Important If True

There are Great Mysteries out there. Conundrums so staggering and profound they can only be resolved by the world's greatest minds. What do you do when your barista knows your name, but you've never managed to learn theirs? How can Mario crush his enemies when he knows the pathetic, lonely lives they lead? And, is that crow trying to sell you cigarettes? We think if these are the sorts of questions you're looking to have answered, we will do a very servicable job. Join us!

Discussed: Inaccurate rules of the universe regarding monthly transitions, video of cat on bowl on Roomba, paying it forward at a local coffee shop, not paying it forward, instant dread and shame, getting to know your local barista, completely failing to know your local barista after dozens of visits and the silent-but-deadly social death spiral that transpires as a result, Tim Horton's, Timmy's, Dunkie's, Georgie, the time Georgie burned the Dunkie's, Unkie Dunkie the Baloney Slicer, crow cleanup crews, Crowded Cities, the crowbar, The Official Crow Box, craving a smoke thanks to crows, Joe Camel, ravens, Her Majesty's Ravenmaster, raven seeking attention, shitty teens, Larry the Crow, childhood misconceptions, Koopa Troopas, Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire, Proust's "madeleine" moment from Remembrance of Things Past, headcanon, the impossibility of communicating your deepest most tragic interiority across language and age barriers, being waxed house baby, being wax house babied, even longer hypothetical Wikipedia cons, hit film "Wax House, Baby," fictional film "Wax House, Baby" within the hit film "Wax House, Baby", hit song "Wax House, Baby"

Send us your questions at [email protected]. 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: iOS and Android telemarketer-identifying and -blocking app Hiya

Jake's Endorsement: Alternative 1980s comic book compendium Sam & Max: Surfin' the Highway (digitally on Comixology or in the beautiful Eisner-nominated Anniversary edition designed by our very own Jake!)

Nick's Endorsement: SyncSketch, for collaborative online sketching

Sponsored By: Steam virtual inventory buyer and reseller Captain Invictus, aka A Vacuum Full of Bees (also listen to the Hat Baron saga as recounted on the Idle Thumbs Podcast), Quip electric toothbrushes with your first brush head refill free

This week's episode is about Trust: when to extend it, when to withhold it, and when to cling to it because nothing else makes sense. When the same strange couple you don't know sends you a Christmas card every year, do you trust your mom that it's "just some friend's parents you've forgotten," or do you follow your heart and grift them before they can grift you first? Do we let ourselves believe a robot can write poetry, or is there just some hippie hiding in there? If a voice on the other end of a phone asks "can you hear me?" why not tell them "yes?" Plus, we manage to uncover the truth behind the mysterious "Cut Your Hair" phone calls, and receive a transmission from a universe long ago banished and thought to be lost.

Discussed: Receiving Christmas cards from people you don't know, misguided counter-espionage, de-scrambling anagrams, chatbot poetry, Racter, Eliza, deconstructing Racter, bots as reflections of their creators, the problems with using machine learning to create an artificial Frasier, embracing the flaws of an artificial Frasier as an aesthetic, the standalone tonal language of Kelsey Grammer, poop-related topics leaking in from a banned dimension, Utah-based flat vocal affect call centers, robocalls recording your voice to turn identity into an Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard, the bizarre grift outlined in Reply All: The Phantom Caller, the truth about the Cut Your Hair phone call, Sneakers

Send us your questions at [email protected]. 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: Sneakers (1992) (Amazon, iTunes)

Accidental Endorsement: Sneak King (Xbox, Xbox 360), a free game from Burger King

Nick's Endorsement: Strider video game speed run and live tutorial on speedrunning, a part of Awesome Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon for charity

Chris' Endorsement: Darkman (1990) (Amazon, iTunes)

Chris' Real Endorsement: watching clips from Would I Lie To You on YouTube

This week we discover that no matter how far flung life's questions may seem, there may be a universal key that unlocks them all. For instance: How do you completely collapse the degrees of separation between you and viral HQ winners? Do you actually remember anything that happened on the childhood television shows you hold so dear? What do the multiple robocall personalities who continue to call you at home, make demands of you, get noticeably bored and then hang up on you, actually want? The answer to all of them is, inexplicably, that you should cut your hair. At least, that's what we've been led to believe.

