Toe Thumb and free stuff

Josh: G'day, Tommy. Yep.

Tommy: The daily talk show, Josh and Tommy.

Josh: Yeah, what did we talk about on this app?

Tommy: We did a good solid interview about your toe thumb. So, you'll— if you know nothing about what a toe thumb is, it's very interesting to somebody who doesn't have one.

Josh: Yeah. And we were also talking about being late to things or cancelling plans. Mm.

Tommy: Got into a bit of technology discussion.

Josh: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we touched on exercise as well and Strava and how, uh, how I got a little, um, doco made all about my exercise for the year. So that's coming up right now.

Tommy: It probably looks into more of Josh's excellent exercise habits. But to finish off, we had your mum on the show very quickly.

Josh: Uh, wouldn't call her our first guest, but she's been mentioned every episode.

Tommy: We're at number 3.

Josh: Enjoy it. Thank you.

Tommy: Check us out.

Josh: Subscribe. Yeah. And, uh, what is— what's our— what's our URL?

Tommy: thedailytalkshow.com.

Josh: Yep, and you can subscribe there. It is, uh, Thursday the, um, the 18th.

Tommy: Hey Tommy, Josh, have we started? Yeah, we've started the daily talk show. Tommy and Josh, Josh and Tommy, whichever way you want to deliver it. Um, mate, I'm a fucking idiot.

Josh: What have you done?

Tommy: Look behind you, look down on the ground. That's your gear.

Josh: Yeah. Like my lighting gear and all that.

Tommy: So I borrowed a bunch of lighting gear.

Josh: Yeah, what have you fucked?

Tommy: From Josh. See the box?

Josh: I can't see.

Tommy: That's that new light stand. So you bought that new light stand in a box?

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: I got here and I went to take out everything from the car and I was like, fuck, I left the light stand. No, I left it on the roof and drove here. It didn't come off.

Josh: Man, isn't that the worst?

Tommy: So what was it, a kilometer? Maybe a bit more than a kilometer.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: But I was lucky coming down the street that's only like 40 kilometre limit and I was creeping along. So, I drove here with your light stand on.

Josh: Just imagine what would have happened if it had hit someone or come off.

Tommy: I didn't even— You know what I thought? I was like, I just would have been annoyed that I would have had to buy you a new one.

Josh: Yeah. Would you have gotten embarrassed in that scenario? Like if you'd actually— If it had fallen off and it stopped traffic or something, would you get really flustered? You would, because you'd be like, what the fuck is that? And then you would have—

Tommy: For a moment, yeah. I left my handbrake off in a petrol station once, and I'd had a massive weekend, so I was feeling tired and just my head wasn't clear. And my car rolled, and there was construction works going on in the— It was like a 7-Eleven petrol station. Anyway, my car rolled over this part that was going into the ground, so it was like some one of those big holes. It wasn't massive hole, but it was like a hole where obviously they they pour petrol into or something and it ran over a part and it bent it. And the only thing I was scared about was—

Josh: Was like a fire or some shit?

Tommy: No, having to pay like $20,000 for some fucking piece of metal.

Josh: What happens in that case? Is it like some sort of insurance cover that?

Tommy: I reckon, yeah.

Josh: Wouldn't that be third party?

Tommy: Third party, like property damage, you'd think it would cover.

Josh: So, if I smash into a home, third party covers that?

Tommy: Third party does, but not your car. Sorry about your—

Josh: Yeah, that's okay. —little Hyundai.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: The— I did something stupid this morning, too. I was walking across Johnston Street, didn't do it, didn't cross at the lights. And it was— the cars were all banked back going towards Hoddle. And so, I was walking across the road and then I looked and walked out the second bit. So, I'm in the middle of the road, I've already gone past all these parked all these cars in traffic. I've looked left, gone to walk across, and what I didn't realise is the lanes change directions depending on the day. So, there was actually a third lane going the other way and they held down the horn and like they had to like stop all of a sudden. I nearly got— I was so close to being hit by the car.

Tommy: You're one of the most awkward people when it comes to crossing roads. You, man, I walk across, oh God, watch it.

Josh: Yeah, because you've got no sense or care of your life. Mate, have you ever had a car crash? Oh yeah, I reversed into a truck that was parked. I've never had a car crash. Yeah, so once you— Yeah, that's why you drive like a dickhead.

