Your 22 Questions for Waveform Answered!

You guys came through! This bonus episode is all questions that you all asked. We got over 1600 questions so we tried to answer all of them! Just kidding, but we did try to answer as many as possible. Follow us on socials: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew Manganelli?

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, host Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring your fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episodes and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from. But when that context is scattered across tools, threads, and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying blind. That's the problem that Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all these pieces together, from Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and more. So, nothing falls through the cracks. With Jira, you can actually share that context with the AI agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, assign them work directly, or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who, and more time actually shipping. Learn more at jira.com.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  That's J-I-R-A dot com. The surface of the sun is colder than the inner core of the earth.

• 1:25Andrew Manganelli?

  The surface of the sun is closer than the pyramids being built?

• 1:29Speaker 01

  I didn't know the core of the earth was that hot. Bro. It's molten iron. I know, but the surface of the sun? Yeah, the surface. Hotter than the surface of the sun.

• 1:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, I can feel the sun.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  What about the core of the sun?

• 1:41Speaker 02

  I thought the surface of the sun wasn't the hot part.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not. But it's the surface of the sun. It's still really hot. I mean, I guess I just never thought about how hot.

• 1:50Andrew Manganelli?

  Do you know what I might see today? The surface of my sun?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  They call that the corona.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  What is up, people of the internet? I'm Ellis, this is Adam, and before we kick off this very special episode of Waveform, I want to ask the host the first question of Waveform, which is, how is this podcast different from all other podcasts?

• 2:20Andrew Manganelli?

  This one right now?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Well, Andrew is the host who does not know how to ask, clearly, but this episode is different because we're answering questions from you, our lovely audience, viewers, spectators. We have, we've gotten over 1,600 questions from you guys.

• 2:42David Imel?

  We're gonna answer all of them.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  We're not gonna answer all of them. It was so many questions. We picked our favorite ones. We're gonna kick it off. Before, just honorary mention, like a third of the questions, like over 100 of them, I wanna say, were just like, "What do you guys think about Zen browser?"

• 2:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Shout out Zen browser.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  "What do you guys think about Zen browser?"

• 3:03Speaker 01

  I think it's pretty solid and it needs a couple more features for me to switch to it full-time.

• 3:09Andrew Manganelli?

  I just don't like those types of browsers, but it's run on the Firefox.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  That's why. Everyone was like, "Andrew," you know?

• 3:14Andrew Manganelli?

  You're right, I should, but I don't.

• 3:16David Imel?

  I haven't given it, I have not given it a shot yet, mostly because everyone keeps telling me to, and I just don't want to do what they tell me, as, you know, Rage Against the Machine would say.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  What's this thing to work?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Two, two really good references in the first, like, two minutes of this podcast. I like it. You guys all got my reference, right?

• 3:33David Imel?

  What'd you say?

• 3:34Speaker 02

  "Don't even worry about it." The people listening, they'll know. It was a Judaism reference.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  I definitely missed that one.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Literally, the form we sent out was, "What's your question? Who are ya?" Like, there's no categories, we're just gonna, we're gonna spit 'em off. This first one is from Constantine, and it's a question for David, specifically. David, the question is, "Kann David das Lesen?"

• 3:58David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Andrew Manganelli?

  I got this.

• 4:00David Imel?

  "Kann Lesen?"

• 4:01Andrew Manganelli?

  What language is it?

• 4:03David Imel?

  It's German. "Kann David understand this?" That's what he said.

• 4:06Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Nice, David.

• 4:08Andrew Manganelli?

  How much did you practice pronouncing that?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  No, that was off the dome, baby.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  I also speak German.

• 4:14David Imel?

  I speak any.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Sprechen Sie Deutsch over here.

• 4:16David Imel?

  Hmm.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I don't know how to say over here. I actually don't know how to say anything other than sprechen Sie Deutsch.

• 4:20David Imel?

  Ich bin ein Berliner. I think it's pretty simple.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Am I the only one who doesn't speak German?

• 4:26Andrew Manganelli?

  There's a lot of German words that is just, if you say the English word, angry.

• 4:31David Imel?

  That's.

• 4:31Andrew Manganelli?

  Haus.

• 4:32David Imel?

  It's Haus.

• 4:33Andrew Manganelli?

  I think I made this joke on the podcast.

• 4:34David Imel?

  It's Hausa. It's not Haus.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  That's same thing.

• 4:37David Imel?

  It's Haus. It's Hausa.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  But you'd know what they meant if you went to Germany and said.

• 4:41David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  I mean, English is a Germanic language.

• 4:44David Imel?

  No, it's Hausa.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Kick, crush.

• 4:46David Imel?

  Play it, play it. Haus.

• 4:51David Imel?

  Same correct.

• 4:52Andrew Manganelli?

  She was, she wasn't as angry.

• 4:53David Imel?

  Not very angry.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Not very angry there.

• 4:57David Imel?

  All right.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  That's hilarious.

• 4:58David Imel?

  Well.

• 4:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay. Next question. This one comes from Shaw. For ad breaks, do you guys take actual breaks or is that just a post-production thing?

• 5:08David Imel?

  Sometimes we gotta pee.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  We do take little breaks, yeah. Stretch our legs a little bit.

• 5:13David Imel?

  Stretch our brains.

• 5:14Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean, sometimes the breaks are too long because we start talking about stuff that has nothing to do with the show. And then we realize we're way too deep. But yeah, it's usually bathroom break, stretch break. In the summer, turn the AC on, break for a couple of minutes.

• 5:27David Imel?

  Which we might need to do today. It's 87.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Fun fact for those, I don't know if we've even said this on the pod yet, when we record, we turn all of the ACs heating and cooling off in this room. So it's as quiet as possible. So it sounds good.

• 5:38Andrew Manganelli?

  The vent is right there above, like, our logo in the back, which means it would be blowing directly on all of the microphones.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  So we're very nice. We turn that off for you guys. But that means this room, which is surrounded by glass, uh, if it's super hot outside, that means as we're recording, the temperature of this room slowly goes up as we're recording the podcast.

• 5:58David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  If it's super cold outside, yes, this temperature of the room actually slowly goes down as we record this podcast. So in the winter, we would warm it up in here before we record. And then we turn it off and we record the pod. And when we were done, we'd all be a little bit cold and shivering because it's 12 degrees outside. Now, today. I think it's 90 degrees today outside.

• 6:20David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  So we are slowly being cooked as we record this Q and A, but that's okay. Cause we take those little breaks and we cool it off.

• 6:26David Imel?

  The point is, it's really uncomfortable to do this show.

• 6:28Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean, there's a lot of times David and I are just wearing like full winter jackets in here.

• 6:33David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Andrew Manganelli?

  And people are like, why? It's like, it's freezing.

• 6:36David Imel?

  For your ears. I'm already considering taking off my second layer.

• 6:40Andrew Manganelli?

  It got hot real fast and it's only 10 a.m.

• 6:43David Imel?

  Yep.

• 6:43Andrew Manganelli?

  And we've been recording for 15 minutes.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  That's because David's been working out.

• 6:47David Imel?

  Yeah. All right.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  This question got asked another, you know, dozens of times.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  It's the classic, why did Adam and Ellis share one mic?

• 6:58Andrew Manganelli?

  That's on you guys.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  We can't ever tell them that, right?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Well, the answer is sort of different now because the excuse used to be like, we were using the Rodecaster and we were out of inputs. And so like, why would we, you know, do anything about it? Now we have the Tascam SonicView 16, which is just, you know, it has inputs falling out of its pockets. Yeah, we could each have two mics, but it's just kind of part of the bit now.

• 7:20David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  It feels like the box Cheerios.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, this was exactly, this was a conscious effort when we got this machine. We were like looking at each other like, okay, do you want to each have a separate mic now? And we like paused for a second and we're like, nah.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Also like, it isn't a kind of thing where it's like, this show works for us as like a business because we, it's so efficient. We have such a system for, like, the reason we can be creative with it is because so many parts of it are like this very systemized thing. And it might not immediately seem like it, but over the course of a year, like per episode, adding another mic doesn't really make it more complicated. But when you take the 60 plus episodes we do a year, that actually does add a significant amount of time. So it's easier.

• 8:03Andrew Manganelli?

  We also get 50 free comments an episode telling, why would we screw engagement?

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Also.

• 8:09David Imel?

  It's a live show that each had a mic.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  The, the, the sexual tension of Adam and I's heads constantly being so close together, like this is gold.

• 8:16David Imel?

  If you had Vision Pros on, it'd be even harder.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  This is showbiz, baby. But yeah, so that's, that's all the reasons why.

• 8:23Andrew Manganelli?

  That's a good bonus episode. One mic.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  That's actually a Nas song. All right. Next question comes to us from Claire Cole. Is David's Fediverse corner dead?

• 8:39David Imel?

  I can bring it back.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Figuratively.

• 8:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Is it the corner that's dead or the Fediverse that's dead?

• 8:44David Imel?

  Mostly the corner.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  The Fediverse is definitely.

• 8:46David Imel?

  No, no, no, no.

• 8:49Andrew Manganelli?

  Welcome to David's Fediverse corner.

• 8:50David Imel?

  Welcome to David's Fediverse.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  We're back.

• 8:52Andrew Manganelli?

  Give us a quick update.

• 8:53David Imel?

  Meta has probably given up on it because Mark Zuckerberg sucks. And they just don't care anymore. And that's sad. But I did go to the Blue Sky Atmosphere Conference in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago. There's a lot of stuff happening in the atmosphere. I will say, the majority of the Fediverse is now made up of Blue Sky and RSS.

• 9:16Andrew Manganelli?

  What about threads?

• 9:17David Imel?

  But you can still federate in threads.

• 9:20Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 9:20David Imel?

  But they actively try to make you not. Like, I get a notification on my threads all the time that's like, "You've been federated for 30 days. Are you still sure that you want to keep that on?"

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Are you sure you want to share to the Fediverse?

• 9:31David Imel?

  And it's like, they're actively trying to bury that under a rug.

• 9:36Andrew Manganelli?

  That's so funny, because the Fediverse is supposed to be this really, you know, not simple thing, but a simple thing to where all the things using it, it shouldn't really affect it. So the fact that they're saying like, "Are you sure you still want to do that even though it doesn't change your Threads profile at all?"

• 9:48David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 9:49Andrew Manganelli?

  Is a red flag.

• 9:50David Imel?

  It's a big red flag, yeah. Yeah. And I asked them about that and they were like, "Well, you know, some people don't really know where their data is going." And I'm like, "That's so bull****."

• 9:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, people on the Meta account are worried about their data.

• 10:02David Imel?

