H.I. No. 112: Consistency Hobgoblins

"H.I. #112: Consistency Hobgoblins" is the 112th episode of Hello Internet, released on October 31, 2018.
==Website description==
"A new Hello Internet artifact is born, American state identities revisited, Banksy's shredding stunt, government and social media, daylight savings time disaster, Scrabble, and First Man."
Grey, I've had something made. I've had something commissioned by a Tim named Sarah, who lives in Brooklyn. She lives in America, does she? She lives in America, in the US of A. Here it is. I'm going to send it to you as a picture. Oh, way, Brady. The golden hot stuff. No, no way. I mean, I'm looking at a golden hot stopper atop a red velvet pillow with golden rope and tassels all around. I mean, what a magnificent setting for a hot stopper, Brady. So this is Sarah's like a jula. And we've been talking for a while. We started off with platinum plans, right? But partly for cost reasons, but not so much for cost reasons, more for appearance reasons. We've decided to go with gold because gold just looks more blingy. Platinum could have just looked like silver. Right. That is the problem with platinum. It's valuable, but not so visually obviously valuable. You can't beat gold for looking like, oh, this is something that belongs in Aladdin's cave. But I think the special touch also is there is a diamond set in the middle of the nail and gear at the top of the hot stopper. Oh my god. I was just zooming in and I thought, oh, that's on for I thought there was an indentation from the mold or something. I thought, oh, right in the center of the nail like that. What unfortunate placement. But no, it's a diamond. Diamond. That's like a little mini royal. Oh, this is amazing. This is like a founding object of the nation of Hello Internet presented here. This is the scepter of power. This is amazing. Also, because there's all this talk about how you're not supposed to make things out of plastic anymore because it's bad for the environment. So we now we've got a gold hot stopper. You know, I'm always a little clenched up when there's a Brady surprise coming. But man, this is amazing. Wow. So where is it physically now? Is it with you or is it under security somewhere? It's on a shelf about a meter away from me next to our specially water jet cut nail and gear sculpture. And another thing that I've just got my hands on, the nail and gear flag that went into space. I've only now just got my hands on it. The actual artifact. So I've got three amazing nail and gear artifacts all together on a shelf at the moment. I mean, I know we have joked for years now about the inevitable Hello Internet Museum. I mean, this really feels like I can see this as the center piece of a museum. Perhaps like when you visit the crown jewels. You know, it's behind glass. Yeah. In this beautiful setting, there's also a people mover that keeps you moving right along because there's there's so many throngs of people coming in to see it that you have to give them a subtle hint to go and let more people view this amazing object. We really are. We really are building this thing. Wow. That is amazing. That red and gold and cushion that it sits on is also filled with lavender. So it even smells gorgeous. Oh my goodness. Tickleous. I'm through Tickleous. I mean, clearly this belongs in a museum. Yeah. And you would have to take it from my cold dead hand. Yeah. What if I wanted this object? Really? Well, I have paid for it at the moment. So we'll have to negotiate that to start with. But the other thing is the other thing that occurs to me is the potential for the most wondrous thing that could ever happen. The golden hot drop. Oh, no, Brady. Imagine that. Because I've been doing my hot drops, you know, around the States lately. And I still like a good hot drop. Imagine the golden hot drop. And it would have to be like a really special one that involved like a treasure hunt and clues and all sorts of stuff. But it would be like the ultimate pro hot drop. People around the world would be searching for this. I think this kind of thing could only be protected by the arc of the covenant. Like that's where I would want to do the hot drop. In the well of the souls. Yes, it's there. But you know, maybe it's the thing best left where it is. So there you go. The golden hot diamond topped. This is amazing. Absolutely amazing. Hello internet artifact that has been created. Thank you Sarah the Joula. Plus that pillow. I actually, I received it in person from her when I was in New York recently. And all I talked about was the pillow. I couldn't take my eyes off the pillow. She didn't make the pillow. She commissioned the pillow to her pillow friend. Look, it's about the object and the setting for the object. Maybe I do need to get like a glass case to put it in for my room like, you know, like a bell jar type thing. Like so it is behind glass here just for the joke of it. So people will come into my office and go, what the hell is that? And I'll be like, well, this is a long story with many layers. I don't think there's any joke in that at all Brady. I think that is deadly serious. For sure, you need to have it under a bell jar suspended. So it looks like it's the rose that pedals are falling for. Like this, you need to go all out for the mounting of this object. And it should be in a room where there's like lasers or through the room, like those red lasers, like in the movies, so to even get to it, you've got to like do like a Tom Cruise offer from the roof, not touch the pressure sensitive floor. Yeah, see, there's golden hot supper. It really captures the imagination. We may consider a picture in the show notes. Yeah, I think there's going to be a picture. I'm sorry, you can't smell the lavender. No, I'm obviously going to have to make it the video for the YouTube version too. And I just like rotating on a plinth. How fast can you get that mounting video? I won't be able to get the glass case sorted. That's beautiful. I love it. I'll show it to you in person next time we're together and you can take it in and you can have a big whiff of all that lavender as well. I look forward to it. I really do. Brady, sometimes you really put a B in my bonnet. I need to, this upsets American so much. No, okay. Okay. I also, I want to stop you right there. I disapprove of your framing of upsets. Upset is the incorrect framing, but I'll tell you, like sometimes Brady, we have these conversations, right? And you are a very different man from me. Sometimes while exploring the Brady mind, the fog of war consumes my view of all. And this is one of these moments where I can feel that I have my hands on this Brady-shaped thought, but I can't figure out where the edges are or what the shape of this thing is. It's like, I'm a blind man. And like, is it a rope that I have a hang of like, or is it an elephant? I don't know what this thing is. And it's, I swear to God, Brady. Every day since the last time we recorded, my brain has been running this little loop that goes, what is this thing about the States? I don't understand this thing about you can't say what's the future from. Do you want to recap the topic for first time listeners? Yeah, first time listeners. I'm sure there's a lot of first time listeners here who are already very baffled by us talking about some piece of gold. Right. I've been so thinking about it. I feel like I can't even summarize it. Okay, let me, let me try. Let me try. And I want you to disagree with even my framing of it because I just can't understand the Brady mind. Right. So when you're in an international group of people and everyone is saying, where are they from? Brady does not like it. If Americans say the state they are from, rather than saying America. When a Brady has observed that Americans say the state they're from, whereas everyone else says the country they are from. Totally correct. Right. Americans will say the state that they are from 100% degree. No disagreement there whatsoever. Without saying the country. So to be like, Hey, I'm Brady from England. And then the person next to me be, yeah, I'm Sandy from Texas. Right. It sounded like an idiot if you said Texas America. Right? No, no, no. It sounded like Amora. Yeah. And so, yes, Brady does not like this. Wow. It bothers you. Is it fair to say it bothers you? It doesn't bother me. I think it says something about Americans. Right. When I brought this up in person with the people I was with when I was in Peru, like it almost caused a riot at the dinner table. Whoa. Okay. I know how much this picks at Americans people's minds to the point where I almost didn't bring it up on the podcast. But that's why when I brought it up last episode I said, look, you know, I know this is going to upset people. And I'm aware that I also, by the way, set up a bit of a one of your beloved Kafka traps here because it's almost like the more you bring it up, the more you play to my argument, and the more you argue about it, the more you're sort of again, playing into my belief that it's like this sort of self-important American centric attitude. So you kind of can't win it away. I don't feel that way at all. Like the reason it's been sticking with me is I think there's something very interesting about it. And it hits one of these points that you feel like it's a delicate point in society around identity. And if you hit this point too hard, like the world shatters, that that's why people get really riled up about it. And I know that it can sound like I'm playing into your idea of this when we have the conversation. What makes that extra interesting to me is when you get to the concept of identity is I could barely care less than I'm from America or from New York. Like if I'm trying to think about the things that matter to me in ways that I would self-identify, like American or New Yorker would not be very high on these lists, right? And when I'm being very careful with my words, I would always describe it as like, oh, I feel like someone who grew up in America. But I wouldn't say something like I feel very American, but it's nonetheless super interesting because I kept thinking about like why do Americans do this? And like, and I do think there are a bunch of interesting reasons that relate to regional rivalries about how like people wanted to distinguish that they're not from the other place. Like a thing that I had totally forgotten about until I started to think about it a bunch is if you do grow up in New York, the fact that you don't live in New Jersey is somehow very important, right? That there's like a real New York rules, New Jersey rules rivalry between the two states, which again, as an adult is like, why did I even think that as a kid? But somehow this was like an important piece of information to have is be like, oh, thank God we're not from New Jersey. And it's like, I've basically never been to New Jersey. Like I've been to the airport once as an adult and never again in my whole life. But nonetheless, like where does identity come from? Identity comes a lot from who you aren't just as much as like who you are. Look, Gray. Yeah, I'm happy to hear you talk about this Samora, but this let me cut in at this point because this was one of the more common arguments, right? And almost all the arguments and I read them all on Reddit, right? And almost all of them we either spoke about or were quite obvious to me. And the one that you point out there is a really common one. But that again misses the point I'm making. I understand that. But it's Americans thinking that that's so important. Do you think that someone from Liverpool, a scourcer doesn't think that's the most important thing about them? You know, anyone that's from Manchester, you know, very close by, they completely despise, they completely identify scourses, they live a puddley and to their core way more than almost anyone from any American state I've ever met. Oh, yeah, yeah. And that's how they carry themselves in the UK. This is all about how you present yourself to someone not from your country. And it's having the self awareness and the humility to realise this is really, really important to me in my American context. But today, I'm not in that conversation. And it's not even that people won't understand. It's a polite and that's almost. Yeah, I just want to say quickly, I don't disagree with you there. Like I understand that point. Yeah. Well, let me, the best example to make my point before I let you have the floor is, I was trying to think of someone really famous and I decided I'd pick David Beckham, who is very, very well recognised around the world. Most people I think would recognise him right? Yeah. I recognised him. If he walked into a car dealership to buy a car, for example, he was going to buy a new land Rover or something and he walked in and the salesman came up to him. That salesman is going to know who he is. And David Beckham is going to know he knows, but he will still shake the person's hand and say, hi, I'm David, because that's like the norm in the convention and it's the humble thing to do. And the guy is thinking, you know, buddy, of course, you David Beckham. You think I don't know who David Beckham is, but he will still have the humility to say, hi, I'm David. That's what it should be on this international stage as well. You know, hi, I'm from the United States. Yes, I'm from the big famous country. Yes, you've heard of all my cities and states. Yes, you're probably going to ask me about it. But I have the humility at the first introduction, at the first