The Grey NATO – 336 – Oops! All Mods!

Published on Thu, 17 Jul 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Synopsis

In this episode, co-hosts James Stacey and Jason Heaton are joined by TGN Slack moderators Jake Thebalt-Speaker and Chris Soule for an in-depth discussion about the TGN online community. James notes that he recorded this shortly before welcoming his new baby boy. The group discusses various topics including recent movies like the new F1 film, diving documentaries, and the role of watch enthusiast communities online. A significant portion focuses on how Jake and Chris moderate the TGN Slack community, including their approach to the Buy-Sell-Trade channel and maintaining a positive environment. They also share their professional backgrounds - Jake as an academic studying human-computer interaction and Chris working in software development. The episode concludes with final notes featuring podcast and YouTube recommendations from each participant.

Transcript

Speaker
James Stacey Hey everyone, it's James. Quick note from me at the top is this episode was recorded very shortly before Sarah and I welcomed our baby boy into the world. And so it's a little late and I appreciate everybody's patience on that. I think it's a great episode with a couple of incredible guests. People were really proud to have on the show to chit chat with. So a huge thank you to everybody for the patience on this episode, including those... on the episode itself and thank you all for the well wishes and the support at this time mom and baby are happy and healthy so let's get to the show Hello and welcome to another episode of The Graynado. It's a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches, this episode 336. And it's proudly brought to you by the always-growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support, and if you're listening and would like to support the show, please visit thegraynado.com for more details. My name is James Stacey, and I'm joined, as ever, by my friend and co-host, Jason Heaton. Jason, how we doing?
Jason Heaton Doing pretty well. This is a very unusual week, and this was really touch and go today. You wrote me. I was out for a run about an hour and a half ago, and I get this message on my Garmin that said, FYI, Sarah's having contractions, might not be able to make the episode. Are you okay running it by yourself? I don't know. And here we are. You're here possibly for the whole episode. We're not sure, but we have some support today. We have a couple of special guests, one of whom has been on the show before and one who has not, but is long overdue being here. It's our two Slack moderators, Jake Thebalt-Speaker and our good buddy Chris Soule. Jumped on in the last minute to kind of fill in the gap here. You know, James, if you weren't going to be here and now we got four of us on the line. So excited to have you all here.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Happy to be here, guys. Thanks for having us.
James Stacey Yeah, I think this is going to be great. I feel like I've traded at least five or six different DMs with Jake about being on the show, more specifically for the other side of the baby coming and me kind of wrapping up. Just because I knew that from what I've experienced with you online, I knew that you would be fine to handle a show with Jason and with Chris, and I would just be the editor. But this is nice. I'm glad that I get to be part of it. I might have to boogie at any moment. I don't really know. That still might happen. We're always trying to find a way to top when I bought a watch on the show. If I have to leave for the hospital on the show, that's good podcasting, I think.
Jason Heaton Absolutely. I'm secretly hoping for that. I mean, I would love that. Not just for the show, but for you and Sarah for waiting. Yeah, I need to get on with this for sure.
James Stacey I can't wait. I'm so pumped. Yeah. But yeah, just in case anyone listening is unsure, everything's good. Everyone's healthy. It's just taking its time. So it'll be fine. Let's move on. We can definitely dive into what I think will be a super fun show.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I think so too. And before we kind of move ahead, I have to look back at last week's show, which was our Guilty Pleasures episode. And the response was unbelievable. The Slack response. And, you know, it's fortuitous that we've got the two Slack moderators on with us today. I mean, I couldn't believe that thread just went on and on. People were pretty happy with the episode. And then I loved seeing other people's guilty pleasures. That was really fun. Some really good ones. I was like, why didn't I think of this?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Yeah. I'm a little concerned for the gastrointestinal health of folks. The number of people who agreed to or owned up to Taco Bell made me worried.
Jason Heaton Yeah, the blood sugar numbers and the arterial plaque build up. Yeah, it could be a little dangerous for our crew. But yeah, you guys can, we'll give you a little advance notice here. I'd love to hear your versions of some guilty pleasures later, maybe when we dive in a little deeper. Yeah, let's definitely get into that. No problem. Yeah, James, I imagine you haven't been up to much over the past week since we recorded last. I think you were at the zoo, were you, recently? That was for Father's Day.
James Stacey It just took me forever to publish the photos.
Jason Heaton You went for a hike, that's what it was.
James Stacey Yeah, I went for a hike yesterday, which was really lovely. Same exact hike we went on when you were here last year.
Jason Heaton Oh, yeah.
James Stacey Jason, through Jefferson Forest. It's our favorite. It's really close to the house. It's maybe a 20-minute drive, a little less. And it's just, I don't know why it's not that busy. It's really nice. Like, people should be in there. No one's in there. We saw a couple people. Like, it's a mountain biking park, largely. But there's a bunch of footpaths. And you get, like, big, sort of mixed, on-the-shield-style conifer forests. And then you get the much tighter... paths as well. It's really nice. So we went for a walk because we're just like fully stir crazy over here, which also leads me to the other thing we did. It was a few days ago. I guess it would have been the 26th. We went to see the new F1, the movie. I'll just call it F1. I hope everyone can keep up. They could have picked any other title. But I think the official title is just F1. But I think you have to say that it's the movie. So we went and saw F1, the movie. Sarah was interested, which is very rare. And I'm so bored. that I'm willing to go to a movie theater, which is an experience I don't normally like. Turns out it was a really lovely experience. Crowd was into it. Everybody was cool. Yeah, the movies are a real mixed bag, I think. If you love Brad Pitt and you love summer blockbusters... If you're as much not a fighter pilot as you are not an F1 nerd, you're going to love this like you loved Maverick, for sure. Same director, same intense take on track footage and putting cameras in the cars and making sure that the actors are the ones driving the cars, all that kind of stuff. So the verisimilitude of a lot of the sequences is high visually. If you're an F1 nerd, like a proper nerd, you're going to be, I think, pretty disappointed by the bending of reality. Like full stop all the way around. Everything from... Look, we're picking nits at this point, but like... a bunch of the stuff that's presented in this film would not be possible. It would be penalized. He wouldn't have a super license, all these sorts of things. Maybe that's interesting. Maybe it's not. I'm not necessarily a fan of just picking apart films for missing the nerdiest details. but at the same time, the movie's called F1. And I think if you're nerdier and you want more of a home, I like Rush from a few years back. That was a pretty great movie. Ron Howard kills pretty much all the time. But Brad Pitt's awesome. Javier Bardem is awesome. The visuals are incredible. Cinematography's great. Obviously, the budget was through the roof. You're watching a proper... You know, in my mind, this is Armageddon, but for 2025 tastes. Yeah. Where the, you know, we're not taking the whole world off. It's just one guy and his racing career and that kind of thing. A few things I would like to shout out, though, because I mostly just recommend go see it, even if you're just like casually interested or you like F1. The integration with other race car drivers is fascinating because it's all their names. There's no fake names on any of this. They're racing people that they were racing. And a bunch of the film was shot in scene with all the other real cars on track in, I think, 2023 or 2022, parts of 2022. And I will say, IWC, first up... Huge respect for the comfort to show Rolex, to show Richard Mille, to not make this like IWC is the only watch that exists in the world, but to put IWC into the watch world like it is in real life of highly respected, high-end brand that exists with peers. But I was just very surprised. You know, there's a segment where they reference the watch you could win if you win a certain race. There's, you know, F1 clocks that like even now don't exist anymore because Rolex isn't the banner sponsor for timekeeping at F1. So I think there's a bunch of things that like an editor could have been like, well, I mean, it's two and a half seconds. Why would we keep this? But they kept it for a reason. And I think it's like it's a nod to the fact that IWC is a watch enthusiast brand. And that has to exist within the world of watch enthusiasm. So a big kudos to them on that front. I would say maybe double check a few of the shots where the crowns are clearly open and the watch is not running. And if it was like an extra, that sort of thing, maybe I wouldn't notice. But we're talking about like the movie has maybe four or five leads or team leads, group leads. And like there's a couple of scenarios where you just go like, you know, If you'd like to hire the TGN consulting outfit, let us know. The four of us would be more than happy to weigh in on crowns in and that sort of thing. But no, I think largely it was impressive to see such a tight level of integration. with a with a product like watches especially something that's a little bit esoteric like the idea of wearing a watch when you're driver that sort of thing um you know it's it's you see these guys we i watched the formula one this weekend and the get out of the car and you they just sit there looking at charles leclerc as he like puts his jewelry back on after the race and that includes his richard mill and then he then he can talk and you're like all right well It's not always cool. Sometimes it's just an ad. But yeah, I think this is kind of the world we live in, and certainly you can't commercialize fighter pilots as effectively as F1, one of the most commercialized things out there. But it was fun, for sure.
