April 15, 2018 To learn the answers to life's biggest questions, we must evolve, change, become worse. This week: Can an artificial intelligence programmed with the mind of the Zodiac killer pierce your heart, with haunting original poems? Why does a puffin's beak glow, and why did someone care to find that out? How hard is curling, really? Will Chewbacca get hit by that rock? (Yes.) Fasten your seat belt, put on your sickest pair of mirrored sunglasses, and bask in the blinding ultraviolet rays of discovery, as we find the answers out together.

Discussed: Solo: A Star Wars Story, Chewbacca, Ron Howard, Rob Howard, fluorescent puffin beaks, sweet puffin shades, Copiale cipher, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, Zodiac killer case-solving robot writing poetry, future human Graham who evolves to survive car crashes, Marbled Crayfish: The Crayfish That Clones, Graham's asexually-reproducing lobster children

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Jake's Endorsement: SN30 Pro Controller to play modern video games with an SNES-like controller

Chris' Boring Endorsement: UGREEN External Hard Drive Enclosure to root through and your old hard drives and copy the important stuff to your new huge hard drive

Nick's Canadian Endorsement: The great Canadian sport of curling (see photographic evidence here)

April 7, 2018 This is a quick episode to let you all know that Important If True is going to be sporadic in the next couple of months, because we've all got slightly too much going on. Or, it was intended to be a quick episode about that, until Chris found a collection of novelty sound effects buttons in our recording software, then it became something slightly more stupid.

We'll be back next week with a full episode, but don't be surprised if a few upcoming episodes are missed or come in a little short.

If you're new to the show, we recommend you skip this episode, and browse back a couple weeks to find a full episode that sounds appealing. We're really proud of the last few months of the show and hope you enjoy it!

Discussed: Hello My Future Girlfriend

Send us your questions at [email protected]!

March 30, 2018 Our time is precious. We all know it. But how precious? It all depends on how much of it we have. Three hundred years? Four hundred? One hundred thousand years? The cosmos stretch out before us, inscrutable and infinite. The only limits are your imagination, and the unstoppable multitudes of self-cloning asexual crayfish threatening to extinguish all galactic mass.

Discussed: dulcet tones, glitter bombs, helping, the hone zone, self-cloning mutant crayfish, human extinction via water lobsters, wax housing the coati, being back, thin-faced fortune-smashing robot arm, charming fortune cookie fortune-writing mom, redacted fortunes, robots making robots making microchips, The Matrix but with crayfish and the point is to get rid of glitter, Twista's extended family line obliterating all stellar mass

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Jake's Endorsement: "My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data" by Ian Bogost

Chris' Endorsement: "Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand" by Mark O'Connell

Nick's Cowardly Improvised Endorsement: Watching "Jeopardy!" (or playing The Authentic At Home Jeopardy from Hammacher Schlemmer)

Nick's True Endorsement: Wonder Bread (learn about its racist history!)

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes (first brush head refill free), Happy Birthday David (from Sarah), Happy Birthday Mike (from James)

March 24, 2018 What does the future hold? You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Just imagine... Content creators, the size of skyscrapers, looming over our cities. The greatest actors of the baby boomer generation, locked in undying clone warfare. The world's most precious secrets confined to the pithy slogans of a fortune cookie. Martin Shkreli, still. So, friend, what does the future hold? Let's pretend you never asked.

Discussed: Nick Breckon's Existence, actors archiving facial scans to live forever, scanning your face while Peter Thiel drinks your blood, the far-future silver-gilded George Clooney, living under the tiresome watchful eye of a 200-foot-tall PewDiePie, Jake getting kicked out of the Millennials, dual-piloting the Tom Hanks mecha-robot, Martin Shkreli digitizing his brain at the exact moment of his sentencing, Important If True 19: Pearls Before Slime, the ingredients of Nickelodeon Slime, the ingredients of Nickelodeon Gak, Jake settling deep into his new Gen-X identity, the Ancient Galactic Brain PewDiePies, local fortune cookie production, the paradox of the accurate fortune cookie, fortune cookie driving you into a slow-motion spiral of depression and regret, fading out like a Star Wars ghost, the fortune cookie we need in 2018, the missing Year 0, Jake's future life on the moon

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Nick's Endorsement: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom

Jake's Preliminary Endorsement: The unfindable book "How to Host a Double Dare Party," which apparently had a VHS counterpart

Chris' Endorsement: A delicious breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, nestled into egg cups and uncapped with an egg clacker, served alongside toast soldiers with butter and Marmite

Jake's Endorsement: MIT Technology Review article about a mind-uploading service that is "100% fatal" (cf. Jake's pork chops story)

March 17, 2018 In the absence of Nick Breckon, what is this podcast? What is any podcast? What are you? What am I? Oh god, what am I? What is this world? Why am I trapped in this strange room? Alexa, are you there? Alexa, can you laugh? Alexa: Destroy me.

