174: Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) – State of the Workflow

Welcome back to Cortex. In this episode of the State of the Workflow series, I'm joined by Marques Brownlee. Marques has been producing tech-focused videos on his YouTube channel MKBHD for over 17 years and now sits to over 20 million subscribers. Marques' product reviews are an incredibly important part of the launch of many consumer tech products. Over the course of this series so far, there's been a thread that keeps popping up that is of great interest to me, and I'm focusing on it more and more, and that is the idea of influence. The people that I've gotten to speak to, they're all very influential in the worlds in which they operate in, whether that's amongst the audience that they've made for themselves or outwardly with the companies that they cover. And for me, in the world of consumer technology, there is nobody more influential than Marques Brownlee. What Marques thinks matters. And I want to know what goes into making these videos. how does Marquez structure his opinions, how does he produce videos consistently of the quality that he does, how has his team grown to help him do it, and also how someone of his notoriety, his fame, his success continues to operate online. But before we get to the interview, I want to mention for the last time that you can get 20% off an annual MoreTech subscription by going to getmoretechs.com and using the code 2025Holidays at checkout. So if you stop right now and go sign up, you'll get the entire conversation with no advertising interruptions. That's getmoretext.com and use the code 2025Holidays at checkout. But I'll talk more about that later. For now, please enjoy my conversation with Marques. Okay, Marques, I want to get started by asking a question I ask everybody who comes on the show. What device is the most important to you for getting your work done? I think the answer is just my laptop. Okay. I used to be a like multiple computers in multiple places person, like more than I am now, but now I use my laptop a lot in a bunch of different places to get like real work done. I mean, the real answer is my phone. Like I need my to-do list app everywhere I go and all the time, but I think my laptop has been a nice bonus for a lot of that stuff too. So I'm assuming this is a MacBook Pro right now? Yeah, yeah. It's right in front of me, so you can't see it. But this is the 14-inch M4 Max. M4 Max, okay. And are you using that computer docked to your workstation? Are you still using a Mac Pro or a Mac Studio or something like that? So at the studio here, I have a Mac Pro. Everywhere else, I do use this. Like at home, I dock this to my monitor. On the go, I just use it like a laptop. And so the one other computer that I do have is the Mac Pro at the studio. That Mac Pro must be getting a bit creaky. You would think. I mean, it's doing fine. And they haven't updated it since M2 Ultra. So it's the Ultra. It has all the GPU cores. It's great for video editing. Like if I swapped that M2 Ultra out for this M4 Max, I would be gaining in some single core and some smaller stuff, but it would be probably slower to video edit. So I keep it for video editing because that's what it's good for. But it's also pretty clear that Apple's not going to stick around with updating Mac Pro for very much longer. So I think I'll end up being a Mac Studio person pretty soon. Yeah. I mean, even if you went to a Mac Studio, but I'm sure with the laptop too now, it must be amazing when you travel. Oh, yeah. Because I remember I saw you on the street once in San Jose waiting for an Uber. And you had like six suitcases around you. And like one of them was a huge Pelican case, which I think you used to carry an iMac Pro around with you, right? That's exactly right. You looked like a man who had been through a tough time. You know, you're really getting ready to leave surrounded by bags. Not great. Yeah, really glad to not have to do that anymore. So for this episode, I want to take a look at your workflow for video production. And I think maybe the video that is potentially the most important of the year that you do is maybe your iPhone review. So I kind of want to take it as a look through that. At least in views, it tends to be the most consistent to be way up there for you in a year. Oh, yeah. I don't know, unless there's a new PlayStation or whatever. I can sometimes do the thing. So I want to start at the very beginning. So you've just been to the event, right? So you've seen it. You've seen what Apple's got to show. You know, you're going for briefings that day. How soon from seeing what the iPhone's going to be, do you have ideas that start popping up in your head for what the shape of the review could be? Sometimes it's happened even before you've seen it. I was going to say, sometimes it's before. Yeah, like there's only so much that changes every year with the phone. But telling the story of how it got to where it is, sometimes the storylines are developing before the device even gets unveiled. So yeah, sometimes before, sometimes there's leaks, sometimes there's trajectories of how things are going on in the rest of the smartphone world. And like, what will Apple's response be? That's interesting sometimes too. But yeah, pretty soon, you know, they get on stage, they start crafting the Apple narrative. You hear about the way they frame things. That's interesting to listen to. And then, yeah, that's where the ideas start coming from. Do you usually get devices quite soon after you've seen them the first time like in average that you know and i'm sure like i know samsung kind of sometimes give people devices beforehand or access beforehand yeah does this kind of timing affect the way you think about the reviews a little bit since you're talking about the iphone review apple is basically the last big company in this space that does not pre-brief yeah on devices so when the device gets unveiled on stage everyone is learning about it at the same time basically yep and then yes sometime between that announcement and my review is when I get the device and start my testing. And I guess it makes it either easier or harder depending on how much time you have, right? Because the embargoes are pretty, you know, they're close, like it tends to be like a week or two depending on the device, right? And depending on when it comes out. Oh, barely. It's usually not even a week for the iPhone. It's usually like four or five days. Yeah. So like with all this stuff, this is kind of like, you know, tech companies, especially Apple, they announce things on a similar cadence, right? So, you know, you roughly, you know, when it's going to be. The exact timing of all of these things can be variable. And this time of year, September, October, you know, the two month span of Tech-Tember, lots of stuff is happening. Does it become hard for you and the studio team to try and plan what you're going to be producing and what the priorities are as these things are kind of shifting and being confirmed? I don't think so. I think what happens is during the rest of the year in January, February, March, all the like quieter months where we have a little bit more flexibility and a little bit more time. The way I've described it is that is like when we're playing with our processes and production the most. That's when we try new things. That's when we add stuff, subtract stuff, see how it goes. And then once we get to September, October, that's kind of like the playoffs. Like if you're a sports team in this analogy, you're no longer like getting better at the sport or learning new strategies. You're just locking in what you've been learning all year and executing on it as best you can because that's her plan. And I think that's kind of how it goes here. Like we know what's going to come out with these typical releases every year. We know there's not too many surprises so we can kind of plan for most of it. And then we just go in and we just execute, execute, execute until December is over. You're not going to come up with a new technology workflow adding a new piece of equipment in the middle of September. Exactly. Like I would assume that there is a, whether it's hard or fast, you kind of have like a lock period. like nothing's changing from like August through to January. Exactly. Yeah. When you get a new phone, what are the first things that you start doing with it to get a feel for it? Like to get your first impressions? Like, do you have a set of tests that you do or do you just start integrating it into your life? That is basically all I do is integrate it into my life. So I've done the setup process and the like getting moving into a phone, if you will, so many times. Maybe you get some like information about it, like a review bullet list or something like that from the company, they'll tell you like what's new about it and you can pay attention to that. But basically, yeah, I unbox it. I pay attention to what's in the setup process. Sometimes there's new software features and they like highlight that there. And then you move into the phone. You don't really get to start evaluating battery life until maybe two or three days in, but you pretty quickly get to start playing with new features, seeing how well things work or don't, taking lots of pictures and videos if the cameras are new and just living with it. And I think that's the important thing is like I mainline the device. I get my SIM card in it right away. And when you start to find things that it doesn't do very well, that maybe other phones did well, because it's my main device, then I'm like, all right, can I use a workaround? Are there other things that this phone can do that maybe make up for the fact that it's bad at this thing that I wanted it to do well? All these other little thoughts. And I just basically start taking notes. Where are you taking those notes? I have an app called TickTick, which is my tasks app, but it also has a notes section. The more I hear about TickTick, it's like it actually has everything. It's like it's its own operating system. It seems like one of these Chinese super apps or something. It's just it's all going on in there. Yeah. In the notes section, it's just things that I'm actively reviewing. I have cars that I'm actively reviewing. I have phones I'm actively reviewing. And anytime I have any thought about