Tommy: Well, history speaks for itself. I'm on a clean record. My wife's had a couple of crashes and I've been driving longer than her, so.

Josh: Who's winning? Yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess that's why. All right, that's enough rambling.

Tommy: I want to get into something. I want to try and keep it— I reckon we could probably take this all the way to the end of the half hour. Okay, what are we in now? How many?

Josh: Uh, 3 and a half minutes. 3 minutes. 4 minutes.

Tommy: Okay, let's talk about Toe Thumb. Can we just talk? Yeah, we just— we— can I, can I just get you to start? Because people might know what not might not know what toe thumb or a toe thumb is. Can you just start from like the birth of toe thumb when you first came into realising and what it is?

Josh: So, a toe thumb is also known as a clubbed thumb. Or murderer's thumb. Murderer's thumb, if you look on the Wikipedia page. And it's essentially, I've got one, my dad's got one, I guess it's been passed down genetically. But it's a very wide thumb. It looks like a toe and it sort of, it starts off like any skinny thumb, don't you think? It's almost like if you think of people have different body shapes, it's like a pear-shaped thumb, maybe.

Tommy: I mean, it's descriptive when you just say, plonk your big toe on your thumb and that's—

Josh: That's literally what I've got. And so, I don't remember thinking about it much as a kid, but it wasn't until I had a technology blog where I was taking a lot of photos of gear, like phones, and I'd be holding them. Yeah. And it would just— The comments that I would get from people— I just got a text, by the way. Billy's Pizza Joint has a special on. That's why I got the Apple Watch, to get shit like that. Anyway, I— Good plug for Billy's Pizza. Yeah, good plug. Don't know how they got my details. But I— So, you're taking photos and— Yeah, I take photos. And so, I would get a little bit self-conscious, so I'd get other people to hold the phone. No, hang on, you said comments.

Tommy: What were the comments?

Josh: Oh, comments were like, "Oh, look at that thumb." No, like just talking about the thumb in general, like, "Oh, lol, look at that." Like, and it was— And actually, it wasn't about being self-conscious, it was more distracting for the actual content, 'cause here I have, put together a really nice review of the Fitbit and all people can talk about is my thumb. So, yeah, I'd sort of taken a bit offline, hadn't really done anything with it. And then I, yeah, I just had the realisation in December of 2017, I'm like, you know what? Toe Thumb's his own personality and we need to celebrate Toe Thumb. I want to, and so? And so, well, first, It actually probably came about 'cause I got the domain name toe-thumb.com. And then so I tried to get toe thumb on Instagram that wasn't available. So, I settled with _toe-thumb. And it's just a great way to make, to actually post content that I just never would, it would normally never hit my Instagram.

Tommy: Okay, so I wanna take you back a bit. My first encounter with toe thumb, I was high school, year 10. A girl— should I say her name? I won't say her second name. Lana was her name. Yeah. And Lana had a toe thumb, and I would look at it a lot. Yeah. And I never mentioned it because— but I was just amazed by it. Yeah. And the look of it, because like, can we put a photo of your thumb and my thumb Yeah, we'll put it on our The Daily Talk Show Instagram.

Josh: But yeah, looking at it— The difference between them. It's, yeah, it is very different, isn't it?

Tommy: Yours is a lot bigger. Like, it looks like it's from a big, big person's hand.

Josh: Yeah, it's sort of, yeah, there's, there's some, there feels like there's some sort of condition, but my other fingers are fairly normal too. Perfectly normal.

Tommy: So, it's just that thumb. So, Lana had one and I'd look at it and that was where I was first introduced to it. And I don't think I have any other friends. I'm not friends with her now. You're my only friend with a toe thumb. And when we first started hanging out more, I noticed your toe thumb, but I never said anything. But you started talking more about toe thumb before your Instagram account, buying the domain. You started joking about it and that opened the door for me to joke about it. I was like, well, fuck it. This is a chance where I can bring it up and joke about it. 'Cause you're joking about it.

Josh: I mean, I did really, It's in regards to genetic issues or whatever. This toe thumb is like, I'm really lucky. I'm really happy with it. Are you? Yeah, I'm happy with that being the thing that I get. Okay. There's so many other things that are unfortunate that people do get. And look, if it's contained to my thumb.

Tommy: Yeah. Are you honestly not self-conscious about it?

