January 6, 2026 • 22 mins
Want to hear something weird about Rae's favourite tech from 2025?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hey, taking, Hey, Ray, do you want to hear something weird?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Always?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
You know what I was waiting for, like some context,
because sometimes like something weird about X is like do
you just want we're just raw dogging that one.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Yes, I do, Ray, Please, do you want to hear
something weird about me and what my product of the
year is?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I'm fascinated about what this might be because I know your interest,
so it could be literally anything.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The weirdest part about this is my product of the
gear is an AI product, all right.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I want to have an initial reaction to that based
off the many conversations we've had on and off air
about AI. But because I know you, I know that
this probably means something that is AI that's being used
effectively and is probably not generative.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
So I'm excited to hear more.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
I love your faith in me. It is also generative.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Okay, Look, we'll learning a lot of bit about each other.
That's fine. I still trust you, Okay, Yeah, I'm.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Just going to start telling you all about it.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I used I've been using the Whoop band, and I've
been using the Whoop band for most of the years.
So this is the first wearable that I've used fitness
wearable that didn't just feel like it was extracting my
data for the sake of it. Okay, I felt like
(01:35):
and yes, it did make me feel things. I felt
like it was taking care of me.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Okay, this is a big claim because I mean, we've
been looking at this sort of tech for a very
long time, and we have both mostly worn Apple Watches
for most of our tech reviewing careers, various iterations of it,
you know, the Ultra and all sorts of ones. So
I'm very fascinated to know what drew you away from
that and what drew.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You to the Whoop, Like, was it paired back more?
Was it just the data thing? I mean, I'm looking
at you right now and you're wearing like an old
school watch.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So I feel like this is this is connected to
being mountains pilled, is what I feel like.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
There's a whole story here, Tagan, There's a whole year
long narrative that.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Goes with this Whoop use.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
But I will start at the beginning here and tell
you about the data that Whoop collects, which is basically
everything except for my childhood trauma.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So would you want it to in an update or
definitely not.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Look when you first open the app, it does tell
you specifically and ask for your permission for your data
to be shared with the US. Oh, okay, okay, where
I think is an obviously political contentious thing. There is
data being collected in the US that is used for
nefarious purposes. It's being used for surveillance, it's being used
to prosecute people for accessing healthcare that is no longer
(02:56):
legal in that country, correct yeap Being in Australia, I
feel relatively safe about that aspect. So, and also I
just wanted to know what it would do for me
once it had all of this information. Because it's got
this little photodiode sensor, it collects pretty much an astonishing
(03:18):
amount of biomarkers in this little tracker because it doesn't
have a face on it, it doesn't have a screen.
The interface for using the Whoop is just through your
wrap on your phone, so everything that's in there.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Is just tracking. That's all it does.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So you've got twenty four to seven heart rate, you've
got your heart rate variability, which is the crown jewel
of recovery metrics for anyone who's looking at up in
their fitness resting, heart rate, respiratory rate, your skin temperature movement,
your sleep stages, your light sleep, your deep sleep, your
rams sleep, your cardio and muscular load, and it calculates
(03:57):
this daily strained score for you. Wo you end up
with a recovery score, which is basically a please don't
overdo it number, okay, or what I like to call
permission to chill if you've had a big day.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I like this a lot because a number of years
ago now I'm going to say probably gosh, more like
six or seven years ago, I wrote a piece for Gizmoto,
And as every time I bring up writing a piece
for Gizmoto, I will say that you can't read online
because it was deleted. I will always bring this up.
But it was from when I had broken some ribs
and I was a very big Apple Watch obsessive at
(04:31):
the time. It was at the time when you and
I were very into hiking, and I would say that
it got a little bit toxic for me, Like I
was definitely getting fitter and that was good, But when
I then couldn't exercise and my metrics were down and
the rings weren't closing, I had some mental health issues
and I never really broke up with my Apple Watch entirely.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I've had breaks, but it did.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
A number on me because it was very much all
about like hitting those goals, and I've seen huge benefits
from that personally, but that was the downside to it,
and it was not great.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I feel like this is where whoopbridges the gap between
just collecting that data and putting it in graphs and
giving you this information and actually understanding what's going on
with your body, what's going on with your day. And
it doesn't just use the information that it's receiving from
all of the trackers in the device. It's using a
lot of third party information as well. So it gives
(05:24):
you this recovery score you don't overdo it number. It
gives you strain goals suggestions, so it's saying, all right,
so I recommend you hit a strain goal of twelve.
