H.I. No. 99: The Necessary Lies of Civilization

"H.I. #99: The Necessary Lies of Civilization" is the 99th episode of Hello Internet, released on March 22, 2018.
The man can't be humble if he has a certificate in his hand. That's right. A certificate intended for a 10-year-old boy. I'll be sending you lots of links to amazing time-lapse videos, because I had a camera on the front of the ship for almost the whole time. I've got the most amazing time-lapses, and hopefully the YouTube video to accompany this episode will include some of my lovely Antarctica scenery. So if you're enjoying this episode on YouTube, you are currently seeing some gorgeous Antarctica-ness filmed. That's great. Now I don't need to find Antarctica's stock footage. Great. Never in your life, will you have to get Antarctica's stock footage? Just pick up the phone. I'm talking to you right now, Brady, but I'm slightly terrified that this episode is not going to work out, because I have this whole new recording setup recommended to me by friend of the show, Marco Arment, that I have set up following his instructions, but I have no idea how any of it works, and I have no ability to debug it in the slightest. And so I'm absolutely terrified that we're not actually recording now, but we'll have to see if that works out. Are you the first person in the history of the show to say friend of the show, or did we used to do that early on? I don't know if I've said that before. It's like a real podcast language thing, is it? Yeah, it is. I feel like suddenly that is really podcasty. You know what? I'll re-record that. I'll just say Marco Arment, right? I won't say friend of the show. Because look, if I ever go all in on this kind of thing, and I say pod, if I say like, oh, hey, Brady, we discussed on the last pod this thing, you have to reach through the internet and just strangle me to death immediately. Because I find that so obnoxious. That isn't abbreviation I cannot stand by, and it bothers me every single time. But I can hear it spreading through the podcast world. It bothers me, but I do use an off-show. Oh, yeah. Like I will say, oh, I'm going to be late for dinner tonight because I'm podding with Grey. Oh, no, you don't say potting. No, Brady, you don't say potting, do you? Please say you don't. I think like in a fun way. Yeah, but that's how it starts, though, right? Like that's how everything starts. You're like, okay, we're going to take podcasting. We're going to abbreviate it to pod to noun it. And then I'm going to verb it by potting. And I'm saying it in a funny way, but that's how we lose the language, right? That's how those things go on. But if you're going to take this hardline stance, I'm going to veto you editing out friend of the show. It has to be in here on record now. Yeah. I can't believe I said that. You gave ground. You verbally cornered me into having to leave it into the show instead of saying, no, we're going to wipe this recording clean and start over. Hello, Internet is a constant chess game of me trying to say things so that I can keep things in the show that you can't edit out. It's listeners. This is totally true. And I can hear Brady doing it. Brady will often say something or do a little segment that he knows. He can probably feel it across the internet that I'm already putting down a mental marker in my head to get rid of that whole thing. And then later in the recording, he makes everything else we talk about, like this big bowl of spaghetti mess that connects constantly back to the thing that he wants to make sure that I can't cut it. And I feel like we do sometimes have this little passive aggressive war between you trying to verbally box me in and me with a surgeon's knife later on feeling like, no, I'm going to extract this thing. I don't care how much I have to cut. Sometimes I win, sometimes you win, but I'm very aware that you do it. Remember earlier in the show when you said Friend of the Show? Yeah. I do remember that, Brady. Yeah, I know. I know. You can have mentioned it a hundred times now in this episode. Now speaking of like your power over the show compared to mine, right? I have to say, you've been getting a lot of Mr. Chompers into the show lately. Everybody loves Mr. Chompers, don't they, Brady? I feel like Audrey's getting pushed to the side a bit. So I just want to send you a picture of what I am looking at right now as I record. Ah, it's so cute how she sleeps on top of Lulu. She's curled up there on her rump. It's adorable. And I notice you keep sneaking Chompers snuffles onto the end of the show. No, I have, I've never done that. I don't know what you're talking about. So I have recorded a couple of Audrey snuffles. And I'm going to send them to you and I'm just saying, if you choose to put them on the end of the show, that's completely up to you. But I think we should do what you think is fair. You think I should do? Okay. I understand what's going on here. Yeah, someone can go back through the show and see how many minutes we've spent discussing Audrey versus Mr. Chompers. I think Audrey's going to come out pretty well in that comparison, but you know. But how cute is Audrey looking at that picture? Just looking up those big loving eyes. She's very cute, Brady. I know that you feel like you're trying to write some doggie imbalance here in the show. I'll just remind you that I have never put a single photograph of Mr. Chompers into the show notes or anything. And there are many, many photos of Audrey in the show notes. She's all over the show notes. So you shouldn't feel like it's uneven. But you don't own Mr. Chompers. You haven't got his image rights. Mr. Chompers is a very private dog. And it's not my place to make him internet famous. I understand what the burden of that could be. I don't want to put that on him. I think that boat has sailed, great. No, he's internet famous in the abstract, right? But not in the particulars. OK. But yeah, OK. I will receive your Audrey Snuffle sounds. And we'll see whether or not they make it to the end of the podcast. All right. Just follow your heart. So great. I bought a phone. Is that the same phone that you're failing to send me photographs on? Is that what's going on there? No, actually, I'm not using my new phone yet. OK. What phone did you buy? I bought a phone that should be familiar to you and listeners of Hello Internet. I bought the Sony CM-R111. An Android phone, I'm guessing? No. This is the phone that was the subject of my first ever buy line in Brady's buy lines last episode. Oh, God. Remember my story about the world's smallest phone back in the 90s? I went on eBay and found one and bid and bought it. And as a special treat, I have not yet unboxed it. I've not taken it out of the box. After the success of my previous unboxings here on the show, I thought you would want to hear the moment that I saw it and held it for the first time. Oh, God. OK. Here, I'm gearing myself up for some kind of Brady's moving to Android discussion. But I feel like, of course, I should have known better. I should have known better. It's not a new phone. Brady only buys antique phones, antique phones that presumably can't be used because they were made obsolete in but five years with the replacement of the old analog system, if I remember correctly. Here is in the box. OK, open it up. It's a scuffed up old box with a yellowing labels on it, details of who you can fax if you have any problems with it. Oh, good. Good. I'm going to open it up. Second hand. I don't know if you're sure the phone's in. This could be a terrible moment for me. Thank you. If there's just a rock inside that box, I will love that forever. Here we go. Let me get here coming out of the box. Here we go. Oh, still got the instructions. And like a little leather pouch for it. A yellowing manual charger. And here's the phone itself in my hand. Well, what do you think of it, Brady? It's cute. I wish I could use it. Is it small and light? It is small and light. I mean, let me put it next to my iPhone. Right, because it's really just like a walkie-talkie. It's the cup on a string for Australia's phone network. It's about half the size of my iPhone. I bought it in England. I haven't bought an Australian one. Oh, OK. You bought the UK edition. It's really lovely. Whenever I watch TV things about criminals, I'm always jealous that they have flip phones. And it's sort of a bit like that. It's got that nice vintage look to it. Of course, I have no use for it. But obviously, Brady, I am, as always, charmed and surprised by these things that you do. But why exactly did you go on eBay to buy this? Sentimentality. You want this as an object to have pride of place in your home as a reminder of the first byline that sets you off on your career? Is that the idea? It's part of my heritage. Hmm. Hey, when you wrote that story, had you ever seen one of those at the time or were you just writing about it? No, I hadn't. It was a total purpose. OK, now I like this a lot better, right? Because, of course, the news reporter has not seen the thing that they are writing about it. It may not have even existed. I should have asked for them to send me a photo of it with a copy of that paper. Yeah, because I was thinking for a second. I was like, oh, wait, yeah, there was a photograph in that article we were discussing. And it flickered across my mind for just the briefest of moments. Oh, was that Brady's hand in the photograph? That didn't come up last time. No, but of course, it's just like some press photo when you're writing an article you've never even seen. Look at this, right now. 20 years later, I have verified its existence. I sent you a picture of me holding it. I see the picture. I guess better late than never for verifying a 35-year-old news article. Don't say that I'd follow things up. Don't check my sources. Glad you checked your sources. I'm sure all of the Adelaide news readers from 1985 will be really happy to know that the phone really does exist. And presumably really was on sale in Adelaide later that year. Well, now that you've verified that it's real and you have a photograph of it, where's it going to go? What are you going to do with this? I don't know yet. It was maybe a little bit of an impulsive purchase. Really? Really? I mean, you say that, Brady. It's an impulsive purchase. You say that as though you were walking out of the supermarket and there was a box. There's the Mars bars and there's the M&Ms and there's the Snickers. Ooh, and then there's the Sony MRX Mark I, 1985 edition. And you're like, I'm just going to pick that up. So I don't think you can use the phrase impulsive purchase when you had to go searching it out. And I think that counts as an impulsive purchase. I think the internet makes impulsive purchases even easier. Because there's more stuff in front of me that I'm like, I have to have it. Like at the shop, all I can do is buy ticktex or Mars bars. Like I haven't got all those other options. But on the internet, I'm like, there's everything in the world I can have. Anything that pops into my head, including the Sony CM-111. Like, oh yeah, wouldn't it be cool to own one? And within 10 seconds, it was in front of me on eBay. All I had to do was press a button. That would never have happened 10 years ago. Okay, yes, I know what you're saying. But I feel like an impulsive purchase on the internet is when you're on Amazon and you click to buy a thing. And then there's the row of stuff on the bottom where they're like, hey, do you want to buy this stuff too? And you go, yeah, okay. And you click to add these other things to the cart. As soon as you're typing in to a search box, it's like a criminal law. Right? It's premeditated at that point. You had to think it through and then go and look up and remember what the model number is and then type it into eBay. You had to go to eBay in the first place. I feel like it's a premeditated purchase. It's not an impulse purchase. I hear what you're saying, right? But it was still within that bubble of impulsiveness. It was within that five minute window of impulsiveness where I was thinking back to the podcast we just recorded. And I thought, I wonder if you could buy that. I think that's the moment the impulsiveness started. And before I had time to think, this is ridiculous. What am I going to do with this thing? I'd already made the purchase. Yeah. I really wonder now in criminal law, how in advance of the murder, do you have to think about the murder before it counts as premeditated? Yeah. That's interesting. I'm going to kill this person and I guess they're at countdown clock and they're like, oh, it was more than five minutes. So that does or doesn't count as premeditated. There must be a previous case law about this. But I do get what you're saying, because the internet does allow us all to fill. Our worst impulse is just at the drop of a hat. And I have definitely bought way more stuff because it's just flickered