H.I. No. 20: Reverse Finger Trap

"H.I. #20: Reverse Finger Trap" is the 20th episode of Hello Internet, released on September 8, 2014. It is the final episode of the podcast's second season.
==Official Description==
Grey & Brady on the season finale talk about greycations, training your dog, alternative medicine, monkey copyright, monkey art, the great monkey renaissance of the 1960s, autos revisited, the ice bucket challenge, Scottish Independence, Black Mirror and Charlie Brooker.
Spoiler warnings: for Black Mirror: The National Anthem, Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits
Hello Internet T-Shirts Now Available
 
==Show Notes==
*Discuss this episode
*Betty's
*York's Viking Museum
*Chihuahua Bubbles - Some Cute Slow Motion
*Audrey the Chihuahua Puppy
*Animal-made art
*Monkeys and apes in space
*The Dog Whisperer
*Cesar Millan
*Autos
*Ice bucket challenge
*ALS ice bucket challenge
*Chinese finger trap
*Derek: Facebook Fraud
*Derek: The Problem with Facebook
*Scottish Independence
*Black Mirror
*David Wong: 5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.
*Cracked Podcast
*The X-factor
*Newswipe with Charlie Brooker
==Other==
I'm ill prepared with supplies here. Do you want to get a glass of water or a diet coke right now? Why don't you do that? Just to have it. Just to have it. I can't be bothered getting up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an understanding sometimes. Okay. Do you want to have it in front of me? I have not one, but four beverages to drink. Like, in preparation for this. So are you sure you don't want to get something? I guess we did go for a long time, but four drinks seems excessive. If you need to be prepared, that's why. I'll be right. Okay. I'm not going to drink the grand canyon on the hottest day you've ever seen without water. Oh my god. I know. I actually nearly died that day. Yeah, I bet you did because that's just crazy. But you know, I'm hard as nails, man. You've been off the grid. Hard to contact. You went on holiday. Yeah, I guess I have been hard to contact. Harder than usual就是說. I assumed you were having like a big software update or a big like system reboot or something somewhere, you know, you were plugged into a wall somewhere. I wish it was that simple. I wish it was that simple. But now in order to recharge after a rather difficult and stressful and anxiety-filled summer, I have to resort to sleeping and lounging just like everybody else. I cannot simply just plug into the wall and reboot and do a software update. That would be much better. I would prefer that quite a lot. Tell me about what you do when you take a break. You know, how do you recharge? What does a gray vacation to use your terminology to use the American terminology? What does a gray, a graycation look like? Oh, graycation. I like that. It's like I've gotten really used to the holiday terminology. This is one of the things when you live abroad, you end up sometimes flipping the word sometimes. I can even hear that when I edit the podcast back that I'll use the different words twice. I like holiday sounds like it's fun, but like a graycation. That's also quite good. A broad is another word that I find. Like in Australia, you don't say a broad. You always say overseas. And whenever I say overseas, that's another one of my wife's laughs at because she thinks it's funny that Australians think of all places as, you know, over the sea. And whereas English people will just say a broad for another country. So yeah, the overseas thing, I would say that's also pretty common in America. And it is not ridiculous to hear Americans say something like to refer to Brazil as being overseas, even though there is a direct land path from the United States to Brazil. You have no sea to cross to get to Brazil. So in the US, are you more likely to hear a broad or overseas when referring to just other countries outside the US? I feel like overseas. You know, I feel like that's the right answer. But I'm sure we'll hear from people who never would use that term. We'll only use the exact correct term all the time. But I think like growing up, I would hear overseas much more often to refer to places that were not America. I mean, obviously in Australia, you can't go abroad with that guy go overseas, but I'm not sure that's, this feeds into this discussion. Anyway, anyway, tell me about the greatcation. I'm not going to tell you about the greatcation just yet because there's a little tidbit I have to work in here now, which is my favorite term for places that are other where. It is Alaska's use of the outside. The outside is their phrase for everything that is not Alaska. And I absolutely love that. I find it is both a charming phrase, but it also sounds like something you'd expect villains in a horror movie to refer to as. Like, oh, you're in some isolated town that's really scary and all the people in that little town refer to the outside. Right? Is everything beyond the borders of their town. And Alaska does have the best state flag in my opinion. We're not doing this again. I'm just saying, obviously I've been looking over those flags a bit since all the brujaha you caused. And I've decided Alaska is my favorite, but that's all I'm going to say. It's a good one. It's a good one. Okay, okay. Greatcation. Greatcation. For some people, I might be the worst traveler in the world. That's how they would regard the way I vacation because when I travel, at least lately, I tend to see almost nothing. The couple of greatcations I've taken of late have been all about relaxing and nothing about seeing anything. So actually, was it almost a year ago now, my wife and I, we took a vacation within London just to the other side of the city and stayed in a hotel. And it was pushing it a little bit. That was all about just being someplace different for a few days and not doing very much. So I went up to York, which is a very lovely city. I was quite impressed by York, but I did not do very many of the classic tourist things when you go up there. I just walked around the city a little bit, but mostly we just relaxed. And for me, that in tail just a whole lot of reading, really, on my Kindle. And not really very much else. It's just a time for me to kind of have my brain shut off into very consciously say, okay, I'm going to carve out these few days and I'm not going to worry about anything. And a key part of this that I found works really well is also the eliminating contact with the outside world as much as possible. So over those days, I did not check my email at all. And I think I only posted something on Twitter once, but even then I was very aware of, I'm logging on to post this, but I'm not even going to look at any of the replies. And I don't go on places like Reddit and I don't check my RSS feed very much. And I want to be isolated from the outside world experience. And that is deeply, almost calming to be disconnected from things and think like, well, it's just me and my book. And that's all that there can be. I'm not going to let all of these external things into my life. Does that take a lot of willpower? Is it hard for you to not just press that button on your phone and see how many emails are in your inbox? Or do you find that an easy decision to have made? Well, email is particular because I don't have email set up on my phone or my iPad is just normally. I have a, I mentioned this before, but I have an outgoing only email systems on my phone and on my iPads. So I don't even, in my normal daily life, I do not want the option to be able to check my email when I'm standing in line somewhere. But with Twitter and the RSS feeds and Reddit, I deleted the apps from my phone and from my iPad. And but this is, this is why the Kindle is a really key piece of technology for me and why I have to deal with this frustrations. I can't get away from it is because I love that the Kindle is a dedicated piece of technology. You know what this does? This is for reading books. You want to check Twitter on it. I mean, in theory, you can, but it's going to take you 90 minutes to do that. This is basically just a book reading device and that, that allows you brain to much more effortlessly focus on the moment and to not be worried about everything else. Whereas reading on the iPad is like, well, the whole world is always just like two clicks away of that home button and the whole world can be quite distracting when you just want to read a book. You have to set up the right systems. I'm not a big believer in willpower as a thing. It's all about the structure that is around you and what, what behaviors that encourages or discourages. That's, that's the way I would, I would put it. You mentioned that you went away with your wife. Is she cool with this? Do you just say, I'm going to sit in a corner and read my book all day? Like is she like, come on, I want to go out and climb a tree or walk up a mountain? We're there for three full days. On each day, we spent like half a day doing something and that's something was usually just walking. I told you not to go to that God awful Viking museum in York. Tell me you didn't go there. I did not go there. We passed it. And then I mentioned that you were against this, which seemed to have the exact opposite effect. It made my wife much more interested in going in than if I had just said nothing and we had continued to walk by the Viking museum. She was like, oh, Brady thought it was terrible. Well, what's inside of it? Does, does, was she thinking that means maybe it's really good or was she just curious about why I thought it was terrible or just, is, is she using me as a yardstick of like, almost sickness, if I, after the whole her debacle, she thinks if I don't like something, maybe it's good. Yeah, maybe. I think it was just a, kind of like a bad movie effect where you complain about a movie and you're like, oh, it was so terrible. It almost entices the other person to watch the movie. Like really wasn't that bad? I don't know. But you didn't go in. So no, we didn't go in. And even when I say we have to do something, like to do something is in gigantic quotations because one of the do something mornings was we just went to the famous restaurant up there called Betty's, I think it is, which is in the center square and we had breakfast at Betty's, which was wonderful. I thought it was going to be just a tourist trap place that was a normal breakfast, but it was great. You should totally go. And if you go get there Jamaican blue coffee, it is excellent. And usually offer code H.I. I think I have internet. Oh, man, I should have contacted Betty's and have seen how they could do a sponsorship. For sure, we're sure as hell, we're not going to get an endorsement from the Viking museum now. No, we are not. We are not. Ah, I should have emailed them. You got to call it as you see it. We owe it to the listeners. When we went away recently to Morocco, it's the same thing. We had this Uber relaxing holiday as well. And people were saying, oh, would you like to do a day trip to the village and watch the locals weave a carpet and stuff? And we were like, no, we want to do nothing. And when you do that, the smallest things become a big deal. We would go, there are a couple of camels in the stables and we would go and chop up some apples and feed the camels for like 10 minutes. And that was like the thing we did that day. And you'd be reminiscing about it for hours afterwards. I remember when we fed the camels as you sit by the pool doing nothing. It's funny. I would have guessed that you and the Mrs. would be the exact opposite. I would have guessed that you two would be, we need to see everything kind of travelers. No. I'm surprised. It's really changed. I think you go through cycles in life like that. And I went through a cycle of, you know, you got to, you know, suck the marrow out of life and all that sort of stuff. But now with life being just so busy all the time, I think I'm like, you, when I have a holiday and my wife feels the same way, we very much seek out places where we can do nothing and where, and where effort to get there and settle in will be the absolute minimum. That's definitely something that's changed. On a work trip, if I go away for work, I'm the opposite of, you know, you've got to see, you've got to get out as much as you can and film as much as you can. Yeah, but that's different. Yeah, you know, get as much bang for your back as you can. But holiday now, I'm more in your camp, do nothing. Very, very surprised. So do you, do you try to do a digital detox then as well or? No. I say, I say I will and then I don't. I try to. Is that why you wanted to know how I get about not checking the things? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to be more like me in this case? Yeah, I guess so. I do. I always envy your discipline and self-control. I think that's an amazing trait you have that I don't have. I still say it's the self-control is overrated. If you're relying on self-control, you're relying on the wrong thing. So because I realized I heard you laugh a little bit when I said that I deleted the apps from my phones. So do you delete the apps from your phone? No, I don't. Well, see now there we go. I think we come to the heart of the matter. I can guarantee you that if I left Alien Blue and Tweetbot on the front page of my personal iPad, I would have looked at them a heck of a lot more. I can guarantee that would have happened. So you'd remove the temptation more thoroughly than I do? Yes. I mean, I barely, I didn't take my laptop with me and I barely used my iPad at all. But on my iPad, the home screen was, I think it was only like, InstaPaper and Kindle and I books. I think were the only things that were on the home screen in my iPad at that stage because that's what I wanted it to be is just these items and nothing else. Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Yes. You missed you, baby. Oh man, that pause. You're going to have to edit that pause down just for my feeling. No, I missed you. I missed you quite a lot. What did you miss? What did you miss about me? What did I miss about you? I, you know what I missed? What? I missed you sending me adorable doggy photos. Oh, should we talk about that now? We should definitely talk about that now. All right. So, for anyone who doesn't follow my personal Twitter account or is friends with me on Facebook because if you do follow me on Twitter or friends with me on Facebook, trust me. You already know all about this. We have acquired a puppy, a little chihuahua called Audrey. Who is adorable? She is very cute. I know all puppies are cute and everyone thinks they're puppies are cute but I think Audrey is super cute. I'm going to agree with you here. She is unusually cute. You know how we handle that stuff about? We talked about how owning a dog is as big if not a bigger responsibility than having a baby and I think we were doing it tongue in cheek. No, certainly not. No, no, no. There certainly was on my behalf and I'll tell you what, now that I've been had a puppy for a few weeks now, I have massive respect for people who, well not massive respect, I have massive appreciation for people who bring up babies. I don't respect them. I think they're crazy to have them in the first place because gosh. It's hard enough with a puppy having to wake up every couple of hours to take it outside for a toilet and all the responsibility. The puppy, you can leave things. You can put it in it's little crate for a while and you can go and have dinner with your wife and that. You can't leave a baby behind but gosh. The next morning I'm like, oh I hardly slept last night. I had to get up twice and I find myself complaining. Then I imagine, well imagine if I had to do that for like a few years and with someone that you can't ignore, like I guess with a puppy you could think, I'll let it do a way just this once because I can't be bothered. You can't do that stuff with humans. Although you know what's funny, a few of my friends who have babies, I've been saying this to saying, I've got so much more appreciation for what you do because you can't cut the corners that I can cut with a puppy and they just look at me and go, yeah we cut corners. So I don't know if they're joking or you can cut corners but I don't think that that works in the long run. Yeah and it's probably not legal. I guess that depends on the corners that you're cutting. Yes. Anyway before we turn this into kind of a child care podcast, I have learned something about YouTube from my puppy experience. I mean I'm not going to sit here and just talk about how cute my puppy is because that's just boring for everyone. I have appreciated your positive reinforcement when I send you the pictures and videos. You've been making all the right noises and saying very cute, very adorable. Wow. So thank you. I can't. I can't not. Yeah. So what I do. Well you could but I am a bit embarrassed. Every time I talk to one of you guys on Skype, like Derek and all that sort of stuff, I'm always in Destin and that. I'm always like holding up the puppy all the time in front of the webcam and then I realize what a sad, sad loser I am. But no, you shouldn't you shouldn't feel that way at all. When I when I called you just now, I was sad that she was in the crate because you couldn't hold her up to the screen. So I demand more adorable puppy-ness. Don't feel bad about it at all. Well let me tell you my YouTube thing I learned. As you know, as you know, I have this super duper slow-mo camera, which I supposedly use for science videos. But it's been used a lot for puppy videos in the last few weeks. So I've been going at the backyard and blowing bubbles and watching the puppy blow and throwing apples and watching her chase them and filming it and then making these cute little videos to, you know, twey, twinky music. And I've just been putting them on like my personal channel. So you know, they don't get watched very many times, you know, a couple of thousand times which I guess, I don't know, maybe for some people, you know, for some people there's a lot of views. But it's not the number of views that should be getting attention is a, you know, a couple of thousand views. But what I've been finding when I post these videos, usually within 15 to 20 minutes, I've been getting emails from the companies asking to license the videos and sell them to television shows. Really? Within 15 minutes. And this is, I mean, you and I are used to all the different emails you get, you know, from people trying to exploit things or do business deals. Yeah, yeah, but this is surprising. Yeah, this is, yeah, this is a new well to me. This is a new thing I didn't know existed. They obviously have search terms and people watching YouTube constantly with, I don't know with what words, obviously words like puppy and jaw hour and cute and things like that. And whenever anything new gets posted straight away, you get these messages saying, you know, big long pro former thing saying, you know, we want to do this, we want to do that. We need you to fill out this form, go to this site to license your video to us and we'll give you a cut of, you know, we'll sell it to TV and give you the money and that. I didn't even know this was a thing. So amongst all the pappiness and cuteness, I've also learned something new about YouTube and another little scammy thing that goes on in the world. That's just weird. I'll send you some of the emails, I'll show you what they say. Yeah, I would be kind of curious. I mean, again, like you said, we get just the weirdest emails all the time from people with the most dubious of business offers you've ever heard in your life. But that I would never have guessed that people are trying to license puppy footage from you just in an automated fashion. How is very strange. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if you know, when a cute video gets a million views, suddenly, you know, the feeding frenzy starts and viral videos and that. But this is just, you know, I mean, I guess that they're reasonably well made videos because they're done with a good camera, despite my hand-fisted camera work. But still, you know, they're obviously red hot on it. They're obviously watching like hawks and they swoop immediately and it's not just one company. So there's obviously, you know, there's obviously competition going on here and maybe I should be looking into it. Maybe I'm missing an opportunity. I've just been ignoring it, but I'm just conditioned to ignore people who are trying to, you know, make money out of me. Let me tell you something. I have a channel idea, which I guarantee would be more popular than any of these boring learning channels that you do. And it is slow motion puppy file. I've done. Don't think I haven't thought of that. I've even been wondering if I was to ring because obviously, you know, puppies grow up within if they lose their cuteness within about a month, you know, they lose maximum cuteness within a month. I mean, even Audrey starting to get a bit bigger than I'd like. Yeah, I can say the pictures she's growing. So I was wondering if you were like to call puppy breeders and say, oh, hi, look, I've got this camera. I see you've got some new puppies for sale before, before you sell them, do you mind if I just come around and film them for 20 minutes with my camera? Yeah. And you just like travel the countryside filming puppies. Yeah. Slow motion puppy file. Slow motion royalties. When I, it's already, I've already given up loads of thought. I was working. When I put the first video on it was, it was Audrey playing with apples because she was so small, like her head was smaller than the apples. That was quite funny. And jokingly, Destin sent me a message on Reddit saying you've been invited to moderate, moderate slash puppies play with apples. And I was like, oh, well, I never knew there was a subreddit for that. Of course, there wasn't. I'm also surprised there isn't. There's a subreddit for everything. Yeah. Anyway, so she was great. I have a question for you. Let me go. What is your puppy training regime? Are you following a particular model for training a puppy? That's more my wife's department. She's a very conscientious person. She is already at the age of 11 weeks. And we've only had her for three weeks. She's already going to puppy school once a week. Oh, good, good. I'm taking her to puppy parties starting from next week where she does social classes with other dogs. And today she had her first one-on-one personal tuition lesson with the puppy trainer. Ooh. So she's already been educated on three different levels. So she's going to get, you know, we're pretty square with that sort of stuff, you know. We get really into everything and read loads and do everything. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I don't know if I should, if I should mention this now, maybe I'll cut this. But that's always the side of something interesting when you start it by saying, maybe I'll cut this. Well, people have a hard time believing me sometimes when I tell this. But back when I was still a teacher and my parents got this dog, when I went to visit them in America, they were like, oh, there's this new show that we love, which is the dog whisperer, Caesar Milan. And for some, like, oh, you've got to be kidding me. What is this? But so I started watching it. And I quite like it. But one of the things I realized was, you know what? This is really instructive for a teacher. Like watching his lessons or watching him instruct the dogs. I thought this is kind of amazing. And my number one advice to new teachers ever since that point was you need to buy all of the seasons of the dog whisperer and start watching them. Watch to back to back every night. I mean, it's September now. There are new, there are probably brand new teachers possibly listening to this show. There are students just in teacher training school now. Go watch the dog whisperer. It is like this amazing lesson in being consistent. And you just, you cannot teach that kind of stuff. And like he is an amazing example of just being really super consistent, especially in this nonverbal way. And I have to be vague. I can't mention anything. But I will just say that new teachers have come back to me after following this advice and have said, you are totally right. I have watched two seasons of the dog whisperer and I am better in the classroom now than I was before. I have hardly any accidents. Yeah. It's like I swear, if I was running a teacher training school, I would, I would try to arrange one day a week to send all the potential teachers to the local dog kennel, be like, listen, can we just have them out in the yard and have them try to teach the dogs? That would be way more beneficial than some of the actual lessons taught in a class. They are definitely applicable lessons to be learned there. And his consistency is just amazing to watch. And like, that is the thing that matters the most when you're in front of a room full of tiny humans. It's like you have to be so consistent. There is a degree of knack to it too though because when I go to puppies school, we are six or seven of us as they are all spread through this local church hall with our dogs and the woman is at the front telling us what to do and they are just like, okay, I will go and do it. And we all sit there trying to do it and the dogs are running everywhere and doing anything about what they are supposed to do. And then she comes along like one by one to see how we are going. And the minute she does anything, the dog is just doing what she says and the dogs don't know her. She is new to them. And then there is the way she moves or touches them or pushes them in the right way and engages with them. The dog is just, she's just got her. She's got the touch. No, no, no. This is exactly what I disagree with you here. But if she's never met the dog before, how can she, you know, so there's no routine or consistency. So how can she be walking up to my dog for the first time and getting it to sit straight away and take food from her hand in the way it's supposed to? Okay. So I have thought about this a lot. I have found myself watching the dog whisper thing. Like, am I a crazy person here? Why is this helping with my teaching? So okay. So here's one of the things if you watch the dog whisperer that I think he mentioned sometimes, but is good to really point out is how rarely he ever talks to the dogs. Right. He never really speaks with them and yet they still do what he wants them to do. And that little point there is a huge shift in your mind. And I'm aware like, boy, that has really helped my interactions with a bunch of dogs and getting them to do what they want. Like my parents dog, Lucy, I'm really aware of consciously not talking to her under circumstances with the other terribly trained dogs where I would have talked to them like they can understand me. Oh, no, Smoky, you shouldn't bite the guest. That's mean and they don't like it, right? And here's a, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, right? Like that's all he's hearing. It doesn't mean any of him. Here's my thought on this. This is a learn skill. I think this is a skill that I got better at by just becoming aware of it. And it's, I don't think you can talk about it because I think this is something that's like in our monkey minds, that is very, very primitive. And it is something to do with just nonverbal communication. And kind of holding in your mind the thought of what behavior that you want or what kinds of things you find acceptable or not acceptable. And somehow that gets kind of projected outward through your actions. I don't think that's a, we can sit down and talk about it kind of thing, but I do think that is a learned skill. I think that's something that I got better with over time as a teacher. And particularly once I became aware of this as a certain kind of skill of, again, nonverbaly in a classroom, getting kids to behave better. Like that was definitely something that I improved upon over time. And that I have seen and heard other people as well describe firsthand that like they have gotten better at this when they're aware of it as a kind of skill. I read a book, the name of which I can't remember. It was quite a while ago about dogs and dog behavior and how they came from wolves and how we should be training them and things like that. It was quite, it was more of an academic science ebook, but for the layman and there was a current running all the way through the book that they did not like the dog whisper adood Caesar. Was it a Caesar Milan? Yeah, yeah, Caesar Milan. Yeah, Caesar Milan. They, they did not like him. And I honestly thought it was sour grapes in much the same way. It looks a scientist don't like Brian Cox because he's such a celebrity. I imagine dog experts don't like Caesar Milan because he's a celebrity dog dude. But they were saying lots of the stuff he says you shouldn't be doing. But CGP, CGP Gray says you should and that's good enough for me. Well, no, actually, I, if I want to follow up with just a little point because I found this similar things, which I was kind of curious and I looked up Caesar Milan a little bit and I felt like he's a very interesting, very interesting guy just the life that he's lived and the things he've accomplished. And it's like, man, I, you know, I could not have done all the things that he's done. But I came across the same kind of criticism of his particular methods. And whether or not animals behave in it because he's, he's always talking about you need to be the pack leader, you know, and yeah. And my, my opinion of this is the historical data on the dogs is irrelevant in this question whether or not dogs have a pack leader in the way that he talks about on the show. The whole notion of holding in your mind this idea, you are the pack leader. Yeah. To not let the dog dictate what happens in a whole bunch of ways and also the same with kids. It's so hard to see it sometimes. But when you become aware of it, you can see in a classroom or with dogs like how the other is dictating the tempo of what happens. And so that's why it's like whether or not dogs have an alpha pack leader in this way. It just, I don't think it matters at all because even if, yeah, even if you're logic or your reasoning is misguided, if it results in sort of actions and behaviors that work, well, good. Yeah. That's exactly it. Caesar Milan is not an evolutionary dog psychologist. He is a dog trainer and he is amazing. And using his tools, I have seen dogs trained very well. And I have interacted better with children. And this same logic, though, then be applied to sort of, you know, alternative medicines and things like that. That science is very quick to poo poo. And then, but then sometimes some of these things work is the same thing. Well, yeah. I can't believe that you would advocate that. Yeah. But you've already just contradicted yourself that, right? Because if the alternative medicine works, that works, that's medicine. The alternative medicine stuff, it doesn't work. So my concern is with the efficacy of it. But this is much more like, what was it? There's a book I quite like by Neil Gaiman, which is American Gods. Have you read it? I have not. It's a good book. It's a good book. There's one point in the book where a character is describing his ancient African remedies to cure pain. And he's like, oh, yes, we have this remedy. And it involves this whole big long process. And we use the bark of a tree and da, da, da, da, da. And he pulls out of his pocket a bottle of aspirin. Yes, we got aspirin from some trees in Africa is where this originally came from. And the like, the story behind the aspirin is irrelevant because aspirin works. You can believe some story about aspirin, but aspirin will still fix you. Maybe Caesar Milan is wrong. His whole story about dog packs. But it doesn't matter if the things he teaches are effective in changing dog behavior. Whereas alternative medicine is telling you a story and not bringing about any change. We could do a whole show on alternative medicine, but it's like, I come down very harshly on that kind of stuff. Again, King Gray with military power. I would put a lot of practitioners of alternative medicine in prison for manslaughter. We're practicing stuff. You're not fixing people. And if somebody under your care dies because they believe that you were a doctor, but instead you're a total charlatan, you should go to prison for that. So no, I'm not a big fan of alternative medicine. But you love Caesar Milan. I do. The sponsor is audible.com, a leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment. Listen to audiobooks whenever and wherever you want. People has a huge number of books to choose from and listed among them is How to Raise the Perfect Dog by you guessed it, Caesar Milan. This is the book that my parents used to train Lucy. They're adorable, multi-pooh, into a perfect little angel of a dog, as opposed to all of their previous dogs, which were, shall we say, not very well behaved. So if you have a brand new puppy, you should check out this book and it is available on audible.com. So if you want to listen to it, audible has it with over 150,000 titles and virtually every genre you'll find what you're looking for. Get a free audiobook, perhaps one about how to train your new dog and a 30-day trial by signing up at audible.com slash hellointernet. That's audible.com slash hellointernet and there will be a link in the show notes. Thanks again to audible for showing their support for the show and thank you for giving them a try. Bit of follow up from previous podcast, just a couple of things to. Oh yeah, we're doing a show aren't we? Yeah, we, yeah, it's time we should now let's get started. Hey, we always start with follow up. Yeah, maybe the show will start here. Yeah, oh, I haven't been recording. Are we going? God, I hope that's not true. No, I am recording. Monkey copyright. Oh, yeah. We discussed that and there has been, it's resolved. Is it resolved? Yes, so where let me just pull up the thing so I have it right here. I didn't actually write this. I copy-pasted from some of the PDFs which I will put in the show notes. But yes, the United States copyright office issued a clarification to their rules about copyright that that yeah, resolves this monkey copyright situation. The bottom line of the story is that they say the photographer does not own the copyright because the monkey pressed the button. The monkey pressed the button and so there is no copyright is there. And sadly, the monkey does not own the copyright. If the photographer didn't get it, I really wish the monkey got it. But no, it's just in the public domain which is more useful but way less funny. So that is there. That is their thing. When I was looking this up a little bit, there's two things that came across. One of course Wikipedia has a page on everything, like there's a subreddit for everything. And they have a whole section on animal-made art which is kind of interesting to peruse through. I once bought a painting by Adolphin for my sister when she went through Adolphin phase and I was at SeaWorld. I bought her Adolphin painting. The photo of the Adolphin painting and everything. They have a section on there which is, I just love the section title called painting Packaderms. Like come on, you could have called that painting elephants but it's so much more fun to call it painting Packaderms. There is a whole little section here which I love on the Wikipedia page which says, monkey paintings were exhibited in many modern art museums during the early 