First date? Try a PowerPoint presentation

When Jason Carman and Harpriya Bagri met, they had different takes on the film Tenet.

Directed by Christopher Nolan, Tenet is considered one of the most confusing major movies. Harpriya was not a fan of its mind-boggling time-travel plot. Jason, though?

He proposed a date. They would get pizza, and he would explain the film. Harpriya agreed. But when she showed up, she did not expect to see Jason holding 29 printed slides from a presentation called "Tenet for Dummies." She also didn't know that Jason was filming.

The video of the date was later posted to X and watched 3.7 million times. Some might see the premise as a recipe for disaster. Others, a recipe for love. So which one was it?

Show notes

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Ben Brock Johnson: Amorous Sivertson, happy belated St. Valentino's Day to you.

Amory Sivertson: Benjamin Brockis Johnsonite, back at you.

Ben: And with that in mind, what is the strangest date you've ever been on?

Amory: Probably like, I'm gonna say some dude thinking that we were on a date talking to me about something that he thought that I was interested in, and I wasn't, and we weren't. What about you?

Ben: I took out a girl named Amanda. We went to the movies, and we watched The Sixth Sense.

Amory: Classic love story.

Ben: Classic love story, and we also broke into a Speedbowl.

Amory: Is that like a go-kart?

Ben: No, it's like, you know, low-level race car — it's not the Indy 500. I don't know anything about cars.

Amory: The AAA of race car driving.

Ben: Something like that. Yeah, and she climbed over the fence with me. We definitely trespassed, and it was, like, one of those things where, like, I wanted it to be on, but I didn't know it was on, but it was definitely on. Looking back on it, it was on. But I just dropped her off and was like, "Have a good night. I hope maybe someday you'll consider dating me. OK. Goodbye."

Amory: And you lived happily ever after.

Ben: Yeah, I think she did. She certainly did.

Amory: You did, too. Your wife is one of my favorite things about you.

Ben: Yeah. But my wife didn't live "happily ever after" after. That's the problem for her.

I don't know if either of our dates would've ever gone viral, at least not as viral as the date we're talking about today.

Jason Carman: This whole, like, little Twitter virality stint was basically me capitulating to Twitter every step of the way.  

Ben: I — that, that actually worries me deeply. 

Jason: Me, too.

Amory: Jason Carman lives in San Francisco. He makes documentaries about tech startups. He also launches rockets into space. Big X — Twitter — user.

Ben: And he's single.

Ben: So, what — how's dating? How's it going? 

Jason: (Laughs.) Dating... (Laughs.)

Ben: Jason is in his early 20s, what he describes as a transitional period in the dating scene. He says standing out from the endless feed of men online is more important than ever.

Jason: Everyone's beginning to, like, realize, Oh, dating is no longer just like a fun after high school, in-college thing. So, thinking about it differently has kind of been a trip.

Ben: We better get serious; put together some PowerPoints now.

Jason: That's what I thought.

Amory: Oh yes, and his creative approach to dating has recently earned him a bit of a reputation, one he's not so sure about.

Jason: I don't know if I want to be totally known as the PowerPoint dating guy.

Ben: Too late, my friend! Jason Carman is the PowerPoint dating guy. Why?

Amory: Because about a month ago, Jason decided to go on a first date, and, instead of the usual thing — "Where'd you grow up?" "How many siblings do you have?" — he opted to give a lengthy PowerPoint presentation, a slide show.

Ben: And he filmed it for all the world to see!

Amory: Some might call it an odd approach to wooing. Others?

Jason: I guess it's the modern version of going and, I don't know, fighting a knight, fighting for one's honor. The modern version of that is making a PowerPoint.

Ben: Killing a woolly mammoth and bringing it back or something.

Jason: Yeah.

Amory: I'm sure those knights would really appreciate this comparison.

Amory: Today, Endless Thread listeners, we bring you the story of one date, two people, and 29 slides that caught the attention of millions online.

Ben: This is "Dinner and a (Slide) Show."

Harpriya Bagri: I had seen some of his stuff on Twitter before, so I kind of knew of him just through the Twitterscape.

Amory: Harpriya Bagri is a software engineer, also in the Bay Area. She works with artificial intelligence. And if you're wondering, we interviewed Harpriya and Jason separately.

Amory: Harpriya, how would you describe your dating life? 

Harpriya: You know, not great.

Amory: Can AI help with that? 

Harpriya: You know, funny that you mentioned that. I also made an AI agent to background-check my Hinge dates for me.

Ben: How's that working out for you? Harpriya and Jason didn't meet on Hinge. Their meet-cute was a tad more old fashioned.