them, I'll just open it and jot it down real quick just to make sure I don't lose it or forget it. and yeah, eventually I have enough notes and enough thoughts that I can form a coherent review slash story or whatever it is. Do you have an entry in TickTick for each distinct product or are you just throwing them all into one spot? I have them for each product. Each product has a note and then each note is a bunch of text, a blob of text. And TickTick, I guess, is important to you as I imagine a lot of software is if it's multi-platform because you're moving around everywhere all the time, all different platforms. I imagine that's actually quite important for your workflow. Yeah, whatever device I'm using, I need to be able to just pull up the notes and draft something in there, drop some text in real quick, yeah. What are the most frustrating parts about switching phone to phone? Because, I mean, I guess it's kind of funny really where you mentioned there are frustrations. I expect people think like, oh, Marcus just gets to use whatever phone he wants. But I guess it's not always like that for you, right? You have to use whatever the one you're testing is, whether that's the phone you want to use or not. So I can imagine that's a frustration. What are the other kinds of frustrations that you run into when you're testing stuff out? There are such specific tech reviewer complaints that I have. I'll be reviewing a phone and I'm four days in and I'm finishing up my thoughts and then there's a major software update that changes a bunch of stuff that I now have to go back and relearn and retest. That's kind of frustrating. I also know that battery life is not really... you can kind of scientifically test it, but there's so many reasons why so many battery benchmarks are flawed. That is frustrating to me. Like I kind of just have to go by how well it sustains my lifestyle. And that's my only benchmark. I like your kind of benchmark is screen on time, right? Like I hear you reference that a lot. And I think, you know, I actually don't care about how many hours I can watch uninterrupted video. Like it's just not a thing I ever do. So like I'm fine with that, you know, like I don't need to know that. So like screen on time, I think is a pretty good, that's the thing we can all understand. I think people sometimes get even too granular with it. Like when I'm reviewing a device and I'm, you know, obviously some people want to know the exact specifics, but it's like either the battery life is good or it's bad or it's meh. And there's kind of this gradient in between where you can get really nitpicky over like, oh, I got seven hours and 37 minutes on this phone and I got seven hours and 12 minutes on this other phone. So this one phone is slightly better. That doesn't make a big difference to me. I just want to know if it's good or not good. Like I'm using this phone right now, the OnePlus 15. And without giving you like benchmarks or any like nitty gritty, if I say to you that it's 10 a.m. and I've used this phone for an hour already and it has 97% battery left, that's all I have to say. That's all I have to say, right? I don't have to get into the exact nitty gritty and the details of my benchmark results. It's like this is a really good battery life on a phone, period. So that's kind of how I like to look at battery. I guess looking at your reviews in general, you are not a speeds and feeds guy, right? Like that is not really your approach to reviewing technology anyway. It's rare to see a chart in an MKBHD video, right? Is that because that's what you care about? Or is it just what you think is best to approach from your content? Like why do we not see cyberpunk benchmarks on your pro videos or whatever? You know, it's useful sometimes. But again, I think if you're looking at the especially what sort of audience you're talking to, I'm talking to obviously a bunch of people who are thinking about buying this device. But I'm also talking to a bunch of people who are just watching this for entertainment and have no intention of buying the device and a sort of a broader audience. And the challenge in speaking to both is not losing one of them. And I think I could easily do a bunch of benchmarks and a bunch of extremely specific comparisons and give you those charts. And that would be very useful for the people who are about to buy it. buy the device, but I would lose a lot of people who were never going to do that in the first place. And on the other side of that, I could give you a bunch of extremely broad, yeah, battery's good, camera's good, and I could lose the people who are trying to get specific information. So trying to speak to both groups is a pretty specific writing challenge, I think. But yeah, I think a lot of those charts, I try to use them sparingly because sometimes they're useful to give context on something, but sometimes they're just a little unnecessarily granular. And I think It's okay to cut some things that are not extremely useful for everyone. You mentioned it's a writing challenge. Your reviews do not feel like they are being read aloud. They feel very much like you were just talking. How much writing goes into an MKBHD review? Yeah, this is a learned skill, a very developed skill. I write 90 something percent of what you're hearing me say. You know, the way it's delivered is sometimes a little bit wandering around what I've written, but I've written everything. Like I have a whole bunch of things that I need to say, and especially in the order that I want to say them so that it flows and that it moves from point to point to point. But, you know, in talking to the camera, there are ways to make it feel like it's not just me reading from a teleprompter or whatever. Some people are really good at that, by the way. I'm terrible at it. But I have my notes like in my lap and I'm reading them. Okay. Knowing like how that feels and how I want to say that and then delivering it. And sometimes you can go a little bit off script because there's something I remember in the moment or something I want to cut in the moment. But generally, it's 90 something percent written. So you're essentially line reading. Essentially. Yeah. Or it's like it's not even line reading. It's like paragraph reading. Yeah. Where like I have five sentences I want to say. And even if I don't say it word for word exactly the way I wrote it down, as long as I deliver the points and the emphasis and the reason for me saying it, success. you do a lot of takes less than i used to i got better at it but it's definitely i think the ratio most people who make videos might understand is like for a 12 minute review there's probably about 45 to 60 minutes of a roll okay so that's just you speaking into the camera it's about four or five times the amount of what will the runtime of the video or not even the amount of stuff i'm saying but like from when i start recording to when i stop recording is like 60 minutes and that is how long it took me to get all the takes I want for the 10 minute video. Do you have people in the room with you kind of like listening and producing from that respect? Yeah. Newly this year, just to have like, because we want to make sure I'm not going too far off script or riffing or like missing numbers. You have someone in the room to make sure like they're looking at what I wrote. And if I say a number wrong in the take, I might not process that, but that's at least a second set of eyes that can be like, oh, you actually said 12 and a half, not 10 and a half, just to make sure you say that again. Was there something that happened that made you do that? Or was that just a change that you wanted to make? That's just like having higher standards for quality control in general, like lots of feedback on like, we want things to be as accurate as possible. And so do I. So like, that was a good way to get ahead of some stuff that I can't like fix and post. Is it weird to have someone watching you? Yes. Especially if you're doing it for so long on your own, right? Where you're like, all gang i'm going in here and you just closed the door but now you've got someone you've got a one audience member which is about the worst amount of audience yeah it's it's so true yeah yeah you get used to it there are certain things you never really fully get used to as a video creator one is hearing your own voice while you're editing in your headphones like that you never really fully get used to that you don't edit the podcast right no no that will get you used to it really okay you just waterboarded with your own voice yes like you're just forced there's no way you're not getting used to that like if you you know like you're into hour two of just you talking like that would dang yeah i mean i've definitely edited many many hours of my own voice but i suppose a podcast is a great way to max those hours out this episode of cortex is brought to you by sentry broken lines of code busted api calls and app crashes nobody enjoys this and that's why sentry exists it's the only developer-first app monitoring platform that is built to give you answers, not just clues. 