H.I. No. 27: Bumper Christmas Special

"H.I. #27: Bumper Christmas Special" is the 27th episode of Hello Internet and the podcast's first annual Christmas special, released on December 25, 2014.
==Official Description==
Grey and Brady talk about Christmas Eve and Christmas traditions in the UK, follow up on the Star Wars Trailer, Brady's new iPhone, bragging (just plain regular bragging) about the 'Best Podcasts of 2014 Awards', Sony Hack and the News, Brady's Sport paper cut, and Middle Earth Corner with the IPA and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
Also Brady wants to talk about bridges, and because it's Christmas, Grey indulges him.
==Show Notes==
*Discuss this episode
*Hello Internet Patreon Supporters
*David Prowse as Darth Vader
*Bristol Zoo
*King Kong Christmas Tree 'Star'
*The Incomparable 222: Forcegiving
*Mr. Plinkett Reacts to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer
*Millennium Falcon stabilized
*Star Trek stabilized subreddit
*Star Wars: Episode VII Trailer - George Lucas' Special Edition
*Numbers confuse Americans - Numberphile
*Pete McPartlan
*The Talk Show
*iPhone 6 drop test
*iPhone 6 fire test
*Sony Hack
*The Interview
*BBC Sports Personality of the Year
*Hohenzollern Bridge
*Bridge of Sighs
*Great Belt Fixed Link Bridge
*Clifton Suspension Bridge
*Are Hong Kong & Macau Countries?
*Hillary Suspension Bridge
*Hoover Dam
*Golden Gate Bridge
*Hoover Dam art deco
*The Bridge Documentary
*Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges
*Sydney Harbor Bridge 
*The Lord of the Rings Mythology Explained
*Minute Physics
*Professor Verlyn Flieger
*Ask Middle Earth
*Knut
*International Phonetic Alphabet
*The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
*The Silmarillion
*Random Acts of Intelligence
*The Istari
*Sauroman the Grey
*The Blue
*Wizards
*Gandalf the White
*Radagast the Brown
Fail. That did not work at all, man. Let us start the show properly. Now we've dealt with more podcast technical problems, which is always the worst way to start a podcast, but seems to be coming in a trend. Yes, it's always super exciting for people listening to us to hear about our technical problems. Last time we mentioned Patreon as a way for people to support us, we recorded quite possibly the worst advertisement ever recorded in podcast history. Yes, that is entirely possible. We did a on the spots recording of an advertisement, which sounded like a good idea in theory, but maybe in practice turned out terribly. But in spite of our atrocious advertisement, we have many people to thank for supporting us on the Patreon. So just wanted to say thank you to all of those people who have decided to chip in to help the show. And at this point, our first list of Patreon supporters should be at hellointernet.com slash Patreon if you went for the higher tier and your name will be listed there as one of our official Patreon. So thank you very much. Like a whole of fame, sort of a, you know, it is like the most amazing hall of fame that there ever has been, I think is the best way to describe it. Have you done it like, does it look like an on a board? Like has it got like a wood background that looks like their names are like etched in gold and what? Well, we are recording this ahead of time. So right now I have actually done nothing at all. Right. Right. Right. So where we have to pretend Brady, right? Because people will be listening to this in the future. Oh, right. Oh, I'm looking at the page now, right? And it looks fantastic. Yes, that was super convincing Brady. So yes, that will be up. And again, just want to thank the people who were supporting us. But people will be listening to us on Christmas morning, possibly. If they are incredibly dedicated fans, because this is our Christmas show. Can you put podcasts up on Christmas morning? Like do the Apple elves work on Christmas day to like a proof podcast and things like that? Well, I guess this is another one of these things that we are going to find out. It could be a boxing day edition. Yes. Exactly right. Fingers crossed. This is our Christmas show. Perhaps it isn't. Who knows? Anyone who listened to the last podcast, and in fact, even if they didn't listen to it, they probably have a clue that I met Darth Vader, because that was the name of the podcast. I went to this I went to this charity thing at Bristol Zoo, David Prouse, who played Darth Vader was there. And I sat with him and oh, lovely. Yeah. I did not tell the whole story. I held something back because I wanted to talk about it with you. And I have since talked about it with you. And I wanted to talk about it with a few other people. And I'm now in a position to tell the whole story. Please do. Because David Prouse was there in support of the zoo's charitable endeavors. And his contribution was he was donating an opportunity to watch the original Star Wars movie with him and 20 of your friends at a sort of VIP screening held at the zoo and then have a Q&A with him afterwards and just hang out. So watch Star Wars with Darth Vader and then hang out with him. Pretty cool price. That is a pretty cool price. It is a pretty cool price. Now, I got I was a bit excited by the whole night. And I was sitting with Darth Vader and we were all dressed up in tuxes. And I had a few wines and everything was good. And I had thought about it a bit. And then when the auction came, I suddenly had a rush of blood. And I thought, this is I'm going to go for this is your moment. This is my moment. I've always wanted to be like that cool guy that just subtly puts his hand up at the auction and you know, just does the nod against the look from the auction ear and it's like, you know, feel like you feel like you're pretty important. Right. So that's what I did. And I won the auction. Oh yeah, I won the auction. So so I've got this, which is kind of funny in a way, because I've seen Star Wars a million times. And I spent all night with David Prouse. So then I asked him anything I wanted. But anyway, I don't think I don't think that auction was was aimed at people who've never seen Star Wars. No, I think that auction was aimed at people who've seen it multiple times. I know, I know. But because I'd sat next to David Prouse and his wife, I kind of, you know, the novelty of getting to spend a lot of time with him, maybe you shouldn't have appealed to me so much. But I did enjoy his company so much that that that actually enhanced the product, the prize in my eyes. But I did, I did bid on it with an agenda if I won. And now that I have won, it was time to deliver on that. And I've discussed it with you and I've discussed it with a few other important people, including David Prouse himself. So I'm in a position to partially reveal the plan. And that plan is we are going to make available a selection of seats at this screening. And you are going to come along. Yep. Being a Star Wars fan and I am going to be there. And David Prouse will be there. So we're going to say it's a chance for Hello Internet listeners who want to come and watch Star Wars with you and I and with Darth Vader himself come and hang out with us. When we make these tickets or positions or seats available, however we do that, I don't know, I don't know how we're going to do that. Yes, yes, we have not, we have not figured out a lot of details here. We don't know yet. But whatever, whatever we do, however we raise any money from this, this isn't to go towards the Hello Internet private jet. This is all the money from this is for South African penguins. I've spoken to the people at Bristol Zoo and they will also organize for us all to have a tour of the zoo and look around and talk about some of the key animals, especially the penguins. This whole charity thing at the zoo is raising money for South African penguins. There's problems with South African penguins, I think basically. I don't know why this happens, but it seems like the parents keep leaving their chicks to go foraging for food and well, they don't come back. And there's all these problems with these penguin chicks and the Bristol Zoo's got this big program where they are sort of saving the chicks and saving the penguin colonies. They're trying to raise money for that. So we are going to raise more money for that. Yes, I think we want to specify that the money is not going to us because what we also decided is probably the fairest thing to do is when we have decided the details, we are going to first give that information to the Patreon supporters of the show. Yes, we're not now, we're not saying that it's going to be limited to Patreon supporters. That is not the way it's going to work. We're just going to give them a head start on getting these tickets. However, we decide that that's going to happen. I figure they're probably the biggest super fans anyway. So they're the people who may think that coming all the way to Bristol to watch Star Wars with us is a worthwhile endeavor. I don't know. I was figuring maybe we'd put some of them on there and then some of them will talk about on the podcast or the Twitter or something. That's not the only way to find it out, but it's a very good way to find it. Yes, whatever is going to happen, your best chance of getting a ticket in a right away is going to be being on the Patreon. But that does not mean that that will be the only way to do it. But that's why I want to emphasize that the ticket money, the ticket sales themselves will be going to Penguins. And who doesn't like penguins? Monsters Brady. That's who doesn't like penguins. I like penguins. I like penguins. I'm actually in some ways just hanging out at the zoo with a bunch of hello internet people and news. It's pretty cool anyway. But then getting to go and then watch Star Wars with Darth Vader afterwards. That's pretty cool. I think that's really the selling point. We will happen to be there, but Darth Vader will be there. Yeah. I'm sure if you bring along a Darth Vader picture or something David will sign it for you because he's pretty used to signing Darth Vader pictures. You can bring along your iPhone or your Kindle and I'm sure Gray will sign it for you. Yes, I'll be very happy to have you. And I'll just give you a little skin. I don't know. Bring a longer piece of plain wreckage and I'll sign that for you if you want. Perfect. I don't know what someone will want me to sign, but I'd be I'd have police. I'd have police sign anything. Did I tell you I signed a test tube? No, you did not tell me you signed a test tube. Someone brought along in India, the chemistry fans brought along these test tubes for us to sign. That sounds difficult to sign. That sounds difficult. It was difficult to sign. Not as difficult as a t-shirt though. Yeah, t-shirts are hardest. Really people. iPhones. That's the way to go. No. But if you want to come, so there you go. Come and see Star Wars and Zoo Animals with Hello Internet and Darth Vader. Do you think anyone will actually listen on Christmas Day? I don't know. Possibly people will listen on Christmas Day. I bet some people will listen on Christmas Day. Would you listen to a podcast on Christmas Day? Well, I always find Christmas Day kind of strange. And partly because in my family, I think I sort of alluded to before. Christmas Eve was usually actually the bigger day because of the Dutch connection in my family. We usually opened the presents on Christmas Eve, so we didn't open the presents on Christmas Day. That was always the big celebration was that day. For me, Christmas morning was often a much smaller event. I always remember having the strange feeling of like almost a 12 noon on Christmas Day. Somehow Christmas is just over. It just doesn't feel like it's Christmas anymore. I still have that as an adult somehow. That Christmas ends remarkably soon on Christmas Day. That feeling of, oh, it's Christmas time. And so I think there would be, if there are people like me, there will be afternoon Christmas Day podcast listeners. So you've done the whole morning shabang and maybe you're just, you know, you're relaxing somewhere, possibly away from your family for a few moments of respite. And so they might be listening to the show. Hello, if you're listening to us. Soothing tones of CGB Gray and Brady to get festive. Yes, possibly, possibly. It's funny how like what you think Christmas is like and like your childhood Christmas sort of gets locked in. And other ways that people do Christmas, like just you never really become comfortable with other people's ways. Like I'm the same as you actually. For various just family reasons, Christmas Eve was always more exciting because that's when we saw, you know, the auntie and uncle who were the ones who we did fun presents with and the fun cousins and stuff like that. And then Christmas Day we did other things. And so Christmas Eve was just always more exciting for me. But that aside, since moving to the UK from Australia, from the Southern hemisphere, like I cannot get used to the fact, for example, that people just watch so much TV on Christmas Day in the UK. Oh yeah. Like that's like the thing to do. There's all these special shows on and people eat and then watch this show and then that show. Like Christmas Day revolves around television in the UK. And that, you know, there are special movies that they release on the day, like, you know, the latest Harry Potter film will be premier on Christmas Day and things like that. And in Australia, where it's sunny and you just go outside and go to the beach and play cricket. I think if I turned a television on in Australia on Christmas Day, well, I would have gotten trouble as a kid. But also people would just think you're like some kind of weirdo. I'm remembering now that when I was younger, my family for two out of the three Lord of the Rings movies, we went and saw them on Christmas Day. At the cinema. Yeah. They came out on, I think, if I don't remember if it was on Christmas Day, or just slightly before Christmas Day. But so yes, there are a couple of watching Lord of the Rings on Christmas days in my family. The other thing that's crazy to me that it seems so many people in the UK do is see their friends on Christmas Day, like go to the pub or go out with their friends in the evening. Like to me, like Christmas Day was like, Christmas Day was the one day of the year practically that I was banned from seeing my friends, like my, my next neighbours who I wanted to play cricket with, you know, every day of my life or, you know, go swimming with and all my mates and all my school friends. Like this was the one day of the year we were all kind of told, no, you're not allowed to play cricket with Steven and Adam today. Right. They're going to see their family. You're going to see your family. This is a family day. Right. No, this is the one day of the year you can give your friends a rest and put your family first. But here in the UK, almost everyone I know, like they do the family stuff during the day and then it's off to the pub with friends. Is that, is that just me? It's funny. Living in London, I've known many more immigrants, I think, then English people over my time. So I don't necessarily have a good sense of what it is that English people do on their, their Christmas day. Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm a bit more, I'm a bit more ingratiated into England and I feel like you are. You are. You've gone native is what you've gone. I have gone a bit native. Look, while we're talking about Christmas, let me change the order of things a bit because things are getting Christmassy and you promised to send me a picture of your Christmas tree. You have not done this. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have gone on. Are you ashamed? No, I just, I honestly, I just, it hasn't crossed my mind. I can message my wife in the other room right now if you want to picture the Christmas tree. Yeah. I want it. I want it now during the show. You want it right now? Okay. I want it during the show. Let me message the misses. Get her onto it. I want to see this tree. Well, I was going to, I was going to give you a harder time about that. I didn't know if I told you. We, we, we went and chose that tree. We like, it's something we, we've done it a couple of times now going and cutting it down ourselves, like choosing it and then like executing it in the forest. Have you, have you ever done that? When I was growing up, we always had a plastic tree. We never had a real tree. Yeah. And with my wife, now she is the one who introduced the notion of real trees, which I think I touched upon last time. She's something he would never occur to me to do. Yeah. And we have not done the go into the forest and pick out a tree just like they do in the movies thing mainly because we're living in central London and so it is a little bit difficult to get out into the forest. And so we always end up just going to a couple of places that are, that are nearby and picking up some preselected trees. Pretty executed. Pre executed trees. Yes. That is, that is what we do. Well, next year you come out with us and do it and you can come and, you can come and help us choose a tree because it's so much fun. That sounds like a long day. That sounds like a long day. It's not, it's really easy and really fun. It's really good. It's like a farm, you know, it's a tree farm. And the one we went to this year was really good because they put ribbons on the ones you're allowed to cut down. And because some of them they're growing for future years. And at this particular place, every single one of them has like a name. Like they've given it a fun name. So, and the name colors your choice in some ways as well as what the tree looks like. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. They've given the tree's individual names. Yeah. Like this tree is called time. This one we ended up with was called Spencer. So we chose Spencer. But they're all sorts of cool names and yeah, that sounds exhausting. Someone has to name all the trees. I'm envisioning a forest full of trees. It's a lot of names. Well, it's not like a, it's not like a, you know, return of the Jedi type forest that just stretches forever. It's a bit more. But even so, it's going to be like, like I often go to IKEA and I marvel at all the names in IKEA. I think, oh, this is exhausting coming up with names for all of these products. I'm just envisioning like how many items are there in IKEA versus how many trees in this forest that you're going to. Yeah. No, you're right. It would, I would say he would have had to come up with a few hundred names at least. Yeah. I often think that about people that run dog sanctuaries as well when they've got to give all the dogs names. I find they tend to recycle their names a lot. Yeah, they must recycle the names. Yeah, they must recycle the pictures. I've got the picture of your Christmas tree. There you go. So, all right, what do you think? Are you okay with this? I have to say, I like it. Yeah. You've done well. It's, it's quite close to our style as well. I can't even begin to tell you how to satisfy I am with all the lights on this Christmas tree. No, I like the lights. It's got a nice balance, but also a touch of randomness. I think you've done well. You do need a touch of randomness. If it's too even, it looks all wrong. Yeah. But for some reason, we have, I don't know what this is. I don't know what this is, but we bought some Christmas tree lights. And, okay, right, I'm going to get some Christmas tree lights that are in a string. Yeah. Right. So I can arrange this. Have you gotten Christmas tree lights? They come in in a loop? Yes. You know what I'm talking about, right? We've got one that's a string and one that's a loop. Yeah. So some of our strands are these loops. And I don't understand the reasoning for this. I don't understand why this is the case. And so I think I think we have two strands that are loops and two strands that are single strands. Like, you know, single strands in the way sanity deems it should be. Yeah. And as a result of this, I have had a heck of a time trying to balance the lights to my satisfaction. And I find myself sitting on the couch looking at the tree and then just getting irritated because it doesn't look right. So I go over and try to adjust it. But because of this, the loop strand disparity, I am not able to achieve satisfaction. So I'm unhappy with the distribution of the switch. I mean, in this pitch, you send me, it looks like the lights at the top of the tree aren't actually switched on or I can't say them very well. I think this is because the lighting in the room. I can't completely judge on how well you've done the lights. But from what I can say, I find it quite pleasing. Yeah. I do notice, is the top of the picture cut off or is there no star on the tree? Nothing on top. We have had some star difficulties this year. Do you want to share with the group? I don't need to share every tiny detail of my fussiness about everything. It's just not necessary. We can just leave it that star acquisition was not satisfactory this year. However, you sent me a picture of your Christmas tree. I'm going to say this and you're going to take it the wrong way. But take it the way I mean it pretty. Your decorations, your star is never something that I would pick for myself. But I think it looked absolutely great on your tree. Would you care to describe the star on your tree and your tree decorations? Well, I found it weird that you call a star because clearly it's like an angel. Yeah. The thing at the top of the tree no matter what it is is a star. Ah, see. No, no, no, no. This is, you're getting into my Christmas tree baggage here. No, it's whatever it is at the top of the tree, it's a star. No, no. I saw a Christmas tree decoration. I think I read it, presumably unread