Important If True

Join us for a very special Important If True, as we celebrate the season by giving thanks. Thanks for treasured relics from childhoods long passed, for new creations from Boston Dynamics, and for the gift of humanity itself—at least for a little while longer. Along the way, we'll answer pressing questions, like: Is a clumsy and dubiously-sentient cube of metal your friend, your enemy, or a citizen of Saudi Arabia? Who will triumph in the inevitable conflict between backflipping robots and totally ripped biojackers? And if a podcaster falls in an empty forest, do their metrics reflect an uptick in engagement?

Discussed: Thanksgiving, how holidays are good but terrible, Jake's cursed Pizza Hut lamp, childhood arcade memories, trolling by eBay seller, Boston Dynamics robots SpotMini and Atlas, the slow-brewing robot revolution, Back at it Again at Krispy Kreme, Saudi Arabia granting citizenship to a robot, C-3PO's implied humanity relative to R2-D2, Rian Johnson (director of three upcoming Star Wars movies), Star Trek's Data being fitted with an emotion chip, Star Wars' R2-D2 being fitted with a speech chip, CRISPR-enabled genetic biohacking, totally ripped farm animals, injecting yourself to get totally ripped, the cyberpunkiest cyberpunk shit, Josiah Zayner, super-ripped biojacker CRISPR dudes, swiping CRISPR biojackers on Tinder, "Human Mini-Brains Growing Inside Rat Bodies Are Starting to Integrate," getting clever-girled by thirty ripped pigs, Warner Bros. Presents the Animal Farm Cinematic Universe, Planet of the Apes But Far Stupider Than Anything You Could Have Possibly Imagined, drugged out rat hippies with human brains, Organoids and the Human Mini-Brains (Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg), the ethics of growing mini-brains, an experience of self that only exists while podcasting, having no meaning except that which others see in you, Nick Breckon

Jake's Endorsement: The Good Place (Amazon, iTunes)

Nick's Endorsement: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (in theaters now)

Chris' Endorsement: Cheap reusable plastic food containers for leftovers, taking lunch to work, and so on

Additional music by: Ross Budgen

Sponsored by: Warby Parker prescription glasses home try-on, Grammarly grammar-advising browser extension

Things are starting to come together. Everything is clicking into place. But somehow…it's not adding up. The more you understand, the less sense it all makes. Fortunately, we're here to help, so ask away. For instance: Why is the number 314 omnipresent, and what does it have to do with Stephen Hawking? Can anything stop honey magnate Ray Liotta's dogged pursuit of fast food endorsement deals? And how do you convince the Taco Bell drive-through guy that you're secretly a lascivious weedlord? All this and more. Listen in.

Discussed: bits and squeezes, the number 314, a delicious hoisting, Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 17-hour ghosts, Benford's law, delusional self-conceptions, The Power of Books, engineering problems for children, knowledge as power, a very bad Steve Jobs joke, some other bullshit about numbers or something probably, Hawaiian shirts, children being cursed by inappropriate gifts, Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers dressing like Magnum P.I. and Indiana Jones, inadvertently cultivating a visual motif in your home, separating the owl wheat from the owl chaff, the psychic toll of gift-giving, the stupid mall and all the stupid little stores in it, fancy-ass letterpress blank greeting cards from the frou-frou greeting card store, cash, state quarters, $2 bills, Steve Wozniak's perforated $2 bills, inadvertently cultivating a reputation as a late-night Taco Bell lascivious weedlord, cultivating a network of useless contacts, Ray Liotta's food empire, Bee Movie, the apostasy of Colonel Sanders, Foodfight!, Ray Liotta's two olives

Jake's Endorsement: Pentametron, iambic pentameter-seeking Twitter bot

Nick's Initial Really Frivolous Endorsement: Using cheap plastic squeeze bottles for your olive oil and other kitchen staples

Nick's Endorsement: Deriving holiday gift ideas based on what the recipient might be missing from their past life, such as shipping frozen lake perch to your former Michigander parents

