Weird Things

Aviation Innovations and Misadventures

Weird Things ·

2024/07/08

In this episode of Weird Things, Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood embark on a journey through the evolving landscape of aviation technology. They discuss the myriad of companies attempting to develop next-generation aerial vehicles, including those adding excessive propellers to electric helicopters in hopes of making flying cars a reality. The trio delves into alternative aviation technologies, such as gyrocopters and other innovative designs that aim to improve safety and

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Apple’s AI Ambitions and Privacy Paradox

Weird Things ·

2024/07/08

Andrew Mayne and Justin Robert Young dissect Apple’s approach to integrating AI into its ecosystem with a strong emphasis on privacy. They speculate on the implications of Apple’s strategy to handle AI processing on-device as much as possible, while also offering cloud processing with user permission. The trio discusses the technical hurdles, Apple’s historical stance on privacy, and how these factors influence the development of Siri and other Apple services. They ponder the future of AI in Apple

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The Curious Case of 3D Printed Knives and...

Weird Things ·

2024/06/28

Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood, and Justin Robert Young embark on a technological odyssey, starting with Andrew’s recent acquisition of a Bamboo A1 3D printer. The excitement is palpable as Andrew shares his adventures in 3D printing everything from knives to whirligigs, showcasing the printer’s impressive capabilities. The conversation then shifts to AI, with the trio exploring Claude 3.5 and its ability to generate games and video content on the fly. From creating simple games with just a few

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AI Showdown: OpenAI vs. Google

Weird Things ·

2024/06/14

Andrew and Justin spend most of the episode comparing OpenAI's GPT-4o rollout with Google's AI announcements. They describe GPT-4o as a multimodal system that combines text, image, sound, and voice into one model, and emphasize that OpenAI's live demos felt fast, real-time, and more transparent than Google's earlier staged or prerecorded presentations. They also discuss latency, the shift from separate speech/transcription models to a single model, and how native desktop and mobile apps, along with

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AI Controversies and Space Ambitions: A Weird Things...

Weird Things ·

2024/06/04

The episode opens with a long discussion of the OpenAI / Scarlett Johansson controversy. Andrew says he had a direct view of GPT-4o voice development, that OpenAI hired actors with disclosures and fair pay, and that there was never an intent to copy Johansson’s voice. The hosts argue that the resemblance was driven by audience expectations shaped by Her and by a familiar voice archetype, not by a plan to mimic her. From there, the conversation moves through AI’s strengths and weaknesses: emotional

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The Philosophical Snake: AI, Robotics, and a...

Weird Things ·

2024/04/25

The episode opens with the news that philosopher Daniel Dennett has died, and the hosts reflect on how influential his books, especially Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained, were on Andrew's thinking about arguments, thought experiments, consciousness, and where the boundaries of sentience may lie. Brian adds his own examples from dogs and consciousness, reinforcing the sense that Dennett was especially good at exploring philosophical borderlands without always forcing tidy

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AI’s Musical Revolution: From Doom Musicals to...

Weird Things ·

2024/04/19

The episode opens with a discussion of AI-generated music, starting from a Weird Things intro written by Suno and moving into comparisons between Suno and Udio. The hosts note that Udio produces cleaner vocals but shorter initial clips, while Suno can generate longer clips and be extended. They treat the tools as a major sign of how quickly AI-generated creative content is improving. The conversation then broadens into practical uses for generated songs, especially study aids and mnemonic tools

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AI Revolution and the Future of Creativity

Weird Things ·

2024/04/16

The episode centers on a long discussion of AI's rapid move from novelty to everyday utility. The hosts describe using AI for transcription, editing, text simplification, image cleanup, and coding help, and Andrew demonstrates how tools like Groq and Cursor make inference and programming feel dramatically faster and more accessible than earlier AI systems. The conversation also walks through tokenization and why newer, cheaper models are changing how products are built. A second major thread is the

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Navigating the Seas of Speculation and Sci-Fi

Weird Things ·

2024/03/30

Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood embark on a journey through a variety of topics, starting with a real-world disaster involving a boat crash and a collapsed bridge. They speculate on the implications of tainted fuel and the role of the National Transportation Safety Board in such incidents. The conversation then shifts to the potential for economic and infrastructural disasters, including the hypothetical use of nuclear weapons to disrupt GPS systems. The hosts also discuss the

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Supersonic Dreams and Toxic Cats