It's kind of like one of those arbitrary Strava numbers
you try to aim for, but it really does break
down each exercise you're doing and how much that's adding
(05:45):
to your strain score, and you can look back on
your previous ones and go all right, well, a wait
session would do this, but you don't even have to
do that because it gives.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
You all the suggestions. That is fantastic. I'll get into
that bit in a moment.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
But I also need to tell you about the most
important part of this, which.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Is the whoop age.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Okay, how physiologically old you actually are? This is the
metric that became my Roman empire for this year.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
This scares me. I don't know about this. I feel
like I can get too into it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
As you know, I am obsessed with living to at
least one hundred and twenty, so obviously.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Up to that number, I feel like it used to
just be one hundred because you went and did those
life hacker things that.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Ruined your body back in the day.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Twelve diets in twelve months, which once again you also
cannot read because they've been deleted off the internet.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
But you've upped that by what.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Maybe fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
I just keep adding five years every year that I
get older.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
I reckon, we're going to get there.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Okay, that's my quick question.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I am going to go on a tangent on that
because as much as I, as much as an X person,
have innate fear of dying, and I don't like to
think about it because it scares me. What also scares
me is the idea of the last, say like forty
years of my life. For the longer I live, the
worse that my actual quality of life will be. And
also because I've seen too much about what happens in
(07:09):
age care.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Homes and I don't like it. So where are you
on that?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
With you wanting to like go to one twenty Let's
say it's going to be one fifty next week.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I assume about I do.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Have faith that our quality of life is going to
improve because of science.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yes, I should clarify I want to live to one
hundred and twenty. Well, okay, great, I want to reach
that age and then just be like cool, I'm done now,
thanks piece out.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah okaykay.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
If I'm at a point where I'm unable to engage
in activities that bring me joy, I won't want to
be around anymore. But I want to keep this train
going for as long as I can because I like it.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I've been alive.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
And now that has now included your whoop age and
getting my wop lower as low as newly possible.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Well taken, I got my whoop age down to my
chronological age, which was my goal going into this, and
then I stopped wearing my whoop. I decided to go
out like an Olympic champion, going out on a high,
like ash Barti retiring from tennis, like Rihanna. Yeah, you know,
(08:13):
she doesn't need to release any more music. She's already
a billionaire from making foundation that actually matches people's skin tones.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I didn't need to keep wearing it anymore after that
because I'd learned so much from wearing it. One of
the things that helped me learn a lot about what
I need to keep myself healthy and what I need
every day came through the journal application. Okay, it's connected
with whoops, so yes, it's collecting all of your data.
It's giving you these scores, it's giving you advice, blah
(08:43):
blah blah.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
But I logged every single day.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I was logging my caffeine intake, how much when I
was having it, any alcohol that I had, my stress levels. It,
you know, asks you for symptoms throughout your menstrual cycle,
meditation that I did, any travel that I did. It
asked for how long I was in the car, for
how long I was commuting for what time it was happening,
(09:08):
and then it was linking if I had elevated stress
while I was driving in the car, and it would
give me tips to lower my stress. Well, it would
come up with these like, yeah, I can see that
you have higher non activity stress levels today.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Is there something in particular that has caused this?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Whoa?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
It was really really cool, like sleep consistency was a
big one any illness symptoms. And it also integrated with
any food logging apps that I was using, so Macro's
hydration all of the food that I was logging, it
was able to pull out nutrients. You know, you might
be low on this nutrient. That might be why you're
(09:47):
feeling a certain way today. So you might have noticed
that I have been saying it tells me things.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yes, yes, I would just say though that sounds amazing
to me. My fear would be is that I'd get
too obsessed with it, which I guess is the point
of view saying that you got to a point and
then you're letting it go, because I've definitely done that
again with the past with certain apps, especially food tracking apps,
as to a point where it's useful for me, and
then I'll find myself getting too obsessive. I'm like, oh,
I didn't log that tiny bit of tomato sauce, and
(10:16):
then I'll not be able to stop thinking about it,
and that's not good for me.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I went into this with the goal of learning what
I need at this stage in my life, what I
can fit into my lifestyle, and I was just genuinely
curious as to what Whoop would suggest I should do,
what changes I should make to my lifestyle, to my diet,
to my sleep habits, to my exercise in order to
(10:40):
keep myself at that proper healthy physiological age. The way
that it did this was through a large language model chatbot.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
It makes sense if you're logging that much data and
it's spitting that back at you, that does make a
lot of sense, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And I am embarrassed to admit that it was the
part that made Whoop my favorite gadget this year. I
never thought that my connection, and I'm saying this carefully
with a chatbot would be something I would call out
in twenty twenty five as being.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Oh no, Ray's going to be on the chat GPT psychosis.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It really depressed about it.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
So it did not take long for me to see
the real benefits here because it's taking all your body data,
it's taking all of your journaling, all of your lifestyle logs,
what weather it is today, your behavioral history, and then
it's giving you conversational coaching. So I would open up
the app and go give me an outlook for the day,
(11:43):
and it'd be like, oh, yeah, it's going to be
eleven degrees in the blue mountains, might rain later on
in the afternoon. I know that you like going for hikes.