it, which was somebody had a King Kong at the top of his Christmas tree that had an airplane in one hand and I forget the actresses name me in the other hand. So even if there is a King Kong at the top of your tree, it is still a star. I would refer to that as a star. Why am I wrong about this? Well, I have, I have childhood issues here. My, my mum was the chief decorator of our Christmas tree and was very, she's a very particular woman and likes things how she likes them. So we were, we were given only a minimal role in Christmas tree decorating. We were allowed to put a few decorations on strategic places and if they would around the back, maybe we got away with it, but otherwise they might end up getting moved. And my mum had a real preference for a star star at the top of the tree, you know, a pointy star, a star of Bethlehem. Sorry, she, I got that completely wrong. Sorry, man, this is, this is, I'm so scared by this, I can't even tell the story. She had a very strong preference for an angel as the star. Okay. She liked putting an angel up there. Okay. I always wanted a star as in a star star because I thought, you know, that's the more cliched one and that's what's on Christmas cards and it's the cliché. Right. And I guess when you're young, you just want to fit in and you want everything to be the same as everything else and you want your Christmas tree to be the same as everything else. And so I was always, well, why can't we have a star at the top of the tree? Why do we always have to have an angel? Because I thought, you know, an angel was a bit square and, you know, I don't know, I just didn't like it. I wanted a star. So anyway, but my mum always wanted the angel later on. I think she've relented one or two years, but generally not. So now that I am grown up and I have my own Christmas tree, my wife's a way better decorated than me. And again, she takes the lead role and I'm pretty much on the bench and I get to put the odd decoration on and maybe get sideline if I'm not doing well. But the one thing I put my foot down on was I'm a grown up. I'm having a star at the top of my tree. None of this angel stuff. That was like, that was me, you know, I've got my own house now. I can have a tree on top of the tree. So every year, so far, we have had a traditional star. This year, my wife said, actually, I prefer angels. And I don't know. I'd probably done something wrong or I was in the dog house. So I wasn't in a position to exert any authority. So she said, we're having an angel, whether you want it or not, we're not having a star. So I'm yet again stuck with an angel on top of the tree when what I really, really want is a star. So when you saw that angel at the top of the tree and said, oh, I like your star. You were cutting me deep because I want a star and I haven't got one. I'm very sorry, really. Sorry, man. I'm sorry about that story. I understand. I understand. You know, this is when you're grown up. You want things your own way. And sometimes you don't get it. And it's sad. Let's talk about Star Wars. Now, can I just say something right off the bat? Okay. A lot of people seem to think that I forced you into doing something you didn't want to do by watching that trailer. Would you do? You did. You have never in your life done anything you don't want to do as far as I can tell. And you sure as heck have never done anything, I've asked you to do that you didn't want to do. So any suggestion that Gray watched that you wanted to watch it. You just like me when I come to you to make me buy technology products, you just you wanted me to push you into it. I disagree with your assessment here. First of all, it is correct that in our relationship, you do sometimes as I refer to it, ask me to bully you in the particular situations. I think that that is fair to say. But with the Star Wars trailer, I can honestly say that did we not have a podcast? There is no way you could have ever talked me into watching that trailer. Yeah, but if you didn't want to watch it, you did it for the people, Brady. That's what I did it for. Not for you. I did it for our amazing audience. Well, now the people are upset. Now the people are upset about it. Why are people? I haven't seen anybody upset. What are you talking about? I've seen lots of people saying Gray shouldn't have done it and Brady shouldn't have made him do it. I feel like I feel bad now, but I don't believe it. I just think you wanted to watch it. You don't do things you don't want to do. If it wasn't for the podcast, I never would have watched it. But I watched it. How many times have you watched it since? I watched it a bunch. I have to say I watched it quite a bunch and gone through it a little bit slow. I was like, what's this? Are those pod racers in the back? The other thing which was of course a joy is that I can then listen to other people talk about the Star Wars trailer. There was a good episode of The incomparable, which is a podcast. I think you and I both listened to. That was good. I don't know how it whatever it is. The trailer is a minute and a half and they talked about the trailer for an hour and a half. I forget with the exact number of times. It's something like that. You're like an alcoholic falling off the wig and you watched it once and you're like, no, no, I'm just going to keep watching. Yeah, I had to watch it a bunch of times. There was the incomparable thing. Then of course, one of the favorites that we've mentioned a bunch of times, the Red Letter Media guys did a Plinkit review of the Star Wars trailers. I had to watch that immediately. I'm not saying that. There you go. It did. The thing that I did not want to do did open up to me a whole world of media that I could not have consumed otherwise. I'm not going to lie. That was enjoyable. The question of would I have done it on my own? Would you have been able to talk me into it if the circumstances were different? No, you would not have been able to talk me into that. I want to know what you think about something. A lot of people sent us an image or a little video which was the final shot of the Millennium Falcon stabilized. I don't know if people have ever seen stabilized footage. The most hilarious stuff I can possibly point to you is there is an entire subreddit dedicated to Star Trek stabilized. Just to describe for people who might not be aware. When you've seen any episode of Star Trek, there's always, oh, the shields have been hit, Captain, we're down to 40%. The camera always shakes and everybody flies about the room. You can feed that stuff into a computer which will then figure out how the camera moved and basically undo that. You can look at the scene as though through a camera that had just remained staple. Some of the Star Trek stabilized stuff is just hilarious. You cannot imagine how terrible the actors look when they are trying to fling themselves away from control panels or fall on the floor because obviously the room that they're in isn't moving at all. That is the stabilized stuff. You take out the camera movement. Star Trek stabilized is hilarious and very enjoyable. Somebody did that for the Millennium Falcon. What it revealed was that the Millennium Falcon did not perform the maneuvers that we thought it did when we were talking last time. Basically does a dive and pulls up. The maneuver is much more simple than it looks when you watch the film because we were thinking of it that the Millennium Falcon was spinning around and narrowly avoiding stuff. I think you called it. It was like a hornet. We thought it was too nimble and agile and a lot of people said, no, it wasn't that agile. It was just the camera that made it look agile. People were sending us this stabilized thing in response to that. What are your thoughts on this? First of all, my thoughts on that are even when stabilized, it is still skimming pretty close to the sand for a big old clunky chip. I still think it's a fast agile maneuver that it shouldn't be doing that close to the ground. I know it went through the asteroid belt and everyone has said it led the attack on the Death Star and things like that. I am aware of that. It's not like I don't know that, but I still want to think of it as a bit of an old clunker. You think of all your best memories of the Millennium Falcon. Most of them involve it being broken on the ground or things going wrong. That is my favorite memory of the Millennium Falcon. Let's say that first. Secondly, if it takes a whole bunch of geeks on the internet to apply the stabilization to show that it's not doing something amazing, that's not an indictment on you and me. That's an indictment on the filmmaker because the filmmaker's job is to convey an impression and the impression was that that shit was doing something awesome. If you can unpick it to show that it wasn't, well, so what? We're not going to be sitting there watching the film when it comes out with stabilization goggles on so that we can know what's really going on. We can only eat what we're served. I think this whole look, it was the camera, doesn't cut it with me. I am with you 100% and I kept thinking of this as this is cheating. That's what this is. There's a phrase that comes from Futurama and you say someone is you are technically correct, the best kind of correct. To me, this is JJ Abrams getting to be technically correct about the moves that the Millennium Falcon can do while visually conveying an entirely different feeling. I give the stabilization thing a kind of thumbs down in that. If people have not seen it, the special George Lucas edition of The Trailer is hilarious. It is so good. What I love about it, you can tell it is made by someone who the special editions really got under their skin. We were talking about a little bit on Insta Messenger, but there was a part that I wanted to highlight to you, which was the rocks over the droid, that block your field of view. Those are not just any old rocks. Do you know where those are from in the special editions? I can't know, I can't think. I actually can't think of any watch that special edition trailer once. I've probably watched that special edition trailer half as many times I've watched the actual ones. I think it is just hilarious. The final shot with the Millennium Falcon and a million tie fighters gets me every time. So in the very first Star Wars movies when Luke Skywalker gets knocked out by the sand people, R2-D2 goes and hides in some rocks in the wall. In the special edition version for just completely not understandable reasons. When they pen to R2-D2, they add it in a whole bunch of rocks on the screen so that he's really hidden behind these rocks, that weren't there in the original movie. And this is a perfect example of messing with something for no reason. Who needed those rocks there? Nobody. And when you placed them there, you also introduce a problem of how the Hector R2-D2 get behind all of these rocks. There's no way for him to enter. And they're just a great example of just messing with things for absolutely no, to no benefit at all, just to messing with stuff. So whoever put those rocks in front of the droid, that was a brilliant, brilliant move. And I feel like really sticks the knife in directly to George Lucas. Come on, we're going to hurry up with this podcast, Maya. You know how you've told me about this Plinkit review? I want to go watch it. You shouldn't have told me about that. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's long too. We can't stop and just, you know, no, no. We're always get stuck on the follow-ups. We've got to keep cracking on. Well, I just wanted to point something out. A video, a number file video of mine made quite a while ago that we've mentioned on the podcast before, because you've said it was kind of an audition for the podcast, unbeknownst to me. It was your audition. You did not know it. It wasn't the first time I'd, you'd appeared in one of my videos. You'd helped me out a few times before, but this was a longer one. I'd helped you out under very different circumstances. Yeah. So anyway, the one we're talking about just past, last week passed a million views. So I thought it was a good chance to bring it up just to get under your skin again, because the video is titled Numbers Confused Americans. Yeah. And you hate that title, along with many other people to be fair. Listen, the thing, okay, so people, people wanted the video. The whole video is, it's about two American expats, one of which is myself. And we are talking about differences. Grey's not in the video, by the way, before you all get excited. It's an animated grey. So don't think you're going to go there and see his face. Who did you have? Do the animations for that? That was a pigment pattern. Oh, yes, that's right. Of course. Of course. Yeah. Peter did a good job on those animations. So yeah, the best. Yeah. So the videos is two American expats. And we're talking about things in Britain with the number system that confuses us. And it just, just some common things that if you ever live abroad, you run into this kind of stuff. Like the phone numbers don't have the same rhythm that you're expecting from your home country, this kind of stuff. But you titled the video Numbers Confused Americans. Which is pretty much what you said about five seconds ago, except with a whole lot of qualifies attached. But yeah. Okay. But the correct title of this video should be British numbers confuse Americans. Not numbers in the abstract. Right? Your title implies that all Americans are baffled by the notion of numbering things that it. Oh, how do we we can group these things together and can we assign them a number? I don't know. It's so confusing. Right? That's what your title implies. Would you would you have allowed if I'd called it numbers that confuse Americans? Oh, God. That is better. But just barely listen. The thing that really irritates me about this is that I should go back and find our message logs. You agreed at some point to change the title and then you just never did. That is true. Like it was I was going to I was going to change the title. There is a reason I haven't. You've gone back on your word as far as I'm concerned. That's the only thing that I know. Yeah. Okay. I accept that. There is a reason I haven't changed it. And that is so many people have commented on that if I now change it, it would it would make all the all the conversation and comments redundant. You were just looking for an excuse not to change it. No, no, honestly, I mean, I could change it right now. It would mean nothing to me. Okay. Well, if it means nothing, it means a lot to me. No, no, it would mean nothing to you. Change it. Would it mean a lot to you? I would really like you to change the title. Really? I would. I think that that title is inaccurate. All right. Inaccurate misleading mildly slanderous towards an entire nation of people. I just think I just think it's like, you know, headlines just sometimes leave out details. And I know I know we're verging on there's a difference between clickbait and tempting headlines. Why don't I know is there a difference? Maybe there's not. But I just think you can put too many boring words in a title and it just becomes there. And you just got to pick a few words, numbers, confusion, Americans and go, oh, what's this about? And that is what it's about. It is about times when numbers confuse Americans. I think it's times they're confused when they're, you know, talking to non-American people. But it's a bit like, you know, if I had a video of American people tripping over, like falling over, you know, steps and things and banging their heads, I would call it Americans trip over. I wouldn't, you know, that doesn't mean every American is tripping over every minute of the day, everywhere they go. That just means that in this video, I'm showing you cases when Americans have tripped over just like in this particular video, I am showing you cases where numbers confuse Americans. No, to me, this title is over the line. All of the relevant information is missing. You're tripping analogy does not make any sense in this case. I was trying to pull it up. My internet is being particularly slow for some reason. But I'm trying to think about what my most misleading headline might be. And that might be the, this video will hurt headline. Yeah, definitely. But I would argue that that headline is necessary for what that video is trying to accomplish. I will let people watch it if they have not seen it. I'll put a link in the show notes. And you decide people on the Reddit if you think that that title is over the line. Well, I don't think it is unlike Brady's title, which I would say the Redditers will obviously agree is way over the line. Well, that's because so many of them are Americans. But I think the part of the part of the fun of that video is kind of the, you know, the parochial, the divisiveness between the two sides of the Atlantic. So why not have a headline that plays to that and, you know, stir the hornets next? Because it's a bit, it's a bit like that. I mean, you're very scathing, you know, in a nice way about certain aspects of the way the British use numbers, like their numbering system on streets and things. And that's just kind of the game of that video. It's kind of a bit of friendly banter. Dare I use the word banter? I know some people really hate that. But if you say so, if you say so, it sounds like I have to change it now. It falls on how much you value your word. I guess is whether or not you're going to change it. How much you value your word. This episode of Hello Internet has been brought to you once again by the shaving geniuses at Harry's. Harry's provide the whole shaving experience online. I mean, you can't actually shave online, of course, but you can buy everything you need to do it from the Harry's website. Razors, replacement blades, creams, gels, moisturizers, go and check it all out. And all of it comes at a really great price. I've been using Harry's stuff myself and I've got nothing but good things to say about them. Now, feels that Harry's are all about trying to take on those big shaving companies, which charge what have always seemed like extortion at prices for Razor blades. Harry's have got great stuff, but at a fraction of the price. In fact, it feels like the Harry's stuff is better than those other guys because I don't know. I just like the design and the way their stuff looks. It just sort of seems a bit more mature and classy. And when it's face that I need all the help I can get when it comes to big mature and classy, go to harries.com, the website, for all the information, prices and to place orders. And when you check out, enter the offer code HI. That's short for Hello Internet and you'll get a $5 discount on your first purchase. You save money and they'll know your Hello Internet listeners. That's harries.com, code HI. Normally, what you'll do if you haven't already got a razor from Harry's is buy like a starter set and that comes with your first handle as well. And you can choose between this one called Truman and the Winston. And I like the Winston because it's like this silver aluminium hand, which really weighty and nice, really nice design. So there you go. There's my recommendation, the Winston. I'm not going to make a recommendation between gel and shaving foam. That's, that seems like a personal decision to me. And then when your first blades run out, I think you get a couple to start with, obviously, a two or three, I think. But when it comes time to replace them, you can buy replacement blades really cheaply, buy them online and they're really well made in Germany. So really good product, really good service, brilliant stuff, harries, give them a try. And thank you so much to them for making our podcast possible. We appreciate it. I think there's only so much time we can spend talking about iPhones. And we have done it quite a bit. But I thought I would let people and you know that I have a new iPhone. I think this is very exciting news. So what iPhone did you get? I got the, I put, I cannot tell you how much I agonized over this. Well, I know because I was on the receiving end of a large number of text messages about this when you were in the store. Yeah. But I didn't know, I didn't know what you ended up going with. You were asking for my advice and I was trying to do the best that I could. I can't decide whether I followed my heart on my head. I don't know which I followed. But I followed one and it resulted in me getting an iPhone 6. Okay, iPhone 6. Yep. And how do you feel about it? After about a week or so now, a week or two of use, I think I made a mistake. Oh, really? How very interesting. Now, yeah, a mistake in which direction? Too big? Too small. Too big. Too big. See? Okay. Okay. I listened. It was funny because in the build up during the time when I was thinking about it, I listened to quite a good episode of I'm pretty sure it was a talk show with, I don't know who John Group was guest was, but they were talking about the iPhone 6. And they were both saying, okay, I'm happy with my 6, but part of me wishes I'd got a 5 that's smaller phone. And that pretty much persuaded me. I was like, yeah, I'm going to do it. I'm going to listen to the advice and take advantage of all this hindsight and get the 5. And at the last minute, I talked to myself out of it. And you know what? I was considering all three and I was making the case for all three and I got the 6 and for various reasons. And it's too big. I can't read, you know, we've heard it all before. I can't reach the top. I never thought I would do this, but I am using the reachability trick where you double click the button and all the icons come down lower so you can reach them. I'm using that dozens of times per day. Oh god, that's awful. I