Generations

Peter
Welcome back to Generations. I am one of your co-hosts, Peter.

Aubrey
And I am your other co-host, Aubrey.

Peter
Aubrey, you have been in Madison now for almost a full month.

Aubrey
Yes, indeed.

Peter
Can you believe it?

Aubrey
No not really. I feel like I've just barely got here like a week ago. It kind of feels like.

Peter
Yeah. Well, you were out this week for a couple of days, like a day and a half, two days or so.

Aubrey
But yeah. Yep.

Peter
So.

Aubrey
Yep. I went back to back to Salt Lake to pick up my wedding dress, so that was fun.

Peter
Mm-hmm. Very, very.

Aubrey
Now we just have to get some a few alterations on it here in Madison and then And then we'll be golden. So, yeah, it was great.

Peter
Very good. That's crazy. It's getting closer.

Aubrey
Yeah, it is like two months.

Peter
It's getting closer. That's bonkers.

Aubrey
Yeah, I know. I'm like, there's so much to do. It's fine.

Peter
Yes, yes, there is. Well, how you been doing other than that?

Aubrey
Oh, you know, just just pretty good. I have a lot of free time on my hands, um, so it is just a huge adjustment to go from being pretty much the busiest person that I know to being the least busy person that I know.

Peter
Sure, sure.

Aubrey
I have a whole lot of nothing to do. I, you know, have a couple of random errands I run every day or have like an appointment or something. or like a meeting or something like that every few days. But other than that, I kinda just fart around and do whatever I want.

Peter
I mean, you know it can be a liberating experience for an an amount of time, but then I can imagine that it'll get a little a little boring.

Aubrey
It's kinda freaky. Yes. Certainly. I kind of am having a little bit of an identity crisis 'cause, I don't know, I I fall into the whole, you know, my self worth is is Attached to me being like a student or working. And so I kind of don't have like, who am I outside of being a student or having like four jobs or something? But it's been nice. It'll be good. Especially once we go once I go back to grad school, it'll be an another beast. So I'm trying to just soak it up Yeah, yeah.

Peter
Yeah, that's true. That's true, very true.

Aubrey
But how have you been?

Peter
You know, just hanging in there, working. And you know, summer is always interesting. In some ways, it gets busier, in some ways, it slows down a little bit.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
But getting ready for a little time off. I have some time off in a couple of weeks, about, oh gosh, I guess two weeks. I'll have a week off. And we're not going anywhere, really. I mean, we'll go to Boise at the end of that week because it'll be summer champs for Gareth. I just basically took the week off I'm like it's been three months since I had any time off, so I need to take a little bit of time off.

Aubrey
Oh, nice. Yikes. Yeah, that's a long time.

Peter
So yeah, but but other than that, just hanging out, working, and you know, doing a little Little D D here and there, still running that, which is fun but stressful.

Aubrey
That's a long time.

Peter
It's so much more stressful running it than it is playing it when I was playing it.

Aubrey
Oh, I'm sure.

Peter
I could just, you know I could show up on whatever night we were playing and just kind of fart around myself.

Aubrey
Right.

Peter
And now If we're going to play, I've got hours and hours beforehand to try and prep and make sure that I'm ready because That's the ton of respect for people who run role-playing games and stuff like that, whatever it may be, because It really is.

Aubrey
Prep Hooray.

Peter
It is improv. I mean, you've just got to be ready at a moment's notice to just. react to whatever your players are deciding they want to try.

Aubrey
Whatever happens.

Peter
And and then sometimes one of the harder things is remembering how you reacted in the past so that you can stay consistent.

Aubrey
Right. It's consistency, yeah.

Peter
You know.

Aubrey
Yeah, that sounds like a lot, but I'm sure it's fun though.

Peter
Yeah. So, well We didn't have like a super, super specific topic, but but but we also kind of did based on our previous conversation.

Aubrey
Yeah, yeah.

Peter
So, why don't you take it away and let us go?

Aubrey
Yeah. Well, so what's funny is is from last time you recorded, I was like, by next time I want to have watched Mission Impossible one and two because as we talked about last time, we talked about the new Mission Impossible And then I, you know, I admitted how little I've actually seen of the Mission Impossible movies. So I'm trying to remedy that. And now I have watched one through four because Yes.

Peter
Oh, okay. All right. Well, you had told me you had made it through one through two. I didn't know about three and four.

Aubrey
I watched three and four on Friday night on the plane rides back home because yeah, I downloaded both of them on my iPad because I fig I figured I at least would get through three.

Peter
Okay. Sure.

Aubrey
Um But then we ended up just like sitting on the tarmac for forever for my second flight. So I ended up just watching the entirety of of four as well, 'cause I had downloaded that as well, thinking, you know, there's there's a chance I get through three and have time for four, so I will download it just in case.

Peter
Yeah.