across my brain. And I thought, oh, let me buy this thing. And you sort of forget about it the second after you've purchased it online. And then it just shows up as a big surprise. So I'm still saying it's premeditated, though, Brady. You're typing in the model number. It's premeditated. That did happen to me because I ordered this and then I went away on holiday, which we'll talk about soon. And I came back and I had this big heavy box with my name on it. And I had no idea what it was. I was like, I didn't buy anything. What's this about? And then I opened it and I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. That was a bit silly, wasn't it? I do have that same thing all the time where a box shows up. And I think, what the heck is in that box? But rarely is it an nostalgia item. Almost always, it's a vastly more practical item. Like right now, as we're recording the podcast, I'm waiting for a delivery. So at any moment, I'm sure the delivery person is going to knock on my door, ring the doorbell, because I'm home. And we'll have to abruptly start the podcast. And I will go get my delivery. Because there's no way they're going to keep on driving. But at least it's not going to be a box full of phones. It's going to be more podcasting equipment. Well, you can joke all you want about my Sony CMR111. I've just got three words for you. Hello Internet Museum. You can't justify all your crazy purchases with Hello Internet Museum reading. If it's Hello Internet related, I can. I'm constantly noticing that there's space available in the Blackstone for rent. If Adelaide has been of a depression in its sort of office market, I think we could get a bargain and start that museum. Yeah, you think we could rent some long-term space in the Blackstone. Just a one-off corner. And like those little boutique museums, it could just be staffed by Tim volunteers. Like just a couple of days a week, coming on Tuesdays between two and four. Right. Come and have a look at a few items. Here's a box full of impulse purchases from really. It will remain leave you that. Yeah. All of which, like the ambiguity about when you run your own business about like, what is a business expense? Right? It's a little bit like, I don't know exactly. Sometimes it's hard to know. I feel like you're idea of a, oh, this is a Hello Internet Museum item. Right? Almost anything can suddenly become that if you talk about it on the podcast. I'm still waiting for the conversation with my accountant when he says, 100 medals. Was it the last episode or was definitely a recent episode where we discussed interrogation and you were kind of making the case that you think when police are interrogating suspects, they can't use like dark arts, they can't pretend to be your mate or say one thing that's not true to trick you into saying something. And your position was pretty clear on that and I understood it. It occurred to me the other day, though, a question I should have asked and I don't know what your position is on this. What do you think about undercover police and undercover investigations? Do you think they're wrong? That's a question that depends a lot on the, like the devils and the details on that one. Right. It is an interesting question, but I think this is why we have laws about entrapment at least I know the US does. I don't know if the UK has entrapment laws, but this idea that if like a police officer can't incentivize a person to commit a crime if they're an undercover role that they can only sort of observe what's going on, I can definitely imagine situations where I'm totally fine with it. Right. Like undercover police at a big public event, right, where they're more or less just acting like a kind of security. That seems to me on one end of the spectrum, it's totally clear. On the other end of the spectrum, things that would count as entrapment, I feel like, no, no, I'm not okay with that. So what about these ones? You know, the Donnie Brasco type things where they just deeply, deeply infiltrate criminal gangs and you end up being almost part of the mafia. You know, you're deeply embedded. Those are the ones where you think you may not be comfortable with it or... That's a really good question. Perhaps a longer conversation for another day, but I felt bad that I hadn't asked and I didn't know where you stood on it. Sounds like you don't entirely know where you stand on it. I guess maybe it's the difference between something like being an undercover police officer is a different situation than an interrogation. It's obviously it's the part of the police work that's done before interrogations and trials and all the rest of it. And you're in like the evidence collecting phase. I genuinely don't know. It's a really interesting question and I feel like it does open the door to a certain amount of dark arts in an interesting way that I hadn't thought about. That's a good question, Brady. Well, let's talk about it again another day or tweet gray your opinions on... No, but we don't tell the people that tweet gray. Don't tweet gray. I won't look. I'll just knock your one Twitter for a month if everybody starts tweeting me. Snapchat. Snapchat. Snapchat. The baffling interface and weird world that I still do not entirely understand. So I don't know if you saw, but not that long ago, Snapchat redesigned the way it all works and it's interface. It had taken me one or two years to finally think I may be slightly understood how it worked and then they went and changed everything again and made it even more confusing. As you said, they didn't clarify it for you, Brady. They didn't make it smoother. They certainly did not. I think half the fun is trying to figure out how it works. Anyway, I took to Twitter, which is a social media platform I do understand and said, I'm not happy about Snapchat. I'm not happy with the new interface. I made my opinion known to my 70,000 followers of however many people on Twitter, the 10 of them who actually read my tweets. You're seabouraddling here about Snapchat's interface. Okay, got it. And hours later, the Snapchat's share price was hit for six and $1.3 billion was wiped off its share price because of people's backlash to the redesign. Now, I don't know if it was my tweet that caused it. Right. Or it more likely was the tweet by reality TV star Kylie Jenner, who pretty much said the same thing about an hour or two after me. She said, so does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me? This is so sad. And Kylie Jenner, who I don't know, but I know Snapchat is propped up by people's interest in her from what I can say, was absolutely devastated by her condemnation of the platform. And a billion pounds or $1.3 billion came off its stock market value. Isn't that amazing that one person's opinion? Not mine, of course. Can work that much money off a share price. Every time I go on Snapchat, there's this new section and there's 400,000 new stories about this Kylie Jenner person because she's bought a new pair of earrings when she said that she's sad today. I wouldn't know who she was if she walked in the house except I'd be really strange that some model had walked in my house. Right. And was busy Snapchating at the same time? Well, apparently not. Apparently she's over Snapchat. Oh, okay. Because she doesn't like the redesign as well. So the two things that has made me think about is a, oh, tree, that was a big snuffle. Audrey's making her opinion on Snapchat known down there. But yeah, I'll be sure to leave that in. I want to make sure I get all the airtime she can get really. That's right. How susceptible these platforms are to the whims of their big stars and also how much people hate these things being redesigned. Yeah. The stock market is one of those things that the more you think about it, the less it makes any sense. Even sentences like you'll hear people on the news say things like the stock market lost two trillion dollars in value today. Right. When the FTSE 500 dropped by 50%. That's a sentence where if you try to follow it through to like, what does this really mean? I often feel like I think this sentence doesn't even mean anything because this rapidly gets you drilling down to the idea like what's happening with the stocks. It's all of these trades. And the stock price represents like a kind of theoretical selling price. Like if you were to sell all of your Snapchat stock, how much money would you get? And they're like, oh, look at all that money that was lost. It's like, but was it lost? It was only ever really potential money. The stock market is one of those things. I feel like the more you think about it, the less it makes any sense. But nonetheless, obviously because of potential money, people super duper care about keeping the stock prices up. And if I was a social media company, and apparently your biggest star did not like your redesign, I think that's a real problem. And apparently the whole rest of the trading market agrees that it is a big problem that Kylie Jenner doesn't like the way Snapchat is done. And Brady Harron, I'm sorry. I can re-record it. And I could say it's a really big problem for Snapchat that at Brady Harron is the influencer of Kylie Jenner, which then destroys all of the value that they have. I'm putting the 1.3 billion down to Kylie Jenner and another five bucks down to me. Would you want that power though, Brady? I mean, no, no, absolutely not. I don't know. Wouldn't you? Obviously Snapchat, we don't care. We're not really that interested. But Brady, if you are thoughts, if you're comments, if you're complaints, say about a different company on a particular podcast, let's say YouTube on Hello Internet, right? If the mere utterance of your displeasure could cause YouTube stock to go atumbling, wouldn't you kind of want that power? No, because I'm just, you know, I'm a human. And some days I wake up upset, sometimes there are things going on in my life that make me not think straight. And sometimes I say something when I'm in a bad mood that I don't think later. And I don't want the whims of my humanity to have that much effect on other people. I don't think that's right. Hmm. See, I have to just feel like it would be such a tool to help try to shape the world to the way you want it to be. Right? If YouTube does a thing that you don't like and you start complaining about and their stock price goes down, be like, ooh, I don't know if I could resist that. I'd love more power to make people watch your objectivity videos. It's not quite the same thing. I feel like, you know what I just feel? It's like social media. It has power in one direction and that direction is to destroy, right? Like social media, it has this arrow of entropy, which is, can we destroy things? Oh, social media is really good at that. Building things up, social media, way worse, much harder to build the things. But to be a wrecking ball through stock prices or people's lives, that's what social media is great at. I saw a comedian the other day. The guy's name is Adam Hess and he tweeted some joke about the letters of the alphabet. I think he said the letters in the second half of the alphabet seem untrustworthy or something like that. Everyone thought it was really funny. His next tweet was encouraging people to come to one of his live shows that he was selling tickets to. Because he's a really funny Twitter. Like he puts a lot of free jokes out there. But he also said come to my show. And apparently he got a bit of backlash when he said come to my show for trying to sell his show. So he wrote, me does a free tweet about how the letters in the second half of the alphabet seem untrustworthy and people are, ha ha, great stuff. What a guy, retweet. Me, please come to one of my live shows that took actual effort to write. People, please leave us alone. That's what it is. Like we'll take your free stuff and we'll take things that require no effort. But things that require effort from people. It's like, hey, get out of my face, man. It's like that with us. Yeah, we'll all join in while you kick some company that's given you a bad customer service. But try and get us to go and watch something you've actually made. It's like chill out, man. I don't know. I feel like if I was running a school, one of the lessons of life that is important to learn that is encapsulated by that tweet is the universe does not reward effort. Effort can be a vital component of reward. But people I think always feel like, oh, this thing that I've done that takes a whole bunch of effort, I should get rewarded for it. It's like, of course, you make a funny joke on Twitter, everybody loves that and shares that. It's not relevant that you spent a year building up a comedy routine that is the actual effort. Like nobody cares. This is just the way the universe works. And anybody who's made anything for the internet has that experience of the thing that you spend forever on being less popular than the thing you put