know. I kind of, I thought when I heard that that was a feature, I'm like, well, you know, I think I'd rather shimmy the phone or, you know, use two hands than do that. But I have my way I like holding a phone and I don't want to change it. And the reachability is something I'm using. I'm not that pleased. I'm not that pleased with it. But I just, you know, the thing is I bought two. I bought one for my wife at the same time. And she wanted the iPhone 6. And for the record, let me say she's in love with the iPhone 6. She thinks it's the best thing ever. And she thinks it's crazy that I don't like it. So in the interest of fairness, she loves it. But I would guess just based on that, that this is similarly with my wife, that your wife probably keeps it one in a handbag and two uses it one handed much less. I can only imagine that's the case because she's got small hands than me. But she loves it. And I think my problem was I couldn't bear the thought of her having a more powerful high memory phone than me. I actually think that's what it was. Which is which I know is silly. Not in a competitive jealous kind of way. No, no, I'm glad that with your wife. I think because I could understand that. Yeah, I just, yeah, I think if she had a bit, if knowing that she had a high-spec phone, the meters would have felt wrong somehow. And as a result, I've ended up with the wrong phone. Okay, so I have one more question for you because this relates to something that I want to say because I'm imagining there are, it's Christmas day, there are probably several people who have received iPhone 6s. Oh, yeah, of course. From Santa Claus. Are you using the phone with a case? So far, yes. I did get the leather case. My, my very strong advice because I complained a lot about the six on one of our earlier shows. And you know, these same kinds of things. And I can't remember when, but at some point I decided I'm going to try it without the case. And it only makes a difference of a couple millimeters on either side and on the bottom. But I have 100% found that this is the difference that makes a difference. And it, it changed my phone from kind of infuriatingly just too large to barely within acceptable tolerances in terms of size. I still think it's a little too big, but I find it surprisingly more usable without a case. So if there's anybody out there who has an iPhone and they're, they're getting driven crazy by the one-handedness, I really recommend trying it without the case. The case is nice though. Like it's, it's, it's well done. The problem, the problem with the case is that, or I should say the problem going caseless is that they have made this completely smooth slippery stone that, that is like trying to use it as a camera is much harder to hold it. Like there's, there's no place to kind of, to grip it. And I am much more concerned about dropping it. And I, just using it around the house, I find that if I'm, if I'm not paying attention, I do just drop it much more. Like I'm on the couch, so I'm not really concerned about dropping it because it's going to drop on a carpet or whatever. But I definitely dropped, outside I haven't dropped it. But I have made this trade off that I think without the case, it is much more usable one-handed. But I still, it, it's only a few millimeters by swear, if, if Apple made a phone that was just like five millimeters shorter on the diagonal, I think I would be totally fine with it. But it's just a tiny bit too big. I'm just so brutal on my possessions though. And if I don't have a case, I just know I'm going to scratch it really badly. And at, at the moment, I can put it in my pocket and sort of have the glass always facing away from things that might scratch it, like wallets and keys and coins and things like that. I know I don't run a, I don't run a pocket regime like yours. So these are factors I need to take into account. But I just, I just don't take care of stuff. There are a lot of hilarious videos of people putting the iPhone 6 through stress tests. You have to realize that the surface of the phone is not glass. It is not as shatterable as you think it is. And so there are some quite amazing like drop tests. There's a video of some guy who sets the phone on fire. It is not impervious, but it is harder to damage than you think it is going to be if you drop it. I'm not worried about dropping it. I'm not worried about shattering it. I just don't want to have a scratch on the screen. See now this is interesting because you and I are very different this way. I used to be like you, Brady. I used to be very fussy about my devices and not having scratches on them. But you can decide not to be this person, not to care if there are scratches. I made this decision and I'm telling you it's a much better life. One thing though, and I know the 5S has this, but I had a 5 before. The thumb recognition, life changing. Oh yeah, without a doubt. That is one of the best features they've ever introduced. It completely changes the way you use the phone. It makes getting into it so much quicker now. But then it makes the frustration not being able to reach the icons that much more frustrating because I can get to that frustrating point so much quicker. Yes. All right. I think we got away with keeping the iPhone 6 reasonably short. And you're right. If this is a Christmas episode, it probably is a good time to talk about the firing again. Oh, one last quick thing. You know about the back gesture on the phone? Probably not. What's that? Okay. So the other nice thing about not having a case just before I forget is that without the case, they're most but not all, but I'd say 80% of apps. If there's any kind of back feature like on a podcast app you want to get from the podcast back to the main list or on the browser, you want to go to the previous page. If you swipe with your thumb from off the screen on the left hand side kind of across the phone, that will do the back gesture. And so you don't need to hit the back button all the time. And that is the one place where the rounded edge of the phone is quite nice. And a case totally ruins that feel of sliding over the edge of the phone. I would still say that the rounded edges are not worth it for the nice feel of that back gesture. But if you are frustrated with constantly reaching towards the top, just be aware that the left to right swipe across the phone is back gesture in almost every single application. That's pretty geeky. It's not that geeky. It's pretty geeky. It's not that geeky. I think it's just how to use your phone. So, hello internet was named, was it like, was it one of the top or the best or the favor or the something podcast, you know, in the list of 2014, the iTunes Apple people? I don't you do this. I don't know what I'm talking about. You do. I always love it. I always love your nuts. Your none, the specificity of lots of these things. I don't know what I'm talking about. But yes, we have been honored and being selected as one of the best new podcasts of 2014 by Apple. So this means that at the top of the iTunes store, if you're in the podcast section, there's a big banner for the best of 2014 and we are listed on there with a bunch of other really great podcasts. So, that is quite an honor to be selected for that. How did this happen? Is this some administrative mistake or? I have no idea how it happened. I just discovered it accidentally. Do we get a gold button or a trophy or anything? I don't know if they centrophies. But if they do, I promise that it will go to you. We have to win any awards for Hello Internet. If we win Pulitzer prizes, Nobel Peace prizes, any of these kinds of things, if we win them, you can keep them all. That is my promise to you. You can't keep them money if it's a Nobel prize. We split the money. But if there's a golden button or some kind of statue of a stylized person holding an object or whatever these things are, you can have them all. I'll be happy to let you have them all. You know I'm sending my YouTube Gold button away at the start of January. I did not know that. Where is your YouTube Gold button going? I am sending it to the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California. The spiritual home of Number File, and they're going to put it on the wall up there. Because more people will see it there and it will bring more pleasure than in my Dusty old office. Yes, I imagine not very many people see it in your office. I don't even see it because it's not actually in my office. It's in sort of a secondary office. You have another office for all this stuff. I can't do actually. It's not as messy. It's not as messy. Your things have their own home office. You'd like it. Oh no you wouldn't, but you would say you liked it. You would be polite about it. I might not be polite about it. No, I think you will. I think it's your kind of room. I've never shown you that room, a picture of it. Sooner or later I will make it to your house. I know you. Thank you, Apple iTunes. Thank you very much. Have you noticed like a huge rush on people listening to the podcasters a result? Have you know, service been collapsing? It's a funny thing. The world of podcast analytics of knowing how many subscribers and how many listeners you have is much fuzzier than the YouTube world. We are completely spoiled by YouTube and drown in statistics on YouTube. I think you have also discovered they now have a real-time feature which is incredibly addictive to be able to see how videos are performing right now or if you link to things you can see if there's a spike in traffic. YouTube spoils us with data. And I find the podcast world, the data is just terrible and vague and it's hard to know precisely how many listeners and how many subscribers there are. I end up just not checking it very much. I know at the moment that we tend to get between 50 and 60,000 listens per show. But honestly, I don't check the numbers all the time because I just think like, oh, I have no idea. I have no idea how precise this data is, but that's our guess. But then people will listen on YouTube as well to the behind the other ones. So do you think are the same people listening again? I have no idea. And also the way that our limited analytics work, I know that almost certainly things are being undercounted because for boring reasons that people don't care about, depending on how they listen to the show, it may or may not count as a listen. So that's why it's just, it's very strange and again, we're just, we're just spoiled from YouTube. I love all of YouTube's data and it can be a little bit too addicting. Yeah. So with the podcast, who knows? Who knows? Who knows who's listening? It could just be your parents. It could just be a couple of people who are pretending to be lots of people on the Reddit is the way it could be. Well, I want to let me talk to you about something that's been in the news because you put a little tweet up before we came on air if I can say we're on air asking if there was anything people wanted to talk about. And lots of people wanted us to talk about the Sony hack. So I said to you on a message, oh, do you do you want to talk about it? And you said something to me that I refused to believe. Okay. You do not know what that is or what that means. To back up, I do often tweet out that we're recording the show and to see what people want us to talk about. Almost every time I do this, I regret it because I have the same experience, which is whatever has kind of happened like today in the news, people want to talk about. And as we've mentioned on the show before, I just I don't really follow the news. And so almost always it is a list of things that I just I have no idea when any of this stuff is. This has been going for like two weeks. This isn't something that happened in the last 20 minutes. This has been one of the biggest news stories in the world for the last two weeks, I would say. Well, the problem is I have also been in kind of isolation mode, yeah, trying to get a video out. Right. So even even my normal, my normal connection to the outside world for the past two weeks has been really clamped down. Because I was rushing to hit a deadline. So the reason I'm surprised, like, I think it's great that you do that. And I really respect it. And I'm jealous of it. But the reason I'm surprised in this particular case is this is a story that just ticks every gray box of something you would be interested in. Well, why don't you tell me about it? I feel a bit silly telling you about it because it's a bit like, it's a bit like it's such a big thing. It's like, I feel like everyone will be listening, which is what happens in a podcast. Everyone's listening. And like, it's like, it's like explaining to someone, you know, what 9-11 was or something. It's like, well, you know, it's just so famous that it's a big, but maybe in two or three weeks, it'll be a forgotten story and people think come silly. But before we take any steps further, presumably, it's not actually a 9-11 style event because I would have heard about it. But I can't. Okay. But like, we've talked about the news so much. But I would say just in general that I have this conversation with people all the time that people forget how many quote important stories pass through their brain in a year. That's true. There's always something that's supposed to happen. And it always gets forgotten a couple weeks later. That's true. There's never any point in the year where you don't go, oh, what's this or what's that? And I have had conversations with people sometimes where let's say, oh, I can't believe that you're not following the news about whatever. And sometimes it sounds really heartless depending on what the whatever is. But my point is always the same. Like almost everything will be forgotten three months max. And that is almost always the case. So there's always something going on. That is true. So like, I may be sounding incredibly gallous now, depending on whatever the Sony has. I don't know. But it's I guess I want to just hammer home this point because as soon as you tune into this fact, you can kind of see the news in a very different way and try to think about how many stories have have passed through your mind in the past year, which all of which were presented as incredibly important in the moment. Yeah. And easily 80% of them don't make any difference in a month's time or two months time. They just don't matter. I mean, I probably it was also a poor choice for me to say to compare it to 9-11 in that way. I was making the comparison more in the context of I feel silly explaining something that feels famous at the moment. Yeah, I know. Yeah. But I'm presuming that's the other. You mentioned it in a terms of like the amount of coverage that it has received. Yeah. Let me tell you what happened. And I find it hard to believe that after a couple of sentences, you're not going to say, oh, yes, I know about that. Okay. Anyway, let's let's find out. Okay, here we go. I'm getting one's again. I'm getting nervous because I really had surprises. Well, I also feel I feel more nervous because I'm explaining something so that's so famous at the moment that people are going to jump on me and say, I've done it wrong. But okay, because I do you do your best. It's fine. Sony Pictures have been making a film that's about to be released called the interview. Okay. It's a comedy film. And the premises, I think two guys are given the opportunity to interview Kim Jong-un. Is it un or the current leader of North Korea? Yeah, Kim Jong-un. They're giving access to him. So the CIA approach these guys who I get the impression of kind of dopey guys and aren't that switched on and see this is an opportunity to assassinate him. And then these guys go to North Korea and something in shoes and maybe some assassination attempt takes place, etc. So that was this film. And it seems that the film was quite the the imminent film was going to upset North Korea. And then Sony Pictures and Sony itself was the victim of this incredible computer security breach they got hacked. Unbelievably thoroughly, everything got released. All the executive emails that they've been sending to each other where they're kind of slagging off Hollywood stars and saying, you know, what they don't like about Angelina and Jolie and all that. All that stuff got accessed. All financial details about how much actors on different films got paid compared to each other. Rough cuts of films that haven't been released. They're apparently a draft of the script of the next James Bond movie. Everything they wouldn't want to come out you can think of got taken and then released and distributed and has become public knowledge and has gone everywhere like a wildfire. And the hackers have made it clear it's because of this film. All the speculation was that North Korea was behind it because they have a history of hacking this kind of hacking terrorism. And so a lot of talk, did they do it or did they get someone to do it for them. And in the last day or two now, the Americans, the CIA saying, we're pretty sure it was North Korea. They're coming out and saying it was them. On top of that North Korea have praised the hack but have said it wasn't them. On top of that, this film which was going to come out on Christmas or Boxing Day, the hackers then started saying, we're going to do more and we're warning you not to be in a cinema. Watching this film when it comes out and they even made illusions to 9-11 like they made threats. So all these cinemas got nervous and started saying, well, we're not going to show this film because we can't guarantee security and all that sort of thing. And then Sony have pulled the film and said, okay, we're not going to release the film. Which a lot of people have really condemned as kind of cowering to terrorism and this terrible moment for free speech and that's launched a whole bunch of stories in itself. So there's all sorts of things going on with this story. The complacency of security at big corporations, state sponsored hacking and then free speech issues. So all the stuff's been going on. President's been talking about it and stuff. This isn't kind of a little fringe story. This has been like one of the big stories in the world in the last couple of weeks. And because it touches on so many things, you find interesting. I thought you'd be all over it. Obviously you're not. And I understand why. But okay, so here is the situation that I'm this is often the situation when news stories come up. I am familiar with the phrase, the interview. Yeah. And pulled. Yeah. So I have seen headlines possibly on Reddit. Yeah. That's some movie called the interview was pulled. Yeah. But that before you before you started telling me about stuff, that was the full extent of my knowledge. I couldn't have told you anything about what the movie was or any of these other details. Yeah. And this is often what I mean by even if you try not to follow the news, stuff still makes it through. But none of the details of this happen to make it through as you refer to it as my bubble this time round. So the interview that that does sound familiar and it being pulled. But I didn't know any of the details about the hacking. And so that does sound like quite a big story. Just going off on the details that you have told me, it's it sounds like a terrible decision on Sony's part to pull it. If I feel like if I was the CEO of Sony, I would release the movie for free on the internet. Yeah. That's a lot of people suggested that. I think I think overall the position has been that it was a bad decision by Sony. That seems to be I think even I think even maybe the president said it. I can understand concerns from movie theaters not wanting to show it if there's been threats. Like I think that's a more difficult conversation to have. Yeah. But you don't you don't give in to terrorists. Do you know what that you know that was my that was my reaction to it as well. And that remains that remains my instinctive reaction to it. My I feel like the only response is screw you. Otherwise what North Korea gets to dictate all movie plot lines from now on with Sony. Yeah. The Sony has to run everything by North Korea. Like that that is the only that is the only conclusion to this kind of kind of action. And so you have to say all right you released a whole bunch of embarrassing stuff about us. That's terrible. We wish to hadn't have happened. But you are not going to dictate our actions. That's that's kind of like what the the you know you don't negotiate with terrorists philosophy. Yeah. Is exactly that you have a choice. You're going to let somebody control your actions or you're not. And the only same same thing to do is go with the or not. Even if that means that there are there are costs. You don't let other people dictate your action. So I do. I have read a couple of interesting responses taking us slightly. Well, not a different perspective, but pointing out all the ways in which America has at least bent to the fear of terrorism. I mean anyone who has been to an airport in the 2000s and anyone who had ever been to an airport before the 2000s will notice a slight difference. That's not even remotely comparable. Well, I think it is comparable. It's all like we we won't we won't live in fear. We won't let you affect our lifestyle. Oh my goodness. How much how much has the fear of terrorism affected lifestyle in the last 15 years? Unbelievably people happily will do go through all these ridiculous hoops at airports and all these other things that have happened since since you know 9 11 and things like that. And people say nothing about it. All these laws that have passed and all these actions that have happened and things that have happened. And it's like you know people are just swallow the pill and