  Yeah, Adam, just go answer your Instagram questions. Just stay away from my Fediverse. You know what? Now that you asked that question, I'm bringing it back. Every week, we're gonna have a lame update that is not that bad.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  No, no, no. Next question, next question.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  See you, done?

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Mark, guys, this one's coming to you.

• 10:18David Imel?

  Okay.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Because we frequently describe things that happen in basketball in tech terms. However, Danny would really like you to explain the vertical tab situation in basketball terms.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Hmm, the vertical tab situation. It's Steph Curry.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  It's Steph Curry. It's changed the game. Yes. You know, before Steph Curry came along, peak basketball was just what we all expect. You know, Michael Jordan from the mid-range was the greatest thing we'd ever seen.

• 10:48Andrew Manganelli?

  Horizontal tabs are Michael Jordan?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:50Andrew Manganelli?

  Greatest of all time.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  However, the game has changed. It simply has evolved and we've realized that there is a more efficient way to get more done. And that is to shoot from further away. And that's exactly what happened with vertical tabs. We went, oh, wait, it's widescreen. Duh, we could be doing this better. And now everyone shoots threes the same way that, you know, the game has moved on.

• 11:11Andrew Manganelli?

  Even Andre Drummond shoots threes. We were talking about.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  We just learned that. Yeah, I did not realize how many threes my rebounding goat was shooting.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do the exact number. This season, look, it's not, you know, as many as you would hope. It's 1.4 a game.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  That's a lot more than I expected.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  It's a lot more and he's making them at about 36% clip. So, you know, Andre Drummond has a three point in his bag. He made two last night.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Now, is it, is it just wide open corner threes or is he like doing dribble handoffs and like stepping out of screen and roll? Like backing out and like step back threes and stuff or what is he doing?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  So Andre Drummond is a 12-year NBA veteran in his mid, mid 30s.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Approaching seven feet tall, if not over.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  No. Andre Drummond is in the corner. He gets past a ball and the defense goes, he's not going to make that.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  And then he does, baby.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 12:06Andrew Manganelli?

  Wait, so he's shooting 36% and averaging 1.3 three-point attempts per game?

• 12:12Speaker 02

  1.4 per game. Yeah.

• 12:14Andrew Manganelli?

  So he makes a three-pointer once every three games?

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Like on fire.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Remember, in, for the past like 12, I forget if it's 12 or 14 seasons.

• 12:23Andrew Manganelli?

  That's the vertical tab right there.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  He averaged one per season. Not one made.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  One attempt per season.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  That's the Andre Drummond I know.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  So he's shot, he's shot 60 or 70 this season and made 20 or 30.

• 12:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Confused?

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Now any.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Don't talk about Andre Draven.

• 12:42David Imel?

  He's slandering vertical tabs by doing this. Slandering vertical tabs right now.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  It's because he's seven feet tall. So it's like anything vertical is freaking.

• 12:49Andrew Manganelli?

  Approaching seven feet tall.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  I don't actually know.

• 12:51David Imel?

  I think he's seven feet.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, Andre Draven has to.

• 12:53David Imel?

  Is he approaching or is he done growing?

• 12:54Andrew Manganelli?

  That's what I was confused about when he said approaching seven feet.

• 12:57David Imel?

  He could still be approaching seven feet.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  He's old enough now where he's done growing.

• 13:02David Imel?

  Yeah, well, Mike Bibby.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Okay, I just want to say Andre Draven is 6'11". I think approaching seven feet is the perfect way to describe that.

• 13:08David Imel?

  He's not still growing. All right, well.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  What?

• 13:12David Imel?

  I'm just saying.

• 13:13Andrew Manganelli?

  The game's changing, David. We don't know.

• 13:14David Imel?

  All I'm saying is Mike Bibby would have made those threes.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 13:18David Imel?

  Nice. Good reference. Love it.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  All right, next question comes from Poncho. What was the first piece of tech that you hacked, modified, or took apart?

• 13:26David Imel?

  Oh, Motor Droid.

• 13:28Andrew Manganelli?

  HTC Droid Iris. Really?

• 13:30David Imel?

  Mm-hmm. Does like a computer count?

• 13:34Speaker 04

  What computer do you remember?

• 13:35David Imel?

  It was a custom-built computer. My friends in first grade, my friend's dad built computers for movie studios. I was like, that was his job. So we built them with them sometimes.

• 13:45Andrew Manganelli?

  I built one earlier, but this was take, I never took it apart after. Because I was not going to try that variable again at that age. It worked.

• 13:56David Imel?

  The first one I heavily modified was definitely my first smartphone, for sure.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had my Droid running custom ROMs, custom kernels, overclocked. I had, I probably flashed a new ROM every other day.

• 14:06Andrew Manganelli?

  I was gonna say, it worked every other day.

• 14:07David Imel?

  I did the Nightly's on Sanogen mod.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:10David Imel?

  And it's crazy because that [BLEEP] wipes all your data.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  Every time.

• 14:13David Imel?

  Every single time. And it was nightly. And I was like, I can't wait for the new build.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Every morning, you have to log into everything again. It was such a, I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Those were the days, seriously.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Those were the days.

• 14:25David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, I painted an Xbox once, which I had to take apart.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  Oh, I wanted to do that so bad to make it white and blue.

• 14:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Mine was orange and you had to like take the circle with the green Xbox out and like acetone, but I couldn't find acetone. So I just sandpapered it and totally screwed it up. And then the paint I used was way too thick. And then my Xbox just looked like garbage.

• 14:48David Imel?

  You put it back together and it worked.

• 14:49Andrew Manganelli?

  It worked, yeah. It just had like a quarter inch of orange paint all over it.

• 14:54David Imel?

  I did that to a keyboard, one of my first keyboards that I like heavily modified. It was like a Cooler Master keyboard with like toper switches or something and I painted it with spray paint. Horrible idea. The texture was like tacky. Slightly sticky.

• 15:09Andrew Manganelli?

  Thumbnail in it or like make an indent.

• 15:11David Imel?

  Yeah, yeah, that was terrible. It was stupid. It was like neon blue.

• 15:16Andrew Manganelli?

  Nice.

• 15:16David Imel?

  That I painted it in purple. Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  I modded a lot of Minecraft stuff and then a bunch of weird stuff as a kid. But like the big breakthrough moment for me was my some point in college getting an old, my first VCR that was just someone like, I think this is broken. Do you want this? And I was like, sure. And it would spit out tapes all the time. And so I took it apart and took the IR sensor out. And I think I just literally soldered the two connections together.

• 15:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  And then it worked. And I was like, oh my god.

• 15:44David Imel?

  I'm imagining.

• 15:45Andrew Manganelli?

  How old were you that you had access to soldering?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  This was like, I must have, I was in Philly, so it must have been like my junior year of college.

• 15:51David Imel?

  I was picturing like a first grader soldering. Whoa.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  I was not that cool.

• 15:57Speaker 04

  My first one, I remember I was like four or five and it was a CRT TV that I took apart.

• 16:02David Imel?

  No, no, do not take apart a CRT TV.

• 16:06Andrew Manganelli?

  I was seven and I did my dryer.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  I did fully disassemble a dryer once before Googling how to disassemble a dryer and then finding out that that was the last thing I should have done.

• 16:19David Imel?

  Is it really dangerous or something?

• 16:20Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable. You can electrocute yourself to death. In like nine ways. Even when it's unplugged, you can electrocute yourself to death.

• 16:27David Imel?

  How?

• 16:28Speaker 04

  That's true about a CRT also, right?

• 16:29Speaker 02

  It is true about a CRT.

• 16:30David Imel?

  Wait, how? Capacitors?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's capacitors in there, capacitors and transformers that store a lethal charge.

• 16:37David Imel?

  Yikes.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  And if you, if you, I mean, I don't want to, never mind.

• 16:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Just don't.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:43David Imel?

  Just don't do it.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  And if you're gonna do it.

• 16:45David Imel?

  No, don't. If you're gonna do it, don't.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  This one comes from Owen McCarty specifically for Marquez. And it was a long question, so I'm going to summarize. How do you script your videos? Because he's a small content creator and he's trying to like work through that part of the process.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Uh, the literal answer is I just spew, I just like word vomit into a doc and it's kind of just like a train of thought. Uh, and then I refine that into kind of how I speak. I've gotten really good at writing how I talk. So I write out literally how I want to say things, how I want to explain things. And then in the actual recording process, I have that doc on my phone in front of me, usually on a table next to me or literally on my lap. And I'll read what I want to say and then put it down and then deliver it pretty close to word for word, not exactly perfect, but as long as I get the point across that I meant to say when I wrote it down, then it's a success. So it's not perfectly scripted,

• 17:44Speaker 01

  but it's kind of like writing a conversation down as I talk, if that makes sense.

• 17:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, podcast, totally different. We're a lot of bullet points on here.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Oh, it's perfectly scripted.

• 17:58Andrew Manganelli?

  Get the big, the really important numbers in. But I mean,

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:01Andrew Manganelli?

  if you're trying to figure out what you should do, you should try a couple of different ways and then watch the videos and be like, which one of these felt like it worked the best?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:10Andrew Manganelli?

  Because

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:11Andrew Manganelli?

  some people can do bullet points. Some people need to read straight from a script.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  I will say you learn by doing. So you might think you need to script everything and then you, you watch yourself back reading from a script and it's super unnatural and that doesn't work for you. I think the best tip really, just to, just to skip the whole scripting process is to try to get good at talking to a camera like it's a person.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  And then if you need to write some things down to remember them, that's good. If you need to write it down verbatim, that, that might be you. But like, the whole point of scripting for me is to get good at saying the thing I want to say in as few takes as possible efficiently. But it's really just about delivery.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  I think. Cause most people when they're new to talking to the camera, they, they are enunciating in weird ways. And for some reason, there's like a disconnect there. But if you're able to just figure out how to have a natural conversation and look straight ahead of you.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Then that's when people connect with you the most.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Which is not normal and very hard.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  It's not normal.

• 19:05Andrew Manganelli?

  It's hard.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  It takes a long time.

• 19:08Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean, Mark has been doing this for how long?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Look at the old videos.

• 19:11Andrew Manganelli?

  There's probably some times where it's like five to 10 takes of a single paragraph. It's, you see the end result. There's a lot more on the other side of that.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  The next two I'm going to read together because they're different, but both kind of like inside baseball podcast producing questions.

• 19:29Andrew Manganelli?

  Who? Claire's calling me?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Uh oh. Uh oh. Uh oh.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Live on the pod, Andrew's having a baby.

• 19:35Andrew Manganelli?

  Water breaking live. Hello?

• 19:38Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 19:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Hey.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  What you doing?

• 19:40Andrew Manganelli?

  Uh, middle of podcast, but I can leave it.