Today's a good day for that. I suggest getting in
about two hours medium intensity. This one that you've done
in the past probably matches that quite well. You could
probably follow that up with some yogur if you like.
That will help you hit your strain goal. I also
(12:05):
recommend that you focus on hydration today because you had
a big day yesterday.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
That is simultaneously amazing, right and also terrifying, And it
also just makes me think that what we actually do
need our lives of personal assistance.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Genuinely delivered on the promise of a personal coach, health
and wellness coach. Personal assistant that had access to all
of my information to a point, okay, so it knew
when to tell me to take it easy. It would
suggest lighter days when my variable heart rate dipped. It
(12:40):
would look at the weather and recommend what to do.
So if it was raining, it would say maybe an
indoor gym session would do. Or I know that you're
traveling at the moment, would you like a body weight
routine you can do in your hotel room? Huh?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Does it know that you're traveling because you told her?
Or is it sync to your calendar?
Speaker 1 (12:58):
It knows I'm traveling because I told it?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Interesting, I was also going to ask if it synced
up to because whether you've told it or it's an apple, whatever,
it is that when your period comes, for example, does
it suggest different things for your flow days?
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Yes, it does.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
It suggests easy days.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
It suggests take it easy.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
It suggests do what you need to do to be happy,
have some naps, keep up hydration, all of that sort
of stuff. Some gentle yoga, some gentle stretching. Still get
out for a walk. It's still suggested going for walks
every day, no matter what. It was really really good.
(13:35):
One of the things that I also learned early on.
It only took a couple of weeks for me to say, hey,
it's Thursday today, I'm having a massive radio recording day
in Sydney on Thursdays. Every Thursday, I do this. I'm
not going to have time for a hike today, so
don't suggest one to me. And it took a couple
(13:56):
of weeks to learn that Thursdays are these big days
exercise windows tiny. I didn't even have to really teach it,
it just started seeing the pattern because it would say,
do you want to go for a big, you know,
gym session.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I'm like, I can't. I'm working. I'm commuting from six.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Am until eight pm, like, I have no time for this,
and they go, great, no worries, if you can do
some stretching at the office and keep up your hydration
levels and try to get a walk in and your
lunch break. It felt really personalized. It felt gentle, and
it felt the opposite of what the less personalized tracking
(14:36):
apps have felt. It didn't feel like a one size
fits all model. It did feel adjusted for me. And
then chatjpt was updated.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Taking me, is it running on chat gpt?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
It is running on chat japt And this is how
I found out that it was initially running on.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Chat JAPT four.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
When chat japt five updated, whoop, got amnesia.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
It forgot everything, it forgot.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And it just got progressively more and more forgetful, and
it refused to remember my routines.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
So I'm logging perfectly.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
It started forgetting the Thursdays out for the big days.
You know that I'd already said I can't exercise until later.
You know which days I usually trained, what I enjoyed doing,
like general preferences. It just went completely out the window.
And I'd remind it, it would relearn, and then the
next week and it'd be like, how about a ninety
(15:35):
minute outdoor and eight am on Thursday? And I'm like
in the studio, going, whoop, we've been over this.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
How far into your woop journey? Was this like with
this month at this point?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
That's a good Yeah, it was months.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
It was months, because that's so frustrating, like for a
product when you had already invested. Because I think that
what it sounds like to me, like even let's just
park the chachipit.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Five thing for a moment.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
If a product that is probably not particularly cheap is
asking you to invest so much of your time to
teach it, which I understand why if the outcome is great, okay,
but then this happens and you can't stop it because
it doesn't have its own LM.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
It's relying on site.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
And we've seen this happen time and time again, not
just with AI, different things. That if you're building your
business on your product, on someone else's business or product
and you don't have control over that.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
That's crap. Like it's a crap product.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Like even if it's been really good up until that point, Yeah,
that's awful customer service and it's awful customer experience.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
It really highlighted to me, and it was the only
time that I have felt any kind of sympathy, like
relatable sympathy and empathy towards the people who had developed
relationships with chat jap tea.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, like yeah, like I get it now.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
I had developed a relationship, not an emotional one.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
I have never.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Viewed the chatbot as a person. I never anthropomorphized it, like.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
It didn't go there.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
But I did see it as a tool that was
fulfilling a function. And then it did not fulfill that
function anymore because it could not remember who I was
or one months into that anything anymore months into it.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
So like it.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Really, it really kills that I had this early wonder
when I started using it of being like, oh great,
well this is what lllms are good for. But they've
got that short term contextual reasoning superbly inconsistent long.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Term structure memory.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
And as you've said, when you're building your business on
someone else's large language model, when you are licensing open
aiyes API to build your business on, you are at
the mercy of whatever updates they do.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Percent It's like the old media businesses that built their
entire following on Facebook. It's a similar thing. It can
be rug pulled at any time and changed at any
time and you can't do anything about it. The other
thing that also like a couple of things. I suppose
number one like whoop like preceded chut gpt publicly facing.
