Ask Dr. Christian Hubicki | Summer 2024

[00:00:08] Hey everybody, what's going on Rob Cesternino back here to once again ask Dr. Hubicki and we are back here with the man who has all the answers to your questions the great doctor Christian Hubicki Christian, how are you?

[00:00:25] Doing great awesome to be here. Thank you for having me back ready to just talk about questions and whatever comes our way this evening Yes, thrilled to get the chance to do this again

[00:00:37] We lasted this back in the winter and now here we are in the summer. It's sort of like we Measure the passage of time now Every six months or so we get together to answer all the questions in our ever-changing world

[00:00:52] And hopefully Christian has the answers to the questions that you all have sent us Yeah Thank you by the way Dear audience for one listening to this this is a thrill that I get to do this with Rob and because you

[00:01:08] Keep doing it and it's fun, but also for sending in your great questions. I'm always amazed at the at the At the bounty of questions I have from that we can choose from to go through so keep them coming I always love it and always appreciate it. So

[00:01:23] Just to start things off we have a list of questions from the listeners across the field of science and pop culture and Survivor and we'll get into all of them here with Christian. I got into a little bit of a Discussion with my wife who recently tried to

[00:01:47] She went to a Like a coffee shop and she surprised me with some macaron cookies Christian Interesting. I'm aware of these. Yes, and she said that she says she got these for me Because that I these are a favorite of mine

[00:02:08] Which was news to me. I know they're a favorite of yours How she confused something that I like with what you like I will leave that to the imagination I have been known to like a macaron I like the coconut. I like the chocolate This is not I

[00:02:31] like that I like a macaron and She was furious it was not it was not a good moment for me and I Take it was very very very very bad night. Yeah Rune is I know what a macaron is I Know what I like super

[00:03:00] There's a super important distinction there because I would have been the exact opposite If I had been given a macaron instead of a macaron I would have been as attempting to be as polite as possible and saying I

[00:03:12] Have the exact opposite opinion I do not like coconut which means survivor awkward. Yeah, and so I really and My wife was very unhappy. I was really just confused about the holes

[00:03:24] They're like, but why do you why like do you why why are you giving this to me? Because you like it. I was like what? This was I from what I the notes I got

[00:03:36] Every way I handled this was very bad. So it was a teachable moment for me It's one of those it sounds like this. This is my my armchair reading of what happened. Yeah was that she was expecting a

[00:03:53] Positive response because she knew and thought that you like these things, right? Yes That's what that's what you wanted and you gave her hesitation and And confusion usually we're just trying to figure out what

[00:04:05] He was actually talking about that's what she so and what what this was that somehow this was your Distance your favorite treat but was it back not by the way? I apologize for being something distracted my interconnection slow because I have about a hundred tabs open on chrome

[00:04:19] And I'm closing them all right now for research for today. Okay here. I apologize research for tonight or for your For your day job For you bro. I'll be sure to you. Yeah, I cast is at least a hundred tabs. Yeah, but anyway

[00:04:33] So if like the lesson I'm learning here and you know, I'm you never too old to learn is that You know if somebody gives you a a gift and Says you like it you there's no pushback You like it just immediately say of course. Yeah, absolutely

[00:04:53] It's exactly what I wanted but thank you so much and yeah But I've always been on the crusade of macaron versus macaron make sure the macaron literacy is Important in today's America, you know, unless you be sprung coconut upon

[00:05:08] Yeah, you know more allergic to these things, you know, some people from survival 46 would have been none too thrilled had they been Yeah, and to be honest, I never knew what a macaron was before you came along

[00:05:19] Well, yeah, they are yeah, I mean I've talked about them in the past but they're I just I mean obviously they're not your thing But they are I love how delicate and lightly flavored they are and they're and they're they're very

[00:05:32] Intriguingly done and hard to make so yeah, yeah They're the kind of thing that you know, you can give as actually ever seen as a gift at your podcast Yeah, my birth last year Happy and a day. So that was cool. So anyway, okay. All right

[00:05:46] Christian we've got so many questions to get into anything you want to say you have any opening statements Well, I mean other than it's been a wild You know six months. I mean a lot of stuff going on in TV. We had all season of survivor

[00:06:00] That was fun. That was a exciting exciting season as it ramped up, especially near the end We got plenty of we were introduced to one cue mm-hmm to the world

[00:06:10] It's been exciting and we got a whole lot of other things exciting to go get like I hear another traders coming out Yeah, so all kinds of fun things but anyway not really an opening statement more

[00:06:19] It's to say that a lot of fun stuff in pop culture and a lot of crazy stuff in science world Especially all this AI stuff. Okay keeps keeps getting thrown at us. All right

[00:06:27] Well, that's why it's so great to have you here to talk about this. Okay, so why don't we start off? With a question from Brendan who asked Christian in the exploding era of AI

[00:06:42] How viable do you think it is that we will ever reach the point where one can upload their consciousness to the internet? Thank you very much for all you do Love you bays Okay

[00:06:54] Love you as well. They know and now I get it. I don't know if is uploading your consciousness to The cloud is that AI or do you or do you become AI? at that point that's a That's a fair question. I

[00:07:09] Think this is a great question to address because it does take two things together that don't quite belong together I think it's actually good to clarify it this was a great question Wanted to talk about all the AI stuff that's been coming in the last few months

[00:07:21] I mean for those who have not been in a coma or have been in a coma. There's been a lot of Both scientific advancement, but also business hype around artificial. Yes. Yes But so and that can be hard to disentangle the two because there is a legitimate

[00:07:38] excitement in the scientific engineering community over over artificial intelligence and what we specifically mean is the concept of deep learning so And which is a subset of machine learning. That's the technology that's been taken off and specifically beneath that are the generative AI methods are

[00:07:56] What the public is generally really excited about these are your chat GPD's These are your things that that generate text based on a prompt or Generating images based on a prop we had some fun with that where I believe you made a pee we Herman Ruben sandwich Yeah

[00:08:14] Paul Ruben sandwich you made with with a dolly mini at the time and that's why we continued to yeah That's really a good, you know grown by leaps and bounds since we've been doing this. Yeah

[00:08:24] Yes, it's so like just in this early so impressive what you can do with these generative methods and And so that has nothing to do with uploading your brain into a consciousness But but and that might be there may not be obvious to people think about it

[00:08:39] But I think a lot of people see these Methods that are coming out there that are increasingly a prevalent and thinking they are like human brains But they are in fact not if they're only like human brains in terms of analogy like only by analogy

[00:08:56] Are they like they they're built by using what we call artificial neural networks, and you might be like oh Neural networks. That's what our brain is our brain is a bunch of neurons connected together into a big network that's what it means and The

[00:09:12] And so but that's all that's where the analogy basically ends for how these things are similar So I so if you didn't if you thought that that's all that we needed was an artificial neural network to upload our brains Or our consciousness into it

[00:09:28] You have that you have a lot of Disappointment to prepare for And this is frankly a probably a pretty common view because a lot of people have been pushing for years the idea that we can

[00:09:40] Load our brain up into the consciousness obviously up to the cloud, you know like in the matrix There are a lot of evangelists who want to believe that this is right around the corner It's frankly they don't want to die and this is their path to immortality

[00:09:52] and so so so sort of the high level lesson is that like Computer neural networks are not really like human brains like for one the neural networks are these very simple mathematical Functions that we might talk about a bit more later

[00:10:07] They're like little things on your graph on your graphing calculator, which of course we all have at the ready you know I definitely have mine right here and There's made up these simple mathematical functions whereas real neurons

[00:10:19] Are made of a really complex biochemistry with a lot of details that may in fact capture a lot of our human experience And if we were to take that and sort of smudge that into mathematical functions

[00:10:32] There's very little guarantee. We'd have any of us left that we recognize. Yeah This idea is not particularly appealing to me one of my favorite movies I don't know if we've ever talked about vanilla sky was one that really talked about this very early on But there's like 2001

[00:10:51] Yeah, yeah, so that's right. That's that was when Tom Cruise and Penelope Penelope cruise. Yeah, yeah, two cruises. They are you right? Yes, right? They co-cruised after that and yeah That that that was interesting as a young and that was a trippy movie to watch

[00:11:07] But I agree with you Rob that what's what's explore if you explore the science fiction element up on your consciousness like that that's where like The scary like black mirror stuff well episodes of black mirror at least are based on this

[00:11:21] And by the way, I confess I have never seen a single episode of black mirror. Oh really what tells me I'm so surprised. Well, yeah me too because I like science fiction But I'll tell you I am very squeamish about horror

[00:11:34] and I know that it's like more psychological horror which I tend to like but like I try to catch scenes that there's The one everyone talks about to me with the with the robot dog with the robot with the robot dog

[00:11:45] So I make sure I went and watched parts of that so at least I knew what it was about But I just hate horror movies at least I mean I or I should say I have to be like dragged

[00:11:54] To something anything that I anticipate will be very scary Very very few things I will watch where they are scary They have to be a very specific subset But I feel like it should because that's your I heard this modern-day Twilight Zone is modern-day

[00:12:08] Science fiction. I really should yeah, I think especially The older ones I feel like that they're kind of out of good ideas I think the real world is still in all their ideas, but you know very interesting to get your take on that

[00:12:21] If you ever get the chance to look at it. So yeah, okay So people should not be planning on uploading their consciousness to the cloud anytime soon So I would love to get you just your updates on like the state of AI because I wonder

[00:12:37] You know, I think what it's really hard to parse as somebody who tries to follow this stuff is and you being like such a Professional who is not hyperbolic about talking about your field

[00:12:53] Could you sort of like give us a sense of where we are because I do get the sense when you talked about like a lot of these like for lack of a better term like maybe the tech world and

[00:13:06] valuations and money and I think that there's a lot of like hype tied into oh This is going to be a great reason to invest in our tech company because of what's going on here

[00:13:18] But maybe that's not necessarily like a realistic picture of what's actually happening in the AI world Yeah, it's you're right to ask that question Rob And because there are a lot of people with strong interests involved business interests who literally have their own money on the line

[00:13:36] Telling you AI is the next big thing in the same way that they were telling you crypto is the next big thing a couple years ago it's it now And weirdly there's a lot of parallels there both work

[00:13:47] There's actual core technologies at the at the core of both of these things, you know They're like the blockchain is a real Computer science concept that exists but doesn't necessarily mean

[00:13:58] Good or it's necessarily good or bad for as a currency. That's a that's a different discussion when I do not plan on having today Yeah, and but the but the but certainly There is a lot of potential to these current deep learning methods

[00:14:15] We are using them in the research field I will I will say like I just came back from the International Conference on Robotics and Automation and Which is in Yokohama this year

[00:14:25] So and and there was a real discussion amongst a roboticist about the role of AI now like in these generative methods in our robots and Before you get scared about it

[00:14:36] It's nothing like with these science fiction terminator scenarios that worried about it's whether or not we should put so much money into it An effort and is it a dead end?

[00:14:44] It's those kinds of things because so there's there's a legitimate question as to how far can these methods take us for a Viable product that what that we actually want to use in our daily lives There are certainly niche things

[00:14:58] That generative methods are good for not even in terms of robotics like there are times I'll go to a chat GPT and say you know I could you rewrite this for me? I just want to see if there's anything that you would do better and like oh, yeah

[00:15:08] It does that or if I will generate 10 names for a podcast for me Oh, okay sure like that that's great like things that are relatively low stakes

[00:15:16] That are that benefit from a lot of data that is trained to do a lot of and has a lot of examples on the the my great mantra with AI is that it is incredibly impressive What it can do, but it's less clear what it can reliably do

[00:15:36] So if you have an application where it has to work Just about every time or like then then then these methods they're they're not necessarily built like that. I mean like

[00:15:50] Things that are using that use deep learning are things like your phone is the through and away somewhere But like if you were to do a Face face recognition, right? Yeah, you know, that's that's handy

[00:16:01] I love that it's on my phone if it doesn't work. I don't die You know, it's like it doesn't work, you know, then necessarily every time But it's good enough and that's a nice that's a nice application

[00:16:12] But I think people are trying to find good applications for the generative methods That it makes sense for mass adoption and my fear is that people are gonna shoehorn it in and everywhere because of hype

[00:16:25] Where it's not necessarily a good solution or there are better solutions that use non deep learning deep learning methods like I I'm I stutter whenever I see people go to chat GPT to calculate like one plus one or as a calculator

[00:16:41] You know, it's like and I mean it can do it and maybe and I think there's statistics on how well it does I honestly haven't checked on them recently, but we have perfectly valid tools that are like proven to work

[00:16:52] unless your computer gets hit by a cosmic ray, you know to give you the right answer and so He and I am not clear and just to just put this onto a bow. It's not clear to me exactly what the killer app is for

[00:17:09] every industry the way it's being sold and So that's that's take one and the take two is a lot of people talk about this term AGI You heard this AGI people say what that means that so that stands for artificial general intelligence

[00:17:24] It's sort of the buzzword for computer that's as smart as a person and basically every way, you know chat GPT You're these large language models. They give the impression of intelligence but really there's change trained on a lot of data to predict text and

[00:17:40] It's incredible what they can do again reliably do this is another thing But but a lot of people look at these things. It's like oh my goodness We are so close something that it says genuinely and smart as a person at that point

[00:17:52] Oh my goodness, then that means all of our jobs are replaced. That means anything that you know We can do on a computer, you know, this will just do for us We can just replicate a mass a massive workforce of these things

[00:18:03] That's what people fear and a lot of people are saying it's right around the corner There are and by a lot of people if there is some some scientists some scientists who work at companies

[00:18:15] Some companies who have a vested interest in saying yes, please invest in our company because it's right around the corner And I'm more of a pessimist when it comes to that. I don't think we are close to this AGI

[00:18:26] It's artificial general intelligence. That's my personal take. I am and I can totally be wrong. No one really knows Yeah, but I but that that's weird that we are that I am short-term I'm a pessimist on this stuff Long term. I think we could figure it out

[00:18:41] But how as long as long term no one really knows I would say at least 10 to 20 years at least but that's hard to tell Yeah, I think that I agree with that I think it's probably like not as close as we think but probably a big part of

[00:18:56] The future and the thing that just like gives me pause with it is just the obscene amounts of money that people are able to be sort Of generating in terms of like okay People who are speculating on it of like like, you know invest in this company

[00:19:13] Because of what they're doing for AI and I do wonder if there could be a bubble there Yeah, so I look I would if I had to bet I don't want I'm not a speculative investor You should see my portfolio which is non-existent. I'm not a speculative investor

[00:19:28] So and and I'm cautious by nature but also cautious as a scientist So that they'd say that there's a lot of reasons to think there's a bubble

[00:19:36] Again, no one really knows because if everyone didn't know if people did know then you can make a whole lot of money Sorting the market, but no one knows the markets are inherently volatile The so in a way it has a lot of a lot of

[00:19:52] parallels to other speculative bubbles in the past The question would be what markers should you look for to know that you're wrong? I mean if they like that how to know that there. Oh, no, this is a real thing. I'll tell you That marker should not be

