Share & Tell & Forget with Spencer Hall and Katie Nolan

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

A glory hole, a foot glory hole.

That's not a glory hole for footsies.

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I'm embarrassed to report that it took me to like two years ago, I feel like, to realize this.

Fucking Michelin.

That's the same people with the restaurant.

It's the tire people are the restaurant review people.

It is the same thing.

And they are very, very proud of that.

Imagine what the equivalent would be.

Like, the tire company also is like the haughtiest, like highfalutinist, like fine dining reviewer.

What else is even like that?

Yamaha.

Like Yamaha is the company that I think comes closest because Yamaha's name is on.

the dirtiest dirt bike that you've ever seen being driven by some by some hilljack into a tree right and it's also on the finest concert piano you've ever seen

being played i didn't only now did i find out that that's the same yamaha katie i've been learning about how the same company that makes yamaha uh pianos yeah makes yamaha motorcycles i assumed i didn't i didn't you thought there were two different yamahas i did not even divisions of the same company you thought unlike everybody else i presume that all don't look same okay but it turns out that they are to go along with this uh Yamaha-Yamaha conversation you were having,

tires and star, same, same Michelin or different?

That's how we got into it.

Same, same

thing.

Yeah.

Naturally related, if you think about, I sell tires, we go places on those tires.

When I go to those places, I might want a bite to eat.

Yeah, that's might want to know that it's good.

Yeah.

Might want to just sell them together.

I guess naturally.

It feels like a very stoned pitch that a Michelin executive gave once.

Yeah.

Of like, now, where does this restaurant thing fit into our overall plan?

He's like, hear me out tire's got to take you somewhere

speaking of trying to get places Great.

Spencer and I were in France last week.

I was in London.

What?

Yeah.

Did you guys get adjusted?

Did Did we all in Europe?

Yeah, everybody was in France.

Everybody, I mean, I feel like that, how do you say it right again?

Con.

I thought it was can is the right way.

Yeah, you would.

Con.

And nobody, I feel like last year, nobody in sports did it.

This year, everybody in sports did it.

I was on a plane with some people that I did not talk to, but included like Joe Burrow.

Yeah.

He was on that plane.

Cool.

He's there for Fashion Week, right?

Like he was prepping for Fashion Week.

I was not at that part of France.

Right.

I was at Sports Beach.

I was, yeah, exactly.

I was at where like Elon Musk was at to give you a sense of the France that I was looking at.

See, I have a thought.

I have a thought here.

It's pronounced con, and you can remember this because it is a con.

The entire thing, like enough people, when you go, it's an advertising junket.

I'm like, 80 to 90% of the money spent at con just evaporates.

How long was the panel you had to do in order to justify this?

It was 30 minutes.

Oh, tough work.

With Alex honold who is awesome oh the guy who climbed

yay

makes my palms sweat legitimately fascinating guy loved talking to him um

was the most out-of-place person

guy who famously was in a documentary about how he's in a van and climbs mountains without uh any ropes or harnesses um was in the same place as elon musk elon you keep saying that he was there he was actually he rolled through this place sport beach yeah and i knew that because people start because because i believe carmelo anthony while holding a glass of wine said yo what up elon from the stage and there is elon musk as he is making his way hello elon elon what's up baby

what's going on

as elon was rushing out to find his car which had been moved by the french police and so he's holding his child like the master the new one the one he just had All look same.

Don't know which one it was.

Yeah, he doesn't know.

He can't know.

Don't know what serial names are.

They're named named numbers as well.

I don't know.

Yeah, all Wi-Fi passwords.

Does he drive one of those?

I honestly could not see the car over the

palisade of humans who were just like photographing him.

Yeah.

Spencer was not doing that.

The car-related experience that Spencer Hall had, I do want to get to, Spencer.

What the f ⁇ were you doing, good friends?

Great question.

I was there for at the behest of Michelin for a piece that I was going to do on Channel 6 and did did do, which you can read on my newsletter, which you should absolutely pay for because 100% not AI.

What can you say that about on the internet?

This is flawed.

There are typos and original thoughts for better or worse, all on my newsletter, done with my partner, Holly Anderson.

The greatest woman on the human element.

The human element.

Woman on earth.

Love Holly.

So I was there for Laman.

Le Monde is a 24-hour endurance race that they run since 1923.

They used to kind of like not tell anybody.

They would just say, hey, we're going to like, we're going to race and we won't tell anybody on public roads.

And we'll race from one town to the next.

And if we hit children, dogs

or priests along the way, that's their fault.

Did that happen?

In 1955, the worst automotive sports incident ever happened there when a car made of magnesium.

And for anyone who took chemistry, just go ahead and do that math in your head.

It hit a bump.

and it flew into the stands and killed over 50 people and decapitated a bunch of people and caught fire.

That'd be crazy if the people that it decapitated weren't the people that they killed.

It killed a bunch of people and then decapitated other people who lived, oddly.

We recovered.

The Gaelic spirit is strong.

Just to get a sense of like what the race's vibes are like.

So that happens and what then happens to that race?

They finished it and the winner drank champagne.

Yeah.

With like casualties all over the place.

Yeah.

Motorsport used to be a lot more car-centric, not human-centric.

