Upgrade - 363: Our App Is a Game Now

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

This week Myke and Jason join Netflix in pretending to be gamers while cable TV channels pretend to be streaming services. We also ponder a smarter Apple display, and Apple has designs on fancy Hollywood real estate. And Myke goes to the Streaming Services as we discuss "Loki" and the first episode of "Ted Lasso."

From RelayFM, this is Upgrade, episode 363, and today's show is brought to you by Calm, Fitbod, Hello, and Bombus. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. How are you? I am fine and dandy, my friend. Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. How are you? I am fine and dandy, my friend. How are you?

I'm good. You know, it's Monday morning, so I'm waking up, but that's what Upgrade is for. It wakes me up. It makes me ready to start my week. I have a hashtag Snell talk question for you from Marlies who asks, who is your favorite AFC Richmond player? Oh, the Ted Lasso question to start. I love it.

As we entered season two of Ted Lasso. I'm going to say Sam. I love Sam. I love Sam too, but football is life, my friend. Well, the obvious answer is Danny Rojas, Danny Rojas,

but I like Sam. There you go. Sam is a quieter character, but I love his uh growth and uh his uh there are some great scenes between him and ted in season one and i like it uh all time it's roy kent obviously all time afc richmond he's here right he's great he's everywhere i wonder if we were also gonna do it we didn't do it that That's great. We are actually going to be talking about Ted Lasso later on in today's episode. For the summer of fun, we're doing two Mike at the Movie segments today.

What? We're going to talk about Loki. Neither of which are about movies. Yep. Mike at the television. Mike at the mumble, mumble, mumble. Mike at the streaming services. Mass, which is weird.

Matt's. Matt's. Mike at the streaming services. Getting weird all the time. We're going to talk about Loki, and we're going to talk about Ted Lasso, season two, episode one. So we're going to be a little later on.

If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question to help us open the show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk or use question mark Snell Talk in the RelayFM members Discord. Follow up, Jason Snell. Apple have delayed their return to the office for their employees

by at least a month due to rising COVID cases spurred on by Delta variant so this is reported by Bloomberg basically at this point they're going to be giving a month's notice as to when any return will be due but it's not going to happen

any time before, I think they said, sorry, it's expected to happen sometime possibly in October. This is what was suggested in rumors, but it's not going to be happening for the time being. This, I mean, could possibly, I've seen some people say this could possibly give them time if they wanted to rethink any of their policies in general because they've been under fire for some of the policies that they've had but nevertheless it's being delayed like many things are always constantly yeah i think it's i don't know it they may the time may give them the opportunity to revisit things. But I think the truth is that if Apple's cultural approach to work is going to change, it's probably going to change being forged in the fires of being back to work and having people resist and not sort of like before that happens.

So this may just put off whatever reckoning is going to happen rather than precipitate a new one. That's my guess. So let's turn our attention now to Upstream, where we look at some of the news in streaming video services. CNN has announced CNN+. This happened last week, but I think we had too much to put in the show. CNN will be hiring hundreds of people to create brand new programming that will exist side by side

with their existing television network. They're looking at about eight hours of daily programming, effectively creating a second video TV network. They will not be able to share content between them launching in 2022. Can you try and explain to people, maybe especially those who don't really, maybe not in America can you try and explain to people maybe especially

those who don't really maybe not in america don't pay attention to cnn what on earth they're doing here because it's weird we talked about this briefly and the idea here is why is some stuff not on streaming why are some organizations when everybody is barreling toward this streaming future some things are not on streaming and this is a great example. CNN is owned by Warner Media because it's one of the Turner assets that was in the Time Warner purchase of Turner. And so Warner Media owns CNN. And Warner Media, as we've detailed here across many, many months, has gone all in on HBO Max for streaming. And CNN's not on HBO Max. Why is that?

What are they doing? The answer is, and this is the reason why ESPN proper isn't on ESPN Plus, right? There's an ESPN Plus. It does not contain ESPN unless you're a cable subscriber and you log in. But like, if you just, if you're a cord cutter and you just pay for ESPN Plus, you don't see what's on ESPN, the channel.

And the reason is the cable TV business model. The reason is that CNN makes a huge amount of money from every single cable subscription because the cable companies are paying a certain amount of money per subscriber for CNN or for the Turner package of channels. And this is all just, this is how in a pre-streaming world, this is how it worked. This is how the money worked is you paid your cable company and then your pay, your cable company paid pennies or dollars, depending ESPN is actually, I think the most expensive, but you don't get a chance. It's not all a cart. Like they cut up your bill and they send, you know,

this money to these guys and this money to these guys, and that's how they bundle together their programming. So we can debate the intelligence or stupidity of the cable bundle, but it's kind of irrelevant now because it's all going away. Except that if you run CNN and you say, we should do a streaming service version of CNN, or I guess step one would be, why don't we take CNN and put it on streaming? And the answer is, well, we've got these contracts with cable companies that generate billion dollars a year or more for us. And so we can't, we can't, because we will kill this enormous revenue stream, which is the money we get from cable. And I don't know the details of the CNN contract, it seems to me, because you could potentially offer, this is what HBO did, right? HBO did HBO Now and basically sold HBO outside

of the cable bundle. But HBO was a premium. So it was not being bundled in with regular cable. You had to pay extra for it. And then that money went to HBO. This is on a, you know, just standard like literally everybody who gets cable gets CNN and they get the money from it. So it's probably true that they can't offer it on streaming or they'll lose a huge amount of money. What's funny

is that it's driven them to this. It's driven them to create CNN Plus. Great name, guys. Great name. We did it. Job done. Everybody knock off early. Take a long weekend. I think we have passed the point where Upgrade Plus seems like a joke. Like, it was a joke about, like,

how silly it is to name something plus, but now it just feels like it's just the name. And so, like, we've passed that event horizon now, where obviously Upgrade Plus would be the logical name rather than the joke name remember peacock

peacock plus that happened so here's what they're doing and I fully expect that other other companies will do something like this I'm actually surprised that there is not a linear live ESPN plus it,

that it's just, it's just kind of on demand content. I'm, and maybe it's not necessary because ESPN, for those who are not, I'm an ESPN plus subscriber. The brilliance of ESPN plus is they take all of the, it's not,

it's not like sports center 24 hours a day. They take all of these sports that are not high profile enough to be on their three, four linear cable channels. There are a lot of ESPNs and they just put them on ESPN Plus simultaneously, right? Because it's not linear. So you can put like 40 college baseball games on simultaneously and it just doesn't matter because it's on ESPN plus it's a streaming service, pick what you want. It's a very different thing, but there is something to the kind of like what's happening now, the quest for what's happening now. So I'm a little surprised there isn't 24 hour a day sports center on ESPN plus, but CNN is going to do this. CNN is going to,

is going to build a parallel CNN for streaming called CNN Plus. They're going to hire a bunch of people. It's going to run, again, in parallel, a different world of CNN. And because they can't take the CNN content, they got to make their own. That said, I would predict that what's going to start happening, because this streaming service is going to be important to them is that they're going to start using their talent across if their shows don't. starring their incredibly popular host, Wolf Blitzer. Let's say Wolf Blitzer. He's a real guy. He's got the Situation Room.

Well, I'm going to make this a real thing. The Situation Room, and it goes for two hours a day, and it's got Wolf Blitzer on it. I would not be surprised if, like, one of those hours goes to CNN Plus at some some point or there's another show called beltway blitzer that follows the situation room but is on the other network i i just i don't know what the legal issues are here in terms of how they can take their talent and all that but i if you're building a parallel cnn i do wonder if you effectively are going to sort of like half

program both of them in order to get your stars on the other side so you can create seriously you can create a new replica of cnn but for streaming in order to keep that sweet sweet cable money coming in while also building a streaming brand it's silly it's ridiculous but this is the kind of thing that a corporation is going to do if there's a really large amount of money that they need to protect, but they don't want- There's still money to be made, right? There's money, and future growth opportunity is all on the other side. It's a short way, a long way of saying the short version is it's the innovator's dilemma, right? Which is they've got an existing brand that throws off huge amounts of cash and it's obviously not the future what do you do you can

milk that one great what about the future and you can ignore the future and then die or you can create something new for the future and they probably should have done this as is often the case with the innovators dilemma they probably should have done this five years ago but and in fact some of their competitors did nbc news has a streaming channel cbs news has a streaming channel abc news has a streaming channel like there are fox news has its own pay streaming service like uh cnn uh kind of weird weirdly late to the game here um i i understand why because of all the money that's bound up in those cable contracts. But this shows you, I think this is the perfect story in showing you what an absurd place we're currently in, in terms of television.

That they are going to build a second CNN that is, well, there's headline news, so it's like an additional CNN, yet another CNN, that's going to be the same as CNN. Like, it's going to be the same, but different. Because they want to do both, and they can't just do what the logical thing would be, which is just offer CNN. Nope, can't do that. So instead, put a plus on it. That'll be great. Let's do that. Put a plus on it.