[00:20:08] Stock price mm-hmm should not be company valuation. That is not a good marker us of Scientific viability don't go off of that. I think that the which My marker that I'm looking for is people roll it out into a high reliability sector

[00:20:26] Where it is and it is doing a job and reporting very high reliability And the reason that's the reason I'm so kind of hesitant on this because if we had that We would have self-driving cars everywhere. Mm-hmm and we've people self-driving cars have been around the corner

[00:20:42] since about 2007 At least that's people talking about it and every time like there's a new Tres release be like, oh, it's almost here Did you see this thing is like well, we'll see and kind of way a little longer. So if they can't figure out driving

[00:20:56] I'm skeptical they're gonna figure out podcasting okay, thank goodness so Christian any other like recent AI Headlines that have sort of like caught your attention or anything else that you want to bring up Just in the overall AI section Yeah, yeah, so the overall AI section

[00:21:19] Let me tell you the coolest what I think I'm most optimistic about in terms of AI in terms of the overall approach I'd like effect on society it is Suggesting ideas for scientific breakthroughs. So like again, it's a thing where if it's wrong

[00:21:33] It's not a big deal. But what is what if it's brilliant? It helps a lot You only need to get right and scientific breakthrough one time and something huge happens Like it's doing things like suggesting material compounds that can have new properties

[00:21:46] Being trained on a lots of other previous previous scientific work and trying to predict What actually is gonna be next step forward on a material? Yeah, or how would you get that kind of stuff transparent aluminum? Transparen oh, yeah, there are all stories of transparent aluminum

[00:22:01] Dig up those 10 year old articles for you at some point Rob. There's a transparent aluminum metamaterial I remember reading about a Decade ago, I think you have to subject it to like high X-ray radiation or something like that and yeah

[00:22:13] Anyway, whatever I wouldn't prepare for that today, but yeah, but can I ask you though? I Understand that that is the goal where okay Artificial intelligence is coming up with cures for a disease or some new

[00:22:29] Breakthrough but has has that happened yet? Are we seeing anywhere where the artificial intelligence is? Creating these things that are actual solutions to our problems

[00:22:41] Yes, yes, it is a tool that p. That's scientists are at least in the literature people are publishing advances purported to be done by By by artificial intelligence methods where they it suggests a solution like here's an example like

[00:22:56] And again, it's all very recent so it's possible people could come out with papers in in in the near future be like Oh, actually it's over height blah blah blah blah, but purportedly people are publishing things like algorithms that were designed by

[00:23:11] By by these AI methods that are faster at computing important math problems Classic one is a is a matrix multiplication and it's not necessarily just the Keanu Reeves film

[00:23:22] It's like it you know for those who haven't taken math in a while a matrix is basically like a table of numbers like you would see in a

[00:23:27] spreadsheet and you can multiply tables of numbers by each other and they have special rules to how you do it and That is super important because everything you're seeing on this screen right now or you know

[00:23:38] Or is being transmitted over the internet is going through a matrix multiplication somehow like it happens everywhere It's one of the things that really drives AI itself So is the fact that that you're that your computer graphics card the thing that you know plays Zelda for you

[00:23:52] On a screen. It's also super good at doing matrix multiplications for other things That's why Nvidia has like a trillion dollar evaluation this company that makes these cards Anyway, but so in a way you could you could be really bombastic and say well

[00:24:07] That means that AI came with it with it out with an algorithm for better AI You could say that I'd say that'd be a little hyperbolic me But the but so but that's just one example and there actually have been materials

[00:24:19] Compounds suggested that have had new properties and so that's It's a real thing. Yeah, okay Dolores also There's robotic surgery. What's your view on robotic surgery now? Is that a totally different tangent than this? It's not totally different

[00:24:39] But it is a lot of related themes because a lot of related themes because where do you want your robot to be more reliable than when It's literally operating on you. Mm-hmm

[00:24:47] So like and robotics and AI there's a lot of related things because something's gotta do the thinking in robotics And for many years it was much more traditional mathematics and traditional algorithms

[00:24:57] But now people are finding ways to use these use these chat GPT like methods in a creative ways to control robots And so I'll tell you if that robot's holding a knife next to me. I want to be really sure that it's gonna work Mm-hmm, okay

[00:25:12] Anything else in regards to AI to open things up. It's it's possible we'll circle back in a future question I think it's good for now. Okay. All right Let's see okay How about a question If Jeff probes asked you to host a season of survivor

[00:25:37] Would you do it at what location and what would be the overall theme that's been from a few years ago? Okay, well Ben welcome from the past welcome traveler and When it comes to and buckle up. Okay, that's all I have to say Is Ben just

[00:26:04] Brace yourself for the news and when it comes to Rehosting your show look I the answer short answer is no I would not host a show of survivor at least I would not consider myself a good host of survivor

[00:26:15] I think I would talk babble too much with the cast About you know, hey, what algorithm that you used to do that vote, you know Things that wouldn't necessarily appeal to all audiences. I think and Jeff Jeff makes you need more of an every man

[00:26:27] Kind of kind of folks for it for that But let's say I did let's say I was like maybe EP like what's up? Like you know like executive producer of survivor was question. Where would it be filmed?

[00:26:38] Is that second question here? So like I was more like I'm like I'm like the angel and or devil on Jeff's shoulder Okay, I guess is what what's going on. All right. So yeah, you would have a change of location. I

[00:26:51] Would I honestly I look I think there's a lot to love in Survivor ever since it settled in Fiji. I do miss changing locations around a little bit I think I'm starting to I stir times where as much as I will like a season

[00:27:05] I'll be like it'll be helpful to have a little bit more of a differentiator I don't miss having the locations different for that reason. Yeah, I get that but I just feel like that that for me

[00:27:14] I've never really complained about survivor staying in Fiji because I just feel like that that okay. I Oh, I am very pragmatic Like I can understand the reason why we do it always in Fiji is all of our props are there

[00:27:28] All of our production is there. We've got everything set up So that survivor staying in Fiji helps survivor stay on the air It makes it more affordable and like there's a ton of built-in costs that they already have there

[00:27:41] so to me that that one makes sense like I love the idea of maybe like you could do one survivor season Somewhere else, but I mean it would be a little more exciting but at the end of the day

[00:27:54] I think it's just sort of the scenery and I know that there's many classic seasons where the location is part of a like the personality of the show but That I feel like a great survivor season can happen in Fiji

[00:28:09] And you don't need to necessarily move to have a really amazing survivor season 100% you're set to agree with that. I don't even saying look like I guess I'm EP I guess I do care about money in this in this instance

[00:28:22] I was more like if I if I had to like if I was to magically will a season into existence You know the where I would put again. This is my season. Yeah, so I got to make sure it stands out

[00:28:33] You know, I was like, oh, I put it in a new location because it would feel fresh But yeah, I totally understand the cost the cost-benefit analysis of putting in Fiji

[00:28:41] I think that on the whole it makes a lot of sense. I'm not I'm not mad at that Really at all I think that if but if I think that it would be something if I if you do one time would be exciting

[00:28:54] This is my season so I guess I get to do it I'm EP and what's the last question? What was the theme be? Yeah, I mean so I was actually I went on a podcast with with your with with Mike bloom. Yes

[00:29:08] Yeah, and and I was telling him that love redemption Island as a theme. Yeah, I did perfect That's exactly what I'm going with this with this conversation at the moment But yeah, I talked about redemption island with him and we were talking about you know

[00:29:22] What was it the wish list for season 50 as to who's gonna go on and I was talking with him It's like I think that regardless of what they do with this upcoming season 50 which apparently Jeff announced will have returning players Yeah, he's so

[00:29:36] Yeah, that's what Mike told me I quite went in cold on this podcast and yeah, like oh you're here to talk about 50 and like 50 the show got renewed. Yeah, and But the so like whatever they do for that

[00:29:49] There's gonna be so many people that like are not gonna be able to be on that show That we're gonna want to see and like it's math unless they put a hundred people on the island

[00:30:01] There's gonna there gonna be a lot of people we've played once and we've never seen again people complain about the hundred and first that didn't make it Exactly exactly and of course you'll never get everyone back that everyone's happy

[00:30:13] But they have such a deep bench great people especially the last, you know, they've had how many seasons In the new era that I mean there's gonna be a lot of people that I would want to see again six You're very good. Your county skills are unparalleled Yeah

[00:30:29] Okay, should they let artificial intelligence cast survivor 50? You know I I would say No, because what it would be it would be because these these LLMs are based on data

[00:30:43] They scrape from the internet so basically it would just be regurgitating cast from Reddit and I've said and I'm not sure if well Actually, I'm sorry. Redditor's for probably this your cast are fantastic. I'm sure so yes

[00:30:55] Yes, it's trained on all that data so it absolutely should okay. All right. Yeah So my theme yeah, yes, okay I think it would be a second like a second chance honestly I mean something like a second chance you maybe don't need a fan vote

[00:31:09] But it would be something where you bring back a lot of people who who who came in played once and And and specifically for them because who knows what they'll do for 50 and they'll believe people behind I think that's a that'll be a great thing

[00:31:23] Regardless of what happens Okay. All right, so Christian I guess So on a similar note. Okay got a question an anonymous question said Christian would you join survivor 50 if asked? Well anonymous. Yes My answer is yes, probably that's my answer

[00:31:48] Okay, and so the it's hard to what one I had a really fun time the first time I feel like I think I answered this with Mike Bloom as well pretty much as well but the

[00:32:00] You think all you for survivor 50. He's gonna hang up the phone. It's the 50th season It could very well be like the last milestone season. I mean unless Jeff probes goes to 100

[00:32:13] You know or something it's it's it'll be an honor to get called and I take it really seriously I mean, I can't guarantee that life won't get in the way, but I'd be interested

[00:32:23] I definitely would take it seriously. Let's see what see what they were thinking. Yeah, yeah, cuz oh, yeah I mean, it's I mean also the cast of whatever they pulled together It's gonna be fantastic. I mean they have like they get the pick of the litter of 700 people

[00:32:40] Or so, I mean Just to be out there with those people would be like a dream It would be so like there's so many interesting people like it would be just an experience. I could talk about again Saying oh man

[00:32:57] Like I got to be there and you maybe go applied high and seek and I hidden hidden the mud puddle And he stepped on me, but he pretended he didn't side like it like there'd be so many stories

[00:33:07] I would assume and for for at least, you know what two or three days at least yeah I had said when I was recently on with Mike bloom for the survivor 50 wishlist half-time show on

[00:33:20] Friday and I had said that I really feel like I think that they should make it a second chances for Survivor 50. I know that it's okay. Well, it's 50. It has to be the legends

[00:33:33] Ultimately playing again, but I feel like you could do a second chance season and then you know Maybe two years from now if you did a legend season and it was survivor 54 Nobody's gonna say well, I'm not watching Legends survivor 54, but I think you need a

[00:33:50] Fans versus favorites to have a heroes versus villains. You know what I mean like you need to like a We need to we need to like have our people Play again before we bring in everything Yeah, and I think that that's sounds not only on a good idea

[00:34:11] But a likely idea in terms of when you would do like a legend season because I mean It totally makes sense that you know, Jeff is doing this new era starting for 41

[00:34:22] And they're really jazzed off and getting new cast and that makes all the sense in the world And they're like hey, you know, we'll wait till 50 just that's a nice round number to bring people back I just I think that makes a ton of sense

[00:34:33] But then after that we're like we're gonna wait till 75 I mean no I think I think it actually kind of opens up a lot of options at that point is like hey What do we feel like doing and especially time?

[00:34:42] You know, I said Jeff prop student interview recently where I saw for the very first time that he was talking about another person hosting survivor besides him and I do wonder, you know, how many does Jeff have any sort of exit strategy of

[00:34:56] How many more years does Jeff want to be hosting survivor? So if Jeff has some sort of like exit strategy of maybe three four more years Like I kind of feel like you can do your okay Let's do our big second chances second chances, too

[00:35:12] Which is an iconic season of the show around the 30th even 31st Around the 30th anniversary of the 30th anniversary season If you did that again at 50th anniversary season maybe, you know if Jeff ultimately wanted to walk away from the show at some point

[00:35:31] Maybe the legend season could be Jeff's final season Yeah, I think that would make a lot of sense I mean because because once once you get past 50 for him

[00:35:42] I mean, it's probably just I can't imagine he's gonna be waiting for like a crazy round number to do it at that point I think and I think that and honestly, that's what you'd want. You wouldn't want someone, you know

[00:35:53] Hanging on until there's until some arbitrary milestone after when they don't feel like doing it You want someone to step aside when they feel like you know what? I've had everything I need out of this experience I don't need to do this anymore

[00:36:04] You know, so that that's what that's what I would hope for at least mm-hmm. Okay. All right Let's then go back to Science okay Christian Amy asks hey Christian I teach AP calculus a B at a high school. What's calculus a B?

[00:36:27] Calculus a B unless things have changed since I was at high school a thousand years ago the is it covers limits and derivatives and Calculus BC so it's like the first level of calculus advanced placement exams

[00:36:42] Calculus BC is the next one that covers integrals if I recall which are a little bit trickier. Okay. Yeah, all right So Amy wants to know any tips on making calculus

[00:36:54] Relevant to Gen Z and honestly look is it Jen alpha my son tells me he's Jen alpha I Jen he's Gen Z that's over Jen alpha is happening now Your son self identifies as a generation already My son is 10 years old he is going to be

[00:37:18] 11 years old in September and he's a proud member of Jen alpha Okay, all right. Well, you know these generations if do do nothing if not make us feel like we're aging I guess and if you have any interest he could talk to you about a

[00:37:35] Skibbety Ohio Ohio toilet if you are so compel I'm I don't know what language this is I'm old enough to remember and millennials versus Gen X the millennials were the young whippersnappers Of this season, I guess we're now two generations removed since that. Okay. All right sounds good

[00:38:00] But it's also Jen Z years Jen alpha's whoever's taking calculus these days. So One I mean if you want to explain calculus, I Calculus is the mathematics of change If you know it'll it'll tell you if you know how fast something's changing

[00:38:15] It'll tell you over time you can use calculus to tell you how far it's going if you see some or if you if it's something Is changing you can say it'll tell you how fast it's changing well

[00:38:25] I'll use it for all kinds of math since math and science. It's it's an easy way to talk about It's just mathematics of change now I think that for the youths The they all I think they all know about this AI stuff

[00:38:40] And I think that the way that I would talk about the applications of calculus would be say hey AI doesn't work at all without calculus In fact, all breakthroughs in calculus is what it makes AI possible So in in calculus there's this concept called a derivative

[00:38:59] Okay, and basically it just tells you how fast something is changing or Or back in math class who probably remember something like the slope of a line The slope of a line tells you how fast that line's going up or how fast is going down?

