H.I. No. 82: God of Bees

0KeeTeam
"H.I. #82: God of Bees" is the 82nd episode of Hello Internet, released on May 13, 2017.
==Official Description==
Brady and Grey discuss: CGP Grey (the penguin) update again, the height of the mighty black stump, Bees, Dying on Everest, Brady finds an argument for the Apple Watch, Brady travels, world records, the UK snap election and the French election.
==Show Notes==
Are you ready for my prepared statement about the news, Brady? How have you been? Is that what you've been doing the last three or four days? Just, just, just penning it. That's right. Yeah, I have, I have an opening statement about the news. I hope you don't mind. It's 20,000 words and I will, I will truck no direct response afterward. I'll put a big piece of a gaff tape over my mouth. I have penguin news. This is going to be... A Shaggy Dog Story. Oh, okay. I'll get comfortable. And I've thought about how to tell up, but I've decided to tell chronologically. So you can experience it as I experienced it. So very, very quick backgrounder for people who are new to the podcast. A couple of years back now I think it was. Grey and I were involved in a fundraising event at Bristol Zoo, raising money for South African penguins, which I found I actually have the nickname Jackass penguins, because of the noise they make, which was new information to me. Okay. But anyway. And to thank us for helping with the fundraising, the zoo took the very unusual step of naming one of their newborn penguins, CGP Grey. This was only the second time they've ever named a penguin. The other one that has a name is the generic one that anyone who sponsors penguins gets a certificate about. So having a name was a big deal. We were very grateful. And I promised to sort of follow the penguins progress. And I have to admit, besides getting some video of its first weigh-in and revealing the fact that the penguin was a lady, that was pretty much the last we spoke about CGP Grey, the lady penguin. Yes. You gave me a bit of a ribbing about not following it very closely, but anyway. Only because you said you were going to take up the mantle of regular reports. Otherwise, I would not have ribbed you. Okay. Hey, look. I deserved it. I deserved it. I will take it. You got me. Anyway, some news came to hand a few weeks ago. It was spotted by the Tim's, not by us, that as a result of a tragedy in the capital of Georgia, a city called Tbilisi, where there was serious, serious flooding in which many humans died, but it also was very, very devastating for their zoo. They lost many, many of their animals. And as a result, the people that oversees zoos in Europe asked all the other European zoos to help them repopulate their animal population. And Bristol Zoo was kind of a requester, but also kind of instructed, because this is how it works, to give a certain number of their penguins to Tbilisi Zoo, which Bristol Zoo did. This came to our attention. And of course, the first thing we wondered was was CGP Grey among the penguins shipped to Tbilisi, and we didn't know. What has happened since? Here we go. Okay. Give a story. All right, so the story has not yet begun. The story hasn't begun. That was the background. This was the background. Okay. Now, in true investigative nature, some of the more zealous fans of the podcast started trying to make contact with Tbilisi Zoo. And I saw on Reddit someone had contacted the zoo through Facebook and said, is CGP Grey the penguin with you? This is easy to find out, because CGP Grey the penguin has a name tag, or a number tag, on the wing. A20583. Right. It's the wing number. Anyway, so you could look up databases in there. And the word from Tbilisi was. Apparently, this was their answer. I couldn't read it, because it wasn't in English. But their answer was CGP Grey the penguin is not here. Apparently, the zoo has a popular penguin that it wasn't willing to send. Presumably CGP Grey. So CGP Grey is still in Bristol. And there was all chat on Reddit about it, and it was problem solved and well done. And a second person said, actually, my mum's friend works at Tbilisi Zoo, amazingly. And they also made some inquiries and confirmed that CGP Grey wasn't sent. Okay. I had been trying to contact Bristol, though. I'd sent some emails to various people in their media department. I wasn't getting replies. I wasn't happy about not getting replies. You were not getting the response. Don't say it. Don't say it. I just want to say it, because I know that tone of voice. They're like, these people are not responding to my emails quick enough. I know how you get pretty. It'd be a while. It'd be a while anyway. And then I thought, this is not the brainy way to be crowdsourcing, hearsay on Reddit, or to be waiting for press people to maybe reply and maybe not, especially when the zoo's only 20 minutes from my house. So this was a call to arms. And I thought, I'm not just going to sit here. I'm going to be a man of action. I'm going to go to the zoo. I'm going to find the penguin. So I got my camera with my long lens. Wow. So I could zoom in. I've got a special new super long lens. And I'm not going to deny. I made a bit of a hooh on Twitter and on Snapchat about it and made a big deal saying, that's it. I'm coming to the zoo. This ends today, I said. I took pictures on the way as I crossed the suspension bridge and I was going in. So I was not quite about the fact I was doing this. Were you making a Snapchat story about it? Were you doing that? I was. Oh wow. Oh wow. I'm a good lie. So I arrive at the zoo, half expecting them to be waiting for me. With a red carpet. I understand. Well, no, not necessarily the red carpet. I thought maybe it would be a bit more defensive than that. The people on Twitter had seen my comments and had said, oh, well, we've seen you email and we're going to get back to you. And I'm like, no, you've had your chance. And I plowed on. Went straight to the penguin enclosure. Long lens. Uh-huh. And actually it was fading time when I got there and I said to the wind fading, oh, have you said, I'm looking for a specific penguin. And she was like, she wasn't having any of it. She was like, oh, I'm not the usual penguin keeper. I can't help you. She ignored me. I just love, I love the idea from this person's perspective that like a crazy man with a telephoto lens. Like, I'm here for a specific penguin, right? Yeah. Anyway, so I got out the long lens and I started zooming in on, and then there's loads of penguins there. Yeah, there's a lot better. And it turns out, it turns out even with the long lens, it was quite hard to read the numbers. And also the penguins don't make your job any easier. Like they face the way they want to face. Right. And that's it. That's the way they're going to face. So I was always waiting for penguins to turn around. But sometimes the wing tag is like the wrong way around and it's in there like wing pit, like in that arm. Okay. And so for those ones, I had to wait for them to flap their wings to even get a look at the number. Some of them didn't seem to have a number. They just had like a wing band with no number written on it. And I was worried that might be CGP Gray. And just as I was giving up hope, this penguin steps out from behind the wall and I look at the number. That's the number I've been looking for ends with the three and it's got all the thing. I start taking loads and loads of pictures of it. It even starts posing for me. I go into Snapchat and say, look who it is. And I put a fun thing and I make a big deal that I've found the penguin. But then I think I haven't got the killer photo yet of the wing number on the thing. So I decided to get one more number before leaving the zoo. And when I go for that photo and I look closely, it turns out that's not the number. It's out by one digit. It looked just like the number but it was out. But I double checked and found my mistake. So this is actually did just number them sequentially. They don't have checked digits or anything like that. I don't know. This was a very similar number. So I'm back to square one. Some of them are sleeping in their little huts and things. I'm having to wait for them to come out. I must have been there 45 minutes. And then suddenly these two people appear behind me. And this is an older man and a younger lady who it turns out is the social media manager for the Twitter person and like the head of communications with the zoo. And they're like, you're Brady. And I'm like, yeah, I am. I was really friendly. Yes, I am. I'm here looking for CGP grade the penguin. And they're like, yeah, can we have a chat? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure we can. And they wanted to take me away from the penguin enclosure. And I'm like, oh, we can chat here. And they're like, no, no, let's go for a chat. Uh-oh. They took me ahead of the enclosure. We went and sat on this bench. Right. They want you to have a seat, Sarah, for a moment before we talk to you. Yeah. Okay. And I say, before we go, is my penguin there? I want to take a picture of CGP grade. And they say, no, it was in the gone to Tbilisi. And I'm like, oh, that's great. I thought they were scared that I was going to be upset. They'd sent it to Tbilisi. Mm-hmm. So I said, don't worry. Like, Gray and I'll be really happy if it's gone to Tbilisi. We think it's a really good story, et cetera, et cetera. You know, we like that, you know, we like the story. Then the Kedda communication says, well, unfortunately, CGP grade the penguin died on the trip to Tbilisi. Oh. Oh. Oh. They were 19 penguin sent. Three of them actually died on this trip. And one of them, CGP, Gray, the penguin. And I tell you, I have never, I cannot think of a weird time in my life than sitting on this bench at the zoo with these two zoo employees either side of me. And it was like in the movies, like when the surgeon comes out and says, yeah, that's what it feels like. That's what it feels like. It was just like that, or like when the police come. And it was like, and it was really difficult because like, they would devastate, have to do this. I felt really bad for them. And I was kind of having to console them. And I was saying, put in the arm around, say, don't worry about it. Look, you know, these things happened. And they're like, we're so sorry. We should have told you, we should have told you, we were moving it and we should have told you what happened. And we really, you know, we're really sad that the penguin's died. And it was this really weird thing. And then they got like the head of birds for the zoo to come and meet me and give me like the full story of everything that happened. And he's assistant and we're having this big long talk. And we ended up talking for like half an hour in great minutia about everything. And then I was like, well, all right. I guess I'll be going now then. Sorry, sorry that this happened. And I left the zoo. And CGP grade, the lady penguin has died. I feel very strange about this. I tell you what, the more I think about it, the sadder I feel. Because you know, when that was just a baby we were there, we saw it, I feel attached to it. I made that cute video of it with the cute music as a baby. I posted the footage of it being weighed. And I feel this real attachment. And I feel sad when any animal dies. But I feel especially sad about this. I'm wondering about those numbers for zoo animal transport. Like those seemed like pretty high fatal numbers. You said 19 penguins went and three of them died in transit. Yeah. It seemed like a high percentage. I was told that birds dying in transit is more common than say a gorilla. Right. Okay. That's somewhat like if you send 20 gorillas and you lose three of them, it's going to be really concerning. They will receive an autopsy report at the zoo with all the details they haven't got it yet. They've actually promised to give me a full briefing when they find out what happened. They don't know exactly what happened themselves. There's a real autopsy going to be done about this. Well, there's some kind of report. Yeah. Apparently that has to happen. I guess that makes sense. That if you're transporting zoo animals back and forth, the sending zoo is going to want to know the details. It just never occurred to me, but... It's serious. It's very serious. So I feel like I have to put this on record and fairness to the zoo. Because this is basically a publicity stunt gone terribly, terribly wrong. Because of all the penguins that could have died. The one that has this really popular podcast following it and this silly guy who made a big ruckus on Twitter and stuff. I feel really sorry for them that they tried to do a good thing. It's blown up in their face and it's made this penguin dying and even bigger deal than it would have been. And I also want to say, everyone has different views about the rights and wrongs of zoos. And I can see all sides of the story. But I do have to point out that this zoo does a lot for penguins. The reason we were raising money for them is they have this special program where they send their experts to South Africa every year and they rescue all these hatchlings and then hand-rear them and release them back into the wild. So this zoo has an above-average interest in the welfare of South African penguins. Yeah. So for us now to be doing a podcast about a penguin that they were transporting, dying, I feel a bit sorry for them because they're trying to do the right thing by penguins and it's kind of, this has kind of gone a bit wrong. So I feel like I should say that. I also have taken lessons from myself, good and bad. Oh, okay. What have you learned really? My first lesson is maybe be a bit more careful before you make a big ruckus on social media. What do you mean? Because I was like, oh, this ends today and I was going in their old guns blazing and everyone was saying, we can't wait to find out, Brady, what's the news? And then suddenly I was confronted by this horrible outcome. And I didn't want to then like tweet or Snapchat, hey, the penguin has died, which is what had happened. So I kind of had to go quiet while I thought about it and that was just like getting people more and more fired up. The suspense is killing us. Where's the penguin? How is she? Maybe I played my hand a bit early on the social media side of things. I can see how this particular time, this worked out as an unfortunate outcome for you. I don't think this is like a general lesson to learn from the situation. It is a lesson, Gray, you know, because this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened to me, admittedly social media. But like, I remember this, another thing that happened to me once, twice in the course of a week. I'd been trying to contact, you know, some of my academics around the university about making films. And sometimes I just wander around the university and go to their offices just for a chat. And I walked past a few of the offices of people that I'd been emailing for a while and one of them I walked in and said, hey, how you doing? Like, Jokey, I was like, why aren't you replying to my emails? I've even held you like three or four times in the last few months. What's going on? And then he was like, my mum died a few weeks ago. And then I was like, oh, sorry. And that explains why you're not replying to my emails, then, so that's like, maybe I should have been a bit more sensitive about not replying to my emails. And then like a few days later, the exact same thing happened with another academic. And I made the same joke. And again, he'd had like, I think it was a parent die as well. So I don't know, maybe I'm just unlucky. Perhaps there is a distinction to be drawn in the difference between the lack of correspondence from a human being and the lack of correspondence from a penguin. It hadn't occurred to me that because of all that stuff that had been going on on Reddit, the idea that the penguin could have died had gone out of my head. Right, right. One never thinks that penguin mortality does want, right? Until you have to face it directly. I'm not like going through the stages of grief or anything because it's just a penguin. But I am also wondering whether I'm partly to blame because if I had done more for that penguin in terms of coverage and publicity, would it have become so valuable to the zoo that they would not have dared even transport it? Like if it had become more famous? Did I not make it famous enough? I think that's undeniable. That is true. If the penguin had been promoted more with updates about her weight and her health over time and you had sent more people to the zoo for your efforts, you could have saved her life. Do not think there's any way that isn't true. Like it has to be true that that's the case. Even if I just called about it more often, they would have thought, because one of the things they were so sorry about was they were saying, we're so sorry we didn't tell you it was being moved. We probably should have told you. But if I was someone who like, called about it every month and stuff, they would have known I was watching and maybe not had sent it. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I think your negligence definitely does have a hand in this, really. I think there's no way around that. By the way, just to be clear, I did say this earlier, the zoo kind of did have to send penguins to Tibalissi. This is how zoos work by the way. Like there's an overarching body that looks after breeding populations and what animals go where. And if this body says you're sending animals here and there, that's pretty much binding. As long as where you're sending it is like a legit proper zoo. And it was. So yeah. Yeah, that's totally understandable. I saw a few things on the Reddit where people were actually discussing that about how. I didn't realize this, but yeah, that there's like a, it's like a metazoo organization that directs the transport of animals around. Like you said, for breeding populations. Again, it's one of those things like it makes total sense once you think about it that that would exist. It's in the interest of all zoos to mix their animals more than they would be mixing just within the zoo. Yes. But yeah, you can see like it becomes a kind of contract where this meta organization directs the movement of animals around. So again, I'm not holding the zoo in any blame at all. I'm just saying that you have the man. You're basically just blaming me. Yeah, that's just to make it really clear. It's not the zoo's fault. If Brady had acted differently, could things be different? The answer is yes. That's undeniable. There's one more lesson from this. Okay. This is a lesson to me. Kind of about journalism, but also about you could talk about this and other aspects of life. And it reminded me of lessons I learned in my early days. And this, I'm not making this part of our earlier discussions about the media and journalism. This has nothing to do with any of that. This is just a general thing about being a journalist. And that is the best journalism always comes from getting off your butt and going to the place. Because I thought the problem had been solved by this Reddit Facebook stuff. And also I thought I'll probably get an answer from the press department eventually, although it didn't look like I was doing it. But really, I didn't get to the bottom of things as terrible as it was until I just like turned up and got in faces and started counting penguins and looking at numbers and like being there on the spot and making them actually come and see me and looking people in the eyes and having the discussion. And it doesn't just apply to journalism. It kind of applies to lots of other things in life. Like if you sit around and wait for stuff to get done by other people or nothing beats if it's feasible and possible going there and being there and being on the spot because you always find out more and you always get closer to the bottom of the things if you're like at the place. The Hello Internet Nation is indebted to your journalism on this particular issue really. Well, I wish I was the bearer of better news. But that, do you know what, when I first started as a journalist, I would interview and do lots of things over the phone because that's the way things work, often. But then often you need photographs to go with it and we would have these forms you would fill out and give to the photograph editor saying, I need a picture of this or this place or this person and you'd organize it all and set it all up and then you'd fill out the form with the addresses and the phone numbers and the times and that. And there was a box you would tick to say whether or not the journalist was going on the story or not whether the journalist wanted to go with the photographer to sort of direct it or maybe you hadn't interviewed the person yet so you needed to be there. So that was a yes or no. And I would always tick no because I don't know, maybe a little bit of laziness and a little bit of shyness, you know, I was still that younger journalist who was a bit who wasn't that confident. I would always tick no and I remember one time the photo editor sort of took me to one side because I got along really well with him and he said, you should go on some of these stories more often because it's good to go there and like see things and you know, it'll make your stories better. So then I started ticking yes more often and I would just go even though I'd spoken to these people on the phone often and I already knew the story. I would go along just to be there for the photo shoot and I found that so valuable and so interesting and I always found it so much more amazing stuff and interesting stuff and like my stories became so much better by doing it that it just became my rule and I would tick yes for everything like no matter what it was, I just wanted to go and see the stuff and be part of the story. It got to the point where a year or two later the photo editor pulled me aside and said, do you actually have to go on all these stories because it's really inconvenient for me for the photographers to always have to come back and pick you up and take you. So it backfired on him but it was a really good lesson it was a really good lesson if you're doing anything and you feasibly can go there, there's a lot to be said for it. I like the georethusiasm was causing logistic problems for the organization that you're working for. It's like, yeah, okay buddy, it's good to be enthusiastic but not this enthusiastic. We're just taking it and we're just taking a photograph of the person sitting at their desk. Do you have to be there? Yes, I want to be there. I could ask a good question. We went for you to do a ride along once every couple months, right, but not every day, not twice a day, not three times a day. There's not all we've been looking for. Yeah. Anyway, there we go. CGP Gray, the lady penguin, rest in peace. Rest in peace. It's gone to that great rocky outcrop in the sky. Gone to a farm in upstate. Yeah, I figured some rocky outcrop in the middle of the sea is the penguin equivalent of the farm. No, it's all a farm. All the animals go to the farm together. That's how that works. That's what they could have done. They could have put me on that bench and said, CGP Gray, the penguin, isn't here and isn't at Tbilisi. She's gone to a special magical zoo. Yeah. There's a farm in Tbilisi. She'll be running through the forest. Happy penguin. Wait, this doesn't make any sense. Don't question it too much, man. Don't question it. We're just telling you a story here. We need to think of something to do about this gray. I feel like it can't end here. What do you mean? I don't know. I feel like this can't be the end of the story. All stories come to an end and death is an ending. I'm not sure what you're looking for here, Brady. Yeah. Well, those people who like, are timing how long it takes death to come up in our podcast are going to crack opening for the mistime, don't we? The whole opening story is about death. When I was thinking about how to tell the story, obviously I had to tell you and the listeners about this. I was thinking, do I tell it chronologically how it happened to me or do I just say it from the start? Look, before I start the story, the penguin is dead. And now here's how I found out. Because I was a bit worried as I told the story, you'd be Mr. Jokey, are Brady, you're so funny and like, you'd be Lafay and stuff. And then like, I'd drop the bomb. And then you'd feel bad about being Jokey. Because that's what happened to me. I was joking about it all the time and making a big joke at the whole thing. Yucking it up on social media, right? Right in checks that you're going to have to catch later. So I didn't want to put you in the same position. But I felt like you should experience it as I experienced it. I think there was the appropriate choice there, Brady. And you also had that moment that I had when they said, actually, no, we want to talk to you somewhere else. Yeah. It was like, oh, no. There's never a good, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. OK. Whenever people say they want to talk to you, like, how many times is that good news? The answer is never, right? It's never good news. And they literally took me somewhere where I could sit there. Yeah. Yeah. If they want to talk to you and they also want to change locations, that is never good, right? These just, you just know. You know something. Something bad is about to happen there. So. Mardi Black stump is ticking along. There's been a lot of online investigations into the height of Mardi Black stump versus Telstra House. People seem to be in the same way they were relying on sort of Reddit and the internet to figure out what happened to the Penguin. They seem to be using sort of, you know, all this Google Earth and visualization stuff to settle the matter of which building is taller, which I don't think is going to provide an adequate solution. Yeah. All I want to know is if there's somebody out there with, I don't know, what are those things people use like the little triangle things to measure the stars? Is it like a fiat or something like that? Yeah, so yeah, one of those things, right? Yeah, you see the like old manuscripts, that's what I want. I want to do with one of those measuring heights in Adelaide. That's what we need. I want sketches, I want triangles, I want trigonometry, parchment, the sketches on a parchment, something like that, that's what we need. Blue prints. The thing that is crucial here, Telstra House, which claims to be one meter taller, it does seem to make sense that would be one meter taller because it was built a lot later. And why would you build a new building in Adelaide and not make it the tallest when you were so close? You would chuck an extra meter on there just for bragging rights. Yeah, of course. Even though I'd only held the title for one year before the other building came along. But the problem is the Mardi Black stump has this antenna on top that Telstra House does not. And the antenna clearly makes the Mardi Black stump taller if you include that. And this leads to this can of worms about how do you define the height of a building? And this is a huge issue. There's a great Wikipedia article about it as there is about everything. This is not a new debate. This has been going on since they started building skyscrapers really. From the moment the builders of the Chrysler building put that cheeky spire on top that they hadn't told anyone about so that they could take top spot and they'd hid the spire until the last minute. Like, do you count antennas? Do you count spires? Is it from the architectural top of the building? What's the difference between a spire and an antenna? Is it the highest level that people can actually habitat your always a guy that has opinions? If you were defining the height of a building, what would you use as your cutoff point? So I was thinking about this earlier today. I think there's only two choices to go with. One is the ground height to the top of the structure including antennas or spires or whatever. Just anything that's physical. Anything that's physical, I think that counts. I think that's one measure to do is just, like if a kid is asking how tall a building is, I think that's their idea, the tallest point. But I was thinking though, I actually like the definition that it is, it's not actually the top of the building, it's the top most part of the building that is where a person can stand that isn't maintenance, right? That's the usable part of the building. That to me seems like a non-cheaty way to talk about what is the tallest structure. I feel like those are the two things that I would go with. What is the place at which someone can either have an office or an apartment at the top of this building or what is the actual tippy top of the building? I think those are two not unreasonable ways to try to figure out what the tallest building is. I hear a Brady sigh over there, what are you thinking? Well, it's fair enough, what you're saying is fair enough, but it just opens more cans of worms. There's a big difference between that spire at the top of the Chrysler building, which is like a proper meaty structure and just bolting some token flagpole to the top to give yourself a few meters, some rickety piece of wood in a pot. I think this way lies madness because... You're right about that. I know what you mean. The Chrysler building is a great example. It's hollow on the inside, isn't it? It's just like a hat with the building's wearing. It's not a whole lot, I think. There is a difference between that and just sticking an antenna up as tall as it can possibly go, but I think there's no meaningful way to try to come up with a way to say, here's how we are going to distinguish essentially antennae from decorative adornments on the top of the building. People do try, by the way. There isn't a tent at it. I'm sure there is, but I just think there's no way that you can possibly get around that. You're always going to be rules-loyering about this whole thing. