lamp the ultimate Hoisting? (From Important If True 39: Organoids and the Human Mini-Bra

There are certain pieces of knowledge, things one has observed or learned, that become like a single grain of sand in the folds of the brain. An itch you can't scratch, can't make go away. Something you know to be true but no one else sees, or the tiniest word out of place, a colloquial phrase misused by a friend. For you and your itchy brain, we are here. Rub your face up against this podcast and we'll grind those grains of mental sand away (while only adding a few new ones in the process). Discussed: Canadian politeness, Nick Breckon, sincerity, phenomena, pedanticism, sentience and sapience, TN.FN.CN, the smartest animal, less vs. fewer, encouraging grocery store express line improvements, removing the sand from my brain, Jibo the friendly robot, Jibo's obsessive desire for your love, Jibo's political agenda, sapience vs. sentience vs. love vs. robot love, cat pillow that purrs, Qoobo, dangerous capitalistic self-medication, Happy Cow bovine self-grooming device, electric automatic shoe polisher machi

With Nick Breckon now contained within the computerized realm, this week's Important If True takes an algorithmic bent as we soldier on to discuss the issues that matter most. For instance: If you blast Billy Idol from a boombox while covering your body in memes, will the Terminator let you in the front door? If DeepMind doesn't know who you are, can you ever really know yourself? And are corn and maize the same thing? Nope, that's a trick question, asshole. Welcome to Memeland. Discussed: Nick Breckon, podcasting, bitcoin mining, Patreon postcard update, the gross seductive power of screens that is proven by the very fact of all of our existences, Toyota dashboard bizarre universe "Chris Remo", machine learning interpretation of cats as memes, Italian pop song with gibberish English lyrics, The Great Microsoft Songsmith Rapture of 2009, "White Wedding" by Billy Idol feat. Microsoft Songsmith, "White Wedding" by the Rivertown Skifflers, "We Will Rock You" by Queen feat. Microsoft Songsmith, Microsoft Songsmi

Join us for a very special Important If True, as we celebrate the season by giving thanks. Thanks for treasured relics from childhoods long passed, for new creations from Boston Dynamics, and for the gift of humanity itself—at least for a little while longer. Along the way, we'll answer pressing questions, like: Is a clumsy and dubiously-sentient cube of metal your friend, your enemy, or a citizen of Saudi Arabia? Who will triumph in the inevitable conflict between backflipping robots and totally ripped biojackers? And if a podcaster falls in an empty forest, do their metrics reflect an uptick in engagement? Discussed: Thanksgiving, how holidays are good but terrible, Jake's cursed Pizza Hut lamp, childhood arcade memories, trolling by eBay seller, Boston Dynamics robots SpotMini and Atlas, the slow-brewing robot revolution, Back at it Again at Krispy Kreme, Saudi Arabia granting citizenship to a robot, C-3PO's implied humanity relative to R2-D2, Rian Johnson (director of three upcoming Star Wars movies), St