They're going to run it for 24 hours, even if somebody blows a hole in the fence, which they did.

They tore a hole in the fence this time.

A guy went through it and they're like, ah, just keep running.

Why?

Throw out a yellow.

Why is that so important to them to finish this race?

It's tradition for one.

And two, it's a really big track.

It's so big that if it rains on one end, it might not rain on the other.

Right.

So you have to be prepared for like different conditions because it's a over seven mile track, I think is the total distance.

Sounded bigger when you said it.

So they won't, they won't red flag it.

They'll just go, okay, well, take care of that over there.

You do what you need to do and just go slow for a minute.

And we're going to finish it up because we got to be done in 24 hours.

So just to set the scene here, the idea of this race happening and there is

actual and potential death everywhere.

And it's insane.

insane.

This also feels like it's connected to like the luxury automobile industry.

So how does this all like square together?

How does this all fit?

Well, tire companies love it because there's no data, like actual data from running a car as fast as you can for 24 hours.

And by the way, they keep it that close.

With two hours left in the race, there were 11 cars left on the lead lap.

11.

Like it used to be that finishing it back in the day was a big deal when you had cars with like open tops, right?

Like they kind of looked jalopy-ish and just finishing it was the idea.

Now the idea is to stay within five seconds of the guy in front of you for 24 hours.

Jesus.

Which is what they will do.

You've had races that come down to the last lap.

This race came down to a guy trying to see whether he was going to run out of gas.

He finished with 1%.

It's my vibe.

But the engineers have the math, right?

So like, nah, you're good.

You're good.

You're going to skid to a halt.

And, but it'll be fine.

We'll win.

It's three drivers, shifts of two hours each, and they just tear ass the whole time.

Wait, shifts of two hours each and they swap, right?

So

what are the other guys doing during the four hours?

Are they napping?

They're trying to, but they suck at it because, you know, you're amped.

There's no chance because it's not, two hours is like almost not enough time.

You want the shifts to almost be like three or four hours, like a REM cycle.

Right.

You are thinking like a performance coach, and that's awesome.

They're thinking like race car drivers.

So they're just sitting there going vroom, vroom in their head like they can't, you know, they have ADD.

They can't sleep.

They're up, right?

Yeah, yeah.

They're like need wheel, need go.

So most of the time, what they're doing is they're either snacking, they're getting some coffee, or they're doing what drivers do best, which is complaining about other drivers to the stewards, right?

Like, I impeded me in turn eight, right?

By like three inches.

And it turns out that, yeah, it's by three inches, but like quit being a snitch.

They're all snitches on each other.

It's adorable.

How French is all of this?

So there's, I assume, an international aspect to this, right?

They're from different countries.

I imagine they're Italians and they're, again, I like to, to, I want to indulge in the caricatures, truly the stereotypes of Europeans that I went to France to enjoy the most.

Paint the picture for us, Spencer, of like where you are as you're witnessing

this sort of European Union come together.

Every single French joint in the place has the best spread.

They will take appointments.

Right.

So it's like at one at 1 p.m., you must be here or it will be impossible for you to eat.

And you show up at 12.55 and no one seats you until 1.15, right?

So they're like, you must be on time.

We will be on time.

They're not on time, but they do have the best food.

The Italian place, if you go to Ferrari's hospitality center, they really do have the church organ of espresso machines.

It's magnificent.

It makes the best coffee you've ever had.

And the French will complain that it's not enough, right?

Even though it is nothing but pure angry caffeine, about a puddle's worth.

And they'll complain about the kid is not enough.

And the Italians are like,

and in true deform, the italians will drink that and then they will go have a smoke outside while cupping the cigarette with their hand over the cigarette and gesturing colorfully that that's very real that happens ferrari by the way a little bit against character in that they were hyper organized super on time super punctual and they're really good at world endurance cup racing f1 the stereotype is that they're these dysfunctional geniuses who have like a magnificent history and the most beautiful car and sometimes they put a banana peel onto the tire when they should have put a a tire.

And in World Endurance Racing, on it, like they are the most together team.

The British are ogres.

They're absolute orcs when they're abroad, just in general.

And that goes for their race fans too, right?

I was walking through a gate and the guy said, mate, we can't bring this beer in here.

And he just throws us like two beers.

Easily, just like just handing beers out left and right.

So the British, perfectly on form.

I saw Italian camping, which actually was, and I have a picture of this, a blue Lamborghini next to someone's tent.

That's it.

Just parked the Lambo, got the tent out of the tiny little trunk in the Lambeau, and pitched it next to the Lamborghini.

So if you're wondering how French, how Italian, how English, whether national stereotypes remain true,

yeah,

absolutely, in the best possible sense of the word.

The stereotype that I found myself confounded by in France, because it didn't seem true, was how rude rude everybody would be to tourists, to Americans.

I found every French person I encountered, maybe because I was at an advertisement.

You were at a tourist system.

You were at like an advertisement.

Yeah, they knew that it was coming.

But it was, they were so nice.

Yeah, you knew, that's different.

That's different than like going out into like the French countryside and trying to, on your own, interact with.

You were on Sport Beach.

I'm sorry.

Plage de sport.

Oh, the Plage de Sport.

Other stereotypes, which I believe should be honored and validated.

