HI No. 115: Pink Flamingo

"HI #115: Pink Flamingo" is the 115th episode of Hello Internet, released on December 23, 2018.
==Website description==
"Brady and Grey discuss: Brady almost dying for The Grams, The UA2408 coverup and the 4153 conspiracy, ruling on what NASA can take into space, Brady buys an iPad Pro, The Numberphile podcast, the unsatisfying resolution of the Amazon HQ2 drama, The Australian Space Agency, and the most disliked video in YouTube's history: Rewind 2018."
Just then we get baseball back because Audrey's snoring way too much. I need to start poking her hanger. Oh, okay. Audrey, you've been so loud today. Oh, you're not even snoring. It's just breathing. I'm dear. Audrey has a difficult time breathing, Brady. That's very cute. She's part of the podcast. So, Gray, I have a story, another story from the Moldives. It seems like you're always just back from the Moldives. Like, is your office actually in the Moldives? Yeah, I have an annual holiday, don't you? And that's often the annual holiday. So, it doesn't seem like a good place to go. It is very nice place to go. But on this trip, I nearly died. And I nearly died for the sake of an Instagram picture. All right, now you're building this up right now. I always build up my Moldives stories and then like terribly disappoint you. This is why I'm trying to set my expectations because you're telling me Brady almost died. And I think, Brady almost died. Yeah. Like, my God, what would happen to the Hello Internet show? Whatever your expectations are, lower them even further. All right, so this is going to be then the tradition for what comes out of the Moldives. Overselling, underdelivering. Exactly. That's my life motto. So, basically, this island that we went to is like, you could kind of call it Instagram Island. It's very centered on like, coming away with the Grames. Instagram Island sounds like the saddest island. It's a great place to go. And it was a great holiday. OK. But it does have a component to it that is like quite cozy. It's also incredibly naturally beautiful and has a million other things going for it. But they're very aware that people like coming away from holidays with nice pictures. So, they'll have like little installations around the place that would just make a beautiful picture. Like, they would stick to lovely big sort of tree logs in the water and put a hammock between them over the beautiful blue water where you can just pose in a hammock and stuff like that. So, that's quite, you know. Right. They're setting it up. I've seen more and more of these things. Yeah. It's a place I just passed today, which is like a scenic spot in London. But they installed a big Christmas lighted up picture frame. Yes. Like, here's where you should take the picture. Stand inside the picture frame and then take the picture and post on Instagram how you're having a great trip in London. At this island, I have a thing like that, but it's like out in the sea. It's weird to see the digital world affecting the real world like this, but it's spreading. Okay. The absolute peace to resistance for that was I took my drone with me because I wanted to get like drone shots to the island because it's amazing. And you'll see some of these in the video for the podcast. Oh great. Come in that in a minute. So, they told me there's the part of the island you're allowed to fly drones because obviously you need drone rules now because let's face it, drones are pretty annoying so they don't want people buzzing the island all day. Right. So, they told me the part of the island where I could launch my drone and don't fly here and don't fly there and don't go over there because that's where the sea planes land. So, I went to the spot and I was thinking, oh, where am I going to put my drone like on the ground to take off because I don't want to get sand all over it and inside that. And sure enough, they actually had like a drone launching pad up off the sand where you could put your drone with a little D on it, like a helipad with a D for drone so that even had a drone launch pad on the island. I mean, part of me thinks that's adorable. And part of me thinks drones are cool and incredibly annoying at the same time. They're not annoying when you're the one flying it and it's your drone, but all other times they're incredibly annoying. I mean, do you feel like a pilot when you're flying your drone? How does it feel, Brady? I'm Maverick, of course. Another thing they have at the island is this giant inflatable pink flamingo that just looks amazing when you've got a blue sky and the greeny blue sea. If you go out and sit in this giant inflatable pink flamingo, it just looks so incredible and it makes for such great photos. People want to use it and it's in like a communal area near a bar on one of the beaches, but they've cottoned on to how much people love this. So what they do is they sell them at the gift shop and you can have your own pink flamingo that you take back to your villa. It's like yours for the whole holiday. So like day one, we were like, we're having one of them. Do you buy it or do you rent it? You buy it. We sort of thought we might bring it home, but anyway, we'll come to that. I need to understand the scale of this. Is this a pink flamingo? I'm gonna say you a picture. This is a picture of me on the flamingo. It's not the best weather, but it will give you an idea. There you go. Did this photo make it on Instagram, Brady? I think probably a version of it did, but it was like, so the flamingo's about the size of like a small sofa. I just wasn't sure if this was a beast that was 10 feet tall in the water, but no, it's a unusually large flotation device. Two people can easily just sit in it and lounge in the water. We could sit just the two of us like side by side, just lay on it and it's bigger than it looks in that picture even. Oh, okay. So anyway, big inflatable pink flamingo. So we're out in the water about like waist deep near a villa having a bit of a photo shoot. And the tide's heading out to sea, but it's not that strong. And there's a bit of a breeze and a wind that starts picking up a bit. And just as we're wrapping up our shoot, a big gust of wind comes and at the time my wife was holding onto the flamingo and she lost her grip and led out a big scream, which made me think she was being attacked by a shark, but it was just that she lost her grip on the flamingo. I'm familiar with this kind of scream. Yes. The overdramatic, it's not that big a deal, but yeah. Right, but as the husband, it sends you into full red alert mode. But anyway, such was the wind that it had picked up and the way the tide was going. And I was like sort of the wrong side of her and the tide to like stop it. It started drifting away. Mm-hmm. And like only an hour before I'd paid like 90 bucks for this flamingo. And you don't want to know, you're flamingo getting away and going out to sea. Right. So I was tasked with like retrieving it. Okay. So I started like wading and it was the water was just that depth where you couldn't quite swim properly. Mm-hmm. So you had to wade and I was also holding like a GoPro on a stick that I'd been doing the photo shoot with. So I couldn't go into full swimming mode anyway. And the flamingo was just moving at this speed that just kept it constantly about two or three meters out of my grasp, just tantalizing. And I was going further and further and then it would pull further away. So I'd like get down into swimming mode and swim but then I'd just stop because I can't swim while I'm holding the GoPro and the GoPro's worth more than the flamingo. So I'm not gonna let that go. Right. So then I'd try and sort of run or wade again and I couldn't get the speed up. So I'd try and it was just, and the whole time like my wife was going, come on, come on, you're so close, you can get it. Which was not encouraging me but was really playing on my ego because she was like my husband can save it. And I'm like, well, I have to be the one to save it now because she would think I'm a hero but I can't save it. And it was just getting further and further away. I can see this whole scenario right now. You are basically the Greek hero tantalists in this situation. I just constantly, slightly out of reach. I see where this is going. Yeah. And then suddenly like I looked, I was getting further and further out. And also I was really like, I was starting to really struggle with my breath and I was feeling like weaker because I'd done too hard a gym session that morning I'd be out in the heat with this trainer guy on the island. So I was already completely knackered. So I was getting more and more tired and I was getting at deeper and deeper. And I realized, oh my God, what am I doing? I'm chasing like an inflatable pink flamingo out to sea with the tide. So when I come back, I'm going to have to go against the tide. And the tide's getting stronger and the wind's getting stronger. And I just suddenly thought, I'm going to die. I'm going to be the guy who died chasing a flamingo out to sea. Like an Instagram flamingo. It would be the most embarrassing death in history. And the thing that made it even worse was it had started in front of all the sea villas because that's where we were doing our photo shoot. So people who'd been out on their like little balconies watching us do the photo shoot and taking their own photos of us doing a photo shoot were now watching us lose the flamingo and watching me chase it. So I had like an audience and I was like, oh, I'm not fast enough, I can't swim fast enough. So maybe I should go a bit further because if I get it, I'm going to look really good and if I don't, I'm going to look really stupid. And in the end, I just said, I'm letting it go. I'm letting it go. It was like the Indiana Jones in the last crusade moment where it was like Indiana, let it go. And I was like, that's what it was like. Yeah, I was like, I'm not going to get this holy grail. So anyway, the flamingo went out to sea. It just kept going and going. And it was really funny because it became smaller and smaller. It was a tiny pink dot. And then it suddenly occurred to us like, well, let's call the water sports center who had inflated the flamingo for us. And we found them up and said, well, we've lost our flamingo. And I said, oh, where did it go? And we said, oh, we think it went out east or west. I think I even gave them the wrong directions. But they were like, okay. And like 10 or 15 minutes later, this like speedboat went out like looking for the flamingo. And we were watching it like look for the flamingo out in the distance. And then like about 10, 15 minutes after that, this traditional Doni, Moldavian traditional boat came chuntering back in from deep sea and stopped and threw the pink flamingo overboard. And the guys on the speedboat went over to it and got it and brought it back. And like 20 minutes later, there was a knock on the door. And there were the dudes were there for the flamingo again. It had been saved from like its adventure out into the Indian Ocean. I mean, I guess that's why it cost $90 because it comes with a rescue fee attached to me. I know. They've got a factor in the man hours required to go rescue. He said, I am sure Brady that you are not the first man to lose a pink flamingo in the Maldives. Oh, I know. I discussed this with the staff. I said, how often do the flamingos like go out to sea? And I said, it does happen occasionally. Yeah. I mean, talk about this. This is like AppleCare plus isn't it? Let's flamingo care. How good is that? You know, you've bought your thing and you can phone up and say, go out to sea and a boat and save my flamingo. I mean, it wouldn't even occur to me to call them up. I would just assume like, oh, they would never go out there and get that flamingo. And I'm sure enough people would think the same way that I had that when they lose their flamingos that somewhere out in the ocean, just like they're those big, swarming, circling garbage piles of plastic, I'm sure somewhere in the ocean, there's a huge flock of Maldivian flamingos orbiting each other until the end of time. Curse in Instagram. Why were we made to suffer? So anyway, inspired by this, I hope people who don't usually check out Hello Internet on YouTube, because obviously we always put the episodes on YouTube as well as normal podcast places. I'm gonna make a special flamingo Maldivian inspired video. Cause afterwards, like afterwards I said to my wife, well, this is gonna make Hello Internet, isn't it? Or I'm gonna make a bespoke video. So we've got a special looping bespoke Hello Internet video with drone footage and floating flamingos. So go and check it out. I look forward to seeing that video. I am obviously glad that you made it Brady. But since we've both had life risking experiences recently on the podcast, well, I wouldn't want you to go. This would be undoubtedly one of the more hilarious ways for you to go. Just 10. Forever inches away from a pink flamingo that you follow out into the open sea. I would miss you, but there's a way that that would never not be funny to me. I really, I knew Instagram was bad for you. I knew it. There was one other thing like about this island that when I first tell you, you might think, oh, that's cool. And then I'll tell you what, it's not. Okay. So they have this other gimmick on the island. All these islands are quite small, but this one's about, it's very, very thin. It's only about 100, 200 meters wide, but it's about a kilometer long. You can walk around it and walk up and down it a lot. Perfect, beautiful tropical island. And they have this thing where they have glass bottles that they put like little messages in with a bit of twine wrapped around it. It all looks very like classy and how you'd imagine. And they hide them around the island. I don't know how many there are, but they hide a number each day. And if you find one and then take it to reception, you