Josh: No, not anymore. I like it really. And I don't want you to be, if that's okay. It doesn't bother me at all anymore. It just feels, you know, what would probably, I'd be more self-conscious of not having like clean nails than the actual thumb itself. You got pretty manicured hands, mate.

Tommy: Like not manicured, but they're like perfect. You got the white bits at the end, like the bit where there's—

Josh: And I like hardly ever use clippers. Is that gross? I was wondering about that. Like there's a few things that, Because I'm a pretty clean guy. Do you? Would you count? You're clean. Yeah. Like, how often do you shower? Every day. I do it twice a day sometimes. Yeah.

Tommy: You have a kid, you're not fucking doing twice a day anymore.

Josh: Okay, sure. Well, I had a kid and it's on your YouTube channel.

Tommy: It's called Toe Thumb.

Josh: They're on both of your hands. I looked after Bodhi.

Tommy: What about your missus?

Josh: Did she bring it up? No, it's never— It's not really a conversation. The only time it's a conversation now is she'll say, "This, you're gonna do a post with Toe Thumb here." Like, "Oh, this is a great opportunity." "Oh, we're outside Gloria Jane's." So she's now Toe Thumb's social media manager? Loves it. Well, it's just like, you just don't have to, just be real strong on the banter. It's got like no expectations. And the other funny thing is when I was searching for a name, I discovered all of these and looked through the Toe Thumb hashtag. There are all these like around the world with a toe thumb, like there's all these accounts, adventures of clubbed thumb. All of these accounts of people who are especially like, that's their travel Instagram for their friends where it's just them and their toe thumb. And you can see that it seems like it's a harmless enough thing to have wrong with you that it creates good banter. It's nothing. It's not sort of anything serious.

Tommy: If you're somebody that's out in the wild and they see somebody with a toe thumb, is it okay to talk about the toe thumb?

Josh: Is it okay to point out, "What's that?" Oh yeah, no, I don't think you say, "What's that?" I think you like celebrate it. It's like, "Oh, you got a toe thumb." That's awesome.

Tommy: But what if you don't know? It's like, I'm talking about someone who's got no knowledge of what a toe thumb is. They haven't listened to our podcast and they just go, 'Hey mate, what's with your thumb?' Have you had that?

Josh: 'What's with your thumb?' Absolutely. 'Oh, what's with your thumb?' I'd be like, 'Oh yeah, I've got a toe thumb.' Is it rude to say, 'What's with your thumb?' No, no. I think it's the equivalent of if someone's maybe— It seems less rude than me saying, 'Hey, what's with that mole on your face?' Because you know it's a mole. Where it's like the thumb, if you've never seen one before, it's like, oh, your thumb looks different. If you said that, like, oh, your thumb looks diff— I am never close enough to people in any public setting where that's ever happened because I just sort of avoid it.

Tommy: But celebrities with toe thumbs. Megan Fox.

Josh: Megan Fox. Megan Fox. Megan Fox. How do you say it?

Tommy: Megan Fox. Anyone else?

Josh: D-Rock. Oh, yeah. Gary Vee's video guy. Video guy has it. They're the main ones. I did a Google search. Do you— have you ever done that? I remember when I got a herniated disc, like back problems, and I Googled celebrities with back problems to make me feel better.

Tommy: So the thing that I get is cold sores.

Josh: Ah, and what is— who are some celebrities with cold sores?

Tommy: Um, Degré Jules Lund, but he's a friend of mine, so I always felt better knowing that the guy who is on television for a living.

Josh: Yeah, I know, but he's been at a pretty grotty background, I'm guessing.

Tommy: No, but here's the thing, gold tools, you're born with them or you catch them, but I was born with it.

Josh: This is the equivalent of someone with red hair saying that they're strawberry blonde. You've like—

Tommy: no, mate, I had fucking face herpes, all right?

Josh: And so that means that your mum had herpes and that's how—

Tommy: no, I don't— no, you don't have to. It can be dormant. It lives in the spine. How fucking weird is that? The virus lives within your spine. Or spine region. And as a kid, my brother, my middle brother and I, we got them so bad. And dude, I felt like I was the Grinch. Like, you think everybody's looking at your lip. Yeah. And I was so self-conscious about it. And I'm— I had one last week, first time in like 3 years. Yeah. So run down, just sick.