The to-go baguette.

Oh, yeah.

Walking baguette.

Yeah, walking baguette.

Yeah, you got to get the baguette as you go.

Had that baguette on.

Maybe eat it as you're walking.

A little butterfly.

And as we saw, you know, the little, the little water bottle pocket on the backpack.

I saw somebody totally wrap up half after eating it, stuff it there.

Gorgeous.

It was perfect.

And I was like, that's not a water bottle.

That's actually your baguette.

Your baguette pocket.

Huh.

Katie, your experience in london was like what compared to what we're describing in france though i had the worst time with the jet lag this is the worst i've ever dealt with jet lag normally i feel like i just one day i'm like oh what time is it and by the next day i'm like i've had an i've caught up a normal sleep cycle i never got on the right time and then last night is the first night that i barely got the right amount of sleep.

I don't know what's going on with me, but I did not rebound well from the time change this time.

It It sucked.

You know what I brought with me that really helped with my jet lag and sleep?

What?

My CPAP machine.

Oh my God.

I walked into the airport and Liz, who went with me, my wife, was mystified.

She knows who nobody is.

So like Justin Jefferson walks by.

He has no idea.

She's like, why are there so many Louis Vuitton backpacks and like Gucci suitcases?

And meanwhile.

because it was an electronic device and I could not put in the checked baggage, I was carrying in my laptop in what appeared to be a very uncool laptop bag, my CPAP machine.

Sick.

You need a Louis.

So you're trying to say you need a Louis bag for your CPAP machine?

I'm just saying there's a market for people

who want to have oxygen blasted into their nose for an hour.

So you got to France and then had to find distilled water?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I slept great.

Great.

Oh, I'm so glad for you.

So you though, your strategy was I'm just going to.

So here's where I got screwed up.

The 7 p.m.

flight, everybody went to go to sleep and it's only five hours or six hours over

My plan was to like stay up through that next day and then like go to bed a little early that night because the next day, my call time was at 5 a.m.

Oh, a call time.

Which was already going to screw me up.

So it's like I could not figure out when to, but instead I just went right to sleep.

And then I woke up too early.

I woke up like three hours before my call time, which I was like, this doesn't make any sense.

How did your mysterious unnamed call time event go?

Awesome.

It was so fun.

It was so fun.

And I'm now,

I'm now, I was going to say best friends, but I halted myself.

DK Metcalf and I are good friends.

What?

What?

That's my, that's my dude.

Yeah, that's my guy.

I was going to ask, does anything help you with jet lag?

Like when you're in the spot?

Because I am a, I am a captain thugget out.

I will just stay up all day or two.

No, nothing's going to work.

Like, I just have to be there and eventually it will click.

I have no shortcuts.

Nothing really.

That's the thing.

I went to sleep at like, I don't know, probably like two or three on Saturday night.

I woke up at 3 p.m.

on Sunday, 3.30 p.m.

And I was like, my God, the day is over.

How did you manage to sleep 12 hours uninterrupted?

That is like the caricature of what I imagine your sleep habits to be.

It's not.

It's, they're not usually, I mean, they're bad, but they're not usually that bad.

It was mortifying.

I want to know how Spencer approaches like how to do his travel and summer vacations, given all the struggles that I think people have about, like, this is going to disrupt my entire life.

And Spencer is going where next?

Where are you going?

Oh, yeah, where are you going?

On your next mystery adventure.

Mongolia.

I wanted to write a story about their festival.

They have a sporting festival in the summer.

It's like a homecoming.

You're going to go to wherever your village is.

And in a place like Mongolia, that can mean a place that's pretty remote.

And they're all going to get together.

They're all going to do the three manly arts, even if you're not a man.

You're going to do wrestling, wrestling archery or open country horse racing open open country horse racing there's no real options in mongolia besides open country really it's not like you go to a track like they have a track in in ulaanbatar but like that's the capital you're going to just race over open territory right just just usually like these kids who are in high school and they just get out there and just let it rip and i wanted to go do that and i'd made the mistake of going well you know i want to go to a real one.

I want to go to a real one.

They're like, ah, well, you should go to one in the styx.

Like, you should go to one like out in the country.

I wonder if there's a tour I can do that with.

Well, there is.

There is.

And they're more than happy to take you.

And it'll take two weeks.

I'm going with Brian Phillips, who was a writer for Grantland.

Yeah.

Now does podcasts.

If you want to know what an extraordinary human being he is, I said, hey, called him up.

Hey, do you want to go to Mongolia?

And the answer was yes.

Whose car are we taking?

Yeah, bro.

Let's go.

So you are participating in this?

You are doing the sporting?

I don't know.

There's a night on the agenda that says night with wrestlers.

This could mean a lot of things, Katie.

And I could tell you about three of them.

Yeah, I don't know.

Could be a tender evening.

Could be a night where I get DDT'd into a campfire.

I don't really know.

To be a man.

But yeah, it may be.

Either way, I'm going to learn a lot.

That's the way you have to approach a trip like this.

It's gonna be a lot of learning.

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Coggyak Veen Champain of Fortune Alcoholic by Volume reported by Remy Control, USA Incorporated in York, New York, 1738.

Centaur design.

Please drink responsibly.