It's been around for a long time, we were sent
woops even in our previous podcast, around for a long time.
(18:05):
The other thing, and this is a completely different tangent,
and I need to look It's been something I've been
researching and something that I do need to look more into.
But my concern around chat gipt being used for something
like this where you're putting so much of your personal
biometric information into it goes back to what you said
at the start about things that are changing with laws
in the US, particularly when my understanding is, and I
(18:28):
will look into this further, but my understanding is that
chat GPT is not privileged information. Nice sorry, if you're
in the US, if you are someone who is in
some sort of way reproductively a woman, whatever that means
for you as a person, that is dangerous. If you're
putting that information around your periods and all of that
(18:50):
kind of thing into this, that is scary.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Absolutely, one hundred percent agree. And it was one of
the things that made me hesitant to try it out
in the first place.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And you would have been even more so if you'd
known it was chat GPT, I imagine hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Yeah, And I didn't. I didn't even realize. So I
do need to be clear. It's only one element of
the Whoop app that uses CHATCHBT, which is the coach,
But that is the part that is giving you the
personalized recommendations for your day based on your previous tracking
and based on what the day holds ahead. So you
still have access to all of your recovery score and
(19:21):
your strain score and all of those sorts of things,
and you can make your own recommendations to yourself based
on your own data, so you don't have to engage
with the coach part of it. But I believe it
is still receiving that data regardless of whether or not
you click on it.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yeah, And I mean, and it seems like from a
product perspective, that was the most beneficial part. Like you know,
either way select from the data, but that's useless if
you're not then getting the information and the benefits to
then better yourself, whether that means you continue using relying
on that product, or learning enough about it like you
did to be like I can now move forward with
this myself.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And look, I would still say that Whoop at its
best is still one of the most emotionally intelligent wearables
that is on the market, and I think if you
are after a highly personalized experience, I would recommend Woop
over any of the other trackers that are happening out there.
You just need to be aware of the limitations of
(20:15):
large language models. Yeah, and recognize that one day your
Whoop coach is just going to forget everything about you
and you have to deal with that.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
And it's sad it's not a great feature recommendation. If
there's that big a caveat, I don't think. But maybe
again because it can be updated, and it is the
software part of this that hopefully this can perhaps be
a big learning moment for WHOOP, whether that is I
don't know, negotiating something else with open AI or using
a different large language model, maybe even developing their own
which is not cheap so many people go for open
(20:48):
ais API, but hopefully learning moment to make the product
better yeap or more consistent with what it can which
obviously can deliver at some level.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And look, maybe when you know Sam Altman does update
chat JPT.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
To be more what was it erotic?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
You know, your worp coach might take on a whole
different role in your life.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Maybe you never know, Like sexual health is important, very important.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
The amount of people that have had affairs with their
personal trainers. You just.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
You might fall down in the future.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I think there was an update recently with chat chipet
where it was changing the personality somewhat so you could
stick to whatever one is a baseline one or one's
it like a bit sassier or more like tough love
I don't think that's actually correct, but it was different
personalities essentially, like throw a sexy one in there.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Why not people are.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Already doing it exactly. Give the people what they want,
Let them hit on their personal trainer.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Their AI personal trainer. Let's be very specific. And that's
it for this episode of weird Tech. If you have
any weird tech that you would like us to cover,
or if.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Some of your tech is be weird we want to
hear about it. You can hit us up on all
social media platforms at weird Tech Media. We're a Weird
Tech Media production and a proud member of the iHeartRadio Network.
