Edutainment!
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Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, Big Shift Mark invokes the Omnissiah, sets up Skynet, and tasks the lads to give him info with excitement. Plugman wizardly Wade goes three-gun monitor mojo and rocks the schoolhouse with Ted. Power Master Balletic Bob believes fiber's mystical, screws up box, lous retro training, and milking turtles with Steve.

From tech issues to math blaster. Yes. It's time for edutainment. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted. And enjoy the show. Oof.

Hello and welcome to Distractible, the podcast where I'm the host and I judge the worthiness of both you, the audience, and the competitors that are here today. Today is an audience versus competitors episode.

No stop. That would be fun, though, wouldn't it? We're not worthy. I think we'd kick their ass. I'd be excited for that. All you'd still got nothing on me. So the way it works is I'm going to judge them and I'm going to assign points based on what they have to offer. And then the winner will host the next episode. If there is a winner, wink.

I thought you were going to say, if there is a next episode. I was like, oh my God, the stakes have never been higher. That's true. That's true. All right. Yeah, I could set a point threshold. And if we don't get above that, the podcast is canceled. That's the end. I mean, that seems like the only reasonable thing to do, really. Honestly, it might be the most reasonable thing we've ever done on the podcast.

So before we get into any of that though, we need to talk about our lives and what's going on in those lives or in the greater universe or local community. You guys won't believe this, but I, Wade, have a Wade's Tech Corner update. Whoa. Do I ever have technology updates? The answer won't surprise you. It's no. I'm going to give you a point before and I'm going to take it away if it's not worthy of that point.

I don't want to stop and allow that to happen. I'm sure you'll earn it. I have been plagued by a mystery for a while. The weighty boy here bought some monitors back in like 2015, 2016. And I use those puppies all the way up until this year. And I decided, you know what? It's time. The universe said 60 hertz isn't the cap. You can go beyond that now. You're using 60 hertz monitors up till now?

So what I did was I bought some new monitors. These bad boys, 4K, dual mode, don't even know what that means, up to 244, 240 hertz, one of the two. Don't even know, the numbers are so much bigger than I'm used to. I slapped these bad boys on. I had display ports on the old ones and I was like, you know what, display port seems to still be the thing after a decade. Let's keep display ports on these bad boys.

Fired up the old PC. By old, I mean less than a year old, because we're all new here at Wade Studios. And all three monitors flickered on, and I was like, oh, baby, we're in business! I launched up my first game, ready to check out my new sweet puppies. And one of my monitors was like, oh, oh dear, oh my, oh no, heaven's the best-

went black. And I've talked to you boys about it off camera a little bit for almost a month, couple months, a month, something like that. Like a month and a half, I think. I have had three different people in the house. I have had at least six hours of calls trying to get these monitors to work. They all work individually. Two of them work at a time. Couldn't get all three to work at the same time again.

until yesterday. - If the solution is you got other monitors, I think you deserve to lose more points than he gave you. - These are the same three monitors. These are even the same three cords and cables. No new parts were added. The solution was not to download software. It wasn't to get a beta version of Nvidia's GeForce experience.

The solution wasn't to go in and update all of my graphics settings, it wasn't to go into the Nvidia control panel or the display control panel, it wasn't to change the hertz, though that might have helped, hard to say. The solution wasn't even just to unplug them and plug them back in. But yes it was, actually. The solution was not just to unplug them. It was to unplug them from both ends of the computer, the monitor, the wall, the thing. Every cable had to come unplugged.

and sit, and then be plugged back in, and then it worked. You didn't try a new cable first? You didn't try that for a month and a half? I unplugged all of the cables, sure, but I was like, well, if I unplug them from one source, they're unplugged. I only unplug it from both ends.

I had assumed that the first thing you would do was try a different cable, which would necessitate you unplugging from both ends. I did try that, which is crazy. I tried switching from display ports to HDMI. But you didn't try another display port cable in the same... I did. So yes and no. I had a fourth cable and I did try that cable, but like I was...

but here's the thing. If I turned off one monitor, the other two would work. If I turned off that one, one of those two and turn this one back on it, these two would work. I didn't even suggest this to you because I assumed you would get here at no point in your troubleshooting. Did you unplug everything and start by plugging one single monitor in and then go from there and see what I did, but that, but that didn't solve your problem. No. Oh, that's weird. All right. That's weird. That's weird. Yeah.

I could not tell you why. I think at all points, there was at least one cable plugged in, whether it was a power cable or a DisplayPort or HDMI. But this was literally unplug every cable from every monitor, leave it sit for a few minutes and plug it back in. Pro tip, if you want to skip the wait time, if you unplug everything and then hold the power button on most devices, that it will be enough to...

discharge any capacitors that are holding on to any pesky juice in there on that circuitry. I don't know if it would, because yours might have haptic buttons or God knows what, but fun. That's just a fun tech tip. They all worked before, just not at the same time. I'm confirming this tech point. That seems weird enough, and you solved it by whatever magic, whatever machine god you prayed to, the Omnissiah blessed you.

I call him JP. That's a weird name for an OmniSaya. Hey, it's my OmniSaya. I can call him. All right. Well, you get that tech point. How long has your fix been fixing? Because I've definitely had things like this where I was like, it's fixed. And then like a week later, it was not.

in fact, fixed? Yesterday. Oh, so you're still well within the window of it's not fixed. So far, it's survived four restarts, four different game launches, running OBS, YouTube video game at same time. Have you updated anything? Update any drivers? Update any windows? That's probably not going to cause all the same problems to happen all over again. Everything is fine. Has it survived this? Break now! Break! Break! Break!

Break, break now, break now. It'll never break. It's not going to break. I will say just one second ago, I don't know if you saw me shift my focus. One monitor did go black, but it was just fell asleep. But I was like, oh no, did I just ruin my own tech point?