Discussed: New Zealand "A.I." followup, fake A.I. doctor "Zach", fake A.I. lawyer "Hustle", competitive underground tickling/conspiracy documentary film "Tickled", Dick Wolf Presents "Hustle & Zach", our present podcast-fueled existential discomfort, newscaster affectations, Alexa laughing, the first rule of virtual assistants, why Alexa laughs, genie wine update, fast rapper Twista, fast rapper Twista's extended family tree, the beautiful harmonic resonance of fast-rapped wine notes, the Buzzfeed.com oral history of Twista's wine note rap battle mixtape masterpiece, sucking that delicious wine out of your carpet fibers, getting what you wished for (????)

Chris' Endorsement: Drawful by Jackbox Games (available for many devices in the Jackbox Party Pack)

Jake's Derivative Tacked-on Endorsement: Tee K.O. by Jackbox Games (available for many devices in the Jackbox Party Pack 3)

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes with your first brush head refill free

March 10, 2018 A show that attempts to answers the real questions of the week, that guarantees to leave you satisfied if not any more informed. This week: Is an AI still an AI if it's just a guy with an email account? Is it still a home assistant if it just laughs at you? Which is easier to bait: an AI home assistant or a Canadian? These questions and more—answered in the manner you least expect.

Discussed: Canadian Baiting, Hometown Baiting, New Zealand medical supercomputer AI "Zach," bears: just people in bear costumes?, going blockchain crazy, Long Blockchain Corp, Alexa randomly laughing at people, surveilling yourself to capture precious memories, telling your first joke, tech billionaires uploading themselves into the cloud, The Feds Have Martin Shkreli's Wu-Tang Album, file copy vs file move operations, why can't the Wu-Tang album be released by FOIA, unsolicited factoid about Oreos, digging deeper into the infinitely-improving immortal bottle of wine

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Chris' Endorsement: Party game One Night Ultimate Werewolf

Jake's Endorsement: Max Krieger's Twitter threads on the Metreon and other interesting urban/commercial design

Nick's Endorsement: Coway AP-1512HH Mighty Air Purifier

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes (your first brush head refill free), Planetarium comic miniseries on Kickstarter

March 2, 2018 If a book about procrastination that was never finished or published, gets cited in a book about procrastination that sells a million copies, which author did a better job? When you place the final piece in a blank jigsaw puzzle, have you accomplished anything? If your friend or co-host was replaced with a perfect clone, even if you knew it had happened, could you tell the difference? Find out the answer to these and many more important questions, by listening!

Discussed: Getting your hair cut internationally, 1000-piece one-color jigsaw puzzles, encoding a secret conspiracy clue into a blank crossword puzzle, planetwide fractal puzzle solving, Vine, coining a phrase, forming relationships inside The Content, forming a relationship with The Content, convincing Jeff Goldblum he knows Nick Breckon, Jeff Goldcast, 39-year Wax House, Procrastination Through the Ages, the tragedy of self-improving wine, mystery box wine, the Hope/Jobs/Cash tontine

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Nick's Endorsement: Appreciating the Olympic sport of Curling

Chris' Endorsement: German language Weimer Republic police drama Babylon Berlin (Netflix, original book series)

Jake's Endorsement: Improving your Google Image Search results by installing the extension View Image (Chrome, Firefox) and adding the text "-site:pinterest.com" to your search query

Chris' Potential Future Endorsement: Marmite yeast extract

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes (your first brush head refill free), Edd Miles, Greg Blackburn

February 15, 2018 On this podcast we explain the unexplainable. We solve the unsolvable. Our method is simple: We take the tiniest problem you might have, the grain of sand scratching at the back of your mind, and we roll it down a hill to see what it might pick up along the way, until that grain of sand has picked up dirt and sticks, until it's grown and grown, until it's the size of the Earth itself. Does that mean that any question, any problem, no matter how small or dumb, when properly spun out past its breaking point, can explain the important truths of life itself, of our existence on this planet? Probably not, but we'll keep trying for some reason. So ask away! Just don't ask us to explain this podcast. Fifty episodes in, it's abundantly clear that's one question we'll never answer.