Chris Soule You know, you run into those troubles, you know, every scuba diving movie ever made, you know, if you're a diver, you see right through it. You can't make a movie for the 1% of nerds as much as we would.
James Stacey I think it wouldn't be entertaining. Like if it was a movie where like no shift was faked. You know, like even this is my big like the Ford versus Ferrari thing. Like if you're on the Mulsanne straight, you don't have another gear. You don't have another inch of pedal to pass that guy. You're at 100%. There's no, there's like, why am I hearing gear changes and that sort of thing? It's just so picky about that kind of stuff. But yeah, exactly, Chris.
Jason Heaton Chris, I'm glad you brought up diving movies because I, and I've realized we're sort of veering from our usual chit chat format, then risk check and then main topic. We're kind of diving into just a overall free for all episode, which I think is great. But since we're talking movies and diving movies. You know, have you seen the previews for The Last Breath? I've seen the previews, but I haven't seen the film. Is the film out yet? I saw the documentary. Yeah, the film is out. The documentary was so good. The documentary was so good, and I'm so worried about the, whatever you call it, the dramatization of it. It looks a little cheesy to me. Yeah, we were.
Chris Soule And, you know, Woody Harrelson, you never know. Like, you know, I love Woody, but what's this movie going to be like? So, yeah, I have currently chosen to leave it with the documentary being the last thing that I remember. about that story. I want to see the movie, honestly, but I don't want to be sad if I see the movie. We'll see.
Jason Heaton I mean, I've watched that documentary about, and if people aren't familiar, this is called The Last Breath. It's a documentary that I believe was on Netflix and probably still is, and about a commercial diver who had an accident quite deep underwater, etc., But there's a scene in that movie that even though I've seen it so many times, I actually break down and start crying when I see it every time I watch it. And it's so crazy. It's terrifying. Yeah. So I just can't imagine that the dramatization is going to live up to that.
Chris Soule we were all down on a dive trip in February when it came out and we were like leaving, I think like the day before that movie came out and there was so much anticipation of, Oh man, can we work to all go see it together? And like, it didn't happen. I don't even think anybody has seen it since then. So we're, we're letting it linger, I guess maybe next year.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we're, we're maybe getting a little ahead of ourselves here because you know, Chris, you've been on the show before Jake, you, you haven't. And, uh, Well, actually, before we get into that, before we maybe do a little introduction of you, Jake, why don't we do a quick wrist check? That's kind of a good way to move ahead here. Chris, we briefly saw a flash of yours and you gave us a little preview of it. Why don't you go first? What are you wearing?
Chris Soule For sure. So technically I am – you were talking about guilty pleasures earlier. I'm shamelessly double-wristing an Apple Watch that nobody cares about.
James Stacey Attaboy.
Chris Soule Yeah. Put that wrist down. We don't need to see it. And I'll redeem myself with a vintage gold-plated Aquastar 63. Oh, man. So this is a kooky watch from the mid-'60s that rotates the internal bezel when you turn the crown to wind the watch or set the time. It makes you think it's broken at first because the bezel moves no matter what. It's super unreliable, but it's charming and great. And it's I think it was probably James who coined the like summer grandpa style watch, you know, craze back then. Mito like Commander Shade, you know, effect with the Speedo Twisto Flex bracelet going on this thing. It's pure grandpa summer style.
Jason Heaton Oh, that's great. And for those who, well, none of you are watching this on video, but we're doing a video Zoom call and Chris has a proper mustache to go with the watch. You know, you've accessorized the watch with the mustache or vice versa. I'm not sure. Thanks, Jason. I appreciate it. Looks great. Yeah. And you're approaching a significant birthday. So I think, you know, it's kind of fitting. Yeah.
Chris Soule Oh, thanks. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. The mustache is for wind up in a lake. So 40th anniversary of Aqualand coming up, we're going to do a 85, you know, themed celebration on the boat. So I figured I'd had to come, you know, full eighties.
Jason Heaton Mustaches are back anyway. Yeah. Yeah. You look like Magnum PI. Yeah.
Chris Soule It's the first and last time I've ever heard that Jason.
Jason Heaton All right, Jake, you're up next. What are you wearing?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Mine is the Seiko Alpinist SARB 017. Very nice. I don't know what, four years at this point, pushing five maybe. Kind of picked it up around, not really intended to recognize, but kind of around the time I graduated with my dissertation. So sort of connected to that and really just easy to wear and on a yellow NATO, it rocks summer fun.
Jason Heaton yeah so yeah yeah it could look like a good mustard mustard yellow from what i can see yeah it looks great yeah i also love a mustard strap yeah one of my favorite strap colors um just because it tones down but it's still pretty yellow and bold Yeah. And James, what do you have for potentially the birthday, the significant day? I mean, we probably all know what it is already.
James Stacey CWN1, for sure. I mean, I've been wearing a bunch of other stuff, though. I've been having a good time, like just kind of digging into a few different watches that I had laying around. I had a real like four or five straight really good days with the Explorer II. Yeah. And I'm looking at it. It's right there. It's still running. The time's still set.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker And I go like, yeah.
James Stacey It's so good.
Chris Soule So you're not planning this out. You're going to roll the dice, whatever baby comes with.
James Stacey No, I'll wear this for the baby because this would be his or hers. Oh, nice. Yeah. Jason, what have you got on? And then, you know, there's something else to talk about when it comes to your personality and watches.
Jason Heaton Oh, sure.
James Stacey That you revealed this week. So let's start with the wrist check and then we'll talk about some watch snob, you know, retrospective.
Jason Heaton Yeah, right. I've got the least snobby watch on. I've got the Citizen Aqualand JP 2007 full loom. This was kind of our watch of the summer. Was it last year or the year before? Yeah, probably. Maybe to both. I'm losing track. I'm going to wear it all summer this year. Yeah, yeah. And so I posted a picture of it on Instagram, got great response. And so many people were asking me about this strap and it's that fabric 24 millimeter strap with the dark, dark buckle. I think we need to put that in the show notes because I couldn't remember. I remembered you sourced it. It wasn't on Amazon, not very expensively and sent this to me. And it's, it's just such a great.
James Stacey such a great um strap and it's so rare to find a good straps in 24 millimeters that aren't made for panerize necessarily it is yeah i have it here it's called the t-strap nylon watch strap in 24 millimeters it is 19 canadian which would make it about 14 bucks yeah can't go wrong i will put it in the show notes it comes in Oh, now they're up to 10 colors. Actually, might need a couple of these.
Jason Heaton All right, let's talk. Cool. Another live purchase on the air.
