226: Eight and a Half

Christina

[00:00:00] Brett:Listening to over-tired. I’m Brett Terpstra here with Christina Warren. How’s it going, Christina?

Christina:It’s going pretty good. How are you Brett?

Brett:I I’m, I’m getting so good at these intros that it’s almost boring now.

Christina:Right. You’re like feeling like I need to mess it up so that it can feel normal.

Brett:I’m I’m sometimes when I’m more scattered. Like I’ll think the words through in my head, but then they’ll come out in a completely different order. It’s very flustering when that happens, which I believe leads to. That’s just good radio. Yeah know.

Christina:Agreed. It is. It’s just good radio.

Brett:So, so we have this topic, uh, I do, do you have any health corner updates?

Christina:I don’t have any health corner updates. I was going to ask you because yeah, we have a topic that we’ve punted for like four weeks that we have to get to, but we have to also start with our like Brett slash Christina’s health corner stuff.

Brett:yeah, like our core [00:01:00] segments

Christina:that is our core

Brett:that end the, who did Christina piss off this week segment.

Christina:totally. Which, um, I don’t think is anybody so

Brett:and I don’t really have a, uh, like my sleep has settled down. I haven’t like that whole like manic cycle a week thing chilled out. Haven’t had one, since we last talked, um, my sleep has been decent. I’ve been getting like seven hours a night. Which is it’s it’s enough to get through, but I’m definitely more, uh, relaxed and less anxious if I sleep for eight to eight and a half hours a night. So I’m just on the cusp of being like tired all day.

Christina:Hence the name of the show.

Brett:It’s it’s true. It’s true. Except I’m I’m like, I’m just tired, not over tired.

Christina:So tired. We’ll get there.

[00:02:00] Brett:Um, yeah. Yeah. So, so, uh, this topic we’ve been punting on because it’s not like, uh, it’s, it’s not an inflammatory or divisive topic for most people and it’s, it’s not the most exciting thing we’ve had to talk about over the last few months, It is something that you have invested some time in. So let’s talk about this state of eating tablets.

Christina:Yes, it’s something I’ve invested, not just time but money. And, uh, now obviously that could be a lot of things that have invested money in because as we discussed before, that’s how I’ve been dealing with the whole last year is just to blindly buy things. Um, I don’t eat my feelings, I buy them. So, um, I’m not sure what’s more unhealthy to be totally honest.

Uh, anyway,

Brett:bill.

Christina:I mean, yeah, but like, I don’t have any debt, so it’s, I don’t know. Um, I also don’t have a house. So, you know, it, [00:03:00] it is what it is. Uh, yeah, so tablets. So this is an interesting thing. I hadn’t really thought about the state of, of eating tablets in a really long time. And a couple of years ago, I guess, close to four years ago now a tablet called the remarkable came out and it, along with another tablet.

Tony, we’re kind of this next wave of eating tablets that were more than just, um, and an eating for, for, uh, listeners who might not be. Aware is the technology that basically it’s what Kendall uses and other e-readers, and it is a fairly low refresh display, all that they’re getting faster that lets you have a more paper like experience.

So it’s really crisp. It’s very readable, especially in sunlight or direct light. Although some of these, um, tablets like the Kendall, um, uh, paper light and or paper white rather, and the Oasis and, and other, um, uh, Uh, th I think like [00:04:00] kobu has a couple of like half front lights too, so you can read them in the dark.

But the whole idea is that they’re easy on your eyes. They’re crisp and high resolution, and they have really good battery life. And so a lot of people really prefer them. To like reading on a phone or an iPad because the screen is better on your eyes, but there’s this secondary kind of market for ink other than just readers, which is for note taking tablets.

So a company called remarkable, I think they’re Swedish. They might be finished, but they’re, or they’re based in Europe, um, came out with something about four years ago called the remarkable one. Sony also had a tablet and these were fairly large, like 10 inch tablets that would actually let you write on them.

And then the whole idea was to kind of recreate the writing on paper feeling so really low latency using IE ink so that the idea would be, you could write just like you were writing on paper, but it’s digital. You [00:05:00] could use OCR to convert your handwritten notes to text. Or to search things and, um, you know, you could annotate, uh, like, like PDFs and, and stuff like that.