This episode was edited by the podcast Butler. Please remember
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miss the next episode, and until next time, stay weird
Hey, taking, Hey, Ray, do you want to hear something weird?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Always?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
You know what I was waiting for, like some context,
because sometimes like something weird about X is like do
you just want we're just raw dogging that one.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Yes, I do, Ray, Please, do you want to hear
something weird about me and what my product of the
year is?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I'm fascinated about what this might be because I know your interest,
so it could be literally anything.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The weirdest part about this is my product of the
gear is an AI product, all right.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I want to have an initial reaction to that based
off the many conversations we've had on and off air
about AI. But because I know you, I know that
this probably means something that is AI that's being used
effectively and is probably not generative.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
So I'm excited to hear more.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
I love your faith in me. It is also generative.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Okay, Look, we'll learning a lot of bit about each other.
That's fine. I still trust you, Okay, Yeah, I'm.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Just going to start telling you all about it.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I used I've been using the Whoop band, and I've
been using the Whoop band for most of the years.
So this is the first wearable that I've used fitness
wearable that didn't just feel like it was extracting my
data for the sake of it. Okay, I felt like
(01:35):
and yes, it did make me feel things. I felt
like it was taking care of me.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Okay, this is a big claim because I mean, we've
been looking at this sort of tech for a very
long time, and we have both mostly worn Apple Watches
for most of our tech reviewing careers, various iterations of it,
you know, the Ultra and all sorts of ones. So
I'm very fascinated to know what drew you away from
that and what drew.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You to the Whoop, Like, was it paired back more?
Was it just the data thing? I mean, I'm looking
at you right now and you're wearing like an old
school watch.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So I feel like this is this is connected to
being mountains pilled, is what I feel like.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
There's a whole story here, Tagan, There's a whole year
long narrative that.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Goes with this Whoop use.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
But I will start at the beginning here and tell
you about the data that Whoop collects, which is basically
everything except for my childhood trauma.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So would you want it to in an update or
definitely not.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Look when you first open the app, it does tell
you specifically and ask for your permission for your data
to be shared with the US. Oh, okay, okay, where
I think is an obviously political contentious thing. There is
data being collected in the US that is used for
nefarious purposes. It's being used for surveillance, it's being used
to prosecute people for accessing healthcare that is no longer
(02:56):
legal in that country, correct yeap Being in Australia, I
feel relatively safe about that aspect. So, and also I
just wanted to know what it would do for me
once it had all of this information. Because it's got
this little photodiode sensor, it collects pretty much an astonishing
(03:18):
amount of biomarkers in this little tracker because it doesn't
have a face on it, it doesn't have a screen.
The interface for using the Whoop is just through your
wrap on your phone, so everything that's in there.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Is just tracking. That's all it does.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So you've got twenty four to seven heart rate, you've
got your heart rate variability, which is the crown jewel
of recovery metrics for anyone who's looking at up in
their fitness resting, heart rate, respiratory rate, your skin temperature movement,
your sleep stages, your light sleep, your deep sleep, your
rams sleep, your cardio and muscular load, and it calculates
(03:57):
this daily strained score for you. Wo you end up
with a recovery score, which is basically a please don't
overdo it number, okay, or what I like to call
permission to chill if you've had a big day.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I like this a lot because a number of years
ago now I'm going to say probably gosh, more like
six or seven years ago, I wrote a piece for Gizmoto,
And as every time I bring up writing a piece
for Gizmoto, I will say that you can't read online
because it was deleted. I will always bring this up.
But it was from when I had broken some ribs
and I was a very big Apple Watch obsessive at
(04:31):
the time. It was at the time when you and
I were very into hiking, and I would say that
it got a little bit toxic for me, Like I
was definitely getting fitter and that was good, But when
I then couldn't exercise and my metrics were down and
the rings weren't closing, I had some mental health issues
and I never really broke up with my Apple Watch entirely.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I've had breaks, but it did.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
A number on me because it was very much all
about like hitting those goals, and I've seen huge benefits
from that personally, but that was the downside to it,
and it was not great.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I feel like this is where whoopbridges the gap between
just collecting that data and putting it in graphs and
giving you this information and actually understanding what's going on
with your body, what's going on with your day. And
it doesn't just use the information that it's receiving from
all of the trackers in the device. It's using a
lot of third party information as well. So it gives
(05:24):
you this recovery score you don't overdo it number. It
gives you strain goals suggestions, so it's saying, all right,
so I recommend you hit a strain goal of twelve.