Katie, what did you bring us today?

Oh, I I actually brought like an article.

And I brought it because I'm fascinated, which I think is the point of this show.

Yeah.

I think that's what you're supposed to do.

I've been asking you to do this for so long.

I know.

I finally did it.

So this one was in the cut, and it's not just an essay about something crazy that somebody did that then we can all yell about online because the cut is elite at that of like i'm a financial advisor and i put all my money in a paper bag and dropped it off in the back seat of a man who said that i needed to do that yep i'm a marriage counselor who killed her husband.

Yeah, oops, I was being scam.

Oops, all scams.

So I'm now trying to find it because this is where I fail.

It's like I had a...

This feels germane to the topic.

Katie Schneider.

Okay, I wanted to get the name of the woman who wrote the article.

Yeah.

Okay.

The headline is, I have a terrible memory.

Am I better off this way?

The existential divide between rememberers and forgetters.

So basically, there's two types of people.

There are the people who have

really strong memories when it comes to like autobiographical information.

And then there are the people who who don't, who feel lacking in that department.

She cites the example of she needs to call her sister and ask her if she ever, if she, the woman, the protagonist, it's like, have I ever gotten an HPV exam?

Like, is this something I've done?

And her sister is like, yeah, it was in sixth grade.

Like, you didn't like the way that the test felt or whatever.

She remembers very specific details.

And the woman who's writing this article, Katie, is like, I don't.

And I can't relate.

And so she has found in her experience that you are either a rememberer or a forgetter.

I am a forgetter, 1000%.

And I feel bad about it every single day.

I have multiple calendar notifications and ways I try to game my system to remind me of things that are important that somebody who remembers, who cares, usually remembers, because I fear that my forgetting appears to be me not caring, that sometimes it comes across as me not caring.

When holy, I care so much.

I just forget a lot.

How does weed figure into this for you?

Oh, so for me, I'm not as big, like that came later, I guess, in my life.

So I don't think that my memory issues are as tied to it.

That's also something a stoner says.

So maybe,

maybe.

Your honor.

I think,

actually, Your Honor, weed is what makes me lose track of time and things that are happening then.

Where like

short-term memory is like literal for me.

When I, if I, if I were to smoke weed, allegedly,

I feel like I can say I'm going to do something and then it's two hours have passed and I haven't moved and I think it's only been five minutes.

That's kind of how my memory gets screwed up in.

or I'll be doing something and I'll think I've, I've just completed something that I have not done.

But it's less about like what happened last week and my inability to remember that i think so spencer one key part of this story that i found really interesting beyond like the clinical diagnoses which said at the extremes of this which i don't think katie necessarily

we're sort of on a as as we all are all the time and every

spectrum of things but like scientifically in 2015 there's a research paper which identified sdam

severely deficient autobiographical memory that is of course the forgetters a decade before that there was a mirror condition that had been established previously called hsam highly superior autobiographical memory, of course, the rememberers.

And in between there, of course, I think is most people.

And that includes me.

I wouldn't say that I'm on one of those crazy ends of the spectrum.

Same.

But, Spencer, something that was a big takeaway from the story is that the people who actually remember more seem more miserable.

And that forgetting also seems to be a key to,

I think,

perhaps the most literal definition of something we talk about a lot as a population these days, which is presence.

They are so present that they don't remember the past.

And that seems to actually have benefits psychologically in ways that were funny to me and also relatable.

We all talk about quarterbacks like this, right?

And good quarterbacks, I think, would be on the complete forgetters, people who have no memory whatsoever of what just happened.

And that's probably true of a lot of really successful people in life, that they might throw out a stinker or a clanker and then immediately forget it.

And the athlete I'm most envious of in terms of attitude was always Dan Marino.

That dude, you know what was going on behind his eyes?

Nothing.

Well, nothing.

He was like sea guy throwball.

Tom Brady, it feels like, would be a rememberer.

Dan Marino, though, a different way to accomplish quarterbacky greatness.

He recorded like a PSA or an ad for some sponsor of the Dolphins.

And a chance to meet me.

Stay tuned.

I'll have details on how to enter and we'll be announcing a winner later tonight.

They go, hey man, do you want to see it back?

And it's like old videotape and it's him and his prime and he goes, send it in.

Nope.

I don't want to see shit.

That was it.

And it's the best because you go, I wish I could be like that.

Which is weird because I also don't relate to that.

If it comes to my own mistakes, I remember.

pretty vividly and beat myself up for a lot.

But where I relate to the not remembering is, for example, I will, and this has been embarrassing to me for a long time.

So this kind of made me feel better about it.

I'll watch a movie and then

if you want to discuss it at length and I've watched another movie between that movie and this one, I'm not going to really be able to remember a lot of what happened.

You're the Dan Marino of movies.

I just am like, I like to think of it as I'm ephemeral.

I'm like existing in the moment, really enjoying every aspect of your movie.

And then as soon as it's over, I might not even remember I ever watched it.

Where are you, Spencer, on the spectrum, would you say?

Where would you self-classify?

I think I, I believe I am closer to the high detail memory, but that memory is never useful or informative.

For instance, I might remember the exact way that the fake suede plush seats on my grandfather's Olds 88 felt and how it smelled.