Well, you've got it so far, but if your monitor dies at any point in the episode, I will take that one away. I think at any point in the future, if the fix breaks, he loses a point as soon as that happens. Are you okay with that, Wade? I would prefer not. There's like a 0% chance we're going to remember that, so it's really low stakes. Don't worry about it. But you got to confess it. Well, I guess you don't have to. You could be a liar. I'm going to look at your irises and I'm going to zoom in and see which monitors are active. I'm going to zoom in.

Did the bit work? Yes. Okay, good. Yeah, it worked. Well, that's good. All right, Wade, good tech update. Very proud of you for figuring that out. And honestly, I've been dealing with a similar thing with networking. Networking is one of the weaknesses in technology that I don't fully understand, and I'm only just starting to. It's so complicated. It's so complicated. It's so complicated. Unnecessarily so. You still have to know a little bit of programming to even get your network up and running or

access anything remotely without like a convenient software for it but if you need to do like like command line level stuff you need to know a little bit nothing makes me feel more like a chump than downloading third-party software to manage networking stuff but boy is that the only way i've ever gotten it to work what kind of networking stuff do you need third i don't think i've ever had to deal with this so what i'm doing is i'm building out like a a

So I have my main house network and it has its own server, act like a small one. And then I have a remote one for the server, the render farm that I'm building. But networking in between them is really complicated. So I have fiber optic internet

But I also have fiber optic cable going there. And to get that to work requires a very specific coupler at the end of it that goes with the wavelength of light that it's using with whether it's LC or LS, like and you have to have a specific receiver that can take it and understand it. And then they communicate with each other. And you got to get the order right because it's two prongs. And it's not just A goes in A and B goes in B. On the other side, B has to go in A and A because it's got to be out to the

in and the into the out has to go to each one. It's not just one plug. So it gets complicated really fast. And if you get the wrong connector, well, you're waiting two days for the next one to come in, buddy. Like it's yeah. So it fiber optic is like magic.

Like, I understand completely, like, I understand well enough how it works in principle, but the actual, if you have it, like, in your house or if you have to deal with it, it's crazy shit. It's not just an Ethernet cable that you plug in. It's, there's things, and I don't know them, and it's scary. You know what's fun about it, though? It brings back the old days of blowing into a cartridge because you gotta keep the end of it clean. You shouldn't blow into it, probably, but if it's dusty, you go, whoo.

No, probably like compressed air or something would be preferable or just like you shouldn't have blown into the cartridges, but we all did it. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it's it's complicated. Bob better be technology related. I have a an electronics story that's very similar to Wade's, but I'm outside the window of it refailing. Probably maybe both of our cars now are plug ins. I keep.

that I'm selling Subaru. The new car I have is a plug-in hybrid. So it has a gas engine, but also it has a plug-in battery bank. And so we charge them in the garage. Our other car's a Tesla, so that was just batteries. We charge them both in the garage and we don't even have level two chargers. We literally just plug them into the wall and charge them at like

10 amps or whatever because circle charging is good enough for our use case. But the plug that the new car was going to plug into was on the other side of the garage and somehow it got smashed. I don't know what happened, but it was a GFCI plug and it got smashed so it was no longer functional.

replacing an outlet is pretty trivial. As long as you're smart and understand the idea of making sure you're checking to see if the wires are live, making sure you turn the breaker off so that there's no danger of you electrocuting yourself or doing something else stupid. It's really like you undo three screws, you take the wires off, you put the wires in the exact same spot on the new thing and tighten the screws like nothing.

It's very trivial. So it's not impressive that I did that. But I did that. And I also put like a like, you know how the outside plugs have a box over them to keep the water out? I put one of those over it so that it can't get smashed because I think like the trash can lid opened and hit it or something. So I put a protective box on it. So I did that, too. Also pretty trivial. It worked perfectly. I replaced it. It functioned when we plugged the car in and it was great. And then I think it was when the Hurricane Helene blew through our area. It was real windy, real wet.

And the day after that, the outlet that I replaced stopped working. Nothing else was wrong in the house. That circuit was fine because there are other things on that circuit. But that outlet just mysteriously, it wouldn't... It's a GFCI outlet and it wouldn't reset. Every time you push the reset button, it would just pop instantly. And I did some research and it was hard to tell exactly what the problem was. But I was like, maybe the outlet's bad. I don't know. There's no reason it should be like this. And so I was going to replace it. And...

As I was going out to the car to go to the store to replace it, I was like, I'll just push the button again. This was like a week later after it broke. I pushed it and it popped in and reset and worked perfectly. Literally, all I had done was turn the power off to it, take it out of the wall, make sure everything was still attached, put it back in. That fixed it. I didn't even unplug all the wires at once. I just checked them one at a time. And I that was a month ago now. But using the same power that Wade used to fix his monitors, I fixed electricity.

which is some pretty serious shit. That's why I'm giving you a point in calling you Power Master. Yes. We must all refer to Bob as the Power Master. Please do. Wade, I'll call you Plug Man. Oh, okay.

Okay. Can I at least be Plug Master? No. No. Power Master just sounds a lot cooler than Plug Man. You relied on others, someone else's knowledge and expertise to fix your problem. You're just the man who did the plugin. And Plug Man's cool like Mega Man, Spider Man, Superman. I feel like I'm going to be put into a bunch of like butt memes. What? What?

Why would that happen? It's not like there was an episode previously where we talked about you being a butt plug for an extended period. I have the same amount of points though, right? Yeah, you do. Yeah. Yeah. No need to worry about it. It's fine. Other thing about networking that's really cool is once you discover the potential of power over ethernet, it is fucking magical. You don't need to run electricity to it. You just power it from your network. That's really cool. So security cameras, stuff like that. And also lights. You can have lights out in...