It's kind of like one of those arbitrary Strava numbers
you try to aim for, but it really does break
down each exercise you're doing and how much that's adding
(05:45):
to your strain score, and you can look back on
your previous ones and go all right, well, a wait
session would do this, but you don't even have to
do that because it gives.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
You all the suggestions. That is fantastic. I'll get into
that bit in a moment.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
But I also need to tell you about the most
important part of this, which.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Is the whoop age.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Okay, how physiologically old you actually are? This is the
metric that became my Roman empire for this year.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
This scares me. I don't know about this. I feel
like I can get too into it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
As you know, I am obsessed with living to at
least one hundred and twenty, so obviously.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Up to that number, I feel like it used to
just be one hundred because you went and did those
life hacker things that.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Ruined your body back in the day.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Twelve diets in twelve months, which once again you also
cannot read because they've been deleted off the internet.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
But you've upped that by what.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Maybe fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
I just keep adding five years every year that I
get older.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
I reckon, we're going to get there.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Okay, that's my quick question.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I am going to go on a tangent on that
because as much as I, as much as an X person,
have innate fear of dying, and I don't like to
think about it because it scares me. What also scares
me is the idea of the last, say like forty
years of my life. For the longer I live, the
worse that my actual quality of life will be. And
also because I've seen too much about what happens in
(07:09):
age care.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Homes and I don't like it. So where are you
on that?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
With you wanting to like go to one twenty Let's
say it's going to be one fifty next week.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I assume about I do.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Have faith that our quality of life is going to
improve because of science.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yes, I should clarify I want to live to one
hundred and twenty. Well, okay, great, I want to reach
that age and then just be like cool, I'm done now,
thanks piece out.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah okaykay.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
If I'm at a point where I'm unable to engage
in activities that bring me joy, I won't want to
be around anymore. But I want to keep this train
going for as long as I can because I like it.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I've been alive.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
And now that has now included your whoop age and
getting my wop lower as low as newly possible.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Well taken, I got my whoop age down to my
chronological age, which was my goal going into this, and
then I stopped wearing my whoop. I decided to go
out like an Olympic champion, going out on a high,
like ash Barti retiring from tennis, like Rihanna. Yeah, you know,
(08:13):
she doesn't need to release any more music. She's already
a billionaire from making foundation that actually matches people's skin tones.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I didn't need to keep wearing it anymore after that
because I'd learned so much from wearing it. One of
the things that helped me learn a lot about what
I need to keep myself healthy and what I need
every day came through the journal application. Okay, it's connected
with whoops, so yes, it's collecting all of your data.
It's giving you these scores, it's giving you advice, blah
(08:43):
blah blah.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
But I logged every single day.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I was logging my caffeine intake, how much when I
was having it, any alcohol that I had, my stress levels. It,
you know, asks you for symptoms throughout your menstrual cycle,
meditation that I did, any travel that I did. It
asked for how long I was in the car, for
how long I was commuting for what time it was happening,
(09:08):
and then it was linking if I had elevated stress
while I was driving in the car, and it would
give me tips to lower my stress. Well, it would
come up with these like, yeah, I can see that
you have higher non activity stress levels today.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Is there something in particular that has caused this?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Whoa?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
It was really really cool, like sleep consistency was a
big one any illness symptoms. And it also integrated with
any food logging apps that I was using, so Macro's
hydration all of the food that I was logging, it
was able to pull out nutrients. You know, you might
be low on this nutrient. That might be why you're
(09:47):
feeling a certain way today. So you might have noticed
that I have been saying it tells me things.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yes, yes, I would just say though that sounds amazing
to me. My fear would be is that I'd get
too obsessed with it, which I guess is the point
of view saying that you got to a point and
then you're letting it go, because I've definitely done that
again with the past with certain apps, especially food tracking apps,
as to a point where it's useful for me, and
then I'll find myself getting too obsessive. I'm like, oh,
I didn't log that tiny bit of tomato sauce, and
(10:16):
then I'll not be able to stop thinking about it,
and that's not good for me.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I went into this with the goal of learning what
I need at this stage in my life, what I
can fit into my lifestyle, and I was just genuinely
curious as to what Whoop would suggest I should do,
what changes I should make to my lifestyle, to my diet,
to my sleep habits, to my exercise in order to
(10:40):
keep myself at that proper healthy physiological age. The way
that it did this was through a large language model chatbot.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
It makes sense if you're logging that much data and
it's spitting that back at you, that does make a
lot of sense, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And I am embarrassed to admit that it was the
part that made Whoop my favorite gadget this year. I
never thought that my connection, and I'm saying this carefully
with a chatbot would be something I would call out
in twenty twenty five as being.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Oh no, Ray's going to be on the chat GPT psychosis.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It really depressed about it.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
So it did not take long for me to see
the real benefits here because it's taking all your body data,
it's taking all of your journaling, all of your lifestyle logs,
what weather it is today, your behavioral history, and then
it's giving you conversational coaching. So I would open up
the app and go give me an outlook for the day,
(11:43):
and it'd be like, oh, yeah, it's going to be
eleven degrees in the blue mountains, might rain later on
in the afternoon. I know that you like going for hikes.