So I was always sort of interested in the remarkable tablet when that first came out, but it was really expensive. It had some missing features. I just didn’t quite know if I wanted to make the investment. So actually in 2018, I wound up getting a, um, What did I get? I, I got an iPad pro 11 inch instead with the Apple pencil, which was more expensive, but I was like, you know what, that’s going to be a better device for me.

Fast forward to last year, uh, 20, 28, it was March, um, remarkable, announced their remarkable two tablet. And they were like, it’s going to be sleeker. It has better battery life. It has kind of an updated screen. It has even lower latency. And it’s going to be out in like, I think the first we’re saying June.

And so I pre-ordered one. And, um, it [00:06:00] didn’t come out in June. It didn’t come out in July. It didn’t come out in August. It didn’t come out September. It didn’t come out in October. I wound up finally getting it, I think like the first week of November. So this was now, you know, more than six months since I, I pre-ordered it.

Um, and at that point, you know, like I’d already paid for it. Like I, you know what I mean? Like, I’d put it on the credit card. I had already paid it off. It was kind of like, okay, whatever, I’ll get this thing. And I got it. And I liked it, but it’s fairly limited in some of the stuff you can do for it there.

Um, it’s really designed primarily as a single task device. So it was really designed for people who really take a lot of notes and really want to recreate that like handwriting on paper experience. Yeah. You can, you can read PDFs or, or EPUBs on it. It has, you know, a pretty terrible e-reader built into it.

Yeah. You can kind of transfer their documents in and out, but it’s really designed to be. Like a note taking device, like that’s really what it’s about. And they ha they, they try to have like a very Apple-like [00:07:00] experience. Um, but they’ve been like advertising themselves all over Instagram and Facebook and stuff.

And so they’ve been pretty popular from what I can understand. Um, I think that they’re like, if you try to order from the remarkable to now, it’s a couple of weeks out to get an order, but they’re not, it’s not like, uh, you know, uh, the, the month. Like the month long waits that it was. But when I got there, by the time I got the remarkable to another device had come out called the, um, books, um, the Onyx books, note air, and this is, um, Onyx or books.

I think books is the, is the device name. And then annex is the brand name is a Chinese company and they use E ink. But. Rather than using kind of a customized Linux kernel, which is what remarkable uses. They are actually using Android as a base. And they, um, have many of the same features as the remarkable, but because it uses Android, you can use [00:08:00] other Android apps with it too.

So you can side load. That Kendall app or the Kobo app or audible, or, you know, other, um, applications. So you can do more things with it. You can SSH into it more easily. You can transfer stuff to Dropbox or one drive or, or whatever more easily, but it also has built in writing functionality so that you can do like the OCR and the, um, note taking stuff in and transfer things over.

And so. They launched like literally right as the remarkable too was I was getting, they launched, um, the, um, Onyx books, note air, and that was priced about the same as the remarkable two tablets, actually a little bit less, I think, um, once all kind of the accessories were involved, but on the face of it, a more powerful device.

And so I went ahead and I ordered that one too. And right. So I got that one and then Onyx actually reached out to me and they sent me the, um, [00:09:00] Books, max Lummi, which is very similar to the note air, except it is a 13 inch device rather than 10 inches. So it’s really big and it’s more powerful. Like it’s, it’s got more Ram, it’s got, uh, you know, a faster processor and they sent that to me.

And so I’ve been reviewing that and, um, I’ve also been reviewing, you know, the, the books, note air, and the remarkable too, which I purchased and, um, You know, I, I talked a little bit about this on rocket, but I can talk more in depth about it here. And I’d love you to ask me questions and, and things that, you know, you would want to know about this if you’re interested at all.

But, um, this is a really niche product area, like, but it’s also kind of cool. Like I’m not gonna lie. Like there’s something like the latency, um, on the remarkable too. The thing I’ll say about it is, is that, although I think the software is limited and kind of buggy and. Not really as robust as it should [00:10:00] be.

Like it, the hardware is really good, but it’s a really let down by the software. And I don’t think they’ve invested enough in the software. Um, but the experience of writing on it is to use upon remarkable. Like it, it is a better experience than writing with my iPad pro like

Brett:so.

Christina:does, it does feel like writing on paper.

Brett:Are you a person who writes on paper,

Christina:Typically? No, no, but I do have to take notes and I do like the idea of sometimes, maybe Kirby, my ADHD, to be totally honest, by doing more note taking stuff. And typically the reason I don’t write on paper is because I don’t then want to have to like convert it into something that I can use digitally.