[00:39:14] You might remember rise over run. Okay, and the derivative is like telling you that how much something is changing Like the slope okay, like if I am gonna kind of have my hand up like this

[00:39:24] I'm pointing my arm up at like a 45 degree angle. Okay, that that's a line with a constant slope Okay, so there's a rib of that line Which is how much that line is changing what's the slope of that line is constant

[00:39:38] So if I were to take the derivative of this this 45 degree line Okay, it actually becomes a constant which is a flat line All right and that's one of the first things you learn to do in calculus is to take a derivative and

[00:39:52] Often it's presented in a math class like oh, here's this equation Here's the expression take the derivative of this and you learn a bunch of rules that you know that something that y equals x becomes

[00:40:02] Why you know becomes one and blah blah blah you learn all these rules how to do it and it can seem a little abstract And be like why am I learning this? Well, it turns out knowing how fast something is changing or the derivative of something is

[00:40:17] super important for one of the most important algorithms in all of In all of humanity right now Okay, and it's called a gradient descent And so it's the thing that basically tunes up your AI methods to do anything

[00:40:31] And it's used for all kinds of stuff and the idea does something like this You know imagine you are on a hill Okay, and you have blindfolded yourself, but you can still feel Beneath your feet you can feel the tilt of the ground beneath you

[00:40:45] You know if you're if it's if your feet are leaning to the left or to the right And your goal is by feel alone is to get to the bottom of the hill okay, and

[00:40:58] Intuitively mean how would you do this? I'll kind of pose this as a unprompted question. Am I blindfolded? You are blindfolded just be careful. Okay Yeah, I think I would feel like when my inertia of like walking down the hill feels like I is no longer

[00:41:14] Pulling me down. I think I feel like that that's when I would hit the flat ground Yeah, exactly. That's a that's perfectly well said The ending clearly what you're doing is you can feel which direction is down

[00:41:25] You take steps in that direction and if like the at the hill veers off in some other direction You take steps and you feel that you take steps in that direction You you you take a step that takes you down the gradient of the hill

[00:41:37] You're descending that gradient and then when you feel all sudden it's flat beneath your feet You assume you're at the bottom right you find it You know that's a that's that that's literally how we do it mathematically

[00:41:49] Now that's a physical hill that it say hey get to the bottom of that hill now in AI you have to train your Your your big old neural network we were talking about before which has a whole bunch of different numbers. All right and

[00:42:07] And basically each when you change each of these numbers the output gets better or worse Okay, and better is actually going down a hill and analogously speaking People talk call it a loss function blah blah blah blah

[00:42:22] But if I point the point is is that you have instead of stepping forward backward left and right You might change two numbers in your neural network that tells you how to neural network functions

[00:42:32] You change it by a little bit and you can know if it good if it takes you down or or up or to the left or right down the hill Okay Well using calculus we can instantly know by taking the derivative of this

[00:42:46] massive neural network which weighs down Which means that when we train a neural network to do something like identify pictures of cats, you know You know act like chat GPT, you know recognize our face

[00:42:59] We have to take this giant mathematical equation this neural network and take a derivative and This for the longest time Was the big problem for how it actually make neural networks work, you know in the 80s and 90

[00:43:14] We didn't know how to do it because badging sitting at home in your classroom taking the derivative of something that's incredibly complicated And we found and it's complicated because it's something you kids in class will learn called the chain rule

[00:43:27] When you learn it when you do the chain rule, you'll learn why it's complicated But people figured out a special method to make the derivatives easier how to write down the math in an easier way And that enabled all the AI basically that you see today

[00:43:40] And that's all because we know how to take derivatives better And that's one of the core things that you learn in calculus That's basically how do we figure out the slope that takes you down?

[00:43:50] To do the bottom of the hill at the bottom of the hill is the best network that you can find Okay Right and if that doesn't help with Gen Z I don't know

[00:44:04] So but like it's it's that the great that but seriously like what when you come in people want to come and work in my lab Like one of the only math questions

[00:44:12] I'll ask them is that I'll have taken a derivative because we do it all the time and whether it's firm for AI stuff or all kinds of physics And It's like it's something that you might be learning in a like 11th grade classroom right now

[00:44:27] It was a student who might be learning or maybe learning this in college or just on your own by looking on YouTube or something But people find fancy ways to take derivatives every day just today one of my students and I were talking about oh

[00:44:41] If we could only learn figure out how to take a derivative of this thing Then all of a sudden our robots should work that and my student will come back like oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah

[00:44:50] We figured out a new way to do this and now we have an AI algorithm that makes the robots walk better Like it's that relevant like in modern-day math and like and that simple thing that you're learning in your classroom

[00:45:01] It's incredibly powerful. It's probably one of the most powerful things you might learn in math in high school or college Christian this is a question that I am fascinated to know your answer about just a little peek behind the curtain of The ask dr. Hubecky so we get

[00:45:23] questions from the listeners and we Get a ton of questions We turn these questions over to Christian who then Rather than try to answer things just off the cuff will do a ton of research to make sure that he's not giving out any

[00:45:43] inaccurate information and gives us a list of hey, these are the questions that I am really Feeling like I can answer well One of these questions is what chain restaurant serves the best free bread appetizer in the world? From Leroy Jenkins Thank You Leroy

[00:46:04] Yes, so so I have prepared I did a lot of research a lot of thinking on this like Rob Do you have a favorite chain restaurant breadstick? You know red option?

[00:46:14] I almost try to not fill up on the bread when I go to the restaurant because I want to Really get the most out of my dish out of my entree So I mean I feel like that the Olive Garden comes to mind, but I'm fascinated to know

[00:46:31] Your research on this because I feel you take this very seriously So my answer is your intuitive answer, which is the Olive Garden that is my answer and I thought about it because there are people for instance who love the cheddar Bay biscuits from red lobster

[00:46:47] I mean, yeah, yes And like that's the end I love those and I think that I have a particular A fascination with garlic. I realize that the way if there's something I really love And I'm not sure why I realized it's probably because there's garlic in there

[00:47:03] And there's a lot of there's plenty of garlic and the cheddar Bay biscuits, which I like and they were a good contender But the thing about the all-garden breadsticks is that they're much better for dipping Yeah, so the cheddar Bay biscuits are too crumbly. They're too fragile

[00:47:15] In fact, they fall apart when you eat them, which is great when you're eating them directly But when you go to the Olive Garden your I am typically eating something

[00:47:21] Which has a lot of sauces or even if the salad the salad has a lot of has dressing left over and I I Am a monster at the Olive Garden There are some there are some days where I will just you know, I'll you know

[00:47:35] I'm going out for lunch and I know it's a special day because I go to the Olive Garden and I Need to relax and I was like, okay unlimited. I'll either go unlimited salad and

[00:47:49] Solo and we'll go with Emily sometimes. Yeah, but like but like I'll just go there solo and and they will just keep refilling and And and at the end of the day I come home as Emily. I apologize. I went to Olive Garden

[00:48:03] He's like, okay, so you won't be eating as much for dinner. Will you it's like well? No, I might be saving some for tomorrow but So the breadsticks are critical and unfortunately like I go into like a challenging mode

[00:48:14] Where I'm at in Olive Garden. They just keep giving me food and I just keep going for it And I just I had this reputation even on the on survivor island of the guy who eats a lot of food

[00:48:24] Yeah, this was this I eat too fast Rob. I eat unfortunately there are times where I'm at a nice meal I have to slow myself down because I'm gonna be rude because I eat too fast. Yeah, and this was

[00:48:37] So at the Olive Garden it serves me well. I I'll never forget I was in Staying or survivor and I the end I got the eat the hotel Restaurant is the only place you can eat in casting and you eat by yourself

[00:48:53] And you're surrounded by all these other contestants sitting at tables by themselves And you can't talk to them The only thing you can see is that like they're there you can just judge them remotely And for some reason I was terrified that I was gonna miss my interview

[00:49:07] And so I they gave me a full pizza and I slammed it down in like two minutes just to get back Yeah to my room and I remember I was listening to some of the the preseason interviews of my season and people were like

[00:49:22] Guy is eating monster. He's gonna eat us out of house at home when we get to the camp Mm-hmm, and so I think Pat was Tet was saying that we got to keep our eye on the rice jar around him

[00:49:32] And so the Olive Garden it feeds all of those impulses for me of eating super fast Even on the island would have had no food you would think I would savor the food

[00:49:42] No, no, I would get my little cup of rice back when we had rice and I was One bite done so I would forget about yeah, and so Olive Garden is my ideal real-time pleasure now Are you the type of person though?

[00:49:55] Like are you like a snake where you will eat like a big meal and then that's it for the whole day like I remember like

[00:50:05] Cochran had told me about how he would like go to McDonald's and eat like four quarter pounders and then not not eat again I Can be I when I was younger. I would do more of that that sort of thing

[00:50:16] I'm more that it's just some sometimes let's have a meal that is like, you know what? I'm creating this like an eating challenge I think I listened to interview with at you had with Adam Klein not too recent

[00:50:25] Not to not too not too long ago where he said he can he has really flexible eating habits Sometimes I'll eat once a day and things like that I think I can kind of relate to that but he seems a bit more like I would get hungry again

[00:50:37] Yeah, I would have to eat again. Yeah, would you be able to do something? competitive like a mukbang or other competitive eating tasks What is a mukbang? What is this? I think a mukbang? I believe it's more of a performance where that there is like a

[00:50:55] copious amount of a particular type of food Whether it be, you know any sort of thing and then you would on some kind of a performance video I'm going to now Polish this all off. I'm not sure if speed is involved in a mukbang

[00:51:13] Yeah, I mean speed it helps me because like it I fill up with the helps me not fill up I could probably do something pretty pretty decent. I haven't done a lot of eating challenges

[00:51:25] I probably remember I told you the one time, you know years ago when I did a burger eating challenge I like this burger is not that big only to realize there's a spicy burger eating challenge Mm-hmm too late and so and I had a horrible reaction to that

[00:51:40] Forcing me to go on it on a year's long spicy eating training sessions training regimen to make sure I wouldn't embarrass myself Would you go on hot ones? I would go I would love to go on hot ones

[00:51:50] I wish I was famous enough to go on hot ones that that would be I would love to see if I would hold up Yeah, yeah, I wish I just coated a Brian one. That was very funny Yeah, it was very funny

[00:52:00] I would love I love the test by metal and and then be humbled by the Dub-omb sauce or whatever. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I would not hold up well at all with the hot sauce And I would be Conan-esque

[00:52:16] Yeah, the I've been slowly building up a tolerance to I okay powder by just like just Dashing my my like my lunch with Brian pepper. Yes. I'm so that way that way I tell you I do take some some pride sometimes I will go to

[00:52:33] When we get a lunch with some of my colleagues like also one of my colleagues of Indian descent He's like, oh, I know a great Indian restaurant And I'm like, oh, okay

[00:52:41] This is like the chair one of the department so I was like, I'm gonna order the spicy food to impress the chair of this department

[00:52:46] So I was so I so I had so I think I impressed him or maybe he was just confused why I ordered something so spicy Yeah Solito and the chef says Rob are you an Italian that gets caught at an olive garden? Yes

[00:53:00] I'm not too good for the Olive Garden and Mike and my kids are they love it Yeah, and to be clear I don't confuse it with with Vince with authentic Italian food Like there are people that that same when I say like the Olive Garden is like Christian

[00:53:14] That's not a real Italian food You think I go there because I think it's authentic Italian meal No, I get it because it is a large quantity of pasta and bread and sour Yeah, it's an engineer so I'll garden is engineered experience Rob Yeah

[00:53:29] The origins of the Olive Garden They like it was engineered from the ground up to be a seamless casual dining experience to the point where back when they intentionally put Beals on the chairs to roll out to to basically engineer as few

[00:53:44] inconveniences as possible between you and getting a lot of food There's there's a thought in engineering going to all gardens. So don't don't sleep on it Yeah, if you were going to do some sort of competitive eating what would be your food of choice? I

[00:53:58] Love to do poutine. I saw that Yeah, I the I saw there was a giant list of Records that Joey Chestnut set and I wasn't impressed until this long-scrolling list went by poutine

[00:54:11] I'm like, oh, that's something hot thing. Oh, whatever hundred hot dogs. That's a that's nothing but a pounds of poutine Well done. Yeah, I mean that gravy is very heavy Love heavy food. Okay. All right then

[00:54:27] How about a question for anonymous question dr. Christian in your expert opinion How would you rank the following from minor inconvenience to complete unmitigated disaster? Stepping in gum Getting honey in your hair Or your dairy queen melting and getting everywhere I

[00:54:51] Love this question Bay because it's our second Baylor reference. Yes, all it would be quite sticky situations Yeah, so I as you said Rob I do screen these questions believe it or not and I will say screen

[00:55:04] I try to research these questions and I and I picked up this question is like well, haha This is a course of reference to Baylor's song was sticky situation. I believe that is single or something and From San Juan, Nilser and I was like, you know what?

[00:55:20] There's probably some interesting science to getting honey stuck in your hair to figure out like it's like that sounds like it's terrible So I started searching only to find that about a thousand websites saying how honey is good for your hair

[00:55:34] And you should put it in your hair. Hmm. So I was like so apparent apparently all of these things Are not terribly big deals. I assumed it was like getting gum in your hair, which is very bad

[00:55:44] Yeah, and this is just stepping in gum, which is just on your shoe This is these are not sticky situations These are most like like mildly tacky situations that you're stuck in like that. Like I mean, yeah You did nothing none of these situations are

[00:55:59] Required anything more complex in a shower to to completely resolve So I I think this it made me realize that these song lyrics go in the long history of Song lyrics where they list things and those lists are not well thought out

[00:56:16] It's almost like that going for the rhyme Yeah, that would make sense, but I'm like come on just because well, let's get some examples like from history, right? There's a you know, let us more sets, you know ironic. Yeah, it's like it's an ironic like so

[00:56:31] What are the things you want to go through the list? Sure. Yeah, it's rain on your wedding day. Yeah, I mean again, that's more inconvenient But not necessarily ironic Correct. Maybe if you are like Al Roker and it rained on your wedding day, that's ironic

[00:56:48] That's well done. Well done. That's that that's that's an example The average person the average Joe no I mean depending upon your region That's like a 30% chance of happening and again season. That's that's not that's not even terrible

[00:57:00] Yeah, I'm terribly unlikely. Okay here. Let me go here old man turn my old man turn 98 He won the lottery and died the next day. Okay, I guess that's Played a lottery you played a lottery every single day That's you know, that's a probability question

[00:57:18] And we don't have enough information to really know so like I think we need more context these are so you think these through You died the next day But it you know and also like it's an old man

[00:57:28] Doing it like if he did it like if he played it every day and he finally won and then died Then that's like oh, that's you finally got any wanted that he died but like I

[00:57:39] Don't know it's what the old man in fact it hurts the story unless like it less. He actually is playing every day I don't know. It's weird. Yeah, it's probably the best one. Okay It's a black fly in your Chardonnay. Is that ironic?