Josh: Do you feel it coming on?

Tommy: Oh yeah, they're the most uncomfortable.

Josh: You get them on your nostrils or anything?

Tommy: Yeah, really bad. When I was young, I had mine like on my lip. I used to get them a lot when I was young. I had a period of 5 years where I didn't get one, and I don't—

Josh: Hydration? What do we think that— what causes it?

Tommy: Rundown. I was sick, I was tired, I'd been working my ass off, and I, and I got a cold, which then led to it. And, you know, I just think I ate a shitload of Nutella and nuts. There's something in nuts, and there's something in egg yolks that feed a cold sore. It sounds horrible, but it's like it actually gives it life.

Josh: Fat? Is it a high fat? She doesn't know. It could be sugar. The nuts and yolks, the thing they have in common is fat.

Tommy: No, there's an actual, might be a, it's not a chemical, but there's something.

Josh: A molecule or some shit.

Tommy: A molecule within some certain foods.

Josh: I mean, I talked as if I knew what a molecule was, but.

Tommy: I have no idea, but there is something that feeds them. And anyway, that's my only thing that I've been self-conscious about.

Josh: I remember I used to get, Eaten alive by mosquitoes, like really bad as a kid. And I would scratch them. I've got so many, like if you look at my leg, they're actually like speckled, like slightly speckly from just scars. Yeah, I remember those things. There's so many of it. There's so many, like if you have a look, I mean, you won't be able to see, 'cause I've still got like peeling from my sunburn. You're a mess, mate. Yeah, but mum used to get so upset about it. She'd say, "You're going to get school sores?" I don't even know what that is. But, um, yeah, it should be like, you're gonna be the scab kid. Do you want to be the scab kid? Stop scratching your mosquito bites. I remember I was, um, be a fiend if I can stop you. And Mum was great at that. But the, the one, um, the one time I went fishing, I got done by, um, sand flies, like something real bad. Actually hurt, like, and they just like all in my leg, like there wasn't a spare part of my body that wasn't just like Fuck, yeah.

Tommy: Alright, I'm wrapping up Toe Thumb. How many minutes did we get out of your Toe Thumb?

Josh: 15. That's not bad. Yeah, good. Toe Thumb. And just general sort of body issues. I get heat rashes, that's fun.

Tommy: Yeah, I've seen that. But if you want to cheque out Toe Thumb, head to _toethumb on Instagram. Yeah, or thedailytalkshow.com and it'll be in the show notes of episode 3. Yeah.

Josh: It's episode 3. Yeah, it's, yeah, let's have a bit of a retrospective in the last 2 episodes. What are you enjoying and what aren't you liking so far?

Tommy: It reminds me of doing radio 5 days a week, but it was long. It was like 3 hours a day. I was getting paid and I was talking with somebody who wasn't necessarily my friend. Yeah. I became friends with them to a degree, but not the friendship we have. Right. And so I remember the anxiety, anxiety is probably a bit strong, but just, the sense that you needed to rock up to have something to talk about. And that's why I love this, because we can fucking talk about whatever.

Josh: And isn't it funny though that looking at what stresses us previously and we look back and like, that's a fucking joke. Like the idea that we can get ourselves all sort of riled up about the idea of coming up with an idea for a regional radio show. Like it's It's funny how we do that. It's not until we look back that we can be like, man, if that was my stress now, like, don't you think? Or do you think it was fucking stressful? Would you still find it stressful today?

Tommy: You know what's stressful is having to do it for 3 minutes, like at one talk break. And that's why I didn't like, and I still don't really like the format of radio. 'Cause you can't really have a discussion in 3 minutes. You can get across one side of a point and someone can say, I don't agree with that, but you're not going into why or what it is. But entertainment-wise, there was enough time and it was good to craft a storey or share a piece of information in that short time. And so, but it was very calculated. Yeah. And stressful in that sense. And then you had people, you know, you—

Josh: people around you, people calling in and stuff. Like, how many calls would you get in?

Tommy: Um, how many calls a day? Well, we would do— say there was like 4 solid breaks an hour, so it could be in half an hour, a talk break, and then there's like phone calls after that talk break. Yeah. And then another talk break, some ads, and then talking about what's coming up the half an hour. So there's like— it's not a great deal of talking across the whole thing, but you still— so there'd be maybe 2 lots of calls per hour. So you could get 4 calls an hour if you're lucky and living in regional radio—

Josh: live regional radio land. It's like regional radio, it's fascinating. Like having been in Western Australia recently on holidays and seeing all these little country towns and saying, oh, it's John and Paul for your breakfast. Like, it's crazy.