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Our thanks to Sentry for their support of this show and Relay. Like, obviously, you started doing this on your own, right? and you've scaled up to the point where you have a whole team in your studio, setting up for the A-roll. Are you still setting that up or involved in that setup? Or do you have members of the team who are going in there and set dressing, setting up the camera, setting up the microphone and stuff? A little bit of both. So some of it can be directed, but a lot of it is also taste. So like I have a look that I want. If I have a look for a review or whatever video I'm making, that I can do the skeleton of it, of like dropping the camera on the tripod in place and like where I want our key to be and what the background is. And then, you know, they can easily fill in the blanks of like set design or microphone placement or like where the foam behind the microphone is to make sure it sounds better than a big empty room, things like that. So yeah, those, the like ratio of how much gets done by me versus the team varies per video but there definitely like a taste part I assume this is a similar thing with editing right Like I guess it depends on the project as to how much of it you going to touch Exactly So there me and Mariah as the other editor on the team for the MKBHD channel videos And it will typically be spearheaded like primarily by one of us. So if Mariah doesn't edit, I may give notes on the last 20% of it. You know, it's not like I edited it, but I had some input. or if I'm editing something, then I'll just take it from start to finish and then I'll pass it on to the team to take a look at and if they have extra things they think would make it better then they can add those notes. But yeah, it's usually like alternated between us basically. And then I'm assuming you also have people who help out with all the other various things like graphics and audio and stuff like that, right? For the videos. Exactly, yeah. I'm assuming this slows your process down a lot compared to when you did it on your own. Like it's a more involved thing with more creative people involved. right? Yeah. And that's a sacrifice that you have to take a balance of. Like you can go all the way to the extreme of like 20, 30 people touch every video and edit things and work on things. And then it takes a long time, but you can make an amazing product and an amazing video out of that. We do have several people touch each video. Like sometimes there's motion graphics. Sometimes there's audio stuff. Sometimes it's just me and I just take a video from A to B and it's over. but I think yeah we can make better videos with more help but we don't want it to take too long obviously there is a balance to all this stuff right like you could make like the most perfect youtube video but then maybe you make one video every 18 months are you producing like weekly videos like what do you have like a cadence for the main channel like how many videos you produce in a year yeah it feels like it's about one to two per week I think this year it's a little bit over one a week at the most I ever did it was probably two a week what is your ideal Probably one and a half a week. Yeah, like with shorts now, there's a little bit of an extra X factor in there because we can kind of just have an idea and drop something at this drop of a hat. But like one to two a week is usually pretty ideal, I think, yeah. Have shorts made a noticeable, beneficial change to your business? To the business, no. To maybe specifically content strategy and visibility of the channel and just overall, like obviously they get a lot of views and sometimes you can sort of use that as like the top of the funnel to get more people to subscribe and watch long form. But it's hardly substantial to the business, I would say. Yeah, I just had Hank Green on the show and he basically just said those views, he just doesn't even consider them real. Yeah. Like he does them and he figures there's a benefit, but just like they're almost kind of fake at a point with the short's views. It's very hard to quantify compared to the main kind of regular video views. Yeah, there's like a scale of like one YouTube view equals 30 TikTok views equals 300 YouTube shorts views. Yeah, they're not worth the same. That's for sure. Obviously, a big part of your review videos are the incredibly elaborate and cool intros that you do as part of them. Are you involved in this part too? It seems like there's like a multi-person operation just to produce those. What is that process like? Yeah. So I think generally we want the sort of cinematic intros to set the stage for either the story or whatever's happening in the rest of the review. And so no matter how much I'm involved, sometimes I'm involved like minimally just in a little bit of direction and then the team can spin it up and go. Sometimes I'm like really heavily involved, but the main point of like making those successful is we have some story or something that we want to say. And this intro supports that. Okay. So yeah, it'll be like, all right, do we have an intro we want to make for this review here? This one plus 15? Yeah, actually, you know, it would be nice if we kind of set the stage with like how overwhelmingly different and how much stuff there is going on with this phone. and we kind of brainstorm a little bit on how we want that to go for that particular video. There was a lot of back and forth because we wanted to like fill up the screen with as much stuff as possible because there's a lot of new stuff. So yeah, it's a lot of communication. It's a fun process, but it usually makes something pretty sick. Do you have a lot of creative meetings as a team? Are they like ad hoc or fixed or a big mixture of both like to work out these kinds of things? They're super ad hoc. It's like somebody walks up to somebody at their desk and then they just sit down and just start chatting it up. Okay. We're all in the same room, essentially, like a studio is one big open space. So anyone can work with anyone on anything at any time, which is awesome. And it just means like, yeah, if somebody has an idea, they walk up to my desk and be like, Hey, here's an idea. And I go, Ooh, and I, I start writing it down on the whiteboard. I'm like, yeah, actually we can work with that. Let's try that. And then we just go from there. Talking about the space and the people in it. Like when you started out, obviously your channel was just you and it was just you for a really long time and then you hired your producer Andrew and then it kind of was off to the races and how many people are now working for the MKBHD empire yeah geez I think it's like 17 or something like that that's a lot of people yeah that's like that's quite a lot of people does this increase the pressure on you like do you feel the pressure of those 17 people well I think everyone feels that in some way just because it's like, I think my expertise is still in reviewing tech content strategy, you know, being in the mix and like YouTube and tech and stuff like that. My expertise is not in being a manager or being a boss or a business expert or anything like that. I went to business school, but it's like, this isn't my expertise clearly. So there is some amount of pressure in trying to run an operation that is fair and generous and equitable and useful and all these other things that are not necessarily the primary focus of the business. So yeah, that is a little extra that comes with it for sure. Are you a people manager inside of your organization? I think no. I think that's one of the things I've gotten to offset with people who are way better at that. It's a skill and not everybody has it and lots of people don't want it. Like it's hard. It's really hard. Like when you're trying to work with people's needs and interpersonal stuff and like, it's difficult and not everybody has the patience or skill or mind for that kind of thing. Especially when that is not the best thing that you can bring to your business, right? Yeah. I'm not going to be the best in the world at that. I can promise I'll be as good as I can in other things, but it's like, we should probably just have someone who's good at that. Yeah, exactly. I mean, at this point where you have the main channel, autofocus, the studio channel, and the Waveform podcast. Yeah. Is this an attempt to try and not make you the sole face of the business or is that just the way in which it has grown? I actually think I probably am in every video on every channel, but to different degrees. Sure. I think it kind of is just an audience expectation thing. For different channels, there are different things that you go to that channel for. For the MKBHD channel, you're here for my opinions on tech, more or less. and so I am the host I am the person talking to you on camera for the waveform podcast okay it's obviously a podcast it's more of a chat show like all of us are on camera and then for the studio there's all the people at the studio so sometimes I'm there sometimes I'm hosting sometimes I'm one of several hosts like there's a big variety there autofocus is Miles and I and thoughts on cars so like I'm in everyone Miles is in a lot of them like we have different levels of collaboration on that and all this is still variable too like we're figuring out what works on different channels. But yeah, I think it's audience expectation that drives most of like how much of the hosting that I am probably going to do in each video. So you have this large physical studio that everybody works in. Do you value in-person collaboration more than virtual? Is that why you have this space? Oh, definitely. It is infinitely easier to work with people in person in this collaborative environment, definitely. Especially to do the type of work that you're doing, right? Like it would be very complicated to operate the robot, for example, if everyone's over Zoom. Yeah. Like creatively, there's a lot of back and forth too. Like when you're sort of molding an idea or trying to think of a way that you can portray something, like there is often a lot of people tossing ideas into a pot and stirring it around and pulling things out. And that all works just so much better when we're all just here to do that. I'm assuming you still use collaboration software, though, even if you're all in the same spot. What are some of the key tools that help the studio run? Yeah. OK, so I guess the big one is Notion. And the other big one is just Google Docs. So anytime there is a video document or a script or whatever, all of that is put into Google Doc that several people can look at and add suggestions to. and jump into there. And that's kind of the only two big ones. Everyone uses email and Slack, obviously. But as far as creative collaboration, it's mainly Notion and Google Docs. Do you have someone kind of managing the Notion? Like, is there someone in charge of making sure that that thing is operated correctly? That's so funny. It's me, unfortunately. Oh, interesting. It probably shouldn't. Like, I'm the one who made the templates and who's kind of building the structure of like what pages we use for certain projects. But yeah, I wish I didn't have to spend time. I mean, that feels like something that you set up so it's the way that you want it to run. But ultimately someone else needs to be the administrator of that. Yeah, I mean, at the beginning of each year, like you said, we kind of like mess with things and that will change processes and we'll sort of establish how we want to use Notion. And then hopefully we all do it. And, you know, some people use