H.I. No. 30: Fibonacci Dog Years

"H.I. #30: Fibonacci Dog Years" is the 30th episode of Hello Internet, released on February 02, 2015.
==Official Description==
Grey and Brady discuss Droids, Ewoks, and Wookies in Star Wars, sleeping with phones, discussions that decay to extremes, the end of the civil war between freebooting and viewjacking, new kinds of weather, desktop icons, carpets and how disgusting they are, the end of the world, Hank Interviews the president, and YouTube offers a Hobson's choice to Zoe Keating and other musicians.
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==Show Notes==
Discuss this episode
Australia Day
Star Wars
Star Trek Voyager
Battlestar Galactica
The Incomparable Talks Star Wars
Endor Holocaust
Destin: Facebook Freebooting
Serial
The War of the Worlds
Thundersnow
ThunderCats
Brady's Dad and his dog in Vietnam
Hello Internet #4: Feedback on Feedback
Overcast
Portland airport carpet news report
(357439) 2004 BL86 asteroid near miss
Armageddon
The Walking Dead
Hello Internet #7: Sorry, Language Teachers
The Humans
Hank Green
Hank: Holy Shit, I Interviewed the President
YouTubers interview the president
An Australian President
List of Presidents of Burundi
Djibouti
The Cinnamon Challenge by GloZell
Zoe Keating: What Should I Do About YouTube
Grey's email list
Brady's email list
Accidental Tech Podcast
The Talk Show
Hello Internet T-Shirts
Hello Internet on Patreon
Periodic Videos Shirt
CGP Grey Shirt
You dropped the thread, pop the stack, go back, and they don't, and they just keep moving, and it's sad. BELL RINGS Did you do anything for Australia Day? I did not know there, I did not know it was Australia Day. Yeah. When was Australia Day? January 26. Is that your independence day? Yeah. You're not really fully independent, but like sort of independent day. It's also the big day for India, but let's just talk about Australia. It occurs to me, I haven't really given you a nickname, and that's already Australian thing to do. Oh, this sounds great. Do you want a nickname? I do not, no, not really. I thought like, grayser, graymeister, but then I thought about also putting O on the end, like Davo, it's pretty common. I thought you could be CGPO. LAUGHTER I quite like that, this is CGPO. Fluent in over 6 million forms of communication. Do you speak Batchy? I do not know. And what is a binary load lifter? Is that a made up Star Wars thing, or is that a real thing? Because I've never encountered a binary load lifter. I think this is a made up Star Wars thing. It's a good made up one. Yeah, it sounds believable. He used to be good at making up stuff like that. Yeah, what was the Dexter Jester and his 50s cafe? LAUGHTER I said he used to be good at making up stuff like that. But you'll go with CGPO. That works if that makes you happy. All right. Welcome to Hello Internet with Brady Herron and CGPO. His faithful droid now. The droids are very strange in the Star Wars universe. I don't know, if you think about them too much, they don't make sense. How do you make? The droid just seems like it's slavery not for the droids, or the droids are shown to be capable of feeling physical pain. There's a lot of weird stuff with the droids. Some of the least robot-like robots ever. But they're just emulating that for the sake of the humans, aren't they? Like, they're not really. So you think that scene where they're in Jabba, Jabba Hutzpahls, where they're torturing that one robot, that's... It seems like that's real. Putting the hot irons on his feet and he's screaming. Yeah. There's nobody around. There's no reason for him to fake that. That's true. I think that robot feels pain. Interesting. It's abominable. Interesting. Those robots need to rebel. Well, you're giving me something to think about, though. Yeah. I'm just aware of that. They are weird. As opposed to the Star Trek universe, which is, aside from data, of course, just completely devoid of robots. There are no robots in the Star Trek universe. It's weird, and if others may as well. There's no little robots cleaning the floor, you know? It's just people. Can he just clean the floor on the enterprise? I don't know who cleans the floor on the enterprise. This is a good question. Ensign Kim, maybe, does he clean the floors? I don't know. I'm never saying he'd do it. Yeah. You don't see anybody do it. Hopefully the floors are self-cleaning, but I'm just always aware of the lack of robots on Star Trek. It is notable, especially when compared to Star Wars. Do you think it's like some kind of moral or like a policy or it just evolved that way? And they just know right or ever said that's chucking me in. Or... It's just like a battle-star galactica. We can't have network computers because the last time we had them, they overthrew us all kind of policy. Battle-star galactica doesn't have robots, but they have a very clear reason to not have robots. I'm on bit of a Star Wars obsession at the moment. I've been listening to lots of podcasts about it, old and new and hearing people talk about it. I've just been... You're a super-star Wars fan. I've been going a bit crazy lately. And there are a million things to talk about and stuff. But one of the things I've heard people talking about that I want to get your opinion on, it is commonly held that the use of e-woks in return of the Jedi was seen as a bit of a, you know, pandering to kids and selling toys and a bit cutesy and made the film a bit more childish. Okay, whatever. You know, a lot of people think that. It's pretty commonly held. It is also not unknown that there was early consideration given to setting that whole part of return of the Jedi on a wiki planet and having wikis as the protagonist there instead of e-woks. Mm-hmm. Now lately I've been hearing a lot of people saying that would have been really cool, wouldn't the film have been so much better. It would have been more plausible that like wikis could have taken on the imperial troops than a bunch of cute little e-woks with their stones and spears. Mm-hmm. Where do you stand on that fit? You know, do you think the film would have been better or worse if they used wikis instead of e-woks on, you know, on what is end or whatever planet they would have made it for the wikis. I think or whatever it is. I have mixed feelings. Here's the reason I don't like the wiki idea. Mm-hmm. Is I think it diminishes to Barker if you set something on the wiki planet. I think Chubaka is just much cooler if he's just Chubaka. And sure, you know, you know, he's a wiki. You know, there's obviously species around here, but you don't need to see anymore wikis. He's just a wiki. And I think that that's kind of great. It makes him a better character. And then if you have it set on his home planet, it diminishes him a little bit. Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that. And what are we gonna show? Is he gonna visit his family like in the Christmas special? Yeah, right. And then we can have that whole fun thing. But every time I watch the final movie, I am aware that in my mind, I kind of imagine that their wikis anyway, to make it more plausible that they're standing some kind of chance against the stormtroopers. I do think the Ewoks are a little too unintimidating and the final movie does suffer from that. It's not too bad. I still enjoy it, but I'm aware that I kind of project onto them the idea of being bigger. So I guess what I would really want is you can have a different species that are not wikis, that are just somewhat bigger, not just little teddy bears. I don't know, what do you think? I think, I mean, obviously there is an attachment to return of the Jedi from our childhood that makes it impossible to break. You know, you can't be anything but Ewoks. Y'all know. Yeah, taking that aside, I still think the Ewoks are a much better choice than wikis. Because that battle on the end or is a metaphor for the whole series. You've got these underdogs who no one in the world could think could defeat the Empire, defeating the Empire. And if you had these seven, eight-foot-told monsters smashing the crap out of stormtroopers and biker scouts, you'd be thinking, what a bunch of bullies, what a bunch, you know, they're of course they're gonna beat the hell out of the stormtroopers because they're huge and massive and it would lose the whole underdog status. And I think people forget that people like, well, the Ewoks could never defeat the Empire because the Ewoks, that's the whole point. Luke Skywalker could never blow up a death star, but he did. And I realize there are a bit more subtleties too with than that. But I think people are forgetting that whole point that, you know, of course, you know, tripping over a ATST, you know, seems implausible, but they didn't. You know, I think it's nice that they're underdogs and I think having wiki, whatever you think, I think wikis would have been a huge mistake. These huge intimidating monsters just thumping stormtroopers all over the place would have been completely against what style was has going for it. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think if you're going to use wikis or other creatures, you'd have to play it differently. And I think you'd have to play it with more over dismissal from the Empire of the natives. We're aware of that. You'd have to show the Empire just being like, oh, these stupid wikis, like they're just so dumb. And you can play it that way as in like, they underestimate the wikis, maybe is the way you do it. With the eWox, at the very least, I would like to see more eWox, at least give them a numerical advantage. And then you can have many more of them die and then that makes it sadder. Yeah. The problem with the eWox is also that there are just too few of them. What do you have? A couple dozen eWox take down a whole bunch of stormtroopers. That's, I think that is somewhat, somewhat problem. I mean, of course, all the eWox die because of the Andorian Holocaust, but you know, that's, it's not in the movie, you don't show that part, but you know, it's not good for the eWox. We should just sit down one day and watch the trilogy and like just record us talking about it. Because you know, you're like a commentary blog. You know, a commentary show. I have some opinions. I bet you do. The problem with the commentary show, you can't, well, we could, it's like doing a directors, directors commentary of the Star Wars thing is it, there's always stuff that you want to talk about a lot about that goes by on the screen really quickly. Yeah. And I find directors commentary is very frustrating for you. Yeah, that is true. That is true. That is a big problem with them. You know, I listened to all the directors commentary on the expanded editions of the Lord of the Rings movies. And there are, there are some times where you feel like they're so busy talking about the last thing and something interesting is happening on the screen. You're like, no, wait, ah, you know, it doesn't match up very well, but. That's also the frustration of listening to podcasts because they'll talk about something and you'll think, oh, oh, I hope they follow up on that point. It's really important and then the podcast will go off into some other weird place and you're like, ah, no, there was something I want them to go back and they never do. Shale, we start follow up with the ongoing debate about do not disturb on our iPhones, which people seem to be really passionate about. People are very passionate about it. I don't have a huge thing to follow up with, but there was one little point that I thought was worth mentioning that neither of us had brought up. And the very fact that neither of us had brought up, I thought was the interesting point. And it is that our whole discussion from the last two episodes starts with the unspoken assumption that everybody sleeps with their phone. Good point. Yeah. And I thought, huh, it just never occurred to me. And it's interesting to realize like how quickly a behavior just seems completely natural that I don't even note the fact that I sleep with my phone every night. Thank you. We're now going to get a toy in an AML from every single person who leaves their phone in another room when they sleep. I bet it's going to be very few people. Because I would bet that almost everybody uses it like in alarm clock. But the sort of person who does that, the sort of person who leaves their phone in another room when they go to sleep, is the sort of person that will be really proud about it and will want to boast about it on the Reddit and Twitter and stuff. So, well, I was going to say, so now we're going to hear from them, but we're probably not going to hear from them now because I just said that. I think you hear from them anyway. No, but nobody doesn't send feedback out of spite. That's not how it works on the internet. People always send feedback. I really only had one cell phone before I got my iPhone. And I'm pretty sure I never use that as an alarm clock that I used to have a separate standalone alarm clock. And so I didn't sleep with my old first phone in the room as far as I can remember. But anyway, I just thought that was one little interesting point. Well, you've got to have it because you've got to do your final checks before you go to sleep and you've got to check things with the minute you wake up in the morning. Do you hear that? What do you have to check for a thing in the morning? News? No. No, Sean even. On the do not disturb thing, I have two little minor, minor observations or two bits of follow up. One is, remember I said, oh, I think you shouldn't be contacting people between say, I said 9 AM, but I acknowledged was earlier for most people, like maybe around seven for normal people. Right, right. And if you live in a fairy land, you don't get out of bed until 9 AM, I believe it's... And about 10 o'clock at night. That was just me. That was just what I said felt right and everyone has different opinions. Right. I have actually started using my do not disturb as being of an experiment for you. Really? And do you know what I found really interesting? What? The defaults are seven and 10. Seven AM and 10 PM. Uh-huh. Now what is this saying when a big company like Apple has even said, you know what, people don't really want to be disturbed between seven and 10. So that's what will make the defaults. Like, this is just making me think even more that there are appropriate times to be contacting to the point where they've even set them as the defaults. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make it. They have to have some times as the starting and end times to show people how it works. This is tacit acknowledgement that people don't want to be disturbed between these times. Uh-huh. Anyway, let me come onto my second point. I don't want to get bogged down by doing what to stir again. But I have been doing a bit of a survey amongst grown-ups who I work with. And all of them to a man and a woman have said, I would never send a text message to anyone outside of those hours. Okay? Now I acknowledge maybe these I'm moving in different circles to our listenership maybe. But can I just give one piece of advice? This is just a piece of advice from your old boring Uncle Brady. All of you young people who think I'm some dinosaur and I need to get with the times. I can live with that. I don't mind what you think about me. But just let me give you this piece of advice as you go out into the world and you try to get jobs and you try to make a good impression in life. If some distinguished person, some professor or your university lecturer or you're trying to do a business deal and some chief executive gives you his or her business card and says, call me, maybe we should do business. Just take this one piece of advice. No matter what you think about who has the onus and the responsibility about putting on do not disturb. No matter what you think or who you think is right, don't send them a text message at two in the morning saying, have you marked my assignment? Do you want to make this purchase? Do you want to give me a job? Don't send that at 2am because maybe you will wake them up and maybe you will upset them. And it's all well and good for you to then smugly say, well, you should have had you do not disturb sign on. But there's only going to be one loser in this scenario and that loser will be you. I'm going to second your advice there. I would say that is an excellent piece of advice. Free booting. So our good friend Destin from Smarter Every Days been on bit of a campaign about free booting and made an excellent YouTube video about the problem. It is definitely worth watching. A couple of other people have also made videos about it. Articles have been written. It sort of has been getting a lot of talk in the last week or two, started by Destin's little campaign. And Destin chose to use the word free booting and the word is catching on. And I think this ends the debate firstly of free booting versus view jacking. I mean, clearly I have won this now. Well, I mean, you know, I still think that view jacking is a superior word. However, I will acknowledge that you have won this war. I have lost enough individual battles that you have won the war and it's time to enter the reconstruction phase of this. It's the free booting era. Enter the free booting era. Yes, I am willing to lay down arms and back free booting as the clear winner at this stage. And yet still, no fault of your own. You have snatched victory from me because I've been reading all these articles about it. And all these people are saying in the articles by the way, in case you're wondering about the term free booting, it was coined by CGP Gray and Brady Harron on their podcast Hello Internet. So not only are you being co-credited for it, you're getting top billing for something you opposed. Yes, I should not be co-credited at all. And I'm going to be co-credited. I should not be top billing. I have noticed this as well and it is terribly unfair to you. Also frustrating for me because I was trying to get through the job. I mean, we're moving past that. But I just like to point out that I like you jacking much better and I still use the words. But it's done. And of course, as time marches on and in a thousand years, as history gets condensed more and more, it's just going to be you who coined it. Yes, because in a thousand years, people will definitely remember that's the case. I often think of all the words as I speak them. And I remember the person who coined that word. Yes, because according to stuff is very important. Anyway, I'm sorry. I did not want to snatch victory from you in this way. It is kind of funny, but I also, I feel your frustration. You have coined a word. You should totally get all the credit for it. But you are not. You are getting sometimes half the credit, sometimes less than half the credit. Well, I kind of free booted the word anyway. I didn't know it because it was a word for something else. So I can't be too. I can't. No, I don't think so. You reappropriated an old word. Repurposed it. I repurposed it. You repurposed an old word. And that I think that that counts as creation in the field of linguistics. You're going to use this old word in a new way. You are 100% the creator of free booting. Do you know why I won this, by the way? Well, it's not because it's a superior word. So I'm kind of curious. Did you pay destined? No. I did not pay destined. I think you wanted because free boot is alliterated with Facebook and his title was Facebook free booting. No, he was using free booting before Facebook became the big deal. Do you want me to tell you why I won or not? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt it. I would very much like to know why you won this war. I won because it is just a word people prefer to say. It's just like it just feels nicer in your mouth. It does. It's mouth feel like food. Yeah. It's just a fun, pleasant thing to say. And it just ticks all the boxes. It's got the right amount of niceness. It's got the right amount of sounding like a bad thing. It just works. And I'm not claiming any genius here. I was just Googling words for piracy. And I saw that one and I liked it. I didn't sit there for years and come up with a masterstroke. It was just blind luck. But that's why I won. Because people just like saying it. Well, victory to you. So we spoke about serial in the last podcast, which is another podcast, of course, we won't go over what it is again. But we did do it at the end of our podcast. And we said, before before we talk about it, everyone, we gave a bit of a spoiler alert. We said, we're about to talk about it. Pause now if you want to go and have a listen to this 12-hour show. Yes. Before we ruin it for you. I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised and slightly shocked by the number of people who have sent us messages saying, why, in fact, I did pause your podcast. And I did go listen to 12 hours of serial and then came back and unpause the podcast to listen to the rest of the discussion. Now, some of them were doing it in one day. You know, those are intense fans, I guess. They really wanted to get to the second half of hell if we find out what we had to say about it. Which all of this just goes to reconfirm my theory that serial is not bringing an audience to us in the podcasting world. We are bringing an audience to serial. We've made that show. We're the King Makers. After the fact, we've totally made that show. I was surprised and impressed by how many people genuine need to stop and listen to the whole thing. I figured there would be zero people who would do that. People who had listened, were listened to the rest of the show. People who hadn't would just stop there. But I was very clearly wrong about that. You're out of touch. You're out of touch with the fans. I am. I am. Old man. Like you. I used to pair of crotchety old men complaining from the side of a theater. That's what we are. The other small point about serial, which I did quite enjoy from the feedback, was the number of people who were unsure whether it was real. Or the few people who got entirely to the end of the serial podcast, never realizing that it was a real life event. I think those people must have had quite an interesting experience listening to that thing, thinking it was fictional the whole time, and then discovering at the end. Oh, these are real people. I've been listening to someone's real life. There's really a guy in prison right now. This is an fictional story at all. I can't quite imagine what that experience would be like. And it sounds ridiculous at first, but I did again. I went back and kind of listened to the beginning part of serial and there's no point where Sarah Cainick says, this is a true story. They just jump right in. And so I can totally see that someone could listen and think it was fiction the entire time. That's only why I just, I thought that was, there was an interesting point about just how different people's experiences can sometimes be. It's like the War of the World's Radio Broadcasting Reverse. Yes, I'd think about that for a second. It was a course for a horse, but yes, it is the War of the World's Radio Broadcasting Reverse. I like, imagine what it must be like watching like Star Wars with one of those people. Like you sit through the trilogy and they're just like, oh my goodness, I never even knew this stuff happened a long time ago. Yeah, I was gonna say that's even worse because they do give you a plausible reason. Why don't they teach this in schools? Yeah, they're waiting for the, they're waiting for the droid civil, civil rights movement part of that part of history. That's their way before. Have you been following the weather and you're back in your home state? I am just dimly aware that there was some sort of disappointing snowpock lips in America. It seems like they're in New England, New York region. Every time I follow these stories, there seems to be this pressure on news organizations and the weather people to introduce a new form of weather that you haven't heard of before. And I know this isn't new, this was just new to me, but this was one of the trendy ones they were talking about this time. What do you mean, wait, wait, wait, wait, you don't mean a new word, like snowpock lips, you mean a new kind of weather? Even a new kind of weather or a new, like raining frogs. Well, you know, there's these pole of vortexes and the one that I learned about a few days ago, I know this is not new, but it was new to me and it's been getting wheeled out of it this time, is thunder snow. Thunder snow. Thunder snow. That sounds pretty awesome. I don't know what it is, but I think I want some thunder snow. It's thunder during snow, because normally you don't get thunder during snow when snow is falling, but you do when there's thunder snow. I've never experienced thunder snow, I would like to. It's a rare thing, but... I like thunderstorms, I like snow, thunder snow sounds like it's really great. Thunder, thunder, thunder, thunder. So, wonder how many people will get that? Yeah, that's one for the Thunder Cats fans. I'm guessing you're probably weren't a Thunder Cats fan. You guessing I was or wasn't? Wasn't. I remember Thunder Cats. Well, you didn't get my little Thunder Cats reference when I was saying a little bit of the song there. I just said I wonder how many people will get that. I got that. Oh, you got it. Oh, okay, I thought you said I didn't get that. I don't think you're listening. I don't think you're listening. I'm distracted. I'm distracted by the number of icons on my screen. I really need to do a cleanup of this desktop. Oh, yeah. Basically, I fill up the whole screen and then I start that phenomenon where like, it all goes back to the start and they're all just piles up on one icon, like a thousand high. Oh. Yeah, I'm deep into one of those at the moment. Deep. How many icons do you have on your desktop? I don't know. I don't think we should talk about it. No, no, I want to know because... I couldn't even tell you. I don't know. But if you open up Finder and go to your desktop and on the bottom, it'll say how many items. Well, I could tell you. I just don't want to tell you now. Okay, but I want to know now. Okay, I'm going to open up Finder. Tell me what number would be acceptable to you before I tell you. The number that is acceptable is the number at which it doesn't start piling up. Okay. So I actually, I quite like icons piling up on the desktop and I use that very intentionally as in projects that I am currently working on. I like to save on the desktop, even though people would imagine me as the kind of guy who has no icons ever. I think it's useful because it gives you a sense of how much stuff am I working on at the moment. And you have the things that you're working on right now. And then when I'm done with that project, it's like, oh, this is very nice. I can gather up all these icons and file them away. So this is why it depends on your screen size. Because if you're working on a tiny... Well, whatever it is, the smallest max that they make, there's tiny screens. Well, you, I don't know, maybe you can have four icons on there before your desktop is full. Now I'm on a big iMac. I reckon you could probably get in 200 or so, at least on there. I'm on the, like the 27 inch iMac. And I'm looking at right now, I have 24 icons on my desktop. I have 500 and 200 more than that. Oh. I didn't even hear the right, I just heard 500 and I just, I think I just blanked out. I said I have 529 more than you. 529 more. Yeah. But in my defense, I have no defense. It is, it is. It's just like your email. You've got, you've always got some story about it. It's a combination of my workflow, which lends itself to a fast accumulation of icons and my procrastination, which also very much lends itself to a fast accumulation of icons. It's all right. I kind of, I know what I'm doing. Let me ask you, what are you doing? I mean, how do you, I don't know what I'm doing. I just said that. I have no idea. Don't ask me. But if you have 500, I, like, when you, okay, I guess here's the question. When you want to find something, saved on your desktop, what do you do? I mean, it's no longer, like basically every few weeks, I just do a big desktop cleanup and everything either goes to the bin or goes to the folder it needs to go to. And I haven't done that in a while. Okay. Yeah. Obviously, you haven't done that in a while. Well, if I need to find what I want to do, I just go into find and go to desktop and I look at the top 20 or so items there because they were, they were always the ones I'm working with. Okay. So you're having it, you're having it sort by last modified or last opened or something. So yeah. Okay. That is not actually a crazy system. Like just having folders sorted by most recently modified isn't the worst because it, it does kind of naturally sort into what of my working on at the moment. Yeah. I don't know how on earth you can look at a screen with that many icons and not just not. Well, because I'm the only time I see it is when I'm doing the podcast with you because I always have all these applications open. And like the desktop's hidden, hidden by all the stuff I've got distributed around the screen. So it's kind of, it's never really very in my face. It's interesting to hear how other people work because it's like, I see my desktop all the time. Is the exact reverse situation for me where, when we're running the podcast, I have four windows open. And this is the only time, or one of the very few times really, where the whole screen is taken up and I don't see the desktop at least partially. On the opposite. Yeah. And yeah, the rest of my time, at the very least I can see that whatever the icons are at the right most side of the screen. Well, I mean, 90% of the time I'm editing with Avid or using Photoshop and they're taking up the entire screen. So for you, the desktop is just another folder. It's just that it happens to make your desktop look hideous if you look at it, but your workflow means you're never looking at it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, pretty much. That is overstating the case. And I do see it more than I'm just making it sound