Tommy: But I think it, it's local and there are things, there's reasons why it's great. Yeah, because you have to deliver local information as part of your quota of content for the day. So we were told you need to talk about local topics at least twice an hour.

Josh: Yeah. Did you, um, have any local deals with any businesses where it's like the local fish and chip shop would give you free food if you mentioned them?

Tommy: Mate, they were so strict on getting contra because they wanted dollars for the people to talk about it. But we became best friends with the people that owned a cafe, Lemon Tree. So when it was organic you'd talk about it and they would give us free stuff, but we were actually good friends. And there was, where else? Oh, there was the GV Hotel, the Goulburn Valley Hotel in Shepparton. I became really good friends with the manager. Yeah. And she would give us drinks, but we'd hang out like, so we got around it and we got our freebies.

Josh: Well, 'cause Nando's had the black card that Jules had. Can't talk about that. You're not allowed to.

Tommy: You're not meant to talk about that.

Josh: Oh, really? It's just like a secret thing. He's got to fucking present it though when he goes to the— Yeah, it wasn't black.

Tommy: There is— I don't know even if—

Josh: Ed Sheeran has one. Yeah, free Nando's. Actually, I don't know if Jules had one.

Tommy: You got to be, you got to be a celebrity to have it.

Josh: Free food. Yeah, free Nando's. I mean, that's, that's Contra, isn't it? What's the best thing Contra thing you've ever got? What's the best exchange that you've ever gotten for doing work rather than cash? Free stuff. I'll lead because I remember my Sonos system. When— before Sonos was, um, you know, in JB and all— actually, they were— I think they were starting to go into JB at this point, but before they were mainstream like as much as they are now, um, I did some work for them, uh, the Australian Sonos, and, uh, some video stuff. And I said, rather than paying me, just let's do a contra thing. So I got like 4 Sonos speakers, like Play:5s or whatever. And so I've got them all throughout my apartment. Yeah, so that's the idea is that you're like fucking this contra is some sort of transaction where it's like you're giving someone, you know, bits on air, you know, mentioning them on air.

Tommy: Oh yeah, hang on. One of my clients at the moment, Sleep Republic.

Josh: Oh yes, you've got one of their beds.

Tommy: King-size mattress. They're like the mattress in a box delivered to your door. It's like rolled up, compressed. So I did a bunch of work for them. So I mean, I don't— the thing with that stuff is it feels like you're still working for it.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's, um, it's normally— it's, it's never outweighed, like it's never— it's normally meant to be fairly equal, right?

Tommy: Yeah, I gave them a product that was worth the same as their product. Yeah, in exchange. I think freebies— I love a good freebie. Yeah.

Josh: I'm trying to think of, you know, actually this was cool. My cousin worked in the sales team for Double TFM back in sort of being like '90, like mid, late '90s. And they had a promotion, I think it was with Fila. And it was at the, what's it called? It's not, it's before Aus— Open, it's at like the grass courts. What are they called? Koo Yong? Koo Yong, yes. That's been on recently. So, basically, for whatever reason, they screwed up the competition and they didn't have any of the, like, it was like this kid opportunity for kids to be trained with like top tennis players. Trying to remember the name, real famous Australian. Todd. No. Todd Woodbridge?

Tommy: No. He's doing the rounds.

Josh: Can't remember who it was now. Ben Hewitt? Nah, it's like, it was like an old coach. Mark Philippoussis? Nah, keep going.

Tommy: You wouldn't know anyway. Yeah, I wouldn't know. You've got no idea with sport.

Josh: Hang on, let's call Mum.

Tommy: Hey, come back to it.

Josh: We'll come back to it, but I'll give Mum a buzz and we'll find out.

Tommy: Nah, fuck that. I'm bored of your story. Okay. But anyway, it's true.

Josh: But anyway, I, no, basically it was, you talk for 10 seconds while we get Mum on the phone.

Tommy: You're not calling your Mum.