1960s as FAD. However, the cultural and scientific interest in monkey painting has diminished and a little note has taken of it today which is a shame for all of those monkey painters. They had their moment. They had their day and the sun. But the thing that I thought was really interesting from the monkey. The 60s were good for monkeys. They were, they were, that was more than 50s wasn't it? They were going into space and also it's like, I don't think going into the space was good for the monkeys. Those monkeys didn't come back. No they did. Do you know, have you? Oh no, I know. Oh, I've done. Oh, I've done. Well, the first monkey in space was Ham. But the second one was a monkey called Enus and he had the nickname of Enus the Penus because he had a really bad habit of touching himself in a friendly way and he would always do it at really inopportune moments like they'd be like a press conference and all the media would be there to see the monkey that was going into space and they'd bring him out and show the capsule. And then with all the photographers there, he'd just start doing his thing. So he was like, he was like a real character. They said it was Ham, Enus the Penus. The monkeys, it was good time to be a monkey. They were like astronaut, celebrities, astronauts, painters. Wow. That's a real. No, it was a good time to be maybe one of five monkeys on the face of the earth. It wasn't a good time to be a monkey in general. It's like there's some kind of monkey renaissance occurring. It's like a couple of monkeys happen to be celebrities. The end. Most monkeys are still living in the jungle or zoos. So that's nice too. Well, so is mate, not so much zoos, but I reckon I sometimes envy animals. The lack of stress. I'm going to start this. Really? No. They've got a nice, they just don't have to worry. This is the Disney version of what it's like to be an animal. What was... I wish I could remember off the top of my head what book this was. But I was reading some book which was talking about studying monkeys and pointing out that inferior chimpanzees should have a really sweet life because they're pretty rarely hunted. They're basically like apex predators. They're relatively strong. Their food sources are relatively abundant and isn't that great for monkeys? They consider around and you know, eat bananas in the sunshine all day if they want to. But the thing that most monkeys like to do with their time is to torment other monkeys and place social dominance games. And so it's not actually some kind of relaxing. Let's hang out life being a monkey in the forest. You're constantly worried that the chief monkey is going to beat you up or there's going to be a monkey coup. It's not a chilled existence. No, not as being a human. That has that different to being a human. Unlike a monkey in the forest, I can go off to York and just do nothing for a few days. You can fly to Morocco. Where's the monkey going to go? No where. There's no good for monkeys. I do have to say in agreement with you, I did a while ago now. I went on a safari. Now, a safari was a really good one. The mess I married, it was brilliant and it was during the migration so it was like the best time to go. And there were two things that struck me about it. One was how much more stuff you see than are you expect. Like I thought you'd get in like a four wheel drive and drive along a dusty road for two hours and then everyone would get excited and go, oh look in the distance. There's a lion and you would look at it for a few minutes and think, well what a thrill that was. That's my mental image of a safari. It was nothing like that. You were out on a big grassy plane most of the time and it was just wall to wall animals and everywhere you looked something amazing is happening. And there are about 20 or so four wheel drives around or going off and doing their own thing and if a whole bunch drive in one direction you know something really good is happening so then everyone goes that way. But there are so many animals. You can almost run over animals like that you didn't see sitting in the grass and there is at any given time 20 or 30 stories happening, unfolding of life and death. Oh, they're not singing Akuna Matata all the time. And just chilling and awesome to be an animal. And I do think the whole time, gosh you know it really was very base like it really made me you know everything was just about eating and not dying. Yeah. It was pretty amazing. Yeah, that's what nature is. That's why we left. We built this nice city and now I don't have to worry about a tiger eating me. I'd still rather be trying to outrun a tiger than have to go to that museum in York. Now I want to go. You're making it sound so interesting. If I remember back in York I have to go now. Can I wait? No, don't try to move us on because I have one final thing about the monkey copyright which I like here. So I was looking. There's no hurry. We're flying through it here. I've been recording 50 minutes. So we're on our first arch and we follow up. Are you serious? Oh, God. We had so many things planned for this show. There was one little detail which was not mentioned in most of the monkey copyright stories that I saw which I think is great. I copypasted it here. It's talking about the US copyright office. It says, the office will not register works produced by nature, animals or plants which seems reasonable. I also like this part here which is, huh, the office will not register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings. I just love that somebody at the copyright office is like, we got to think of everything while we're clarifying these rules. So this makes this as clear as possible. And I love that they have pre-built in there and an exception which is for divine or supernatural beings can also not register their works with the copyright office of the United States government. US government says no. So if you get like Jesus on a piece of toast or something. Yes. That is exactly the example that they used is like that kind of thing is not copyrightable. You the person who has the toast that Jesus spoke to, you can't own the copyright that is in the public domain, all of God's works. Although the interesting thing is they have a little caveat to that which is that work which is inspired by a divine or supernatural being but created by a human can be copyrightable. So your video is a safe then. Oh, thank you. Yes, that's exactly it. An angel whispers into my ear, the sweet scripts every time. So in the last podcast we talked at length about your videos and the robot stuff and self-driving cars were a big part of it. And in your video and you were kind of advocating using the term auto for self-driving cars. And that got quite a lot of reaction from people on, you know, on Reddit and that. And a lot of people while perhaps not disagreeing with your message don't think auto should be the word used for self-driving cars because auto is already used for normal cars in many countries. Every single German in the world tweeted to me or email to me to helpfully let me know that auto already means car in German. As I tried to be polite and explain on Twitter, you're speaking German. You have words for all kinds of stuff. It's up to you Germans to decide what is going to be the word for self-driving car in German. Whatever we select in English, it shouldn't be, it shouldn't matter, right? This is not relevant to the German language that we use that that I think auto is the great word for self-driving cars. Make up a new word, you know, I don't know what's going to work in Germany, but I'm sure it's going to be something incredible. That's a little insensitive. It's a little insensitive of you because I mean, I agree that languages are different and you can't pander to everything. But you've got to, there's got to be a bit of give and take here. Like if you came up with a word for something and in a few big famous languages, that was the word for murder or rape or something, you would have second thoughts, wouldn't you? Okay, well hang on. Yes, Brady, I will grant you that if auto meant rape and a automobile in Germany, that maybe it should be something we should reconsider using. But it does it. It means car. And I think that kind of linguistic conflict, I am totally uninterested in. No, but that linguistic conflict is even closer. Like it's even, it could cause even more problems because if it was the word for rape, maybe people would be like, well, okay, that's ridiculous. But like if it's so close to car already and in fairness to Germany, they're pretty good at making cars. It's not like they're dissociated from the world of automobile manufacturing. They're pretty much near the top of the tree here. So surely, surely we should be listening to them and being aware of potential problems down the track here. I think not when considering what word works best in the English language, languages are their own things. And you run into these linguistic conflicts all the time. I'm sure everyone's heard these hilarious stories of brands that pick some word that they try to use as their thing. And then it turns out that does mean something horrible in Japanese or in Spanish or something. Like linguistic conflicts happen all the time because the number of sounds that the human mouth can make comfortably is relatively small. It's not infinite. So there's always going to be a conflict. But I feel like it's not my job to pick a word that works well in every language all across the world because other people are speaking other languages. There are other things that can be used in those languages to describe the same things. Like that's what we do now. That's what languages are. If Germans, for example, said for some reason that they think car in German is the perfect word for a self-driving car, I'd be like, great. If that works in German, perfect. Run with it. Because these are separate languages. You don't have to worry about this kind of overlap. I'm still 100% behind auto as a word for a self-driving car in the English language. And other languages should pick other things for their... Like the whole reason I like auto is because it's an automobile. This is an entirely English-based pick. But I have no idea what kind of thing would work well or sound good in other languages. So those languages should pick. They're own things. Okay. I just... Sometimes I have a hard time telling if you are serious or not serious when you ask questions. And this is one of these times. I'm not sure if you were serious when you brought that up. I think... I mean, you know, oh, I'm always the devil's advocate. And you are the best devil's advocate that could possibly. Well, I think saying on the devil's advocate actually seems to rile people up. So I won't say I'm being the devil's advocate. What I'd like to do is ask questions that will make you explain your position in a new way that will help me understand it better. So whatever you want to call that, I do that sometimes. But I do think if a country that has... Makes a lot of cars... Their production of cars is irrelevant to this conversation. It doesn't matter how many cars they make. Well... I don't see that how that has any bearing on this at all. Well, I think it could because if they were to then become a leading producer of self-driving cars, they're probably going to start getting involved in naming these things. And then these things are going to... Yeah, but no company... No company calls their thing a generic name. Honda doesn't come out with the 2007 Honda car. They come out with a particular name for a thing. I'm talking about what is the name for the generic category of things in a particular language. So of course, you don't see any potential for problem here. Like what do you say? Yeah, what is the problem? I don't understand what problem there is. If the biggest economy in all of Europe calls cars, autos, and then the big language English decides they're going to call this new category of vehicles, autos, you see no problem ever for confusion and... Well, your theoretical example for confusion requires that two people are speaking at each other using different languages. Presumably, things are entirely consistent. If you're both speaking German, you both know what you're talking about. Or if you're both speaking English, you both know what you're talking about. Like what is the confusion here? Someone in English is overhearing someone in German, speak about something, and they pick out one word, and then place an order for a thousand autos based on overhearing a conversation in another language. Like play out for me the scenario where this matters. I just think if we're at the start... Nah, I'm like, what is this? When is this going to be confusing? I want an example. Well, see what happens right is people who speak German sometimes leave Germany and people who speak English sometimes go into Germany and sometimes they try to speak to each other in each other's languages. And so sometimes when someone is referring to one kind of car, the other person might think they're referring to another type of car. Now I think it's pretty unlikely they're going to order a thousand of them without this confusion being resolved. But I do think if we're at the start of the process and deciding what the word should be and there is no word yet, then maybe we should take this opportunity to consider all of our options and remove the confusions before they happen. I'm still not sold on this. I can tell. This is like the world's most unconvincing argument to me. Okay, so somebody is in a car rental store in Germany and they are trying to speak German because they are being a polite tourist with the person at the car rental company and they accidentally rent the wrong kind of car which will be immediately apparent when they go to the lot to get it and then disaster. Say a new number was discovered by a mathematician like Graham's number. Some new constant was found. Some new number. Obviously the number already exists but our number has to be named for some reason. Would you call it, you know, set SEPT, the French number for seven? Would you call it that or would a mathematician think actually even though no English person calls seven that number, French people do. So instead of calling it that, I'm going to call it something else just so we don't cause confusion for the French mathematicians. I'm not going to say stuff the French. That's their problem. I speak English. I'm going to be a little bit considerate to my fellow humans on earth who I acknowledge have their own language and rather than using a word or that will cause a potential conflict or confusion. I'm going to call the number something else. I'm going to use another permutation of letters that doesn't already represent a number in another language and I'm going to call my new number a Google, a Google Wiggle Wack. Because that word doesn't exist for it. But you would be like, stuff them. They speak French. I'm calling it what I want. It's their problem. The one difference here I would say is that you're talking about coming up with something like out of the clear blue sky that is unrelated to anything else. So you're coming up with an arbitrary name for a brand new thing and presumably you was the discoverer, one that name to spread. This is much more like the companies coming up with brand name problem, which is why they're willing to spend a whole bunch of money trying to research what a brand name means in every language ever. Because this is like a different case. I still say that the case of what is the generic term for a class of objects in a particular language is a very different case from that, from someone discovering something and wanting that name to spread and you can choose a totally arbitrary name. Yeah, I agree. I agree. The word you're saying the word has to do what it says on the tin. You can't choose from an infinite number of letters. You need to, you need, yeah, I understand that. Here's the thing. If I'm trying to push, because I think self-driving car is just an awful mouthful. Yeah, it's a mouthful. Yeah. I mean, honestly, if I have to sit here and predict what is going to, what are we going to call self-driving cars in 10 years, I predict that we call them cars and that people just stop making a distinction between the self-driving variety and the non-self-driving variety. I think this is the same thing like with smart phones. Well, guess what? In five years, they're just phones. The whole need to have this additional category becomes rendered irrelevant. That's my actual prediction for what would happen. Instead, if I in my video said, oh, we shouldn't call them cars because it limits your thinking about them, which I still think is true and why I still think we do need a different word. I said, let's call them flubrity-gigets instead. It's just so stupid, right? Maybe flubrity-giget is not anything in any other language, but that is not the part, like I'm trying to pick a word that can spread easily and is reasonable in the language that I speak. If anything has a chance of competing with car, auto is it. That's again why I think it's a different scenario talking about coming up with a new number versus coming up with a category for a thing in a language. That's why I think they're different. Okay. Are you convinced? I don't think you are, but I think- No, I still have a few more things I could say to that, but I think we've probably discussed it. We have probably left it, however, however, for people who are still listening who haven't left. There's one final thing that I want to say. I'm not sure even I'm in that category. I swear I will edit this down. Somebody edited the Wikipedia page about self-driving cars so that for two glorious days, it said self-driving cars, also known as, and they have a list of a couple of things, and somebody snuck onto the end of that, autos. It stayed up for longer than these things usually do because Wikipedia is really good about catching this kind of stuff. It was up there. It was glorious, but here's the thing people. I don't want you to go back to that page like happened with the Brady typing page and constantly try to revert it and get into a big war and then get blocked. I don't want that at all. What I want is for people to actually use the word auto in blog posts that they write or anything that they create for the internet because that is how you convince Wikipedia to actually change something. You need evidence of its widespread use, not just, oh, one dude in a video said it should be called this thing. Don't edit the Wikipedia page to say autos. Just actually use the word if you are publishing something on the internet. That is my request. Let's make this happen, people. There we go. That's the end of that. What about Flubbidigidget? I think that's a good name. Dude, Loodoo, I'm going to cut right there. There is, I do have one more thing to add to this discussion, which I didn't bring up last time. Okay. I actually, one of my best mates is a pilot, a passenger aircraft pilot and a fly 747s. For many, many years, I have been telling him that I, because the big joke I always have with him is that he's not really necessary and everything is automated and they land on their own and take off and everything is auto pilot. I have always said to him that I think we will have pilotless planes at some point and the argument and the thing I've never been sure about is whether or not it will happen in our lifetime. I will be able to claim victory. He's convinced it will not happen. I think it will happen. Will it happen in my lifetime? Is the question I want to answer from you? I would say that in your lifetime is a long enough time frame that I would give that better than even odds. But I would not expect that to be soon. I tried to look into the plane automation thing. It was a little hard to get the details that I wanted. If I had to make a prediction, I would easily bet on autos being fairly widespread in society before there's any serious talk about planes with nobody in the cockpit. That would be my guess. I wonder if the podcast will still be going. We could have the first ever plane crash corner talking about the crash of a pilotless plane. Or won't that be exciting for you? And you and Lone. Hello, internet. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. The all-in-one platform makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, Portfolio or online store. 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Whatever the thing you want to make the website about is what you want to be spending your time on, not all of the code that's behind the scenes and all that kind of stuff. So use Squarespace. It is so easy and so powerful. I really do recommend them. So Squarespace is good for everyone, whether you need a simple website solution or your developer and want to get into the code. There are so many options and it starts at just $8 a month and includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year. So start a trial with no credit card required and begin building your website today. And when you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code HelloInternet all one word to get 10% off and show your support for HelloInternet. Squarespace, everything you need to create an exceptional website. I was going to make this my paper cut, my Brady's paper cut, but I'm not sure I want to do that because this is controversial. I want to talk about the ice bucket challenge. Now I know you live in a cocoon and if I tell you anything that's happening in society, you generally don't know what I'm talking about. This one needed through my bubble. Yeah. And you know what the ice bucket challenge is. Yep. Okay. Can I start by saying raising money for things is a good idea and motor neuron disease is bad news. And the amount of money they have raised for the ice bucket challenge is amazing. And I don't know, I'm not going to get into discussions about charity, I and charity be and what percentage they spend on what which people get in a tears about. I'm not qualified to talk about that. But the ice bucket challenge is beginning to get a little bit on my nerves and there's a few things I don't like about it. Is that, is that all right? Am I even allowed to say that? Well, first of all, for people who might not be aware, give a brief description of it and then tell me what your problem is with ice bucket challenge. Well, maybe the problem is I don't fully understand, but you pour a bucket of ice water over your head after being challenged to do so by someone else. And then you challenge three other people to do it and you post a video of yourself doing it online. Here's me. Hi, it's Brady here. I've been challenged by Gray. Let's raise money for ALS. Pour it over your head. Scream. Have a laugh. I now challenge three other people, Bill Smith, John Jones and Sally Johnson to do likewise and then they have to do so. And there is an element of make sure you give money to the charity. This has obviously become incredibly widespread. And like, I don't know who came up with this idea, but they are clearly a genius. And this thing has just taken off and raised all this money for a good cause. And it's hard to say you're annoyed by it, but I am annoyed by it mainly because it's everywhere. And like every time I go into Facebook, there's a hundred more of them I have to look at. But also, I don't like this sort of chain lettery component to it. I think that's the main thing I don't like about it. This challenging other people to do it. And then there's incredible peer pressure on the people who've been challenged to do it. Like, I know some people who've been challenged. And then people start ringing them up and saying, I challenge you to do it. Why haven't you done it yet? You're supposed to do it. And it reminds me of back when I was at school when there used to be these chain letters that people, it was mainly school girls at the school I went to would get. And they would have to hand right ten copies of it and send it to ten other people. Because if they didn't do it, like their mum would be murdered or something like that. And I forgot about those. I remember those. Yeah. That's what it's like. It's got this sort of, it's got this peer-pressuried chain letter component to it that I don't like. And I also do think it's a bit humble, Braggie, isn't it? It's a bit like, it's a bit, it's a bit look at me about charity. And I don't know. That's why it works. You know, it's the reason it's worked is it appeals to people's desire to, I don't know. I read a really good term for it. What was it? It was something like donor centric philanthropy, where the philanthropy is all about putting the emphasis on the people giving the money. Which is interesting. I don't know. It raises a lot of, so there are a few things about it that make me feel uneasy. There are other things about it, I think, a brilliant. I mean, I've in my BBC days, I had to make a few films about people who were suffering things like mode and urine disease and there's nothing more terrible. And if they're raising, you know, $100 million for that, it's hard for me to criticize at all. Yeah, no, it's, but, but there are things about, there are things about this particular style of campaign that just annoy me a bit. And by the way, I've made a video along these lines. I made a dice bucket challenge on number five, where we poured a bucket of a, one and a half thousand dice over someone. We raised the money for water aid. This seems to have happened now, people are adapting the charity. We did it for water aid for various reasons. But so I am as guilty as it, we didn't do the challenge other people. But, you know, I have, I have jumped on the bandwagon. So I am as guilty as anyone. But, um, thoughts? Yeah, I was, I was just, I was just looking at the Wikipedia page about it, because I was trying to find, I was trying to find some of the origin of this. Ah, yeah. And it looks like this is basically a thing that predates the ALS campaign in particular that this is, it is not original with them and that it is unclear where this started. But that, that the, the ALS campaign has also decided to do a kind of ice bucket challenge as well. And, yes, these things are very hard to talk about. And, you know, I, I saw ALS kill a very close family friend over a number of years when I was growing up. And that, that disease is awful. It really is. It is one of the most terrible things that can happen to a person. So I was like, but like I've seen that stuff up close. And it's, it's very hard to talk about this and separate like, let's just talk about the mechanics of the thing versus the like the disease ALS itself, which is awful. So if we're, if we're just talking about the mechanics of it, I think I, I have some of the same feelings that you do. But this, this is a kind of, I, I have a very strong, it's almost, I almost think of it. It's like the opposite of, I don't know what they're called, but you know, I think I've heard them call it like the Chinese finger traps. Do you know what I'm talking about? If I say that, I don't know if there's a better. They're, they're like the rolled up paper things that you put your two index fingers into and the more you pull like the tighter, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, what would you call that? Yeah. Uh, I'd call that that, that's wrapped up paper things you put your finger in. There you go. I'm sure there's a better name for it, but I think that's what we call it as kids, but I have, I have kind of a reverse feeling of that to a lot of peer pressure stuff. Where it's, it's as well, it's the same challenging aspects of it that I find like, like a reverse finger trap. Like the more I would be challenged to do something, the more repulsed I would be by the thing. And, and the more I have this feeling of like, I'm not going to do a thing just because people are telling me to do it. And the more people are telling me to do the thing, the more I guarantee you, I'm not going to do it. And that is not specific to this challenge. This is just a thing, the thing in my life in general, which let me tell you makes me super popular at parties sometimes. It's like, let's do the fun thing is like, no, if you're telling me to do the fun thing, I'm not, I'm not doing this. Come on, everybody's doing it. No, now you're just a huge party pooper. You're no fun and nobody likes you. And it's like, well, fine, but you know, you don't tell me what to do. So that is, I have this same kind of reluctance to it. And I have been following this thing very closely, but I have seen a couple of people specifically say, like, I'm doing this thing, but I'm not challenging other people to do it. So it's interesting to hear you say that your video that is along these lines, you went that same path, which makes me very happy that you did a thing, but then you say, like, I'm not challenging other people to this. But of course, the challenge is exactly what makes it successful. It's this viral. Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah, it would be, it would have not, yeah, it would have got nowhere fast if it didn't require the challenging as well. Yeah. And anyone who has done it and raised money for any cause, I think is brilliant. I do. I do think I do think it's great that they've done it. But yeah, and I don't know. And it's probably just, it's probably just the grumpy old man in me. Something you did, something you just said then, though, there is a question I want to ask you. And all week I've been thinking, I want to ask you this question, but there was no excuse to ask you and even got to the point where I thought, maybe I need to come up with a new segment, which is Brady asks great a question. And you've kind of touched on it enough for me to now ask you the question. Uh oh. Are you ready for the first ever installment of Brady asks great question? I'm getting nervous now. I don't know if I want this to be a segment. All your segments live on for a very long time. Here is, here it is. Do you dance? Do I dance? Yes. I guess no, not really. So if you're at like a party and stuff or out with mates and, you know, oh God, at a party. No, no, definitely not. That's that's I mean, if I'm home by myself and listening to music, I might do motions that might be interpreted by some very generous people as dancing. I would love to say that. No, you wouldn't. It would be like the lane on Seinfeld. But I'm trying to think how much money I would pay for a video of you just dancing at home on your own. It is not in substantial. Maybe that'll be my next one either. That could be the ice bucket challenge. How much money do we have to raise for Grace cause of choice before he will release? Yeah, but you see yourself. Yeah, but you're already going about this the wrong way. Like I guarantee you, if I start getting a whole bunch of messages from people on Twitter, like, oh, you have to upload a video of you. Like now it will never happen. No, no, but, but what if like, you know, Bill Gates or someone who, you know, is a listener to the podcast said, Gray, I will just I would donate the sum to the charity of your choice and let the money's on the table. I really don't like being told what to do. I really don't like that. I could I could turn down very, very large sums of money. It's not you turning it down. You're turning it down for a charity. No, see, this is this is all a kind of blackmail stroke. Thank terrorism. Thank you. Blackmail is the word. They should call it the ice bucket blackmail. I'm not sure that's exactly right. But when did they name it? But naming people like naming them on a video and not not telling them you're going to do it. Like publicly calling someone out to do something. Okay, blackmail is a really emotive word and I won't use that word. I'm sorry if using the word blackmail, but publicly calling someone out to do something in a in a in a publicly deliberately publicly posted video. That's harsh. If the person doesn't want to do it. Yeah, yeah. And that's that's why that's why I feel like I'll give you I'll give you a give you an example of a similar kind of thing which would take it away from charity. Have you ever been to a Cirque du Soleil show? Yes, I have a long time ago. Long time ago. Okay. So you may remember, but they are big on pulling people out of the audience in a Cirque du Soleil show. And they're always very good for the most part. Like they do interesting things and like it's it's part of the show. But I often find myself during these segments when they're clearly coming into the audience to grab someone. This isn't like a raise your hand and volunteer. This is a we're going to grab someone kind of thing. I am always sitting there thinking, please do not pick me because I will be the person who sits here no matter how much the audience booze. And I will not go on stage. It's like, let's make this easy for everybody. You don't want to pick me. And because that's not going to be great for you. You just want somebody who gets up on stage after you know, because I've actually looked at videos about what happens in Cirque du Soleil like when someone says no and it doesn't happen very often. No. There's clap-clap-claps. You know, people try to convince and the person says no. And then like the clown does the bigger thing like let's clap-clap-clap again. Right? You get two claps but after that you get booze. Right? People get mad if you don't go up after the second claps. And like I will be that person. I am not going on stage because you're telling me to go on stage. You say that now but and the hate of the moment do you think, you know, you're a nice guy. I'm sure you wouldn't let being boo. This is something. Okay. So I think you're breaking an excellent point because there's lots of scenarios under which I totally agree that it is very difficult for people to predict their future behavior. You imagine future you as current you. Like it's easy to say that now as I'm sitting in an office, right? Except the only thing is when those clowns are going around I find myself mentally preparing for this. I am getting ready for this in a very particular way. Do you know what, Gray? Do you know what, they know it too. They look you will never get picked because these people are professionals and they know it. I used to one of my jobs when I was a kid at Journalist on a newspaper was once a week. I had to go out into the street and interview seven people. I had to ask them a question about the topic of the day. They had to give me a little quote and then we had to take a photo of their face and say their name and their age. So it would be you know, should women be allowed to vote? CTP Gray age 42 from Norwood says yes they should be allowed to vote. Of course, we're all human beings. Now, getting people to answer a question for you in the street is reasonably easy. Getting them to tell you their name and age and where they live, a bit harder. Getting them agreed to have their photo taken and put in the newspaper harder again. There are some people who love it and want to do it. There are some people who will not do it. And when I first started doing these vox pops going out into the street, they used to take me forever. They would take me a couple of hours with the photographer and I'd get rejected and I'd be trying to talk people into it and they'd say no. And then over time as I did it more and more month after month and then year after year, I became like a Jedi and I could look at people from half a mile away and just tell the photographer they will say yes they will say no they