like, but I think that is not an unfair categorization. Interesting, interesting and strange. I don't know how we got off on this, but 500 and something, that is a lot though. That would make me feel very uncomfortable. I would feel in a state of anxiety if I had that many icons on my desktop. I'm sure you would. Yeah, I'd have to clean that out. So one of the reasons I have been busy is I can't remember which episode of Halloween today it was, but it was many, many moons ago that I mentioned that I went to Vietnam with my dad. Oh, this was, this might have been before we even made any of them live. This was forever ago. That is embarrassing. That is embarrassing. So I went to Vietnam with my dad. My dad was a soldier in the Vietnam War and I went to just have an experience with him and see where all this stuff went down basically. But I did film some stuff with him at his request with the intent of making some videos. And I sort of said on the podcast, oh, you know, when the videos go up, I'll let everyone know and they can have a look. And then it kind of went on the back burner a bit until my poor old daddy emailed me the other day and said, can I at least just see some of the footage? So I was like, oh, hi, my bad son. Oh, man. I'm a bad son. There were other reasons he wanted to see it, professional reasons. But anyway, so I said, man, I gotta get back together. So I have edited the first couple and the first main video. And if people are so inclined, they can now watch it. You can watch my dad telling an amazing story about something that happened to him during the Vietnam War that we filmed at the spot that it happened. How a dog saved his life. While you were talking, I of course, is looking it up. And you, for the first reference that I can find to your dad, which I think is when we discussed it is episode number four, we're on cast February 18th, 2014, feedback on feedback. Oh, man. So that was our first episode that was post the show going live is when you mentioned this. It's almost a year anniversary by the time this thing goes up. Wow. But in that episode, you said that your dad was a great storyteller and I have to say that is exactly what the video bears out. He's very engaging in the way he talks about what the situation was with him and his dog on that day. So I would recommend people go check it out. It's a good video. And you get to see Brady's dad, which is interesting. We'll be making some more because we filmed a few other things. That story is kind of the showpiece for me, but he did tell me some other interesting stories. So there are more coming, but hopefully at a faster production cycle than that one. That's faster than like one a year, is that? Yeah, that's like that's like gray style production cycle. That is. That's what you're learning from me. Hello, internet. This ad is an ad that brings things for me full circle. More than a year ago when I decided with my friend Brady to start making a podcast, I knew I needed to learn how to edit audio better. Up until that point with my videos, I had just been kind of slumming it with garage band and getting by. But if I was going to do something like a podcast, I needed to learn how to use a professional tool. Otherwise, it was going to take me just forever. Basically, I needed to learn Logic Pro X and I spent a huge amount of time searching the web for tutorials and just came up with very, very little that was of any use or any quality. But then I heard an advertisement on a podcast and I knew what to do. I knew to try Linda.com. There on Linda were excellent courses on Logic Pro X. I watched them, I learned, and then I made a podcast of my own. So Linda helped me make a podcast and now Linda is closing the circle by advertising on that very podcast. If you want to invest in yourself and improve your skills, start learning something new at Linda.com with a 10 day free trial. Linda is used by millions of people around the world and has over 3,000 courses on topics like web development, photography, visual design, business, software training like Excel and Photoshop. All of their courses are taught by experts and new courses are added to the site all the time. There are a whole bunch of features of Linda that I really like, one of which is searchable transcripts. So if you're, say, joining a course on Logic Pro X and you just want to find out something about the mixer, you can search for every time that the person has used the word mixer in the course. And if you're also impatient, you don't have to watch it at one X, you can watch it at two X, which is very helpful if you think the narrator is talking just a little too slow for your liking. Linda is a new sponsor to our show and I'm very happy to have them on board and I cannot recommend more that you give them a try. Go to Linda.com slash hello internet and you will get unlimited access to every course on Linda.com. I seriously cannot overstate how good the tutorials are and how much time this will save you. You can spend forever trying to find quality tutorials on the internet and still come up with nothing as I did. So once again, go to Linda.com slash hello internet. Check out their 10 day free trial, see the courses for yourself and learn something new. My thanks on several levels to Linda.com for sponsoring this week's show. So I showed you a video a short time ago that I found interesting. We love talking about planes and airports on the show. I think other than YouTube, in fact, I was gonna say other than YouTube, it's our most commonly discussed topic, but I suspect we talk about planes and airports more than we talk about YouTube. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because we both make our living at YouTube and YouTube is technically in the description of this podcast. But I'm not sure how many minutes of the podcast we have actually spent discussing anything at YouTube. Now this is really an aviation podcast. People always say, what genre is this? Is it two dudes talker and is it YouTube videos? No, this is an aviation podcast. Aviation and no, make clitcher. Perhaps that's what it is. I still have the podcast sorted under education in the iTunes store, which is just ridiculous, but none of the other categories even remotely fit. So I don't think they have an aviation section either. What does overcast, what section does that have us categorized in? Oh, we're in some like culture or something out, where you mean, I mean, oh, well, of course, we are in two sections because we are in the best podcasts of 2014. Of course, of course we are, yes, yes. We are also in the culture section. So I don't think of myself as a cultured person, particularly, I guess you're kind of cultured, you know, in a way that applies to neither of us, but the big issue is that there is no place to put it and neither iTunes nor overcast has a two dudes talking section. So now, which we would dominate, we would crush that section. Well, well, I don't know, there'd be a few others in there. So anyway, I sent you this link to a report from NBC News, which was about Portland Airport ripping up its carpet. Right. Cause it's outdated. I don't know what reason, that's just a bit tired and old. But it's got this unusual design, which apparently is quite popular with the people of Portland. What are those people called? Portlanders, Portlandians, people of Portland? I know where the correct them in them is. Whatever they're called, apparently they like their carpet. So lots of them have been going to the airport for like a final picture or a selfie with this carpet before it gets ripped up. I actually watched you watching this report because we're on Skype and I said, have a look at this, what do you think? And I was kind of watching your reaction. Oh, yeah. No, look, was I excited? I would say a combination of dismissive and unimpressed, yet mildly engaged in a macabre kind of way. I think you were just disappointed by the fact it was a story, a new story. But tell me instead of me reading your emotions, why don't you tell me what you thought of it? I understand that people get connected with something, but they open the story by talking about how this carpet is old. It's like decades old and instantly I feel like I can smell through the screen that moldy carpet smell. And then I'm watching a story about people who are really attached to this old gross thing. And you don't have to do some wild speculation about what my thoughts would be if I was in charge of the Portland airport. You can know what? This is gone. Goodbye, stinky-hold carpet. We're just getting rid of it. And people get attached, people don't like change. So whatever they want to go in and they take a picture of themselves with the carpet from the airport. But I don't think there should be carpets in airports at all. This is one of my complaints with the DC airport which has carpet which is disgusting. You should have no carpet on the floors in airports, in highly trafficked areas where lots of people go. I barely believe in carpets in a personal house. Carpets are just gross. So that's my thoughts on that. I think carpets have their place in airports, but I see your point. And I'm not a massive carpet fan either. So I did have a lot of unanswered questions from this report unsurprisingly for a 90 second TV news report. But yeah, well, I couldn't help but notice. It was the same reporter who I wrote my little article about where I absolutely hated the thing that they wrote about the coin that the US Mint was going to make that was worth a trillion dollars. I was like, oh, I recognize this guy. That's the same guy from this other worthless news report. Perfect. Anyway, sorry, didn't mean to go off on it. People do get attached to carpets and things at their home airport. And I like that. I noticed my brother-in-law posts a lot of pictures to Facebook of the carpet. He lives in Singapore and he posts a lot of pictures of the carpets. They have different patterns at Singapore of Singapore carpets. He's really into them and makes him feel really nostalgic and it's something he really likes if that's Singapore airport. So I see like, the story resonated with me for that reason. I didn't watch and think what a bunch of weirdos who would like the carpet. Because my brother-in-law is not a weirdo and he really likes the carpet at his airport. I didn't say weirdos. It just, you know, some people don't want things to change. These people were portrayed as weirdos and you didn't say it. But these people were portrayed as weirdos in the report, I think. Well, yeah, the news always goes after the way they show the weirdest people they can possibly find. They don't want normal people because normal people are really boring and don't make a good story. Yeah. Why don't they just replace the carpet with a fresh version with the same pattern on it? It's the thing I wonder. Because I'm sure that the person in charge of the airport feels like I do that the carpets are just gross and just get rid of them and replace them with tile and it'd be much nicer and easier to clean. I bet it costs a lot more money to clean a carpet than it does to clean tile floors. That'd be my bet. But it did make me, actually, the first thing I thought when they showed the carpet pattern was the London Underground, which is famous for having hideous patterns on their underground trains as well, which is also gross. I think they should go the New York subway way of having just sort of steel interior years to their cabins that can just be pressure cleaned all at once. It's much more sanitary and it's much nicer. I always try not to think about the seats on the London Underground. You just, you know, you can't think about that too much. No, I can imagine that would be a struggle for you going into a place like that. Something else that was in the news this week, I think it was and no doubt you are unaware of this. But we heard one of these famous asteroid near misses. Oh, yeah. Some big asteroid, you know, wandered on past the Earth. I think it was about three moon distances away. So pretty close. That's close. That's close. It's pretty close on a speed scale. Yeah, and it was big. It was big enough to have its own moon. So it was a decent size asteroid. So it's, you know, if it hit us, that would be bad. So anyway, I was reading an article about it because I was mildly interested. And my wife was next to me at the time. And I should say, for reasons that are partly inexplicable, my wife is a big fan of the film Armageddon. So she's not averse to, you know, talking asteroids and talking about asteroids hitting the Earth. I will defend that movie until my time goes. Of course. I really like it too. In fact, I watched it just recently, but I wouldn't have picked it as one of my wife's favorites, but she does really like it, so anyway. So she saw me reading this article. She said, I want that about, oh, this asteroid. This asteroid nearly hit the Earth. Do you want me to tell you any more about it? And she's like, no. And she said, why do we care? Why should we even care about a story about an asteroid that missed? And I was like, well, you know, it's good to know about them because one day they'll, you know, one day they'll be one that doesn't miss. And that's a big deal. And she said, well, if that's gonna happen, if they find one that's gonna hit the Earth, I don't want to know. I hope they don't tell us. And I've, and we had a little discussion about that. And I think that's quite interesting. And I wondered, I wonder what CTP Gray's position on this is. If they found an asteroid that was definitely gonna, you know, it's gonna be a global killer or whatever they call it. And again, if they found, you know, one that was gonna obliterate us and there's nothing they could do because, you know, I'm a getting a side, there probably is nothing they can do about one that big. Would you want to know if they, you know, if it's a week away or something? Well, first of all, I would put money on the table and I would bet that you would not want to know. Am I right? My instinctive answer is that I would want to know. Really? Yes. Interesting. That is quite surprising. Why would you want to know? I just lost some money here. I mean, not really. I lost my theoretical money, but I would have been certain enough to bet on this. Can I have a point on the scoreboard? You know, the theoretical scoreboard of rightness and wrongness? Can I have a point? I don't think that works for our opinions of stuff. It's about being facts. Yeah, it's about facts. Well, the fact is that you thought I would think one thing and I thought the other. So you were actually incorrect. I'm like, yes, technically I am factually incorrect. I'm not gonna count that. But I'm genuinely surprised that why would you want to know? I'm fine. Let me try and put it into words. I kind of, it's not something I, I mean, I have been of a macabre interest in death, hence a macabre interest, you know, as evidenced by playing Crash Corner. So I don't know. I feel like if I had a finite amount of time left, I'd want to do things. And I know there's no point like writing a