Chris' Endorsement: Taking the time and effort to spatchcock and roast a whole chicken: butterflying the bird, dry brining the chicken a day or two ahead of time, roasting the chicken, using a meat thermometer to avoid overcooking (great but pricey Thermapen, less pricey mid-range option, cheaper alternative), making stock out of the leftover carcass and meat bits

Sponsored by: Warby Parker prescription glasses with free home try-on, Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill

We're not sure what your friend told you when they handed you this podcast, but you might not want to press play. Not because it's bad or something (we're pretty proud of it actually), but because, let's just say, it's incredibly cursed. If you dare listen, it may not turn out well for you in the long term. That said, no risk is without its rewards. In this case, you can listen to us puzzle through some crucial questions of the ages, like: Is Walt Whitman alive? Who is the Ketchup King, and why do they remind us of a trip to work with dad? And, will a bittersweet Facebook video solve the mystery of who killed you? Find out quickly; if you got this far you probably don't have much time left.

Discussed: Loving my coffee mug, hating Mondays, cursed videotapes, detailed newspaper coverage of Walt Whitman's decline, no hope for Walt Whitman, an unfavorable turn in the condition of Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman about the same, the Walt Whitman beat, generated Facebook videos of your memories, generated Facebook memories algorithmically predicting your future death, obscene food combinations, peanut butter/jelly/ketchup sandwiches, "I Am The Ketchup King (and the Ketchup King Likes You Very Much)," overwhelming sensory experiences destroying good things, The Year I Hated Ketchup, the nerdy version of teenage awkwardness manifesting itself in incredibly self-destructive ways, drinking vinegar, Vine, "Share Your Curse Online," inevitable future CW or BBC crime shows in which algorithmic Facebook video montages are crucial clues, Happy Valley (Netflix, BBC), seemingly normal things that may be death in disguise, the powerful and seductive fantasy of throwing your keys or phone into a storm drain, the horrifying reality of watching your keys fall into a tiny crack in the ground, The Aviator

Chris' Endorsement: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) (Amazon, iTunes)

Chris' Subendorsement: Someone who thinks the framework for this endorsement is pathetic.

Chris' Sub-Subendorsement: La Mer, performed by Julio Iglesias (YouTube, Spotify, Amazon, iTunes)

Nick's Endorsement: Too Funny To Fail (Hulu)

Jake's Endorsement: The Pacifica Taco Bell (Business Insider article about Pacifica Taco Bell)

Nothing is permanent, especially not these days. You look away for a second and look back, and the world around you has changed, subtly. A TV you swear wasn't there a moment before is yelling at you about something that doesn't exist yet. Your friend turns to you, his shirt changed to a logo you've never seen before, and you think you know what he's going to say - he's going to ask you important questions about the world around him, questions like "How can you best maintain the integrity of your aging brand? What REALLY happened at the end of The Usual Suspects? Is this podcast cursed?" - but as he opens his mouth you hear, in splintering clarity, "SEE DADDY'S HOME 2 THIS WEEKEND," and know you can't trust him ever again.

Discussed: Happy Birthday Jake wooooo Happy Halloween!!!, Jake's curse, corn maze, terrible 20th Television production logo, La Cucaracha horn, SeamBI, SeamBI B2B, How I Met Your Mother, brand integrity, Taxi, definitely Mastercard's favorite play of the game, television without greenscreen, Ex Machina, The Usual Suspects, Beauty and the Beast, believing movies are more magical than they really are, a very gullible friend, running for high school student office, how Americans talk on the phone on TV, everything being terrible forever

Nick's Endorsement: Polar Feet Adults' Non-slip Fleece Socks

Chris' Endorsement: Using Instapaper (or a similar read-it-later service) to always have something you've been meaning to read handy

Jake's Endorsement: Using 3D face-mapping software Facerig to inject shreds of levity into your soul-sucking mandatory office video chat experience

