Everyone's a Geek About Something

Tom Pellereau:
Where did the word geek come from?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I did look it up, actually.

It was from German.

It was from a word that originally meant like freak, and so it started with a negative connotation and has gradually lost that over time.

Rob Bell:
What words are synonymous with geek?

And it is things like innovative, creative, dedicated, focused.

Yeah, they're not negative words, are they?

Tommy, some might say you are one of the most celebrated geeks of modern times.

Discuss.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, we've got a VW camper van.

So amongst you lot, I'm quite like into my camper van, but then you go on these like camper van forums, and there are people who just take it to a whole new level.

And that's certainly what I've learned in life, is there's always someone who is more geeky than you about something, which is just brilliant.

Rob Bell:
Hello, and welcome to Sketchplanations, The Podcast with me, Rob Bell, that lad there, Jono Hey, and the one and only Tom Pellereau.

Each episode we pick one of Jono's sketches from sketchplanations.com and dissect that topic into a billion pieces.

Well, a dozen at least.

This time we've selected the sketch entitled, Everyone's a Geek About Something, which in my view is a gorgeous observation of human character and behaviour.

Before we start geeking out on geekiness though, a reminder that you should be able to see this sketch up on your podcast players now, and you can find the link to see it in more detail at sketchplanations.com in the episode description down below.

And we'd also love to hear from you, our Sketchplanation listeners, with your thoughts and theories behind everyone being a geek about something.

Do you agree?

Are you a geek about something?

And if so, what?

How do you feel about that?

Do you celebrate it?

Or do you keep it quiet?

You can send your emails to hello at sketchplanations.com.

Thank you, Tommy.

Or you can head to the podcast website, sketchplanations.com/podcast and leave us a voice note on there.

And after the admin, let's podcast.

Jono, The Sketch.

Everyone's a geek about something.

What does that mean to you?

Why did you want to pop it out there as a sketch for people to enjoy and maybe for people to think about?

Jono Hey:
Full disclosure, I think I saw this somewhere, maybe on like a T-shirt or something.

Rob Bell:
Mate, your references are getting as bad as mine.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I think I saw this somewhere, maybe.

Why did I want to do this?

I wanted to do this because I love it when people are passionate about something and people are passionate about such different things.

And at first glance, it's sort of like my reaction is, oh, how are you so into that?

And then what I typically find, I have found, is if you start speaking with them about it, listening to them and getting into it yourself, you're like, wow, that is fascinating.

And what I like is there's this classic sort of like, what is a geek?

And that's kind of, you know, the maths and science nerd at school.

But actually, you know, you can just be passionate about this.

And somebody else is passionate about something totally different.

It might be like trainers or Pokemon cards or pop music lyrics, dance moves, whatever.

And somebody knows everything about it.

And it's what I love about it is, first of all, it makes people happy.

And secondly, is if you take the time to listen to somebody and ask somebody about that, it will pull you into their world.

And you'll find the passion and the joy in it too, even if it could be an area you really didn't expect at all.

So that's what I love about it.

And that's why I did this simple sketch.

Rob Bell:
Should we say the guy on the left is a Twitcher?

We call them Birdwatching.

The second guy, is he playing computer games there, Jono?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, playing computer games.

And I was trying to capture the range of things where it's completely fine to be a geek about, but you wouldn't necessarily consider it being a geek.

I had a ballerina and somebody reading and somebody out hiking, because you can know all of the hikes and all of the mountains and all the different trailheads and everything.

Rob Bell:
Now then, Tommy, some might say you are one of the most celebrated geeks of modern times.

Discuss.

Tom Pellereau:
Wow, that's very, very kind.

I would take that as a huge honor.

Rob Bell:
I hope so.

It was meant with love.

Tom Pellereau:
After The Apprentice, Sarah and I got married quite soon, and it was out in the papers and there was a headline, or not exactly a front page headline, but there was a thing that said, Big Fat Geek Wedding.

I was like, that is cool.

I think I've got it on my wall at work actually.

I, like you two, love discovering the geekiness within people.

In a social setting, in work settings, I love discovering what it is that they are massively geeky about, especially kids.

So friends of ours, we were in Paris for the Olympics, and he loves Warhammer, and he persuaded his parents that they had to go to the Warhammer in Paris while we were at the Olympics.

Rob Bell:
Where is Warhammer?

Is it like a shop of figurines?

Tom Pellereau:
Exactly that.

So this 12-year-old loves Warhammer.

Warhammer 5000, I think he's into.

Their figures are about half an inch, a few centimeters tall.

He could talk for hours about them and the different worlds and the different battles and the characters.

As Jono said, as soon as you start talking to someone like that, they instantly become more passionate about it and more animated, and you too get sucked into their world of wonder, whatever that might be.