together in an afternoon. That is one of the hard realities of life. Do you think that is a good thing to instill in young people? Like would you really want to teach kids that? Do you think that will set them on a path that will help them in life or a path that could be quite negative for them in life? Oh, Brady, I wish you hadn't asked this question. I think there are certain things young people shouldn't be told. Yeah, okay. So there's this idea that has been kicking around in my head for maybe about a year. I don't even know if I should say it out loud right now, but there are a bunch of things that in my brain have now fallen under this category. And I think of this category as here's like the sign over the door, the necessary lies of civilization. There's like a lot of stuff that I feel like I've come to realize that as a kid or even as a younger adult or even just like me five years ago, was thinking about how like, oh, these things that we tell people, this is all just a bunch of bulls**t, right? Like, or this is just a lie, right? And now there's some part of me which has begun to think of some of these things as like the necessary lies of society. And right at the core of this, is this terrible necessary lie of society, which is like we have to tell people to work really hard. Because if we don't all together as a society kind of agreed a lie about this, the game is up, right? You can't have everybody going along with the idea of hard work is not always going to be rewarded. It's like the propaganda that we need to keep a civilization together. I mean, Gray, that lie I think is built on an even more fundamental lie. Yeah. And that is that life is fair. The thing with life is fair is I'm not quite sure that I feel like institutions teach people this idea. Right, whereas the kid says like, oh, that was unfair. And then the parent will very quickly say like, life isn't fair kid. Whereas I think the lie of hard work is rewarded is much more consistently, explicitly or implicitly taught. Like the whole system of schooling is kind of set up to this idea. Like you're going to work really hard on a thing and then you get a good grade. And the good grades lets you go to college which lets you continue to do really hard work in a structured environment for other people that is not under your control. And I was like, well, we need to do this. So that society sticks together because I feel actually a little bit like maybe even just talking about stuff on the podcast has slowly opened up this idea in my head. But it is the acknowledgement that if everybody thought about society and human interactions the way I do, the whole world would burn to the ground. It just like it wouldn't work. I've had this phrase knocking around in my head like necessary lies of civilization. And I can't quite get this idea to go away and I feel like I'm seeing it more and more everywhere. This is one of those things of like, when I say I would teach it in a school, I feel like I would try to identify the select subgroup of kids for whom this would be a good lesson and maybe just pull them aside and be like, hey, listen, we're putting you on a different track. Those are the ones that become criminals. We've got this sociopath track over here. And you're either going to be really successful or really terrible people. I just think it's brilliant that we've taken a conversation about Kylie Jenner and taken it to a place where we're talking about the fundamental treats and lies that hold civilization together. I feel like that was your fault. You pushed me into it, Brady. I haven't even wanted to talk about this. I feel like it's an idea. You can't say out loud, but it's there. There's definitely a few of them. Thoughting matters. There must be some that involve love and relationships and stuff. Wow, that's dark. That is darker. There's someone out there for everyone and I think there's some of that. But it's quite comforting to people when they're feeling lonely or something's gone wrong for them. We got to keep that society together, Brady. Yeah, like if we started teaching people that look, maybe you will be unhappy forever and there isn't someone out there for you and you're just not made to be in a relationship and find love and happiness. Like I don't think that's a good thing to be telling soon. And given what we know about you so far, probably your whole life will be unsuccessful and miserable. I'm like, oh, okay. All right, let's move right along from this dangerous topic, shall we? Let's continue onward. The only thing more frustrating than not being able to get your username on a website is not being able to get the domain name that you want. The domain name is like the ground zero of the internet. If you are starting something for you or for your company, you need a good domain name. That tells people who you are. And the place you should go to get your domain name is hover. I have lots of domain names with hover, lots. Like when I log in and know how it you scroll down to the bottom of a page and then there's a little next button that says, click over to the next page to see the next 50 of whatever. I have four of those with hover. 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I'm not here to have to untick a bunch of other boxes for peripheral products that you want to sell me. I don't want to have to pay for things that just seem like they're part of domain names like domain name privacy. It's like, would you like to pay extra to not have your personal information spewed all across the internet for creepsters defined? It's like, no, I don't want to have to pay for that. I think it should just be included. And with hover, it is included. So everyone needs a domain name. And it's easy to get creative these days because hover now has over 400 different domain extensions that you can choose from, including one of their new ones now, which is dot me, which is perfect for wanting to show off who you are. Or if you have a portfolio of work that you want to show off as an individual, a dot me domain is the perfect place to do that. Have you never used hover before or bought a domain name before? Well, lucky you get 10% off any of all domain extensions offered for your entire first year. Go to hover.com slash hi to check out their deals. It's time to take the foundational step to building your online reputation, getting the name you need. So once again, go to hover.com slash hi. Hover, domain names for everything you're passionate about. Thanks to hover for supporting the show and thanks to hover for keeping track of my many, many domain names. How is your vacation, Brady? Amazing. I went to Antarctica. I want to know all about this. I haven't followed you on social media lately because I have honestly had this feeling like, I don't want spoilers for Brady's amazing vacation. And I did have one spoiler come through, which is you sent me a pretty awesome image. I did have this funny feeling like, Brady is on such an epic trip. I don't want any spoilers for this trip. So you have been to Antarctica. Tell me about it. Do you know before I went, I was talking to a friend of mine because not many people have been there. So when you say I'm going to Antarctica or you talk about Antarctica, normally when you talk about anywhere else on the world, people will talk about the time they went there or their friend who went there. Which is the worst. Yeah, people feel the need to one up you in vacation stories. Or even if they won down you, they'll rather talk about their down thing. Like you'll say, I'm going to Antarctica and they say, oh, that's interesting. Speaking of cold, I went to Skig Nest last week and I spent the next two hours talking about that. And you're like, yeah, well, I was in Dead Horse Alaska three years ago. Like it's not Antarctica. Anyway, that's by the by. It's not a computer. But you're going to win every vacation competition for forever. Well, I was telling my friend I was going there. And he said, a colleague of mine just came back from there a few weeks ago. He works in like an architecture firm. He said, tomorrow at work, we're all taking a lunch break and he's going to show us photos and videos from his trip. And I couldn't believe that. I thought that sounded like hell on earth. It's like someone showing you like a slideshow in the 80s and like, why do you want to sit around and listen to this guy talk about his holiday? I was baffled by it. Anyway, having now been to Antarctica, I completely understand it because it's so ridiculously amazing. And it's like this far away place hidden there on the bottom of the world that no one sees or knows much about. When you come back, you just want everyone to know about it. It's like, oh my goodness, you have to see this thing. Like it's frustrating that people don't realize. You know how people can come back from there and say, oh, it's this unspoiled wilderness and we must protect it and it's so special. And you kind of like, yeah, whatever, that's a bit of a cliche. And then when you go and see it, it's like, oh my God, this is like an amazing unspoiled wilderness from another planet that has to be protected. Like it was so extraordinary and no photo or anything I say or word, conveys it. And it's like, you just feel this like, ah, ah, it reminds me of one thing. I may have said this in other places, but it reminded me of something. And that was many years ago, I went into the Bank of England Gold Bullion Vault, which is under the streets of London, right in the center, which really busy. Which is such a core video that you did. I'll put that in the show now as people need to go watch that. Thank you. It was this amazing place. And then when I came back upstairs and left the Bank of England, I just walked out onto the street and everyone was walking past me going to their Starbucks and on their phones and going about their business, I felt like grabbing them by the collar and saying, everyone, stop. There's this incredible thing under your feet that you don't know about and you have to know. It's incredible. It's amazing. You have to see it. You have no idea. And that's how I now feel about Antarctica. It's ridiculous. And it's on the same planet as us. And we just don't think about it. It's like, it was crazy. That's my summary. I was very impressed by it. You're very impressed by it. When you say you've had an experience that's impossible to explain, I always just think of the comparison of people who have done hallucinogens where they just like, I can't explain this to you. It's the thing that you just have to experience firsthand. And so that's what it sounds like Antarctica is. You've been to cold beautiful places before, but you can't understand Antarctica unless you go. After you've been there the first couple of days, you'd sit in the restaurant on the ship that took us down there and you'd be saying to let your fellow passengers, so what do you think? And everyone was almost having the identical reaction. You just kind of sigh and raise your eyebrows and just go. We're all like, we should have brought a poet. Yeah. So if you ever haven't tried to go to Antarctica, I would recommend it. It actually is the case that, I mean, Brady, you recommend me to go to lots of places. I'm never going to go. You're like, oh, go here. Go here. It's not just never going to happen. You do have a tiny bit of pole with Antarctica, simply because I really love going to cold places. Like on vacations, I love cold. And being on a ship in a cold environment is doubly attractive. So you do have extra pole there, but you have sold it so much that I almost worry it would ruin all other cold trips in the future. I'd be going to Norway and all I could think is, yeah, it's fine, but it's no Antarctica. I would be a little bit worried about it, like too much of a peak experience. That's an interesting reason to not do something. I understand it. The moldeaves are like that for beach holidays. The moldeaves has ruined beach holidays, but I still wouldn't take that going to the moldeaves. Is that really true, though? Do you feel like beach holidays? They all just fall epically short of the moldeaves? Yes. Anyone who goes to a nice beach with a blue sky and white sand goes, isn't this heaven? I'm like, yeah, no idea. Now, maybe that would increase my likelihood to go to the moldeaves, because I don't really like going to tropical places at all anyway. So I might as well experience the best one on the face of the earth. But my understanding is that, didn't you have to do some kind of physical, you don't just let anybody go to Antarctica, isn't that right? Like anything before you go to a country that you've not been to before, or a place you've not been to before, you think there's going to be like really strict rules. And so you did have to fill out a medical form to say that you were fit, but it turns out it was just a formality. Trust me, I would have been among the