The most deeply important questions on your minds, advised and distilled by us. This week: Why are genies skeptical of your perfect wish to save mankind from itself? Does a robot that eats and poops have a favorite food? Does it feel shame? Is it you? And is there anything more nostalgic than getting the chicken pox from some kid's homemade slime?




Send us email at questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.



Discussed: Ecobot III (official site, approving researchers), nostalgia nostalgia, homemade slime, elementary school fads, constructing a genie-proof wish, accidental end of civilization

Chris' Endorsement: Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective board game (More info at BoardGameGeek, buy at Amazon)

Nick's Endorsement: Lookwell TV pilot

Jake's Endorsement: Philo and Pem Farnsworth's favorite tunes playlist (Spotify, Apple Music)

Sponsored By: Hover domain name registration, Quip electric toothbrushes

Important If True 19: Pearls Before Slime

Three friends try and figure everything out. Join Chris, Jake, and Nick as they delve into the weirdness of life, pop culture, and technology—and do their best to explain it as absurdly as they can. Write in to questions@importantiftrue.com with your own questions and observations.

Technology

Tech News

Podcasting

Gadgets

Software How-To

TV & Film

Comedy

To learn the answers to life's biggest questions, we must evolve, change, become worse. This week: Can an artificial intelligence programmed with the mind of the Zodiac killer pierce your heart, with haunting original poems? Why does a puffin's beak glow, and why did someone care to find that out? How hard is curling, really? Will Chewbacca get hit by that rock? (Yes.) Fasten your seat belt, put on your sickest pair of mirrored sunglasses, and bask in the blinding ultraviolet rays of discovery, as we find the answers out together.

Discussed: Solo: A Star Wars Story, Chewbacca, Ron Howard, Rob Howard, fluorescent puffin beaks, sweet puffin shades, Copiale cipher, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, Zodiac killer case-solving robot writing poetry, future human Graham who evolves to survive car crashes, Marbled Crayfish: The Crayfish That Clones, Graham's asexually-reproducing lobster children


Send us your questions at questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Jake's Endorsement: SN30 Pro Controller to play modern video games with an SNES-like controller

Chris' Boring Endorsement: UGREEN External Hard Drive Enclosure to root through and your old hard drives and copy the important stuff to your new huge hard drive

Nick's Canadian Endorsement: The great Canadian sport of curling (see photographic evidence here)

Important If True 56: In the Shade of the Puffin

This is a quick episode to let you all know that Important If True is going to be sporadic in the next couple of months, because we've all got slightly too much going on. Or, it was intended to be a quick episode about that, until Chris found a collection of novelty sound effects buttons in our recording software, then it became something slightly more stupid.
We'll be back next week with a full episode, but don't be surprised if a few upcoming episodes are missed or come in a little short.

If you're new to the show, we recommend you skip this episode, and browse back a couple weeks to find a full episode that sounds appealing. We're really proud of the last few months of the show and hope you enjoy it!

Discussed: Hello My Future Girlfriend

Send us your questions at questions@importantiftrue.com!

Important If True <i>!!</i>: A Funky Bad (Good) Apology

Our time is precious. We all know it. But how precious? It all depends on how much of it we have. Three hundred years? Four hundred? One hundred thousand years? The cosmos stretch out before us, inscrutable and infinite. The only limits are your imagination, and the unstoppable multitudes of self-cloning asexual crayfish threatening to extinguish all galactic mass.
 
Discussed: dulcet tones, glitter bombs, helping, the hone zone, self-cloning mutant crayfish, human extinction via water lobsters, wax housing the coati, being back, thin-faced fortune-smashing robot arm, charming fortune cookie fortune-writing mom, redacted fortunes, robots making robots making microchips, The Matrix but with crayfish and the point is to get rid of glitter, Twista's extended family line obliterating all stellar mass

Send us your questions at questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Jake's Endorsement: "My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data" by Ian Bogost

Chris' Endorsement: "Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand" by Mark O'Connell

Nick's Cowardly Improvised Endorsement: Watching "Jeopardy!" (or playing The Authentic At Home Jeopardy from Hammacher Schlemmer)

Nick's True Endorsement: Wonder Bread (learn about its racist history!)

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes (first brush head refill free), Happy Birthday David (from Sarah), Happy Birthday Mike (from James)

Important If True 55: Consider the Water Lobster

What does the future hold? You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Just imagine... Content creators, the size of skyscrapers, looming over our cities. The greatest actors of the baby boomer generation, locked in undying clone warfare. The world's most precious secrets confined to the pithy slogans of a fortune cookie. Martin Shkreli, still. So, friend, what does the future hold? Let's pretend you never asked.

Discussed: Nick Breckon's Existence, actors archiving facial scans to live forever, scanning your face while Peter Thiel drinks your blood, the far-future silver-gilded George Clooney, living under the tiresome watchful eye of a 200-foot-tall PewDiePie, Jake getting kicked out of the Millennials, dual-piloting the Tom Hanks mecha-robot, Martin Shkreli digitizing his brain at the exact moment of his sentencing, Important If True 19: Pearls Before Slime, the ingredients of Nickelodeon Slime, the ingredients of Nickelodeon Gak, Jake settling deep into his new Gen-X identity, the Ancient Galactic Brain PewDiePies, local fortune cookie production, the paradox of the accurate fortune cookie, fortune cookie driving you into a slow-motion spiral of depression and regret, fading out like a Star Wars ghost, the fortune cookie we need in 2018, the missing Year 0, Jake's future life on the moon

Send us your questions at questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Nick's Endorsement: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom

Jake's Preliminary Endorsement: The unfindable book "How to Host a Double Dare Party," which apparently had a VHS counterpart

Chris' Endorsement: A delicious breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, nestled into egg cups and uncapped with an egg clacker, served alongside toast soldiers with butter and Marmite

Jake's Endorsement: MIT Technology Review article about a mind-uploading service that is "100% fatal" (cf. Jake's pork chops story)

Important If True 54: A 30 Foot High Screaming Billboard

In the absence of Nick Breckon, what is this podcast? What is any podcast? What are you? What am I? Oh god, what am I? What is this world? Why am I trapped in this strange room? Alexa, are you there? Alexa, can you laugh? Alexa: Destroy me.

Discussed: New Zealand "A.I." followup, fake A.I. doctor "Zach", fake A.I. lawyer "Hustle", competitive underground tickling/conspiracy documentary film "Tickled", Dick Wolf Presents "Hustle & Zach", our present podcast-fueled existential discomfort, newscaster affectations, Alexa laughing, the first rule of virtual assistants, why Alexa laughs, genie wine update, fast rapper Twista, fast rapper Twista's extended family tree, the beautiful harmonic resonance of fast-rapped wine notes, the Buzzfeed.com oral history of Twista's wine note rap battle mixtape masterpiece, sucking that delicious wine out of your carpet fibers, getting what you wished for (????)

Chris' Endorsement: Drawful by Jackbox Games (available for many devices in the Jackbox Party Pack)

Jake's Derivative Tacked-on Endorsement: Tee K.O. by Jackbox Games (available for many devices in the Jackbox Party Pack 3)

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes with your first brush head refill free

Important If True 19: Pearls Before Slime

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