you pull a movie. And suddenly you pull this like flippant comedy movie. And suddenly it's like we must not give an inch to these people like there is a slight contradiction. I do I do see what you're saying. I do see what you're saying there. I don't think that the airport comparison is an apt one mainly because to me that that that seems like a like a different a different kind of reaction because the terrorists did not say oh by the way this is like a Merry Christmas episode everybody we're going to talk about terrorism on Christmas. The terrorists did not say we want you to install these security features. Like this is a like a kind of action you take in reaction to how the world is. It's not the same thing as a kind of direct command from somebody who's threatening you saying we want you to perform action X. And if you don't perform action X there will be consequences. That's the kind of statement that I mean you just you can't you can't go along with that. So I don't I don't think that the airport security one is is comparable. But I can feel that there is an argument to be made somewhere here. And I think actually that the triviality of a movie is kind of what makes it a much easier decision is to say look you should just release this movie anyway. This is not a big a big discussion about state secrets. I don't know. Yeah anyway it's a bad thing they're bad people and I feel and a lot of people are not massively sympathetic to Sony and sort of say well you know they've got a track record for getting hacked with their PlayStation problems and their lacks and big corporate people need to learn to take these things seriously and maybe that's true. But I don't think and there's also been this whole you'd love it great so full of nuanced arguments. There's this other massive argument about whether or not the media is being too complicit in this and when all these like gossipy emails from Sony executives about Hollywood stars like should the media just not report that stuff and give the oxygen to the to the what the terrorists want because this stuff getting hacked doesn't matter so much if the media don't then say who all this stuff's public domain let's tell all these gossipy stories and compare salaries and have all these bitchy comments between people and what's the what should the media do here because the media is like condemning the hacking but they're also saying well now this stuff's public you know we're free to report it we're obliged to report it they say yeah yeah well I don't even know how to I feel like self-respecting places would not do that but obviously most of the news is as we just got many times it's not self-respecting and they want things that are easy that will generate lots of views and this is just the the easiest most of you grab theest kind of thing to do and that is the nature of the beast and that that's obviously just what they're going to do and it makes total sense for them to rabble rouse with one hand and say oh isn't this terrible this terrible hacking stay tuned to us about the latest details about all the terrorism threats from North Korea and oh by the way let's also talk about the salaries of all of these people isn't it great that we have access to all this information it's no surprise not surprising at all to me that that you would get both sides of this from an organization that is structured the way most news organizations are structured so can I can I add one more thing sure and we'll cut this if it turns out I'm completely wrong because I could be completely wrong and shouldn't stay in the podcast if I am but okay but anyway I want to add one more thing this it contains a spoiler for the film that won't be released so I don't know whether you're allowed to spoil things that won't be released but anyway I've seen this video doing the rounds on Reddit and elsewhere which purports to be a scene from the film the pulled film which shows the sort of assassination death of the North Korean leader I don't know if it's a dream sequence or he dies at the end of the film I don't know what it is but the scene is him in a helicopter being hit by missile or something and then dying in quite graphic quite a graphic way and it is a really graphic death like it's really in your face you see him being blown up and it's like whoa that's that's full on man and if the film was released in another country that showed that simulated death of barrack abound or something like that I imagine a lot of people would be upset and it is and it is it does it is interesting I do wonder what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot and I'm not saying the US would then go and hack into some other countries film companies stuff and do this but it is it is like it's pretty that's pretty interesting stuff to be doing and I know there was a documentary in the UK called the assassination of George Bush and this is not unprecedented but it is an interesting thing when you're starting to make films about the assassinations of currently living people and I'm all for free speech and I'm not saying pull the film and I want to see the film I really want to see the film now because of all this hype and I like some of the actors in it but it was interesting I watched that and when I saw that scene I was like if you're from a if you're from a really sort of conservative country that respect your leaders a bit more than some other some other countries do that's quite a thing to see like quite that's quite a thing so you don't know maybe you should have a look to tell me what you think sometime I have not done a Brady's paper cut for a while no yeah and do you know what I think what do you think the frequency with which I do Brady's paper cuts reflects maybe my mood and I've been quite happy the last month or two oh yeah oh yeah but this week I've been coming up with loads okay you grumpy with the holidays I have been a bit grumpy this week maybe maybe because my sister and family have been in town and they've and they had their my lovely little nephew with them and I'm not used to having little little little boys around and affected my mood but he was great so I don't think it was him but I have come up with some paper cuts this week okay I'm only going to give you one I'm saved the other ones up yeah give me your best one I'm going to give you the most topical one not the best one and I have absolutely no doubt you won't know about this if you don't know about the Sony hack there's no chance you're going to know about this story okay but you might not even know of this thing that exists but it it baffles me okay it is called the BBC sports personality of the year nor Brady nor have you ever heard of this thing I have never heard of this thing okay it gets worse this better be good no no I am so bored already we haven't even started talking about it this is this is a contest that grips this this is a night of the year that grips the nation like everyone is so into this and it's treated like such an important thing once a year the BBC has this big televised TV show awards ceremony like the Oscars where they crown the sports personality of the year from Britain and you have to be British and they choose a short list of like ten people from all different sports so there'll be footballers and racing car drivers and cricketers and you know whoever has excelled that year usually on the international stage they put they they they have them together the public vote on their favorite based on a no criteria that is discernible to me it's just called sports personality of the year there's no waiting attributed to what you've accomplished compared to what someone else accomplished there's a public vote and then at the end of the night they announced the winner and they give them this trophy and like and really important sports people winner because Britain's got some good sports people and they're always there and they get up on stage and they really emotional and they talk about it like it's one of the greatest accomplishments of their life it's treated like a really big deal even by the people winning it like so this year it was won by Louis Hamilton who's a Formula One World Champion which is like a big super thing and then he wins this meaningless British popularity contest decided by a phone pole and I swear that gets more coverage than when he actually won the Formula One title it's this huge thing everyone cares about it dates back to the 60s or 70s when the BBC was far more relevant I guess it was the only it was the only TV chap thing you could watch on TV and so it was the center of everyone's universe and this was a big TV event and for some reason this this old-fashioned ridiculous contest just persists year after year and it just the whole country stops for a night to see who wins this meaningless personality contest even the name sports personality of the year what does that even mean it annoys me I can see that it does this apples to oranges competition oh no it's like yeah so the Formula One driver comes first and second place is a golfer and third place is a woman runner I think it was it's like it's like and I don't but it's treated so importantly even by the people winning it like they they seem sincere when they say this means a lot to me like this is a really big deal thank you can I ask you something pretty yeah I don't understand why this bothers you because other people don't get it because other people think it's important because other people think it has meaning and I want to I want to sit them down and say listen this has no meaning it's like it's like if it's like if once a year the Grey family got together in wherever they live North Carolina whatever and they all sat in a room and they all voted okay who's our favorite podcaster of the year who is a member of our family and then you won it and then you made some speech like it meant something to you like it's like it's so okay it's parochial and you're allowed to have parochial things and have British only things but then you there needs to be some I can feel that this really bothers you but this to me is also the the perfect kind of thing that I just I cannot engage with this on any level it's nothing annoys me more than competitions that and have nebulous judging criteria like if I'm watching a tv show and they're judging something and they say okay you just beat that person and they can't explain to me why that person beat the other person but didn't you say this is this is a popularity contest yeah but even the people voting like what are they supposed to be voting on it's never actually said it sounds like if it sports personality of the year it's basically who do you like best that's what this sounds like but based but yeah but like based on what like how much people like them that's why the people who win are really happy about it because it has been demonstrated to them that lots of people not only appreciate their accomplishment in sport but also like them as a person well that that makes me even mad okay okay I can I can offer no help here except to explain to you that you don't have to follow this this you don't have to participate or be aware of this popularity contest yeah no you just kind of kind of I kind of void it just I never even knew this thing existed until 10 minutes ago you also didn't know the Sony hack existed so I'm not using you as my yard stick being in touch with society what I am showing you Brady is what is possible in life I don't want to go as far as you I can just imagine some huge terrorist attack happening in London and half the population being wiped out you're not knowing it happened and going out to get milk and like where is it where is everyone I'm sorry about the sports personality thing I just I can see it bothers you but it just it just strikes me as as one of those things that is interesting to the people who participate in it and not interesting to the people who don't and you cannot explain human interest I just love sports so much I'm worried that people who are following this and look at the results are going to think that this means something and like they're gonna like they're gonna rate athletes accomplishments based on this and I think you got to let it go well funnily enough the next thing we're gonna do uh-huh is equally completely arbitrary so having said all that I'm about to break all the rules hello internet this special Christmas episode is brought to you in part by audible.com a leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment listen to audio books whenever and wherever you want given that it is the holiday season I have a recommendation for you are you ready? Patrick Stewart narrates a Christmas Carol I really don't need to say anything more it is just as amazing as you're probably thinking it is right now as almost anything narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart would be so if you are in the holiday spirit I highly recommend that you go check it out and you can get it for free if you go to audible.com slash hello internet you can listen to it for free and get a 30 day trial by going to audible.com slash hello internet if you want to listen to it audible has it with over 150,000 titles and virtually every genre you'll always find what you're looking for so once again we thank audible for their sponsorship of hello internet about a week or two ago uh-huh was the 150th anniversary of a famous bridge in England that is very close to where I live called the Clifton suspension bridge and I think I just said something online about how much I love bridges and I really love bridges and someone made some comments on Twitter and and said you should talk about bridges on the podcast and I was like oh I'd love to I'd love to and after all you'll talk about flags I thought maybe I should be allowed to talk about bridges okay but I don't really I have nothing to say about bridges you know well that's going to be a problem if you don't talk about I had plenty of things to say about flags yeah so I just really like them and I want to talk about them but I haven't really got any sort of structured reason other than this anniversary of the Clifton suspension bridge and also I did see in the news that they're building a new bridge over the Thames in London which I thought would interest you oh I haven't heard about this a new pedestrian bridge near Waterloo which is gonna cost I've read that it's gonna cost like 175 million pounds cheap that this is bridges are expensive aren't they well you want to make sure they don't fall down yeah no but right if it costs a lot to make sure it doesn't fall down that's fine I feel like you could be with something that won't fall down for less than that but anyway I'm not you know the cheapness is not my primary concern in the construction of bridges yeah yeah well you're not paying for it but anyway I'm presumably I'm paying for it with taxes yeah so that's fine yeah no wonder we have to spend twice as much to make it 10% safer that's fine that's fine so what I thought we could do is you and I each I gave you a bit of homework I think earlier today so this is a bit rushed yeah but I said let's let's you and I each come up with our five favorite bridges which sounds a bit like a personality contest and a bit arbitrary which okay so yeah I didn't know the reason for this you you you did tell me to do this yeah and it's a completely manufactured excuse for us to talk about bridges yeah but see this was not made clear to me before you just you told me I needed to come up with with five bridges and you did not specify why and the criteria was just bridges of of interest to me in some way that that's all it was and you had to have been on them you have to have used the bridge I had a very difficult time with this homework I have to admit yeah I my brain just I had a difficult time trying to latch onto this of thinking five bridges five bridges that I've been on I don't know I did come up with the list but it took way longer than something should have and I have a few items on this list that I'm not even sure you're gonna count so we can we can begin our conversation about bridges five bridges of interest from each of us that we have been on okay how do you want to go first how are we gonna do it you were the one who you you were the one who assigned me this homework you have you have no structure at all you just have this desire to talk about bridges in the abstract what's your number five no plan tell me your number five bridge I didn't I didn't arrange them in order I didn't know they had to be in preference I just have a list of five tell me one arbitrarily then okay um well okay okay if I have to the one arbitrarily I'm going to pick is I don't know the name off the top of my head but it is the main bridge in Cologne I quite like that bridge and it has a nice little feature that people couples write their names on locks and then there's a there's like a mesh in the bridge that people connect those little locks to apparently this is a thing that is done around the world in many different locations yeah that you're that in Japan a lot as well yeah I had well when I went to Cologne I had literally never heard of this before so this is the first place that I ever came across this and the Cologne bridge is a satisfactorily industrial looking I quite like that and then plus the locks I like that feature as well nice is that what you want to talk about yeah does that do it for you Brady that's good that's a good star it's got Scott story you talked a bit about the bridge it's kind of industrial looking yeah yeah it's a little industrial all right nice okay Brady why don't you tell me about a bridge I'm gonna give you my number five and this is okay this is one that I think this is one that especially for you okay I wanted to have one from Venice because Venice has got brilliant bridges the realto probably being the most famous the big one that goes over the main canal but probably the second most famous and then what I'm choosing especially for you is the bridge of size oh the bridge of size okay and that size is in not size is in a bridge of great size I assume to when you said it's for me that that's what you meant it's the bridge of size do you know this bridge have you been have you been to Venice I have been to Venice a long time ago this is a little bridge that just connects two buildings that goes over a little canal I think it connects the palace and what used to be the prison cells and legend has it although may not be entirely true that after you'd been tried in the palace you obviously were led over this sort of enclosed bridge to be taken a locked away or maybe executed and you had one last look at the window of the bridge where you could see sort of the canal and the beauty of Venice and they say prisoners would sigh before being taken away to their doom was one final look at the beauty that they were leaving behind yeah this this looks familiar and that sounds like a story I might have heard when I was in Venice yeah and it's a nice little cute bridge it is a cute little bridge go on give us another one grey number four for you oh I'm sorry I'm trying to look it up on the on the we keep it I don't have a number four these are just all out of order all right well I'm just we're just apportioning numbers to them for the sake of it mine are in reverse order all right so now I have some questions of technicality here okay you said we have to be on a bridge does it count if I've been under the bridge I think under count yes that yes that counts okay thank you because then I was going to come up short if under didn't count what you've only beat on four bridges in your life I know I was trying to come up with a list of five bridges that I could remember that were interesting in some way okay so my next one then is the great belt bridge which is in Denmark I don't know if you if you know the great belt bridge does it sound familiar to you it's I don't know I've been to Denmark I can say in some pretty impressive bridges but that one that name doesn't ring a bell what's going on there the great actually I'll have to put a I'll put a picture and I guess all of these we're going to have pictures in the show notes you bet you bet they will this is the this is the bridge is in the bridge bridge is not yeah it's okay so the great belt bridge it is in Denmark and it is the according to Wikipedia is the third longest and it connects these different Danish islands and it is it is enormous I never knew that this bridge existed until I happened to be on a ship that was going through one of the there's two sort of channels that it goes over did I didn't know that it was coming and then you can I just saw it on the horizon it's like this thing is enormous and and going under the bridge made it feel like it was a thousand times bigger than it actually is so I thought that that that that is an interesting an interesting and slightly different bridge I was on that bridge just recently when I went and this isn't the bridge bridge by the way this isn't the bridge in the TV show the bridge but which is Danish TV show but this this I went over this bridge to go and get my mile of pie printed oh did you did you yeah when I went going from Copenhagen to the the factory where we did the printing no okay fine there we go good choice so you are you're good at this am I yeah am I good at this yeah I think you're just so excited to talk about bridges that's you're happy to get whatever you can get do you are you not excited by bridges are they not just great things just great accomplishments and interesting in so many ways do you not think that I like all markers of human domination over nature which would include bridges but I feel like you are definitely we're more excited about this