Harpriya: There was this party. Jason was there. That's how we met. I was telling him about how I really enjoyed his videos and stuff, and he had read my blog.

Jason: She's great. She's very smart, and we're both nerds in the best sense of that. I mean, we met at a tech-optimism dinner party at my house.

Amory: A tech-optimism dinner party. Yes, you heard that correctly. They talked about things like AI, podcast audio quality, and they were hitting it off. Then they got to a somewhat contentious subject, one that would go on to have a rather big effect on their soon-to-be romantic lives.

Harpriya: If I recall correctly, it was him that had brought it up.

Jason: This movie comes up with me a lot in conversation. And I just think it's great. I don't know how. I don't intentionally bring it up. That would be really concerning for my future dating, but —

Harpriya: I had just seen it like a few weeks before that, just very recently. And I was just telling him how it was cool and all, but it wasn't like other Christopher Nolan movies. Maybe some of it went over my head. I didn't really enjoy it as much as I hoped to.

[Fay: All I have for you is a gesture in combination with a word: Tenet.

Protagonist: That's all they've told you?]

Jason: Tenet is the most underrated Christopher Nolan movie, and hated in many ways. 

Ben: For the uninitiated, Tenet is a nearly 3-hour action movie written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the guy who brought us mind-bending films like Inception, Memento, Interstellar, Oppenheimer.

Amory: And, Ben, as you know, I am the uninitiated. I have never seen Tenet.

Ben: On this timeline.

Amory: (Laughs.) How would you describe the plot of Tenet?

Ben: Uh, there's, um, some good guys and some bad guys, but there's one good guy. And he's trying to travel through time to stop the end of the world. And there's a machine. There's, like, a machine they have to go through to, like, to go through time. And there's a lot of discussion about entropy, which I don't really understand. And yeah, that's what I got. How'd it go? How'd that go for you?

Amory: (Laughs.)

[Protagonist: I need some idea of the threat we face.  

Barbara: As I understand it, we're trying to prevent World War III.  

Protagonist: Nuclear holocaust.

Barbara: No. Something worse.]

Amory: Apparently, this movie is not for everyone.

Harpriya: It was very slow for probably a good chunk of it — probably a majority of it. I think I didn't see how certain things added up. 

Ben: But it is the movie for Jason.

Jason: I think it's like the most unique take on time travel that I've ever seen in a movie, and I think that's what makes it so cool.

Ben: They have a lot in common, clearly.

Amory: A lot in common. They're both at the tech-optimism party talking about Tenet. Harpriya's like, Mmm, yeah, too confusing, too long. I don't get what all the fuss is about. Normally, this might elicit a head nod and a new topic.

Ben: But Jason had been in this situation before!

Harpriya: He ended up telling me that he had an ex-girlfriend who he explained the movie Tenet to, and he made this whole, like — he did a presentation on it or something. And I was like, Oh, interesting. I didn't think I would be at the end of another presentation in the near future, but I thought it was funny in the meantime.

Ben: Fast forward a couple weeks, and Jason is on X or Twitter or whatever, and he jumps into thread with some randos about, obviously, Tenet. One tweet has a video of a Peloton instructor ranting about the movie mid-workout.

[Peloton instructor (via @JacobOller): Did anybody see this besides me? Because I need a manual. Someone's got to explain this.]

Ben: And so he ends up tweeting someone else, to say.

Jason: I have these slides I made for a date three years ago. And people didn't believe me. I went to bed, woke up, the tweet was mini-viral. Posted the slides. That went very viral. And then some guy replied, "You should record yourself on a date doing the slides," which I proceeded to do.

Amory: Jason is, among other things, a self-described content creator. And he knew Harpriya had recently started to make her own content. So, Jason got an idea.

Harpriya: He had just, like, texted me, being like, Oh, do you remember when I was telling you about Tenet, blah, blah blah? And he was like, How about I give you the presentation? Do you wanna go on a date? And I was like, OK, that's fine. 

Jason: She didn't know at the time that it was gonna be recorded. But I'd met her a few times. She seemed cool. I knew she was thinking about getting into content.

Harpriya: He was very explicit to not go on Twitter beforehand.

Jason: I was just like, I know she would be interested in doing something like this once she knew what it really was. And this is another thing I like about Tenet's approach, is much of it is covert.

Harpriya: I literally thought we were just gonna talk about the movie. But, no, it was a lot more than that.

Amory: A lot more than that. Here we go!

Ben: How the date went down, in a minute.