Apple is hiring an engineer to be a part of a team called Apple Sports. This is a role based in New York and part of the TV app services team. A quote from this is, we are looking for an outstanding full stack software engineer to join the Apple TV sports team and help us build the next generation

of products that change the way millions of fans experience and consume sports. We don't know what this means, but I've never heard Apple Sports before. Yeah, this is Apple TV Sports. This, to me, is confirmation that Apple, we don't know what they're going to do. We've talked about it here, but we don't know what they're going to do. But Apple is very much interested in the idea of live sports as a possible future for their streaming service. That live sports is one of those areas that as the cable cord cutting picks up the pace,

right, as that continues, you're going to start to see the economics of... Right now, sports TV contracts are inflated because cable companies wanted to use live sports as a way to keep people paying for cable we are very rapidly moving to a new world where sports contracts are still inflated but they're inflated by streaming services wanting to bid on them so that they'll get you to subscribe to their streaming service and uh we've seen the stories about apple sort of sniffing around some different sports properties the pac-12 network uh nfl sunday ticket and i don't know whether any of those will come to fruition but it looks to me

like they're they're building their own version of BAM Media, which was the thing that started at Major League Baseball and then got bought by Disney. That is the basis of Disney's sort of streaming infrastructure, which includes, and it's not just Disney+, it's ESPN. It's a live streaming infrastructure as well. And I think that that is clearly what Apple is working on here. The more I think about it, the more I think that

when we were talking about NFL Sunday ticket, I wonder if we're actually looking at an additional Apple TV plus service, like an additional Apple service that's a sports streaming service that might be separate from the entertainment streaming service, right? It seems harder to pull off yeah you can't create your own sports like you can create your own tv shows you know yeah but you can you can uh you can buy i mean this is what espn plus is is you're buying rights and putting them together for uh sports and then you just need enough to get people in the door i don't know apple's got so much money

that that it's it's i i think a little less... For Disney, it's a fundamental part of their business. This is how they're going to make money. For Apple, it's more like an ancillary part of their business. So Apple's business model considerations are way more complex here. But this job posting was one of those things that made me sit up and be like, ah, that's a great indicator of where Apple is going here. We don't know what those sports will be. They don't maybe even know what those sports would be. But Apple is focusing on this infrastructure team for sports.

And why sports? And the answer is it's because it's live. When they release Ted Lasso, they release it at midnight Pacific on a Thursday night, Friday morning, which means that as the day goes on across the globe, people watch it kind of spread over 24 hours or they get to it the next day or the day after that or whatever. Live Sports is live 100% viewers watching in the moment and they want it to be rock solid. 100% viewers watching in the moment and they want it to be rock solid. And it's just a very different set of standards for how you do streaming media to do live sports. So that's the tip off here. Apple, I think, is serious about live sports. We just don't know what they will be yet.

But they're going to have to build an infrastructure for it anyway. And that looks like that's what they're doing. You mentioned a minute ago that they can do kind of whatever they want because they have so much money. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Apple is looking to acquire large studio space in L.A. for their Apple Studios-based content. They're looking for half a million square feet for multiple TV shows and movies that can be made concurrently. Currently, right now in LA, it's becoming increasingly difficult to rent space. So Apple has just decided they're going to own it. Peak TV has actually really changed this. It sounds like the state of California signed some sort of subsidy thing too that is in part the goal is to increase the amount of studio space that's available in the LA area for shooting.

I did see somebody speculated that maybe Apple should buy Sony pictures just to get their lot. Just to get the space. At a certain point, it might become cheaper to buy an entire company than to try and find half a million square feet. Because the way that the Wall Street Journal reports it is that Apple ideally would like to set this up as effectively a campus in LA that's theirs. Well, Apple's already got, so they've got their TV offices are in Santa Monica.

They've also got their fitness studio, which is, I think, in that general vicinity. So like Apple is already- They have stuff in Culver City too, right? Yeah, so they're spending a lot of money on resources in LA for this part of the business. So yeah, I'm sure they would love it if they could just build their own LA campus

that had studio space and offices for their execs and all of that stuff. Like if they're, if this is a long-term play for them, then what, what, this is just another version of that same old Apple story, right? Which is Apple wants to control what it can control of its own stuff. And renting space out has got to be uncomfortable for Apple, even if it's a thing you do. And honestly, the guys who run Apple TV plus who were sony executives by the way like they are they used to have their own studio space at sony so now they don't um i don't know we'll see where this goes but uh but yeah it it's apple has not been doing this that long and they're

already like we would like to own some studio space now we don't want to rent anymore john stewart has also posted the first teaser for his upcoming show on apple tv plus so my expectation is this is like a sketch that they made i don't think it's ever going to be used in the show it's a teaser in the sense that is it is a comedy sketch it's a a topical comedy sketch that their writers came up with that they thought would be a great way to get attention on the Internet. Yeah. And remind people that Jon Stewart's show is coming to Apple TV+. That's what it seems like. It's not like a trailer for what Jon Stewart's show is going to actually be like. It's more like we can gain attention and get people to notice that we're coming back to TV,

that John is coming back to TV by doing a comedy bit on the internet. I imagine the show would include sketches. I would imagine, right? I would imagine. This one mocks the billionaire space race. It's got a pretty star-studded cast. Jason Alexander and Tracy Jordan were in it

which was a surprise to me it wasn't really my style of comedy but I understand why people liked it I don't know it wasn't really my taste but I know it was a lot of penis jokes because it's about the billionaires yeah launching their

phallic rockets into space and like yeah i didn't think it was that funny but i thought it was not a bad calling card to just be like hey look at us we're gonna be irreverent and we're gonna spend a lot of money yeah so watch our show when it comes out this fall yeah and it's coming september i saw another reports or that's not a report, like just a note somewhere else, that they started shooting it in front of an audience a couple of weeks ago. I still can't get my head around it,

like how topical it will be able to be. I'm not sure how. I'm really intrigued to see what the show ends up being like. Yeah. i am too this is one of those cases where there are a bunch of different models there's the extreme topical model which is uh daily show and colbert yep where they're on four days a week and they are writing jokes about that day to do that day and then broadcast that day. Then there's the John Oliver model, which is, you know, there are a bunch of shows that do that.

But I think his is a great example of it where it's a weekly show. And there's a topical portion of it that is about that week. And then there's also a deeply researched segment that is about a single topic that is obviously not something that they worked on in a week it's taken them many weeks to do the way they've they've announced the steward show it's that it is a single topic show so my guess is that it probably won't be that topical uh because they're i mean it'll be literally topical in the sense it's about a topic but you know what i mean it's not going to be as current. It's not going to be current about like something that happened this week because they're going to take their time to build these

things out about issues that they think matter and then talk about them. So my guess is my gut feeling is it's going to be like John Oliver's show, except even more so if you can imagine, even more just about the subject and not what oliver does which is sort of do a weekly recap at the top of the show before they go into the topic they could do that though but even their topics see very frequently not always but like the topics in last week tonight even the in-depth stuff is stuff that's happened can kind of happen very recently um and i get but and that's the benefit of like you produce it and release it in a very short space of time right because that's how you get around things being

old by the time that they're out and maybe you know maybe the john stewart thing like they're getting their sea legs right so they're producing some stuff that they know isn't going to change isn't going to be in the news and then maybe as the series goes on they could do stuff that's like all right we're going to go deep dive on a thing that's happening right now but it's been going on for a long time or we have something to say on it and we're going to get out right five days you know right right they could um yeah there are a bunch of ways to to do this where you could you could have multiple things in process and something happens and you say let's move that up and then you put an intro on it or that is oh this is relevant because of x but we've been working on it and here it is um yeah and that's why i'm kind of fascinated to see this also after

all this time away i'm also interested in sort of like what does john stewart want it to be because john stewart kind of could write his own ticket and I think that uh he was burned out on the daily show and so this is sort of like he's writing his own uh concept of like what's not going to get me burned out what's a level of pace that I'm willing to do it's stuff that he cares about is what he cares about and it's also like um I think some of the things are related to causes that he supports and stuff so it's like there is a more of a driving force to this maybe than just like hey what happened this week let me make some jokes on it right it's like you know here's a bunch of stuff i care about deeply and i'm gonna make shows and it's and

it's only once a week and it's for a fewer number of weeks than the daily show on top of it it's a lot less work it's like it's there is it isn't necessarily going to be weekly either like i don't believe that that's been set i was seeing some conversation around like you might get one this week and one next week and then one in a few weeks which honestly is like last week tonight as well which seems for me almost impossible to know when there are new episodes because they take they take breaks which is what happens with the daily show yeah as well as they've got their various hiatuses they're not on every week they take breaks so yeah is what happens with The Daily Show as well, is they've got their various hiatuses. They're not on every week. They take breaks.

So yeah, looking forward to it. What's it going to be like? There's so many different ways they could go. So that's kind of fascinating. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Calm. Business leaders know that healthy, happy employees can create successful companies, no matter what industry they're a part of. And Calm for Business can help your employees be their best selves at work. At Calm, they want to help you kickstart your

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to take a minute to relax because it helps me focus on everything that's coming on later. And Calm has a ton of great options, whether you're looking for something just like that to help bring you back to a level point, or you're looking for something to help you sleep, there really is something for everybody to try. Calm has a library of content specifically designed to help work teams stress less, sleep better, and build mental resilience. This includes lo-fi music playlists, which I love, quick breathing breaks, guided meditations, and hundreds of soothing sleep stories to feel more relaxed and more prepared for whatever's going to come your way. They even have programs tailored for mental health and productivity, like their Mindfulness at Work series. tailored for mental health and productivity,

like their Mindfulness at Work series. Millions of employees at over 600 companies like Lincoln, Itterable, and Universal Studios use Calm for business. And Calm is available globally. Right now, Calm is offering a free well-being ebook for HR and benefit leaders, and one month free after you attend a free demo when you go to calm.com slash upgrade.