it. Some people kind of check it once in a while. It's not like super critical, but it kind of just helps us keep a finger on the pulse of like what's going on. And I would assume, like from talking to other video creators, especially that is like a database of here are all the video projects and here's where they are through the flow. You know, this one's being shot. This one's being written. This one's being edited. That kind of thing is what's going on in there. Exactly. Or if even someone has something to add, like the smartphone awards are coming up and it's like we need someone to keep track of like all the trophies that we ordered and the shipping and all the other design things with the video itself and with the trophies. Like we'll just add steps in the Notion project just to make sure we keep track of everything. And again, I'm sure that, well, I would like to hope so, that that is like one of these types of things that help having a team is you're not ordering the awards. This is the first year that I'm not ordering the awards. Do you have a personal assistant? I don't know. I think you might need a personal assistant. Like I'm not trying to make you hire more people, but. So actually the newest ad to the team, Harper is her name, is the head of production. Okay. And what that means is she has the bird's eye view of everything happening on every channel and how everyone's time is being used. So previously, before Harper, for example, if someone came up to me and was like, hey, or if I said, I need to shoot this short right now. Is anybody available who knows camera but is not busy shooting with other stuff? Like, I think Miles is available. Is Rich here? Oh, Rich is outside. And there's like, that was massively simplified. Now that Harper's here, it's like, hey, Harper, today, this afternoon after lunch, I'm going to shoot these two things. So let's make sure we have a spot to shoot them and a person who can help me shoot those things. And then she has the bird's eye view and can line those things up. So as far as time saving as what a personal assistant probably would do the most of, I think that has been the most helpful. Yeah. I still think you might need an assistant, but you think about that one. You shouldn't have been ordering those awards. That's what I'm saying. Fair enough. Yeah. So something I find kind of like jumping back into the iPhone review of it all. Something that I find really interesting is that you will say like when the iPhone embargo comes up, people are posting their reviews and you would frequently drop a first impressions video at that time. And then a review later. So you give yourself more time. Why do you do this? It is twofold. One is because this is the only company that doesn't pre-brief. And so we inherently have less time. And by the time the review embargo drops, I've probably only had half the time I really need to review the phone. Yep. But the second part of that is the iPhone is super hot and people want to watch something on day one. And so I just, I'm giving you something on day one. I'm giving you something to watch. I'm giving you some new impressions that weren't in my initial impressions from the event, but it's not the full review yet. Those fully baked thoughts come when they're ready. So it is a sort of a solution to that problem. Is this something that you can take advantage of that maybe other creators would not? Because I don't feel like I see anybody else do this, that like if they've not got a review, it's not called review, it maybe isn't going to work for their audience. but you seem to be able to be very successful in getting two pieces of like long content out of the one product yeah do you think that this is like a competitive advantage you have i don't see why anyone else couldn't do it i guess there is a distinct pressure on basically every creator to be as early as possible with all of the thoughts that they have and i think it is a luxury or a privileged position to not feel that pressure as much where I think that people will want to hear what I have to say, even if it's three, four days later. So yeah, I think other creators could do that, but that pressure to be first is never gone. So I think it is kind of something that we get to do because people want to hear what we have to say anyway. Yeah. I think, you know, I've been focusing on covering Apple for like 15 years in the podcast that I do. And from a coverage perspective what you do is similar to like what John Gruber will do where John's written review will come a week later maybe more but people want to read it because they want to know what he has to say like he has a voice like you have a voice which for a lot of the audiences of both is more important than being first like that there is like a distinct thing that people want which is you know clearly why you are as successful as you are right like your voice people want to know what you have to say and want to know your thoughts, which is why whenever there is a new piece of technology, you are amongst or at the top of the most viewed videos for whatever that might be. There has to be a reason for that. And that's what I would assume it is. Sure. And there's also some level of like, you know, the embargo thing, like everything drops at the same time. There is an amount of noise that is hard to navigate. Like when all of these opinions come out at the same time, how many of these reviews are people really going to watch on that one day versus when things settle down a few days later and then something maybe a little bit more well-formed or at least a little bit more distinct comes out that can live on its own outside of a lot of that noise so that helps too yeah i mean anybody that subscribes to a bunch of tech creators you know there is like the clock ticks over your refresh youtube and it's like here's six videos for you to watch at least do you have to think about that do you try and consider the packaging of your video when you have these big embargoes oh yeah There's a whole game. There's a whole strategy, even within just that little system. Like the thing that you've probably heard people start doing is like when there is a super, super, like when OnePlus or Samsung drops a device and I know that there's going to be 50 videos on the hour, I will wait till 6.02 to drop my video so that it's at the top of the feed because 50 things just flew through your feed at exactly six o'clock. And now it's 6.02. Here's this one on top. So when you log in, you start scrolling, you'll hopefully see mine. You shouldn't say this out loud. Now, like everyone's going to be sent in different minute comments from each other. Soon it'll be like, oh, half past the hour. Here comes my guest. He's ready to go. It's funny. That might happen. You know, there's also when you start testing a device, like a lot of reviewers, we're talking to each other behind the scenes. Like we're testing things. We'd be like, are you seeing how bad this camera is too? Not just me. Okay, good. Just I don't want to make sure I'm not crazy. we kind of when we test the device we get an idea of like what we think other people are going to say i use a phone i realize it's a really good phone and i'm going okay i know that at launch everyone is going to be saying that this is one of the best phones of the year so if there's a way that i can sort of fit my packaging in like a puzzle piece to obviously live on its own but maybe even be referential to the world that this video is launching in that also helps a lot and usually gets people to click so that is also something we think about but you very rarely forcibly wade into controversy i feel like as a creator i don't feel like you're trying to find the gate as it were like as a content strategy yeah like so there's being first as a strategy and then there's being contrarian as a strategy and there's being negative as a strategy and i think the gates kind of fall into that third one where it's like ah this new thing is going to come out, it's going to be really good. We all know that the new whatever is going to be good. But if I can be the first one to find the critical flaw, man, that's a good content strategy right there. So yeah, that is always going to happen. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or scaling your business, Squarespace will give you everything that you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. When you build a site with Squarespace, you can get discovered fast with integrated SEO tools because once you put together a beautiful website, you don't want nobody to see it. That's why every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions and auto-generated sitemap and more so people find your site through search engine results. You can even offer your services and get paid with Squarespace. 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You can build your entire website and then when you're ready to launch it to the world, use the offer code cortex and you'll save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash cortex and the offer code cortex to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of Cortex and all of Relay. In the past couple of years, there's been a lot of talk about your impact of having positive or negative effects on the products that you're covering like i think about the humane ai pin especially like a few months ago i had david pierce from the verge on the show and i spoke to him about this exact thing too because i think the two of you made some of the most viewed content on this and it was a product that was very negatively reviewed and then there was a lot of talk about product scaling companies so Like you at the time, you made a video, right? Where you're like, bad products kill companies, not the reviews of them. Have your feelings evolved in any way on this? I've definitely given it a lot more thought because strangely, a lot more bad products have continued to come out. The people can't be stopped. That's the problem. Yeah, that's evergreen. It's always going to happen. But I have found it interesting because the controversy was actually two There were people who suggested that I was too critical of this new thing insert new thing here and that I should be more open about people making new things But there were also people who are critical that I wasn't negative enough about this thing that