And so you can you can do some pretty cool stuff. I need to discover the magic of this because our house that we live in had a built in security system when we moved in that was just like inoperable. And it has power over Ethernet cameras. I have no idea how the fuck what to do with that about that. But they exist. And I should figure that out because it's cool. But also, I don't know anything about it.

It's surprisingly simple, a lot simpler than what it's what it seems like. That part of networking is not that bad. Do I cut the Ethernet cable, strip it back, make it into two prongs and then stick it into a plug? Sure do. OK, I'll go do that right now. Editors, please put. No, I actually got my own RJ25 stripper and like crimper. And crimper. Oh.

Oh, dude, those are so fun. It's so satisfying to click. I haven't done it yet, but I realize you got to make some you got to make some terminations, bud. I will. I will. I'm going to make tons of terminations because it's got a guide in there and everything. So you can see exactly what wires. Yeah, you just got to get the wires in the right order and then you and then you click. Oh, that's the best. So you're going to make your own network. So you don't need like spectrum.

Big network. You're gonna make your own. He's building his own internet, Wade. Everyone go plug into Mark's house. He'll have the new internet. You can, you can wait. Actually, uh, future business idea. Forget the movie theater. Forget all that. Web 4.0. Are we making web 4.0? Oh,

Oh, you know it. Or maybe it's 3.1. I don't know how the versioning works for that stuff. I was a 4.0 student, so I'm qualified to be a part of this endeavor. Oh, if we're going out GPA, I'm afraid we're going to have to be a web 3.2. I'll elevate us. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, I can't say that my GPA probably dipped below three, but I want to show you something. Get on my back, boys. We're going 4.0. So here's the thing, right? We can start

our own internet provider business because if you look at this, so this is one of the networking companies that sells parts and you can get home networking stuff. You made this? It's 4,000, right? That seems like a lot until you realize this could serve 2,000.

20,000 subscribers. Oh, hell yeah. 2048 client capacity. If all of them are paying a moderate price of $299 a month, think of how much money that is. Which is a deal in today's economy. Yeah, it's a deal. $299 a month. Hold on. For fiber internet, I assume. Fiber. Look at this. Fiber.

So we can deliver 10 gigabits per second to over 2,000. That's only 2 million a month to us. I mean, really, we'll be breaking even. It doesn't seem like there's enough plugs on that thing to serve 2,000. I'm not going to lie. Splitters. You get splitters. You do get splitters.

I know what those are. You got 16 plugs. You just need, what is that? A couple hundred splitters. And technically, we have to provide the clients with one of these random things, which, you know, they cost. Oh, they buy their own equipment. That's actually rolled into the price, the monthly. We all love that.

They buy the equipment and then they lease it from us. And then it's, I have to return it to us when they cancel their service, but they can't cancel their service until 24 months. So there's not really any danger of that happening. I'm glad that's all just hypothetical and doesn't exactly represent how it actually works in the business.

I still get emails and phone calls from the last two companies that I got internet from one of which is in California and the other of which is in North Carolina a state I haven't lived in since 2018 and they still will just be like hey did you ever return that router I'm like yeah I took it to your store and handed it to some teenager at the counter let me guess they didn't

typed it in correctly. Jesus Christ, your $45 router that never worked isn't worth all of this phone call shit. Not like you gave us good hardware. Dumb son of a... Anyway, I'm not mad about it. It's fine. Anyone at home, you can buy your own modem. You can buy

your own router. You should. You should get one of them Motorola surfboard modems and get one of them. Any kind of router other than what they give you, it's probably better. The companies will scare you, though. They'll give you jargon that's like if you have issues and you use your own equipment, we can't service it. My favorite is in the last service we had set up in California, the company required a technician to come out.

which they required you to also pay the fee for, for having a technician. But they wouldn't let me just plug my stuff in and then turn it on on their end because they could do that, but they would not allow that. So a guy came out to the house and he's like, where's the stuff? And I took him in and he's like, oh, this is all. Oh, yeah, this looks right. And he got a little iPad out and put three buttons on his iPad and turned our internet on. And I paid $80 for the privilege of talking to Daryl for eight minutes. Fucking...

scam i had somebody come to the house that literally just opened something up with a key then they had me do all of the work and interface with it and they closed it sealed it up and they're like i think we're just going to charge you a usual service charge today that's it'll be 79.99 and i was like you were here for 20 minutes i did all the work and i owe you 80 80 it's a bad sign when somehow cable technicians still feel like less of a scam than like

scam roofing guys who will come to your house, inspect your roof in air quotes and tell you you need a whole new roof, even though the roof on your house is three years old. Somehow I trust them more than I trust the cable company. What if your roof is like 30 years old? That's pretty old. You know what? I bet I know a guy who could give you a new roof, give you a real good deal on it.

how old is good roof bad 30 is about the maximum age for a roof most roofs are are rated to last like 20 to 30 years depending on like the type of material and everything but that's it sounds like you might be due for another fun expense on your house soon yay houses yay i don't want any more updates can we move on yeah all right we can move on i'm sad now

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We'll put the fiber optic internet business that we're going to start and take over the country with. I'm going to think about that while we do this. That's in the back. Because today is about learning. Oh, you all boo. I mean, yay. I love learning. Except I'm going to learn you this.

Okay, hold on. Okay, hold on. Wait, wait, hold on. Hold on. Tell me if you can hear this. Three, two... What? What? What?

Yeah, you hear it. You fucking liar. That's a minus for you. That's a minus, WavePoint. Worth it. You should lose the point for being tricked. Trick me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, then it's shame on me. Then I lose a point if you trick me again. If you trick me again, you get your point back in the rest of the episode, okay? Trick me a third time, but won't get fooled again. All right, here we go. You're evil, I mean, you're evil. And you're ready to jump to the ship and you need your heart.

I can't. Go on. Yes. What you doing, Mark? Oh, okay. Oh, you know, you know.