Rob Bell:
I get to do a lot of that for a job, right?

I get to go and speak to people and ask them about the things that they're known for, the things that they know so much about.

And anyone who can bring a subject to life, whether or not it's relevant to me, I can go away from that conversation feeling so joyous, as you guys have both mentioned there, because of the passion, just the enjoyment of other people's enjoyment.

Tom Pellereau:
No matter what it might be, like, there's a brilliant lady who works for me and she absolutely loves serial killers.

Her geekiness passion is listening to serial killer podcasts and watching films, and she recently went to a serial killer convention, I think.

Jono Hey:
Oh my gosh, dangerous.

Tom Pellereau:
She is incredibly passionate about it and knowledgeable about it, and for her, it's, you know, it's like Warhammer is for my 13-year-old friend, to this guy I know, William, or as super zings were for my son, Jack, a few years ago.

Rob Bell:
So one thing I want to ask is, you know, what do we mean by geek then?

And because in the past, it has had quite insulting connotations, you might say.

I get the feeling that that has changed slightly in in more recent years.

What do we think?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I think I think exactly that.

Like it used definitely used to be geek and nerd, like derogatory terms.

And to be honest, and I have a bit of a problem with like nerd or geek stereotypes in films and media generally.

Rob Bell:
Like what they did with Tom on The Apprentice.

And I mean that, you know, unapologetically supportive, Tommy, of how you are.

Tom Pellereau:
I find it a bit like ironic because I'm not nearly as good as maths and physics, as many people I know.

But I got the geekiness.

Bit of an embarrassment, really.

Jono Hey:
Tom, can you make sure that you're wearing your glasses for this one?

Tom Pellereau:
I'm sorry, I'm not even wearing my glasses.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
But that is one troupe, isn't it?

Wearing glasses.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Or like, being spotty, or like not being able to not being physically coordinated, right?

All of these things is is like, how do we channel that this person is going to be clever?

They've got to be rubbish or all this other stuff.

I really don't like it.

But anyway, I think that has changed.

Generally speaking, like with with geek, right?

You can it can be it can be cool to like nerd out on stuff.

Yes, these these days and I was you know, I was trying to reflect as we as you mentioned, we were going to talk about this tonight, like what has changed for that to happen?

Yes, definitely think it has.

It's not always like was it the jocks and the nerds in like, yeah, like Greece, Greece, right?

Yeah, and there's like nothing to redeem.

The jocks are cool.

Definitely who you'd want to be, it seems, but I don't think that's the case anymore.

And there's been quite a few characters who've, who've like broken that geek barrier.

Rob Bell:
Cross the threshold.

Tom Pellereau:
Well, in many respects, like the geeks have kind of taken over the world.

Like some of the richest people in the world now are kind of some of the historically kind of geekiness.

You think of your Bill Gates and your, your musks and your other kind of massively intelligent geeky kind of characters who've, who've really kind of taken over.

You know, Zuckerberg probably is enormous.

I don't know what he was called at school, but might well have been that.

And they've really kind of changed the world.

So I think maybe the stereotype has changed through that.

Maybe it's just changed because society has improved and got better and hopefully there's a lot less bullying in the world.

And I, you know, I really feel for, I'm sure there are still kids at school who don't enjoy the geeky term.

I personally feel very fortunate to be in that group.

Rob Bell:
Do you talk about, you know, geeks ruling the world?

There's a book by Alexandra Robbins called The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, right.

Rob Bell:
I've not read the book, but I know that it talks very much about what we're talking about here.

It goes on to suggest that in your teenage years, we're kind of at the height of our creativity and imagination and so we're struggling to define ourselves.

It talks about that in and out, kind of if you're in with the cool gang or out of the cool gang.

But in her book, Alexandra Robbins argues that those interests and those passions that we have as kids that make us stand out and perhaps outside the cool gang are actually the same qualities that make people interesting and perhaps successful, when they go on into the adult lives.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, for sure.

I find it amazing how some people could be so incredibly focused and passionate on one thing.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

And I have huge respect for that, that they can just become, there's a lad on this street and he is so into certain types of Apple coding.

And that is his absolute thing.

And when you ever see him on the street, he wants to talk to you about the latest thing.

And he's 15 years old and he's already got the Apple coding license kind of thing.

So he can hack into my phone like you wouldn't believe.

But that tunnel vision and that focus is incredible.

And I have utmost respect for anyone who can do that as well.

Rob Bell:
Those words that you talk about, you know, that the focus and dedication to a topic, you know, I was thinking about this, what words are synonymous with geek?

And it is things like innovative, creative, dedicated, focused, like a real individual.

You know, they're not negative words, are they?

Those in themselves.

