[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But actually it doesn't really hold water because you know, if you lost a shoe, you're not going to replace the floorboards before checking whether there's a shoe underneath it, right? And so nowadays the generally expected


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sounding awful in all of this, but no, it all just went way over my head. I wasn't that, you know, into it at all. And you know, and my father was kind of an old school kind of person in that, you know, he'd do his work at work and then he'd come home and he'd, you know, dig the garden and do all those other things that he liked doing. And so actually he didn't bring his work home that much with him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I was sort of early teens, I wanted to join the Navy. I wanted to be a submariner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For again, reasons for which now escape me entirely.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I really wanted to be a submariner and it turned out they wouldn't have me because, so I wanted to be an officer in a submarine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Captain, I'll certainly be a captain of a submarine. Turns out, bizarrely...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All officers in submarines are watchkeeping officers, and at the time there was a requirement that to be a watchkeeping officer in a Navy ship, you needed to have 2020 uncorrected vision.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which I didn't have. Which is bizarre in a submarine, right? Which spends most of its time not able to see anything at all, but it just was the rule. And so that kind of career path was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The armaments. A watchkeeping officer is one of the ones who kind of takes control of the ship and so actually has to kind of, you know, be able to see what's coming the other way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, I never actually applied. I was a, so I was a Navy cadet when I was at school. Uhm, so we had the, the, the cadets at school and so I was in the, the Navy section of the cadets, mainly cause I liked sailing. And we did a few things, we, you know, we went sea training and we, we


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Got to go around a few nuclear submarines and things, so I got quite interested in it then. And I did, I must have pursued it as far as finding out that they wouldn't have me, but that was as far as I went with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I kind of enjoy, I mean, why was it at Submarine's appeal? I think it's just because it's this very sort of self-contained society. And I think that just really appealed to me, this idea that you've got this kind of microcosm of a society, uhm, without all the complications and confusion of the big bad world most of the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was okay across the board. I went to a really bad primary school, like an awful primary school, which I won't name because I don't want to get sued. Uhm, and actually to be fair, I did actually just out of it, out of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I managed just about to scrape my way into a pretty good secondary school and I kind of started kind of low down in that secondary school just because of this sort of start in life. And I kind of clawed things back a bit, but by the time I got to 16, so then there were these things called O Levels that you did when you were 16. I did pretty well across the board by that point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you know, I could go the humanities route or the sciences route. The humanities route, I'd end up having to write lots of essays. The sciences route, I'd end up doing lots of maths. But the thing that had changed in between primary school and secondary school is the pocket calculator had come along.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So actually my inability to multiply two numbers together was no longer really that much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was more that, I mean, it was somewhere in between the two, right? My handwriting at its best is hard to read and it's a real pain to write. And so actually I just couldn't face the idea of, of sort of spending the next several years basically spending all my time trying to write stuff, which I found painful to do anyway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I really did actually, I enjoyed, so yeaah, which subjects did I particularly enjoy? I guess on English I really enjoyed, I enjoyed creative writing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so I really enjoyed English. I didn't enjoy history, so I gave up history at the earlier stage I could, which is probably again just, you know, reacting against family type stuff. But yeaah, you know, English I really enjoyed, languages I enjoyed, and I enjoyed the maths and physics side as well. So the two subjects I did badly in, at O level, were chemistry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was sort of a frustrating subject. So chemistry was one I did badly in. The other one I did badly in was English literature. And that probably was partly the handwriting thing, but also partly because, so I'd done quite well in most of the, we had lots of kind of assessed elements, but there was an exam as well. The exam was mostly on Romeo and Juliet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably didn't that much. I was sort of following my nose. I was quite into computers as well at that point, so I guess I was, you know, on computers this was, you know, so now we're talking about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My dad, my dad did actually buy, you know, one of these mail order, very cheap telescopes at some point, because I remember us being out in the back garden, you know, looking at Saturn and seeing the rings of Saturn in a back garden in the middle of London at that point. But I really didn't have that much to do with astronomy at that point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My parents and I decided quite early on that our idea of what constituted a holiday was different in that they liked going around ancient monuments and things. And you know, when I was a kid, I didn't really. So we sort of parted company on holidays and they go off and visit ancient Rome. And I go to on one of these kids unaccompanied holidays.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep, so uhm, and you know, it was a kind of fairly pushy school, and so they wanted people to be applying to Oxford and Cambridge, so I duly applied to Oxford. Again, I was sort of following my nose, I wasn't really, didn't have a particularly huge career ambition in mind. My sister had actually been to Oxford.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You put down the place you actually, so Oxford has a system of colleges and so you say which college you wanted to go to, but also you put down kind of the second, third and fourth choices. And the first choice I put down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was a college called St Catherine's, which I picked just because it doesn't look like an Oxford college. It's this, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Interviewed as well, uh, one of which was a college called Lady Margaret Hall and I'd only applied there at all. You know, I was filling out this list of places and I didn't know that much about Oxford colleges. So I asked my sister and she said, Oh, apply to Lady Margaret Hall because there's lots of women there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I put Lady Parker Hall down and for whatever reason, you know, I clearly that on that occasion said the right things at the interview. So I got offered a place there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeah, no, you applied for a particular subject. So I had actually at that point, you know, so the, the A levels I was taking were pure maths, applied maths, physics and computer science. And I really was quite enjoying the physics. I enjoyed the maths a lot too. And it was a little bit of a toss up between applying to do maths and applying to do physics. And in the end I applied to do physics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the maths, I think it was probably because I liked the application of it. The fact that it is something where, you know, you can solve a problem and then it actually has some real world implications and you can sort of weigh what you find against what you find in the real world to see whether you were right or not. Whereas maths has that rather more kind of abstract flavour to it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the academic side of things, it was a big change. I mean, the, you know, the, the change in teaching style is enormous and it's something we still face with students today, right? That actually this, you know, you go from a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A rather well-nurtured environment in school where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can kind of force myself to do it and then everything's fine. It's like now, you know, these days I'm...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not, not for the first couple of years. So the, the degree program then had very few choices in it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were just two things we hadn't done at all before, which were geophysics and astronomy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, this is weird because this kind of goes back to my father again, right? I actually found that I liked the archaeological aspect of it. The fact that you don't have complete control over things. You have to take what you're given and try and figure out what's going on. You're picking over the ruins. You are, and you're trying to reconstruct on the basis of this sort of fragmentary information that you get what it all means.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so it really is in that sense very like archaeology. It's, it's, you know, it's taking those fragmentary bits and pieces and trying to put it together into a coherent story that explains things and then say, okay, if I'm right, then I also ought to see this. And so then you can go and do that experiment. So I really like that kind of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So then I, so getting to the end of the degree and it's basically, well, what am I going to do next? I did actually apply and got offered a job. Uh, I applied to ICI, big chemical company.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I hate that stuff. Anyway, so we went through all that and they did offer me a job. You obviously were good with the shellfish. I clearly didn't completely embarrass myself with the shellfish and dealt with all the other bits and pieces that they threw at us. It was, it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I realised that, you know, I could go on and actually study for a PhD and I didn't have to do it in the UK. And at the time that was pretty unusual, right? Most people didn't travel overseas to do, you know, to, to, for education. And, you know, between undergraduate and postgraduate studies. But I did sort of hit on this idea that it would be great to go to the US.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I must have had quite a lot of commitment to it because it's quite hard work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because the world really wasn't set up for, you know, British people going to the US to do PhDs. I mean, some people did it, but it wasn't an easy thing to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you had to apply to all these places and fill in all these forms and do, you know, put in all these applications. And I applied to about four places in the US and got off of places. So I, you know, in the end decided, well, you know, and I still had this job offer from ICI. So I was thinking, weighing these two things up against each other. In the end, I decided I just wanted to have a bit of fun for a few years and see a bit of the world and study a bit more astronomy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the US, the US system's a bit different from the UK system. US undergraduates do a broader education.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the other, the bit that I missed out of the story is that between being an undergraduate and starting my PhD, I was actually ill for a year. Um, so I'd actually kind of been out of the system for a year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In that I was, I was basically nauseous for a year. I just felt completely sick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To a greater or lesser extent, you know, there are some times where a year goes by and I feel fine and then suddenly it comes back again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the end they put me on antidepressants and that's what turned it around in the end. So I suspect it's probably a mental health issue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't so bad in the sense that because they did start from this slightly lower level, it meant that that was kind of probably the right level for me at that point. So I kind of matched back into it reasonably well. I actually was still ill when I went. So I, the other thing that sort of disrupted my first year as a PhD student.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Typically, you know, finding a PhD supervisor and finding the right match could be quite a tricky thing to do. And sometimes, you know, it's hard to find somebody who actually wants to supervise a PhD student. The nice thing is I was at this place called the Center for Astrophysics. So Harvard has, houses this thing called the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which is both Harvard