Oh, no. All right. Yeah, there's a bonus bonus there for you. All right. OK, so I love that so much. Not because I really love chess, but because it is so goddamn impressive. The amount of stuff that's to teach a single chess move and sensationalize it in a way that's just so. Yeah.

Stafford Gambit. Is that the same speaker that fell? Yeah, it's because it's a long ass cord and I crossed my leg. One second. All right, hold on.

We're in cross episode bits now. That is edutainment. That's edutainment. It's educational entertainment. You learn something from that. You learn about the Stafford Gambit. So evil. Was white or black doing the Stafford Gambit? I was unclear. I guess black was from our perspective. So we were the ones. Yeah. Yeah. I see. I see. I watched that like 10 times in a row. Probably.

wouldn't be able to execute the Stafford Gambit, but I'd be able to get pretty close. And also probably no one would fall for it or if it's a trick at all. I don't even know, but I know what the Stafford Gambit is. So I want you guys to present me with your favorite piece of edutainment. Edutainment. Edutainment. Is

Is there a time limit how old it can be? No, no, not at all. It could be anything, anything from any time. This just happens to be a TikTok that I saw. So there's a channel I watch. I don't have to pull up a specific video, but there is a channel I watch sometimes. I don't know if it's the titles, the thumbnails or just the puzzles themselves that get me. But the channel is Mind Your Decisions.

And I don't know how entertaining it actually is, but there's something like fulfilling because the problems are presented to you. And they're usually like logic puzzles or different kinds of puzzles. And there are things like, here are some matchsticks. Move one matchstick to make this equation true or something. And I'm like, how do I move the matchstick?

I need to move to how do I move just one. And sometimes I'll think of the solutions, I'll feel really smart. And other times I'll watch the solutions play out. I'm like, I wish I'd thought of that. It's less on the entertainment scale as far as like funny or like rock out or whatever else. But it's more so just like, I enjoy the brain teasers. And I like feeling smart occasionally. At the very least, I walk away. I'm like, you know what, next time I'll know what

to do. So for those who have never seen Mind Your Decisions, it's a YouTube channel and also a website. And if you go through it, it doesn't seem super entertaining off the bat, but I can understand what he's saying. It's like videos like only 1% can solve this and then solve for the magical angle. It's like kind of like, you know, online IQ test type dilemmas.

present a question and probably solve it. So, okay. I see that. All right. Okay. That is edutainment. Whether it's, it's entertainment value is to be determined, but it's educational for sure. And I'm entertained watching it. That's great. That's great. Bob, what you got? Uh,

so this is sort of a genre I really, really like and miss, even though it's not a thing I'm likely to have to deal with anymore, but I like the way that, uh, companies decided to do employee trainings in the eighties and nineties. There are any number of very unhinged, uh, videos that you can find, but, uh, I found this one and I can share this. If you want to see it, I can share this one. Like,

Oh, yeah. Anyway, this is a Wendy's training video? Yeah.

Just the fucking dumping out of the grid. I like how concerned the trainee looks.

Also, he's got the gold plated spatula like goddamn. Anyway, that's it could go on forever. And there are tons and tons and tons of these. Yeah, I haven't seen that one. I saw like the coffee one or the serving drinks or cash register one.

They're all good. It's not a thing I've ever had to learn from, which is unfortunate. Like, I feel like people would respond very positively to this. If you were starting your job at wherever, Target, some restaurant, whatever. And they were like, all right, we're going to watch the training videos now. And then something like this started. I feel like people would be into that. I feel like that's a little I feel like that's a bright spot in the workday.

I'm sure at that time when that came out, they rolled their eyes. But right now, whatever they have in current day training videos is not superior to that. That's the truest form of edutainment. And for companies like that is a big thing. It's just like, how do you get your new employees to retain the information? And it has to be

entertaining in some way to capture their attention because no one likes watching training videos, but you know, it is what it is. They're usually pretty terrible. My training videos at the engineering job I had were just... I remember watching driving school and whenever I worked at United Dairy Farmers, I remember like the ice cream videos and dude, they were old...

not funny and just so boring dude the videos were rough but the guy who taught my driver's ed class was a legend i remember still sitting in that room he had a bunch of like stuffed animals and each one was for a different purpose and every time we would talk and the one i remember the most was if you're at a four-way stop what you have to do is you stop at the line and then you stick your head out and you become a turtle and he had a little stuffed animal turtle and he would just be like turtle

Look left. Turtle. Look right. Turtle. And he had like literally he had a whole cast of characters. Each one was a different action in a different. It was very effective. Also, everyone thought he was completely insane because he was like a really old dude. He was like like a retired age guy who was like doing this because he enjoyed it. Clearly. And all the kids who were in there learning were always just like, oh, God.

I thought it was fucking great. Absolute legend. I don't remember his name. I remember it was this little, not very well ventilated, musty room in a little thing in downtown Dublin. And that dude would just have his stuffed animals up at the front and we would go through scenarios and he would go through and he would turtle and there was a bunny and there was a cow for some reason. I don't remember what the cow did. Something about the udders. Oh.

I don't recall. My classic udders driving dilemma. You keep your hands at 10 and 2 and then milk it. Milk it. Milk the wheel. Is he saying he's teaching six-year-olds to drive? I don't know. It worked, man. It worked on me. Every time I stop at a four-way stop, I still go, turtle. Turtle.

Turtle. And now Bob can both drive and milk a cow. That's true. Yeah, multiple learnings. That's very edutainable. I have a classic example, if I may. I hope I'm allowed to share this. If not, I guess we can mute some audio, but I think I'm good.

You guys remember this? Oh, we're going to get claimed immediately. Mute it and we'll just sing it. I'm just a bill, just a little bill sitting on Capitol Hill. All right. Schoolhouse Rock. I'm going to call that all just like under the umbrella. It is Schoolhouse Rock. But man, what a thing that we actually look forward to watching and learning when we were in school.