That's right, you get a free well-being ebook and one month free after you attend that demo when you go to calm.com upgrade that's right you get a free well-being ebook a one month free after you attend that demo when you go to calm.com upgrade that is calm.com upgrade go get started today our thanks to calm for the support of this show and relay fm let's talk about gaming pro gamers great gamers pro gamers um because your favorite game came back again alto's odyssey the lost city is now available in apple rk yes what is this and how does it differ from alto's odyssey so what so what happened is so i love alto's odyssey it was the sequel to Alto's Adventure. It is a sort of sand surfing game. You could call it an endless runner,

but boy, I don't feel like that does it justice. It's side-scrolling. You basically, it has a very simple mechanic. You're jumping and flipping and picking up coins and grinding off of various kind of vines and ropes and stuff and the music is beautiful and the graphics are beautiful and it's very calming it's very soothing uh there's a zen mode where you there are no points and you just do it because it's pleasant i like to play that mode on planes oh yeah i love it um i it's one of the rare games that I have completely expended.

Like I got all the levels. I did it all. It really was an obsession of mine for a little while. And when I got to the end and I got the last one, I did sort of like, I think my last challenge was go for more than a day in the game, not on the real world, but in the game, you know,

like from sunrise to sunset and then back around to sunrise. And it was this very long sort of, I wasn't trying to pick up any points or do any big moves because it wasn't about accumulating points. It was about just staying alive and being in the game. And it was so pleasant.

And that was my last one. And I got to level 60. And so then I was like, it was like a little moment of like, I did it. I retired. And I've revisited it a few times in Zen mode. But basically, I put it down. It was like, that was great. What a wonderful experience that was. So in the interim, it sounds like indie games like that have had a harder and harder time in the App Store. And so Team Alto, which is two companies, it's Snowman, and then the designer that they work with, who I think is in London, they approached, got approached by Apple to do an Apple Arcade game. And I think it's interesting because this is not quite the,

let's bring an existing game into the store, but it is also that. So The Lost City is an extension of Alto's Odyssey, but my understanding is it's also Alto's Odyssey. So if you've never played Alto's Odyssey. Yeah, you can play the whole game. Because I got confused until I read your article. Right. Because I launched it and was like, I've got to start again? But you can go into the settings

and bring your progress over, but it doesn't do that automatically or tell you, which I found strange. Yeah, I wish it said, you've played this game before, when you first launch it, would you like me to bring over your progress? Because you have to go to a settings screen and do it.

But I did that and then suddenly I'm level 60 and all the players are unlocked and all of that. And the extension of the game is there's a new biome called the lost city so the the game has three biomes that have different graphics and different music and there's the sort of like the sunny sandy part and then there's sort of the ruins part and then there's the uh squishy watery viney jungly part um and and the new mechanic is there are are 10 map fragments on the map and you get all 10 and it unlocks this fourth biome which is the lost city different music different graphics wasn't in the original game and then and that's that is nice enough on its own because it adds a new texture

to this already wonderful game and if it's familiar to you now you've got this little unfamiliar bit but on top of that within the lost city there are little messages in a bottle basically that you can pick up that are tasks for you to complete and you can only have one of them armed at a time and they're like the level-based tasks there are you know uh do a grind over a chasm back to a grind or something like they're very specific things that you have to do and you have to go for that one in the uh in the previous game there'd be like three on each level and you could get any of them or all of them in one go and and with this mechanic that's laid on top you have to pick one and try to do that one um and some of them are limited to just in the in the city so you have

to wrap all the way back around to the city in order to do it again but it's just more alto's odyssey it's delightful so Alto's Odyssey. It's delightful. So for people who have never played it before and are Apple Arcade subscribers, they can just start at the beginning and experience it. But if you played it before and loved it, you can go back to it now and there's a whole extra set of things to explore and a new set of challenges.

And so it's a fun opportunity for somebody like me to revisit it. So it's an interesting way for them to split the difference. I did talk to the Altos, the Team Alto people before this came out. And, you know, definitely the message I got was that this is, that the game market in the App Store has really changed and that this Apple Arcade approach is like the only way that a game like that is going to get an update because it's like it's just hard out there they didn't want to do a you know in-app purchase mechanic kind of thing that's not what it is

um and apple arcade allowed them to do this and build this new version or you know basically it's extra levels on top of the original version for people uh who've played it they get the extra levels so um yeah i love it and it reminded me just how i love it this is this is literally my favorite ios game like it reminded me like oh no i i the amount of of love i have for altus odyssey it's like it's very clearly my favorite i was also treated to a new arcade game around similar time a kind of similar game in some ways jetpack joyride plus this is one of the games that was popular on ios like years ago and now it's been brought back to apple arcade like i just saw angry birds got this treatment as well uh jetpack joyride is one of my very favorite all-time

ios games it's made by a company called half Studios, and they've made loads of games over the years. And this Jetpack Joyride was a spinoff of another game series that they were making. And so, yeah, it's basically the old game back again, and they've added some features, but not a ton. And they've refreshed some of the graphics, so it works good with the new screens. I love this game, and I'm so happy that it's on apple arcade i really

love what they're doing now i think apple has nailed it they're bringing in new stuff and they're signing new games all the time there's a couple of new games coming up on apple arcade that i'm really interested in but they're doing i think a really good job of reaching out to developers like the two that we've just mentioned and they're like hey you have a good game what if we just make it a part of apple arcade or hey do you want to make a new version for apple arcade like i think that they've kind of landed on a real good mix now like there's a tetris game coming soon called tetris beat that i'm really excited about there's a game that's a really weird looking word based puzzle puzzle game called word web um super stickman golf 3 plus is another one coming oh yeah yeah i'm like i think they're doing whoever they've got picking out these old games

i feel like me and this person share a very similar taste in games because they're bringing all these ones that i really like like jetpack joyride was a very successful game but I don't know if a lot of people would really think of it as like, oh, this is the game you should bring back. So I'm really pleased they did because I love this game. These are two games, if you have Apple Arcade, that I will recommend both of them. I don't think Jason's played Jetpack Joyride Plus

but they're both really great games that we recommend to you to go check out. Previews of the Playdate handheld console made by Panic have started to be published. So a few different games websites have been and tech websites have been publishing them.

It seems like the Playdate is going to be just as fun as we thought it would be. Just like really weird and quirky and awesome. I'm so freaking excited for this thing. Pre-orders begin this Thursday. I'm going to be trying to get one as soon as I can, hopefully maybe receive it before the end of the year.

But I just, you know, I love, I'm excited for this product, but it also just warms my heart because like, we know the people that make this thing and everyone's freaking out about it and it's getting really great reviews online, like from all these tech publications and gaming publications like I'm just really pleased for them that it seems to actually

be working you know like you never really know how this stuff's gonna go and I'm just super jazzed about it and I can't I just cannot wait I'm super excited about this thing looks great yeah I'm looking forward to it it's fun I mean what i like about it

too is it's it's just aggressively not trying to be what uh all other game hardware is trying to be it's trying to be something different they and the fact that not only does it come with a season of games for the price of it so you get a bunch of games that come once a week but they also have a developer kit and they've seeded that a long time ago and so you can sideload games and people are making games for it um it's never gonna a lot of the criticism i see on the internet is from people who just don't get it right they're like well this is never going to succeed in a world where there's the nintendo switch or there's the steam deck or whatever. And it's like, well, no. First off, their definition of success is very different, and they're not trying to sell a billion of them.

That's not the goal here. It's meant to be really different, and that's the whole premise, is it's not like what you would make if you were a big game company. It's not. If you want to call it a hipster handheld game company, right? It's not. It is, if you want to call it like a hipster handheld game console, sure, do that. But like, it's trying to appeal

to a very different kind of ethos. And yeah, it looks great. I look forward to it. I hope the games are great. The, yeah, I'll pre-order one. Although, although panic. What about your pals at Upgrade? I look at, look.

On preview, little Upgrade play date I just want to put this out there like Jason said at first we're important influencers gamers don't forget we just established our gaming cred moments ago this is what we do around here all the time we are

gamers so yeah where's the exclusive Upgrade preview? I'm going to buy it around here all the time yeah we are gamers so yeah where's where's the exclusive upgrade i'll buy it i'm gonna buy one yeah i'm gonna buy it but also like if you want to like just slip it a little early to us over here at the upgrade program just like whoops i dropped i was over visiting upgrade and i dropped one oh i don't know where to go wouldn't mind if you're out there yeah looking forward to it according oh net Netflix. Netflix are getting into gaming. Netflix. Gamers rise up.

Who is more of a gamer than Netflix? Has announced that they are planning to add mobile games to their service at a time when growth is stalling for Netflix. Actually, along with subscriber decreases in some markets. This is a COVID related thing, but nevertheless nevertheless this is not something that they want. The expectation is that these games will live inside of the current Netflix app based on IP

that Netflix owns. And Netflix do have some experience of this. So not only do they adapt games to TV shows, they have actually been producers of some video games based on stuff like Stranger Things.

There are no ads, no in-app purchases for the games that Netflix are looking to make. My big thing that I want to talk about here is Apple aren't going to like this, are they? No, not unless they, on Apple's platforms, they put them out as apps

where you just have to be logged into netflix in order to play them there's no way that's what they want to do i am sure that's not what they want to do uh unless they're unless they're trying to navigate kind of the roblox kind of thing which is that like it's all comes with a subscription and it's using this basic framework that's in the app i don't know how this is going to go jason i'll tell you right now that roblox thing that only that like, might as well just be called, this is the Roblox exemption, right? Well, and so really, that's not a strategy for Netflix.

It's only an excuse if Netflix has also gone to Apple and kind of cut a deal with them, which I doubt. Probably the reason Roblox got around it is they do use the in-app purchase program. So they use Apple's in-app purchase program so they use apple's in-app purchase right right which doesn't do right and that's going to be the issue if if netflix still had the apple in-app purchase this wouldn't be an issue right they would let it through and it wouldn't be maybe not maybe not right because you could say these are features of the app our app also is a game now i'm skeptical that apple is going to

allow something like this but can i just also back up and say i'm also skeptical of this as a strategy yeah me too i read a fun funny article about this that basically said netflix has decided that quibi was right after all not in the way that quibi thought but like in a way that like netflix is is actually threatened by people out on their phones who want a small amount of time to, to spend with entertainment. And they're not spending it with Netflix because it's more of a long form experience. And the article was kind of like, ah, Netflix is very savvy and they are doing this thing that Quibi, you know, obviously failed on. But now Netflix has got a lot of cred. So, so watch out.