James Stacey I should not be allowed on Amazon. I just shouldn't at all. But yeah, that's rad. Great watch. Solid strap, too. I think that strap suits the watch quite nicely. Yeah, I think so, too. Absolutely. So let's, uh, let's talk about, uh, the most recent addition to the swim proof blog.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. I've been, I've been holding onto that news for, well, 12, 13 years now. I mean, I, um, yeah. So back when I was kind of an early, in the early days of my freelancing, I, I, I was doing some, I wrote a couple of articles for askmen.com and then the editor in chief approached me and the, my predecessor in the, the watch snob column. was stepping away from it. And I have my suspicions who it was, though he hasn't come forward yet, and said, you know, we've got this role that needs filling, and would you like to take over? And so I took on the pseudonym The Watch Snob, and I looked back, and it looks like they discontinued that column in 2020. I thought it was still going, but it was... for those that aren't familiar um because it's been a while now um it was a question and answer style you know readers of askmen.com were encouraged to write in with their questions about watches kind of like what we do with q a you know but very watch focused of course and the persona of the watch snob was this anonymous person who you know was as the name suggests kind of snarky and snobby about and claimed to kind of know everything about watches um and look down his nose at a lot of a lot of brands and a lot of watches and just a lot of readers in general. And it really pained me to write some of those because the, the, the personality was, was definitely not me. I mean, some people might beg to differ on that, but I hope not. And, and I did it for close to three years actually. And I was reading back some of the old, old columns that I wrote and they were, they were really fun to write because I could just really kind of dig in because it was anonymous and go totally against type, you know, for myself and, and be brutally honest about watches I didn't like or, or that I, well, I didn't say that. Or even hyperbolic. Yeah. Like I was really into Panerai. I really liked Panerai back then. I still do. In fact, as people know for my guilty pleasures, I kind of. Yeah. You're killing me with that Panerai Reca. It's an overwatch recon for it. I found a couple of triple zeros for like less than three grand. Oh man. Yeah. But the snob, the watch snob, was very much against Panerai. And it was great because it threw people off the scent that it might be me. And Panerai at the time, whoever was doing PR for them, or maybe even up the chain from them, got pretty upset about some of the watch snob's comments. And they finally approached AskMen's editor and said... We'd like to send one of our best watches to have the Watch Snob review so we can prove that we make good watches. And so they sent this three days automatic radio mirror and I had it for a while and it was a hoot. I mean, I wrote this long review about it. I mean, it was good fun, but I was doing it every week and it just got a little bit tiring to kind of maintain that kind of tone every week for over 80 different columns. Yeah, it was fun. So I finally decided to come out of the closet and reveal my identity now. And I think people got a kick out of it.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker So the question I had was, James, did you know this ahead of time?
James Stacey I didn't know. Jason, if you told me, I just didn't remember. I've been accused of being the watch snob for a decade at this point. Actually, it became like a thing on a press trip in 2012 when you were the watch snob. Oh, my gosh. I took a bunch of heat on a press trip from someone who... thought they had figured it out. And I was like, I don't, one, I don't really read. I like, I was aware of the watch zombie. It was a whole thing, but I didn't like read ask men religiously. Yeah. Um, so I, you know, I would touch in if it was like a, a topic that exploded on what you seek and we could all get a laugh about it, that sort of thing. But I didn't read it every day. or every time that there was a new piece. But yeah, I remember being at a dinner and somebody's like, you're just a complete liar. I know that's you.
Unknown It was that sort of thing.
James Stacey So I would not put this person on blast. I think that they didn't come from the watch world specifically. But yeah, I also woke up the other morning after you published this to... A text message from Thomas Holland, former guest, several-time guest of TGN, saying, Jason is the one. I think he was a huge Watch Snob fan. And he's like, I cannot believe that. This is rocking my whole world. Yeah, this is hilarious. I love that these things come out at some point. So kudos to putting it on. Also, just a really nice story that you wrote. I enjoyed reading it.
Jason Heaton Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. Uh, Cole Pennington, I think it was, his was the first message I saw cause he's in several time zones ahead and he WhatsApp me and he's, he said, Whoa, it was you all along. It was great. Yeah. And then actually the, the person who succeeded me in the role as watch snob privately DM to me on Instagram and said, I was, I succeeded you in that role. So I, I know who the next guy was. So, you know, I know. Yeah. It's like dread pirate Roberts.
Chris Soule Or Highlander. There can only be one. Exactly, yeah. There can only be one.
James Stacey Only one watch snob. Someone should bring it back. I mean, I don't know what the rules are for stealing a column.
Jason Heaton I thought of just making my sub stack for turning my swim proof in.
James Stacey I think you maybe blew that opportunity.
Chris Soule The world needs the watch snob, man. The world needs transparent, brutal honesty with a keen, sharp wit behind it.
James Stacey The thing is, I don't actually think that watch enthusiasts need the watch snob. There's so much of that online.
Jason Heaton Yeah, that's so true. Anyway, so that was good fun. At this point, who cares about a main topic? I mean, we're well into it. We're 25 minutes into this episode and we're just jamming. We're just riffing off stuff. We're just getting started.
James Stacey Well, I'd love to dig into sort of Jake's background with watches and that sort of thing. Jake, I think so much of the crew know you and know your name and know that you're the authority on the Slack. And I want to be really clear that between you and... And Chris, you've really shepherded that team to make sure that everyone has a place that they can play around and have fun, that it's a playground for everybody. And that's kind of the goal. But it's not something that Jason and I necessarily have the resources to make happen. And you guys have just done it in such a beautiful manner. I'm super curious. We've got tons of questions, and we'll get to all of them, I'm sure. But let's start with what brought you into watches?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Yeah, the short answer I think is I'm just a nerd about stuff. I mean, I think, you know, I can go through like, you know, first watch memory was my grandmother giving me a Disney watch at Disney World. But like as a kid, I just kind of wore watches as watches. The first time I started paying attention carefully at watches was really kind of around the smartwatch era. um in the 2012 2013 era when jason was was being the watch snob i was deep on technology um as a computer science major um and and very much on the tech side of things um and so the idea of like extending your phone to your wrist and that sort of thing was really compelling to me at the time um so i went through pebble and eventually landed on apple watch and those kinds of things
James Stacey You also had a Pebble?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker I did, yeah. I liked that watch a lot. I was really sad to see that they... Yeah, then they got really good and then they shuttered and then they disappeared and then they became... I have no idea where that is. Mine may be in a box. I considered buying an old one, Chris, on eBay to try to get the new operating system for it as it's coming back. I should have thought about it. I was into that for a while. Wow. And then sort of mid-grad school timeframe, I decided I was studying computers all the time and needed some ways to disconnect from my attention. And so kind of leaned into fountain pens a little bit. and out of fountain pens sort of sort of rediscovering i don't know rediscovering is too strong um for myself discovering i guess like the analog world a little bit more um and that's kind of what brought me towards mechanical watches and sort of watch nerd dumb uh i don't know 2015 or so um give or take Um, and then kind of just fell really hard down the rabbit hole. Um, so that's, that's the, the slightly longer version of the story, but yeah.
Jason Heaton What was your first analog? Like, what was that? Was it a Seiko? Like so many of us?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker No. So it depends on how you count. Um, the first thing I ever purchased was an Orient Bambino, um, with the intention of wearing it, um, in my wedding that was coming up in a few months.
Unknown Hmm.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker I agreed to my, my wife and I agreed that I wasn't going to wear it until our wedding. Um, and so then I also bought a Vostok common Durski, um, as the, as the watch I was going to actually wear day to day. Um, cause it was sitting on a shelf and I was like, not supposed to wear it for a few months, but I was already far down the hole. And so I needed to find something that, um, wanted to find something that, uh, was gonna, was gonna scratch the itch a little bit. So very cool. Yeah. The, the commenter skis, they're like field watch. And the one that I picked sort of being a computer person, one of them has the symbol for the Russian like signal intelligence organization on it, which is sort of vaguely the internet. Right. And which is what I'm studying. And so that's the one I went for. I was trying to find something that was a little bit like. sort of meaningful and i could at least describe away or explain away the like weird symbol on the um so so that's that's what i ended up with and then that sort of uh became i don't know the big bug right and and uh started started the path down the rabbit hole so to speak amazing yeah and and you did wear the orient for the for the wedding then yes yeah yep do you wear it I wear, I intend to wear it yearly or rather I not intend to wear it yearly. I do wear it yearly kind of around our anniversary. And I try to wear it for things that are a big deal for our relationship, I guess is the way I would put it. It's a, it's a 40 millimeter watch and. and larger than I, what I tend to wear in general. Um, and my wrist is a little bit sensitive about, um, size and weight and how it falls on the wrist and those kinds of things. So stuff that's, that's a big, um, is a little bit hard day to day. Um, depending.
