Rank Ideas

Today we're ranking Ambition. But for full disclosure - we are on a mission to rank every single human idea in the correct order from best to worst, so we may be a little biased when it comes to the topic. Fortunately for you, the self-awareness that led to the above disclosure more than offsets any risk of us getting it wrong. "Let's Rank!"

I think I may have already referenced the Tower of Power song, 'What is Hip?', in an earlier episode, but if it's not too 'cringe' to repeat myself, I will once again say:

I'm starting to think that Nick is picking these topics to send me a message. What's next? 'Being really good at board games'?! Well guess what buddy - it's gonna rank highly! Very highly indeed.  Higher than your precious punctuality? We must wait and see!

As a kid I had a varnished timber bed and it was impossible to lie there at night and not find all sorts of faces and other patterns in the knots of the wood. Similarly, it seems to be unavoidable to some degree to do the same at the conceptual level and ascribe human traits to all sorts of extremely non-human inanimate features of our lives. We even name cyclones. Seems pretty cool. Maybe in time people will develop parasocial relationships with the random white noise sound that we release under the large language model generated podcast entitled 'Rank Ideas'. I hope so! 

Who could more deserving of an elegant description of this episode than you, the person who has come to read one? And yet, there's so seldomly one to find here. Far more likely that you'll find a slathering of semi-conscious, tediously self-referential musings on the noun that forms the week's episode. But, of course, if you'd been here before then you'd know what to expect, and what more would you then deserve?  Maybe it's all perfect after all. Of course it is.

This episode description? Wow, you found it! Well done, I'm honestly surprised. But can you read it? You can? Oh yeah, that's right - you love to read. How else would you enjoy your subscription to Dork Magazine? Haha, I'm just kidding around! You're really normal. Don't worry. You'll never have to worry about being exceptional. You honestly couldn't fit in any better, even if you had a podcast ranking all human ideas so you could talk to your good friend regularly. Your friend who for some reason refuses to live on the same continent as you. What? Shutup.

The premium way to prevent people from storming your fortress, is to surround it with a deep trench that you fill with water. I'm sorry if this is news to you. If you think that this episode is looking at moats as a mere metaphor, then I invite you to raid our podcast HQ. But I have to warn you, you're going to need to bring a big bridge with you. Because there's a moat.

It's incredible to think that after all these years, the Rank Ideas podcast is just four trophies away from our feted EGOT. While we wait, we are lucky to have the greatest award of all - friendship. And this old soccer trophy I have that says 'best podcast co-host' in Nick's handwriting. Are awards generally any good though? Listen up to know definitively!

I wonder if there's been a single year in the history of our species where a person hasn't taken the life of another. It would have to have been a year when there weren't many of us around. I hope we can get another such year soon! 2024 is already out, so it'll have to be 2025. In the meantime, is the idea of murder useful in our quest for good life?  Only time will tell. Time, and this episode of your favourite podcast, Rank Ideas!

la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la feel free to add your own intonation :)

Whimsy. /ˈwɪmzi/   synonyms: arbitrariness, capriciousness, flightiness, whimsey, whimsicality. type of: irresponsibility, irresponsibleness.   Damn. That doesn't sound so good. Good thing the thesaurus doesn't have much of a role in modern society. Especially not in the Rank Ideas HQ, which doesn't even have a bookshelf. Purple monkey dishwasher.

Every episode we release these days is about generalisation. Same must go for every podcast. That's new media for you. Next you'll be telling me that all new media is podcasts. Which, also, is correct.

Excited to report that our species is almost totally connected to each other and we can finally find harmony by hearing everyone's perspective. Ceaselessly. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe!

In writing this episode description I looked up the 7 deadly sins. It turns out there used to be more but they were cut down by combining them and then re-expanded before being picked up by Billy Graham of all people. He still holds the record for largest crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground - something like 160,000 in the 1950s. More than 7% of the entire city at the time. Insane to imagine. Some of the sins we lost include Tristitia (despondency) and Ἀκηδία (dejection), which I think is interesting. None of this really has much to do with this episode, but I thought I should include it just because I want to. You understand.

Time might seem like a funny thing to rank - after all it's an undeniable part of the natural world. But with a bit of digging, it seems clear that our experience of time is really impacted by our cultural framing of it. For the best? You tell us! By meeting us in the past, ideally at a time when we were better at checking our emails.

This week the guys have invented a new game for you to try! Unashamedly, it's called Rank Ideas. Basically, everyone on the planet gets together in pairs and ranks all human ideas on an ever-expanding list in order from best to worst. It's super fun, we just know you'll love it. Thanks for playing! We'll go first.

