Transcript:

Tyler Brandon
Hello?

Spencer Estes
Sorry. Hello.

Tyler Brandon
And welcome to Info-Dump, a podcast hosted by two siblings who love to learn shit and then tell each other about it. My name is Tyler.

Spencer Estes
And I'm Spencer.

Tyler Brandon
There must still be a little delay.

Spencer Estes
It’s weird, I don't hear a delay on when you're talking, it's coming through like regular and I respond immediately but then when you respond to me it's like I can tell that you haven't.

Tyler Brandon
…as if it's coming out of my mouth.
This is our introductory episode, take two, cause we had some technical difficulties last time.

Spencer Estes
And different technical difficulties this time.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah, so now we're not recording in person. This is our first time recording remotely from each of our own houses. So, we're going to see how it goes.
So, for this episode, it's going to be structured a little differently than the rest of the episodes that we want to release. This, is like we kind of said, an intro episode where we're going to kind of introduce ourselves, why we're producing this podcast, what it's going to be about, and then some topics that we plan on covering at some point. I don't want to talk first because I feel like I always talk a lot.
So Spencer, what is some of your background, occupations, hobbies, interests, things like that?

Spencer Estes
Good question.
I don't know why that was a good question, but it was a good question.
Hobbies and... okay. So, occupation is always interesting thing for me to talk about because it has nothing to do with anything that I'm interested in. I am very much an individual who works to live and not lives to work. I collect a check. So, I for a long time was in food service. I was a cook in a lot of restaurants. I did enjoy that. And at the time I was considering going to culinary school…

Tyler Brandon
Can you pause? You cut out a lot And I don't know how much the recording picks up versus how much I actually hear.

Spencer Estes
My main question is if the audio or video looks shitty on your end is it is that how it's going to be in the recording or…?

Tyler Brandon
Right? I don't know. I can try to look it up real quick.
…records each participant locally on their own device, creating separate high-quality tracks for both audio and video, ensuring best quality regardless of internet connection.

Spencer Estes
Hey, well that's good, right?

Tyler Brandon
So, unless it's important and I need to hear it we can just keep going, you know?

Spencer Estes
Yeah, I'm trying to do a speed test real quick to see if my internet is behind.
Hello?

Tyler (over videocall)
It seems like my internet connection might be a problem, actually.

Spencer
I was gonna say, it is not on my end.

Tyler (over videocall)
I'm gonna see if I can't…
No internet, no shit.
Can something just go right, please?

Spencer
…and it's penis but it's P E N 1 5 and it's about two middle schoolers and…

Tyler (over videocall)
So, my video is working again. Can you see me?

Spencer Estes
No.

Tyler Brandon
Fuck!

Spencer Estes
Oh my god, it's been recording this whole time? Good thing I wasn't doing all embarrassing shit when you left.

Tyler (over videocall)
God damn it.

Spencer
Did you drop again on purpose or was that an accident?

Tyler (over videocall)
That was an accident Is this seriously not gonna work? What the fuck?
I'm gonna be so fucking pissed.
Let me shut down and restart our fucking internet.

Spencer
I'll start carrying a cord. I'll bring you mine.

Tyler (over videocall)
Your ethernet cable….

Sepcner
And you know what's funny too? I can't stop the recording on my side.
Lost her again.
That's our new intro.

Tyler Brandon
Hi.

Spencer Estes
You're ba-
So creepy of you to pop up like that.
You're just stuck right there.

Tyler (over videocall)
On the cam- or on the computer?

Spencer
Yeah, it's not changing, it's just that.


Tyler (over videocall)
We rarely ever experience internet issues. So the fact that it's happening on the day that we're actually able to record.
I don't want to make you wait, but at the same time I also don't know when it's going to fix itself.
I keep getting warnings about trying to reconnect.

Spencer Estes
Oh, there you are. Now I can see you. and you went away.

Tyler
I did?

Spencer
And you're back a little. You're back but glitchy.

Tyler Brandon
How do you feel? we try to give this another go?

Spencer Estes
Yeah, it's working right now.
Welcome back to my channel!

Tyler Brandon
So delayed.
Surprise guest on my podcast?