And I read this and say, Netflix is being Quibi here. Like in all the ways that Quibi signifies, because this strikes me as being a company that is good at a thing, feels threatened by a different thing that it's not good at, and has just decided it's going to spend money to do that thing now you could you could like apple or apple tv plus you could argue is like that but apple apple's different in that they are they are playing in so many different ways and they're a platform owner and they have hardware and all that but like netflix i'm not saying netflix couldn't do this i'm just saying i don't think this comes across as being something that is,

that makes sense for Netflix as a brand. And it's much more like Netflix just wants to throw a bunch of stuff in its app to keep people from going to other apps because it's deluded into thinking that that's what it's going to do. And I just, I think it's delusional because people who are wanting a mobile experience and want to play a game or something like that, they're not going to, oh, I want to play this game that comes with my Netflix subscription. I just, I'm really skeptical that this is something that's going to actually work to solve the problem that Netflix wants to solve. Maybe I'm wrong. It always could, it could be that they figured it out and they're going to do it this way and it's going to be

great. But I look at it and I think, you know, the Netflix is trying to be something it's not because it is true. Netflix is competing with everything else on your phone. That's absolutely true. I'm just not convinced that Netflix can come up with its own solution to this that solves that problem. I think, you know, Netflix might be better off creating a new product that is a game streaming service or a mini game app that Netflix customers get for free, but is something else

and marketed as something else rather than just have it be like, did you know you can play? You seem to be on your phone. Did you know you could play a game on your phone in the Netflix app? I don't know. Yeah, I'm not convinced.

I'm open to the possibility it'll work, but this feels like overreach from a company that has found a weakness that is fundamental to their business model and have decided to rub some money on it in hopes that the weakness will go away. And that's not how it works. Here's my problem with this. It feels desperate. i don't think that this news has come out the way that either they want or it should have uh i feel like there was well there was a leak it came out through um like some rumor reporting i don't think they should have announced it at the same time that they announced their subscriber decline because it makes it seem like the strategy exists purely because they need to make money in other places or keep people around

it feels desperate to me and and unnecessary i think i think maybe the thing that troubles me the most about it is that if it there's a whiff of desperation for sure but also it feels like netflix not being comfortable with what it is netflix is huge it's dominant it might not end up as number one but like it's a brand new relatively speaking company that i think at worst is going to be number two or three among all entertainment companies worldwide right it's pretty good because the others are going to be disney and maybe amazon right which is a behemoth of another kind right like netflix and right now netflix is number one bigger than all legacy entertainment companies they have also built up an audience of new generations of audience who don't think of tv as anything but netflix all its competition is just

trying to be netflix like netflix is number one not just in size but in terms of like the mind share in the in the audience and in the industry, like it's dominant. And so maybe there's an aspect of this that is, there are no more worlds to conquer. And so it's going to try to find some new world to conquer, but I feel like it goes against what they should be concerned about maintaining their dominance rather than,

uh, than doing something like this, a dalliance over here in the game side. Cause like the fact is like get over it no people are probably not going to be watching opening the netflix app when they're standing in line at the at the supermarket that's okay my daughter is 19 she is born and raised on netflix essentially she loves netflix um she also loves other streaming services. And like, she's on her phone all the time and she's not watching TV shows on her phone, right? Like she doesn't do that. It's okay. She's a loyal Netflix customer. It's baked in. It's

going to be there for the rest of her life. Like they got her. And I really believe that Netflix is like that. I think Netflix has done this amazing thing and they are who they are. And to obsess about like, well, but no, we haven't covered every other portion of your audience. Not only is it weird and creepy and kind of Facebooky, but I think it's just a mistake. Like Netflix, again, maybe you should invest in a company that is going to be the thing that monopolizes people's brains when they're in line at the grocery store or waiting for their doctor or whatever. Like, OK. But like, is that a fit with a Netflix brand? I don't think it is. I really don't think it is. I'm not sure what they're going to do with this.

It really is very, very peculiar to me i'll i'll predict something which is that they're going to half-heartedly do this for a little while and realize that it isn't anything and then it'll be sunset and that'll be the end of that according to a report from philippe esposito at nine to five mac apple is currently working on a new display that will include its own a13 system on a chip inside with its own neural engine. Now, it is believed that because of this feature, the display could actually be a high-end model, possibly to replace the XDR,

and it's expected that this chip could help deliver higher-resolution graphics or add in features like AirPlay. So they got that piece of information, and I think drew some conclusions for it. I don't know if I necessarily go along the same route. So if I was given this piece of information and I think drew some conclusions for it. I don't know if I necessarily go along the same route. So if I was given this piece of information, which is that Apple is currently working on a display

that will include its own A13 system on a chip with its own neural engine, I don't think that this means it's going to replace the XDR. I think that this is just Apple's monitor. And I expect it isn't anything to do with graphics or AirPlay. It's so they can put Face ID in the thing.

Secure enclave. Yeah, I've come up with a list of things, none of which means that it has to be the high-end Pro Display XDR replacement. If you were going to put a chip in, like if you're going to put a chip inside, it means it's expensive. The A13 is not that chip

right that's an old chip for apple now which i'm sure they can make very cheaply and it's their own chip and all that so so here are the reasons um airplay is a good one i like that idea imagine the idea that your monitor actually has wi-fi and can do airplay like built in and it's an airplay display too like that's cool that's that's sure. That's, that's sure. I wouldn't put that at the top of my list, but that's a cool idea. I think you make a really good point, which is if you've got something like that, you could use secure enclave. You could do face ID. You could do more intelligent processing of that kind of data to pass on to whatever device is connected to it. The first one that popped to my mind is all about

camera hardware in it. It's the idea that you have the onboard ISP, image signal processor, that is, Apple talks about this all the time now, like the new iMac has the best webcam ever on the Mac. And it's not just because of the hardware, but it's because of the processor that is doing lots of smart things to that. So I throw that and center stage, something like that in there. The idea that it's basically a smart monitor that includes this really smart camera that will do all that stuff automatically. Right. So you've got a really good webcam that does center stage that maybe does face ID. face ID, that's immediately where my thought went, is that primarily the reason that you would put an A13 in a monitor is for the camera, actually, given what Apple's existing camera tech is.

I actually wonder if you put Wi-Fi and a camera in there, I wonder if you could do FaceTime without actually connecting a device to it. That would be interesting, right? It's also just a FaceTime receiver. But whatever, I i don't i don't think we necessarily need need to leap to the idea that this replaces the pro display xdr it may it may just be that this is the tech that's in their new um you know i don't want to say consumer display but their new more affordable display for everyone else yeah i mean like look they could have been told additional information um could be but. But it really seems to me that it would make sense that Apple would put a chip like this in any display

that they made if they were making a display. Why would you not? They put their chips inside of everything now. This is what they do. It's also possible that what Apple is planning for its displays is to do two monitors, a replacement for the Pro Display XDR and a smaller, cheaper monitor that are both doing the same thing. If you consider the micro LED stuff, it's not unreasonable that Apple would replace the Pro Display XDR with a large monitor that is using micro LED instead, and that might allow them to get the price down

or even keep the price the same, but have it be higher quality because it's got more zones than the Pro Display XDR. Like it's not unreasonable to think that what they might do is release two displays. So that's possible. And it is true, 9to5Mac may have information here

that what looks like a leap and an assumption is actually based on fact. But A13 inside doesn't seem like a disqualifier for me. If Apple can put its own chip in something in order to make it be a more amazing product that only Apple can do, of course Apple would do that. I do like this idea. I mean, I don't know how Thread works exactly. But, like, you know, this idea of you would put Wi-Fi in it, you just put a Thread chip in it,

it connects to everything else in the house, and now you can just walk up to this monitor and have a FaceTime call. Home strategy, yeah. It'd be pretty cool. That's the Apple TV. That's the Apple television. Oh, the team monster on the phone.

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That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash upgrade for 20% off. One last time, bombas.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Bombas for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Dan asks, do either of you use the back tap feature in accessibility? And if so, what actions are triggered? I will remind you in case you've forgotten about this.

I think this is an iOS 13 feature, I believe, where you can double tap just with your finger on the back of your phone and it can launch an action. And people were really excited about this initially and we're having to do all kinds of wild things. Do you use this? I don't. No, neither do I.

Remember that I don't use my phone that much right now that I'm traveling. I'm using it a little bit more, but I don't use it. It is not at all my most frequently used device. It's my least frequently used device. So I know it's there, and I keep thinking about cool things that I want to do, but I'm also honestly a little bit concerned because I want it to be something that I'm not going to regret it if I trigger it accidentally. That's the thing.

And this is my thing. I turned it on, and I had a shortcut set to it. I think it was like set a timer or whatever. And every now and then I just look at my phone and it had been enabled. So I'm sure this is a great thing. And I'm sure it does what it's supposed to do, which is help people for accessibility, right? But for me, it's just kind of like something that I want.

It isn't really what I want. Do you look at it and go, well, at least I know how long ago I tapped the back of the phone? Hooray. What was I doing four minutes and 23 seconds ago? Turns out, just tapping the phone. Tap. Mark asks, considering the recent news reports about the Pegasus spyware, what are the odds that Apple may consider making the iPhone one big secure enclave?