Aubrey
So yeah, now I've watched a lot of Mission Impossible in the last two weeks.

Peter
It it sounds like that is correct.

Aubrey
Yes, indeed.

Peter
So tell us, out of those four movies, which one was your favorite?

Aubrey
So I'm gonna say it's a close close run between one and four.

Peter
Okay, that would have been my guess.

Aubrey
For me. Um yeah. One is just like iconic and ev and he just looks so young and it's like the first one, you know, and they have the It just it feels very iconic and so, you know, that is most of the reason why and it's just like a fun watch and there's like plot twists that I'm like, Whoa, I wasn expecting that, I wasn't expecting that, you know. Um, and same with four. Four I I liked how many just like how many missions it felt like they had in four. Um and it was very like spy like, very like I mean they all are spy like, but specifically for it felt like um there's just a lot of the things that I really love about Mission Impossible in four, and I also love Benji so much, and Benji is such a, you know, when one of the main team members in Four, so I really enjoyed those. So, yeah, probably between one and four for me.

Peter
Okay. So like we talked about last time, five, six, seven, and eight all pretty much the same team. So you can feel a kind of a similarity in both the directorial style. But even sort of the way they approach it amongst those four.

Aubrey
Yeah, absolutely.

Peter
So now you have watched the four where again everyone was directed by somebody different.

Aubrey
Yes. It was like whiplash. Every time I would like watch each one was so drastically different. Oh, going from one to two though was the biggest whiplash of my life.

Peter
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Aubrey
I was like, what is going on? Two to three as well was just whiplash from the the complete variants in like the directing style was just crazy.

Peter
So okay, let's just do it. Tag to me about Mission Impossible 2.

Aubrey
Oh my, I hated it so much. I actively was like, This is the worst movie I've ever seen in my life, almost the whole time. It was still fun. Like. I can say I hate it, but I still, it was still a fun watch because I was laughing at it the whole time. Because every time there's a slow-motion, unnecessary slow-motion scene. where Tom Cruise is doing some jump, flip, turn, kick in the chest, crazy karate move, and then his hair is flowing in the wind or something. I just was laughing so hard and I was watching it with Hayden and every time a like just the unnecessary slow motion Just one after the other. I like, Not again, please stop with the slow motion.

Peter
It never stops in that one.

Aubrey
I hate it. Never Never I was like, We've had at least seven slow motion kicks in the last thirty seconds. Like, there's no way he's gonna keep going like this.

Peter
Oh, I mean the whole fight on the sand at the end, and but even just Uh-huh.

Aubrey
It was like they were jousting with their motorcycles. and then they the motorcycles get they throw them off and they just slam into each other and then they go tumbling in the sand and the hair is flowing and the oh it was crazy.

Peter
And you've got the Hans Zimmer score, so you've got this like overly dramatic now, don't get me wrong. Big fan of Hans Zimmer.

Aubrey
Absolutely.

Peter
Love some of his stuff. The Batman Begins, that whole trilogy, his soundtracks for those are great.

Aubrey
Yes. Yes.

Peter
Love Inception. I mean, I even I dig the Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack, but but yeah, it's Like, I can just hear the Naya's theme.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
They're like, ah, ah, like, as the slow motion, and they're like fighting on the sand, and the waves are crashing. And, you know, it's cutting back and forth between the two of them fighting. She's walking to her death, getting ready to throw herself off the cliff to save everybody in Sydney.

Aubrey
To the cliff. And the wind blowing through her perfect hair with her perfect tiny nose and perfect extremely tiny waist and Always wearing a crop top for some very unnecessary reason and just having no point in the movie besides being the pretty face that the two that the evil guy and the good guy are fighting over.

Peter
Uh-huh.

Aubrey
And I oh, that was just so Th what was also funny is this was extra extra bad in the motorcycle sand fight scene. This was extra bad but when they would do a slow motion so someone could do some really cool trick kick thingy, but then the other guy would just like stand there waiting. for Tom Cruise to jump, spin three times and do a kick in his chest with the the bad guys just waiting there for him to have his cool moment and then get kicked in the chest. That was what What really sent it for me is I was like, why is he just standing there? Well, Tom Cruise has to have his have his slow motion moment, so that's my bad The Doves In the compound.

Peter
It's true. And let's not forget the doves. You have to ask yourself, why are there freaking doves? In this sort of underground compound, they're there for one reason and one reason only, so that as Tom Cruise looks and then like turns to run away, a dove can slow-mo.

Aubrey
Slow moons Oh, man.

Peter
Fly across the door. And that's a John Woo signature. The doves is a John Woo thing. I agree with you about Naya as a character. She is used poorly.

Aubrey
Yes.

Peter
Again, it's you know, you look at some of the other Mission Impossible movies, and while I appreciate quite a bit that realistically We don't get a significant love interest really after that.

Aubrey
Mm-hmm.

