WEBVTT

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hey jonathan do you think you can help me out with

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these these are fully

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earwax i've noticed this myself when using my old earpods over the years

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they clog up in the mesh of these headphones and at points i got so bad

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that i couldn't even hear out of them in fact these are sarah's second pair

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after clogging up her last set so i think this is probably

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a pretty common problem being a bit of an

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earwax producer myself i've often wondered if seeing a bunch of ear wax on

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my airpods meant that i'm ruining my ears but after

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reaching up to a local hearing specialist he told me in an email that one

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everyone has different earwax some softer some

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harder having no earwax is the genetic anomaly

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two i always worry that i'm pushing earwax further in my ear

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but he said that oftentimes you're actually helping remove earwax from your

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ears hence this mess three

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also if you are someone who cleans their ears frequently

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that could be causing your ear wax to become softer making it all the more

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easy to clog your earbuds and four if you're seeing lots of earwax

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you don't need to worry about your health just the health of your airpods

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obviously the easiest and most wasteful solution to the problem is to just buy

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a new set of airpods which is what sarah did the first time hers got clogged

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but that's untenable apple does service

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airpods but it's 70 each for a repair or replacement or it's

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50 just to get a battery service from what

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i can tell it's the same service just one's cheaper so

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make sure to say battery service to save 20 bucks so between 100

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and 140 to deal with a naturally occurring body excretion

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it all seems steep there have got to be better ways

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now where was i ah yes wax filled air

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pods in doing this research i came across a

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little startup called podswap founded by florida entrepreneurs

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emily alpert and emma stritzinger the company swaps your old airpods with

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refurbished ones and then they refurbish yours remarkably

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they worked out how to replace the battery and clean airpods

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at fifty 50 to swap a pair of first gen airpods and 60 for a second gen set

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they're certainly a compelling option

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so i got this pair of air pods from a colleague

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i can just show you uh what they look

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like um how often do you deal with

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airpods like this it's nothing we

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haven't seen before yeah um yeah i mean it's no secret that

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airpods are pretty gross um so this is something we deal with

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every day at pod swap like it's no surprise that people have

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um sound issues when they send their earpods to us because they're so filled

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with ear wax so this actually um is one of the reasons

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why you might experience issues with sound on your ear pods does the earwax like

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get really smushed through the mesh yes

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we've seen air pods that we're shocked people can even hear out of

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because they're so clogged up like from

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the back through the front it's just um it's unbelievable

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but you know they've been out since 2016 so it makes sense that someone's using

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them for the past four years and it just builds up we have

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to open them up and really get in there let's just say that so then

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um what does it mean for me as i embark and try and clean

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these airpods often times when you attempt to clean them yourself like we

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have a lot of people who damage them ultimately

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so careful out there yeah well thanks

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for all the help okay so let's see what these pod swap

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airpods look like and how clean they are

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oh yeah okay let's see this other one

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okay these are pretty clean so i wonder

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what's going on behind the mesh let's find out

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so one of the concerns i have with cleaning air pods is that

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the earwax has been pushed through the mesh and so all i'm going to be doing is

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cleaning the surface and not actually addressing the problem so i want to know

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how bad it can get behind the mesh

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so i'm going to sacrifice these old earpods that i've had since my iphone 5

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and see what's what key the music

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i have no idea what i'm doing so

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uh there's a seam here and i wanna get

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into it looking at i fix it they used

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a knife i believe

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that these are glued together and with a bit of heat

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and a bit of pressure maybe i can uh pry

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these apart let's just see

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it's warm um oh yeah it's warm

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oh yes yes it worked

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hey oh okay but i do need to get the speaker off now

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yes oh i got it okay here we go

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interesting it's not full of ear wax but it has gone through ever so lightly

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oh but

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when the light goes through it it's orange

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so that's delicious

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all right so i think this is a design

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issue with the release of the airpods in 2012 apple made a big deal about how

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these headphones could fit comfortably in more people's ears

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they use this funnel shape to help but what doesn't help is where the mesh is

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placed right near the tip so if you're a waxy individual

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you can probably see the problem

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so what about cleaning them well

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i discovered this cute little thing recently it's

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an earbuds washing machine from a company called cardlax

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who also make a portable muscle stimulator no matter

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now this is a kickstarter and they kindly sent over a prototype to try

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cleaning one of these airpods so let's see what it can do

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and if you want to pre-order one they're currently going for about 50

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on kickstarter all right

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gloves

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not bad still some residue here and there it looks like it was

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used it's probably good for maintenance but what if you want to try it the

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manual way looking at some videos on youtube i also

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learned of a irish phone repair shop called phone fix crap that's been

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posting very gross microscopic videos of airpods being cleaned

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it looks like he has a thin pick he uses to clear out the wax and scrubs it with

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some sort of liquid and brush and sucks it out with a vacuum if it's really bad oh god i can't i

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can't watch this anymore also when in my interaction with the ear

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specials he mentioned hearing aid cleaning tools which is interesting

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so we ordered a set off amazon for about twelve dollars

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look at these fine picks and brushes

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it might be a big help

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oh my gosh it's really coming out

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all right uh let's go up to sarah and uh

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get her to see how well i've done

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sarah i think i've cleaned them

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oh my gosh let's see if you can guess

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which one i cleaned manually and which one i cleaned with the earbuds

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washing machine all right what do you think of how they look this one looks

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way cleaner than this one for sure okay i guess the real test is

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by trying them out yes let's see if you actually hear music

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okay let's try this side first

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okay so i still have to like turn it up

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a fair bit to see it does it sound better it does

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sound better okay let me try the other side

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i don't know if they sound better okay here's the thing

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is i have to still turn my audio up to like more than halfway

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to hear something right now put them both in okay

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there's one sound better than the other

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this one does sound a little better okay

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but they're still not like they were when they were brand new yeah

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so i hope these are charged up enough these are from pod swap

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let's see if we can oh wow

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it's way louder already oh really

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yeah insane difference

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oh this sounds way better like i can

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turn it down to here and it sounds loud enough clearly

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i've failed haven't i yeah i'd say so

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okay

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well we have a conclusion very sad one

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so i wasn't able to do it myself i'm quite surprised and disappointed

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emma and emily at pod swaps certainly know what they're doing

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me on the other hand don't god this makes me want to keep on trying until i

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get it

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the disposability of airpods has been an issue since they came out almost

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five years ago so it's no surprise that we'd want to keep them running as long

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as possible and as annoying as it may seem i think

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maintenance is an important way to reduce the likelihood of your airpods

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getting filled with earwax so if things do get bad and your

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batteries thin pot swap offers what seems to be the most cost effective and

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environmentally friendly way of breathing new life into older airpods which is remarkable

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considering how tightly these things are glued together

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thank you for listening into this Mac Address if you too

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are a producer of earwax give us a like and if you've clogged up a set of

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earbuds before might as well subscribe i'm also curious if any of you have

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found a really great working solution to this problem

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let me know in the comments below because i'm desperate to figure this thing out