Jono Hey:
Those are not, like passionate and that, but I also, I came across like obsessed.

Obsessed, so you could be obsessed with that and then...

Rob Bell:
Which that crosses the line, does it?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, and you're a geek because you're obsessed at the expense of other things, which might be important to live a normal life.

Rob Bell:
E.g.

social skills, I was saying.

Jono Hey:
Potentially, yeah, like I'm not gonna, yeah, I'm not gonna go to the party because I'm gonna do this other thing that I'm really passionate about.

Maybe that gets onto the obsessed, or maybe that's just really cool and following your passions and, you know, it should be a badge of pride for you for doing that.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
I had a hypothesis.

Rob Bell:
Yes, please, go on.

Jono Hey:
And I don't know, it's a hypothesis.

Well, I was wondering...

Rob Bell:
No, no, this is Jono's definite thought.

That's the set I was gonna call this segment.

Jono Hey:
This fits proven.

If you're grown up and 30 years ago, let's say, and all you know is your local, your school environment, the people who live near you, if you're really into one thing, bikes or Pokemon cards or whatever, model railways, you might not know many people who are also into that.

Whereas I sort of feel like with the web, it's sort of easier to find your tribe of like-minded people and also have your interests kind of validated.

Like if you're really into model trains, I think big model trains because it's kind of a classic geeky kind of thing, right?

Rob Bell:
It is.

Jono Hey:
But if you type model trains into YouTube, you will find the people who are way more geeky than you.

And all of a sudden you feel, you don't feel geeky at all, probably.

You feel just like I'm with my peers all of a sudden, this is normal.

And so I was wondering if, you know, whereas you might have been a bit almost repressed, like you're the only one who likes this and it's not cool to do this.

Whereas now it's like, oh, look, loads of people like this.

So I'm going to be proud about it, which is good.

Rob Bell:
A lot of the topics we talk about on here, when we talk about the impact of social media, I'd say more often than not, we're coming at it from a kind of like, yeah, and social media has changed that.

In this sense, I feel that online communities and social media has had a massively positive impact on it.

And for exactly the reasons you talk about that, that feeling of inclusion, that feeling of finding your tribe, feeling of belonging.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, and be able to bounce ideas off that and kind of then become more and more.

Like, we've got a VW camper van.

So amongst you lot, I'm quite like into my camper van, but then you go on these like camper van forums, and there are people who just take it to a whole new level.

And that's certainly what I've learned in life is there's kind of always someone who is more geeky than you about something, which is just brilliant, right?

Rob Bell:
Yes, yes.

And so, you know, we're not the first ones to redefine this word, but you know, you could easily just substitute in passionate for geeky in that sentence that you just said.

Tom Pellereau:
And Jono said obsession, and then obsession starts getting that slightly dangerous line.

It's like the cool circle, really cool, really, really cool, really cool, looking like an idiot.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jono Hey:
That's that fashion, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're super, super cool.

And then you switch on to the other side.

Tom Pellereau:
It's an Eddie Izzard sketch there, I feel.

Jono Hey:
Okay.

Rob Bell:
Jono, let's come back to your scenario.

30 years ago, as a kid, you only really know your schoolmates and the people in your neighborhood.

They're the only people you really have access to and interact with.

There are some subjects, topics, that if you were geeky about, passionate about, you would still possibly be considered in.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Rather than being out.

I mean, the one I can talk about for that would be football.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
If you were an absolute football geek and you knew all the players and you knew all the scores every weekend, for some reason, again, in my experience, that has been considered like in, that's cool.

The same for a series of books or something, not the same effect.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

It's like there are more socially acceptable interests you can have.

Like I said, at the top, if you're really into music, lyrics or dance, music is a classic one, right?

Where you're like, generally speaking, that's a great thing if you're really into music, I think.

Food, another one.

People say, I'm a real foodie.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
But that's culture, right?

It sort of changes.

Like when we were kids, it was really cool to be really into garbage power kids or top trumps or something.

And these things change over time.

As you say, it does seem that football has been one that's always been pretty cool to be really into.

And music.

But I think also there's maybe a bit of a difference between people who love music and really like listening to it and then people who are just unbelievably knowledgeable about music.

Like especially some of the DJs that you listen to.

Like some of the even, you know, you listen to a Radio 1 DJ and just some of them, their knowledge is so incredible.

Like they know the name of every song that might come up and you're like, oh my gosh, you're not just like good at being a DJ.

You clearly have loved music since you could first listen to it and you bought all the first albums and you'd listen to the stuff and that sort of thing.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I definitely, I was thinking through ones where there's no stigma attached to being really into it and like you, football was one.

We have some good friends who are still experts at 90s football league players and clubs.

But something like, you know, if you were into extreme skiing and you knew all the people who did the extreme skiing videos or surfing or something like that, where it's kind of an aspirational lifestyle.