I think I always had a good time. I never heard anyone complain about the schoolhouse rock days. Yeah, absolutely. And that's how I know how our government should work. And immediately, both of you knew exactly... Like, you saw just the Capitol building and you guys were like, I know this. It was just... It's so effective. It's older. I don't remember what year this even came out. But man, watching this elementary school, it was like, dude, schoolhouse fucking rock day. Yes. All right. That's down there. Specifically school...

Just a bill, but I'm going to call that all schoolhouse rock. So all schoolhouse rock is off limits now. Okay, that's a lot of stuff. I have another one if you need a moment, Bob. Yeah, I'm still looking. Go ahead. He's racking it up. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill Nye, the science guy. What, are you just going to claim all of Bill Nye? I was looking for specific Bill Nye bits. I'll let it be a showdown for Bill Nye bits because since I've already let him have all schoolhouse rock, let's say if you both can come up with a bit,

I'll put both bits on the board. It won't even be a competition. Let me start with what the first thing I think of with Bill Nye, which is kind of a weird one, is the brought to you by, which was always a gag. It was like, Bill Nye is brought to you by H2O. Water. Stuff like that. I don't know why, but I was always like, dude, I love the brought to you by because it's not actually just some stupid company. It's something fun and interesting. And then obviously the episodes always would be too. But man, the brought to you by's always looked forward to those.

All right. That's that's Wade's claim to Bill Nye. Bob, what's your claim? If you have one, I was trying to find it like a specific bit that he does. It's it's kind of a whole episode and it's kind of a segment in the episode. But the there's an episode on static electricity.

And specifically, there's a segment where he has a balloon and then he has like a piece of like aluminum foil suspended inside a glass jar. So it's like there's no wind or anything. And then he like rubs the balloon to get a little static charge in it and then uses that to like move the foil inside.

in the jar. I remember at the age that I watched that, I understood like that if you rub, you know, you could static electricity, you could static shock. I sort of, but I remember seeing that specifically and just being like,

Wait a minute. Wait. Electricity? Wait. Field? Ooh, hang on. And there was like that specific demonstration. I generally enjoyed Bill Nye videos in school and stuff, but that specific demonstration, I remember I saw it and something in my brain was like...

Wait, it was like the perfect like something clicked in place edutainment moment. But there's I feel like there's a lot of that with Bill Nye, but I was just struggling to find the perfect one. I don't know if that's that's not the most exciting thing they ever did. But that one that one really got me.

Well, that's good. It's on the board. Uh, Wade, you got anything? Chris Hadfield's TED Talk. I don't know if you guys enjoy TED Talks. I enjoy TED Talks. Chris Hadfield was the astronaut who also performed David Bowie's Space Oddity. But his TED Talk I found really fun. People that do stuff that you know you'll probably never do in your life, like going to space, and then like talking about it, talking about a moment. Like there was a moment he was talking about where like he just could not see. He lost all of his vision. He was outside and he had to rely on his training to get through.

through a moment and he's like yeah but whatever's scaring you to stop you from pursuing your dreams is probably also pretty bad like it's you know funny but it was funny it was really informational learning about like what he'd experienced and gone through and then I don't know hearing him perform Space Oddity is just really fun and he kind of changes the lyrics to make it less like ominous and either sad or whatever and more upbeat and just I

I don't know. Enjoyed his TED talk quite a bit in TED talks in general, but I want to claim all TED talks in case Bob has. Yeah, I don't think he's going to bring up another TED talk. As far as entertainment value goes, TED talks in general, probably not the most edutainment because edutainment is specifically I'm putting it on. It's here. It's here. Don't worry. But I say I'd say edutainment is more specifically entertainment value.

more than just educational i guess that's fair because ted talks are just educational pretty much they can have like entertaining moments but you know some people do pretty entertaining job i would agree though that not all ted talks are super entertaining glad i picked a specific one then i think ted talks are a decent category for that but i see what you're saying also ted talks to me this is a joke from a kid's movie but it really is the perfect summary to me there's it's in the uh wreck it ralph

Ralph breaks the internet or whatever it's called. Um, there's a character at one point and there's a guy who's like, I saw this Ted talk and I don't remember anything the guy said, but it made me feel good. And I think the point was something like, I respect your journey. And like, that's how I feel about most Ted talks that I watch. Are you, I'll watch it. And while I'm watching it, I'm like, Oh, Oh, interesting. And then it gets to the end that I'm like, what the fuck was that about? Ah,

I don't know. I enjoyed it, though, I think. I respect your journey, man. You know, I'm sorry to interject here, but there's a coincidentally educational things, more by education as in don't ever do what you're seeing here. There was a video of someone...

It was some TV show, I think, or maybe a YouTube channel where they were trying a whole bunch of different things, whether it was for therapeutic purposes. But either way, they were smoking some kind of frog venom.

Have you ever seen this? No. No. That doesn't sound like a good idea at all. It was not a good idea because the people said like it goes 50-50. Either you have a really beautiful journey where you feel nothing but love or you're flung headfirst into hell and you stay there for a long, long time and the first guy to go got

flung into hell so hard. He just started like freaking out, throwing up. He started spasming. He slid into a river where he was like face down in the water spasming while the guy guiding them through this is like, it's okay. Relax while he's in the water, like face down, just inhaling water. Jesus. Horrible experience. And the guy who's gonna go second is watching this and the camera cuts him. He's just like...