Peter
Because in three, he's married. In four, we think she's dead, but she's not. And And while there are other female characters who could play the part of kind of the femme fatale, it never really gets anywhere weird. I mean, the closest honestly you get is. probably in Mission Impossible 8 with Haley Atwell's character when she's reviving him after he's been under the water.

Aubrey
Right. Yeah.

Peter
But But nothing like two, where it's a full-on love interest, and then using her as the bait. That's her whole point. Her whole point in that. movie is She's the Bait for What's Is Nuts the Bad Guy, which I don't even remember his name.

Aubrey
Yes. Yeah. I don't eith I don't even either, 'cause I yeah, I don't even Yeah, it was just Yeah, I don't know. The it was very what that movie came out in 2000 or something, so it kind of felt like a yeah, where it was like a classic.

Peter
Something like that. It was very early two thousand.

Aubrey
They say some misogynistic things that you can kinda just slide 'cause it was two thousand and no one really bats an eye at it.

Peter
Oh, sure.

Aubrey
But nowadays it's like, Oh, why would you say that?

Peter
Yeah. Yep.

Aubrey
But yeah, it was just Oh man.

Peter
It's one of those movies that I loved when it first came out, and I continued to Insist that I recognized it wasn't a great movie, but I loved it.

Aubrey
Mm-hmm.

Peter
And then years passed that I had seen it, and we watched it with Gareth. And I was doing the same thing that you were doing. I was just laughing at all of the ridiculously unnecessary slow-mo.

Aubrey
Yes. Yes.

Peter
And while I still enjoy it, It is definitely the worst of the Mission Impossible movies.

Aubrey
Absolutely.

Peter
I mean, it shot this last time I watched it, it shot straight to the bottom.

Aubrey
Absolutely.

Peter
I just, yeah.

Aubrey
Yeah, easy. Easy. Yeah, it was still again, it was fun to watch because I just hadn't seen it before and I wanted to you know, we love Mission Possible, whatever, you just watch it. But at the end I was like, Yeah, that's I'm good with just that. That was It's again, it was fun to watch. It's not like I was like, oh man, when is this going to be over? But I was just laughing at it because I was, this is just ridiculous.

Peter
Right.

Aubrey
The whole time, this is ridiculous.

Peter
So again, big contrast going from one to th two because one has that very I mean one is an action movie But it's a spy movie first.

Aubrey
Huge Yeah Yes, very much so.

Peter
Like Mission Impossible 1 is very much, okay, you've got the whole scene with the breaking into the CIA room to get the knock list. And now, now you've met the guy from Mission Impossible A.

Aubrey
Exactly, yes, yes, yeah, yes.

Peter
I love that they brought him back. I think that was one of the greatest things. And that he's happy that that all happened because he got sent there and he met his wife, and he's had a better life because of it.

Aubrey
Yes, it's adorable.

Peter
I thought that was a great, that was a great callback. But Very again, there are action scenes, but most of the tension for Mission Impossible 1 comes from the spy stuff.

Aubrey
Yeah, absolutely.

Peter
It's him trying to figure it out. It's the meeting with Max. It's all of that stuff.

Aubrey
Mm-hmm.

Peter
And then you jump into two where the spy stuff literally is only the stupid masks.

Aubrey
Yeah, that that was it.

Peter
That's the extent of it.

Aubrey
And you could kind of and you could tell So there wasn't like a a ton of reveals, except for at the very beginning, of course. At the very beginning, that's a reveal because you think it's it's Ethan Hunt and then he pulls the thing off and then the the whole air like plane blows up or whatever but Yeah, it was just the mask.

Peter
Right.

Aubrey
It wasn't Ethan going in, sneaking in anywhere, or having a whole, you know, it didn't really Feel like there was like a whole plan, really much. It was just the bad guy impersonated Ethan a couple times.

Peter
Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey
It's kind of what it felt like.

Peter
So then you go from that to Mission Impossible III.

Aubrey
Yes, yes.

Peter
Now, I don't know about you, but geez a lou, talk about whiplash again.

Aubrey
Yes, absolutely. Huge whiplash. That is not a fun movie.

Peter
No, no, not a little bit.

Aubrey
Like, three is not fun in any way. That's not like a. No. Whereas two, I may have hated it, but it was fun and I was laughing. Three, I was on the plane and I was like, oh, I feel a little icky.

Peter
Well, because here's the thing. So, and I can't remember, again, I cannot remember the bad guy's name. I remember the actor's name, Doug Ray Scott.

Aubrey
Actor's name, yes.

Peter
I remember him in Mission Impossible 2 as the bad guy, but he never really felt that threatening. Like, he was just, he was, oh, he's an ex-MI agent who's gone rogue and So we're supposed to just infer from that that he's actually skilled, but we never see him really doing anything.

Aubrey
Yeah, and wants all this money. Yeah. Nope.