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like the top-most, usable part of the building is a lot harder to rules-loy your way around. And I think it gets to the idea of, why do we want tall buildings? Because they're fun to go up into. Right? There needs to be space for people at the top of these tall buildings. Otherwise, what's the point of it? So you would count observation decks. Yeah, I would count an observation deck as a top point. So like the Empire State Building, the observation deck, I think, is the highest part where people can go. And that seems to me like, I think that's where you should measure the height from for what the tallest building is. I mean, also, it comes down here to whether we're counting things as buildings or structures. Because I think they're two different categories. What you're talking about is a fair categorization of a tallest building, maybe, but not a tallest structure. OK. So a radio mask could be a taller structure, but it's not a building, obviously. OK. All right, yeah. I think you have a point there, right? Because the structure is going to be a place that doesn't have any human usable space on the inside of it. There's a certain definition, too. I can't remember what it is off the top of my head. That precludes the CN Tower from being a building, but it is a structure. Even though it's got that lovely observation deck, because so much of it is just tower and lift to get you to what is basically just a floating observation deck, that gets crossed off. There's some definition of a building. I don't know if it's a percentage of the structure that can be habitat or, you know, I don't know. I can already see here from the Wikipedia page, right, that they have three categories. They have buildings, structures, and towers. Yeah. So I guess I'm just going to make it up, but I'm presuming that a tower is a thing that a person can go up into. So it has some limited amount of usable space versus a structure, which probably has none, like a radio tower, which is a structure in these definitions. I'm going to guess. It's a mess. But, and, you know, this is what happens when you do with mighty, mighty buildings, like the mighty black stump. These kind of questions need to be answered, so. There is some definition by which the mighty black stump is taller than Telstra House, because it's got this wispy little antenna on top. But the jury's still out. There's still a lot to go. This is not the last you've heard of it, but it's just bike rays wishes. Once again, I'm looking at these two buildings in a 3D rendering. And it looks like Telstra House might have higher usable space, but it's hard to tell. Are those just elevator banks on the top? What is that? I don't know. Who knows? Someone needs to go out there in person to take care of them. People are using all this visualization software. I don't know what it is. And what they've been doing is they've been, like, virtually going to the top of the mighty black stump. And when they do that, they can, like, see onto the top of Telstra House. And then they virtually go onto the top of Telstra House. And you can't see onto the top of the mighty black stump. So they're saying, look, it's proof. It's proof. I don't even know what this software is. Like, I don't know what's going on here. It's not satisfactory to me. This needs to be done. I'm sorry, this needs to be done in person. This is not something that's going to be solved virtually. Google Earth is not going to cut it for Brady. That's what's happening here. That's right. I want real earth in this particular case. If the black stump building manager had shown me the respect I deserved and had let me onto the roof, I would be a lot closer to knowing the answer to this. That's true. That's true. That's right there. So we don't know. Someone in Hadalid has to be able to get access to those roofs. I think that's got to happen. Of course, immediately following our discussion, there was a total lockdown of all Wikipedia pages pertaining to Hadalid buildings. I'm getting a little bit upset about something. And I've been dealing with this a lot on Reddit and online. But I want to have it on the podcast so that everyone has heard it. The black stump is a legitimate long term nickname for the Grenfell Center. It was called that when I was growing up, you can go through newspaper archives. It's referred to all the time. There is nothing wrong with the Wikipedia page referring to this building as the black stump. The word mighty has been added by a gray to be facetious. No one calls it the mighty black stump in Hadalid. That is a joke. Of course, it should not be on the Wikipedia page. But the black stump is completely legitimate. And it's driving me crazy that people keep deleting references to the black stump saying, oh, this is just some hello internet joke and nuisance makers. That is not nuisance making. The black stump is 100% legitimate. And it's driving me crazy that people now think it's some joke. I mean, do you have a primary source for it being called the black stump? Because we have a primary source of t-shirt sales that say it's the mighty black stump. I've gone and I've pointed people to old newspaper articles that predate hello internet referring to it. Real estate sale articles referring to the black stump. But I just, I can't win this one. It's this Wikipedia vandalism backfiring on me. I blame you. Me? With your stupid mighty. Because you put mighty in there and have confused everything. If I have caused some kind of Wikipedia trouble, I'm terribly sorry. I've never wanted to cause, I would like to get it on record here that I have never wanted to cause Wikipedia trouble. I have never encouraged Wikipedia trouble. I'm just saying, like I think we have a primary source that shows that it's called the mighty black stump. I've never seen a primary source for saying that it's called the black stump. And the mighty black stump is just a better name. But I'm sure people will sort it out in the Wikipedia. That's how this works. The truth will triumph, Brady. Now, last episode, just very, very quickly. Last episode we spoke about something that both you and I dislike and that is April Fools' Day. I'm adding to that list from my and at least Star Wars Day as another completely naftay that everyone jumps on and thinks they're the master of dead jokes and they look like complete idiots. Stop it with all you may the forth be with your jokes. Stop your corporate people photoshopping Darth Vader into whatever your corporate picture is to make it look like you're down with the Star Wars fans. You look silly. Star Wars Day was cool for a couple of years. It was funny for a couple of years. Now it's been co-opted by the idiots and anyone else needs to get the hell out of Dodge. Whoa. Wow. That's just my opinion. Yeah, it sounds like you're feeling pretty intense about this. What about you? You think Star Wars Day is, you know? Oh, it's best. It's the best, Brady. I don't want to be lumped in with you as this grump who doesn't like fun. That's not me. I'm all about the fun and a holiday based on a pun. I like, man, I couldn't imagine something that would be more down for. I think that's a fantastic idea. And yeah, it's great. I love seeing corporate cross promotion. I love seeing dad jokes. I love everything about it. So don't get me wrong listening audience. Brady is the cramudge in here. I'm, I think it's great. I think it's awesome. Is it purely the pun or is there some link to the date as well? Like it wasn't the date that the film premiered or anything. It's purely the pun. I think it's literally just the pun. That's all it is. Star Wars Day Wikipedia. Yeah, it's entirely just a pun. It's just a pun based holiday. Perfectly in favor of. I think that's great. It's like a good pun. Yeah, yeah. That's my favorite. It's the best. I think Brady, the problem is you just don't like things when they get too popular. You like Star Wars when it was just you and your friends who knew about it. And now when virtually no one had heard of Star Wars except me and my friends. Exactly. It's just you and your friends back in the 70s had watched Star Wars, right? But now that everybody knows about it, now you don't like it. I think that's what's happening here. Yeah. I like Star Wars before it was popular. Say like a day before it came out. This episode is brought to you in part by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one platform that lets you make a beautiful website. Oh, so easily. With Squarespace, there's nothing to patch, install, or upgrade ever, which is what I really like about it. If you ever tried to run your own website, it is an enormous hassle. And that's a hassle I was very happy to give up and just simply have Squarespace deal with it. I haven't thought about configuring a MySQL in years. And I'm so happy about that. Squarespace has award-winning templates that are a beautiful way to present your idea online. And they're so easy to tweak and adjust that you won't end up feeling like you have a website that looks like it was made from a template. You can just make it be just the way you want it to be. And if you have any trouble at all, Squarespace provides award-winning 24-7 custom support. It's used by a wide range of creative people, businesses, musicians, designers, artists, restaurants, and many more. Basically, anybody who needs a website, you should be using Squarespace. It's what I use for cgpgray.com. It's what we use for HelloInternet. It's just so easy. If you need a website for anything that you are working on, make your next move with Squarespace. Just go to squarespace.com slash hello to sign up for your free 14-day trial and receive 10% off your first purchase. That's squarespace.com slash hello. Thank you so much to Squarespace for supporting this show. I saw something on the HelloInternet Reddit, which I really liked Brady. It was a picture of a guy installing his new B house, his new apiary, wearing the nail and gear. Did you see this photo? I'm looking at it now. He's a handsome man. He's a handsome man. I have to say, I gave him credit for not wearing the B suit. If you look closely in the photo, he has B's all over him. Is that his real bidders? He got one of those B-bids. Ooh, it's a good question. Let's enhance. I'm enhancing. Click to enhance. That is a B beard. Wow, okay, there's actually way more B's on here than I first thought. Super impressive. I wanted to mention this photo because this one made me really smile because you might think this is crazy. I have this idea, Brady, that when I retire from the internet, when I give up the tremendous volume of outputs that I create, when I hang up my Reddit username and retire, I have this crazy idea that you know what I love to do in my retirement? I'd love to raise B's. I don't know why. I have this idea that I'll get a B house and I'll tend to the B's. This is just this little idea that I have as an old man hobby. I love it. CG B-Grey. Why that? Of all the old man hobbies you could have. If you'd said I want to build a train set, I'd be like, oh yeah, I'm totally on board with them. Who doesn't want to build like an awesome train set? I don't want to build an awesome train set. No, that seems, that strikes me as incredibly tedious. That sounds uninteresting. Why the B's then? Why the B's good? I have no idea. This is one of these things that I'm just aware that. Okay, so sometimes I watch these property shows. I think I mentioned before on the podcast, I watch this property show called Escape to the Country where people who live in London decide they're going to retire out in the country. How could you have just melted my brain? Why have I melted your brain? That's like a TV show. You don't watch TV. How do you even watch that? What device do you watch that on? You can find the show. I can't believe you watch Escape to the Country. I'm so sure I've mentioned this before to you, Brick. This is the biggest shock to me than the penguin dying. LAUGHTER It's fantastic. It's a great show. It is a great show, but I can't believe you watch it or like it. It's a great show, essentially, for pensioners. My wife and I will make a cup of tea. We'll put a blanket over our legs like we're 80 years old. And we'll watch Escape to the Country. And it's fantastic. Do you think you could ever live in a rural location with your base? Here's where I'm going with this, right? Is because I watch this show and there's a funny thing that always happens on the show. We're like a couple who's lived in London their entire life. They're like, oh, we're going to go retire. And they'll be describing what they want to have in a house when they retire. And they're like, oh, okay, we want this feature. We want that feature. We want this other feature. And then the husband will always say something dumb. Like, oh, and I want a really big yard because I'm going to manage goats, right? And it's like, have you ever taken care of goats before? And he's like, no, no, that's just a thing that I want to do. And I'm watching this show. I don't always feel like, what an idiot. Like this guy thinks he's going to be managing our herd of goats in his retirement. Like, that's a disaster. Like, we all know how this is going to end. Goats roaming the country free once they've escaped from his backyard, right? Or if they're all going to die, like, who knows? It's just not going to end well. Like, this idiot has never raised goats. This is what he thinks he's going to do. But like, I have this same crazy idea in my head. Like, at some point in my future, I'm going to be raising bees. And I don't know why. I don't know why I have it there, Brady. But it's just like, it's this idea, my old man hobby. And it's a contradiction because I'm aware that I am totally disdainful of other people who on a TV show that I watch have essentially the same idea for their retirement. And I'm like, oh, those idiots, right? But no, but me, this somehow feels different. I think this is going to happen at some point, Brady. Do you like honey? Yeah, it's good. Honey's good. Are you allergic to bass? You seem like you would be. Do I? That's a good question. I've been stunned. Wait, why does it seem like I would be allergic to bees? How can someone seem like they're allergic to bees? I don't know. You just seem like an allergic kind of guy. Oh, yeah. All kinds of things. I should just be allergic to them. This is the way it seems. That's just the vibe I get. Like, you don't look sick clear anything. But you just, I get an allergic vibe from you. OK. I've been stunned by bees as a kid. OK. Can you get allergic later in life? I don't know. I have no idea. Do you only hear my bee stung story? Of course you have a bee stung story. Tell me, Brady. I grew up with a swimming pool in Australia. My parents had a swimming pool. So my sister and I had a swimming pool by default. And I remember one day my mom took us to the shops and bought us lots of fun stuff for the pool, like inflatable stuff, and these big plastic oars and things like that. So we were going to have the time of our life playing with them in the pool. But for some reason, I was going to go to my friend's house first to play cricket. My sister and I, because we were little kids, we were funny about not getting to play with the toys first. So we made a pact that when I got back, we would play with the toys together. One of us wouldn't get to enjoy the toys before the other one. And my sister, who's a lot, just completely sweet, just agreed to that and said, yes, that's fine. So we put all the toys around the pool and said, we'll play with them when I get home. But first I'm going to go over to my mates house and play cricket. And we were playing cricket. And then after a while, I said to my mates, we've got all these awesome new toys in the pool. My sister thinks I'm going to play with them with her. But why don't we put our bethers on secretly and run around and go and play with them before she gets the chance? Because that would be like, you know, just a tormenter. Because that was what brothers do to sisters. Right, yes. So we changed into our bethers. And my sister was watching TV in a living room that looked out over the pool. And we came storming into the backyard and their bethers going, woohoo, woohoo. And we picked up all the inflatables. And one of the oars was sitting by the side of the pool. And I threw the inflatable in and picked up the oar and jumped into the pool with the oar ready to go rowing. And my sister came out into the backyard crying because what was terrible thing we were doing to her and tormenting her. And suddenly I had this tremendous pain in my hand. And I'd been