But that guy does it still. And he has the all love beautiful journey. So it really was 50 50. And I learned to never, ever, ever change.

do that ever we hear a distractible support coin flips oh god we will let the frog venom decide who is truly right let us know if you want a frog venom episode yeah i don't know if i want that experience i have i have one that's really more of a person i have a positive and a negative and they're two different people so i want to i want to cover this i feel like this is good all right we'll

legend of edutainment legend of uh conservation and ecological uh advocacy steve erwin the crocodile hunter i think there are still debates about if what he did was too disruptive and whatever i feel like his heart was in exactly the right place and i don't know enough about the

ecology or the whatever the animals to know if he was really fucking them up or if it was fine. But like his show in terms of awareness of creatures and and teaching, but being very entertaining, top notch. Love Crocodile Hunter. Very good combo of edutainment. Can I just say there's sort of a modern riff on that that's embodied in

in large part by a guy who's named Coyote Peterson, who on a YouTube channel where I've seen him on the channel Brave Wilderness, where it's like a similar vibe. He's like the outdoorsy guy. He loves all creatures. But one of the things that he seems to do a lot is just get really fucked up

by animals. Like there's the videos where it's like, I get stung by the world's most poisonous, painful, venomous thing, or I'm bitten by a snake or whatever. I don't like that. I don't think that's a good version of the Crocodile Hunter School of Edutainment. I hate those videos. They make me squirm and I hate it and it makes me

not interested in the creatures of the wilderness very much as opposed to steve irwin who made me feel like i wanted to explore and meet you know see all these beautiful creatures it's a bad it's a bad version but uh yeah steve irwin that's a good one i think that's steve irwin absolute legend wait what you got i've shouted this one out before i think for a different context but urban rescue ranch is a youtube channel it started off with a guy who just had like uh i'll

got an emu i think named kevin i think it's an emu i could be wrong with the species but emu named kevin and he got a kangaroo and named it da baby and like some of the early episodes he had like some chickens he had this kangaroo and he had this like angry running giant bird over the years it's actually developed into a lot more where now he has like a non-profit he does rescues so like people will drop off or he'll pick up like you know injured rabbits or birds

or hawks or possum, squirrel, you name it. He's kind of been learning along the way. So you kind of learn some lessons with him. He'll be like, oh man, I need to do the pins this way. I did it this way. I thought this would work, but I need to do it this way. But some of the stuff is just like, as a kid, I found an injured squirrel one time and my friend and I were like, I don't know what to do about this. Let's take it home and try getting it some milk or something. And we probably didn't do the thing any favors.

But like he goes through, he shows like, hey, we got this injured animal. You might find one of these. You can call these numbers. These places are everywhere and they can help you. Or at the least, you can give them this kind of food, but make sure you don't do this. So it's really, they're entertaining, fun videos. But also like there are a few things where I'm like...

I didn't know that kind of place existed till now. This, I now know who you're talking about because it sounds like, oh, what a lovely channel. And then you go to their channel and he's got a video that's like how to bottle feed a baby beaver. And the next video is how to raise beavers for meat.

Yeah, it's all memes. But yes, I found I fed a ground dog to my prairie dog. Big ounce dies. How to catch and cook baby owls. Emotional. 100% clickbaity memes. And he's always been that way. But I think there is some learning to be had there. So I'm putting it on as a urban rescue ranch. There actually is to believe it or not, there actually is. But it is very entertaining. But like every now and then you're just like, man, if I'd known that years ago, I might be able to save that bird that flew into a window. I could have saved that.

chipmunk you might have been able to yeah actually people said on the subreddit that like there really wasn't anything more i could do which i guess makes sense it was nice them to lie to you like that general psa at least if you live in america what you want to do is call your local animal control if you have an animal that you feel like really needs help i'm not saying this to you mark because i think that poor chipmunk was uh fairly well on the way out the door and i doubt animal control would have gotten it but if you have an animal that's like not on death's door that you feel like

will survive, but you have no idea what to do for it, Animal Control will totally get your back. They will come help you out, and they generally know how to deal with lots of stuff. It's kind of their thing. Fair enough. Somehow didn't know they existed until I was older in life. Like, as a teenager, had no idea Animal Control was a thing. I mean, I would not have guessed that as a kid either. I knew that there was some company you could call that wasn't the garbage company to pick up animal corpses. Did not know there was a company you could call for animals that weren't dead yet.

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LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. All right. Next up, any last ones? We're getting down to the wire. So if you want to shout out. I have a video game. Actually, I have a couple of video games, but edutainment games were big business when we were kids. And I have one from my childhood, but also possibly Mandy's favorite game that's ever existed that I feel like I have to throw in here. Mine would be, well, one Storybook Weaver. Did you guys ever play with Storybook Weaver? Storybook Weaver.

I don't know. It's almost like a, just like a mod on like MS paint. But the whole thing is it has like a bunch of like backgrounds and clip art and you can, you can make a storybook. You can, you can design the scene and you can have pages so you can design a whole story. And then you just write like the, you write the story underneath it. I played with that just recently.

for hours just to be like, well, what can I make? And then what's the story with this? Interesting. But it's not a game. There's no like objective. It's just a creative sandbox of write your own book.

Wait, I've got one image of this I want to share because I think this really puts forward exactly what this is about. Jesus. It's a clown on a unicycle behind an explosion with fire all around a courtyard and it says, Larry was expelled into the wicker courtyard for his misdeeds. I really like it.

That's I've never heard of that game. Oh, dude. Storybook Weaver was what's up. Also, my next favorite childhood game, very edutainment math blaster. Of course. Oh, my God. Love that shit. Can't get enough. And then Mandy's game, which is sort of like a logic and puzzle game that had a lot of like cryptography games and sort of logic based stuff is called

uh the logical journey of the zoom beanies uh i always just call it zoom beanies it's uh it's like a little kids puzzle game but it has very cute characters amy talks about zoom beanies yeah she's she's mentioned that before i did not play this when i was a kid but i have played it as an adult because mandy showed it to me and we play it's a great game it's super fun i think i probably would have been too stupid for it as a kid because i was not good at this sort of

puzzling problem solving stuff but it's a great game and it's got some very like it has lines that manny and i still just like say to each other one of which being there's a game where you're trying to build you have three uh trees and they each want pizza but each of them wants different toppings and won't eat certain toppings you have to like find the right combo and one of them every time you give them something they don't want they go there's something on

on there I don't like. And just like the most memorable delivery like burns into your brain. Is that where the guy goes, make me a pizza. Yeah, make me a pizza.