And I will remember the exact slant of the light through the window.

And I will remember the pecan log that I got at Stuckey's when we stopped for gas.

So sensory.

Yours is sensory.

Very much so.

Mine's emotional.

The thing I always remember is the way I feel about something.

The best way to describe it is when you see an actor that played a bad guy in another movie and you can't immediately place what it was, but you look at the actor and you go, I don't like that guy.

Why don't I like that guy?

That's me with almost everything.

I know how you made me feel, whether or not I remember specifics of what happened in that interaction.

I remember the like, you've evoked this feeling.

I feel, I have like a gut feeling about you that I'm comfortable listening to because I know it's informed by something I have since forgotten, but I've retained the gut feeling.

There is a sports metaphor running through all of this as I'm hearing you guys talk about it, right?

Like gut instinct, like what does it mean to have like a library of things that you can consult that maybe you can't explain analytically, but has served you in the past?

Like that is such an athletic sporting concept that I think I relate to in this sense.

My memory, I feel like, is comically bad in some spots and comically precise in others.

And maybe this is most people.

But what I think about is the time that someone asked me after I was like just done taping Around the Horn, like literally two hours before, someone on the sidewalk was like, oh, I love Around the Horn.

I was like, oh, I just, I just taped it.

And he was like, what'd you guys talk about?

And I didn't know.

And so part of me is like, what am I spending time actively engaging with?

Like, which is not to say that I don't care about Around the Horn.

I do, but there's an autopilot aspect.

Katie's making a face that makes me look terrible now to my colleagues and coworkers.

But it's sort of like, what are you spending time stressing out about?

Yeah.

And is that actually what we put into our mental library?

Because I feel that way a lot about quote unquote content, where it's like, oh, the stuff that I really feel invested in emotionally, to your point, Katie, that's the stuff that I can recall.

But there are just so many things in my life that feel like, again, this is the meme that I always cite, which is like, you're the raccoon holding cotton candy, trying to wash it in water, only for it to dissolve and then be like, where the fuck did that go?

That's like so much of what I think my profession entails.

And so like, I have no memory for like, what the f was in the A block today?

I don't know.

That's like where i where it's harmed me in many ways but one of them is professionally recalling

something outside of my emotions about uh sports memory is the way that i know people who are like oh my god i remember it was the seventh inning there were two outs man on first and i'm like

remember that specific now that you're telling it to me i remember it that way but all i remember is like i was i felt anxious i felt so like it was over.

And then the next moment I was relieved of that because it wasn't over because we stayed alive.

I remember that.

I don't ever, unless being reminded of it, I never have that like vivid memory of the thing.

that I feel like is used as the example of like, so you don't like sports?

And I'm like, no, I just don't.

It doesn't work that way up here.

I wish it did.

I wish I liked history class.

I hated it because I could not remember

anything ever.

I'm like, you have to remember all these in order?

How?

No, that's absolutely wild because I don't, I, I don't remember the feeling at all, right?

I might, it might come to me randomly, but I'm never there.

There is only like the camera.

And that is, that is how my memory works.

So it could be very precise in that respect.

But if you ask me at any age how I felt about that thing,

no clue.

Huh?

None.

Yeah.

I could tell you big stuff.

If I saw something big, like I was in the Georgia Dome when it was hit by a tornado during the SEC tournament.

We're hearing some rumbling behind us.

There's some concern.

The building is rocking a bit.

And I do not remember fear at all.

You know, I remember awe.

I remember thinking, this is pretty significant meteorologically.

This is, you know.

Structurally, this is pretty big.

I remember Vern Lundquist sitting next to me going, the f ⁇ is that?

Which is exactly what Vern Lundquist said.

And I was like, that's what you should say at this moment, right?

I remember Bill Rafferty getting under the table and me thinking, do you think that's going to help?

You know, I remember thinking, like,

you know, I remember thinking at that moment.

Onions.

Onions is what Bill Rafferty was like.

I mean,

was lacking in that moment.

You know, Bill was wise because he was taking a margin.

You go, maybe the table will, you know, me, I was like,

I don't know.

We'll die, you know, or we won't.

It's fine.

The formative memories, though, of like,

again, so I have a four-year-old and I'm always wondering, like, what is she going to remember from any of this?

So, of course, like, it gets confused, I believe, with like your photo albums.

And I think photography as it.

That's absolutely.

I feel like I've watched home videos that now I recall those as memories, but it's just because I've watched them.

To Spencer's language of like, it's just the camera.

I think that increasingly, like, because our brain is actually being outsourced to the cloud, we are sort of like outsourcing the process, I fear, of actually remembering, internalizing both details, emotions.

We're sort of like, it'll be there.

We can consult it if we need it.

We can pull it back up to the point where like, I will look at photographs in the modern era and I'll be like, holy shit, I forgot about taking this.

I forgot about the fact that I did that until I just revisited it just now.

Whereas so much of my childhood memory is in like.

the photo album context.

I remember like being at SeaWorld in Florida as a little kid, like putting my finger in like a hole in like a fake like iceberg thing at like one of the displays that they had.

And I'm like, do I remember that?

Or is that just a photo I keep on revisiting?

And I wonder if you guys have, what's like the most vivid thing as your earliest memory that you can recall?