• 19:43Speaker 05

  Oh, it's the podcast today?

• 19:45Andrew Manganelli?

  A second one. Oh, sorry. Is this not a, uh, come home call?

• 19:51Speaker 05

  No, it kind of is.

• 19:52Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, okay.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Wait, Andrew, put your headphones on real quick.

• 20:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Cool.

• 20:02Andrew Manganelli?

  Thank you all. I'm going to go have a son. Enjoy the rest of the pod.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Is the surface crazy? That's crazy. Like, you could, sometimes like someone leaves a video, it comes back and they have a different shirt. That's like a mild transformation. Sometimes, sometimes they leave and they come back the next episode and they have a different haircut. And you're like, wow, they changed a lot. Sometimes like Andrew leaves a father of one and returns a father of two. Huge transformation. All right. So I don't know how much of that is going to make it into the podcast, but what did just happen is Andrew just got a phone call and he had to go leave and have a son. So.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Now, literally, we've adjusted the cameras and David and I will continue answering questions.

• 20:46David Imel?

  You know, somebody had a baby live on Twitch for the first time. I think we might be the first podcast to have a baby live on a podcast.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, kinda, kinda.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  There's no way we're first to that.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  That's only if Andrew comes back to this podcast and is a father of two. Wouldn't that be crazy in one episode?

• 21:03David Imel?

  If he came back next week.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  If he comes back just at the end of this episode and he's like, by the way, now I have two kids.

• 21:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Normally it takes nine months for that to happen.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, he just did it in a day. Andrew just did it in a day. All right. Well, yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Do we want to do the inside baseball podcast question still?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  All right, sweet. So these are our two sort of similar questions I wanted to ask them together. Chris asks, why is the audio podcast available so much sooner than the video podcast? Meanwhile, Sean Paul says. Sean underscore Paul on X, excuse me, Jesus.

• 21:38David Imel?

  Twitter?

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Sean underscore Paul on Twitter.

• 21:41David Imel?

  Nice.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Asks, what does being part of the Vox Media Podcast Network actually entail?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Question. Adam, do you want to do the audio episode? Sure. So the audio part of this happens because I don't know how this actually started. I think it was Studio 71 when you guys were initially planning it, came up with a time that was like, we'll launch at 4:00 AM because we'll hit like every major time zone at a decent-ish time, you know? Yeah. And that works fine for, for audio. But then when we started doing video as well, it's like publishing at 4:00 AM Eastern Time is a little weird. So we had a discussion. We were like, do we just like move the whole published time entirely? And we were like, nah, people kind of like got used to expecting it when it comes out. Let's just keep the audio what it is and video will come out when it's ready. And that's pretty much what we've been doing ever since.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think the original 4:00 AM time was like, so everyone's morning commute is covered. If you're an audio only listener, it's probably in your feed by the time you're going to work on Friday.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  It's interesting that like the audio podcast, like audio podcasts are something people consume with some sort of regularity. And we can like sort of plan around that. Whereas YouTube videos, it's like, I'm going to watch a YouTube video.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also we collectively don't trust automatically publishing on YouTube. Yeah. So we manually. It gets time zones wrong all the time somehow. And yeah, or at least it did when we were, you know, publishing a lot. Now, the Vox Media Podcast Network question is another interesting one. Essentially, it just means that we are part of a larger group of podcasts to which you can go to, to buy ads, basically. So Vox Media Podcast Network sells the ads that you see that support this show. And when you're part of a larger group of podcasts, what that means is someone like Vox Media can bring a group of shows to an advertiser and say, look at all these tech shows that we have. And you can reach all these audiences with one fell swoop, basically.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  So it's a nice advantage there. And they've been great support for some of the stuff we've done with the live shows and some other fun stuff we wanted to do. So it's, it's all good, friendly support for the show. If you want to reach Waveform's audience and Esther Perel's audience at the same time, you know where to go. Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 23:56David Imel?

  Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Guys, this is a great question for you two because you both have been getting shipped review units for quite some time. Because I think I know what you would probably answer this question as.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  I would love to hear.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Terrible way to say that, but what's the most expensive tech you've broken while reviewing? I will also substitute this for any fun, oops, I broke this while reviewing at stories you may have.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, what do you think I would say?

• 24:27Speaker 02

  I assumed you were gonna say the classic, why did this ship with a screen protector?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Oh, that is a, that is a classic. How much was that when it came out, the first fold?

• 24:36David Imel?

  Eighteen hundred.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  So if you, if you weren't around for that, what Alice was referring to is the first ever Samsung Galaxy Fold. It's kind of a big deal, it's a phone that folded in half and there was a lot of unknowns about it. And I shot my unboxing video and the way it went is I actually shot my entire unboxing and first look video, edited it all together, got it ready for upload. And then as I was going to upload, I said, I need to shoot a thumbnail. What I'll do is I'll take the screen protector off and take a photo of it. So I upload the video and then I start to peel the screen protector off and then some pixels start to go black. And then I peel it a little further and more of it starts to go black. And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. This is weird. What's going on?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Turns out that top layer, we didn't really know at the time and it wasn't really explained to any of us, but was a very delicate layer of the actual display. Yeah. So I, yeah, quickly put it back on. I published the unboxing and first look still, but then I started to see other people post on Twitter that their displays were breaking. And so I chimed in and I said, I, mine is also breaking because of this, this top layer coming off. And other people had essentially tried the same thing as me. They tried to take the top layer off. So yeah, I broke it. Couple other people broke it. We all sent it back. Samsung had an internal crisis, they fixed it, they revised it and shipped it a couple of weeks later. But that-

• 26:02David Imel?

  They had gaskets to it.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, they added a bunch of stuff.

• 26:05David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  So that was eighteen hundred dollar phone, broken during the review process. And I actually never reviewed that phone later.

• 26:11David Imel?

  Oh, wow, really?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Because I shipped it back to them. They took them all back. So yeah, that that might be my answer at 1,800 bucks.

• 26:18David Imel?

  I remember I flew to Vancouver to do the hands-on video for that and I shot it. And then like as I was editing it, you tweeted about that happening. So I had to revise my, I had like, I added to my video and I was like, okay, breaking news.

• 26:34David Imel?

  Marquez broke his and and Dieter broke his and then I'm editing again. And then Samsung releases a statement, we're delaying this now. And I was like, breaking news again. So in one video, there's like three segments of me being like, actually, actually, actually.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, in like different locations and everything.

• 26:50David Imel?

  Yeah, yeah. The most expensive review I ever broke was the Galaxy Note 10. It was like completely made of glass and the the front and back both like the glass kind of like beveled around the backs. And I was at a pizza parlor like the day I got it in New York and I I was sitting at a high top. And

• 27:16Speaker 01

  I can see this is going.

• 27:17David Imel?

  It like it had this coating on it that made it slippery.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the note, yeah.

• 27:21David Imel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Yep, and it's in your pocket?

• 27:24David Imel?

  No, I had it on the table.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 27:27David Imel?

  But it was like one of those metal tables.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  I think a lot of people don't realize how many phones just slowly slide across.

• 27:33David Imel?

  Just autonomously.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:35David Imel?

  It was just slowly kind of moving and I didn't know.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  The world is not level.

• 27:38David Imel?

  Yeah. And it fell from like four feet or whatever. And because it had the glass that sort of like beveled over all sides, it hit the corner and just like cracked up the whole side.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:50David Imel?

  And then I tweeted about it and then I got a really angry call from Samsung. Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  As if it was their fault.

• 27:56David Imel?

  Was this necessary? And I was like, no, is anything necessary?

• 28:00Speaker 01

  You made your phone a slip and slide.

• 28:02David Imel?

  I literally, the crazy thing, I think earlier that day I had tweeted like, damn, this phone seems like it's gonna be the most fragile phone that Samsung has ever made. And then lo and behold.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:12David Imel?

  It was.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  I've had various scares like that. Luckily, a lot of the carpet in the studio where we shoot is is carpeted.

• 28:18David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Uh, which is nice. I don't know, what did I just say? A lot of the carpet is carpeted?

• 28:23David Imel?

  A lot of the

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of the A lot of the studio where we shoot is carpeted.

• 28:27David Imel?

  Right.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Uh, I've come into the studio and seen like three phones on the floor next to my desk. Realized that they'd slid off my desk.

• 28:34David Imel?

  That's crazy.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Which is why a lot of you know I have a mouse pad on my desk now that I put phones on.

• 28:38David Imel?

  Crappy mouse pad.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  This is from Alex.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Will you be doing any content around the World Cup this summer? Lots of cool tech used in soccer.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I did learn that recently. And I learned that because I was digging into if we should make a video on some of that stuff.

• 28:55David Imel?

  That could be cool.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  I think what I might end up doing is just focusing on the coolest individual thing that I find. I'm not sure what that's gonna be yet, but I am now aware, just like Alex is, of a bunch of cool tech being used in the World Cup. Which, some of you might know, the finals are going to be 30 minutes from this studio.

• 29:12David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  It's going to ruin traffic for a long time.

• 29:15David Imel?

  I need to rent out my apartment and get the hell out of here.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Make it an Airbnb for whatever week or two, so if somebody can pay you a ridiculous amount of money. And then, yeah, it'll, it'll happen.

• 29:26David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:27David Imel?

  Uh, you gotta beat Cleo Abram to the video, though, because she always does the tech of sports videos.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. Maybe it's a collab waiting to happen.

• 29:33David Imel?

  You should collab.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:34David Imel?

  Yeah. You heard it first, on this podcast.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  This one got asked by a lot of people, uh, and it's gonna become a big fight between Adam and I on one microphone.

• 29:45Speaker 04

  Oh, do you also have the same question pulled up?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you guys can decide who's more right, um, and why it's me, which is...

• 29:54David Imel?

  Okay.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm reading Katie, but it looks like someone named The Man, The Myth, The Legend also asked this question.

• 30:01David Imel?

  It's to say it's not the same person.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Why does Ellis hate frequency response charts so much?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Can we first explain what a frequency response chart is for people?

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Yes. A frequency response chart...

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Should Ellis be the one explaining that?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  It's this bull**** chart. It doesn't mean anything important. It sounds like a bee's asshole.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay, okay. A frequency response chart is an X, Y, it's a function. I guess it's not technically a function, but it's, it's a curve plotted on an X, Y graph, where the Y-axis is volume, or loudness, or amplitude. I can't believe I just said "volume." That's one of my biggest pet peeves. So I'm already off to the races.

• 30:45David Imel?

  Is it a Nabra jog wheel?

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Well, it's loudness, which is very different than volume. And the X-axis...