[00:57:54] That's not ironic at all. That's just that's just oh, that's unfortunate. These are things that are just unfortunate yeah It's a death row part in two minutes too late again, is that ironic or

[00:58:10] More morbid than I run it. Yeah, I was gonna say that's just pure bureaucrat bad bureaucracy is what that sounds like to me Mm-hmm, it's really run of the mill. Yeah. Yeah

[00:58:20] Rain on your wedding day as best out of which it's like a free ride when you've already paid Can I get that's not that if that's ironic? Good advice you didn't take Yeah All right, mr. Play it safe

[00:58:35] Was a frail little judgment from Alanis there on mr. Play it safe afraid to fly He packed his suitcase Kissed his kids goodbye He waited his whole damn life to take that flight and as the plane crashed down He thought well isn't this nice. Hmm. No I

[00:58:55] Know would it be more ironic if he was like some sort of like playing safety advocate like it's almost like there needs There's me more serendipity Then just like a thing. I always wanted finally happens, but it's bad

[00:59:09] It's like I like there needs to be a there needs to be a connection to your past that that's fine It's like what's that scene from Conair? I think you're like like there's a scene in Conair

[00:59:21] Yeah, where Steve Bisham is talking about is a credence clear water revival that he saw or is it Leonard Skinner that he talks about that Sweet Home Alabama and they they're on a plane and everybody in the band died in a plane crash

[00:59:38] Yeah, that's more ironic. See I think she's going more tragic So it's an example of a song where the list things I think that the most notorious is that there was a recent remake of we didn't start the fire by Don't even get me started follow my boy

[00:59:55] Which which this was another big not to go back to the macaron macaron thing So Billy Joel's iconic We didn't start the fire. I believe from 1989 was John. I've been saying for years we should redo it and

[01:00:12] And it was of all that my wife's favorite band fallout boy So a real passing of the torch from my favorite musical artist Billy Joel to fallout boy Recording the new we didn't start the fire and

[01:00:27] The list that they came up with for we didn't start the fire too is Horrible and and I've blistered. I have complained about this at my house and my wife's response is like oh Cuz you know better you could do better than he went like yeah

[01:00:43] I could they should have run it past me their list is trash and it's not even in order The I didn't know anything about this, but I was at a friend's house for a party It's like a sec no

[01:00:53] I have to read you the list of things they chose and they're like by the way zero mention of the coronavirus It's like until he's conclude the coronavirus was less than we got Tiger King in there Yeah Yeah, it was not good No, no

[01:01:15] So I think that the moral story is one getting honey in your hair is not nearly as catastrophic as I once thought apparently just shampoo and it's fine But but but the but more or so that when you're gonna do a song with a list

[01:01:29] You got to run it by us, you know We're gonna give you lots of good notes at least not help you embarrass yourself Yeah, a little less in terms of your choice. We got balloon boy in there We got the fire fast Yes

[01:01:44] Netflix viewers of the world over rejoice that they got their fire festival in this in this chronology of history We got woodstock 99 I didn't even know about with stop until like Netflix started making documentaries about it

[01:01:58] And it's just like what are one of these things? I mean balloon boy. I nearly missed entirely. I think I'm Anyway, that's a last a last rub That's the that's the moral of the story. Mm-hmm. My they got Michael Jordan's They say Michael Jordan 23 YouTube killed MTV

[01:02:17] SpongeBob Golden State Killer got caught Michael Jordan 45 we had Michael Jordan's number is that important? We need to have it in there. It's what did you know Michael Jordan also wore number 45 Was that when he was a baseball player? No Old number was retired

[01:02:36] Returns to the NBA that historic or is it more like and the back being did it I understand I was actually a big Chicago's bulls fan at the time. I understand You know, I Understand the the allure of it. I mean as much as anyone

[01:02:52] I mean I but what the only celebrity I had met when I was a kid was Dennis Rodman I was I remember that was but that I don't know I don't buy it. Yeah run the list by us

[01:03:01] Okay, let's go. You know what I would do go to Wikipedia and see like search like biggest things that happened in Those decades and start there. Yeah, and also The the original song is in order This song starts with captain planet

[01:03:18] He's your hero Rob. Mm-hmm. Take the chronology of this down to zero apparently Yeah, but I can't talk about it. Can't talk about it. Okay. All right Christian okay Christian another Christian Christian Shavasas. Would you ever run for president dr. Hubecki? No, I would not run for president

[01:03:43] I'd have to a very different change in my own Ego, I think or arrogance to think that I could run for president and make world decisions for everyone But I mean things I would run for office would be things

[01:03:56] I like genuinely have a passion for things like, you know, but like school board or something something education folks Yeah, I could see I Thought about this honestly I had to think I was put on the spot with this question

[01:04:08] I said like I was asked on the island one of my castmates asked me question Would you ever run for political office? And I had to think about it's a club and some that I really believe in there So probably something education or science related, you know

[01:04:20] You know or be an appointee of a government But I would have to somebody really care about and I would have to be okay passing the torch if I thought that

[01:04:29] It was time for me to pass torch or I was okay with losing. Yeah, well those would be the things You could you could pass the torch if you're that if you're that worried about losing also that's also an option

[01:04:42] Perhaps and and I remember them saying it was like oh, that's interesting. I would never run for office. They said oh, okay That's yeah, what about some kind of political appointment?

[01:04:52] Would you ever go into the government in you know, especially in your line of work where there's some sort of like We need some sort of like Ro you know in your field some sort of like a Robot czar

[01:05:09] Yeah, oh yeah, well robots are that sounds awesome. Zars are a real thing. So they're like okay We need somebody we have a doctor of robotics. Okay. Would you go to Washington and sort of like head up like a task force?

[01:05:22] That will be awesome that I could do especially considering It's those tend to be shorter term jobs like they're not things that you don't necessarily our careerist You know, like when there was a when there was an Ebola czar, you know that the bull is ours

[01:05:35] Not what was not serving for ten years. It'd be something that I could do that gosh and it like yeah Could be bad. I Also love the idea that they're that that the president appoints ours

[01:05:47] When I was running my run my lab, I would I would appoint a czar's for things just as a Ironic I'd be like as like you're you're the emails are you you update the email list, you know

[01:05:58] So you've been dubbed the emails are I have a student who said is like I put in my resume together I don't want to put emails are on my resume. Can you give me a better title? It's okay

[01:06:09] I'll give you an official title. Yeah, the emails are is yeah did czar become the appointed title for things Like it all sort of like the Russia phobic You know last 50 60 years czar really did catch on Yeah, and it's been going since cold war

[01:06:26] It's not like this is a modern and it's like it's in the middle of the cold war We were appointing czar's if I recall so it's it's it's a funny choice for that

[01:06:34] I have to look up the history that I didn't come prepared for that discussion. Okay. That's cool Yeah, it's very cool. All right, how about From another anonymous person says legs or wheels That was just for you or robot

[01:06:51] Uh both of course, you know, I guess it's skate, you know, I'm thinking skateboard Roller skates. No, but probably with robots I would guess and this is a super apt question because we ask ourselves this question all the time We're if we're talking about

[01:07:06] things that are really big in industry right now are humanoid robots and we talked about this a little bit last time but That's my field. That's like my specific sub area of expertise

[01:07:16] Is is it's humanoid legged robots that walk and if you had asked me a couple years ago Christian are there gonna be 50 humanoid robot companies built startups building robots that are they're trying to sell next year

[01:07:30] I would say you're crazy crazy, but it turns out that all of a sudden Everyone got the same idea that they were gonna build humanoid robots and And honestly apparently the one through the most part they want to put them in factories

[01:07:42] Now however a question we always ask ourselves is like why does it need to be a walking humanoid robot? Can't it just roll around on wheels factories are pretty flat most of the time so The question is legs or wheels. That's the big picture question and

[01:07:59] When our legs good when our wheels good, I mean obviously wheels are good for something when things are flat or reasonably flat now that said people will come all kind of crazy wheels there are things called wheels or

[01:08:10] Where where they are where they're where their wheels that that bend like they like like they're soft and squishy without having air in The tires they can be used to grip on to Surfaces like like the edge of staircases and things like that

[01:08:24] So there are wheels and go all kinds of terrain so the question often is like hey, why ever have legs? Let it you know I mean, you know, can't we just have wheels that go up and down things well

[01:08:34] It turns out when you get it want to get up on really high surfaces And you want out and you don't want to have a giant wheel So you don't want to you want to fit in what we call a small form factor with a robot

[01:08:45] It's good to have legs, you know And that's a lot of the places that we want People to be in our places we build with a lot of place people are places that we build for people get around in things like staircases and what wheels tend to be

[01:08:59] And legs tend to be much better about that I mean also legs are great in what we call unstructured environments if you go out in a Forest and you're trying to hike over, you know tree branches and you know step

[01:09:12] And go over a creek or it go on, you know Or skip across stepping stones in a river. Those are good for legs The legs have a big cost other than the fact that you might fall down

[01:09:25] That's that that's always the concern with a lot of these legged machines particularly bipeds re upright Legs use a lot more energy than wheels one of the most efficient Mose of transportation are trains because they are very hard wheels that don't squish

[01:09:41] So you don't lose energy in the squishing and releasing of the way of the train wheel on as I guess a hard track and It's you just can't beat that efficiency of moving Moving a bunch of stuff for very little energy now trains obviously can't go upstairs

[01:10:00] Those kinds of things but so that so it's often a trade-off of maneuverability And ability to handle rupturane versus efficiency and frankly speed if you have a really flat surface It can go much faster with the wheel, but there are all kind

[01:10:16] There are all kinds of people way people are trying to come up with combinations of wheels and legs I'll have kids come to my lab and they'll say hey why not have a giant mech that has roller skates That's not bad idea. It's a

[01:10:28] In fact, it's actually a fairly complicated mathematical problem to control robots with wheels and legs And this is where I get a little self-plugged at my own student Published a whole paper on how to control robots with wheels and legs

[01:10:42] And he actually won an international best paper award for that so which was you know So yeah, you did a really good job. So and so it was it was a pretty tricky problem

[01:10:52] So and so we're actually designing and building now all kinds of prototypes of robots that have legs with wheels on the end They do all kinds of weird wacky wiggling maneuvers to get over stuff but drive around when it's flat It's it's a complicated question

[01:11:05] But so there are wheels for one of things are flat you need efficiency legs when it's rough and And you need to be need to be agile and there are all kinds of things in between that if you have any special needs okay, and

[01:11:18] You maintain for yourself. You still want legs now wheels Myself I like my legs. Thank you. Okay. All right. It's tried in style. Let's go back to survivor. Okay Nick has a fascinating question Nick says on survivor season 35 half of the hustlers tribe Has the same birthday

[01:11:40] What is the likelihood of this happening considering the birthday paradox? Was this statistically expected or is this a shocking coincidence first I had no idea about this second What is the birthday paradox?

[01:11:57] Well, I'm so glad you asked Rob. Yeah, so the it's a the birthday paradox or the birthday problem States it's the question. It's a question. So how many people need to be in a room? Or it to be likely that two of them have the same birthday

[01:12:16] Okay, it's called the birthday paradox or the birthday problem because the answer is counterintuitive You given that the 365 days in a year you might assume you mean to have like a hundred or so or a hundred or more Maybe half like 150 or more

[01:12:32] People in the room have people have the same birthday to make it likely that two people at the same birthday The answer is back 23 You only need 23 people in that room for two people to have the same birthday and the roots of it's a paradox because it's counterintuitive

[01:12:46] Because when you have more and more people in a room The number in order to say how likely it is that they're gonna have the same birthday You don't say how many people are in the room?

[01:12:56] How many combinations of two people are in the room and you and I are in this room here There are two of us so there's only one one one combination, right?

[01:13:04] So highly unlikely that we have the same birthday one and 365 that we have it if Sam joins the room Yes, we now have One two three combinations of people like that we could pair up well with each other Something like that anyway, yeah three and

[01:13:23] And as and as you add more it multiplies so you suddenly get tons of tons of combinations Yeah, we talked about this when we were talking about combinations of people on tribe swaps that could meet a few years ago When we're talking about season 43

[01:13:39] But but so the combinations grow really fast So it takes a surprisingly few number of people to have so many combinations that is likely that two of you have the same birthday That's how it works. Yeah, so so in fact Rob I often get onto these

[01:13:54] Podcasts with you and there's always some probability related question where some seemingly Unlikely thing happens on survivor and it's always my job to say It's not that unlikely. That's why I always feel happens and so now we have this additional question

[01:14:10] Or how many how likely is it that season 35? There was a tribe with six people Three of them had the same birthday. Is that unlikely And The thing what we learned is that the thing that makes the birthday problems so counterintuitive is that when you have more people

[01:14:30] It scales up really fast. How many options there are for connections For people same same birthday with see what season 35. There were six person tribes. There's only six people and half of them Had the same birthday so it seemed pretty unlikely so I saw this question

[01:14:50] About an hour before air so I had just enough time to write up a script to count to do a calculation So I ran a million combinations of birthdays tries of six

[01:15:02] Okay, and the chance and the probability that three of them have the perhaps have us have the same do we know which three? Oh, I don't remember which one Three I need to look this I that seems like the research can you pull it up?

[01:15:14] But but the answer is 0.02 percent One in five thousand chance that three people on the same birthday. It's actually extremely unlikely I was floored and I keep checking I I kept trying to debug my code I can't guarantee that I didn't make some mistakes somewhere

[01:15:32] But I did a lot of cross-checking across all the references to make sure that the math worked out Well, yeah, I like about there's so like one about a one in five thousand chance That's happened so it is in fact incredibly unlikely

[01:15:45] So while the birthday problem the message of it is it's actually Doesn't take that many people to make it likely they had the same birthday The fact that there are so few people on this tribe. It's actually extremely unlikely. It's quite a weird rare occurrence

[01:15:58] Okay, all right according to Minnows. It's Patrick Bolton Lauren and Devin share a birthday Yeah, I mean and so I was I was doing my code at first and I made a typo

[01:16:14] And I actually ran the numbers at first for the odds of two people having the same birthday on a tribe of six Which is also pretty small. It's about four percent and There and I went through a counter the number of three

[01:16:25] tribes of six starting tribes and there's only 36 of them by my count So it's that's about right yeah, you'd expect there to be one tribe that has two people same birthday But one that has three quite a right

[01:16:36] Yeah, it's be interesting to look back at how many seasons have people that share a birthday I think that in Survivor San Juan del Sur Interestingly that the one person from each tribe shares a birthday Interesting Natalie and Nadia both have the same birthday

[01:16:58] Interesting Natalie and Nadia had the same birthday. So what are the odds of? Them having this of two of two people having the same birthday because they're a tribe of nine correct Mm-hmm, they dropped so they dropped so in doke Kim. So that's nine people on the tribe

[01:17:13] and so if I do that nine people on the tribe and If I were to run those odds the idea the probability of nine People on a tribe of nine to have the same birthday is nine point five percent

[01:17:26] So if I do zero point zero nine four one squared Probability of that happening is less than one percent. Okay, that's also pretty unlikely. Hmm. So it's a live math So hopefully I didn't make any mistakes. So You share a birthday with a couple of survivors

[01:17:45] I think Colleen Hatskill and Stephanie LaGrosse. Yes. Yeah, that's what a what a huge day What I guess what is the best day? For survivor birthdays. I mean that might be it. That might be it

[01:17:59] Uh, whatever Q was born. That's the best day. Yeah, I don't know if this has been updated I'm looking at a list of the different survivor birthdays You know, um, you have December 25th is Boston Rob and Eliza