Josh: I am calling Mum. You're not calling your Mum, huh? Oh, your Mum's calling. I'm calling Mum. We'll give it— I've never met your Mum. You've spoken to her, yeah. She likes my Facebook. Hello, Joshua. Hello, Mrs. Jansen. We're just doing a— Tommy and I doing the podcast. I'm trying to remember who were the tennis players that was training me when I was a kid at that Fiala camp thing that was double— Tony Roche and Yvonne Gwilligong. Oh yes. Yeah, okay, thank you. Have a good one. Catch up, bye. See you, Lynn. So, there you go. Tony Roach and Yvonne Goolagong.

Tommy: I did a project at school about Yvonne Goolagong.

Josh: Yeah, well, she trained me in tennis and look at me now. But no, got the best part about it was like got Fila shoes, Fila tops, Fila hat, like fully like kitted out. It was free. It was free.

Tommy: Your mum didn't pay to do the camp.

Josh: Because it was a thing where it was like it was meant to be something that people could win. Yeah, but tactics had fucked up, so they're like, we just need kids to be there so we don't look like fuckheads in front of the client. So it was all filled with like sales people's friends and shit like that.

Tommy: Classic radio, can't fill it. Yeah, get your mates' mates in there.

Josh: I remember at Doveton Pools pretending they would do the like taste the difference between Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Yeah, I've mentioned Coca-Cola in the last two eps. And I say Coca-Cola, which I never ever say. Anyway, Coke and Pepsi. And they— Yeah, you'd get Lifesavers after you do the test. So, I was trying to work out as a kid how many different looks I could have so I could keep going up and doing the test and getting more Lifesavers. So, I went out with my glasses and a top on, then I went without my glasses with the top on, then I went without my top on. All for light tacos.

Tommy: I'm glad that you're, um, reinforcing my weirdness comments about you.

Josh: I mean, I was a kid. What, like, uh, have you—

Tommy: before we go off on any other tangent, because we did speak about this, it's like, do we come with something? And I think I've liked it because we had to be so planned with radio. Yeah. And we can do what the fuck we want here. Uh, is there something you were thinking about? Because I thought about Toe Thumb for today. Is there something you've been thinking about?

Josh: Oh, I've been thinking about time a lot. And this year, it was probably late last month, I sort of had this realisation of, actually I read an article, New York Times, about people piking, people cancelling plans and how easy it is and how much we love doing it. And I've been one to cancel plans purely out of like, You book something far enough in advance and most of the time I'll do it. But I went through a bit of a stage of like, I don't really give a fuck, I'm just going to cancel because I don't really want to do this anymore. Whereas this month I've started being very specific about my calendar, which means if I book it in, I'm going and I'm doing it. If I don't want to do it, I say no now. Otherwise, I book it in and I follow through.

Tommy: Well, you kind of feel shit and I think The people who are the cancellers probably live in a world where they are feeling not great about cancelling all the time.

Josh: Yeah, well, they've got to be a bit— there's got to be some sort of anxiety built into it. But I think it made me think about families and how there's the always late family and the family that was always on time. My guess is that you come from a family that was always on time. Correct. And did you— was it a thing that you would talk about as a family?

Tommy: My dad is pretty— no, we never talked about it, but my dad is, he's very on time with everything. And I am too. I don't like letting people down in that respect. And so, you know me, I'm on time. I just hate the fucking—

Josh: you— this— the YouTubers who are filming them being late to all their fucking flights.

Tommy: Casey Neistat, that's what you're talking about.

Josh: That was, yeah, just the last set, but fuck. All of them, like, how many? They're all like shocked, like, "Missed my flight." Yeah. It's like, oh, we still had 10 minutes before they—

Tommy: Mate. Maybe it's a part of the story.

Josh: There's a little bit of that, but there's also, I think it's also we come from Australia where basically everywhere we go out, you know, we have to be there 3 hours before. Whereas people from Europe or the US, they're just like, maybe they look at international flying in a different way where it's like if you're If you're in Europe and you're only like a short, like, you know, like a few hours drive to a country and you're flying there, it doesn't make that much sense to be there 3 hours early.

Tommy: I can't stand the feeling of thinking I'm late for a flight. I think that stems across all the things.

Josh: Have you ever missed a flight?

Tommy: Never.