stunned by a bee. And that was on the oar. And it turns out while I was playing cricket, my sister had rescued a bee from the pool using the oar and had like fished it out and left the oar by the side of the pool. Because she's so humane. She wanted the bee to dry out and fly away. So when I'd come running and picked up the oar from the side of the pool, I put my hands straight on the bee and got stunned. So I learned my lesson. I got my cum up and said, oh, I can't believe you did that. Oh, I was getting all angry after what I just done to her. So you learned to never torment your sister again. That's in how that works. That was the last day I ever tormented her ever. That was the last day. That's good. Yeah. That's good. I'm glad you learned that lesson. It's a important reading. Yeah. My stepfather's a beekeeper. Oh, yeah, really? Interesting. I've never gone and seen his bees or hives. He kept them on another property away from the house when I was growing up. But he would just sometimes go away and tend to his bees. See, even just the idea of it, it just sounds romantic. Like, oh, tending to bees. Yeah, of course. That sounds like a great thing to do. About myself sometimes reading about how to keep hives and like, what the hell am I doing, right? It's like, I can't help myself. This is definitely one of the strangest things that I find my mind like vaguely drawn to every once in a while. You can leave them alone, Greg. You could get an allotment somewhere and just go once a week. Just go check on them. Leave the allotment people to deal with the hive of bees. I forgot something. I guess somewhere more out in the country. I can see why that would appeal to you, because there's a lot, you know, because bees are all about organization and colonies and all those sort of things that you find so interesting, you know, organizational structures. So being like the god of some organization structure would quite appeal to you. That's what I'm doing at work. It's the power trip. Yeah. Yeah. I am the god of this hive. Right? Yeah. You nailed it, Brady. Yeah. You've gotten to the core of my... No, I'm just interested in you. Obviously, I don't think you want to do it to be the god of bees. But I can see why, like, you know, studying and looking at it would be interesting to you. I can see why I'd been interesting, Hobbie-T. Yeah, it's just that. It just captures my attention. What are you going to do in your retirement, Brady? I would like to spend more time in mountains and walking up. I'd like to be one of those people who let goes to Scotland and catches Monro's. You know how there are people who try and get to every peak in Scotland and stuff like that. I would like to climb hills in your retirement. Yeah. Old people do it. Oh, yeah. It's not like, you know, crampons and an ice, ax and stuff. It's just like... Pleasant walks up Scottish hills. Oh, okay. All right. I thought you basically told me that you're going to be... You're going to be summiting peaks in your retirement, which seemed a little bit like... I've got bad news for you. Yeah. I think I would like to do that. I like hills and mountains. I like that. I think that's a romantic image of a Brady. When a Brady retires, you'll see him on the Scottish hills in the distance walking around. That's a Brady will do. Fagging another peak on my list, crossing it off my list. I like that. I like that. Taking a pointing selfie at the top, pointing to the... The style or whatever's up there, the trig point. Oh, see. I like this. We'll have relaxing retirement's breeding. Maybe this is a good point to move on to Mount Everest, then. Because you know I love talking about Mount Everest. It is, as we are recording at the moment, we're just coming into the Everest climbing season. It should be more accurately described as the Everest death season. Because that's when we start hearing all the stories about people dying at Mount Everest, which seems to be becoming more and more common. More and more people go every year, right? Isn't that how that works? Is it like a busy place now, Everest? All the tourists have ruined it. There's a Starbucks at Base Camp. There's not a Starbucks. There's very good Wi-Fi at Base Camp, though. Give it time. There'll be a Starbucks there eventually, right? There's better phone reception at Base Camp, then, where I live, that's for sure. That is true. You live in the center of a black hole of reception that has to be crazy every time I try to out some like, it feels like I'm in the third world as far as my phone is concerned. Like, why can't I get no signal in your house? It's crazy making. Good place for bees, though, out here. The first death that was reported was not of a tourist or some amateur. It was actually, as far as mountaineers go, it was a guy who is probably the superstar of mountaineering at the moment. He's a guy called Yulee Steck, or his nickname is the Swiss machine. And he's like a really famous mountaineer. He's really good at climbing peaks quickly. And he was getting ready to try and do an unusual Everest climb this season. And he was just kind of a climatizing and warming up, sort of thing. And he was actually just going up a little side peak called Nutsi. It's funny. Mount Everest, to my mind, is really three mountains kind of joined together. Everest, Lotsi and Nutsi. And yet they all are treated separately. And Lotsi, in fact, is the fourth highest mountain in the world. But actually, it's really just like a southern peak of Everest. Anyway, so there's these three mountains joined together. They formed like a little cradle around this Western quim. And he was sort of doing a climatization climb on Nutsi and has fallen to his death, which is terribly sad thing to have happened. But an interesting thing about him is Yulee Steck is actually the star of my all-time favorite YouTube video, which I actually have since found out, I think, maybe a little bit of a free boot. But it's been free booted so much now. I don't really know what to say. It's a clip from a longer film where he's climbing the IGA in record time. And it's got a really cool song that I really love to it as well. This is the video that you sent to me before the show started of. This, again, didn't even occur to me. But obviously, there's going to be records for how fast people can summit. Yes. And it seems like that. That was this guy's specialty. I want to watch in this video. It starts off by saying, oh, you want to go quickly, but you can't make any mistakes. Yeah. And I'm just thinking, oh, of course, that's any kind of climb. You want to get up quickly because you want to get to the top or you want this experience to be completed. It didn't occur to me that people would be racing for time. Which just seems so crazy to me. That you're doing an already dangerous thing and you're turning it into a vertical race. But the video is very impressive to see him moving up the mountain at quite a rapid pace. It's an impressive little video, and I'll put it in the show notes. I'm pretty sure it's the North Face of the IGA, which is like the famous face of the IGA. And it's also very, you know, you always hear about North Face. I think that must come from the North Face of the IGA. It's the famous difficult climb. He would go up with, you know, very little equipment and super, super fast. So when I saw that this person had died, I was like, oh, that's the guy in that video, isn't it? And I went back and sure enough. So that was sad news. That video is like quite beautiful, though, isn't it? Like, what did you think watching that video? Like, it's beautifully filmed. It must be really quite breathtaking to be in these locations. And that that's shot of him. Right as he's like walking along the crest of the mountain right towards the peak. It's just I can't imagine what that experience is like to have the mountain plummeting down on either side of you as you're walking along this ridge towards the top. Like, it must be an amazing experience. Well, I'm glad you said that. That leads me to the thing that this was had been thinking over the last week or so. Obviously, he died falling off a mountain. And when that happens, it's like, well, that's just a total tragedy. But he was a guy who was very aware of the risk. He talked a lot about the risks of what he did. He wasn't like a cowboy. He knew he was doing a risky thing. And he obviously made this decision that it was worth it. And when you see that video and you see the sorts of things he was experiencing, it did make me think about, how do you make this calculus of risk in your life versus getting to experience that sort of amazing stuff? The astronauts who walk to the moon, people who do amazing things and see amazing things, but risk their life doing it. And how does one make that decision? And it's very easy, the week after the person dies to say, well, he made the wrong decision because he's died at the age of 40. But I don't know. I kind of think I get why you were doing it. I think it was, and I kind of think it was worth the risk. He got to see and do lots of amazing things that you and I will never get to experience. He got to experience what it's like to go up that snow field at the top of the eye or on your own after having just climbed the North Face. And that's pretty amazing stuff. And I guess you could say what counts for nothing when you've died. But I've been thinking a lot about that calculus of the last week or so because of his death. Well, we're all dust in the end, Brady. Like that doesn't change things. But I don't think a guy like this makes these calculations. I think people like this are, I mean, this is the best possible way. I think they're total freaks. I think someone like this is, they're not doing any kind of like risk reward calculation and feeling like, oh, I'll see amazing things if I do this very dangerous thing. I think this is just a person who is more or less born to do a very extreme thing and you probably couldn't possibly stop them. Whenever you see people doing like really extreme sports or even things like astronauts, like someone becomes an astronaut, like those people are just such extremely driven people as to be such a small percentage of the human population that it's just like, oh, of course, you were gonna do something. I don't think this is a calculation as happens in the human population. There's going to be somebody who wants to do this sort of thing. They almost can't help themselves. I think that's the way that works out. Okay. Is that not what you wanna hear, Brady? No, I mean, yeah, that makes sense. But I feel like I make the calculations. Like I've gone to every space camp a couple of times, you know, despite this dicey airport that some people are a bit scared of and walking at the altitude. Because I thought, you know, I waded up and my desire to see this place and go there was greater than my fear that, you know, I'd come to an untimely end. But on the other hand, I really wanna go and see K2 and there's like a trip that I've been looking into to go there, but it does involve going through a few places that are not considered very safe for sort of political reasons. And I've been put off that and I've decided not to do that at the moment because I don't think it's worth it, you know, when I've weighed everything up. So I feel like I do make those decisions and I just wonder how. Yeah, but precisely, precisely like you making those decisions is the reason that you're not doing speed runs up Mount Everest, right? That's precisely what I'm saying, right? Is like I don't think that there's another person who's doing the calculations in the other way. He's like, yeah, I think this is gonna be worth it. I think someone like this is just like, I got a client, like I got a client mountains fast and I just, I don't know why, but I just have to do it. Like I think that's what this is. So you think when he would do, I know you haven't followed his career or read interviews with him, but you think when he would do talk about, you know, I'm aware of the risks and I weigh things up, you think that's just lip service. And really he just had this drive that was all consuming. Yeah, lip service isn't exactly right, but it's like I just think that the way the person's brain is set up is doing this calculation in a very different way than anybody else would do it. That's what I mean is like the adrenaline reward wired in his brain is like way higher than it would be for somebody else, right? And it's also a person who's probably had like just the right experiences to be this sort of person. So that's what I mean by like people who do this kind of stuff are freaks in a particular way. I've also used this example of like Richard Branson as a business person who I think is a similar thing. He's like, oh, he's like a broken human being, but he's broken in such a way that he can't stop starting businesses. I think it's just things like kind of hardwired into him. It's not a thing that's about, whenever you're looking at anybody who's in like the top point, oh, 1% of people in any category, you just, it's crazy to think that they'd be like a normal person who's just decided to do something else. Like I think all of those people are sort of freaks who can't help themselves. That's why like you're sitting there thinking about, oh, the political problems and wherever I need to fly through to get to K2, like yeah, that's why you're not, that's why you're not climbing up K2. I mean, maybe a near retirement breed. When you have more time to it, you'll do things a little bit differently, but that's kind of my take on it. Like I just don't think these are normal people. I think like, definitionally, they have to not be normal people. He was the same age as me. Oh, really? And he twice won this award, which is like the Oscars of mountaineering. I like that there's like the mountaineering has this award every year. How does that even, what do you mean the Oscars of mountaineering? That doesn't make any sense. I can't pronounce it the Pilo door, which French for the Golden Ice Acts, the annual mountaineering award, given by the French magazine Montagnes. I don't understand how that can work. I think it's if you do something that year that's like pioneering, like you know, you pioneer some new route or you do, you climb something in a new way that hasn't been done before. It's like, I don't know. I'm trying to, I'm trying to get a nice little praisy of what it's given for, but I can't really find it. Anyway. There has been another death at Basecamp. He was attempting to become the oldest man to climb Everest. He had been the oldest man before. His record had been taken from him. So he was trying to get it back. And he was 85. And he died. Oh, yeah. He was Nepalese. So he was quite good at altitude, but he died at Basecamp. They think of a heart attack, which you know, again, very sad, hard to be completely shocked when someone really old dies trying to climb the highest mountain in the world. Yeah. I'm not surprised when 85 year old man dies of a heart attack at Everest Basecamp. That's not exactly shocking news. No, this is the thing I wanted to ask you about. Was that the authorities now in Nepal are considering an age limit on people climbing Everest. You have to be over 16 to be allowed to climb Everest to get a permit. They're now considering putting a limit on. And for some reason, I'm not exactly sure why. I've got a theory why, but I don't know. They're thinking of setting the limit at 76. So OK, I need to know your theory. So why do you think 76? This Nepalese guy that held the record