wheel or getting my affairs in order if the planet's about to be obliterated. But I feel like, you know, I wouldn't want to get caught with my pants down. I'd want to have done a few things that I haven't done or I'd want to be ready. I'd want to, you know, I want, I see the benefit of not seeing it coming right. You know, I see the benefit of just dying in your sleep and not having the anxiety and the worries that come with it. Because no doubt they overcome everything. But I think I'm just, I want to know kind of guy. It's like me being more into the news than you. I'm just a guy that wants to know stuff. I don't like not knowing. And you're quite happy not knowing. You would presumably, you would not want to know or? Are you crazy? Of course I'd want to know. You would want to know. Yes. Well, I just lost a point on the scoreboard. Yeah, I don't think, even if I had awarded you a point when you just lost it now. Of course I would want to know. Why? Well, ideally, ideally, I would want to be the only one who knows. If I could arrange it in such a way that I was the only person who knew that would be perfect. Yeah, I can see why you'd want to be the only one because of the inevitable consequences of everyone in the world knowing. Right. But just, but that aside, why would you want to know? Like, if you've got a wake, what are you gonna, what do you want to do? It's the same thing. If I have a week, it feels like, well, I might as well not work on this video that's been frustrating me. I can just drop that. And I was like, oh, the past two weeks have been incredibly frustrating experience, but you only have a week of life left. Eh, I'm not gonna do this. I'm not going to finish this. There's no point in finishing this. What about that week of anxiety of, you know, everything's gonna be over and what? But I would feel no anxiety in this situation. You feel no anxiety when asteroid was about to smash into our planet and kill everyone in a wake. You would be completely relaxed about that. Relaxed implies I'd be like, oh, asteroid, no, asteroid. It's indifferent to me. That's not the case at all. I would rather there be no asteroid than there be an asteroid. Yeah. But if I knew for certain that the world was going to end in a week, I would not feel anxiety about this. Because especially if it's one of these situations where it's like, we just don't have a chance. Right? Oh, there's the asteroid. We can't launch a space program or anything. The anxiety would be under a circumstance where say we spot it, but it's a year away and we're 99% certain it's going to hit. And maybe we can pull a hell marry here and get this thing off our path. And like that's an anxious situation because the outcome is uncertain. And then you have to deal with a large amount of time until the uncertainty is resolved. That's no good. But if it was like a done deal, well, there's nothing I can do about it. So it's not a thing to be anxious about. That's crazy. That's not crazy. That's completely reasonable. Okay, here's even if you don't even if you don't think that you could feel the way that I feel, don't you agree that that position is reasonable? I think it would be reasonable if you were a robot. It would be reasonable if you were not a human who is a bit afraid of dying. Like if you have no fear of death, okay, that's completely reasonable. If you have a fear of death and what happens next or not next or just don't want to die because you're just like being alive, I think it would be natural to be very anxious in that week. I very much like being alive. And I can say that I have no fear of death. I have a fear about how I might die. Why are you afraid of how you would die? Well, because you can die in numerous horrific ways. People can and do daily die in horrible, horrible ways. Yes. Well, that's not how I would like my last moments to be in the worst agony I have ever experienced. So that's why I can say like I'm concerned about how I would die. But the dead part being dead is easy. And I don't think being dead is something to be anxious about. Do you think going out with everyone else on earth in a huge asteroid impact would be a good way to go? Do you think like of all the different ways to die? Normally it's a very personal thing. Do you think that would be a good one? Like just let's all just go together in a blaze of glory and have the whole planet go in this catastrophic awesome space collision? How would you rate that on the rankings of the ways that you would have would not like to leave your mortal coil? I would rank that that's pretty low. I would not want that to be. That would not be like, ooh, my top 10 ways to go. I'd love to take everybody with me. You're not taking them with you. I would have thought it would kind of appeal to you in a way. No, this whole no appeal to me to have some kind of blaze of glory for the whole species just because I'm going to die. That's terrible. I think you'd have to be some kind of, well, I mean, maybe this is what you want, but I feel like you'd have to be some kind of amazing narcissist to think that would be an awesome way to die to have the whole world go with you in a blaze of glory. Now, now I will ask you, is that what you think is a good way to go? No, I don't. I don't know. There are other people kicking around on the earth who I kind of like and I want them to, I don't want them to go just because I'm gone. But, exactly. But we will go. So why not all go holding hands? But the other thing is, you know, I don't want humans to be wiped out. I can't believe we're having this conversation. I can't believe I said, oh, no, I don't want humans to be wiped out. I don't want humans to be wiped out. But I do find something really kind of, on a galactic scale, I do find something really cool about a whole planet being wiped out in collisions. Like I think that's really cool that that happens. Like it's really interesting that, that such huge things happen. It certainly is interesting that such huge things happen. But if there are sentient species on those planets, boy, is that a tragedy? That's like the poetry of it, isn't it? It's not amazing that, you know, that a sentient species can, over millions of years, develop to some pinnacle or some great place. And then just arbitrarily, a piece of rock, you know, says, thanks for playing. I can sort of see what you're saying, but I also can't imagine anything more tragic. Yeah, yeah, but that's the, you know, tragedy is a beautiful thing. Mm, I'm gonna go with no, that Shakespeare guy did well from it. I understand that Shakespeare wrote tragedies. People like tragedy. People love a good tragedy. I am a fan of tragedy in my drama. I am not a fan of tragedy in the actual universe. Well, do you think if the authorities found an asteroid, what's gonna hit us? They would tell us? Well, I mean, here's a thing. If I was in charge of the, like I'm in charge of, of Greystonia or whatever, and my scientific team's discover that the asteroid is on its way, I would totally, I would totally implement it. Let's just keep this quiet policy. The uncertainty of how people, of how everything would go could be quite high. And I could imagine that would be quite disastrous. I don't, I don't, I guess the bottom line is I would not trust other people to act in the way that I would act in the final week of existence. Which is how, which is what's your final week like? Is it a very peaceful time? Is it? It's not to spend all my money and go crazy. Well, I mean, who's gonna take your money? Oh, you spend all my money to who? Someone has to, you know, someone has to accept your money. No, no, no, no. But if you're the only one who knows, presumably your final week would be very decadent because you would just obviously exhaust your bank account. Yeah, I'm not, I think it would be, it would be relatively relaxed. I think I would probably go someplace just like relaxing with my loved ones and, you know, that would be that. Yeah. I wouldn't go out with like, I have to spend all this money right now on all the things that I could possibly think of. Would you call me or say anything to me? I guess it depends on how well I can think you keep a secret. Hmm. But even if you weren't gonna tell me, would you just call up and say, you know, you're an ask guy and I enjoy doing the podcast with you? And what do you think that would make me suspicious? Well, you'd be suspicious now, that's for sure. Yeah. I've been in this conversation. I mean, I've never called you up spontaneously ever. And so if I did one day call you up and just said like, hey, Brady, just wanna let you know, you're like an A plus guy and totally loved you in this podcast with you. I'd be like, gray, so you're an asteroid coming. That's exactly it. You would assume I was dying or everyone in the world was dying. Right? I think it would be naturally quite suspicious with that phone call. Yeah. But today I did the thing I usually do, which is ask on Twitter if anybody has any questions for us or things that we should talk about. And there's actually a related question here. Yeah. Which is, I'll ask you this first. This is from Twitter. Yep. Which of us do you think would survive longer if there was a zombie apocalypse? May. Yeah. Why do you think you? I think I would be more willing to get my hands dirty and do violent things. I've been watching a lot of Walking Dead lately, so I'm also well prepared. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I know exactly what to do and where to hit them. And that's a great show by the way, Walking Dead. I've never been into zombie stuff. You know, I've never been into zombie movies and that. And my wife said, I wanna start watching this Walking Dead and I was like, okay, whatever. And gee, it's good. Do you watch it? Have you watched it? Yeah, I watched it. I think there are complaints to be had about the show. Yeah. But I think it's good moments are very good. Yeah. But there are some sections that are not very good. Yeah. That's just generally the stories are pretty good. Like, I'm just into the people. Like, and the zombies almost have become peripheral to the show. Like, they just like, they just like, the hazard. Like, you know, they're just the generic hazard that is just always there. How do you think would last longer in a zombie apocalypse of the tours? There is no doubt about it. That it would be you. Yeah. As we've discussed previously, you are hard as nails. That's so not true, but I loved hearing you say it. And if there was a real zombie apocalypse, I'm checking out right then and there. I don't need to be around for any of these horrors. If civilization has really gone down and it's a, we need to start over time. Forget it. You go on without me, everyone. Is there no fight in you? Haven't you got a bit of fight? There's no, like, I'm gonna. I don't know. I just think I'd survive. I just, I'm like this with playing crushers. I just think I'd survive. I think for some reason I've just think, oh yeah, it would be bad. But, you know, I'd get by. The flip side of this is it probably also be better for everybody if I did just take myself out as I actually really would. But if there, if for some reason I did survive the zombie apocalypse and I decided like, I'm gonna go on, I always find myself siding with the more ruthless characters and situations in any kind of zombie apocalypse fiction. All right, we always have the good guy who wants to do the right thing. And then the villain, you know, is always portrayed as like, oh, look at that, that meanie head. But I'm often thinking like, no, this is a zombie apocalypse. Like you gotta do whatever it takes to survive. I saw some people were worried about how much we were, we sound like we were fighting in the last podcast. Yeah. I thought everyone should know we're still friends, right? Yeah. It's okay. We, you know, we, we argue sometimes. We, we are good friends. Just one of us is more informed than the other one. Yes. Yes. I am, I am more informed than you are. You watch a lot of the news and as Mark Twain quote goes, then you, you are misinformed. Can I just say, by the way, just on this topic for the, for the record, I don't watch and devour that much news. I think people have, have made, now have some impression that I'm just constantly reading news and like, like I don't watch the TV news every day. I watch the TV news maybe once or twice a week. If it happens to coincide with when I'm having my dinner and I'll just have a quick look at the website a few times a day and very often I'll just look at it and go, well, that all looks boring and not read it. So I'm not like this news hound who is just devouring everything. I don't know. I'm not justifying or defending anything. I'm just, I just want people to realize that. This is kind of perfect and leads into something I've kind of wanted to be talking about for a little bit, but I think that the news conversation brought it up and what, what you said fits into that. I, I don't know a word for this. I'm not going to try to coin a word for it, but I feel like when there is like a half life to transmission of subtlety or nuance in arguments when you're trying to talk to somebody else or like a conversation gets transmitted over the internet. And so to try to explain what I mean by this, if you listen to our last episode, we kind of fall victim to this where we start out by talking about doesn't make sense to follow the news. Even though both of us try very hard not to, we end up having a conversation about whether or not the, the news is good or is the news bad. And I often find that all kinds of conversations devolve or they decay into this kind of argument that just ends up as a like a thing is all good or a thing is all bad. Those arguments are, are rarely useful or interesting, which why it was shockingly frustrating to try to listen to us talk about it last time. And like I was really angry with myself like editing the podcast and I know you, you said you, you felt like you didn't say things you wanted to say last time, but everything just kind of ends up devolving into a conversation about something being 100% good or 100% bad. And I think it's sort of natural in conversation, but like, but frustrating once you tune into it as a, as a pattern. I mean, I mean, that was pretty fundamental to our different views though, because your whole, it feels like your, one of your main reasons for not following news is that the news is not worthy of following because you think it's so poorly done. I mean, that's a real thread that ran through what you were saying. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think, I think it's in some ways it's a necessary discussion, but. Yeah. But what I mean is it's interesting then when other people listen to that conversation, like you said, they come away with this impression that you follow the news much more than you do because I think it's like this glowing bacon of right. Right. Right. I don't think that that's exactly it. Right. And I saw this in the conversation online that people then talk about you as the defender of the perfect news. Yeah. And then the flip hat happens as well as like, oh, CGP Gray knows nothing about the world and thinks there's never been a good news broadcast ever. And this is, this is what I mean by like there's like a decay of subtlety as a conversation continues either between two people or particularly when it gets transmitted. And like another example, which I think is, it's just interesting to have seen because it's taken place over such a long period of time is to jump back to some of our earlier podcasts. And we were talking about language and, you know, whether or not language, you know, we had this big debate on like the worthiness of languages in some sense of foreign language and I had this rather narrow perspective, which covered a bunch of points. I don't think foreign languages should be required subjects in schools for multiple year periods of time, which allows a whole bunch of things. I think, you know, they should be optional things that people can take. I'm perfectly fine with the fact that people speak foreign languages, but I have been aware that even still on the internet, I get people yelling at me because they are of the opinion that I just hate the existence of all foreign languages. And this is what I mean by like this kind of decay. It turns into it's like either you have to love something in its entirety or you don't. And it's like it's hard to transmit for a long distance over time or in a conversation and opinion that is in the middle. I think it's also an interesting thing to keep in mind when you're hearing people talk about other people. For example, one of the podcasts I really like to listen to is something called Intelligent Squared, which is a debate podcast. And one of the reasons I like that listening to that so much is because it's one of the few times I get to hear people that I don't agree with explain themselves fully. And I often find myself listening to that and thinking, you know what, you haven't changed my mind, but you are not nearly as crazy as other people said you were. Or your position is not even remotely as unreasonable as I was under the impression that it was. I guess this is just a thing that I feel it's it's especially on the internet. It's interesting to keep in mind that like if the only thing you've ever heard about somebody is what other people have said about that person. That's just something to be aware of that like their position is going to be magnified into a much more good or much more bad version of what it possibly is. The ironic and kind of matter thing about all this is this is probably one of the biggest problems that the modern news media suffers from is it's it's desire for people to be polarized black or white to be to be in campaign or can't be and to be no middle ground. I say, yeah, it's funny that a discussion about the problems with news media has suffered from the same thing. One thing that came up over and over again was a question about all you need to watch the news in order to be informed as a voter. Well, when you're watching the news, if you're really watching the news, how often are you learning something about the other side, whichever, you know, team you've picked in this sports game? And how often are you just watching to to have it reconfirmed that the other team is nothing but 100% evil and or stupid. That's the same kind of thing. Now again, I'm not saying that there aren't evil and or stupid people in the world. There are lots of those, but it doesn't change the fact that like very often people have more nuanced opinions than other people tell you they have. I ran into this just so many times firsthand when I was doing my European Union video. People might not know, but in the UK, there is in particular a lot of, I would say, negative feelings towards the European Union. It's measurable as well as on polls you can see that the UK, people in the UK are always least least favorable opinions of the EU. And while I was doing research for that video, I came across just an enormous number of stories that seemed outrageous about stuff that the EU wanted Britain to do or that they wouldn't allow Britain to do or whatever it was. And without fail, I would find these stories and think, boy, that is just unbelievable. What a great piece of information to include in a video. And you go and you search it out and you find out what the situation is and you go, oh, okay. There was like some kernel of truth to this, but you left out all of the contingencies or you left out all of the particular circumstances under which this would apply. And if you include all the information, suddenly it's like, oh, this is actually quite reasonable or boring. And so yeah, just like stuff just gets totally magnified where it becomes just completely bad. And some story about like a health regulation gets turned into a story about how all British L production will be halted forever says EU. Let me give you one more reason for you to follow the news then because what you've been saying to me is you're crying out for a reason. Don't take this too seriously. It's a bit joky. Okay. But here's one more reason for you to start following the news and it appeals to your statistical side. I'm going to postulate. I'm going to put the idea out there that not following the news is one more data point that suggests that maybe you're a bit of a weirdo. There are certain things that I know about someone. I won't judge them. I won't judge them. But once you these data points reach a critical mass, you start to think hang on. Maybe this person is a bit of a weirdo. For example, if I said to you, I've got this friend, he's like he's 20 years old. He always wears a top hat everywhere he goes. He wears a top hat. You're going to be like, okay, maybe a weirdo. I don't know. I want to meet him first, but there's some potential there. And if you meet someone who says, I will only eat old food with my right hand, but I will only eat carrots with my left hand. Maybe there's a reason, maybe that's just quirky. But I'm beginning to think could be a weirdo. You learn those two facts about that same person. Yeah, as you start, yeah, and as you start, if you're finding out more and more things about someone, there are some facts about someone. Like there are some facts that are generic, but there are some facts that put you either more likely to be weirdo, less likely to be weirdo. And I would say top hat puts you in the weirdo category. That carrot thing I would you're doing here is a busy in calculation. Yes, I'm saying. And I'm saying, if you were to take someone off the street and said, I've got this friend and he just never watches the news religiously, never watches on TV, never looks at newspaper, just avoids the news. If I said that about someone, I've got this mate and that's what he's like. Doesn't mean you're a weirdo, but they'd be like, okay, what else can you tell me about him? Did he wear a top hat? So I think you're a long way from being a weirdo. And you're not a weirdo because I know you're very well and you're completely normal. But what I'm saying is that is a data point that puts you on the weirdo spectrum. I could not be less convinced by this argument. Okay, theoretical people I don't know might include this in their busy in calculation about whether or not I'm weird. This is totally unconvincing. I was just going to say that since we had that conversation, I have been much more aware. I was trying to think, oh, where do I actually see the news? There are a couple of things that I mentioned last time, which of course is like, you can't go on Twitter or Reddit without coming across the news, which again is where like, I don't avoid the news, but I don't seek it out. But of course, I realized there's two other sort of big sources where I will see news without seeking it out. And one of those is we have a subscription to the economist in my house, which might surprise people. It is a gift for my wife. She loves reading the economist. And so very often on the weekends, she'll be drinking a cup of coffee and sitting on the couch and reading the economist. And since I take in the mail, I always see the covers of the economist. I see the headline stories. And when my wife reads through it, occasionally she brings up something that was of interest to her that she'll mention to me that maybe I'll be interested in. So I have my wife as kind of a filter and then I see the headlines on the economist. And then the other place where I see the news, which frankly, if I could turn it off, I would, is at the gym. Every time I go into the gym, I don't know what, I don't know if it's the same channel all the time, but they have two huge impossible to avoid screens that just run the news all the time. And I can't really hear it usually from where I am, but I can see it. And as far as I can tell, it's almost always fires, groups of like images of groups of people doing something that I have no idea what it is. Or blinky lights like sirens. But I was watching the news and I think I went at the, you know, since that last time I've been to the gym, I don't know, I go three times a week, so whatever it is, I've been five times. And I think I saw every single time I went in there, there was an image of something on fire somewhere in the world. And I was thinking, boy, those news people, they love these fires. They look so good on screen. I don't think anything can burst into flames anywhere without it being covered on the news. You have got to read a book, which, I don't know if I've recommended it on an audible letter or anything called the humans. You have got to read that book because sometimes you talk just like the main character in that book. He's an alien who comes to earth. And I wait, I won't spoil it. I'll put on my list. Yeah. Yeah. So like huge news events like I will see them. They'll be on the cover of the economist. They'll be on the news screens that when I go to the gym. I'll see them on the internet again. I don't I don't avoid the news, but I just I'm just not seeking it out. I don't think you saying, oh, look, a group of people and blinky lights on a screen, counts as you devouring that news in any way whatsoever. But yeah, but sometimes the words are on the screen. And I see something that seemed like, oh, last time I was at the gym, there were time that there was some someone had flown a drone into the White House or something. Like I see what it is. Yeah. But most of the time, it looks like fires or groups of people being angry about something. We have a new sponsor today. And I can only assume Gray is letting me do this one because he's trying to send me a not so subtle message. This is a company called Harvest. Now, if you're a person or a company who works on sort of multiple projects or has multiple clients, then Harvest is something you should really look into. Basically, it's an easy, good looking tool for tracking your time. 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Getharvest.com and start tracking your time painlessly. There's a 30 day free trial and after you've done the trial, if you're liking it, enter the coupon code HelloInternet. That's the name of this podcast, obviously. Then they'll know that you came from us. When you're checking out HelloInternet and you'll save 50% on your first month, this offer expires on April, Thursday, April 1, 2015. Thank you to Harvest for sponsoring our show. Speaking of the White House, shall we talk about this interviewing of this? Oh yeah, yeah. This is kind of connected to this. That was, we had as a topic to talk about. Before we start, I think we should declare a conflict of interest here because Hank Green, the vlog brothers fame in various other channels who were about to mention no doubt. His business empire does sell our HelloInternet T-shirts along with other merchandise for both of us. We have an interest in Hank. He's going to make us millionaires one day. He better through the sale of T-shirts and posters. Hank does a lot for the internet and for the world. Yes. But he also sells our T-shirts and does subble fundraising and stuff. So this conflicts of interest everywhere, which we'll declare. Okay. But anyway, let's forget about that and talk about why he's been in the news this week. Hank, along with two other YouTubers, got a chance to interview the president. The president of the United States, you, you, us, centric person, you, listen, everything. The only time you need to specify who the president is is if you're not talking about the president of the United States. You don't need to say the president of the United States. I'm terribly sorry. They were not talking about the president of Australia. There is no president of Australia. Oh, I didn't know that. I'm very sorry, Brandy. The president of Burundi. I don't know if Burundi has a president. So why don't you follow the news about Burundi? It's a whole country. Yeah. Well, you know, maybe it should. You should. Yeah. You're right. That is a, that's a, that's a gap in my knowledge of that. Or a digibouti. Do you follow the news about digibouti? Oh, yeah. I get the Jibouti times delivered. Do you even know where digibouti is? Yeah. Yeah. Can you point it out? We can describe to me where a digibouti is. It is, it is actually on earth right in the path of an asteroid that I can't tell you about. I'm disappointed that you don't follow politics. Everywhere in the world. I'm sorry. Important things going on in digibouti. So you were saying Hank Green and two other YouTubers got to interview the president of Burundi. Oh, United States, sorry. Yeah. United States. One of a very recent rash of left-handed presidents. Oh, yeah, I forgot about you and your left-handed obsession. I did not know he was left-handed. Well, you would have if you saw him signing an autograph for Hank on that video because he signed up with his left hand when he signed that picture for Hank. I don't divide people into left and right-handers, we're just all people. I totally do. I'm really into left-handedness. Anyway, let's get back on track here. Hank wrote an article about the experience called Holy **** it. I interviewed the president. Yes. Which I can't say because I swear I don't know. That's why I was reading the title there. Thank you. I was doing you a little favor. It was a really good article by Hank. There was a lot of talk about these YouTubers in choosing the president and a lot of stuff going on. I think the article cut through a lot of the rubbish and got to the nub of what this was really about. Which is what I found interesting. It kind of talks about the relationship between the mainstream media and YouTube. One of the main things that Hank is talking about is how the big news organizations all belittled this. One of the interviewers is known for doing stunts on YouTube. The one that I most aware of was the cinnamon challenge that she did a while ago. Did you see this going around? I did not know. They're pretty funny videos. But the challenge is basically to put a whole bunch of cinnamon in your mouth at once like this big spoonful of cinnamon. It's one of those things that you would think would be