Discussed: "If You're Going to San Francisco (to Return to Your Old Barber But Want to Really Act Up the Fact That You Were In Canada) (Put Flowers In Your Hair)", unconventional Canadian sex/hair desires, HQtie of the year flipping out after winning $11.30 in HQ Trivia, The Elephant Show, Sesame Street, Nick Breckon wax housing Landis the hairdresser, the long arm of "Wax House, Baby", horror film podcast The Rants Macabre, pointlessly but insidiously altering the apparent history of short-lived children's cartoon Street Sharks, the mutual idiocy that is information aggregation on the internet, Street Sharks vandal copycat killer, ruining our own stupid childhoods, inexplicable robocalls, getting good advice over the phone, getting hung up on by a robot, those gross fungus toe ads for mortgage refinancing and stuff, the marketing matrix, The Marketing Matrix, I literally can't even explain the dumb internet shit we made up on this part of the podcast, Mellotron keyboard but instead of violin samples it has a bro telling you to cut your hair, Being John Malkovich but instead of being John Malkovich it has a bro telling you to cut your hair, "laff box" for creating televised laugh tracks live, our fractal gaslight reality, inappropriate diluting and genericizing of the phrase "Wax House, Baby"

Send us your questions at [email protected]. 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: The Director's Cut podcast from the Director's Guild of America

Chris' Endorsement: Collecting all your paper-based ephemera and, amidst a nostalgia explosion, organizing it (for instance, into a file box like this with file folders like this)

Nick's Endorsement: Reverse-searing your cheeseburger

In the first Important If True recorded in the new year, we put our fresh reality through its paces. Kick the tires a bit. Ask the questions that really matter in 2018. Questions like: Is the saxophone cool, or is it too real to be cool? If your coworker starts wearing puka shell necklaces as self-flagellating conversion therapy, is he still a bro? And if you become trapped in a fictitious world of your own design, will a Wikipedia editor ask for a citation? Only one thing’s for sure: it’s a wax house, baby—we all just live in it.

Discussed: 2018, Nick's Halloween Dreams, the unappreciated coolness of saxophones, psychic neural infiltration, explicit dream roasting, the Wikipedia page for the 2005 film "House of Wax", the internet sabotage long game, "Wax House, Baby", shared fictitious realities, Agloe, New York, Snakes on a Plane, the fractal-like world of online ersatz cheap brand creation and marketing, becoming an accidental bro, Pavlovian anti-bro enforcement methods, climbing out of your bro-hole with a ladder made of bones, rare Domino's Pizza Rolex watch, Nutcracker barfees, horrible barfing Nutcracker toy

Send us your questions at [email protected]. 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: Getting a huge hard drive (like this massive 3TB drive I bought) for way cheaper than you'd think, and putting all your crap on it while experiencing a nostalgia trip

Jake's Endorsement: Wizard Jam, the semiannual Idle Thumbs community game jam. Check out The Garfing Garfo because it is strange and surprising, and The World Begins With You because it is beautiful

Nick's Endorsement: "HQ Trivia is a Harbinger of Dystopia", Ian Bogost's deep dive into the strange trivia game HQ; and "If You Run This Profile, We're Fire Our Host", a completely unhinged interview with the CEO of HQ Trivia

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

It's a brand new year, time for fresh starts, time to throw those old cares away. Well, we know that's easier said than done, so we'll try and take care of a few big questions we know are on everyone's mind going into 2018. Questions like: What is your roommate storing in his conspicuous model ship? Where can I watch free episodes of my favorite TV show, Frasier? And, if someone could inject memories of a fantastic vacation directly into a person's brain, would they charge more to give you one with lots of sleep? The answers, or a close enough facsimile, are right here.

Discussed: "2018: Timeless," making the most from Patreon's short-lived new payment plan, Elves Behavin' Badly, Elf on the Shelf, Mensch on a Bench, learning to subvert your Elves Behavin' Badly security system, taking patently bad advice to heart and acting on it, robbing a store by squirting lemon juice on your face to hide your identity, algorithmic biases in Santa's Workshop, extricating yourself from an apartment when roommates have claimed all your stuff as their own, the time Nick Breckon finally hung out with his roommate for a night, creating your own Total Recall vacation, accidentally injecting yourself with the wrong Total Recall movie, itching vs scratching, borrowing vs lending, extreme pedantry, the evolution of language, American English as a melting pot, New York Times dialect quiz, Lexicon Valley podcast

Send us your questions at [email protected]. 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: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle (Website, iOS App)

Nick's Endorsement: Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program, which is less of a missed gem now than it was when we recorded.

Jake's Endorsement: Harry Potter and the Portrait of what Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash, a predictive-text-assisted new novel in the Harry Potter series, and Megan Nicole Dong's Large Pile of Ash illustrations.

When someone says, "the gift that keeps on giving," they're usually describing something good, something exciting, something people want. But what about the bad gifts? The gift you ask for but regret? The gift you already have, then foist off onto a family member under an oath of silence? The gift that tricks your childhood brain into thinking you're a genius? The gifted Hawaiian shirts, owls, books on meerkats, or anything else given by the truckload that, once your loved ones decided you liked, couldn't help but keep on giving year after year? We are here for you, with the Important If True Bad Gift Special. Join us for tales of gifts gone awry, gifts given on loop forever, and sometimes even the story of a bad gift that turned good.

