Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Tell & Forget with Spencer Hall and Katie Nolan

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Is it better to remember or forget? Why do luxury car companies compete at Le Mans, a 24-hour race in a French town? And why do you watch streams of video games like Elden Ring (even if you’ll never play them)? Also: Michelin, Mongolia, core memories, downloadable chodes, and, as always, horse-punching.Further reading:I Have a Terrible Memory. Am I Better Off That Way? (Katy Schneider) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 footsie's. Yeah. You're listening to Draft Kings Network. I'm embarrassed to report that it took me to like two years ago, I feel like, to realize this. Mm-hmm. Fibn, Michelin. That's the same people with the rest. 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. Yamaha's name is on the dirt bike that you've ever seen being driven by some hill jack 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 fucking Yamaha. Katie, I've been learning about how the same company that makes Yamaha pianos, makes Yamaha motorcycles. I assumed. I didn't. You thought there were two different Yamaha.

I did. Not even divisions of the same company, you thought? Unlike everybody else, I presume that all don't look same. Okay. It turns out that they are. To go along with this Yamaha, Yamaha conversation you were having, tires and star, same Michelin or different? That's how we got into it.

Same thing. Yeah. Naturally related, if you think about, I sell tires, we go places on those tires. When I go to those places, might want to bite to eat. Yeah. Might want to know that it's good. Might want to just sell them together. I guess naturally related.

It feels like a very stone pitch that a Michelin executive gave once. Yeah. I was like, now why 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 to the time? Were we all in Europe? Yeah, everybody was in France. Everybody, I mean, I feel like that, how do you say it right again? again?

Khan. I thought it was can is the right way. Yeah, you would. Khan. 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. Yeah, exactly. I was at where 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 Khan, 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 expense paid? It was 30 minutes. Oh, tough work. With Alex Honnold, who was awesome. Free solo guy. Free solo guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God, he makes my pomp sweat.

Legitimately fascinating guy, loved talking to him, 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 any ropes or harnesses was in the same place as Elon Musk. Elon, you keep saying that. He was there? He was actually there.

He rolled through this place, Sport Beach. Yeah. And I knew that because people start, because I believe Carmelo Anthony while holding a glass of wine and said, yo, what up Elon from the stage. And there is Elon Musk as he is making his way. Hello, 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 mascot shield. The new one? The one he just had? All looks same. Don't know which one of us. Yeah, he doesn't know.

He can't know. Don't know what serial number. They're named numbers as well. I don't know. Yeah, all Wi-Fi passwords. Does he drive one of those? I could. I honestly could not see.

the car over the palisade of humans who were just like photographing him. Ew. Yeah. Spencer was not doing that. The car-related experience that Spencer Hall had, I do want to get to, Spencer. What the fuck were you doing in France? Great question. I was there for at the behest of Michelin for a piece that I was going to do in Channel 6 and did do, which you can read on my newsletter, which you should absolutely pay for, because 100% not a. AI. What can you say that about on the internet? This is flawed. There are typos and original thoughts for better or worse, all in my newsletter done with my partner, Holly Anderson. The greatest woman on earth. The human element. The human element. The greatest woman on earth. Love Holly.

So I was there for Lamont. Lamont 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 galaxy spirit is strong. Just to get a sense of 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.

Just throw out of 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 track, I think, is the total distance. Sounded bigger when you said it. So 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've 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. This also feels like it's connected to like the luck. 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 lab. Eleven. 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 the kind of look joloppy-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, no, you're good. You're good. You're going to skid to a halt. But it'll be fine. We'll win. Three drivers, shifts of two hours each.

And they just tear ass the whole time. Wait, shifts to 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 frum, frum, 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, 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 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 1 p.m., you must be here, or it will be impossible for you to eat.

And you show up at 1255 and no one seat you until 115, right? 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, you know, a puddle's worth. And they'll complain about it's not enough. And the Italians are like, and in true to form, 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'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. F-1, the stereotype is that they're these dysfunctional geniuses who have, like, a magnificent history and the most beautiful car, and sometimes they have put a banana peel onto the tire when they should have put a tire. And in World Endurance Racing, on it, 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 Lambo and pitched it next to the Lamborghini. So if you're wondering how French, how Italian, how English, whether national stereotypes

remain true, yeah, 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 everybody would be to tourists, to Americans.