Spencer Estes
It is- it's not delayed over here.
Dream guest. My throat- my throat's too fucked up, I'm gonna hurt myself but- Dream guest? Yeah, I can't do it. I can't do it, my throat hurts too bad.

Tyler Brandon
That's okay, baby….

Spencer Estes
Don't drop. Don't drop. Don't drop.

Tyler Brandon
Don't drop, don't drop.
You're really close. Can you- Am I-
You're not gonna scare me, I know you're... I could see you this whole time!

Spencer Estes
Really?

Tyler Brandon
Yes, I could see you that whole time. It was kind of funny.
Maybe I'll keep that in.

Spencer Estes
And you're normal now.

Tyler Brandon
Thank god. I can get off my beds.

Spencer Estes
Well, your video's normal now.

Tyler Brandon
Quick! What's your occupation and hobbies and background?

Spencer Estes
So I work in finance but on the tech side not the finance side and I don't have an educational background outside of high school.
Damn! Hold on.

Tyler Brandon
I'm still here, keep going!

Spencer Estes
I do a lot of learning for free for fun. It depends on the day on what it's about. I have a lot of little hyper fixations. Gems and minerals, reptiles, natural disasters, especially since tornado season's coming up. I've been digging deep into the weather stuff. Kind of whatever interests me that day or that week, and I'll go all in and spend hours and hours and hours reading through articles and watching videos and yeah, completely situationally.
A lot of that stems from my hobbies. I am an avid gem and mineral collector, have had reptiles off and on throughout basically my whole life. Love the outdoors, too. Astrophotography and nature photography. So, very eclectic, I would say. What about you?

Tyler Brandon
Well, I've always been a nerd, kind of like you, and my occupation revolves around being a nerd. I am a medical laboratory scientist at a hospital. I work in microbiology, specifically. I am going back to school for a master's in medical microbiology and biochemistry. So, I am not just learning for free, but I am also paying to learn some more. But I definitely do learn for free as well. That's one of my hobbies is learning and exploring topics that I'm interested in. Other hobbies include reading, going outside and looking for critters and plants and whatnot. I don't know, hiking around, exploring, mild exploring. I think we like to cook here and there. We've canned some stuff every now and then. The gem and mineral things.

Spencer Estes
I forgot to mention anything about cooking. I do enjoy cooking; love trying new recipes. I see some weird stuff on Facebook every once in a while and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna try it. I saw like a salmon soup and it turned out to be fantastic. So now I trust Facebook recipes a little more and I always like to try new things. I am definitely a foodie. A fat bitch at heart.

Tyler Brandon
Aww. Yeah, what was the dish you made the other day with all the fancy names?

Spencer Estes
Which one was that? Was that the one with the salmon? Or the other one?

Tyler Brandon
Bitch, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was it.

Spencer Estes
I had made puff pastry that was stuffed with smoked salmon and Gruyere and leeks and green onions and then I made a lemon orzo to go with it and it was fantastic. Smoked salmon is not my favorite. It is very fishy, very oily, but it does taste good so like in small amounts. I have learned to appreciate.

Tyler Brandon
I've also been expanding my horizons, which says a lot because I've been a pretty picky eater and I don't necessarily enjoy cooking, but I've been doing better. Sorry, I've been getting spam calls nonstop.
I think I mostly made it through my hobbies. I got my gyms and minerals. I also enjoy watching storms and whatnot. If we haven't said it yet, because we've been cutting out nonstop, we are from Kansas, so storm watching is one of our obvious pastimes. Like, of course we're going to storm watch. Duh.

Spencer Estes
The sirens go off and you immediately go outside. And I still do that to this day.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. but we don't have to do too much more detail than that. That's just a little like taste of who we are. I'm sure our personalities will come out just fine in some of the future episodes, something I did want to talk about is why we decided to start this podcast. Would you like to give your reasons why? Your personal reasons?