I'm sorry, this is the question that's like if the black box survives the plane crash, why don't you make the entire plane out of the material that is in the black box? Which is like, it doesn't work like that. I did just want to touch on this. You're going to find better reporting on this in other places.

I don't really want to go into it in depth because it's just too much for this episode. Plus it's kind of not really the stuff that I like to focus on unless I feel like I kind of have to with the show. Right. Cause it's just like so big. But this is the,

those reports about there being journalists and, and many people around the world that are being monitored by this software, like they can basically take over your phone and this company's apparently legit and it's for law enforcement and blah blah blah you surely you've heard about it now if you haven't just google pegasus and you'll find it but what i wanted to mention was just this one thing where people say like you know like what what how does this happen like apple say that they're so secure why can't they lock it down i my kind of view on this stuff is i don't think there's anything any company could ever do just to completely stop these types of exploits

my fit is if people make the code people can break the code like it might be an oversimplified way of looking at this i think the the challenge with all these sophisticated systems is that you have people whose entire livelihood is finding flaws yeah and um apple and you know and all os developers have teams of people who are trying to also find flaws and fix them the problem is that the universe of possible flaws is so large that you end up with people finding flaws externally that don't exist internally. And, you know, Apple could do even more than it's done. It's a lot better than it used to be at basically offering bounties for bugs.

And the idea there is if shady people are going to pay you to use this as an exploit, well, we'll pay you and you can feel better about yourself. And they want to kind of create a culture in security research where if you find a security flaw, you can make your living finding security flaws without handing it over to bad people. You just go back to the vendor. back to the the vendor um unfortunately uh state actors and you know other other uh nefarious groups uh will pay a lot of money you know the the oppressive government will pay a lot of money to a security firm to hack the journalist that's writing about them or the person who is trying to escape from under the the the control of the oppressive government. And, uh,

and so there will always be a market for this kind of thing. Also, it is a, it is a war. Um, it's an arms race. Yep. And so,

you know, the, the Pegasus is all about iMessage and, and text messages, which is one of the challenges. I was actually brought back to Steve Jobs when he introduced the iPhone and talking about like, we don't want apps on the iPhone because we don't want them to take down AT&T's network. Right. But like, there's something about that, that like iPhones don't exist in isolation. They exist as part of other systems.

And some of these exploits are all about the other systems. It's about a text message that comes in or an iMessage, but some of them, it's a text message. So it's data that's being handed off by the carrier to the phone, and then it's doing something. Now, this was like, what, five years ago. My understanding is that Apple has, big surprise, spent some portion of the last five years trying very hard to wall off iMessage and messages because of this, right? So my guess is that surreptitious messages are probably a lot less of a vector for this stuff than they were five years ago. In fact, I don't know if they closed the door or if it's just a little bit less or if it's still a problem but like this is the kind of thing where it's like this war is has been fought i think it may still be being fought the problem is you're always firing you're always

fighting the last war and they're like the the state actors have moved on to some other vulnerability that the phone makers don't yet know about and then when they find that one they will have moved on to another one and that's just sort of the game. Because that's like one of the interesting things is iOS 14 has a technology that Apple developed for iMessage called Blast Door which is supposed to do this. It's like sandbox within a sandbox

ultimately and it still works. It's just cat and mouse, right? Like, oh, we fix this thing we know about it and like, well, Yeah. Like, oh, we fix this thing. We know about it. And like, well, ha-ha, we got another one, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can do things where you put it in this place and it's all analyzed separately. And you can, like, render out the text as an image and then hand it.

I mean, there's all these things you could do. But the thing is there's always another exploit. is there's always another uh exploit and i'll tell you if you if you read a lot about uh about hacking and malware and uh and ransomware and all those things um this is a huge problem for our our planet is we have a lot of insecure systems and it's very hard to take these complex systems and make them secure and this is just going to continue to be a problem so i would say if you if you have anything that requires you to have a hundred percent confidence in your device uh and your device is on a network like don't have that thing on that device i mean i i hate to say it but like and the truth is for most people, that's not the case. Most people are not a target and most people are not, um, are, are, do not have things of this level, right? Those things are generally both true. However, if I was

a journalist being focused on by a government for my work, I would have to make a lot of assumptions about my security and keep a lot of data offline and switch devices all the time and have multiple devices and do all... It would be very difficult, but that's what you would have to do.

That's literally what you would have to do. We just started re-watching The sopranos and you basically you have to go find pay pay phones you could do the outside line type of thing you know so you live your life at that point you know gonna go find an outside line yeah yeah so so that's the truth of it is that um if you want to go live in a cave all your data will be secure but nobody wants go live in a cave, all your data will be secure. But nobody wants to live in a cave. And so here we are. So most, you know, I don't believe that there is malpractice going on in terms of the operating system developers.

I think they do legitimately see this as a huge threat to their business and they want to fix this stuff. I'd say Apple has seemingly been slower at this than maybe they should have been, but that they do seem much more on it than they used to be and engaging with the security community. But this is going to still continue to be a problem because there is this imbalance of need. Like if Apple would always pay better for this information than others. It would be less of an issue, but even then you would still have state-sponsored organizations that would pay people to find exploits. That would still happen. The good news is that when this stuff comes out uh it gets passed to those os vendors and they and they try to make a fix but like it is just a constant battle

and and yeah if i were in an authoritarian regime and trying to escape and knew that they were they were uh following me and analyzing me i would um my behavior on my devices would be very different true absolutely true hack asks the magsafe battery oh no did we just get hacked by my behavior on my devices would be very different. True. Absolutely true. Hack asks, the MagSafe battery pack... Oh no, did we just get hacked by a text? Here's a hack. The MagSafe battery pack certainly isn't the best solution for everyone, but it does seem to make sense to me as a replacement for a MagSafe charger.

You could leave it plugged in most of the time, but take it with you if you know you'll need more juice on a particular day. It has the same charging speed as a normal MagSafe puck when plugged in most of the time but take it with you if you know you'll need more juice on a particular day it has the same charging speed as a normal magsafe puck when plugged in does that framing change your opinion of the product there is absolutely no way that i would want to leave a battery plugged in all the time i wouldn't do that yeah i it doesn't change my i mean no not really like i'd really rather just have a regular MagSafe puck. And I don't think that, I mean, if it is true that it charges at the exact same rate as MagSafe and passes it through. If you use the right charger. You used to use one of the 20 wall ones.

Yes. Well, that's okay. Although it's still a little less clean because you've got to detach it every time. And to your point, I know that it would be kind of uneasy. I'm sure it's got firmware in it to not charge, you know, when it's full and stuff like that. But I don't know. It seems really weird to me.

But, yeah, I guess if you need a justification for buying one, this is an extra justification. I'm still not interested in this product. I also just wanted to say on a separate note, this is something we didn't know last week, but I wish I would have known, because this is like another reason that I think this product. I also just wanted to say on a separate note, this is something we didn't know last week, but I wish I would have known because this is like another reason that I think this product is weird. You can't

charge it with a MagSafe puck. You have to charge it with a cable. So like if you've gone all in on MagSafe, which you would expect most people that buy this battery are pretty much all in on MagSafe, you now need to bring a lightning cable back into your system to charge the battery.

I think that is wild to me. That is so wild. Because I feel so, like poor Jeremy Burge, friend of the show, creator of Emoji, who just celebrated. Sure.

His birthday. Just celebrated his birthday. Which is the national, it's National and Worldwide Emoji Day, which is when everybody celebrates the birthday of worldwide emoji day which is when uh everybody celebrates the birthday of the creator of jeremy jeremy burge yep and he lives on a boat and uh that's actually true it is completely true and have like have moved all to magsafe because it just worked really great for him but now has to bring like another cable back in you know he lives on

a boat limited space for all this stuff and now he needs a lightning cable back in. He lives on a boat, he's in limited space for all this stuff, and now he needs a lightning cable again. I don't know, it's weird. This is just like a weird set of decisions, I think, this product. But you go for it if it's for you. If it fits your life, then that's great. It does not fit mine. And Stuart asks, given their content model,

do you think that YouTube Premium is overpriced? Where I live, it's twice the cost of Disney Plus and almost twice the cost of the basic Netflix subscription. Go for it, Mike. I don't think so, because I feel like I'm paying creators as well as YouTube, right? So I know YouTube's taking some money, but I'm paying a lot of creators. For me personally, I watch more YouTube than anything else. It is easily like in time for me more than multiple of any specific service that I use. Like I would say I watch as much YouTube as Netflix and Disney Plus combined. And it's going to so many different

people. Like for me, I consider like, oh, in YouTube, I have these different sets of creators that are almost like their own services, right? Like I have, these are my tech YouTubers that I watch, and these are my educational YouTubers that I watch, and these are my kind of more entertainment YouTubers that I watch. And I would pay $5 a month for each of those buckets. So it doesn't bother me that it's all in one thing. So yeah if if youtube premium removed the ads and only youtube got the money i would consider it overpriced but because creators get the money too totally works for me and i don't use enough youtube for it to make sense to me right but i think that i think that your point that you watch youtube the most is a key point here which is this

is actually a pretty great service if you are watching a lot of YouTube, because that means that you are watching a lot of content created by YouTube creators. And so they're getting that money. And it means you're sitting through a bunch of annoying ads that you can make disappear. And so that's really nice too. And if you're watching it more than Disney+, it should cost more than Disney+. And the truth is, I think that's a good measurement, right? It's like, I only watch a handful of YouTube videos a week. So it doesn't make sense to me.

I just tap skip on the ads and it's fine. But if I used it all the time, I would absolutely prioritize it over some of the other services. For sure. Makes sense to me. But in the end, what I like about YouTube Premium is that most of YouTube Premium is not walling content, right? It's just giving money to creators and cutting out the ads. Is that right? Yeah, I watch literally zero of the premium content that they create.