Rob Bell:
This is interesting.

Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Then, then that's just really, that's just being cool.

Tom Pellereau:
Isn't it?

Rob Bell:
That's cool.

That's funny.

Do you, would you say that we'd all instinctively know the topics that were cool, not cool from this perspective?

Jono Hey:
I had that.

I was like, well, what's Rob a geek about?

Rob Bell:
Well, yeah, I was going to ask what we're all geeks about.

Yeah.

Jono Hey:
And I was like, well, I think I would put woodwork in there.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Planing.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Making chopping boards.

Jono Hey:
That's one where it's had a resurgence of coolness.

Tom Pellereau:
You were seriously into planing wood at one stage.

You made a lot of very, very impressive chopping boards that took you like six hours to make, and you loved them.

Rob Bell:
Six hours, six days.

Tom Pellereau:
Six days.

Exactly.

Jono Hey:
It might cost so much.

Rob Bell:
I listed out the things that I think I'm a bit geeky about.

Tom Pellereau:
Yes, please.

Rob Bell:
And Back to the Future was one.

Tom Pellereau:
Yes.

Rob Bell:
Bridges and then the rest is basically, the rest is basically a consequence of my job.

Bridges, lighthouses, lost railway lines, engineering history and World War II history.

Tom Pellereau:
So, this is a really interesting question about work and geekiness, right?

Because I've listed out some of mine as well, and quite a lot of mine are very much to do with what I work, what I do.

And I wonder, you and I, all the three of us, are very, very lucky in the fact that we really do do something we're incredibly interested in.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, but I'd say my interest has come because of the work, not necessarily I went to find the work because of the interest.

Is that the same for you?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, I suppose.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, okay.

Tom Pellereau:
I think, I have, sort of a slight aside, one of the joys of my job is meeting people who are incredibly geeky, amazing, experienced at what they do.

Like this chemist, Chris Smith, who I work with quite a lot, regulatory expert, Mercer, you know, the red light guy who you met at the launch, Dr.

Abst.

Like, I am so fortunate, I suppose, like you, to meet these just people who are just so knowledgeable at that and who just blow my mind in their ability and their understanding of it that I could never get anywhere near in a day in a lifetime.

Rob Bell:
Jono, what would you, because can we have a go?

Can I have a go?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Tommy, do you want to pitch in as well?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
I think, well, it's obviously like design and user interface, I'd say are right up there.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
I'd say Southampton Football Club.

Tom Pellereau:
Metaphor.

Rob Bell:
No, of course.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Framing.

Rob Bell:
Metaphor.

Jono Hey:
I'd say you're, I don't know.

Tom Pellereau:
Jono, there's not much.

It's not.

Rob Bell:
Sketching.

Photography.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
The art and sketching.

Are you geeky about that?

I don't know.

Yes, I think you probably are.

Yes.

I think you probably enjoy delving into different softwares that you could be using and the different functions within that software to make sure that you're optimizing everything that you publish.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
I'm not convinced Jono likes the term, though.

Do you?

Did you get about this at school?

Like, was it a good thing for you?

Because you were actually really, really intelligent.

Like, I wasn't actually called a geek at school because I'm not nearly intelligent enough.

But you are like really, really good at maths and stuff.

Was it?

Rob Bell:
Yeah, but he's good at football as well.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Well, I do think, let's hear from the horse, his mouth.

Jono Hey:
No, it's cool.

I also thought there was like an interesting balance to be struck to try and actually like things like doing sport at the same time as trying to, I don't know, learn everything there is to know about maths and science that you need to.

Rob Bell:
Running down the wing with the encyclopaedia.

Jono Hey:
It sort of balances it and gets rid of the like, oh, he's just about that.

And he's just about the maths or science geek or something.

Like if you've got a bit of sports and social activities in you as well.

But I was wondering when I thought about what am I really geek about?

Because it's interesting to say design and I do like design, but I spent a lot of time designing and spending a user interface, but it's not, I wouldn't say that I'm a geek about it.

It's a bit like enforced geek because it's your job.

You know what I mean?

Rob Bell:
Yes.

Okay.

So the knowledge and the experience is there.

And I'm not saying that you're dispassionate about your work or have been dispassionate about your work in that area, but there are things you are more passionate about.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Yeah, that's probably it.

I mean, I must be a bit of a geek about doing all these sketches.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
But then what does that come into?

And I eventually put like self-improvement, learning and bettering yourself is maybe just what I'm always seeking.

And if you were to ask me, I could go into a...

You are asking me and I could go into a conversation for a long time about all this stuff.

Rob Bell:
You're right.

And Tommy, you could probably say the same about that, that self-improvement side of things.