• 30:53David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Is frequency, from usually about 20 Hz to usually about 20,000 Hz.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  This line represents how much loudness, how many decibels are added or subtracted from a device like a loudspeaker or a microphone at a given frequency. So if something has like a big spike at around 3K, 3,000 hertz, you know that that device is either going to be receiving or outputting 3K at a much louder volume than other frequencies.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Cool. Is that satisfactory, Adam? All right, David.

• 31:33David Imel?

  Uh oh.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Do me a favor. Think about your favorite photograph you've ever taken. Not the best, but the photograph that you took that just really like moves you. You know, that you think like every time I look at this, I get excited about photography and how good a job I did. And just like, wow, I really have come so far in this practice, right? You have the picture in your head?

• 31:55David Imel?

  There's a twinkle in your eye.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  I want you to describe the picture to Marquez, but you are only allowed to describe it in terms of how much red there is.

• 32:06David Imel?

  That's not fair. There's some orange in the photo.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  But red, we're thinking about red.

• 32:12David Imel?

  Desaturated red.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  No, no, but just give me a number.

• 32:16David Imel?

  What?

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Like from 1 to 10, how much red is there?

• 32:19David Imel?

  1.2.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  All right, Marquez, can you describe the picture to me?

• 32:24David Imel?

  I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it now.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  This is a frequency response chart, okay? It is really good at explaining a very small, very small modicum of information that can be useful, that has these like very specific uses that when you're directly comparing, no, I'm not even going to go that far. If you're trying to find a very specific piece of information, the frequency response chart is where you will find it.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  If you are trying to express the sensory experience of listening to something, it's the exact same as being like, "Look at this picture, how much red is in it?" That's the picture.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  I think most people see these charts in headphone reviews, right?

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  So you'll see a pair of headphones, maybe compared to another pair of headphones, and they'll put the frequency response charts next to each other and go, "See, look how much more sub-based response there is in these headphones because the chart's higher over here than the other one." Is that valid?

• 33:23Speaker 02

  No, because, David, think of the second-best photograph you've ever taken. Now think about how much red is in that. Is that a good way to compare those two photographs?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Well, if you're looking specifically at how much red is in it, then yes.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you don't...

• 33:39Speaker 01

  You're usually not doing that.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  The point of a photograph is not how much red is in it.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think your argument is the frequency response is a unimportant factor.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say it's necessarily unimportant, but it's leaving out most of the story because what does sound need in order to exist?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Need a medium.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Well, that's actually a really good point. That's bigger brain than I was gonna say. I was gonna say, it needs time. Like, there's no such thing as a paused sound. A sound can only exist over a spread of time.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  I have a good analogy for this.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  What is missing from the frequency response chart?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, how fast a response.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  How fast it is. Another thing that's missing is, like, this is sort of the idea of, like, you can think of sound as like, "Oh, there's more 3K than there is 600, so we can do a little bump here." But that's assuming that you're giving it one flat input of zero decibels. All these speakers, all these headphones, they have these nonlinear curves. Like, you might get a bigger boost at 3K from a sound coming in at minus 10 dB LFS than a sound at minus 20, you know? Like, there's different sensitivities, there's different ranges. There's almost like each one of these frequencies is going through its own lookup table, right?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  And so just saying, like, "There's more 3K" actually says... Nothing about how you would perceive these headphones.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Cause just a little.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  You can see a free two frequency response charts of a headphone and see one of them that has like a crazy boost in the high end. And then you'll put them on and it will not sound significantly brighter because that boost might only be for really loud sounds. Or it might only be for really slow sounds, or it might only be for really fast, like there's so much information.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  That is like left out of this, this thing that if you're, if you're, I will say like a great example is my, sometimes they're useful with microphones. You know what I mean? Like what is this microphone good at picking up? But even then, the parts of microphones that sort of give them their really distinct sound, I don't think are captured in frequency response charts. Because the dynamic range information is missing. And I just want to follow this up with one other thing. A lot of people ask like, well, Ellis, like we use spectrographs all the time. And you don't seem to have a problem with those. And I don't, I really like spectrographs, but spectrographs, A, have a time, the X axis is time in a spectrograph, right?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  The Y axis is frequency. And the point of a spectrograph is to be able to visualize a specific sound, not a device. So when you need to understand, like, I'm hearing this sound, where am I actually hearing things? Spectrograph, really awesome. There's nothing that a spectrograph can do to explain speakers or headphones or microphones.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  All very valid. I think, yeah, I, I, I actually get a lot of flack sometimes for not putting as much benchmark information and graphs in my reviews. And instead I rely on describing the sounds, the feelings, the materials, things like that. Because I think that works when I'm talking to a regular person, more important. But I do, I do hear from people who are like, yeah, but you gotta measure this and really be able to back it up. And sometimes we even do measure it and don't include that in the video. Uh, but I think a lot of that is the reason why. And the analogy I thought of as you were talking is it's like trying to compare two cars with just the horsepower number.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Or just the zero to 60.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Which could tell you that one of them is more powerful than the other and maybe is faster. But when you line them up over a quarter mile.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  The, the way they behave, the way they go through gears, if they even have gears, that like, there's so many more things to consider in how they will drive than just. 805 horsepower, you might suggest. And that's the same.

• 37:31David Imel?

  It's not too dissimilar to MTF modular transfer function charts on lenses, which are supposed to, yeah, they're supposed to measure sharpness from like the center of the lens to the edge of the lens. That's obviously useful for like medical purposes if you just like want as much sharpness and fine contrast as possible. But the actual human experience of using a lens is not peak sharpness and peak.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 37:55David Imel?

  It's like the experience of the lenses, it's different looks and you're doing creative looks.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  If you, if this is not enough for you and you need scientific proof that I'm right, go on your computer and search Fletcher Munson curve. That's Fletcher F L E T C H E R M U N S O N curve. This is the frequency response curve of our ears, like the most famous frequency response curve in history. And you'll see there's like nine lines.

• 38:22David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Because our ears respond to different frequencies at different volumes, just like every transducer.

• 38:29David Imel?

  Things our brains are dope.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Well, it just goes to show when you actually need a frequency response curve and it's like of medical importance, you don't use these silly little one line nonsense burgers. You use the big, the big Chad dynamic range measurer, you know?

• 38:45David Imel?

  Adam, do you have a response?

• 38:46Speaker 04

  My response is, one, headphones use these curves as well to, they account for this. It's not like they don't think of this stuff, the people that make these. There's like the Harmon Carden curve, there's a bunch of these. But two, you're talking about frequency response graphs and sound as if it's art, but that's not art. It's science. Music is art. The way that the speaker moves and pushes air, we can measure. And if you are comparing two things, if I have one speaker that does the exact amount of air as another speaker, me personally know that speaker will sound the same to me, not to you, not to anyone else in this room. But to me, those two speakers will sound the same.

• 39:30Speaker 04

  Everyone's ears are different, but the speakers aren't. I mean, they are because there's like minute differences in how we make things and nothing's perfect, whatever.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  You're missing an asterisk, which is. If you play the exact same sound at the exact same volume.

• 39:42Speaker 04

  Yes, which is why when you're testing headphones, you usually play the same songs. You usually play the same things because you want to compare them A B. You're not like, nothing's in a vacuum. You're comparing these things and frequency graphs in particular are useful for the internet. Not when you're like talking about if we're in person and we're talking about headphones, like just try the headphones, trying the headphones will always be the best thing you can do.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:05Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, not everyone has access to very expensive headphones all over the world.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 40:09Speaker 04

  The next best thing is how we share information on the internet are these graphs. If you have a pair of headphones you have access to and you can try them on and you can see their frequency response. And there's another trusted source that uses this technology to measure the exact same frequency responses in another pair of headphones that you don't have access to and they're expensive. You can be relatively confident that they're going to sound more or less how your headphones are. And if you have a preference, that's where trying a lot of this comes into play. If you have a preference with how you want your headphones to sound, then you know what to look for in the frequency response graphs. And again, that's not 100% true because you might try a pair of headphones that you thought you wouldn't like because of the graph and then it ends up being great. But that's like the, the beauty of trying out a bunch of different headphones. That's why people fall into these rabbit holes.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's hard to compare things online when you can't play, you can't put the headphones on their head and let them hear it. So we are trying with these graphs and measurements and words to give them the experience and it's hard.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  Which is an issue that Ellis had with his speaker that broke physics video because everyone was like, why didn't you give us a test? Because you don't understand the speaker is pushing air, which needs to be picked up by a microphone, which is then being digitized and pressed on your phone. Like you wouldn't understand what it sounds like. There's no way.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think that we just should start a debate club. Cause that sounded, that was pretty crazy.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Adam, which one of these two microphones is brighter?

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Are you looking at a chart?

• 41:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm looking at two charts. The one on the bottom is the RK87 cardioid response graph chart.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  RK87 is the name of the capsule. It's not the, these are, these are two different microphones.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  And their frequency responses.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  And I'm looking, the first one, I'm trying to describe for audio. So the one on top is like a bump in the lows, then it slopes down a bit around 1K and then it bumps up again around 10K. Then the one on the bottom is.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Bunch of peaks and valleys, but pretty much flat around zero, all the way up until about eight or seven K, then there's a big bump. So judging by this, my guess would be the bottom one, because there's a bump into 10K.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  You are technically correct, but what you're missing is that this microphone that you said is very flat is famously the least flat microphone money can buy. It's the Neumann U87 AI. It famously has the pointiest, most cuddy dynamic, like, like mids of all time. It looks like it. No, it doesn't, because the, the reason is, is because the, the, the power of the U87 comes from an extremely limited dynamic range in those mid frequencies. If it, nothing is going to ever get boosted, but it also means that your quiet mids are just going to get brought up by the capsule. So when you hear it, it's like, it's, it doesn't sound flat at all. You can look at this almost completely flat line and think like, oh, I need a flat mic.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  This is the exact same thing as like seeing an EV with 800 horsepower and a gas car with 800 horsepower, because an EV, you also need to know that it makes all of its torque instantly all of the time. And it, and a gas car makes peak horsepower at certain RPMs and also builds torque over and over through the different RPMs. So you can have two cars that both have 800 horsepower, but you put them on the line next to each other, and the race looks like this. And you're like, why, why is the EV not slowing down? Because the gears, there's gears, there's different torque, there's like all these other variables that are not explained in this one. So you could be right by looking at a graph of horsepower and go, okay, I think the one that's lighter is going to do better. But like, there's, there's a lot to it.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  There's another, a bunch of factors. I'm gonna die on this hill, but I'll end it with saying, if you want to know how something sounds, type in the google.com, the name of the thing, and then type in sound on sound, and it'll take you to the website of this magazine where they do great gear reviews.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  That's what you need.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  And someone will tell you how it sounds.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Great gear reviews.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  That's what you need, baby.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  I will also die on the hill if you need great reviews.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  I know it's a shocker, but I believe it.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  I think it's a great time to take a break.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Sound of, yeah, see, see.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  We're not doing trivia?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Not only did we get questions for you guys, but we also got a few trivia questions submitted via this forum, which means we have the very rare bonus episode trivia.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Unreal.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  And I have no idea how we're gonna make sure Andrew can get points. Isn't he winning?