[01:18:16] That's good. That's pretty good. What was the only two famous people born on Christmas. Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, so Um You know redemption Island was also the story of somebody coming back. So there's some symmetry there then

[01:18:35] Yeah, what is the best day? That's a good Twitter poll the best day of the year for survivor birthdays This is five a birthday Twitter account. Maybe they have the answer to that

[01:18:45] Yeah, I mean so it's too late to factor this into the Mike gloom podcast and somehow work that into the format I guess that's that's too late. We're going to do one ballot I guess for that and there

[01:18:54] What will be the last day on the calendar that no survivors are born at? There's still you know, there's still some spaces left on the bingo sheet

[01:19:04] I feel like it could be a pool. I could be like a draft. You can run like a draft on that Rob Maybe that's the summer really so October 20th is a lonely day. It's just me still

[01:19:14] Just you well, well, it's it's still a great one Rob. What can I say we we got Without that we wouldn't have Tens of thousands of hours of podcast For that day. There's a couple days so August 29th looks like five survivors have a birthday on August 29th

[01:19:35] Chris Daughtry Yasmin Giles Michael Jefferson Laura Bonham and Ronnie Barda All born on August 29th Okay, okay. I have a question. I have a question for an expert here I saw a rumor or someone told me a rumor that Laura Bonham was gonna be on like a show

[01:19:57] Is that a thing or is there my hallucinating things? I have not heard anything about Laura Bonham being on a new show Okay, all right. So I heard that she was gonna put her on the traitors you cowards

[01:20:09] Okay, I said someone called me it's like she's your Laura Bona's gonna be a big brother. I'm like Wow Maybe maybe this is an exclusive This is excluded are happening now. So yeah, I'm the last person to have inside information on these things

[01:20:24] If you heard it here first Is find out right now Sam text Laura Bonham and see if she's in sequester Yeah, I might have been some troll Twitter post that's maybe maybe okay all right then Though that's pretty amazing about survivor heroes versus healers versus hustlers

[01:20:46] Genuinely rare. Yeah, do you think that like somebody in casting like this is hilarious all three of them have a birthday? We'll put them all on the same drive Was that casting person like really desperate to sell like oh man

[01:20:58] I have the best that could have been the theme, you know three birthdays versus two birthdays versus what brought one birthday And I might have been a better theme than heroes healers hustlers

[01:21:07] Yeah, okay some other folks are saying that they heard it too. So maybe maybe your answer something Okay Katelyn has a question for Christian. What are your thoughts on ranked choice voting? Are there any interesting mathematical considerations? I've listed some podcasts before about ranked choice voting

[01:21:27] I'm a big fan of ranked choice voting. Is it as good am I being sold a bill of goods when people talk about ranked choice voting? I Think it's pretty cool. I think it's a cool thing

[01:21:38] I think that the so for those who don't know what ranked choice voting is, you know What we're used to in American elections is basically plurality voting it's basically survivor voting that and a lot of elections that the person with the most votes wins the election and

[01:21:54] In survivor that makes for super interesting votes because you can have crazy vote splits and then super interesting votes in real life too Yes, exactly. And that's maybe interesting in a way that a lot of people don't like because

[01:22:07] You know that obviously the one that one of the weaknesses is that if you have more than two candidates in the race But let's say two of the three candidates. Let's say they're really similar in terms of few points

[01:22:17] They might split the vote and then a minor that it might spoil be a spoiler for another candidate And and people would some people argue that that who hurts the diversity of viewpoints on a potential

[01:22:28] Candidates on a potential ballot or the viewpoints on that on that ballot. What can you do about it? Yeah, well the idea is instead of just voting for one person You could rank all the candidates in terms of an order of how you would favor them

[01:22:40] Now there's a lot of ways to do ranked choice voting But the one that I believe is most popular and I've seen adopted Is it's called instant runoff voting?

[01:22:53] And I was actually they have it in three states. They have it in Alaska, Maine and Nevada for various purposes I was actually in Alaska when they were running about to run an election and I was seeing all the ads

[01:23:08] Explaining how ranked choice voting works. Wow. And and so and so and they did a pretty good job explaining it So the idea is that you rank all your candidates on your ballot, okay? You submit your ballot and

[01:23:22] Then after election night happens you tabulate the votes and the last place candidate gets eliminated Okay, and so all the people who voted in the last place candidate in terms of first choice votes So they say who who are all everyone's first choice, right?

[01:23:37] The last place candidate gets eliminated. I guess like survivor or something and All of the people who voted for that candidate first Their ballots are now freed up now all of their second choice candidates are now reapportioned to the whoever they voted as their second place

[01:23:55] And they keep eliminating and then reapportioning votes until one candidate has a majority and The idea would be then like in the situation where you had two candidates that were pretty similar a third candidate that that wasn't

[01:24:07] But if these two candidates had a majority together that one of them would get eliminated and Then the other and then all their votes would go to the very similar candidate and then they would take the election So so having the third candidate doesn't

[01:24:22] Allows the viewpoints the relative viewpoints to be represented In spite of the fact that there was this weird minority a plurality with a majority was not reached in the first ballot That's the idea. Yeah, and I rather like the idea

[01:24:37] I was trying to find it what people said about this like what the criticisms criticism is worth The problem is it's gonna be a lot of people with Political stakes we're gonna put a lot of information or perhaps insert information out there

[01:24:50] But I tried to sort through what seemed to be the major criticisms of it. I mean one thing is that it's just complicated And that if it's if it's complicated the idea is that it might just people like

[01:25:01] I don't even know what to do and they either vote incorrectly Which if you don't if you don't put everyone on the ballot your vote can be invalidated Or people would be like, I don't know what this is and they go home

[01:25:11] I've seen conflicting reports as to whether or not is increased or lowered Voter turnout. I'm not sure about that, but then so it's more complicated So if they were to happen you need a big public education campaign for people to understand what they're doing and that can

[01:25:27] another but another thing that can happen is that I'm a true majority can kind of like never be truly reached like the person who wins the Who wins the the election a lot of times will not be a person who got a majority of the votes

[01:25:41] Which is kind of by design But it freaks people out that like there have been a couple of there was an election in Maine I was reading about I forget the candidate's name But they were pissed that they lost because of the make of ranked choice voting

[01:25:53] They thought they quote should have won and they can throw it can confuse people to the point where people think this Is kind of rigged in some weird way and famously the election that was happening when I was in Alaska was Result in a real big upset

[01:26:07] There were two Republican candidates and one Democratic candidate and the Democratic candidate took Alaska And what was this for? It's just for this is for the congressional the single congressional seat in Alaska I mean Alaska those one is one of the states that has only one congressional seat

[01:26:23] So it's very competitive to be to be to be the state representative So it was a big I would say a fiasco, but a lot of people were shocked And I think basically some people think that you have to strategize very differently

[01:26:39] Uh, poorly for a ranked choice ballot. So it changes how the election goes But uh, you know and the only other great so so I the the criticism is that it can have some weird results Yeah, and it's confusing. What about the benefits?

[01:26:53] Like the benefits. I like them. I honestly kind of like that I was trying to I was trying to find the most nuanced takes I could the the most nuanced takes I saw were like

[01:27:01] Yeah, it's good, but it's not going to solve as many problems as you think it I that that that's unfortunate, but I think it's I think it's a cool idea because I

[01:27:13] Try to make a political statement beyond just saying I think it's cool when people get to run For a ticket and don't have to worry about what the impact is directly on other candidates like, you know, I'll throw my hat in the ring

[01:27:24] Yeah, not to worry about being potential spoiler. I think that's a cool idea But I think that I would you know run this like I was running My family where we're trying to get a dinner order and you got a couple people that are like I

[01:27:37] Want pizza and I do not Why I hate tacos like uh, and this is like no, I love tacos. I hate pizza But if everybody's second choice is burgers, it's like, all right fine Nobody's getting what they really want but we're getting what we can all live with

[01:27:54] That's the spirit of compromise Yes, yes, and I think that and so I think that the biggest hurdle would be adoption And getting people to understand what's going on and what this does

[01:28:07] I think once if it became part of the culture like oh, this is what you do you rank all your candidates I I think there would be far fewer issues

[01:28:13] But you know there it does have some opponents, but it's hard to tell if it's that how they should do this rather 50 cast Ranked choice voting ballot. Yeah. Hey, have you just have you determined how you've done your wish list? Well, I would love to get your feedback

[01:28:27] Well, I think that first off a couple things one Recently I went back through with Mike bloom and we added a lot of people to The lists and my thinking was like let people vote for who they want to vote for

[01:28:43] And give give them more options as opposed to Uh keeping the lists smaller if if a lot of fans are saying I want really want to vote for this person

[01:28:52] What does it hurt to have more people and we ended up adding about 25 people who were on the bubble From the first half of survivor. What do you think of that? Well, I think that that's fine. I actually did watch that podcast of yours

[01:29:07] I think your reasoning was like I let people vote for these candidates and that's fine And it's kind of in the spirit of what we're talking about here. Well, so what would a ranked choice Season 50 ballot look like which I mean I obviously ranking all

[01:29:19] What I assume will be 200 people on this list or whatever by the end will be Onerous, but would it make sense? Like you ranked your like I guess you're supposed to pick a whole cast worth

[01:29:28] But you rank the cast when you when you pick them as well. And does that make sense mathematically? I don't know. Hmm. Think about that. Yeah, so if so if to do a ranked choice voting with the survivors, okay so

[01:29:39] Um, I'm giving like one two three four five But if my like if my number one person is christa clump and nobody else Ends up with voting for christa clump as a number one person

[01:29:53] Okay, so now then this was my number two then my number two becomes my number one. Is that how it would work? Yes, that's it basically how it works. It'll be a portion to the number one Now I think the thing is that's important difference here

[01:30:06] Is that you're not trying to get one candidate has a majority in this thing You're not trying to go for one head. You're trying to get a cast together, right? Right

[01:30:13] So so so you would have to set up a different threshold other than oh a person reaches a majority That should be on the cast it has to be something lower than that and different There's probably a different version of ranked choice voting other than the instant runoff

[01:30:27] That uh, that could work. All right, let's take ranked choice voting out of it. How do you think we should structure the ballot? Okay, um I like the idea of doing A primary and a runoff the equivalent of that where you uh, where where you um

[01:30:43] Because there's gonna be lots of votes maybe all over the place, you know, the like I've like uh Okay, I actually like that that we get it down to like what maybe like 20 men 20 women

[01:30:54] Yeah, it's kind of it basically bring it down to the second chance ballot like the equivalent of second chance I like this. I like this because we don't have to reveal the results of what the top 40 are For 450 oh, so

[01:31:08] The top 40 well you'd have so what would you do a second? What the idea would be you do a second vote, right? You do a first vote first

[01:31:15] Maybe we get it down to like 50 is a nice number. Uh, what if we got the first the first round down to 50 and then that was the real vote Yeah 25 and 25. I think that's actually a pretty a pretty good one

[01:31:25] And then you to try to do the final 10 and say it's good. Yeah, I think that could lead to pick five for each Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah, I think this is good. Okay. All right

[01:31:36] Kamara wants to know what is the doctor's roman empire? Do you have a roman empire? What what is the thing that lives rent free in your head? Yeah, this this roman empire thing confused the heck out of me when it was taking the internet

[01:31:49] What are people talking about do you think a lot about the roman empire? No Yeah There are there are time periods in history. I feel like I think about more than the roman empire

[01:32:02] Like I don't know. I like world war two. I think I'm out a lot more than the the roman empire. I don't know So it's just the thing I think about other than tv shows I better call solace rent rent free in my head I think

[01:32:17] But uh, but when it comes to I guess world events is that the premise of the question or just Well, I don't think it's necessarily world events But it's a thing that you think about like and I was really confused about this because it's something

[01:32:27] I almost never think about but I guess there are some people that think about the roman empire at least once a day That is that's bizarre to me. I mean so a thing that I think about once like roughly once a day

[01:32:39] Just Kim's going back to it. Honestly, uh, my my cheating answer is better call So I think about that shows It's probably not healthy The I think a lot about the food Yeah, I think a lot

[01:33:00] Um, it's but it's kind of like an obscure thing that just that just I keep coming back to Um, you know what? It's actually lead to another question. It honestly is The mole the mole. Okay. Beautiful. The mole. Yes, Trevor asks dr. Christian Vicki

[01:33:16] My question is has christian seen the show the mole on netflix. I find the show Being an interesting strategy show if so, what would be his strategy as the mole would love to hear his thoughts on the game

[01:33:27] In general if he's seen either season. Thanks first off. Have you started? Uh, the second netflix season of the mall Yes, I have started the nest okay. I'm surprised because I haven't heard from you I so I am I am I am gathering my thoughts

[01:33:44] I so I I was I was traveling last week and I but I made sure that Emily we have to we have to binge the first Drop of episodes of the mole. I do not want to be spoiled as the people's opinions

[01:33:55] And so I saw the first drop of episodes. I think they just did the second drop I haven't seen that second. Yeah, the second drop came out on friday I just did a recap of week two

[01:34:04] Of the mole uh, that is up now on rob as a website dot com and the youtube channel Yes, so the so that I do love how the questioner asked if I have seen either of the seasons of the mole

[01:34:17] I'm guessing not necessarily aware of how many seasons of the mole there are uh Um, there are many there this is technically season season several season seven. Yeah, um Uh, so I was an og Mole fan back in 2001. We did a podcast about this rod

[01:34:37] I we went oh at the as a recap of season one netflix mole mole season six canonically We did you meet josh josh wiggler? Uh, brooklyn zed uh, and just at least all yeah

[01:34:50] All all I talked about my mole journey and and all the way through this most recent one I love the mole as a franchise um, I bought in 2008 The soundtrack to the original mole on compact disc for $50 because it was only available in one place on

[01:35:08] Music website. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, so that's that that's how big of a mole fan. I am. I loved it Emily and I made our own version of the mole on some internet forum somewhere where we filmed Like the equivalent of the romantic scene. Yeah. Yeah, it is

[01:35:24] Yeah, we we had we had teddy bears that were each of the players and our little online game all set up It was it was very cute. I even yeah, I had the whole stumper and screen going

[01:35:34] Hey, big fan of the mole in the concept and I think But I think that the and I would recommend I'm gonna try to talk about the mole with this youth Spoilers as possible

[01:35:43] But I'll try to warn if I get close to anything like a spoiler for any of the seasons of the mole The first two seasons were hosted by Anderson Cooper The now CNN Anchor before he before he was a full-time anchor um

[01:35:56] Of his own show and those two seasons. I love I adore those first two seasons Um, in fact, it was underrated gem the first season the first season aired in its entirety the second season Got canceled right after 9 11

[01:36:11] People often wanted to talk about saboteurs like the mole did it get cancelled or did they move? They like preempt it started It started the first two or three episodes Yeah, it's they did the first two or three episodes and then it got that it got cut

[01:36:27] They re-aired it the following summer. They did finish the season off in the summer So I had to wait, you know until like like from the fall to the summer to know who won the mole

[01:36:37] Uh, it's like that but I but I but I was right about the mole. I was I was very happy. It was a lucky guess Um Those seasons are fantastic. You know, they were on netflix at one point. I don't know where they are now

[01:36:47] But find them. Um, I recommend them. I know a lot of people love the belgian mole. Gabby's trying to get me to watch the belgian mole Oh, okay. Yeah, so she I think she has seen the belgian mole

[01:36:57] So I need to watch that says Chris. She could have been on og mole patrol with us. Oh, I Brooklyn that sounds like a fantastic idea until you know how long this podcast would be And you I'm assuming we have a life to live

[01:37:11] So the mole lives rent free in my head in a way that so the last the season one of the netflix mole came out when last year or something Uh I loved parts of it and I was texting you about it live

[01:37:26] Yes, and over and and by the end I I was frustrated with it. It's a hard show to pull off I'll say it's a very hard show to do in a way that satisfies me because the show has so much dang potential um the And so

[01:37:41] Over time when I think about the mole Netflix season one I get angrier over time I I just I just think about all the things that I would have done differently if I were somehow in the years of the producers yum

[01:37:53] So anyway, for those who don't know the mole is people there's probably at least one person who doesn't know the mole is But the mole is a it's a one-one. Yeah

[01:38:00] There's a game show where they're all trying to where all these contestants are trying to win money for a pot but one is the mole um and the and so and uh, They're trying to sabotage money from the pot. They work for the producers keep the pot low

[01:38:12] um, sometimes they do too too good of a job, I think and the and the the players are by Survive not by voting each other out But by taking the quiz and the person who gets the lowest on the quiz

[01:38:24] About who the this quiz about who the mole is it goes home? And so the emergent strategy is amazing. It's subtle but amazing So you so what you end up doing is forming alliances Which used to be called?