win something like it could be like a free massage or a bottle of champagne or things like that. So it seems like a nice thing, doesn't it? Like, oh, that's a nice little gimmick, something for nothing and add a little bit of interest to your trip. That seems fun. Everybody loves a random reward. And you get to feel like you're the lucky person who found the thing in the day. That seems good. Unless you are a Brady. Okay. And my wife's a bit this way too. Suddenly it becomes like, oh, no, all right. Not a competition, but like a task that has to be achieved. And whenever you're having a nice walk down a path or just, you know, on your way to lunch, suddenly you remember there are these bottles. And you start like going on like hyper alert, looking like at the trees and all the possible hiding places. And even when you don't want to be that into it, it just like starts consuming your mind a bit. And in the end, you kind of start resenting it. Like you start hating these bottles. Like I never found one. But it's like, god damn it, these bottles am I even going to find one? Like it's like the iceberg spotting competition on the ship in Antarctica. It's like, I have to find a bottle. I have to find a bottle. And it starts like eating away at your brain all through the holiday. Oh, I still haven't found a bottle. Maybe you'll find one tomorrow. Oh, I'd forgotten the bottle existed for an hour. That was lovely. But now I remember again. Very unreleasing. You are 100% correct when you started this story as unless you're a Brady. This to me is one of these competitive, isn't exactly the right word. But this is one of these things where, again, the Brady mind is a bit mysterious to me. And it is often the fog of war. And this is one of those cases where it's come up when we get together in person, perhaps in groups, and games are around. And you have to abstain from the game because you know that if you participate in a game, this aspect of your personality comes out. And these little moments as well. Like the bottles for me, it would never cross my mind to treat them this way. But as soon as you start describing it's like, oh, right, this is a thing where this part of the Brady comes out. It comes out like a monster trying to find all the bottles. But it's like, I don't want the prizes. Because the prizes aren't even that great. Yeah, it is. No, I understand. And I don't begrudge other people finding them. And I don't want to beat other people to them. It's just like, how do I know? I deliberately sometimes in my number five videos in the background put unsolved Rubik's cubes to troll people. Because I know there are people who, when they see an unsolved Rubik's cube, it's like just like their brain just can't handle. But this is what it's like for me, knowing that there could be bottles that I could find that aren't found. It just drives me crazy. It is one of the great satisfaction of life as a YouTube video creator to put something in a video that you deliberately know will annoy a certain kind of person. It's like, ah, what a great satisfaction that is. So I understand the thing with the Rubik's cube. I, of course, in my own videos would never do such a thing, but it's tremendously satisfying when you're doing it. I find it satisfying in part because I find the reaction on the other side just irrationally baffling. And this is one of those things. It's so hard for me to conceptualize why this thing happens to you. Why do the bottles on the island feel like an unsolved Rubik's cube or like a checklist with an item unchecked? And you just, do you feel compelled to solve it? I have none of this within me and it's baffling. But I can just imagine, poor Brady, flies to the literal other side of the world as far away as you can possibly get so that he can be relaxed with nothing to do. And then someone leaves a task which is always open and forever incomplete for him. I'm sorry that they've done this on the Maldives for you. Is it all in the islands or is it just this one island? Will you be able to escape it? There's just this one. OK, good. I do like that I have a drone pad, though. Your plane incident. Yes. The plane you were on that was coming into land and then you say dramatically pulled out at the last minute and flew back up near vertical. I think we might have to work. Near vertical. Anyway, you asked the listenership to investigate. And they did. This incident has been investigated at a level of detail that I think is only comparable to some of the great plane pressures of our time. Oh, fantastic. So there's lots of detail around the place. The audio from the cockpit and traffic control has been retrieved. Oh. And you were indeed correct, Gray? Your memory under this extreme situation did not fail you. It looks like your plane did come down to 300 meters. It looks like it got to practically touching the runway. And then suddenly pulled back up to 900. 9,000 meters? I believe is that what you said? 9,000 meters? No, 900. I'm pretty sure it's 900. So it got down to, let's see, when it got to 300 meters, he was going at 213 miles an hour. And then he pulled up and came around and landed later on. Bit slower at the second time. So anyway, what was the cause? Is the big question. Yeah, what happened? What happened? What was the reason? Well, I'm not going to eke this out. The thing is we don't know. What do you mean we don't know? We don't know because the pilot, I've got a transcript here now. OK. Basically, they're doing all the technical talk. Let me understand this fully. Yeah. Tower says, clear to land runway 11, 2408. And then two minutes later, the pilot says, tower, United 2408 going around. And the tower then tells the flight runway heading maintained 2005. So the tower just tells the pilot to go up to that height, I guess. Is that what that means? I guess so. Yeah. Giving the new instructions, what height to be at, and then shortly after it gives a new heading. I mean, OK. So I know that I always talk about how the pilots, they have this calm tone of voice when things are going on. But this transcript, this is too much for me. I don't understand how is cool to just say, we're not going to do this landing. We're just going to turn around. And the tower is just like, that's cool. Come around again later. Well, great. This is probably not the time to be having chats about these sort of things. Stuff has to be done. It's not, oh, what happened? It's like, oh, I just wasn't feeling it. Oh, really? Are you OK? I've been having problems at home. I don't know. Haven't been getting on with my wife like, no, I'm going around. OK, here's the new numbers. Don't hit anything. OK, I guess you have a point there, Brady. When you say it that way, it sounds quite reasonable, especially when you're making fun of what reasons might be. But still, I can't believe there's no lingo. Like, tower, United 2408 going around. Gust. Windy, windy. Yeah. All right, tower 2408 going around. Sad home life. I'm just not feeling it. Like, how does it not come up later why they didn't go around? This is baffling to me. And especially for such a dramatic event that I experienced, there must have been a real reason. Well, I've heard some of the experts saying the fact he didn't say anything indicates that may have just been like wind. OK. When I say wind, I mean, the blowing wind's not like his own intestinal wind. Oh, really? OK, I wasn't quite sure. So the fact he didn't say anything like, oh, there's a goat on the runway. Because if there was like a reason that other pilots should know about, he probably would have said something. Right. But the clue does come later when he's coming in the second time and he has this little backhanded. We'll do 11 now as long as you don't keep our speed up. I think maybe that's the moment where the pilot's saying, it was you, it's on you guys. Oh, OK. So that's pilot passive aggressiveness for you're making us land too fast. That's the theory. I mean, I really, I love that the Tim's did so much research into this. I'm also looking at a map of the airport here. And I'm like, am I missing something? Because I see Grey's flight on runway 11. There's another flight coming in on runway 22 or something on runway 22 left. But there's a marker there for a rogue turkey. That's humor, I think. That's like, they were just speculating because it was around Thanksgiving that there could have been a turkey on the runway. But this flight 41 and 53 is like the conspiracy theory of the event. Because it has been suggested that maybe flight 41, 53 was like blocking the runway or something like that. And that's why he pulled up. But oh, I like that conspiracy theory. I do like it. Conspiracy 41, 53. But even the people like doing this conspiracy theory are kind of admitting it's pretty unlikely. But one person here I'm reading, I choose to believe that his pilot is a hero who narrowly avoided a catastrophic collision with flight 41, 53 on 22 left. Yeah, I mean, for sure. The key defining factors of conspiracy theories is that they're way more interesting than reality. So I too am a believer in conspiracy 41, 53 for sure. Yeah. Because this thing about like, oh, there was just a little bit of passive aggressive professional bickering between the pilot and the tower. That's not a satisfying answer. My pilot's dramatically avoiding flight 41, 53 and it being covered up because of how tragic the incident would have been for all the loss of my life. I like that conspiracy theory much better. Oh, I love that there's a cover up now. Brady, there's no other reasonable explanation. You're right. Can I just make a suggestion for planes? Yeah. I think when announcements are made on planes, that are at a certain threshold of importance, they should put some text on the screen saying what the announcement is, not that there's an announcement in progress, but what the announcement is. Because like most people, I think, I put on my noise cancelling headphones as soon as possible on a plane. So I don't have to listen to all the rubbish about duty free shopping and all the enane stuff they announce and also, you know, because I don't like the noise of the plane. But it does occasionally mean I miss like a really important announcement. Like if they say, ladies and gentlemen, the left engine is on fire, brace, brace, brace. I think I wouldn't hear that because of my noise cancelling headphones. So, you know, I'll miss like important things in a lower tier like where two hours late, if you've got a connection, this is what's going to happen. I miss lots of announcements because of noise cancelling headphones. And most of those announcements, I'm happy to miss. But certain ones, I think this should be like a little a ticker or something on the screen with written things for people who aren't listening to the announcements. They shouldn't be depending on us hearing announcements. My wife gets really angry at me. She's like, one day something really important is going to happen and you're not going to hear it because of those bloody noise cancelling headphones. But I'm not willing to part with them, but I do want the important information. It happens to be on trains, too. I was on a train the other day. And I think an announcement must have come over the PA saying at the next station, the back two carriages are going to be disconnected. So get out and go to the front two carriages. Right. And I completely missed the announcement because I had my noise cancelling headphones on. And we got to the station and suddenly everyone got off the train and I was like, what the hell's going on? And I took my headphones off and I said, what's going on? Someone said, didn't you hear? We all have to get off and go on the other carriage. This is a problem. So I'm trying to think this over. And you caught me at a bad time because my most recent pilot on my way back to the UK was a real chatty cafe and lots of announcements. He's not like, I'm going round guy. No, no. Man, a few words. Yeah. And just to be clear, this is a flight that's supposed to be over nighttime, right? Like they're shutting down the lights. Yeah. Everyone's going to go to sleep. And dinner's been served. They've turned off the lights. And the pilot comes on. Right when just people are probably just beginning to drift off and to sleep. Comes on and says, hello everyone. Just want to let you know. We're currently estimated to arrive at London Heathrow five minutes earlier than our scheduled arrival time. And I like bananas. Yeah. That would be bad enough. Except I immediately had a thought which anyone who flies into Heathrow would have that exact same thought. But then the pilot also articulated, which was, but traffic tends to really stack up at Heathrow. So even though we're getting in five minutes early, we might have to circle around for a while, which could add 15 or 20 minutes additional time to our arrival. But we don't know now. Like, obviously, we'll find out when we get there. So just keep being updated. It's like, are you f***ing kidding me? The lights are out in the caprin. Just like we have to look at the fastened seat belt sign, there should be some big sign up front for the pilot, which is, hey, the lights are out. People are probably sleeping. Nobody cares. Here's the problem with the announcements, right? There's no action that can be taken in any circumstance except for the one you just posited, which is brace, brace, brace. Right? Like, no matter what, they tell you, oh, the flight's going to be two hours early. Oh, the flight's going to be two hours late. The weather when we land is going to be this, right? That's my personal favorite. If you save all of those things to right before you descend to the runway, it makes just as much difference. Now, when he's to know these things during the flight, there's nothing that can be done. All right. I'm going to be devil's advocate for 10 seconds. Okay. I'm just thought of why maybe this happens. Okay. And