step, to follow the social norm that everyone else follows, every other Joe below that comes into that car dealership who you haven't heard of has to introduce themselves with their name to start with. And even though I'm big and famous, and you're going to ask for my autograph and a photo later on, I'm still going to start off like everyone else, because that's the humble thing to do. That's the right thing to do. I think that's an interesting comparison. I don't agree that it aligns perfectly, but it's a very good comparison that yeah, they know who David Beckham is, but David Beckham sort of pretends for a moment like they don't. And it also acknowledges America bestriding across the globe as she gets. So yeah, I guess like I wasn't trying to argue that, you know, someone from Spain cares about the fact that New York isn't New Jersey. I wasn't trying to make that point. That's a dumb point. It's just trying to think like why do Americans reflexively say it? And it's because all of their experience is the state is the distinction that matters when relaying to other Americans. And yeah, I totally agree that you can make an argument that that belies a lack of worldliness, but like the David Beckham is very famous, I think there is something about America that is a little bit different because of its omnipresence in the world. But I have a couple of questions for you, Brady, because I want to get the shape of something down. There was one question you was should have asked me last time that everyone is angry that you didn't ask me last time. I wonder if it's one of your questions. Everyone said, I can't believe, I didn't say this to Brady. I guarantee you it's not one of my questions. So why don't you tell me what the question is? Everyone said that you should have called me up on the fact that I said, Brady from England and not Brady from the United Kingdom. And they think it's hypocritical of me to introduce myself from England rather than the United Kingdom, but to call Americans out on introducing themselves from their state. But we did discuss that in the episode. I think that the UK is actually a great comparison to the US with the distinction between the levels and the national government. We totally did discuss that. I don't remember it, but do you think that's hypocritical of me? Do you think like I can't have my cake and eat it too? Or do you think there is a difference between England, Scotland and Wales that is different to the American states? Okay, let's put that on pause for a second because we will sort of get to that then. Here is my question. We're sitting in a group of people. Say we're on a hiking trip in South America. Yeah, we're at an international group of people and everybody is going around and saying where they are from. Yeah. So I'm going to give you a place name and then you tell me if in the ideal Brady world where people are being respectful and cognizant in this way, what their answer should be. Okay. Okay. Alright, so person number one, where are you from? Their answer is Maryland. I should have said that off from the US or America. Okay. Yeah. Canberra. I should say Australia. Okay, interesting. Beijing. China. Hmm. Alright. Hawaii. Can you hear this? This is a little piece of paper where I've written some exceptions. Okay. That's as I wanted to know if there were exceptions. Okay, great. And the two exceptions I wrote on here were Hawaii and Alaska. Okay. Alright. Alright. Yeah. And I don't know why. But someone in the red up brought up the fact they were from Sicily and they don't like saying they're from Italy. And looking at that made me think, I can kind of go with that. I can kind of get that you might say you're from Sicily. And I think the same applies to Hawaii and Alaska. Whether it's so superficial of just being, you know, not contiguous to the main body, I don't know. But I will give those to a leaf pass. And that's totally arbitrary and you can slay me all you want for it. And to head off any of the commenters in the world, we are totally in like foolish consistency as the hubgoblin of little minds territory. Right. Like there's no way to be consistent on this topic. Like so you have a total pass on that. So but I was just curious like I was trying to find a couple places that would be an exception. And with American states, I think Hawaii is the most exceptional of the exceptions. Yes. I almost think it's generous of you to say Alaska. Like I would kind of include Alaska two. If most of the states are within one standard deviation of the norm, Hawaii is three standard deviations away. And Alaska is two standard deviations away. Okay. Okay. So that's interesting. So you would give Hawaii a pass. I was just wondering. By the way, you can go too far the other way. Another reddit comment that caught my eye was a chap who I think was from Denmark saying that when they're in Denmark, obviously they'll say, I'm from Copenhagen or they'll say, you know, they're local part of Denmark. And if they're traveling around Europe, they'll say, I'm from Denmark. But this person said, if they were in South America, they would say, I'm from Europe. I actually think that's going too far. And I think that's bordering on being a bit contescending. Okay. Well, so this is what I was going to try to catch out with the next one. I was trying to pull this next one where my question was going to be, what if the person says and Dora? Yeah. Okay. That's a tricky one, right? Yeah. Because I don't think it's reasonable to assume that even most Europeans would know where and Dora is. That's true. But I think the Brady default to politeness should cut in again. And you shouldn't put the other person in the potentially embarrassing situation. So I think you should say the country. And if they want to say, where's that fair enough? Or if they want to just like pretend they know and go, hmm, interesting in that. But I don't think you should say like a vague thing and make them bury down and say, you know, oh, because basically if I say Europe and then you say, well, where in Europe are Endora? Like it's almost like I didn't think you'd know. I think you're too dumb. Hmm. I just think stick at the country. That seems to be the norm. I agree with you that that that's the norm for everybody but Americans. Obviously, that that's what everybody should follow. So I was just curious if like, so someone from Endora, you think they should say Endora? Yeah. Right. Okay. And let the person gloss over if they want or dig deeper if they want. Because if you say the vague thing, it's almost like I think you're too dumb to know. By the way, I'm aware that argument could apply to the American situation as well. But that better say how are the argument there? Again, I'm not trying to like nail you down on a gotcha moment here. Right. That's just dumb. I genuinely find this interesting and it's been driving me crazy since we last spoke of like what answers would Brady give to these questions? I have no idea. I'm genuinely surprised that Beijing, you would say China. I think that's interesting. But with the small countries, like I remember when I first moved to the UK and you know, I was going to graduate school then. And I was in the position of for the first time very frequently coming across people from all sorts of countries where I had no idea. And I do remember a few awkward situations where I was trying to like, suss out where the hell in the world, whatever this country was that this person had just mentioned. Like what country would you have not known? I mean, I got to pull up a map, but it's actually funny because I remember like I just have this vague sense of shame because somebody said something from South America. And I was not able to place it until like I was able to go back to my dorm room and look it up about like, where was that? Did you know the continental? We thought maybe it was Uruguay. And I wasn't sure like, or Bolivia, one of those two probably. And I was like, is this Eastern Europe or is this South America? Like I just can't place it in this moment. Like I think Uruguay is a little bit in Dora ish for everyone maybe in the northern hemisphere. I don't agree. I will accept it for America, but I think everyone in Europe will know Uruguay because they're such a big soccer country. Oh, freaking soccer always screw in me up with where do people know where places are from. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, okay. I do think if you're from a place that someone is unlikely to know that a socially polite thing to do is maybe clarify a little bit. Like another example on my list is the person answers that they are from Georgia. And I know someone who was from Georgia and they would always clarify the country not the state in America. Yeah. Right. Like they were always really quick on that button. Like they wanted to clarify they're from the country. Do you think that clarification is necessary? Well, it's become necessary because there are so many American George and striding the world assuming that that's an acceptable answer. I was going to say, yeah, because Georgia is so famous that it dwarfs the country called Georgia. Right. So do you think that someone from Georgia should clarify in a conversation that they mean the country not the state? Well, I imagine their accent would probably give it away. But I think you probably would clarify as I said because of the problem that's been caused the America problem. But you do it with a like a a smile or like a it'd be like someone who's got like an unusual name or unusual spelling of their name. They always have to say this thing at the end of their name because because their parents made poor choices and giving them an unusual spelling name and saddle them with this burden for the rest of their life. Yeah. Exactly. Sorry people with unusual spelling names. Okay. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, this mostly gets through it. I mean, I was kind of wondering about also a question like if someone says Tokyo again, you would say Japan. Look, you keep coming to these capital cities and that's a fair point, Gray. And the same applies to London and even though it's not the capital, the same applies to perhaps New York City, right? Right. And Los Angeles, I'd say as well. And the thing I would say to that is go with the country. And then when they say where are you from, you know, then you say, yeah, I'm from the big famous city that you're probably going to guess. But the other reason for that is most of the time when you meet people from those cities, they're not actually from those cities, they just happen to live there. Yeah. It's such an amazing thing when you meet someone in London or from London and they were born in London as well to the point where they'll say, oh, where are you from? Our London. Oh, where were you born? Actually, I was born in London. It's like, oh, amazing. It's it's shockingly rare. Running through my mental rolodex, I don't think I know anybody who was born in London who lives in London. And the same is probably going to happen a lot of the time with Beijing and Tokyo. So yeah, I was just curious because I was trying to think like what are the most identifiable cities in the world? And I feel like Tokyo's got to be on like that top five list. Yep. Which would seem to me like surely I think you're perfectly fine, politeness wise, saying something like Tokyo instead of saying Japan. Yeah. And with Americans, if you're from maybe the two or three most famous cities, you might get a slight leaf pass as well. But Americans have got the extra baggage that there's already this cliche perception that they're like immensely arrogant and American centric. And they're just like, they're just playing to it by then saying that and not just saying America. It's a chance to make an introduction that makes you more humble to start with. I think take the opportunity to be humble rather than just play to the expectation and the cliche. Yeah. So I have two more. One of which I will admit at the front, I think is totally unfair. And it's if the person says they are from Hong Kong. Almost more than Taiwan, I think Hong Kong is I was like, what is the worst answer to muck this up the most and Hong Kong is gotta be that. Then you are being almost deceptive by saying China, right? You say I don't think there's any good answer. If someone says China and as you dig in it, but it's like it's I don't know of any relationship in the world that is like Hong Kong to China, except of course, Macau. Would you be okay with someone saying Hong Kong? I feel like you have to be right? Yes. Okay. Yes, I would be yes. And then finally, Wales. I would expect them to say, well, interesting, interesting. I think that of all the home nations in the UK, I think if you say you're from the UK and you're not from England, that's almost being deceptive as well. If you're Scottish and you're from Scotland and you say, oh, I'm from the United Kingdom, you should have said you're from Scotland. This upset Americans, right? This upset Americans because this is where they think I'm being hypocritical. And maybe I am, but I do think these nations have a higher ranking than an American state. They play in the World Cup. Scotland plays in the World Cup on its own. And you know, Texas doesn't. Does Wales play in the World Cup? Yes, Wales does. Okay. Yes, Wales does as well. I pick Wales because, sorry, Welsh people, I know you care a lot about the difference between you and England, but to me, this difference seems hilarious. They