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Run and the Smithsonian institution, so it's actually a very big organization. At the time I was there, there were 250.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're kind of spoiled for choice and because, you know, Harvard takes, you know, four or five PhD students a year and there's 250 people there who might want a PhD student, it's not that hard to find a supervisor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was teaching, as I said, we spent the first year and a bit doing courses and he actually taught one of those courses and I just really liked his style when he was teaching and I kind of liked the stuff that he was teaching. Which was what? So he was teaching galaxy dynamics, so the motions of stars in galaxies and which is essentially what I then went on to do my PhD on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there are people who really, you know, study the equations which dictate in my case, for example, the motions of stars within galaxies and prove theorems about them and do all those things that mathematicians do. So it's kind of mathematical physics. And at the other end of the spectrum, there are people who largely go out and observe galaxies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the interpretation bit is kind of the bit on the end, having made their observations, which probably has a little bit of maths in it. And that'll be more basic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it sometimes can be quite difficult to get that kind of interface between the theory side and the observation side. Uhm, but that's the obviously ideal thing is that. Astronomy is one of those subjects where everyone does a bit of both. So even if you're an observer, you do a bit of the theory side. If you're a theorist, you probably have to understand the nature, at least understand the nature of the data well enough that to make sure you're not overinterpreting what you're doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Essentially you're solving the equations which dictate the motions of the stars and the gas within that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's, but there were also, you know, there's just the more, more kind of mathematical side of things of, of solving.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Essentially solving equations on a piece of paper. So the guy I ended up working for, Steve Kent, the reason why I ended up working for him is in passing in one of his lectures, he was deriving a bunch of results from a set of equations and essentially the equations which dictate the motions of stars within galaxies. And just as a throwaway point,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At some point he said, and of course, so and so can't be done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, I was a bolshe, what would I be in 20, 21 year old at the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I go into the office with this thing early in the morning. I stick it under his door. Then I went back and slept, right? Cause you know, I was exhausted by that point. And so the next day I dropped by to see him and he read it by then and he said, this is really good. And you know, let's write a paper about this. And do you want to come and do a PhD with me? It was essentially the way the conversation went.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so, and so I ended up doing a PhD with this guy, uhm, and that was one of the, well, it turned out that wasn't the first paper we ended up publishing together. We did some, you know, some observational work together and I analyzed some of the data that he got as the first paper. But I think it was probably the second paper we ended up writing together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the career path for somebody, and at that point I was kind of quite committed to it. I was really enjoying the science. Was your father still alive?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think we did have that conversation a few times, I think. And then so, and, and this is probably leaping ahead a little bit, but one of the pinnacles of my mum's life, she was very proud of both me and my dad, right? My dad had a really interesting progression through, you know, his kind of academic


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He ended up doing kind of a part-time degree in London. So he's living in Brighton, did a part-time degree in London, which is where he met my mum. But kind of, so he sort of pulled himself up by his bootstraps from very little education to doing a degree, to moving into museums and so on. But he didn't go beyond his undergraduate degree, so he didn't do a PhD.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kind of late in his career, he got given an honorary doctorate for his contributions to archaeology by the University of London, which was, you know, obviously a very proud moment for everyone. But just after he got it, I was home visiting and somebody phoned and asked for Dr. Merrifield and my mum got to say, which one? And you could hear her kind of glowing with pride when she said this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the standard career path is you do a PhD. If you want to kind of pursue that academic career path, you typically do these things called postdocs, which are these relatively short term positions where you work for two or three years at a place and then you move on to another one and you kind of build up your research portfolio and hopefully your reputation to a point where you can get a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so it was a very kind of young, vibrant environment to be doing it, but it was a little bit scary in the sense that most post-docs you end up going to work for a person to do a particular thing. For CETA they just give you a fellowship and essentially you turn up and they say, okay, well there's your desk, there's your computer, do something interesting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and so you really are for the first time really kind of pushed in pretty much at the deep end to swim. In retrospect, I think there probably was kind of people were keeping an eye on how things were going.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you were really struggling, people would say here's an interesting thing you might want to work on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What is that danger? I mean, you know, even at that point, so the first thing I did when I was there, actually just use some data that even then was 20 years old. It was some old radio data.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So at that point I was starting to get a little homesick. I wanted to come back to the UK and there were a couple of reasons for that. Partly my parents were getting older and I thought, you know, I wanted to spend a little bit more time with them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's also, I've kind of glossed over, but there's kind of a love story going on in the background as well. Right. In that I met the person who's now my wife when we were undergraduates together. Right. Uhm, so back in Oxford.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We kept it going for a while and then we kind of went our separate ways.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I came across a postdoc position with a guy called Ian McHardy at Southampton University back in the UK. So I applied for that and managed to get that job. So I then came back to the UK.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'm still in postdoc world, so this is now my second postdoc.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep. And I was sort of intent on not falling into it in that I had reached a decision, okay, this is it. This is my last postdoc. I'm not doing any more of these.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, every time you move, it gets harder, right? When I moved to the US, my entire life fitted into two suitcases. When I moved back from Canada, I needed a shipping container to bring back my life from Canada, just because you get more stuff and it's more hassle to move and you just, you know, you want to settle down and all those things. Plus by that point, I was back in a relationship with


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so for example, in the UK, the two big funders of this are the research councils fund these fellowships and the Royal Society fund these fellowships as well. And the reason why they're a root out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is because it turns out that if you can get five years of money, you can then go to the university you're at and say, okay. And the nice thing about these fellowships is they're portable. You can move them from places. So you can go to your current head of department and say, okay, you can have me free for five years, but in return, I want a permanent job at the end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's a negotiation which works reasonably well. And in fact, if your current institution won't do it, another institution almost certainly will. So it's, these are a pretty good route into a permanent career in, in science. And so, and I'd applied one year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I thought, okay, I'll do one more cycle of this and then it's time to start thinking about, you know, that career in computing or whatever else it's going to be. So I put in my final application, Royal Society didn't interview me again, but the research council won what was then called PPARC, which was the research council that funded astronomy, gave me an interview. So I went through the interview process. It was quite.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I now got the big bargaining chip, which I took to my boss at Southampton and said, you know, so I got one of these fellowships, what are you going to do about it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep. So I, yep, I played my card and they duly made the offer and said, yeah, all right, we'll do that. You can, you know, for five years you do. And this is a quick pro quo, right? They have you for five years, you do a little bit of teaching during those five years, which they get for free. But then at the end of it, they kind of offer you a permanent position at the end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that was sort of me finally say, and you know, as with all these things, it's a complete chain of chance that gets you to that point, right? That's the way you happen to end up being the.