don't get me wrong. I'm more on your side here. Okay. But I can only think, there are certain people who are obsessed with the weather and are we running late? Are we running early? Yeah. Obsessed weirdos. Yeah. Maybe they do that announcement to stop those weirdos harassing the flight attendants, the whole flight. Like, instead of 19 people coming up to the galleon saying, oh, sorry, I was just wondering. Do you know if we're on time, we were running late. Oh, what's the weather like in London as the captain heard? Maybe like to stop that happening and the attendants getting harassed. They do these occasional announcements. That's just my speculating. Yeah. Interesting speculation that it could be flight attendants requesting, please save us from all these obsessive compulsive weirdos because this is going to be the same kind of person who's going to check right before take off. Oh, what's the weather? And they need to know if it's any different. Okay. Maybe. But also on this flight, everybody had little screens in front of them where you can pull up the window to stare at what's the time at the destination? What's our exact altitude? What's the barometric pressure outside? Yeah. What's the phase of the moon overhead? All the whatever the stuff is that they put on that screen. So my feeling is any of those planes, especially if they have a screen, you know what I want to hear from the pilot? Nothing. I don't even know why the pilot tells me his name. Right? They're like, hi. This is John Aresmith flying your flight today. Like, I don't care. I care that it lands. Great. I'll thank you at the end for landing the plane. But I don't need to know your name. Bob, I hang on John Aresmith. You haven't told me the name of the lead cabin attendant. He'll be making my flight comfortable today. I need to know that person's name as well. At least that one I can understand because I have a possibility of interacting with the chief person, right? Like, there's within the orbit of things that can occur on a plane, maybe there's a situation where I'm going to interact with the chief person. But the pilot, especially now, now when the pilot goes to the bathroom and they like wall off the front of the airplane, right? They put the food cart in front. Sometimes they pull the window. It's like, no one can see the pilot. You can't, like, what does it matter? If it was a dog and an automated system up front, I would have no idea. Like, you never would know. So I'm like, I just don't understand. I don't understand the reason. And I think all of those announcements are so trivial. The total amount of human aggravation caused by pausing movies for the remaining few luddites who are using the in-flight entertainment system. Yeah. That outweighs the utility of the announcement, right? Like if we're doing a utilitarian calculus of what is lost and what is gained every time the pilot opens his mouth on the public channel on an airplane, I think we lose every time for people being like, oh, I was at a good part of the movie, right? Yeah. No, it makes me furious. Well, this comes back to my original idea though, because there are ways to escape this. No, he's canceling headphones. Yeah. So that's why I think there should be some way to convey messages of true import to us. The only problem is, of course, they'll then start exploiting that and using that to sell a duty free as well. But I still think there should be like a text or a ticker of announcements of things. They shouldn't just rely on the audio. That's old school. That's old school. I agree. And I would almost wonder if that's the case. I mean, my flight obviously was very dramatic, but clearly just under the threshold of what might exist, which is a system where, like, I wonder, do the pilots, if they have to tell you brace, brace, brace, it seems like just from an Americans with disabilities act standpoint, should have a button they compress that turns all those screens red and says emergency. Like that, right? That feels like a thing that should exist, right? That's when the sign language person comes out of a sacred compartment and starts. Yeah, but like, I don't know, it seems like that should exist that there should be a way to visually indicate there's a problem. I mean, probably everybody screaming and hugging their loved ones goodbye would also be a good visual indicator that there's a problem. Because I don't know, because this again, it feels to me a bit like so many other things in my life where I feel like, if it's a real problem, someone will let me know. This feels like the same thing. So many things go wrong with inflight entertainment and electronic systems on planes. They, if they do have like a functionality where everything goes red and says we're all gonna die. Like you just know that's gonna get triggered by mistake at least once a month and some poor person just having a nap is gonna like wake up to this like false alarm and outspin that the plane's about to hit the sea. I don't know, I'm like, I feel like this must exist. This must exist. There must be a way to press a button that turns all the screens red and says we're gonna die. Now I really wanna know. I'll ask my pilot, he'll be able to tell me. Yeah, you ask your pilot friend, we can find out that way. But I think you're still conceding too much even with your idea of how to fix the pilot announcements. Still gonna hold my position of I wanna hear not one word from the pilot. Until I say thanks for getting us here at the end when he stands there. I had a chatty pilot cost me the lovely emotional ending to the film up as we were coming into land once and I still resent that. Still remember it. See, I timed my up watching just perfectly so I'd be able to watch the end before we landed. He robbed me. See, that's the utilitarian calculus coming through. Hmm. What was that announcement? Who cares? Has the movie been forever solid? Yes. I've been on the road recently a bunch and when you're doing a lot of driving on your own, you need something to occupy your mind. And that's where Audible comes in. I've been listening to a whole bunch of audiobooks recently and they all come from Audible because that's where I get my audio books. It's the best place to get audio books and it's where you should get your audio books. As an Audible member, every month I get one credit that's good for any audiobook that I want to choose on their system. Plus Audible has recently introduced Audible originals. These are Audible productions that you're not going to find anywhere else. And as a member, you can pick two of them every month. This is in addition to Audible's already ginormous collection of audio books. And when you buy your audio books on Audible, they're yours to keep. You can go back and relisten at any time, even if you cancel your membership. And if you get an audio book and you don't like it, exchange it, no questions asked. And as someone who's done research on a bunch of topics, that is a feature I have used several times. I don't want to mention the books I've been listening to recently because that would give away the contract that I'm working on. But as it is the holiday season, I'm going to recommend a classic favorite of mine, which is A Christmas Carol, read by none other than Sir Patrick Stewart, John Luke Picard himself. I got this book a number of years ago as a Christmas present from my wife, who is a huge next-gen fan, and the captain did not disappoint. He does quite the emotive performance of A Christmas Carol. If you're looking for something to listen to over the holidays, I highly recommend it. Start a 30-day trial with Audible and your first audio book is free. Just go to audible.com slash hello internet or text hello internet to 500-500. That's audible.com slash hello internet, all one word, or text hello internet, also all one word, to 500-500. Thanks to Audible for supporting the show for keeping me busy during a recent trip and for delivering the beautiful voice of Patrick Stewart directly into your ears. I saw in the news the other day that they'd sent a supply ship up to the space station and in the tweet or whatever I saw about it, there was something about someone had said something in my lens of, I wonder what Christmas goodies are on the supply ship. Straight away I started feeling the dread, like Santa suits and all sorts of crazy stuff that these astronauts were going to... Sure enough, within a few days, I found out what one of the objects was. And if you click on the link that I've sent you, it's a news article about it. It's another hello internet favorite. It is the elf on the shelf. Oh, God. There is an elf on the shelf on the space station. And they've been taking little pictures with it, sort of posing on little shelves and racks there and the modules of the international space station. Okay, now, look, I don't want to be Mr. Seneca Man over here, but this feels like a sponsored product placement. That big elf on the shelf is paying for placement on the space station. I don't think so. I don't think they'd be allowed to do that. I think it's legit. And do you know what? What? You're going to call me fickle or a hippocrylonal, you call me what you want. I don't mind it. God damn it. I don't mind to this one, because it feels like peripheral. It feels like just a little thing off to the side. The astronauts aren't wearing it. It doesn't take up a lot of space and weight. It's the right amount of whimsy. An astronaut themselves wearing a Spider-Man suit is not whimsical. It's embarrassing. But just a little elf on the shelf in the corner at Christmas. It's just a little human moment. I'm all right with it. And I can't justify it and I can't explain it and I know I'm frustrating you, but I'm just saying, when I first saw her, I thought, oh, this is going to rile me up. And after a few seconds, I thought, nah, I'm all right with that. That's cute. I have to admit, again, I don't understand the shape of a Brady mind here. I don't understand the scales of justice for what is and what is not allowed on the space station. There is no justice in camp. It usually depends on how much sugar I've had in the last hour. I'm especially irritated because I don't remember how much of it ever made it into the show or not. But I feel like you totally turned my mind on the space costumes thing. Like you brought me around to your side. I stand by that too. I stand by that. I know you do, but the thing is I wasn't originally with you and you've earned me Brady. Like you've turned me and now, I look at the space stuff and I think, oh, those guys make it fools of themselves. Why are they doing this? What, like, it's just a terrible publicity idea. So you like you've changed me. And now, now what to me seems more suspicious. You're somehow okay with this. I know you don't have a reason for it. And again, even I will say it's fine not to always be consistent, but... I think I made it clear. It's because of small arms length. It is more arms length. And it's small. Yeah. But it bothers me because it has the appearance, even if it's not the case of product placement. Like, let's say it isn't. Let's say that the Elf on the shelf big industry didn't pay for this, which I agree with you is probably unlikely. Like, that's also bad then because now NASA is shilling for the omnipresent spies on your children's Elf industry. I don't think that's what NASA's doing. And I think the thing NASA's doing here that I also don't like is it's kind of trying to ingratiate itself by using the Zart guys to try to get free publicity. And it's like, oh, everyone loves Elf on the shelf. They're a year behind and granted, but they're like, everyone talks about Elf on the shelf. Everyone knows it. If we have one on the space station, we'll get a whole bunch of free media. Goddammit. Now, again, I'm trying to like think through the rules in my head of like, how can I make something consistent out of this? And I'm immediately running into all of these stumbling blocks. But like, I happened to hear this thing the other day. So I was talking to someone about the concept of throwing a dinner party. What is the platonic ideal of a dinner party? They're like, well, it's different from just having people over. You have to have invitations ahead of time and it needs to be clear to everybody that it's a bigger deal that the platonic ideal of a dinner party, the host is also cooking. You can't just order pizza. That's not a dinner party. And one of the things that I thought was a very interesting idea was that a dinner party should not have visible labels for the foods. So everything should be presented in terms of just being the food. Here's a slab of butter on a plate, but it's not in a container that has the brand of butter. So everything's being decanted from its packaging. Exactly. Even if you were serving soda, like the bottles have to be hidden away in the kitchen and you were just bringing out soda. Okay. Well, at first I thought, well, that sounds dumb and crazy. But then I thought about it a bit more and I was like, oh, you know, it would be nice to be in an environment where there aren't labels and advertising. And I think somehow the space station feels like that that the elf on the shelf is like a bottle of coke on the table. Yeah, that's fair enough. The funny thing is like straight away you see it's upon like the corporate and the money and the elf on the shelf industry and like to be fair, like I didn't really think about that very much at the time. But the article I sent you, I know do you use a photo of the elf on the shelf book to help illustrate what the elf on the shelf is to readers. So maybe that kind of planted that seed in your head. Very partly. So then when I was first exposed to it. But I don't know, I never really thought of it as a way that they were gonna sell more elves on the shelves. In hot, yeah, of course they will, but that wasn't the thing that came into my head. It's just because