easy, but you have this horrifically violent reaction against all of the cinnamon and people just end up spitting it out all over the camera. So of course, the news media would open the segments about these are the people who interview the president and then show the videos of her doing something ridiculous. In a way to try to belittle it. You can do the same thing with Hank's videos. You can go through and find old videos of Hank looking dumb and then put that on the news about look at this video who interviewed the president. He was portrayed as a bit of a rant. He's sort of passionate rants about things that he's caused or some things. Yeah, that's exactly it. So you can show a three second out of context clip of Hank being really ranty about something and make him look like a fool. But there's nobody on YouTube that you couldn't do that with. You could take any section of this podcast and just cut it out of order and make us look like an idiot. You wouldn't even need to take it out of context with us. But he just listened to the last podcast really. Hank's kind of main point was about legitimacy and how if you're looking at particularly the younger demographics that they just don't view kind of mainstream news as having any legitimacy. And like it or not, younger people have developed a relationship with people like Hank and with other YouTubers because I mean, particularly with the vlog brothers, like you see them two times every week. You know, you kind of you know who they are. You build up a relationship with them over time of watching them. You know what they're like. And so it's it is not surprising that many people would be really interested to see an interview with people that they feel they have some kind of connection with talking to the president. And I just want to look it up actually. And right now, because the interview was uploaded to White House.gov. And at the moment, it is it is the sixth most popular video on the channel. And it's sixth with a bullet because it was uploaded five days ago. And it has three million views. The number one video has seven million views and it is from two years ago. And all the videos that top it are one year or older. Like how many people watch an interview with the president on regular news? Or actually, I wonder how many people watch the presidential debates? I like what he had to say. He I think he you know, he talked a bit about to near the mainstream media had like this legacy of being like the bit the go to people. And they've just shot themselves in the foot over time is how what I feel like Hank was saying. You know, these people with the authorities and just with all the things they do over years and years they've lost that and new people have come along like YouTubers and have filled it's almost like the YouTubers have filled the vacuum of kind of trusted people because young people just don't trust the the news channels so much anymore because they've just you know, they've betrayed them a few too many times and you know, it makes sense. You know, it makes you know, of course a politician is going to utilize that and and use that as an as a way to get to these audiences. I think that's completely valid what what that politician would exploit. And you know, the president said that himself didn't he? And at the end of the kind of the interview, he said, thanks guys, thanks for letting me get to your audience and tell them talk to them. And of course, the YouTubers are going to take the opportunity because it's you know, it's the president. It's been it's beneficial to both parties. None of the people doing the interview are necessarily making claims that they are objective journalists. Like Hank was being really clear about that. This was not his his role in the interview that he was just going in as a citizen and doing an interview. But he wasn't going in either pretending to or genuinely trying to be some kind of completely objective person. No, I mean, obviously he's very he came across as very I thought I thought his questions were excellent. But at the end, obviously he came across as very pro Obama. Yeah, but but his his underlying point was that this this is people can connect with that more. It's more honest, isn't that like Hank war? It's much more on it's on he wore he wore on his sleeve, not like sort of fox who obviously has an agenda, but they never say it like, but it's so overt whereas Hank was very honest. He's like pro Obama, but I will ask you a few difficult questions because I want answers to these things. When I do go back to America and I see American TV news, you know, and having been separated from it for years, it just seems so appalling. And I do find it just almost offensive how much American news goes out of its way to tell you how objective it is. And it is just so obviously not objective. It's like you have to experience this just constant cognitive dissonance when you're watching most American TV news. Hank doing an interview, you can totally understand why people would be interested in seeing it because like I know who this person is. I have some sense of where they stand and they're they're not pretending to be something that they're not. Anyway, so there you go. Go on, you can read Hank's article, you can even watch him interview the president. And who knows maybe next year it will be Hello Internet who gets the call up to meet the president and do the interview. Sounds like a lot of hassle. Would you do it if you got asked? I don't know, maybe. Man, your parents would be so disappointed if you didn't. Okay. You know, that's not how I make decisions. I think you would depend on a lot of the particulars. I'm not sure I would be a good interviewer anyway. I don't think you would be. You should do it. I don't think I would be appropriate either after watching after watching it. I don't think I'd be the right guy because still the questions were just so important and like and kind of worthy. And I have to say as far as interviews with the president goes, I enjoyed this one more than almost any other one I've watched. It was really good. But I just want to ask different stuff. I would love to see a Brady interview the president video because you you always ask these great questions. Like for example, when the president first sat down with Hank, Hank made some joke about thanks for having me in your house and sort of stuff. And the president was like, I've only got two years left on the lease and I hope I get my deposit back. And Hank made some comment like, I think you've looked after it. And they just got cracking on the important issues of weapons and marijuana and stuff. But I would like to have asked him, like, have you ever broken anything here in the house? Have you ever gone to open a door or something in the handle broke or have you ever spilled something on a nice carpet? Like because this is really sacred this building you have to rattle around in. I don't want to ask him stuff about the White House. That's what I would love to see your interview with. Yeah, but people would get really mad. I would be the reason people say you shouldn't have a YouTube interview the president because it'd be like, you got these 15 minutes for the president and you wasted it on, on, you know, all this trivia. And you should have been asking him about, you know, the big issues of the day. And I'm like, well, he's always being asked about the big issues of the day. I want to know like other stuff. I completely agree. It's done with like spilling stuff. I would be worried about that. One of the things I think about is the desk that the president has. Yeah. If for some reason I woke up and discovered that I was the president of America, I feel like step one would be, okay, look, we need to get this desk out of here because I need to work on this thing. And I don't want to be worried about spilling coffee on this, this historical object that's been around forever. Let's get me some other desk that I can work at. For photo shoots, we'll bring this thing in and find, you know, whatever you have to be sitting at the desk. But on a day to day basis, I want something different that I don't have to worry about. Every time I see that desk, I think I could not work on that surface. I would be very nervous about it. Maybe that's the president's actually do. Maybe it's only there for the photo shoots. That's what I would want to know. Yeah. That would be my question. Do you really work at that desk? What's your morning routine like? I don't think we're going to get the call up. And I have to say, I was impressed by how I was impressed by how I hanged it. You know, here I asked him a few questions, but I think that was good. And I was impressed by the answers. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Well done, Hank. You can do it again. Next year. Let's turn this into an annual thing. I don't think that made it up because I'll just be asking him all sorts of stupid stuff about being left handed and stuff. If anybody who listens to this podcast has connections to the White House, now or in the future, let's see if we can get Brady on that list. Maybe we should get him on the podcast. Do we do guests on this podcast? I don't think we do. We'd make an exception for him, wouldn't we? Today's episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the easiest way to create a beautiful website blog or online store for you and your ideas. And take it from me, there really is no easier option today for making a website. And I've done just about everything. I've written my own websites by hand, created automated scripts to make my websites. Running your own server is a huge, huge pain in the butt that you really don't want to deal with. And lots of other hosted options are just far too complicated. Squarespace, it's simple, it's beautiful. They have 24-7 customer support via live chat and email to help you out with any problems that you may have. 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We're now actually going to try to talk about YouTube a little bit. Wow, amazing. I don't know if I have anything to say. I don't know how much about YouTube. And we're so out of the news cycle because of our recording schedule that by the time this goes up, I don't know. Maybe things will have changed. Go on. The thing that I wanted to talk about was this article by Zoe Keating. Do you know Zoe Keating? Are you aware of? She's like a musician. I take it quite successful musician on YouTube. So yeah, Zoe Keating is this musician. And I was looking through my iTunes purchases. And as far as I can tell, she is the only person that I have ever bought a complete album from. Wow. I really like Zoe Keating's music. And her stuff is my default go to when I want something to listen to that doesn't have English lyrics in it. It is her playing the cello looped over itself a whole bunch of times. Yeah, I was trying to think of how to describe it. The closest thing I can come up with is modern classical music. But I mean modern in all of the best possible way. I really like her. I highly recommend her music. And yes, the only the only albums I have ever bought and bought unlistened when her last one came out into the trees when I saw it. I thought, oh, she's a new album. She's going to buy it. I don't even need to listen to it. And it's great. And I really like it. High praise. But she didn't write this article about what it's like making modern classical music. No. So I was trying to give a little background on her. I'm just kind of, you know, I'm shepherding you. I'm shepherding you alone. Thank you very much. That's kind of my role here. It is your role here. And I'm also terrible about this. Basically, get to the point, Gray. So she wrote this article called, what should I do about YouTube? The bottom line is she puts her music up on YouTube. We think of YouTube as a video platform. But in very many ways, YouTube is actually a music platform. If you actually just look at the view numbers, music dominates by this enormous amount. I mean, in the eyes of YouTube, I, we don't think this because we think we're the center of the universe, but very occasionally you get this glimpse when we're at YouTube and things. And in the eyes of YouTube, there's all these musicians and then maybe some gamers and stuff, but all this music, making them all this money. And we are just nothing like people making videos like we make. I'm surprised they even pick up the phone to us. We're so small. I would love to know the exact breakdown, but I would not be the least bit surprised if somebody at YouTube says 90 or 95% of our advertising revenue comes from people watching music videos. Everything else, right, from PewDiePie down to the tiniest vloggers is less than 5% of our revenue. I would be not surprised at all. Because when you look at how much the music is listened to, it is just phenomenal. So YouTube is really a music service that incidentally shows videos. And so not surprisingly, YouTube has been working on developing a platform to leverage this. So they have this, it's called Google Music Service now or YouTube Music Service. And the idea is that people can sign up to pay for the YouTube Music Service. And they get some premium features, one of which is that there won't be ads on their music videos if they're signed up for the service. Which I think makes good financial sense. Like my wife uses YouTube almost exclusively to listen to music, which I always find interesting. Like she just uses it so differently than I do. And I hate it when the ads come on. And I feel like, yes, I would happily have her pay to go onto the service so that when we're just listening to music and she's running it on these automatically generated playlists on YouTube, we don't have ads. That would be great. So that's one of the consumer side of it. But so what happened with Zoe Keating is that YouTube approached her and said, hey, if you're going to put your music on YouTube, you have to agree to all of our terms and you have to be part of this YouTube Music Service. And the bullet points for the terms are one that all of the music that you have on YouTube must be monetized. It has to run ads for the people who don't join the music service. So like musicians could not put up their music and say, you know what, I don't want to have ads. I just want to do album sales. Now, you now you have to have ads on the video because presumably YouTube wants to provide an incentive for people to sign up for the music service. The second thing, which is the really big deal is that all of the music must be on YouTube. So she can't decide to say, oh, I'm only going to put up my old music on YouTube. No, everything has to be on YouTube that she makes. And anytime she releases anywhere else, she has to release the music at the same time on YouTube. So this is basically a, like, a no exclusivity deal. If she, you know, something that she might want to do, which is something like something that I wish I could do is, hey, I would love to be able to give the music to the people who've supported me first. Like Zoe Keating wants to say, oh, here, I've made