[SPONSOR BREAK]

[Jason: People didn't think I was serious about making a slideshow about the movie Tenet. But I did. I have it here.]

Amory: So what happens when a guy goes on a date with a PowerPoint presentation and secretly records the whole thing?

Ben: He might get beat up. He also might get 3.7 million views, obviously. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[Jason: And so I asked a friend of mine who I met a few weeks ago, a girl named Harpriya. I texted her last night, Do you want to come to a date, and I'll give you my Tenet presentation? So that's what's going to happen since everyone has asked to, well, see the presentation. So, here we go.]

Amory: OK, so she was warned. A presentation is on the dinner table, is on the menu.

Ben: He asked for consent before he gave her his Tenet presentation.

Amory: So, about an hour before the date, Jason sets up at an Italian restaurant, Norcina, in San Francisco's Marina District. He got seats in front of a floor-length window.

Ben: Meanwhile, two friends with cameras and audio equipment hide behind an outdoor dining booth across the street. Secrecy is critical.

Jason: There was an area mic I hid under a flower vase right there. The restaurant was in on it.

Ben: Oh my goddddd!

Jason: So, the cameras were set up, and we were worried about the glare of the lighting. It was all stressful. We were having some issues with audio. Then, eventually, we got everything straight.

Amory: As for Harpriya?

Harpriya: I had researched the restaurant beforehand. I was really excited to eat food and, you know, get to know him better.

[Jason: Hey, how's it going? 

Harpriya: Hi.

Jason: Nice to see you.

Harpriya: Good to see you.

Jason: Thanks for coming.]

Ben: The date starts like a lot of first dates: kinda awkward. There's some nervous, small talk — about spritzes.

[Jason: I'm normally not like a spritz-flight guy, but it's really good here. And a friend, maybe you got a one, so I don't know what to do. Like spritzes at all before.  

Harpriya: What is a spritz?]

Ben: Great question.

Amory: Harpriya, I'm with you, girl.

Ben: But also, I'm in. I wish someone would take me out for a spritz flight.

Amory: Let's do that after this. Let's get a spritz.

Ben: A spritz flight.

Amory: So there's also this kind of vibe, like they both know something is odd. Then, Harpriya notices that Jason is holding something — a folder.

Jason: And I don't think she knew what was in it. She was looking at it a little bit, and then I held it up.

Harpriya: And he pulls out like 29 pages or something of these printed slides. And yeah, I was laughing, a little confused. And I was like, Is this serious? Is this partly a joke? But then, he was committed. 

Amory: There's like a weird joke in here, like, "And then he pulled out his slides!" It's like, "Oh gosh, no."

[Harpriya: Oh, you're serious. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I mean —

Harpriya: You printed it out? I knew you said you had a presentation. I did not think —  

Jason: Yeah. I thought it'd be, like, weird if it was like, I don't know — I just printed the slides. It's only, like, 29 slides.]

Jason: She looks over her shoulder, almost like, I'm not sure for what. Was she looking for help? Was she looking to leave? Was she looking like — what was it?

Harpriya: Yeah, I was like, You know, let's just go with it. Let's just dive right in.

Ben: The slide show is titled, "Tenet for Dummies." And it starts with text explaining, quote, "If you're reading this, you probably didn't understand the film Tenet... It's OK!... you're just not as film smart as you thought."

Harpriya: "You're not the film expert you think you are," or something like that. He had all these, like, jokes in the beginning. And I was like, What are you trying to do?

Amory: Oh, boy.

Harpriya: I was like, This could be going very downhill if you're starting off with that slide.

Amory: Oh, I would agree, yes.

[Jason: I made these like three years ago. This is sassier than, uh, it's — you know, this is not about you. It's about the theoretical person who doesn't understand Tenet, which is I think most of the population.

Harpriya: OK. OK. You know what? Let's keep going. Yeah.]

Jason: I was just so nervous. I was trying my best to be myself, but not be too loud, be loud enough for the audio. Also just, like, the slides suck. The slides are not meant for this.

Amory: This video, we should say, is 17 minutes long, so it's edited.

Ben: Can't believe she stayed that long. Shocking.

Amory: Well, the date was longer. This is the edited version, and I have to admit, when I watched this for the first time, I kind of thought the whole thing was a setup. I thought Harpriya had to have been in on it.

Amory: You could say that there's romantic chemistry and you want to see where this goes. There's another part of me that's like, Hmm, this is something that we could make content around together, and it could do really well. You know what I mean?

Jason: Well, if anything, the first.

Amory: Whatever he told you, what he pulled out was not what you were expecting?