When we walked into your living room, and our eyes fell on your fine imported Brazilian Eucalyptis Coffee Table With Integrated Aquarium, we couldn't help but notice that the smartphone, tablet, or other in-home electronic device that signifies your wealth and worldliness was left open to Important If True. "How captivating you must be," we thought, as we leafed through the episode and wondered which of life's biggest conundrums you'd be puzzling through with us, what advice you sought and hoped we'd help answer. Things like: Is a mirror really a reflection of ourselves if it only works when we smile? Do strangers offer helpful advice so they can live on in your memories? And, how do you tie a shoe so it really stays on there? Impressed with your taste, depth, and apparent largess, we buy ourselves a seven million dollar replica Wild West town with your credit card before you notice.

Discussed: Shaq feeling Twitterers around him, defunct online service GEnie, putting in contact lenses, remembering strangers, being a memorable stranger, WikiHow: How to Take Out Contact Lenses Without Touching Your Eye, mirror that only works when you smile, coercive smile-based compensation at customer service jobs, tying your shoes like a square knot instead of a granny knot, Every Time I Tie My Shoes: A Novel, Every Time I Tie My Shoes: Short Fiction, Caldecott Medal-winning children's book Every Time I Tie My Shoes, Hammacher Schlemmer, The Sharper Image, Brookstone, Amphibious Sub-Surface Watercraft ($300,000), 23-Acre Wild West Town Amusement Park ($7,000,000), Genuine 7 Foot Robby the Robot ($32,000), a lot more stupid shit from Hammacher Schlemmer that I'm not going to list all of, what kind of '80s you are, "'Big' or Murderer?", one second a day video made while staring into a smile mirror, Hammacher Schlemmer hoarder house, $30,000 $15,000 Important If True podcast appearance, Zoltar fortune telling machine, The Gotham Golfcart, the shitty Hefner fantasy of Hammacher Schlemmer, weird old early 20th-century aspirational status objects, "Be the New Schlemmer" marketing campaign, J Peterman (catalogue), J Peterman (Seinfeld character), ridiculous strategies to profit on the back of the inane 17-hour time-delay ghost concept from last week's episode, tattooing your naked ghost, the complex path of the Earth through the infinite universe

Jake's Endorsement: The Idle Thumbs telling of the epic saga of the Team Fortress 2 virtual hat economy, as supplied by CaptainInvictus

Chris' Endorsement: Instant Pot automated pressure cooker and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's pressure cooker beef stew recipe–and excellent New York Times recipe author Melissa Clark has a detailed Instant Pot guide and a new Instant Pot cookbook

Nick's Endorsement: Doing a good old-fashioned jigsaw puzzle, like the Nick-approved Disneyland map jigsaw puzzle or Pixar: The Artist's Desk jigsaw puzzle

Can cold spaghetti enable your rise as a charismatic cult leader? How do you outrun your own 17-hour-tape-delayed ghost? How do you fight your homeowner's association? The world is confusing. Fortunately, each week, there's one source to which you can turn: WikiHow.

Discussed: Botnik Writer, Celebrity Explainer, eating cold spaghetti, mundane perception-alternate events, becoming a highly captivating charismatic cult leader, Roy Batty in Blade Runner, modern technology enabling you to relive your boring life forever, Mom's Spaghetti, a very well-known meme, encountering your own ghost, avoiding your own ghost, l'esprit de l'escalier, watching your own failures forever, Disney Channel Original Film "Me and My Ghost Pal", your own stupid subjective myopic experience, cutting parsley, generating associative memories, X-Acto knives, freeing yourself from bad associations, excellent WikiHow illustrations: How to Fight Your Homeowner Association, How to Break a Habit, How to Prepare Parsley, How to Escape a 17-and-a-half Hour Time Loop, Crown Records Management: The Power of Memory, The Truman Show but with a weird ghost version of you, The Game but the point is to make you eat McDonald's, Jones Pontiac Oldsmobile & Plymouth of Topeka, How to Avoid Encounters with Ghosts and the Paranormal, dreams