[01:38:35] Coalitions because they couldn't call it alliances in the era when they're when abc was competing with cbs survivor They filled coalitions of people which would share information about who they thought the mole was and then deploying this information to the other

[01:38:48] Coalition so they get questions wrong about who the mole was. Yeah, their suspicions will be wrong And you yourself try to act somewhat like the mole so that way you are suspicious and other people get the answer wrong So it's this delicate balancing act

[01:39:01] Trying to win money in these games for a pot But also occasionally sabotaging the games or at least appearing to that way people plausibly think you're the mole So it's a classic social deduction game in that way that if you play a good social deduction game

[01:39:15] We'll work in a way where sometimes you want to act just kind of a little bit like you're the bad guy um, so that In terms of how the mechanics work that is so brilliant and um And and and the the modern current mole

[01:39:30] Doesn't always quite it gets good moments, but doesn't quite get the formula right the depth of the strategy Really was fantastic in season one and two. I i'm not finished this current season that's coming out

[01:39:44] But uh, but the original ennis cooper moles. There were some really smart people who knew what the heck they were doing um in those moles I can't I oh my goodness the fact that people figured out this idea of a misinformation coalition and season one is

[01:39:59] That's that's inspired. Yeah, that's an inspired friggin thing and uh on top of that the show is is um It's it's a globetrotting show where you're going around some region or some country

[01:40:13] And they take you all different locations the games are phenomenal sometimes like in uh in season two The original season two and mole with anderson cooper there is it's there is a there is a game where they're basically playing tag

[01:40:26] Where one player is incentivized to catch the other players so that they basically get immunity If they win and if the players or the other people are trying to chase when the whole bunch of money gets added to the pot

[01:40:37] It sounds like a simple game except they emptied out an entire tiny village in uh, Italy with cavernous Maze-like streets to play this game. They empty out a whole To play it. Oh astonishing um in the in season one

[01:40:53] They play a game where they have to where the players have to defend a spanish Old spanish sport with paintball guns against trained special operatives that don't have paintball guns. It's it's amazing and

[01:41:08] um, and some and on these games often i'll have like these these weird dilemmas in in them They're so cool. So I love them all Um, but little things can go wrong Beckon ruin the whole game a little tiny production decisions

[01:41:23] um, like one thing that they can do is is um They started doing in these most recent seasons if they give the players the opportunity to Try to get an advantage By spending money out of the group pot that they all earned. Yes like an open-ended bet

[01:41:40] I'm like they they never did this in any of the seasons. I remember from from my wee childhood um and The incentive and that the incentive structure is kind of bad because only if there's a player

[01:41:52] Who thinks that they are not on to who the mole is they will Spend every dollar in that pot To get that advantage because it doesn't matter if there if there's any money in the pot if they're not around so, uh, so there's a few game theory like

[01:42:08] Um Problems that can crop in with just one bad decision. Yeah Yeah, so anyway, I But at any point rock, I'm just gonna rant about the mole for an hour if I if I keep going Well, it's exciting to see your passion about it

[01:42:23] You know my feeling on the netflix versions of the mole and this season especially without getting uh overly spoilery is that it feels to me like they the game is broken in that um that the

[01:42:37] Emerging gameplay is that it feels like that almost the entire cast is saying I am going to spend I don't care. I'm not so worried about making money for the pot I'm gonna take Uh money out of the pot. It's a win-win for me because one

[01:42:53] I get I get the advantages and also then people will think I am the mole and I think That there are people that are trying harder than the actual mole To be the mole the mole doesn't have to do anything

[01:43:08] Yeah, so this this is an easily fixable problem in my opinion. Yeah, because this was not an issue The person who's doing the most to win money for the group

[01:43:17] I mean and that is actually I mean there's a couple of interesting elements of the mole that don't that don't make it Report with any other reality show but like the thing that's all you gotta do one easy fix

[01:43:27] Is don't allow these open-ended pot spending things don't allow that they didn't use to do that They're just the there are ways you could take money out of the pot, but they were pretty incremental back in the original mole

[01:43:39] This time you can just empty it. That's that that's just don't do that And they're always they would always end up and always on the season with a respectable pot. Yeah, and I mean it's It was never a concern executives that brought you too hot to handle

[01:43:55] That's I think there's a lot of overlap here with the idea of like oh if you do the thing you're not supposed to do You lose all the money

[01:44:03] It's actually the same some more executives who did that show. I mean it's all Netflix or Netflix reality. Oh, wow Yeah, I don't I don't I don't know what they're doing They're apparently all the producers are ignoring my dms on what they should do on the show

[01:44:15] But the have you actually the end the producer No, that'll be hilarious, but I don't know who to talk to but if they hey if you're listening I want to love your show. I really do. I this is a man who spent $50 for no good reason

[01:44:28] I could have just went on limewire or something Christian is wasting money more than the mole contestants Yeah, it's it which is frankly an impressive feat if you think about it now what so So there there's that that is easily fixable

[01:44:42] And they seem to I'm shocked that they didn't make a change because they did the same thing happened in the previous Season it's happening twice. Do you think they changed with the host?

[01:44:51] Yeah, yeah, I don't know what there's a couple of things also when you go back to these original seasons of the mole There's a lot of time that's spent outside of the challenges

[01:45:00] They're called the missions or sometimes called the tests in the original game where they're just having dinner at like a hotel restaurant And they're having dinner with the host Anderson Cooper and they're just telling stories and you're learning about the about these players and

[01:45:15] Sometimes there's an element of the dinner. It's actually kind of part of one of the games There's a point where at one one of the game one on one of the the dinners Someone eats a piece of cake. There's a cake and everyone takes the slice

[01:45:28] But one slice does not have a blueberry on top now that that person gets a That person gets a special opportunity And then you might say oh, that's a funny little random thing to throwing for dinner But here's the thing the mole gets inside information

[01:45:41] So do you suspect that the person who went for that piece of cake had inside information as to whether or not That was the thing that could help them sabotage the pot or not. There's all kinds of crazy mind games

[01:45:51] And and and none of that is present in these recent two seasons of the mole Like they're not having dinner with the host It would help humanize the host and hope he'll humanize the contestants better

[01:46:01] They're all kinds of little things that they could do to make it great It's You can do it Okay Anything else on the mole? Oh, there's so many things on the mole. I'll leave it to one thing one thing because whether we can move on

[01:46:18] Um, the the one thing that's a little challenging with the mole is that because is that the mole does not have an incentive Other than to really kind of sort of do what production suggests they do Like they're not they're not the mole themselves is not a player

[01:46:30] There is not a condition on which the mole wins or loses Which in a way is good. So it's not like the traders the traders the moles are the traders the traders can lose It's different. Um So the the mole is really just an agent of production

[01:46:45] So from a gameplay standpoint, that's a little strange. Like what is their real motives to really playing against production in a weird way? Which which adds a different dynamic But it also could be a good thing because then the production can actively balance the show

[01:46:58] Midway with this mechanic that they have in place Which is the mole if people are losing too much the mole sometimes helps out the team and that helps them Lay suspicion which is good for the show Okay Brando was here

[01:47:11] Chat what do we think christians glasses prescription is I'm curious what the what the chat thinks but i don't know enough about Glasses prescriptions for people who know that mines minus nine minus nine

[01:47:26] Yeah, which is really bad. Okay. It's really bad. There was a there was a point where I like I when I was on the show Uh, I had I only brought four pairs of contact lenses with me because I was a genius

[01:47:37] And if I and I was down to my last pair because I kept losing them Um by the time I was voted out and if I didn't then

[01:47:43] Um, I would have been blind in the challenges. Like I would have been it would have been like shapes like and that's it. Okay Um, kate has a question. What are your thoughts on the olympics? Uh

[01:47:56] They are in paris coming up. Yes. Do you care about the olympics? Like how much how many hours of olympics will you watch? Emily loves the olympics So she will put on the olympics and I will catch them

[01:48:07] So but via osmosis she loves the olympics and especially she loves that they're coming to los angeles And uh, so which uh, which is her her hometown. So Oh, will she attend? I I think I think we'd all attend if it's what it's in los angeles

[01:48:22] Yeah, 2028. Yeah, we have an on on our wall. We have an original poster for whatever LA olympics it was because there were 84 80 I think it's the 84 olympics. She has a poster with 84 olympics on our wall Okay, all right

[01:48:36] Christian jasmine wants to know what's your favorite role to play in blood on the clock tower So blood on the clock tower. I mean people would been hearing about this this hot new game called blood on the clock tower it's

[01:48:48] You know, I I'm surprised to learn that blood on the clock tower is a recent Yeah, like I guess that I had thought like oh this button must be around forever And I only recently just discovered it's only a baby

[01:49:01] It's a baby. I think it technically is a Kickstarter that launched in 2019 It's another it's another social deduction game. It's a little bit like it's a lot like the traders. Yeah Uh, there are some bad people who are actually killing off the good people at night

[01:49:15] Figure out who they are and so there are a lot of games like this. There's um Let's see So you know like on on online games it's things like among us It's like a video game or like goose goose duck

[01:49:27] It's like that, but it's it's more just purely a social game There's no like you running around with a character on a screen, you know, you know doing tasks like and among us It is just like a face-to-face player game

[01:49:38] Which people can also play online and it's amazing I like Steven Steven fishbacks like a cult like evangelist of this game Yes, it's been going on twitter and saying everyone should play it and I was like, okay, steve

[01:49:48] I want to you're talking about I've seen a lot of these games before and dwight from season 43 Good old Dwight he's really into it. It's like he invited me to a game. He's like, okay, I'll go and I played it I loved it. I loved it now

[01:50:02] It fixes a lot of the problems I have with other social deduction games Um, and I didn't I didn't realize were problems until I uh until I played this one So for these games like like mafia or werewolf

[01:50:16] You're if you're killed at night, you know, you're out of the game You have to go sit in a corner somewhere and not talk to anyone, you know, you're not involved anymore That's not the case in blood blood the clock tower characters die

[01:50:27] Um, but you actually are still a part of the conversation. You still have a role to play You can actually help win the game at the end of the game You can still actually vote in some circumstances to evict people from the town um

[01:50:39] The roles powers involved are fascinating and the the core Fascination when people I think love with blood and clock towers that the deduction of who is bad Is can be incredibly complicated because there will be roles that you could investigate to say, oh

[01:50:55] Who is the bad guy? They're demons in this game. There's a bad demon and they have minions that help them They're the bad people you can have a role that investigates

[01:51:03] Is are one of these two people the minion or the demon for instance, and you get and you will get told yes or no Um, but there's also things that can happen to you. You can be made drunk

[01:51:15] Or made poisoned. Yeah, you and the person running the game is called the storyteller can lie to you And so the storyteller will can be feeding you misinformation But you might say okay if my information was poisoned then that must mean someone else wasn't poisoned

[01:51:30] So it creates this whole logic tree of trying to build worlds as to who could it be bad? Or who couldn't be so you can say okay? There's a world where where sam is evil

[01:51:42] Does that make sense and you all the facts you know what we know the answer anyway, but they uh, but I think that there is a

[01:51:50] But I think there's a world where sam is evil and you try to see if that makes sense with all the fact that you've laid out and Meanwhile, I and and so that makes the the the experience really complex and really intricate

[01:52:02] Yeah, and as a yeah, and so at the same time like it's a little different for the evil team If you play another social deduction game, it's pretty common for the evil team to just kind of lay back and lay low

[01:52:12] I hope they're not noticed you can't do that in this game because the town has too many powers at play That if you just let them put the pieces together you'll get you'll get steamrolled You'll get voted out and found out immediately

[01:52:23] So the evil team has to actively so in disinformation and claim that they are a certain role They're in fact given roles that are that are not amongst the players in the game

[01:52:33] They're called bluffs to say hey, guess what you can claim to be this person and no one will say no no no I'm this this role so you have more you have more leeway to basically

[01:52:44] So disinformation amongst the town and that's it's fascinating and so much so much fun We've been playing on saturdays a lot. So yeah I've played a little bit and you know the thing that was my frustration with it initially was about like wait

[01:52:57] Hold on so now I get this information and now it might not even be true What what are we doing? I'm I find out this thing and then but you know what the more I think about it Like sounds a lot like real life to me

[01:53:09] You know you get this some information I don't know. Yeah, this person could be drunk could be could be fake news, you know It's like oh that wasn't even true that thing I believed Yeah, you've got to embrace that world

[01:53:23] But you're not sure what you what you're saying is true and it's exhilarating and like and Often the games will get down to the very last the very last day

[01:53:31] Where it's only a couple people left alive and you have to make a choice which one of these three is the demon Yeah, you get it wrong the game's over now back to the question. What's my favorite role?

[01:53:40] Um, I haven't played I I've a lot of worlds. I love to play but the favorite favorite role I love that it's in the game. It's called the marionette is what it's called Okay, and so this is one of the things that's really interesting about the game

[01:53:52] It's because there are times where you think you are a good player But you're in fact secretly evil and you don't know it And uh, the only person that can tell you is someone from the evil team

[01:54:06] And so this has this has grand implications and once it actually takes us back to I think a cool thing about Interesting about survivors. We'll wrap this all together in a big bow. Okay So the so the marionette is an evil minion

[01:54:19] So sort of an assistant to the demon who is told at the beginning of the game that they're a townsfolk They could be one of the normal townsfolk roles

[01:54:26] They could be the fortune teller they could be the chambermaid or whatever the various roles that they give you information But they're actually secretly evil and they win with the evil team They win by the demon getting to the end and killing all the all the bad players

[01:54:39] Now they are seated. They don't know it. They are sitting next to the demon So if the demon decides and the demon knows who they are the demon is told that You guess what you're a marionette and it's up the demon to tell you

[01:54:53] They could just not tell you and just you know, let you go off and pretend to be good the whole time Not not knowing the otherwise, right?