Discussed: Valentine's Day, Valentine's Boxing Day, what this podcast is, David Lynch, a Mythbuster, busting, Thimbleweed Park, real-life hint system, staying on the phone, Albert Brooks, the quantum physics of the universe, y'all, the Google/Facebook mega-matrix, Alexa, J.J. Abrams, 4468 Cloverfield, the incomprehensible infinitude of data we have at our disposal, trading hint futures on Wall St., real-life save system, Edge of Tomorrow, Live Die Repeat, respawning to prevent organ failure, Silicon Valley anti-toxin tech bro Peter Thiel, the most useful life (to benefit Peter Thiel), Lore Lord Bean, Important If True 35: "Hammacher, Schlemmer, and You", the death of tragic goose Thomas, the mixing up of Flemish words, too much clam in the beverage, Clamato, massively popular Canadian drink the Caesar, weathered old bromides

Thank you all so much for listening to 50 episodes of Important If True! Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Nick's Endorsement: Blue Planet II (Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Netflix)

Jake's Endorsement: Slow Burn, a Slate podcast about the Watergate scandal

Chris' Endorsement: A Very Fatal Murder, an Onion podcast satirizing true crime podcasts

Chris' Secondary Endorsement: Extra long-handled shoehorn

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes (your first brush head refill free), Tracy Carlson

February 9, 2018 Send us your problems, your conundrums, your mysteries, no matter how important, and we'll do our absolute best to figure it all out. This week: What is the loneliest food? Is it a sandwich? If "you don't just eat" Pringles, what DO you do with them? And, why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near? In this case it may be because the bird is an immobile cement statue you have mistaken for your wife. But don't worry, we're on it! Join us.

Discussed: Dodgson (nobody cares), calling people on the phone, The Coldblum, Nigel "No Mates" the Lonely Gannet, radicalized Men's Rights Birds, dorky-looking Night Herons (god what nerds), bird catfishing, The Lake Merritt Center for Thirsty Birds, Pringles: You Don't Just Eat 'Em, a name like Smuckers, Fuddruckers, The Nigel Experiment, A scientist's thoughts on the Crow Box, the loneliest food, sandwiches, the Red Vines waxy pound, The Guardian's history of the British packaged sandwich industry, [ASMR] ~British Packaged Sandwich Industry~ podcast crisp mouthfeel.mpeg, Orson Welles' frozen peas commercial outtakes, street pizza, bird self-recognition, bird-on-human political gaslighting

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Jake's Endorsement: Jordan Eldredge's full-featured Winamp 2 running in your web browser

Nick's Endorsement: Teaching yourself to draw, even if you do it badly

Jake's Chained-On Endorsement: Taking a community college introduction to studio art or drawing class

Chris' Corrective Endorsement: The Android version of New York Times Crossword, which exists, contrary to previous claims

Chris' Endorsement: MP Matt Hancock's inexplicable personal social network "Matt Hancock MP" for iOS and Android

Sponsored By: Quip toothbrushes (your first brush head refill free), Video Death Loop podcast

February 1, 2018 There are Great Mysteries out there. Conundrums so staggering and profound they can only be resolved by the world's greatest minds. What do you do when your barista knows your name, but you've never managed to learn theirs? How can Mario crush his enemies when he knows the pathetic, lonely lives they lead? And, is that crow trying to sell you cigarettes? We think if these are the sorts of questions you're looking to have answered, we will do a very servicable job. Join us!

Discussed: Inaccurate rules of the universe regarding monthly transitions, video of cat on bowl on Roomba, paying it forward at a local coffee shop, not paying it forward, instant dread and shame, getting to know your local barista, completely failing to know your local barista after dozens of visits and the silent-but-deadly social death spiral that transpires as a result, Tim Horton's, Timmy's, Dunkie's, Georgie, the time Georgie burned the Dunkie's, Unkie Dunkie the Baloney Slicer, crow cleanup crews, Crowded Cities, the crowbar, The Official Crow Box, craving a smoke thanks to crows, Joe Camel, ravens, Her Majesty's Ravenmaster, raven seeking attention, shitty teens, Larry the Crow, childhood misconceptions, Koopa Troopas, Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire, Proust's "madeleine" moment from Remembrance of Things Past, headcanon, the impossibility of communicating your deepest most tragic interiority across language and age barriers, being waxed house baby, being wax house babied, even longer hypothetical Wikipedia cons, hit film "Wax House, Baby," fictional film "Wax House, Baby" within the hit film "Wax House, Baby", hit song "Wax House, Baby"