See? Yeah. Yeah, so I think it's the wrong way and they've gone away from the idea of doing originals in the same way that they did uh when they did like copra kai and stuff like that they're not doing that sort of thing anyway so it's a very different beast as well also like to back up a second it really is about who you want to support and what you value personally and um know, we do upgrade plus here and you can support that. I have, uh, six colors memberships and people can support us that way. And, you know, I occasionally

have gotten not so much lately, but like when I first launched it, I got, uh, messages from people who were like, why are you charging me? Why do you want to charge me $60 a year for six colors? I could, I could have bought five magazines for a year for that or something like that. And I was like, okay, well, this isn't a magazine. And you know, it was more akin to saying, I, why, why PBS station? Why are you selling me a tote bag for a hundred dollars? I can get a tote bag for $10. And the answer is, you're not buying for the tote bag. You're buying to support the thing that you want so that they can survive and make more stuff. And it's not quite the same with Disney,

but with YouTube Premium, it kind of is. But I like to approach all of this stuff this way, which is, is this something that has something I want? And is it something that I want to exist in the world? I will pay them money. I feel good about paying money for things that I value. And that is not the same kind of calculation. And it goes for your favorite podcasts or,

or, or Patreons or anything that you're doing it. You know, what, what are the things that provide value to you? The value is not necessarily just, it's not dollars for dollars. Yeah, and it's not embedded in the shows.

If you don't watch as many things on YouTube as you do on Disney+, it shouldn't cost. You shouldn't pay for it. It doesn't make sense then, but you wrap a whole bunch of different kinds of value in, and every service is kind of different in that way. Yeah, and it's like I get it. People have used the

netflix thing for for us a bunch of times like oh it cost me as much as netflix to get upgrade plus it's like okay like that's fine then like you don't yeah you know you don't have to subscribe but going back to what you were mentioning before like that's kind of i think that we do things very specifically with this show and some of our other shows too at least this is how i do the shows that that i'm on because every creator on real afm gets to make their own decisions about if they want to do a membership program and how they would run it for their show i believe it to be all of it so you can give us the money if you want to support us you can give us the money if you want to support us. You can give us the money if you want to remove ads. You can give us the money if you want the extra

content or any combination of the three. But for me, I think that's the right mix. I think it should be all three. That's what I want for my shows. You get more, you get no ads, and you also get that feeling of supporting some of your favorite creators if that's your bag. As well as all the other benefits discord and that

kind of stuff go to getupgradeplus.com and you can support the show um but yeah it is a mixture and uh you know i was just listening to i mean i pay for stratechery and i was just listening to the stratechery daily update today and ben was mentioning about you know it's subscriptions for everything now um and it isn't like share of wallet anymore like it used to be you're now like sharing in the overall amount of subscriptions that someone's willing to pay for uh everything's subscription now like that's just the world that we live in software services entertainment and uh you you feel like you you've got to get the value out of it, that's the ultimate.

Yeah. And if you do, great. And if you don't, that's fine. That's your decision. If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade, or you can use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord. Thank you to everybody that does.

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to try out FitBud for free and get 25% off your FitBud membership. Thanks to FitBud for their support of this show and RelayFM. Loki. Let's talk about Loki. So spoilers for Loki. If you haven't seen it,

you should see it, especially if you have Disney Plus. But we're going to talk about it and we're going to talk probably about the whole season. Have you watched the behind the scenes episode? I haven't. Oh, it's really good. It's the best one of those so far.

I'll just note on it. It's not really spoiled for it's very funny and we should say if you if you have watched ted lasso but haven't watched loki you should skip to the next chapter where we talk about ted lasso yeah we're gonna talk about ted lasso after loki so that's what the chapters are there for so you can jump lasso after loki that's what they always say that's you gotta always alphabetically not true but okay i mean it is if you go by no no because his name is what is his name loki i can't remember maybe it is by surname who knows um the behind the scenes is good like

it feels like the most complete one of those so far and it feels like it has more of a story that they're telling with it it feels like maybe they've kind of landed on what those behind the scenes things should be okay so that's really good i recommend that this is easily the best of the three um i think they knew that right i found it especially interesting that they've used loki as the jumping off point for the next phase of all of marvel like the movies and the tv shows right like the multiverse and kang and all that kind of stuff is all here and i found that really interesting like we have the next thanos kind of character here and it's all in the loki tv show and i found that really interesting i thought it was really kind of like um and they talk again i'm sorry you know you haven't seen it but i touch on this in

the behind the scenes thing it seems like such a mark of how they think of tom hiddleston you know that they were willing to give him and his character like the beginning of all of this next part you know it's like a a sign of um i can't think of the right term but like really like a sign of maybe respect for the work that he's done he's been in it for so long he's been in this you know right one of the og yeah so but overall the show is so beautiful and you can tell they put the money into it it this one really felt like just a you know four or five hour movie more than the others as well i thought it was fantastic it was really well done yeah i i agree this was my favorite marvel uh series of these um and i liked wandavision a lot but like i think this this one hit it out of the park i i love the cast i love the tone of it i love the music which is fantastic

uh i just like the look it looks so good and it looks good in the in the interiors where they're in this organization that's got this very kind of old tech retro tech kind of thing they're they're an omnipotent time traveling organization with all this old tech so beautifully done and then they go there's an episode where they're outside on a planet and like the purple planet and it is gorgeous i just i love i love everything about it now i will also say as somebody who is a uh has been a doctor who fan for a very long time this show kind of feels like doctor who on a on a budget a little bit um and i mean that in the best way possible like i i just i i loved it so um tom hiddleston is great. The other actors are great. Owen Wilson doing his thing.

I love Owen Wilson in this show. I'm a fan of Owen Wilson anyway. I like him. And I think he does a great job in this. They picked the right use for him, the right way he does it. And then Sofia DiMartino, who is sylvie is fantastic too um really kind of a revelation in that part um and you know loki i love that the idea here is

how do you do a show about a villain and they could have made it like an anti-hero show you know the sopranos that kind of thing and that's not what they do instead they try to understand why he does what he does and also have him kind of learn and the way they do it with kind of exploring alternate versions of loki um and other paths he could take and like having that be part of his sort of path of realization about himself i just think is just incredibly incredibly well done and and loki learns uh learns and grows but in a very kind of interesting conflicted Loki kind of way. It's very complicated to get your head around the start of this show, right? The time.

And the fact that one of the plot points here is basically they end up going to a lot of apocalypses. It lets the show be so atmospheric because like everywhere they go, like even when they go to a superstore, they go to a big box store in one episode and you're thinking, well, how could there be a more boring place than a big box store? But it's the big box store at the end of the world.

It's hours away from being destroyed by a mega hurricane or mega tornado or something. And everybody there is on edge because the weather is increasingly bad outside and it's super claustrophobic. And like that, that everywhere you go in the show, you get that kind of thing, whether it's a fantastical apocalypse or there's literally sort of a post at the end of time. There is also this kind of mega apocalypse that they visit. Like, I don't know it. If I have a criticism, it's that they have a bunch of members of the cast who don't get used as much as I would like for them to be used. So, Umu Misaku as Hunter B-15, Gugu Mubathara, who was in Doctor Who, actually, as Rihanna Renslayer. And The Morning Show. And she is in The Morning Show Season 1.

She's great, too. They don't have as much to do as I had hoped. Eugene Cordero, who is great and was on The Good Place and, uh, is in Star Trek, uh, Lower Decks. Um, he's in it, but, um, not a lot. And again, it's one of those things I about this and sort of the head fake about this show is that it has always been uh promoted as being a miniseries essentially yeah and the big reveal at the end of the last episode is loki will return for season two which i was so happy to see because it kind of ends on a cliffhanger and i thought are you ripping us off and you're going to make us watch a bunch of future marvel movies in order to see the results? And the answer is no, they're going to do another season of Loki. I don't think the cliffhangers resolved in season two of Loki, honestly. Well, I think that a lot of the cliffhanger will be resolved in season two of Loki, actually.

I think that it has some references to the movies and kicks off the movies. But I do think that there, because there's so much here about the TVA and about what's going on with Owen Wilson and where did Ravonna Renslayer go? And like all of those things are up in the air. I imagine we'll see all of those stories, but I could imagine any or all of these people to pop up anywhere at any point during the next couple of years right yeah but i i suspect that the story of this particular group is going to be largely told in the next season of loki and and that that works for me because this this actually in hindsight is structured like a tv show about the people at the tva and and where is ravana going at the end of

the show and and uh how is how is uh the creation of a multiverse and different timelines changing everything? And I think that, you know, we're not... Some of this may pop up in Marvel movies, but I feel like there's a through line here that fits. I didn't feel like when they said there's a season two, I didn't feel like I got kind of sold an empty box where it's like, well, really all of these dangling threads will just sort of be hinted at or picked up in a bunch of different Marvel movies and the doctor strange movie or the Ant-Man movie. It's not like, no,

like a second season is going to explain what's going on with these characters. And it's like, that's great. That's, that's actually what I want. Plus I loved it. So I do want,

I do want a second season of it. Same. Jonathan Majors. Oh my God. Yeah. Wow Majors. Oh, my God. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, good one-episode performance. So I think technically, and he's great in Lovecraft Country, too,

if you haven't seen that. He was great in that, which they didn't, which just got a bunch of Emmy nominations and got canceled. Yep. I think we spoke about that last time, right, because the creators signed a deal with Apple. Yeah, it if hbo uh like knew they were going to get nominated and so they got that cancellation out in advance just to like make it not be quite as embarrassing but still really embarrassing anyway he's great um big ask i think to have a character who has not

appeared in any of the other episodes, be the character at the end, but they're definitely going for a wizard of Oz thing where like they, they said that the, the, the timekeepers are kind of modeled on his face. Uh, and they did that because they wanted to be like, like the wizard of Oz.

