Important If True

You've been given the chance to re-live your life from the start, with everything you know now. A chance to right wrongs, a chance to show them all? Maybe, if you're lucky. A chance—with our help—to really figure out the mysteries of the world that you missed the first time through? Things like: What do roosters have against Swedish labor unions? How did Sinbad hide himself in plain sight, in every child's copy of the movie Kazaam? What was that guy yelling about outside your apartment that one time? What is a "tooth worm?" Definitely. In fact, we just did. Your life wasted, you pursue one final question: Can you re-live your life from the start, knowing absolutely none of this?

Discussed: ugh... "memes", Swedish labor union screaming rooster, Nick Breckon overhearing a disaster, psychic billionaire baby, John Titor, Early Edition, beautiful medieval teeth, tooth worm, Kazaam/Shazam, First Kid trailer on the Kazaam VHS

Nick's Endorsement: Boston Cooler (Vernor's Ginger Ale over vanilla ice cream)

Chris' Endorsement: Buckwheat tea, aka soba tea

Jake's Endorsement: Late Night Work Club animated short films

No one asked us to answer these questions. No one asked these questions at all, but as hosts of this podcast we must do our best: If a tree falls in the middle of a forest and it doesn't leave a will, who gets all its stuff? What's hidden in Chef Boyardee's past that someone really, really wants you to know? And when you meet a robot in the mall who could see through time, space, and maybe reality itself, what do you ask it? We'll need your help with that last one, but leave the rest to us.

Discussed: knife-wielding stabbing machine, The Tree That Owns Itself, Pepper the robot, Wetzel's Pretzels, Chef Boyardee, dumpsters

Jake's Endorsement: Better Call Saul (all seasons on Amazon & iTunes)

Chris' Endorsement: Sliding down the stairs on your heels as a kid (or something)

Nick's Endorsement: Walking an unfamiliar city alone

The truth often hides just beneath the surface. Especially when that surface is a Furby’s skin, which is also a ghost. So what happens when our children decide they love their robot friends more than us? Before that can happen, how many pounds of spiders would it take to devour us all? Where is the body of Cervantes, and what's it doing? Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Discussed: Cuties, a girl and her water heater, robot propaganda, Cervantes, "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle, two thousand pounds of spiders, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Bob Hoskins on a blue screen, MIDI piano cacophony

Nick's Endorsement: Ice cream sundae with vanilla ice cream, Spanish peanuts, and Sanders Hot Fudge

Chris' Endorsement: The cold shower capper

Jake's Endorsement: Something True, true tales from the footnotes of history

The universe is infinitely complex, filled with unlimited possibilities. To get to the truth we must tear down our preconceptions and ask real questions, like: Why does your friend remember a movie that never existed? How bad of a driver does your car really think you are? And which members of E.T.'s original family were human-pranking assholes?

Discussed: buff bros, pork chops, Cafe X, way-too-smart cars, gyroscopic smart spoon, Hopkinsville Goblin Encounter, E.T. (Amazon, iTunes), The Net (Amazon, iTunes), The Conversation (Amazon, iTunes), the ending to Predator (sorry for the poor quality), the Mandela Effect,

Jake's Endorsement: Interacting with humans

Chris' Endorsement: The rapturous reaction to last week's shoehorn endorsement

Nick's Endorsement: The experience of watching this subway saxophone confluence that occurred on a New York subway train. One must feast on this meal in the proper order: the opening course, followed by the entree. Mwah.

If you could go back to King Arthur times, how would you impress all those medieval idiots? Would you dazzle them with memes? Would they celebrate you, or hoist you? Who's the man, they might ask? Are you the man? Find out, in over 45 minutes of audio content you'll actually want to listen to!

Discussed: Snapple, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Credit Human, Egg Cuber, meme dreams, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones DVD release TV spot, Jeff Goldblum

Jake's Endorsement: Illinois Institute of Technology fight song

Chris' Endorsement: shoe horn (approachable normal sized shoe horn; intimidating weird large shoe horn)

Nick's Endorsement: Hot Winter Hot Sauce

Also: Listen through to the end for a sneak peek at our new true history miniseries, Something True!