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's winning by...

• 44:26David Imel?

  No, I'm winning.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 44:27David Imel?

  By a lot.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  Yep, by more points.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  We'll keep track of points. We'll figure it out later.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. This question comes from Mohave. The question is, what was the last iPad to ship with iOS?

• 44:40David Imel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Oh, I know this.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  That's a good question. I know!

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Cause this...

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Yo!

• 44:46Speaker 01

  I should know this. Okay, so they switched to iPadOS when they added... I'm talking through it out loud.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Mohave!

• 44:52Speaker 01

  They added widgets to like 17, right? Wait, did you say which iPad?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Which iPad?

• 44:59David Imel?

  iPad.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  iPad 17?

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Well, iPadOS 17.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  What are we on now?

• 45:04Speaker 01

  So it was iOS 16 and then iPadOS 17?

• 45:06David Imel?

  Isn't it just iPad 2026 or whatever?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Well, then we need to know which iPad came out when, because there's like the Air that comes out staggered from the Pro, which comes out separate from the Mini, but that was definitely after. And then the base iPad, which sometimes comes out the same time as the Air. There's no way I get this right, but I'm gonna try to get close. iOS 17... Okay. Well, I guess, did they give an answer in their question? They did.

• 45:32David Imel?

  Can you verify it?

• 45:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just fact-checked it. He was correct.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, you know, we'll do the same thing we usually do. Answers at the end like usual. We'll be right back.

• 45:48Speaker 01

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• 46:32Speaker 01

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• 46:52Speaker 06

  Support for the show comes from Google Gemini. You know that moment when curiosity strikes? You're exploring a new city with the family and a sculpture catches your daughter's eye. What is that? Who made it? With Gemini, you can snap a picture and get a fully interactive breakdown of its history, architecture, and even hidden secrets. Gemini is built for moments like that. Whether you're learning something new, solving a problem, or looking for your next favorite thing, Google Gemini is here to help. Download Gemini, Google's AI app, or visit gemini.google.com to learn more.

• 47:31Speaker 07

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• 47:57Speaker 01

  All right, welcome back. We've got some more questions from y'all. Thank you again for asking them. Hopefully, we can answer as many of them as we can in this pod. Go.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  I made a promise to myself that if I didn't know how to pronounce any of your names, I would Google them instead of being like, I'm sorry if I mispronounce this.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Because I really try to. But I Googled it and I cannot find anything. So I really hope your name is Jason Abe. And if it's Jason Abe, I sincerely apologize, Jason. I could have just said Jason and skipped all of this.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  This question comes from Jason.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Marquez, what started your addiction to weather content?

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Jesus.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Small talk.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Like a lot of people, like a lot of people, actually that's part of it.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  But the content part, I think, came in the last couple of years because of just, you fall down a rabbit hole sometimes and instead of the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, rabbit hole, I fell down the weather content rabbit hole. I think this was right around like big, yeah, big winter storms. So we're sitting here, we're sitting duck on the east coast, we get these big blizzards that wipe across the country. And then you watch one video about the blizzards and then you're like, okay, now I know. That was a pretty good video. And then you get another suggested video about it and you're like, all right, I'll watch this one too.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Is it related? Cause I'm, a distinct memory I have working here is like in my first like two or three months of working here, like I barely knew you, only knew you from the internet, really. Someone at lunch asked you like what your bucket list items were. And the first one you whipped that like, like no hesitation. You're like, I want to see a tornado.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  I remember being like, what?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Interesting. Yeah. I've, well, I've always wanted to observe a bunch of natural phenomena and I've always been interested in natural phenomena, including weather. And every time we get a big hurricane or a crazy low pressure system, or even wild thunderstorms or whatever, that is fun for me. I love lightning and thunder. I love that. So yeah, naturally I would like to see, but the tornado thing was specific though, because I worked at the Liberty Science Center and I was in this little exhibit a lot, which was basically a 360 set of displays. And you step into them and it would play a video of a tornado coming down a path at you, an actual video of a tornado passing over the top of you.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Because somebody managed to go get a probe with a bunch of, it was like a cone with a bunch of cameras in it that they put in the path of the tornado and drove away.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. They move, they made a movie about it called Twister. You didn't see it?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  About the probe?

• 50:31Speaker 02

  No, I'm joking.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, it was super cool to watch and the video even starts with the guy like putting you on the ground and driving away. And then the tornado goes over the top. And I was like, that is. Crazy and I learned way too much about tornadoes and I'm like this is the craziest information anyone's ever seen. How does this exist on earth? I gotta see this. It's crazy that it's real.

• 50:50David Imel?

  We should take a field trip to go see a tornado.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  I've looked into this. Really, really want to do that.

• 50:56David Imel?

  Maybe a fire tornado.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  It's hard to like coordinate safely. It's not like a safari where you just go, oh, there's one that's been sitting there for a couple of days. It's like very sporadic.

• 51:03David Imel?

  A few days ago, I was walking around in Bushwick and I saw a trash tornado.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  That happens sometimes.

• 51:08David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  That's a very east.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  It's just a trash tornado.

• 51:12David Imel?

  Trash.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:14David Imel?

  That was awesome.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Anyway, I like weather. I've always liked weather, but maybe more than the average person.

• 51:21David Imel?

  Are you still using Acme?

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Not as much as carrots still.

• 51:24David Imel?

  Cause I found out new features of Acme that I want to try, but it's $25 a year, which is like a lot, but.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  The radar part of Acme is actually pretty interesting.

• 51:33David Imel?

  Yeah. Apparently they have a Waze-like feature where you can report, you can report.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Hyper local weather.

• 51:39David Imel?

  Yeah, but you can also report rainbows. If enough people report a rainbow in your neighborhood, then you get a notification. And now they also will alert you if the sunset's gonna be sick.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 51:50David Imel?

  And I'm like, maybe that's worth the $25.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 51:53David Imel?

  Earth is sick.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm.

• 51:55David Imel?

  Being outside.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  I'm in the middle of.

• 51:57David Imel?

  Very good.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Project Calmarian. I'm just keep thinking about.

• 51:59David Imel?

  You're in the middle of, wait.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  The book, sorry.

• 52:01David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 52:02David Imel?

  You're, wait.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:04David Imel?

  You're reading?

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an audiobook. I say reading though, cause I don't like to say. That counts. I'm, I'm listening. Yeah.

• 52:10David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  I'm listening to it. Especially this book, the audiobook is crazy. The audiobook's good. It's so good. It's good. Anyway, it just makes me appreciate earth a lot and it has all kinds of crazy stuff everywhere.

• 52:19David Imel?

  Cool.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  So, very cool. Yeah. Shout out to the weather.

• 52:22David Imel?

  You know, I used to not give a rat's ass about the weather.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Cause you lived in California.

• 52:27David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  In San Francisco.

• 52:29David Imel?

  It's the same every day.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  65 sunny.

• 52:31David Imel?

  Why would you care about the weather? You don't even have to check it.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  We just vibe.

• 52:34David Imel?

  Yeah, but uh, yeah, I remember in 2020, when I started to weirdly, it's like, it's kinda like when you become a birder, you know? It's not like, it's not if you become a birder, it's when you become a birder. It's the same with weather, I think, because I remember waking up one day and just asking my router, what's the weather like today? And I remember that that was a really weird experience.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  You asked your router?

• 53:00David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  What does that mean?

• 53:01David Imel?

  I asked my Google Nest what the weather was.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  It has an assistant built in.

• 53:07David Imel?

  My Nest router, yeah, has a built in Google Assistant speaker.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  That's hilarious.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  I'm so sorry, speaking of this, you might already know this. So like the Nest thermostat that's on the wall. I was at an Airbnb last weekend and we were trying to get music to come out. All the TVs had like, uh, these like big surround sound, soundbar systems. We were trying to figure out how to get music to come out of their via casting.

• 53:29David Imel?

  Does it have speakers? The Nest thermostat?

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Well, so we were like, we found a device called Kitchen, or it was called Living Room. And we were like, oh, that must be the living room TV. And so we like hit cast and we hear music coming out of the bedroom where there is a TV. So like, oh, we must have accidentally casted Spotify. And we go in and I realized it's coming out of the Nest thermostat.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Did that sound like a bee's asshole?

• 53:55David Imel?

  For sure.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  It was terrible. But we were all just like, these things are Bluetooth speakers too.

• 54:00David Imel?

  Well, Wi-Fi speakers.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 54:01David Imel?

  But the internet of things is truly a utopia. Really came out the way that they pitched it.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Next question comes from at the month July. They want to know, what is something you miss about being a smaller channel? And what is something you are happy the channel grew out of?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Hmm. That's good. That's a good question.

• 54:22David Imel?

  Is for Waveform or for?

• 54:23Speaker 02

  I think, I think it applies to lots of different things.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  We can probably all answer.

• 54:26Speaker 04

  I'm going to answer former because he misses not having us around because we just annoy him all day.

• 54:32David Imel?

  Nah.

• 54:34David Imel?

  He loves us.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  No, I think.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  You love us.

• 54:37David Imel?

  You love us, don't you, Mark?

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Having us here.

• 54:39David Imel?

  You love coffee patties, don't you?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  The thing, you know, the thing that came to mind when you read that about being a smaller channel is it's both the upside and the downside at the same time. So I watch a lot of YouTube and a lot of tech YouTube in the process. And so I see lots of great tech videos that are inspiring. I see lots of pretty mid tech videos and I see lots of low effort tech videos, fine. And when I'm a smaller channel and I put out a tech video that has maybe a little bit of shortcomings or I missed something, or there's a little bit of, oh, we could have done that better. It's just one of the tech videos.

• 55:20David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  But as a big channel, maybe just as this channel, when we put out a video where we kind of like crunched at the last minute, or we were on to the next one and something got missed, or whatever, there is an ecosystem of

• 55:35David Imel?

  Of scrutiny.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  criticism

• 55:36David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  that echoes for days and weeks on that one issue.

• 55:41David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Speculating on way more malice and negative intent than just, oh, I was an idiot and I forgot something. And so I do miss the smaller channel days where it was like you could just toil away and get better on camera over and over until you're just good at it. But on the other side of it, it's actually a good thing that we're under such a big microscope because we have such a big platform, obviously. But then also it makes us better even faster. Like, we have to do the best possible work. It's an extra pressure. We've described it as the publish button feeling heavier. But yeah, there's two sides to that coin. So I remember the days of being a smaller YouTuber and making like a video every other day.