To 'give up' is a phrasal verb. I learned this a couple of decades ago when I successfully lied my way into a job as an English teacher for adults. I kept it up for six months, always learning one class ahead of my students. It was really fun and I loved it, but then my girlfriend moved abroad and we broke up so I eventually gave up on my whole life at the time. 9/10 use of six months.

Rank Ideas is an important cultural project. "rAnK iDeaS iS aN imPorTanT CulTurAl pROjecT"

War is surely bad. Peace is surely good. So, it naturally follows that Pacifism must be... You'll simply have to listen in to find out. In the meantime, be grateful that Nick and Chris have buried the hatchet for long enough to return for another flawless episode of Rank Ideas!

Money, it's a gas, makes the world go round, must be funny, if I were a rich man, etc. Our ranking is based upon a small sample size. If you are dissatisfied with the result, please send more data to: Christopher Endrey Bsb: 063254 Acc: 10305902   Thanks in advance!

Is respect important to you? I'm not sure if it's important to me. I guess it's about the context. I love to respect the ability of Jeremy Cameron to kick goals from all circumstances but I simultaneously do not respect the things that interfere with my capacity to watch Jeremy Cameron kick goals from all circumstances. Will this come up in the episode? No. Respect ultimately begins with respecting yourself, something you can actively practice by listening to the Rank Ideas™ podcast™ immediately!

I'm sorry I didn't get around to writing a caption for this one, I was too busy lying in the hammock where I play candy crush until the battery dies

The rational brain is the monarch that reigns supreme.  That said, it's the rational brain that's making me write this, so maybe don't trust that too much. If you want the purest possible form of truth on this or any matter, simply listen to the Rank Ideas podcast. And, of course, tell your friends to do the same - the rational brain commands it :)

When I think of 'folly' I think of the two most wonderful guys sitting down recording themselves ranking ideas until they get to the end of all of them. Because such a pursuit is in any way foolish? Heaven's no! I think of them, because it's the idea that they're ranking this week :)

This is the first time in our lives that we've ranked sitting. Will we be swayed by the fact that we're sitting during the conversation? Probably, but it's our only real option. Other than, of course, lying down, standing up or kneeling.

Fornication can get it! (a ranking)

We all worship something. Oh, you don't? What about your insistance that I'm wrong about us all worshipping something? I thought as much. Thank goodness you don't get a right of reply to our episode decriptions. (please forward all replies us at @rankideaspodcast)

I suppose you want to know what this episode's about. Well, it's in the title, privacy. Oh, you need more? Okay, but where does it end? You want my address? My blood type? Hit me up on the socials to ask, I'm not so big on privacy it turns out :)

Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot, like me? You don't? That's a shame, because I was hoping to illustrate the sin of envy. The Pussycat Dolls didn't seem to experience this kind of pushback. Why must they have everything I want!!?? I will meditate upon this question until I am finally happy.

Looking back, this will end up being one of your favourite episodes. It'll give you that feeling of before - which, good or bad, is at least familiar. And at the end of the day, isn't family what it's all about?

For an idea that gets so much play in the public sphere, I don't feel there's a lot of corresponding mapping of what values are. Let alone what they're good for. Thank goodness there are two loveable louts that are on-call to let us know the ultimate utility of most any idea. And they can be accessed at any time from your personal device?  Now that, my friend, is value. I mean, values. 

In many ways, Nick and Chris are your conventional Beauty & The Beast trope but with a modern twist (Beauty & The Beauty). It's good in theory, but in practice this is not a vodcast but a mere podcast. We can only survive by routinely googling "Nick Delatovic no shirt" and hoping that someone is uploading some hot new content, like this episode.

I'm no expert, but Freedom seems to me an idea that gets thrown around a lot more than it gets interrogated. And I guess that's for the best. Far be it from me to tell anyone else how to live. Except via the Rank Ideas List. Where will Freedom end up on it? Listen to find out, or don't, it's all your choice! 

It can be very difficult to separate effects from causes. Especially when it can feel so good to find certainty. We at Rank Ideas HQ up on Moon Mountain are pretty cold on ideology in particular, given it seems to be the ultimate manifestation of explanaining at the expense of exploring. This makes intersectionality is a curious proposal, given it offers both a comfortable handle to circumvent this instinct, but is also a shorthand in itself. How will it rank? Find out, with your incrementally-allotted visit to Moon Mountain™, "It's tomorrow, today!"  P.S. Here is that essay Chris doesn't shut up about: Nexus causality, moral warfare and misattribution arbitrage. | Edge.org

We at the Rank Ideas headquarters know that people love to back an underdog. It just feels so good when the little one chalks up a win over the incumbent titan! That's why - despite being a minnow in the podcasting world (outside of Laos) - we continuously behave as though we host the greatest show available in human history. Which we do. But we really don't want everyone else to act like that's the case. That would become tedious. Enjoy another episode!