have their own language gray. Yeah, I know. I know that I have their own language, but there's something about it which Wales to me, it's like the Cornwall Independence movement. Like yes, I know you have your own language down in Cornwall too, but the Wales and England, like I just, I just can't take the distinct serious leg. They do play cricket together as well. Wales doesn't have its own cricket team. They have merged with England on that one, but they do have their own soccer team. Yeah. And Wales was subsumed by England for like 600 years and then it re-appeared later. And it's just, I don't know, I think Wales is an interesting one. You're getting me in so much trouble. Am I, I don't think I am. Now, I'm just my Twitter and my Reddit. I'm just asking you questions about the politics in China. Like what could possibly get you in trouble there, Brady? I don't say this is just my opinion. Like I'm just one person. Yeah. And there are a lot more Americans than there are Brady's. So you guys have it your way. I'm just telling you what I think. But no, I mean look, Americans, they're nice people too. So I think the Americans will treat you very nicely. Everybody leave Brady and people. They're brilliant people. I just genuinely think this is fascinating. And I think it's fascinating because I do agree with you that even though I think the distinction between Wales and England, personally I find somewhat ridiculous. I'm totally fine with someone from Wales saying that they are from Wales. And I just think that the UK and the US are on this same level, which is why I also think it's okay for someone from the US to say their states. I've had one more thought about it. And I don't know if this is going to get me out of trouble or get me into even more trouble. Okay. But I was thinking about like reasons this has become the case. And like the one that I harp on is this kind of American centric attitude or this arrogance I refer to you right. But it's also possible that the main reason this happens is because Americans aren't very well-traveled and aren't very worldly and don't have that many experiences in which they get to take this out for a spin. And the same thing applies to why they also don't put the USA in their post because they so rarely send post from outside America. And I don't think this is like a criticism of Americans per se. I think this is just an artifact of the fact they live in such a massive country that it's hard to get out of. It's such an awesome country full of so much stuff you don't often need to get out of it because you can see so much amazing stuff in your country. And they also have so little vacation time, which I think is criminal, how little holidays Americans get. So I like give them a total leave pass for not leaving America much. There's no reason to and also it's very difficult to. But I think that might also play into the reason that they'll default to state identification and not even think of the country side of things. They're just not practiced at it. Well, there's also two other things which I'll be slightly delicate about. One of which is there's a measurement effect that's also occurring here with Americans that you are talking to outside of America. So you're talking to Americans who have passports, who have the means and ability to travel internationally. And I think there's two also confounding factors that those Americans are vastly more likely to be from states that you can 100% guarantee that other people have heard of, right? Like California, New York, Texas. If you're doing surveys of Americans abroad, it's not a huge population of people from Wyoming. And it's going to be a crazy number of New Yorkers. And then I'm also willing to bet that that particular group of people may be in conversation or more interested in disassociating themselves from the federal level of the government and associating themselves with the state level of the government, right? Because if you say like, I'm American, precisely because of the long shadow America casts, it has a lot of associations. And I think people may prefer, particularly in an international setting to be associated with the state rather than the country as a as a whole. This was a very common theme in the red at people wanting to not be tarred with the brush of maybe things that are happening on a nationwide level. I'll tell you one little little anecdote and then we can leave this conversation forever. You will be bothered by the internet no more. Because I do feel, I feel like I have come to a better understanding that its politeness is the fundamental shape of the thing here. And then there's just this little quirk about the UK where there's some disagreement. But again, consistency of goblins. So since the last recording for an experiment, I thought, if anybody asks me where I'm from, I'm going to say America. And of course, now I'm like cruising for people to ask me where I'm from, right? And it's like, I've never been more social, right? It's like, I'm talking to the guy at the Starbucks. I'm talking to people in the office. And you know, the sex and yeah, it's like I'm just like, I'm just cruising for casual conversation like I never have in my life. And I'm coming up with nothing, right? Like, you know, well, first of all, these are rusty skills. And it's just like, this isn't working. But, but miraculously, two days ago in the least likely place, I went to the gym after the gym, I go into the sauna, nice and quiet place. And I, I time my gym in sauna visits very carefully so that nobody is there. I've found the exact correct gym window that has the minimum number of people. And I've rearranged my entire schedule around that. So I'm in the sauna, minding my own business. And what happens? It becomes packed with people like never before, all of whom are having a noisy argument about Brexit. Great. Perfect. Now I can just jump into a conversation. And in the course of the conversation, they asked, where was I from? Yeah. And so I answered America. Yeah. And the guy who it asked looked at me and he said, yes, we can tell that, but where? Yes. Like, ah, right? But it's like, he said it like I was in 80s, right? Like I was a total moron for answering the question in this way. In this, he had said Canada. And I would have said Canada. Yeah. Then it wouldn't have been, right? That's the thing. But I said America. And it really felt like everyone in that sauna judged me in that moment and thought me a moron. This is why this is like yet another reason. Like I'll always just say New York. And I'm not going to say that I'm from America. Fair point, great. Fair point. And when we discussed this last time, that was the best excuse I said as well. I said that was the one reason I think it could be it works. And anyone who uses that reasoning, I find it hard to argue with. You're avoiding the inevitable question that comes next. But I still think you did the polite thing and you weren't like an asshole. And I'm from New York. I love your American accent, Brady. I really enjoy it. It's an interesting discussion point. And it certainly, ah, insights emotion. I'll take your word for that. It's incited no emotion in me, but much much brain buzzing over Brady. Do you know what? That's a fairer way of putting it to. When I like, it's not like Reddit became like a swamp of abuse and anger. It was a completely dominant subject and people were very strident. But there was no like anger. There was just lots of explaining. So I think that's probably a fairer way to put it. I don't want to give the impression that everyone was like really mad at me and abusive to me. They weren't. They were just like, they just wanted to explain it. That's good to hear. I do feel that our Reddit is unusually good. And I hope they're being very good during this absence time. Well, daddy's away. Yeah, everybody beyond good behavior. I'm trusting you guys. It's all been great so far. Like keep it nice and calm. I was also just as a final conversation minimizer. There's a thing that my wife and I have learned to do over the years, which I I had to instruct her to do, which is when people ask where we are from as a couple, we have to answer in a very specific way. Because usually my wife is like the lead in the conversation. And so she would say something like, I'm from Hawaii and he's from New York. And I was like, no, no, no, we gotta do this the total other way. Because what happens when you say that is the person is very interested in Hawaii and doesn't care at all about New York. But because I was the second person mentioned, they feel like they need to give some kind of token comment about like, oh, New York, it's great. Tell me more about Hawaii. So we've as a couple, our couple answer, it has to be New York first, Hawaii second because everybody loves Hawaii. And then that is the polite way to let the conversational interlocutor just start talking about Hawaii because it is the exception. Well done. Sounds like you guys have got that sorted question. Minimization Brady. It's always the goal. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the company that has been on the internet for years and years helping people turn their cool and interesting ideas into a real website to show them off. If you have something in your head like that, there's an idea that you want to get out in the world. Squarespace is the no-brainer place to go to make the website for that idea. They make it very easy to showcase your work or to publish a blog or to sell products and services of any kind. And Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful templates created by world-class designers to start with. So you don't have to create the whole look of your website from the ground up. No, you can take something that is already beautiful and then customize it in a million ways to make it yours. And with building things for the web, there's just so much that you have to worry about, but not if you're using Squarespace because they handle all of the stuff that you'd never even think about for you. Like having to build different versions of the site for every size, computer, and phone screen in the world, not your problem. Squarespace has got you covered. They'll automatically adjust your site to look good everywhere. What are the latest things you need to do for search engine optimization? Again, Squarespace just has that handled. It's the one stop solution for everything you need to make your website happen. And while there's super easy to use, if you ever have any trouble, they have 24, 7 award-winning customer support to help you out. So if you have an idea and you want to get it out in the world, make that happen with Squarespace. Head to squarespace.com slash hello for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code hello to save 10% off your first purchase. That's squarespace.com slash hello and use offer code hello to save 10% off your first purchase. Get started with Squarespace. Think it. Dream it. Make it. So Gray, what did you think of Banksy's shredded art? Okay, you need to explain this to the people. I think most people will know about it. I mean, even you'd heard of it in your blackouts, so this is for posterity, Brady. You have to explain it to the people listening a thousand years from now who have no idea what's going on. This is not a news podcast. This is a time capsule. Greetings from the past, oh people of the future. It's going to be really weird for them to hear that. Yeah. And they're still going to be named him. So back in the day, back in the late 2000s, there was an artist named Banksy. Okay, now I feel like you're giving too much background. So Banksy, the guerrilla graffiti artist type dude, he has this famous image that he sometimes creates and stencils and that of a girl holding a heart shaped balloon. It's like the iconic image that everyone associates with Banksy since he first painted it on a wall somewhere. I think in London, I'm not sure. Anyway, there was an auction at a big famous auction house. Was it Christie's? I think it was Christie's. It was one of the big famous auction houses. It's other bees. It was Sothebees. Sothebees. So it was being auctioned this print of it, an original Banksy print of his piece of artwork. And it was in a frame. It was in like this gold frame. And when the hammer came down, it sold for pretty much exactly a million dollars. So it was this million dollar piece of art. And moments after the hammer came down and the sale was finalized, it turns out there was a shredder, a paper shredder built into the bottom part of the frame. And the piece of artwork lowered itself automatically with some remote control, lowered itself through the frame and kind of self shredded itself. And the painting was shredded coming out the bottom of the frame. So it was this self shredding piece of art that it just sold for a million dollars. It didn't shred all the way. It stopped about halfway. So half the painting is still in the frame. And the other half is dangling out the bottom. Because it was a terribly insecure vertical only shredder. Whereas everyone buying a shredder, you got to buy the quality cross cut. That's what you want. It was actually also a mishap like heat banksy has since kind of revealed it was supposed to completely shred. But in some ways it works better half shredded. It's more obvious what's going on, I think, as a piece of artwork. But I don't think he wanted it to be preserved as an artwork. Of course, everyone was like, Oh, what's going to happen now? Someone just