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there's one more move. Yep. So I've got this five year fellowship. I'm coming towards the end of the five year fellowship. So I'm still a postdoc. I'm still in this five year fellowship. And again, and we're back with chance again, I happened to see an advert. It was in a newspaper for the, uh, a new professor of astronomy at the university of Nottingham because there's no astronomy at Nottingham at the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not even faculty at that point. I'm still going through this fellowship. So I'm very junior, but again, you know, clearly I'm fairly obnoxious and pushy individual. And so I thought, well, why not? And, and really I was doing it not cause I expected to get it, but more to put.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, so, you know, support me or else kind of thing. So I put in an application. I was somewhat surprised to be shortlisted. I went along to the interview.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, the interview wasn't my finest hour. It's funny when you think back on these things. The only thing you ever remember about them are the really stupid things you said. But anyway, I must have said some good things as well as some stupid things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and they actually ended up appointing two of us. They got to a point where they couldn't decide which, who to appoint. So it was me and this guy, Peter Coles, and the vice chancellor just kind of snapped his fingers and said, okay, well, clearly they're both good. Why don't we have two of them?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and started, and you know, we made an argument that basically said, well, look, you know, you were originally going to appoint one professor and two lecturers, since you've appointed two professors, clearly you need more lecturers. We also played this game of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Getting people who had fellowships, because again, you can play this game of, well look, we can have this person for free for five years, so let's have two of them. So we ended up growing the group much more rapidly than the university or the physics department expected, uhm, and really turned it into the fairly thriving thing it is today.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just because it was this, you know, it's the biggest monolithic thing I've ever done. So I wrote it with a guy called James Binney. Again, this comes down to these chance things, right? So the book's called Galactic Astronomy. There was an early edition, an earlier edition of it called Galactic Astronomy by Michaelis and Binney.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To write the book and so James and I wrote this book between us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at the time it was kind of supposed to be the definitive view of what we know about galaxies, kind of slightly from the perspective of the Milky Way and working outwards to other galaxies, which probably isn't the way you'd do the book if you were doing it now. But yeah, it's sort of this overview of what we know about galaxies and it's sort of a undergraduate postgraduate level kind of textbook.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, probably the biggest example of that was that thing that got me my PhD supervisor in the first place, right? That was the classic example of that. And that interestingly, that's been a very slow burn in the sense that it was a very much a kind of, it was a, I showed it that in theory something is possible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. And the interesting thing is that since then, the world's kind of caught up with that in the sense that people are now doing the stuff that I said that was possible in theory. That's really rather satisfying that having, you know, derived this result, which at the time was this very abstract kind of thing, people are actually now using it to get real results in astronomy and learn a bit about the way the universe works.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's to do with the fact that if you measure, if you could measure the speed at which a whole bunch of stars are moving in a galaxy or a cluster of stars or whatever it is, you'll find they have a distribution of speeds, right? They don't all move at the same speeds. And in particular, if they're all moving in fairly random directions, then you find that typically the distribution looks pretty much like a Gaussian.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, actually the most popular, you know, as with the Gaussian, the most common thing is zero. So actually the, the, the motion along the line, if you're measuring, for example, the motion along the line of sight, the most common answer you'll get is zero. And then there's kind of a tail of things out to higher and higher velocities. So someone moving towards you, someone moving away from you, and you end up with this sort of tail. But there's this characteristic distribution you get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so what I was looking at was the departures from that Gaussian shape and what that tells you about the orbits that the stars are following. And it turns out you can learn a lot from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it, it was, it's, it was horrendously hard to measure. As I say, it was really sort of slightly a theoretical result.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was sort of do, to do with showing actually you can use that shape information to learn more about the distribution of the orbits and actually also to learn about the mass of the galaxy in this new independent way, because the Virial Thermo is a way of measuring the mass of the galaxy. I showed actually there's another way to measure the mass of the galaxy in this rather subtler way. At the time there was nowhere near enough data to actually do this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But now there is, and actually people are using this method to measure the mass of galaxies and measure the distribution of mass within galaxies, learn about dark matter, all that kind of stuff. It's sort of this very kind of theoretical result that I came up with is now actually being used to learn something about the real properties of galaxies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That really was the way it worked for the vast majority of astronomers. Now I would say probably the majority of astronomers are in the other model where there are these big surveys going on, they're part of large teams and they're all trying to come up with clever new things to do with these large data sets. Astronomy's gone from being, you know, when I started it we were incredibly data staffed, right? There wasn't that much data.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The biggest change and the biggest thing that's revolutionising the way these data is being mined is machine learning, right? That actually people are able to analyse huge amounts of data.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have somewhat facetiously, you know, cause the other thing that goes with this is astronomers being done in bigger and bigger groups. You know, when I started out, you'd do your papers on your own or, you know, like I got together in this collaboration with Conrad Keichen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because that's very much the model for experimental particle physics, where they do these huge monolithic experiments, which by their very nature involve huge numbers of people, all of whom specialize in some little bit of the experiment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't find that interesting. I really don't. I love this being able to see everything through from that beginning to end and seeing the whole project and managing the whole project and doing the whole thing yourself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's the same thing, and actually it's because, and it's cost too, right, it's the other thing. As with particle physics, you know, astronomy is getting more and more expensive, you know, the telescopes we're building, so we're building this extremely large telescope now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's the same with the particle physicists, you know, they're cutting edge, you know, colliders are, there's only one at any given time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think so, because in the public perception the two are very closely connected together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think that, you know, the advice I would give at that point is by all means go for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The chances are, you know, if you start in one place and want to get to another place and you're doing a random walk, the chances of you getting there are pretty low. So I think the important thing is just to kind of keep your options open as much as you can and not, you know, not


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fixate and not think somehow that you're personally a failure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you don't get to where you wanted to get to because so many things are outside your control, it's ridiculous to kind of beat yourself up if you just don't get where you originally planned to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Except, you know, if I look at my own motivations along the line, they haven't actually been filled with glory in large part. Or, you know, the fact that I got into astronomy at all because I was lazy as an undergraduate and wanted an easy option. You know, there are many reasons people end up where they are. And it's not really not my place to say, actually, you know what, your motivation's bad here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the case. The other really important thing to say is, and again, this comes back to this kind of odds against success thing, is when I'm talking to people who are applying for PhDs or even, you know, going through a PhD and thinking about their career, future career,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, these are people who are studying a quantitative subject. So I get them to do the quantitative analysis of saying, look, me personally, through my career, I've probably supervised before I retire, what, 20 or 30 PhD students, something like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just cause that's, you know, I take on a PhD student every couple of years and my career is 40 years and maybe that's 20, 20 PhD students. In a statistical sense, when I die, one of them gets my job because actually if it's more than one, we end up with an exponentiating number of astronomers and the world really couldn't deal with that, right? So that's the odds, right? That actually the odds are 20 to one or whatever it is that it really is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, so one of my recent PhD students has gone on to, uh, work for, she's working for one of the, uh, finance companies in Nottingham now. So big finance houses looking again, analyzing data and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, looking for patterns in it, very much the skills that she acquired as part of her PhD. She's now applying to analyzing finance. Another PhD student, a recent graduate, he's now working for Ordnance Survey actually down in Southampton. So going back to my roots. Oh, I'd love to work for Ordnance Survey. He's such a cool job. It really is. Cause the thing that he turned out to be really good at in his PhD was coming up with clever ways of visualizing data. And of course he's taken that skill and he's using it enormously well now and doing all sorts of stuff of, you know, he was modeling