Jono Hey:
I love that.

Perhaps an unexpected one was copywriting.

That's one where I get quite into.

And when you said about design and user interface, I paid a lot of attention to the words that are on products and web pages and apps and stuff like that, and what's good and what's not, and how you would edit it to make it better.

Not so much marketing copywriting, but I was like, is that true?

And then I was like, actually, I've got three or four sketches just about copywriting things.

And I made a presentation to teach people about writing for the web.

So I think I'm a geek about that.

Tom, I thought when I was like, what is Tom a geek about?

I always thought that Tom was a geek about finding ways to make life easier.

Because you're always like problem solving and figuring out and amazing at getting stuff made and whatever, but you're actually always on the lookout for like, here's a cleverer way to do this.

So now I don't have to carry these things from here to here.

Or now I do this and it's already done for me when they press this.

And I was like, what is that?

And Tom's like always looking to make his life easier.

Rob Bell:
This is true.

I could probably chalk up a number of examples of that as well, Tommy.

That go from like this one, I'm thinking when you and Jono had a big pool, you know, like those standing pools that you build in your back garden, you have one of those at uni, somehow you got your hands on it.

And one way of filling it up, which I'm sure you started with, was like buckets and saucepans from the kitchen, taking them out.

You rigged up some massive like Rude Goldberg contraption so that water would find this really long journey from your upstairs bathroom via gravity down into the pool.

But yeah, I mean, it was almost like anything you could get your hands on that would help channel that water along the way.

Tom Pellereau:
I remember at school, like age 10 or whatever, we had sort of writer CV or so.

It was a ridiculous task.

You had to kind of write for the first time, write some stuff about you.

And I wrote this line which was, Passion for Efficiency.

And I remember it got called out by like, because, you know, someone who worked in a recruitment or whatever came in and we were, and they were, and he looked through the morphs.

And I think I got like a, a credit or a merit or something like that.

I was like, I've always been really proud of that.

Yeah, because I love making things more efficient and just easier.

And as you say, I don't know if that comes from personal laziness or trying to help other people out.

It's Black Friday this week.

I don't know if we necessarily want to say that, but we are unbelievably busy at work.

And I'm just spending my time trying to help people do whatever they're doing who work for me better and easier.

Because I look at people and go, oh my god, you're working so hard.

Is there an easier way we could do that?

And certainly I love computing in that respect, because you can make people's lives so much easier with computing and routines and things like that.

Jono Hey:
There were a number of people I was thinking that I would now describe them as spreadsheet geeks.

And there are all sorts of memes, which are quite positive ones, which is like, I've got a spreadsheet for that.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jono Hey:
That might have been seen as really geeky, but now I think if that's you, you're like, yeah, that's pretty cool.

And I really know how to make these spreadsheets do whatever I want.

Tom Pellereau:
I will say that Adam Smith, the kind of father of economics in many respects, in his 1700s book of The Wealth of Nations, he was very-

Rob Bell:
Someone's been researching.

Tom Pellereau:
He was very-

Wow.

Because in some respects, geekiness is about specialization.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Or a really deep interest in something.

And he very much said there that kind of that is the route to prosperity becoming incredibly specialist at one thing, that improves the efficiency of the whole organism as it were.

And then his example was in a needle factory, where if you had someone making sewing needles, knitting needles on their own, and tried to do the whole process, it was really quite difficult for them.

But if Rob became the expert at cutting them the right length, then Rob could become obsessed with them always being the right length.

If Jono was looking at making that hole in the top, he'd become really good and obsessed with that.

And if Tom was in charge of, you know, firing them or putting them into the boxes or whatever, like we could all become incredibly good at our bit.

And as a whole, we produce many more things.

And so I think the world is going towards that kind of specialization, certainly in our work.

And also, I love the fact that there are YouTubers who are making a lot of money from some incredibly geeky stuff.

Because it's so useful.

Like if you want to fix your dishwasher, there is some guy or girl who's taken it all apart, who just knows how to fix it and he can save you a fortune.

And it's amazing.

Jono Hey:
You're absolutely right.

There's like massive specialism and it is about getting like deep.

You can't help it if you're a geek.

You have deep expertise in one area.

One of the things I liked about a place I worked in the States was because we were in multidisciplinary teams, you're always looking also, you have to be an expert in your field, but also what else are you bringing?

And so when you put a team together, you get a nice combination of skills.

And I did do a sketch in it once, not a very good sketch, but because there's this concept of T-shaped people, which is like, I'm really deep in one thing, but then I also have some broadness, broad interests at the top.

And so I remember thinking when I got there, it was nice that, yes, people were experts in the fundamentals of what we were doing, but they really celebrated the other skills that you were bringing.

So I always remember, there was one guy who went to clown school for three years or something like that.