paid a million dollars. Are they going to have to pay? But of course, in one of the great ironies of this piece of artwork, it's now worth even more money. And the person who bought it said, Oh, yeah, I'll pay the million. And now they own this piece of artwork that's worth way more because it's become so incredibly famous for what happened. That's interesting. That's very interesting. I did not realize that banksy had met a statement that his original intention was to completely shred the painting. Yeah, he's shown how it was made and said, you know, I did all these test runs and it completely shredded on all my test runs. But the final thing didn't shred. Which is interesting, isn't it? Because like obviously he was making some statement about the value of art and then having it disappear before people's eyes was quite, you know, quite a clever thing to do. But the fact a kind of half shredded the way it did has created this like quite nice installation. Like it looks quite cool now. I think it's more bankable as a piece of art than if the whole thing had just fallen on the ground into pieces. So it's kind of backfired. I know I hasn't and he's made an even more valuable piece of art. I like the situation more now that it's backfired because I've said it before on the podcast, but if Banksy was a less good artist, he would just be in prison, like as a hooligan defacing public property. And he's very interesting. But I have to say when this story came to me, like, you know, we went to Disneyland, like, and that was a really interesting experience. And I've seen his art and I think it's good. And it's interesting and he has a style. But this really felt to me like, you maybe wanted to make a statement, but it just feels to me like you're being an asshole. By shredding something after it has sold like, I get it, you know, I get what you're going for here. And it's a very Banksy thing to do like a podcast so that doesn't listen to podcasts. I don't really think that's comparable. I'm not. What? I'm not as if shreds is out. I don't know. Like if there was some way that we were able to auction off all of the podcasts. And then after that auction had happened, haha, like the computer they were all located on self encrypted. And now you have nothing. Like surely, yeah, then I'd just be a dick. I don't think there's any other way to do it. No, I hear what you're saying. I mean, I don't know Banksy personally, but the guy obviously has a lot of money and he's made a lot of money through people paying for his art. And then to then decide to make a statement about how you're all idiots if you pay a lot of money for art is kind of a dick move. Yeah, well, you don't even have to assume that that is the expression that is intended. I mean, I would say that's probably the obvious conclusion that you're supposed to draw from this. I can still view this in absence of like, remove whatever it is he's trying to say with his art. It to me seems like a very simple destruction of private property that's no longer yours. Like the gavel comes down and now this is not yours. Again, he got his whole start by painting on surfaces that were not his. So it's not thematically incorrect, but this one just struck me as a like, oh, this is not a stunt that I particularly enjoy. This is not a thing that I think is interesting. And the whole discussion about who is it more valuable now strikes me as a like a weird side show and sort of an irrelevance to the actual discussion. Like I'm genuinely glad to hear that the guy who bought it at auction was happy to still buy it. Great. I'm glad to hear that. Also think probably a pretty good move to do that and then have a bunch of new stories about the shredded artwork, but I'm going to give this stunt like a zero out of 10 as far as, oh, I think that's cool. It doesn't strike me that way. And I feel like maybe that makes me a bit of a party pooper, but it's just the way I feel about this one. What about you? Do you know I kind of feel the opposite despite not wanting to? Like I kind of didn't want to like it. He's one you in spite of yourself. Yeah, like because I kind of have this resistance to gimmicks like that. It was just like a fun idea. It was just I enjoyed the playfulness of it and I enjoyed the idea of the spectacle of shredding something in an auction house. So it tickled me more than I thought it would have, because whenever like modern art happens, right? I always have like a bit of, I don't know if it's a jealousy or a resistance or something, but I always think, well, I could have thought of that. I could have done that. I feel this one was an unobtainable prank to normal people because no one else can sell their piece of art for a million dollars other than him. So no one else could have made the joke. So I feel a bit like it was a bit it was cheating a bit. He was doing something no one else could do. But as I said, I'm not only quite resistance, that sort of thing, but this one captured my imagination. Now I took my hat off to him. I have that same feeling about a lot of modern art. I mean, I know it's like the world's biggest cliche, but it is the reaction like this is dumb and I don't understand the what the point of this is. It seems like a, you know, this auction that's a side effect of the way human brains work. Everybody's playing a speculative game with this art. Okay, great. Whatever. But Banksy is different because the reason you feel that way about modern art, the reason I feel that way about modern art is because it lacks any technical skill whatsoever. That's the like, oh, I could have done this. Right. I could have made this thing. It's not that impressive. Whereas Banksy's art style, like I can't draw or paint remotely as well as he can, especially when he's doing these, these simple drawings, like there's more skill in good simplicity in some ways, like picking the elements and that image of the girl with the balloon, like it's a great image. There's a reason it's so iconic. It has technical skill. And even to pull off this prank with the shredder is in some sense a technical skill as well. I give him that credit. But yeah, I agree with you that most modern art is like, whatever. So this is more interesting than most modern art, but it's because I almost feel like Banksy isn't really modern art, like he's an artist. And he happens to have a particular visual style. And most of the time when I say the words modern art, what I think of is stuff that lacks any interesting technical ability. That's just like garbage in a room that you're supposed to go, oh, it's so deep. So I had to renew my ester to go into the United States. I don't know what that is. It's like a visa, but without it's not as full blown as a visa. It's just like a permit. You fill it in online to say I'm coming to America and they'll let you come in. Oh, you have to do that as an Australian. I go as a Brit put. Yeah, yeah, you have to do that. Yeah, so if you haven't got like a visa or depending what permits you got, it's just like an online thing you do and it's valid for, I think it's valid for a couple of years at least. I did not know about that. So even if you don't need a visa, you need to fill out this little RSVP card for going into America. Well, it's done online and there's no physical thing. It's just all electronic. So when you obviously when you they swipe your passport, just a little tick comes up saying, yeah, ester in place, sort of thing. So for the first time, feeling that I've filled out a few over the years, for the first time when I was filling it out this time, I was asked to enter my social media handles. So I was, you know, who are your parents, where are you born, what's your passport number, all that sort of stuff. And then one was, you know, what's your Twitter handle? Oh, it was optional. It won't be for long though, will it? No, it won't be for long. Actually, I didn't fill it out, but it was optional. And I think there were drop downs for all the different kind of social media you can be on. I don't know how they decide what ones to include and what ones not to include. And, you know, do I have to put all my YouTube channels and my MySpace page? How do you feel about that though, being asked for your social media? I mean, obviously do not like do not like one tiny bit. It feels very invasive. I always wonder like when you swipe your passport, what are they looking at on that screen? You know, you can see that they pulled up some file on you that says things about you, you know, watch out for this guy. He's hard as nails or whatever it has on the little documents there. But with all of this security stuff, it always feels like you're just trying to catch the dumbest people, like the dumbest terrorists. It can't actually be secure. You'd have to be so dumb to be, you know, talking about, oh, I'm putting together this bomb, right, on Twitter and posting photos of Instagram of like all the wires or whatever. And then you travel to the US and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm terrorists Johnny at Twitter. That's my Twitter handle. It's more about networks. It's not that they probably put your hand into something and look at everyone, your friends within who they're friends within who they're friends with and some AI will put together some clever network to realize or hang on. That's kind of where I was going with this, right? It's a policy that would only catch the dumbest person, which then feels like, well, you're really just casting a wide net for whatever it is that you possibly can, which is what makes it feel uncomfortable. I'm talking about you using it like in a clever way, like links that you were just mildly, mildly careless about. But the AI is able to say, hang on. If you're friends with that person and you follow that and you do this and like they start knowing more about you than you realize you're giving away. Yeah. You know how they say these things where they can figure out, you know, with 10 data points, they can figure things out about you that you don't even know about yourself. So that kind of thing. Yeah, no, I know. This is getting very close to it. I have this thought of, like, oh, someone should make this thing. And then I've realized, oh, this thing would probably just destroy all of society. So maybe you don't. And we're getting kind of close to that. So I'm just going to keep my mouth shut. But yes, I do agree with you. That's probably a thing that the machines can pull out reasonably quickly is maybe learning a lot about you by all of the associations with your social media accounts. But there's this thing that I've been vaguely following that this relates to, which is one of these stories that I just, I don't know how real a lot of this stuff is, but it's the like China social credit stuff. Do you know what I'm talking about with this? No, no. Okay. So before I say anything, I want to be very clear that this is like, I've read articles on this, but I just don't know how real it is. And some people seem to think it's very real. And some people are like, oh, no, this is totally overblown. But basically, the Chinese government is implementing a kind of how good of a citizen are you score? Oh, yes. Yes. I do know about this. I only mention it because that's what makes me like when I laugh about how the Twitter handle thing is optional now, but like it won't be for long. Like eventually, it'll just be mandatory. It doesn't feel like it's a good direction for things to go in. Again, I want to state this thing very, very cautiously, but sort of growing up, I much more had the idea that democracy just sort of wins because it's a better system. Right? That like, oh, democracy wins. And it's great. And there's sort of like this upward arrow of history and things improve. And this is great. And then a few years ago, largely from reading the book that dictators handbook, which I turned into that video about rules for rulers, I sort of changed my mind and thought of democracy as much more like a stable but fragile point that you don't inevitably have a march that like all countries moved towards democracy. You can have democracy arrive. And it's a sort of stable point, but not infinitely stable. Like it's more shakeable. So it's not the end result of an inevitable arrow. It's a thing that can happen. But increasingly, I worry that technology is shifting the playing field to favor a kind of soft technology. And this is why I wonder about the China thing. China to me is the perfect example of it doesn't seem to be becoming more of a democracy as it becomes richer. It's better than it was before, but it seems like it's leaning in this technocracy direction. That if you control the technology, maybe you can control the society. And I just worry about that being the way the playing field leans over time. That what technology allows someone to do is like almost by definition, it allows a smaller group of people to do more things. And I do kind of worry about what effect that has on government. It's all sort of vague and incoherent, but that's the uncomfortable feeling I would have when a government form asks you for what's your social media handle. It's like, oh, is this the start of something that's really bad even though right now it might not seem like it's a big deal? What's the difference between a technocracy and like a dictatorship or something where the dictators just have a lot of good technology? I think it comes down to the question of hard versus soft force. Like you're not ruling through an iron fist. You're ruling