Like that’s my big thing, right? Is that I’m going to need to access whatever I’m writing on paper. Like digitally. So I used to have a bunch of mole, skins and other stuff, and like, um, and jot calendars and planners and things like that. And I really liked the idea, but I was like, I can’t access this, you know, [00:11:00] anyway, and I, over the years I’ve like looked at things like there was like a pin that would sync with Evernote and, you know yeah.

And, and, and stuff like that. And like, you know,

Brett:paper that you could like yeah. Yeah.

Christina:Yeah, exactly. And, and like, that was okay, but you know, like that’s still requires a whole other kind of level of, I don’t know, like for me I’m such a, uh, digital, um, person that, uh, I like the act of writing and I think it’s important for me as bad as my handwriting is, but I think it can be better for my, for my memory and for my attention span, but I like need it digitized.

Brett:Yeah, I do buy that. The act of writing on its own, just like handwriting, something out makes you remember it more than typing it and way more than just listening to it. Like, for me, that’s true, but I hate writing so much. Like I don’t write. I write so little that my hand cramps [00:12:00] just signing my name.

Christina:yeah.

Brett:is so not used to writing.

Christina:Yeah, that’s how I am too. That’s how I am too. So it’s been like a, a, an interesting, um, I guess, journey to have to kind of teach myself to write again, if that makes any sense.

Brett:So how does the, something like the remarkable, how does it solve the, so, like, I had a bunch of mole skins, and I was pretty good for a while about, uh, back when I had like client meetings and stuff. If I just scribbled on. Uh, notepad while the meeting was happening, I would remember the meeting better, but I would get annoyed that I couldn’t search.

So I started using, like, I bought a, it was made by mole skin, but it was really just a folder and it could hold index cards. So I would use one index card per meeting

Christina:Oh, that’s smart.

Brett:scan that index card when I got back and I’d put it in Evernote, which then would make my handwriting [00:13:00] moderately searchable. Um, like the lack of searchability is what killed mole skins for me.

Does the remote markable allow, does it OCR and search your text?

Christina:Yes. Yeah. Um, the, the, the books does a better job than the remarkable does, but yet they both do it. Um, I like the books better to be totally honest. Uh, I think the remarkable is like one of those things where they have a really good, like. Experience from kind of like the factory onward. Um, and part of me would kind of want to root for them to be like, Oh, you know, they’re, they, they they’ve, you know, kind of pioneered a lot of this stuff, but, but to be totally honest, the book stuff has done a better job with it.

Um, but yeah, they both do that. And, and in fact, the book stuff can even do like offline OCR stuff. You have to be connected to the internet to do those CR. And the search stuff on, um, the, uh, remarkable too, but yeah, it’ll let you search that stuff, which is really, really nice. And so that’s one of the reasons why I’m using it, the downside with both of [00:14:00] them, um, is that if you use an app like OneNote or Evernote or something like you can’t integrate directly into that without importing those notes into, you know, one of those systems, um, even though.

The, the books that the note air and the max Lumi, both work with Android. Those, uh, note taking applications have not been optimized in any way, shape or form for E ink. So you cannot use those apps themselves to take notes. So if that’s what you want, like that’s not gonna happen. You are really better off with an iPad or using, um, like if, if you’re a windows user using, you know, um, one of the pen, um, You know, systems like a surface or something which works really well with one note.

But what you can do is you can import like as a PDF or as something else, you know, the file into your OneNote notebook, and then you can search it so you can still work with it that way. It’s just not one of those things where like, you can open up a OneNote page and start writing. You’re [00:15:00] going to open up a page in another app and then, you know, later like import it so that you can have access to it.

Brett:pull me over and tickle me pink

Christina:What’s that

Brett:and would actually make me buy one of these just for the novelty of it. It could. Uh, store marked down versions of my handwritten notes in Dropbox

Christina:I know.

Brett:writer and NBA ultra could access them.

Christina:I know. I know. And, and that, from what I, from what I can tell, at least so far, there’s been no, like conversion to Mark down, although. On both of them. I think it might be slightly easier on the remarkable, because at least extensively their stuff is more open source, although, you know?

Brett:What if a PD. If a PDF is saved with an OCR layer, uh, with searchable texts, I have tools that can convert that to Mark down. So if it were store, if like those PDFs were stored, In some kind of accessible sync system, [00:16:00] whether it’s a one drive or Google drive or Dropbox, somewhere that like Hazel could pick up these PDFs.