Josh: Never in my life. We had one situation recently when we were in the US where they had to put on our bags late. Yeah. And basically, I think it meant that if we wouldn't get some of the compensation that you would normally get if your bags were lost, because they're like, hey, we're going to try and get them on the plane. We can get you on the plane, but there's no guarantee we can get your bags. What's the Jansen family like? Always on time. They are? Yeah. But Bree's side, late. So, I think that we've— I feel like I've adapted over time to Yeah, especially creative, like being in the creative industry, people are fucking flaky. They're all like a bit mental. So, it's hard to tie people down. Whereas like, I think that that's a priority for me is to be on time and be someone who can be relied upon. I think the issue is that when you have that expectation of yourself, you then have that expectation of other people. How do you deal with late people or cancellers? Do you, If someone says, hey, I can't do, I'm going to cancel. Do you just have like an open book policy where it's like, oh, if I'm available, then I can do the next time they suggest?

Tommy: Or is it a— Is it if they keep cancelling on you or, you know, they're the cancelled type?

Josh: Yeah, if they're the cancelled type and they're like—

Tommy: I think I've got one of my best mates, longest friend from primary school, and he's flaky and I think he would know it. It's gross. And so, but what I think is you almost need to, you can't expect them to do anything more for you.

Josh: Yeah, it's the empathy. So, that's the thing, right? It's this balance of we can have a standard for ourselves, but we don't have to expect that of others. And I think having, for me, it's about scheduling out my time and putting in the calendar, these are the things that I'm doing. And that means that it's not about flexing to the, you don't have to be flexible with them. But you also don't have to like go out of the way to make things difficult as well where it's like, ah, well, I'm not. Next time you say, I'm not going to say that I'm available.

Tommy: If you're relying too heavily, like if you put too much weight on that, you, it's a dangerous place to live. Like your friendship won't survive. Yeah. And so that's my friendship with him. I've put that in place where I'm like, ah, whatever. And I kind of make it a joke, but you're right. I don't actually bring it up a great deal. Yeah.

Josh: Well, it's even friends. Like, I think it's the sometimes being a friend is realising what that person's like and adapting to that. So, it's like that with text messages. I'm not necessarily that great on texts and I give people that same sort of leeway where it's like, I'm not going to get upset if they don't text me back or, you know.

Tommy: I reckon you are. You— I don't— I've never thought you're a late person. But I think that you can get a bit lax, like it all kind of, it revolves, not revolves around you, but it's like, it ends up being.

Josh: Whatever I'm prioritising. Yeah. I'm not good. I think what that comes from is not being good at multitasking. Yeah. So, if I'm focused on something, if I'm doing something, I'm in the mode, like, so when I'm making a YouTube video, the ability for you to get in contact with me is much lower. And you almost like, you'll text me going, "Hey man, are you working on a YouTube video?" And it's because I've gone like radio silent 'cause I'm like smashing it out. And I think that that can be a good quality to have, being able to compartmentalise. I'm trying to get to a point where I'm carving out time every day that I look at my phone and I do all the social media shit, doing a shocking job of it at the moment, but I set them as recurring things in my calendar. So, hopefully I get to a point where I'm only, you know, checking my phone on the social media type of stuff once a day between these times.

Tommy: It's full on that we have to manage this. Like we have to create things in life to manage it.

Josh: 'Cause he— Yeah, because, well, I think the thing is there's a saying that if you can't, those things that can't be measured can't be managed. So there's, you need to work out, okay, if it's always on and you're just checking it all the time, then it's harder to, Dial it in. Is it the Measure Man?

Tommy: I get it though.

Josh: It's basically, that's why I can't, like I'm loving having my calendar. And even if I'm not doing it all right now, it stays in my calendar. So, if I get a little bit better every day, then that's something. But these apps are being designed. A friend of mine, Nick Hallam, just did a Medium post where he's changing to a dumb phone next week.

Tommy: What do you mean? Like a—

Josh: So, a Nokia, like his old Nokia. And the reason was because he got a message on Facebook saying, "Hey, you've spoken to X friend 2 days in a row. Keep the streak going by contacting them today." And so, what's his point? He's like, well, fuck that. Because social, like Facebook, all of this, you know, these platforms, they're trying to make them stickier and they're trying to actually change the way that we think and the way that we communicate. And if we know anything, we know that, you know, this year for me, it's about creative momentum. One of these things, you know, doing this podcast is part of that. And those habits become our life and what we do. And so spending lots of time on Facebook or making sure that you're messaging people back or having a Snapchat streak with someone is fucking shit. And I don't think it's good for our brains.