Spencer Estes
Yes, I would say one, I love learning and love sharing with other people. It's not always the easiest to find someone who's willing to listen. So, it would be great to talk into a microphone. Whoever listens, listens, and whoever doesn't, doesn't. But also, I think it's especially important, like in today's day and age, there's so much misinformation or misleading information, a lot of clickbaity headlines that give partial truths and cause a lot of confusion. I'm not saying I am the… I don't know everything and I say things that are wrong too, but I at least do my best to try to validate information beforehand and be accurate in the information that I'm sharing. Not necessarily saying I'm doing this to dispel all of the bullshit that's out there on the internet today. But I do plan to call some of it out and hopefully it teaches at least one person. What about you?

Tyler Brandon
Yeah, definitely. I feel like I'm going to end up repeating a lot of what you said, but they're also my reasons. Like you kind of alluded to, we do this for fun. We look up different topics for fun and we don't have a ton of people in our lives that we can like talk at; info dump on, if you will. We know each other, like we like this stuff and we'll tell each other about it. Um, but I would like, I also want other people to know some of this stuff too. It's kind of cool and fun. So yeah, putting it out here for people to opt in or opt out of. I think it's kind of the perfect way to do this. I feel like it would been something that we, I don't know if we should have started it earlier in our lives or not, but life happens and we're, we're getting around to it now and I'm excited about it. But along the same lines of dispelling some common misconceptions, maybe from old wives tales or even like current trending topics, there is misinformation out there. And if we happen to look up things in that area, we can make sure it's coming from reputable sources that have lots of evidence and make sure we're putting out the correct information so people know a little bit more about what they should and shouldn't believe, I guess. Help give people more background in some areas.
How delayed am I?

Spencer Estes
Pretty delayed.

Tyler Brandon
Okay, that is going to make going through our topics interesting. Sorry, I also dropped something.

Spencer Estes
Wait, how am I gonna read the topics?

Tyler Brandon
They’re on the drive if you have access to the drive.

Spencer Estes
Hacking in now.

Tyler Brandon
What are you doing?

Spencer Estes
My neck looks gross.

Tyler Brandon
Huh? It's just cause you have skin, that's your sternocleidomastoid. It's my favorite muscle up there. See? Yeah, you turn… See, it goes from your sternum to your cledium…

Spencer Estes
You stup-
All right.

Tyler Brandon
Okay.

Spencer Estes
So we have some topics we're especially excited to cover in the near future. So we're to go through. We do have a hefty list, but we have refined it some and highlighted some notable favorites. So we're going to go through and talk a little bit about some of the episodes that we'll have in the future, including, but not limited to.

Tyler Brandon
Spontaneous human combustion.

Spencer Estes
Organ transplants and rejection.

Tyler Brandon
The Yellowstone supervolcano.

Spencer Estes
Toxoplasmosis.

Tyler Brandon
The microbiology of food spoilage.

Spencer Estes
The plague, specifically…specifically something that I don't know how to pronounce.

Tyler Brandon
Y. pestis? Yersinia pestis?

Spencer Estes
Y. pestis. Specifically via Y. pestis.

Tyler Brandon
Pronounced how it's written.

Spencer Estes
That was such a read.

Tyler Brandon
Coldsore and wart myths and facts?

Spencer Estes
The anti-vax movement.

Tyler Brandon
What are the chances that defrosting permafrost releases a new pathogen?

Spencer Estes
The science behind pheromones.

Tyler Brandon
Do you stink good or just bad? Stem cell contributions to science and medicine.

Spencer Estes
Can you imagine how musty sex in like the 1700s would have been back in like, full bush and like six layers of clothes? That sounds terrible.

Tyler Brandon
Can you imagine how much, like, crust would build up like during?

Spencer Estes
oooo

Tyler Brandon
Yeah. Yeah. They didn't have like a sink to splash their...

Spencer Estes
And then to freshen up, they go and splash their coochie with some river water that someone's shitting 20 feet upstream in.

Tyler Brandon
If they're not using a bucket that they have to wash their face in after.

Spencer Estes
And one of our other topics is cholera. I'm just kidding. I think it is.

Tyler Brandon
Speaking of, honestly though, it's probably on here somewhere.

Spencer
Stem cell contributions to science and medicine.

Tyler
Diseases that we can or have treated with other diseases.