Peter
And then all of a sudden, we go to Mission Impossible 3, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the bad guy, is just the coldest, most heartless, evil character. I mean, you think of classic bad guys in movies, and because we mentioned it earlier, I'm thinking of Heath Ledger's Joker in Batman or The Dark Knight, right?

Aubrey
Right, yeah.

Peter
And it's an incredible portrayal. He does a great job.

Aubrey
Mhm.

Peter
But at the same time, the whole time you're watching it, you're like, this dude is psychotic.

Aubrey
Yes, yep.

Peter
He's mentally unwell. And then you watch Philip Seymour Hoffman in Mission Impossible 3, and you're like, no, he just is evil.

Aubrey
Yeah, he's just awful.

Peter
He's just a horrible person. And his completely unrepentant way, he just is going to kill anyone or anything, do whatever it wants. Casually, like it's casual violence and evil.

Aubrey
Yes. It's so nonchalant where he just says the most horrible things that he's gonna do.

Peter
Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey
And you're like, oh, like, geez. Yeah, it was very, especially with the beginning where it's like Ethan's finally happy and he's getting married and she's so cute and they, you know, are so cute together, and then it just got so. Well, in the very, very beginning scene is like a Uh, what's it called? Not a flashback, flash forward, I guess. I don't know. Like, the opening scene to Mission Impossible 3 is when he shoots who you think is his wife. And that being the opening scene, I was like, I don't know if I want to watch this movie alone right now. I'm a little scared. And it was so Just he's just so evil. He's such a good actor acting as bad guys.

Peter
Oh my gosh, because here's the thing.

Aubrey
He's so scary.

Peter
You hate him. You hate him.

Aubrey
Yes.

Peter
I don't know what he was like as a person. He has passed away, but you hate him.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
You hate him.

Aubrey
Yeah. Yes. Yep. Yeah. And the whole time Because that's the opening scene, I was like, well, his wife's gonna die. I watched him shoot him in the opening scene. When is his wife going to die? But I had also. Scene Fallout where, like, we see a little cameo of his wife with her new husband, like, when they're in Where are they at? With the with they had to they have to stop the bombs or whatever, and she's like she's being the nurse in like the hospital wing or something like that.

Peter
That's right, that's right.

Aubrey
Yeah, and so he like at the end of that movie, he gets to like see her and see that she's happy, and it's all like, she's like, Yes, I'm happy, and it's a very sweet moment. So I was like, wait, but he just shot her. Like, wha what what is happening? Like, what's going on? And so that was that was freaky. And then Getting to that point, like she is also an incredible actress. I don't know what her actress's name is, but yes, she is incredible and Oh, just the when they first they're trying to capture I think his the bad guy's name is Davian, I want to say Um, they're trying to capture him, and when they get him in the airplane, and he just so casually is talking about how he's going to do these horrible things to Ethan's wife and, like, watch her Like, watch him kill Ethan in front of her and stuff like that.

Peter
Mhm. Michelle Monaghan Mm-hmm.

Aubrey
He says it so nonchalantly, and it is so terrifying.

Peter
Mm-hmm.

Aubrey
It is so, so unsettling. So that movie is probably not one I would watch again, like to choose to watch, unless I was actively doing a like movie marathon with someone who had never seen them before. Or something like that. But I don't think I'll ever choose to watch it again because it was scary.

Peter
And that's when we get to that was why I think for me especially, Mission Impossible 4, Ghost Protocol, such a breath of fresh air.

Aubrey
Yes, yes.

Peter
Such a breath of fresh air.

Aubrey
Yep.

Peter
And it's hard for me because here's the thing: I think that the bad guy in Mission Impossible 4 is one of the weakest bad guys in the The entire, I mean, it's like him and the guy in two. They're tied for the the lamest bad, you know, bad guys.

Aubrey
Yes.

Peter
In all the Mission Impossible ones. And that's me even saying that I think that Gabriel in 7 and 8 is pretty weak. And granted, he's kind of not really the bad guy.

Aubrey
Yeah. Right.

Peter
the entity is whatever but but I think Hendrix or something was the the guy who wants to fire off the And he just, he's, he's so much of like a nothing burger, except for the fact that we get this whole brutal fight in this car parking thing at the end with him.

Aubrey
Right. Yes, Hendricks. Yeah. Yes, yeah, certainly.

Peter
That goes on maybe a little too long, if you ask me. But at the same time, it was a different take for the movies. It was more fun.

Aubrey
Mhm.

Peter
It was a lot more sort of. It just felt a lot more light. It didn't feel nearly as heavy. And the cast, like, I was really sad that we didn't get Jeremy Renner's character back in more of them because I liked him a lot.