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They do now? I think yea, you don't need to, you only need 20-20 corrected vision now, not 20-20 uncorrected vision. So you could do it. So yea, I'm a bit old to be a Submariner at this point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I have actually, I, so my wife has worked in various areas of administration, including local government. So when she was, when we were living in Southampton, she was quite senior in the, in the city council in Southampton, which meant we got invited to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chat to the Submariners and stuff. And I came away from that thinking, actually, you know what, I'm glad I didn't end up in one of these.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So again, it's one of these funny things and it's again, it's sort of people have, it's about people's expectations of you, right? When I was at school, I was kind of, you know, the nerdy kid. And so no one would ever really pick me for the football team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just cause it's just not what you do. But actually when I moved to Nottingham, somebody was setting up a five aside team and they couldn't find a goalkeeper. And I said, well, that's all right, I'll give it a go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It turns out, so it turns out you only need two skills to be a goalkeeper. One is you need very fast reactions and the other is you need absolutely no sense of self preservation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it turns out I had those things. And so I made a really good five-a-side goalkeeper and you know, was the reason why our, pretty much why our team really started succeeding because I could keep most of the balls out of the net. So yeah, I could have had a career as a, as a goalkeeper.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not at the moment. I mean, only in, you know, in the abstract. He never, you know, my dad died before he was born, so he never got to know him. Um, so he only knows him kind of in the abstract. So I think he's, you know, he's sort of a little bit interested in the fact that his granddad was an archaeologist, but again, he's more interested in football than he is in history at this point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He wrote a bunch of books actually, yea, he wrote, I mentioned there was this kind of paradigm shift of going from archaeology being all about rational explanations to all about ritual explanations. Uhm, so he wrote this book called The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, which is kind of the, is the, the, the original kind of founding textbook of that whole, whole discipline.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which he uses to explain deep, fundamental concepts. But he's not just a mathematician, today you're going to learn Tadashi is a true polymath.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if I went back in a time machine and spoke in Japanese to the young Tadashi and said, what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you think you're going to be when you're an adult? What would he have said to me?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I guess painting has, I don't know if this is the case in Japan though, I guess the cliche is that becoming an artist doesn't lead to fame or certainly doesn't lead to fortune.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the things you're known for now, we might come to it later on, is your enjoyment of toys and using toys to demonstrate things and that you're very associated with toys now. What was your relationship like with toys and playful things when you were at that age where toys are a common thing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So take me on the next step of the journey. You said that you left Japan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm struggling to conceptualise the two images you've painted of yourself as a young boy though, because on one hand, I'm picturing this quite shy, mild-mannered,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Paris, where there'll be other Japanese people, I wanna really throw myself in the deep end. The two seem at odds, those two kind of characters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So how do we move this journey on from, from France? What happens? You're there for two years in Bordeaux?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is crazy. This must be something about your personality though. This is most people


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did, did, did your colleagues know you were doing this? Like in your department, would they say, what are you doing today? And you'd say, oh, I'm just learning Russian.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For more from Tadashi Tokieda, check out the notes for today's episode. I'm going to include links to his numerous Numberphile videos. I'm Brady Haran, and you've been listening to the Numberphile Podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, Zydex is hooking us up. Yeah, so I mean, I think what has me most excited about it is just the way the game looks now. Yeah, well the new PC is a good guy that's gonna look pretty. And I've seen some people do, like, what you can do now with the cinematic tools is like, oh wow, that looks really good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, it's uh, yeah, it's gonna be interesting when we're in, all in there, uh, following somebody around. I mean, we gotta, we obviously gotta play with it a bunch more. Yeah, we're still getting into it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He genuinely loves, uh, like the end game. He likes the game. Yeah. I like the game when you're just like surviving on a beach. It's the, it's the end game stuff that I'm like, I don't even want to touch. I don't care. But, uh, like I want to focus more on building.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In this series. Yea. Like I really wanna like, alright pick locations and go like, alright I'm gonna build something cool in this location. Awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We can start on the island and then I know they're gonna release the ascended version of uh, Scorched Earth, that's coming. I don't know if I have any desire to go back to Scorched Earth, it's all desert.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, I was a bit of a naysayer too, because again, I do not like ARK's endgame. Like the later, when you gotta go into caves and shit, I'm just like, I don't find any of that fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that was always a big problem with the ARKs maps. It's like, okay, you got this big beautiful map that you want to explore, but there's no reward for exploring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think they came out when one map came out, but I don't think, but then I think you could use them across multiple maps.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What I'd like with mods is if, yea, Anthony, you're kind of show running this, you kind of spearhead what mods to install on everyone's, uh, art game. But don't tell us. Most of you will not know. That'd be great. Yea. I think that's a genuine question.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe in the video, maybe this could be how you structure the video too. It's like, okay, you know guys, in this episode I've added this mod, let's see how they react. Freeze frame.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Good camera. Thumbnails and everything too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What do you think is going to come out first, GTA 6 or ARK 2? We got ARK 2 before GTA 6. Yea, that's my guess is ARK 2.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it is pretty. So, convey that. Games are getting prettier and prettier. It'll be art.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, it's a, and that's, that's, ehm, because it is, ehm, at it's core, it is Old Ark. Yeah. And, yeah, it's just like, okay, yeah, it's just two creatures kind of biting inside of each other. Yep. Like, there's no collision or anything. Maybe, maybe Ark 2 will have more of that. I think Ark 2 is gonna have more of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we're also starting, uh, in Shrouded. I'm working on the first episode right now. How's it going? It's going good, yeah. I like the first episode. Uhm, still got some more to do on it. But, yeah, that's gonna be fun. Are we recording that again soon? We need to, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, for sure. You go, oh alright, this is a good cut point, and now I have the first half in the next episode. Yeaah. Yeaah, you're talking about game worlds, that game world is such a joy to explore to me. Cause it, it really, you do get rewarded for exploration.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, yeah. Yeah, it's like, oh, what's behind here? Oh, I found a chest. Oh, I found a cool weapon. It's like, oh, it's a little bit better than my old weapon. And even if it's not, you can tear that weapon apart and get money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay. So then you can use that money to upgrade the weapons you do like. It's like, oh man. Alright. And they, uh, they released a roadmap recently. They're gonna add a whole bunch of, like, more NPCs and, uh, what else? Hold on, let me look at their roadmap real quick. Yeah, give us the roadmap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, you'll be able to explore soon. Yeah. Good. Good. But yeah, they're gonna add pets. I guess a mountain biome. Multiplayer paintings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have no idea, there's pets. There'll be a dog. Yeah, a dog would be nice. It'd be nice if there's a few options too. Oh thank god, they're adding signs. That's one of my biggest things again, you know, you can't craft that sign when you're right on. Oh, gotcha. Okay. It's like, especially when inventory starts piling up, you go like, oh fuck, what box was that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it's- It makes you care about, you got something, you know, something. You're not alone. You're attached to this world a little bit more. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, that's kind of arc. I mean arc, you know, you end up having a thousand pets. That's true. It's true. You just tame it so much shit. It'd be cool if you could send it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yea, they're adding like, uh, townsfolk, like a lot of the, uh, towns you come across are, you know, they're empty because that world's been destroyed, but I guess some of them are gonna be actually populated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I was like, oh, okay, we're adding in extra NPCs and shit. I, uh, make that world feel more lively.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, I still think in Shrouded, you know, it's like any of these games, they're gonna have their audience. Like, you know, uhm, we played the hell out of it, and we, you know, me and, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but yeaah, it always feels very rewarding to explore. It's like, you know, oh, let me go in these woods, next thing you know, like, holy shit, I found a tavern, an old tavern that you could fix up, and like, you know, there's a little story in the tavern, there's chests, it's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, yeah, it has different biomes for sure. It's got like, you know, kind of the grasslands where we're, where you start at. And then as you go, you can get into sort of the deep woods, like big trees and like that biome, very rocky and mountainous.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, then there's a plains biome where it's kinda grassy but it's more hilly. Uh, and then there's a full on desert biome. Oh shit. That you can eventually get to. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, yeaah, just great locations, yeaah. I keep thinking about some of the spots I've been to. It's like, yeaah, that map, I love that map. Cool. Cause it's a, yeaah, it's just a handcrafted map and yeaah. They made, they did a good job over there. I didn't shroud it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, yeaah, I've been loving Helldivers 2. Which, you know, it's odd, I usually don't like those type of games, like live service type game. Uhm, but I think what Helldivers 2 does right, a couple things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It doesn't focus much on the story. There isn't much of a story. It's just, you're part of a war, go to war. Shut up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and it doesn't feel like it's constantly trying to sell you something. Like a lot of these live service games, I feel like you pick up, and you start playing it, and immediately they're just slamming you with ads to buy their currency, or you know, it's like cosmetics. Battle Pass. Yeah, all that shit. And I hate it every time, it just leaves a bad taste.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's kind of the dungeon master of the whole thing. From what I understand, his name's Joel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he's just the guy over there that's in charge of like, the battlefield. Yeaah. It's like, okay, what are the robots doing next? What are the bugs doing next? Yeaah, the whole... You know, what orders are we going to give the hell divers? I mean, that's the thing, yeaah, the story structure is so stupid and simple.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, there's a mission where you have to activate this thing and it releases a bunch of pesticide to try to, you know, beat the bugs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's like, okay, orders from Super Earth, you gotta go and you gotta activate these things. And if we do it, we take over this sector. It's like, alright, cool. But, uh, then, I guess today...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or maybe yesterday, but they released another update. It was like, uh oh, the pesticides are having consequences. Now some of the bugs can fly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like, boom, now you got a new enemy type flying bug. Yeaah. That's awesome. Yeaah. That's great. Just yeaah, that thought process of like, alright, today we're doing this, and in a week, it's gonna be this. Yeaah. Alright. That's pretty awesome. They're telling a story as dumb as it is, but it's a battlefield. Yeaah. Yeaah. And you're a part of the battlefield. It's wonderful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What if they could call in stratagems on you? Dude!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You see a ball, a green ball land next to you and you're like, oh shit. Joel? They're calling in zombie stratagems. Come on now. This is the way to go Joel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what else I appreciate about that game? No damage numbers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. It doesn't, like, to me damage number, any time I see damage numbers in a game, I feel like it's a lazy cop out. It's like you shoot something and you just see like 10.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's one of those things that some people do like to see, like, okay, this gun I shoot, it does 10, and then, oh, what if I shoot with this gun? It's like, oh, that gun does 13. You're absolutely right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I get that. I get it in certain games, but with shooters, I never liked it. A tiny health bar is fine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I think Helldivers 2 again, and that's why I've enjoyed it. It feels more immersive because you see your bullets doing damage. You see what's happening to them. Yea, and so the bugs will bleed, like I know the uh, the chargers, if you like, shoot them enough, they'll start bleeding out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you just know visually I've damaged this thing. Right. It's like, that's the way to do it. I mean, it's more, it's more work on a dev side.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like, you could do health bar damage numbers, but, or just make it look like you're...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'll be good for the whole team, like they really, cause the first tail diver is like, I went and looked at it, I was like, what does the first one look like? It's like a top down thing. I know, it's really different. Wow, it's a whole different type of game. They went balls in. Yeah, they just said, alright, we're gonna do this, but I'm like, we're gonna scale it up. And yeah, it's wonderful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. Well you think, you know, cause even what we did with uh, BattleBit friends, it's like that kid can turn that animation around pretty quick. Right? Stuff like that with mocap. It's like you could design a show where, you know, you know, have some good scripts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 7-8 episodes, and then mocap a lot of it, I mean with the Helldivers, you know, models. Put the show together and have that released alongside the game, and it would probably do


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Come on, let us write you scripts. We should voices.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so the concept of that movie is just a guy wakes up and realizes no one's invented the Beatles. It's all in his head. They didn't exist. It's a fun concept for a movie. I wanna watch that. And he wrote the songs. I think so, yeah. He tries to write the songs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well known brands that just don't exist all of a sudden. Some stuff, yea. Yeaah, that's neat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Man, that's like, I've al- I've always had a dumb idea and it's- it looks like it's actually being turned into a video game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have you guys seen the trailer for uh, Kings? Kingmaker? No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kingmaker. It's about... I should just play the trailer. Alright, play the trailer. I should just play the trailer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did it let you down or are you excited? Oh, I'm super excited. Okay. I've always like had this like ideas like that'd be cool if you could do that and then like someone's making a game about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, there's like, there's a moment in the trailer coming up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Grenade launchers. It looks good. Nah, this looks fun as hell. Looks like Helldivers. This is supposed to have co-op.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yea, that concept of just being able to go back in time, and uh, just bring modern weapons to a fucking medieval fight. Like yea, I'm in. That sounds amazing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like, it's so dumb that I'm just like, yes, I want this game immediately. Yeah, alright. But yeah, apparently also it's supposed to be co-op, so you can hop in there with either a friend or friends. I don't know if multiple people can be in, but that'd be cool. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 2024. So, sometime this year. That's just one of the recent trailers I saw. I was like, wow, that, uh, I'm in. This game looked cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That game's great. It was so good. They don't let you get bored. No. It's like every level you get new toys to play with, some new ability.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nah, it's a great game, yeah. If, uh, yeah. Grab a friend and play it takes two. Yeah, for sure. It really, it makes me want to play that, that team's other game. I, uhm, I never did. I think it's, uh, A Way Out, I believe it's called. Oh yeah. That's the one, it's like a prison break game. Yeah. But, it's four times.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well that's a type of game, from what I understand, it's way, it's chatty. It's even more so, more chatty than it takes to. Which makes sense because... Yeah, it's a story driven thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, it's not the couple you look towards, it's uh, for uh, inspiration. Kid was creepy as fuck too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, still. It's done on me. I haven't played it. Like, I just watched, uhm, Niebz and Thicc play. Yeaah, that must have been some. Yeaah, it was. It was great. But yeaah, I never got to play it myself except for maybe like one or two parts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, yeaah. Yeaah, you don't have time to get bored in that game. No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I got a friend who, uhm, he keeps, he has a necklace and he, with a little bit of his dad's ashes. Yeah. In the necklace. Yeah. He wears it all the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just interesting. Yeah, I tried to have a quiet weekend because our past few weekends have just been nuts. Yeah. So yeah, this was like, past weekend was nice. It was like the first weekend I've had was like, okay, chill out. Tell you what, I did a, uh, we did animated bad movie night. And what was it? We watched this Don Bluth film called Pebble and the Penguin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is like, uh, just, just this old like dumb animated thing. It's like Martin Short and it's terrible. Don't watch it. What year? If you were to guess. I, if I had to, if I had to guess like early 90s? Pebble and the Penguin. Cause in the 80s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, but it was like, uh, we watched that and then we ended up watching Heavy Metal, which I hadn't seen in like 15 years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That movie's great. Like, it holds up. It's just a, what, four or five short stories. It's called classic. Yeah. I recommend everybody watch Heavy Metal. A lot of boobs in it. Animated boobs everywhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nah, people love that show. Yeah, we had a good time watching it. It was like, man, I didn't think it would be this engaging. Yeah. Cause I thought, I was like, okay, it's gonna be like animated boobs and stupid. It's gonna be awful. I enjoyed it from start to finish.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. It's worth a watch. It really is. It's a neat, short stories. Better than that Don Bluth piece of shit. Man, I respect the fuck out of Don Bluth. Cause he's one of those, he was one of those guys that were like, alright, fuck you, Disney, I'll do my own thing. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It caught up to him. Cause he did like Secret of Nim, which was really good. I loved that, that was great. Yeah, he did a lot of good stuff early on, and then like, he ended up going, I think, too childish with his content. It's like, he was trying to be Disney. That's where the money was. I get it, yeah, that's the thing. It's like, hey, Disney's making a kill and doing these kid films, I should make my films more kid friendly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then you lost that charm that like, I think Secret of Nim had, which it-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It didn't feel like a Disney film and that's what made it amazing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like that character felt real, like I was, I was invested. He's so well acted. He's so well shot. Everything. And it was uh, the acting was subtle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's just, yeaah, it just feels better. I will say one thing about Pebble and the Pig with that I did like. Uh, Tim Curry is the voice of the villain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And any time he's on screen it just kills it. I mean, it's Tim Curry. Yea, for sure. He's great. And he's singing songs. It's just like, ha ha ha ha ha. Yea. Oh man. It's like, I'll get him. Uuuh. You know, he's doing that, just that Tim Curry just...