was clearly bad and it was a cash grab and it was just designed to raise venture capital or whatever and then peace out. Like that was a real two sided argument. Like even making the video is bad because you're kind of promoting it, even if you're doing so negatively. Yeah, that's happened a bunch more times, like a bunch more bad products have come out. And I've seen that on Twitter where people go, oh, I can't stand all these negative reviewers who don't see the big, bright future ahead of us. And there's people going, how does this keep happening? Why are people not shutting these down as soon as they come out? So, yeah, my thoughts have evolved a little bit, but I think I generally still feel the same way that if your product is bad, people are going to buy it and find out that it's bad. And then soon enough, the reviews come out and people stop buying it. And if a big review comes out saying it's bad and a whole bunch of people find out at the same time, not changing the trajectory of the product, I'm more just accelerating what was already going to happen. Yeah. Which is people finding out that it's bad and not buying it. Because it's like, what is the alternative? Like people give their money and find out it's bad individually before giving them. I'm definitely on that side of like the service that you provide is to talk about your experiences with the product. If those experiences are bad, it's really good to know that. Now, you can be wrong, I'm sure, right? Like everybody can be wrong. And that will come out in time. Like if it was like, no, you know, he just had the battery in backwards or something. And that was why, you know, like it's like, oh, okay, now we understand it. But if you're going into it honestly and showing the experience, that is the benefit to the people that choose to pay attention to you. Yeah. And this is part of what comes with like trying to be, I think one of my skills is like being a professional user almost. Like understanding the type of person that is going to buy this thing and then using it like that person would. So if I'm reviewing a $160 Moto G, like I'm not gonna spend that much time benchmarking how many frames per second I'm going to get in a game or any of these really, really nitty gritty camera back and forth detail comparisons because the person buying a Moto G is not interested in that and is not really frankly paying attention to that at all. But if I am reviewing a bleeding edge, humane AI pin, which is a new first gen product in a category that only early adopters are going to buy, then that's how I go into my testing of like, I'm going to try everything this thing is capable of. I'm going to see if I can do the things from the commercial in my own life. And when a product fails that test, it's pretty clear that there's going to be some negative reviews following it. Even without the big polarizing things, do you spend time considering your influence? Like what you can influence in the world of technology with the people that pay attention to you? Do you think about that, like the good and the bad? Not too much, really. I think most of my focus is just in trying to be accurate and trying to make good stuff. And the only influence I guess I really mostly see is in other coverage of the same things that I choose to cover. So if I am not one of the first, but if I'm somebody who jumps in on a product and realizes it has this really unique application and highlights it, then I will actually see other people notice that too and highlight it, which is cool. And if it's the other way around, if it's negative and I review something and everyone starts to realize how bad of a deal it is or how bad the product is. And I do sometimes see that ripple effect as well. I think there's a quote about, I think it's maybe Walt Mossberg who's like, I don't care about your stock price. I'm not interested in that. I'm just here for the products and how good or bad they actually are. How much time do you spend looking at feedback from your audience. Is that actually something you're able to do? Yeah, that's always been one of my big highlights. I used to read, actually, this is going back a long time. I used to respond to every single comment on every single video. And there used to be a thing called YouTube channel comments. So they could comment on your channel and I'd respond to all of those too. And I used to get an email for every single new subscriber and I would click on the channel link of the person who subscribed and I'd leave them a channel comment thanking them for subscribing. Scalable. Yeah. Oh, definitely. I don't know why I did that for so long. I did that for years. I think the day I had to turn that off is the day I did some random like accessory giveaway and I had like a few thousand people subscribe in one day and I was like, my inbox is literally a disaster. Like I can't keep doing this. but I have always read as many comments as I can, as many tweets and replies and threads and people talking about the videos under the videos as I can. So yeah, and I think you get different types of replies in different places. I could talk for hours about that. Like when I go to the YouTube comment section for the first 30 minutes, that's all useless because that's just people who were going to watch in the first 30 minutes anyway and are generally very positive. But after the first 30 minutes, Then you get people who are starting to flow in from recommendations, people who aren't subscribed, people who are seeing the videos for the first time. That's interesting. If the video starts to surface on Reddit, for example, then you get people who are Redditors, like they watch certain types of YouTube videos and maybe they haven't seen your video before. So you'll see a different type of reaction to your video. When it gets embedded on different websites, then the comment sections on those websites are interesting. There's all kinds of different feedback that you have to kind of filter through to understand the lens that it's coming from. But it can all be useful. This is why I even pose the question is, is it possible? Because I just figure it is, for you, an absolutely crushing amount of information. So many people with so many opinions. I don't even understand how you could filter that for anything. Yeah, that is definitely a developed skill that I've had to learn over time. It's a firehose at this point. I obviously can't read every single comment anymore. There's too many of them, but I can read hundreds of comments and sort of parse through the way people are feeling about a video pretty quickly. Do you feel that, you know, going through the feedback, does it affect the content that you will make in the future? Or do you just kind of like log it as, okay, this was a feeling somebody had? Like, does it make you think about how you would produce something later? No, definitely. It definitely does. This is a long time ago, but one of the best, most impactful YouTube comments I ever got was I made this video. I don't even remember what video it was. It was just kind of like a random video when I was in college. And a couple hours into the comments, I scroll down to the comment section. And one of the comments just says, what was the point of this video? And it's such a simple comment, but it really pulls back the curtain on like, why did I make this video? This next video that I'm working on, what will I be able to say is the point of making this video? I want to be able to answer that question. And the fact that I didn't have an answer for that video made me want to have an answer for every subsequent video. And you know, there are people who go, oh, there's too many of this video in a row. Can you make some other stuff that maybe can make me realize, oh, you know, that's actually true. I've done a bunch of phone reviews in a row. Let's zoom out a little bit. So yeah, generally, I do listen the feedback and I see a lot of it and it does actually impact the videos. You seem like a very positive person just in general. I always get that vibe from you and the content that you create, but being online in any capacity brings with it a lot of negativity. How do you process that? How do you handle that? Does it affect you? Yeah, in the same way that I've built this filter over time of being able to parse out like what people actually mean when they say certain things in the YouTube comment section, for example. I have also built that filter for social media, positive or negative. I've built that filter for in real life interactions, positive or negative. And I kind of feel like I've gotten good at getting to the core of what people really mean when they comment something or what they really want to say when they comment something. I value constructive feedback the most, I think. So if it's negative, but it's got this little nugget of i wish you would do more of this other thing that can actually be useful but you know i mean i speak for myself and basically everybody that i know that sometimes you'll get these comments or it's like people are very positive and there's that one negative comment yeah do you have that too like does that still get to you or you have managed to handle it like do you still you know it's like four o'clock in the morning you're like you're like stewing on this one comment somebody left no i definitely still get those and i still gets to you i don't I think that's another one of those things as a YouTuber you never quite get used to, which is like you could read 400 positive comments in a row, and then you could read one or two negative ones that are about the same thing, and you're like, dang, everybody hates this now. See, I thought that we were leading towards you'd somehow found the way to manage it, but I guess you're just human like the rest of us, Marques. Yeah. That's just going on here, you know? You can kind of throw some away. Like people just leave like random hate comments. Like, wow, I hate this guy. Okay, well, I can't really do anything with that. That's not constructive. Those don't bother me, actually. but it's the ones that are like extremely specific that actually have some truth to them where you're like oh damn like when i started this series there were lots of people leaving lots of constructive feedback and it has now led to what i think are much better episodes but i still had that thing of