fittest, most capable people on the ship. I thought there was some kind of, like minimum number of pushups you need to be able to do to get onto the inside. No. I guess I'm really imagining is the training sequence in Armageddon, where I say, oh, we got to get you nice and fit before we can breathe. Okay, so it's not like that at all. All right, never mind. There was some quite old, not very mobile people who were doing the full shipang. I mean, twice a day you got in and out of Zodiacs and sometimes you would land on the continent and have to get out of Zodiac into the sort of ankle, deep water and walk up the rocky beach and then walk along the ice and stuff, but not a problem. You could do it tomorrow. I won't be doing it tomorrow, but okay. I will continue to recommend this one too. Also, I don't want to really go into all the details of like, you know, the hospitality and stuff, but the ship I went on, I think you would like as well. It would be a real selling point. So I will continue to hammer away about it too, because I think this is the one for you, definitely. All right, I'll keep that in my mind in my bag bag here. I actually recorded a podcast down there. I made an audio log each day while I was down there and there's obviously doesn't belong on Hello Internet because it's not really that kind of show. I will put that on unmade podcast sometimes soon after this episode. So people can hear me talk about it for more time than they would care to. It's like a vlog, but in podcasting format, that's what you were doing. Yeah, kind of, kind of. Yeah, but I did make a few notes of things about the trip that I thought were Hello Internet-y, to talk about. I don't know whether I should go into my hissy fit about plain seating in British Airways. Oh my God, Brady, Brady. I know you're talking about Antarctica, right? I know this is like a wondrous experience for you, but you've just mentioned British Airways and I have to interrupt you. I can't not interrupt you right now, because I found out a terrible thing. What? So I was recently flying on British Airways and for various reasons when we landed, we're sort of stuck on the plane for a little while, but everybody had gotten up and I was at the front of the line so I ended up having to make a small talk with the flight attendants. Yeah. And during the course of that conversation, I was like, oh, that's safety video, right? It's the worst, right? Because I'd seen them all rolling their eyes at it and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's totally the worst. And so I said, when does comic relief season end? And they looked at me and they said, it doesn't end. This is just the new safety video forever. And my heart sank to the center of the world upon hearing that because even though on the last show, I said, I'm not gonna pay attention to these videos. I find I can't look away somehow. I can't do it. And the little bit of hope that I was holding out that is like, oh, surely this is a temporary fundraising situation. No, it's permanent. It's going to be here for five years until they redo their video. And I'm so upset about that. So anyway, sorry, I just, I had to mention that. No, fair enough. I had to encounter it a few times on this trip. I don't want to go into it and people want to go back through my Twitter and see my, my unhappiness with British Airways account. That's so interesting that what happened with this video? So it will say that I think they are deliberately splitting apart people who travel together to make them pay more for seats. Why do you think that? Why do you think that? We booked to go. I went with my wife. We booked to go together. And I will point out because this was like a one-off like holiday of a lifetime. We had decided to fly business thinking, let's make it special. And I imagine it's not a quick trip down to Antarctica. No, it was like a 14 hour flight. Oh, Jesus Christ. We wanted it to be a special, you know, once in a lifetime holiday and everything about it to be good. So we've we've forked out for that. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure if you fly for 14 hours in economy, there's a non-trivial risk of death for being an economy for that long. I don't know about that, but yeah. I'm very certain about that. So when we checked in, we didn't pay like the extra money for seats here and there because we thought, well, all the business seats are okay and we're going to be together and we hadn't thought about it. We booked it so long ago, nearly a year ago. We hadn't thought about it. Checked in, can't sit together. Opposite ends of the cabin. Ridiculous. There was a time when if you booked together, you would be put together. Right. Especially when you've paid extra already for the nice experience of the flight. So anyway, the reason I've got a conspiracy theory about it is then when we got on the plane and we were like miles apart, there were other couples who were split apart as well. And my wife said to her, was sitting next to one of these like estranged people. So she said, do you want to do a swap? So you can at least sit next to your husband and she was like, oh, thank you so much. So you see then moved to another part of the plane. And then the guy who I was sitting next to got on board and I was like, do you care about where you sit? Because my wife now had a better seat than his seat. And he said, no, I don't care where I sit. So I said, do you want to swap with my wife? So my wife could come sit. So in the end, I did end up sitting next to her but it took these like multiple leapfrogging exchanges for all the people who were unhappy with their seats. I'm thinking of that little puzzle with the cars where you need to get a car out of like a block of cars. You need to move each one at a time to get it through. Like that's what it sounds like you're doing here is everybody can sit together. We just have to do the right number of couple swaps one at a time in order to make this arrangement work. It's like some stable marriage problem or something. I have to say that is very suspicious, right? If it's not just, oh, it's an accident and you two were separated. If there are several couples and everybody separated, I would feel suspicious about that. I would feel very suspicious. I tell you what, it bloody works too because I jumped straight online and paid extra to get a sitting together on the return flight. So it totally works. I thought you were going to say that you jumped straight online onto social media, made an angry tweet and British Airways lost a billion pounds in terms of their net worth in this time market. That's going to be like, yeah, you go Brady. I have to say, the people on British Airways, like the staff, I always find very nice and charming and I've noticed you with them, but I constantly have problems with that airline. They're not on my good list. But anyway, we got there and we did end up sitting together on both flights and before we left, the part of Argentina you leave from right down the bottom, Tierra Del Fuego, like down in Patagonia at the very bottom of South America. I saw their flag flying a few times. Tierra Del Fuego flag. And I've put a link there in the show notes for you to have a look at because I wonder what you think of their flag. I thought of you when I saw it. Oh, okay, I thought this was going to be something else because I thought I'm misremembering now as is often the case, my own video is on topics because I forget as soon as they're uploaded, all the information flies out of my head. But I thought like there's some flag in Argentina or in some country where it's required that they put this little wedge of Antarctica on the flag. The whole messed up situation with the territorial claims, but I feel like it's Argentina is fussy about their claims in Antarctica. That they are. There's even signs on the dock when you leave where they lay out what they think the situation is with Antarctica, but that's got nothing to do with the Tierra Del Fuego flag. It's also dumb. It's also dumb and theoretical, right? Like we all learn these watches in Antarctica. No, nobody does. And eventually someone with guns is going to tell you who really owns those little wedges of Antarctica. Argentina even sent a pregnant lady to Antarctica to have a baby on Antarctica because they thought it helped their claim. It helped your claim with who? Who do you think you're fooling by sending a pregnant lady down to Antarctica? And imagine that had gone wrongly. They really lose their claim. So this flag, I don't know. It looks a little amateur. I will say this, it looks better in real life. It looks nice fluttering in the wind and a bit beaten up. I quite liked it because there's so many birds and albatrosses around Tierra Del Fuego. Is that supposed to be an albatross in the center? Yeah, it is. It's stylized albatross. And you see so many of them there. Okay, yeah, just a paint a quick word picture for the listeners. If you think of those flags that have divisions into three, so there's the bottom left hand triangle is yellow, the top right hand triangle of the flag is blue. So that's sort of diagonally separated. Yeah, diagonally. And then there's a diagonal white section in the center, which is a stylized albatross. And then the Southern Cross on the blue side. I think I'd like it better without the Southern Cross. It's not the worst flag I've ever seen, obviously. It looked nice in real life. I just thought that flag works for me. Saying on a computer screen out flat, not so much, but when it's fluttering and I just liked it. And I can believe that, right? Some flags, the colors, they don't translate well into the computer yellow famously, never really looks great on a computer screen. So I can see that that might be better in person. So on the voyage, I had one of those social moments where I wonder what you would have done if you were me. Humble hug. That's what you do. Humble hug. It wasn't quite as confronting as the humble hug. I still haven't done a humble hug since then. I've still been really awkward with everybody. There was like a newsletter every day on the ship telling you what was happening that day. And on one day, as we're getting closer to Antarctica, as you cross the notorious Drake Passage, they said iceberg competition. First person who spots an iceberg bigger than the ship wins the prize. Now, most people will blow deck because a lot of them get sea sickness on the Drake Passage and it's cold and there's nothing to see because it's just the sea. But I'm not that person. I'm like always on the deck setting up cameras. I'm really into it. I don't get sea sick. So a lot of the time, I was just up on the top of the deck myself and taking a thousand photos with my long lens and I looked out to the right, the starboard side. Oh, look at you so fancy. And way, way, way, way in the distance. I saw a huge white iceberg like miles away. But even without the lens, you could see it. It was gleaming white. It was clearly an iceberg on the horizon. And it was so far away, I had to have been bigger than the ship. It must have been massive. I don't know how long I'd have been there. I went down below to the cabin and said to my wife, I've seen an iceberg. It's bigger than the ship, definitely. Should I report it? Basically, I was worried I was going to ring up and they were going to say, yeah, it's been there for four hours and everyone's already reported it. So I didn't know whether I should ring up and like say, I've seen an iceberg or I should just not do anything. Well, you're afraid of the social embarrassment of them telling you that other people have seen the iceberg. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to look foolish in front of the captain. Is that what this is? Well, I wasn't going to like store onto the bridge until the captain. I think that's the best way to do it though, right? Yeah. Iceberg. Iceberg, starboard side, right? And then you show off that you give the captain a little wink, right? So he understands that you know all the nautical lingo, right? You're on the inside of that. So I didn't know what to do. And my wife was like, just cold. Just cold, that reception. So I picked up the phone and said, I'll hi, I think I've seen an iceberg. I was also worried that it wasn't an iceberg. And they'd say, you know, you idiot, that's a cloud. That's a whale. That's a whale. That's Argentina. You don't know what you're doing. Yeah. So I called and I've said, I think I've seen an iceberg and they said, okay. And I said, it's that to the right. She said, all right. And I said, has anyone else called up? And she said, no, no one's called. You're the first person. So she said, I'll call the bridge and find out if you're right. And then she called back a couple of minutes later and said, I've spoken to the bridge. You're right. They've checked the radar and everything. And that is a massive iceberg. You've won a prize. Ooh. And like about 15 minutes later, I was gone by then. I'd gone back above deck to take photos, but about 15 minutes later to the room was delivered a bottle of champagne, which we never drank because we weren't drinking on the drip. And a little certificate saying, you are the winner of the iceberg competition. And I'm not ashamed to say, I am a lot more proud of that certificate than I should admit to. That's because that really makes me smile. Because I know you a little bit Brady. And I feel like I understand immediately how much you would enjoy that certificate. In fact, I can hardly imagine that there would be anybody else on that ship who would enjoy that official certificate more than you would. I have like official iceberg spotter certificate. That is 100% right up your alley. It did make me feel like, you know, a man of the ocean. Right. Me and the crew had like, with comrades, they're like that guy. See that guy there? Right. He knows your stuff. And actually, I was walking down one of the corridors about the next day, and this guy who was a member of the crew stopped me and said, you won the iceberg competition, didn't you? And I was like, well, yes, I did. And I just imagined they were all talking about me on the bridge saying this is guy, Harron. He's like, you can smell ice. He's amazing. Can you believe how far away he's part of that iceberg? And I said to the guy, I did. And I said to him, how do you know that by the way? Because I was wanting to, you know, I wanted to hear what they were all saying about it. Exactly. You wanted to feel out the situation about how much are they talking about you? Yeah. So I said, how do you know? How do you know that I'm the one who won the iceberg competition? And he said, because I'm the guy that had to bring the champagne to your room. Oh, I'm sorry, Brady. Because I know that the answer that you wanted is, oh, because we're all working on a ballot in your honor that will be sung for many years on this ship. Yeah. Because you're the stuff of legend. We're thinking of offering you a job. Right. That's what you want. We want you to give us a speech tonight about how you did it. Yeah. See, I feel like if I was in that situation, you know, say you would win a prize and they don't specify what it is. And I see an iceberg off in the distance. There's no way I'm dialing that phone, right? It's like, whatever you're offering, the chance that you're going to give it to me on a stage is too high. Or they're going to say your name over, over the announcement system. Yeah. No. Nope. I'm going to let that go. And you know what? Someone who's excited to get a certificate, they will get it. And everything will be much more right in the universe. Grey, you're taking the shine off of it now. You're making me think that some other introverts put on that before me, but didn't call it in. Yeah. There's like a whole team of an Iraq style guys who had seen it three hours ago and none of them got it in. Yeah. Or maybe everyone up on the deck was laughing and said in the last 20 voyages, he's the first person to actually call one in. No one actually calls it in. It's like a joke. Right. Or they said, oh, no, that's for the kids. Right. Yeah. Yeah. They got to your cabin and were surprised to realize it was not a 10 year old boy. Where's little Brady? We've got a prize for him. A little toy boat. A little toy boat. Fisher price. I'm Brady. Well, I'm sure that certificate is framed in your house right now somewhere. Is it not? It is not framed. I do have it somewhere. I did bring it back, but I haven't got it here. I expect to see a picture on your snaps a gram of it mounted on the wall at some point, Brady. I think the people will like that. So speaking of flags, I did have a special moment and I did fly the nail and gear on the Antarctic continent. Yeah. I got to say, Brady, you sent me that photo. Yeah. It's quite a remarkable moment to get the flag in Antarctica. But you know, would have been better if you had a flagpole. I mean, I see what you're doing there. And I appreciate the joke. And you're not the first to make it. But I'm totally stealing that joke from everybody else who made it. And I was like, yeah, you know what? That's the kind of comment Brady does deserve. After the last time when a guy put up an awesome pirate flag in the ocean, you were like, no, a little piece of paper. It was great that that was done. And you know, you can think as a, oh, I'm going to tell him how we could have done it better. At least I took a proper cloth flag. But I know they put like a stick on the moon for the flag. And sometimes you might put one in the soil. But the traditional explorer thing, like if you look at people on top of Mount Everest, they don't put poles there. They just hold it above their head like I was doing. Like I did at the explorer mountain. Oh, yeah. I was in the right genre. Actually, you know what, you're right. I've been thinking about photos I've seen of people on top of mountains holding flags. You're right. It's like the team of people are holding the flag out. You're right. That is the way I've seen it. And you're like, you're in far too hazardous in an environment to be fapping around with poles. And this is like life and death. Just like when you were holding up the nail and gear, it was life and death at that moment. There were three or four people around when my wife was taking that picture of me with the flag. So it did create the, what's that flag? I don't recognize that flag. And then how did you explain this territorial claim of yours? I just mumbled something of the podcasts and it's a joke. And you wouldn't understand. Oh, right. OK. So you're telling all the people they're on the outside of the inside joke. That's what you're doing. We're inside. I'm bursting with pride. In all seriousness, it's super awesome that you did that. It was very cool to see. And it was very cool to know that you were in Antarctica and had unfurled the mighty nail and gear. That was pretty great, Brady. That was pretty cool. I may even award myself a medal. No, I don't think you can do that. No, no, no, really. I don't think we get medals of honor. I don't think that's how that works. No, you're right. The queen couldn't give us a victory across something. Even if you and I were to land on Mars as the first humans ever to step foot on Mars and plop down a nail and gear flag, I don't think we get award ourselves a Hello Internet Medal of Honours. I don't think that's how that works. No, you're right. I agree. But maybe I can print you up a nice certificate. Would you like that? Add it to my collection. Yeah. So if there's one thing I find a little bit crazy just in the world in general and among tourists and that when you're walking around London and stuff, it's people taking photos with iPads. That was taken to the next level a couple of times in Antarctica. Too in particular, I can remember. One was a guy standing on the front of the ship as we crossed the Drake passage, nearly being blown off the ship, spray everywhere, going around him, and holding up an iPad to take a photo. And the other one was a guy standing up on a zodiac, balancing on the edge, trying not to fall in, taking a photo of a minkey whale as it, like, you know, emerged from the water. Magnificent moment. And he's holding up an iPad to take a photo of it. It's so incongruous and I can't get used to it. I can get used to people taking pictures with their phones. I'm glad you can because that's something you're going to see. I'm glad you're letting that one slide, baby. Yeah. But there is something, you know, when you're in Antarctica, taking pictures of like wildlife in the distance with your iPhone is strange enough. But an iPad just looks so naff. When you're in the magnificence of nature in any form, that is when you can most keenly feel the limitations of your phone's camera. Like if you go out to the National Parks, notice this feeling of, wow, this is so stunningly beautiful. And take a picture. You go, it looks nothing like the way it looks to me as I'm standing here. I don't know why I even bothered with this photograph. And yeah, the iPad camera is an additional step down on that one. It's not just because of the quality of the camera. It's something about holding an iPad up. That just looks wrong. It does look odd. It's not a step too far from holding up your laptop and using the FaceTime camera to take a picture of whatever you're looking at. Yeah. It's the fact that the tool is so big, it's not built for purpose. Our phone is small and sort of, you know, it's supposed to be everywhere and utility. And iPad is not being used as it's built for purpose. You can't just then slip it into your back pocket. No. Like you're carrying around this giant rectangle everywhere. You're not going to grab your laptop and just say, oh, I'm going to take a quick picture. All right, of this thing. I mean, I'm sure people have done it. I'm sure we'll hear from those people. But yeah, it's sort of ridiculous. And I understand why it happens. And if it's the only thing that you have on you, sure, whatever, but especially standing at the bow of a vessel in Antarctica with your iPad. I don't know. I feel like that's a particular image of civilization in a way, right? There's something about that. It's like, oh, okay. This is where we are in the world. Another thing on this trip I realized is how incredibly little I know about krill, krill. Like shrimp, the things that whales eat. Yeah, is that what it is? Is it just a shrimp? Because they look like shrimps. They look like prawns. But like they're this famous thing. They're famously, you know, the most important thing in the world, because so many things eat krill. Are they? Okay. They're super important. Yeah, like all these sea life things, you know, whales and all the penguins and everything eat so much krill. And I always hear about how important it is. But I know so little about them. I mean, the world is an infinite place, Breed. You can't know everything about everything. But like krill, that's the thing that the blue whales eat, right? They're just filtering it through the gigantic mouths, which is always funny that the world's largest animal. I think if I remember incorrectly, the blue whales are the largest animals ever. It's nothing but like the tiniest animal ever. There's 379 million tons of krill making it among the species with the largest total biomass, according to Wiki. Over half this is eaten by whale seals penguins squid and fish each year. I mean, what do you want to know about krill, Breed? I just feel bad that this is like biomass-wise. This is like amongst the most important and abundant animal on the planet. And I don't know much about them. I mean, how much do you know about algae? Not much. Yeah. I bet there's more biomass of algae than krill. There has to be, right? You reckon biomass, maybe? I'm going to reckon that it's an order of magnitude or biomass in terms of algae versus krill. Okay. It's got to be. I have no idea. Maybe you're up. And I feel like my knowledge of both is about the same. And that knowledge is, they exist. And I have a word in my head that is the label for the thing. One of which is green and slimy. And the other one is pink and tiny. That's the sum total of my knowledge. I feel like I want to know more about krill. Okay. I'll see if I can get you a book. Or maybe people in the Reddit can have good recommendations. Someone must have written a gripping audiobook on the history of krill that you can dive into. I mean, that has to exist. I read a whole audiobook on cod a while back. Like there has to be one on krill without a doubt. All right. Actually, I have a lot of doubts about that. I don't think that's really going to exist. But I don't know why I'm saying it so confidently. I feel like there's books on everything, but now maybe not the krill. Maybe there's just not that much to know about them, Brady. You have been sailing and being on voyages yourself. I have to say I've done very few of them. Well, let's back up because you're overselling it with the words there. I have been on cruises. I have not done any sailing. That sounds far too active. I like a nice cruise with a lot of people who are retired. That is about my speed in the ocean. Do you think cruising or sailing gives you a better feeling for the vastness of our planet than say flying over it, which we often do? I feel it's more of a more visceral experience of the endlessness of these oceans. I think you're right. In no small part because there's something unreal about the plane journeys. When I look out the airplane window, there's something about that just doesn't register as very real. Once you get past it, like, oh, I'm taking off from New York and I know New York very well. And now it looks like a tiny model of New York. And then when you're flying over the middle of America, there's no sense for the absolute scale of it. There's