before did climb it at the age of 76. So I wonder if maybe they're using that. The record now is 80. The Japanese guy who was 80 broke the record. But this Nepalese guy that used to have the record was 76 when he did it. So I wonder if maybe that number has been used somehow. There could be other reasons I don't know. But what do you think about setting an age limit on climbing Everest? Because you're all until freedom and people can do what they want and stuff. That seems crazy. I mean, there's a thing that I don't like, which is rules for what I imagine are really rare circumstances. How many people over 65 are trying to climb Everest every year? How many people can that possibly be? I'm imagining it's not a huge number. And it's like if someone who is older wants to try to climb Everest, and presumably, you have to sign some waiver or whatever. We're like, yeah, I know I'm climbing Everest. I know it's going to be dangerous. I don't like this kind of stuff. Like why? What is the point of this? To stop people from dying on Everest? It's like, well, it seems like lots of people die on Everest. What difference does it make if they die of their old? Well, I can give you a point if you want one, just to make the argument. And that is when people get into strife on Everest, that actually can cause a lot of other people strife. Because inevitably, sometimes they'll try to rescue them. It's very costly to try and rescue people. People can lose their life trying to help other people who are losing their life. So getting more people on the mountain who are incredibly likely to get into strife has that implication. If you send someone up there who's almost definitely going to get themselves into trouble, and then everyone else is going to have to try to save them, suddenly you're risking a whole bunch of other lives. So that's an argument. I have a question for you, because I don't know. Is there some kind of qualification that you need to do to climb Everest? Do you need to prove yourself physically in some way? I actually do not know the answer to that. Famously, that people complain that any old tourist can get dragged to the top practically by their guards. But I don't know how much that's an exaggeration and you have to approve some kind of ability. I imagine most of the companies that help you get to the top of Everest would reply and say, yes, we have a vetting process. We don't take any Tom Dicoheri up there. How stringent that is, I don't know. And I don't know. I don't know the answer is I don't know. I guess what I'm wondering is, like, OK, let's say I go out and I buy some boots, and then I fly to Nepal. And I'm like, all right, I'm walking up that mountain. What's going to start me from doing that? You would have to get a permit from the government to go above a certain height. So if you're not doing it with a company and you're just going on your own, I don't know how easy it is to get permits for that and that I don't know what the government would require from you. I don't know how they check it. But so there exists some sort of permit? Yes, to go above a certain height. Like, I went to base camp. If I, when I was there, I said, oh, I think I'll go up the KUBEU ice fall and see how far I can get, I would be breaking the law. OK, that was as far as I'm allowed to go without a permit. Right, and then the Everest police would grab you when they put you in Everest jail. OK, and the permit is super expensive. All right, my feeling on this is whatever you need to get the permit, like that should, I just don't like this artificial, like, for your own good rule. I would be totally fine if there was like, oh, as part of the permit process, when you arrive in Nepal, there's an exercise room and you have to be able to complete a certain number of physical tasks to demonstrate that you're able to do this, right? And then it's like, that's fine. That's totally fine. I wouldn't have any problem with that. I don't like the age limits. Seems a bit arbitrary. Yeah, it seems a bit arbitrary, right? But it's like, if you have to go into a room and you have to be able to do 100 push-ups. Yep. And if you can't do 100 push-ups, they don't let you climb the mountain. Yep. That seems fine, right? I would be OK with that. If a bunch of pensioners want it for you to death, I'm not Everest. Thumbs up from greater that. That's fine. As someone who's a little bit fascinated by the moon landings, I'm often asked what's the best book to read about the Apollo program. So for today's audible sponsorship and book recommendation, I'm going to tell you. But first, a word on audible, a leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment on the internet. Audible has a truly vast selection of audio books and other products. You can sign up as an audible listener and you get book credits each month for a low monthly fee. But importantly, you can try before you buy with audible's free 30-day trial, which includes your first book. And here's my recommendation, A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chacon. This is hands down the best book I've read on Apollo, both for its story, telling, and attention to detail. It's absolutely first rate and formed the basis for HBO's later mini-series from the Earth to the Moon. Chacon had great access to all the main players and his book reads like he was there, every small step of the way. A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chacon, check it out. And why not check it out in Audible where the unabridged version weighs in at 23 hours? That's plenty of train trips, car journeys, gym workouts, dog walks, wherever you listen to audio books. Go to audible.com slash hello internet to sign on for a free trial. That URL was handy for us too because they'll know you came from the podcast. That's audible.com slash hello internet, hello internet, all one word. And enjoy A Man on the Moon as much as I did. Or if that's not your cup of tea, you can choose any other title as your freebie. I finally met someone who made a strong case for the Apple Watch. Pretty. I almost feel a little bit insulted by the way you're starting this conversation because I feel like how many times have we discussed the Apple Watch? We've discussed this many times. Gray has often over dinner and over drink. We're not podcasting. I sometimes say it a great gray. He sell me on the Apple Watch and he tells me why he likes it, how it fits in with his life. I understand the logic of the things that Gray says. They make sense and like, okay, you know, if that's how your brain works and that's what you want. I can get it. But the case you make never seems compelling enough to me. It doesn't. It just never lands and never lands. Yeah, like even in your case, I think the things you're saying it helps you with don't seem strong enough to me for what I think the pleasure I imagine you could get from having like a nicer watch. That's just me. That's just me. It is, like I wanted to get you on record for that because I do always think it's funny because it's, it's not just that you find my reasons unconvincing for you. You find my reasons unconvincing for me. Yeah, I can't have done it. I can't have done it. I mean, obviously it's your decision and obviously the case is compelling enough because you wear an Apple Watch and you don't wear the other watch. But I feel almost a bit, I know it sounds really arrogant but I feel almost like if only you knew. Like, no, I know. I know. When we have this, like I can see it in your little baby eyes that you're thinking like, oh, Gray, I know better than you on this topic and if only. I totally know that. That's how I feel. That's how I feel with you. But I spoke to someone the other day thinking it would, the discussion would go the same way and at the end of it, I was like, now okay, you should have an Apple Watch. Okay, I have to know what is this argument. Well, he was the person driving me to the airport. Okay. So he's like a car driver. He runs a car service for a living. And he used to have nice watches. And then it was an Apple Watch. I'm like, why do you wear the Apple Watch? Tell me. And the two reasons that seemed completely compelling to me and they were both relating to his work, one is he's always driving and just being able to flick his wrist while still holding the steering wheel to see what's going on is a strong case as opposed to fishing a phone out which is not only dangerous, but it's illegal. And I don't want any driver fishing their telephone out and checking their phone all the time. But he can just flick his wrist at the wheel and he's driving all day long. Right. But the second part of that is, is the business case. He's self-employed. He needs to get bookings. It's an industry where booking cars, I'm like this. If I try to book a car with someone and they don't get back to me really quickly, I'll just book one with someone else because I want to get it done. So he can't afford to miss opportunities. So he needs notifications to him. A so important. And he's driving all the time. So being notified every time an email comes in from someone who might want to book him seems really compelling and like it would start to hurt his business if he was missing those messages, those emails and those opportunities. So the fact he's always driving combined with his really, really compelling need for notifications, which I think is much stronger than you would need for notifications as you've told me. He sold me on it and I was like, all right, I still think your watch looks a bit naff, but I see why you're wearing it. It sounds like you're just making a case for distracted driving. That's what it sounds like. So I'm listening to this and like, this guy doesn't need an Apple watch. That's all I'm hearing is like, I've been trying to talk this guy out of his Apple watch. That sounds like, oh great. Now I've got a guy who's looking at his watch a hundred times while he's driving. This is no good. He didn't look at his watch once the whole trip, but I was sold and I was, I thought, okay. I can't, this is the worst argument in the world and this is what you feel like you finally see someone has a compelling reason to use the Apple watch. I can't believe this. No, because you're like a bit mumsy about safety. You're thinking mumsy about safety. There's this slanderous accusation. You are a bit, you are a bit of a little, you're a bit careful. So I think, so when I tell this story, you're saying the horror of someone looking at their watching crashing, whereas I see more just a glance, oh that's something I need to deal with and I will, you know, at the next petrol station. I don't see it as a safety concern, but I can see how the gray eyes of safety are seeing it somewhat differently. He could just, he could just check his phone at the petrol station instead. And this is, I feel infuriated that this is the argument you feel like is landed for you for an Apple watch. This is crazy. This is crazy to know. Well, I think people using their phones while driving is like really, really bad. Yeah, of course. And at least this is a bit safer. And you're never gonna stop people connecting while driving. You just can't do it. It's an impossible, it's impossible, Gray. Like you cannot stop people wanting to check emails and internet and things and social media while driving. It's just can't be done. And if the watch like scales that back, a little bit, okay. I'll take it. Okay, so you're doing this thing is like, it's not that he's gonna be a responsible person and check his notifications at the petrol station. You're saying it's less distracting for him using the watch, but he's still doing a bad thing. That's what you feel like here. That's your argument. I'm not arguing anything. I'm trying to say something nice about the stupid Tom Katoi Apple watch for once and you're slapping me down. This is terrible because this is terrible. The little chunky silly thing. And I'm like, oh, I'm trying to throw you a bone. And now you're saying he should check his phone at the petrol station, okay. And get yourself a nice watch too while you're at it. That's what I'm thinking. This guy should be checking his phone at the petrol station and he should get a nice watch. So yeah, I disagree, disagree. We can never come to a meeting of the minds on the Apple watch Brady until eventually one of these days you will end up with a smart watch just like I know you will. It's only a matter of time. So Brady, any update on something? A little bit more firsthand journalism. I know you've been to the US. I know you probably have very many US stories. But there's one thing that I want to know, which is tell me are the ATATs? Are they still at Dallas? Are they still there? They most certainly are. Oh, thank God. Yeah. So I've just been there. It was my first time at Dallas. Now, Grey has spoken rather negatively about Washington, Dallas Airport over the course of this podcast. It's true. It's terrible. He made it sound pretty terrible. So this was my first time saying it with my own eyes. And I have to say, I'm inclined to agree with Grey. Okay, thank God. I was, I was, I could feel myself building up like this, this tension because I'm like, Brady, Brady's gonna spout a bunch of nonsense about how it's not so bad and he's hardest nails. Okay, so but you're on my side with this one. I arrived and I was a little bit excited. I was gonna get to see these ATATs maybe if they were still operating. We didn't know if there was, there were rumors that they were no longer operating because of some train that's being built, but anyway, I got off my plane and I didn't quite realize how these ATATs would work, but it was like we were a bunch of dazed prisoners being led off the plane. And before we could even like get our feet and figure out what we're going, you're kind of shepherded around this steep corner into this holding area and then like cattle, you're shuffled into through this door and you don't know what the door was too. Oh, okay, I know where you're going. It's not obvious where you're going and like you're not prepared for it. They don't say you're gonna get put on this thing. There's no like chance to do anything else. And suddenly you're in this weird room with carpeted walls that doesn't even really seem like a vehicle. Mm-hmm. And then it does its weird thing where it changes its height and starts driving. The lack of communication about what's going on when you've just got enough a long hole fly, it was really disappointing. So anyway, I chugged along in the ATAT and I saw all the other ones crawling around. And that was kind of cool. I mean, it was kind of otherworldly because I got this sort of late at night. So seeing these things crawling all around the airport was kind of cool. I was just one gate away from the cursed gate which I think was B50. I saw it from a distance, but I didn't get to take a photo of it. And then the ATAT deposited us at the arrivals immigration area, which again was kind of not a very pleasant place and not a very pleasant experience. These places really are, to be honest, but this was particularly bad and they were pretty rubbish with what cues to put us in and then I got moved from cue to cue and I was thinking, oh, this couldn't get any worse. And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, almost as if Grey had arranged it, a little kid, a little tiny kid standing next to me. Some toddler suddenly got down on his haunches and started vomiting all over the floor. So I'm waiting in cue next to a pile of vomit at Dallas. I'd like to be sympathetic, but... No, no, nobody is sympathetic to children when they're traveling, right? This is like, let's a kid. Your only job is to be quiet and that's it. Don't expel anything from your body, right? Just be silent and miserable like the rest of us. So like, and I finally got through and got my bag and then I had to join some other cue with my bag, which was even longer than the immigration cue where they just wanted to take a piece of paper off me and let me continue. So, and then I ordered my Uber and my Uber guy phoned me up and wanted to figure out where I was going and just obviously decided I wasn't a good fare and canceled on me. So I was having Uber problems as well. I'm falling out of love with Uber, I can tell you that right now. Oh wow. And that's a whole other story. But anyway, so my Dallas experience was terrible. And when I left Washington, I went via Ronald Reagan Airport, which is lovely. I'm realizing though, you didn't actually, you were barely in the CD terminals. I didn't even, you know, experience all the things you hated about it. I had a quite limited exposure and even that put me off it. It is now on the list of places that a Hello Internet listeners can check off that they've gone to you on a worldwide Hello Internet scavenger hunt, I guess. So I'm glad I'm glad now that both of us have been there. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Yeah. I'm glad the both of us have been there. It's fun for you. I'm sorry that a child vomited in line. I'm sorry that you're falling out of love with Uber. It sounds like difficult travels, but did you make it to your math festival long time? I did. I enjoyed Washington. It was only my second time I'd spent any time there and I really enjoyed it. I was there for this National Math Festival, which was interesting. It was really good. I really loved it. It coincided with the March for Science, which was held in Washington, which I think there was some worry that it might sort of, you know, the nerds might do the March for Science instead of the Math Festival. But I think the two sort of played off each other quite well. And luckily for the Math Festival, it absolutely poured with rain in Washington that day. So I think a lot of people who were thinking, I'll do the March and then go to the festival or I'll go to the festival and go to the March thought, I'll bugger that, I'm just going to go to the Math Festival. So I think we were the winners for them. Fantastic. I love that thing. We'll have come all the way to protest, oh, but it's raining. How much do I really care? Turns out not rain's worth much. It was a great success the March for Science anyway. And I must speak positively about it, if only because our friend, Duke from the Vatican, was one of the hosts of it. And I did catch up with him for a drink in Washington. The wave function that is Dirk did spread to Washington. So I got to see him while I was there. I didn't know he was there for that. He was the guy up on the stage, show boating around in the dry no doubt, covered by the stage. Yeah, yeah, no, for that pretty face, they can't let him get wet. No, that's the thing. No, no, no. Exactly. His sunshine machines at the top of the stage to keep him nice and warm. I'm sure that's how that works. So now you feel like you have to speak positively about it. That's funny. Interesting. How could I show a bit of solidarity? So the math festival, like I obviously got there early. And I had to do these like three presentations, two of them with Matt Parker and one with Cliff Stull, who are people in my number five videos. And there was this like really big room that we were doing it in. And like I'm thinking, there's no way people are gonna come to this room. I get really nervous about that. Like I just imagine like three people turning up because I'm like, who's gonna wanna come to this? And then after that, I knew I had to do this like a, they'd set up this kind of meet and greet thing for me, like meet Brady from Number Far, which I was a bit uneasy about. And I wanted it to be as low key as possible. And then I went to the place where it was gonna happen, which was this huge area at the convention center in Washington that I swear was three times bigger than an aircraft hanger. And then there's this one tiny desk over on the side with a sign saying meet Brady from Number Far and like a chair and like ropes and stuff. And I'm like, why are there ropes? That makes it like, you do not need crowd control. This is not gonna be a big thing. I felt really like really uneasy about it and really embarrassed about it. So, so luckily lots of people came to the presentations. Those were really good audience. And there were lots of Tim's. I met the guy that does nerd stats on Reddit. Oh, okay. Did you complain to him about that worth the weight measurement? The terribly named worth the weight measurement? I didn't really get time to discuss that, but if I had, I would have. He was disappointingly normal. I was hoping he'd be a bit nerdy, but anyway, he seemed kind of normal. But anyway, anyway. So I met lots of Tim's, saw a few nailing ears around the place. And then I went up like three o'clock or whatever I went up to this desk. Well, I was gonna have to sit for hours, which I thought was gonna be the most embarrassing moment of my life and I was gonna be sitting at a table for like three hours a month. There are a few people milling there when I got there. So I'm like, hi, and like did sign a few things and did a few selfies. And then amazingly, it was never like a long queue, like a VidCon where like a thousand screaming people line up to meet some vlogger. But there was always just like 10 people for the whole three hours. Like I think people would come along and think, oh, there's a queue. Oh, there's no queue. I'll join the queue now. So like for the whole three hours, they'd never stopped. Like I was able to just spend three hours meeting people, which was nice and also incredible relief for my like personal pride. Brady. Brady. Well, I love this stuff because it's like, it's like you don't know who you are, Brady. You're worried. You're worried at all these events that nobody is going to show up. But you are like, you're the mighty Brady heron. You are a number file at a math convention. Like you think nobody's going to show up to say hello? Like do you have any concept of who you are in the situation? I'm amazed that you weren't mobbed, right? That the fans didn't dare you limb from limb, screaming and excitement to see you there, right? It's like, it's just, it's so funny to me because like I saw the same thing at VidCon where you're like, ooh, I wonder if anybody's going to show up. It's like, no, no, dude, like you're Brady Heron. You're had a math convention. Like I think you're going to be fine for a meet and greet. Like I think you're going to be just fine. Well, all right, that's fair enough. But having said that, and there were quite a few Hello Internet listeners came just for Hello Internet. I probably weren't, who probably weren't number file fans. But my favorite people who lined up, and there were a few of these, and I remain bamboos would buy them. Our people who were waiting in line for maybe 15, 20 minutes because sometimes I would talk to people for a while. And someone would get to the front of the queue and I'd say, hey, how are you? And they would say to me, yeah, I'm good thanks. Who are you? I saw this queue of people or people wanting to meet you. So I thought, I want to find out who you are. And then I would have to like, to a total stranger who had been waiting in queue to meet me. Oh my God. I would have to say, oh well, my name's Brady and I make these YouTube videos about mathematics and some people like them. And they're like, oh really? That sounds really interesting. How long have you been doing that for? And I'd talk to them for like five minutes. They had no idea who I was. And then they would be, oh, can I have a picture with you? I'm like, yeah, of course you can. Or can I have a signature? Yeah, yeah, you can. Yeah. And then they would just walk away. I feel like I can't believe it, that's real. It's true. It happened three times. One of them was a family. It was a mum with like all her kids. And then I had to like have pictures with the kids. And none of them knew who I was. I really almost can't believe that. What kind of person would do that? And I would just say a queue and thought maybe I was someone. It's interesting or famous. But it's not like this is Soviet Russia. And you see a line and you just have to get on the back of it because maybe there'll be bread like it there. I don't. Oh my God. I cannot. I cannot. OK. I mean, I was grateful for them because they kind of padded out the line a bit. But I've kind of felt a bit sorry for them. I would find that the strangest moment to be in a way justifying the existence of the line to see you. I was like someone gets with the front. Like, you don't seem that impressive. Who are you? That is so weird. I can't believe that that happens at all. Like if you told me one person did it, I'd be like, well, obviously there's some lunatics in this world. But three people. That's one an hour on average. I don't understand how those people can exist. That is very strange to me. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. So from Washington, I went on to Miami. And I'm not going to talk for ages about Miami. But it was a weird place. I'm sorry. Were there expectations that you are going to talk for ages about Miami because everybody knows it's a place that you talk a lot about? I have never been to Miami. Tell me all about it, Brady. I'm not going to go too much into Miami because I don't want to turn Hello Internet into what Brady did in his holiday. But there was one thing that struck me as interesting. And this was, I mean, probably the thing it's most famous for and it's greatest asset is its lovely big long, beautiful beach. Big long sandy beach, beautiful water, always great weather. All the hotels look out at the beach. I had a hotel room looking out over the beach. Everyone sits by the pools at their hotel that are oriented so you can look out over the beach or you sit on the beach itself. And everyone gazes at this marvelous vista. So being America, obviously this has seen as an advertising opportunity and they have lots and lots of planes dragging ads behind them. And I actually quite like that. I find that quite, quite quaint. And I'm in favor of those planes dragging ads through the sky on one condition. They have to be those ads that are made of like letters that have obviously been taken from a stock pile of letters. And they just rearrange the letters depending on who the advertiser is. But that cliche kind of look I'm talking about. Right, right, right, right. But you want letter press here, like a Gutenberg rearrangement of the letters for the advertisements. Because what happens now is some of the planes are dragging behind them like these huge obviously like silk screened posters with pictures of women holding machine guns saying come to our firing range. And that sounds pretty awesome. I think I could be sold on that. That one was awesome. But generally those ones I don't approve of, it's a bit too high tech. But when there's those ones just like dragging letters, I feel like I've gone to the 1960s or something. And it's quite, I feel like I'm in like Scarface or something. And I'm back in Miami in some cool time. OK, but if it's like a bottom third banner advertisement on a YouTube video, that's not cool. That's what you don't like. Yeah, I want the letters. I want the printing press letters. So they're OK. But there's another kind of advert that I was horrified by. And that was every sort of 20 minutes or so, probably about 100 to 200 meters out to sea. This slowly chugging boat goes along, like you know, from right to left and then left to right, along the whole stretch of the beach. With this giant TV screen facing back to all the people on the land, playing video ads at them. And it just chugs along. And you've got to watch all these video ads from this advertising boat that just chugs up and down the beach all day. And I do not approve of that. I'm going to say that might be one of the most defensive kind of ads I've ever heard of. It was terrible. It was terrible. I cannot believe they're allowed to do it. I think right below that, the kind of ad that always bothers me the most is, and you particularly see them in Las Vegas, is they have these, in quotation marks, I want to say like trucks, they're little trucks. But on the back of them, they're carrying nothing except a gigantic vertical poster, right, in either direction. And those things always bother me because they feel like, your whole job, little truck, is to drive up and down some of the busiest streets in a city, just causing more traffic while advertising. You offend me here. At least don't have the advertisement be actively in the way of everybody else on the road. And I've seen them in London every once in a while too. And I was like, those really bother me. But to have someone essentially literally drag a TV across an ocean view, I feel like I would make me furious if I was on vacation. That is horrific. It's the, you know, it's your thing. It's their beautiful thing. It's why you're there. And like, like I said, I can get on board with the planes because I don't know. It's like from another era. But the TV screens. That's like a crime against humanity. That's the sort of like to me. Come on Miami. Sort yourself out. We're one of those things. The Big Bang Quick Sports Bowl Corner Grey. It doesn't involve a bowl. This is from the world of athletics. And something that I thought you might find interesting. And that is obviously, you know, who wins things is quite important in athletics. You get your gold medals and stuff. But a sub important thing about athletics is who has the world records? Who has, you know, run the fastest hundred meters or who has thrown the javelin the furthest? Right. Now, because of all the problems that athletics has been having with doping and things like that and drug sheets, a controversial proposal seems to be close to becoming a thing. And that is they are thinking of scrubbing the record books of any world record that was set before 2005. And that's because before 2005, they didn't keep samples. Since then they do keep samples. So as they come up with like better drug tests and better ways of finding sheets, they can read blood samples. I think blood or urine and things like that. I'm not exactly sure which I think I think that's the reason. I'm pretty sure that's the reason. So basically the rules are a such for world records to be recognized. It has to have been achieved at a competition that's on like a list of approved events where I guess they have, you know, the right clocks and take measures and stuff. Right. The athlete has to have been subject to an agreed number of doping control tests in the months leading up to the event. OK. And the doping control sample that was taken from them after they set their record has to have been stored and available for retesting for 10 years. And basically up until 2005, that didn't happen. But since then they've had these more stringent requirements. So I think for like the integrity of the sport, because some of some of these world records, for example, the world records set by Florence Griffith Joyner, who was a American sprinter. And her records are considered pretty suspect, but they still stand. They've decided we can say that because she's died, so we can defame