Aubrey
Me, too. Yeah. Yeah, I liked him. I liked his character. It was like interesting. He had some, he wasn't just some random guy they threw in. It felt like he had a little bit of something. You know, and with his like secret, oh, how do you learn how does a chief analyst learn how to fight like that? So, you know, that sort of scene and stuff like that. I thought that was really cool. I got really excited when I was watching the credits and it like Jeremy Renner, and I was like, What? Hawk guys in here.

Peter
Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey
Yeah, I liked Four for all those reasons too. I really liked. There was a lot of the spy stuff that we know and love.

Peter
Yep. And I think it was I think it's fun that it doesn't all work.

Aubrey
Where, of course, there's some. Yeah, yes.

Peter
You know, we I mean, we've got the mask that stops working, it's printing the mask, we've got the climbing glove that stops working, and there's just some good comedy, but it's comedy but still tense.

Aubrey
Yep. Yes. That scene, yeah. Yes, yes. Where it's like, oh, well, something went wrong. How are they going to figure this out? sort of thing. And I had seen um the sticky glove on the side of the Burj Khalifa scene. You had shown it to me forever ago. I don't even remember. It was forever ago. So I remembered it and I was like, oh, this is this is the scene. This is the cool scene. Um, yeah, so that one was it's always so tense and and epic. And then when yeah, the mask stops working, so they have to hope the two other semi-bad guys have never met so they can impersonate the other and all this stuff and they're waiting for the yeah, it's it was it was super fun. I liked I liked all of those. It got plenty of Tom Cruise running as fast as he could scenes in all four, actually. So I was happy about those. I lo I don't know why that's my favorite, but it's my favorite. But yeah, the the villain in in four I think says like three sentences total, I feel like.

Peter
I mean, I think most of what you get in terms of any of his dialogue is just when you catch the glimpse of his speech at the beginning when they're introducing who he is.

Aubrey
Yes, yes, yep, yep.

Peter
That's about all you get.

Aubrey
And then when he is trying to blame the the bombing of the Kremlin on on Ethan, so he says Roger that team leader ready to detonate or something like that.

Peter
Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey
And then he says, like, one other sentence. And that's, like, his entire thing. But, yeah, I always love the The super spy, super tense. How are they gonna figure this out? Sort of thing. So, yeah, I'm excited to watch because I have seen five, this has been a really long time, but I have seen five. So I'm excited to watch Five and Six because, again, I really love Six. And then, yeah, I haven't seen Seven. So, we're getting to some rewatches. But I'm just going to go through all of them so I can keep the storyline straight.

Peter
There you go.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
There you go. That's what you got to do.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
Well, they're fun movies, and I think I said I still hold, even with the flaws of particularly two and three. Again, I think there are some issues with a lot of them have a few little issues here and there. But overall, I think they are just about it's about the best just action movie franchise out there and uh and they're fun movies.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
So I'm glad you got to watch those and I look forward to hearing about your rewatch of the rest of them.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
So Well, I know this isn't necessarily my my pop culture dedicated podcast.

Aubrey
Yes, yes, I'm very excited. Well Aha.

Peter
But I'm just going to throw this out there. And I'm going to talk about it more with Eden next week. But while your mom and Gareth were gone in Missoula last weekend to a swim meet, I finally decided to sit down and watch Murderbot on Apple TV Plus, and I really liked it.

Aubrey
Mm-hmm. Oh.

Peter
I don't know what people the general consensus is.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
There are definitely some changes from the book or the novella that it's based on, which I have read, All Systems Read by Martha Wells. And so there are definitely some changes and such, but I enjoyed it. I thought it was fun. It is a dark comedy in that Murderbot is a security unit who has. hacked his governor module, so he doesn't have to obey the clients, but he is basically doing it to make sure that nobody realizes he's hacked his governor module because he knows that he will be, I guess, it. It knows that it will be. ground down into slag and used to make a new set of murder bots if the corporation finds out that it has hacked its governor module.

Aubrey
Oh, geez.

Peter
So basically, all it really cares about is it's constantly downloading future space opera, sci-fi, soap opera kind of stuff. And it sits there when it should be doing stuff and it's just. In its head, it's watching vids and entertainment and crap.

Aubrey
Oh, that's funny.

Peter
And one of the things that I love that they do is they show you bits of some of these. These dramas that he's watching, and they're ridiculous and over the top.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
And I love that they have produced some of these shows in there.

Aubrey
Cheese.

Peter
So, but he the thing is is Murderbot hates the people, hates people, just it hates people and There's a lot of again, it's tense.

Aubrey
Oh, right, right.

Peter
It's an interesting story that is for the most part stuck pretty true to the novella. But I thought it was a lot of fun, and so I would recommend that if people are interested. I don't think you need to have read the book or the novella by any means. To enjoy it, but I think it's been fun. So it's definitely something that I think was worth checking out.

Aubrey
Yeah, that sounds like fun. You said it was like more dark dark comedy, sorta.