through a kind of self-sensorship that you can put on the population. You don't have to like outlaw saying something before everybody decides that they're not going to say the thing. Not because it's illegal, but because it's uncomfortable. That's me is a little bit like what this like the technocracy feels like is. You know, you're on Amazon and you're buying books and maybe you think, I'm not even going to buy any books that are even remotely close to anything that a computer somewhere might two degrees of separation away say this is associated with stuff that we don't like. It's like it's not even the extreme stuff. It's anything that could be a degree of separation from something that's from something away from extreme. So that's kind of what I think about as the technocracy that those patterns can be spotted much more easily than they could under like a traditional dictatorship where maybe you have a whole bunch of spies, but you can never have enough spies to keep track of everything. Do those concerns like affect your behaviors now like in anticipation of this stuff coming in or do you act pretty normal now? And it's just if it started becoming a big deal, then you'd be careful about what you bought on Amazon. Or do you sit there on Amazon these days and think, oh, I better be careful because in five years, there could be this whole new regime and I'm going to look pretty bad. I don't think about it now, but I could imagine a future me thinking that kind of thing. I was just trying to gauge your level of paranoia. No, like the answer to that question then is like right now, no, it's not very high because I would describe all of these thoughts as like as the thing that you're supposed to be able to do, playing with an idea. I don't even know how seriously I take this idea. I don't even know how real the thing in China is, but nonetheless, like it's a thing to sort of play with this idea and think about. Maybe this is a thing. Maybe it's not a thing. I don't know, but the social media handles on government forms makes me think of that thing. Like, huh, maybe this is something maybe it's not on a scale from one to 10. How would you rate yourself? Do you think this is crazy talk? Do you think it might be reasonable? I don't think it's crazy talk. It doesn't really affect my behavior. Like, I'm not careful about what books I buy on Amazon, but I don't think it's crazy talk, especially now. I'm literally being asked from my social media handle to enter the US. Yeah, it's connected to like a very little thing that I had in the show notes for a while, but it's like it's sort of the same thing when we talk to while about when people are online, how do you ensure they see news that you would rate as good? And in that conversation, like we both agree that ultimately this needs to come down to some kind of human curation that may be purely algorithmically. This is not possible, but of course, human curation has all of its own problems. Good is important, not good is in happy. Yeah. I'm specifically using the word good in a sort of big way. Let's not get caught up in the details of what that means, but we can have a very broad sense of bad as in bad for everyone and good is in good for society, but we don't need to get more specific. But Facebook is apparently rolling out a program where they're trying to algorithmically or through whatever methods they're doing, figure out who are the trustworthy sharers of news on the platform and then to be able to wait those persons shares more or less in their system. That to me has a little bit of this feeling as well too, that if you're on Facebook, in the back of your mind, maybe you want to share an article, but you have to then do the meta cognition of will Facebook think this article makes me a less reliable person and will therefore turn down the volume on what my shares reach? We face this on YouTube, don't we, though? Like do I put up an avant-garde experimental video on my channel? Yeah, not as many people watching it cost me in the long run. Yeah, I mean, the YouTube thing is a little bit different because it's more opaque and YouTube at least in theory sometimes says like future videos don't affect the past videos and channels aren't people like I just think it's a clearer case on Facebook that somewhere in their algorithm, they have a like serious sharer of important news, however that's defined and then they've got crackpot and you're somewhere on this scale. And then knowing that the things that you share on Facebook are always being fed into where are you on the serious versus crackpot scale. Like that kind of thing then affects. Do you want to share a story that like oh you think it's real? But maybe you have some doubt about, but then you say you know what I don't want to hurt my trustworthy score. I don't want to impact my future audience. So maybe I just won't share that. And what you've read that we will become a bit homogenous and safe. I don't worry that people would become homogenous, but this is just another edge that feels like it's being maybe eroded towards this kind of technology that you're being watched in all of these different ways. And I do think it's fair to say with a lot of the big social media platforms that you know they really want you to be the kind of user they want on their platform. And they're going to amplify or mute you based on your behavior. And it's like well, this is a tool that many people could want to use. That to me is the fundamental thing about the technology is the like meta thinking about your own actions and how they affect your ranking in some system. Do you think being a Hello Internet listener gets you more points or less points on your government score? I mean it gets you more Hello Internet points, that's for sure. Gets you one step closer to that golden hot drop. No matter what country you're from or what American state you're from, it's always good to well make yourself a bit smarter to exercise your brain in ways that'll make you a better problem solver or maybe more creative. That little bit sharper. Now brilliant is a website that will help you do just that. It's essentially a community and a repository of math and science problems and puzzles that are tailor made to help you understand concepts at a deeper level. I actually met some of the people from Brilliant while in San Francisco just recently and the thing that struck me most was how much time and effort goes into every question. They aren't just slapping together a quiz for the pub, whacking on a few multiple choice questions to make it more clickable. These people are super serious and super passionate about how the brain works, how learning works and they put loads of time into what they're publishing. We talked for ages about how pictures are chosen, how questions are laid out on the page, what wording works best and they're constantly improving and adding to what they have. Learning is an art form to these people and I suggest you go along and check out what they're doing. Now in addition to these more elaborate lessons on the site, my favorite section is the problems of the week. Now you can probably guess what that is. Each week a new set of problems from beginner to advanced is unleashed on the world. You can do that week's edition or you can go back in time to previous weeks. And in addition to the questions themselves, there's an interesting community discussion about what's really going on. People chat through what's in the question how they would have solved it. Those discussions and explanations are often just as intriguing as the problems themselves. Now there's lots of free stuff on the brilliant site so I do go and have a play. But if you take out a premium subscription, that means you get access to everything. It's essentially like the Pro model. Then all you have to do to get 20% off is enter the URL brilliant.org slash hello. That's 20% off plus some fame and glory for Hello Internet because you use our code. That's brilliant.org slash hello. Thanks to brilliant for supporting the show and well, let's get back to the show. Daylight savings time, Brady. Today is the day where we fell back, which I always have to think for a minute which way that goes. We put the clocks back at two. I was still awake at 2 a.m. I actually watched my iPhone clock like I was watching like the ticking version like you know on the little icon and I was going to tick tick towards two and then the hour hand went backwards by now. It was cool. Did it rotate backwards? Did it just pop backwards? Well, it happens so quick I couldn't quite tell. It looked like animated back but maybe it was instant. I don't know. I can't believe you were up to see that Brady. What a strange time to be alive. He lost an hour of your life or I don't know. I hate the spring forward fallback thing because it sounds helpful but it's not because I still have to think it through real hard each time to be like, wait, so yesterday 7 p.m. is what today right? Like I just yeah there's something about this math that I find totally impossible. I'm rubbish just in general with clocks like if someone in America says cool mate at this time and I have to do like time zone conversions that's like an hour of my life gone. Yeah, this is why you got to turn on time zone support on the calendar on your phone. So when someone says 3 p.m. in New York you just put 3 p.m. in New York on your phone and then it shows you wherever the hell you are what time that actually is. Just let a computer do this because God only knows those calculations are not easy and they're not consistent. But I'm sure you've got thoughts on dialogue saving time. Well, I mean we go through this madness all the time. It's obviously dumb. I've spoken about this many times. Yeah, okay we need to just mention Brexit briefly because now Brexit now it's serious because the EU has said they're getting rid of daylight savings time. They're not going to do this anymore. So this was their final fallback and the plan is they're going to spring forward and then that's it then they're done. No more of this nonsense. So we keep the lot in the evening which is the best one. I don't know. I don't know how this works. All I know is last fall back they're going to spring forward and then boom they're done. I can't figure out when the sun is up. Someone always loses in this calculation. Children go to school in the dark or whatever. Look there's only so many hours of sun to go around and it's screwing with the clock doesn't change anything. But they're loading the sunlight towards the second half of the day rather than the first half of the day. I'll take your word for it. Yeah, I think that's the way you like that's the general agreement is you leave summertime on and you stop savings time or whatever. That is the saving time. Yeah, all right. Yeah, it's like it's impossible to talk about. Yeah, it's basically my question was do I get to play more cricket after school? I want that preserved maximum cricket time after school. So I want the sun to stay up as long as possible. I think that's what's happening for your European cricket parties. I'm pretty sure that's what's happening. But I do not trust me to do the mental math at remotely about how that's going to work. But of course the UK is hates anything European they're going to be that way keeping it. It's surely it's like god damn it right now we're leaving the EU. This is exactly the thing that I really worry about that because of the weird politics of this the last thing in the world the UK wants to be seen to do is anything that aligns with the European Union. And so I feel like I was reaching out to taste delicious Ambrosia which is that I don't have to deal with this nonsense in my life. Do you know what I hate the daylight savings time and it's like I am a man unmoored from the world. I was going to say I can't think of anyone in the world who would be less affected by this than you. But Brady I have to go to the gym right. The gym is the thing that is like it's like hello internet keeps me on the bearist of Gossamer threads connected to what's going on in the world around me. It's like the god damn gym and the people with their schedules their schedules shift when the clock shift so I have to shift my schedule to and the other one that kills me is when I go into my office like in this big building I don't want anybody there so I get up nice and early so I can go in before anybody arrives. My whole life is scheduled around these things and then the clock's changed so it affects me and I heard it like I hate how it affects me and it's like it was going to be fixed it was so like it was within my grasp and then it's just been whisked away I'm crushed like I cannot explain how crushed I am. I haven't like dipped into this argument but I have no doubt the bricks that people absolutely want to keep this daylight saving situation because it's the sort of thing they would want to keep. Yeah it's like it hits all of the wrong markers. It's an obvious thing. It's a visually obvious affects everyone thing that they're going to not want to align with the European Union on and it just crushes me it makes me so sad. Why does everyone at the gym change their schedules? I don't understand. I can see how people being in and out of the office would change because of you know light and people wanting to go and play in the park or ride their bikes and stuff but I can't see how why the gym instructors change the time for their spin class and things like that. What do you mean like it's it you know there's spin classes at 8 a.m. or whatever and then it's still going to be at 8 a.m. the next time. Exactly. So when the clock's changed I can't see how that affects your life. But I still have to wake up an hour earlier or an hour later to hit the empty hour at the gym. Right the empty hour moves when everybody else's schedules move. Okay so it's the moving empty hour but so spin class is still at 8 it's just there's more or less people in it because of people wanting to take advantage or avoid sunlight and stuff. I feel like I don't know I don't even understand how to explain this. Okay all right busy gym times let's reverse engineer this. Okay it's busy in the morning before work from all the people I'm really frustrated by who are like they get up early go to the gym and they have a great day people. I want to be one of those people I'm not and then I silently resent them for they are running in the morning right so before work hours gym is busy then it starts to lull off as the workday begins. Yeah and this is where we get into the beautiful empty hour at the gym. Yeah but it's a brief period of time because once you start getting close to lunch time again people are taking off early from lunch I presume to get to the gym and then lunch time it's incredibly busy and after work it's incredibly busy. Yeah of course. So when the clock's changed that's all still the same pattern isn't it? It's just yeah but it's just but it hasn't moved on your clock it's only moved in reality so if you still obey your clock which admittedly has changed and your your body might have to slightly adjust over the course of a week or so but as long as you obey your watch you can still hit all these windows that you want to hit. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here like I'm doing so do I? I totally don't understand your complaint here unless you're saying people start changing whether they go before work or after work. No no no nobody changes anything. Well there's nobody changes their schedule in any way but the hours change. Okay so you're talking about like your natural body rhythm like you're having to like just think convenience of that. What I want and again what I'm so close to achieving is to be able to ignore the fact that the clock's change. So like in my schedule I get up at you know six in the morning and when the clock's change whichever which way I want to move my schedule so that I'm getting up at the same time I was yesterday. The same time on your watch or the same time in the universe. No I'm in the same time in the real world right? Like not the same time on the clock right but I can't because everything else in the world has shifted and then there's only two things I care about which is I want no one in the office and I want no one at the gym and because those two slots move I too have to move and that's where it affects me. Okay and that's the frustration. So the thing you're resenting is that you're having to change your your body clock. Yes that's the whole reason the clock thing is dumb is because everybody has to change their body clock. That's the whole problem. I understand you now. Okay fair enough. Fair enough. But like I was losing my mind. What I thought you were suggesting was you know everyone's going to the gym before work and then when the clock's change everyone starts going to the gym after work because you know it's easier to cycle or something like that. But that's not what's changing just what's changing is your your wake up time in relative to the stars. Yes. What you're discussing there is the theory of what should be happening with daylight savings time right is is people adjust to have more after work activities because there's more sunlight but in reality land nobody does that. That definitely happened in my reality in Australia. Okay. But I haven't really noticed it in the UK so much. It's not so much in the it's like everybody's going to work at the same time and everybody's doing whatever at the same time nothing changes. So anyway I'm grumpy because today I feel like I have just been doomed to a thousand years of daylight savings time changes. Yeah. I've got to build my own private gym in my own private office that's next up on the project list I guess. So great just before we came on air on air just before we started recording. Before we started broadcasting live to the world Brady. Yeah just before we started I saw a tweet and you won't see it so I took a screen cap of the picture that press association tweeted they took a photo of the the final board and I think it was the world championship of Scrabble so this was like you know obviously the two finalists went head to head I don't know who they are I haven't done enough research. So this is the final board from the Scrabble. I just wanted to see what you thought of it. I really wanted to know how many of the words you knew. Okay. Because obviously these people know all the words don't they. All the words. Yeah. They know all those tricky words that can get you out of a jam. Tell me you're not fascinated to see what the final board looks like in the Scrabble Grandfellow. The Super Bowl of Scrabble. Well I mean I can say I'm not excited because I have a real visceral aversion to Scrabble. I think it may be one of the worst games mankind has ever created. Wow. A lot of these don't even register as words to me right you should be able to read any which way right. Like there's DE on here DE is not a word. Apparently it is as is UT. Yeah. I mean they must mean Utah everybody around the world would know that UT is the abbreviation for Utah. Can you use abbreviations or abbreviations? No. No you can't. EN I know is a word. That was one of my cheat words I learned in Scrabble. A cheat word huh. What does EN mean? That's today with printing I think it's like it's a measurement and EN it's a small gap. Oh yeah of course. I remember this from Late Tech Type setting. Yeah it's like M&N lengths right. So ZO basically is there any two letter combination that is not a word in Scrabble? That is the question I'm left asking. Looking at this F E F. What is this? There's a blank one in the middle. Yeah that's a blank in Scrabble. That can be any letter you want it to be. Have you ever played Scrabble? Yeah I have played Scrabble as terrible. But that blank is really throwing me off there. Can you please you can please a blank? Yeah and you nominate what letter it is. I don't know what letter it is in that word because I don't recognize all letters around it. Level little suss. I don't know what that's supposed to be. Shouldn't they write in marker what the letter is? That's very confusing. You just have to remember. Maybe they should. Yeah the funny thing is like there's so many weird words on this board that when you see a word you recognize it's like really exciting like oh a variant. I know that word. Or words that I'm just sort of registering as I think I know it like groutier like yes sounds like a thing I might know. One of the grouts. Yeah I want to grout. Any I know the word any that's good. I would have been embarrassed putting gag on the board. Jaw I can recognize jaw. Scriber I get one who scribes. I'm surprised. I'm surprised. Text is a word. T E X but it is. Everybody knows if you're from Texas you're a tax. That works. So all of that the American states with you isn't it? I'm saying everyone around the world knows there's text max. Text max the word. I don't know I just why do you hate Scravel so much? Are you good at it? No I'm terrible at it. I can't spell. That's true Tim's that is true. I'm a terrible Speller and a fast and careless type which is a fantastic combination bad comb by that. I played Scravel a couple times and I just hate everything about it. Okay here's the fundamental problem with Scravel. You have to keep turning the stupid board to read it right. This is like ground zero problem with your game is that you have two people sitting at a table and it's not like a chess match or like a breathtakingly beautiful go board. No like you can't read it upside down and you have to turn it so you lose half the thinking time when you're playing Scravel with somebody else. Although sometimes looking at it from another angle makes you have ideas you wouldn't have otherwise had. No. Disagree. That's true. Okay. You don't get enough letters. You need more letters. I think the double triple word score thing makes it look like a cheap game of jeopardy or something. Like even this board is just ugly. Look at it. It's ugly. This is not a piece of artwork. The double triple word score is that that's where the strategy comes in though. What to open up on what to you know how aggressive to be and how cautious to be. That's what makes it more than just how many words do I know. This is bellotron. Yeah. But it looks cheap. Look at it. It's cheap and gross. I'll give you that. I'll give you that it looks cheap but I think that's because they've kept the original design and I quite like that they've done that. They haven't like like for example the redesigning of Uno cards I think was tragedy the way that the draw for card has changed its design. I like that scrabble looks exactly like it looked when I was a kid. Okay. I remember that draw for a while. Exactly. It's burned into your mind. Right. And then they changed the design. They changed the design of the draw for. Is it the one now just with the circles with the no words? Yeah. And it's all. Yeah. Oh, I like that much better. Well, look you would. I don't like words. Yeah, but fundamentally. It's about nostalgia. Like, okay, I'm trying to look at this stupid scrabble board. God damn it. Double letter, double word, put symbols on there. I hate words because they talk to you when you look at them. Right. So you're looking at the board and it's a triple word double letter. They're all like they're all just dumbly talking to you when you look at them and looking at a scrabble board and trying to play it. It's like this noisy thing. I just I hate everything about it. I don't like scrabble. And this is just aesthetically unpleasing. Go is the winner in this realm. Go is like two players building a work of art together and scrabble is the worst. It's the ugliest game by far. Can you think of an uglier game? Can you think of a single game that's uglier? I am struggling. Yeah. What do you think of games that I like three-dimensional like mouse trap, run yourself record? Oh, mouse trap. Wow. Wait, is run yourself a ragged a game? I don't know run yourself a ragged. That has different names in different places. I found and I'll run yourself a ragged in a shop and it was called something different. So I don't know what other people know that is. I'm unfamiliar with that. Mouse trap. I'm fine with that. But I don't know. Mouse trap falls into, you know, it's like shoots and ladders. Oh, sorry. Wasn't it snakes and ladders? Yeah. It's snakes and ladders. Where the purpose of snakes and ladders is to teach young children the futility of decision making and that they live in a universe in which their decisions don't matter. Here I found run yourself a ragged code, scrubo, scramble. I recognize that even less. Okay. And it's like mouse trap. The purpose of that is also to instill in children that the best laid plans of mice and men often go wrong. They're like, look, you're going to have these complicated structures and they're not going to work and welcome to the world kid. This is tough. I don't even remember how the game mouse trap works, like the actual board game part of it. I would just build the trap and then set it off so I could watch it work. I didn't care about the game itself. I just wanted to build the thing and then see if I could make that route-gold big machine work properly. Yeah. Again, it's like a children's learning. There's a reason that adults don't play mouse trap, right? Because they've learned. Oh, complexity often leads to failure. Like hungry hungry hippos. There's not international championships of hungry hungry hippos because you've taught children again. Sometimes your skill doesn't matter and just being fast and voracious is all the matters in the world. So that's what these things are for. I'm not even joking. I really think that's why kids have these weird games that don't make any sense to adults because you're like, you're learning things about the world. You're learning these harsh, harsh lessons that we have to cover in candy color plastic. Scrabble, it's an adult's game, but it's the worst game. The kids' games, maybe they look kind of garish, but they're serving the purpose that they serve. Those things you put in baby cribs that have mirrors and bells and things on them. They're garish, but the purpose of them is there's like a human trying to congeal inside this brain and you want to give it a bunch of stimulus to play with to self congeal. That's why that thing exists. You make childhood sounds so romantic. Do you like trivial parts? Yeah, it's okay, I guess. It's better than Scrabble. With Brady and I discussing hiking on the show, the thing that is good for your soul, the thing that calls to us, I have found myself re-listening to one of my favorite audiobooks. All-time. That book is A Walk in the Woods. It's By Bill Bryson. Now, where would I listen to my audiobooks? Well, there's only one place. It's audible. There is no better place to listen to audiobooks than audible. Their selection of books is just unparalleled. If you want an audiobook on any topic at all, audible is going to have it. In addition to their huge