I could S I could pull the markdown texts out and put it into my very plain text notes. That would be cool.

Christina:Yeah, you could do that with the books. So we might actually want to try that. What, what I could do is I could, um, give you access to, um, a folder and you could like test it just to see if, if it’ll do what you need it to do.

Brett:I want access to your diary,

Christina:Yeah. That’s exactly it. You be, you be, you be so bored by most of the notes that I take, but, um, dear diary, I had to podcast Brett today.

It was pretty terrible.

Brett:He is the worst. Oh my God. Gag me with a spoon.

Christina:there is, um, there’s this guy on YouTube. Um, his name is, um, um, uh, Valeria and he does this thing called, um, my deep guide. And he does very in depth, like comparisons and like breakdowns about how all of these things work. And so if [00:17:00] you want to know everything about what the latency is like, he has cameras set up to capture like every millisecond of like what it looks like when you’re like.

You know, putting the, the pen down to the screen, if you want to know like how the different software features work, like he has all of that stuff. So we’ve got a link to, to him, um, down, uh, in our show notes. Um, he’s great. Um, I do not have that kind of time to be totally honest. Uh, but I did enjoy like when I was waiting for my things to arrive, um, I did watch his videos and I got a lot out of it from them.

Um, It’s cool though, because you can create like templates and it’s not as easy as it, as it should be. Again, the remarkable I hate to, like, I’m not trying to dog on it because I spent a lot of money on it and I might sell it. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but like, it’s a really nice piece of hardware.

It’s just, the software is not there. Whereas the book stuff is really nice. And the max Lummi and the node air are essentially the same device. It’s just the max Lumi [00:18:00] is gigantic. And the note air is, is like, You know, 10 inches. So it was basically kind of the difference between an iPad, um, uh, pro 13 and an iPad pro 11.

The one nice thing about the bigger size I will say is that you can view a PDF without any sort of like having to reframe or move anything at all. Like for technical papers or stuff like it’s going to basically be one-to-one. Um, On the screen, which is really nice if you’re looking at like manuals or technical papers or other sorts of documents, like it’s really, really nice.

So if you’re somebody who annotates a lot and reads a lot of that kind of stuff, uh, the bigger screen is really, really nice for that. Um, I th I find for my own use cases, the smaller screen, probably as a little bit better, just because, um, The the big size would certainly make it less portable, although who’s traveling now anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

But, um, [00:19:00] but the, the, the max Lumi is, is nice. And the screens, like I will say there is like refresh and like latency things that you can use at least on the, um, on the books devices. And, and I think people have created hacks to do this on the remarkable as well. People created like second screen sort of experiences where they can either, um, broadcast their screen.

From those tablets, you know, to their computer, or they could use it as a secondary monitor. You can do that. It’s not a great experience. It’s going to have kind of a slower refresh thing. Like, you know, these, these things are a lot faster than they used to be, but it’s still not an LCD display. You know what I mean?

Like the refresh is not there, but for, you know, for people who are primarily dealing with notes or if you draw and I don’t draw, but if you draw. Um, people seem to like them, the pens are like, you know, they, they use like Wacam technology and so they have multiple pressure points and you can, you know, use different.

Like if you buy different nibs, it can give you a different feel or experience in like they’re pressure [00:20:00] sensitive. And the software has different types of brush styles and stuff. So you can, you can do pretty advanced stuff. Um, like I would say that if you’re looking for like a, an all around device, an iPad is still going to be better.

Right. But if you’re somebody who takes a lot of notes, likes that experience. Annotates a lot, um, is looking for another toy to kind of like geek out with they’re definitely worth a look. And they’re also, there’s been some movement in E ink in color Inga readers, um, which is getting exciting. And so, um, I think we’re gonna be getting some of those into purview, uh, soon.

So I’ll have more updates on that. Cause that actually is kind of interesting thing. Like, especially for people who might, people who want to read manga, people who want to do other stuff,

Brett:work as readers as

Christina:Oh 100%, 100%.

Brett:in which like I w w in what ecosystem,

Christina:Um, so, so, so the books, you could do it with anything, like, it [00:21:00] literally has an easy way for you to install Google play so you could install and it has Bluetooth and stuff. Built-in so like I have audible and I have Kendall on it, but I could also have stuff in it from, you know, kobu or, um, I don’t think Barnes noble has, I don’t know if they have a reader anymore, but any of those, um, if you’re buying stuff from I books, I don’t know.