will say yes the guy on the left will do it the woman on the right won't do it those two women will do it and that man over there won't do it. And it got to a point where my strike rate was just about 100% I would never be rejected because I would never ask people who would reject me because I just knew the people and I knew all the signs and I bet you those clowns at Cirque du Soleil are exactly the same and they scan the audience and they look at you and they're like in a million years that guy won't get up. He's the one that will say no and that's why you will never be picked. Well I know. I have never in my life been pulled out of the audience for anything and it's funny because my father is the exact opposite. We can never go anywhere and if they're pulling people out of the audience, my dad gets picked every time. And what do you think that is? I have no idea especially because we're very similar looking guys according to other people. That's why I was going to ask you if you could pick something. What are some of the big tells for either Will or won't agree to have their photograph in the newspaper? Part of it is just a feeling and just a way people move and carry themself and other parts of it are more obvious. Women of a certain age, they become vanity issues. How the person looks, you can tell whether they're the person who likes having their picture taken. The picture was always the problem. Everything else is easy. The picture was the problem. The non-verbal stuff that sees her Milan skills again. It's hard to articulate but you know it and you've learned it and I think that's really interesting. I think it's probably also a trait of the sort of people who do the job we do when you become self-employed in your own boss. You're the sort of person who doesn't like being told what to do by other people. It doesn't surprise me that you and I are both people like that who probably don't like being bossed around. Yeah, that's a good point. Speaking of Voxpops and asking people about the issue of the day, let me ask you, Mr. Gray walking down the street. What do you think about this whole Scottish independence thing? It's getting nervous again, but this is asking me a question section. I thought that was quite a nice segue into our next topic. It was a nice section but you're going into slightly interviewee newspaper, Brady Mode made me a little nervous. Let's talk Scottish independence. Very easily over the course of my YouTube career. The number one requested video by a mile has been Scottish independence. I have looked into this topic a number of times because the demand for it is just so huge. As you may be guessing, since I'm talking about it now and since I haven't made one, I have no intentions to ever make a Scottish independence video. I think when we're recording it, it's in two weeks now. I think maybe maybe only 10 days shorter. It's coming up soon anyway. This is the vote you're talking about. Yes, the vote for Inner Out for Scotland as part of the UK. The reason that I'm not making a video about this is that I came to the conclusion that there isn't anything to honestly discuss about this as an issue. I could have made a video that talked about a bunch of stuff, but the conclusion was almost everything about the Scottish referendum that people want to talk about. They want to talk about how is the debt going to be distributed? What's going to happen to military assets? What's going to happen to the North Sea oil? How much North Sea oil is there? Will Scotland's economy be better or worse? All of these questions are totally unknowable. If you're starting from that premise that these objective facts about the future of Scotland are unknowable, there's nothing really much for me to discuss on this topic. It suddenly becomes an issue. I guess this is up to the Scottish people. A very rapidly becomes a, it's not really any of my business kind of issue. I'm very interested to see what happens. The polls are not clear at this stage about which way it's going to go. It's a funny topic because it has been so highly requested. I have come to the conclusion that I have so very little to say about it because I don't think there is much to be said about it. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts? I've got a couple of really good friends who are Scottish and they're both Scottish journalists for the BBC. They're obviously very, very interested in it. One of them just was just here last weekend. I was talking to her quite a lot about it. There is a degree to which people like you and I, people like you and I who are expats anyway. We don't even just live in England. We're not even from this country. If you count us as English people for the sake of this argument, I think it does kind of affect us and it's, and it'll totally affect us. But it's not our decision. Yeah, but it's not our decision. And therefore I'm kind of a bit, I always feel a bit wary about saying too much about it as well because it's a bit like, well, you know, who am I to discuss it? But the one thing that does amaze me and you've touched on it with what you said was we don't know anything about what's going to happen or even what how the independence is going to work. Yes. And it's, and because of that, it strikes me as really premature to be voting on it. Like if I said to you, Gray, I think you and I should collaborate and launch a new YouTube channel. Are you winner out? I would imagine you would say to me, well, what's the channel going to be about? How are we going to do it? What's going to happen? How will it work financially? What will the topics be? How will we work together? You'd have a million questions and then you'd say no at the end. That's very likely. Yeah. But but like this is not what's happened here. It strikes me as they're saying we're going to have the vote and all the people are sitting around saying, well, what currency are you going to use? How is the military going to work? Will this happen? Will that happen? And everyone's saying, oh, we don't know. We don't know that yet. That will be thrashed out later. Well, hang on a second. Tell me now before I vote. And that because that will affect how I vote. Of course, I don't vote. So it doesn't matter. But I feel quite sorry for the people of Scotland here because it's so instead, I guess, I mean, I don't follow it very closely. So maybe I'm wrong. But I imagine what's happening instead is it's becoming very much kind of us and them about patriotism and Scottish identity and some of these other things that are very important, but are maybe a bit more nebulous. And no one, no one knows what they're voting on. I think as an outsider who hasn't been following it, it seems a bit crazy to me. Yeah. So, okay, you brought up the one that I wasn't going to talk about it, but I think you've done a nice little intro into this, which is yes, if I'm pushed, I do kind of have some thoughts on this. And I think that you are exactly right. The lack of detail did you hear that everyone just said that I was right about something? I've said you're right before. But I think you're exactly and the lack of detail is so striking that I almost think it's like an intentionally done maneuver. Yeah. It reminds me of the vote, which also helped launch my YouTube career, about changing the voting system in the UK. And that whole voting system changeover, are we going to use first pass the post? Are we going to use alternative vote? That was so poorly orchestrated that I had suspicions at the time that it was done this way intentionally. And we have found out after the fact that basically it was because the people in power had no interest in this actually working out. And so it was a similar kind of thing. All of the details were relatively vague and information was just terrible. And there was a lot of confusion that was sewn. And that was partly because like the powers that be didn't really want this to happen. And the Scottish thing, it's like I almost wonder if the Scottish independence party basically wants this vote to take place and would hope that it is just narrowly defeated. That they don't actually want it to win because I feel the same way that if I was in charge of the Scottish independence party, I would feel like, man, you need to get some of these details down about how stuff is going to work because I'm just imagining if I was a Scottish person and it was the same thing that they're saying, we're going to vote for independence. Oh, how is that going to work? We have no idea. Don't worry. We'll sort it out later. I feel like my general political philosophy, I would say, is that you want to push power down, like have power as close to the source where it is being executed. So I'm generally in favor of more powerful smaller governments than more powerful bigger governments. So in theory, I should be on board with the Scottish independence, but the lack of specificity would make me have to say, I can't vote yes to a contract that I have no idea what the particulars are. That's just insanity. And so that's why it almost makes me wonder if it's this way on purpose. I mean, the part of me, initially when you said that and you sort of suggested, is the independence movement scuppering their own their own cause. Initially, I thought, oh, that's crazy. People are Alexander Lee, there has nailed his colors to the mast so strongly you'd think it would be an embarrassing defeat. But on the other hand, I then thought we'll hang on, say they did lose. At least they could say we fought the good fight and we're like, we're Scottish to the core. That would probably serve them very well in years to come, even though they were the plucky losers, but they fought the good fight and they've always got Scotland's interest at heart. So I can see that. I can see what you're saying. I almost wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they do like a little rebranding after the election. Let's say it goes down as a no. The Scottish independence party changes their name to something like the Scotland first party or I don't know, something like that. The code is not the code that SNP now, they're not the code. The Scottish National Party. The SNP, yeah. Maybe you're right about that. Yeah. So then they don't need to do a rebranding. But it's like, especially because of the way the voting system in Scotland is just vastly better than the way it is in England. But they have a lot less to worry about with a shift in the polls. They wouldn't suffer the same kind of totally crushing defeat that small poll number changes can happen like in England or in America. I almost wonder, is it better to stay from their perspective as the plucky We Heart Scotland party versus the, oh crap, we have to rule a country and we didn't figure out any of the details beforehand. We've got no money or military. Well, it's not even that, but just think about it. If you are in charge of the division, do you think this is going to be a quick Las Vegas one hour divorce situation? No. This is going to take years and years to sort out if it actually passes. And it's like, who wants to be in charge of that boring affair? Nobody. So I wouldn't, here's the thing, I wouldn't put, if I had to bet on it, I would not bet that it was intentionally done, but I can just say that it raises my suspicions. And the lack of any kind of specificity makes it almost impossible to make a rational decision in favor of this particular split. Even though in general, I am in favor of smaller, more local governments than I am in bigger, larger government. Twitter. Oh, yes, you love the out Twitter. And so do I. We're both, we're both quite prolific Twitter users, aren't we? Yes. Twitter last week made a kind of testing the water's announcement where they said they were going to be changing some aspects of the way the timeline in Twitter works. And just about an hour before we started recording, I saw a headline that Twitter has now officially said that they are going to bring on Facebook style algorithms to the timeline, which is going to radically change the way Twitter works. So just anything that's Facebook inspired is poison. So yes, already, just some background for those who might be a little bit less familiar with the way these things work. So on, I mean, I'm sure most people know, on Facebook, basically, Facebook is constantly custom, when you log in to see what are my friends up to, Facebook is constantly customizing the way that looks. And it's using information about the things you give thumbs up and thumbs down to where the things that you click on to predict what are the things that you are most interested in possibly seeing. And that description sounds fine. I mean, Facebook is very popular, obviously. But it very much changes what Facebook is compared to something like Twitter. So when you sign up for Twitter and you follow people, when you log in, your timeline on Twitter is just a reverse chronological order list of what people have said. There isn't, there isn't any prediction to it. There aren't any algorithms that say, oh, you always click on the links that this guy sends. We're going to put his tweets up at the top and you rarely click on what this person says. We're putting his tweets at the bottom. Or not even showing you. Yes, twice. Yes. Or not even showing them as Facebook and sometimes do. And just the experience of these two services is so different. I really hate Facebook. And I have disliked them for a number of years. And then in just the past couple of years, it's like, man, I thought I hated you guys before. But you really amped things up to make it just awful. And over that same time, my love for Twitter has just been this exponential rise. I like, I really like Twitter. And I'm not, I'm not a very social network kind of person. But I think the reason that I like Twitter is because of this structural difference between the two of them. And I am just, I am just very, very concerned over the future of this thing that I find a lot of value out of that I get a lot of value out of. I don't know. I mean, how do you, how do you, you sound like you don't, you don't like this, this sound of this change either? No, I mean, I find that it just, I'm just really suspicious. And about about their agenda and why they do it. And at the moment, it just seems like a quite a fair playing field. And it's sort of, you know, it just all, it all happens there as a stream of consciousness and it all edits itself. And if people like you, they get rid of you. And if you're using it well, they appreciate you and you win. And if you're using it badly, you get dumped. And you don't succeed. And I don't like the idea of, I don't like the idea of happening. What happens on Facebook happening on Twitter? I feel like, I feel a bit, I feel a bit robbed by Facebook. Well, I feel like there's robbery going on because sorry, I probably shouldn't use robbery. You, there'll be some proper word for it that you'll prefer. But like I was looking, I tweeted about this the other day and it totally came across as a humble brag and it wasn't meant to be, but I'll, I'll take it if it was. But like number five has like, I don't know, 60,000 people on Facebook have liked it. So they've, you know, they've pressed a button and said, I like number five. I want to know, I want to know what you're doing. And you know, that's not a massive number, but it's all right. And then whenever I write something on there and I see these statistics for how many people have actually seen, seen it. And it's like, you know, we've delivered this to 6,000 people. And I'm like, and of course, they're saying, give us money and we'll give it to even more. So it's, so it's, I almost feel like it's not, it's not that I'm being penalized because I'm no good. And, you know, the users have not clicked on me for so long that they've just said, well, we're not going to deliver you post anymore. They're deliberately holding it back. They're sandbagging. Yes. They're sandbagging it in the hope of getting money out of me. And actually, you know, I know this isn't used to anyone. It's not like I've, you know, come down off the mountain with the 10 commandments and I'm revealing exposing what's going on. But, but like, I hate that. It seems so wrong to me. And yeah, let me just jump in for a second because I think this is a function of business pages versus personal pages on Facebook because I'm not sure if personal pages see this same number. But the bottom line is that that you and I both have business Facebook pages. So, I have a Facebook account in quotes that is, it's just called craze blog because I made it so long ago. But it is basically the like the corporate entity of me. And I for a very long time, I posted links on there and Facebook knows this is not a person. This is representing a business instead. Yes. And what started to happen, the timeline of this is that at some point, Facebook started basically charging people who posted things on their business pages that weren't doing very well. And they said, oh, if you give us money, we will put this out on even more people's timelines. Yeah. So this is where when individuals log into Facebook, well, part of the algorithm Facebook is using is what stuff do you like the most? But they're also using an algorithm of which companies have paid us the most to appear on the top of your timeline. So that's like an ad almost. Yeah, it basically, it basically is an ad. And I wouldn't, I don't mind advertising. But there's like, there's something about the Facebook model that just feels so disingenuous, right? They're not being honest about it. It's like, oh, you follow this thing. And oh, you happen to see this thing from them, but it's also because they paid. It's not just because you followed it. You were already exposed. Yeah. I mean, I can accept Coca-Cola