library of audiobooks, they're also producing their own original programs. When you sign up with audible, every month you get one credit that's good for any audiobook plus you can choose from two of their audible originals and the selection changes every month. And an audible, your books are yours to keep. You can go back and re-list in any time even if you cancel that membership. You can start a 30-day trial and get your first audiobook free by going to audible.com slash hello internet or text hello internet to 500 500 to get started. Now, I'm going to recommend that if you find yourself too called into the woods that you should listen to a walk in the woods by Bill Bryson. Like I said at the top, it's one of my absolute favorite audiobooks. I'm going to particularly recommend you get the version that is narrated by Rob McQuay. A great audiobook narrator can really add a lot to a book and his reading of this book really brings the story to life. It's a walk in the woods. It's by Bill Bryson, but look for the narrator Rob McQuay. I love it. I've listened to it several times and I'm listening through it again. It's just as good every time. So you should get that as your free, audible book. And once again, you can start your 30-day trial by going to audible.com slash hello internet or text hello internet to 500 500 to get started. Thanks to audible for supporting the show and thanks to audible for bringing me so many great audiobooks. You had me watch a movie Brady? I felt like we had to review first man. First man. Yeah, you feel like we had to review it? Yeah, well, you know, I love Apollo and the moon and I don't know, I felt like one we should do. When you sent me an instant message suggesting this as a movie to watch for the podcast, I felt there's no way I can turn down a Brady on a NASA movie. It's just not possible for me to say no. So I agreed very quickly to go see first man, which I have just come from a showing up and you saw it last night, did you? I saw it last night and you saw it for a few hours How do you want to start with this Brady? I don't know. This is always a problem with movie research and we kind of don't know how to start. Look, I'm just going to do what you want. I loved it. It was a great movie and I had this feeling watching the movie that a good movie can do which is when it's over, I almost feel like I've woken up from a kind of dream. That's what this movie was. Like I was seeing it in the theater. It's a great movie for seeing it in the theater. It was all dark. It had my full attention and then when the credits rolled, I needed a cup of coffee because this feeling of like, oh, I've woken up from some kind of dream state was very strong. So I thought it was a great movie. I was expecting frankly to be really bored throughout the whole thing and that I was going to watch this because you wanted me to, but I thought it was great. I loved it. I thought it was boring. Oh my god. Okay. Wow. I thought it was really, really dull. Huh? The world has turned on its head in this moment. I was also thinking, oh man, Brady must love this. Brady is probably eating up every moment of this movie and I thought it was either wrong. Wow. Okay. Tell me what you didn't like. To be fair, it didn't feel like as long as it was. It didn't feel too long and it was a long movie. So maybe boring is not the right word because I wasn't like looking at my watch thinking I wish this had finished. It felt like the right length. Okay. I just felt very bored by it. It had a few good things in it. I had things I liked about it. But I was a bit disappointed. Okay. What were you hoping it would be? I was hoping it would because it was all about Neil Armstrong, you know, the first man. It was all about the person. I was hoping it would tell me and the people watching something about him like it would shed new light or it would help me understand the man better. The problem is right. The problem with this film is it's about a man who is a really boring guy like Neil Armstrong was kind of almost in some ways picked for his boringness. That's what made him so ideal for what was thrust upon him. But it it means like he doesn't make for a good movie. Like three or four amazing things happened to him in his life action wise. They showed those moments quite well. Like when his Gemini ship spun out of control and when he escaped from his lunar practice craft when it exploded and hit the ground and things like that and when he walked on the moon of course. And they dealt with all those moments very well. And there are a few sequences and visual parts of the film that I thought were really good. But like I just felt like he was really boring and they didn't give me any understanding of him and his motivation and some of the human things that may or may not have happened in his life. And maybe that's because nothing interesting happened. And the couple of things they did do that sort of humanized him kind of made up. He didn't leave any jewelry on the moon for his little girl. Yeah that was the number one question I had. The movie opens with his daughter dying which I presume is real. Yes. But at the end of the movie it shows him dropping this piece of jewelry of hers on the surface of the moon. And it was so shocking as a thing. My reaction was this must be true because surely they wouldn't they wouldn't fabricate this. But then immediately I did the meta cognition of I just don't know and I want that was my number one question for you was was that real? And of course, okay. So no it isn't. No. And there was so thorough and accurate in this film, making sure all the ships look right and the buttons were in the right place and that to do something like that was quite audacious. And it was so audacious that made me think my goodness is that because I like to think I know quite a lot about Apollo 11. I was thinking, did this happen and I didn't know? Have I missed this piece of trivia all this time? What a clearing emission in my knowledge of the moon landing that I went and researched it and looked it up. Then I read articles about the director saying, basically I made it up. That's a bad move. I think that's a really bad move. But I kind of like you kind of see why they did it story wise because it made the story nicer and it suddenly made Neil Armstrong interesting. Oh, it's interesting that he did that. But in fact, he didn't do anything so interesting. He remained boring. Well, I had just a different reaction to it because I wouldn't use the word boring. I would use the word level. He is portrayed as a man who is level. That doesn't make for great films. Does it? It doesn't make for great films unless your movie happens to be about what was the first human who stood on the moon like? What I was thinking of during the movie is for this project, you're trying to select someone who has such an unusual cluster of characteristics. I mean, again, the astronauts already are a couple standard deviations away from anything like a normal human being. And for this kind of project in particular, you're looking for someone who is risk-taking enough that they're like, yeah, I'll go to the moon, but they're also so level-headed that you can trust them with the gigantic rocket ship that would go to them. Like, you can't send a cowboy off to do this kind of thing. Yeah, but think of that as your film pitch. Okay, I want to pitch to you a film about a guy who's really level and no matter what happens to him, he kind of just stays really level. Again, any other movie, terrible protagonist. And I think we also touched on this a little bit for Captain Sunlenberger when we were talking about the plank. Like, there's the same thing. Like, he's a like a level guy in a really interesting situation, which is again, is exactly what you want. Like, I always want those pilots to be real boring on those announcements. Maybe it's a casting issue then, Gray. Maybe it's a casting issue because Sully is the same, but he was played by Tom Hanks, who's, you know, so charismatic and quite a successful actor. And I've always found Ryan Gosling, who plays Neil Armstrong, to be quite a boring actor. I find him quite uncharismatic and not that great. I kind of like him still, but he always plays really sort of dreary dull characters. And maybe they needed to give the part to someone who just had some sparkle somehow just to rescue Neil Armstrong from himself. Don't get me wrong, by the way. You know, who loves Neil Armstrong more than me, but. Yeah, I don't think you're like, Pupuig Neil Armstrong. And this is what we're talking about, the movie. I did have a little bit of a hard time taking Ryan Gosling seriously in the beginning of the movie. You know, shouldn't you be using moves from dirty dancing to try to pick up Emma Stone, like isn't that what you do? This is like, you're such a pretty boy. But he won me over with this level portrayal. And I guess like the other thing here is I've been kind of down on movies lately. Oh, we have discussed it a little bit, but this feeling of being beat to death by the machine that makes the movies and knowing too much about how movies are made and the structure of movies and then seeing like, Oh, these character decisions were made for this reason because like this just has to fit in this way. It just all of these strings, like I can see all of these strings and you need to have a disagreement between your main protagonist right about now. There it comes. All right. It's like, Oh, it's exhausting. Whereas I think the reason I got pulled into this movie is it just it so wasn't a traditional three-act structure movie. It gets a sequence of things that happen to Neil Armstrong. And he is not a protagonist for a mainstream blockbuster movie because he has no emotional reactions to anything. And that's sort of the story of who he is. Yeah, but they did then make him cry on the moon and you know, that made stuff up to, I don't know great. I thought it was a bit cliché. I thought maybe I've seen too many space movies, but I thought it was cliché. It had all the things that the right stuff and Apollo 13 and all these things have to have. It seemed to just tick all the boxes. It has the trope of the anxious wife who's actually quite steely and and it had you know, the deaths that make you question whether this is all worth it. I mean, you can't mess with what really happened and everything and the film was pretty accurate. Have you seen the film the right stuff? No, I haven't I have not seen it. I'm sorry because that's the great space movie. Okay. And I felt like this was like, I won't say a poor man's right stuff because it's probably cost more to make than the right stuff. But it felt like I wanted to be the right stuff, but failed in all the areas where the right stuff succeeded because the right stuff is a very similar film. It even starts with a test pilot and the test pilot life and then becoming astronaut and going to astronaut training and the funny things that happen is just selected as an astronaut and then the personalities of the men who are chosen to be the astronauts and their relationships with their wives and all these sort of things. So this was like this followed the right stuff template, but it didn't have the brilliant acting and the fascinating characters and I know I have seen less space movies than you have, but that strikes me a little bit as surely this is what happens when you send someone into space. Yeah, like you got to have the training, like they do the training montage in Armageddon because you got to train guys you're sending up into space, right? And yeah, I mean, I can't like I just I was so sure that Brady was just going to love this movie and we were going to have two minutes at the end of the podcast where we both say we thought it was great. And then there's let me tell you some things I liked about the movie. Okay. Let me tell you some things I liked about the movie because there were things I liked about the movie. I loved the scene where they did the launch of the Gemini, the first launch, where they never once showed the outside of the rocket. Okay. And they focused on like the rivets and how this thing feels like a tin can that's just been shaken to death. And I thought that was a really brave way of showing the launch. They lost their nerve when they did the Saturn launch finally to go to the moon and they went for the all the cliche classic shots. But the Gemini launch made it feel like, wow, this was really pokey what they were doing in these tin cans. And it was creative and different. And just to follow on from that, I also like just in general the way they showed what it was like to be like in the space suit. They made it all seem a bit crappier and more homemade, which was probably a little bit accurate, like you know, what it's like to have all the windows fogged up and to be inside your mask and hear your own breathing. And it did give a real sense of not just a sense of being there, but a sense of the precariousness of what they were doing that I haven't seen in a lot of other space movies. And is that it? Is that the end of the list? That's pretty much it. And the rest of the things I've written down here are things I didn't like. Wow. That's so interesting. It was really well made. It looked good. It was a bit too much of the shaky face close-ups, you know? That is my one major downside was I at many points felt like I was in that three-axis spinning machine with just like Jesus Christ. Can't you guys lock off a camera for any of these shots? Like you can't. It's