Equality is an interesting idea that I will readily advocate for when shortchanged a piece of watermelon, and comfortably abandon when I am the one with the surplus melon. Unless I can trade the extra watermelon for some social credit/higher value melon. I wonder if this melon observation typed in a podcast blurb will earn me a Nobel Prize in Economics. And/or Literature. All things being equal, I guess I already have those. Closing remarks? 'Power of Equality' by the Red Hot Chili Peppers isn't as good as their other songs. How 'Ironic'. Especially given that Flea plays bass on the Alanis album, Jagged Little Pill. What an incredible world. Equality.

It's our first major anniversary! Wow! What better way than to celebrate turning 100 than by letting our live audience select the most sexy topic imaginable to be ranked. That's right - it's boredom! We also snuck in a bonus round where we invited everyone to challenge anything on the list. Some good condenders! Listen to the end to see how they all fared. Thanks for joining us and here's to 100 more :) 

Catch a man a fish, he will eat for a day. Sounds pretty good. Hard to think of a better system. Teach a man to deconstruct gendered proverbs, he will become insufferable for life. In fairness, chances he was already insufferable were probably good. Is this a good caption? I'm self-taught. Enjoy the episode!

Sometimes we voluntarily participate in systems that are designed to exploit us while being falsely presented as valuable. It's a sad, sad reality to navigate sometimes for the truly cucked. Don't forget to sign up to Chris' patreon over at patreon.com/endrey - that's patreon.com/endrey

If these trends continue, we'll never get to the end of knowledge. But maybe we will, let's be honest, how could you know. In the meantime, it's lovely that we have the capacity to explain everything else as magic. It just feels better that way.

"Without the ability to create, we are nothing.  With the ability to create, we are nothing." - Dalai Lama    The Dalai Lama never said that, as far as I know. I just made it up!

All you can eat is my favourite genre. But is it the best genre for me? Probably. Depends on the price. I'm sure there are other arenas of life where the concept of a limit may apply, and I'm confident that the only limitless thing you will experience today is the quality and rigour with which Nick D and Chris E tackle the topic.

I know that you only listen to the Rank Ideas podcast, but is that necessary? What if there were other, better podcasts out there? A fun abstract thought experiment maybe, but are there places where loyalty isn't so reliably rewarded, 100% of the time, by your favourite hosts Nick and Chris? A terrifying question to ask, but if we're loyal to one thing, it's the self-soothing narrative that we're bold.  

Luck is everywhere, just never near me am I right?! But I'm sure that all evens out and today is your lucky day. Is this the episode where a special listener will win a car? Chance would be a fine thing. Will your listening be interrupted with unseasonable hail destroying the pie you left to cool on the window? Chance would be a fine thing, indeed.

In considering this episode description I searched for 'best and worst small talk topics' and learned that 'weather' is amongst the best, and 'religion' amongst the worst. Confusingly, however, 'Jupiter, God of Weather' didn't seem to rate a mention at all. But enough about me. Have you heard any good podcasts lately?

Let's just say, this week's episode is just like when you have to make a hit podcast where you take an idea and rank it in an ever expanding list in order from best to worst. Your humble blurb-writer was never much one for creative thinking, but Nick and Chris will surely find the correct home for 'analogy' on their MasterList! 

You gotta be cruel to be kind. Not sure if that's true, but it's definitely true that you can inadvertently be cruel through being kind. There should be a platitude that says 'all proverbs are true' so that we can screw up our faces and give them the mistrust they deserve. Sorry if that's a cruel way to teach, but you gotta be cruel to be kind sometimes.

Our collective understanding of the past does a tremendous amount of heavy lifting in how we navigate our own time. It is a force that cannot be overstated. "The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding." Ariel Durant said that, but maybe others did too. The history of this quote may be incomplete.

The universal acclaim that the Rank Ideas podcast has achieved might make you assume that Nick and Chris would be instinctively warm to the idea of criticism. True listeners know however, that Nick and Chris are instinctively warm to nothing! Except of course, each other, dense meals, and other types of meals. Criticise that, we dare you.

Like all good wellness coaches, Nick and Chris begin each day with several hours of goal setting, planning, and visualising how each action taken in that day will contribute towards attainment of these goals.  There's truly only one downside to this - having to live in a society full of MORONS who refuse to be as deliberate in their path to becoming what they were always meant to be. Namaste.