giving them a big word of cash and me having to see Coca-Cola in my timeline. That's just the reality of the world we live in. And you and I do that to our viewers indirectly with advertising in our videos. But it's a bit different to the people who have asked to see it. People who have liked you. And you have to like, and now you have to or people who say liked Coca-Cola, they say, I want updates from Coca-Cola. But then even then they're not getting all the updates from Coca-Cola. And it's like, it's like I've done my grocery shopping and I've got all my food and the deal is done. And then as I'm walking out, they say, oh, if you actually want to put your groceries in your car, that's going to be another 20 bucks. Yeah. It's like one. It's like a second. Yeah. They're inserted themselves as a middleman. So the interesting thing that came up was Derek Averitasium has two great videos on all kinds of shenanigans that are going on with Facebook. I'll put them in the show notes. They're really interesting. But Derek, I think it's okay for me to say, Derek contacted me when he was making those videos and he wanted to know some of the numbers from my own Facebook page about like how many people were seeing my posts. And the interesting thing was my posts on Facebook, I was totally unaware of this phenomenon. But because my posts were very popular on Facebook. And so I would, you know, if I don't know how many subscribers I have on there, it's not very many. It's something like 20,000 I think. But it would say something like 18,000 people have seen this out of the 20,000. So I really high proportion. So super high proportions. So I never, I was not really aware of this until Derek brought it to my attention that this is like, oh, there's a promotion thing. I think it's going to once or twice, but it just didn't cross my mind like what's really happening here. The thing that I have seen the last few times that I posted into Facebook is they get you from both ends because now when I post, Facebook sends me a message that says, hey, that post of yours was really successful among the first 2,000 of your subscribers that we sent it to. Please pay us money to send it to the rest of your subscribers because this one is really worth paying for. And so now it's like, it doesn't even matter if people on Facebook are subscribed to your business page. They want to see it. It's a successful post. But Facebook is still saying like, well, we don't want to let this stuff so. So they're not even allowing cream to rise to the top. Yeah. So it's on both ends, on both ends, they get you. Now these are particular problems with, being a business on Facebook. And like those are our particular issues. And it's one of the reasons why I don't have links anywhere to my Facebook business page anymore. I don't want to promote that. I have no interest in anybody following me there. And I always keep debating whether or not I should even keep posting the links there because like I just, I have nothing to gain from this anymore. And Facebook is just awful. But the complaints about businesses aside or just even for individuals Facebook deciding on what things that you like and what things that you don't. What makes Twitter so valuable to me is that it always feels like when I log into Twitter, it's like you're stepping into a kind of internet room where people are having interesting conversations, right? The people that you follow, they are just, we're all in this virtual room together now. And it's a forum where it is perfectly okay to listen in on what other people are saying and potentially join into any of these conversations yourself. Because everything is in order and because it is as it is occurring now, Twitter in my mind really has this feeling of, it is a place that is filled with people who I am interested in and who I could potentially talk to at any moment. And you can only have that with this chronological list of postings. And so that is the thing that really worries me about Twitter changing this is like, okay, if they start hiding stuff or rearranging stuff, it then very much becomes like Facebook where you go to Facebook to post a thing and maybe people comment on the thing, but it's a different feeling from, I'm just listening to people talk and maybe I'll participate in those conversations and maybe I won't. And that is why I love Twitter so very much. I mean, you are a much heavier Twitter user than I am as far as I can tell. Do you get that same feeling from it or like, why do you use Twitter? I mean, I've got a bunch of different Twitter accounts obviously because of my multiple personalities on the internet. But I don't know, it's hard for me to answer that. I use it for so many different things. I do use it to follow the news. I do use it to stay in touch with my mates and people I like personally. I do use it to follow people who I'm just interested in, but at my friends, they just figures who I enjoy following. I use it for entertainment. I look at aviation pictures and things like that. I use it for so many different things and I just don't want them to break it. And they're going to. And they're not, and they're going to do it because they want to make money. You know, this is about money. This isn't about them proving the experience because obviously it's about money. And the next step is the Facebook step. It's going to be it's going to be getting money out of us or delivering us more stuff we don't want for money. I mean, I can't see why else they're doing it. I don't know what I think about it, man. I don't know. I'm not making sense because I'm just. I don't know much about it. I've heard, you know, I've heard other guys talking about it on podcasts and I haven't read the latest articles, but it's just going to turn to rubbish. I know it. It's going to turn to rubbish and it'll be another thing that disappoints me like Facebook. Part of what I've been, my vacation was also a little bit of a test run for something that I'm trying to do this month, which is to cut down a lot of my digital life. Like I'm very much present on the internet. And I mean, it only four days into it. But for the month of September, I've been intentionally reducing the volume of just tons of stuff. So I have hardly been on Reddit and I have almost not been on Twitter and a bunch of other things. Sort of like, let's see if I can keep a working environment and kind of extend the boundaries of this vacation internet blackout. I'm not posting or not looking as well. Not looking as well. It's not like it cannot and it can never be perfect because it is a weird thing that Reddit is also sort of my job. So like I'm trying to try to figure out the balance here, but just cutting down my connection to the internet quite a lot. And even just a few days into it, the thing that is so obvious to me is that I can cut down lots of things, but Twitter is the hardest one because because Twitter delivers so much value and because to me, Twitter is in some ways it's like this passive socialization. Like there are plenty of people who I'm interested in following and who I know. And Twitter allows me to just keep up to date with people who I know, but I don't see in person. It's like we talked about on one of the previous shows where if the gap between the last time you talk to someone is too long, it feels like there's this big distance between you because you can only talk about the big things you can't talk about little things. And Twitter to me is the greatest way and the easiest way to keep talking about the little things with people I know who are not physically proximate in my life. Whereas even something like sending an i-message to someone I know that still feels a little intrusive to me sometimes because I don't know what they're doing. I don't want to just interrupt someone with my random thought. But on Twitter, it's always okay to just message someone. You know they will see it if their client is open and they won't. That's why I really like it. And I can see that man cutting this out of my life is hard because I get a lot of real value out of it. And then that's why the Facebook announcements make me think, oh god, there's big difference between voluntarily reducing the volume of something and then just, oh, we changed it so this whole thing doesn't work the way you like anymore. And now it's just gone. Like I would feel a real loss in my life if the way Twitter currently works is not the way the Twitter continues to work. So that's why this announcement really catches my attention and makes me very concerned. This is like, oh, you're messing with the way I interact with my friends. Like that's a very, very personal thing, Twitter. Not pleased to hear about these announcements. So, pardon me, thanks. We've got no one to blame but ourselves if our friendships now depend on this device, this system. But it is what it is. We put our eggs into this basket and what do we know about them? What do we know about the basket? And now we're complaining that they're messing with our eggs. Yeah, it's a problem that Twitter is not a decentralized platform. I disagree with you about that friendship thing because these are people like 20 years ago, I would never have called. And also people who I'm not even necessarily friends with but you can follow people that you are interested in and occasionally you have little interactions with them. And that's a whole totally different experience. You can't just over here what interesting people are talking about all the time. So I fundamentally disagree with with your friendships. Yeah, but they're not your friends, man. No, but like, that wasn't a weird when we first spoke today before we started recording and I was talking about surprise, surprise, the puppy. And you were like, oh yeah, like I wanted to show you something. And you were like, oh yeah, I've already seen that. I knew about that. I saw your tweet. And it's like, it's like, oh, well, that's a bit... Well, I'm not saying that nobody knows better than me that people you follow on the internet are not your friends. Like, I'm conflating two things here because that's what Twitter allows you to conflate two kinds of things. Where there are people you are interested in that you can potentially have interactions with on Twitter in a way that you never could under other circumstances. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Like, so that is valuable. And then on the flip side is the four people that I follow on Twitter, I can passively keep up with what's going on in their life in a way that is beneficial towards the actual friendship that exists. Like, those are the two different things. But that's why Twitter is really valuable to me for both of those reasons. But I am no fool that like, oh, all these people I follow on Twitter are my friends. I would say easily most of the people I follow on Twitter, I do not know in real life. The number of people who I know in real life and follow on Twitter is very small. I mean, it's probably... I follow about 100 people. I don't know. I guess it's less than like 10 people I know in real life that I actually follow on Twitter. But yeah, so anyway, that's why it's two different things. I think it's valuable. And I don't want them to mess with it, but they will that will be sad. So I'm preparing for that loss. I hate to bring this up. But there was the homework that we didn't collect last week. And I've got a feeling we're not going to collect it this week either. Well, I don't know. Did you watch the episode today? I... This is the TV show Black Mirror. So the episode you in particular wanted to talk about was episode one of series two. And for people who are unfamiliar with the mirror. Well, yeah, yeah, sorry. Episode one of series two. And this isn't like a series. They're all one off pieces. So it's not like you just, you know, they're all standalone shows. And a funny thing happened with it actually. Because remember, we were going to talk about it last time. And I said I hadn't watched it. And then you told me often. But funny thing happened. Two things happened actually. First of all, I tried to do the right thing. And I followed the CGP Gray model. And I didn't look up what it was about. I wanted to go into it absolutely clean. Because I thought that would be a good idea. So I switched it on. And then a second thing happened. And that's one of the things that most annoys me about watching things with my wife. And that is within five seconds of it starting. I realized I had watched it before. And I knew it very, very well. So having told you, I haven't seen it. And we can't talk about it. I had seen it. And the things that started, I was like, yeah, of course, yeah. I know this. I did watch it again, though, which to refresh my memory. So I have watched what you wanted me to watch. In fact, I have watched it twice. I must say, just in general terms, and a lot of people have been realizing this now that we have started mentioning it. What a great show, what a great series it is, The Black Mirror series. It was they're really good. They're really good shows, aren't they? They are, they are very, very good. Should we talk about this one episode? Should we talk about episode one of series two? So then maybe. So now we're in a reverse problem. Because I had intended to watch the episodes again because it's been so long that I've since I've watched them. And today I started. I watched the episode two of season one. Okay. But I ran out of time before our scheduled recording session, before I could rewind to episode one of season two. No, no, no, that's okay, because episode two of series one, which is called a 15 million merits, I think. No, that's episode two of season one. Yeah. I thought I'm sorry. I just said reverse. I probably did. This is what we're going to do. We are going to talk about episode two of series one, which is called 15 million merits. Yes. That's the one we will talk about. Because I have also watched that one twice. Okay. I watched that one a few years ago when it first came out and then I watched it again a couple of weeks ago. And I think in many ways that is my favourite of them. So I'm very happy to talk about it. Okay. Okay. That's that's perfectly fine because I'm actually not sure how much I have to say about episode one of season two. But episode two of season one, as far as I'm familiar, let's call it 15 million. Oh, this is way better. Way better. 2.101.2. No, no, you're just one of two. It's much better if this way. What I was going to say is I think this is just a masterful episode of TV. I just totally loved this episode. And yes, it is by far and away my favourite in the series. And the six episodes are very strong. Two of them are not my favourite, but this one is absolutely great. So yes, we will talk about 15 million merits. Do you want to summarize it or express your new amount? Let me do the summary. Okay. Massive spoiler warnings ahead people. Seriously, watch the episode. Don't listen to us. Now, if you haven't seen it, it's really good. Okay, so the opening shot is a guy sleeping on his bed and all around him are computer screens and the computer screens wake him up with this fake sunrise. And he sits up and you realise that he's in a little room that's maybe not much bigger than a prison cell, but all of the sides are screens and it's presenting to him like a virtual field of view. Yeah, like every wall is a screen. There's no everywhere you look as a screen. Everywhere you look as a screen. The only thing in the room is his bed and then from out of the wall comes like a little sink and a shower. And you see him getting ready for his day. And then as the shot progresses, he's then in an elevator with some other people going somewhere and where he goes is into a room where there's maybe 20 people and they are all sitting on bicycles peddling away with a big video screen in front of each of them. Like stationary exercise by stationary exercise by, sorry. And so they are peddling away and it becomes clear that what they're doing is that as they pedal, they are earning merits or earning points within the system that they can see on the screen. Like every, you know, 10 rotations gets them one merit or whatever it is. And then they can buy stuff on the screen or watch particular episodes of things or turn off advertisements. They don't want to watch by paying merits into this virtual system. It's never actually said, but I think the presumption that most people would have is that this, this life they live. And I understand why you find it hard to describe because it always feels like they're in prison, but they're not in prison. They just like this is just the way society works now is you're locked into this, you're locked into this life of living in these cells and peddling these things. And the feeling is perhaps the peddling is producing electricity for society, perhaps. They do explicitly say that at one point. They do. There is one explicit line where they say that the peddling is powering all of society. Yeah. But yes, what I actually, I took note because I thought it was kind of amazing that the main character almost doesn't speak at all throughout the whole episode. And especially the first like 10, 20 minutes, I timed it and it takes 15 minutes from the start before he says the first word. And even after that, he speaks very rarely. It's only until maybe the last 10 minutes. That he's really talking in any way. And so that's why I thought it was a really powerful episode because it manages to show you this world that is both very clear. Okay, I have these guys are on bikes, there's these computer screens. Like I understand what's going on, but it also really limits your view. Like you don't have any sense of how did he get in here? What's going on in this world? Are there lots of rooms like