Spencer Estes
Bizarre allergies like cold, touch, or water.

Tyler Brandon
How cancers are typed and staged.

Spencer Estes
Extreme environmental conditions like high altitude, lack of gravity, extreme heat or cold, and how it affects the body.

Tyler Brandon
I love survival stories, so that one's gonna be really cool.

Spencer Estes
I have multiple on my bookshelf behind me.

Tyler Brandon
Same, on the bookshelf in front of me.
Physiological changes that happen in an infant's body once it's born.

Spencer Estes
Autopsy findings and how they can lead to a diagnosis or cause of death.

Tyler Brandon
He cut out…
Is it all better?

Spencer Estes
Yeah.

Tyler Brandon
Okay. Say that one again if you would.

Spencer Estes
We're gonna, you're gonna edit this and it's gonna be like eight minutes long. And it's gonna take you like five hours to edit out all the pauses.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah. It truly might be eight minutes long. Maybe I'll leave in some of the funnier glitches. Like, we're recording this because we had technical issues the first time.

Spencer Estes
And these are way worse than the first time.

Tyler Brandon
So much worse.
I should have let you read this one. All things DMT. That'll be fun. If you don't include the stuff in your brain. Which I guess is it released at birth as well as death or just death?

Spencer Estes
My favorite drug that I never tried. I think it's definitely at birth. And I'm pretty sure, yeah, it's at birth and at death. And...

Tyler Brandon
Probably other high stress moments or something.

Spencer Estes
Near death experiences.

Tyler Brandon
It's really cool, no matter what.

Spencer Estes
Yes.
Unexplained medical conditions.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah, I've got one for our next topic.
CRISPR, which is gene editing.

Spencer Estes
Coincidentally near-death experiences and if they can tell us anything biologically, ph- fuck biologically, physiologically, or spiritually. I almost said “psychologically”.

Tyler Brandon
That did say “psychologically”.

Spencer Estes
Damn. Okay, near-death experiences and if they can tell us anything, biologically, psych-holic-… What the fuck? Near death experiences.

Tyler Brandon
Mmm. Okay, period.

Spencer Estes
Period

Tyler Brandon
The link between schizophrenia and religious psychosis. That's cool.

Spencer Estes
Drug-induced psychosis.

Tyler Brandon
There's some horror stories there. Survivor bias within alternative medicine.

Spencer Estes
All the various cool spiders.

Tyler Brandon
I'm excited for that one. Are ALL mosquitoes bad or are mosquitoes ALL bad? I don't know where to, like, emphasize that.

Spencer Estes
Is homosexuality bad? We're just kidding. Homosexuality- Homosexuality- I can't even say that one right. Homosexuality within the animal kingdom.

Tyler Brandon
Listen and find out!

You are what you eat.
Cordyceps, the zombie fungus.

Spencer Estes
All about bees and other important pollinators.

Tyler Brandon
Animals that can change sex.

Spencer Estes
Plants that use alternative methods of energy production, not photosynthesis.

Tyler Brandon
How various animals can change their color.

Spencer Estes
Toxic fungi.

Tyler Brandon
Disastrous tornado outbreaks and the specific ways they cause deaths.

Spencer Estes
Notable volcanic eruptions and the specific features that are deadly about eruptions.

Tyler Brandon
Positive effects or results of natural disasters.

Spencer Estes
Background radiation and the environment.

Tyler Brandon
The various dinosaur extinction theories.

Spencer Estes
How a particle accelerator works and what it's used for.

Tyler Brandon
DNA extractions from mummies.

Spencer Estes
Nuclear medicine.

Tyler Brandon
Dark matter and dark energy.

Spencer Estes
Invisible fires.

Tyler Brandon
And solar weather including solar flares and solar wind.

Spencer Estes
I’m so excited about all of these, I think.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah. Yeah. That was just a, a handful. Our list is quite a bit longer than that. My favorite topics are going to be things in like disease, microbiology, health. So, you'll probably hear a lot of those type of topics from me, but of course I'll sprinkle in some others as well. What do you look forward to the most?