Some questions are like an itch you can't scratch, or worse, an itch you can scratch as much as you'd like, but the itch doesn't go away. Today we indulge our compulsions and scratch away at the unscrachable, like: When did George Clooney start showing so much skin? Why does the flu virus really want you to party? And what drew three painters of video game box art to the same back-alley brawl, in the same town, on the same night? We will tread these paths again and again until we discover the truth, or are tricked by our own minds into believing we have. Plus, thanks to a helpful reader, major steps are taken to record for all time the 45 brains that control existence.

If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Important Reference Material: self-driving car, self-driving flying car, robots wearing skin, The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, flu-prompted sociability, Streets of Rage cover art, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Amazon, iTunes), Steven Spielberg's early career, 45brains.online

Nick's Endorsement: Flonase Allergy Relief (Nick promises this is not a paid endorsement)

Chris' Endorsement: Kitchen salt jar (alternatively: a "salt pig." ugh.)

Jake's Endorsement: Berkeley High School morning announcements

The road to the truth can take you through some dangerous places, so keep the windows up, the doors locked, and never, ever get out of the car. Or ignore that advice, and follow us down the truth’s seedier and long-forgotten offramps, in search of the really important questions. Like: What happens when your smart house gets a little too smart? Where do those creepy Chuck E. Cheese pizza robots come from? And why is the society depicted in Pixar's Cars a mockery of the living and the dead?

If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Important Reference Materials: Goldblum noises, Smart House, Alexa, Blank Check, The Rock-Afire Explosion, carbohydrillium, Disney•Pixar Cars, popes, geological butts

Chris' Endorsement: Stayfocusd Chrome browser extension

Jake's Endorsement: Logan

Nick's Endorsement: Calling your aunt back; or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild if you just want to buy something and be a consumer

A researcher has determined that by 2025, if you string all our smart devices together—our Amazon Alexas and always-online talking teddy bears, our color-changing light bulbs and remote-controlled doorknobs—they will have the combined thinking power of 45 human brains. But that raises the question: Who exactly are these 45 brains, and what do they want to tell us? Join us as we find the answer or, failing that, make something up.

If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Important Reference Materials: Morgan Freeman Turkish Airlines ad, CloudPets hack, Furby, Teddy Ruxpin, children loving Alexa, Alexa making questionable choices, Tomes and Talismans, Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis

Chris' Endorsement: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart

Jake's Endorsement: Witness, starring Harrison Ford (iTunes, free on Amazon Prime)

Nick's Endorsement: Finding and frequenting your local neighborhood bar

The great mysteries of our time lie before us, hovering tantalizingly out of reach, so instead we set our sights on the achievable. This week: What happens when flame robots battle garbage? Where's the intersection of George Michael and Matlock? And who brought Jaws to the friendly, rustic murder capital of the world? You may think these questions unanswerable, or barely questions at all. Friend, you may be right—but we'll do our best to pull them apart and see what truths they reveal.

If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Important Reference Materials: flame drones, drone-hunting hawks, Poirot main titles, Matlock main titles, Careless Whisper, boops boops, Jaws, Murder She Wrote, historical Spartan pec-oilers

Nick's Endorsement: The CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Amazon, iTunes)

Chris' Endorsement: Batman (1966) (Blu-ray, iTunes)

Jake's Endorsement: ThruYou by Kutiman

I can't believe we've done this. It's a brand new podcast. Join us, won't you? We're delving into the minutiae of pop culture, technology, and our own lives to find some kind of meaning—or at least to spin everything out as absurdly as we can. This week: Why do hawks ride planes, when they could fly? Who oils The Terminator's pecs? And what's Snagglepuss up to, exactly? These questions and more are answered definitively, sort of.

Important Reference: plane falcons, Snagglepuss reboot, zombie snails, Boston Dynamic's latest robot

If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Chris' Endorsement: Fish Spatula, aka Fish Turner, aka Oliver Fishturner

Nick's Endorsement: Farberware Nonstick Skillet

Jake's Endorsement: Listening to Nick starting at 54:30