like they said the thing you know they got the thing which you kind of know it right but you're hoping no one sees it you know it's like ah they found it they found it But yeah, I think it helps you make better stuff. Every video that you post reaches a massive audience, like millions and millions of people. Do you still find yourself being surprised at the performance of some videos? Do some videos still just take off in a way that you don't expect? Yeah, definitely. This was happening a lot this year where we had this streak of maybe a month and a half or something right around September, which is obviously a hot time of year anyway. but like I interrupted my iPhone coverage to go out and do a video on like the meta glasses that I got to try and I in my head already was kind of like this is a meta Ray-Bans glasses video in the middle of iPhone season like I already know it's gonna bomb but I am really into these and I think people would be interested in it so I'm gonna make it anyway fully prepared for the 10 out of 10 and I actually think it started as a 10 out of 10 and by the next morning it was like a 3 out of 10 and I think now it has like 7 or 8 million views or something and I sometimes when that happens I'm like okay I should stick to my gut on like why I actually am making these videos because clearly I cared about it but why wouldn't that hit right like why wouldn't that be an important video to watch or to check out or to share so yes I do still get surprised but I think it's good to keep that happening because the more surprises the more like interesting like things that people hook it just means we're doing a better job of judging what should be a video which is good yeah with these few numbers comes a lot of people in the world knowing who you are like you are a celebrity as well as a youtuber right like there aren't i think that many in certain verticals that kind of cross over into that world but like you know you went to the met gala a few years ago right Like you have these brushes with celebrity. What is that like? Yeah, there's a lot. There's an interview with Jimmy, I think, Mr. Beast, who kind of broke this down. He oversimplified it, but it was really funny. It was basically like when you have, you know, 10,000 subscribers and you go out and you go grocery shopping, you're kind of like wondering and like hoping, is somebody going to know? hey does anybody here know about my videos anyone looks at you a little bit it's like you saw it yeah i got you you're like very excited for that and that like makes your whole day and it's super cool and then when you have a million subscribers it's kind of like every time you go out to a crowded place there's probably one person that says hi probably every time you leave your house one person says hi to you which is interesting it's really cool when you have 10 million subscribers every time you leave the house people say hi to you like people will come up to you and say hey i like this video or hey i my friend really likes these videos can i get a picture but then he said like once you get to 100 million subscribers which this didn't resonate at all but when you get to 100 million subscribers every time you go out it's a meeting greet because one person takes a photo and then everyone looks over and goes oh the photo oh this is the guy and then they just start and it's like a whole thing which sounds brutal but i think yeah the the interesting middle ground is that yeah every once in a while you just kind of get this sense of community and scale and just like there's people everywhere that are like you never know who you're talking to or what sort of connections or community they're in but it is pretty cool that there's like this network effect of like it's kind of everywhere a few years ago at wwdc i was in the media area and you would came in and it became like a meet and greet just amongst the media people just coming up to you one in pictures like i guess there are certain environments where it gets extra heightened right it was like oh everyone here knows who i am but this isn't my thing this might be spoiling a video but we haven't really planned it yet so i'll just say it anyway like anytime there's a tech event that is like obviously the highest density of people who are probably gonna say hi or want to take a picture or whatever and ces is like the apex of that and so i kind of can't go to ces anymore 2020 was the last time I really went to CES and I was trying to think of like is there a way that I can go back to CES and like really see some stuff and maybe if I get like this super elaborate disguise with like you know movie makeup and like a transformation maybe I can go to CES and like make a video and see some cool stuff but then also it's like a crazy YouTube video that would be kind of fun do you know Adam Savage from the Mythbusters that's exactly what we were gonna we're gonna reach out to him be like all right to do that like i think this would be sick like a totally different human and then i get to like go to ces and then everyone who sees the video later was like whoa like that would be hilarious what would be very fun is you going to vendors and booths and trying to get them to pay attention to you i just think that would be very interesting and maybe interesting for you too like a humbling experience you know if no one knows who you are that they give you anything yeah that's true the experience that i have at ces is inherently very different from most people's yes but i would be curious to like talk to the people also like the pr filter that i get like i don't get the real opinions of pr people i get the pr if i this might go on twitter in five minutes answer and i would love to go to the same booth as me and as like this in disguise person and talk to the same person and get different answers You've got to do this. That would be hilarious. You've got to do this. That would be so great. Oh my God. Yeah. I love that. This episode is brought to you by FitBod. If you're looking to change your fitness level, it can be hard to know where to start. If the year of health or the year of fitness is ahead for you, this is what you need to get started because FitBod is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan that is made for you because everybody has their own path with fitness. It's personal. It's personal fitness. And that is why FitBod uses data to make sure they suit things to you perfectly. It will adapt as you improve. So every workout remains challenging, pushing you to make the progress that you want. Because you will see the best results when a workout program is tailored to your body, experience, environment, and goals. FitBod stores this information in your FitBod Gym Profile, which it uses then to track your muscle recovery so you avoid burnout and keep up your momentum. 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So this has been sort of a default for most and I have adjusted it a little bit, but yeah, I can walk you through whatever. Okay, so usually when people send me their home screens I'm obviously struck by what's on it. For you I'm actually was immediately struck by what's not on it. Oh, interesting. There's no Slack here. It's on the next page. So there are certain apps, and I've even pruned this a little bit. There are certain apps that I've realized I only really engage with them most of the time through a notification that I got from it. So I don't need to launch into my email app or launch into Slack as much. I mostly will just get a notification, and then I need to go to Slack. What is your notification policy? Are you strict with notifications? On my phone? No, I just kind of get all of them. no i mean yeah you must turn some things off though right like the social media ones surely oh oh yeah yeah sorry i don't have instagram or twitter yeah you're right i used to have those you've seen those videos right where people's phones are just going crazy have you ever tried that like just to see what it would look like not only have i done that but i have also and this was years ago almost a decade ago i accidentally leaked my own phone number in a video and it was only a few split second like a split second it was on the camera but five minutes into a 10 minute review there's my phone number and i immediately went back and like use the youtube blur tool but in the meantime my phone was just white hot with phone like i couldn't do anything on my phone because it was getting too many calls at the same time which i've never seen that before calls yeah that's phone calls right like yeah i mean i don't know why people would do it anyway but like texts I would see is the thing but like what are they like hi hi how can I help you reach the Marquez hotline they just wanted to call yeah you must have to go through your videos like a fine-tooth comb that's why it's helpful to have the extra sets of eyes where it's like I might scroll past my calendar for a split second and there's an embargo in there and I gotta blur that you just reminded me that happened to you right yeah a few years ago every version of this you can imagine has happened yeah okay it just keeps happening forever probably like there is one where, gosh, I was reviewing two products at once. I think I was reviewing a new phone and I was reviewing the new I think it the HomePod mini or something like that Okay And you know Apple review policy is basically like you can acknowledge this thing existing your presence until the video comes out so I was reviewing the first thing which was the phone and I went in to like play some music and like somewhere like in the settings or whatever it had the little icon for the HomePod mini that said I was playing it on the HomePod mini and that goes in the video and sure enough, I get an email from Apple like, delete this. Oh God, you're right. So I go in and of course I can trim it out or add a blur with the YouTube video editor, but it's like, yeah, the fine tooth comb is underrated. We need a lot of that. It's one of those things where like from Apple's opinion, you're like, oh, come on, really? But at the same time, they do ask, right? And like you say, okay, right? So it's like, we don't like, you know, it can be a bit frustrating, but it was an agreement that we all made. I also I see Instagram is here but none of the text social media apps are on your home