Harpriya: No, no, no, no. I literally thought we were gonna talk about it.

Ben: Regardless, the date doesn't seem like it's starting well for Jason, the guy who said "you're not as film-smart as you think you are." Until...

Jason: The first time it happened where she actually got interested was the palindrome. 

Harpriya: He showed this very ancient artifact where it said, it said "tenet," and I think that pulled me in.

Amory: This slide shows a matrix carved into stone. It was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii and later found elsewhere. It kind of looks like a secret code.

Ben: There are five words in the matrix. And they all can be read backwards and forwards. The word in the center is "tenet."

[Jason: No one knows what it is. 

Harpriya: Where is it? 

Jason: It's everywhere. They have it on doors. They have it on buildings.]

Harpriya: Wait, I didn't know this. Like, that was really cool.

Ben: This is where having seen the film actually helps, Amory, because the whole movie is about time inversion...

[Barbara: It's inverted. Its entropy runs backwards. So to our eyes, its movement is reversed.]

Ben: ...which is different than the time travel we usually imagine, where we get in a machine, press some buttons, and go ride a dinosaur.

[Barbara: Don't try to understand it. Feel it.]

Jason: And then the next slide, I think she remembered that it was a PowerPoint slide on a movie on a date and went back to being like, Um, what?

[Harpriya: How many slides in are we?

Jason: Probably like halfway there.

Harpriya: Halfway there.

Jason: Part two, part six, but...]

Jason: I was like, Oh my God, these slides are just monotonous and unclear and slow. And, like, I'm getting bored, and I'm getting out of it. And so I quickly just like — I was like, OK, this happened, this happened, this happened. And then when I did that, went through four slides that I didn't think were that important very willy-nilly, she was like, Wait, what was that one?

Amory: "That one" was a pretty cool slide, actually. Kind of a timeline of the whole movie, showing at what point the characters are going forwards and backwards.

Ben: If you ever get confused watching this movie, this is the slide to look at.

Harpriya: He talked about that machine that reverses the entropy. And they don't really show this as much in the movie, which is why I think that was a big point of confusion for me, is when they go backwards in time, they're reliving every day at the same unit of time. Like, a second is a second, but backwards.

Ben: And this is the moment that things really took off.

Jason: The awkwardness was gone at that point. And it was just like, I want to see this PowerPoint thing through and then talk about time travel theory at the end. 

Harpriya: And so we got really into it. We got into all these details, and it was connecting together and it had a lot of like lightbulb moments talking about what that could mean and what our theories were on whether or not it exists.

[Jason: I guess my question is, do you think time travel is real?  

Harpriya: Well, I think the whole point is, like, time is relative.  

Jason: Yeah, subjective and relative. Lots of different — yeah. 

Harpriya: You time-travel backwards. Now, there's two of you. 

Jason: I don't see why that wouldn't happen.]

Harpriya: But yeah, I think it was really cool to be able to talk about it just because I feel like it's not a topic I normally talk about.

Amory: Ah, that first date. Romance.

Ben: True love.

Amory: True love.

Ben: Eventually this PowerPoint date kind of morphs. They get pizza. They put down the slides. They eat. All of a sudden, it's just like a normal date.

Amory: Except for the secret camera part.

Jason: Once the pizza moment happened, I started laughing like the way that you do when you say "cut" kind of thing. I started laughing and said into my mic, "OK, guys, I think we did it." And then, at that point, she totally knew what was going on.

Harpriya: And I was like, "I had a little bit of a feeling!" I did!

Amory: Whoa, that was at the end of the date?

Jason: And I was like, "Are you? I could totally delete the footage. Like, seriously, it's no problem. Like, I don't even know if it went well." And she was like, "Let's just see it. Like, let's go look at it."

Harpriya: And later on in the night, we went over to Jason's apartment, and I watched him edit this whole thing, shrink it down to 17 minutes.

Amory: Oh my god, that night?

Harpriya: Yes. That night. (Laughs.)

Ben: Interesting.

Amory: No, it'll be really cool. I'm gonna give you my presentation. Then we'll go back to my apartment, and you can watch me edit the footage of the date that I recorded that I didn't tell you that I was recording until the end. No notes. Sounds like —

Ben: Oh, lovely. Can't wait to come up to your place and have a drink.

Amory: (Laughs.)

Ben: Jason uploaded the video the next day.

Jason: And that was terrifying. Thankfully, I think it went OK and wasn't horrible, per se.

Ben: People liked it! Sixteen thousand people, to be precise. Millions watched.

Amory: But some people were not huge fans.

Ben: No!?