[01:54:59] Or they could tell you and that way you're an active member helping out the evil team win because obviously you want to now That's cool But what's even cooler is the fact that there is a marionette we'd say on the script

[01:55:10] It's in the game if there's a marionette that's that's available That means an evil any evil player can go and lie to actually good players and tell them that they are evil And there's a chance that they don't know

[01:55:23] That for sure for sure if they're evil or not Or if they're good or not So the mere fact that the presence of the marionette on the script means that

[01:55:31] You can lie to half the people in the game and more than half the people could think that they're all evil when they're in fact Not and therefore all trying to help out the evil team and that's one way the evil team can win by selling disinformation

[01:55:41] So the marionette adds this whole layer of what could be true That that makes the game interesting. I mean, what's a parallel to survivor? I remember a young man named jesse from survivor 43

[01:55:52] Yeah, who's the threat of there being a knowledge power could be in the game to get someone to give them their idle Didn't matter that there wasn't one in the game, but the threat that they're all comes back to Dwight

[01:56:03] Y'all comes back to Dwight exactly poor poor Dwight. Well, hopefully in the end he became a in the end He became a popular blood and clock tower influencer and always right with the world. Yeah, okay All right, how about

[01:56:17] Sarah cupcakes was there has the shot in the dark outlid its usefulness as a survivor twist How could this twist be modified to maximize game relevancy? Yeah, so I have opinions about shot in the dark. I feel like I talked to you a bit about them rob

[01:56:30] Definitely. I was I was with shannon. I was podcasting with shannon gus Uh on the episode where Caleb successfully played the shot in the dark and you were I think doing a live show Yeah, that must be a wild live show. Yeah

[01:56:44] That's uh, and so like that was the one time the shot in the dark explicitly worked, right? Um I mean obviously other people were safe, but the first time it actually had an impact on the outcome

[01:56:56] Worked for jay me right side. Yeah, work for jay me in the previous in the previous season, but the um I've always not been a fan of the shot in dark for the most part and that's because It's too weird to the audience

[01:57:10] It's it's it's this is this is the thing. I don't like about it I want to hear your opinion of course rob on this but like it's so It's almost never brought up

[01:57:19] So if you're a casual viewer of the show, you might be like, what's this shot in the dark? What are they talking about and and everyone has one and it's hard to even speak track of who has one Uh, and and often it doesn't even matter

[01:57:34] Um, so my case my case against the shot in the dark is like it's weird Rarely has a direct effect um And people don't know it's in the game People assume it's strange. I I I don't know how people

[01:57:49] A new player to the show new newcomer to the show really understand how how it's going on now The pro case for the shot in the dark is that it indirectly is affected votes that people

[01:58:00] Um one enforces people to blindside people which is already I I thought that's like one of the weakest reasons I have it because like people are already blinds any people all the time anyway You know, it's a and and when it and when it works

[01:58:12] And when it works they just go home that you know kill unfortunately went home the next vote anyway It's like it just delayed the the the the vote out at the Kaila abortion and The other thing though is that it's creating some weird vote margins though

[01:58:26] Like it has led to the possibility that a vote could flip because the margins are smaller I feel like there people are do treating the vote differently because of the shot in the dark

[01:58:36] But it's so indirect. I'm not sure if people really recognize that that's the case. Yeah So my reason yeah go on please. I want to I don't know necessarily if the shot in the dark has necessarily Flipped a vote like has teetered it in You know another

[01:58:53] Direction in the way that like a split vote has sort of like created like okay We'll put three votes on this person three birth votes on this person And then Suri ends up going home because there's trying to split the votes, but

[01:59:06] I do think it has created paranoia around the person of like, okay Well, let's put one vote on this person and then really Panics the other person who is getting that one vote put on to them because of the shot in the dark and can

[01:59:21] destabilize things a little bit more in what would have been previously a more controlled situation Yeah, yeah, so so I mean and when I first heard of it I kind of got what they thought were going for like like they they're really were

[01:59:35] Hitting hard in 41 this idea of their losing votes and all kinds of different ways They wanted some weird voting outcome to happen because there weren't enough votes and they did get that once And what I think is the most interesting vote

[01:59:48] In all the new era to me what the sabaya vote in episode three of season 45 Where then she's doing the candle thing and then she like she has to melt the candle and then she has

[01:59:58] She's gonna potentially lose a vote or she bank a vote and it created this weird dilemma That she had to suss out in the moment Had at the at the voting confessional. She like when she was about to vote

[02:00:09] And that was the most interesting thing I saw. I mean if they can recreate that in different ways, that would be phenomenal But that wasn't even the shot in the dark Exactly exactly wasn't even the shot in the dark

[02:00:19] And so what I thought was maybe something like that could happen with shot in the dark where Everyone's paranoid and everyone throws out shot in the darks Which means they lose a vote and that lower the vote total leads to something crazy to happen

[02:00:31] At the vote but doesn't really the way it mechanically works You have to play it before you write the vote And I'm just thinking of this off the top ahead since I started rambling with you Rob

[02:00:40] Yeah on this like how do you get that to happen to me? That is the case you want people throwing out their one shot in the dark like oh my god I hope I don't go home. That's what you want

[02:00:49] I feel like you have to somehow play it after the vote Because even though it doesn't make a lot of logistical sense that they already voted it's already in the urn But I think there's a way to manage this because when people

[02:01:01] Panic because an idol just got played there was something crazy happened at the tribal council That he didn't expect it maybe an idol got played where they didn't expect it like imagine

[02:01:11] What we had uh 45 uh julie played the idol, uh, how did she play on herself on herself and Emily went home? Right and Emily went home and Emily went home. Um In that pan and that that that only get rid of Emily. I forget

[02:01:26] But anyway situation like that where you think he got someone but they played the idol What's what to my season not to make it need to make all about me, but it's a good example where a surprise happened like imagine

[02:01:37] Um, everyone's panic when the goliaths voted for me But they played the idol on me Yeah, do they do they throw out their shots in the dark like oh my god I have to

[02:01:47] Um, I have to throw my shot in the dark and invalidating their votes that they just cast That's a calculation that they see but that would be almost impossible to do on survivor How do I know which vote was angelina's to take out of the bucket?

[02:02:00] Like uh, I think maybe you could separate that you lose your vote from you have one time where you could have this one in six Shot but I kind of feel like they

[02:02:09] Perfect in a perfect world. I don't think they want the shot in the dark being played that often like in your scenario I think the shot in the dark gets played like 12 13 times a season

[02:02:19] Well, well, well then they but the almost every vote is going to have a shot in the dark Maybe one but then what happens it takes a vote out of the total What they wanted is to mess with the vote total. That's what they wanted to do

[02:02:31] So what what could have happened? So like in that situation this me thinking through my with with my season a bunch of votes are on me they're all invalidated

[02:02:40] And all these shots in the dark are being are being thrown out meaning all these votes that were going to be cast for me Anyway, are being are being thrown away and we would have the majority anyway. We wouldn't have to like split the vote

[02:02:51] Yeah, uh the way we did it But or something like that, but my point being is that like That if there was a thing where everyone's throwing out shots in the dark at least that would be action and then

[02:03:04] Let's assume there's a way to take the votes out. I think there is Then uh, yeah, there will be shot in the dark happening all the time. I thought that's what I wanted I don't know. What why are these things you never use them?

[02:03:13] I think that the reason they want it is to prevent an episode where it's just like a complete everybody knows One person is going home. There's nothing they can do They don't have an idol and at least that they would have this sort of like okay

[02:03:24] The editors can play but they could play the shot in the dark tonight So we don't know what could happen, you know, I think that they are it's it's really insurance against just a totally boring tribal council outcome

[02:03:36] I think that that's the reason why it's in the game and so I don't think that really the intention of the shot in the dark is so that play, you know players will play it more I think it's that players will

[02:03:50] Blindside people and not just say okay christian. You you're going home tonight. There's nothing you can do and then we all Just sit around all day at camp When does that happen? Like what is this prior prior prior to like in the 10 seasons leading up to season 41

[02:04:04] How often does it happen like it's poverty knew she was going home? Yeah, so I'm just trying like in recent history like I kind of feel like uh, maybe elaine and survivor 39 had like an episode where it's like, okay

[02:04:16] Well, lane we know you're we know it's you tonight. Nothing you're like nothing you can do about it Elaine's going home. Uh, you had an episode like that Um, you I'm trying to think in survivor 40

[02:04:27] You know yet like at the plight of adam kline who was trying to like he knew he was going home He was he was like really looking for to play the idol at tribal council

[02:04:37] Like uh, he was somebody who if anybody could have used a shot in the dark in that spot Uh, I think it would have been adam and maybe that the day at camp ends up being totally different

[02:04:47] So maybe it's something that had been on their mind for a while of like what do we do? I remember in um, I'm trying to think of uh season Uh 30 ghost island there is like one of the stephanies ends up like that's like basically she's going home

[02:05:04] There's nothing she can do about it So I always felt like the shot in the dark was sort of like their preventative measure To sort of just like okay, there's a vote. Nope the person who's going home knows it

[02:05:16] They can't do anything about it and we can at least Get some excitement out of this Zach wortenberger wrote a really great article for the confessional uh that the uh brand new newsletter that we started with kevin

[02:05:29] Jacobs, uh, which he talks about he thinks it's the best twist of the new era You could read that reality tv newsletters.com. I really think it's uh something that is a little something doesn't break the game causes people to

[02:05:46] Uh have to like be a little bit more aggressive And a little bit more deceptive and so overall I think it's I think it's pretty good I would say who cares about the little dice like let people anytime they want to the shot in the dark

[02:06:02] Why can't I go to the tribal council if my strategy is every every every vote I'm not going to vote. I'm going to do this shot in the dark every single time What if that's my strategy It could be just be uh at that point

[02:06:15] It's just a mechanic where you you elect to vote or not And uh on every particular tribal council when I get voted out for doing that. Isn't that interesting That that that's a more Uh Larger change to the mechanic

[02:06:31] I think that if you're willing to go for that kind of larger change of the mechanic that would shake that potentially shake things up and I mean I think that uh, they would be scared to do that normally because I mean think about back to season one

[02:06:42] The people are like I have to vote someone out Like they wouldn't cast people on the show that are not interested in in not voting people out But yeah, you know Like isn't that a real opportunity though?

[02:06:56] If you're in tribe of six and two people say like, you know what? I'm not voting tonight Like well now something really unexpected could happen Well, that's what I more want

[02:07:05] I like if it's gonna like that's why I kind of like the I like if it's going to be there I want to use more and what it's used so in frequently I think that part of like being like the original idea like

[02:07:15] We're worried about there being a boring vote. I think the show has been fantastic at casting people who want to Want, you know blood on their breakfast sandwich, you know with these other players

[02:07:23] They want they want to vote them out and like like they want to blindside people They want people to not like like they that are not on their belt. Look at that blindside I did look at 46, you know

[02:07:34] Everyone wanted a blindside that that was their own they could claim And so I felt like it was not like that was I felt that wasn't a major problem So it might have been fresh on their brains because yeah, it was kind of sad

[02:07:44] When when Adam you know had nothing nothing left but to try to go for that What hopefully was an idol in his season? I that was I guess that made me top of mind But then to me that was not never a structural problem with the show

[02:07:55] Uh, they did a great job with with making it not boring. This is not season This is not Guatemala. You know, this is not like, you know, it was not

[02:08:04] We're you know, we're not losing uh, who said John had a dd. I try to remember Margaret Margaret Margaret They're not losing Margaret here on On the ad or whatever. Yeah, so um Anyway, okay. So anyway, so that's why that's why I don't love it

[02:08:20] But if you have it in there, I want to see it because otherwise have to be reminded it exists And therefore we should see it more often and therefore they should In what you're saying is kind of like me you should be able to play it

[02:08:28] It should be played more but you're saying why not play it all the time I'm saying maybe why why like for instance like, okay Caleb He hit the shot in the dark shouldn't he get it back if he has even successfully hit it like in the nfl

[02:08:42] You get that in the nfl you as a coach You get two challenges Uh a game and then if you If as the coach if you have two challenges and I believe if if both of your challenges are successful

[02:08:59] You get a third challenge because your challenges were successful if i'm Caleb and I hit the shot in the dark Shouldn't I get to play the shot in the dark again? Yeah, it's it keeps keeps keeps keeps rolling with it. I mean something something where

[02:09:13] Again, it is gonna be in the game. I agree. It should be played more otherwise kind of like It as a view viewing experience like oh, there's this mechanic there that we never think about and almost never mentioned

[02:09:24] I'm looking at the eyes of like like like a friend I might bring over to my house to watch the show He's like what's the shot in the dark? Well, let me explain to you You have a one and six chance if you

[02:09:35] It's too complicated. Where's otherwise I hear you. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm completing but anyway, you get it You get what I'm saying. I'm sorry. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right Let me give you uh got a few more questions for you

[02:09:49] Okay, uh, brooklyn zed was in the chat before can you please ask christians to explain to me what a difference engine is? I know it's for doing math, but I don't understand. What is a difference engine? so difference engine

[02:10:02] Is one of the is like the first argument of one of the first mechanical computers is what it is It was invented by uh charles babbage Uh in the 1820s You'll note, but you know well well before ibm well before ibm

[02:10:17] And it's a it's a physical mechanism that is designed to do mathematical calculations basically the first calculator more or less and I I um, I think that this is a part of some tabletop rpg. So people are asking questions about

[02:10:32] You know, so what what is this difference engine? But specifically it does a mathematical calculation Uh of trying to solve a a a polynomial Um polynomial so polynomial. Yes So a polynomial in math is just like oh you have uh a constant

[02:10:49] You know like like a number like one you can add x which is a variable which is you know x You know plus x squared. We all know what x squared is and uh plus x cubed plus x to the fourth plus x to the fifth

[02:11:01] Blah blah blah blah those are all that's a polynomial And if you put different numbers in front of all those different things you can make it Make take a whole bunch of different shapes. So it's a really powerful concept in mathematics and

[02:11:13] So they use it to as as a way to kind of hack a calculation for otherwise unsolvable problems or problems that would be very hard to solve um So it's really important back in For a very long time to have a really good way to calculate

[02:11:30] Polynomials because if you could do that you can compute uh logarithms, which are big in finance They're good for calculating things like interest rates and things. So if you want to calculate interest rates It's good. The things like you want to you want a logarithm in finance

[02:11:42] Uh things like uh trigonometry. That's you know, that's the math of triangles, but more more accurately It's like angles. So if you want to know what angle to you know, just set the beam on your house

[02:11:53] You gotta you gotta you got to take a cosine you got to take a tangent these trigonometric functions We call them and so we didn't have you know So in the way that you do those is kind of hack those those that math using

