After Things Podcast

The episode opens with a joke-heavy run of stories, including Bryce recounting a TikTok about Waffle House grill cooks earning shirts for hitting profit milestones, then a segment about Steve Jobs' pre-worn Birkenstock sandals selling at auction for about $218,750. The hosts riff on the sandals' smell, rarity, and the value of Steve Jobs memorabilia, and briefly detour into jokes about Steve Wozniak, Segway scooters, and what kinds of Jobs-related items might command higher prices. The middle of the episode covers a ChatGPT test on the AP Computer Science A exam, where Bryce explains that the model scored 32 out of 36 and missed some visual or poorly worded elements. That leads into a broader discussion of AI's growing capabilities, followed by a long segment on Disney research's face-aging/de-aging neural network and speculative uses for film, TV, and even recasting or upcycling older media. The latter half of the episode shifts into word-of-the-year chatter, with the hosts debating 'gaslighting,' 'metaverse