And so he brought really different things to your team if he was on your team, because he had this experience at clown school.

And so I think that's...

Because you could be a geek in different...

You could be an expert in your job, but you could be a geek in these different areas.

Like, this is my passionate interest.

You know, I love motor...

I ride motorcycles on the weekend.

And so when I come to work and I work on this project, I also bring this insight with me about this other community.

Rob Bell:
Yes.

Jono Hey:
And maybe...

I was just thinking like, yes, like the Adam Smith is sort of, we're all gonna specialize and do this, is sort of a bit demoralizing in some ways, because I don't want to just be the expert hammering in this pin.

I want to bring my whole self to it.

And we get these benefits when we all have these eclectic interests and you bring them all together in a team.

And that's also, I think, something you get when people are allowed to be geeks about different things and also bring that to the table.

Rob Bell:
Is it hard to say what your deepest geekiness is?

I'm going to keep using geekiness because that's the language of the episode.

Jono Hey:
Yes, that's actually why I started thinking like, what's Rob a geek about?

Because I wondered if sometimes, if you're a real geek about something, it's a bit transparent to you.

Like you might not always realise that you've got crazy amounts of knowledge in one area, and you're going beyond what somebody else would, because for you, it's normal and it's interesting, and somebody else is like, what?

You've read all of these.

Rob Bell:
The fun thing there is how useful in your profession, in everyday life, that real depth of knowledge might be.

So in my case, back to the future trivia, it's great for a quiz night if a round on back to the future comes up.

But it's not that useful professionally or in everyday life, I don't think.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I thought that I was thinking that being a geek in some areas is more profitable than others.

That kid on your street who's learning all those Apple coding rules is probably going to serve him well.

I was also thinking if you're like a geek in like tax rules, that's probably going to help you out.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Or baking.

I think baking is a good one to be a geek in because you're going to make a lot of friends.

Rob Bell:
Everyone loves that, yeah.

Jono Hey:
It's like, oh, I've tried this new cake recipe.

Can you test it out for me?

Rob Bell:
These are the geeks that shall inherit the earth.

Yeah.

All geeks are not born equal.

Tom Pellereau:
Rob, I liked also what you said in terms of there are some things that maybe there should be a distinction between like personal geekiness into something that you really love, and then geekiness into something that you've had to become because of your work.

For example, compared to most people, I am an insane geek on selling on Amazon, and the plethora of different things.

Jono and I have had a couple of conversations about books, and poor guy, he was just like, oh my God, I never realized this world.

And because I spend a huge part of my day in the Amazon various different platforms.

And I'm sort of glad I know how that all works, but at the same time, I'm so not...

I'd also be relatively happy to not get involved in that world quite as much as I do.

Rob Bell:
So my question on that then is, does there need to be a passion behind the geekiness?

So in which case would you exclude all of your knowledge and experience and expertise on selling on Amazon from being something that you're a geek about?

Tom Pellereau:
I'll say that, or another way of putting it is, there are some things that you are paid to become passionate about, but there are other things that you do because you just really love them.

Rob Bell:
Because you love it, yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
And I must admit, a lot of the things that I am geekiness are kind of both, as it were, but I'm an unusual person where I spend a huge amount of my time, my work and my life are very similar and I hope to make them more so.

Like I'd love, I'd love to start designing off-road bikes, like electric bikes and e-foils and all that sort of stuff.

And I can't wait to get into that hopefully one day.

Rob Bell:
I can't wait till you get into that either.

Tom Pellereau:
But at the moment, my focus is on sort of red light technology and Amazon selling those areas.

Jono Hey:
A quote I came across from Richard Feynman, he's a physicist and he wrote, nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, that's nice, yeah.

Jono Hey:
And there was another one I came across the other day from a writer called Henry Miller and he says, the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

And I think, you know, I don't know if I'd quite go that far when you're talking about how Amazon works, but there's definitely like, actually it can get really interesting if you go into it deep enough.

Is that a magnificent world in itself?

Rob Bell:
And someone who loves how Amazon works might not see that in a blade of grass.

I do.

Jono Hey:
This blade of grass.

Rob Bell:
I'm really starting picturing this blade of grass now.

I want to know more about it.

I want to get down to molecular level.

Tom Pellereau:
I now have a few really small little cacti on my desk, and plants and all nature are just so insanely cool when you start really zooming in on them, as Jono has just said about his blade of grass and cactus especially.

Obviously, you've got to be a bit careful with them.

Jono Hey:
It was like when we had, remember James Wong on the podcast.

Rob Bell:
He just talked so brilliantly about it.

The botanist.