than I am so I would like to hear your next bridge number four I'm going to do the one that just had its birthday the Clifton suspension bridge okay which basically looks like any other famous old suspension bridge except you know a bit smaller than what most of them are these days but this was like the the trailblazer this was designed by Isambard kingdom Brunell who's like the famous engineer of England did amazing things across the country and this is considered like his crowning achievement although it was not finished till after he died and it's it's a beautiful it's beautiful looking it's just it's just a classic classic looking bridge and it's very close to my house and I drive across it almost every week and that makes me happy so it's been of a hometown hero for me so I'm going to Clifton suspension bridge and I won't talk anymore about it because I want to hear another one because yours are more exciting because I don't know what's on your list give me your number three the next one I don't know if this will count as well because the interesting thing is not the bridge itself but many years ago I went to Hong Kong and then I went to China and when I was leaving Hong Kong and going into China you have to pass through this bridge but they have turned the bridge into a a big passport check zone and it was a it was a very strange and very weird experience because it was so obviously a bridge that had been enclosed so it was a long long passageway and it was also just kind of a boring like airport interior on the inside but also with many passport checks I don't remember what the heck it was but there were just like a lot of desks that you had to go to and people looked at your passports and there were you know military looking guys with dogs walking around and it was it was a strange strange bridge because it really did feel like an airport interior that extended from one sort of kind of a country into another part of that country so it was a it was a strange experience but the bridge itself is not notable it is the things that the humans have done inside the bridge which is notable but look at this it's an engineered bridge passports a border a bit of politics it sounds like a great fantasy this place you must have loved it it well it was interesting this is also a long time ago where I was not quite the same person that I am today but it was my experience on that bridge that always may be aware of how Hong Kong is a bit of a strange place which did eventually lead to a video nice one all right what's your next bridge my number three is the Hillary suspension bridge which is a bridge you walk over when you go to Mount Everest on the Nepal side as you go to Mount Everest you have to criss-cross like ravines and gorgeous all the time and you're always going over these suspension bridges that look a bit perilous and sort of you know oxes and cows are going over them and donkeys as well as you and it's a you know you feel like you're taking your life into your own hands that does look terrifying yeah and the most oh you've got a picture of it up have you I would not cross that bridge all right well that's the that is a bridge that I would not cross that's one of the better looking ones but it is very it is kind of the most famous in picture eskin it's the one that really starts your trip because you you cross that bridge and then you go up this really really steep mountain climb like an oh that takes most of the day to get up to a place called Nampchipazar so that kind of even though it's the second day of the trek that that bridge for me really marks the start of your climb up to Everest Base Camp and it's named after Ed Hilary who's a real hero and it is very interesting looking and all the handrails the hand cables have got like prayer flags and ribbons and scarves wrapped around them and they blow in the wind and it looks very spectacular and this bridge is basically one step above the trope bridge that is made of wooden planks in which one wooden plank in the movie always breaks as the characters try to walk across it yeah that is this bridge is better than that in construction but just barely it's interesting when you when you do this when you do that trek to Everest I'm just looking the first YouTube video that that comes up on the Hilary suspension bridge I'm hoping it might actually be mine it is mine look at that when you go go I made it I just made a little short video showing it it's interesting when you do this trek you you see you go over you it seems like hundreds of bridges like like this and they're usually made of like metal and things like that and they feel they feel pretty safe you get used to them but in almost all cases about five or six meters below sometimes collapse sometimes still intact is that cliched wooden broken bridge that they used to really use and you look down and you think I'm a goodness people used to actually go over that and it's usually rotting away and looks terrible and you're going over the more sturdy one above but you do see lots of cool bridges like that so yeah Hilary suspension bridge you you look to the other side first to make sure there's no cows or or donkeys or anything coming because you don't want to be on the bridge at the same time as those guys they get right away see yeah see this is again the kind of situation I would not want to put myself in I don't want to ever be at a bridge where I have to worry about livestock coming the other way you would love it you would love it afterwards you would be so pleased you did it if I hadn't died yes I would love it afterwards that is true but somebody's going to be the first person that the bridge breaks on yeah somebody's going to be that guy maybe yeah what have you got a lottery ticket every time you cross give us your number two bridge okay so here's another one that I don't know if you're going to count this as a bridge yeah have you got any that counts as a lot normal bridges I gave I gave you one normal bridge I gave you the cologne bridge and the one that I'm saving it for the end which I would say is my favorite bridge is a real bridge okay so I have another one that I think it counts as a bridge although you might not okay and I would say that it is the Hoover Dam counts as a bridge oh now have you ever been to the Hoover Dam I never have because the one of the the one time I had a good chance to go there they weren't letting buses go over because it was too soon after 9 11 and I was on a bus this is going to be a bit confusing for some people because at Hoover Dam they have now finally built an actual bridge that goes over Hoover Dam so the geography this is a bit confusing but when people think of Hoover Dam they tend to think of something that's kind of level with the surrounding area but that's not really the case like Hoover Dam is already a fair bit down inside the gorge through which the river passes so there is there was ground that is above it and probably since the creation of Hoover Dam they have desperately needed a through road for all the people who are driving by Hoover Dam but don't want to visit Hoover Dam like the thousands of tourists who were clogging up the actual road that goes across the dam yeah and so just to actually I think in the past five years or so they have finished the construction of an actual bridge that does go over Hoover Dam so that is not the bridge that I'm talking about because the first time I went to Hoover Dam that bridge was not there and the second time I went to Hoover Dam that bridge was under construction I can see pictures of it now yeah it's like a way from the dam it's sort of ruins the look a bit doesn't it in person it's actually much more impressive than it looks in pictures at least when I saw it under construction I thought oh this is kind of cool looking but more importantly it is desperately necessary because both times I have been to Hoover Dam it's just a traffic nightmare I cannot imagine anybody who has to drive across that for non tourist reasons they must lose their mind I think it counts as a bridge would you give me that as a bridge oh well I don't think I have a choice aren't construction pictures of the Hoover Dam brilliant they are they are and if anybody if you visit the Hoover Dam you can go deep down into the bowels of the Hoover Dam it is very it is a very interesting place and it has a kind of my art this architecture that I just love which is the art deco we are humans building amazing things kind of architecture they have these very stylized I forget what they call them but they're the Hoover Dam angels I'll put a picture of them in the show notes but it is it is this just art deco look that I love and so Hoover Dam is done in that style and I really do quite like it all right that's borderline for a bridge but I'm going to give it to it counts as a bridge because I've got nothing else for you okay I for my number two I'm we're getting into cliche territory here but that's just the way it is my number two I'm going to go for the golden gate bridge yeah yeah what can you say it just is man it is what it is it's awesome you look at it and it's like a celebrity walked in the room because it is it's a celebrity bridge and like you know whenever I say it when if you're flying into San Francisco and you see it for the first time against the water you that color of it and and you know you walk across it it's just it's a superstar and you know and because San Francisco has become bit of a second home at the moment with the number for our stuff you know it's also feels like I feel a bit of extra loyalty to it but wherever I am or whatever I'm doing if I can say it I'll look at it I love it I believe I may have this entirely wrong but I'm dredging up from my memory somewhere that the color of the golden gate bridge is not the color it was intended to be I think that the name is not like international or something or international red or well that's just the name I think it's like a it's like a warning color paint that's it's some it's some kind of standard but my understanding is like this was supposed to just be during the construction phase that this was not intended to be the the permanent color of the bridge there may be entirely wrong and maybe I'll cut it later if it is or maybe I just won't if I'm feeling lazy so I will leave it to you to listen to it I love stories like that I hope it's true I'm gonna you're gonna send me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole now were you there when I made all the youtubers all walk across the golden gate bridge I have walked across the golden gate bridge with a bunch of youtubers but I'm not sure if you were talking about this particular is it the last youtube e the you can't bring everyone was like no one knew what to do and I just love walking across the golden gate bridge so I was like let's all go and walk across the golden gate bridge so we all drove out there and it was yeah you must have been there and you know via and destined and Hank Green and I was there for that I did not realize that the reason we were walking across the bridge was because of your yeah because after about halfway across I kind of then felt the pressure because you know it wasn't great weather that day and everyone was kind of like some people didn't seem that into it and I kind of felt pressure that people weren't enjoying it because I'd suggested it and then so I was like oh we can turn back if you want to and other people were like we're not turning back and you're the one that said we should do it so they became a bit of a like do we walk all the way across or not but yes we were there on that day I think I have a couple of pictures I really like of of everybody who was at the E.D.U conference on that day going across the bridge and that was that was nice fun memories of San Francisco I will suggest one more thing because that's Christmas day like don't don't don't actually do it now but there's a really good documentary called The Bridge which is very macabre very sad but completely fascinating and it's one of my favourite documentaries it's all about the Golden Great Bridge and Suicide and Merry Christmas but but seriously like it is it is a really good documentary and really significant and if you like filmmaking and documentaries and things I can't I really recommend it yeah I guess if you found our conversation about terrorism too uplifting for your Christmas afternoon go ahead and watch that documentary it is very good have you ever seen it I have not ever seen you should watch it you should watch it okay I will I'll put it on my list do it seriously do it I think I will I will I think you will I think you will I'm not saying you will like it but I think you'll take something from it I will I'll put on my list yeah okay is it my turn is your turn it's your it's your number one although I know they're not in order my personal favorite bridge is the Golden Jubilee bridges which are here in London and this the naming is always slightly confusing because there are two bridges that are on kind of on top of each other one is called the Hungerford Bridge which is a bridge that is just for trains that crosses the Thames at embankment yeah and right on either side of the Hungerford Bridge are these two additional footpath only bridges that were built later and those are called the Golden Jubilee bridges built for the Queens Golden Jubilee and I absolutely adore these bridges for various reasons I happen to be in that area a lot and every time I walk across that bridge it just makes me happy it's in a beautiful spot in the city and good views there yeah you have tremendous views of everything and that skyline in particular I feel like I have walked across that bridge so many times I have taken so many pictures from that bridge I have more often than I really should just tweeted pictures from that bridge it's hard to resist because it always just makes me very happy and I have seen that skyline now change over I guess the 10 11 12 11 I have no idea the more than a decade that I had been here in London I have seen a whole bunch of buildings go up and I love I love seeing that kind of thing and so for me just just personally that is my favorite bridge in the world at this moment and every chance I get I walk across it if people come and visit me I often start if we're going to go for a walk it like oh hey let's start an embankment and then oh look there's this bridge that we get to cross let's walk across it and take a look at all the things so that is my my current favorite part of your kind of London break tour is yeah or just a just a nice way to see London yeah yeah it is nice it's not I mean it's it is an amazing part of the world just there I like to you know see Westminster and everything and so you're going to top that what's your what's your bridge well mine's probably pretty predictable but but I have to say it because it just it is just you know it's it's it's it's another superstar and it's the superstar for me and that is the Sydney Harbour Bridge oh of course of course you're going to have to go with the home team well I didn't see the Sydney Harbour Bridge till quite late in life for an Australian because I didn't go to Sydney till I may I may have been in my 20s I'm not sure oh yeah and the first time I saw it with my own eyes it was like that's it and like you can glimpse it from different parts of the city and then you get out on the water and you see it in all its glory but no matter where you see it from what angle whether it's you know side on or front on and what it you know you're catching a snippet of it between buildings and things like that or the full the full panorama it's brilliant from every angle and I cannot stop looking at it and even even now that I've probably seen it a million times I just cannot tear my eyes away from it if I am if I am anywhere that has a view of it I have to look at it it's so much bigger than you think it's really industrial and chunky and it manages to it manages to look really old from another era while at the same time looking really modern like an amazing piece of engineering I think it's got it's got everything going for it it's in this incredible beautiful location it's right in the heart of the city unlike the Golden Gate Bridge which feels it like it's a bit you know pushed away from the heart of San Francisco it's sort of out in the outskirts you know Sydney Harbour Bridge is like this big beast in the middle in the middle of everything in the middle of the harbour I've had some great you know a couple of lovely new years' age right underneath that watching fireworks and I was there for the Olympics and it's a great centerpiece for celebration Scott it's got everything Sydney Harbour Bridge yeah it really is in the center I'm just pulling it up on the maps here and it is right in the middle it couldn't be anymore in the middle it looks like on the satellite it's it's got everything I have not done the bridge climb because lots of people are going to ask if I've done it and oh well I was immediately going to ask because that was not that I know anything about it but when I was typing in Sydney Harbour Bridge Google immediately says yeah Sydney Harbour Bridge climb question mark yeah I've not done that yeah I will do it one day but what is it you can you put on like harnesses and your harness and you clip onto a rope and you can sort of climb over the span over the arch and you know oh god really yeah yeah not something that sounds like you'd do well it sounds I mean you clipped in you clipped in yeah so that sounds better than like you know the the the Mount Everest Bridge the Indiana Jones Bridge yeah I mean you're not clipped in on that one so I guess if I had to choose between the two it sounds like I would do something I would do the Sydney Harbour Bridge climb before I would go across that hill and I think the Hillary Bridge will collapse before the Sydney Harbour Bridge does as well but yeah yeah so I would also I would also wedge with that yeah there you go I did have some honorable mentions but I'll save them for another day oh yeah oh great great so we can continue yeah that was all right that was pretty good fun wasn't it I'm glad you enjoyed it it is Christmas thank you for humoring me this is my Christmas gift to you reading he's talking to you my bridges so it's time for our middle earth corner you first things first you released a very popular new video in the last few days as we record all about Lord of the Rings sort of mythology I have to say it is surely the geekiest nerdiest video of yours that I can remember watching uh really do you think so yeah like in terms of yeah here's here's the mythology of something that's already fiction so here's the fiction within the fiction and it's like all really like you know I did love it you know I learned I learned from it and I enjoyed it and so have many many other people that's your voice there I like that yeah but it was a bit it was a bit like here's a made up thing and now here's the made up thing within the made up thing and it's like the sort of thing that a nerd would take really seriously oh no technically technically they're the angels brothers of the sisters of the phone number your nerd voice is making me really uncomfortable but yeah I feel like it's hitting a little too close to home is maybe what that is no one's a big ad in me so take it as a compliment but but we'll down on the video um yeah I guess in the case you're right it it may be the nerdiest thing I've done because it is about a fictional universe so yeah I was originally a bit like what does he mean it's nerdy but then your nerd voice I think you've just convinced me yeah you're obviously uh caching in on the Hobbit movie you opportunist you yeah yeah well it's it's more like this finally got my my button gear on a project I've been working on for a long time I think in particular Henry he admitted physics has probably sick of hearing me mention this project because I've mentioned it to him a couple times over the past little while that I was working on this thing I think he was getting to feel a bit like uh huh yeah now I've been hearing about this lower the rings project for a long time now and seeing a whole bunch and nothing I was going through my old emails about this project because there were a couple people that I wanted to put in the special thanks at the end of the video one of which is professor of Maryland who is a Tolkien professor who has a website where she talks about this stuff and I realize that I first sent her an email two years ago now where I'd compiled my initial notes for the very first draft of this video and I sent them to her and she she gave me the thumbs up so that I I had it right and then I was trying to work on this video you don't necessarily I'm not I haven't obviously been working on this for two years but it's I have many projects like this where they have been started and stopped and they have to be paused and then and then re-brought back a few times so this is a project that has been in in existence in some form or another for two years but has been activated and then shelved a bunch of times which is also why I think Henry has heard about it from me several times sorry I'm just curious before uh before I ask you about your own thoughts on it what did the professor think of the finished product has she watched your final video and told you what she thought of it so I actually I haven't heard back from her the other person that I asked was someone who works at askmiddleearth.tumbler.com which is a a very nice like bite-sized website for frequently asked questions about middle-earth stuff which people might want to check out I know that that he he was looking at the the final draft of my video and or