make me a pizza yes he says that all the time whenever we order pizza pretty much man i say that to each other uh so i got three down the choreo book weaver math blaster and zoomies i would say math blaster of those is the more specific edutainment but i've got them all on the list wait last chance i'll go with video game because bob bob opened my mind up to one that i i think again i've mentioned on here before but in case i haven't because you guys don't remember it operation neptune the

The predecessor of We Need to Go Deeper. You have talked about that before, but I don't... The further down you go, the more complex math equations you have to solve. So it teaches you... Well, I don't remember if it teaches. It's been so long since I played it. Oh, Operation Neptune is part of D-Day? Oh, no. Well...

not this video game i got a submarine a very colorful scape landscape but uh it starts off you have like basic simple like addition subtraction and then like you'll work your way you'll fight some sea monsters whatever and you'll work your way to the next zone and the next zone you have to like send up some kind of like research or something the further down you go but like eventually you'll get to like multiplication and like division and like as a kid i couldn't

I couldn't do those things. I was too young and I didn't understand how to do them. So I never got super far into the game, but I loved playing it and like trying to figure out the math equations and making sure I was setting the research up. Like I actually really enjoyed it, even though ultimately it was like a math game.

but it had like the mechanics of, I think firing your torpedo and swimming around and dodging things. It was very much like a mathematical kids version of we need to go deeper. That's great. Uh, I think you have mentioned it, but I did not know of it specifically. That's that's good.

That goes head to head with Math Blaster. It's going to be a fun matchup. I want to play it. Any last ones? Wade, Bob, anything. Shout out to Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail. I learned stuff from those, even though I don't know that they're necessarily supposed to be educational games. But man, but I learned a lot of animals and Amazon Trail and I

other things about traveling and stuff. I have one I was curious for your verdict on if it counts or not. The Darwin Awards. My dad thought those were very funny. And so I've we like I read some and listened to they had like audio book versions where they told the stories and stuff.

It's not really educational, but I think the point of the Darwin Awards is like, for anyone who doesn't know, it's awards that are given out to people who essentially killed themselves in hilariously stupid ways or outrageous ways.

I didn't know his actual show. Yeah, it was it was a big hit in the like the 2000s. And so I feel like I learned a lot of things of like, oh, that never would have occurred to me either. Like there was a story I remember of a guy who like drove his truck out onto a frozen lake to go ice fishing, but didn't like check the thickness of the ice and his truck like fell through the ice because it was it wasn't.

Very thick. Things of that nature. People dying in... It's sad because people did die, but like in ways that are a little ridiculous or comedic or otherwise outrageous. And so you learn. You learn things not to do or things you should do to avoid, you know, dying. Fair enough. All right. Wait. Wait. Last chance. Last chance.

I'd love to shout out distractible podcast. We're very informational, but God, are we one of the most entertaining things out there? I learn new things for me every week. All right. I'm putting it on the list. All right. And that's it. Judgment is closed. Uh, you know, just some honorable mentions that weren't brought up. Bob,

you made me remember dumb ways to die with the Darwin Awards. Oh yeah. And I feel like if that specific piece of media was mentioned, that's pretty up there for edutainment. That was about rail safety in Australia. Something like that. It was specifically all of those deaths were leading up to don't stand in front of the yellow line in train stations. That was the whole purpose of that cartoon.

cartoon. I didn't actually know that. I thought it was just for fun. No, it was. That's how entertaining it was. And educational, even though the education that it was trying to put across wasn't really remembered as much because all the other ones don't don't do the dumb things. It's still a meme. Like, I'll still come across like TikToks and things where that that song is used. And then Kurtzgesagt, which was not mentioned, but is a great channel with tons of informational and educational things.

honestly, Amy sometimes think it's too existential because they often talk about crises of the universe exploding and things like that. And it's, uh, for some people it can be stressful, but, um, those were honorable mentions that I wanted to bring up. So here's how it's going to work. I'm looking at your list. And the reason I put down everything is because I have a ranking one to five, and I'm going to rank who gave the most, uh,

edutainable given that Stafford Gambit was like the, the, the bar I said is like, this is crazy edu, entertaining and still, it actually teaches you a chess move. Very educational. So I put that like, I'm going to rank number one has to be close to that ish. And that's how I'm going to, to order these. So, uh, give me two minutes to narrow down this list. And then I'm going to do a dude. I'm pretty good about my list. How about you, Bob? Uh,

I feel like I was struggling to remember. I think there are some still sort of deep in the recesses of my mind that I've... Neither one of us, I kept wanting to bring it up, neither one of us brought up like Magic School Bus. I feel like that's pretty... Oh, I did enjoy Magic School Bus. That was good. Some of those types of shows and stuff. There's tons and tons of good stuff like that. I've narrowed down to five.

It's hard for me to judge between the two Bill Nye suggestions. Oh, you gotta pick one. Bob's was specific, but also I do remember a lot of the brought to you bys were funny and they did sometimes teach a little bite-sized thing, but I don't know. It's tough to call that one. Wait, I could change my Bill Nye bit. So it's bit for bit. I know a bit that's even better than the brought to you by. Okay. Can we change last minute? What the fuck? Did you know that?

Now you know. Those bits were always really good. Those were really good. That is true, but, man, now I don't want to... I don't want to... No, I want to claim that one. I'm just going to flip a thing. All right, I claim brought to you by then. Would you flip a pen? No, I have a little... It's not a coin, but, well, it's never going to show it.

it's got two sides a little little like screwdriver thing so it did two sides why don't you just get a dice man odds and evens what is that for your for your ultra rolls when you're playing dnd uh we don't use real dice but i wanted to have one because whenever i roll bad i want to roll dice again but i can't because we're like live or whatever so i just roll this to get my frustrations out okay all right you ready in number five i put urban rescue the reason i put in number five

is because I have not personally watched it except for the videos that have come across my feed and I didn't learn anything from them. But I believe in the educational entertainment value of those videos, so it's on the ranking. - I'll take it, I'm on the list. That's more than I expected. - So in number four, we have Math Blaster.