Tommy: And so that's what he's saying. He's needed to go cold turkey and remove—

Josh: Because the only way that you're going to be able to take control over these sort of— they're saying that they're creating new neurological, uh, pathways by, uh, you know, putting the notifications in a certain spot and getting us to do these, you know, checking for notification, you know, what are the things, what are the actions that you do constantly. And that's why things like Facebook would change where their marketplace button is because they know that was prime positioning. That was where all the message notifications were. And they're like, that's something people use all the time. They've been using it that way for 2 years. Now, if we're trying to push a new feature, that is the prime positioning. So remember only a year ago when you had to press a different button to get to notifications.

Tommy: It would blow people's mind of the data that they're capturing, like heat spotting. Yeah. So like where your fingers are on the screen of the smartphone.

Josh: Yeah, the heat maps and stuff, being able to, um, yeah, like it's— there's, there's so much where this is going.

Tommy: Um, my thing with people who do that drastic go to a 3210. Yeah, obviously it's identified that he's got a problem.

Josh: Yeah, but I mean, I've done it too. It's the people who are— I remember seeing a profile pic that I put up, would have been like 2010, 2009, where I'm like taking a Facebook break. And it's like, yeah, people do it and all that sort of thing, but you end up coming back on the platform. I think real radical change is hard. He's saying that the reason— It's not sustainable. No. And the other thing is he talks about the reason that brings him back is Facebook events. I can't relate because I don't fucking use Facebook events at all. I've never, I probably accept less than 5 events a year.

Tommy: People have just stopped inviting you to anything.

Josh: Exactly, well, I just don't respond. But the thing, final note, I got a, my Strava movie. So, basically Strava is the app to be able to track your runs and your cycling and all that sort of thing. It spat out a movie for me. I thought that I would just show you what the, what my movie looked like and you can just respond to it. So this—

Tommy: So you posted this on your Instagram. I had no fucking idea.

Josh: Yeah, it wasn't very flattering. It got one fucking like, it wasn't a video. But this is the video. This actually made me laugh. 'Cause this idea of they're gonna build you up and I'll put it in the show notes as well. But this whole video is about like, look at all the shit that all the sport that you've done this year. Press the play button.

Tommy: It's like your iPhone putting together a movie of your photos. Yes, exactly. This is doing the same. Is this access to your exercise? Okay. All right, strava.com. My year in sport. You don't do sport, Josh. Days active, 23 in a year. It's bringing up photos of bridge. Probably thinks they're walks you've been on. November 11th, what happened here? Average distance walked, 4.217 km. Longest activity, 17.18 km. So it's tracking your movements. Yeah, trying this whole run thing again.

Josh: Where did you pull that from? That was a comment that I did within my, um, Strava afternoon run. Wait until you see the hours I did. It's gonna be crazy.

Tommy: You're gonna be like, for one, one year of exercise. Total distance, 128 K's, 31 bike, 42 something, 52 walk. Total time, 14 hours.

Josh: I did 14 hours of exercise.

Tommy: Um, that video is actually more engaging than I thought. That was a minute of my life.

Josh: It's amazing. It's like real, like pumps you up, but I feel like an absolute idiot. It's like the equivalent of someone's done a reality show about you for a year and haven't told you. It's like if someone all of a sudden said, "Hey Tommy, we've actually had a camera rigged up to your shower for a year and we've created the shower highlights reel." You'd act a bit differently in the shower. Yeah. So that's how I feel a bit exposed. I didn't know they were making it. So this year I'm obviously gonna run or—

Tommy: It's a good value sell for them on top of—

Josh: That's great. I mean, they probably only send it to like premium, like I'm a premium subscriber.

Tommy: Yeah, 'cause you do so much exercise. Exactly.

Josh: Thanks for joining, mate. Remember you can send us mail, PO Box 400, Abbotsford, Victoria 3067, and we'll read any letters that we've got.

Tommy: Josh has got a fucking PO box for some reason, loves the subscription.

Josh: And we're doing this every weekday. It's about 30 minutes long. We've spoken longer today. It's going to hit 40 minutes. So, sorry about that. Alright.

Tommy: Episode 3, done and dusted. The Daily Talk Show with Josh and Tommy. Thanks, guys.