just a feeling of God this flight takes longer than I think it does. The only time I didn't have that was a little while ago, I had the experience of traveling across America. And then I happened to take a flight which reconstructed a whole bunch of the path that I had taken. And it was very weird to see that from the airplane to be like, oh, okay, I know where all of this is. I've gone through this on the ground. And now I'm doing it over the air. And then it did feel like I had a much more visual experience. But no, in general, I think you're right. I think taking a cruise in Alaska gives you a sense that Alaska is enormous, that it's huge. And you're only seeing a tiny part of it. That is partly because the speed is a much more humanly understandable scale. You can see the trees going by and kind of mentally clock how fast you're going. So yeah, I think that does give you a better scale of things. When you're in Antarctica though, did it give you a sense of the scale of how big it is? I guess because what I'm wondering here is the scenery must have been pretty similar, right? Like how different does it look as you're traveling along or does it just seem like it's just a giant wall of ice the whole time? No, there are different parts. It was so different to what I expected. I thought you just would go through the sea for a few days and then you would reach like a whitish cliff and this huge expanse of whiteness. But it wasn't like that at all. It was so jagged and dramatic and mountainous straight away. I was only on the Antarctic peninsula. And the scenery was so extreme. The scale of it was so much more than I could have expected. And the icebergs were so big and massive and different. And it was different in different places. And it did take a while to sail from place to place. It was like you're in the small part of it and that in itself was massive. The scale and the beauty and the dramaticness of it all is what surprised me. It felt massive and it made you feel small and you were only seeing a small part of it. Did it make you feel humble, Brady? No, because I had that certificate from spotting the icebergs. I felt like I'd conquered the continent. Okay, stay tuned people because there's an extra special offer coming your way. This episode has been brought to you by Fracture. Pictures printed onto pieces of glass, specially made and ready to hang straight out of the box. It's just so simple to upload your photos, choose your sizes and then with a few clicks, you're all done. Whether it's something to decorate your home or office or maybe a thoughtful gift for a friend or loved one. Fractures based in Gainesville, Florida, operating out of a carbon neutral factory. Now, I've currently got about 3,000 photos taken during this recent trip to Antarctica and don't think I won't be getting some of the better ones turned into fractures for my mum and dad. As a matter of fract, I may even get that one of me flying the nailing gear down and give it to Grave for Christmas. He could hang it over his computer and look up at it for moments of inspiration. I can just see it happening. Now, as a special treat today and in the hope that you might give Fracture a try, I'm also going to put a handful of my favourite pictures from the trip in the show notes at high resolution. You can feel free to download them if you like and if you get one fractured, make sure you send me a photo of your pointing at it on the wall. Don't forget to point the points very important. Now, to fracture any picture, and let's be honest, maybe you'd rather opt for a snap from your own holiday rather than mine, visit fracture.me. You'll get 15% of your first fracture order with the exclusive code Hello15. That's fracture.me 15% off with the code Hello15, all as one word, H-E-L-L-O, and then the numbers 1-5. Get those photos out of your phone and off the hard drives when no one will ever see them and get them up on the wall. Oh, and when you do it, make sure you pick Hello Internet in their one question survey that helps support the show, which we shall now return to. This new story has caught my eye. I don't know a lot of the details about it, and I know that you and I don't really go in too much for talking about politics in detail, but there is a bigger picture here. And this is the story going around where someone's, I think, got some court case where they're trying to stop the president blocking them on Twitter. And the judge hasn't made a ruling at the time in recording it about whether or not this is legal or there's some first amendment issues or something like that. And the judge has suggested in sort of in passing that maybe the president of the United States would have been better advised just to mute the person rather than block them and muting them wouldn't infringe on rights the way that blocking may or may not. So take it away from that and just talk in generalities. What do you think about public officials and people in important positions blocking citizens? Like you're thinking maybe the president shouldn't be blocking people on Twitter? Yeah, that is the debate. I don't think it's entirely because you can't see his tweets because there are a million other ways you could see his tweets, I guess. I think it's more, I think if you're blocked, you can't then comment. So you can't enter the debate that happens underneath or as if you're muted, I think you can enter the debate. Just the tweet, it doesn't say it so they don't have to be annoyed by you. That's the truth is that I was kind of forgetting what the difference is between blocking and muting because my policy is only ever to mute. Yeah. I don't block for a couple of reasons. One, I think it's just pointlessly aggressive. Yeah. The person, I believe that they're notified that you're blocked as opposed to muting, which is just silent. Yeah. Then like you said, if they try to log in and see what your tweets are, the blocked person is unable to see that. And I kind of forgot about that. They can't even see what you're saying on Twitter. Which of course is silly because you just log out and you can see the tweets. But that almost is part of what makes it feel like it's pointlessly aggressive to me. Yeah. It's like, oh, I've blocked you. You can't see that. And then the other reason I don't block people I mute instead is because maybe I'm wrong about this. But for people I mute, sometimes I get the feeling that they would take great satisfaction out of getting blocked. And I would like to deny them the satisfaction. That's exactly how I feel. There's a very warm glow, knowing that they're still screaming into the void. And they don't know that you can't hear them. It's like, oh, we've black mirrored them. Right. You just don't exist and you don't even know. So yeah, I mean, maybe I'm wrong about that. But I definitely get the impression that there are some people who seem like they're asking to be blocked. That's the badge of honor. Right. Yeah. It could become a righteous crusade of, I was so right. And CGB Gray was so wrong. And he was such a baby and couldn't stand it that he blocked me. That they're holding up the block as proof. Whereas in reality, it's like, I just never carried a hear anything you say ever again. Like, goodbye, you just don't exist in my world. I will never think about you again until the end of time. So that's my policy for not blocking. There is something to that idea that a politician, even if it's only in theory, right? If I woke up and I was president of the United States tomorrow, and for some reason, I couldn't resign immediately, like I would want to. And I was using Twitter because I think, oh, God, this job sucks so much. Like, let me just goof around on Twitter all day. I certainly wouldn't be like reading all of the feedback. And it would just be impossible to do anyway. There's like a very theoretical aspect about this. But I do feel like the judge would be right to say, you can't block, but you can mute. That there's some kind of democratic idealism that we're preserving here. That you're not barred from the conversation. The pointless screaming into the void of political interneting that happens. But like you're not banned from it. You can still participate in this total waste of your time in mental energy. If you want to, that seems deeply important to lots of people in ways that I think is bizarre and self-harming. But you know, whatever. So yeah, I think I'm going to be on that side. That politicians shouldn't be able to block. I think it's especially true now that politicians, particularly the current president of the United States, is using Twitter as such a way to implement policy and announce things. I think if it was just a private Twitter word, it was, he's my bacon and eggs I had for breakfast this morning. I'd feel less that way. But now that it's become such a part of politics that I think I'm probably on the same side as you. I still love the idea of you being president, though. I like the idea of you running under the slogan, make America gray again. Doesn't even make any sense, Brady. Doesn't make any sense at all. It's too sense-coulding, doesn't it? I have one policy aim, which is that we're going to desaturate the flag. It's just going to be gray. We can take off the color. And then resign. Right, and then resign. I have no other goals. I just want to do this one thing. Just get it done in the first 100 days where you have all your political capital and then get out of there. Desaturate the flag. All the political capital that I would have, right? All of the political allies I would have because I've been so involved in that system. I was elected on this mandate. Or I don't know if he's going to get that desaturation through the Senate. Need 60 votes for desaturation. Do I need less votes if we're only going to 25% desaturated? I don't know. How does that work? Like each vote is an additional percent of desaturation. It's a sliding scale. Do you think the same thing? Like what do you think about this? Or do you feel like if the president wants to block someone, the president can block someone? I mean, because, look, in real life, you can block people through physical security. You don't have a right in real life to say something to the president. That's not going to happen. That's true. Is this actually different? I don't know. I don't know. That is a fair argument. And that's hard to argue against. I think if everyone else is allowed to comment, and you've been picked out to not comment, there is something that seems a little unfair and arbitrary about it. But then again, the president can say, Joey Smith, you can come and meet me in the Oval Office and Sandy Jones, you can't. So, don't know. Just mute them. Just make it not a problem. It's like, listen, we have a really easy solution to this that accomplishes what you want. Unless, of course, your whole point is to block someone in an aggressive manner. If what you want is to send them that little message of like, your block body. Or your whole point is to stop the mentoring, the debate with others. And then I do see a free speech debate creeping in a little bit. Mute. Don't block people. It saves you a lot of effort. And it's far more sneaky and fun. Yeah, it's far more sneaky. And you deny your opponents any satisfaction. Dare I say it's a slightly naughty feeling when you meet someone. Which is the greatest satisfaction there can be. Speaking of the world of social media, I've been getting messages from a bunch of my friends, including you. Yes. Asking if I'm on Instagram. And Instagram is the one social media platform that it feels like everybody tries to bully me into being on. Right where they're like, oh, you don't have an Instagram. You need an Instagram. And the thing that did push me over, the idea of like, oh, I want to get an Instagram was everybody in the park wanting me to sign up to their dogs, Instagrams. Which in a weird way, I was so much more interested in than like my actual friends Instagram. So I was like, yeah, I would like to know what this dog is up to all day. Sure, I'll sign up on the Instagram. But I didn't have one. And I thought, okay, fine. I will try this. I will sign up to the Instagram. But when I went to go and do it, somebody had to it was already there who had taken my Instagram name. Yeah. So there was already a CGP Gray on Instagram using your logo. So it's not like they just happened to have your name up. Well, okay. So the problem is there's several CGP grays on Instagram. And I feel like I don't understand why people are doing this like attention. Attention. Do you think so? Okay. So there is someone else who has been trying to follow all of my friends Instagrams and is using my logo and is reposting photos that I put on Twitter onto that Instagram to make it look like it's me. And this is one of those things where I like, I don't quite know how to react to this. And I'm also really aware that this has