I found every French person I encountered, maybe because I was at an advertising festival of creativity. Yeah, they knew that it was coming. But it was, they were so nice. Yeah, let's, 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. The plage de sport. Other stereotypes, which I believe should be honored in, validated. The to-go baguette. Oh, yeah. Walking baguette? Yeah, walking baguette. You got to get the baguette as you go. Had that baguette on them. Maybe eat it as you're walking. And then as what we saw, you know the little water bottle pocket on a 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? 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 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, the time changed this time. 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 check baggage, I was carrying in my lap, and it appeared to be a very uncool laptop bag. My CPAP machine. Sick. You need a Louie 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 entire night.

So you got to France and then had to find distilled water? Yeah. 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 fight this. 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 there. My plan was to stay up through that next day and then go to bed a little early that night because the next day my call time was at 5 a.m. Which was already going to screw me up. So it's like I could not figure out when 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 was going to say best friends, but I halted myself. D.K. Matt Caff and I are good friends. What?

Yeah. That's my, that's my dude. Yeah, that's my guy. I was going to ask, does anything help you with JetLack? Like, when you're in the spot? Because I am a captain thug it out. I will just stay up all day or do. No, nothing's going to work.

Like, I just have to be there and eventually it will click. I have no shortcuts. Nothing really works. That's the thing. I went to sleep at, like, I don't know, probably 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. 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 approached. like how to do his travel on 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 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 be in 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, archery, or open country horse racing.

Open country horse racing. There's no real options in Mongolia besides open country, really. It's not like you go to a track. They have a track in Ulan Batar, but like... That's the capital. You're going to just race over open territory, right? Just usually like these kids who are in high school and they just get out there and just let rip and I wanted to go do that and I 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 oh well you should go to one in the sticks 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 yes those podcasts if you want to know what an extraordinary human being he is I said, hey, just called him up, hey, do you want to go to Mongolia? And the answer was yes. Whose car are we taken? 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 DDTed 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 going to be a lot of learning. Katie, what did you bring us today?

Oh, 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 is in the cut, and it's not just an essay about something crazy that somebody did

that then we can all yell about. out 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. I'm a marriage counselor who killed her husband.

Yeah, oops, I was being scant. Oops, all scams. So I'm now trying to find it because this is where I fail. It's like I had it. This feels germane to the topic. Katie Schneider. Okay, I wanted to get the name of the woman who wrote the article. 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 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, is 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 the test fell 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, 1,000 percent. 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 shit, 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, like, that came later, I guess, in my life. so I don't think that my memory issues are as tied to it. It'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.

We're like, short-term memory is like literal for me. 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 just completed something that I have not done. But it's less about like what happened last week in 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 honest, as we all are, always. all the time, on a spectrum of things. But like, scientifically in 2015, there was a research paper which identified S-D-A-M, 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 H-S-A-M, highly superior autobiographical memory, of course, the remembrerers. 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. An 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.

Nothing. He was like, see guys. throw ball. Tom Brady, it feels like, would be a rememberer. Dan Marino, though, a different way to accomplish quarterbacking 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, fucking send it in. Nope. I don't want to see you.

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 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 old 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 Stuckies 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 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? 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 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 taped it.

And he was like, what did 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, we just 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 fuck it was in the A block today?

I don't know. That's like where it's harmed me in many ways, but one of them is professionally recalling something outside of my emotions about sports memory is the way that I know people who are like, oh my God, 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 a lot. 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, do you have to remember all these in order? How? No, that's absolutely wild because I don't remember the feeling at all, right? It might come to me randomly, but I'm never there. There is only like the camera. And 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. when it was hit by a tornado during the SEC tournament.

You'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 all. 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 fuck is that? which is exactly what Verlunquist 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 is what Bill Raverty 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... 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 the 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 sea world 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 early. memories is like being in my, because we were in a home, we were in a home, we're old people. We lived in one house until I was in first grade. So it was like, 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 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 to 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 dry wall, 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. 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 memory was being very hot. Scared. And looking up and seeing a foot coming to 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 Lin, Lynchian kind of story of like, I saw a human head on a post somewhere. I feel like a, I feel like a, Spencer, I feel like a more manipulative therapist could spin that story into something that feels like an explainer for who you became. 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 to.