her. But anyway, is that how that works? Oh, OK. That's OK. I'm not the journalist. I don't know how that works when you're engaged in defamation. So what they've said is for sort of the integrity of these records, they've decided to take this heavy-handed, broad brush approach and say, let's just wipe out all the records from before 2005. And of course, a whole bunch of people who probably are clean and certainly say their claim are saying, hang on, this is really unfair. We're losing all our world records. But this is the decision that they seem to be coming to. Let's wipe the slack claim, start world records from then. I was wondering what you would think of this. This is an interesting decision. My first impression is, you're telling me that somewhere in the world, there's a vault with 10 years worth of athletes blood in urine samples. Like that's what I'm getting out of this story. Like somewhere they have these samples stored, that is weird. That is really weird to think about. I think they would only keep the ones of people who have won the medals and set the world records. I don't think anyone who ever does anything has everything kept. Although I imagine they must have to try and keep fourth and fifth and sixth. Maybe they do it for all the finalists. You've got to keep a few, right? Because we're going to go back in time and we're going to reset who's the record. You're going to have to test who's number two as well, right? Yeah. Otherwise, you're just filming the lead golfer all the time, right? And that's no good. You have to film everybody. OK, so after you get over the shock of the way in the blood, no, but isn't that interesting to you? Do you think they're all in one place? Where do you think they... I want to know where they're kept? I don't know. I've seen reports and stuff before from these facilities that do this. It's like a whole industry, you know, checking athlete samples for doping. They always just look like big giant labs with fridges and friezes. And if they decide to pass this new rule, and then let's say one of the facilities that's storing all of the blood and urine burns to the ground, do all of those people then lose their record? That is an interesting question. I think maybe there's a degree of higher powers there and people would say, well, that's not your fault. You're not going to lose your record for that. I think this 2005 thing is they've said, we didn't really get our act together in terms of, you know, having good mechanisms in place to stop cheating until 2005. Let's make that our new start point. Let's reset the clock. There's a whole bunch of people who are saying they're sort of innocent victims. But I mean, world records are funny things anyway, because it's not like they're like, you don't get medals for having a world record. They're just like, they're just pieces of information anyway. Yeah. And even if someone knew has the world record for the 100 meters, women's 100 meters, everyone's going to know, oh, it was run quicker, you know, in 2002. But that one doesn't count. Yeah, everyone's going to know that. Yeah, that's how that works. I thought it was an interesting decision that you might have thought on some, because I never really know where you stand on drugs in sport anyway. I kind of pardon me, thinks you think maybe they're okay. So I'm pro-doping. Yeah. It seems like a stupid, arbitrary thing to say. Like, oh, we can do all of these things that are sports training, which are all about manipulating the chemicals inside your body through physical means. Yeah. And you can eat healthy food. Oh, that's not fair. You ate too many carrots. That's making you really strong. It's dumb. I'm all in favor of doping. I don't even mean that as a joke. I want 100% in favor of doping. I think it's dumb that it's not allowed. Point people then put their own lives at risk, because they sort of push themselves to the limit. Won't sports be more exciting when people's lives are on the line for the game? What's the downside here? It seems like it's all upside. The sport gets more exciting. You're going to have more impressive physical feats, which is the whole purpose of it. I have no problem with this. I have no problem with this whatsoever. Wow. And it muses me that you think that. I think it would be a little bit irresponsible if we allowed doping in sports. Yeah, because sport is filled with nothing but responsiveness, right? It's a very responsible field. It's all above board. Everything's fine. There's nothing irresponsible about the whole notion of professional sports in the first place. But doping. No, that is too far, sir. Right? No, we're definitely not allowed. I mean, all that crazy stuff about people doing like high altitude training and like taking out their blood and then like pumping their own blood back into them. It's like, oh, that's not doping because it's your own genetic material. Like this stuff is crazy. I'm totally fine with it. Like you want to take some steroids to be a better athlete? I'm okay with that. I have no problem. So you're saying let's make sport like, you know, technological arms, right? So just take it to its conclusion, wherever that is. Like, it's that already. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a camera where I came across it. But I came across something which was just talking about even like sports records as they relate to like baseball bats and tennis racquets and all kinds of things where you just, you don't even really think about it. But it's like, oh, of course, of course, there's actually quite a lot of technology that goes into a tennis racket and how it responds to the tennis ball. And it's like, oh, yeah, this is all like a thing anyway. That's about progress. Yeah. I mean, yeah, people say, oh, countries with the best, you know, chemists will start winning all the medals. But as it stands now, the countries with the best training facilities win all the medals. So I understand that argument. I do think there's like a human safety element to some of the drug stuff that probably is worthy of consideration. Don't get me wrong. It's worthy of consideration. But I think what will just end up happening is we'll start genetically breeding people to be more receptive to those drugs, to compete in our sports. And we'll just end up with an entire class of people who are bred to be athletes. I think that's the natural logical conclusion of this. And it'll be an amazing sporting future. Would you rather watch that sporting contest between like the super bred, drugged up, overhumans or robots competing? Or bass? 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The Prime Minister Theresa May has just decided. Let's have an election. I thought this new law where you had an election every five years, which was new to the UK, was designed to stop this being like a thing you were allowed to do. But obviously it's not. I don't actually know what that new five-year law is for now. If you can call SNAP elections anyway. I don't understand how she's allowed to do it. But it's happening. Yeah, we mentioned this once when the law first came out. And my understanding is that that law was primarily to just shorten the maximum length between elections in the UK. It was six years before, wasn't it? Oh, OK. OK. So this law, whatever it's called about having a set election every five years on a set date, is just a fancy way of saying the limit now is five years between elections. That was my understanding of it. And that seems to be the case. Background for Americans. Where there's this thing in the UK, just very briefly, where you can have an election at any point. And then you have, it's what, six weeks is the whole cycle before the election actually takes place. Like, this is a thing that can happen in UK politics. And it can happen either because you have a coalition government that falls apart, or it can happen as it's happened in this case where the party in power thinks that they can more firmly lock in their power. And you can just, you can have an election. And the thing that happens now, which I think is interesting, is that it looks like it resets the clock. So it's again, the next election can be no more than five years from this election is the way it works. So we don't have like a fixed election cycle in the UK in the same way that the United States does. And that is what has happened most recently with Theresa May calling the snap election in the UK. And for those who don't follow British politics, pretty obviously what's happened is the opposition party in the UK is in such a dire state. And it's so far behind in the polls that I think the prime minister here thought it was a fair complete that she would win an election and win it handsomely and probably increase her mandate. And not only would it reset her clock, she's probably arguing it'll give her a bit stronger mandate for all the Brexit who have and stuff that's to follow. So it's sort of opportunism, isn't it? Or shrewdness or whatever you want to call it. I saw your tweet. I saw your tweet. Which tweet? I don't even remember what tweet. You're clever girl. I think it was. I think it was, right? Because it was one of these things where obviously I don't follow the day to day of politics. I have no interest at this, but this did burst through my bubble from a bunch of people sending me stuff about the election happening. As soon as I saw it, I thought it wouldn't have occurred to me, but it does seem like there was a very clever move on her part. So one of the things that in retrospect, it seems almost obvious. Like it's a good decision for her to gain more power and to sort of lock in more victories for her part. I mean, it'd been discussed for months and months, but she just kept promising she wouldn't do it. It wasn't a shock because no one thought she would do it. Like everyone thought it was a really obvious move. But she just promised that she wouldn't do it. So the reason it was a shock was because it was such a, such a brazen break of her promise. I have a hard time holding someone to the notion of like, if you've had an opinion once, you have to have that opinion for forever. Yeah. I wouldn't even pass it off cynically as like, oh, politicians, you can't trust them. It's just like, no, you don't necessarily know what reasons, like why things change. Even if it was just straight up strategic to say like, oh, we're not going to hold an election. And then later we're going to do it anyway. It's like, yeah, people have their reasons. I can never like fault someone for changing their mind. I think it's okay to change your mind. I don't think it's okay to lie for strategic reasons when you are a leader of people because then people could make decisions. Like if before an election, you promised you would do something and you knew for a fact you wouldn't do it. And everyone voted on you on that basis. And then you did the other thing. What hope have we got for democracy if like, like, I'm not saying it will stop happening. But if it's like acceptable and everyone's saying, oh, no, it's fine. Yeah, you're allowed. It's okay to lie. I think when you do strategic lying, that will never stop. But I think you need to be cold on it and slapped over the wrists. I think if we create a world where strategic lying is like fine, then what hope have we got as like voters like what, like what, like we're just like, we're just flopping in the wind now because they can just do whatever they want. There has to be some penalty for your strategic lying. And too much strategic lying has to result in you like, you know, getting kicked out. We're a little bit of strategic lying. You kind of get away with it. Yeah, it's funny because it's like when I was first saying that, I was having in my mind, like I was going to go to some like World War II analogy about what will our leaders say on the radio that's strategic lie to like win a victory. It's like, yes. But at the other end of that spectrum is just straight up lies that we can all agree. Like terrible. Like, I'm never going to fulfill this promise at all lies. So yeah, obviously there's got to be somewhere. There's got to be something that's somewhere in between there. Yeah. I'm okay with being strategic about when you want to announce a snap election. Yeah. It feels like it's someone who is already in office trying to time a thing. I feel like I'm okay with that. But maybe, maybe much further is not okay. Is it a little bit like that because I know you're someone who is really opposed to gerrymandering, aren't you? You think that's pretty poison thing that happens in the US. Yeah. Right. And that is a prime example of the people who are in power being able to manipulate the electoral system. Is snap elections? Another example of that though, like she had the power and she's manipulated the system by calling the election at the moment that gives her the maximum opportunity to win. Not like an arbitrary fair time that's been decided this date in the future. Is this not like a kind of gerrymandering? How is it different? Yeah. I think you're right. In a way, this is a kind of gerrymandering. But I'm more okay with it because I think this is, again, we have to talk in the abstract about how do you have a government system work? Like we're not talking about this particular election. I'm kind of okay with it because I think this is just the natural consequence of the way this system is set up that you could also have a moment where you have an impasse in the government and then you can have an election that occurs when there is an impasse. And the election is like the thing that solves this political impasse if a coalition government isn't able to stick together. And I think it's very hard to imagine like a set of rules where you can have the government dissolve but not have it dissolve strategically. This is like the consequence of the way the system is set up. But I totally agree that there's this, what has occurred now is probably the situation where someone is strategically dissolving the government in order to win by a bigger margin. I mean, she's pretty upfront about that just to quickly come back to this practical example although we're mainly talking in abstractions. I mean, there was no real impasse in the UK and no one has even pretended there was. She basically has said, I want a stronger mandate, you know, going into the next few years with all the things that are ahead for the UK. And to be fair, the opposition, all the other parties lay down and approved it. Like, you know, it went through the parliament. So it's not like they all said, cried foul and said, stop it. So, but I don't think it's not even like they manipulate, she manipulated the system and created some bill over which no one could agree that would result in the parliament collapsing. She just basically said, I want more votes. What do you all say? And what opposition isn't going to approve an election because you look cowardly if you say no. Putting aside the particulars of the policy, this was just a totally brilliant game theory move, right? Because I think this whole situation with Brexit and then the UK having another election, she's able to do the like, do you want to vote to make us stronger in a negotiation? Or do you want to make us weaker in a negotiation? It is such a killer electoral move and to time it at a place where, yeah, the opposition party seems like they are particularly weak. I don't follow the details of it day to day, but I expect that the conservatives are going to walk away with like a huge, a huge victory over this one. It's hard to