Nick's Endorsement: Exercising with a pull-up bar in your home, and not doing crunches because they hurt your terrible old back

Chris' Endorsement: The underappreciated Martin Scorsese dark comedy The King of Comedy (Amazon, iTunes)

Jake's Endorsement: The dark Garfield art spiral of famed illustrator Olly Moss

Sponsored by: Warby Parker prescription glasses with free home try-on, Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill

AAAAAAaahhhHHGHhggg! Oh, excuse us, that was just our podcasting equipment warming up. When you taste something gross, what compels you to tell your friend to try it? Or worse, to keep eating it? If we hear someone has wished for something, why the compulsion to wish it away? If something great is on TV, why violate it? In short: Why do we do things we know are bad for us? If we knew, we wouldn't be here. Join us!

Discussed: the trash kids love to eat, Jake's dark compulsion, Jake's twisted perverted self-flagellation, Jelly Belly Gourmet Candy Corn, the gross taste more cleanly, Philip K. Dick's "A Gross Taste Cleanly," off-brand candy bars, Jokerz, beef gelatin, vegan Tylenol, saving animal fats in a jar, existential meme crises, 11:11 wishes, Nick getting his wish, casting wishes by tossing change into bodies of water, wish inflation, nickel poisoning...?, meme forensics, violators and snipes, surprising truth in industry jargon, Important If True Home Violator Kit, Nick's dreams, the Dean Scream, 45 human brains unearthed in Spain, 45brains.online, saponification, the tragic loop of time travel, throwing our brains in the trash, unprestigious awards, bowling for babies, trophies for millennials, parents collecting wine corks and restaurant matchbooks, childhood failure

Chris' Endorsement: Frank Lantz's fractal-like browser game Universal Paperclips

Jake's Endorsement: Barbie Trashes Her Dreamhouse art project photo set

Nick's Endorsement: Fairfax Breakfast Sandwich, a very healthy choice

Sponsored by: Warby Parker prescription glasses with free home try-on, Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill

Your dreams have come true, assuming you dream of a podcast in which we do our best to work through the world's biggest questions, starting with these: Why are twentysomething Canadian robots putting septuagenarian Canadian humans out of work? Is Google Street View less creepy or more creepy if you're the one taking the photos? And, when Clifford got big we know it came from love, but was that love tainted by science gone wrong, or the touch of some malevolent wizard? These truths and more will be revealed to you, before you wake up and forget it ever happened.

Discussed: correcting a mistake, Nick Brekcon babysitting himself at Disneyland, externalized self-loathing, wishing upon a star, nightmares, CBC mail robot retirement, anthropomorphizing lovable dumb box robots over insidiously friendly human-like robots, cats' preference for humans over food, helping out your retiring mail robot buddy, boss robot, forcibly retiring your boss, The Count of Monte Cristo of Mail Robot Retirement Revenge, The Ship of Theseus, The Mom of Theseus, ostensible democratization of Google Street View, Google Street View camera hidden inside a teddy bear, long-term Google Street View gaslighting campaign, the world's largest and most popular website: Google.com, pulling off some sick moves as you surf down the slippery slope, scorning your past selves, "It Was a Very Good Year," just pushing the button, chitinous hide, Short & Curly Australian ethics podcast for children, the value of children, Dumbledore, Dumblededoodledy, a secret world in which wizards exist, Clifford the Big Red Dog, how Clifford got big, David Cronenberg's Clifford the Big Red Dog, The Fly, Darren Aronofsky's Clifford the Big Red Dog

Nick's Endorsement: Stretching (so you don't ruin your shitty old busted human frame)

Jake's Endorsement: New York City in 1993 shot on HD video

Chris' Jake-adjacent Bonus Endorsement: The Deuce TV show pilot on HBO

Chris' Real Endorsement: Jarred anchovy fillets to pump up the flavor of your meals (for instance, this delicious pan-seared chicken recipe)