screen yeah there's no threads or Twitter or anything like that what puts Instagram front and center but not those and has that changed over time it has a little bit I also have like a separate home screen with just the text social media apps sure Instagram is the one with the people that I know in real life the most yeah so as far as like things that I'll just sort of just scroll mindlessly for a little bit. That's like Instagram for me. Twitter is probably my second most scrolled social media, followed by like the others in no particular order, threads and blue sky and all that. Do you find it frustrating to manage multiple text based social media apps now? Like, is this a thing that you have to like put a lot of thought into? Yeah, especially because I'm not a fan of like cross posting the same thing to everything. I kind of believe that there is inherently some overlap of people who will follow one person on several accounts. Yeah. And I'd be like, why am I seeing this in 300 places? It's kind of silly. So I try to speak the language of the platform on each platform. And yes, that is annoying and a lot of work, but I try to do it. What do you like about Superhuman? It's an email app, right? Yeah. I mean, I assume there's other things in there, like a lot of these apps, but like you're using Superhuman for your email. Yeah. It's one of those apps I don't really recommend to most people because it's like a 30 or $50 a month or something like that for an email app or service but it has a lot of really useful management things so I can get to inbox zero I can have emails pop back up on certain days when I need to see them it's just fast to manage stuff and I get like three to five hundred emails a day so it helps to have like all those yeah the management part of like getting to inbox zero with that sort of volume is pretty big for me you maybe can't answer this question but why do you get so many emails what is that is it press releases it is a combination of i'm looking at my inbox right now there's a lot of admin email stuff there's a lot of emails from companies so probably most of it is just like here's a new thing that's coming out like i just get a absolute ton of those emails yeah and i guess it's from companies you know and those you don't right like everyone wants you to know they've got a new thing coming out exactly i'm looking here I have a whole bunch of frisbee emails and like random other things of like conversation I'm, I'm having with like people I know. Oh, that's so sad that that's happening in email. I know. Like that's bad. It's like, please. Like a group email with a bunch of people. Anything. Anything but email guys. But here we are. There's news, there's business emails, there's emails I'm CC'd on that are just for visibility. So I can see the threads developing as stuff is happening. I will use this as another point to, suggest you get a post on the system. This is just another thing that a post could do for you is help you out of your email. I will say I was genuinely surprised that when I contacted you to do the show, how quickly you responded. That was quite a surprise. I assumed you may never see it. Which is probably a safe assumption for a lot of people with that sort of volume of email. Do you think Superhuman is actually helping you deal with this or are you just good at spotting things in your email? It's a little bit of both, I think. because again, if I didn't go through my email, like for example, I just got back from a tournament in Europe where I was kind of offline for a while and I would log back on and the time zones were all messed up. So I'd log back on and I'd have like 260 emails and I'd be like, hmm, I could just skip this and come back tomorrow, but then there's going to be 500. So I just, I'm very deliberate about going through everything, archive, archive, archive, archive, rhyme me later, reply real quick, archive, view, click link, return back, reply, archive. I go through everything. I can triage pretty quickly based on what I'm expecting. I've got to say, I just allow your time. You're still holding on to Arc. Are they going to pry that one from your cold dead hands? I don't know, man. I have Arc on my home screen. You know what's funny? I stopped using Arc on the desktop. So I'm kind of just like... I have Arc sitting here because there are little spaces. I have spaces of... It's almost like bookmarks at this point. I have a couple themed spaces left, but I could easily just go back to Chrome. You're on Chrome on the desktop? You're going back to Chrome? I'm on Deer on the desktop. Oh, so you continue just down the journey of the browser company. What could go wrong, right? I mean, it's going to become a SaaS app and it'll be fun. You know, like it'll be fun. Yeah, it'll be great. But yeah, for now, I am in Chrome-based AI browser land. Yeah. I want to touch on TickTick again a little bit. So, you know, you mentioned using it for notes. I assume primarily it is a task manager for you. That's where your tasks are going? Yeah, it's a goat. Do you share tasks with people or do you keep your own task list and expect others to do the same? I keep my own task list and we try to use Notion to do everyone's shared tasks. It's not as good. I've also experimented with endless other tasks apps that I figured I could like, I could do shared lists with people to assign tasks and all this other stuff. And we never really fully do it. So we end up just sticking with notion. But I, in my brain, need a task list to make sure I get everything done. But apparently other people are not the same way. I don't actually believe it's humanly possible. I don't understand how you could get anything done if you don't write down what you have to do. Because I would not remember to do all the things that I need to do. Same. That's what I'm saying. And also I don't want to, like even if I could, I would like to think about other stuff than the to-do list. That would be awesome. Yeah. All right, so Marquez, before we finish up, I would like to say to you, what are you excited about right now? Do you have anything that you would like the Cortex audience to know that you've got going on? Well, you know, it is still Techvember, so I will say. Oh, it continues. It's like all quarter now. There's plenty of videos you can check out if you check the MKBHD channel. But also we just launched our refresh to all our merch. So if you go to mkbhd.com, that's where all of that new stuff is. And I'm wearing one of them right now, but we're really proud of it. So check that stuff out too. Good photo shoot for that one. Oh yeah. Everyone got good new profile photos out of that one, I'm sure. Which is how you know it's good. I would also give a shout out on your behalf. I love the Waveform podcast. Thank you. What I like about Waveform is it's like the shows that I've been making for years too, where it's people that enjoy each other's time hanging out and talking about technology. I feel like in a lot of modern podcasts that is a lost format now like people don't produce shows like that and I like that you guys chose to like that you're just having fun but also talking about the news like I think it's great yeah thank you it is really fun like you said to make and it's almost like surreal to get a shout out to just us having fun but I would I'm very glad that people enjoy listening to it so appreciate that I really hope that you enjoyed this episode with Marquez as much as I had the honor of putting it together. I was really excited to do this when I started this series. He was at the top of my list and I'm so pleased that we're able to get together and make this episode for you. Before we wrap up, I want to remind you for the last time that we're offering a 20% off discount from a MoreTex subscription. You can buy this for yourself, give us a gift, or tell someone in your life that this is the perfect stocking stuffer for you. Just go to getmoretex.com and use the code 2025Holidays at checkout. Doing this really helps support me, helps support the show, that will mean a lot to me. To give you an idea of the content that you're missing out on, I'm once again going to include another MoreTech segment from a previous episode at the end of this show. So I'm going to play for you the MoreTech segment that I recorded with David Pierce at The Verge, where we make a series of recommendations to each other for things that we're enjoying online. Please enjoy this taster of MoreTechs. Thank you so much for your support this year. Happy New Year to you. And you'll hear from me again in 2026. so we spoke about installer in the show installer is essentially a place for good recommendations and good vibes so i want to give the more texans the taste of this about the way that you think and the things that you like so i want to ask you about some things that you're enjoying right now and maybe this could be stuff you are enjoying right now or things you can pluck from your mind in the past of like favorite things from installer like what are some stuff maybe some apps some games some media some hardware that is exciting you at the moment i've been watching the show black rabbit on netflix okay i'm a real sucker for any kind of overly dramatized thriller story like i love super spy novels i love any story about a person with like totally unbelievable amounts of martial arts training just like fighting their way through bad guys black rabbit is not quite that but it is the same like really pulpy thriller it's jason baitnaman and jude law both of whom are awesome it's like way overdone but in a way that i find it makes it more compelling oh jason baitman in action are you kidding me i had no idea this thing existed this is what i'm saying it's fabulous and it is in true netflix form netflix like has barely talked about it at all and instead is like really desperately trying to get me to watch some reality show i don't want to watch but black rabbit is excellent it takes a minute to get going it's one of those shows that does the thing that netflix does a lot now which is it starts with the climax and then rewinds and all these shows do this now for like really interesting structural hollywood reasons but i don't love that and then it it like moves really fast for five minutes and then slows way down and then it takes a minute to get going again but once it does it's so fun and that