There’s probably a way to remove the DRM. Yeah, I get it. It’s called books. I don’t know. I’ve never, I haven’t bought anything from it in a decade. I buy everything from Kendall. Um,

Brett:up on, on the iBookstore a long time ago.

Christina:same, same.

Brett:still have books for sale there. If anyone’s looking.

Christina:Right by them, right? Yeah, no, I, uh, yeah, it’s not, it’s not what I use. I use, I use Kendall Kendall, one that, um, you, if you want to use that on the remarkable, you would need to strip the DRM and then import them in. But on the books, it’s like a completely seamless native process. They even have like an app store that comes installed on it.

That has an older version of the Kindle app that you can install. But yeah. Like, [00:22:00] it’s very easy to install Google play services and install the latest version of the Kendall app and it’ll work just like any other Kendall you’ve ever had. Um, which is, which is great.

Brett:can I tell you where the iBookstore failed me?

Christina:Yes,

Brett:So the iBookstore when you, when you’re an iBox author, it lets you embed HTML. Uh, interactive HTML. So I got excited about this idea. I, with my ex-wife wrote a children’s book and my very talented brother illustrated it. Uh, and the goal like the illustrations were all done in pieces on paper, but in pieces so that I can make a parallax, uh, display of each illustration.

So as you tilted the iPad, It would like it moved as if it were three dimensional and it was really cool in prototype. But when I got into actually [00:23:00] building it and I books author, the way that they handle embedded HTML made it a horrible experience. And I’m still sitting on a pile of. Great illustrations and not too bad of a story.

Uh, I, if a publisher ever approached me, I would just flatten them and, and we would make a print book out of it, but I’m not going to go shop it around because I felt like my, my dream of the kind of interactive children’s book kind of died there.

Christina:That’s a shame. Yeah, I’ve heard a lot. And I think they actually have retired the ebook or I books, author. Um, app and I think now they’re like just use pages,

Brett:Right.

Christina:which, you know

Brett:Yeah. Well, their stuff for like educational texts, they did, they, they put all their eggs into the, uh, educational textbook. Kind of idea like that was where all of their innovative innovation went. [00:24:00] I, I don’t know that it ever caught on

Christina:Uh, I don’t think that it did. Um, I think that. I don’t know. I feel like, yeah, I feel like they put all their eggs in that basket. It I’m sure that the, um, was it the DOJ? I can’t remember what agency it was, but they had to settle the, the price fixing lawsuit. Do you remember that?

Brett:No.

Christina:Yeah. So Apple was accused of price fixing basically, um, They wanted to have the prices be, uh, like a minimum price, which was a higher basically, I guess then maybe what, like Amazon or some other places were selling.

And they were accused of, I guess, working in concert with the publishers to raise the price on eBooks and they were found guilty of this. They had to settle or maybe, I don’t think they were found guilty. I don’t remember what it was. Anyway. They settled. They ended up having to, you know, pay out. A couple hundred million dollars in the settlement.

I remember this cause I wound up getting like $80 or something or a hundred dollars or something in [00:25:00] an ebook credits from Amazon. Um, and, uh, and it wasn’t even like I bought a lot of I book stuff. I think what happened was that Amazon and other people had argued that because of what Apple was doing, they had to sell. Things at higher rates because there’ve been some sort of collusion. I don’t remember all the details. It’s been a decade, but they, they got in trouble, um, uh, for, for price fixing. Um, and so I think that when that happened, I at least, uh, Yeah. Yeah. This was, uh, a price fixing thing. Um, the United States versus Apple was a U S antitrust case in which the court held that Apple Inc conspired to raise the price of eBooks in violation of the Sherman act.

The suit filed in April of 2012, alleged that Apple Inc, and five book publishing companies conspired to raise and fix the prices for eBooks in violation of section one of the Sherman antitrust. In fact, the book publishers are hatchet, a Harper, Collins, publishers, [00:26:00] Macmillan, penguin, and Simon and Schuster, uh, ironically pink when, um, uh, uh, and Simon and Schuster now the same company, uh, along with random house.