Peter
Yeah, I mean, it's it has moments that are funny, but it's also I mean, there's a scene where Murderbot just like just straight up blows this person's head off, and you know, so it's billed as a comedy, but it's a dark comedy.

Aubrey
A little freaky Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Peter
The other thing I'm going to mention, and I can't remember if you and I talked about this, but oh my gosh, your mom and I watched the two most recent episodes of Taskmaster Series 19 last night.

Aubrey
That makes sense. Oh no, I don't think we've mentioned that.

Peter
Oh my heck, that show. Oh, Aubrey. And here's the best thing. Here's the best thing. It's all free on YouTube in America.

Aubrey
Oh, really?

Peter
Yeah, so it's on the BBC or maybe Channel 4 or something.

Aubrey
Dang. Yeah.

Peter
So it's on like British television over there.

Aubrey
Mm-hmm.

Peter
But in the States, they just put like all 19 seasons of it are up on YouTube.

Aubrey
What in the world? That's crazy.

Peter
Yeah, so this most recent one, the reason and I watched some I think I'd watched maybe all of the first series and had started the second. The thing that brought me that got me to go back and watch this one is: have you ever seen Brooklyn 99? Oh.

Aubrey
I've only seen basically when I'm over at your guys' house and it's on.

Peter
Classic. Gotta watch it. But Jason Mansukas is he plays a recurring side character, Adrian Pimento.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
And he is psychotic in Brooklyn 99.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
And I thought to myself, I'm like, I wonder if that's what he's actually like. And apparently, he called up Greg and Alex, the two guys who do Taskmaster, and said, I would really like to be on this. I will fly myself over to the UK. Can I be on the show?

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
And they said, yes, of course. And so basically, what they do is, if you're not familiar with it, they get five comedians, actors, whatever, but usually kind of British comedians. And then the way it's filmed is they get all five of them together, and over the course of a couple days, make them just do a ton of ridiculous tasks. And then each episode is them watching everybody's performance of those tasks, and then they get judged on it by Greg, the taskmaster. And to see who wins.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
And Jason Matsukas, at one point, I'll just put it this way: like Greg, again, the main taskmaster guy, he says something to Jason. He says, At first I just thought you were crazy, but now I think you might be a serial killer.

Aubrey
Oh dear.

Peter
And so, yeah, we watched the two episodes last night that had come out that we hadn't seen yet. And we were just laughing so hard. It's so funny.

Aubrey
Oh, that's awesome.

Peter
So go watch Start with Season Series Nineteen, Episode One.

Aubrey
I should get watched at Taskmaster. Uh-huh.

Peter
See what you think. And if you're not hooked after an episode or two of this one, then I don't think it's for you.

Aubrey
Yeah. Yeah, fair.

Peter
But if you watch this and you go, oh my gosh. I'm so excited that there's 18 more seasons of this, or series as they call it, that I can just get directly into me.

Aubrey
Right. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome since the whole thing is on YouTube. That's so nice.

Peter
Oh yeah. And then there's like international I there's Taskmaster New Zealand, Taskmaster Australia, I think.

Aubrey
Oh, geez. Wow.

Peter
They tried to do one in America that apparently failed spectacularly. But all these international versions, you can find those too. So Yeah.

Aubrey
Oh, that's awesome. I love it. I love it.

Peter
Well, do you have an astro fact for us?

Aubrey
I do. It's not a not anything crazy, but this this came out in this article came out at the end of May. So basically I'm sure I've mentioned this a million times, but in the world of black holes we have stellar mass black holes, which are like five to fifty times the mass of the sun, supermassive black holes, which are millions to billions times. The mass of the sun and intermediate mass black holes with the masses that are just somewhere in between, like hundreds to thousands or something mass times the mass of the sun. But basically intermediate mass black holes are kind of the the missing links in the black hole evolution we just we just don't really know how they get to be that random weird in between. Mass. Usually it ends up being like black hole mergers. Like two smaller ones merge and they become a bigger one. But that happens so rarely that We just don't know what else could be the reason that these black holes could get to be their weird intermediate mass. But basically, four new studies Have come out on intermediate mass black holes, which again, any research on intermediate mass black holes is great because they're so weird and so rare and few and far between. So basically we had this team the at Vanderbilt that they Analyze reanalyze data from the Nobel Prize winning Laser Interferometerometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. Which is a very long they just call it LIGO. Those detectors in the US and then the Virgo detector in Italy, and they actually found waves that corresponded to Intermediate mass black hole mergers. So these are the heaviest gravitational wave events recorded in the history of astronomy that they found. that found intermediate mass black holes, which is great because it's just hard to find them because they're so few and far between. So basically the Earth-based detectors only captured like literally a split second of the intermediate mass black holes, so we d we still don't really know how the universe created them. But we did find the strongest gravitational wave event recorded in astronomy, and it came from an intermediate mass black hole. So that is my that's my astro fact, which is great. I love black holes. They're my favorite. So Yeah.