elf on the shelf is not organically Christmas. Like it's a constructed modern thing. And we all know that the last acceptable organically Christmas thing is Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer. That marks the end of when organic Christmas items can exist. And everything before Rudolph is sort of fine and everything after Rudolph is suspect like elf on the shelf. Like if they brought up a little Rudolph doll, I would have no problem with that or a little Santa. But elf on the shelf, it's suspicious. It's commercialized Christmas. Yeah, obviously without going into the how Santa issue, you're right, but at least like heavily plays on tradition. I mean, it is an elf and it is wearing like, you know, red and white, Christmasy, sanitary type outfit and like there are no words on it which helps. So I don't know. I hear you. It hasn't made me as angry as the Spider-Man outfits Halloween did. That's still the low point of the space station for me. Well, I enjoy your judgment of objects sent to the space station even if it's not entirely consistent. Maybe they should have me as like the person who decided to start it. I just run everything by me the inventory. I'm like, yep, yep, yep, no, no, yep. And you could be like, look, NASA, I'm trying to do you a favor here. I'm trying to save you embarrassment. I am team NASA. No one's more team NASA than you. Although I can't help but notice that this was delivered by SpaceX, not delivered by NASA. Ah, of course it was. I've had a bit of listener feedback. Oh yeah, mainly hot stopper news. Hot stopper news. I just want to in general say thank you to everyone who's been doing pilgrimages to the Mardi Black stump and Adelaide and going to Black Stump espresso down in the reception and asking for a hot stopper. It's becoming increasingly common. Are you still supplying them with hot stoppers? I sent him another bag. He ran out and I said, do you want some more? And he said, yes, please. God, I love this, really. Now I heard the other day that what happens is like teams go up there and they look a bit awkward and sort of say, have you got, and before that people can even finish the staff guy, you want one of these, don't you? And pull out a hot stopper. Like they can pick him now. I love that this has happened. I remember you mentioned this a long time ago and I vaguely filed it under the category of, things no one would obviously maintain over a long period of time, but I love that you have. It's not no work for me, you're either keeping him supplied. Look, here's the thing Brady. If it was my job to keep him supplied, we would have run out of hot stoppers there years ago. Like you're the real hot stopper hero in this scenario and I love that this is happening. I didn't realize that people are still going there. That's fantastic. Yeah, it's still a thing. I got a tweet from a guy called John Bishop with a fantastic photo. How's that? John Bishop. Okay, so John Bishop is asking, what's the record for the largest hello internet hot stopper? And then he has a photograph of himself with one that is 260.3 centimeters large. Two and a half meters. How is that? It's gray colored. It's a very good likeness of a, oh, it's just a giant hot stopper. Oh my God. He CNC milled it out of plywood. What does CNC mean? I don't actually know. Is that the programmable machine? Is that what a CNC miller is? Computer numerical controlled machining. Yeah, so pretty much what you said. There's also quite a like a photogenic image. He's gone out into the woods. It's a nice background. It's autumn. It's beautiful, beautiful picture, beautiful piece of image, largest hot stopper I've ever seen. By quite some distance. Yes, I would like. I too will agree. This is the largest hot stopper I have ever seen. According to my quick conversion here, it is eight feet and six and three eighth inches tall. There's quite a hot stopper. Oh, and I just noticed in the picture he is pointing at it as well. In case you missed it. In true hell of internet style. The pointing is required. Yeah, my God, that's fantastic. That really makes me smile. That is ridiculous, but it is delightfully ridiculous. I've got one more gray. I've got one more piece of hot stopper news. This one, I'm going to warn you from the start. This is a bit weird. OK. But it's so weird I thought maybe it's worth a place on the show. OK. So you remember we dropped, well, you dropped some hot stoppers underneath some bushes underneath the sign at an arby's on our road trip. Yes, never have I felt more like a weirdo than in that moment. You're about to get out done. OK. So I've had a message from a Tim. I won't say her name for reasons that are about to become evident in God. But this hot drop was obviously one that we just did like on the podcast. So this was like a special hot drop. Right. That one hadn't been shared ahead of time. That was the live hard drop. So this Tim has sent a photo of herself underneath the arby's sign with the bushes in the background and she's holding the hot stopper. So she's, you know, she's got one. And this is the email that came with it. I don't even know why I'm reading this. OK. You make me so nervous. I got one of the ultra rare, coverted hot stoppers early this morning. I wanted to tell you about the interesting company I had with me while it happened. I am a driver for a company that provides medical specimens, brackets, body parts, to doctors for training. My job is to both go pick up the whole bodies from where they died and bring them back and or to deliver coolers with parts in them to surgical companies. Today I was delivering 11 torsos when I realised the hot stop would be on my way. So I pulled my corpse bit-fueled van right into that tiny arby's parking lot and got to work looking with great success. Thank you so much for leaving these around and for making my favourite podcast. That's not anything to worry about, Brady. That's amazing. That's the greatest thing ever. I'm just imagining the police pulling it over and saying, what's in the car, man? She goes, 11 torsos and a hot stopper. Wow. That is great. There you go. Nice work, Tim. In terms of things that I never really thought about, someone's got to drive around bodies or body parts. And the way it's phrased 11 torsos, I'm just sort of visually assuming that it's just the torsos. That arby's parking lot was not an easy place to turn around. So I don't know. There you go. Wow. That makes me so happy. Like that weirdness. This is the kind of thing I love about doing the show, Brady, is like the show goes up and someone's listening and it's like, oh, they just happen to be driving a truck full of dead people body parts. And they are the human who at this moment is going to go get that hot stopper. You never know what's going to happen, Brady. You never know. So, Gray, obviously it's become clear to people who listen to the show over the years that you are slow to respond to text messages. And when you do respond, I would say your responses are normally brief, straight to the point. Straight to the point, perfactory? Yeah, no. I'm not going to give you perfundery. I'm going to say containing exactly and only the necessary information. That's what I think. OK. The only time you seem to break out of character is when I need to purchase Apple products. So the other day, I lost my iPad. We discussed. So I had to buy another one. So I was on my way to the store to buy a new iPad. And I haven't bought one for a while, and I don't know much about these sort of things. So I thought, oh, I'll send Gray a text in case he can give me some advice. But I normally don't hear from him for two days. So good luck. And I sent it. And before my thumb had come off the screen of my phone, this stream of consciousness came out true. And you were like, you go, I had this verbal dire here, and you're giving me all this advice. And part of me is like touch that you're willing to help me on a topic that you find interesting. But another part of me thinks, well, he obviously gets all my other messages as well. I can just choose to add all those ones. This is slanderous. And not the correct way to think about this at all, Brady. First, you must know by now messages that I receive in the morning, wherever I am in the world in the morning. There was no chance of getting responded to. So you hit me in the afternoon. And if you hit me, it was a perfect storm of Brady replies. And you got me when I was on my phone, I remember the moment, talking to my wife and a Brady text message rolled in about how he wants to buy an iPad. And so I think I was appropriately helpful. You caught me right there when I was on the device. If you send a message, and I'm not on my phone, it's going to be a few days maybe before I look at my messages. But you got me at the right time. And I just, I wanted to be helpful, Brady. I wanted to help you out with your iPad purchase. But you, I don't know why, but you withheld information from me about your iPad purchase. I was trying to be helpful. And you were deliberately withholding information from me. And I don't know why you did this. Because basically, I wanted to know what I've had to get. And also whether I should get the keyboard and whether I should get the pen. Right. I don't know. I withheld it from the partly just to like, see specs and control. But I'll say, because I thought it might be fun to discuss on the show. Well, yeah, obviously I told you to buy the Pro. We all know that. Yeah. Once you go pro, you never go back. I don't know if I make that wrong. Yeah, I'm a jerk. And Brady is a pro kind of guy. I was always going to get the Pro. I'm such a sucker for pro. I'll even buy Pro if it's like a toothbrush. I'm terrible. Pro toothpaste. So I did get the Pro. I probably didn't need it. But Brady couldn't bear the thought of not having it. Brady, here's a secret of life. Yeah. When you live in the first world, almost never does the word, need mean anything. Everything in our built environment, do you say, do you need any of the particular parts? Of course not. You don't. So when people talk about, do you need something? This almost seems irrelevant, because you need so few things in life. The only things you need are the very basis of things that are what keep life going. So need does not come into it with an iPad, Brady. Also, I've just got this fantasy that people like you feel, but I now realize is a fantasy of somehow getting some professional use out of an iPad. Like there's just no work use for it. It's just a big phone. But Brady, it is the iPad Pro. I mean, surely it's made your life more productive. No, it doesn't. No, it hasn't. So you've just been watching Netflix on it. Yeah, it is. It's still just a video machine. And I don't even put my email and other stuff on it because I don't want another place that can get my email. So it's like, until they come up with some good way to edit, even to editing audio would do me now. But until there's a better way to edit material media on an iPad, it is going to remain a recreational device for me. Yeah, I know people who edit podcasts on iPads. What software are they using? The recommended app is a thing called Fairite. OK. However, I have tried Fairite to edit a podcast. And I found it a totally unworkable process. OK. You were probably editing podcasts and editing audio pretty quickly. And iPad stuff is fine if you don't need to make a lot of edits quickly. So I can't exactly say that I would recommend it. But I know that it is at least possible. But surely, Brady, if the iPad is helping you to relax, does that not also help your work? Yeah. Don't you ultimately need time off from work? Yeah. But I would like it to help me work. I'd love to just take it to like, you know, a cafe and sit and not have to take like my big laptop or my, you know, with a drive plugged in on the side of it and stuff. Like, I'd love to just be able to take an iPad and just spend an hour having a hot chocolate and quickly editing a podcast. But it's just not happening for me. You may in theory be able to do that. Obviously, editing video is totally out of the picture. I would love it if they put Final Cut on an iPad. But I don't think it's happening anytime soon. But you still haven't told me, Brady. I was advising you, answering all of your iPad questions. Yeah. And the only thing I wanted to know is, did you end up getting the keyboard or not, and you refused to tell me? You also didn't ask me if I got the pen or not, the pencil or whatever it's called. Well, I mean, here's the thing, Brady. I told you that the pencil was a non-optional purchase. So I just assumed that you would have got that. You did. You told me I had to get the pencil and that keyboard was up to me. And the decision I made, which was just based on instinct and having a look at both, was I didn't get the keyboard because I didn't like how it felt on the iPad. And I was told that typing on the iPad's fine, which was probably not true. But anyway, I didn't get the keyboard because I liked the cover that hasn't got the keyboard. And I did get the pencil as you told me. And I'm yet to take it out of the box. Oh, my God. Okay, well, that doesn't help you, Brady. You have to take it. And do what with it? And just like, and it's clearly this is something I'm going to lose because the way that it is connected to the iPad is non-existent. I cannot believe I haven't lost my ear, pod things yet. But I'm definitely going to lose this pencil. And I haven't got used to it. I'm yet to use the iPad and think, oh, this would be way easier if I had a pencil in my hand and still I've using my finger. Those AirPods, all right. So I have a lot of pencils. I have a very good record of not losing Apple pencils, although I'm always worried about it. So I keep a spare in my bag if I'm ever traveling. But I swear to God, those AirPods, it's like, I don't know how I lose them all the time. I've lost so many of those AirPods. It's like