James Stacey You were talking 2015. Now, now we're 2025 in a decade. How do you, how, how has your kind of taste evolved? What, what, what, what's the last few that you bought? Whether you got excited about.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Yeah, so I guess the best way to describe this is starting in 2025, I have slowed down quite a bit. Prior to that, I was churning on a lot of anything under kind of $800 or whatever, right? So I've touched all of the Seiko divers. I've touched all of the various micro brands in a lot of ways. I have repurchased more than one ETA-based flyer GMT. And then kind of around 2025 or so, I think it was January 4th, I found an Explorer 2 in the five-digit reference in the black dial. I went to see a white dial and I realized it sort of wasn't for me in the metal, in the flesh, in the real world, I guess. And then a couple of months ago, a month and a half ago, a crew member offered me the 50th anniversary Doxa 300 in the Sea Rambler. So that's the other one. And then the CW11. And those are the three that I've had in 2025 so far. Very cool. Three bingos.
James Stacey That's a good trio, I think. I also, I love the 16-570. I have these conversations a lot because I'm such a, I guess maybe the inappropriate term but not inaccurate would be, I'm very evangelical about that reference. right and it won't save you it's not salvation uh but but it is a nice it's a really nice watch that just wears so nicely but i do love that the black and the white there's not really a bad option there's not one clear winner which makes it delightful to me because you like you can say no the white's not for me just like the black isn't really for me And, but like, I've had this conversation and, you know, to bring up Thomas yet again, because he has the black one and he's like, yeah, I tried the white one on. It doesn't really, doesn't do it. And I was like, that's, that's, well, watch it. This is great. This is why you make a black and a white.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Yeah, exactly. Right. I got to the place kind of in, as I was, I was just getting tired of turning. It's kind of frenetic and kind of stressful implicitly. And I got to the place of like, I'd really just, I'm not going to own one watch. There are some things that are, that are pretty special to me. I'm not getting rid of them, you know, those sorts of things. But I do want kind of a default is, is kind of how I was approaching it. And for me anyway, the white dial is a little bit bold, flashy. I don't know. It's not flashy. Right. But it's, it's punchy. You can see it. It's got a different thing. Right. And I was looking for something pretty low key, pretty versatile, pretty daily wear basically. So, so yeah.
Chris Soule At the risk of belaboring your metaphor, James, you don't have to preach the gospel of the 16570. That just comes out of you passively, man. You're like the 16570 guy. The apostle of the 16570.
Jason Heaton You know, I kind of have a question for both of you. And I've realized that among our community on Slack, and I think it actually is to its credit, I don't know most people's day jobs or vocations or what they do. Some people are a little more upfront about it. We know there's a guy in Western New York who's a librarian, for instance. We know some other things. Chris, I don't really even know what you do for a day job. I sort of have a sense. And then Jake, aren't you an academic of some sort? Or you do some writing? So if you're comfortable sharing even a vague sense of it. Also, just to be clear, I work for Hodinkee. Yeah, James, yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, you're an open book, so to speak. But Jake and Chris, it's a two-part question. I'd love to know if you're comfortable sharing what you do for your day job. And then how does the... What I really am curious about is you guys are great moderators, but I've always wondered this about you guys and about like the old days moderators on forums. Like how does that fit into your life? How do you do that? How do you do the work, the moderation work?
Chris Soule I'll go really quick because Jake's is way more interesting. So I lead a team of people in software for a financial institution here in Louisville, Kentucky. So that part, not super interesting, but certainly like anything in, you know, any big company, you get out what you put in. If you bring your passion for helping people solve problems, you can do anything. And I certainly enjoy a lot of that at my job. We work with Salesforce a lot. So I apologize to any sales people who are shaking their fist at a cloud right now. But it's very fulfilling to work alongside great people in a great company culture in technology. And a lot of what I do in technology has characterized like a journey for me since college of... Really bridging that gap. Technology is hard. And it's hard because it requires hyper-specificity. At the end of the day, all information gets processed as a one or a zero, right? And so when you gather requirements to... meet a need to solve a problem in a business setting, you've got to be really, really specific. And I'm good at being really, really specific. And I have been, I, I love, I have a deep appreciation for attention to detail and, and, you know, again, you know, specificity here I am on the same, on the same chain. The soul of narrative. There it is, yeah.
James Stacey Again, I think this got cut out of the last time you were on, Chris, but I've stolen that, and I hope everyone else knows that. I did not make that up. That's from John Hodgman, who's wonderful.
Jason Heaton But yeah, specificity is the soul of narrative. Hodgman is great. Well, and Chris, you were the right guy to edit my second novel. I mean, your attention to detail was... maddeningly good. The questions that you asked me are like, I think you should do this or what about that? And I was like, this guy's exactly the right person for the job. I really appreciate that.
Chris Soule And it was a great challenge and a lot of fun to do that. I appreciate your trust in me. But yeah, I mean, I've always felt like. if it's worth doing, it's worth doing like really right. I got to nail it. And that type of thing for me has translated well into the Slack space where what we're trying to do is make the great community that lies within the audience of the gray NATO come alive together in a space. And I feel like we've been really able to do that. And so, yeah, that for me, it all kind of revolves around. bringing people together in the context of technology. And I do that during my day job as, as well as a moderator for the community.
Jason Heaton Yeah. And we'll, we can let Jake jump in with his kind of story as well first, but then I'd love to have you guys kind of go back and forth and just tell me like, literally like, how do you do the work, the moderation work? Cause I am curious about that. Like it's a lot to keep track of, but, but Jake, why don't you tell us a little bit about what, what you're doing during for your kind of day job?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker So I'm an assistant professor at UW Wisconsin in Madison. More specifically, I work in a department that's called the Information School, which is a term that has come to sort of rebrand a little bit, if you want to describe it that way. Programs that historically trained librarians. So we have a master's degree in our department where you earn a master's in library and information science, and then you're certified to be a librarian, qualified to be a librarian. my work is not library related actually sort of uh chris's description of how he thinks about his role is is very connected to to sort of what i do um the field that i work in is is human computer interaction um so the intersection between people and technology essentially um so cool and often the way i think about it is like hci human computer interaction is anything from like What's the right color blue of the Google search button all the way through to what are the right kind? How do we develop new kinds of technology that provide interfaces for computers, right? Devices, keyboards, mice, something like that, right? There's a demo I like from a while ago where they built a device that like mounts on your bicep and senses when you tap on your arm. um to allow you to like project a screen on your arm and then tap on a screen basically um on your arm and that's hci2 right um and then my flavor of it is studying online communities basically right um so so sort of literally we um our work is is interested in um how information gets produced in systems like wikipedia or open street map um and i've got a particular interest in in sort of disparity and sort of coverage in those kinds of systems. And specifically along this kind of an urban rural spectrum, but not necessarily. So at a high level, right? Like I was a computer scientist in undergrad, double majoring in Spanish because it was fairly straightforward. And had kind of a crisis of conscience as a sophomore around like, what am I going to do with my life? Do I want to be writing software for the rest of my life? What does that look like? And kind of stumbled into understanding that there were people who study the internet, people who study people online through technology. And that sort of opened my eyes to the field. And then that's kind of when I decided I was going to go to grad school, get a PhD. Part of that crisis of conscience was I didn't really ever want to have a boss, right? And part of that crisis of conscience was I want technology. I'm very interested in technology, but I'm also interested in people and society and social impact in a variety of different ways. So that's kind of the orientation, right? And then the more specific direction of our work is a representation of that, an instantiation of that. But I have colleagues who study things like social media and mental health. I have colleagues who study things like how do we design interfaces to support participation in these kinds of online communities. I have colleagues who study things like, actually, do you remember the 2015 era or so, the headlines around Facebook is manipulating people's emotions? yeah yeah that was a study um in my field uh kind of adjacent to my field that was trying to test a theory of communication which is the idea that uh emotions spread sort of in a contagion style way right the the term of art is emotional contagion and the idea was essentially we have this theory that if you express emotion that that spreads to your social connections broadly stated And it was the sort of thing that had been theorized. There was a lot of evidence around, but had never been sort of experimentally tested because it's hard to experimentally test. And so there was a researcher who was at Cornell who figured out how to connect with Facebook and Facebook facilitated their experiment to study this question. The effect size is pretty small. Facebook wasn't actually manipulating most people's general emotions in most cases, right? But And manipulation is a scientific word in psychology that sort of means intervention, right? It means experimental condition, essentially. And so it sort of blew up in popular media. But that's one version of the kind of work that my field does broadly.