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, he's got an energy, man. Game on. Yeah. For sure, he deserved it. God, yeah, he did. He's done so much shit. Yeah. Some good, some bad. Yeah. A lot of bad. Yeah, for sure. Fuck it, he had a good time. Got paid. Yeah. Still love his, uh, command and conquer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's hilarious. I love that clip. That clip makes me so happy every time I watch it. He's in it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know that one. He's uh, he plays a general in Command and Conquer. He's like the Russian general. And if you beat the Russian side, it's like a clip of him plays and he's like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. Yeaah, he was in a what, Hunt for Red October, Home Alone 2, uh, Legend? Legend, oh god, I hate that movie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's one we watched at Bad Movie Night, I think, a while back. And I was just like, oh my god. It's not a great movie. Oh my god, this sucks. He was great in Clue. That's right. Oh fucking Clue. That's one I haven't watched.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that was, if I'm not mistaken, when that was released, there were different endings. There were. There were. So like, depending on what theater you went to, what version you saw. It kind of backfired for them, apparently. Really? Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can see that working, but if you and your friends all go to the same theater, you're just all gonna see the same ending.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I saw clips of the Oscars. I don't watch the damn Oscars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I was thinking of, like, I've seen him in something I've liked and I remembered it. It's that one Suicide Squad movie that James Gunn did. Okay. John Cena plays, I think, Peacemaker? Yeah. Which I think has its own show, too? The show's supposed to be good, too. But the Suicide Squad movie, that one was good. Okay. And he was great in it. Alright. So I'll recommend that one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly. I wanna see it just cause yea, it's like I usually don't give a shit about Godzilla movies. Nor would I. Yea, there's so much buzz about this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No one would have this reaction of like, this thing. Thank goodness he's here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you die a lot? You're gonna die more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was it the championship or something? Was it championship? They're building something? Were they building with Legos?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hello, hello! Hey, hey! What's up? Hello everyone! We have a trailer for Ark Ascended.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, just dropped like the day before this podcast came out. Yes. And what did we talk about about 10 days ago?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You'll hear, you'll hear the rest of that part of the podcast later, 10 days ago, we were like, we can't believe there's not a trailer out, cause this thing...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is it, is it still launching, what, the 28th? When is it supposed to launch really soon? We never had a date. That's like the first thing I want to talk about because as of right now, like even somebody in Discord was like, a trailer came out and it was announced, kind of, cause it just says coming soon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, yeaah. So there is no, there is no definitive date. But originally they said end of October.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, I guess they just missed that mark, but that's okay, whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or, it is gonna come out in a few days, because Neebs, what did you, uh, did you see something on the reddits?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, the visuals, yeaah. I mean, that Unreal Engine 5 looked very nice. Just the lighting and, uh...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, just kind of the way the, the foilage moves. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The animals are knocking down trees. Cause they didn't, they didn't knock them down. At least not like they do now. Cause it looks like you're watching the trees hit the ground and the leaves are reacting or the branches are reacting, which is awesome. But we had talked about it in the podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, yeaah, now I get that, but these are, like, Apsro explained to me last week, cause I didn't know, these are, these are pre-existing maps, but there are a lot of changes, so yeaah, the water and the building and all that other stuff, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, it's, uh, I mean, they're using, uh, they've, yeah, they're completely using what, Unreal Engine 5 now. So I'm, I'm sure there's technical hurdles that they are not expecting that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once people have their hands on the game, they're going to go, oh shit, we got to fix this, we got to fix that. So, you know, at least they're doing that early access. They're not, they're not saying like this game is going to be perfect on launch. Like, no, it's going to be a mess probably.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. You know, you know, Studio Wildcard has a reputation. And if you know, you know. It is not just them, it's a lot of survival games. No, yeah, a lot of people do it. I mean, we talked about it, in seven days still in early access. Like, come on. Yep. That's absurd.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I'm sure, but I guess the big question is, when? Because all they delivered was a trailer that we all expected to see six months ago. And now we get that on the, you know, on what we think is probably going to be the release.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there's a chance it might actually be like a drop release in a few days and they might actually be good or it could be another six months, which would be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, well anything wow you, I care. I, I would like to, to get in and see how pretty it looks, cause it does look very different. Oh, it's gonna look good, yeah. I mean that Unreal Engine 5 is an amazing gaming engine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And yeaah, that tech is incredible. It is. So I mean, I'm super excited to get in. Like I want to know when it's going to come out because I want to know when we can actually jump in and play it. But was there anything else aside from the graphics that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wowed you or made you very much more intrigued with this trailer?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean not, it looks like, yea, it's, it's, it's arc with a shiny new coat of paint. It looks like it plays pretty much the same. It's just, uh, it's got a new, yea, all the new stuff is really just, oh, the water and the grass, everything just will kind of react to you now. And it obviously looks pretty, the volumetric effects look great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh no, it did look great. Yeah, no, I'm curious to see. Yeah, the water is a lot more reactive now. Cause like even like there's a shot of a house blowing up and I think it even affects like the water and the trees around it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm curious because at the end of the trailer, you know, it says Ark Survival Ascended, Steam, Xbox, and PS5.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's like, yeah, they're, they're saying, Hey, this is coming to console. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's something I noticed on one of the, I think the building that blew up, actually. I noticed like different building parts that I hadn't seen, like different, uh, roof structures.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, maybe they're, uh, they're, maybe they're expanding the building a little bit. I mean, I hope so. In the building.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well they did mention, you guys did see that they mentioned something that was saying that they were changing the building in what we recorded. So like, meaning not just the way it looks, but I think the way it works is supposed to be changing, at least what they announced. So I'm just, it's too bad they didn't show any building in the trailer. That's really what get gamers going.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I mean, it's a survival game that has buildings. So, you know, you've seen tons of trailers with, uh, snippets of building because that's a big part of the game. Why wouldn't it be in there? I think it's kind of weird that it wasn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably because it still sucks. Uh, maybe. We're not gonna highlight this that people are gonna be complaining about right away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, so it would make sense if that was, uh, you know, when it's ready that we would jump in the island, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, in that, is it the lost island or is it the big island?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I'm looking at Steam too, also seeing, uh, this is neat, this cross-platform modding. Okay. So it looks like they're just gonna have a mod system built into the game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, there's a mod browser directly in the game so people, I guess, can make


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mods and shit and you can like download them right there in the game. Oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is, yeaah. So that's another thing, yeaah. We, we could technically form a tribe and, uh, people at home that wanna play on their, uh, Xboxes or PS5s could join us. That'd be big, wouldn't it? Yeaah. Public multiplayer up to 70 players.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That'd be crazy. There's a photo mode now? That'd be good for us for getting, uh, shots for thumbnails. Yep. New camera system? What does that mean? New camera systems. New map system. Tracking system. New structures and items.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have no idea, man. I don't know what to do. I mean, photo mode, if there's a photo mode that tells me, you know, you can't, well, I guess you could pause the game, but if you got a, if you got a server with 70 people, it's like, are you going to be able to do photo mode?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, it can't pause. It's like, so, oh wait, now is the photo mode gonna be like, okay, while the game's running? That'd be cool. You could, you could set up really awesome shots with that. Yeah. This sounds like it's a game change, like big changes. I mean, I'm super excited to play this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm curious, I mean yea, definitely curious. If it works!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, I'm curious to see, they haven't released PC specs yet. Nope. Cause I feel like to run this thing smoothly, you're gonna need a beast. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it fights smoothly and it builds smoothly and it has these fun extra tools that obviously we do care about, it just seems like it's going to be something to look forward to. But. Oh yeah. I'm just being positive. I mean, we're going to play it for sure. All right. Okay. Yeah. So, so there we go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now we're gonna talk in a weird way, like it didn't come out, but it did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I'm gonna see, I'm gonna try not to make it that awkward, or it's gonna be awkward.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, cause he didn't, he didn't respond to this message to talk. He saw it. He's a piece of shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, Ark Survival Ascended is coming out supposedly at the end of October. Right. That's what we've been told, at least now, the date we're recording this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lately. Yeah, they've been super quiet. And it's, it's already October as we're recording this. Yeah. And we've seen no trailer, only we know that it's coming. All they've shown is like little images of like, hey, here's the new drop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's the new sleeping bag. Important things. Yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What do the dinosaurs look like? Right? So, to me there's two options, either they're just like, they're just waiting till they're done and they're confident about it and they're just gonna blast it out, it's like end of October, boom, here's the trailer and here's the game. Or they're in way over their heads and uh, it's gonna be delayed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would think that it's going to be on time-ish and they're not going to say anything until it comes out because.