So it’s big four, but, uh, uh, only Apple proceeded to trial while the publisher defendant settled their claims. So Apple went to trial, the publisher settled, and then they were, um, uh, found guilty and. Um, yeah, the, uh, the district court ruled that Apple was guilty of conspiring to raise retail prices of eBooks and scheduled a trial in 2014 to determine damages and then Apple settled, um, the, that the case out of court, uh, while they were still appealing.

And they basically, you know, had to, had to pay $450 million. So I think when that happened and that, that, you know, it was brought in 2012, which was only a couple of years into. The program. I don’t know my distinct sense and I could be wrong. Was that Apple kind of stopped caring about eBooks in any way whatsoever after they had to pay [00:27:00] that amount of money for that,

Brett:I don’t, I feel like that’s not enough money to really, if Apple was driven to own a market, that amount of money would not deter them. I feel like there was

Christina:Well, yeah,

Brett:lack of enthusiasm that kind

Christina:Well, I think it was probably both, right. Like I think that it’s probably lack of enthusiasm. They weren’t overtaking Kendall and there wasn’t a way for them to, I think that I, and I think that the, the course argument was that the way, like the government’s argument was that they were trying to, um, own the market by.

Working in collusion with the big publishers to raise prices. And that was what they were trying to do. Cause they were basically like, okay, we don’t want to get into this, this game with Amazon where Amazon sells things at lower prices than us and we can’t win. So we’re going to work across the board and convince publishers to sell everything at a certain price.

And that will, um, uh, [00:28:00] force us to be a more even playing ground. And then we can use our ecosystem and our other things to try to. You know, get a bigger slice of the market. I think that’s what that, that’s what the government’s argument was. Um, you’re right. $450 million. I don’t think would be enough to deter them.

But I think at that point, like Amazon’s lead probably only widened and like they would have had to. Do the same thing Amazon, which was doing, which was like selling stuff below cost as lost leaders. Although ironically, this is how it always happens. Amazon now has minimum prices set by publishers and, you know, their prices have generally gone up, um, than, than what they were a decade ago, which I mean, I’m not opposed to let you know writers get paid, but, um, I think it was probably a combination of both them not already winning and then, okay, well, we tried and we got caught up in this multi year, like, [00:29:00] you know, antitrust case.

So

Brett:All right. I, yeah, I got lost.

Christina:that’s fine. That’s

Brett:that. I did that thing where

Christina:did that thing where like I was talking and you just totally drunk, zoned out.

Brett:I started thinking about the next thing.

Christina:Yeah, let’s talk about the next thing.

Brett:Oh, do we have to though? Okay. So yeah, we, we do

Christina:no, no, no. Let’s talk about, let’s talk about like your nerdy stuff and then, then we’ll, then we’ll get to Britney noble.

Brittany will be kind of a dessert.

Brett:Oh man.

Christina:I mean, we can talk about it. I don’t whatever order you want to go in. I don’t care.

Brett:I’m setting a 10 minute timer.

Christina:Okay. Perfect.

Brett:how long we have to talk about Brittany Spears. All right. Starting now.

Christina:Okay. Did you watch framing Brittany?

Brett:I watched the first, like, I, I think I got almost half an hour into it before. I, I didn’t want to watch it anymore. Uh, it turned out, like [00:30:00] I mentioned to L last night that, uh, I was supposed to watch this for the sake of this show and, and, uh, I, I did, I, wasn’t going to push the point because I, I, I don’t care about Brittany.

Um, But, and, and she was, she was like, now we’re going to watch, you know, uh, the office and Frazier are our fallback shows. And then this morning she’s like, well, I got some time you should watch a little bit of this, this thing. So you’re ready for your show. So we did just this morning, sit down and watch it.

And she said, she said, I’m sorry, we didn’t watch this last night. It’s actually interesting.

Christina:Right. I’m glad that she said that. Thank you L.

Brett:It’s it’s moderately interesting. Tell me, give me the highlight.

Christina:Okay. So this is, um, a production that the New York times, um, is doing. They did a documentary on Hulu. That is basically it’s called framing [00:31:00] Britney Spears. And by framing, they really mean how she’s been framed in the media, like her positioning, not like framing for a crime. And it’s kind of a look at her.

Immediate image over the course of her career, which is now over two decades and really over the last, um, nearly 15 years where she’s been under this conservatorship, which I think we’ve talked about on this show before, uh, in 2008 court’s rule, basically that she is, you know, needs to be under some sort of conservatorship.