Jason Heaton Yeah, yeah. I mean, it seems to me, from what you described, that then it explains why you're good at what you do with our Slack moderation and obviously an interest in it, right?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker it certainly is part of the motivation yeah i mean uh to just to put a strong point on it i care a lot about online communities um and i care a lot about the online communities that i'm a part of but in that vein maintaining it supporting it facilitating it putting some effort into the community aspect of it is really important to me
Chris Soule I think I speak for everybody in saying that that is very clear, my friend. Well, I'm glad to hear that.
James Stacey And I mean, like to be clear, when Jason and I started building this out and it became clear that we needed help, I'm novice-ish. I'm getting more into it, the idea of hiring people or finding people for teams. And the thing, I probably learned this from my father more than maybe anybody else, but the thing I like most is I love specificity. Like I like people who love details. I love people who are thoughtful. And I love people who have the ability to formulate a plan. And you guys just kill all three of those things. You love this whole crew. Even the guys that lash out and get a little weird every day. People get squirrely. We got 2,000 people in there. We have a large enough end value to be able to see every outcome. We are real humans. If we keep doing this, right? Exactly. Yeah. But I, I, yeah, I just, I love the idea of, um, of the combination of compassion and thoughtfulness really makes just about anything possible at a people level. Yeah.
Chris Soule I always say you guys set the tone, you know, from, from your voice on the pod to your voice as, you know, semi public nerdosphere figures, uh, who the community is as a reflection of. the way that you all are. And we're just here to come alongside that and shepherd that. And I think it's, it's one very successful ball of wax for sure.
Jason Heaton Well, now that I've revealed myself as the watch snob, I'm sure it'll change the whole flavor. The tone has changed. The tone has changed. It's ruined. But how do you actually do the work? I'm just curious. It's a lot to keep track of. Do you subscribe to every single channel and keep track of every post? Because you guys are on top of a lot of stuff.
Chris Soule Dare we reveal if we don't subscribe to every channel?
Jason Heaton No. How did you split up your duties behind the scenes? I mean, look, as James and I have said before, we're so grateful for your work. I mean, and the fact that I don't know exactly how you do it is shameful. But I'm just so in such awe of your attention. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Soule Yeah. No shame at all. Jake, what do you think?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Yeah, I mean, I would say the short answer is it's probably less work than you're imagining. I mean, I think in a lot of ways, to Chris's point, the crew is a set of people who are self-selecting, right? They're a set of people who want to join and want to be there. They're a set of people who are... motivated around chatting about the the superlatives right and and the the broader goals um and what that really means is there aren't that many things that need intervention right um so often i guess the other thing i would say is um uh i do try to i think i'm subscribed to every channel i hang out in tgn parents despite not having kids as an example right um And just because I, you know, I think part of it is awareness. Part of it is just staying present. And I think part of it is I want to be able to see things that come up in case something comes up, right? There are times where folks flag something and say, hey, just putting this on your radar, not that anything needs to happen or whatever, but just FYI. That can be helpful. Yeah, visibility can be helpful. I've missed things, for instance, I think it was a maybe a month ago that Chris was like, there was a conversation about politics, and it went fine. And I had missed the threat that the threat had happened. And that was everyone involved, right? I'm proud of you all. But those are the kinds of things, that's the other piece of this, Jason, I think is just a sort of, for myself anyway, I've been on the internet enough to know, and to be clear, I've spent a lot of time participating in communities on the internet for probably, call it 15 years at this point, to kind of recognize which things are going to go which way, kind of, right?
Chris Soule For me, Slack makes it really easy with the way that it is designed. So big kudos to that software team and those HCI professionals. I mean, the UX that Slack brings to bear, user experience, has totally changed the face that I work on a daily basis. So I do use Slack and have for many years just in a professional setting. And that was one of the reasons that I was really jazzed to have it. you know, be the platform that our community was on, but they make it super easy to stay up to date with the catch-up feature. You just kind of swipe through everything and I can read everything that way easily. I will go ahead and be vulnerable and admit that I'm not in every single channel. I think I'm not in boots over protest because I didn't want boots, but we have boots. i'm not in pets because like i think i'm also not in boots what's gonna go wrong in pets honestly like and i'm yeah that's true i like animals but not that much and uh that might be it uh so you know but jake's got his eye on those channels guys so you know don't go nuts
Jason Heaton Yeah, the militant faction comes out of pets. It's a free-for-all in boots, yeah. Big political discussion in the pet department, yeah. Yeah, right.
Chris Soule But other than that, yeah, I stay, you know, plugged in and up-to-date on everything. I'll check it anywhere between, you know, three to, you know, half a time per day, if that makes sense. Every other day, maybe if I'm... on vacation, I'll let Jake know. And you guys know, Hey, you know, I'm taking some time with the family. I'm not going to be online. And I love having a team where we can do that because before it was kind of, we're flying solo, but now Jake and I really, you know, share time and are very equitable about kind of moderation effort. And that's huge. And I really appreciate you for that, buddy.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker I mean, that's very kind. I mean, I think the other piece just to put a point on it, right? Like, part of what we're describing mechanistically, right. Is like, yes, go through sort of keep up on every channel, read through backlog, pay attention to what's there or not there. But like, I was doing that anyway, cause I'm a nerd. Right. And I want to spend time on the internet and I'm in an online community. And so I think to be concrete about it, we're participating is the short answer. Right. And, and I think that that means that we have some of the visibility. We have some of the. orientation um and then you know mostly we've just been bestowed a little bit of authority and and things go the way they're going to go 100 and it's well organized to your point earlier that you know the folks in the slack are incredibly good about um
Chris Soule socializing those norms and i'm sure you would have like a technical term for this right but people sort of like self-police right those norms are really key because that's what forms the community it's what makes it a place that people want to come several times a day to nerd out together and so it's it's a beautiful machine that works that way And then, you know, every now and then, yes, we do have things that we have to address.
James Stacey But luckily, surprisingly infrequent.
Chris Soule It is. Yeah. I mean, like most of the time it'll be, you know, Jake or I will discover something. We'll lob it over to the other. We'll say, hey, I'm going to craft a message. You know, just check me on this. Make sure it's not overly emotional or whatever. And then I'll just go ahead and bring it up with the individual. Hey. You know, this is really kind of outside of the standards of what we're looking for here. You know, let us know if we're missing any information. Just, you know, a straightforward, casual, like if you're in a workplace, it feels just like coaching. You know, you just got to be honest with somebody. Just be courageous and honest with someone. And they, you know, overwhelmingly go really well. And I love that about our community. People are open to feedback and they want it to be a great place.