Jono Hey:
And I think blades of grass, to be fair, have something going for them that Amazon doesn't, which is, as he put it, the miracle of life, which does have some fascination to it that perhaps, you get to the bottom of Amazon and that's it, you know it, but maybe you don't.

Tom Pellereau:
No, because they just continue to evolve it.

Oh, right, don't you?

Rob Bell:
But does a passion in something make you a geek about something?

Tom Pellereau:
That's a good question.

What's the difference between passion and geekiness?

Rob Bell:
This is what we stumbled upon, that there's a lot of interaction, perhaps, between these two words when talked about in this context.

Tom Pellereau:
Where does the word geek come from?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I did look it up, actually.

It was from German.

Basically, it was from a word that originally meant like freak.

Rob Bell:
Okay.

Jono Hey:
So it was described, it was definitely in a bad way.

It started with a negative connotation and has gradually lost that over time.

Yeah.

Good.

So I think you need more than a passion for something.

I think if you have a strong passion, you will probably start to build a lot of knowledge and go really deep into a subject.

But just being interested in it and really liking it probably is not enough.

Rob Bell:
But yes, it's a combination of the two then, isn't it?

It's a combination of knowledge and expertise and passion and desire to know more and go deeper.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
And start pushing the boundaries beyond, go beyond where others have been.

Rob Bell:
I think that sums up basically what we reckon a geek is.

And I will hold my hand up happily to being a geek in a few things.

Jono Hey:
Do you remember, I think I mentioned this maybe in one of the episodes with James Wong, but one of the people in the sketch is with binoculars watching the birds.

And there was the couple who were friends of the family.

And when you talk, was it passion and knowledge?

Obviously, they had a passion about birds.

They loved birds with probably a love.

But they also spent all their time planning trips around the world to go see particular birds at the right time of year and bring all the right stuff in the right places.

And they had this amazing bird table with a telescope that they trained on it and they knew every single one who was coming there each day.

They'd be like, Oh, look, there's a wax wing.

We haven't seen none of those for quite a while.

And they had all the sounds of the birds.

So when they ended up walking, like that was that was knowledge that somebody who just liked birds did not have like you didn't have a recording of a Dartford warbler to hand as you went out on a walk.

And so definitely, I think they qualify as on the geeky side for birds.

But they were my inspiration for the person on the left.

Rob Bell:
Oh, that's nice.

That's nice.

Can I throw another metric or characteristic into our definition of a geek then?

So it's passion, it's knowledge and is experience some kind of experience around it.

So you're talking about the birdwatchers there, Jono, and the fact that they've gone on these trips and they've made recordings of it.

They've done they've done more than just read up loads about it.

I feel like I want to throw that into the into the geek cauldron.

Jono Hey:
I was thinking that you do kind of need some experience to appreciate it enough.

And I partly say this because my parents have a lot of books, and they will go places and be fascinated about stuff and they'll buy all sorts of books from the areas.

And we were looking through the books the other day and I came across some crazy ones.

See, that's why I just call them crazy ones.

But like one of them was like Nuts of the Caribbean.

Another one was, you know, bloggers of the Pacific Northwest.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, great.

Jono Hey:
And it's funny, you can look at it very specific.

Yeah, very specific.

If you were to just see those books as I had done, you know, in southern England in the winter, without any other context, it's hard to be really like excited about reading about Nuts of the Caribbean, right?

But if you had been in the Caribbean, and you've been looking at the trees and whatever, and you'd seen the nuts and you'd spoken with the guide about it, you might be really excited about the Nuts of the Caribbean.

Rob Bell:
I'm with you, man.

Jono Hey:
Same with the Pacific Northwest loggers.

I'm not immediately drawn to the stories of the Pacific Northwest loggers until somebody has to take me there, or if I've walked around those forests, and I've seen those villages, then yes, I am.

And so I do think that some personal experience is probably...

I don't know if it just happens, probably.

That's how you become a geek or something.

Rob Bell:
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Jono Hey:
Could you be a geek and back to the future of you without having gone to watch the films?

Maybe?

I don't know.

But it would be harder.

Rob Bell:
Yes.

No, it would be harder.

No, I know it'd be impossible.

Tom Pellereau:
I think.

Yes, no, definitely.

And on that decisive note.

Rob Bell:
And on that decisive note.

Jono Hey:
You know, I was going to give I was going to give an example where I might have shared this one with you one time before, Rob.

We went to Half Dome in Yosemite Valley in California.

And, you know, it's a fabulous place.

But like, at the time, you know, I did all sorts of stuff in my career at that point, and I was interested in lots of things.

Geology is one where it's kind of interesting, but it's kind of difficult to get your head round.

And it looks like layers of rocks.

And, you know, it gets confusing.

And there's a bit of rock here.

And this rock's different.

You know, like, I'm not that excited about it immediately.