And then the man behind the curtain, they really wanted that to be the effect. And I think what's interesting about this is everybody knew that he'd been cast as a villain that is probably the major villain of the next phase of Marvel movies. What I think is interesting is I'm not sure I believe that this is that Loki was necessary to set that up. I think it's more like they saw an opportunity to tell this story that kicks it off. Like, you could just introduce Jonathan Majors in Ant-Man and say, here's this guy.

But they had like, what if we went back a step and had like page zero of that guy's story and showed him as the man behind the curtain? And they built this show around that. And yes he appears he is super strange he is acting the hell out of it and i think he did a great job i was blown away i was absolutely blown away by the performance so again again this

is stuff from the behind the scenes thing so he was there one day right he arrived on set and did all that in one day and it was like at the end of the whole shooting which is kind of incredible um the character he plays so he who remains is like the name of the character they were saying that like this persona the way he's acting that's not going to be how kang acts right right which is also super interesting because effectively like this guy could just keep showing up in the multiverses and playing completely different types of people which is fascinating to me one of the things that i like about the way this show is structured is it's a time travel show and the idea is if you

control time travel and this has been used even in Doctor Who, it's been used in other formats, but I like this idea that if you could control time travel and you find a timeline where you win and you control everything until the end of time, of course, you're going to build a structure that prevents anybody from doing anything different from that, which is what the show starts with, right? Is there's the one true timeline. And it's very clear, I think from fairly early on that the logical reason you have a one true timeline is that there's somebody out there who really likes how time, uh, ended up and doesn't want there to be any alternatives to the one where they win. And so the, he who remains when we meet him, the man behind the curtain, he's basically saying, look, I know you think that free will is important, but I've seen all of the options and this is the best one. And the answer is, well, it's rich coming from you. You're the guy at the end of the universe. You, it's rich coming from you saying we don't deserve free will because you won at the end. but and that's what Sylvie basically does right she's like no uh free will I'm gonna kill you and his response is like well see you later because he knows that about all those other

options so in some ways it's like we're seeing his story in reverse um that this was his kind of culmination of like the one true path for him and now we're going to see what happens when that true path is kind of cut off I I'm not sure it makes sense because it's time travel and time travel never makes sense. But like dramatically, I really like that idea that what we're meeting is we're meeting kind of the most benign kind of end state of him, but still holding on to his power and control and preventing there from being free will in the universe. And it's an almost biblical kind of thing, right? in the universe. And,

and it's, it's an almost biblical kind of thing, right? Because what Sylvie really does here is, is it's the, I want, I want freedom and, and we'll be cast out of whatever,

you know, it's his Eden, but like cast out of this orderly world into complete disorder. But at least we have our freedom. It's fascinating stuff. Loved it. And, and what a, yeah,

what a great, uh, performance by, by him in that last episode. Good stuff. Looking forward to his next appearance. They did set, like, in the documentary, like, he's the next big villain in Warby for a long time. Like, they just said, like, you know, we're looking forward to working with him for many years to come.

He seems to be the Thanos of this next phase of Marvel movies. And I'm into it. I was blown away by that episode. It was my favorite episode of the season, but it had one thing in it that I really didn't like. One of my lower points of the season was Loki and Sylvie's fight. It was kind of unnecessary for me. It's that same thing. I think we said this before with Falcon and Winter Soldier

and even also with WandaVision. Marvel feel like they have to have these big fights for it to be marvel the one thing i liked about the fight is that it's also a conversation that they're having and the conversation is good and then the fight is like the eye candy which i agree it's i it's not that exciting it's not not that great but i i kind of appreciate the idea i kind of admire the idea that that these are these two characters having a conversation yeah and fighting they tried but like i just didn't buy that they would be doing it didn't seem like the like that moment i want to do a shout out to richard d grant great oscar nominated excellent actor as old loki yeah wearing the comic book outfit of lo. That episode, which is

set in this sort of weird afterlife that is actually real, where there's a kid Loki and an old Loki and an alligator Loki and there's Frog Thor is visible at one point, full of all these references. That's a great... And there's President Loki at the end before they escape and like, it's just... But

Richard E. Grant was great to see and he had the story arc sort of of all those Lokis wrapped up into his before they escape and like it's just uh but richard e grant was great to see and he he had uh he had the story arc sort of of all those loki's uh wrapped up into his story which was pretty nice and i mentioned earlier but natalie holt who is the uh the the composer um and she has appeared and participated in a bunch of scores but like i feel like this is one of her highest profile things like hi hey movie people hire natalie holt to score your movie she's amazing the score of loki is beautiful the first three episode score i think is on apple music right now i don't know if the the next three are out yet or if they're coming out soon, but I love the score for this. It's so weird and brilliant. And she's an interesting character herself. She's a violinist. She once threw stuff at Simon Cowell on stage.

Oh my God. Yes, I saw this. Yeah, she protests that Britain's's got talent or x factor or something yeah she was playing she was uh playing for one of the contestants and then she just got up and started like throwing food at uh simon cowell um because of his quote dreadful influence on the music business which was amazing so on on an episode of britain's got talent in 2013 anyway uh she's brilliant and the score is fantastic and like i enjoyed the story of loki and i enjoyed the performances but if you had given me just the way it looks the direction the cinematography the production design and the way it sounds with the music that enough would be one of my favorite shows of the last five years like that that alone

would be enough because it looks and sounds so good. So I don't know if Marvel can keep it up. These, I think we've ended the preliminary live action Marvel, like the launch shows. So they are going to do what if, which is an animated show that's coming out next, but then they will have starting this fall and winter will

be kind of like the next wave of these shows and we'll see how those go but like it's been interesting to watch these three and sort of see what works and what doesn't work about all of them but the loki show is the that's the that's the winner like that's the one where it all came together crown jewel and they knew it i think so the the main thing that i like about what they've been doing and i think they're going to continue, especially because of the types of projects they have coming next. I like that. They get really weird with these.

And they're not scared to write. They get weird. They get really inside baseball to the comics. Like they, all of these shows have been doing that. And I really appreciate that one of the things that we've said on the incomparable about marvel movies again and again is that one of the things i love about marvel movies is that marvel has been willing

to take some chances and do movies that are in like their own genre inside a Marvel movie, like that they're, that they're willing to do a heist movie, right. Or a murder mystery or whatever it is. Like they can make other kinds of movies within a Marvel movie. And with these TV shows, you got to do even more. Like they need to be their own things. They need to have their own feel. It gives you as creators, like freedom to do different kinds of stories and if i have i have many criticisms

of falcon winter soldier because i think it was kind of a flop and i understand that in many ways it's because of the production and changes that happened with covid but i think my biggest criticism of it is it just feels like a generic marvel movie. And I think that's a mistake. I think you want them all to have their own unique feel. And that one, it felt like it was the first one they put in production and that they were playing it safe. And they're like, let's literally just make a long Marvel movie and chop it into episodes. And what WandaVision and Loki teach us is don't do that.

Make it weird. And it can be differently weird. Make it the right kind of weird for the characters that you're doing. So like Moon Knight is with Oscar Isaac is in production. And that's a show about a superhero who has multiple personalities. And it's very modern interpretations of that character. It's very psychological. It's about mental health and mental illness. And it like really grapples with those issues. And it's very psychological. It's about mental health and mental illness. And it really grapples with those issues. And it's like, that is what I mean by be true to the character and be weird the way the characters are. Just commit to it and have it be about something and have its own personality. So I'm excited and I hope they keep doing it because

it allows them to take what they've done with the movies and extend it even further. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by hollow hollow make incredibly comfortable buckwheat pillows i absolutely love my hollow pillow i sleep on it every single night and have been doing so for years because it is so comfortable i get just the amount of support that i'm looking for the pillow doesn't collapse when i lay on it like a traditional pillow the buckwheat really it keeps its shape but it also because i don't know if it's like it's not like a beanbag but it's the closest thing i can attribute it to it's got a different feel to that but it's like little individual buckwheat holes that is like little things you can go look on their website kind of like tiny little soft shells or something i've really struggled to explain what it's like

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but football is also death for football is also death again. Spoilers for Ted Lasso now. What an opening. I was very surprised about the opening. I don't know if it's something that like, okay, I'm not an animal person, right? I don't know if it's something that like okay i'm not an animal person right i don't know if it's something that like if you have a dog you would be upset to see that a dog gets killed for football um but it was quite a moment uh okay so the clearly this uh

is based on so we're talking about season 2 episode 1 of Ted Lasso here. It's clearly based on Randy Johnson, the baseball pitcher, who during spring training and this is the 7 foot tall throws 100 miles an hour fastballs, Randy Johnson, and during

spring training one year, he threw a pitch during a game and a bird flew between him and the batter and there's video on the internet you can find it and he basically exploded the bird with the baseball wow and i think this is their riff on that yeah which is and it's it's ridiculous like i mean i think they tried to play it the way it is because anybody who's taking care of a hound is going to not do it the way that this guy does. But they try to suggest that he's an old, infirm guy with this dog and that the dog breaks his lead and then rushes out onto the pitch after the pigeon. I had a moment when the dog is just there in the bird and I'm like, this is a strangely specific set of items here that have been composited onto this shot i think that perhaps this will be important in a moment and the idea is just to get the dog to leap during the penalty

shot to give danny rojas a thing that he has to overcome which is that he's killed their mascot their elderly mascot dog who jumped after a bird on the pitch which is also like ridiculous the great setup to it is this mascot i'd never mentioned before uh like now all of a sudden the team has a mascot and it's a greyhound which makes sense for the club right um because like that's their logo i also noticed something which hadn't been there before the the commentator referred to afc wimbledon as the good boys, which is a fantastic nickname for the club. Like you might have like the Hammers for West Ham, you know, like the Gooners for Arsenal, right?