Today's a good day for that. I suggest getting in
about two hours medium intensity. This one that you've done
in the past probably matches that quite well. You could
probably follow that up with some yogur if you like.
That will help you hit your strain goal. I also
(12:05):
recommend that you focus on hydration today because you had
a big day yesterday.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
That is simultaneously amazing, right and also terrifying, And it
also just makes me think that what we actually do
need our lives of personal assistance.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Genuinely delivered on the promise of a personal coach, health
and wellness coach. Personal assistant that had access to all
of my information to a point, okay, so it knew
when to tell me to take it easy. It would
suggest lighter days when my variable heart rate dipped. It
(12:40):
would look at the weather and recommend what to do.
So if it was raining, it would say maybe an
indoor gym session would do. Or I know that you're
traveling at the moment, would you like a body weight
routine you can do in your hotel room? Huh?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Does it know that you're traveling because you told her?
Or is it sync to your calendar?
Speaker 1 (12:58):
It knows I'm traveling because I told it?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Interesting, I was also going to ask if it synced
up to because whether you've told it or it's an apple, whatever,
it is that when your period comes, for example, does
it suggest different things for your flow days?
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Yes, it does.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
It suggests easy days.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
It suggests take it easy.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
It suggests do what you need to do to be happy,
have some naps, keep up hydration, all of that sort
of stuff. Some gentle yoga, some gentle stretching. Still get
out for a walk. It's still suggested going for walks
every day, no matter what. It was really really good.
(13:35):
One of the things that I also learned early on.
It only took a couple of weeks for me to say, hey,
it's Thursday today, I'm having a massive radio recording day
in Sydney on Thursdays. Every Thursday, I do this. I'm
not going to have time for a hike today, so
don't suggest one to me. And it took a couple
(13:56):
of weeks to learn that Thursdays are these big days
exercise windows tiny. I didn't even have to really teach it,
it just started seeing the pattern because it would say,
do you want to go for a big, you know,
gym session.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I'm like, I can't. I'm working. I'm commuting from six.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Am until eight pm, like, I have no time for this,
and they go, great, no worries, if you can do
some stretching at the office and keep up your hydration
levels and try to get a walk in and your
lunch break. It felt really personalized. It felt gentle, and
it felt the opposite of what the less personalized tracking
(14:36):
apps have felt. It didn't feel like a one size
fits all model. It did feel adjusted for me. And
then chatjpt was updated.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Taking me, is it running on chat gpt?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
It is running on chat japt And this is how
I found out that it was initially running on.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Chat JAPT four.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
When chat japt five updated, whoop, got amnesia.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
It forgot everything, it forgot.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And it just got progressively more and more forgetful, and
it refused to remember my routines.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
So I'm logging perfectly.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
It started forgetting the Thursdays out for the big days.
You know that I'd already said I can't exercise until later.
You know which days I usually trained, what I enjoyed doing,
like general preferences. It just went completely out the window.
And I'd remind it, it would relearn, and then the
next week and it'd be like, how about a ninety
(15:35):
minute outdoor and eight am on Thursday? And I'm like
in the studio, going, whoop, we've been over this.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
How far into your woop journey? Was this like with
this month at this point?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
That's a good Yeah, it was months.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
It was months, because that's so frustrating, like for a
product when you had already invested. Because I think that
what it sounds like to me, like even let's just
park the chachipit.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Five thing for a moment.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
If a product that is probably not particularly cheap is
asking you to invest so much of your time to
teach it, which I understand why if the outcome is great, okay,
but then this happens and you can't stop it because
it doesn't have its own LM.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
It's relying on site.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
And we've seen this happen time and time again, not
just with AI, different things. That if you're building your
business on your product, on someone else's business or product
and you don't have control over that.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
That's crap. Like it's a crap product.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Like even if it's been really good up until that point, Yeah,
that's awful customer service and it's awful customer experience.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
It really highlighted to me, and it was the only
time that I have felt any kind of sympathy, like
relatable sympathy and empathy towards the people who had developed
relationships with chat jap tea.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, like yeah, like I get it now.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
I had developed a relationship, not an emotional one.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
I have never.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Viewed the chatbot as a person. I never anthropomorphized it, like.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
It didn't go there.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
But I did see it as a tool that was
fulfilling a function. And then it did not fulfill that
function anymore because it could not remember who I was
or one months into that anything anymore months into it.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
So like it.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Really, it really kills that I had this early wonder
when I started using it of being like, oh great,
well this is what lllms are good for. But they've
got that short term contextual reasoning superbly inconsistent long.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Term structure memory.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
And as you've said, when you're building your business on
someone else's large language model, when you are licensing open
aiyes API to build your business on, you are at
the mercy of whatever updates they do.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Percent It's like the old media businesses that built their
entire following on Facebook. It's a similar thing. It can
be rug pulled at any time and changed at any
time and you can't do anything about it. The other
thing that also like a couple of things. I suppose
number one like whoop like preceded chut gpt publicly facing.