Peter
I love that. So I'm going to share a health-related thing. This is not a practice of medicine or How medicine works, sort of thing, because let's just be honest, how medicine works in the United States is pretty effed up right now, and I don't know that it's going to get better until the system completely falls apart.

Aubrey
Yep.

Peter
So, I'm going to focus on something more positive.

Aubrey
Hooray.

Peter
And I'm going to start off with a recommendation.

Aubrey
Hooray.

Peter
Of something that people can do, and I think that it's reasonable to do. Now, I know that there are people who have very strong feelings. about large language models, AI, chat GPT, all those things. And I respect that. People are welcome to feel ethically about those tools however they choose to. Find them fascinating, and I use them on a fairly regular basis, not to necessarily help me so much with the creative process, but to do some handy things. For example, I feed Mac Whisper this podcast as I do my other podcast, and it generates a full transcript for us. I then feed that transcript to ChatGPT. And it gives me a one-paragraph summary and then a bulleted episode notes. I'm just not going to spend the time to do that. I just, I'm not going to.

Aubrey
Right. Right.

Peter
And so this gives us.

Aubrey
That's what it's made for, is to do stuff like that.

Peter
Yeah, so I use it for that. But one of the things, especially, and this is where Google Gemini have found to be the best at this. Google Gemini has what's called deep research. So I went into Google Gemini. And I said to Google Gemini, because I was interested. I said to Google Gemini, I gave it the following prompt. Let's do a deep research topic on meditation. In particular, I would like to focus on the evidence behind the benefits of meditation and what those benefits are. Let's look into different types of meditation. at least in an overview and how one would practice those different types. Let's also look at guided versus self-guided meditation, if there's any evidence to support benefit differences between those two types. Finally, let's do some research into how someone who is just beginning meditation could develop their own practice in a logical and successful fashion. So that's the prompt I gave Google Gemini. So give it about 15 minutes. And Google Gemini sent me back what turns out, if you export it into Google Docs and then download it, about a 34-page PDF. Highlighting all of this with all of its sources at the end. And then what I do is I then take that PDF and I upload it into ReadWise Reader. That's what I'll use to read it. Because as I read in ReadWise and I highlight passages, it automatically exports those, I get them in my ReadWise account, and then I get them automatically sent to my Obsidian vault.

Aubrey
Ah, very nice.

Peter
This is all a bunch of blah, blah, blah. But here, I want to share with you a few things. And again, this is the thing I like about the Google Deep Research stuff: it gives you, it gives you the bibliography, it gives you the sources for these. And it will give you the reference to the study, you know, whether it's in PubMed or something like that.

Aubrey
Right.

Peter
So, can there be mistakes in this? Of course, there still can. We have to take these things.

Aubrey
Right.

Peter
In the way they are created, and understand that, in large part, these are they're autocomplete on steroids. But I think especially when I do when you do like this deep research thing, it isn't going necessarily and just looking at the corpus of what was used to train it and then trying to tell you what it thinks you want. It's actually going and it is pulling and looking at all these and searching the web. I mean, it's using Google, which is how we were going to find these things anyway.

Aubrey
Yeah, right, right.

Peter
So, I want to read a few things just to highlight the benefits of meditation because I'm sitting here reading this thing and I'm like, holy crap. This is like, this is incredible. People who aren't meditating, like, we need to start meditating.

Aubrey
Yeah.

Peter
Consistent meditation practice induces neuroplasticity, leading to measurable structure and functional modifications in brain areas critical for managing emotions. Focusing attention and self-awareness. Hey, guess what? The parts of your brain that are in charge of being attentive and self-aware, those parts get bigger.

Aubrey
Ah Yes.

Peter
Let's see. This evidence of neuroplasticity suggests that meditation offers more than just temporary relief or coping strategies. It fundamentally reshapes the brain. building a biological foundation for sustained improvements in emotional regulation, cognitive function, and stress resilience. Mindfulness practice can cause a reduction in the size and reactivity of the amygdala, the brain region associated with processing emotions, especially fear and stress. This downregulation of the amygdala is directly linked to reduced stress and anxiety levels and an improved capacity for regulating emotional responses.

Aubrey
Wow.

Peter
How about this? A 2016 study found that meditators' brains appeared to be 7. 5 years younger than control subjects.

Aubrey
Oh what That's crazy.

Peter
Suggesting that meditation may slow age-related brain deterioration.

Aubrey
That is crazy. Yeah, I'm I'm a big meditation guy. I'm a big fan. I I do my meditation I meditate almost twice a day if I have like, especially during the week when Hayden like leaves for work, I'll do a morning meditation, then I always meditate at night. And I've had my therapist tell me I need to meditate consistently for the four years that I've seen her, and I would like fall off and on, you know, where I'd be really consistent meditating every day and then like the whole month of graduation and everything, I did not meditate, I don't think, a single time. But I've been back into it.