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're, we're past the point. It's weird that they don't even have a date. They just say end of October. Just end of October. Where that's very strange, isn't it? Normally there's a fucking day on there. Eh, sometimes. Every game studio's different. Some game studios don't like, you know, eh, you know, eh, we're aiming for this. Whether they hit it or not, eh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You think they might do this early access? Like, after they release it. Oh, I have no idea. Cause that's what they did with Sons of the Forest, right? Oh, like Arca Ascendant. Oh man, so that's already weird cause it's a remake of a game, but a remake of a game coming out in early access. Okay, yeah. Oh, it's a remake.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes. Unreal Engine 5, yeaah, they're doing a complete overhaul of the game in Unreal Engine 5. Okay. So they're using Nanite and Lumen and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, glad they put this out. This really gets me going. That first bed looks more comfortable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't mind it, it's just different for that. Like, you know, okay, either one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I like early arc. I wanna play it, but I don't wanna do a boss fight. How about that? I'll play it until, like, we get bored of it, but it's just like, no, we gotta do a boss fight. No, fuck we don't. Boss fight's in the gamer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no shit. If they fix the boss fights and make them fun, maybe, uh, maybe I'll be interested.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so let's see what this looks like. Alright, so, okay. That's, I think that's a lot nicer than that, but can you build though?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, this is stuff you can build, taller walls. But what about the mechanics is what I'm talking about, like, that you guys say building there sucks. Oh yeah, no. So, I don't, see, I don't think the root game has changed. It's just gonna look prettier. That's it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so I still think the building will suck compared to what we- but you never know, maybe that's something they-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They might update for this. Well, they've also seemed to made things like, with those two things, one significantly, I wonder if the walls are also just bigger. They look taller by default now. Yeaah. So that's what they're showing. That might mean building might work a little bit better. Who knows, it might have changed. Maybe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You better. But at this point, this is all they've put out on it. That's all we've seen. No trailer, just those images. And coming at the end of October. Yeah, end of October. Which is about now. There you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's cool, they're gonna have cross-platform. Oh wow. Yeah, so that's kinda neat. It's like if you have your buddies on Xbox and PlayStation, play together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That game with a controller? Hell no. Going through those menus and stuff. No, exactly. The seven days.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I can't imagine you're going through there, which I don't know. I've started to get, I've gotten pretty used to doing it with Conan now. So, you know, maybe, maybe it's something that you could adapt to and just be fine. But in my head, I'm like, no, I don't want to navigate those menus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've finally committed to a weekly 12 meal plan and I'm excited because I've been getting factor, but not every week and I'm getting it now cause I know I'm, I'm eating junkier food.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they have so many options. Keto, vegan and veggie, calorie smart and protein plus options are on the menu each week, prepared by chefs and approved by dieticians. So if you have ever considered trying a ready to eat meal kit,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a big list there, anything else jumping out at you? I don't care how bad it is, I want to hear it. An updated mini-map? Do I see wild babies? Uh, yes you do. That's new, huh? That is new.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe? Maybe. I don't know if you still have to get the egg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And tame it from the egg. But, I mean, that does make the world feel a bit more alive and dynamic when, you know, yeaah, okay, there's a brontosaurus, and she's got a little baby with her. Not everything comes from an egg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A photo mode? Oooooh, we can take pictures of ourselves. That'd be good for thumbnails. Yeah, a ping system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Directional sprinting and walking. What do you suppose that means?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I'm thinking that you could hit a button and move it, like you're gonna like click and push forward and it locks in the run.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wow. Actually, this has been nice to hear this. I hope that the trailer doesn't come out. I want to, I want to experience it like with you when it does.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, none of us have seen it. Let's play it and let's rewind it and look at some stuff. Yea, it's, it is absolutely nuts that that's the only information that you have on it. This late in the development. For something that's coming out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I think so, uh, well that was because they shut down their official servers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wouldn't that be a dope transfer? Copy that over to the new one. Oh, that'd be


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you know, you would think that it would be worth the test, cause if you could charge for it, like I know that if, if I knew that I had to go through that pain in the ass thing, taking the map out, but if I knew that if all I had to do is if I wanted to put it back in and it cost me a hundred bucks to put it back in, or I could start from scratch, it's up to you,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Five years ago when they were planning this and figuring this shit out, they could have said, all you gotta do is just offer them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] End of October. End of October. End of last year. End of 2024 is one of the things that I read recently. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have something like that. Might be a producer on it. But yeah, there is, uh, the release date is still to be announced. There is no, there's no official release date, at least on Steam.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, plan release date to be announced. They don't know. We don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe end of 2024 was like a give em a shut em update. Yeah. It'll be out when GTA 6 comes out. That's what I was just thinking about. Yeah. It's another game. Everybody's like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Take that too. Yeah, I can't imagine what Rockstar is gonna try to pull off with six. For sure. Cause you know it's Rockstar, they're always like, alright, what can we, how can we push it? Yeah. There better be AI in it. Whoa. I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A side character. Yeaah. And the side character can follow you and you can turn around and talk to it and it'll respond.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really? Yeah. It's gonna be my, uh, my old person companion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's gonna be like, like a chat GPT with a sexy voice. Like that, like that movie with, uh, what's his name? Joaquin Phoenix? Her? Oh yeah, her. That was good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah, it's really good. Fell in love with an AI system, right? Yeah. Oh, that is so, that is so the future, except for it's not going to be a talk. It's not just going to be a voice and in five years it's going to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Quest 3 is insane already, and you go, in five years? Forget it. And everything that they're working on now, I mean, what they're showing us is one thing, which is amazing. You know that they're five steps ahead already right now in development on other things. They have goals, yea. You'd think eventually these headsets are gonna be glasses. They're gonna be so easy to put on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's possible to have AI, AI could probably easily, at this point, make a simple game. Right. It's like, yea, code, yea, code Pac-Man. Yea, here, here's Pac-Man. Yea, except I want it to be turtles. Yea, do Pac-Man, but with turtles. Yea. Yea, I mean, people are already using chat GPT to help with code.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, listen, I'd like to see you guys cook this stuff. Alright. I'd like to see it. You think you'd get to the point, like I bet, I bet in 20 years AI can run a fast food joint. Like McDonald's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, McDonald's is just gonna be AI controlled, the entire thing. Oh, it could, it could be, it could probably be done next year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, maybe two, yeaah. You know, customer service, all of it, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now you should be able to walk up to the counter, you know, the drive-thru. I mean, they can only do text to speech. It's like, ah, I want a quarter pounder with cheese, and brrrr, there it is. It's like, yes sir, is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. Okay, drive-thru. And in the back, the robot's just meep meep meep meep meep meep. Heat it up. There you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All right. That's a good title for this place, Food Court.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thank you to our sponsor Rocket Money. And they are a personal finance app that monitors your spending, helps you lower your bills, and they find and manage all of your subscriptions for you. Because more people than not have subscriptions that they have completely forgotten about. And for any of those that are found, Rocket Money can easily cancel them for you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pretty awesome. And rocket money just saved me money again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I was being overcharged by 15 bucks a month on my phone bill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew my bill was gonna be cheaper and then I got the little notification and I'm like, wait a second.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rocket Money really makes it so much easier for me to stay on top of my bills. It's great. So start today. Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage expenses the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com slash Neebs. That's rocketmoney.com slash Neebs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stay on top of your bills, save money, and go to rocketmoney.com slash Neebs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a good title for this place, Food Court. Everything in the world, Food Court. I was thinking on a fraction of that. It's really a very small fraction of that, but I was thinking of another, like, uh, business. You know, like, well, cause I wanted soup, and I'm like, man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wish I could go to a place, man, I wish I could, and it's pretty easy these days, you'd think, to open up a store and it's just soups. Yeah. It's the name of it. Soups. Soups. Soups. Right. And then you go in there and you've got fucking 45 different soups. You go in there, there's great, amazing soup recipes that could be easily duplicated over and over again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cereals, exactly. Cereals. Except for this would be cooking, and yours would be buying cereal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like a sandwich au jus. I want this podcast to just develop a timer with how long it takes us to get to devolve into food. Sure. Not long. Man, I hope they have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you could just go out to dinner before that and fill yourself up real good, then go to this. That's perfect, cause you can go and now I get my little sample.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not in a damn soup. Just cook that sushi. No, don't cook the sushi, but this, this is gross. It's not necessarily soup.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nah, I get it. I've tried it. And I'm like, you know, you, you could be eating hot, delicious seafood instead of cold seafood. But you like sushi. Well, sushi's different because you wrap it in the rice. I don't know. Sushi's different. This, this is cold. This is a sushi apologist.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cold rice fucking seaweed fish. Cold fish soup with a damn lemon squeezed in it. Ceviche!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you ordered things that you don't usually order.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Six restaurants. Okay. Seven. Yeaah. And they covered two. A good cook is a good cook, but yes, things might not stay traditional, hence the no capers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know, I know, I'm just saying in the country. Yeah, it kinda comes in with chicken piccata, you expect capers. Yeah, exactly, it's a pretty big part of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I would say that a lot of people would have that mentality in the South, or in the, in the, in the, not even...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just in the country. There's country everywhere. Ah, fuck it, it's green. Yeah, we can't get hold of capers, what we oughta put in this. Just, I like peas, those capers are too salty. Put peas in there. Put peas, I like peas.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All right. Now what about places or people? See any weirdos? Places with people. Got any weirdo stories? Any weirdos?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From the gas pump to the grocery store, your utility bills and favorite streaming services. Inflation is everywhere. But thankfully there's one company out there that's giving you a much needed break and it's Mint Mobile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As the first company to sell premium wireless service online only.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mint Mobile lets you order from home and save a ton with phone plans starting at just 15 bucks a month.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when they sell online only, they're eliminating the traditional costs of retail and they pass along that sweet savings to you. And we've used Mint Service and love it. Never had a problem with it. And all plans come with unlimited talk and text and high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and keep your phone number along with all your existing contacts. And to get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month and get the plan shipped to your door for free, go to MintMobile.com slash Neebs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's MintMobile.com slash Neebs to get the best.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had the Olympics there one year, didn't they? Like 80s or something? Is there any sort of like really good or like monuments? I'm trying to think of like, isn't there some sort of like famous statues or did you go and see any, anything really famous in the city? Any museums that were like really well known or?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just go into that area anyway. It's like, yea, hey, war's poppin' off and your mom's there. You're like, yea, anyone would go. And of course, yea, in his mind, he was like, I told you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep. With fucking paragliders, you see that shit? It's like yeah, that's how some of them like crossed over from Palestine into Israel. They were like fucking like paragliders and shit. Just the patience. And they were using like little drones to take out like turrets and some of the damn Israel defense systems.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That'd be like us living here in a bunch of rednecks are like, we're gonna go attack somebody. And it represents all of us. Yeah, then you're like, fuck these idiots. Yep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, nah, the civilians, the people, and that, and Gaza's such an interesting region, because just how packed it is. It's like Tokyo levels of pack. It's like 2 million people jammed into this little, little section. Yeaah, pretty nuts. But yeaah, it's gonna, yeaah, so there's gonna be sadly so much loss of life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're hungry as hell. It's weird how, yeah, tea times is permeated in that culture. And I know that was a big point of contention when James Cameron, when they shot the uh, Aliens movie, back in the day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, Cameron, everybody be setting up a shot and James Cameron's like, all right, let's go. Let's get this shot. Uh oh, nope. It's tea time, governor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And? It was great. So describe Schwarmr to me because the only, uh, the only places I know Schwarmr from are from the Avengers movie and Breath Edge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like you were saying, you don't have to ruin a dish and a cup. That's always been silly. A cup and a plate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's gotta be the right shape, can't be curled up too much. It's gotta be, it's gotta have the scoop. That's why the geniuses of uh, of scoops, the, the chip. Well the scoops, they've got the, the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, there we grow. No, bamboo is the quickest. Yeah, you can have bamboo farms, so sure. And if I'm not mistaken. If you can recycle it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, of course there is. Actually, that would surprise me. Actual beans that figured out interstellar travel. Because we hadn't figured that one out yet. Yeah. That's like the next like, okay, how do you pull that off?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I was, I watched, uh, there's a, I thought it was entertaining. Uhm, it's called Encounters. I think it's a three or four part series on Netflix. Okay. It was just fun talking to, uh, people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who's been doing research for, I guess, a long time about aliens and all that, but, uh, he, he ended up going to these particular places that I think it's called the blue spots where, you know, like, hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of them had a, one of them was a cop. It was funny because they went through this whole, like, they were going through the psychology of like this particular town. It's like, they were talking to people, high up people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who had these experiences in these towns that were just like, I'm a fucking saying shit going through like, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A long times of like, I'm not saying anything. If I say this, people are gonna think I'm crazy. One of them was the cop. One of them was the sheriff of the fucking town. He's like, I'm not fucking telling anybody what I just saw. And I don't care if other people are saying it because everyone's gonna think I'm crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the camera footage that he had on the thing, he's like, I've had this camera or whatever for 10 years. And he's like the one night that I'm like, there it is. I want to take a picture of it. Go figure the camera stop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were, had it there and it was all glitched out, you couldn't see shit, he goes like, so look at this. No, but that's what he says, he goes, uh, I mean, to me, you go, if, if there is something out there,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If they don't want to be seen, why wouldn't they easily jam any sort of, and again, I'm not saying that there's anything I've never seen an alien, but it kind of makes sense that you go, yeah, if they don't want to be seen, wouldn't they easily just make things not work?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I mean, if they happen to be in the sky, you go like, if they are there, you go, obviously they're, you know, I don't know, thousands of years potentially ahead of us if they happen to be in the sky and not making any movement or like any sound rather, you don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That kind of makes sense now if you think about it. I mean, it's so weird to think that there is another, other life out there. Whether or not, you know, and we're obviously going... That's not weird at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's just the distance. And yeah, can you figure out interstellar travel? Yeah. You gotta figure out how to break the speed of light.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love when alien shit hits the news, like it wasn't too long ago, like there's someone in Mexico, like in front of Mexican Congress. This guy revealed two alien bodies. Yeah, bodies. And then you look at him and you're like, Jesus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll figure it out. Well yea, I think they should add x-rays of it and like within an hour of the x-ray getting released, like someone highlighted a bone and they were like yea, that's a dog femur.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I actually thought I saw a UFO one time. I remember this, like, this was growing up. I was in a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In our house and then I just happened to look out the window and like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Into the, uh, across the field that was by our house. And I just see this string of lights.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, couldn't explain it. Yeah, couldn't explain it. What's going on?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't fucking, uh, I don't know, but in the end, Jose Zalcó Benítez, the Director of Health Sciences Resource Institute of the Secretary of the Mexican Navy Office. That's a lot of words. Basically said, I can confirm that these bodies have no relation to human beings. Wow. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, people have been waiting years for this. Yeah. Well, introduce our special guest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have two questions. Ah, did you enjoy it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fair enough. And second question, uhm, how much time you think?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that to suggest the barrels full of hot dogs? Ah, coulda done that actually, shoulda done that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's even a hot dog costs about two bucks, you know what I mean? True, it is. Think about it, how many hot dogs do you get in this? It is the cost of a gas station hot dog.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These are good, these are good. All beef hot dogs? Yes. In the game? I would say that. Yea, none of that fucking pork chicken bullshit. No, yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So looking forward a little bit, well actually, I mean from now on since the game just came out.