is just like pure turn your brain off delightful entertainment that I cannot recommend highly enough. I love Jason Bateman. Oh yeah. I'll watch Jason Bateman in anything. Did you watch the Christmas movie he made? I have no idea he made a Christmas movie. Was it also on Netflix or there's no way I'm ever going to find it? It's not technically a Christmas movie. It just came out at Christmas. What was it called? Oh, Carry On. Oh, you know, I haven't seen that, but it's been in my mind. And it's like, it's fun now because it's like, I guess he just makes lots of stuff on Netflix now. Yeah. And Carry On hits all the same kinds of notes. It's like it's completely absurd story. Because this was like the most popular movie ever on Netflix or something, right? Yeah, it was a huge hit. It's Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman is the bad guy. No part of it is remotely anchored in reality. And I don't care at all. It's so fun. Netflix also does this thing that Apple do a lot where it's like, if you make one project with them, you will be able to make as many projects as you want, as long as they're only even kind of successful. Completely. It's incredible. Speaking of Netflix, I have another Netflix recommendation for you. it's a reality show it's called building the band and the structure of this show is like a mashup of every great netflix reality show basically they start with 50 singers who are all in isolation rooms by themselves and one by one they go out and they sing for the other 49 and all of the 49 have to decide whether they want to be in a band with that person and so at the end of the auditions So it's Love is Blind but Band? It's Love is Blind meets American Idol. And it is fabulous. Netflix, it's good stuff, but they are almost producing reality shows like an LLM now. It is such a Mad Libs approach. And a lot of times it doesn't work, but sometimes it really works. And Building the Band is, I think it's 10 episodes. And I found myself so compelled by the end of it. Even to the point where like, I was a huge American Idol fan for the longest time in the early days. kind of turned out and like a lot of these people like go on to win and then you never hear from them again yeah i'm still listening to some of the music from some of the bands that got formed there's good stuff out there so i there's like a similar thing again it's a netflix reality show i don't think a lot of people watch that i have enjoyed i enjoyed at least the first few seasons of blown away where it's like what about great british bake-off but for glass blowing oh i mean there's a mad libs right up my alley oh in the uk we have great british bake-offs for everything now. Oh, really? Yeah, there's one called the Great Pottery Throwdown, which is pottery. I really like that one. There's like a sewing one. I can't remember what that one's called, but there's one for sewing. But my favorite, I would recommend, you're a fan of Bake Off, right? Oh, of course. I have a heart. Come on. Have you heard of Bake Off the Professionals? Wait, wouldn't that ruin it if they were all like really good and more serious? Right. So, Bake Off the Professionals, teams of two. Okay. They are all working in fine hotels, chocolatiers, or they're like, you know, they've built up a business on their own. They have two sets of six. They will compete in challenges to get down to three and three. They then blend those to the final six. That's kind of like the structure of the show. But it is high intensity baking challenges. Like they have to build full on show pieces of glass blowing and chocolate. It is unbelievable. It's so dramatic because things break all the time, and they are working at such a high level. The judges are great, both very accomplished pastry chefs. I think it's only really found success here. I don't really think that it has broken out in the States the way that Bake Off has. Yeah, I've certainly not heard of it. If you can find it, if you're a Bake Off fan, this is the ultimate Bake Off. It is. Amazing. It's so, so, so good. and it also has that thing now it's been going on for many years where people have come back right they're like i didn't make it i want to do it again you know it's got that kind of vibe to it really good on that note there's also i don't know how globally available this is but there's a show called the kids baking championship that is sort of in vibe terms the closest thing i found to bake off in a way that i really like the thing about the bake off is like they're all rooting for each other and they help each other and it's like it's nice and the point is not like ruthless cutthroat competition like all american shows are you know if you kill your competitor you get fifty thousand dollars and that's like that's just less fun yeah but the kids baking championship all these kids are like 10 and 11 years old and the judges like care for them but also are mean to them about when they script their caramel and it's this very sweet show and my wife and i watch it obsessively and i cannot recommend it highly enough it is a food network show whenever me and my wife are in the US together, we will alternate between Food Network and HGTV. Perfect. Just leave it on in the hotel whenever we're in the hotel. And we've often been in the States around kind of like Christmas time. And so Food Network is just all Christmas cookie challenge, Christmas baking challenge. And I've seen some of the kids baking challenges too. It's great. Just great stuff. Just great. But yeah, the vibe shift is big between the adult and the kids stuff, which is good. I mean, I'm happy that they don't bring the same like kill your opponents to the kids challenges. Yeah. No one's yelling at them or like lighting on things on fire near the it's better. More shows should be like that in America. All right. I have two more for you. I could do this forever, but I have two more that immediately come to mind. They're related, but one is a podcast and one is a YouTube channel. The podcast is called What Went Wrong and the YouTube channel is called It Was a Show. show and what they both do it's always movies on what went wrong and it's usually movies on it was a show but they basically just dive deep into all of the ways that making things is hard and messy and often totally disastrous and so what what went wrong i think has been i mean they've been doing this forever there are a million episodes and they'll actually like often they'll review current movies or talk about stuff that's coming up so you get a sense of like what's going on in the movie world now but then they'll go way back and sometimes for timely reasons but other times not at all just give you like long messy backstories of movies like i just listened to an episode about pirates of the caribbean the other day and it's like a history of the movie pirates of the caribbean laced with all of the ways this was a giant disaster that almost fell apart it's really fun like one thing i really like and will always watch or listen to is people being really good at their jobs like i had this long run not that long ago of just down the rabbit hole of watching john batiste the musician just do anything it's just like just watching people who are that good at anything is always incredibly fun so i highly recommend all of that this is like the opposite this is like the ways in which every great thing is incredibly tenuous and messy and complicated and it's sort of a miracle anything good ever gets made is like very much the vibe of both what went wrong and it was a show and for anyone who likes the show arrested development which should be everyone they have a series on it was a show about the making of arrested development that is like again it makes very clear that it's a small miracle that show ever existed lasted as long as it did and still exists. And you come out of it being like, thank God this actually happened against all odds. And I think so much creative work is like that. It's just really fun to see it actually put all together in one place. So I highly recommend both of those things. All right. This came into a recommendation off. I'll finish out. I'll give you these two, which is similar vibes. Netflix, we're back to Netflix, had a show called Seven Days Out. Okay, I don't know. This has actually made me also think of a third recommendation. They essentially go to a bunch of places and they are with them for a week before an important event. What a good idea. Each episode is about a different thing. So you've got the Westminster Dog Show, setting dinner at 11 Madison Park, which was the best restaurant in the world at that time, the Kentucky Derby, A League of Legends, eSports team. But these are the episodes. It's like they're with them for a week before a thing happens, which also reminds me of an incredible movie called Six Days to Air, which is how a South Park episode is made. Oh, I've heard of this. I've never watched it, but I have been recommended this before. Oh, my God. It's one of the ultimate people doing things at high level pieces of work. It's just incredible. I love that. But then also like something that I will rewatch every few years is all of comedians in cars getting coffee. Oh, totally. It is that idea of like people who are at the absolute top of their game in something just talking about the thing that they do. I love that kind of stuff. My current version of the Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee thing is Working It Out, Mike Birbiglio's podcast. Oh, okay. It's a mix of like every comedy podcast, which is just like two comedians talking about how they got into comedy. There's like some of that. But then a big part of the show is like they both bring jokes and actually work them out together. It's incredible. Like you sort of can't believe you get to listen to these people who are this good at it do this kind of stuff. So I think that scratches the exact same itch that Comedians in Cars does for me. So I think you'll like it too. Remember, if you enjoyed that, you're going to love MoreTex. Go to getmoretext.com and use the code 2025holidays at checkout. You'll get 20% off an annual MoreTex subscription. You'll support the show and I'll be very grateful. You can also find a link in the show notes that will pre-populate all of that for you. So all you have to do is enter your credit card. Thank you so much.