James Stacey That's what you guys did the last time I posted on BST and just like skipped three of the rules.
Jason Heaton No one's immune. No one's above the law.
James Stacey Like immediately got the siren. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Unknown And then got a side. I've had that too.
James Stacey Like you guys are kind enough to side. You should have called me. Just call me out. Make it as ugly as possible. That's how I learned. But yeah, I didn't do the like, you know, my username and the rest of it. I cut some corners. Fair play, for sure. The rules apply to everybody.
Jason Heaton Let's talk about buy-sell trade, because I think that is inarguably probably the most popular channel, I would think, or at least one of, or heavily trafficked, busiest.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker For sure.
Jason Heaton And it's the one that we debated for a while, the creation of it, and then that we've had a... less than a handful of issues, but one major one, we're calling it Cadegate. Talk a little bit about buy-sell trade. I mean, we had some hesitation about even setting that up at first because of kind of the potential minefields there, right?
Chris Soule Yeah. Yeah. There was a there was a significant period of time in which the crew existed on Slack, but we were not willing to kind of dive into the potential firestorm that could be trying to, you know, police people's transactions online. I mean, it's still, you know, blows my mind that we get away with it. um for um we do put in a significant amount of oversight on that channel especially because like the social contract if you will is no more important than in that channel but for a long time it was daunting to envision how we could go about that especially given that slack is a very real-time focused platform so um yeah i don't want to you know belabor how that all came together. But suffice to say, the BST rules and regs 2.0 is only slightly evolved over the 1.0 doc. Yeah, for buyer protection. Yeah, absolutely. That's the whole point.
James Stacey And to be clear, I don't think there's anywhere on the internet where the buyer isn't the one that's often at the highest level of risk. If you do this enough, you'll realize the way PayPal set up, the way that eBay mitigates as much as possible the risk to the buyer. It feels if you get into this, you feel like, oh, I might be getting scammed. This guy might never send me the money, that kind of thing. As a seller, you have very little risk. And we're trying to trying to balance those scales with, you know, community involvement and and checks and balances and that sort of thing. And I think you guys have just done a lovely job.
Chris Soule Well, you know, credit to the community again, because, again, the people that live those norms out and actually participate to, you know, Jake's point earlier. We may not know each other in person, but you do know these folks. They're real people. They're interacting with you every day. And sure. Yeah, they have skin in the game. Absolutely. Their reputation.
James Stacey They're talking about their real lives. Right.
Chris Soule Yeah. They want to be a part of this for real because they are a part of it for real. And sure, lurkers, you know, or people who don't participate actively very often, they post frequently on BSD. But, like, we're... They're outspoken about that. Hey, you know, I don't post very often, but this is me. And they understand what's at stake as well. So it is very much a self-enforcing thing, too. And it's, you know, we call it the nicest place on the Internet. It's definitely the nicest place to buy and sell a watch on the Internet, I think, because even though Slack is not all designed. Oh, very much so. Even though Slack is not at all designed for like. semi long lived posts, the way that we have balanced pricing concerns with visibility of each post, make sure that, you know, both parties are incented to price really aggressively and well. And plus we want to be able to give each other, you know, the friend price because we're in the crew together. So the whole thing is, yeah, it works great.
James Stacey I've definitely sold a couple watches where I said, look, man, if you don't like this in two weeks, please sell it on our platform for the same price I gave you. That's all I'm asking. Get your money back, for sure. Add the shipping. Anyone will understand that. Things can go up $30. Not to borrow too much of Jake's world of computers, but there's logic gates that get you to be part of this world. I texted Heaton the other day because someone... sent us an email someone had told them that we had a bst that was private they had never clearly they had never listened to the show they'd never googled it anything that email got deleted you don't even get a response like this was somebody saying like hey how do i get on the slack i'd like to sell some watches and i go nope you're good thank you go ahead and listen to the show for a little while and figure it out for yourself it's really easy it's really easy but you have to cross a few. You have to hit a low bar. And I would say most people on the Slack are hitting a very high bar.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Yeah. James, you've used the phrase before communities have a right size. I believe it very strongly. Yeah. Well, and I think it is, to my mind, it is part of what enables this sort of thing, right? It's not impossible, as an example, to have a fairly... sort of honor-based, generous set of expectations around buying and selling and then maintain some accountability around it for call it 2,000, 2,500 people, right? It is impossible to do this if you're Facebook, if you're Reddit. Absolutely. And at a minimum, to your point, people are still uncertain until something lands, right? And I think that the... sort of size and smallness i guess right enables some of these norms some of these sort of self-policing norms if you want to describe it that way community aspects the community aspect of it and and then it lets us it lets everybody in the crew kind of get a sense of oh i know that person right and therefore we can have a different kind of interaction
Jason Heaton Where would you like to take, I mean, if you had a wish list of where you'd love to see the Slack community go in the future? I mean, just keep going the way we're going? Or do you have any wish list goals of what you'd like to see changed or added or anything?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Yeah, I was going to say, I think it's pretty smooth sailing. I think growth doesn't need to occur. I agree, James, generally, unless folks want to join, right? Of course, yeah. You all were talking a little bit ago about BST and being hesitant about even putting it online, right? And to my mind... Putting that stuff in the open helps everybody, right? Being visible about it helps everybody. I'm fairly sure. I mean, I don't know this 100%, but it would not surprise me if people were buying and selling watches in DMs on TGN Slack before you launched BST, right? Yeah. Even now. I mean, that is probably still happening. Absolutely. But there's no recourse. If, for instance, something goes wrong and it's been happening in the DM and there's no structure around it, having some structure around it, putting it open, putting some structure in place, I think is really important, generally stated, right? Just broadly. And so I think BST landed in that way. One thing that I think could be helpful over time is getting a little bit more explicit about the norms, about the set of things that... compose or comprise the TGN spirit, so to speak, just because newcomers don't always know that, right? People join every day or every few days or whatever. James would know that better than I do. But broadly stated, new people don't know what that looks like yet, right? And you take a little bit of time to figure it out or you don't. But even just articulation of here's what we're trying to do, I think it could be helpful as an example, right? I mostly think that... putting some i don't know guardrails uh bowling bumper lanes whatever you're gonna call it in place just helps everybody kind of stay uh aimed at the right target yeah tone matching yeah i get it yeah yeah for sure
Chris Soule i have been uh it's something that we've talked about for a while and i have admittedly been the sort of like one finger on the brake handle if it ain't broke don't fix it type of impulse and i think we we do balance each other out a little bit in that way which is a healthy dialogue that continues with that which i think is is has been good um I have that philosophy about the whole Slack. So it takes a lot of convincing to be like, hey, let's make this change. But as a result of that, like I say, we have great conversations and we do make quite a few changes. So it's a nice health check.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Well, and just to be clear, in case anybody's worried about like new rules coming or whatever, Chris and I have been talking about some version of like, what if we articulated the norms in a document somewhere for a year, maybe, right? And nothing has occurred, right?
James Stacey Like a charter, a code of conduct.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Yeah, something in that space. And it's not, I mean, that's my opinion.
James Stacey I'm sure Explorers Club has one. Why not TGN Slack?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Magna Slacker. So I'm just planting a flag as that's kind of my orientation. But whether or not we implement or what that's going to look like is going to be a careful decision if it ends up happening.
Chris Soule Yeah, certainly if we do continue to scale, we're going to need that.
Jason Heaton Yep. Yeah. I would agree. I think if there's one thing we're guilty of just in terms of the podcast in general is we do make a lot of assumptions that people have been listening for a while. And when we do an episode on here's an episode introducing our two Slack moderators, like if someone came in fresh and this was their first episode, it'd be like. Maybe they don't know what Slack is. They don't know what, you know, maybe they're free subscribers and they have no idea that there even is a Slack community. And here we're doing an entire episode with two guys that moderate our Slack community or, you know, we talk about things that we've talked about before or whatever. And we don't always do a great job of like explaining, but then you don't want to take 10 minutes at the top of every episode to kind of give the whole backstory.