I will tell you, no and no. Oh, shit. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no my, no, no my thing. No, at all. Cool. But yeah, I don't want that memory. If you just said, like, 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. So that what they do. Tell me a little bit.

Let's speak more about that. The topic that I brought today, because I was looking for it, 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 Eldon Ring. The DLC, the downloadable content. Nice. Why are you pointing at me? Because I taught you what DLC was. Katie taught me with DLC beats.

But there's an expansion pack is what I used to call it. And it's really hard. And one of you guys explain Eldon Ring, actually? So I didn't play it. Did you play it, Or? Yeah, and I'm terrible at it.

Okay, you explain 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.

thousand hours. I finally defeated the demon. And I'm like, I love this. I don't know why I love this. 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 side step 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. 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 dare you? What? How dare you? You weren't really planning 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 Fav after my dad died. 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 Eldon 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 Eldon 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, Eldon 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, oh, 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 you.

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 you're a puzzle solver you can't tell me 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 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 beat this button i'm Let me go boss again immediately. It's too much. I just realized now I'm just Leroy Jenkins.

All right, ready guys? Let's do this. Leroy! Oh my God, he just ran in. I will watch you develop a plan. When I'm in there, I'm fash in these buttons. Yeah.

Like I will either, my 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. Oh yeah, no, I D. 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, 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. Hunting the trophies? And harvesting every trophy and every animal so that my boy could put that shit on. That jar bar was hard. Arthur needed the swaggiest Western gear because if he was going to die, he was going to die looking fly. 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. This is also an acceptable use of the game. There's no right or wrong way to play. That's right.

It was the Montessori School of Red Dead 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, yeah. And you never paid off your whatever's. 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 video games? Because I don't do that. So I think there's something here. 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 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. Way too much work. But if you're watching somebody do it, wouldn't you rather just go do it? Not that shit. Yeah. So, for instance, 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, 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 Tomoguchi. You have to feed it and go to bed and wash it?

Right. And you could 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 out. 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 peak 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. Thank you, Martin Cito Pants. I really appreciate that. That's another part of it, though, is that it's the distillation of like, get to the good parts. Yeah. Or 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 are you playing right now that no one else gives a fuck 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 concede of the game is that you're a... You're doing the L-SAT? You're 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 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 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 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 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. when it's like it's a three-part DLC, so you're not going to blow through it right away. The C's a downloadable show. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, the length 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 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 into wanting to be the open world horse puncher, which was missed. Oh, yeah. Remember Miss? I never played it, but yeah. Spencer, you remember missed? 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 raw dog the entire game and puzzle-wise if you want to be that person. But you're here for enjoyment. Yeah, that's what it comes to.

This is the speech I give myself before I finally Google a hint. I'm like, you're not a bad person. You're here for play. You don't have to be perfect all the time. 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. Like, 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 arch shit. So go ahead. I, listen, somebody, whoever wrote the Breath of the Wild Guide at Polygon. Oh, my God. Bless you.

I will kiss you forever. Yeah. Yeah. What did we find out today, guys? We're on the show, Calabla Tori Finesette. 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 is that 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, then Katie Nolan Gifts will go, you've actually already learned this. You learned this on this specific day. Who'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 forward.

Trying to forget more stuff. Yeah. I feel like what I learned, as I exclaimed, unprompted, I am Brett Farrv. You did exclaim. That I found a way in which I relate to one of the words people in all the 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, played your guy. 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 of, that will be Pablo's least listened to podcast ever,

the future follow-up. The What Warhammer Faction is Pablo? Pablo, buddy? I want to show you. What? You? You're an ork. You're an arc.

Zero thought, instant punching, no aim. Roll the dice. That's what you are. How are those calves looking, though? How are those orc calves? Hoping. Rip, daddy. Jacked.

Green and jacked. And complete, without a single troubling thought in their heads. Listen, this is your faction, baby. Yeah. Green, jacked, and sculpted lovingly by Spencer. Hall is exactly what I want my calves to resemble. This has been Pablo Torre finds out

a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.