I ranked Math Blaster versus Operation Neptune as head-to-head on Amazon reviews, because it's the only place that sold both of them. So we had Math Blaster in Search of Spot, which is the one I played, and I believe that's the one Bob was talking about, versus Super Solvers Operation Neptune, which had a 3.5 out of 5 stars, and Math Blaster had a 3.6.

So just barely, Math Blasters eked out the rating of that. However, if it was Math Blasters Adventure Math, that has a 3.4. But I don't believe that was the one that people actually played. I played in search of Spot.

So it's like depending on which version might be above or below. But given my experience with math blasters in search of spot that puts it at the four for Bob. And then at number three, I did a toss up. I did a coin. We have two Bill Nye things. Wade said Bill Nye first. Bob said specifics. And then he claimed another one. I'm not really counting that. It was heads for Bob.

tails for Wade. It landed tails. Wade gets number three spot. Still never won a coin toss in my entire life. What a streak I'm on, boys. Look, I don't know what to tell you. That's just the way it turned up. Number two, and I find myself shocked that I put this above Bill Nye because I cherish Bill Nye, but I can't deny I remember every single Schoolhouse Rock thing I've ever been shown. Schoolhouse Rock lands in at

at number two. And at number one, the one that is closest to what I presented with the Stafford Gambit in terms of that specific genre is the Wendy's training video because it just, it had a song, so much education. I learned so much. I felt so much. Number five,

Wendy's tops the list. I've been humming it in my head this whole time. You press it down. Yeah, it's right there. Wendy's gets Bob plus five points. All right. So Bob gets plus five. Schoolhouse Rock gets Wade plus four points. Bill Nye gets...

Wade plus three points. Uh-oh. Math Blaster gets Bob plus two points. So just by those rankings, it's tied. Urban Rescue gives Wade. Urban Rescue was mine. One point. Here's the thing. I just see what's happening here. Bob, you scored one point in the pre-talk. Wade, you scored one point in the pre-talk and lost one point for tricking me.

The score is a perfect tie. Oh, God. Because you tricked me. That's right, baby. It was a trick from the start. I knew I'd put you in position to have to do a solo show. I'm saying it's time for your wheel. We're tied. Wait, you just said the whole thing was a trick to trick me. You tricked me twice. Yes. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to play that. Of course I'm not. Damn it.

I could get out of the wheel by claiming that, but I'm not gonna because fuck me then, I guess. Oh, Bob, we're gonna have a really easy job. He's gonna write him an episode. This guy's gotta do a whole one by himself. What are the odds?

You got to do a better job of assigning points the way that can't end in a tie. Dude, I made a ranking. He did make a ranking. I talked it all through. I could have said Math Blaster went the other way, which would make a decisive winner, but I go with the version I played, and that's what the score is on Amazon. What are we up to? 99% chance that Mark has to do solo episodes? All right. Yeah.

You know it. No, it's 10% chance. So I don't think I've had more than a tie in a long time. Hooray. You sure you're not tricksy? Are you sure you're not really tricky? Oh, this is looking pretty good. I don't know. Wait, why are you such a lying sack? Come on. Well, you don't want him to have to host his own episode. We have to write it for him. Yeah, there's no there's no like how much we have to write. I could be as lazy as I want on the writings process. I'm not looking. Oh, no. Oh.

Oh, it's fine. Oh, God. What are you? Don't scare me like that. What's wrong with you? God. So close. Was that a trick? Were you tricking me? Whatever. I was, but it's too little too late. All right, Wade, congratulations. You won. It was a very close game between the two of you. We learned a lot. We were very educated. And now the one man show goes up to 12%.

Yay. Woo. Can't wait for the next tie. That gave me heartburn for some reason. I don't feel good. All right, Bob, loser's speech first. I enjoyed this very much. I love edutainment in general. I do feel like these sort of, I'm going to call them anthology episodes are really tilted against me because I have the memory of a man twice my age.

I'm sure I had some real diamonds in my rough. If I could just remember what was in the rough, there were definitely some diamonds in it. And so I could have won. I would have won if I wasn't so old. Thanks for the win. I appreciate it. All right. Well, okay. Wade, your winner's speech. Loser's speech.

Well tied, Bob. Well tied. So I guess technically we did both win for a minute there until the wheel. It's nice doing episodes like these as well because I do have an awful memory, but I feel like my nostalgia memory is pretty good. Like a lot of things prior to like making content, we have discussions and I'm like,

Oh my God, that game or that show or that episode. But man, oh man, when people talk about games we played like four or five years ago, I have to go back and look and I'll even watch it and I'll be like, I have zero recollection of this ever existing. I cannot believe my face is on this with hair. No bald.

and playing it. I don't know what's changed in the last like 10, 15 years, but man has my memory gotten a lot worse. I'm gonna try to just live in the moment or live in the way back past. Play some Operation Neptune like the old days and forget all of the modern games that clearly aren't as good because I don't remember them as well. Okay, well, somehow I'm depressed. Uh, we also didn't mention Mythbusters, which I just remembered is a... Ooh, that's a great one, yeah.

Too bad they're not there. So if you guys have any edutainable things, post them to the subreddit, the distractible subreddit. Thank you, Bob and Wade, for participating. Look forward to Wade hosting in the next episode. DistractibleStore.com for merch while it's there. It's limited time or something like that. Or Jackass. Taught me what not to do. Fair enough. Fair enough. But it's not on the list. Thank you for listening and or watching. Podcast out.