this? And the episode as it goes on does sort of answer some of these questions? There is a later shot where they finally show you that he's in one room of many, many rooms in a gigantic building that all have people on bikes and screens. And another character mentions vaguely that like she was in another place before she came here, but she wanted to go to a different place where her sister was. But like that is that is the only information you get about the outside society. You don't really know what's going on. And so the whole thing is they are presenting to you a kind of economy that is based on electricity generation and then also just buying virtual objects. That the life that these people lead is incredibly Spartan. And I have to say it was very interesting watching it a second time because it's a ton of details that you pick up on that you miss the first time round. And one of them is just noticing how there's almost nothing in any of the rooms. Everything is gray except for the stuff that's on the screen. Like the only color in their life comes from the computer screen. Every item of clothing, every surface, it is all either like black or dark gray. And there's nothing with color except for those screens. So it's like even like the visual direction of it is showing you like this is the most exciting thing in their life is what's on those screens. And the main character you can feel is kind of resistant to this life that he is there, but he's kind of reluctantly going along with this. He's constantly paying credits to turn off advertising that he doesn't want to watch. I mean I thought I thought I mean I'm sure this will come out more, but for me I mean a few different things happen, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but the advertising and the way advertising is treated in the show is the most powerful thing about that whole show for me. And was completely fascinating that they live in a world where there is a real premium and a real value attached to being able to not watch advertising. And you have to pay to turn off these ads. They were quite intrusive ads. And sometimes they were like for you know sort of sexual pornographic things. So they were really like they're distasteful in some ways. And so you would have to pay some of your credits to not watch it. And if you didn't have the credits or were unwilling to pay and you just shut your eyes. Yeah, everything shuts down. Everything shuts down. They have detectors that know you aren't watching. So you have to watch these ads. You have no choice. And they're on all four walls of your bedroom. And it really is really invasive. I was going to say it was shot so well because they often showed what this guy's life was like without the ads. And very often he was just sitting in his room. And there was nothing but a star scape on the wall. And he's looking into space. And then it's really shocking when all four walls are covered with a screaming ad for pornography. And one of the things that I noticed as well like the whole episode is done so well that I thought this has to be on purpose. But every time it takes him a little while to turn off the ad. This whole society is based on hand gestures for interacting with the technology. And so we have to do this this shoe away hand gesture to bring up a dialogue that says do you want to turn off the ad yes or no. And he has to do it again. And it says are you aware that you that this will cost you credits to turn it off yes or no. And he's like he has to shoe it a third time before it finally confirms and turns it off. It's like your whole life is surrounded by the five second unskippable ads on YouTube. But they can pop up completely in your field of vision at any moment. And you always have to wait five seconds to turn them off. It's very startling and it's very it's very well done. But you have to pay to turn them off too. Yeah. Yeah. They're even worse kicker. Yeah. That's exactly it. Like you have to pay a dollar every time to turn it off. And you never know when they're going to pop up and they pop up all the time. Like so it was just it was it was really really well done. And I would just say that there is had to look it up because there I'm going to get it wrong. But I'll just mention that because I don't have to have my head. But there is an internet writer who I really like. I think he's very good a guy called David Wong. And he's written a bunch of articles for crack.com. And he also occasionally appears on their podcast. I love the episodes where he's in. But he has an article that I think talks a lot about this episode in an indirect way. The article I think came up before the episode. Please talk about why the future is going to be based on BS. And it's a whole article that is kind of about the economy of selling virtual goods. And some of just the crazy stuff that happens as more and more of the economy transitions into digital items. Like what does it what does it mean to be paying real money for virtual objects or the other things that companies do is impose artificial scarcity on digital objects. Which is kind of crazy when you think about like it's a digital object. It can be replicated infinitely. But we're going to put a lot of online games do this. There is a finite number of a certain kind of sword that will ever exist in that universe. And it's very strange. It's a very interesting article. I would recommend reading it. But I think it's a good companion piece in a way to this episode of TV. Because I mean in this show one of the things you can spend your merits on is improving your avatar in this virtual world. By a hat for your character and things like that. Yes. I thought they did it. There's other little bit of an aspect to it which is you feel like everybody is rather separated from each other. And this is strange following on from our conversation from Twitter. You see that when they're not working people are again it's a little bit vague but it seems like they can't quite leave their rooms. And they all end up interacting with each other with these digital avatars that they cleverly call doples. I presume short for doppelganger. And yes, a big thing that they're spending their money on is getting new clothes for their doppel or this new hairstyle or these various objects that the doppel can hold while he interacts with other people. Like that is a perfect example of forcing a kind of scarcity where if they presumably can't interact with each other outside of work hours then there is value in the way your doppelganger looks on the screen when he interacts with other people. But there's like a total artificial artificial reality there. So there's one thing about this episode that makes me well it doesn't make me surprised you like it but it made me think you wouldn't like this episode as much of some of the others. And that is while all of this is going on and it's all brilliant and I could see why it really appeals to you as a YouTuber with an interest in advertising and the future and stuff like that. The other big thread of this story and kind of the escape from this world that you can get is that you go on you can go on to this talent show this sort of this show which is like the X factor and that's your big escape and two and various things happen. I don't know how much we're going to talk about those but it's a very big part of the show and I imagined from what I know of you you don't watch a lot of shows like the X factor and these sort of talent shows. And there's a lot of there's a lot of things in the show in in Black Mirror that I thought were really clever not just in parodying the show but clever clever comments on those types of shows like X factor and that and I would have imagined they would be you would be indifferent to them or they would be lost on you. Did you did you appreciate that aspect of this show or was that kind of not as interesting to you? I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of injokes on that that I didn't get or references that are sort of over my head but I think even you can watch the show and if you knew nothing about online talent shows you could still derive enjoyment from those segments because it still just fits entirely within the world. So the way it works in the story is that people can earn 15 million merits and they can buy a ticket to go on this talent show and this talent show was promoted all the time through the advertising and that the people who have won the talent show are also promoted. Again one of the details I like is it's a bit it's a bit unclear like where are these people once they've won because they talk about how winning on this talent show gets you off the bike you don't have to be on the bike anymore but but there's no there's no vision of where are these other people they just live in TV land now and they're singing for you or doing whatever and so the notion of this as an escape is very interesting and the mechanics of it with the judges being entertaining I would bet there's a bunch of stuff in there that if I if I watched more of those shows I would it would make me like the episode even more but I felt totally engaged by it even without having probably the adequate background information although I'm assuming that the one guy is supposed to look like Simon Cowell I do know what Simon Cowell looks like and there's one guy on there is like that has they've got to be trying to be Simon Cowell he's the Simon Cowell figure he even sits on the part of he even sits in the spot where Simon Cow sits on those shows oh I see yeah there we go so that's why I didn't know they have spots that's pretty funny I would want to judge it in yeah no it was uh yeah I mean I don't know how much you want to talk about the plot on the story and in many ways that's not really necessary I guess it's more the well I'll I guess if you want I'll give a quick I'll try to do a quick summary of the rest of it and then I have a couple points on the show unless there's something else you want to bring up now no no go ahead please please okay so the the the rest of what happens is basically our our main character meets a girl and he clearly has a crush on her and he likes her and she has a pretty singing voice and he buys a ticket for her to go on this show and it basically bankrupts and he has no no real credits left just you know a couple hundred and he paid 15 million for her to go on this show and she's going up there to sing and it's a new season of their talent show and what happens is she goes on and she sings her song but there's a new judge on the panel who runs the pornography channel that keeps has been interrupting us all episode long with its advertisements and it turns out that they don't think she's a good enough singer to be a professional singer but the pornography wants her to be one of the girls on his channel and this is also call back there is just this enormous amount of of pure pressure from the crowd and from the judges and she has also been drugged with this again sort sort of unspecified compliance drug before she's gone on the stage so she's not fully in her right mind she's in an incredibly difficult situation and this is where they do mention that you know I can't believe you're wasting everybody's time and all of these credits you know who do you who do you like all of these people who are running the bikes like you need to be grateful to them and and take this amazing opportunity that most people will never get and so she agrees and again like disappears you just you don't really know where she goes and in a terribly horrible crushing scene you see our main character later on in his room now with no credits and a pornography ad comes on and it's a special ad that's going to show you the whole thing and it is her her like promotion and her first appearance on this pornography channel and I've got to say I mean black mirror is a hard show to watch and this is a hey cat hey cat stop he can't turn the ad off because he's got no credits left and can't shut his eyes so he's been and this is someone he cared for and tried to give an opportunity to and now he's been forced to watch her sort of exploited and yeah yeah like there are so many difficult scenes in black mirror that are very well done but this one this one is really up there it's like oh man you know this this is all his fault and and you really you really understand how empty his life is before he even met this girl and he thought he was doing the best thing for her and she is clearly drugged in the video that comes up on the advertising like she's not really in her right mind and they have her singing the song that she sung on stage and it's like it's hard to watch it's so hard to watch and the that actor I don't know who that guy was but this guy is just an amazing actor I can't believe I haven't seen him in anything else but he does it a flip out scene where he ends up smashing some of the screens in his room and it kind of ends with him on the ground crying and some of the screens are smashed but the ad is still going on in the background and it's just it is awful it is awful but then the the finale of the show is he does have a shard of glass now from this broken screen and they do a like a montage of him montage sounds so cheesy it is again so well done in the show like a montage of him filled with hatred and rage just cycling on the bike and buying nothing and and being on borderline starvation because he doesn't want to pay for any of the food just saving up the 15 million credits to get on the show and then he goes on the show he gets there he has this shard of glass in hidden in on himself and when he gets on the show he holds it to his neck and again in an amazing performance because you've hardly heard this guy talk and then he gives this rage filled kind of incoherent monologue about how awful their whole society is and how these judges are the people sitting on the top of the whole thing and it's it's just absolutely terrible and he's holding this shard of glass to his neck and threatening to kill himself and miss a beat and the judges are going that was the most amazing outpouring of emotion we've ever seen you know we want you to be on our TV channel where you can talk about this kind of stuff you know twice a week live yeah and again it cuts it's a little bit unclear what happens to him but then the the kind of closing scenes are one of his friends is on the bike and watching his show where he's sitting in his room with the glass to his neck and giving a monologue about how terrible their whole society is like that's his stick now he does these he does these cool rages with glass to his neck and it's just like a commodity now I actually when I was making notes when I was making notes I thought there was there was a great there was a great line that one of the judges says to him because they're like a little bit trying to figure out what this guy's about and one of the judges says you know you're a little out there but that croat that throat cutting thing neat gimmick yeah and it's it's it's so crushing because it's like it undermines everything that he's just done like boy that was a really great gimmick you had on the stage there with you with your blade and the end oh god it's just it's so awful and then but he sells out great that's the in the end he sells out and like it ends it ends with him he we do say that he's now living in like a lovely place and he just sees TV show twice this is yeah this is one of the details that I missed the first time I watched it on the second watch through I couldn't I can't believe I missed it but when he's broadcasting his show it looks like he's in his old cell but when when the camera goes to him really recording the show you can see that his his cell is really just a tiny corner in his now huge white house yeah like instead of everything being gray and black he now lives in a much bigger house that is entirely white that has a fake corner of his old cell in the center of the house where he records his show and he holds his shard of glass to his neck during the show and you can see that during the show they're selling a virtual item for your doppel to hold onto which is a shard of glass so you can be just like our social critic yeah and then the final scene is him going over to the wall and looking out over this this vast scene of a of a beautiful forest and one of the things I really like about that last shot is it is unclear as to whether or not he is looking out over real nature or whether or not these are just very good screens now that he's looking at and it's what I what I love about that is is it kind of undercuts the whole society they live in because if he's looking out on a real mirror you can see that the world is fine and this this post apocalyptic feeling that you've had the whole time is sort of a lie but if he's looking out on if he's looking on screens well he's he's in a cell he's just in a bigger cell like either way it is awful and that's why like this episode is just such a crushing episode of television in every way but I just thought it was amazingly done from start to finish it is just so good very good very good I did I could watch it a few times all the episodes in that series are good but this one had a few extra things that I really liked yeah was there anything you didn't like I can honestly say that there is there is nothing about the episode that I didn't like it's good good review because again what watching it on the second time through there were just a million details that I picked up on that I thought man this is this is just so good like there's there's all these there's a shot that maybe one of the judges there's a middle judge and there's some indications that like maybe she doesn't really like the society either like she doesn't go along with it but she like