dramatically disperited me from actually trying to use Instagram because it's like, oh, if I can't get my username, then what's the point? Yeah. And I thought I was being really clever because I had made an Instagram account which was called not CGP Gray, which somehow I thought I was going to be able to use to sign up to dog Instagram accounts in the park. But I realized immediately that I hadn't really thought that through because then I'd have to explain this name and then explain what my actual job is and then it was all over. And so I was like, oh, God, secret Instagram account. And the whole thing just became too complicated and I just gave it up. And I feel like the Instagram is not for me. But I want my original name if I'm going to use it. But somebody has it and is just keeping it. I don't know if it's like a terrorist negotiation and for the record, I don't negotiate with terrorists. And then there's somebody else who's just pretending to be me. I feel like I have to just give up this whole platform and let it go. I think that such an insidious practice too, like of all the things people do, taking people's names and doing that is one of the things I think lower stuff. I think that's really unfair. But maybe there's some motive or something going on I don't understand. But I cannot conceive of any explanation this person could give that would make me think, oh, okay, fair enough then. Yeah, this is one of these things in the modern world that's just weird. It's not a thing that could ever happen in real life, where someone goes around and they just start using your name and pretending to be you. But on the internet, it's like anybody can do this stuff. And I feel like society has to figure out how to handle this identity problem. Twitter tries to do the thing with blue check marks. And it's sort of works. You have that on Instagram, by the way. And I just got one last week. Oh, okay, so they have some kind of verified program. They use it a lot less than Twitter, though. Yeah, but I think it still doesn't really help. Because it only lets you know in the scenario where, oh, you're interacting with the person. And now that person is verified. It doesn't work in the negative case. Like what I would love to be able to do is I'd love to be able to call up Instagram and say, hey, can you give an anti verified badge to this person? And they could put like a little skull and crossbones or some kind of anti-symbol on the logo. Right? Because I did try to go through Instagram and get my actual name back. And that process was totally unsuccessful. And so I feel like I wish there was a way to be able to say this person is anti verified. I want the thing on the other side of this. I don't just want the positive thing. And I feel like that's something all social networks could have. I used to say like, well, why don't you specify if users are anti verified versus verified? But just so people know, if you see a CGP gray on Instagram at the moment, it's not the real deal. Yeah. And it's inhibiting my use of Instagram. I can't become a very popular Instagram star who can affect stock prices with my photographs of displeasure of things. I don't know. I'm still not convinced Instagram is for me, but now I will never really know if Instagram is for me. Do you know what though? Someone impersonating you or one of my other friends who work in this area is one of the few people I would block. Because I don't want that person putting a comment under my picture. Other people saying a comment saying great photo Brady and your logo next to it and thinking that must be great. I'm going to follow that person. So I would be inclined to block someone who was impersonating one of my friends just because I don't want them to be leeching off the capital that that person has built. It's such a weird thing. Again, I can't quite understand the reasoning for wanting to do that thing. But yeah, anti verified. Let's make it a thing. I don't think a skull in crossbones is the right logo. That's too cool. Yeah, it is too cool. Thumbs down, baby. Or a red cross instead of a green tick, maybe. I think you're red cross it. Yeah, skull in crossbones, too good. Or like a really ugly, there's a, that color that's famous for being like the most ugly color. It's this kind of like greenish brown awfulness. They use it on cigarette. Yeah, it's that. We use that color. This is anti verified. An X. Is anti verified a word? Like, is that the right word? I don't know. It's new speak, Brady. You just put anti in front of the thing and it's fine. Or gate on the end. Verified gate. Quick playing crash corner. Playing crash corner. Something has to be marked. Because I've been getting a lot of contact, like, from listeners. And so I want them to know I'm hearing them. I don't know if we mentioned it, but a 2017 was quite a special year because by some metrics, and I'm not entirely sure about this, and it also depends on definitions. There was no fatality on a scheduled commercial airline. Oh, yeah, I saw this somewhere. Yeah, I saw it. And I've been reading through the crashes that did happen in 2017. And a lot of the ones that people may know about from last year, what are the cargo flights or they were charter flights. And so if you use the right definition, you can get zero fatalities. Although I do see one that happened in December, a small plane in Canada with 25 passengers. That seems to me to have been a commercial flight. Although maybe it wasn't a jet engine. Maybe there's some other thing there. But one person died from injuries after that crash happened. If it's after, that doesn't count. The hospital could have been at fault there. Now, you have to die when the plane hits the ground. All right. I'm sure that was much consolation to the family. Yeah, they got a staff infection in the hospital. It was it was an entire effort. Anyway, it was this notable year. But 2018 is off to a bad start. And we have had numerous crashes, including one in Iran that was quite bad. There was one in Russia that was very bad. But notably most recently, and this was the one that most people contacted me about, another huge blow to my attempts to get you to ever go to Mount Everest with me, was we had another plane crash at the Nepal Airport. I feel like that one has a lot of crashes per 100,000 landings. Nepali airlines are infamous for not being massively attentive to... Oh, great. ...of the aircraft. ...of the aircraft. And we've discussed this before, and this was another one. This was a US Bangla Airlines flight. So that may not have even been a Nepali airline. I'm not sure. Anyway, it was one that crashed at the Nepal Airport. And obviously my Twitter timeline lit up, because whenever there's a Nepal plane crash, this happens. So there was... Is that the center of the bull's eye for you? Everyone's going to tell you all about it. It's like, anytime there's any news about automation anywhere in the world, people send it to me on Twitter. And it's like, oh, yeah, okay, here we go. And now, yeah, for you, anything with Nepal, that's what you're going to get. Yeah. So even though I'm not doing my own cause any good, I thought I'd raise it with you. And also just let people know, you know, thanks for letting me know. I spoke to Duke from the Vatican yesterday. And he, the first thing he said to me was, do you know that this Nepal plane crash? I bet everyone's been telling you about it. And like, well, yeah, now you're telling me about it as well. But, yeah, so I've even got my mates helping me out with those ones. You know what, I'm glad you're happy to receive this information. Whereas I feel like every time you bring a plane crash corner, I tense up a little bit and I think, oh, God, what is Brady going to tell me now? And I've been just living in happy bliss, you know, watching the BA safety videos, trying not to think about being on a plane. And keeping the one piece of news that I did here, which is, oh, there was no fatalities last year. Great. I'm just going to imagine this trendline continues forever. And now I talk to Brady and Brady ruins this. He breaks this idea in my mind. Hello, Internet. Have you ever tried to make a website? Let me tell you from personal experience. It's a real pain in the butt. It's not a thing that you want to do. You have to set up a computer remotely to host HTML files and PHP. And basically learn the whole job of being a systems administrator. It's not fun. And it's the kind of thing that will fill your life with stress. At least it was before Squarespace came to rescue us all. I really think that one of the best things I have ever done to minimize stress in my life was moving my websites from whatever self-hosting thing I was using at the time to Squarespace. Putting both Hello, Internet on Squarespace and CGPGray.com on Squarespace, I basically have never had to think about maintaining a website since then. The websites are what I want. They're up and they work. If you want to make a website, you should start with Squarespace. They really make it just completely simple. You go to Squarespace, you sign up, you pick a template that looks sort of close to how you want to start, and then you can use their drag and drop interface to customize it to get it exactly the way that you want. And it is super customizable. There are lots of websites that are running on Squarespace that you would never have any idea our Squarespace websites. So after a little customization, you have a site looking the way you want. And then they just have so many integrations and plugins. So you can make that website do whatever you want. Like I have an email list. It's very easy to put a little block on your website that says, click here to sign it for my email list. If you're running a podcast, it's very easy to drag in little audio blocks. If you want to sell something, they have e-commerce tools that make it dead simple. They have analytics so you can see how your results are working. And there's lots of stuff that you would never even think about that's done automatically. Like built-in search engine optimization. Is that a thing that you want to do? No, of course not. And optimizing for different size screens. Do you know how many different size screens there are? An infinity of different size screens. You don't want to have to adjust the website for each one of those. No, Squarespace does it for you. There's nothing to patch or upgrade ever. And they have 24-7 award-winning customer support. So if you need a website, make it with Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code Hello to save 10% off your first purchase of a website. That's squarespace.com. Offer code Hello. Thank you to Squarespace for supporting the show. And thank you to Squarespace for running my websites for years now. Hey, speaking of news in the news bubble, did you hear that Stephen Hawking died? I did hear that Stephen Hawking died. I think that was absolutely impossible to avoid in my universe. Do you know I woke up the morning that it had happened? And my Reddit client, I think, has 25 slots. And eight of those slots, including the top four, were all Stephen Hawking has died. Yeah, that is also how I found out was my entire front page of Reddit was. I think it was the same thing. It was like 10 of the 25 slots was about that story. I mean, the man had a good run, right? I forget what the original diagnosis was, was like five years, 10 years, something like that. Not even that, not even that, I don't think. I don't understand how he lived as long as he did. It's just astounding. Because of the saturation I'd woken up to, my first instinct, obviously I was sad that it had happened. But my first instinct was not to make a video about it or do any sort of tribute video on 60 symbols, which is my physics channel. A few people said to me, including people close to me said, no, this probably should be a video. It's about as important a physicist as you could get. That has died. I was in Bristol's, but I did activate Sean, who helps me with filming to do some interviews with the Nottingham crew. And then we put it together into a video. And I'm really pleased I did it in the end. We made a sort of a tribute video. But that video, I think, doesn't capture why at least some of the physicists who I know who knew him thinks he lived so long. And it was just like, he was like a really, really determined, stubborn guy by the sounds of it. And there's a few stories in the video that kind of encapsulate that. I mean, maybe. But I don't think you can really just out-determine degenerative disease. I think maybe there is an element of that. I'm not talking about, you know, mind over matter. You're not talking about magic when we're discussing the death of Stephen Hawking. No. I understand what you mean. But I do think there are degrees to which a determination to do certain things that result in prolonging your life you can do. I don't know about the case of Stephen