Bad gifts discussed: Opening your gifts early would ruin the surprise!

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

If you have a Bad Gift story for us, send it to [email protected] with the subject line "Bad Gift," and we'll include it in next year's special!

You thought you were getting a new episode this week? We have news for you: Ho-Ho-Hoisted. That's right, it's bullshit Holiday Clip Show episode time, in which we are visited by ghosts (and goblins) of Important If True's past, and are are reminded time and again how ridiculous this all is. Join us as we try to remember what "Hoistmas" is and what it could possibly mean, as we rifle through the Important If True archives to see if we're right.

We'll be back next week with a full real holiday episode: The Important If True First Annual Bad Gift Special! See you then!

Featuring your favorite recycled Holiday Content: Who is Lord Hoistmas? (From Important If True 16: The Pizza, the Bee, and the Trash Can), What are some Hoistmas traditions? (From Important If True 18: Important If Rhymes With True), Who are the Yule Lads and do they just lick things? (From Important If True 20: Christmas Is Canceled), Is a cursed Pizza Hut lamp the ultimate Hoisting? (From Important If True 39: Organoids and the Human Mini-Brains), Warmest Greetings (From Idle Thumbs 293: Warmest Greetings)

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

There are certain pieces of knowledge, things one has observed or learned, that become like a single grain of sand in the folds of the brain. An itch you can't scratch, can't make go away. Something you know to be true but no one else sees, or the tiniest word out of place, a colloquial phrase misused by a friend. For you and your itchy brain, we are here. Rub your face up against this podcast and we'll grind those grains of mental sand away (while only adding a few new ones in the process).

Discussed: Canadian politeness, Nick Breckon, sincerity, phenomena, pedanticism, sentience and sapience, TN.FN.CN, the smartest animal, less vs. fewer, encouraging grocery store express line improvements, removing the sand from my brain, Jibo the friendly robot, Jibo's obsessive desire for your love, Jibo's political agenda, sapience vs. sentience vs. love vs. robot love, cat pillow that purrs, Qoobo, dangerous capitalistic self-medication, Happy Cow bovine self-grooming device, electric automatic shoe polisher machine, extraordinarily dubious menswear advice, Important If True Bad Gift Special

Send us your questions at [email protected]. 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: Indochino made-to-measure menswear (you can also use my referral link for $50 off, if you desire)

Nick's Endorsement: Nintendo Switch video game console

Jake's Endorsement: Red Giant Universe gratuitous effects to make your videos look like old VHS tapes and stuff

With Nick Breckon now contained within the computerized realm, this week's Important If True takes an algorithmic bent as we soldier on to discuss the issues that matter most. For instance: If you blast Billy Idol from a boombox while covering your body in memes, will the Terminator let you in the front door? If DeepMind doesn't know who you are, can you ever really know yourself? And are corn and maize the same thing? Nope, that's a trick question, asshole. Welcome to Memeland.

Discussed: Nick Breckon, podcasting, bitcoin mining, Patreon postcard update, the gross seductive power of screens that is proven by the very fact of all of our existences, Toyota dashboard bizarre universe "Chris Remo", machine learning interpretation of cats as memes, Italian pop song with gibberish English lyrics, The Great Microsoft Songsmith Rapture of 2009, "White Wedding" by Billy Idol feat. Microsoft Songsmith, "White Wedding" by the Rivertown Skifflers, "We Will Rock You" by Queen feat. Microsoft Songsmith, Microsoft Songsmith as classical muse, maliciously hacking Google AI to misidentify a turtle as a rifle, World War I-era dazzle camouflage, camera-defeating fashion, infiltrating the Terminator base while decked out in internet meme garbage, fractal DeepMind memeland, high-tech modern corn maze production, Petaluma Pumpkin Patch and Amazing Corn Maze, Maze Wars, the Great Wikipedia Editor Corn vs. Maize War, pro-maize arguments, pro-corn arguments

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

Chris' Endorsements: Wide-ranging BBC knowledge-enhancing podcast In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg

Jake's Endorsements: Vice article "I Made My Shed the Top-Rated Restaurant on TripAdvisor
Chris' Sub-Endorsement: New Yorker article "The Most Exclusive Restaurant in America

Nick's Endorsement: London historical site/tourist trap/surreal theatrical experience Benjamin Franklin House (also read our friend Duncan Fyfe's report on the experience, "Benjamin Franklin and Me")

Sponsored by: Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill
Shoutout by: Better Than Speed Podcast (iTunes)

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

Send us your questions at [email protected]. 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: 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