Amory: Yes, believe it or not, some took issue with the surreptitious filming.

Harpriya: A lot of my friends have asked me that question, like, Were you offended or, you know, whatever else? Like, some of my friends clearly would not be cool with it. But no, I thought it was funny. I genuinely thought it was funny.

Ben: Others saw the very premise as a bad idea. Like the definition of mansplaining.

Harpriya: I can see why people think that. But I think in reality it honestly didn't feel like that at all. It was definitely more of a conversation. It was funny. And then there was a lot of banter and back-and-forth. I don't think he's a mansplainer. I think he's a great guy.

Jason: I think it's a person thing. I wouldn't try this on a blind date with someone off of a dating app or just a random person — like, I knew Harpriya was someone that would appreciate something like this. 

Amory: I want to know what movie Harpriya would explain to you.

Jason: It would be funny to do it and have people vote who did better. I think she would do better, 100%. But that would be, that would be a great follow up.

Harpriya: My favorite movie in the whole world is Cars, like the Disney Pixar movie.

Amory: Yes! I've never seen it, but I love this. I love that we are miles away, seemingly, from Tenet.

Harpriya: It's not just this animation about talking cars. It's, I feel like, so deep and has a lot of philosophical meaning to it that people miss. So I would love to give a presentation about Cars. I feel like I can really talk about that movie a lot.

Ben: Oh man, all I have to say, Harpriya is "ka-chow."

[Lightning McQueen: Me. You. Dinner. Pah-ka-chow. Cha-chow. Pah!

Sally Carrera: What that? Ow. Ouh. Please. Ugh.]

Ben: In the end, they both said the date was a learning experience. Not just about Tenet. They learned some other things, too.

Jason: If you're someone who's already anxious and paranoid about what people think of what you're saying, which I certainly am as well, then your problem is definitely not worrying about saying too much. You just need to be out there and confident in what you're saying or your PowerPoint presentation.

Harpriya: Maybe, it's like, in an odd way, the bar of a fun date is higher. It could be so dynamic. It doesn't have to be like, "How many siblings do you have?" "What's your favorite color?" Especially to understand why someone likes something so much is truly a reflection of themselves that you don't get from the very basic conversations of how many siblings you have and your favorite color and all those basic questions.

Ben: The Tenet date was a few weeks ago. Has there been a second date?

Jason: Uh, no. We have been talking a lot about things, but there's not been a second date.

Harpriya: Jason and I have kept in touch via text. And we'll see. I don't know.

Amory: Well, now you have a Cars presentation that you have to put together and give.

Harpriya: I know. So that's tempting. I think I'll — do I tell him? Should I tell him or just invite him?

Amory: Just invite him.

Harpriya: Give him a taste of his own medicine.

Ben: I have to say Amory, that when we first talked to Jason, there were like so many red flags for me where I was like, Here's a guy who — he's explaining a movie to this woman, he's subjecting this poor woman to 29 slides of explanation on their first date. But the more that we talked to Jason, I was like, You know what? This guy's a nice guy, I think. He's actually a nice guy, and it was really nice to hear Harpriya say like, No, I was good with this. And to me it's just a reminder that, you know, true love is very subjective. And also, Harpriya, I really look forward to the Cars slide-deck explanation. My kids would also love that.

Amory: Yeah, I think Harpriya is smart as hell, and I think if she had really been miserable, she would've left. And I guess my only thought is that like a date is not, Let me tell you about this thing. A date is maybe. Let's each tell each other about a thing.

Ben: Yeah.

Amory: If we can go back in time, time travel, we can do this date again!

Ben: Oh, let's see it happen.

Amory: And they can each give their presentation, and then they will live happily ever after if they so choose to.

Amory: Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

Ben: (Speaks "backwards.”) It was produced by (speaks "backwards").

Amory: Are you trying to say his name backwards?

Ben: Yeah.

(Ben speaking "backwards" in reverse.)

This episode was produced by Dean Russell. It was co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson. And...

Amory: ...Amory Sivertson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

Ben: The rest of our team is Katelyn Harrop, Samata Joshi, Frannie Monahan, Matt Reed, Grace Tatter, and Paul Vaitkus.

Amory: If you have a PowerPoint presentation that you want us to hear, invite us out. We'll give you one as well.

Ben: Take us out for a spritz flight for crying out loud.

Amory: It's about time, don't you think?

Ben: Yeah.

Amory: Yeah, just email Endless Thread at WBUR.org. That's how the best dates start.

Ben: Yeah, you don't, you don't even have to call or text. You can just email us. It's fine.