Because that SeaWorld thing is mine.

And I don't even know if I actually remember it or if I just have seen the photo.

like a million times.

That's the thing.

I don't know that I can separate mine from photos like or from stories even.

Like I think I would say one of my earliest memories is like being in my, because we were in a home of the, we were in a home.

It sounded like we're old people.

We lived in one house until I was in first grade.

So it was like, I didn't, I didn't spend a lot of memory time in this house, but I remember it.

So that's how I know that memory must have happened for me before first grade.

But I remember being in that house, like in the kitchen.

I think it's me remembering my grandmother telling me that, in case any kids are listening, I don't want to, but that something isn't real.

And I, and I think that's my first memory, but it's also a story.

So I don't know if it's just a story I've been told that I've painted the picture for myself in my head.

I could not tell you my earliest childhood memory.

I don't know.

Useless.

Spencer, what's your childhood memory, your earliest memory you remember?

It had to be South Carolina, and it had to be 1978.

So that would have put me at about two.

And it was my father.

or my mother, unsure of whose foot it was, but there was a piece of drywall that had a hole for the dryer vent to go through it.

And I remember sitting on the floor of this room and one of my parents playfully putting their foot through the drywall, right?

Like through

the hole and wiggling their toes at me.

And I remember, this is a rare actual emotional memory.

I remember being horrified that there was a human visage, a figure, a disembodied foot coming through the wall.

And me like, so my first memory is like sense horror.

A glory hole, a foot glory hole.

That's not a glory hole for footsies yeah that was my first my first memory was being very hot scared and looking up and seeing a foot coming through the wall at me and going that's not right huh this is why you don't want memories yeah right that taught me nothing about life that taught me nothing about how to be a person it didn't make me better it's just a weird not particularly interesting you know it's not even like a david lynchian kind of story of like i saw a human head on a somewhere.

I feel like a man made me want to be an artist.

I feel like

Spencer, I feel like a more manipulative therapist could spin that story into something that feels like

an explainer for who.

Yeah, look, I don't, I don't know how you, where you stand, no pun intended, on feet.

But if there were to be a proclivity of some type, we could probably trace it back.

I will tell you, no and no.

Yeah, no, no, no, not my, not my thing.

No, at all.

Cool.

But, but, yeah, like, I don't want that memory.

I, if you you just said, hey, do you just want to go ahead and eject that?

I'd be like, yeah, take it.

I feel like we may have just had a breakthrough with Spencer, though, as to why he doesn't like feet.

Okay.

Try to unsing that song.

Talk more about that.

Yeah.

Tell me a little bit.

Let's close it.

Let's speak more about that.

The topic that I brought today, because I was looking for what's the Venn diagram between the three of us beyond, obviously, our collective hatred of the foot.

Right.

It's video games.

And I've been finding myself doing a thing that is implausible, I think,

for me once upon a time, which is not playing the thing, but just watching someone play the thing.

And the thing has been Elden Ring, the DLC, the downloadable content.

Nice.

Why are you pointing at me?

Because I taught you what DLC was.

But there's an expansion pack is what I used to call it.

And it's really hard.

And Elden, can one of you guys explain Elden Ring?

So I didn't play it.

Did you play it, Spencer?

Yeah, and I'm terrible at it.

Okay, you explained it.

Absolutely terrible.

But if I had to put it, it would be like decaying medieval otherworldly environment inhabited by a series of increasingly powerful ass-kicking monsters that you have to fight.

Sounds right to me.

That's what I've been watching is people fight demons.

Yeah.

And getting routinely destroyed in one genre, but the other genre is after 17,000 hours, I finally defeated the demon.

And I'm like, I love this.

I don't know why I love this shit.

I just love watching someone else fight a demon in this bizarre medieval universe full of mythological characters.

When you watch it, are you

almost breaking down tape?

Are you noticing, oh, he does that right sidestep there?

I could see how that's why he would employ that move against, or are you just watching it like it's happening before you?

I hadn't thought about this until just now, but it is kind of like how I feel about watching football analysis at a high level.

Yeah.

I don't know any of this shit.

I'm never going to use this shit.

I'm mostly just trying to figure out, is this person actually good at this?

And if they are, I become fascinated, even though that language is not one I will ever learn.

I will never play this video game.

I will never play football or coach football, but I will listen to like these extensive breakdowns and strategy sessions in the way that I will watch this video game streamer because I'm like, this feels impressive to me now.

And I don't know if I'm being conned by something, if I'm an idiot, or if I'm like an aspirational person who's just, you know, constipated with this.

Playing Spider-Man with you for five seconds,

you weren't really a

how best to deploy the tools given to you.

You weren't like,

I'm just a kid out there.

You weren't like, in this scenario,

I have three different types of webs, and it would probably be best for me to employ the one because I am facing many enemies at once.

It would be best for me to use the web that draws in multiple enemies to one spot so I can then use my L1 to then unleash an attack that will affect them all because they've all been brought to me.

You weren't thinking that way.

You were like, I have this.

I have this.

I have this.

You were kind of just deploying.

I'm Brett Favre after my dad died.

And I feel like I'm just like throwing bombs and it's going to work and I'm going to feel like the greatest football player of all time.