AirPods are like a subscription service that I'm on from Apple. It's just like they're like your flamingo. Yeah, I don't know how. I don't know why this object, but somehow it's like my brain is incapable of keeping track of AirPods. I'm yet to lose mine. I did misplace them for a week, but then I found them. And I love them. They're like, they are a great addition to my life. But the pencil, I don't know. I cannot see any need for it yet. You use it to tap the screen, Brady. Tap the screen with it instead of using to do that with my finger. No, it's not the same. It's not the same. You have to do it with the pencil. It's much more comfortable to do with the pencil. All I need to do is press play on Netflix. I mean, okay, if you're telling me you literally only use it as a Netflix box, then I suppose you can get away with it. Can I have your pencil then when I come to visit? I just think you look a bit silly using the pencil too. It looks a bit pose-y. No, I disagree. I think you look like a very serious professional when you're using that pure white- I think you look like you think you're a serious professional when you're using the pencil. I don't know. I think it looks a bit hearty. Like I can say, like if you're writing with it or drawing with it, like, you know, of course. But using it just for like, you know, navigating around, I don't know. What do I know? I would like to use it. And as I've said, I would like the iPad to become more a part of my life. But I just can't say it happening. It's the dream of all technology and also all stationary stores that when you go in, you partly sell yourself the dream of, oh, when I buy this thing, this thing will make my life more productive. But you're still just you, right? Like the same guy who walked into the store as the guy who walks out of the store. It's like, oh, now that I have this trapper keeper, I'm gonna do great at school. No, you're not. This episode is brought to you in part by Casper. Casper is the mattress that combines multiple supportive memory foams for a quality sleep surface with just the right amounts of both sink and bounce. You spend one third of your life sleeping so it should be comfortable. And Casper products are cleverly designed to mimic human curves, providing supportive comfort for all kinds of bodies. Those experts at Casper are working tirelessly to make a quality sleep surface that cradles your natural geometry in all the right places. And I'm gonna say they do a good job because every night I go to sleep on a Casper. And when I visit my parents in North Carolina, there too, I have requested a Casper mattress to be the mattress that I sleep on at night. Now when I go to hotels, even if they're very, very nice hotels, their mattresses, it's always a disappointment. It's just not the same without a Casper. And it's not just the mattress. Casper also offers a wide array of other products like pillows and sheets, all designed, developed, and assembled in the US. With over 20,000 reviews and an average of 4.8 stars, Casper is becoming the internet's favorite mattress. Now what must you pay for an amazing mattress like this? Well, Casper's are really affordable because they cut out the middleman and sell directly to you. It's delivered right to your door and there's free shipping and returns in the US and Canada. You can get $50 towards select mattresses by visiting Casper.com slash HI and using code HI at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. That's Casper.com slash HI and offer code HI. Thanks to Casper for supporting the show and thanks to Casper for cradling me gently while I sleep. So Brady, you mentioned that you want to be editing audio on your iPad. Yes. Editing presumably long streams of audio. What is it that you're editing on the iPad or that you want to edit? I have started a third podcast. A third podcast. A third podcast. So obviously, hello internet is like, you know, origin story. Origin story, of course. And Unmade's been going for a little while. But now I have launched a number file podcast spun out of the number file video channel. And do you know what? It's going well. I'm liking it. Where can people go to find the number file podcast? Well, they can just go to wherever they listen to podcasts and just write a number file. Number file is spent with a pH like the file part is pH for love, not files in a filing cabinet. Number file, or one word, or they can go to number file.com and you know, find it from there. So it's not like number file videos for people who have ever seen a number file video, which are normally like, you know, 10 minutes long and very mathematical and lots of numbers and drawings and writing and things like that. The podcast is not like that. The podcast is like long interviews and discussions with people who are in the videos and mathematicians and other interesting people with some kind of numbery bent. So these are produced while you're making the regular number because like, are these produced in the spiritual home of number file when you're going out on location to do these interviews? They'll be produced everywhere. Basically, the thinking is I spend all this time traveling around the world meeting all these interesting people to make number file videos. And I'm end up making like a five or 10 minute video with them. Why not then say, oh, why don't we go and sit down for an hour and just have a chat about life and other things that don't come out in the video. So it's more about people and stories. So the first one was actually with a guy called Grant Sanderson who makes the YouTube channel three blue, one brown. Just talking to him about maths and his attitude to making videos and that. But I've also done one with the second one with the really famous mathematician who helped solve from our last theorem. So that's like a proper top level mathematician. That's pretty serious. Yeah, yeah. And the third one's with Hannah Frye who's like, you know, a mathematician but also like a really interesting communicator and maths celebrity. So I'm hoping for a real mixture of guests and they're just sort of so far they've been half an hour to an hour long chats. And I think they're really fun and funny and interesting. So if any teams out there have any capacity in their podcast schedule, that's one to think about. Like there's always more room for dessert. There's always more room for podcasts, right? I don't know if there's always more room for another hour long discussion I don't know. But I think if people's podcasts cues are anything to go by, the answer is yes, there is always room for more. Yeah. I do have to say Brady, it is supremely satisfying to me that you have made this podcast because ever since we started Hello Internet and after the first season of Hello Internet, when don't laugh, I still cling to the idea of seasons. I was thinking of trying to bring it back. We could talk about that later. But what are we on now, season 11 or something, man? How did I? Yeah, I know. But like I never achieved the dream of what I wonder with seasons. But anyway, ever since it was obvious that we were going to continue with the show and you enjoyed podcasting or at least I hope you enjoyed podcasting. I do. Yeah, I do. I've had conversations many times in which I expressed the idea that it just seemed inevitable to me that at some point there would be a podcast where Brady, if not interviews, but talks with guests, I couldn't conceive that this wouldn't happen. And you always gave me a whole bunch of like, oh no, like podcasts, it's a big project and it takes a bunch of, you always gave me these reasons that I thought were no good reasons. And it feels like all it took was what? Four years later, you finally broke the seal with your first other podcast. And now that that door has been opened, now we are in a world where there can be multiple Brady podcasts. And of course, the number file podcast is the one where I feel like, I knew it. I knew this was going to happen. I was just waiting for it to happen. I would never have guessed that it would take this long. But I'm very glad that this thing is now a thing that exists in the universe. Well, when you come out of your project site, clubs, you can even have a listen to a couple if you like, tell me what you think. I think like this is like more like the one you predicted. Like obviously, the unmade, which was the second one I started, is more like just outside my normal zone. It's just like joking around with a friend. But this is like the one you predicted, isn't it? It's like quite interviewing. And I do talk less in this one, obviously, because I am the interviewer and the other person is like the star of the show. Right. But I don't know. In some ways, I've still restricted it a little bit by making it, putting it under the number file banner. Like I couldn't easily do like a chemistry interview or interview like a movie star on it. I think it's still a bit more restricted, maybe, than what you used to talk about to me. But yes, that's true. I mean, look, also, the universe is balanced again, because like you have more YouTube channels than I do, you also now have more podcasts than I do. Right. Was unbalanced for a while there. But now, like things have come back into the natural order of things. And I just sort of assume that there's going to be now, you know, maybe not soon, but many podcast projects in a Brady's future. Now that this has become, you know, like a thing that you can do, that you feel free to start and to do new ones. So I think I feel like the world is open to you, Brady, the podcasting universe. Well, I mean, you opened this world as well, because I mean, firstly, because it was your idea to even do a podcast in Hello Internet. So you dragged me into the podcast, well, but you also gradually over time have taught me how it technically works at the back end, to a point where I can actually now make one and upload it and understand how it all works. Like obviously, people are already joking, oh, now there's going to be periodic videos and 60 symbols and objectivity podcasts. And like, you know, of course, there could be. Of course, that comes into my head, because like, you know, why wouldn't it come into my head? But I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. I was going to say, are you? You never say never. Yeah, you're not going to put down never on the show, though, aren't you? No, no, I've just got no more capacity. I haven't really got capacity for this, but I've managed to carve it out by getting a bit more help on other stuff. But here's the thing, I can be sympathetic to the notion that you are out of capacity. But at the same time, I feel like I've been hearing from Brady how he's out of capacity for forever. I've been hearing about how you're out of capacity before objectivity came into existence. So it's like, obviously, there is not infinite capacity in a Brady, but it seems like there's just, like you have so much to give Brady. Like it's like it's an endless bounty of Brady giving on as many projects across many different things. So I know that you are probably feeling a little overwhelmed right now. And of course, it's because you have a brand new project at numberfile.com, that they should go check out, subscribe and listen, thumbs up, smash that like button. Review, review, review. Right, review. Become a friend of the pod. Oh, God, it still hurts. It still hurts. But I think, yeah, like the horizon is open to you, Brady. And I never say never. All right, and you don't have to like mathematics. Like I know a lot of people who listen to Halloween tonight probably wouldn't watch numberfile videos because it's like there is some mathematics in there. But this hasn't got mathematics in there. It's not like we're sitting there talking about numbers and proofs. And then you divide by three on both sides. And then you cancel out the x's. It's not like that. It's more like, tell me about what you were like as a kid and what was university like. And it's been really interesting actually finding out what people like own up to and tell you if you get the right person. It's a really interesting little revelations. Well, it's also why it's always seemed, something along these lines has seemed inevitable to me because you are without a doubt the best interviewer I know. I know you always want to downplay this, but you are really good at it. And I've seen you in action and you have a real skill for asking both the right and interesting questions and asking questions that are the exact right amount of annoying to get an interesting response from people. Like it's your skill, Brady. And you're so good at it. I feel like you can't perceive it as directly as those around you. That's super kind of you. Thank you very much. Go listen to the podcast people. Let's talk about the Amazon headquarters. We were talking before the show. It feels like this was something we were both very interested and we've kind of run out of puff a bit now now that the stories actually come to fruition like it's a bit like, meh, okay, let me tell you what my problem is with this. So I don't know when it was like six months ago we talked about Amazon holding this competition between different cities for where are they going to build HQ2? Right, they want to build like a gigantic second headquarters and at the point that we discussed it they had whittled down the list to 20 finalists in the bidding process and there was like a map to look at and there was a whole page and there was this fun horse race speculation around who is going to win the honor of having an Amazon factory drop down upon them. Who is going to get to give all the text concessions to Amazon that they were? Exactly. I mean, really, that to me is part of the interesting part. How far are these cities willing to go to like cut their own flesh right to convince Amazon to come over? And I was really excited about this. I don't know why it's, I