sorry he was looking at the final draft of my script and said that there were there weren't any errors and I saw I saw that he posted on his tumbler and he liked it so that was good you pleased with anything we should know about behind the scenes one of the things that had been holding up this project for a very long time was I had done a bunch of initial drafts with stick figures and unlike many of my other videos this has a lot of characters and kind of particular individuals and with my with my very limited art abilities I was never able to find a satisfactory way to distinguish between all of the different groups of people and all of the different individuals and so the artwork was really something that was that was holding this project back for a long time and then since I started working with canoe it was one of the very first things I started to think of was like hey maybe I could have this guy help me out with the Lord of the Rings and luckily I didn't drive him away with all of my crazy insistence on the facial expression of queen line in the last one and so he signed up for another round of lots of picky picky changes for me and we worked together on a bunch of different stuff and I think it came out really great you know he sent me a bunch of different concepts for how the artwork could be and we kind of narrowed it down to to the way it looks in the end and I'm really thrilled with it I could never have done this so just there's a huge thanks huge thanks goes to him with helping me out on this video so that's that's one of the things well done canote yeah it looks it looks just great what's this about IPA what's going on here okay yeah so some people saw me complaining on Twitter so anybody who is a kind of Lord of the Rings fan knows Tolkien was a big fan of names and so all this background stuff for Lord of the Rings is a little difficult to get into because not only are there a huge number of characters but also Tolkien gives all of them four or five names there's Elven names there's their actual names in their own languages there's human translations for the names there's just a million names and there's this phenomenon when you read stuff that you just don't have any idea how it's supposed to be pronounced and so here was the problem that I ran into I'm familiar with lots of these names and I'm reading them and I have an idea of in my head how they are pronounced but of course with things that you read and you never hear another person speak out loud because there are not many times in life when you run across someone else who wants to talk out loud with you about the mythology behind the Lord of the Rings you don't have a chance to compare pronunciation notes and so I don't know how this kind of slipped my mind but I did not realize until the morning I was I had to record it this was the day that that the final Hobbit movie was released in the States and I was frantic in the morning like okay I have everything all said I just need to record the audio for this and I realized I don't have any idea how to pronounce some of these names for real I know in my head how I pronounce them but I have no idea if I'm going to do this right and let's just put this way the kinds of people who get into the Tolkien mythology they are nerdy detail oriented people and so I was suddenly terrified that I was going to get all of these wrong but I had to I had to do something really quick and so on a lot of guidelines they have the IPA listing for how the name should be pronounced IPA meaning what okay so anybody who's gone to Wikipedia articles at the top where you look at some article it'll say like oh here's the word and then they have a bunch of little symbols which are like funny shaped letters so it's like the upside down or the backwards E or the bold I it's like this string of little characters and I'm sure almost everybody's had this experience where you think oh I'm not quite sure how to pronounce this word and you click on those strange characters and then I'll Wikipedia it takes you to this page that shows you how each of these letters is supposed to be pronounced so they'll say like oh you know if you see a bold C it's supposed to be C as in cat not C as in scent right so that sounds relatively easy but where it gets really hard is with the vowel sounds of how do you represent with the different vowel sounds are supposed to be so I found myself infuriated the morning that I was supposed to be recording the audio trying to work through some of the IPA stuff and it just brought to head a lot of problems that I have with the IPA I think it is just totally useless I don't think there is anybody who's not a professional linguist that this stuff actually helps with because you're you're looking at a word that you don't know how to pronounce and then you have to look at a bunch of symbols that most people are just not familiar with so in your mind you don't have placeholders for these things you have to think oh I am looking for the the funnily written H or this bizarre symbol over here this little line then you have to find it on a list and then on that list it shows you a bunch of other words to try to compare that sound too and so if you were trying to do something long like what I was trying to do Eru Aluvatar right this is a name that I wanted to check you you cannot if you are not already familiar with it successfully use the IPA to tell you how to pronounce this because there's just too many things that you're mentally juggling in your head and then that's like too many of the vowel things are just are not clear enough and so I just I hate the IPA and it feels like this relic from a bygone era when people had to write dictionaries and there was there was no way of conveying audio information to other people and I was just inferior why is there not a website where I can copy and paste the IPA symbols and a computer just spits out the sounds for me that this doesn't exist there's a couple things that were sort of close but just terrible when I tested them against actual words that I know how to pronounce it just came out all wrong it's like look look IPA people if you think this system is as consistent as you think it is I should be able to take these symbols and have a computer spit out the sounds but it doesn't seem like this is possible and I was complaining on Twitter and then what irritates me is people who are professional linguists writing back and they're like oh the IPA is incredibly useful and I am sure if you use this every day that it is a tool that can convey meaning to professionals but I just think it is it is totally useless for people who don't use it all the time I've never been able to use this to successfully figure out how to pronounce a word that I don't already know how to pronounce now I will admit that my particular problem is what they call a corner case it does not affect very many people because how often is someone ever trying to find out the pronunciation of a word that doesn't either exist in their own language or an actual language spoken by other humans I imagine not very often but this is what I'm trying to do if I'm looking up something like is tarry which is an elven word there is surprisingly like few cases I think where someone is ever going to be using the IPA to try to figure out me upwards also though like all of this aside yeah enough you know I was going to say I feel you pain but I'd be lying yeah I know you'd be lying but all of this aside uh-huh who's the official arbiter of the pronunciation of these words anyway because the guy who made them up made them up I should say is dead and like so who do we go to to find out how is tarry or whatever that word like like isn't it just some arbitrary decision anyway how to pronounce it okay so Tolkien did have pronunciation guides he writes so he wrote down why aren't you using those it was it's complicated well his guides are tricky but there are also there are recordings of him actually speaking out loud the names of lots of the stuff there's lots of audio recordings of him but this is the thing if if I wasn't time constrained this would not be such an issue but I had to get this done on the day the movie was being released I figured and so like the clock was ticking and I did not have time to go chase down a whole bunch of stuff to try to find every Tolkien recording ever anyway they ended up just being a frustrating irritating morning um but I also just find like if people were sending me like lists of the IPA stuff and the other problem with this is I find that the the things are confusing because well it's almost like when you get if you if you think about a dictionary too long the whole thing just seems insane because you're using words to define words and you can end up getting into these bizarre loops right where you're like oh we're gonna use words to define themselves like oh god how does this start somewhere you go doesn't start anywhere right they're all just interconnected and the IPA does the same thing with with human sounds are always writing oh it's it's like the the sounds in this word well how do you know how I pronounced this word and they try to give you a whole bunch but I just think it's so easy to fall off the path here um but anyway I just feel like we're in a world now we we can have recordings of stuff let's just use those we don't we don't need to have this this strange system that has such prominence at the top of every Wikipedia article just have a just have a button I can click where the word is pronounced don't show me the IPA stuff it's it's totally unhelpful to almost absolutely everybody is is my my problem with the IPA stuff anyway sorry about that how did you go in the end did many people leave comments saying that you got pronunciations wrong or did as you as it been pretty positive that you are you nailed most of them I'm pretty pleased I nailed most of them I got one slightly wrong um but it's it was it was okay uh what one was that okay so uh I got I got wrong uh Yovanna which I think in the video I I reversed the V in the end sounds I think I said uh Yanava or I can't I can't quite remember which way I said it but uh Yovanna I think I be saying it wrong right now I suddenly can't remember how that ruined the video for me yeah well there's you know there's always there's always something there was a typo in the video like there are always typos I can never avoid that but but all things considered I was I was very worried about this video because I thought this was a this was a real exercise in leaving out information um I love the Lord of the Ring stuff and you can go really deep on Lord of the Rings and the background information and I find that it is a world that it has this perfect mixture of consistency but also mystery I find like that is a very difficult balance to get right but I think the token universe just just hits that really perfectly um but when I was saying I said in the beginning of the video millions of pages it's obviously hyperbole and nerds were correct to me they go well actually the simmerely and only has 400 pages but it's like so you can do no more is to yes but but it's like yes I just showed a picture of the simmerely in because if any people might be vaguely familiar with this book but it's like there's the legendarium there's the token letters there's there's all of Christopher Tolkien's writings there's just there are thousands and thousands of pages of stuff talking about everything that has ever happened and I was I was I was worried but anyway so I I was worried I was worried that I had to dramatically simplify a whole bunch of this stuff and so I thought oh I might have just made a video that is too uninteresting for most people but actually irritates the hell out of the people who would like it the most as as Tolkien fanatics because I had to simplify a whole bunch of stuff and it just strikes me as a video that did not need to be made that's what I that's what I love about it like there's no like it's not like I was sitting there thinking do you know what I just you know Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is okay but I just want to know what they believe behind all that you know it's like they didn't need but that's that they're the most fun things isn't that yeah like doing lists of bridges yeah I don't think anyone would have tuned in today thinking I hope they do a list of bridges because there's absolutely no reason for that yeah I was making fun of you before for things that you're interested in but of course this is my version of of the bridge I'm it I'm intensely interested in this stuff and I totally love it but it is it is not useful in any way and and this is again just going to the the arbitrariness of human interest I cannot say why I'm so interested in it really I can try to come up with reasons but you know ultimately you are interested in stuff or you aren't interested in stuff but for the record Tolkien nerds I just want to I just want to get something on the record here I am perfectly aware of the great contention over the origin of orcs I just had to go with one version of the story and I went with what I think is the simplest one for people who are unfamiliar with the simmurilian and all of the other writings but please no more emails about the actual relationship between melcore and the creation of life I'm fully aware of this I just this was an exercise in simplification so there I just wanted to want to get that on record but you forgot to mention but I tell you what what you were complaining about your your easy bridge homework yeah you sent me into Bristol on one of the busiest shopping days of the year to find the crowds to go and see the Hobbit movie today so that we could talk about it so I did my homework did I send you in I think I suggested that this would be something that we might want to do yeah I'm not sure this was homework homework in the same way that you you commanded that I come up with five bridges and told me nothing about it um no we have we have related to lord of the rings stuff we have both just watched the final Hobbit movie we sort of did it at the same time as well didn't we yeah we were our our we weren't in the same location but our our movie watching experience was overlapped today yeah to watch the Hobbit the battle of the five armies so we're going to talk about it now are we um I you know we can talk about it now I I took some notes I assume you took some notes as well do you know what I was really nerdy and I took notes during the film on my iPhone I was really impressed yeah genuinely surprised I did it on a like on an on an email like on an open email and then I don't think I saved it to drafts because I can't find them so I haven't actually got them so I wrote like seven or eight really interesting notes and um you know but you know what you know I'm ready I'm gonna give you credit for trying I just assumed that you would take no notes at all but I am quite pleased that you actually you you at least you at least attempted to take notes it gets worse I'll tell you a funny story about the end of the film afterwards as well but let's talk about the film yeah and I'll have one last check that these notes aren't here but I'm pretty sure they're not no they go on I don't know yeah I'm sorry but I did take notes I do I do believe you where do we where do we start talking about this film we both we both obviously had seen the first two and I think we've both spoken in non glowing terms about the first two previously yes we have but I'm going to start this with before actually watching the movie when I purchase tickets because I hate going to the movies I really hate everything about the movies yeah every once in a while I go to a movie for various reasons and it is not an enjoyable experience I see I'm the opposite I love it really it's like it's like the but I don't do it much anymore the last year or two I really dialed down because of various reasons and but it's like a rule it's a real special occasion for me going to the movies I really like it today was one of the first times it didn't feel like that it felt like a chore today well because it was a chore yeah that's why do you why do you hate it just because it involves like factors you can't control yeah everything's out of my control I can't stop the movie I can't pause it I can't murder anybody in the theater who is being irritating what whereas you can't do that at home at home I can control the environment yeah but I just haven't got a ginormous screen I I am perfectly willing to pass up the ginormous screen for control without without any hesitation that is a that is a trade I'm willing to make okay so I I dislike everything about the movie going experience and so when I was suggesting oh this might be a thing to do for our Christmas show I thought okay well let me now I have to go look we agreed I'm gonna go buy tickets and when I was looking I was trying to find tickets for Lord of the Rings and I discovered fortuitously that one of the theaters nearby me has what I'm going to refer to as the airport lounge version of watching a movie yeah there's a few nice ones like that yes yeah I'm very familiar with this experience and having dogs in many times now I I was completely unaware of this ever and this is the first I came across this but basically for five pounds more on the ticket which considering the ticket I think would have been 15 pounds anyway you can get these big recliner seats you can have like a waiter who comes over and brings you popcorn when you press a button yeah your screen is much smaller but you're in a much smaller space yeah and because it's more expensive that acts as a child filter people with lots of children don't want to go into the more expensive area and I thought man this is just like when I was going to be stuck in in dullest airport for many hours of uncomfortableness I was going into this movie expecting many hours of uncomfortableness and so I thought this is exactly the moment I am happy to pay a little bit more to make this experience as comfortable as possible yeah and so I went into the the kind of lounge area to watch a movie and it mitigated a very large number of my complaints about movies all of which center mostly around other people yeah so I have to say it's a great innovation yeah it was interesting to discover and I still don't like movies but having discovered the lounge I would be more amenable to going to movies in the future so that was 100% worth it do you know something I found interesting one it gave me a little insight into maybe you know the life of the film critic and people like that because this was one of the first times I couldn't remember going to a film like for work reasons knowing that I was going to have to talk about it and it's inevitable you start thinking about what you're thinking and what you might say in the podcast and things like that and it really affects the way you watch the film but also it starts then you start thinking and then I started thinking about the fact that it was affecting my thinking and then I could talk about that on the podcast and it just kept going down all these layers like inception and like I started like and then I could talk about the fact that I was talking about the fact that I was talking about it and it kind of it kind of did my head in a bit and the film hadn't even started yes yes it's a different experience I kept thinking about a while ago I read an article talking Roger Ebert's work routine for reviewing movies and it was interesting he would talk about he always did things on handwritten note pads and just made no attempt to organize stuff while he was watching the movie and so at the end of his movie experience there would be a whole bunch of sheets just laying around him that he just torn off the pad as he kept writing stuff and you know presumably his poor secretary later had to try to put it all in order and collect things together but yes I was aware of that immediately as well that the watching a movie knowing that you're going to talk about it is a slightly different experience than just watching a movie regularly did you have expectations I have to admit there was a chance I probably would not have seen this film at the cinema being so burned by the previous two I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy let me just put my cards on the table yeah I've not read any books really I've read none of them really I'm not I'm not the fan you are in any way so you haven't you haven't read any of the mythology either than I'm guessing oh yeah I've read I've read those thousands of pages but the book was just not in depth enough for me no yeah no it was no so I can't have a discussion with you about the differences between the three ages you know that's not good we're not going to have that conversation well you can have it it just it just won't be is it won't be on the level you might appreciate so I really enjoyed the three Lord of the Rings films I think they're masterpieces I think they're not without flaws and they occasionally got a bit tedious but overall I really like them I still rewatch them sometimes on a on a winter's day I'll sit down and watch one or two of them you know directors cut length I think they're great and then I thought the first two Hobbit films were real disappointments we've discussed it before and to the point where I did not have high hopes attached to this one yes there's my there's my there's my starting point for today yeah let me let me let me do a similar thing mm-hmm people may not be aware I'm a fan of Lord of the Rings but I I too I love the original Lord of the Rings movies and I have watched all of the extended editions I used to have the DVD box set with all of the background like dozens and