I think people who play Elden Ring do, because this was, I like a hard boss fight, but I can't have an entire video game of hard boss fights.

And my understanding of Elden Ring, which to be clear, is just

by being on chat, because every night I get on chat with my brother and a bunch of his friends and sometimes we'll all be playing the same game sometimes we're all playing different games and one of them or two of them are playing or we're playing Elden Ring and just listening to them get their asses kicked every single night I was like this isn't for me because I like a hard boss fight right example the Valkyries in God of War I like having to figure out the way this lady moves do I get frustrated so frustrated but once you unlock the o as soon as she yells that annoying phrase, what that means is that she's coming on your right and you're going to have to step to your left and then hit this button or like employ this shield specifically because it'll stop her from, once you figure that out, you're like, ooh, I'm the man.

You're a puzzle solver.

You can't tell me shit.

I just figured all you were very difficult and now you're easy.

Now I can walk through you.

But then I have to go do other stuff.

And I'm like, let me go make a potion.

Let me go collect a bunch of gold coins.

Let me go answer a riddle.

I cannot just sit and go, like, now that I've beat this boss, let me go boss again immediately.

It's too much.

I just realized now I'm just Leroy Jenkins.

Ready, guys.

Let's do this.

Leroy

Jenkins.

Oh my God, he just ran in.

I will watch you develop a plan.

When I'm in there, I'm f ⁇ ing mashing these buttons.

Yeah.

Like, I will either, my two, the two versions of myself that I am most familiar with in video games are

open world player who's not doing any missions.

I'm familiar with that.

Just a leg.

Oh, yeah.

No, ID.

Let's, brother, let's speak on it.

Yeah, absolutely.

You want to know how many intentionally unfinished Red Dead 2 save files I have?

This is blasphemy.

You're talking to a completionist.

This is blasphemy.

I mean, no, I will, no, I will, I will, there will be one totally complete thing.

Okay, good.

That's fine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You have to get me into the

hunter-seeker brain pattern, which I have super strong, but I can't direct it.

So, in other words, I will be a completionist, but only for the thing I really care about.

So, for instance, I have never, ever, ever completed the fishing in Red Dead.

Never.

But you know what?

I spent a good 72 hours of actual life energy doing.

Collecting the trophy.

Harvesting every trophy and every animal

so that my boy could put that shit on.

That jack bar was hard.

Arthur needed the swaggiest Western gear because if he was going to die, he was going to die looking floppy.

That bear hat was a gateway drug.

The second you unlocked that, you were like, I need them all now.

I need to go get all of them.

Yeah.

I was mostly punching horses.

Yeah, you punched a lot of horses.

Katie and I would play Red Dead and I would just punch horses.

Yeah.

This is also an acceptable use of the game.

There's no right or wrong way to play.

That's right.

I was, look, it was, it was the Montessori school school of Red Dead Redemption.

Right.

I'm just like,

let me play over here in the corner.

I will be banned from every town because I'm just punching horses.

You were an outlaw, you know.

And you never paid off your whatever.

Five-star level GTA equivalent.

Like, I have the cops chasing me in every possible village.

But so what is it for you then watching?

people play videos because I don't do that.

So I think there's something.

It might just be my age.

No, I think there's something here because you're a puzzle solver and you're like, I want to go do this myself.

I'm like, I find that impressive, but left to my own devices, I'm just not going to do it, but I will find it

admirable.

I will watch someone else do it.

I'm just never going to have the discipline to do it myself.

Way to go.

But if you're watching somebody do it, wouldn't you rather just go do it?

Not that shit.

Yeah.

So for instance, I.

My kids turn me on to a lot of games because they'll watch these videos of their favorite streamers playing them.

And I will watch them because a lot of them are games that I think I could enjoy, but honestly, honestly simply do not have the time.

There is a game called My Summer Car.

My Summer Car is a rally car simulator, but it's also a Finland simulator.

So imagine if you had to build a car and you had to actually put every part together.

That's what it is.

It's tedious.

You have to learn to put together a car in actual virtual parts.

from the floor up.

I'm never, ever going to do that.

Ever, right?

Additionally, there are a thousand ways to die in this game because your character who is building this requires maintenance like a sim, like a ton of games.

Oh, like you have to feed it and go to bed and wash it.

Right.

And you can die by being stung to death by wasps.

You can actually pee in the game.

And if you pee on a TV, you die because it electrocutes you.

As everyone knows, pee on a TV, you're dead.

You have to pay your bills in the game.

So sometimes the lights go off in your house.

I'm lost now.

I'm out.

For that reason, I am lost.

That's where it loses me.

I'll just go live my life.

But I can watch a streamer play it.

Yeah.

And it's absolutely hilarious.

That's the best pitch I've been given to pique my interest of watching somebody deal with the annoyance of a game that I wouldn't want to be annoyed by.

Some 24-year-old in Melbourne just spent 120 hours playing this, and they boiled it down to a 27-minute YouTube video for my pleasure.

Perfect.

Thank you, Martin Cito Pants.

I really appreciate it.

Perfect.

That's another part of it, though, is that it's the distillation of like, get to the good parts

where the parts that I find interesting, and I can find them and not have to, like, it's just so much work.

Yeah.