mean, it's sort of like boring corporate taxation, compensation, corner, like it's, it is kind of dull but I don't know, it just hit me in the right way and then whatever it is a couple of weeks ago all of a sudden it was just, it was just done. It was over. It was announced and the winners were picked and I felt like, hey, what happened to this horse race I was following? I wanted to go from 20 to 10 and then from 10 down to five right and at each stage everyone's getting more vicious and like a cage battle or something. Yeah, exactly. Bezos is able to oversee a fisticuffs fight between the governors of the various states. Like I don't know what I wanted except like this really dramatic battle. And so it's a weird story but I felt like it was over before I had a chance to really get into it. Of course, Amazon's not out here for my entertainment in picking their second headquarters. In retrospect, it kind of makes sense why they wouldn't have a playoffs and like a bracket of the cities. Like, oh, Raleigh's defeated Atlanta this week, right? Like it makes sense why they wouldn't do that. But I don't know, I find myself weirdly disappointed by it. Should we tell people who won, who don't know? So this is the other thing. There was a bit of like a switcheroo at the very end. Which is one of the winners was place called Crystal City, which was not on the original list, but it is in Arlington County, Virginia, which as we discussed last time was like there were three cities that were picked all around Washington, DC and Jeff Bezos just bought a house in Washington. So it seemed like that area was a lock to win and this city that I've never heard of before, they got the bid for HQ2. But also, it wasn't just HQ2, it was two HQ2s. And there's a second one that they're going to build in, what to me is a particularly hilarious spot. Long Island City in New York. Now, long Island City is part of New York City, but it's in Queens, which always feels like a little bit of a separate place. Like it's part of New York, but Queens feels like its own spot. And long Island City, to me, seems like kind of a hilarious spot because it's not a very nice part of New York City. And it also lacks any kind of transportation options. So I don't know how they think whatever it is, 50,000 people are going to be able to commute in and out of that particular spot in the city. But I don't know, I feel like all this stuff together just made me feel a little bit like, oh, I wanted more of a vicious battle. I didn't want to just suddenly know. And it's also weird that you just picked two, which didn't feel like the rules you were setting out at the start. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on it, Brady? Surely they didn't choose Crystal City just because Bezos happens to live in Washington. Like there must be like a bigger reason than that. Is it because of just proximity to the lawmakers? This is my thought, right? Bezos didn't pick Washington DC for no reason as a place to buy a house. Yeah. I think like many of these tech companies are thinking that they've ignored the politics game for a long time. But the like, the bell is ringing for all of these companies that hey, you guys don't do a lot of lobbying and there's other companies that spend a lot of money on lobbying. Maybe you should play this game too. And I think the big tech companies are realizing that they should. And so I feel like Bezos went to DC because probably one of the biggest financial concerns that Amazon has at this point is government interference or regulation or rules or whatever. And so the best thing that he can do is spend time there. And then also get a bunch of like Amazon voters right in the backyard of these people. So that's kind of my thought. And what about Long Island City? What do you think the rationale was for that one? In a nutshell. My guess would be just that New York is a useful place to have another campus if they want to try to attract tech talent that's on the East Coast. Because it's a cool place to live as well. Yeah, it's a cool place to live, right? In America, obviously San Francisco, even though it's kind of a hellhole. It really like the last time I went there, I was like, well, I never need to come to you again. San Francisco. But it's still like the place. It has a lot of these network effects that make it the place to recruit tech talent. But New York City is clearly the second best place in America. And so Amazon seems to be doing a lot of pivoting into tech. So my guess is that the New York one is going to be like, where are they trying to recruit programmers to? And for all the programmers who don't want to move to the West Coast, New York is the best place to go on the East Coast. And that's probably why it's there. That would be my guess. All right. So the next question then, and the next piece of news, is why is Apple building a big new mega campus in Austin? Same reason? Because I know Austin's a pretty co-place. Oh, that's outrageous. I knew Apple was also trying to build a campus. But I thought Raleigh in the great state of North Carolina was the lock for Apple's additional campus. I can't believe that. I feel like I've been personally robbed somehow. It was supposed to be Raleigh, Apple. Everyone was expecting it to be Raleigh. I don't know why they would choose Austin over Raleigh. I was recently in Austin. I've got one word, overrated. I've not been there. I want to go there because I've heard it's highly rated. But you got me wondering now. I'm telling you right now, it is highly rated. Now, Austinites, Austiners, Austinistas understand the exact meaning of this word. Overrated. Doesn't mean bad. So you can calm down. It simply means the wondrous tales that people tell of Austin, right, this, oh, it's an oasis on the plains of Texas. It's just a city. It has bars with noisy nightlife and live music. It's not Nirvana among the cows. That's not what it is. It's a city. It's a nice city. It's a way overrated. Super duper overrated. I don't understand why. So why does Apple want to put a $1 billion campus there? I don't know. They should have put it in Raleigh. I'm very disappointed. They clearly want to up their game in the South, don't they? Right, you know? I mean, yeah, if I have to pick the third best place, if you're going to try to get techies, if they're not going to San Francisco and they're not going to New York, I mean, it's probably that they're going to Austin. I guess that's what it is. Also, Texas, you know, is a big player on the political stage, isn't it? So having like a huge presence there for a company that wants to be part of the politics of America, you know, that's why a lot of NASA got put there, isn't it, so? Yeah, the NASA stuff feels different, though, right? Because that's like, oh, we have to assemble this aircraft in, you know, every state in the union. I don't know. I'm not sure how much an Apple campus in Austin could affect Texas politics. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I don't know. I feel like the way you affect politics most directly is like Bezos pressing the flash in Washington, D.C. and being right there. I don't know about the politics angle, but I'm still just deeply disappointed. So the biggest news of all, though, is the announcement that the Australian Space Agency, is that what they're calling it? It's like the Australian NASA, I think. It's like in its embryonic stages. Oh, okay. The Australian Space Agency has just started where they're going to put their headquarters. Is it Adelaide? Yep. I'm looking at an article here. That might not be NASA, but the development of the Australian Space Agency is being touted as a giant and exciting leap into the unknown. Adelaide will be the new agency's home after South Australia won the space race between the states to secure hosting rights. I'm glad that in your pitch here, you said that it's in the embryonic stages because I didn't want to be mean, but my very first thought was, Australia has a space agency. Like, again, I'm, look, it's not a question of who allows in kangaroos build a spaceship. It's simply a question of, what is the size of the population? All right, Gray, I'm going to give you a big looping pitch over the plate here. Here's a sentence further down that I was hoping you weren't going to read. Okay. Despite its ambitious aims, the new agency will have modest beginnings, a staff of 20 people, and what the federal government said would be a relatively small startup cost. Oh, okay. But like, Australia is good for launching rockets and stuff like that. So I'm thinking maybe, rather than like, you know, building a space station, Australia is going to see it herself having a role in the kind of facilitating launches and stuff like that, and then industry start building around that. You want to be closer to the equator when you're launching a rocket, right? Well, not so good for that part, but wait a minute, doesn't the equator go through Indonesia, like a thousand miles north of Australia? Yeah. But like, there is a good launch facility in South Australia called Wombra, where they do launch sort of rockets and things like that. So yeah. But if you're going to launch rockets, you should launch them from Darwin. It seems like Adelaide is the exact opposite spot. I don't know. Stop it, all right? Adelaide's the new space. No, look, I'm not trying to put Adelaide down. I'm just like one, I'm relieved that you're not pitching me a story about how mighty Assa, the Australian space agency is. Assa. So like, I feel better that you've beaten me to the punch on this because I was just surprised. I was just surprised. But yes, how do you feel about this great honor, Brady? Look, if you told me that Australia was launching a 20 person space agency, I probably wouldn't have even given you the time of day. But because it's an Adelaide, yeah, I'm right on board. Okay. Like my parochial side has been stirred. Right. I think they should be basing it in the mighty black stump. Because there isn't rooms for rent in that building, but they're looking at building something on the site of a former hospital. Quite a nice little spot in Adelaide and I think they're knocking down the old hospital. Assa is going to be part of that, I assume. Oh, it really is called Assa. Is it actually cold there? Yeah, it says the Australian space agency was announced in 2017. Whomra is a really cool place. I've been to a rocket launch at Whomra. It was awesome. Whomra is an Aboriginal word for like a device they used to throw spears. It's like a little wooden sheath they put the spear in to help them throw the spear further. Oh, it's the thing that gives them the leverage. I don't think I know which way. Yeah, it's like you put the spear in the base of it and then you throw the two together. Yeah, so that's quite a cool name for a place to launch rockets. That's a good rocket launch name. Yeah. It is like about 15 hours drive in Adelaide, but oh, okay. Well, you probably shouldn't have mentioned that. What's in the middle of nowhere, but I'm trying to get behind this. So you don't have to get behind it yet, Gray. Let me work up some talking points and hype for you. I just want to let you know it's happened while we're talking about. Basically, I thought if I rode on the coattails of Amazon and Apple announcing new places, they would seem more important. Okay, right. I see what's going on here. Like, why did Brady bring up this Apple thing? That doesn't seem like a story. Ah, ah, now he wants to ride off of one of the largest companies in the world and then like, and also in the same vein. Let's talk about Adelaide. So I've just been suckered into this conversation of Adelaide boosting as I often am on the show. I'm just trying to appropriate some of the stardust of the big companies that you are interested in. Okay. So what do you see as the glorious future in space for Australia? Look, I have no delusions of grandeur here. I just, I don't know. It could be the start of something big. It could come to nothing. It would probably come to nothing. But I'm just happy that Adelaide got a win. Basically, I'm happy for you that Adelaide got a win. The biggest cities sometimes kick us around a bit. So that's nice, that's something nice has happened. I mean, only 20 people. So I do realize we're just being thrown a bone, but we'll take it. I was going to try to throw you another bone. I was like, how many people did SpaceX have when it started? And the answer was 160 people. So it's rather, rather more than the Australian Space Agency. I don't know that you and I have discussed this before. It's been suggested many, many times, but Elon Musk does have quite a relationship with Adelaide. And Adelaide had some problems with its power supply a year or two ago. And Elon Musk, having his ability to seize on PR opportunities, said, I, Hey, South Australia, I'll build you a big super battery, with all my new battery technology. And the government took him up on it and he did all these visits to Adelaide. And they built a big Elon Musk battery proof of concept, power station type thing near Adelaide. So like, he has this association now. So I imagine, you know, maybe the government there's now going to say, Hey, can I throw a steady SpaceX bones as well? No, let's put it out there. I think it helped. The vision of Adelaide getting SpaceX bones. That's a feature Australian Space Agency. Adelaide, we have a problem. Today's episode is brought to you by Brilliant. Brilliant helps you master key ideas in math, science, and computer science. In fun, bite-sized bits, and through problem solving. Whether you want to hone your quantitative skills, improve your knowledge of science and technology, be a smarter parent for your inquisitive kid, or simply stay sharp. Brilliant helps you grow as a curious and ambitious person. And I feel like hello internet listeners are way more likely than the average person to be curious and ambitious people. No matter where you are, Brilliant's entertaining and educational course library is perfect for beginners, but also includes intermediate and advanced topics for professionals or lifelong learners, so that you can finish every day a little bit smarter than you started. And what's great about Brilliant is, instead of having you memorize formulas, you are learning not just facts, but you're learning frameworks for thinking and for solving challenging problems. This helps you apply the concepts that you've learned, and they're always keeping it fresh because every week there are new challenges. 