dozens of hours of the making of those movies I consumed all of that I just loved it and more importantly I think that those original three movies are a a masterful example of how to take books and film them because you you just you cannot just be completely faithful to a book when you make a movie these are fundamentally different mediums and I just think I have never seen a better book to book to movie transition than those Lord of the Rings movies so I I can enjoy both of them I really like them obviously I did not like the Hobbit movies they are like a perfect example of how not to do a book to movie transition they're just terribly and it's the same it's the same team amazing I was even staying through the credits again at this one and I was looking and I was like yep there's philippa one of the main writers from the last one who I've seen a million interviews with on the extras who seemed really competent then and you know she's working with Peter Jackson and it's like I know all of like I know these movies well enough to recognize all of the writers and the producers and like I've seen interviews with these people and it's just mind boggling to me that it's all the same team but yeah so I didn't like the first two Hobbit movies and so I was going into this one with it with exactly zero expectations whatsoever not even low expectations just nothing so there's my starting point so did you like the movie how do you think what do you think of it you good thumbs up thumbs down thumbs down yeah thumbs down tedious yeah thankfully it didn't seem too long like it didn't seem as long as the other ones I didn't dislike it I was just completely it was just like I was completely not engaged with it at all couldn't it was just repetitive boring not like not like it didn't make me angry like I didn't I wasn't thinking this is really bad like in the first one when that singing dancing things going on in the in the Hobbit house I was like a singmata joke this is terrible it was never like that it was never like or it wasn't like watching a twilight movie where you think this is the worst thing that has ever been committed to cellular or virtual cellular it wasn't like that well it didn't offend me just it just complete I just think it just completely failed to engage me in it didn't I didn't care I didn't excite me and I wasn't impressed by the filmmaking like I was in Lord of the Rings just all the things that the Lord of the Rings did well this failed and the one my one complaint about the Lord of the Rings films is that the battle scenes are a bit drag on a bit and are a bit too much and this film was just like one epic one of those battle scenes yeah so it in another funny coincidence I have been rereading the Hobbit and I actually just finished reading the Hobbit this morning before going then to see the final movie and to be clear I am not complaining about differences that are from the book you have to do things differently but the battle of the five armies in the book the Hobbit the entirety of it is maybe maybe two and a half pages no it is the briefest thing that happens and I always think Tolkien spoilers for the Hobbit people Tolkien pulls this great move where he clearly doesn't like to write about battles like in the in the actual books there are not many battles described in great detail and so in the Hobbit he describes the kind of setup here are the armies here's where the orcs are there advancing this way humans are on one side of the mountain elves on the other side and the the the the eagles come in but then Bilbo gets knocked out gets knocked unconscious and this allows Tolkien the author to just skip the whole battle right you turn the page and Bilbo wakes up when the battle is over and somebody then just quickly relays to him what happened so the actual battle is like nothing at all and then this movie is four hours of a battle which again could be done well because a movie is a visual medium yeah and I think that the last time I remember being blown away by special effects in a movie theater was the final Lord of the Rings movie and the final battle in that movie that was the last time I remember really feels like it was a bit much but it was pretty good it was like I'm not saying it was a great battle scene and watching it later in life I have found it a little bit long but at the time when I saw that was like the last time I was really blown away by special effects because I because I watched this I was watching this battle today right yeah this endless endless battle and I was imagining is he doing this because he's being loyal to the book and then if he was which I now know he wasn't but if he was I was trying to imagine how the book wrote this and basically it would this is how the book would read it would be you know Gmoth the Hoch from the north of the Hoch took his broadsword and he swiped a guy to his left killed him and he swiped a guy to his right and then he swiped another guy to his left and then he fell over and then some giant beast was just about to kill him and just before the big beast killed him some hero Gmoth from the west suddenly appeared and shot him with an arrow who that was really close yeah repeat this 19 times and then and then a great horn sounded and everyone looked to their right and yet another army that you don't care about and known nothing about suddenly appeared on the crest of the mountain and came running down the mountain and Gmoth the Hoch from the south swiped one to the left and swiped one to the right and then he fell over and he was just about to die again and you were sure he was going to die this time and at the last possible moment Cindy the wizard from the east jumped in and saved the day repeat that 19 times and then another horn sounds and another army appears and it's like goodness sake I don't even know who these armies are I don't know who these characters are I don't know who I am supposed to support the people who I thought were the good guys are suddenly going a bit evil is that is the ring a big deal I know the ring is famous but now all they care about is some stone and these other guys are after some necklace and another guy wants the gold and then there's some other battle going off somewhere else and some people are going on a mission somewhere else and I don't know who they are and what they're looking for I don't know who I I don't know who I want to win the only person I care about is the Hobbit because Rant and Freeman's pretty good actor and he was an excellent choice for Bill Baughan. Yeah he's he's good so you know I hope he lives and I know he lives so there's no there's no tension there because the one person I care about I know he's going to live and it's like goodness me like that's why I would but also I didn't like the way the film was made as much like the first three films Peter Jackson felt like this kind of Cecil B. Demil guy to me it's like he had gone back to old school filmmaking and it felt like he was building big things and there were lots of people there and he was making this epic film and he used lots of effects very well but it felt like a lot of it was real as well and this one felt a lot more a lot more effects driven yeah it felt like you know he's been drinking the George Lucas aid yeah and like it's like oh you know go back to I know it's more expensive maybe but one of the nice things about Lord of the Rings was it felt dirty it felt like they had dirt on their hands and there were real rocks and swords and this felt a lot fake in every way yeah yeah it's funny you mentioned that because I had the same the same feeling which again is like the Star Wars original prequels versus the later ones where I was I was really aware in lots of the big army scenes that it just looked so CGI which is really interesting because of course the original movie used tons of CGI to fill in fill in these characters but they did a much better job of mixing actual live action with overhead CGI shots to make it feel much more real and here is like oh wow let me watch these two computer armies fight each other it is no no interest whatsoever but your description of the beginning of the movie right so so here's the story of my notes I go into this movie and I have no expectations and I felt for I'm I'm going to say for the first half of the movie I felt like I was sitting there and I just had no reaction whatsoever to anything like I like I was this empty vessel through which light and sound was passing yeah and I was just I was connected to absolutely nothing and so I have almost no notes from the beginning of it except I noticed a couple of things which I thought were interesting that like one this movie made no attempt to help anybody who just showed up at this point they they know who they're selling these tickets to it's people who've watched the first two you know good luck to you if you don't know who these people are the first half of it I had just no reaction whatsoever and I was thinking I can give this movie a kind of meh like it made no impression on me whatsoever yeah but then but then about halfway through suddenly my notes start and my notes start with this this line that Gandalf says about how the orcs have this whole other second army they've been holding back that are about to arrive yeah and my notes says a second front approaches question mark oh no I thought the movie was over yeah and and this was exactly my feeling of like the movie suddenly turned for me where I felt like it was wrapping up and I had already felt like I had been sitting there for a long time and I just had no reaction and then there is there was just as much to continue sitting through with this second front of orcs that approach and like that was supposed to be I imagine it like that was supposed to be like a dramatic twist was it was it was it supposed will we supposed to go oh no but I was so disengaged it maybe I was the same it was just like oh okay another battle yeah it was it was it was just I cannot believe that this is this is going to continue onward and yeah they could have ended the movie right there and it would have made no difference to anything whatsoever and then the other thing which you picked up on you mentioned it and I had a little this little comment in my notes which was I cannot believe that they did something which was they had not not once not twice but thrice they had the same shot of hero on the ground big troll creature over the hero dramatically lifts hammer slash sword over its head to smash the hero on the ground and at the last second somebody off camera jumps on the orc or shoots it right you just expect it now it's just okay no drama because you know it's going to happen some okay I have to tell you though here here was a thing so they do it once okay you get one of these in a movie that's fine yeah you know okay they did it a second time and I thought did they forget that they already did this shot in the movie right did they did they forget like this is the second troll that I've seen doing this exact same thing where someone stops at the last moment now here's the thing the third time spoilers obviously people the third time it's Thor and Oak and shield on the ground who I know perfectly well from the books is going to die and I had a brief moment where I thought I think Peter Jackson has just done something brilliant here we have seen twice the hero come from off screen to save our main character but I know Thorin is going to die and they're setting us up in this third shot and I thought man this is going to be a hell of a movie moment if this character with his gigantic hammer just smashes Thor and Oak and shield dead right because they've trained us to expect someone to jump in and it's going to be really shocking when they don't nope nope not at all they just use the exact same shot three times yes and the thing that killed me was they slowed down time each time it's like how can you watch this movie and not keep track of this oh I found that just like for a brief moment I really did think this is going to even if the rest of the movie is terrible this is an amazing setup that is going to work great no opportunity missed we're just have a hero save him again and and you know we've we've talked about this a little bit offline as well but this movie is again an example of action scenes that just don't engage you like action scenes that have no sense of danger there was there was one part I made I made a note about as well so this is like again hundreds of of orcs and dwarves and elves and everybody's fighting and just goes on and on forever but there is a shot where there's another wave of orcs that have just arrived and they kind of catch Bilbo off guard yeah and he bends down and picks up a handful of of rocks now Bilbo is a tiny halfling these orcs are are gigantic and tough creatures that are wearing armor yeah Bilbo one shots five of these orcs with stones that he's throwing from his hands yeah and and this to me is the exactly the kind of thing like don't feel makers understand there's no sense of danger here are these are these creatures dangerous or can a tiny pebble thrown by what is basically a child completely kill or knock out five of them just immediately yeah because and we're told these are like these guys are bred for fighting like yeah and but then like you know you run into the front and every and always the lead guy the leader of the army who runs into one of these fronts and I lost I lost count of the number of times some some hero leads the charge into a huge wall of Yeah, they always going with their sword and take down 15 or 20 of them before anyone knows what's going on like do the guys on the front of these fronts like do they ever land a punch or a sword or like it's just it's like yes like storm troopers isn't always missing and stuff I know but it's just like but there but there's a there's a difference here where you can establish this reasonably well and I think that the the original Lord of the Rings does a much better job with this where again spoilers there's gonna be spoilers forever I'm just gonna stop saying it but in the original Lord of the Rings they kind of draw a better distinction between goblins which are really small and numerous but they also kind of give you the impression that the goblins are maybe not the best at fighting cannon fodder yeah and so you can have just tons of them and you can much more easily accept that the goblins advantage is in their numbers yeah right but then you have the Urkai which are built up as these are the ultra super soldiers and in the first movie the Urkai kill one of the major characters that's how you establish that there's actual there's an actual threat here yeah there is something to be lost and when the Urkai show up it is always actually bad news and then the orcs are kind of somewhere in the middle but yeah this this movie it's like oh are they really tough or are they not really tough it just when you need thousands of them to die they just die when you need them to be scary they're suddenly scary it doesn't it doesn't work like that movie you have to establish what the what the boundaries are but I really did I felt back I laughed out loud in the theater when when Bilbo is just like pow pow pow one shotting these guys yeah and they just they just fall over from a pebble that hits them against their clearly armored head the other saying that was really jokie like that video game he was when that guy jumped in the trolley to save his kids and rolled down the oh yeah yeah that was barred yeah that was barred saving his film I did really laugh out that the thinking of barred there was a tremendously cheesy scene where the kind of weasley the weasley guy asks asks the main character barred you know what why are you fighting for this fight and the camera just rotates so that his family comes right in view and like barred doesn't even say anything yeah and it's like oh is the weasley guy supposed to know the camera move that just occurred here and he's like oh well I guess I'm doing it for my family but yeah it's just it's funny because again like the first half of the movie just left no impression and then I suddenly have a thousand notes about things that I could not stand in the second half because it was like it just crossed my threshold of too long suddenly uninteresting it did suddenly I have the others like it didn't I don't know how long it was but it didn't it was too long but it did I will I will agree I don't know off the top of my head the running time but I'm willing to bet that this was shorter than the others it did feel it did feel shorter but still still just way way over the top and I hate I didn't like but I didn't hate the opening sequence with the dragon and I'm glad they kind of just dispensed it was still too much but they dispensed of it reasonably quickly and I did like that and it made me like that guy who killed the dragon it made me like him and he became my second favorite character so there was some merit to that opening sequence before the opening title comes on the screen that was yes that was all right and this is to take a little moment here as well this is another example of movies have to be different from books and so in the book that character bard it's going to sound almost unreasonable when I say this you've been reading this whole book about the Hobbits and the dragon and the dragon flies off to go attack Laketown Tolkien then introduces the character of bard has bard killed the dragon ends the chapter without ever mentioning him again in the space of maybe three pages that's the kind of thing you cannot possibly do in a movie you can't be like oh the dragon flies off and this dude you've never heard of just kills him oh and then we're never going to mention him again right you you have to change things in a movie and you you can get away with that in a book in a way that you just never ever could on film so again I'm totally okay with him being a like a big character that none of this exists in the book that that's perfectly fine you have you have to make changes but there were just so many so many bizarre changes and so many things that just go on forever that I couldn't understand there also too many people like and and too many people I don't relate to it's like like I don't want to hop on about Star Wars and then I know it's good to have subplots and you know intrigue and even Star Wars has subplots but Star Wars does just simple wasn't it there was a there was a young guy with floppy hair that was a bit like you who you wanted to win and there was a guy that was obviously bad in a black suit who you wanted to die right and there was a pretty princess and you wondered who was going to kiss the princess because she was pretty right and that was it and like everything else was just you know and then everything stems from that but watching this film today I was like so there are like five or six guys who seem to be good but a couple of them what they seem to be bad yeah and there's a and that woman that all woman for some reason loves that was the one she cries because he's dead but can I can I stop you here can I stop you here I had to write down this dialogue word for word because it was so awful when her when this whole love triangle does not exist in the books this is just bizarre bringing it in I don't understand but she says if this is love why does it hurt so much and then the elven king says to her because it was real yeah and it's just like oh my god I just felt nothing I felt nothing fit for anyone and it was so humulus and Martin Freeman was trying to be funny occasionally I guess but the film was completely devoid of humor and Matt that's Martin Freeman's strength you know use him he could bring a route you know and occasionally he tried but yeah and the character in the in the books like Martin Freeman is excellently cast because he could pull off this kind of I'm a guy who's in a situation that is far beyond what I'm supposed to be doing yeah but yeah he's he is underused in the movies but there but there were a bunch of just weird moments where the movie did try to be funny and I thought it just it fell yeah fell flat and it again it was this weird tone shift where it's like this is this movie serious movie you can have funny moments in a serious movie but there were just things that became oh is this comical like they had a troll siege engine where this troll runs up to a wall and smashes it over but they have him then comically fall backwards unconscious it was it was one step away from having little birdies flying around his head in a circle on on screen when he falls over and it's like oh is this a dramatic scene where the wall has been breached and so I should care or is this a funny moment with a troll you can't mix those you can't mix those two things together they seem to try and give this the funny lines to Gandalf and I'm not convinced he's very good at funny he's a fabulous actor but I don't think he's very good the the original trilogy had you know gimley and he as it works and he we're he was funny but there's no character in these films that pulled it off yeah he I think he he was on the edge but totally totally worked I'm just trying to look at some my notes here of just like things that irritate the crap out of me oh my god okay okay okay so the final the final fight between Thor and Oak and Shield and I can't remember which which the you're supposed to be on the ice yeah yeah on the ice but he's he's a character that is mentioned in a single line in the habit it's just like an incidental person that they turn into this enormous thing and it's it's him in his son and I can never remember which one is which but anyway so the final fight between the two some about the defile or