[02:12:04] Polynomials, so it's really helpful to do I for instance just a practical example I uh I in my house um, we we have a um, we have a one particularly high ceiling like we have a we have a four-year

[02:12:17] It's two which which goes up two floors and it has this a big open space and Emily loves art and managed to get her hands on a 10 foot long painting And she's like oh, this will be perfect to hang up by the ceiling and um

[02:12:39] In order and and hang and hang there it'll fill that space perfectly. So she has nice painting up there They okay, how's this going to get up there? Well that that fell to the the robotics engineer pair. Yeah, so Uh, I bought a like 20 foot tall ladder

[02:12:55] I asked angeline to borrow hers and the and um, and I was reading the instructions and and it was in a place At the house where it was kind of in a tight space And it says, you know, don't use this ladder for anything steeper than this angle

[02:13:09] So to determine whether or not enough space to prop up the ladder I had to do some trigonometry You know, I actually so so this would be a thing that I used my calculator today

[02:13:17] But I would have needed one of these tables generated by a difference engine to do All right, and so that's what charles babbage invented in the 20s now He never actually built the dang thing. Well to say he never actually finished it

[02:13:29] It was so complicated and he had so many fights with his engineer that was helping build it It was never actually completed, but it became legend. He's considered the father of the computer

[02:13:38] and uh, it all the the actual first version of his exact device was only built in 1991 150 years over 170 years later or seven years later And it was so complex, but it was it was it was practical

[02:13:53] It just was very hard to build and people use those ideas to build the first mechanical computers because computers were mechanisms before they were electronic Anyway, yeah That's what that's what difference engine is and yeah, I'm sorry. That's uh, yeah

[02:14:05] You seem to have a thought but I'm leaving a pregnant pause Which you for three to fill out. No, no, I this I had not even heard of a difference engine Yeah, so it was his first device and so it was specifically just for calculating these

[02:14:19] polynomials which allowed you to do all these cool calculations And then he had the second device which he I think It's 20 years later He uh, he invented something called the analytical and the analytic engine Analytical engine. I'm sorry

[02:14:31] Which is basically the first proper computer not just a calculator. It was a proper computer. It was designed to use punch cards Much like the punch cards you might have heard people using the 70s 1970s For computers he he designed this whole thing and it um theoretically functional

[02:14:48] I don't think it's people have built it to this day I think that people were trying to build it but it but it is credited and it was actually the first technically What we call Turing complete computer people probably have heard of Alan Turing

[02:15:00] That was the subject of the of the of the um the imitation game that Benedict Cumberbatch movie Where she built he built an actual computer to break, you know, german codes during world war two and um, and he had he had a A there's a

[02:15:16] Criterion for whether or not a computer can basically do anything that you need a computer to do called Turing complete and it turns out that Charles Babbage's analytic and analytical engine was Turing complete that he designed in like 1840 So it's like a hundred years ahead of his time

[02:15:34] So that's what a difference engine is and so fascinating mechanical computers are crazy They're they're they're amazing. Um, and and and hideously complicated But they're but they're really fascinating In fact people these days are actually looking for new ways to use mechanical computers for niche applications

[02:15:55] Where you don't have the ability to route wires from place to place I'm actually on a project right now I have a funded research project with you with between my university and University of Florida Where we're working on ways to figure out how to make

[02:16:06] Mechanical computers do control Actually for the Air Force of all things there. I don't know what that there is It's uh, it's it's a large grant to look into the fundamental science of how you would Make a mechanical computer do calculations for you Okay, christian

[02:16:23] I have a question for you from L Who says how do you feel about school run survivor games? Much love from survivor fsu Well, it's great to hear from you l. Yes, so l. I believe it's one of it's one of our

[02:16:37] So I'm a faculty at at fsu and Florida and i'm you're aware of survivor fsu I am the academic advisor for a private episode. Okay. Wow. What is what is treat for the kids?

[02:16:50] Yeah, it's great. And then they reached out to me and I was I was so happy that they thought of me when for an advisor So yeah, they run. I believe two games a year their most recent game

[02:16:59] Um, they invited me out to come see uh, and I got to run a tribal council I got to be Jeff Jeff probes for one of the tribal council. Yes. How did that go? Um, and

[02:17:08] Pretty well. I mean like I look I realized how hard of a job that Jeff has I'm he must be quick on his feet because I was really trying to keep up with things But I did my best

[02:17:18] I think that I was able to keep the banter up and ask questions They but I I love these school run survivor games for a number of reasons It's not even necessarily just about the show But the process of putting on a production

[02:17:31] Like like like a self-run survivor game Is enlightening you learn a lot think about the logistics what you would need To put on a show to put on it put on a game like that. I mean they they edit these things

[02:17:43] So you got to get a whole bunch of camera angles So you have all these students running around with their iPhones and their androids Taking taking camera angles from everywhere

[02:17:52] And they have to think about how do you make a good twist? Where do you hide an immunity idol? All these uh, organizational production decisions That are creative but also practical. It's like so so I love the creativity it forces people to come up with

[02:18:05] um, and so they come up with puzzles All kinds of stuff. So I love that when people do these kinds of games because they're uh, I think it's it's great to get the students organized

[02:18:17] And putting their mind to something really ambitious and then pulling it off by editing it into a final product Why have college campuses become the breeding ground for so many survivor in-person games playing out So I think it's a couple of things. I this is my guess

[02:18:34] I I haven't interviewed my students in my uh, in the club. I advise about this But I get the sense that like there will be like a whole they're all in dormitories together for the most part or Apartments and one person will be like a survivor fan

[02:18:49] And then that will rope in a couple of their roommates or or or dorm mates to come and watch it too And they all start watching it together And I think that starts to build a critical mass of people's like, oh, we should run one of these

[02:19:01] And because their college students they all live together and they have Comparatively more time for extracurricular activities. Right. They end up doing a club And I think that that's that's just in the nature of a college campus

[02:19:14] Christian I have a couple questions for you of my own. Okay. Okay I would love to hear your thoughts on the apple vision pro Do you feel like that this is a device? That five years from now we will see as like a integral part of our lives

[02:19:35] Or do you think that this will be something when they make a documentary about the 2020s That it will be a passing fad that is mocked I I I'm more I don't know about necessarily mocked, but that's how things go right?

[02:19:50] Everyone mocks a google glass, right? Even though I don't think it's this way a bad idea But I feel like it's the thing that people mock these days. I don't I

[02:19:57] I I think the problem is what what's the killer app? I don't I get the concept like hey What if you could have like anything in front of you can have a virtual office or anything you got I get the the vision. What is the like the

[02:20:13] I you're always looking for the one application that's like people are like, yes, I need this is transformative I need this for that and I haven't seen it

[02:20:23] Was virtual reality. I love the idea, but it's just I I fail to see like people like oh no no your life will change Now that you have this for designing your rooms or

[02:20:34] And on top of the technical challenges of nausea, you know, that's challenging. That's a genuine challenge And there's expensive like and so it's I those again the technical challenges and expense Over time you can theoretically knock those down, but if the need isn't there

[02:20:52] There's there's nothing you could do about that until you hope there's some new application needs it Can you think of an application that they could do or make that would get you At least curious enough to get your credit card out I mean the

[02:21:09] The thing is always video games right gaming is a huge industry I mean, I think that that's that's always the idea like what if you could Play like Dungeons and Dragons on this thing and I can

[02:21:22] If it would but things there need to be critical mass of everyone else playing it for me to jump on I'm not an early adopter of these things. I tend to be cautious Only the mall. Yeah

[02:21:33] Exactly only the mall. I'm an early adopter of the mall. Yes. I play the mole on that. That's it if there is a Mole that has been generated that you can play a vr headset. Yes do the mission and run around in that tiny That tiny tiny bubbles

[02:21:50] I mean, and that's the other thing. I mean like so there's there's there is I mean what added a value to get for it for it because like yes You look around you see it like this, but we're already accustomed to looking at a screen

[02:22:01] And and panning our head around with a little mouse if you're playing our first person shooter or something right and so like You can't run around. You can't walk around There are people who try to make these like treadmills the omnidirectional treadmills that you can walk around it

[02:22:14] But they good luck making those like Cheap and reliable. There are some interesting concepts for them I don't I would love it if they were to be done But like something that is truly immersive where you get all like the tactile senses

[02:22:27] Of being in a world then it actually becomes literal virtual reality To in in that sense as opposed to something you can look around it um, I mean like when when vr was It had so many waves. I remember had a wave

[02:22:42] What the late 90s when nintendo had virtual boy And there are a couple of things like that like I remember it was so wild to be just be in a 3d environment Let alone

[02:22:53] Uh virtual reality, but now we found a way to make 3d environments seamless on our screens So it doesn't have that added benefit So there needs to be that real added depth of dimension unless if but if the mole was exclusively available on the apple vision pro

[02:23:07] I would crack into my savings count for it. Sure. Okay Christian and we've covered so many topics here tonight You have proven once again to be knowledgeable in so many different areas. We recently saw our friend drew brasil dominate for several days on jeopardy

[02:23:29] At any point did you ever consider? potentially Going on at jeopardy Well first off graduation to drew what a what a performance fantastic kudos kudos. They have that's amazing

[02:23:44] I the thought it was all that we interviewed him and then uh that our scoop from our interview that steven And I did that ended up uh in the new york post

[02:23:56] I I think I saw that I think I was trying to find like what the what the like what some information about I think it cropped up on my google search feed. Yeah, oh what happened with true

[02:24:03] Your interviews you're making news. Yeah making news rob. Yeah, I mean the thought I crossed my mind From this will get picked up Yes, I would say what was it gonna be? Dr. Christian Yubicki says he would adopt apple vision pro only on one condition

[02:24:21] Yeah, that there's quick bait for you right there. I mean like oh who here's this Here's this show the mold that that always gets canceled after a renewal after two seasons and then you know, yeah

[02:24:32] The show that that only weirdos like me apparently like and then just brought back and they cancel That's what's going to bring back the actual vision close But but the the

[02:24:41] Like the thought is crossed in my mind to do jeopardy, but not in a serious way. I mean because jeopardy is a real trivia skill I mean you have to like um, I have I have so many blind spots when it comes to trivia

[02:24:52] I'm not a good pop culture trivia guy Uh, and I think that that I would have to fill up a lot of those blind spots to Do well So and I really and and jeffy's You know

[02:25:05] Talk to avid fan base. I have a personal friend who played jeffery and it was like the culmination of like One of his life streams, right? He got to go on that show. It's not something I would want to try on like a like a hat

[02:25:18] I would have to really commit to it to really go for it But it seems like I mean drew at such a young age too by the way He's really impressive. Yeah. He's an incredibly impressive guy

[02:25:28] Um, so that's that's wonderful. I'm glad we had good representation on on the show Even though apparently he celebrated too much for a for a good first jeopardy shoot That's funny. That's why you could so yeah, he's so you can see why survivor cast him

[02:25:43] You know, he gets a good genuine reaction. They think so. Yeah, that's uh, that's so I In in and the abstract I would love to do a jeopardy. Um

[02:25:51] But they had a special category jeopardy that was up my of my ally, you know, what was science and mold Science and mold Science and mold jeopardy. I think I'd be good. Okay

[02:26:02] Um, all right. Well, maybe maybe the some in the audience could put it together science and mold jeopardy I'd tell you speaking of you look like you mold producer. I know you all listen this podcast. Look just reach out to me

[02:26:15] We'll talk, you know, could you fix the ball? Oh, yeah, I already like I gave him good advice for free for free. I'll get I got more stuff for the Netflix are you listening? Well, Netflix, please

[02:26:29] You know call me and we'll talk about how to get this singing because you got the you got some some some great IP That you that at least one person really loves Yep, and then we could talk about the money will be printing on the apple vision pro

[02:26:44] There you go. Perfect. Yeah, where are I rolling it rob? What's the start of the speculative investor? Yes. Okay, bring it all around speculative investment Uh in apple Finally, they could turn that company around finally make some money Okay, all right Christian Anything else tonight?

[02:27:05] Oh, I think we covered plenty tonight rob. Incredible. Just I yeah Yeah, thank you very much again. Do not run out of gas No, no, especially look, I've really hit like once

[02:27:17] This is what I'm talking about my roman empire is the mole because once I start thinking about it I just started to keep growing. Uh, so yeah, it's it's a I it's but it's been it's been fantastic fantastic questions from the audience as always

[02:27:29] Please keep in coming, you know throw some hot throws some oddballs in there I know some of that I you never know when they'll stick something really that they can really spark something fun I like like the like the time I

[02:27:40] I tried to determine how much wood could wood chuck chuck at the wood chuck wood chuck wood I enjoyed that question. Yeah. All right, christian. Where could people keep up with everything you're doing?

[02:27:49] Well, so you can uh, you can keep up with me uh on on on the website formally notice twitter at chubecky chubii cki Also on instagram chu bi cki on the same on the same handle. Um, yeah, you can

[02:28:04] I guess you can technically go to my youtube channel has some some old some old some videos of me talking about survivor in a talk Um, I'm hoping to start releasing some more videos now because I've been doing a lot of lecturing

[02:28:16] Not only for this my university, but also to a consortium of historically black colleges. Um, I I I hosted a lecture series for three weeks Over the summer on how basically getting getting started in robot control And so and and it was meant to be an introductory course

[02:28:38] And and so I looked to hopefully publish that sometime This summer, but if not, uh, you know, if you're not interested if you're waiting for rope If you're too can't wait for robot control you also go check out twitch.tv slash chubiki chubii cki again

[02:28:53] Where uh, sometimes I do lecture But honestly these these days over the summer i'm relaxing by playing blood on the clock tower With with white in friends on on twitch and you can see me

[02:29:03] You know changing screens and pulling up my uh my iPads and things like that while i'm taking notes So it's a fun game. Yeah, okay. Well, i'm gonna Dedicate myself to getting better at it because I feel like all my friends are are playing it and

[02:29:20] Um, I'm I'm gonna come around on it Okay, cool I hope hopefully it it it sinks its teeth into you because definitely had it definitely has for me

[02:29:29] It's one of those games that once like I felt what I felt just such an addiction to once I got the once I got the taste for I see why it's so popular in spite of this relative youth

[02:29:39] Okay, we love to hear from the listeners in the comments Let us know what you thought about everything dr. Hubicki had to say and of course, uh, we got a mall recap up for you today Josh wiggler finally joined us to talk about the mall

[02:29:53] We also had a talking with teabird go up in the last 24 hours We caught up with aubrey brocco on the latest talking with teabird So be on look out for that and then I know, uh, one of my favorites I believe

[02:30:08] One of your wonderful wife emily's favorites claim to fame is coming back this week also Great great. She can tell me all about what's happening with uh with with claim to fame. Who's covering it?

[02:30:21] Me and jenny you're gonna be back for talking about claim to fame later on this week So, uh the summer it's not the summer. It's a claim to fame till the Jonas bros are back

[02:30:29] So be on the lookout for that and so thank you so much for joining us. Take care everybody. Have a good one. Bye