Peter
Well, I know I'm not very consistent either. But so here's the final thing: maintain consistency. According to the studies, even with short durations, to truly benefit from meditation, daily practice is crucial. If consistency is a challenge initially, it is advisable to shorten the duration but avoid skipping it entirely.

Aubrey
Yes. Yep. Yeah, I don't know if you I'm sure you use me Peloton meditation, because I've seen you use Peloton. I've, oh, I you I did that one. Oh, Dad did that one the other day. Uh but they do like the daily meditation practice where it's to basically help someone start up doing it consistently. So it's just the one class you're it's meant to repeat to be repeated every day for seven days until they drop a new one. And I yeah, I've I've done them, but I kind of usually do them one-off.

Peter
I will have to check that out.

Aubrey
I usually don't repeat them. I don't know why. I just like to try other I some techniques that they do in the guided I like better than others. Um but it's cool, especially for people who it's really hard to like get it consistent. Then you just go in, you bookmark the class, you just take it every day and then you can do a new one.

Peter
Well, I will have to try that. I have been lately trying to do the daily Calm through the Calm app. That's about a ten 10-ish, 10-11-minute little exercise daily with a different theme for it. And then I have done some sleep meditations, whether it's in headspace or calm, or I've done a couple of Peloton medit Sleep meditations. But it is a practice that I have become increasingly convinced that I need to incorporate into my life. And so I did pretty good this week. I forgot yesterday, but Based on all of that data, I just want to urge people: it's a great thing to do. And it's fairly, and there. It seems intimidating, but in the year 2025, it is not. There are so many different options. And one of the reasons I asked this. This query, the way I did, is because people who are hardcore meditators will tell you that guided meditation. I know that sounds funny. I was supposed to. They will tell you that, oh, guided meditation isn't as good, and you need to just, it needs to be self-directed, blah, blah, blah. So, the evidence that this, again, that Google Gemini got together for me. basically shows little to almost zero difference in terms of benefit from guided meditation to self-directed meditation.

Aubrey
Oh, that's awesome.

Peter
So don't let anybody shame you.

Aubrey
Oh, yeah.

Peter
Find something that works for you. Do it. I guarantee you, you don't even have to pay for any of these apps.

Aubrey
No.

Peter
$20,000 tells me that there's hundreds, if not thousands or even millions of hours of guided meditations on YouTube.

Aubrey
Absolutely, there is.

Peter
I mean, you should just, if you ever have a question, the first thing you should just ask yourself is, is this on YouTube? And nine plus times out of ten, The answer is yes.

Aubrey
It's yes.

Peter
So people meditate. It's good for your brain. It's good for your heart.

Aubrey
Yes.

Peter
It lowers cortisol levels. It helps people lose weight. It helps balance hormones. I just have become increasingly convinced about the benefits and was impressed at some of the results and wanted to share that. So I mean, as your mother knows, as your mother knows, if you can find me data that says something is good, I'll do it.

Aubrey
Yeah, no, that's awesome. 'Cause I've again, I've been trying to do consistent meditation, you know, on and off for years, but it's It's always nice to hear the science for people like you and me we're very just science heads. Yep. Yes, you will.

Peter
I drink disgusting things because there's data to say it's good. I told your mom today and she was very disappointed. I was like. I'm not going to retire when I'm 65. Don't plan on that. I've read too many things that actually say that people who retire, it accelerates their dementia.

Aubrey
Really?

Peter
Yeah, because you stop using your brain in that same way. So I'm like, I'll go, I'll go part-time, but I'm like, I'm still going to work until I go, okay, it's probably not safe for me to do this anymore.

Aubrey
That makes sense. That's crazy. That's crazy. But that makes sense.

Peter
So, yeah, no.

Aubrey
That makes sense.

Peter
Well, it was a ton of fun to talk to you. Glad you could watch all four of those.

Aubrey
Heck you, me too.

Peter
They're good movies and a good time, even if some of them are more difficult to watch than others.

Aubrey
They are.

Peter
Well, we'll be back in another couple weeks with another topic for you all. Until then, if you've got anything you want to share with us, reach out at feedback at generations. fm. And go ahead and leave us a review. One thing I'll mention here on the pod, don't anybody get alarmed if at some point in the next week or two you get something weird where you might get a double download. I am in the process of migrating the podcast. from its current host to an actual dedicated podcast host that actually serves things up a lot faster is it's not necessarily that Squarespace has been unreliable, it's just very slow. So I'm working with transistor.

Aubrey
Okay.

Peter
fm. I've been very impressed with them so far. The migration process for the middle of culture was fairly painless, only took about half an hour.

Aubrey
Oh, nice.

Peter
Everything worked, so I'm going to be doing the same to this one. But if anybody notices any little hiccups, that's all it is, and everything will be right with the world.

Aubrey
Sweet.