James Stacey To be something like a low-level jerk, if you will. I like that there are boundaries. They're very simple boundaries. You have to like the show to understand the slack. That feels fair to me. I've used this term many times. I don't mean to be rehashing it, but it's a shibboleth. It's something you have to know certain few things. I don't love posting something on Instagram. If you know, you know. That's gatekeeping. I'm not looking to gatekeep anything. I'm looking to protect the people who are already in here because they're having fun. And they're finding value. And this is $5 a month. I get it's not a ton of money, but that means a lot to me. I just listened to a three-hour conversation with Schultz from Starbucks. And he's like, I get it. Sometimes the coffee is expensive. Sometimes it's not. But whatever you pay, that means something to me. right and like we could make this conceivably it could you know we've been doing this for a while it could go up in price i don't want to do that i would rather protect what we have and make this a place where nobody would prefer to to stop their subscription because they didn't enjoy it you know what i mean yeah yeah there's a difference between gatekeeping and acknowledging that not everything can be for everyone because exactly then you just water everything down to the point that nothing is interesting again coming back to specificity it's what it's all about so And nerds will find their way over these hoops. They're not big hoops. Exactly. We're not making it that tough. Yeah. So there's a bit of self-selection in there, which I am deeply comfortable with. And if you're uncomfortable with that or you have trouble with it, send me an email. I'll elucidate the details to you. It's a short email, I promise. And I'm more than happy to communicate over it. What I'm not doing is making it a scenario where this becomes a place that I don't want to be and you guys don't want to moderate. You know what I mean? Nobody wants that. I sat here all afternoon and went through the... the quick catch up on, on my phone and read a ton of posts and liked a bunch and answered a few questions. And I just, I love it. I love being able to have that be 30, 40 minutes of my day.
Chris Soule And you guys actually being a part of it is everything too. I mean, it counts as so much to the entire crew to just see selfishly.
James Stacey That's why we made it.
Chris Soule Well, right. It's not like, it's not like you have to try hard. It's like, it's you there. Cause you want to be.
Jason Heaton I remember when we first, James, you were floating the idea of this years ago. And I remember thinking, I was so hesitant because I thought, how are we going to be involved with this on a day-to-day basis? Like people are going to want us to be there. We're going to have to kind of oversee things and whatever. And it was like, well, moderators will be important. And we want to set up something that will almost just kind of live on its own. And lo and behold, that's what's happened. It's transcended the podcast. I almost feel like...
James Stacey The podcast is almost secondary to the community. I mean, at this point, I don't think most people are paying for the pod. Nobody pays for the pod. They're free. But the Q&A that I've, you know, we're three, four months behind on, I'll blame my, you know, progeny on that factor. But we'll catch up, I promise. Yeah, I think you guys have done just such a good job with it and that it's working out quite well. And that, you know, I think we see the feedback on the community with people being engaged. And I'll even get feedback occasionally from people who thought they were more lurkers. And then they found the channel and that's the one where they live. And that feels like Watch You Seek in 2007 to me. I, you know, there were three threads or three, you know, sub forms that I existed in and I started to know everyone's name and I, you could kind of expect what they were going to show on wrist shot that day. So if it was different, you're excited. Like that kind of stuff is great for sure.
Jason Heaton Well, this is a, we've, we've been tempting fate with this long episode. Um, yeah. And you know, yeah, I think we should jump into the final notes. So If you get the call to run to the hospital, you can zip out the door here with a full episode under your belt. Final notes. We have four people on board here for final notes. Chris, why don't you go first? You've got an interesting looking one on the list.
Chris Soule Yeah, absolutely. So this is just a post from the Slack crew that I wanted to elevate. This is a shout out from Rob Sterling, a good crew member out of New Zealand. And just, I think, yesterday or a couple of days ago, he recommended this podcast. It's like a miniseries podcast. called Kelly Tarleton's Final Treasure Hunt Podcast. And so I had not been familiar with Kelly Tarleton, but apparently if you're a Kiwi, that's a fairly household name. He's got a very famous aquarium in New Zealand named after him. And that gets into a little bit of what he accomplished in life. But... Essentially, if you enjoy shadow divers, which if you're listening to this podcast and you don't enjoy shadow divers, something's wrong. This is like a like a little bite sized package of everything that is great about shadow divers, in my opinion. So Mr. Tarleton was like a self-made diving pioneer. Um, you know, he was one of the very first in, uh, New Zealand to actually rock, uh, like a, like an official aqualung and before guys were just like fabricating them out of, I don't know, aircraft parts and bottles and such. Uh, he became a treasure hunter who actually hit it big on, on some real wrecks. Um, he, uh, went on to invent like the walkthrough acrylic, acrylic tunnel aquarium. Like we've all experienced, you know, you go to a big local aquarium. Yeah. This guy invented that. Wow. Um, and you know, he, he worked as a salvage diver, commercial diver. Uh, he, you know, lived and thrived under the ocean as a leader. And we just was a community member that everybody loved. Uh, but he died young and, uh, he left one of his adventures still incomplete in this podcast kind of covers his life and covers what this adventure is, but I'll, I'll leave it up to you to go check that out. But, uh, I have so enjoyed this very locally produced New Zealand sort of documentary style podcast. Highly recommend. And again, shout out to Rob for the outstanding post.
Jason Heaton Nice. That sounds awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hit the show notes for that for sure. And it looks like you've got a second one here, Chris. Do you want to just segue into that? Sure.
Chris Soule Yeah, so in the spirit of treasure hunting and the gold watch and all that, it made me think of a film that I watched a while back that was a recommendation from our buddy Chris Scott up in Chicago. Shout out to Chris. Shout out, Chris. Yeah, so he was talking to me about Mel Fisher, who, if that name doesn't ring a bell, like a big treasure guy down in Florida. especially in the 70s and 80s. He discovered the Spanish galleon, the Atocha. And we're talking one of the biggest real treasure, you know, finds in history where you can even still, like, go online and buy a piece of eight or what have you from this, you know, hoard that was uncovered. It's the whole, you know, story of Mel and his team and... It's real treasure hunting, ladies and gents. It's real stuff. And it's just like nothing gets your heart pounding like that at the end of the day. So it was a National Geographic Explorer episode from 1986. You can watch it for free on YouTube. It's called Atocha, Quest for Treasure.
Jason Heaton Nice. Yeah. And I believe there's still a shop in like Key West or something called Mel Fisher's or down in the Keys.
Chris Soule There sure is. Yeah. I've not been, but I really want to go.
Jason Heaton Yeah, he's Mr. I can remember back in the 80s, like National Geographic articles. And he was, I think he was... Maybe it just lives in my imagination, but I think he was kind of the gold Rolex wearing, you know, Submariner wearing, you know, kind of old salt. I think that was kind of his persona. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Soule The guy we all want to be deep down, right?
Jason Heaton Yeah, exactly. The mustache and the, you know, and the gold dive watch. Yeah, you're him. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Jake, what do you got for us?
Jake Thebalt-Speaker uh my i don't know i had to i can quickly do one and then we can talk about it um but the um i'll start with the the libby app if you're unfamiliar it's an it's an app that um you connect to your uh local library um membership which lets you sort of browse their catalog for e-books, right? And then send it to your Kindle or whatever else you want to use. And then secondarily within that, I've been reading this book, How to Do Nothing by Jenny O'Dell. She's an artist and an academic in, I think, the Bay Area and around San Francisco, sort of exploring what it means to disconnect from the attention economy. How do we get out of paying attention to the world? Yes, please. Come back to sort of like... calming our brains down and those kinds of things. So I'm only a couple chapters in. I read too much for my job, so I don't have as much time to read for pleasure. But I'm enjoying it so far.