• 56:24David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  And if you ask me about the video I made like earlier that week, I'd be like, oh yeah, I just made a video.

• 56:28David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  I didn't really think too hard about it. That doesn't happen anymore.

• 56:31David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  It's interesting.

• 56:33David Imel?

  When you're smaller, people are nicer. That's another thing, because people want to root for the underdog. Right? So like, if you're like a growing channel and people are like impressed for, oh, I'm surprised that a channel of your, like, that your channel doesn't have more subscribers. Like, they're very nice about it. But then when you get bigger and bigger, I think people are sort of just more critical and they're just like meaner because it's, it feels less bad to be mean to a bigger.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  It's punching up.

• 56:57David Imel?

  It's punching up.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  You can only be overrated.

• 57:00David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  You can, you can never again be, like, just like when you're young, you're like, wow, you're so young, you're so

• 57:05David Imel?

  Smart for your age.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Smart for your age, or whatever. And then you get older and they're like, yeah.

• 57:08David Imel?

  Yeah. No.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:10David Imel?

  I know. People for years were always telling me like, oh, you're so introspective for your age. And I'm like, when will that stop? At a certain point, I'll be 40, and then you're gonna be like, wow, you're so introspective. And I'm like, no, I'm an old man, bro.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:22David Imel?

  An old man.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Do you guys miss anything about the old days of the Waveform Podcast?

• 57:28David Imel?

  Oh.

• 57:29Speaker 04

  I feel like I never had that experience with waveform podcasts in particular, because from day one of the video launching, it was like the most subscribed channel I've ever been a part of. So it was like from zero to 100 real quick, but I do miss making videos. So I remember making videos all the time in my bedroom, doing a bunch of reviews.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  I made a video in your bedroom.

• 57:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, you did make a video in my bedroom.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:53Speaker 04

  And it was.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  An organ.

• 57:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, when I lived in.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  A tech video. Yeah, it was an.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  I didn't say that.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  No, it was a tech video.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  But we were in Vision Pro, so it was okay.

• 58:06Speaker 04

  We were in Vision Pro, so it's fine. But yeah, it was like, it was more so that up and coming part of it was fun. And I feel like now this is more of a very established, we have a flow, we are more professional in this sense. But I think it also reflects just like where I am in life and my age. So I'm like riding this because it feels right. If I was like still doing what I was doing back then, I don't know if I'd have the energy for it right now.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. Cause I'm an old tired man now, so.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  The up and coming thing is just a special like grinding phase that can last a short time or a long time, but it is, it is very unique. And you never get that again after you've done it. I guess some people are like serial entrepreneurs and they kind of like do that all the time, but it is kind of in YouTube land anyway, you kind of just get it once.

• 58:53David Imel?

  Yeah. Well, we were both learning. I remember you, your motto was like, try to make every video better than the last.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 58:59David Imel?

  The way I got better was I did, every single time I make a video, I want to try a new technique. So whether it's like a new editing technique that I need to learn by watching videos on YouTube about, or a new like shooting technique, or a new way of describing something, like you sort of like grow our repertoire over time. And that repetition is like so good and so important. And eventually, you know, the curve is like this, but then it eventually kind of like caps out a lot. And then every time you're doing something new, it's like this much more.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Nowadays, it feels like we can never do anything without a plan and like a. It's almost, I feel like this happens in tech companies. Like, you need a multi-stage rollout fai- like, plan for like, how to do something like, when they were making the iPhone Air, they were like, well, we're gonna have an Air 2, and then the next thing, or whatever.

• 59:47David Imel?

  Multi-air.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  For us, it's like, if we're gonna try something new in videos, it's like, well, are we gonna do that?

• 59:51David Imel?

  Forever?

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Forever? Or are we just gonna try it once for fun? And we, I still like doing the random things, we just try for fun once.

• 59:59David Imel?

  Yeah. Something I miss about early Waveform, though, is like, a lot of the experimentation that we were doing at the time. Just like, random weird, like, long-form episodes and random weird, like, special episodes and...

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Random Q and As just in the middle of...

• 1:00:11David Imel?

  Uh huh, yeah.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Random stuff.

• 1:00:14David Imel?

  Yeah. So, you know, it's possible to bring that back, but people do get into a flow of the kind of show that they expect every Friday, so they can do their dishes, you know?

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Dishes are important. The dishes would never get done if we didn't do this.

• 1:00:25David Imel?

  Nah, nah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Abrar asks, "What is a video or a video idea that you were really invested in and wanted to make but never did?"

• 1:00:36David Imel?

  Hmm. I have one. Right when ChatGPT came out, I went down this insane rabbit hole of like, what is a large language model, how does a transformer work? And then I also went down this, like, really philosophical rabbit hole about, what does it mean to be alive? And I wrote this, like, long, Adam remembers this, because we were on a run together and I was like venting to him about this. And I went down this really deep philosophical rabbit hole about like, Socrates' like, five steps of living, like, of consciousness.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Consciousness?

• 1:01:14David Imel?

  Yeah. And then eventually...

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  While I'm next to him, like...

• 1:01:21David Imel?

  Yeah, and eventually I just was like, hmm, none of that matters. Yeah, it was, it was, it was interesting. I was like caring so much about it. And then at one point I just hit this wall and I was like, why are we caring about if the computer should have rights? I feel like that's not something we should worry about. I don't think we need to. Cause that was like, kind of part of the video was like, will there reach a point in which the AI need to have rights? And then I eventually was like, maybe not. And that's okay. And I wrote like three quarters of the video. And then I was just like, I've done that. It's kind of pointless.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've done really deep rabbit hole stuff where I'm like, what's the point here? Also, when you said the AI stuff, I mean, we, there's a lot of videos that are kind of just on the back burner, like in the back of my head that we just haven't quite figured out a reason or a way to do. One of them is, you know how we did like Google Assistant versus Siri versus Alexa versus whatever Bixby? Yeah. I was thinking we should, you know, in this height of everyone's talking about all these AI models, let's do Gemini versus ChatGPT versus, and every time I think I should do that video, I look at how fast they're changing. And I'm like, there's no way to do this video. And even if I do thoroughly cover a 45 minutes of all the things they're capable of, literally the next week, it'd be like, now it can do better code. Now it can do this. Now it can do that. It's like, well, I guess.

• 1:02:39David Imel?

  While we were recording this podcast, Opus 4.7 just dropped.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm like, all right, I guess I'm not gonna do that.

• 1:02:45David Imel?

  Yeah, dude. Are you serious? I'm serious.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  We could publish a video today and it would be wrong. So yeah, that's a tough one.

• 1:02:53David Imel?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Trivia.

• 1:02:57David Imel?

  Wow. Y'all really came through trivia questions. That's hilarious. We didn't even ask for trivia questions. They just decided to give us trivia.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04David Imel?

  Wow.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  Guys, this question is from Sasha, who had, I just, Sasha gave us a lot of questions. One of them, I just thought, I'm not going to ask because there's no way you guys would know. But apparently the German keyboard layout is like different and has lots of weird shortcuts. I did not know that.

• 1:03:20David Imel?

  Thank you for.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  It's annoying. The L is like at the bottom instead of on the left.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  It's so annoying.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Thank you for blessing me with that info.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Sorry, on the right. Yeah.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  The question we do want to ask is a classic Price is Right rules question, which is how many emojis are there in the Apple keyboard?

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  I kind of think I might.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  And the Apple keyboard.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Price is right?

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  Price is right.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Okay. Okay, that's good. And it's like the current number because they, you know, add some.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're gonna double.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  iOS 26.4 or whatever.

• 1:03:52David Imel?

  They only add like six a year though.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  Wait, how do you have a point four of an emoji?

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  No, iOS 26.4 got some emojis.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  I'm joking.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 1:03:59David Imel?

  They had like six.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Up to date numbers.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Just joking.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:04:02David Imel?

  Emoji consortium.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  We'll think about that. We'll be right back.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. So AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from. But when that context is scattered across tools like threads and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying kind of blind. That's the problem Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all of these pieces together from Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub and more, so nothing falls through the cracks. With Jira, you can actually share that context with the AI agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor and GitHub Copilot. Assign them work directly or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who, and more time actually shipping. Learn more at jira.com.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  That's J-I-R-A dot com.

• 1:05:02Speaker 07

  Hey Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admirals Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability very safely. Eighteen plus. Okay, welcome back. We're gonna kick off this third segment of the pod with some rapid fire questions from you guys. I'm bringing my computer closer so I can read rapidly and fire them off. Question number one comes from Bongus. He wrote, "Bongus question."

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Question number two comes from Tim. Tim wrote, "It hurts a little when I pee," which is not a question, but I wanted to let you know anyway.

• 1:06:18David Imel?

  I get that.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Oliver asked, "What is the best Taco Bell item? I like anything with the Doritos Loco shell." That's kind of my answer.

• 1:06:27David Imel?

  Cheesy, cheesy potatoes.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  David?

• 1:06:31David Imel?

  I don't go that often, but the Crunchwrap Supreme is...

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Classic?

• 1:06:35David Imel?

  Yeah, pretty classic.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  You don't really like Taco Bell?

• 1:06:37David Imel?

  I haven't gone in a long time, but yeah, it's good. Same.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Anonymous says, "No question, just love." Heart emoji.

• 1:06:43David Imel?

  Appreciate you. Are they gonna hack us? Anonymous says, "Yeah."

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Harvey asks, "Ellis, why are you so funny?" Born this way.

• 1:06:52David Imel?

  Nice.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  Taco Bell's Chimichungus asks, "When is DJ Cafe 84 coming back?" DJ Cafe 84 is a name that I DJed with in college all of three times. I don't know how you know that.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 1:07:08David Imel?

  It was anonymous.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  That, that is crazy.

• 1:07:10David Imel?

  Is it Nardwar?

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  That's like the level of this. "Still keep me nameless, please," asked, "Is Ellis real or is he actually Adam's ventriloquist puppy?"

• 1:07:22David Imel?

  Interesting, interesting.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Very true. Brandon asked, "How many total responses to this survey?" Like 1,600, I want to say, maybe even more.

• 1:07:30David Imel?

  You've only answered 10 questions.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Thank you, guys, for, for, for coming out en masse for this. Yeah, like 16, 17-ish hundreds. 1-6-6-6.

• 1:07:41David Imel?

  Good year.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  Craig Hyundai asks...

• 1:07:43David Imel?

  That's probably a war.