Spencer Estes
Mine'll probably be the natural disasters. Very excited to talk about. There's so many cool stories, so many survival stories, so many destruction stories. It's just kind of like an endless loop of interesting, I don't know. It's probably because we've had a couple of storms in the last week and I'm like all hyped for. Storm season again, so I'm definitely interested in all the weather stuff right now.

Tyler Brandon
Yes, I am less excited that we had a polar vortex this weekend, but more excited for the actual severe weather.

Spencer Estes
Yes, I am still very upset about that. One of the things I did not mention when talking about myself earlier, I do a lot of gardening. That's one of my main hobbies. Every single day after work, I will be outside gardening. Even if there's not something to do, I will always find something to do.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah, your motivation scares me.

Spencer Estes
And now it's medicated, so just wait.

Tyler Brandon
Even worse. Great. He's unstoppable…Well, that's all we have for you this time.

Spencer Estes
Lord.

Tyler Brandon
Which leads me to my next point: we're not recording this other topic tonight. There's no way, no way. So that sucks but I also, it is what it is I guess.

Spencer Estes
No chance. Got to roll with the punches. You can stop recording whenever, by the way.

Tyler Brandon
We should say bye to the people.

Spencer Estes
We didn't do outro! What is our outro? Didn't you have that on a little piece paper?

Tyler Brandon
You know, I don't know that we actually had an outro yet. We were going to leave it on a good note.

Spencer Estes
Yeah, let's leave things on a good note and talk about some things that we're excited about.

Tyler Brandon
Okay, that sounds good. Good outro idea.

Spencer Estes
You go first.

Tyler Brandon
Oh, I'm excited to see if this episode uploads nicely. Maybe the audio and visuals won't be so horrible and I'll be able to splice things together. So, I'm excited to see that. But if, if I, if I want to say something that's not podcast related, I guess I'm excited for the nice weather coming at the end of the week. Although it's supposed to get to almost 90 by Friday.

Spencer Estes
I’m excited about the same. Yeah, we're supposed to be in like the 80s again this week. I have some plants to get in the ground. Excited to spend some time outside.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah.

Spencer Estes
Other than that, think that's about it because I've been watching the weather to see if I have any clear nights coming up. I really want to get back out there and pick a new target for the telescope. I am very much looking forward to that. Well, I'll say this, even though I don't have a clear sky in the immediate future, I am excited about it regardless. And first opportunity I have, I will be out there photographing my new target. I haven't even decided on the target yet, but I'm excited just to switch it up because I spent a lot of time on the last one.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah, you did. Do you still have more editing to do on that one?

Spencer Estes
I gave up. I got it to work. So that last session was like over 20, wait, wasn't 24, over 18 hours of editing that one picture to get it to what I thought was good. And then when I saved it and compared it against the previous version that had like three or four hours less data incorporated in it, it looked worse. The better one looked worse after I had spent all that time taking more pictures and all that time editing. So I was like, fuck it. I have one edited version that I am happy with and I learned immensely throughout the process about things I was doing wrong and ways I can do editing better. I have lots of new techniques to try out next time, but I am officially retiring this target for now. When it comes back in to view in winter, then I'll spend some more time on it.

Tyler Brandon
Gotcha.

Spencer Estes
Something I did not think about with this telescope hobby is... What about during the summer when it doesn't get dark until like 9:30?

Tyler Brandon
You're gonna be up so fucking late. So late.

Spencer Estes
Yeah, excited to see how that turns out.

Tyler Brandon
I don't know that I have any good advice, unfortunately.

Spencer Estes
We'll see, just gotta check and adjust.

Tyler Brandon
So that was us leaving it on a good note. My sock got stuck.

Spencer Estes
If you listened until the end, thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah. I think our first episode, we talk about how Rhinovirus travels throughout the human body and what it does. And then Spencer talks about…

Spencer Estes
…alternative medicine, some common misconceptions, some myths and facts, some that work and some that don't.

Tyler Brandon
Yeah, so listen to episode one if you'd like to hear us talk about that. Thanks. Bye bye. Jesus.

Spencer Estes
Thank you. Was that weird to say thank you at the end like that?

Tyler Brandon
A little bit. That’s why I didn't stop the recording.