like was everything filmed by a guy standing 50 feet away using a telephoto lens, but by hand, like this is like stuff in the house, like you know, conversations and stuff, not the rocket stuff where it's supposed to be shaking around, but yeah. It struck me as bizarre and like an intrusion of modern filmmaking onto this thing that set in the 1960s. Because otherwise like they clearly put a kind of 1960s grain over the whole movie, which I thought gave it an interesting feel. But it felt very strange then when they were also having just this shaky cam. Like that was that was my number one thing like Jesus Christ guys. This doesn't work when they're just talking. It's like AB camera shots here and it's it's all over the place. Did you notice a lot of what felt like gratuitous shots showing watches? Because I think like some money probably changed hands to make sure that the Amiga got some some time, the moon watch, but it felt like there were a lot of like the watches felt a bit gratuitous in the film, but maybe I'm just something I pay attention to. I don't think you are. I don't think you're overly sensitive to that. I was very aware of several characters watches. Even ones that I didn't recognize the brand, it wasn't always like oh look that's obviously, you know, an Amiga. They just seem to place a lot of emphasis on people wearing watches all the time. Yeah, there were several shots where watches seemed really shiny and cuts were pulled down just below the watch. So I don't think you're crazy with that. Tell me more about what you like. Let's hear some positives. Well, I have some questions for you as the expert. Okay. So a thing that also made it feel like it was not a traditional movie to me was very little explanation of lots of things, which I thought was great. As brave, I was watching it thinking, well people understand what's going on here because of the lack of exposition. Yeah. There were many scenes where I can say I didn't really get the details of what's going on. It's like oh, there's a problem. This guy seems unhappy with the decision that's just been made, but I don't really understand why. Like in the lunar module, when they're landing, it's like Buzz Aldrin seems annoyed with some of the decisions he's making and it's not clear at first why I don't understand. But I think it's a great move if they didn't have Buzz Aldrin spell it out for the audience. Like I like those clunky exposition lines. But what I was wondering is like how much of Ryan Gosling's dialogue was real? Because watching the movie, I was getting the impression that they're not doing exposition dialogue because this must just almost entirely be whatever the dialogue was in the actual cabin. That's how it sounded to my ear. I didn't hear anything that I didn't think was what was said. I've heard the recording of some of that landing a few times and there was nothing. It all seemed to follow exactly what was said. I guess there were so many Apollo nerds watching that they had that's one time where they couldn't really take any license with actual dialogue. Is the recordings of which still exist? Yeah. That's what I was thinking is like I wonder how much of the voices that I'm hearing on the headsets are just the actual recordings from the day. Or did they have the actors just say the same things? I have no idea. But I obviously Ryan Gosling is saying all his lines. But I was just wondering about like some of the faceless NASA guys, like if that's just actual recordings from the time. Well the big question that they had to deal with, which was interesting was what they were going to do for Neil Armstrong's first words on the moon. There's this famous story isn't it? He was supposed to say for it to make sense that's one small step for A man, one giant leap for man kind and the A was missing. Armstrong always said, well that's what I was supposed to say. And he actually pretty much said, actually I think I said it and it was kind of lost in transmission whereas other people think he just flubbed his lines at the moment. And I wondered how they were going to deal with that and they just went with one small step for man, giant leap for mankind and they didn't really make it clear how they were playing it from my hearing of the recording. I don't think he said A, I think he blasted up. I could there's been all sorts of analysis done and people saying what could or couldn't have happened instead. But I think he flubbed it as well. I'm sure there has been but to my ear, it doesn't sound like there's time to correctly say an A. And someone who has edited a lot of audio is like if there's an A, you've done a thing where you have pronounced a vowel at best, but you haven't you haven't really said it. I actually wasn't even really thinking about that because I was just thinking like, yeah, he messed it up, he messed it the line and it's fine. It still sort of makes sense in the way that it said. Yeah, I think the meaning comes across yeah. Yeah, the meaning comes across. And it's got almost a bit more poetic now maybe that's just because we've heard it that way so many times but yeah, it's he could almost have said anything and it would be poetic, right? Yeah. Golly G, look at that earth. All right. And if you heard it 10 million times, it would become like, oh, that's the most poetic thing anyone's ever said. Well, the third man to walk on the moon. So the first man on a Apollo 12 because everyone was like, well, what's he going to say and what doesn't matter? And he was kind of aware of the weird situation he was in. When he stepped on the moon, his name was Pete Conrad. He was quite a short guy. So as he jumped down the ladder, he went, whey, as he stood, and then he said, it may have been a small step for Neil, but it was a big one for me. What a clown. That's good. He was a bit of a comedian. All of this makes it more stark that they manufactured the thing about the bracelet and his daughter. Yeah. Because if it it seemed like a movie that was really paying attention to all of the details and wasn't bothering to do exposition for the audience and seems to be using just a ton of actual dialogue from the scenes. And also my big point that I agree with you on was, and all of the earlier flights, I loved the claustrophobia of the camera not leaving the cabin or just only showing shots that would be cameras bolted to the ship itself. And it's like, I thought they did a tremendously good job of this feeling of claustrophobia. And it's one of my measures for a movie of it is a movie working as does it cause any kind of emotional resonance. And all of the scenes in the cockpit for me were high anxiety scenes, even though I know like, oh, this happened a hundred years ago when he was fine. But the way they filmed it conveyed that. And yeah, it really gave that feeling of this is a bit of a tin can that we've made work. And it's just such an interesting cinema technique, the way you can create anxiety, almost because of the expectations in a movie that like, give me the wide shot, like I want the wide shot, and I know the movie's not going to do it. And it creates this claustrophobia. I disagree, though. I thought it was perfectly fine in the final mission to go for the wide shot. I feel like that made it stand out as a more different thing. And almost made it feel more uplifting after all of these, all of these anxiety inducing buried alive inside this little tin cancines from earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Man, I never know with you, Brady. I never know at all what you're going to think. Maybe it was just my mood. It got me at the wrong time. Or, you know, I've always wondered what must have been like to be Neil Armstrong and walk down that ladder and leave that moment. And this film was the first time I saw it recreated an interesting way. It was the first time I thought, because I always think the reality must have been quite disappointing compared to like, you know, the way we mere mortals build it up, like to actually have lived it. It must have seemed a bit like just normal and dirty. And this is the first time I've sought portrayed that way. It was like, it felt like, I felt like I had some sense of what it might really have been like, which was nice. What do you think it was like, you just mean, does that sort of the normality of it? Yeah, just like, I mean, because he did it and he knows what it was like, you know, what it looked like and felt like and this grand moment in history that no one really knows what it looked like, except for this terrible grainy camera angle that we had. Like, I don't know, it's like such a built-up moment in human history, but the reality of it, no doubt, was quite normal and human and visceral and I don't know, that came across and by showing it through his eyes and looking out the glass and showing his hands on the ladder and it just seemed, it was very unglamorous the first step. And I liked that. I agree. I again feel like this is where, to me, it struck me as not a normal movie and that they didn't have swelling, triumphant music at this moment. It was... Well, I also didn't show the planting of the flag, which has been a little bit controversial. Okay, I didn't even think about that. But yeah, like, he just gets out and they just show you these first-person shots of looking out at the nothingness of the moon. And, you know, while I agree, like, it's such an incredible accomplishment and I will forever think of the whole NASA Apollo time as maybe the only technological blip in the course of human history, reaching further than the timeline should have allowed. The shots of him standing on the moon were really very... Like, the emotional feeling there was, what are we doing here? It was a real like, my god, like, we've done so much to get here and you stand on the moon and there's nothing. And you also... I thought they did a good job in the shot of conveying the feeling that the moon is smaller than the Earth. It's not an infinite vista in all directions. Like, he's getting out on a bunch of gray dirt on a small sphere and he's gonna fly back. Like, it's a big deal, but it's also kind of what am I doing here? You're right. They did make the moon seem small to a point where I wondered if that was accurate, whether it felt too small or almost. But I don't know, because I haven't been there. One more question for you with the expert. Is Buzz Aldrin supposed to be kind of a dick? Because I was very aware in this movie, they really only gave him a few sentences that were character moments. Like, maybe three character lines and all three of them were very clearly telegraphing Buzz Aldrin is kind of a dick. I don't know if he was like exactly like that. He was like a more obnoxious character. But that's one of the things I found interesting though. Like, he only got three or four lines in the film. And yet he's much more memorable and interesting. And you want to know more about him. Well, yeah. You know, the whole film's about Neil Armstrong. And it's like, no, 100%. I want to know more about Buzz Aldrin. I didn't come out of that movie thinking, boy, I want to take a look at Neil Armstrong's Wikipedia page. My number one question is, is Buzz Aldrin a dick like does everybody hate him? Why did they portray him this way in the movie? You know, why did they hire the actor who always plays a villain to play Buzz Aldrin? It's like, okay. I mean, he was like, you know, a more colorful character and still is obviously. But they didn't deal with a lot of that. Like, I would have liked to have seen more of the relationship between, you know, like Buzz Aldrin, there was jockeying about who was going to be the first man down the ladder. Like Buzz Aldrin tried to maneuver to get that job. And why did they pick Neil Armstrong? Couldn't they have given me something there or they're said a little explained or... Well, I'm going to give it two thumbs up. Yeah. Maybe it caught me at just the right moment. Yeah. But I feel like I really loved it. I am planning to see it again. So I'm going to reserve the right to say I was wrong. But what I want to know right now on the Brady one thumb on a 360 degree circle, where do you rate this movie? It is just above the horizontal because of the effects and how well made it is. I'd say if you're holding your thumb in front of you and then you start tipping it up, I'd put it towards about just not quite at 10 o'clock. Not quite at 10 o'clock. Not quite. Or maybe just touching, maybe, maybe it just gets to 10 o'clock. Okay. If you want to see an amazing space film, watch the right stuff. It's an old film, but it's still incredible. I tried to get destined to watch the right stuff for about four or five years. And finally, there was a night when we both had to stay in the same hotel room for something we were doing and I made him sit down and watch it. I pretty much tied him down because he has attention span of a nat and wants to do a thousand different things. And I was like, no, you are watching this film. Watch that film. And if you want a polo, the book you should read is called A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chacon. And that was turned into a series. I think it's an HBO series called From the Earth to the Moon, like a mini series. And that covers all a polo. And that's awesome. That's a recommendations by Brady. Who would have thought I didn't think you'd like it that much? This is the magic of movies, Brady. Sometimes they get you. Sometimes they don't.
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