It's been around for a long time, we were sent
woops even in our previous podcast, around for a long time.
(18:05):
The other thing, and this is a completely different tangent,
and I need to look It's been something I've been
researching and something that I do need to look more into.
But my concern around chat gipt being used for something
like this where you're putting so much of your personal
biometric information into it goes back to what you said
at the start about things that are changing with laws
in the US, particularly when my understanding is, and I
(18:28):
will look into this further, but my understanding is that
chat GPT is not privileged information. Nice sorry, if you're
in the US, if you are someone who is in
some sort of way reproductively a woman, whatever that means
for you as a person, that is dangerous. If you're
putting that information around your periods and all of that
(18:50):
kind of thing into this, that is scary.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Absolutely, one hundred percent agree. And it was one of
the things that made me hesitant to try it out
in the first place.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And you would have been even more so if you'd
known it was chat GPT, I imagine hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Yeah, And I didn't. I didn't even realize. So I
do need to be clear. It's only one element of
the Whoop app that uses CHATCHBT, which is the coach,
But that is the part that is giving you the
personalized recommendations for your day based on your previous tracking
and based on what the day holds ahead. So you
still have access to all of your recovery score and
(19:21):
your strain score and all of those sorts of things,
and you can make your own recommendations to yourself based
on your own data, so you don't have to engage
with the coach part of it. But I believe it
is still receiving that data regardless of whether or not
you click on it.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yeah, And I mean, and it seems like from a
product perspective, that was the most beneficial part. Like you know,
either way select from the data, but that's useless if
you're not then getting the information and the benefits to
then better yourself, whether that means you continue using relying
on that product, or learning enough about it like you
did to be like I can now move forward with
this myself.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And look, I would still say that Whoop at its
best is still one of the most emotionally intelligent wearables
that is on the market, and I think if you
are after a highly personalized experience, I would recommend Woop
over any of the other trackers that are happening out there.
You just need to be aware of the limitations of
(20:15):
large language models. Yeah, and recognize that one day your
Whoop coach is just going to forget everything about you
and you have to deal with that.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
And it's sad it's not a great feature recommendation. If
there's that big a caveat, I don't think. But maybe
again because it can be updated, and it is the
software part of this that hopefully this can perhaps be
a big learning moment for WHOOP, whether that is I
don't know, negotiating something else with open AI or using
a different large language model, maybe even developing their own
which is not cheap so many people go for open
(20:48):
ais API, but hopefully learning moment to make the product
better yeap or more consistent with what it can which
obviously can deliver at some level.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And look, maybe when you know Sam Altman does update
chat JPT.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
To be more what was it erotic?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
You know, your worp coach might take on a whole
different role in your life.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Maybe you never know, Like sexual health is important, very important.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
The amount of people that have had affairs with their
personal trainers. You just.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
You might fall down in the future.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I think there was an update recently with chat chipet
where it was changing the personality somewhat so you could
stick to whatever one is a baseline one or one's
it like a bit sassier or more like tough love
I don't think that's actually correct, but it was different
personalities essentially, like throw a sexy one in there.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Why not people are.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Already doing it exactly. Give the people what they want,
Let them hit on their personal trainer.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Their AI personal trainer. Let's be very specific. And that's
it for this episode of weird Tech. If you have
any weird tech that you would like us to cover,
or if.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Some of your tech is be weird we want to
hear about it. You can hit us up on all
social media platforms at weird Tech Media. We're a Weird
Tech Media production and a proud member of the iHeartRadio Network.
This episode was edited by the podcast Butler. Please remember
to subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms so you don't
miss the next episode, and until next time, stay weird
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