And then we're at the top of Half Dome, and there's this bit of rock, which is a half dome.

It's this massive cliff.

It's called, it's basically cut in half.

So it's a sheer cliff and it has a bit which sticks out over the edge.

And so it's literally a sheer drop for like, you know, 400 meters below you.

And this guy, this nice guy took a picture of us, which my dad hates, which is us standing on this little thing sticking out over the over the cliff edge.

And then he was like, do you mind just taking a picture of me?

And I was like, yeah, fine.

Actually, can you do a video?

And so we went around, I lined it up, got ready to take the video, and he's like, this is Yosemite.

Here we have the Yosemite Valley carved by the glaciers with the Merced River coming here, drawing down into the Central Valley.

And he basically gave a geology lesson.

And he was up there making material for his geology class.

Oh, wow.

And I just remember thinking like, wow, our geology is fascinating.

This guy is amazing.

I want him as my teacher.

And I want to learn everything about geology now.

And here it is real, right?

Like it's so, so immediate and vivid.

And so I think that I don't know if that's like a personal experience thing or whatever, but I just remember thinking it changed me from something where it seemed like a dry textbook thing to something that was amazing.

Rob Bell:
His geekiness drew you in to be fascinated by the subject for which he is a geek.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, exactly.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jono Hey:
I remember thinking, I want to be in his class.

Maybe I'll go take a geology class.

Rob Bell:
I don't think there's a better example that can define geekiness for us.

That's amazing.

I had a whole list of famous geeks and they all were along the lines of what you were talking about earlier, Tommy.

You know, the people who have affected us through things on the Internet and things through computing.

Tom Pellereau:
Oh, there's many others.

There's Sir Isaac Newton.

As you know, there's many along the way.

Jono Hey:
Isaac Newton is interesting because I think there's this lovely quote from him.

I can't say exactly, but it's essentially like he spent his life on the shore of a sea of knowledge.

And all he's been doing is throwing stones into the edge of it, you know?

And it's kind of like the more he knew, the less he realized he knew and the more he wanted to know.

And so I do think there is an element of like geekiness there.

It's that power of really deep interest in something makes you realize how much there is to learn and how interesting something is.

Whereas on the outside, it might not look interesting.

Somebody's like, oh, apples fall off trees.

Of course, they bloom in fallen off trees.

Rob Bell:
Come on, mate.

Jono Hey:
You know, and he was like, well, yeah, but how does it fall?

It just falls.

You know, yeah, that was that was what was going on.

Rob Bell:
Well, in many ways, that's what we do on the podcast.

We explore curiosity and we go deeper into subjects than I have gone before.

And we go across the whole breadth.

It is that sea of knowledge that we keep chucking little pebbles into.

And the more we chuck into, the more curious we become to swim further and deeper.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
I didn't even write that there.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, that's fair.

Rob Bell:
All right.

So before we finish off the episode then, what are we saying?

What are we summarizing around this topic of everyone's a geek about something?

Jono Hey:
Two things I'll take away from this, having geeked out on it with you guys.

The first one is to actually reflect and go, you know what, are there some interests that for whatever reason, I might have been really passionate about, that for some reason I haven't been following up on, or I've parked for some social reason, whether or not it just didn't fit in or something, that actually I could pull out and work on again and geek out with.

And the second one would be for me is go, well, actually, is there somebody around me, somebody in my environment or that I know that I can help nurture an interest for them as well?

Rob Bell:
Lovely.

Jono Hey:
To encourage their geekiness to come out.

Rob Bell:
Tommy, any summaries for you on everyone's geek about something, anything that you feel listeners could take away?

Tom Pellereau:
Oh, so Sarah loves jigsaw puzzles.

Oh.

And so I've got one ready for her for Christmas.

But actually, I think, because we quite often put the kids to bed and then like maybe watch TV for half an hour before going to bed, sort of thing is a bit of an unwind.

I was like, well, instead of doing that one night, maybe we should do a jigsaw instead.

Rob Bell:
Nice.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Share the passion.

Yeah, I love it.

Rob Bell:
Brilliant.

The only other business I had was a recent discovery of a Cornish village situation between Falmouth and Penzance called Guique.

Jono Hey:
Guique.

Rob Bell:
Guique with a W.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
That's the only thing I wanted to add.

Shout out to the Guique Massive.

Well, let's round this episode up there, shall we?

For now, I'm off to watch Back to the Future for the 467th time.

Jono's got a new 1.3 millimeter diagonal head micro fine liner sketching pen to try out, and Tommy's got to get himself off to Las Vegas for the 7th Annual GeekCon at which he is the keynote speaker.

We'll see you there.

Go well and stay well.

Goodbye.

Tom Pellereau:
Goodbye.

Rob Bell:
All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.