• 1:07:47Speaker 04

  Craig Hyundai, which I can only assume-

• 1:07:50David Imel?

  Is that like John Photography?

• 1:07:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like John Photography.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  I like what you're doing with cars, man.

• 1:07:55Speaker 04

  Craig Hyundai, killing it. Um, top three Chrome extensions. I'm gonna-

• 1:07:59David Imel?

  Oh, ****.

• 1:07:59Speaker 04

  Sit out from this one, because I only use one and it's Claude.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Well, I should look at what I'm-

• 1:08:05David Imel?

  Yeah, okay. Um, okay, I know, I don't know, yeah. I really like, what font is, is a great Chrome extension?

• 1:08:12Speaker 04

  That one is good.

• 1:08:13David Imel?

  You can highlight anything on any page and it tells you what the font is. Amazing.

• 1:08:19David Imel?

  Ublock Origin is classic. Um, send to Kindle for Google Chrome. Good.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Do you have a Kindle?

• 1:08:27David Imel?

  Um, I have the Kindle app. Yeah.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  That's three.

• 1:08:32David Imel?

  Oh, the hide shorts for YouTube is good.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  I only have the, the Amazon Price Tracker one and Google Docs offline. That's it.

• 1:08:43Speaker 04

  This one comes from Cat and Jazz, and it's just an interesting question.

• 1:08:46David Imel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:47Speaker 04

  What is everyone's favorite sound made by a piece of tech that is not produced by the speaker? So for example, a hinge closing, a certain brand mouse click, lens attaching to a camera, things like that.

• 1:08:58David Imel?

  Whoa.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  That's so good.

• 1:08:59David Imel?

  That is so good.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  That's really good. Okay, I had a couple things pop into my head. I wanna pick a best, but there's some really good ones. David, you'll agree with this one. Hasselblad lens clicking on a body-

• 1:09:08Speaker 04

  That was mine!

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a nice-

• 1:09:11David Imel?

  Nice.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  I wish I had it right, I could put it right in front of the mic and you could hear it. That is a primo funk sound.

• 1:09:16David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  The leaf shutter as well. Um, but I also think of like, a really nicely sealed-

• 1:09:25David Imel?

  Like, the MacBook closing?

• 1:09:30David Imel?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  Subtle.

• 1:09:34David Imel?

  Yeah, decent. There are definitely multiple devices that I think are generally bad devices, but have such good, like, clamp feeling, or like, when you close them, it's such a satisfying, like, clomp-

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  There's a lot of those.

• 1:09:45David Imel?

  That I keep using it. Just because it's satisfying.

• 1:09:50David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51David Imel?

  Um, multiple foldable phones are like that, where like, the, the, the action force of closing it is just very satisfying.

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

  The OnePlus Open has a really nice-

• 1:10:01David Imel?

  Hmm. Um, sound. Okay. My, um, Hasselblad FlexTite drum scanner, uh, virtual drum scanner, when I scan with it, it goes-

• 1:10:18David Imel?

  And it goes.

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  Sounds like it's struggling for the first half.

• 1:10:25David Imel?

  Mom, get off the phone! Yeah, it does that for 15 minutes. So, I like the, I like the last sound.

• 1:10:32David Imel?

  It's nice.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  I'm trying to remind myself of these. This is such a good question.

• 1:10:36David Imel?

  Yeah, but there, there are many. There are quite a few.

• 1:10:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I definitely thought of first the Hasselblad leaf shutter from, the phones even. Like, not even the cameras, just like the phone that have the partnership.

• 1:10:45David Imel?

  Oh.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Press the orange button and you get the leaf.

• 1:10:47David Imel?

  Okay, but you gotta experience.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  That's the speaker.

• 1:10:49David Imel?

  Oh, you're right, you're right.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  I'm thinking the actual leaf shutter.

• 1:10:51David Imel?

  You gotta experience the Pentax 67. It's this old, it's, the Pentax 67 is this old, uh, medium format film camera and the shutter on that is insane. It's like you're shooting a bazooka.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Andrew's gonna have some keyboard suggestions.

• 1:11:05David Imel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know if it's like a favorite all time, but we recently, for the, for the avid heads, uh, we just got an avid S1 in our, um, audio room, which is a, like Pro Tools controller with flying faders. And so when you load up a, a, a layout or a preset, all of the faders like jump to the, the correct point and it, it sounds kinda like this.

• 1:11:33David Imel?

  Ooh.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's like a nice sound, but I just got really excited watching the faders go like.

• 1:11:39David Imel?

  You know what that reminds me of is the Logitech MX Master. Um, when you switch it into like free flow mode versus like the clicky mode, it's like.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is an ASMR episode. I've just thought also in the car world, there's so many of these. Certain switches in cars are really good, but the door close sound on some of these cars. Mmm. Ah, the German cars. Ah, oh my God, the. Perfect steal. Wow, really good question.

• 1:12:04David Imel?

  Yeah, really good question.

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, also my water bottle makes this sound.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's sick. Where can I get one of those?

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  mkbc.com.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  Love it. Uh, this question comes from Ohelvia, which is, what is the hardest part about staying unbiased on Waveform?

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Hardest part? The hardest part is just getting everything factually correct. But that's, the unbiased part is easy, I think.

• 1:12:26David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  I feel like sometimes I try to, if I know I'm like dunking, like making a lot of jokes, because it's, I feel like it's all jokes. You know what I mean? If I'm making a lot of jokes about a product, I'll like try to be like, okay, well, here's something nice about it to balance it out a little bit, but I don't know. I think, I don't know. Yeah, I guess you guys are right. Like, it's, it's not hard.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  I do have a thing now where I, this came from making a product. So, we made panels. And there was a good week where everyone on the internet was relentlessly dunking on it. And that gave me a good window into what it's like when everyone's relentlessly stunk on your thing. And 75% of it was just wrong. And it was weird because people would pile on repeating the wrong thing. And it wouldn't make sense for me to pop out and be like, hey, here, this is wrong, because we knew that so many other things were wrong. It wouldn't make sense for me to defend certain things and leave other things. So I just kind of let it all happen. And so now, when we go in to criticize something, I have this extra lens of like,

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  we need to make sure we're right about the things we're criticizing, because if we're just repeating something that someone else repeated wrong.

• 1:13:40David Imel?

  Right.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Then that makes us look worse, especially to the person who made the product. And we might meet that person, we might know that person, we might lose respect from people in this, in the industry, who see us repeating the wrong thing. So I want to make sure every time, when it's correct or when it's incorrect, we're at least saying the correct thing, like the right thing.

• 1:13:57David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  The accurate thing.

• 1:13:58David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Because I've seen what it looks like when they don't.

• 1:14:01David Imel?

  I think it's valuable to get context too. Like, most people are like, how could they have let this slip through the cracks? And it's like, a lot of the time, they know that a thing is like that in a product, right? And usually, they have a reason for doing it. Now, that reason could be valid or less valid. You could be like, a regular person doesn't use this thing this way. But usually, there's a reason why they made the thing a certain way.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Sometimes there is no reason.

• 1:14:24David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Sometimes the volume of the Subaru is full screen. No reason.

• 1:14:29David Imel?

  Well, there's a reason. I mean, someone made that decision.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  Someone did make that decision, and we can ridicule that, but we should think long and hard about why they made that decision and then go, okay, yeah, that was dumb.

• 1:14:37David Imel?

  It's dumb. Yeah, which is fine. They can be wrong.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:40David Imel?

  It's like Samsung making the part of the screen, the inside of the fold, like a screen protector, but it's actually the screen.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  You know, we do criticize products all the time, and we always have to remember that there is nobody who knows these products better than the people who make them.

• 1:14:53David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Because they know what it could be capable of, what it, you know, they know where they stopped in development, where it could have done something else and it didn't. They know exactly where its boundaries are, what its limitations are, and they strategically thought of ways to minimize costs and what boundaries they wanted to hit. All these things that we find out by using it, but that, I'm always conscious of that relationship because when we make a product and we know things about it that other people don't know, and then they're just spewing wrong things, I'm like, oh.

• 1:15:19David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:15:20David Imel?

  And that's the hard thing about the internet, too, is that everyone sees a different timeline. So the things that you could correct somebody about something, and most of the people will not see your correction, will just keep repeating the incorrect, you know, statement. So, yeah, it's tough. I mean, first, I gotta say, like, the concept of bias is not, like, it's impossible to not be biased, like, it's literally impossible. You know, you can go, you can just deliver facts, sure, but almost every way that you deliver the fact, if you rearrange the sentence in a different way, it's got a different connotation, it's gonna skew things a little bit differently. Everyone has their personal opinions about whether it's anthropic versus OpenAI, whether it's, you know, like, every single thing.

• 1:16:04David Imel?

  Your personal opinion, as hard as you try to not let it influence your reporting, will in some way influence your reporting. That's just a fact.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  So that's what you sign up for as a reader.

• 1:16:14David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  When it's, or a viewer, like, when I'm watching this person's review, what I'm signing up for is their take on this thing.

• 1:16:21David Imel?

  Right.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Because if you just want a spec sheet, you can read a spec sheet, but that's, I think, ultimately what people are here for, is they trust our take on things.

• 1:16:27David Imel?

  Yeah. The bias that people generally talk about is like, is someone getting, like, paid to say a certain thing. Like, that's a true, that's like an obvious bias.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36David Imel?

  But, um, yeah.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  Ramonam2 asks, if you could pick an old phone design and put modern cameras and software on it, what would it be? And why?

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  There's a correct answer. There's a couple of correct answers, but.

• 1:16:48David Imel?

  You're gonna say Nexus 6P?

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  No. I think you guys are glazing that phone for no reason.

• 1:16:53David Imel?

  What?

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  Why are you so?

• 1:16:55David Imel?

  No.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Nexus 6P is nice, but like.

• 1:16:57David Imel?

  It's iconic.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  It's not the correct answer.

• 1:16:58David Imel?

  It's iconic.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  The 6P?

• 1:17:01David Imel?

  Yes.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  The Huawei with the visor at the top?

• 1:17:03David Imel?

  Yes.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  Why that one?

• 1:17:05David Imel?

  It was metal, it was beautiful, it had a great screen.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  It didn't rock on a table?

• 1:17:09David Imel?

  The visor was awesome.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Okay, but if you just want a nice metal, well-built phone with new specs, do the HTC One.

• 1:17:17David Imel?

  Yeah, but that one had huge bezels.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it had boom sound speakers.

• 1:17:22David Imel?

  Boom sound, and had a kickstand.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Who needs speakers? It had incredible speakers.

• 1:17:26David Imel?

  I would say the HTC Thunderbolt with the kickstand was pretty sick, but it was also my first.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Kickstand was nice.