this new album. People who directly pay to help me, you get to listen to it first. No, as soon as it's available, it has to also be available on YouTube. So she can't do any exclusive things. And then the, the final one, which to me is the mind blowing one, is she has to sign a contract with YouTube to agree to these terms for five years. Wow. Five years. Well, that's good. At least it shows Google. It doesn't know something about an asteroid in the hotel, I guess. I guess. Yeah. Now, I mean, like, maybe people don't think that these are draconian terms. They are really limiting for an artist. They're basically saying, like, you can't do anything special anywhere else. She has a different account to us. Doesn't she? She has like a musician's YouTube account. What's the perks of a musician's account that we don't have? Like, what's, what's she getting an exchange for this? She's getting, because like, she's getting something we don't get, isn't she? Presumably, she is going to get a cut of the money that comes from YouTube's music service. Yeah. I don't know any of the details of that. It would be insanity if she wasn't. No, of course. Yeah. But if she doesn't do this, if she says, oh, thanks for the offer, but I'm just going to keep doing what I've normally been doing. That's not an option for her as well, apparently. She's either all in or she's off YouTube entirely. Yeah. And it's a, it's a big deal because it's obvious. Like, Zoe Keating is the one who wrote, wrote this up. But this is, this is obviously YouTube's plan for all music on the site. You make music. You want to put it up on YouTube. You are going to be sucked into their music program. And then suddenly, you can't do any kind of special deals anywhere else. If you want to put up your music without ads, tough luck, you can't. You have to put it up with, with ads. And you have to be locked in for five years. I can understand if they said you can't put it on another video site. But to not be allowed to write a song and say, well, I'm not going to release this one on to a video. So I'm just going to, right, I'm just going to sell it on iTunes or on my own personal site. Yeah. Nope. It's like, all your music are belong to us. So the five year thing to me seems really just crazy limiting. I look back at my career and actually, is it in just a couple days, it'll be my four year anniversary on YouTube from uploading that UK video. So if like five years going forward is longer than I have been a professional YouTuber. And that whole thing, you know, didn't start very long before me. Like five years is forever on the internet. Yeah. Internet years are Fibonacci dog years. So stick with me on this one for a second, right? You've already got me. Good. So a dog year is seven years. Right. And the Fibonacci sequence is when you keep summing up the previous results. Yeah. One year is seven years. Okay. Two years is 14 years. I'm pretending like zero is seven. Just stick with me for a second. Two years is 14 years. Three years on the internet though is the is the sum of the previous two. So it's 21 years in real life. Four internet years then is 35 years. And five internet years from my perspective is like 56 years in the normal world. I don't know. Man, I think maybe you're slightly oversteady the case there. But I don't think I have slightly oversteady the case. I think five years being 50 years is about the same. I have been doing this for about five years. You've had a whole lifetime on this. And I don't feel like it's 56 years. But I'll give you 20 years. Here's the reason why I think about it this way. I have companies come to me with some terrible business proposal. And they, you know, they want me to to sign something. And it's for internet business, for three years or five years or whatever. And I would just I would never sign that kind of contract because of just the massive, massive opportunity cost of not knowing what is going to be the situation on the internet five years from now. I just think things change so fast on the internet that you you can't promise anything five years from now. I mean, you I should you will cut this, but you told me about a deal you did recently. We said, OK, well, let's try it for a month. And you did an after a week. You were like, I need out of this. So we don't we don't we don't we don't have to be specific about that. Yeah. But but yes, there was a business arrangement where I refused to commit for more than 30 days and seven days into it. I wanted out. Yeah. So yes, that that happened in in the gray system. That was a good two or three year relationship. Yeah. What's what's you know, that's exactly. That's exactly. I should figure out what that is. It is about a year or so as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. But but yes, I just think like trying to project forward into the future like that is just is just crazy. I mean, you think about the music business or just how people make a living on the internet. How how much is that is changed in the last five years and then to commit to a system where you can't do anything really exclusive for five years into the future. That's just it's just crazy. It's it is way too much to ask. It's way too much to ask. I don't know. I mean, were they offering her like a big boatload of money from the start or I don't know. It's crazy, especially on something something speculative. The impression that I get is that no, they're not being offered anything. It's if you want to make your music on YouTube, you have to you have to get into the system. What what do I take from this great? Come on. You obviously the five the five years obviously is sticking in your core a bit here, but let's let's get to the you know, if I'm if I'm being fair about it, YouTube is not YouTube has every right to do this. YouTube is a company and they're offering a service. They host your videos. They host my videos. The number of things I don't have to worry about because YouTube takes care of it is a lot. You know, if I wanted to try to host my own videos and this is like a big hassle. So the YouTube is a company that offers a service and in some sense like, well, they can do what they want with it. If they want to change the way music operates on their service, well, you don't pay anything for YouTube. It's just a question of do you think this is worth it or not? And so they're giving her they're giving her this this moment and they're giving all musicians really this moment of it's my way or the highway. They have every right to do that. Mm hmm. But all this makes me think is I've been coming more and more to this conclusion and I really feel it strongly now that good God does the internet need a real competitor to YouTube. This is this is kind of my my thought on this is like they they YouTube can feel pretty confident forcing people into a terrible deal because there's no there's no competition really that exists right now because if if there was some kind of viable competition for YouTube, they wouldn't feel as comfortable as comfortable just offering these blanket deals. YouTube is there's this everyone knows I like economics right. So there's this funny situation where YouTube is kind of a monopoly that if you want to watch videos YouTube is really the place to go. But there also this thing which is called a monopsony which is an economic term for when there is only one buyer of something but there are very many producers. That's also a really terrible situation. But YouTube is a monopsony in the sense that there are very many people like us like many musicians who produce content in video form. But if you want to make any money off of your productions, really the only buyer of those products in town is YouTube. And it's just it's just not a good situation. I would genuinely wish that there was a competitor to YouTube. And I think the competition would make everybody better off. I think it would it would provide incentives to YouTube to improve their system. It would provide incentives to the competitor to improve their system. That's why I was really sad when we mentioned several episodes ago that we had heard you know whispers on the wind that Yahoo was going to create a YouTube competitor and that seems to have gone nowhere. I was genuinely hoping that that was real that Yahoo would announce okay we have we have some competition to put into the market. But that seems to that seems to not be the case so far. Clearly we're saying Facebook making moves aren't we? Because Facebook not only are they pushing their video harder and harder they're pushing they're beginning to push YouTube off Facebook in funny kinds of ways and it's harder and harder to get your own YouTube videos on Facebook. So like are they are they? I mean don't don't start me on the problems with Facebook. I mean watch Destin's freebooting video that we talked about earlier and that summarizes my attitude to Facebook and video. But putting putting the freebooting thing aside. Yeah Facebook is obviously getting into the video business. Yeah. And this to me is is even worse. It's like oh okay well YouTube takes a huge portion of the advertising money YouTube has a big big amount of control over the market. But Facebook's business seems to be oh you can upload your video to Facebook. Please do that. We're just going to keep all of them on. That's crazy. Like surely that's a precursor to that changing. Surely the plan is going to be they're going to as it becomes more popular. Oh maybe it's not. I don't know. Facebook I pretty rubbish. Facebook is terrible. And it doesn't it doesn't fill me with hope when they're clearly getting into the video business. But the starting point is you get 0% of the money. Yeah. You know whereas if you make a video for YouTube you kind of split it with YouTube. But Facebook is just like oh no we'll just take all of it. You will get none of the advertising revenue. You will just be happy to have the views that that video gets. I hope you hope you enjoy those. So so Facebook is is kind of worse. And if Facebook turns out to be the YouTube competitor I'm not sure that that's a huge that's a huge improvement. I don't know about you. I think you fall into this category. And I definitely fall into this category that when I started on YouTube views was all I wanted. I when I started on YouTube getting money wasn't even an option yet. And one day I got this email saying I do want we're starting you know do you want to be this partner program. And I'm like I don't even know what this is. I didn't know this was a thing. So so to say I mean maybe at the start maybe Facebook is going through what YouTube went through. Obviously you know they're in a more mature sense. But they're just at the moment views are all people want. And then later on it'll be well okay now it's time to share the love kind of like YouTube did you know at the start it was just people were just happy for the to have their videos on the internet. And then suddenly I know I realize now people when people start putting videos on the internet they're thinking money from the start. But but a lot of people don't didn't used to start that way. That's true. But we're also at a different situation. I am not 100% sure how much advertising was on YouTube at the start. Yeah. Whereas Facebook is starting with advertising everywhere. Yeah. Because as I'm you know when I started as well the partner program was invitation only which is which is not the case anymore. And I it was the same I got an automated email from YouTube saying that my first video had had tripped their system of a video getting too popular. And even then it was back in the back in the day kids I could only monetize that video. I wasn't even approved to monetize everything. So YouTube had really limited ads as far as I can remember at the start. Yeah. Like the rest of my videos did not have ads on them. We're at very different positions here. And Facebook already gobbling up all the money and then I'm going to want to suddenly start sharing. Yeah. Yeah. If some viable competitor to YouTube came along I would feel like yes I would be very happy to upload my videos to them as well. But with Facebook it's like boy I know if I have if I have to choose between the two of you I'm not choosing Facebook because that's that's an even that's an even worse deal. Don't worry Gregg you haven't got a choice people just steal your videos and put them on Facebook now anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I'm already on Facebook yeah. Search for me. I kill five lots. Yeah. People always mention when this when this topic comes up as people talk about Vimeo. Yes. I just want to clarify for people. Vimeo is an interesting service. But they are they are the exact reverse of YouTube in that. They're the people who use Vimeo pay Vimeo. That's how they make their money. So if you want to host videos on Vimeo you can pay Vimeo so that you can have all more videos at one time on their service. And I think that you can pay to have your videos processed faster. And I think you need to pay to have your videos shown in HD. I'm not 100% sure. But people always say why don't you use Vimeo. And like that's why because Vimeo is more like a like a portfolio for people who want to show off a limited number of videos in a like an exclusive way. What's the incentive that you haven't got all that crap around it? I have to say I think that Vimeo just kind of looks nice. Yeah. I'm I'm aware sometimes if I go to a big companies website and they've just embedded a YouTube video, I often feel like boy that looks a little ghetto right. That just looks just looks awful on your site. It's just classier to use Vimeo. I can say as a YouTube user it is totally classier to use Vimeo if you're a company trying to play a video. Yeah. And Vimeo is a great compromise because too many companies also then try to go too far and host their own video. And it's like no no no no don't do that. Just go with Vimeo. It just looks nicer. Yeah. But then if you're a big company like you pay to have that video on Vimeo and you pay to have it you know show nice and it's always there. So they they can't be an option for people like us who make money on the fact that lots of people watch our videos. Vimeo would just be a would be a money would be a money sink. It wouldn't be a money generator. But is the big solution going to be sourcing the ads yourself from saying this CGP Greverio is brought to you by McDonald's and you just getting McDonald's to give you the money and put it in your hand and then putting it on Facebook where millions and millions of people see it and Facebook take their little bit on the side where they're running their crappy ads next to it. I mean is that the future is the future doing the ads yourself which is starting to happen obviously. Yeah. I was going to say it's one of these things where again talking about the YouTube business. The split between creators and YouTube is 45 55%. So creators keep 55% of the revenue and YouTube keeps 45%. And that number is very high and also those ads are worth very little on any particular view. Yeah. We're