she's playing her role whereas the two guys on the either side you can feel like oh they are just into it and they are also the ones who push all the contestants to do something if they just just so many details that were great but one of the things that I I really appreciate with television or with movies is when they know what not to tell you when they know what details to hint at but without really explaining it and one of the things it just happens in the background of this show that I thought was great is there's like an underclass of fat people in yellow outfits who are the janitors and it's not exactly clear why but one of one of the characters either gives up or is or is like fired from being on the bike and he turns up later as one of the janitors and he's like an overweight character on the show and all of the janitors are overweight and there's like there's like no real explanation of what what do these people like what is their role in society you know why are they all fat and I think it's a no cycling I have had you yeah but it's there's a little there's a little thing in there which I almost wonder if it's connected to these guys because he talks about the main character makes a mention about the the cheap food being really bad for you and I almost wonder if in the background of the writer's minds is it like is that the janitors can only afford the really awful food is that why they're all fat like there's never a single janitor who who is fine and also on the on the second viewing you can catch in the background there is like a fat person's version of the talent show that one of the guys watches and it is yeah and it's just you watched closely my friend yeah well well it was it was interesting because you can see it like the main character has a subnoxious friend who watches all the porn and watches all the terrible TV shows but I didn't I didn't pick up on at the first time but the fat person show that he watches is all the janitors are the contestants and it's it's about them being able to eat enough to win and it's very it's very quick but but one of the the host of that show makes a mention about how one guy's been really preparing for this and he's put on 17 stone and now we want to see if he can beat you know our food matron or whatever and it's just awful and it's everywhere you look in the show is just sadness and and horror but but I love it that that kind of little detail is in the background it's not fully explained you don't know what's going on with the janitors but they're just they're just sort of there and it's it's just enough to make you interested but not so much that some character has to come on screen and tell you things like in all of the episodes of black mirror almost never does a character do the thing that you see in so many movies where someone turns to somebody else and explains to the character something but really they're talking to you the audience yeah all of these episodes is like the actors involved are just living in their world and you are watching them and for the most part there isn't too much exposition and I think that's one of the things that makes it really great is like well that's because it's smart people TV isn't it's made like you could never do that in a Hollywood film because it has to appeal to everyone whereas people like you know people like you quite enjoy watching a show and afterwards talking to your friends and your wife and and wondering out loud about these things and I wonder what the janitors were and I wonder what this and I love all these questions a lot of people hate that a lot of people hate coming out of a film or a TV show and having all these unanswered questions and that's unfortunate you know I I like them but that's why you will never get that in a film and you'll only get that on niche channel four TV shows because it's the only place you can get away with a small smart audience maybe I still think most most I may like the those kind of details better than an average person but I still think you can get away with much more of the not talking about stuff in movies and TV than most movies and TV do I mean it's more than why then why are they doing it because the smart people making these shows know it's cluttering their show and making it more obvious and taking away the mystery but they still keep doing it why are they doing it just to spite you no I don't think so I think it's it's a it's a question of safe pitching right it's safer to pitch the movie love and to pitch the movie high and miss yeah right like there are there are very many situations in life where you have to think about the motivations behind the people doing the creation and if you're making a big blockbuster movie and you're the script writers you don't want to be you don't want people coming out of that movie sounded like oh I didn't like it because I was confused like you're going to over explain yeah then you might do if it was just on your own in the movie might just do fine but you don't get fired for the over explaining you might get fired for everybody thinks the movie is confusing and we're not going to hire you again so that's that's I think that that might be part of it but you might not expect that I would like black mirror because I think it's fair to say that it is broadly if not exactly anti technology it is broadly suspicious of technology yeah definitely yeah uh and you would think I I'm like oh that's that's ridiculous or I don't like these episodes or all these these premises are terrible but I think it it pulls it off just really well it pulls it off in a smart way it almost never is people actually complaining about the technology you know I think a good example is do you remember the the first episode um the one with the prime minister yes of course yes spoiler alert and also maybe take your child out of the room alert if you're listening with your family which I don't recommend that you should do but the first episode is basically about a terrorist who is his kidnapped a princess and is going to kill her unless the prime minister has sex with a pig on live TV it's such a funny it's such a simple premise and yet when you say it's just yeah it's it's brilliant it is brilliant promise now also I have to say that that is the opening to the whole show and this is another example of man I just love going into stuff blind because the opening scene of the first episode is totally different if you don't know anything because you can experience that as the prime minister experiences it he just wakes up he gets a phone call you don't know what it's about he's down in the room it's like okay this serious we have all of our staff gathered around you're watching this video of the prime crying princess and it's okay this is a serious TV show I don't I don't even know what the genre is right but where this is very serious yeah yeah and like but then as the details unravel there is this moment where the prime minister and I think very well you is the audience like no this this is like some sort of joke right this isn't real and and the scene almost turns for a minute where you can believe that this is some kind of hilarious joke that he's supposed to have sex with the pig and then you go right back with him as the show like refuses to let go of this very serious premise as like no this is really we're really going to do this as a dead serious episode there is a terrorist threatening to kill someone unless you have sex with the pig on live TV and man another it's a grim episode not a lot of laughs in that one but but really well done but what what I just wanted to say though is is that what I love about that episode is that almost everything that happens is the fault of things like Twitter so it is really clear that the government could have had kept a lid on this and could have handled this in a very different way if it wasn't for the fact that the video leaked on YouTube and they were able to take it down off of YouTube in the UK but now it's a national thing and people are uploading it on social media site like but like they don't go out of their way to really harp on that but it's still really clear that like man this whole situation could have been handled a lot better if there wasn't social media around for the various twists and turns of that plot and that's the kind of of commentary that I think is done really well like they're not shoving it in your face they are just showing you through the things that happen like maybe his Twitter thing is an all 100% great yeah I mean it's I mean I know he's not the sole the sole person but one of the real creative forces behind this obviously is Charlie Brooker and that's what I mean you know he's this dark guy isn't a this kind of cynical black mirror type guy but he's also a real technology guy he loves video games he uses Twitter he's a real consumer of media so I mean this you can see how this this series would be born of people like him who who who hate and see all the bad things about technology but also love technology and live it and and I think you get you get quite a fair depiction because of that yeah it's it's done really well it's not it's not demonizing technology it's just showing stuff and like the like the future in the 15 million merits episode it's not crazily unbelievable like many things that I see that involve future technology where it's like oh that would that would never happen it's like okay this is this is an extreme thing but as like can I imagine a future where the economy is based almost entirely on virtual goods very easily like I don't think that it that is a really hard stretch here and sure the specifics of this story are crushing but what's really crushing is this whole environment that they are in and like that is that is more what the episode is is about the specifics of the people so yeah I think it is it is just great and yeah you can feel Charlie Brooker's fingerprints all over a whole bunch of the episodes you can really feel his I actually ended up trying to find every internet discussion I could a 15 million marriage just just to read what other people were thinking about it and lots of people commented that that episode sounds a lot like what Charlie Brooker might think of his own career that that he he is someone who does nothing but very accurate very devastating commentary on the media itself but he does like he is part of part of the system like he can't he can't possibly not feel somewhat conflicted about that about the shows that he produces and like he had a short lived news show that was very much this just talking about nothing about how terrible the news was and it's just you can definitely imagine that that he might see some parallels between his career and what happens to the main character in that episode it's funny you should say that I was at I was at the airport once and I was buying one of Charlie Brooker's books and as I was buying it from the guy in the in the shop the guy in the shop said oh Charlie Brooker was in here just a couple of minutes ago he's getting a flight and I was like oh wow that's amazing like you know what was he like and did you talk to him and apparently he had with him these people you can hire at the airport that just walk around everywhere with you and if anyone tries to come up and talk to you you're like pushed away like a like a security guard you know your own private bodyguard and I did find that funny that you know Charlie Brooker's this man of the people every man persona and yet he's that seems like quite a hollywoody thing to do I wouldn't have imagined he was someone that would do that at an airport you know he's famous people at airports all the time and they're on their own but he opted for that I will never think less of people for doing something like that because I didn't think less of him for I just thought it was it was just there was a there was a conflict between his images one of me and then I realized he's not one of me well this is why on on my second viewing of the episode the thing that that really I thought about when I noticed oh the main character has this set inside his actual house is when what was it was it called news wipe was that his news what screen wipe and news what I will also highly recommend news wipe for a variety of reasons but he has in there a set which or I don't even know if it's a set or if it's the actual house but he is almost always talking to you as though he is just in this kind of junky room that is in his lounge watching telly yeah but it is I have often wondered about that room because it is very cluttered it is very untv like and you know I don't know is that actually shot in his room or like the main character in this episode is this is this a set somewhere that he is filming this on but I either way it is to present this image of him as this kind of unshaven like dishevelled normal dude who was just angry at his TV like and they're like oh that's very interesting that that your main character in this episode has his old cell that he is broadcasting from he's not broadcasting from his actual house like it maybe there's a parallel there Charlie Brooker so can you believe it we've made it to the end of season two series two this is this is it isn't it yeah this is it 20 did you think we'd get to 20 no I didn't honestly when we started this thing I thought we might be over promising with 10 I thought I was deeply worried about even making it to 10 I thought I don't know I don't know about this but so here we are at more than twice would I thought we might not even make in the first place make what's got what's got on man are we doing more yeah so normally I would love to end this ambiguously because I think that it's kind of fun to have the short endings or the abrupt endings I should say and at a season ending especially to just make no comment on whether or not there will be another one I would normally love to do that but I think this time around we can say that well I will say anyway that if you are willing to commit to another 10 I say we should do another season are you up for that as long as we can as long as I can continue asking you those like random questions one unexpected question like do you dance can I keep doing that okay all right if that's the if that is the price of your cooperation I will pay it I might also we can negotiate details later but I might want to also get a playing crash corner clause in this I'm aware but I'm happy to keep going good good I'm glad to say I have I have really enjoyed doing these so far again I think that you feel the same way and yeah it's been an interesting experience and I'm happy I don't know if we will be able to make it to 30 but I feel like I can promise trying to make it to 30 no problem where there's low we haven't even talked about some of the things I feel most passionately about yes and and this this episode tonight I think we had maybe six things that we wanted to talk about and we got to maybe two of them so there's at least there's at least another episode but everyone we do get along by the way everyone like we are like friendly yeah I think people I think sometimes think people worry that like we don't like each other very much we are friends who can disagree on a very large number of things but sometimes I do worry when I'm editing the podcast it sounds like I'm angry and I don't I never mean for that to be the case I never mean I don't I am never actually angry at you Brady you frustrate me tremendously sometimes but anger is not the ocean that I ever you're not angry you're disappointed no just frustrated what do you got what do you got you got a surprise I have to say that people who listen to the podcast have been very supportive and one of the things that they have constantly said is you know I have enough razors and websites and audio books is there any other way that I can and help the show and we're thinking about a few things but one of the things that we do have now is a hello internet t-shirt so in the show notes I'm going to put a link to a t-shirt that you can buy if you want to help support the show and that's going to be available over at dftba and it's going to be a gray shirt with the hello internet logo on it can I just say I've seen I haven't seen this t-shirt I think I can imagine it from how you described it though it's just like that the hi as it with with your call border on it and stuff or yes yes I was you didn't you didn't want to go for like just a big picture of my face or something you didn't think people would go for that on a t-shirt I have to say that did not occur to me as one of the options of how we might merchandise the show maybe if there's a huge demand for it that can be a specialty item special item yeah you didn't see my face as one of our main selling points oh do you know what we have got though we could use Audrey the puppy Audrey on a t-shirt now maybe yeah everyone likes to cute puppy everybody does like a cute puppy and you like promoting that cute puppy so this this could be this could be synergy what about playing crash coordinate t-shirts once we sell out of hello internet t-shirts like like little nation ones maybe I have to say we you know this is running the podcast is a strange thing I think we are we are looking into ways to help keep it going and but yes for now the t-shirt is a way that people can support the show if they want to or if they just want to look super cool wearing a gigantic hi on the front of your chest I'm sure you will get make lots of friends that way perhaps if you walk around people will say it says hi they'll say hi to you maybe give you a high five I don't know how much magic this shirt will work I assume a lot but it is there for you
==Episode List==
==References==
Category:HelloInternetEpisode
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