• 1:17:32David Imel?

  Yeah, the kickstand was hot.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  A phone, the Thunderbolt, but actually lasting all day on a charge would be nice.

• 1:17:37David Imel?

  Yeah, the Thunderbolt burned me. I had to return it because it burned my hand.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:17:41David Imel?

  And I got a Samsung Droid Charge instead, which was worse by a factor of like 30.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  It's funny because these phones all have such like electric names and then have horrible batteries.

• 1:17:50David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  I think the correct answer is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

• 1:17:54David Imel?

  The correct answer? No, it's not. No, what?

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  That phone.

• 1:17:57David Imel?

  That, no.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  That OLED.

• 1:17:59David Imel?

  No.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  That slightly curved screen.

• 1:18:01David Imel?

  Mm-mm.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  That perfect size.

• 1:18:03David Imel?

  Nada.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  It was made of plastic. Yeah, but it had the recharge, pop the battery out the back and swap a new one in. That was nice. Keep that.

• 1:18:10David Imel?

  Yeah, I guess. I mean, yeah, bring that back, yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  The real correct answer, guys, is the Samsung Exclaim M550.

• 1:18:20David Imel?

  You're gonna make me Google this?

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  It's a feature phone.

• 1:18:22David Imel?

  Oh, I'm not gonna Google this.

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  It's a feature phone, and has a slide-out numpad and a separate slide-out keyboard.

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  So what are you modernizing? The camera? And the battery?

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and get Google Maps and email.

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  That's all you need. Well, and the antennas, because I don't think it had anything past 3G in it.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  T-Mobile G1 or the Sidekick. Give me one of those.

• 1:18:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:18:46David Imel?

  This is-

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  The G1 and the Side- y'all like the physical keyboard.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  I would love a Sidekick.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  Well, they both had a physical keyboard. Oh, the digital. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The trackball is nice.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  The trackball's nice.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Wait, what was the- so the Galaxy Nexus didn't have the trackball, but what- oh, the Nexus 1 had the trackball.

• 1:19:01David Imel?

  The trackball, yeah.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  That's a good one.

• 1:19:02David Imel?

  That was the first Android phone.

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  Wait.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  Well, the G1.

• 1:19:05Speaker 02

  The G1.

• 1:19:06David Imel?

  The G1.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Had the keyboard, but then they-

• 1:19:07David Imel?

  Yeah, sorry, not Nexus.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  But then the Nexus 1 had the RGB lit trackball. That with today's tech would be pretty sick.

• 1:19:14David Imel?

  That was fire.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  That'd be nice.

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  Here's a question for Andrew. Why do you look at the ceiling when you're speaking?

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  Well, um, I'm looking for the answer. I just thought of a really sassy answer to the last question.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  The iPhone ear.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Give me the iPhone ear, but with modern internals.

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

  That's so good.

• 1:19:34David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:19:35David Imel?

  If they put silicon carbide in that thing.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, give me like two good cameras, silicon carbide, like real speakers.

• 1:19:40David Imel?

  Telephoto.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  Oons, O-O-N-Z, Oons asked, is there a company like Pantone, but for sounds? Which is, whoa.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  That would be a frequency response chart?

• 1:19:56David Imel?

  It's like Uber for sound.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  There, there, there are various, um, sound standards, organizations that set standards for various things. The short answer is kind of, um-

• 1:20:10David Imel?

  THX.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, THX would be an example of one of these companies. Dolby would be another example of one of these companies. And what they're doing is they're saying, if you deliver your audio meeting these specs, it will sound like this on these systems. So kinda.

• 1:20:25Speaker 04

  All right, this question comes from Owen. If you couldn't talk about tech on the podcast, what would it be about?

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  I think that's pretty clear.

• 1:20:34David Imel?

  Basketball.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  This would be an NBA podcast.

• 1:20:36David Imel?

  What would I do?

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  We would explain everything to you in tech terms.

• 1:20:41Speaker 04

  Component.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  That would actually be really fun, like, like-

• 1:20:44David Imel?

  The token dumb guy.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  No, we don't, because-

• 1:20:50David Imel?

  Get out of here. Now, Andrew wouldn't know what to do either, right?

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:55David Imel?

  Andrew and I would start our own podcast and you guys could have your basketball podcast.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Tech is kind of everything, though.

• 1:21:01David Imel?

  Tech is everything. That's, that's-

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Like, if you say photography, it's just tech still.

• 1:21:04David Imel?

  I know. It's, even policy is tech. I know. It's crazy. It's like-

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  If you say cars, it's kind of-

• 1:21:12David Imel?

  When we used to cover tech, it used to be just for the nerds and like geeks. And then eventually it just bled into everything and the tech companies are everything now because everything is a tech company.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:23David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Even Allbirds.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  That's not gonna get old anytime soon.

• 1:21:29David Imel?

  Baby, baby.

• 1:21:31Speaker 04

  This one comes from AJ. Who do the Waveform podcast hosts listen to as their Waveform podcast?

• 1:21:37David Imel?

  Oh, wow. I'm kind of embarrassed.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Tech?

• 1:21:40David Imel?

  Am I allowed to say? I don't really know.

• 1:21:41Speaker 04

  They specifically asked about tech, but I figured it doesn't have to be about tech if you listen to something else. I don't know what you guys-

• 1:21:47David Imel?

  I've listened to a lot of podcasts.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  I, I don't. I, I read The Verge. I really like-

• 1:21:53David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  I'll usually go through like tech meme once a day and see what's going on. Who are some like tech writers I really like? I really like, um-

• 1:22:02David Imel?

  I think Hard Fork is like one of the best shows right now. Yeah, they're really good. I know.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  There's a Substack by a guy named Matt Stoller called Big. That's about monopolies. And so it ends up covering, like, he covered all the antitrust stuff.

• 1:22:19David Imel?

  Is it a limited series?

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  It's a Substack.

• 1:22:21David Imel?

  Oh.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a word.

• 1:22:22David Imel?

  Is it a limited series?

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  Infinite. Matt Stoller will never stop. I really like that.

• 1:22:27David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  I like the American Prospect. Prospect.org.

• 1:22:31David Imel?

  I will say, um, I just, uh, there's, uh, I hate even, uh, okay.

• 1:22:40David Imel?

  I like listening to Pivot. Uh, I disagree with both Kara and Scott a lot. However, when Scott is gone, I really dislike the episodes. So there's something about their chemistry. Like, a lot of people say they listen to Waveform because of our chemistry, right? Because we're all in love with each other. It's electric. It's electric. It's electric. Anyway, uh, and they just have really good chemistry. And it's just really fun to listen to people who are enthusiastic with good chemistry, who are also pretty smart in a number of categories, even if they're wrong a lot, like us.

• 1:23:13Speaker 02

  I think that show also is, is good to listen to for us because we don't necessarily need other people's opinions on like new devices.

• 1:23:21David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like, I love hearing other people's opinions, but generally we form our own opinions.

• 1:23:26David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  But for things like big tech policy.

• 1:23:30David Imel?

  Policy.

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  Hard for generally has like a really large part of their podcast dedicated to those topics.

• 1:23:35David Imel?

  Hard for is just great in general. Yeah.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37David Imel?

  Yeah. Um, they also have very good banter.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, holy smokes. Sorry.

• 1:23:42David Imel?

  Sorry.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  Trivia time.

• 1:23:43David Imel?

  Trivia, dude.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  Question number one.

• 1:23:46Speaker 04

  Coming to us from Mojave.

• 1:23:48David Imel?

  Mojave.

• 1:23:49Speaker 04

  What was the last iPad to ship with iOS?

• 1:23:53David Imel?

  Oh, last to ship with iOS?

• 1:23:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:23:56David Imel?

  Shoot.

• 1:23:57Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:23:59David Imel?

  I'm just gonna leave it. See what happens.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Like, specific model? Indeed.

• 1:24:09David Imel?

  The WH1000X M5 iPad.

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't even think I'm right.

• 1:24:16David Imel?

  The iPad Air, Gen 6.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  What do you got? Okay, well, we're both wrong. Uh, I said iPad Air 3.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:24:29David Imel?

  What?

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I was right.

• 1:24:31David Imel?

  That's crazy.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I actually got it. Wow.

• 1:24:35David Imel?

  They're piss device.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:24:38David Imel?

  Yeah. I wrote iPad Pro Gen 1. I, yeah. Cause remember last iPad to have iOS and I was thinking first iPad to have iPadOS.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:24:48David Imel?

  Yeah, but that's not the same thing.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Wow, I'm shocked I got that right.

• 1:24:51David Imel?

  Well, I'm also shocked you got that right.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Stab in the dark. A broken clock is right twice a day, folks.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  Question two is, closest without going over, how many emojis are there in the Apple keyboard?

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  I'm gonna write the number that I, that pop into my head.

• 1:25:10David Imel?

  And cross my fingers. Cross my fingers, hope to die. I think I'm wrong. But last time I was wrong.

• 1:25:21David Imel?

  Yeah, man. I think I'm. You might be right twice a day. I'm way too low.

• 1:25:26David Imel?

  Remember I said wow when I saw the answer many years ago? Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Hope and Min Reed, what do you got?

• 1:25:32David Imel?

  I have 647.

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  And David?

• 1:25:35David Imel?

  3,100.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  David, the point is yours. There I'm.

• 1:25:40David Imel?

  Is it 3,247 or something?

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  I'm finding a few different numbers, and I think it's because some of them are counting all the different like skin tones and stuff is different. But it seems like the general consensus is there is about 3,700.

• 1:25:51David Imel?

  Nice. Thirty seven hundred emojis? Yep.

• 1:25:56Speaker 02

  Yes. That feels, that number feels high.

• 1:25:58David Imel?

  It does. It does, but I also saw that number recently and I was like, hmm, crazy.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Uh, well, we learned something new. David got another point. He really didn't need it.

• 1:26:07David Imel?

  You got another point, too.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  I got a point.

• 1:26:09David Imel?

  Basically, nothing happened, except Andrew fell below in the rankings.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I desperately needed that.

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  Do you think Andrew will name his new son emoji?

• 1:26:16David Imel?

  I would.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  I don't know. We'll have to ask him. We'll see.

• 1:26:19David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  Anyway, thank you so much for all the questions. It's fun when we kind of get to go off the rails on our not so regularly scheduled programming. Our next episode, we will be back on our regularly scheduled programming. And so for that, we will see you soon. Peace.

• 1:26:34David Imel?

  Wave from Spud, Adam, Malia, and Ellis Fronven. We are produced, we are, we are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and our intro after music is vibing sill.

• 1:26:53David Imel?

  There were still woolly mammoths alive when the pyramids were built.

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• 1:27:40Speaker 06

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