And so her father has been in charge of her finances and, um, like her medical care and other things. And this obviously.

Brett:that

Christina:Because she’d had like a series of very high profile, like public breakdowns. Like if people remember she shaved her head, she attacked the paparazzi. Uh, there was an incident where she barricaded herself in her house with her kids.

When our kids were very young and she had to be admitted into a hospital, [00:32:00] she was on a couple of 51 50 stays. Um, her. In addition to that she was doing things that were I, and I’ve got a link to it in that, that I put down there, um, a, a rolling stone article that came out in, um, uh, February of, um, February 21st, 2008.

So this is now. 14 years ago called the tragedy of Brittany Spears, um, from, uh, Vanessa , who is a fantastic writer. And it’s, it’s the, it’s actually really interesting to read. And I think it’s interesting to read that while you watch the documentary, because it puts into context, in my opinion, why the conservatorship happened?

Like she was it’s it’s unfortunate when we look back on it now, because all of us, and I certainly was one of these people, um, treated it as like. If not just an outright joke as like a thing to gawk at, and to just kind of like, we were all kind of, our mouths were gaping, what was happening. Like she was [00:33:00] dating members of the paparazzi.

She was acting 100% erratically, like. Mentally unwell. And in like in, in hindsight, like just really just unhinged behavior and, um, you know, it was around the time that Anna Nicole Smith died and, and there’d been kind of a lot of, you know, this was like the height of the paparazzi kind of culture and celebrity culture thing.

Um, And I, I think that there was this fear and I don’t think it was unfounded, uh, from her family that she was going to die. Like, I really think that they thought that she was, she was on her way to either, you know, um, self-destructing in a way that would, that would lead with, with her death. Um, and so she was put under this conservatorship, which is a really.

Rare thing to happen. It usually happens with older people or other stuff, but she was put under this conservatorship and, um, Where her father had been absent from her life for up until that point, really, he had been very [00:34:00] active, you know, kind of took control of things. And, um, within a couple of years, you know, she was able to perform again.

She was, you know, putting out albums. She did her successful biggest residency and things seem to be on the up and up. And then a couple of years ago when she was going to be announcing her second Vegas residency, Things seem to kind of go off the rails. She seemed to meet at least to meet and not be quite with it anymore.

Um, they ended up canceling the residency by her saying that her father was sick and that she was gonna be focusing on that. Then it turned out that she’d been in treatment at some facility in Los Angeles, um, that, that she shared like later on. And then it gets, in my opinion, this is where it gets, which is to me all, all signs and like rumors were that maybe she was no longer being med compliant or whatever the case may be.

And then it gets to where I feel a little bit uncomfortable, which is that she had fans who had like a [00:35:00] podcast dedicated to her Instagram, who someone left them a voicemail message claiming to have worked as a paralegal for, um, her, uh, You know, uh, the, the lawyers who represented her surface or ship or whatever, um, and basically said that she was desperate to get out of the conservatorship, that she was not a control of anything in her life that she didn’t want it that way.

And it, you know, basically alleging that she’s all been a prisoner, um, you know, in and has no control over anything. Um, she’s now brought to the court like her, her father was temporarily removed as conservator. And somebody else was kind of put in his place. It’s like a temporary thing. Cause he’d had some health problems.

There was also an altercation that he had with one of her sons. And I think that the, her ex-husband who we all made fun of K fed, but real talk. I think he’s actually proven himself to be a pretty good father. And he’s been the one consistent parental force in those kids’ lives. Uh, I think filed a restraining order against the dad or some shit [00:36:00] anyway.

Uh, the, the, the long, the short of it is, is that she has been petitioning the court to remove him as conservator and to put someone else in charge, um, of her finances and other things. And in, in, um, November the court ruled that they were not going to make a decision at that time about his role as conservator, but they did appoint this bank to also be responsible for, um, her, her wealth, which at this point is now like over $60 million.

Um, But, but she has all these fans now who are, have started this hashtag free Brittany movement, where they actively like, want her out from under the conservatorship. And they actively like are, you know, saying that like, you know, she should be free and this and that, and this is where I’m conflicted.

This is where I would, this is kind of why I wanted to talk to you about it. I have no problem. Saying and even thinking like her father is probably not the right person to be in charge of things. I think that he’s [00:37:00] probably should not be the conservator, especially if that’s what she’s saying. Well, I have a problem with though, is there seems to be this, like, I think kind of horrible message that her fans are positioning, which is that Brittany’s completely okay.