Weird Things ·

2024/03/25

The episode opens with a discussion of Boom Supersonic and its attempt to revive commercial supersonic air travel. The hosts talk about Boom's successful test flight of a scaled-down prototype, the plan for the Overture airliner, the role of Japan Airlines, and the history of Concorde, including sonic booms, U.S. restrictions on supersonic flight, and the Concorde's drooping nose and hot exterior. A large middle section focuses on AI as practical tooling: how to prompt ChatGPT and vision models more

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The Future is Now, and It’s Weirdly Domestic

Weird Things ·

2024/03/16

The episode opens with Justin describing a Cameo birthday message he received from Kirstie Patterson, the performer associated with the viral Willy’s Chocolate Experience disaster, and the hosts discuss how the incident became internet-famous, the “depressed Oompa Loompa” label, and how Cameo can be a practical way for someone caught in online notoriety to earn money. They also briefly discuss the “unknown” character from the event and the broader weirdness of the production. A major middle section

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A Deep Dive into Space, Technology, and Woolly Mammoths

Weird Things ·

2024/03/09

The episode opens with a long discussion of SpaceX test launches and the broader idea that visible failures are part of iterative engineering. Andrew and Brian contrast that with the Space Shuttle program, noting that shuttle design involved practical compromises, unexpected hazards, and a much messier reality than the idealized version often told. They also briefly touch on the value of publicity and storytelling in aerospace, including drone ship landings and fairing recovery attempts. The

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Monkey Raft

Weird Things ·

2024/03/03

The episode opens with the hosts riffing about recording and editing workflow, including the value of planning for cuts, trusting the edit, and how much polished media depends on invisible post-production. From there, Andrew introduces a preprint about panspermia via cosmic dust, then the conversation shifts to a monkey-raft explanation for how monkeys may have crossed into South America on floating vegetation islands rather than by land bridge. The middle of the episode becomes a broad

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The Great Podcast Blackout

Weird Things ·

2024/03/02

Andrew apologizes to the Weird Things audience for the lack of recent episodes and says the show has still been recording. He explains that the delay is due to changes in how the show is handled on the backend, and says they hope to have episodes out soon. He adds that if listeners can hear this message, the new fix is working. He describes the fix as using AI to handle some of the process and calls it the wave of the future. Key topics Lack of episode releases: Andrew directly apologizes for the

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The Border! Rockets! Words Become Videos!

Weird Things ·

2024/03/01

The episode opens with casual chatter about a possible Starship launch while the hosts are near Brownsville, followed by a long discussion of major AI announcements from Google and OpenAI. Andrew explains Gemini 1.5's large context window claims and the limits of simply increasing tokens, while the group shifts into a detailed examination of Sora's text-to-video results, including improved realism, physics, camera motion, and remaining failures. They repeatedly return to the role of compute, model

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Brian and Andrew talk about… HOLY MOLY JUSTIN IS BACK!

Weird Things ·

2024/02/25

The episode opens with a discussion of Google's Gemini Ultra launch and the rebranding of Bard to Gemini. The hosts compare Gemini with ChatGPT on model quality, pricing, integrations, and usefulness for coding and summarization, while also talking about how AI tools are already woven into their workflows for transcripts, show notes, and quick summaries. Brian also describes using AI for a real-world well-and-solar calculation experiment, using photos and measurements to estimate energy use, water

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Brian and Andrew talk about… AI!

Weird Things ·

2024/02/12

Andrew and Brian start with travel and recovery talk: Brian describes being knocked out by illness and bad sleep, while Andrew explains returning from a three-week trip to India and how he managed jet lag by staying awake through the long flight. Andrew also says he was careful about water and food after getting sick on a prior trip, and that he brought antibiotics with him via an online doctor visit so he could treat a likely bacterial illness quickly when it hit. The episode spends a long stretch

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Weird Predictions – 2024

Weird Things ·

2024/01/06

The episode opens with the hosts greeting each other for 2024 and then moving into a discussion of older dystopian science fiction that reflected the anxieties of its era. They talk about Logan's Run, Make Room, Make Room/Soylent Green, Clockwork Orange, and Silent Running as stories shaped by fears about population growth, pollution, youth violence, and social instability, before widening the conversation into how people now think about depopulation, fertility decline, and whether modern cynicism

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WT: Whales As Large Language Models

Weird Things ·

2023/12/23

Whale songs and AI tools. Picks: Justin: Squid Game: The Challenge Brian: Amanda Knox

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WT: Gemini Launch Explained

Weird Things ·

2023/12/09

Google’s new AI launch might not be what it seems. Picks: Justin: Fargo Andrew: Doom Patrol | Now Streaming | Max Original | Max

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