Jason Heaton Yeah, that sounds great. I'm a big Libby user, and I use it a lot for audiobooks as well. I think it's a really great feature. Yeah, cool. And then you've got a second one. You've got a product, which we love to have in Final Notes.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Just in the spirit of bags and being bag-oriented, it's a little spendy, $140, $150 or whatever. James is holding one up on camera right now. Just the Wandered 6L Rogue Sling. It's a pretty small camera case, but you can actually unzip a whole bottom section and then a top section and put a laptop in it, sort of at a horizontal or at a vertical angle. It's got a little gusset thing that'll pop out and hold a water bottle. It's just like an incredibly useful daily bag that's smaller than most other daily bags. And I've been kind of re-exploring photography. And so having a camera on me most of the time is helpful. And if you're like me and you hate things in your pockets, sling bags are great places to put things that normally go in your pockets.
James Stacey yeah cool yeah cool yeah the wandered stuff's really nice i use mine all the time since i bought it i bought it off of uh i mentioned it on the slack and someone's like i've got one i bought it and it didn't really suit me i bought it off them uh i got it in black they come in a couple more fun colors than than the black if you want like i think it's like a bright yellow or bright orange i think it's also an option They have that sort of like, I don't know what the material is. It's polyurethane probably, but it feels like those kind of fry tag, like bags made from recycled materials of other things. It feels, yeah, really sturdy and strong. and it's what I carry if I anytime you see like the zoo shots on Instagram I put the big lens in that the shoulder the you know camera over my shoulder and then I can put a water bottle in there for my kids if you want to put a t-shirt or a jacket in the water bottle sleeve you can and I've used the laptop um Like you unzip two zippers and this like long kind of pouch comes out and you can slide a laptop and it rides right against your back. So if you're walking or on a bike, it's actually quite comfortable. And I've used that a couple of times. It's nice. The product's solid. I'm kind of surprised with how much I like it.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker No, I like it a lot. I went with the Sedona orange color, but there's like five or six different colors for folks.
James Stacey So yeah, I lean in hard to orange. Very nice. All right, Jason, what have you got for final notes this week?
Jason Heaton Yeah, we've got some good YouTube videos to catch up on here. A few of us have put up. It looks like, James, you've got one too.
James Stacey The title of yours is great.
Jason Heaton Yeah, this is great. I have to shout out to Brad Wakefield, who was the photographer that I was working with in Scotland when I was there back in May, who sent this to me when we got back from this trip. And it's a BBC archive. just seven minutes long, called Big Jim's Big Boozy Bike Ride to Braemar. This is such a great, it's just a little slice of Scotland in the 70s. This guy named Big Jim Colley, the description is he's a Scottish crofter, which is like someone who runs a small farm, who lives alone in a bothy in the foothills of the Cairngorms. And what this guy does is this video, the reporter went and followed him as he travels once every now and then to this town of Braemar, which is 60 miles away. But he takes a shortcut that's only 22 miles over some mountain passes. And he rides this rickety bicycle that he has, which he has to carry over streams and up hills and over rocks and things. And he always tucks in like this. He has stashed along the way bottles of whiskey, of single malt scotch, like hidden under rocks and stream beds to keep them cool and whatever else. And he knows exactly where they are along the way. And he'll stop and he'll start the day with a couple of stiff drinks before he even leaves his little cottage. Sets off, stops halfway for a couple more. And by the time this guy gets to where he's going, he's like... you know, half in the bag. I mean, I just, I don't know how he even rides a bicycle cross side. And, and it's, it's just this great, this guy's this classic old salt and he's riding in like a, you know, knit sweater, you know, very Scottish looking and he's stopping along the way for these whiskeys. And it's just, it's such a delightful little short, short film to watch that kind of incorporates, I don't know, most of what I like about Scotland in general, but it's a, yeah, it's great. It's, it was really fun.
Chris Soule I've heard of stage bottles, but that's ridiculous. Yeah. Stage bottles.
James Stacey That's so funny. This looks awesome. I watched the first 13, I'm at 14 seconds in and I'm sold. Oh yeah, it's great. It's really great. I mean, it opens with a fireplace.
Jason Heaton Never a bad idea.
James Stacey Cinematography is always provided by a fireplace for sure.
Jason Heaton I love the idea of staging a bottle of scotch along the way on a journey.
James Stacey That's great. I remember years and years ago, you know, big Top Gear nerd that I am, they had Eric Bana on Top Gear, the actor, but he was also fairly active in Bathurst, the race series. Like Bathurst is a racetrack in Australia, but he would drive his car in these road rallies and other things like that. And they brought up, it became this conversation that they had where they were talking about... that there was a legal limit to how much you were allowed to bring in for alcohol for Bathurst. And it was 36 cans of beer, 12 bottles of wine. Like it was a big number for a 24-hour race. And people were still sneaking in to the grounds weeks before to bury alcohol. Yeah. amazing so yeah there it is i get it yeah that looks uh that looks great hit that for the show notes absolutely and uh i'm gonna finish it off this week with uh with my pick which is i i i i'm almost certain i've referred to their videos on the show in the past but it's grind hard plumbing co which is a group of guys that run a youtube channel in rural idaho They have their own property and they're essentially machinists and fabricators and they just make crazy stuff. And recently they bought essentially a mountain that has an old fire road and a bus at the top where you can camp. And in this episode, which is like an hour plus, it's like maybe an hour and 10 minutes, they bought three different Earthmovers from Timu and then drove them to the mountain, like through the woods, through the swamp. So it's one... mini excavator I can't explain how hilarious it looks it's one of the smallest skid steers I've ever seen just delivered on a pallet right it has a roll cage and a front bucket and then it's one miniature dump truck that they call the honey badger because there was nothing it couldn't do at one point they're pulling the honey badger up a slope that's so steep none of them can walk it so they're like winching it and then letting it drive until it's about to tip back And then drawing the winch in and starting over again. And I was just like for an hour last night, I was enthralled. Sarah was laughing. These guys are complete knuckleheads in the exact way that I love. They're perfectionists and they're really hardcore about like making cool things. They're making like, they make really wild stuff. Stuff for shows. They make... crazy monster wheel motorcycles and other stuff like that. But them buying a few of these like earth movers from Timu is very much in the realm of how I operate at my cottage. I would definitely want one of these honey badgers pretty badly. So that's my tip. It's called Extreme Off-Road Camping in Timu Excavators by Grindhard Plumbing Co. Outstanding. It's really fun. It's a really fun hour. Different type of fun than Jason's video, to be fair, but it's a similar vibe. Yeah, the same vibe.
Jason Heaton Similar vibe.
James Stacey Yeah, I love it. None of these guys could possibly operate, should be drinking while operating. I'm not sure we call this heavy machinery. Watch the video. Middleweight machinery, we'll call it. But that's great. And I think that's also a whole episode. Guys, can't thank you enough for being on.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker Thanks for having us. Pleasure is ours.
James Stacey We had no intention of making this episode. I thought I'd have a kid by now and the rest of it. And to be clear, you may not hear this episode for a couple of weeks. I don't know when I'll get to edit it if I'm headed to the hospital this evening. But it means a lot to have you guys not only on the team, but also just on the mic. And Jake, finally, finally have you on. It's so nice.
Jason Heaton Yes, thank you. I enjoyed it a lot. Good fun. Great fun. Yeah, this is, I mean, this is the microcosm of our bigger community right here. And it was such a natural, fun, organic conversation. I just loved it.
Chris Soule Absolutely, guys.
James Stacey As always, thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to subscribe to the show notes, get into the comments for each episode, or consider even supporting the show directly, maybe even grab yourself a new TGN sign NATO, please visit thegraynato.com. Music throughout is Siesta by Jazar via the free music archive. And we'll leave you with this quote that Jake picked.
Jake Thebalt-Speaker This is a quote from Don Norman from his book, Design of Everyday Things, in which he says, it is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.
Jason Heaton That's so true. That's great. Love it.