Jake's Chris-adjacent Bonus Endorsement: Reassessing obnoxious childhood opinions fed to you by kid-targeted media and scorning your past self

Sponsored by: Warby Parker prescription glasses with free home try-on, Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill

We're going on a trip through the world's most bizarre mysteries, unanswerable conundrums, and dumb news, and it's going to take a while, so pack something healthy. No, we said healthy. Okay, fine if that's what you want. This week: If you have to babysit a ten year old version of yourself for the weekend, do you both get paid? What do ants see in you anyway? And, when you push a button that you know does nothing, has the satisfaction you felt when pushing it given that button a purpose? We can't stop pushing Nick's buttons about the alleged nutrition of PB&J sandwiches, so it must be true.

Discussed: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, weird jams, haunted sandwich, The NBA's Secret Addiction, Playmobil Traffic Cone Lung, How a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich is Like a Playmobile Traffic Cone and the National Basketball Association is Like a Human Lung, feeding Snickers to ants, Snickers-based ant rituals, the relative impulse for self-care in ants versus octopuses, bothering an ant researcher, generic-brand confections, allsorts bag of candy garbage, bridge mix bag of candy garbage, babysitting your ten-year-old self, existential crisis, tuna fish sandwiches, Jake Rodkin: the perfect babysitter for Jake Rodkin, getting punched by your own ghost, experiencing the past as it happens, mishearing Kraft cheese advertising slogans, the dystopian ambitions of the Kraft corporation, glitches in the universe, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Super Mario Bros. tv commercial and "making of" video, morphed boy bite with bowl fly, stuck in an elevator for the weekend, nonfunctional elevator buttons, the illusion of control, this dismaying observation, video game illusion of control secrets revealed on Twitter, how a toaster really works, toaster don't give a shit

Jake's Endorsement: Thimbleweed Park adventure game for computers, Xbox One, PS4, and iOS

Chris' Old Man Endorsement: canned sardines, a tasty sustainable healthful snack! (try "Fisherman's Eggs" from this list of easy sardine recipes)

Nick's Impenetrable Endorsement: Watching StarCraft e-sports—try these introductory videos from StarCraft player and streamer Day9, or just read about The Rise and Fall of StarCraft II Esports

Sponsored by: Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill

While we grapple with the mysteries of the world around us, while we do our best to solve your conundrums, provide you with advice, and tease out your bizarre hypothetical situations, we are being watched. Watched, judged, and pitied, by beings beyond our perception, hovering outside our senses on the edges of our reality. These beings fear for us, not for the damage we might do to them, but for the damage we might do to ourselves. And for our part, we barely know when they're there. In that way only, are they more afraid of us than we are of them. If you haven't guessed, this episode is about centipedes.

Discussed: September 21 2017, dads, Important If True Dadcast, annoyed bird cursed to live in a cage of its own creation, centipedes: masters of space and time, classic middle-grade novel My Dad the Centipede, classic kid's book The Big Centipede, Yoda, Yoda Centipede, Yoda Da Man, human evolution, relative scale of human beings, giraffes, the ocean, a big fucking whale, octopus cities, the Gloomy Octopus, octopus evictions, miserable octopus society, Mcity (driverless car testing town), Yodaville (military bombing testing town), Safety Town (children's driving education town), Bartertown (Mad Max dystopian barter town), Gravesend (crime and riot simulation town), Pizzaland (fake pizzeria), "America the Beautiful" musical road, Mellotron keyboard instrument (example of Mellotron string loops), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Amazon, iTunes), Arrival (Amazon, iTunes), Wolverine Street, self-hoisting AI, human beings

Jake's Endorsement: 80s.nyc (photographic Google Street View recreation of 1980s New York City)

Nick's Endorsement: The West Wing Weekly ("The West Wing" discussion podcast)

Chris' Endorsement: The Thin Man (1934 film about tipsy mystery-solving) (Amazon, iTunes)

Sponsored by: Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill, Warby Parker prescription glasses home try-on, Peter's happy birthday!