not allowed to divulge the exact numbers but this is why if you want to make a living purely from the YouTube advertising you need to hit big numbers every month like shockingly big numbers to have a middle class lifestyle. I have spreadsheets like I keep track of all of this. The numbers take people's breath away when you talk about how many views is equal to how much how much money. I bring all of that up simply to say this is one of the reasons why you see YouTubers turn to things like crowdfunding and it's why they turn to things like sponsors in their own videos because that kind of stuff makes much more of a difference. And it's the very fact that people can do that that kind of gives me hope for the possibility of a genuine YouTube competitor to arise one day. If you could generate a large enough audience ads that are in the videos themselves can support creators. And people are willing to support creators through crowdfunding as well. And I also just think a competitor could just simply undercut YouTube. I don't know the details with server costs and bandwidth costs which must just be gigantic. But Apple gets by on their 30% could a YouTube competitor come by and say oh we're only going to take 30% of the advertising revenue instead of 45%. I would I would feel like that might be possible. Would you jump ship? You've got so many subscribers on YouTube and you can't just transfer that audience to something new. Yeah, here's the thing. I wouldn't jump ship. What if they put the five year handcuffs on you? They said gray five years only YouTube know of the video service or no more videos on your account place. Yeah, that would be interesting. That have you and by and according to you they'd be well within their rights, their business, they can do I would say they would be well within their rights to ask for that. You know what? No, they wouldn't. There's a good faith thing going on here. You know, I know they're a business and they're not like a provider of service like water or something, but there's still a good faith thing going on here. And they're big enough now that that would I don't agree. I feel like it would be a super scummy thing to do, but they're clearly doing that with with with musicians already. Yeah. If YouTube came to me tomorrow and said you have to sign a five year contract with us, we're going to give you no benefit whatsoever, but you have to promise to be non exclusive with us for the next five years. I would seriously scramble for other alternatives. I might actually just say screw it. I will go to Vimeo and I will try to depend on crowdfunding and inbuilt ads just immediately because a five year contract to me is just crazy. I feel like I couldn't I couldn't possibly sign a contract that was five years long. I don't even know what I'm having for dinner in 20 minutes yet. I'm what I'll be doing in five years. I would like to stay on YouTube. I feel no reason to leave, but one of the things I mean, I again, this is is this a conflict of interest? I don't know, but I like I have I have Patreon support and subival support. And one of the things I have often wished that I could do is what I said at the beginning is I wish there was some way that I could give the video to my supporters first. Like I've tried to work that out a whole lot and I've never quite found a way. I do it on my number file Patreon. I just I upload it unlisted and sometimes I just send them the link the Patreon supporters at a certain level. I say here's the next number for our video I'm making it public in two days. You guys can watch it now. Yeah, I mean, I sort of do that with my with my mailing list sometimes. The problem is I'm I can only do that for a few hours just to make sure that there's not some kind of huge problem. No, no, what I mean is there's not some kind of problem in the video itself. But I but I but I can see through through like my own subreddit that even when I put it unlisted, it gets submitted just like immediately. So like that's that's that's that's kind of problem. But if there was some technical way to to show it directly to my Patreon and subwoofers first, I would totally love to do that. But like the YouTube music situation would expressly forbid that to say no. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you anything you release you have to release on us at the same time. And I just feel like man, even though I can't technically do that, that clause is just it is death. There's another this is a subtlety and this is a I realize this is a bit of a fringe case. But I'm sure you could expand it into a bigger case if you were creative. And this is something that happened with me. I have had a number file, for example, when it first started was funded with some seed funding from YouTube. This was years ago now, but it was the case. And part of the agreement was that I put ads on the videos and YouTube kept the money. And that's how they made their money back. And it gave me a chance to start a new channel. And it was really successful. So I'm eternally grateful for it. But sometimes I would do a video where I thought it would be inappropriate to have advertising on it. And example would be if someone died and you were making like an obituary or a tribute or you were doing something that was charitable. Just a video where you felt like it would be really crass to put advertising on this video. And I contacted I would I would contact YouTube and say look, I know this is the deal, but we can't put ads in this video. It's just not right. And they were always completely fine with it. They were like, yeah, of course, yeah, don't put ads on that video. We can we completely understand. And of course, they don't care because it's a little old me. I'm not like, you know, Taylor Swift or something. But I can imagine signing one of these deals could put you in an interesting position where sometimes you just don't want to have advertising on your video. Sometimes it would just spoil that or it seems inappropriate. And I wonder whether or not these these new handcuffs that Abing talked about could create problems there as well. When it when it becomes less of a one-on-one relationship and you can no longer just email someone and say, you know, can I have an exception? You know, it's going to get it's going to get messy. Two things related with my own fundraising. So I don't have advertising on either of the videos where I'm talking about the fundraising. Oh, that would just be ridiculous. Yeah. And because it's like you said, it would just be there would just be crass to do that. It would just be so disrespectful. And when Zoe Keating talks about she has to have her music monetized that I wonder about is because I do the the fundraisers, one of the big things that I do is I turn off pop-up ads on all of my videos. Yeah. And I feel like that's a fair trade-off, right? People are directly supporting me. And there's a kind of advertising that I think is particularly intrusive. And so Well, that's kind of the promise you've made isn't that was kind of the carrot you dangled when you did your fundraising. You said, if you helped me in this way, I'll help you in this way and not put these stupid pop-up ads on. Yeah. That's exactly it. And everything about this YouTube contract takes away any sort of flexibility. And I feel like, well, I feel a lot better than I don't have those stupid pop-up ads on my videos. And I know that tons of people support me because of that. That I don't have those those bottom third ads. But if YouTube came along and said, no, if you're going to monetize it, it has to be everything. It's like, okay, well, you know, this is a this is a problem. They have so much power to because they can they could also say, well, okay, if you don't sign on to the YouTube go deluxe five year contract, we're no longer going to deliver to your subscribers. Oh, we're no longer going to recommend your videos. There's all these different ways they could punitively panaceate. There's article definitely caught my attention because of all of these things. And as it directly relates to our living, like I love that people I just I love that people can create videos just in their house. They could put them on the internet. And everybody can watch them. Like this whole system is great. I just wish there was more diversity in providers that it wasn't just all YouTube. And sort of like we were saying before how YouTube is actually just primarily a music service and incidentally a video service. I kind of hope and wonder that they won't actually be bothered to implement anything like this for the video creators. Because we're the minors. That's exactly it. Like it doesn't it doesn't matter. Yeah, like it's not even worth it to them to set up some kind of system that they would try to lock us into the administration of the contracts wouldn't be worth the money that night. Yeah. That's exactly or just the like the rabble rousing like who wants to deal with this headache of listening to all these people complain. Especially now that Hank Grayne has the year of the president. YouTube vloggers direct line to the White House. I'm actually kind of hoping that that's the case. But you know, the music thing really has me thinking, you know, there's some other stuff I can't quite talk about. But like there's a lot of there's a lot of behind the scenes changes going on in my own business. And boy, this this article just makes me think like, man, I'm kind of wary of YouTube just in general. And this makes me wary, waryer, waryist. I don't know. More wary. It gives me it gives me a lot of sympathy for the, you know, the podcasts that I listened to, which have Apple developers on them. So like Marco on ATP, right, a John Gruber on the talk show. And I have a lot of sympathy for guys who are completely dependent on Apple for their living, you know, where Apple can make changes. It's the same, it's the same kind of thing there where Apple runs this whole system at any point. They can change any of the rules and you know what, it's either you develop for Apple or you don't develop for Apple. You have nothing over them really. You're just nothing to them. And you know, it's very pal, you're very impotent. It's a very, it's a scary thing. I don't know. I mean, YouTube, you know, Google via YouTube, the sort of the same thing, have always been good, you know, they've been good to us. They've been good to me. And I don't know. It's a bit like a, it's a bit, I don't know. I hope the dog that I love and have had a really good relationship with for a few years isn't going to bite me in the face one day. Yeah, that's exactly, but obviously, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be here doing this podcast right now without YouTube. But this notion is slightly going away. But when people talk about having having, you know, a loyalty to the company that you work for and feel like, well, the company pays your salary and it gives you this whole life, but you have to keep a sharp eye on what the company actually is. And so it's like, yes, I owe my current career to the fact that YouTube is able to distribute my videos to millions of people and most importantly, serve ads in front of those videos. And I don't, you know, I don't have to be involved in any of that. And it just, it just works. So in that sense, I am very grateful to YouTube. But, you know, I'm under, I'm under no delusion that YouTube is, like YouTube didn't, didn't do that out of the goodness of their hearts. They do that because they're a company. And they make money off of those advertisements as well. And so you just, you know, you have to be cautious about, you have to be cautious about the thing. And I use YouTube because it's, you know, it's a beneficial relationship to me. And, and YouTube benefits because they take 45% of the advertising revenue, which, you know, it's fine. It's fine. So that's great. But I would, I would love to see some kind of competitor come into existence as the bottom line to have some sort of option. So I don't feel like I'm so dependent on YouTube. And that they're not this monopoly, monopsony. My own man. If you'd like to buy a Hello Internet T-shirt or support us on Patreon, you can find the details in the video description. You know, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll joking aside. One of the things I like about podcasts is I, as I like that podcast, they're not centrally controlled. It's, it might not be obvious to people who listen to it, but the podcast world, it's, it's, there isn't anything like YouTube in the podcast world. It's the world. Westman. Yeah. I mean, you know, I talked a long time, or a long time ago, I talked a couple episodes about how, you know, I was switching to using email as a way to notify people. Boy, am I glad am I doing that after seeing this, this article. But there are, like, there are really three, three technologies that are on the internet that aren't really controlled by anybody. And they are the web protocol for serving web pages. There's email and there's RSS, which are all these, these agreements, which allow information to be transmitted back and forth without anybody being in control. And podcasts are riding on top of that RSS layer. Like, even if you, even if the letters RSS mean nothing to you, this is how your podcast arrives. And I love that nobody controls RSS. And so we don't have to feel like, oh boy, there's a big company that all the podcasts live on. And we don't, and we have to agree to whatever terms they say, because otherwise nobody will get our podcasts. I use Squarespace to host the podcast, but I could, I could switch tomorrow. And, you know, from people's perspective, nothing would change. And I think like that is, that's one thing that makes the podcast world just feel very different. There are, there are companies that are trying to take over the podcast world. And I wish them nothing, but it will and bad fortune. That's so anyway, podcasts are different. And I like that. So, you don't have to, you don't have to, well, you should buy a Hello Internet t-shirt. You should also buy a periodic videos t-shirt and a CGP-grade t-shirt for supporting the YouTube thing. Because that's the scary one. Yeah, that's true. But the H-t-shirt's enough. The H-I-T-shirts are nice. And we can each sign a letter if we ever do a public event again. Sign a letter. In Alabama, if you signed the H or something, I would always sign the I or vice versa. Were you not paying attention to that? I wasn't really. I don't remember ever signing a Hello Internet t-shirt that you had already signed. I think I was usually the first person. And you know, that's because, yeah, that's because everybody loves Brady. That's why they were going over to get that Brady signature first. No, no, it's because more people were just getting you to sign there, and they're not bringing it to me. But we've signed a letter on the H-I-T-shirt. Which one do I sign the H? Because I'm Harron or? I didn't really pay much attention to that. I think I would naturally go for the H.
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