something that was yeah yeah yeah it's Thorno and Shield and it's him and they're standing on his ice and they're fighting each other okay for some reason who knows where maybe I blinked I wasn't paying attention suddenly our main villainous orc has this long rock at the end of a chain that he is swinging around and trying to hit Thor and Oak and Shield and it was just in this fight scene went on it felt like for five minutes of our orc trying to hit Thor and Oak and Shield and it reminds me a little bit of of like when I saw Avatar which was a movie I did not like and I find myself rooting for the villains to just can we just finish this and so I find myself in the theater feeling like can you just can you just hit him already like I know he's going to die just kill him so this can end and then it's really irritating you're using a mid-range weapon for a close melee fight like he's he's within feet of you and one of your arms is a giant sword and you're and your eight feet tall of the name yeah just stab him just stab him he's right there you're within range the only reason you're using this big weapon is so that you can dramatically miss him as you slowly swing it around like this is you're using like a siege weapon in close combat this makes no sense at all he's within range just stab him and the other thing I kept thinking of there was like again this like we have no sense of the danger of anything is in the Lord of the Rings books there are not many descriptions of individual dwarves ever taking on trolls they're always doing it as an army yeah because that's the only thing that makes any sense because yeah he's eight feet tall and he's fighting a dwarf and I was thinking I bet if you took a a kid who's like six years old and tried to train him to be the best fighter in the world and put him in armor and then you you had me with a long sword versus this kid I bet I could kill that kid just because I'm way bigger it doesn't matter how good you are at fighting if someone is just massively bigger than you you're going to lose if it's coming down to to close combat it doesn't make any sense the only the only way you can get around that is the thing like dungeons and dragon stats here is if you have amazing agility but when you think of dwarves do you think of really agile creatures is that one of their fundamental characteristics obviously not is like it's like the it's like the spider man phenomenon spider man fights villains who are massively more strong than him but his primary ability is his agility to avoid blows but like this is not the situation here with this with this dwarf versus this gigantic incredibly strong orc and it just it just loses all sense of danger it just it just means it means nothing we do accept it in James Bond movies when like gold finger straps bond to a you know a table with a slow moving laser that's going to cut him in 10 minutes rather than just putting a bulletin he's head yeah but but here's the thing it all comes down to the movies kind of establishing what they are right and and bond movies at least the older ones like like with the slow moving lasers they don't establish themselves as super serious films right in the beginning you know they're kind of lighthearted and they're kind of the kind of campy yeah and the the habit is just going so hard to convince you like this is a serious important movie yeah you like you can't then have cartoon physics everywhere if it's a serious important movie these things don't mix so two other two other quick things yeah maybe I missed something but this thorn open shield dude yeah for the first half of the film he's like bad he's been you know he's he's going a bit loopy because of the evil and he's gone off the rails yeah and then halfway through he just seems to change his mind and like realise the error of his ways and says actually now I'm going to be a good guy now and we're all going to hug and be buddies did was there some path to transformation that I missed that made him go from bad to good like I didn't get the redemption I didn't see the I didn't see the emperor lightning bolt moment where suddenly he realised the error of his ways and switch he just had this kind of little arti seen down in the vaults and then came back and said all right that was a point and pointless yeah there was there was no real transition like that okay I was making sure I wasn't like texting or something and missed it missed the you didn't miss anything but my final note here time at unresolved things again a moment I kind of laughed out loud and felt bad but luckily there were very few people in the theater with me was after the the the fight that lasts for a thousand years all of a sudden they're back in the shire so Bilbo leaves and they they just flash forward and suddenly oh Gandalf is dropping him off at the shire and he's going home yeah I thought hey wait a minute what on earth happened to the whole point of this entire battle because the men and the elves and the dwarves had a disagreement over how the treasure was going to be allotted right right there there was no there was no conclusion to this right they just say oh the battles over and boom Bilbo's back in the shire and there was there was no resolution to what was the actual point of the entire fight what is going to happen do the do right do the men of Lake Town do they get money to help them rebuild do the elves get their gems what happens with those with the dwarves who show up how does this all work Thor and Oak and Shield who you think is the king under the mountain is dead what happens to his companions I know the answer because I read the book but I I could not believe that they spend so much time on all of the fights and adding all this unnecessary stuff and then they just they just skip what happens that she was how I think that was that how that I haven't even thought about that yet but you're right there was no kind of but also a big unresolved thing is at you know at the start of the Lord of the Rings movies which presumably is what 30 years later or something okay yes like presumably we still live in a middle earth where there exists a mountain that is fall to the brim of like gold like this is an amazing there's a this is an amazing place this is like the center of the universe and in the Lord of the Rings movies it's not like has it has the gold just been distributed or what yeah but you're right there's so anyway yeah another thing that bothers me is the issue of legolas oh my god oh my god now I can obviously the age thing is a problem because he clearly looks so much older and I kept every time he was on screen I kept thinking get this 40 year old man off off camera yeah because of because then he pops up in the Lord of the Rings movies is this kind of fresh face handsome guy stuff but he looked he looked old in the in the in the first habit movie and I swear he he is really going through that transition of just being like an older grown up person yeah and he just he just looks he looks laughable on screen let's put that to one side for a minute though I'll put that to one side for a minute you know because you know the guy's getting older and they wanted to keep the same actor for you know okay let's let's say that's that's it's amountable yeah except for the fact that he's he's not mentioned at all in the original habit movies and there's no reason to have him there but yeah we'll put it I guess I guess it was like Orlando Bloom don't they but anyway find some other attractive elf dude like we're not we're not we're not short of attractive humans in the world you can find another one let's put that to one side I didn't even realize that but let's let's put that to one side and say you had to have him the other big problem is not his appearance it's his change in personality because he's he's not just going from an old man to a young man in appearance he's going from this boring in the in the prequels he's in the Hobbit he's this sort of boring serious guy who's seeing all this amazing stuff and then in the Lord of the rings he's fun and exciting and fresh faced and like he clearly hasn't seen all the stuff he's seen in the Hobbit because like in the Hobbit he's seeing he's seeing stuff that would just turn you into this like you know this kind of sad guy I guess and then he suddenly it's like he got rebooted for the he's got this completely different personality that doesn't marry with what he's seen the years before yeah it makes it makes no sense whatsoever his character arc there yeah he's he's he's supposed to be this like there's young sort of rebellious elf in in the Lord of the Rings and and he's he's supposed to be different yeah and he's he's the world somberist man in this movie and then he pops up again in Lord of the Rings and he's he's party dude that everyone wants to hang out with yeah he's 18 years old and he's lots of fun after after seeing hundreds and hundreds of his comrades die you know not that long ago and then the horrors of war and now he can't wait to ride off again yeah it's it doesn't make it doesn't make any sense now Orlando Bloom was just like this is a terrible terrible decision to have him in the book as well I'm sorry to anyone who's listen to listen to this he hasn't seen the food doesn't know let's be honest nobody's listening to this who hasn't seen the movie yeah you know there's nobody's nobody's nobody's listening this far who hasn't seen the movies they they want a catharsis is there anything else we need to say there's a lot we could say but oh man I mean I'm just like to do my notes I'll do a couple of couple of strange points yeah one point dune worms pop out of the ground at one point do you remember the scene I can do or actually look okay yeah so they're pretty cool they don't exist in the books but whatever that's fine and then what did they do they just disappeared right yeah as far as I could tell they popped out of the ground wants to look scary and then yeah what I never saw them get killed and I can't go back through the hole because that's where all the soldiers are I never saw them do anything right they just they're just they're on screen to look cool just to be another piece of crap on the screen and then nothing happens with them so that was that was terrible yeah they just just yeah so so many things but that one was one like what is what is this exist here I have I have no idea second thing other minor point I think many movies suffer from there's no sense of place at all how far are these places from each other where the hell is anybody yeah comparing contrast I think it's the two towers I don't exactly remember which Lord of the Rings movie but they do this thing which I love because they can just barely pull it off we're at one moment a bunch of characters just literally puts a map on the table and the camera focuses on the map and people point to different spots on the map and describe what's going on they say oh Sarman's forces are coming from over here we're coming from over this way this is not far and I always love that in the movie because it's it's sort of awkward but it's also we need this right now I need to have an understanding of where the hell all these places are yeah and this movie has has no understanding of where anything is which makes everything just even more meaningless let me ask you this to what extent has Peter Jackson done a George Lucas here and tarnished tarnished himself I mean he hasn't done he hasn't gone as far but has he done that has he has he undermined himself and that's an interesting question um as that it's a very interesting question um um I think I've said in this podcast before but I actually kind of hope that at some point in the future there is a redone version of the Lord of the Rings movies where they update the special effects I don't know how possible that is um but there are some shots in that movie where I thought you know what I would be okay with like a like a special edition version of these movies where they go back and try to clean up a bunch of stuff because there is I always thought those movies were made just when they were technically possible but I would have loved it if those movies were delayed like a couple years because of the technology um but the Hobbit movies would almost make me worry about the same team ever going back yeah and doing anything and again I know I find it baffling I don't know why these are so different I you know I don't even if you even if they didn't want to make it into three movies as we discovered last time that that it was supposed to be two and let's say the studio was forcing them to make it into three it doesn't not even then the decisions don't make any sense about how the movies turned out about making them so long and so padded with stuff so I don't I don't know studio may have been pressuring for three movies but they wouldn't pressure for three long movies yeah like they don't they don't care how long it is yeah they want three points of sale yeah and you know you could you know cut cut the movies down in half and I think you could make something better one of the things I always kind of wondered in the for the first movies was Peter Jackson kind of came out of nowhere and I always wondered what the story was with how the heck did this guy get hired because I looked at his IMDB profile back in the day about what has he done before the Lord of the Rings and it seemed like it was almost nothing like a couple of very small projects and I always I was never able to find out the answer but like how did this guy end up getting selected for this enormous expensive incredibly important project and then he amazingly did just a just a phenomenal phenomenal job and that always seemed like a mystery to me and now I have another mystery of how did this same person and the same team of people around him produce something so terrible so I feel like like Peter Jackson is a is a bit of a mystery to me I don't understand I don't understand where he came from I don't understand how he got originally selected and I don't understand how far how far he has fallen yeah which seems quite far what do you think do you think he's he's he's unredeemed himself or I am baffled I am a bit baffled because he did he did it right with the Lord of the Rings and I mean maybe maybe the writing was on the rock maybe the warning signs were there and the Lord of the Rings and we ignore them those battle scenes that were just creeping on a bit too long and there were a bit too much and maybe we should have yeah it's like it's like the hints in return of the Jedi like the the sheep of things to come yeah and it's and it's like it's almost like maybe he has this in common with George Lucas maybe he didn't maybe the things we liked he doesn't know what was good about it and he picked the wrong thing like he doesn't get why it worked and then when he tried to do it again he he accentuated the wrong things you know he thought he thought we all loved those battle scenes in his first three and it was more we tolerated them because all the other stuff was so good so he he doubled down to use one of your favorite songs on the wrong thing but who knows you know he hasn't he hasn't done he hasn't done a lot of other brilliant stuff but you know I'd be pretty happy with Lord of Rings on save so he's still done better than me yeah fair yeah fair enough yeah and then I will I always be always be grateful to him for the original three movies to finish with that we've been talk it's been so somber I feel like and we've been complaining for a long time this is this maybe our longest show ever this is our hour hour the battle of the five armies bumper Christmas special bumper Christmas special or incredibly boring long podcast we will let the viewers decide I mean a lot of this is already is over KP cut isn't that but anyway go on really and I don't know anyway I just thought as a slightly slightly fun thing there has been a discussion on my Reddit that is related to the Lord of the Rings which I have enjoyed a quite a great deal which is listeners may know by now that my Reddit username is mind of metal and wheels and this has always been a Lord of the Rings reference this is not a I am a robot reference but it's from one of my my favorite lines in Lord of the Rings which is a a comment where tree beard is describing sarman and he says oh sarman has a mind of metal and wheels and tree beard intents as an insults but I always thought as a kid like that's a great line a mind of metal and wheels that's amazing and so I use that as my Reddit username and a whole bunch of people only just realize this after I put out the Lord of the Rings video because I I had to work that line in at some point in the video and I did and I think the light bulb went off for a bunch of people but oh that's why the red name is this but so anyway this led to a little discussion about there are five wizards the five is tarry and there are five guys who participated in the random acts of intelligence show and I think we are kind of known as a little group now and so there was a big discussion about which which random acts of intelligence dude is which of the five wizards so this is you may Henry destined and dirk from first to stu's dad bliliam dirk from very tassia yes so it is it is the five of us yeah and it's just it is a fun little discussion about about who who is which and it doesn't it doesn't work perfectly the characteristics don't line up absolutely great but so I guess I am sarman in this situation people have been quite over like I mean I don't understand it but I mean I know the characters vaguely and I've seen your video but people have been pretty unanimous in their classifications I don't think there's a lot of arguing to be done here people seem to agree on this agree on this don't they so there is there is one slightly contentious point all right you run me through the five and yeah okay so well the thing that I'll mention about me with being sarman I think is appropriate because I have very often thought that were I to be tempted by the ring I would fold just immediately although you don't like objects I don't like objects that is true right but I am I am totally just aware that one of the ways that the rings the ring is supposed to work its evil is by tempting you with the power to do good of like wouldn't things just be great if you were in charge right and you know you could you could start making things go your way and you could sort out all these problems if only you had more power and I I would just be completely susceptible to that argument I would not be able to resist in the slightest and I would go from normal dude to all shall love me and despair in a month okay so being sarman is is about appropriate all right so then the question is there the two blue wizards and the the consensus seems to be that that is Henry and Derek are the two blue wizards yeah and then the question is for you and destined who is radigast and who is Gandalf this is yeah I mean I'd I know a bit about those two characters I don't know me and destined quite well and it's most people seem to have put me down as this radigast and I get the impression that's because of my caveman my caveman think they think I'm a bit you know and that radigast character in the film he looks kind of caveman like doesn't it he's kind of rough around the edges and yeah I think it's the nature connection there yeah and and obviously destined is yeah I can't get you wise and smart and clever and and and Gandalf is the wise wise one so that seems quite well that seems like a no brainer to me I can't see how I can see how maybe people want to marry up destined with radigast because destined a man of nature but I can't see how you would marry me up with Gandalf Gandalf is Gandalf is wise and clever and does good stuff and everyone likes him and that's not that's not quite my my skill set yeah I was I'm glad that you're coming and I don't want to I don't want to put you down in in any way but being being a Gandalf is is is quite a quite the thing and I've got to say I'm if I have to vote I'm putting destined down as yes as Gandalf yeah I don't think I'm worthy of any of being any reason but if I have to be the weird the weird one I'll take him well I would say I do not I refuse to accept the movie portrayal of radigast as anything to do with the actual character of radigast so I am I I I disavow the movie radigast and accept only the book version of radigast which is almost entirely unknown but just a wizard who is involved with nature and does not does not get involved in all of these affairs about battles so I still see I see I'll go with that I'm not I'm not an outdoorsman but I do like a bit of nature or I didn't tell you my story oh yeah I am I'm just rubbish at everything and laugh and like I just can't manage myself and like for example I went away to the cottage in the countryside this week with my sister and friends and family and like drove all the way back home after this week away and like realized I'd left my coat and credit card back in the cottage and like had to go all the way back and get it so anyway I went and saw the film today and then left and went walking around the shops and just wandered aimlessly and then went back to the car park I went to pay for my parking and couldn't find my wallet and my wallet had fallen out of my pocket in the cinema oh man so it was such an adventure I went back to the I went back to the cinema and talked at loss and then I had to go back into the cinema and get like my phone out as a torch and I was crawling I couldn't remember where I sat so I was crawling around under all these seats looking for my wallet and I found it it was more exciting than the movie
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