Hawking. But certainly there are people who kind of when their will goes, they stop doing things that are physically keeping them alive. People sometimes give up, don't they? At certain points. Or not in a bad way, but just your ability to do the things you need to physically do to keep living. You can just say, no. Yeah. No, I mean, it's a loss for the world. I think I can pretty directly point to my own career in physics having been started by Stephen Hawking and reading a brief history of time. As I always want to specify the illustrated edition, which is much easier to read. Right. And I think what's better? I hear a lot of people sign that since he died. You're in that category too. That was a big deal to you. That was really my first introduction to the idea of physics. Because the way my high school worked was each year you just did one science all year. So you started with Earth Science, which was really just kind of like a baby science. And then you did biology. And then the next year it was chemistry. And the final year was physics. And physics was also optional. You only had to do up to chemistry. You were not required to do physics. And I was much more of a computer kid in terms of the things that I had found on my own. But my best friend in high school at the time was showing off to everybody that he was reading this like big hard book called a brief history of time. I remember in a totally petty high school way thinking like, I'm smarter than him. I can read that book. He's bragging to everybody that he's reading this book. And like I can read it too. And so I picked it up out of like some kind of best friend competition. And I was like, oh, this book is amazing. Like this is really great. It was actually because of that that I had ended up signing up for some university classes in physics to do over the summer to just familiarize myself with it and thinking about it as a possible major in university later on. I can imagine a very different course of my life where I decided not to take physics in my senior year because it would have been a subject I would have been much less familiar with. And instead doubling down on computer science stuff and then going on to do computer science stuff in college. So yeah, I think I can very strongly point to that book as navigating a large direction that my life took afterwards. That's great. And also it also means there would be no halloween internet if it wasn't for Stephen Hawking. Without many things, there would be no halloween internet. No. And I'm not suggesting there should be listening halloween internet amongst Stephen Hawking's numerous accomplishments. Thanks Stephen Hawking. I had a very interesting experience in college and in the rest of my life because of the book that you wrote. Gray, I know you don't like spoilers. I know you don't like watching trailers. Right. But you have also said that your attitude to future Star Wars films has become a little bit more mad. They're going to be out every year. They're not like these seminal events anymore. So I'm wondering if I can persuade you to watch the recently released teaser trailer for the new solo film, the hand solo special film. I'd like you to watch it. I have a motive a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. You bullied me into watching a Star Wars trailer. Bullied you. I swear you did. Bullied. I'm gonna stick with my original usage into watching a Star Wars trailer. And I always regretted it that I let you push me into that. Well, you're never gonna make that mistake again. I'm never gonna make that mistake again. But lucky for you, you are correct. I totally feel and it has been even more so the case is more time has gone on that the last Jedi just totally broke something with me in Star Wars. And I am filled with I just don't care. I will now watch all the Star Wars trailers because I view them as like Marvel movies. Actually a little bit less than Marvel movies because there's plenty of Marvel movies that I would avoid the trailers for. So yeah, I'm cool. Whatever you want me to watch. I'll watch it. Well, have a watch of this solo trailer. And after you've watched it, we'll discuss it. So spoilers are low. I guess if you don't want to know anything about this trailer. So watch the first link there. Okay, trailer watched, Brady. I have ingested it. First reaction. Jack Black doesn't seem like a good casting choice for Hans Solo. I think is my reaction to that trailer. That guy is very Jack Black, isn't he? Especially at the end. That hadn't occurred to me, but fair enough. I think having Woody Harrelson in it might be a mistake because it completely yanked me out of the moment when someone so famous, who's done so many other things appears. I think Star Wars films are better served by people who are not quite so prominent, but anyway. Yeah, I'm going to agree with that. Solo is two few letters for the title of the film too. It looks silly in the Star Wars box, just having SOLO at the end there when they show the logo. It's like, that doesn't look right. But I'm missing some letters. Oh, yeah, you're right. It does. It does have two few letters. Mm. But anyway. I don't know. I got to say the casting of that movie doesn't strike me as great. Like, said, the main guy strikes me as not Han Solo at all. He seems like Jack Black, especially at the end when he's making the joke about everything's fine. And I don't know the actress's name. I'll just think of her as Sarah Connor from Terminator Genesis. And so a few other movies they've seen her in, in which I would describe her as Thurley Mediaoker every time. That's the Kaleicy from Game of Thrones. I don't watch the Game of Thrones. I don't know it. Is she good in that? She's the Kaleicy Med? Okay. It means nothing to me. Thank you. It's like, you can say it louder, right? But it's just like, it's not like we're trying to speak a foreign language here. And you just speak louder right until they understand that. I'm sure it's very important in the Game of Thrones. Good. Anyway, everything I've seen her in, I think she's kind of mediocre. But I think I just feel like, whatever I was very met about. I watched that and went, that looks entirely missable. And you love Hansolo. I feel like it's your favorite. No, he doesn't love Hansolo. Yeah, but I feel like Brady, you really love Hansolo. Soon after that came out, there was a fan recap came out using a different song. They used some music by the Beastie Boys, sabotaged by the Beastie Boys. Now, I want you to watch the second recap trailer with a new piece of music. It's always embarrassing when your multi-billion dollar media company is outdone in coolness by some kid in his bedroom who recuts your trailer. That trailer is so cool. That makes me excited about the film. The first one I was like, I don't want to watch the film. I watched that second one and I'm like, ah, that's awesome. I mean, with any kind of media, music always does so much heavy lifting. Right, so much more so than people think. Like, music is absolutely vital. A thing that I think is great about the Beastie Boys recut of the solo trailer is it does what I feel like these alternate Star Wars movies should do is take stuff in a bit of a different direction and having a Beastie Boys song in a trailer makes it feel like, oh, this is a movie that's like Star Wars adjacent, but it's going to have a very different feel. Whereas the music in the first one is very boring, generic, important movie music. They still try to make it a bit more rocky and grungy, but in a generic film score way. I was watching this video about how in movie making, there's this really common thing about using temp music to score movies and that now studios are also doing the thing where when they're making a movie, they will just take the music from the movie that they want this to be the most like and do a temp cut with that music and then just slightly change it. Like, so they're trying to go for the theme. And the solo music feels like I've heard this a thousand times as just like important music in a movie. But I was watching a trailer for the new Harry Potter spin-off, which is like the Fantastic Beasts. Yeah. And it ends with music that sounds so much incredibly like the Avengers. It's just startling. It's like, oh god, all of these movies. Like I can just feel this pressure of Hollywood wanting to have these things that are these big universes that's all built around Marvel that all kind of sounds the same. That's like we're going to force a universe and all of these universes are going to be dealing with big important things. And we're going to make a bazillion dollars off of all of these movies because we're just trying to angle them at something that's the same that we know that works. And I think that is exactly why the recut trailer with the Beastie Boys music. It's like a breath of fresh air. It's extra funny because that Beastie Boys song was used in the new Star Trek reboots. I think it's Star Trek 3. Yeah. They use Beastie Boys a bunch of times. And in the third movie, they use it in a pivotal scene. They use that song. And it's like, it works. It kind of works. It's a fun song, but it also makes stuff feel different. So, yeah. A plus work to that second trailer. And a thoroughly mediocre score to the first one. Do you think you could use that type of music in the actual Star Wars film? Do you think the times come where you could have song lyrics or contemporary songs in a Star Wars film? That would be a massive step, wouldn't it? Galaxy far, far away and all that sort of stuff. Could you do it? Like, I think in the right alternate story, you could. In one of the main movies, right? When the next main Star Wars movie comes out, if they're just using Britney Spears music as the backing. And some, like, I'd find that quite jarring, but I feel like you could get away with it in an alternate movie. Yeah. Because if you just feel like, oh, we're just playing around with the style. I don't know. The recut trailer is awesome. It makes it feel much more exciting. But it still feels like, God, this looks just very boring and very formulaic. It's like, oh, here's Han Solo. He's breaking the rules, kicked out of the academy for having a mind of his own. It's just like, I just, I feel bored by it before I've even seen it. I'll tell you a trailer not to watch if you don't want to be scared about what the film's going to be like. And that is Ready Player One, which I enjoyed the book and have been quite looking forward to the film. And the trailer has made me think the film's going to be terrible. The film may be great. And I hope it is. But the trailer really worries me. Ready Player One is one of those books that has been so universally recommended to me that I feel my wall of resistance has gone up over. Right? Where it's like, oh, it's been too recommended. And I feel like I don't want to read it because everyone recommends it. So I haven't seen the trailer to Ready Player One. I haven't read the book Ready Player One. And no internet, you don't need to tell me to read the book Ready Player One because everybody in the world has already told me to read the book Ready Player One. Did you watch the TV show Peaky Blinders? No. It's a British to BBC show. That's a show set like in sort of crime underworld of the UK just after World War One. But all the scoring to it is modern rock music. Like really contemporary, you got grungy cool stuff. And that works really well. That works really well. I'm watching it at the moment. And I read the music choices are intriguing and somehow nine times out of 10 worked really well. If you throw that into the recommendation pot for people, if they want to watch a show using music in an interesting way. And it's a culture. Well, are you going to see Solo Brady? Is that going to be on your list? Memorial Day apparently it's coming out. You're going to be there. I probably won't see it. The day it comes out. But I'll probably see it in the first week or two. Yeah, you're going to buy some hot dogs and go watch the movie. Well, hot dogs will be consumed. That will probably be my main reason to go and see it. My hot dog excuse. I can go and get my five guys hot dogs next door. It was just mentally thinking like, I don't really want to see Solo. I'd watch the trailer already anyway. And then you feel popcorn. Yeah, even before you'd be like, oh, you should watch the trailer. It's like, I'd seen this, right? It's like I watched it and already totally forgotten about it. But now I'm thinking, oh yeah, when the movie comes out, this is my excuse to eat popcorn. I can just tell my wife, I got to go watch a movie. It's a business expense. It's for work. It's for a hello internet. And go and consume all of the popcorn in a horrible self-destructive orgy of popcorn.
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Category:Hello Internet Episode
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