imagine how that wouldn't happen. I do think that she's right in a way that the more resounding of a victory she can win, like the better it makes it for the UK negotiating with the European Union. And it's like, oh, God, like you're trapped in this position where she's made it almost feel like if you don't vote her way, you are voting against the best interests of the UK. That's why I did think like as soon as I heard that the election was occurring and then I saw her little speech about like, oh, you need to vote with us or you're against us, you're against the UK thing. I was like, man, it just feels like it's a really clever little game theory win on the behalf of the conservatives. So I think it's an interesting situation. And I'm going to be very curious to see how it turns out, but I'm expecting that they're really going to clean house. Yeah. The only thing I disagree with them, what you just said was capturing it as like some brilliant move. Like she's just solved from last last theorem or something. I think it was like just bit of a no brainer and she was just a bit ruthless. I don't think you know, she's pulled off some political act of genius like it was just like everyone was saying for months, yeah, she'll probably call it snap election because she'll crush them and increase her majority and then sure enough that's what she did. It's not just calling this snap election. It's the it's the tie in with Brexit. That's what makes it a stronger position. I'm not saying that this is like, oh, this is some strategic 3D chess move. It's an interesting thing that has occurred in the way this system works. And I think combining it with Brexit, it just feels like a kind of trap for the voters where you have very little maneuverability. Yeah. I guess the sneaky move was calling the snap election after triggering the article. Yeah. That's what it is. We're a revote on Brexit. Like Brexit's happening. You can't stop it now. Are you going to sabotage the country or not? That's probably the interesting thing about the timing. If she said, I'm not going to call article 50 until you decide on me as your new prime minister, then it would have become referendum too. Right. It's like, oh, you know, I'm flying this plane. We've taken off. We know where we're going. And now are you going to let me pick the crew that I fly the plane with or not? We're all on this plane together. Like we need to get where it's going. And we can't get you out of the cockpit. So it's almost crazy to try to like pick people who are going to work against you. That's why I think it's just, it's an interesting thing. It's also sort of like sad to see the opposition parties are trying to negotiate with each other to run candidates or not run candidates in various districts based on who was going to win or who was like, it's just you can see all of the side effects of the strategic voting that has to occur everywhere else. It's just, you know, again, that's just like a, this is a very frustrating situation. Take an interesting thing about politics, Gray. Yeah. Like just to touch on, you know, my consumption of news again. I'm really into my political podcast at the moment. There are quite a few I like listening to, particularly American politics. You know, it's become so interesting now that I've really increased my intake of American politics stuff. And there's also like a few, like there's a satirical magazine that comes out every two weeks in the UK called Private Eye, which deals a lot with politics. And that's one of my favorite things to read. And I've always got great pleasure from these things. But the problem is because you know, I'm a busy person and there's so much of this stuff. You can't consume it straight away. You know, you've got to pick your times when you go for a drive or you go to the gym and stuff. And in the last year or so, politics has just started changing so quickly that all of these things become completely pointless to listen to within hours of coming out. It's been a really crazy thing. I guess I'm helping make one of your arguments here in a way, but like this stuff is changing so soon that if I have any podcast about American politics and I don't listen to it that day and leave it three or four days, I may as well be listening to them talk about Andrew Jackson or something. It's so out of date like the stuff they're talking about. It's crazy. I don't know why politics is moving so quickly now. I don't know whether it's changed or I've changed or something, but it's just everything has just happened so fast now it makes my head spin. Has something changed that's made politics go into some kind of fast forward or is it just like is it just a weird little time we're living in at the moment or is it just the way I'm perceiving it? Like I know you don't follow it, but you must be aware that all this stuff that's happening so quickly now. I feel resistant to arguments about how things are happening faster now than they have ever been. I wonder because I think that that is almost certainly going to be affected by how much people are discussing things. The amount of talking is going to make stuff feel faster than otherwise. Like I am not saying that things aren't faster. I'm just saying that like you're a perception of how fast things are. Essentially what I'm saying here Brady is I think you might be subscribing to a lot of political podcasts, right, which are talking about a whole bunch of stuff and you only have so much time to actually listen to your political podcasts, which then makes you aware of all the ones you didn't get to have become totally meaningless and irrelevant than the time that has passed. Then it feels like wow, things are going by so quickly because I didn't get a chance to listen to these three other political podcasts about this thing. I understand the point you're making there and perhaps I framed that incorrectly and made it sound like I listened to loads and loads of them. There are only like two or three of them. I do listen to them within a few days and they just seem out of date really, really quickly. So why do you listen to them then? I think a big part of it is the handful I do listen to. I like the people as much as anything, which is always an important part of a podcast. I'm just enjoying smart, hearing smart people talk about interesting things in an interesting way. It's not that I'm like some total political junkie. I mean I think what's happening in America is quite interesting at the moment. It's quite a show. I don't think that's the whole reason. I think I also just enjoy listening to these people. But like so many things, the landscape is changing really quickly. It's kind of a bit dizzying sometimes and the UK doesn't feel that much different. This snap election has certainly hasn't helped. Just when the UK felt like, okay, let's bid in for two years of Brexit slog. It's like, no, no, we're having another election. If you called the election a few days before the council elections and so there are election results coming in during the election campaign and it's like, wow, man, it's a bit fatiguing to be honest. It's a bit fatiguing. Maybe you should listen to fewer political parties. I know. I need a good beekeeping one. Do you know any? I'll find some. I'll get a good beekeeping recommendation. You should start one. It could be called the buzz with CGP Grey and it's just all about that latest happenings in the world of beekeeping. I was about to say there's no possible way that there can be news in the beekeeping world. But if there's anything I've learned from the internet, right, it's that is that everything is a world unto itself. Every topic has an infinite amount of depth to it. So I'm absolutely sure that there's like beekeeping monthly and a podcast and politics within the beekeeping world. Every topic is an infinite topic. Of course, there's been another big election though. This has been the French election. Did you follow this? Do you know what happened? No, I... I'm sorry, Brady. There has been a French presidential election. I wanted to ask you about their voting system, but if you don't even know what happened, you're probably not going to... Oh, I know about the two round French voting system. Yeah, I know that. OK. OK. I think you probably should know that there was a French presidential election on the weekend, but I totally respect that you don't. And... And let's see. Let's see. That's good because that will make your discussion completely non-political, which is great. How many elections happened worldwide every month? There must be a bunch. Yeah, but France is a pretty big important country. And this is like, you know, particularly the context of... Are you saying other people's elections are not important, Brady? That's what I'm hearing. Or particularly in the context of what's happening in the EU. And although we're not going to go into the details, the nuances of this election, you know, involving, you know, who was running and what was going on and some of the implications. In a broader context, this was an interesting one. This was one... Did I miss something important? No. It's the whole thing. What's different now than before? The final run... The final two-person runoff was between a centrist candidate and a far-right candidate who was very anti-Europe. So it was considered a bit of a referendum on that. Was this going to be like a, you know, Brexit rerun after recent election results where more right views have prevailed. A lot of people were thinking, is this a trend that's going to continue? This woman who was running for French presidents was quite extreme, from quite an extreme side of politics. There were lots of eyeballs on it to see what would happen. And in the end, the sort of more centrist candidate won the two-person runoff in bit of a landslide. But the thing that was interesting from purely a voting perspective was the round before where there was just this right-wing candidate and then lots of other candidates who were left and centrist in that. They all split the vote amongst themselves and the right-wing candidate did really, really well. So, but then what happened was when it became a two-person runoff, all the people then consolidated behind the centrist one. So it was just really interesting from a sort of an electoral theory perspective. So I thought maybe you'd followed it for that reason. No, it sounds like the system works then. That is the Frenchism. Like, it's round one, one vote per person. And then you pick the two most popular and they face off in the final election. It's a better system than the first pass-to-post system, but that's not hard to do. Because first pass-to-post is the worst ever. Is it a better system than the transferable vote, though? What are the advantages or disadvantages to this runoff system versus a transferable vote just having one round in the first place and everyone just has their priorities and knows that everything's going to get shuffled around in the end to where it should be? If I'm going to rank these two things, I would say that the two-round system is better than first pass-to-post. But it's not as good as a ranked method, like single transferable vote or instant runoff vote. It's because you're losing information about preference. What you're essentially doing is you're having two first pass-to-post votes, one after the other in the two-round system. And so it sounds like in this latest French election that what can happen is exactly this, where you get a candidate who has a smaller, fanatical base that sticks together, wins. They get a bunch of votes. And then there happens to be somebody else who also has a bunch of votes who might be like a centrist candidate. The round two essentially is an option to undo the winner of round one in a way. That's what the two-round system is doing. Whereas if it was just a straight runoff of straight first pass-to-post vote, that wouldn't happen. But the thing with a single transferable vote system or an instant runoff system is you're able to say like, oh, I like this person in that part. There's more information to work with about how much the people like each of the candidates and what their ranking is. Better than first pass-to-post, not as good as some other systems. Even with this, you get very quickly into this. This kind of fun, debatable area where with all voting systems, I like them because you have to be making some kind of negotiation between what the mathematics tells you about how systems work and then what is it that you are valuing in an electoral system, which the math can't possibly tell you. And it's why arguments about this stuff will never end because there's no mathematical answer to say, oh, this system is obviously the best. You can only just say, this system meets a bunch of different criteria in better or worse ways. And then ultimately, there has to be some human judgment about which of the criteria matter more than others. There's no way to just say like, oh, this is the best or this is not the best. But we can all agree that first pass-to-post is the worst. I guess the advantage of the runoff, I mean, I think I agree with you. I already like the transferable vote. But I guess the advantage of the runoff is once you know people's preferences the first time around and the landscape changes, you can debate again in the new context. You have the second election campaign for a few weeks. Suddenly now that the stakes are different and who's against who is different, you might want to change your vote. Like, you might think, oh, okay, if I knew those two were the two most popular, I'd want to hear what they thought about this and that and that might change the way I vote. And what I also think is really valid in a voting system is this whole idea of, you know, again, in theory, you should be voting for the person that you totally, like, that you agree with more and that you like more. But like, let's be honest, there's a huge amount of the voting system which is, well, I don't want that person in charge, right? And like, I'll take anybody but that person. And so I think the two round system, it gives you that moment of saying like, okay, well, I didn't like Joe blogs, but when Joe blogs is running against Bob blogs, like, oh, he's, that guy is the worst. Like, I'll take anybody overhand and it allows you to do that kind of switch. Like, there's, there's that information change that happens between the rounds. It's why something like a rank system just happens to collect all that information up front by asking you to order the candidates because that's implicitly what you're doing. Like, would you like this person over this person over that person? And then you're able to run like a bunch of theoretical elections. Like that's, again, that's the main problem with just a single first pass of post election is that you can very often end up with a candidate that the majority of the citizens all agree they'd rather have anybody else than that candidate. And at least the two round system prevents that from happening because it allows people in the second round to consolidate around a candidate that everybody prefers to the other person. It's fine, but I do find it mildly amusing that this massive country, which is the nearest country to the country you live in just had this really like to moat you as interesting presidential election. And you were just like, hmm, hmm, like, like, plodding away driving your truck simulator and having the time of your life. And with no idea what's happening.
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