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So I feel like this is a real summary of a bunch of the little things that YouTube has done. None of them big, which is why it hasn't come up on the show yet. But I was just like, I'm going to keep putting little things in this corner. And then since this section kept getting bumped back and bumped back for several episodes, of course, what has been released since the last episode before we could get to this corner, was the always talked about YouTube rewind of the year, which I feel like every year catches me off guard that I forget that it exists. And then for a brief shining moment, it's like the absolute epicenter of the online universe. And then it fades away very quickly. This is of course this compilation video that sort of, you know, is full of YouTube stars. It talks about the year that was you didn't get the call up. No, no, they did have a bunch of animators, which is genuinely nice to see because it's obviously more of a pain in the butt to include animators than other creators. You have to work them in a little bit differently. Props to Jaden animations and like others. It's great. I'm glad they included them. But no, I was not asked to be part of YouTube rewind. Snubbed. Snubbed. Well, I was worried if they'd say, Brady, we want you and the white gloves of destiny from objectivity, but. Oh, no. That actually would have been really good. That would have been great. Yeah. Like, yeah, I could see that even, you know, because like there's a million little cameos in this. Yeah. Me and Keith down in the archives. Yeah. Doing the ultimate rewind through history. Yeah. Yeah. Or even just as a prop in the background, right? The white gloves, just like a little objectivity nod from someone who's a fan. I'll tell you what, if I'd been in that video, I would comfortably have been the oldest person in it. I'm not 100% sure that's true. No, maybe. Maybe. Or Will Smith, maybe. Oh, yeah. Of course. Will Smith. Anyway, this is just for context. It's been viewed 142 million times, which is not surprising because YouTube shoves it down everyone's throat. But it has become the most disliked video in YouTube history overtaking some Justin Bieber video that used to hold the record. It's been liked. It's got the thumbs up 2.3 million times. But it has been disliked more than 13 million times. Oh, wow. It's up to 13 now. That's great. Did you say you probably didn't see YouTube's like me a culper basically on Twitter about it, did you? No, no, I don't know. I don't know what is this. Yeah. So YouTube tweeted a picture like a screenshot at the moment that it overtook Justin Bieber as the most disliked video. And they wrote new record exclamation mark. And then they put, oh, wait. Like, so they were kind of like being self-deprecating. And then as the second thing in the thread they wrote, thanks to the creators that took part in rewind and the community that responded, we hear what you're saying. And we want to make Nick's year better for all of you. Watch this space. That's close to a me a culper, isn't it? Yeah, I mean. Here's the reason we're talking about it. Because like I mentioned at the beginning, it's like this burning thing on the internet. But it also, every year kind of fades rapidly. Yeah. It sort of goes away. But I do think that this is interesting, precisely because it crossed this threshold of being the most disliked video on all of YouTube. It gave it like a news peg and a talking point. I hope it's a thing that YouTube takes notice of. I sent you, I don't know if you've seen it, but it's a graph of the likes versus dislikes over time for all of the various YouTube rewinds. This is the first time in a long time that it's been out-disliked. It is the first time it has ever been out-disliked. 2011 looks like it might have been out-disliked. I can't quite tell, but. Oh, yeah, maybe. But I feel like it's the second one. It's within basically within like a margin of error, right? Like they're so small, it doesn't matter. Like 2012 is the actual start, especially if you go back and you watch the first 2010 rewind, it's hilarious because it's just Rebecca Black counting down some bit. It's not even what we think of as rewind. What do you think of the video? You've watched the video, obviously. Here's the thing. It's terrible. It's corporately cringey. But just from a like, I'm watching something on YouTube. Here is a video. Does this deserve to be the most disliked video on YouTube judged as a video? I think not. But likes and dislikes aren't about technical skill, are they? No, no, no, but this is what I mean. It's like the actual video, if you watch it as I did, sort of isolated from the world and someone's like, oh, hey, YouTube rewinds up, you have to see it. And so I click on it and watch it without much context. It's corporately cringey. And there's a couple of parts that make me deeply cringey. Yeah. But it feels like, oh, this is just like last year, right? Where it's bad and boring in a corporate way. But I wouldn't have pegged like, oh, this is going to be just the worst thing ever, right? People are yeah, totally going to hate this, viewing it in an isolated bubble. What did you think of it? Watching it. I thought it was dreadful. Like I never like or dislike videos on YouTube, but I did consider giving it a thumbs down just to almost like I felt like I had a duty to. But I didn't. I probably said this last year when we just reviewed last years, it makes me kind of embarrassed to be a YouTube filmmaker. Like if my friends who know that I'm at YouTube videos, but aren't into YouTube, but watched that and associated that with me, I'd be really embarrassed that they think that's the world I operate in and work in. And that's what my content is like. And that's what my viewers and audience enjoy. Like it just, it makes me feel incredibly disconnected with YouTube because like my experience in YouTube world is nothing like that. And I feel like my experience of YouTube and YouTube world is not represented in that video in any way whatsoever. And that's either because they've stuffed up or more likely my little corner of YouTube is so insignificant and small, it doesn't even deserve to be in the rewind, which is kind of interesting and depressing and fascinating all at the same time. I mean, Brady, they did represent science in the video by doing an experiment where they melted lipstick in a big bat. Yeah, that was the one nod to science wasn't it? Hey, there needs to be more science on YouTube and you're thinking, oh, here comes the science part. And then they just melt lipstick. Yeah, not good. Shall we say? It's like you have two seconds worth of science. You could do almost anything melting lipstick and just stirring it and going, ooh, it's not like it's not what science is. What's fascinating about that is you probably don't remember, but a few years ago now there was a controversy when the European Union released a video that was aimed at getting women into science. Oh, I remember that video. Yeah, that was unforgettable. Yeah, science, it's a girl thing. And that was really terrible and condescending. And it was all about makeup and lipstick and trying to incorporate that into science. And it was like, oh, and they got so much flat for it. And they quite rightly, in my opinion, withdrew from it because I think they really made a mistake with it. And the beautiful thing about this is that they've done the exact same thing, but just in like a couple of seconds of rewind, like it's like they've crammed every possible terrible thing you could do into one mega video. Right, they purified it, right? They've distilled it down into this thing. Yeah. How can we be really condescending to science? Oh, well, we'd melt lipstick, but we haven't got time to put science in the video. Well, let's just melt lipstick for two seconds. Yeah, it's like, I would prefer that you just hadn't or just show it, but don't be like, oh, this video needs more science. And it's almost like the two creators who are like, you know, legitimate science creators were given the script line. There should be more science on YouTube. And then within half a second of that half a line being delivered, they just slapped them in the face and said, this is what you're gonna get. Like, that was pretty terrible. And also, if last year's productions are anything to go by, they almost certainly filmed a whole bunch of genuinely sciencey stuff. And I'm sure they were filming for hours and hours. And then of course, what ends up happening is like, well, we gotta pick the thing that just looks best on camera. Who knows what that even was in that bat, right? It could have been something else entirely. And just like, whatever, this looks good. We're just gonna film it. We're gonna add an align about the lipstick. Great, we're done. Move on. So a couple of other thoughts, Greg. Just what? Yeah. You asked my aunt, my aunt, my aunt, the two other things that I wrote down, it's not the easiest thing to say, but the section in the middle where it got all emotional and worthy about YouTube. And they talked about how all the great things that are happening on YouTube with diversity and that's all the stuff. Like, I get that YouTube wanna push that barrow and highlight these things that are happening on the platform. And fair enough, of course they would wanna push those things. But it was done in such a condescending, yet saccharine, yet kind of unsettle way. It was like, they didn't represent diversity and the good things about YouTube just by showing them in their natural environment. They just kind of shoved it down your throat and spelled it all out. And like the music stopped. It was like an after school special, like telling you exactly why YouTube's good. So that section I found like, tonally poorly done, even though, you know, if that's what they wanna achieve with the video, that's fine. But I think they could have done it a lot better. Yeah, I mean, they might as well have had a record screeching sound effect, like preceding that section. I'm like, hey guys, let's take a minute to talk about the things that really matter. It's like, whoa, this is quite a shift. Yeah, and it was just lacking in any subtlety. And the people who have had success, like, you know, breaking down stereotypes and misconceptions on YouTube, do it like just by being themselves and by being cool and being there. You don't have to spell it out quite so clearly. And the other thing that I wrote down was, because before I watched it, obviously I saw there was all this controversy about who wasn't in it. Like obviously all the PewDiePie love was like, PewDiePie should be in it. How can you have a rewind without such a big and important creator? Or how come they didn't have this boxing match between Logan Pollan, whoever, like, there was all this controversy about who was left out. And there were other people online saying, this is ridiculous, you know, you can't have everyone in it. There shouldn't be all this talk about who's in and who's out, like this stupid debate. But YouTube bring this on themselves, because the whole message of this video was who deserves to be in the video. Yeah. That was almost like the theme of the video. This person should be in it. This person should be in it. This person deserves to be in it. So the whole premise of the film was who deserves to be in a YouTube rewind. So of course that's gonna blow up in their face with all the people they left out for the various reasons they would leave those people out. It was a stupid thing to do for that reason. That, to me, is the thing that I think went so deeply, deeply wrong with this YouTube rewind. Is exactly that point. That, I mean, the title is, everyone controls rewind. And the premise of it is that the creators in the video are also picking other creators to be in the video. And it incredibly opens them up to perfectly legitimate criticism of who should be in the video and who should not be in the video. And then makes all of the decisions they make framed in, like it has always been the case, but it is, it just makes it crystal clear that everyone can pick who's in this video as long as they're the people that we want in this video. And it's like, I don't really wanna get into that debate either. But I can say, there are some people who have made very repeat occurrences on YouTube rewind. It was like, we all know why you're here. It's because you're one of YouTube's golden children and they love you for a whole bunch of reasons. But if you could gather up YouTube as a community and ask that community, which people do they want in rewind, I could think a few of those people who are there every year, who there was like a 0% chance would be chosen. But YouTube wants them there. And this is also why to me, it falls under my YouTube wants to be TV corner because perhaps to me, the thing that really sets it off on the most wrong foot is opening it with Will Smith. Yes, that was a massive must. And making it a mystery, like it starts with the back of the head and you're like, oh, who is this, who is this person? And it turns around and it's like a gut punch. It's like, yep, we're doing exactly what you're afraid of. It's almost like what the hell was this person doing here? He's so out of place and they start with it as a big reveal. Like we should be like, oh, awesome, you taught me by surprise. And it's like, no, you've disappointed me from the start. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm just going to say it. The only way an opening reveal like that would have worked in YouTube's favor is if it was PewDiePie because it would be a genuine surprise and a huge number of people would be thrilled to have year review. They'd be thrilled, right? You genuinely wouldn't expect it. And it would also mean that YouTube had made a decision that was contrary to what you expect. Logan Paul would have worked in that respect too, maybe, but PewDiePie's a better choice. PewDiePie is the biggest, at least for now, while he's still winning over a T-series. Hashtags was grabbed by PewDiePie. But like, that is the only way a reveal could work. And it's amazing because if I sat down and tried to think, okay, how could you make a reveal that would get exactly the reaction that you don't want to happen? I think almost nobody could be more perfect than Will Smith. He's like old person's cool. He's like the managers of YouTube when they sit around thinking who's the coolest person in the world we could possibly get. And they'd be like, oh, Will Smith, I loved his films in the 90s and the 2000s. It's who the manager would choose. And it's like, no, you don't get it. I mean, look, this may be a little mean to say, but Will Smith is a YouTube carpet bagger. He is coming to this platform in a very calculated way. And I'm not saying that his vlogs are bad. I've watched some of them, but I cannot get past just how transparently this is a calculated career move for someone like Will Smith. He knows as the first big movie star person to really go all in on a vlog that he is going to be exactly what YouTube wants to promote. Exactly what they're going to want to put in YouTube rewind. He is going to become another one of YouTube's golden children. Like if I was Will Smith, 100% I would be doing a vlog on YouTube and promoting it and trying to be a huge big deal there. But it's like always this feeling of YouTube doesn't appreciate the resource that it has in all of these creators because they don't like the intrinsic chaoticness and variance that comes with the people on the platform. But it's the one advantage that they have over other streaming services. It is their most key advantage and it's infuriating to see them constantly push back on this. And the Will Smith reveal is the most like, hey, you know what everybody wants to see in YouTube rewind? They want to see movie stars who are making calculated career moves. It's like, no, nobody wants to see this. I don't know how you possibly could have thought this reveal is a good idea. And that sets the tone for the whole thing. Because now everything that happens in the video, it's not something that the viewer wants. I think that's why it ended up spiraling out of control because everybody could make the comment at some point in the video. This isn't what I want in my YouTube rewind. And starting it with Will Smith made a fruit of a poison tree. I think it really did. I mean, it's so corporate and tone deaf. And it makes me sad and it's just a huge mess. If you were the boss of YouTube, if you got my chief executive and you had to oversee next year, what would you do to rewind? Would you scrap it? Would you have someone cool make it? What would be your plan of attack? First of all, would you have it? Does it need to exist? Well, I mean, look, like here's the problem. Am I the CEO of YouTube? Or am I the God Emperor of YouTube? Because those are two very different things. As the CEO of YouTube, I'm not sure I would do a lot different. Because the CEO in the real world is acting under a whole bunch of constraints. And the CEO of YouTube is really just a sub-CEO of Google that owns them, which is a sub entity of alphabet. They're not even like an Elon Musk style CEO who can just go off the rails and do what he wants. But you aren't telling me that like, she's looking at this video and standing by and thinking, yeah, that was a good call. Surely the people in YouTube must be thinking, hmm, we mapped that one up. Or do you think they're looking at it going, sure it's got a lot of dislikes, but it's achieved a whole bunch of things we wanted up to achieve. Well, the CEO I imagine would have thought that this was achieving what they want to achieve. Like in retrospect, maybe it did, maybe it didn't. But like they made it because they thought that this was a correct decision. So like if I was the God Emperor of YouTube, I think the thing that people actually want from rewind. If you're trying to make something that's actually for the community and that matches up with the actual title of what it is, you would need to have something that references the biggest events on YouTube in the past year. And guess what, that means you're going to have creators in there that aren't perfect angels of exactly everything that you want. That's what the rewind should be. And it's like, the problem with this thing is it's like a weird promotional video for YouTube, but like promotional to who? I don't understand. And everyone's in the wrong context. All these people you'd know and love, I have to admit, I don't know who most of them are, but all these people who are no-one-unloved, it's not a rewind because you're not saying them doing the things you love saying them do. They're all way out of their comfort zones and look like they're way out of their comfort zones. You know, you're seeing someone who's really famous or doing like fantastic technology reviews. And he's like, in front of a blue screen jumping out of a plane and like, yeah, it doesn't quite fit. I also loved how fast MKBHD disowned that. Like he was the first guy out with a video just to sing himself from YouTube rewind. It's like MKBHD is no dummy. He knew exactly what to do there. But no, I agree. It's people completely out of context, but that's what I would do if I was the God Emperor of YouTube is I would say, okay, look, we're gonna have the biggest events. And that means that there are people who are not angels and we're gonna have them in there. But it's like a YouTube rewind that doesn't include a race between two channels to be the top channel of YouTube is like a totally meaningless rewind. You know, like one of the bigger events of the year. Like that has to be in there. Whether or not you like PewDiePie, it has to be in there. And a live streamed boxing match between two creators. Like even if it wasn't the biggest thing, it was like, how can that not be represented in there? I know one of the guys had a few other issues, but you could do something about the boxing without bringing up all the other stuff. Yeah, and I think that's a perfect example of Logan Paul has made some mistakes this year, but you could still have him in it with the boxing because the boxing with KSI was a legitimately huge deal. And lots of people were watching it and it's just, it's a bizarre thing that YouTube does. Like I kind of hope that YouTube sees it and take something from this because I think it's a real sign that, I've always said that YouTube is weaker than it looks and one of the reasons it's weaker than it looks is because a lot of people I talk to at best dislike the platform and the way it handles creators. And a lot of people have built up a lot of resentment towards YouTube over the years, which is like all of the randomness and the demonetization and changing features or taking features away and always like putting you in a smaller and smaller box and all this kind of stuff. And I think like that ends up expressing itself in this kind of video. I doubt anything will happen because I'm pretty sure that YouTube really does just want to be TV and they're gonna do everything that they possibly can to make themselves TV over time. And this is just like a one way ratchet. But I would hope it would be something else but it's like creator frustration made visceral in the YouTube rewind video. If they said to you, CGP Gray, we're doing another one next year. Do you want to be part of it? Can you give us like a sound buy and a piece of animation that looks like it's from your channel and stuff? What would be your instinctive reaction now? Ah! Okay, there's many levels to this Brady. My instinctive simple reaction would be that, no, I wouldn't want to be part of it. Yeah. But I might want to be part of it if there was an opportunity, let's say to be slightly subversive in the actual video itself. Like if you could say sneak something in. That might be a reason to be in YouTube rewind. But the straight up question, like if I was asked, I think you asked me the same thing last year, would I be in it? No, it's a strange, bizarre thing. I don't like being part of projects where I don't have control over them either. Or it's like I'm gonna hand you a thing and like who knows what's going to happen or what the context is going to be around it. So generally, no, like I'd have to say no. But if you were offered the opportunity to have the white gloves of destiny in the video, what would you do, Brady? Do you know, like last year, I'm sure I said, pardon me, thinks no, but another pardon me thinks I have an obligation to try and seek out opportunities to promote the projects. I have that obligation to other people who are involved with the projects. But I'm not sure I'm being in it would do you any good anyway? Like if they said, I'll Brady, can you just come and stand around a campfire and wear the white gloves and deliver some line about? I love that education is part of the YouTube platform. Like I don't think people at the end of the video are gonna go, who was that like weird ginger guy with the gloves? Oh, let me go on what she's channel and subscribe to it and learn about the archives at the Royal Society. I just don't think that happens. So I think like there's probably more to be lost than gained, you know? I just wanted to take a look at the only appearance that I genuinely liked in the video, which was at the very end primitive technology did the credit sequence. Oh yeah, that was cool. Primitive technology, if it's a channel that you haven't seen, it's great. It's weirdly meditative. There's no talking. It's just this guy out in the woods somewhere, building a hut or baking bricks, like all of this neolithic level technology stuff. But he has just a great way of filming it and there's something just really captivating about the tremendous number of man hours required to shingle the roof of your hut with clay bricks. Like, it's just amazing in their hypnotic and he got featured at the end and I thought, oh, this is actually great. And one of the reasons it's great is you get to see who is this weird channel. Like, what does he do? It's long enough to take it in. So it's a huge feature. I think you could argue that aside from Will Smith, no one was greater featured in the video than primitive technology. But I've just pulled up his subscriber stats for the day that YouTube rewind went up. You wouldn't know. You wouldn't know there was any difference in before and after YouTube rewind went up. It's like, it ticks up some, but it's not like he gained a million billion subscribers when rewind went up. YouTube rewind went up on the sixth, and he gets 2000 subscribers a day on average and on the rewind day he got 4,000 subscribers. You know? So I don't think it's a promotional tool for the people who are in it. And I will always say, people use this phrase where they go like, I'm so honored. To be part of this thing. And I say it like that because I don't know if this is getting into necessary lies of civilization territory. Like whenever someone is giving you honor, not always, but very often it's because there's no good reason for you to do this thing. Like honor is how people trick you into doing something that is not in your own best interests. Right? It's not worth actual compensation. It's worth this pretend societal compensation called honor. And I think the YouTube rewind is a great example of that. Like, oh, what an honor to take these people and showcase them in the rewind and suck up a day of their life filming and added with travel and everything. It's like, it always makes me smile and people are like, oh, it was so honored to be part of this thing. It's like, you just sound like a sucker when you say that. But I don't know. I don't know if I should leave that in the podcast. It's too close to the core of society, Brady. Yeah. YouTubers are also a group of people who are probably more susceptible than most to being paid with honor as well. Because it also is like ego-striking, isn't it? Well, if it's validation, you are important enough to be in this thing that other people aren't in. Again, I don't want to bring it up, Brady, because I know it's a point. But I'm going to again say that the YouTube rewind crowd, the drama club is dramatically overrepresented in the YouTube rewind crowd. Like for sure, many of those people are the personality type of like, I just want to be on the stage. I just want a bunch of strangers I don't know to love me like a total psychopath, right? Like there's clearly some people in that group who fit that mold quite tightly. I always love it when we're recording Hello Internet because I know if you ever say, I'm not sure I should leave this in the podcast or I'm not sure I should say this. It means you're almost guaranteed to leave it in. They're the things you leave in the most. It's the things you don't talk about that silently. Yes, Nick. Do you know why I leave them in sometimes, Brady? I feel like those sentences are like a message in a bottle to younger versions of me. Like, hey, hey, don't buy all this bulls**t society is selling you. Let other people buy this bulls**t.
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Category:Hello Internet Episode
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