Yep. AFC Wimbledon are the good boys, which is so great. Like that is a great nickname, right? Like it just really works. It's a bunch of boys and dogs are good boys. If they're boy dogs, you know, like it works for me.'s a bunch of boys and dogs are good boys if they're boy dogs you know like that's it works for me i thought it was very funny um this episode was oh man it's so good i was so happy to be back in this world again and like just didn't miss a beat i loved it uh i

loved that it tricked me right so you know obviously one of the things that they're setting up to overcome right they've got the psychologist the sports psychologist yeah uh i say afc wimbledon that's the actual club uh afc richmond is obviously what i meant i was waiting for the really like london deep london uh reference there about why people from wimbledon are good boys that didn't have good boys in wimbledon no i mean afc richmond good boys i apologize the good boys you know like they the the sports psychologist right and Ted having to overcome that as someone. So one of the things that struck me about season one is there are all these sitcom setups that you expect to go a certain way because that's the sitcom setup way to go. And they go a different way.

And so with the sports psychologist coming in, who is not really having it with Ted Lasso. What you expect is to be like, she's his nemesis and they're going to battle back and forth. And instead it's more like, no, she's very good at her job and successful with what she does. And Ted kind of has to be like, oh, okay. Like my stuff doesn't work on her

and like reflect about what that means about himself. Like it's really interesting that it doesn't go. It tricked me because I yeah because i thought oh this is gonna be a love interest for ted oh interesting with the way they were setting it up where it's like ted doesn't trust psychologists and then someone's gonna come in and he's gonna fall for them and then he has to learn to trust psychologists but like that doesn't seem like that's the thing we'll see what happens in future episodes but it doesn't seem like what they're going for here like the way that they're setting up their relationship definitely feels more like what you're saying right where like

he has to also like doubt if like you know like he in his mind he is the person who makes the the team feel better that's his whole thing, right? Picks the team up. And he couldn't do that for Danny, but the, I'm trying, what's the character's name? I have to try and find now because I don't remember.

I don't know. But the doctor, not doc, doctor, can do it. And I thought that was like a really interesting way that they're going to go with this. Also speak Spanish and French. Fantastic's fantastic right just like absolutely fantastic well that that's the thing that makes ted lasso being like whoa i am out of my league here yep like this person she is very impressive dr fieldstone thank you okay oh yes dr fieldstone of course what a name uh yeah i i it's it's funny the way they they set up danny rojas's thing

um but like look he's the most irrepressibly possible positive person right that's the whole character of danny rojas's football his life he's so enthusiastic and so to have him how would he even have a crisis of confidence, right? And the answer is they engineer this opening episode crisis of confidence for Danny to bring in the sports psychologist and to show like what, you know, they do all the jokes, but football is death.

And he's like, whoa, what happened to Danny Rose? Oh my God, in the shower. And then they kind of figure it out and wind him back to sort of where he is at the end. And it's very impressive. And like, that's a funny, it's a funny bit. That was a funny bit. But also the show, again, it just hits me with like,

I can't believe that someone made this television show. Like I keep saying this over and over again. Like I can't believe that someone was allowed to make this show. Well, like they're in the pub so uh ted and coach beard and he talks so openly about his experiences in couples therapy and about how he just feels like he was set up and like the that is a thing where you know i think so many people have been through that kind of thing with like a distrust of therapy and that kind of stuff. Like, oh, this person's just out to get me,

or I don't think this person's going to actually try and help me. You know, I've been in these kinds of situations myself. It spoke right to me. And I just found it so incredible that this 35, minute comedy can hit these notes so truthfully like these it just slices through and finds these just incredible humor moments i just i it blows me away how good it is really does yeah i would say so if I have a criticism of this episode, it's that the first half of it, let's say,

and I think they know what they're doing here, right? The first half of it is very much like status quo. Like, let's remind everybody. And then it's introducing the conflict with Danny. But it is kind of like, Oh, aren't we all happy status quo? Yay.

Uh, and I, I watched it and I was like, uh, I don't know. Like this doesn't, you know, this doesn't seem right.

There's some, something feels wrong here. Something feels off. But for me, the thing that really brought me all the way back around on it is um there's roy kent yeah that's a great b plot is the which stuff which he like i appreciated in season one we know that he's got his yoga group of of uh older ladies that don't know who he is and don't care and he just goes out and hangs out with them and they talk about their things and he doesn't have to worry about being roy kent um and i like that we never

saw them but in season two we see them and i'm okay with that too i feel like okay we did that bit and now we're seeing him settle down with them to watch reality tv and and uh have drink wine and stuff and like i love i love that i love jamie's on the show too jamie tart is on the celebrity sex island or whatever it is totally good uh and then um and then his grappling with keely wants him to do commentary and he doesn't want to be a talking head and he's coaching his niece's soccer team and you know he he curses at them because it's roy Kent. But like, I just, all of that made me really happy. You know, the laugh out loud moment for me in the whole episode is there that when Danny Rojas wakes up in a cold sweat and screams out loud because he's having a nightmare about killing the dog. We see that he's sleeping with two women in his bed.

Yeah. And that's it. That's all we get. It's like, okay women in his bed yeah and that's it that's all we get it's like okay it's great it's ted lasso it's danny rojas i'm sure everybody there is having a great time and it's great and but i just love that moment of like we didn't need to show this this way but we did and i'm like that's just it's just amazing it's professional football all right like that's what they do i don't and i don't know about danny rojas's life and i don't know who the other people in the bed with him are and i and it's and it's ted lasso right so i'm like beautiful we it's like well that's not something that we knew about danny rojas and

now we do great like i just it was just so hilarious so i love the attitude in nate's character in this season when he's like well it's like, oh, we've got to give him some motivation. It's like, is his paycheck not enough? I really loved that. Those little moments from him were very good. Or with the other, like the kick boy. And he's like super mad about him wanting to leave early. So clearly Nate, okay, structurally,

season one ends on, it's a low low but it's also kind of a high and then you you've got to build a story arc for season two you got 12 episodes you gotta you gotta tell a story here so you gotta start you gotta start introducing challenges for the characters so we get some challenges for the characters we get the fact that the team which we're like oh well they've turned it around and i know they're being relegated but they're really going to turn it around but at the start of this they haven't won they've only ever tied which is the worst it's it is purgatory right for ted lasso especially like how can you even tie you guys do ties here and now it's nothing but ties for ted lasso you got to get over it um so that gives us some structure to like the drama of the season and then with nate

nate went from being the downtrodden equipment guy to being an assistant coach and sort of like a hero who was like plucky and and and kind of came into his own i think it's clear that the story for nate in season two is he's trying to deal with being a coach and he's a little he he hasn't really gotten, how should I put this? He needs to learn from Ted about how to be a good coach. Ted and Beard, right? Because I think he doesn't know. I think he's playing the role of the typical football coach.

Yes. Yeah, I think that's it. And so you see him be mean to the guy who's his replacement, which he shouldn't be mean to. And he has that moment of like, well, we're paying him. Isn't that enough that we're paying him? So yeah, he's Nate. Not only gets to kind of voice those things, but I feel like the story for Nate is going to be Nate needs to learn how to be like Ted and Beard or be the Nate version of them. And that he has to learn some lessons there that he's trying. Now he's trying to be a coach

and he's losing some of what made him so endearing and i think that that's the story that they're they're gonna be telling with him and maybe i'll be wrong maybe they'll go another direction but that seems to me that that's what they're trying to do with nate yeah and it's just it seems so funny to me because it's so out of like character of everything else that's going on and it's just and also of him too right like he's something's changed in him now right that wasn't there before yeah i i just adored it i think it's such a good start to the season there's there's a lot of stuff this is obviously it's the beginning episode there's a lot of set up stuff right that's coming down the pipe right like

obviously there's a big story for re Rebecca that we're yet to see, where she's going to be looking for somebody in her life. And that's going to be a story that we're probably going to go through for a bit. Yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait now for every Friday. I think they did exactly what I wanted in that first episode. Like I enjoyed it just as much

as I have every other episode. And yeah, like I said, I got a little worried at the beginning and it felt better as it went along. And honestly, I read some reviews that said the same thing, that like in the first episode, you're like, oh, what are they doing?

And then like as the first, I think reviewers have seen the first six, like all of the reviews are like, yeah, it's fine. Like don't get worried if it starts out and you're like, wait, this seems a little bit all of the reviews like yeah it's fine like don't don't get worried if it starts out and you're like wait this seems a little bit weird it's fine it's it's fine it will be the show that you expect it to be so great can't wait i love that they're uh to back to our kind of anti-binge watching point i love that they're releasing it

over 12 weeks in uh 12 episodes great uh and uh if you want more Ted Lasso talk, there's an incomparable podcast called Football is Life. First episode of season two is out already. And we'll be doing that week by week with, again, rotating group of hosts and guests and all that.

So people should check that out. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. Thank you to Hello, Fitbod, Bombus, and Calm for their support of this show. And of course, thank you to everybody who supports the show directly. You can go to getupgradeplus.com and you will get longer ad-free episodes of every single Upgrade release. If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com and you can also go to

theincomparable.com as well to find many of Jason's podcasts. And also here over at RelayFM, you go to relay.fm.shows and you can find stuff that me and Jason are doing. Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L and I'm at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley. Thank you.