So, but Katie likes, I feel like you like doing some amount of work when it comes to, so what do you what are you playing right now that no one else gives a f about?

No one cares.

So you can skip to your next podcast now.

But

this is a video game.

It's called the Talos Principle.

I'm actually currently playing Talos Principle 2.

It's like logic.

puzzles, but basically the conceit of the game is that you're doing the LSAT.

You're doing the LSAT

a robot, an AI being that has come after humanity.

Humanity's done.

You are the future evolution of humanity.

It's them coming into consciousness trying to figure out what happened to humanity and what of humanity they're supposed to take with them and what they're supposed to leave behind.

So it's like...

AI grappling with the concept of love and AI grappling with the concept of art.

And all of that is just like you're walking up to terminals in between puzzles because the puzzles are all in different rooms.

You're basically just walking between different rooms.

But in the meantime, if you want, you can go up to this computer terminal and it'll give you like an excerpt of like a

poem or it'll give you like a you read all those and you read, yeah, because that's this game, it's just puzzles and that.

There's no other, you're not really interacting with anybody else.

There's no story unless you make one.

And it's, I find it really interesting because it's like poems and books and stuff, kind of what you were just saying, get to the good part.

I'd love to be a person who has read like all of these old classic, great novels, but I'm not going to to be able to read them all and so if you're going to tell me that actually in the concept of where you are in this video game there's a relevant passage from one of the classics that i think would really hit right now and we put it in this computer for you so you can just read that and then go try to figure out how to get the red light from the red light source to the where it needs to go without crossing the blue light it's fascinating and so they just had a bunch of dlc and i like when the dlc is like

girthy i like when it's like it's a three-part dlc you like so you're like you're not gonna blow through it right away

a downloadable show yeah you like yeah i like well the links can be there too i like it to have i don't like when you pay 20 bucks for dlc and you're like oh i did it and it's done and it's if it's free and it's quick fine but if i'm paying money for it i want it to be like almost like a second game to get me through until you come out with a new game Two thoughts.

One, this reminds me of a game that actually scared me and I think radicalized me me into wanting to be the open world's horse puncher, which was Mist.

Oh, you remember Mist?

Yeah, I never played it, but yeah.

You remember Mist?

Yeah, 100%.

Yes, I do.

And I have to say that this leads, I'm going to jump.

This is why I was a terrible math student.

I'm going to skip eight steps and get to the conclusion to draw from this, which is that guides are good and you should use guides.

And it will increase your enjoyment of the game if you use a help guide, because I understand wanting to rawdog the entire game and puzzle wise if you want to be that person but uh you're here for enjoyment yeah that's what it comes this is the speech i give myself before i finally google a hint where i'm like you're not a bad person you're here for play you don't have to be perfect all the time yeah you don't have to be perfect you don't have to do it somebody already did this for you this is not the time in your life when you want to go ahead and be Lisa Simpson and demand to be graded and perfect.

That's just not, it's not why you're here.

You're here to zone out.

You got the rest of your life to go do that other hard shit.

Absolutely.

So go ahead.

I listen, somebody, whoever wrote The Breath of the Wild Guide and Polygon.

Oh my God.

Bless you.

Bless you forever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What did we find out today, guys?

We're on the show, Copatory Finds Out.

We find out things, revisit traumas.

Michelin is Michelin.

They're the same thing.

That was a big revelation.

That's a big one for me because I think I've had that question mark for a long time.

But then here's what I've also learned: I'm going to need to relearn that because I will forget.

And later in life, I'll ask, Are those the same, Michelin and Michelin?

And someone will have to go, You then Katie Nolan Gifts will go, You've actually already learned this.

You learned this on this specific day.

He's on the downloadable showed episode.

Imagine having somebody else having the memory of your life that you don't have.

And you're like, I am insufficient.

How do you have a memory for this?

I don't.

So that's what I learned.

Spencer?

Yeah.

I think we learned that Katie might be happier for not having an accurate memory.

And that's something I'm trying to carry.

I'm trying to carry forward.

Trying to forget more stuff.

Yeah.

I feel like what I learned as I exclaimed,

unprompted, I am Brett Favre.

Indeed exclaimed.

That I found a way in which I relate to one of the worst people in all sports.

Well, it's one of the better ways to relate, I guess.

There's a lot of bad ways you could have related, and I'm glad that you don't relate in those ways.

I also learned that Spencer wants to tongue kiss, the polygon.com author who wrote The Breath of the Wild.

I did.

I learned, I had that confirmed for me today, but I could have guessed.

I feel like I had an inkling.

Oh, listen, one of the great works of literature of all time.

Also, today we learned in a podcast that will be Pablo's least listened to podcast ever, the future follow-up.

The What Warhammer faction is Pablo.

Pablo, buddy, I'm going to show you.

What?

You?

You're an orc.

You're an orc.

Zero thought, instant punching, no aim, roll the dice.

That's what you are.

How are those?

How are those calves looking, though?

How are those orc calves?

Hopping.

Rip, daddy.

Jacked.

Green and jacked.

And completely without a single single troubling thought in their heads.

Listen, this is your faction, baby.

Yeah, green, jacked, and sculpted lovingly by Spetzer Hall is exactly what I want my calves to resemble.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark Media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.