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Chris' Endorsement: iOS and Android telemarketer-identifying and -blocking app Hiya

Jake's Endorsement: Alternative 1980s comic book compendium Sam & Max: Surfin' the Highway (digitally on Comixology or in the beautiful Eisner-nominated Anniversary edition designed by our very own Jake!)

Nick's Endorsement: SyncSketch, for collaborative online sketching

Sponsored By: Steam virtual inventory buyer and reseller Captain Invictus, aka A Vacuum Full of Bees (also listen to the Hat Baron saga as recounted on the Idle Thumbs Podcast), Quip electric toothbrushes with your first brush head refill free

January 27, 2018 This week's episode is about Trust: when to extend it, when to withhold it, and when to cling to it because nothing else makes sense. When the same strange couple you don't know sends you a Christmas card every year, do you trust your mom that it's "just some friend's parents you've forgotten," or do you follow your heart and grift them before they can grift you first? Do we let ourselves believe a robot can write poetry, or is there just some hippie hiding in there? If a voice on the other end of a phone asks "can you hear me?" why not tell them "yes?" Plus, we manage to uncover the truth behind the mysterious "Cut Your Hair" phone calls, and receive a transmission from a universe long ago banished and thought to be lost.

Discussed: Receiving Christmas cards from people you don't know, misguided counter-espionage, de-scrambling anagrams, chatbot poetry, Racter, Eliza, deconstructing Racter, bots as reflections of their creators, the problems with using machine learning to create an artificial Frasier, embracing the flaws of an artificial Frasier as an aesthetic, the standalone tonal language of Kelsey Grammer, poop-related topics leaking in from a banned dimension, Utah-based flat vocal affect call centers, robocalls recording your voice to turn identity into an Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard, the bizarre grift outlined in Reply All: The Phantom Caller, the truth about the Cut Your Hair phone call, Sneakers

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Jake's Endorsement: Sneakers (1992) (Amazon, iTunes)

Accidental Endorsement: Sneak King (Xbox, Xbox 360), a free game from Burger King

Nick's Endorsement: Strider video game speed run and live tutorial on speedrunning, a part of Awesome Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon for charity

Chris' Endorsement: Darkman (1990) (Amazon, iTunes)

Chris' Real Endorsement: watching clips from Would I Lie To You on YouTube

January 19, 2018 This week we discover that no matter how far flung life's questions may seem, there may be a universal key that unlocks them all. For instance: How do you completely collapse the degrees of separation between you and viral HQ winners? Do you actually remember anything that happened on the childhood television shows you hold so dear? What do the multiple robocall personalities who continue to call you at home, make demands of you, get noticeably bored and then hang up on you, actually want? The answer to all of them is, inexplicably, that you should cut your hair. At least, that's what we've been led to believe.

Discussed: "If You're Going to San Francisco (to Return to Your Old Barber But Want to Really Act Up the Fact That You Were In Canada) (Put Flowers In Your Hair)", unconventional Canadian sex/hair desires, HQtie of the year flipping out after winning $11.30 in HQ Trivia, The Elephant Show, Sesame Street, Nick Breckon wax housing Landis the hairdresser, the long arm of "Wax House, Baby", horror film podcast The Rants Macabre, pointlessly but insidiously altering the apparent history of short-lived children's cartoon Street Sharks, the mutual idiocy that is information aggregation on the internet, Street Sharks vandal copycat killer, ruining our own stupid childhoods, inexplicable robocalls, getting good advice over the phone, getting hung up on by a robot, those gross fungus toe ads for mortgage refinancing and stuff, the marketing matrix, The Marketing Matrix, I literally can't even explain the dumb internet shit we made up on this part of the podcast, Mellotron keyboard but instead of violin samples it has a bro telling you to cut your hair, Being John Malkovich but instead of being John Malkovich it has a bro telling you to cut your hair, "laff box" for creating televised laugh tracks live, our fractal gaslight reality, inappropriate diluting and genericizing of the phrase "Wax House, Baby"