And is completely aware of everything that’s happening. And is this like prisoner. And I, I don’t think that’s true. I think that Brittany is really sick and something happened to her in her early twenties, which is not uncommon for people that have mental health breaks and, and no, no like, like people like are diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar and, and other things like it’s a very common thing.

I think something like that happened. I’m not a doctor. I’m not going to try and make any sort of diagnosis. It’s none of my business, but reading that Vanessa . Article and rethinking back about what happened in that times. Those are not behaviors of somebody who is okay. And it, it went beyond just drug use, right?

Like some of the [00:38:00] behaviors were just like completely out of control. And maybe you could, you could, you know, shock some of it up to the same thing. But some of it was seriously looking like, you know, somebody who something was happening to them. And I don’t know, I’m, I’m not super okay with the idea that it’s like, We think she’s sitting, that’s hidden messages in her Instagram, which okay.

That’s, that’s insane. And, and, and, and we don’t like her father. And so we think that she should have control over everything when it’s like, I don’t know if Brittany’s okay. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about whether Brittany is okay or not. I don’t think as a culture, like, what does it say when our pop princess might be like mentally unwell?

Like, what does that mean? Right. Like.

Brett:be fair. Um, from CEO’s to pop stars, like people in, uh, famous people in general, I have, if not [00:39:00] more, they have an equal amount of, of mental illness. And I, I don’t feel like that’s. In any way, disqualifying on its own, uh, the fact that she endangered children, or it sounds like she may have endanger children.

That’s that’s, that’s a court matter for sure. Um, like I don’t think her mental health is okay. People are going to diagnose, we tried to diagnose Taylor Swift once. Like, I don’t know if you remember that it was actually the title of an episode where we have no Goldwater rule. We can say,

Christina:no, absolutely.

Brett:we can say she’s not, well, I think the only part of it having seen what I’ve seen, which isn’t much the only part of it that really bugs me is that this is, uh, our time’s up.

This I’ll give you another minute. Um,

this is, uh, this is a topic that people. Uh, really feel the [00:40:00] need to rally and protest and walk around on the street. Carrying signs. I feel like there are just more important things in the world.

Christina:Yeah, no, I think there are more important things to the world. I think the reason people say this though, is because she’s the symbol, right? Like she’s Brittany Spears,

Brett:They did, there were a couple of quotes, the people talking about what she had meant to them. Uh, that she’s the one that made it okay to, to grow up gay. She made it okay to come from the situations they came from. And I get that it’s important. Like that kind of representation in the media. It can be very meaningful to people and very valuable.

Uh, and so I, I can understand. Being willing to walk around the street with a big sign for that. I’m a person who, uh, doesn’t even show up for protest for things I do care about. So it’s not easy for me to fathom, petitioning for a pop star as wellbeing.

Christina:Yeah, no, look, [00:41:00] my, my very unpopular opinion is I think the free Brittany people are nuts. And I think that they’re actively harmful that said, I do think that the issues of the conservatorship and like whether her father should be in control of her money and whether there should be an outsider involved, I think are valid.

And like,

Brett:be

Christina:I mean, I think that there should be like, she, she wanted the court appointed person who was her, who was her temporary conservator she’d wanted that to be permanent. I think that would be fair. Right. Um, like I do feel like there is something to be said, like, cause we don’t know what the deals are.

And like they interviewed somebody who was briefly tried to be her lawyer who tried to petition the court for something. And the court, the judge told him, I’ve seen some like mental health analysis that you’re not allowed to see. And that leads me to believe that there was something so severe that she is not capable of making the decision to hire counsel.

She is not capable of doing that. The counter-argument that people have. And, and I think this is a valid one to consider is okay. If she’s not capable of making those [00:42:00] decisions, then why can she, you know, tour and do these shows? I, that’s not an invalid thing to say, and maybe she should never tour again.

Maybe she should never perform again. That said, like, I also don’t think, you know, people who’ve, who’ve seen her in interviews and I’ve seen her perform and I’ve seen her do other things. I’m just going to be real. She hasn’t seen completely with it. Like she hasn’t seemed completely connected to. You know, like something’s still seemed off.

I’m trying to be really careful here. I don’t want to like be offensive and I don’t want to, I don’t want somebody to discover