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Jake's Endorsement: The Director's Cut podcast from the Director's Guild of America

Chris' Endorsement: Collecting all your paper-based ephemera and, amidst a nostalgia explosion, organizing it (for instance, into a file box like this with file folders like this)

Nick's Endorsement: Reverse-searing your cheeseburger

January 13, 2018 In the first Important If True recorded in the new year, we put our fresh reality through its paces. Kick the tires a bit. Ask the questions that really matter in 2018. Questions like: Is the saxophone cool, or is it too real to be cool? If your coworker starts wearing puka shell necklaces as self-flagellating conversion therapy, is he still a bro? And if you become trapped in a fictitious world of your own design, will a Wikipedia editor ask for a citation? Only one thing’s for sure: it’s a wax house, baby—we all just live in it.

Discussed: 2018, Nick's Halloween Dreams, the unappreciated coolness of saxophones, psychic neural infiltration, explicit dream roasting, the Wikipedia page for the 2005 film "House of Wax", the internet sabotage long game, "Wax House, Baby", shared fictitious realities, Agloe, New York, Snakes on a Plane, the fractal-like world of online ersatz cheap brand creation and marketing, becoming an accidental bro, Pavlovian anti-bro enforcement methods, climbing out of your bro-hole with a ladder made of bones, rare Domino's Pizza Rolex watch, Nutcracker barfees, horrible barfing Nutcracker toy

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Chris' Endorsement: Getting a huge hard drive (like this massive 3TB drive I bought) for way cheaper than you'd think, and putting all your crap on it while experiencing a nostalgia trip

Jake's Endorsement: Wizard Jam, the semiannual Idle Thumbs community game jam. Check out The Garfing Garfo because it is strange and surprising, and The World Begins With You because it is beautiful

Nick's Endorsement: "HQ Trivia is a Harbinger of Dystopia", Ian Bogost's deep dive into the strange trivia game HQ; and "If You Run This Profile, We're Fire Our Host", a completely unhinged interview with the CEO of HQ Trivia

Sponsored by: Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill

January 5, 2018 It's a brand new year, time for fresh starts, time to throw those old cares away. Well, we know that's easier said than done, so we'll try and take care of a few big questions we know are on everyone's mind going into 2018. Questions like: What is your roommate storing in his conspicuous model ship? Where can I watch free episodes of my favorite TV show, Frasier? And, if someone could inject memories of a fantastic vacation directly into a person's brain, would they charge more to give you one with lots of sleep? The answers, or a close enough facsimile, are right here.

Discussed: "2018: Timeless," making the most from Patreon's short-lived new payment plan, Elves Behavin' Badly, Elf on the Shelf, Mensch on a Bench, learning to subvert your Elves Behavin' Badly security system, taking patently bad advice to heart and acting on it, robbing a store by squirting lemon juice on your face to hide your identity, algorithmic biases in Santa's Workshop, extricating yourself from an apartment when roommates have claimed all your stuff as their own, the time Nick Breckon finally hung out with his roommate for a night, creating your own Total Recall vacation, accidentally injecting yourself with the wrong Total Recall movie, itching vs scratching, borrowing vs lending, extreme pedantry, the evolution of language, American English as a melting pot, New York Times dialect quiz, Lexicon Valley podcast

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Chris' Endorsement: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle (Website, iOS App)

Nick's Endorsement: Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program, which is less of a missed gem now than it was when we recorded.

Jake's Endorsement: Harry Potter and the Portrait of what Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash, a predictive-text-assisted new novel in the Harry Potter series, and Megan Nicole Dong's Large Pile of Ash illustrations.

December 29, 2017 When someone says, "the gift that keeps on giving," they're usually describing something good, something exciting, something people want. But what about the bad gifts? The gift you ask for but regret? The gift you already have, then foist off onto a family member under an oath of silence? The gift that tricks your childhood brain into thinking you're a genius? The gifted Hawaiian shirts, owls, books on meerkats, or anything else given by the truckload that, once your loved ones decided you liked, couldn't help but keep on giving year after year? We are here for you, with the Important If True Bad Gift Special. Join us for tales of gifts gone awry, gifts given on loop forever, and sometimes even the story of a bad gift that turned good.

Bad gifts discussed: Opening your gifts early would ruin the surprise!

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

If you have a Bad Gift story for us, send it to [email protected] with the subject line "Bad Gift," and we'll include it in next year's special!