H.I. No. 10: Two Dudes Talking

"H.I. #10: Two Dudes Talking" is the 10th episode of Hello Internet, released on April 23, 2014. It is the final episode of the podcast's first season.
==Official Description==
Follow up on what schools are for, Brady moans about small things, and thoughts on this podcasting experiment.
==Show Notes==
*Lulu!
*HI #1: Being Wrong on the Internet
*PGCE
*Twitter Homework
*Brady vs Grey
*What is reddit?
*Destin of Smarter Every Day
*Evan's Birthday Yahtzee
*Anchoring
*Alan Stewart
*Grey's recommended podcasts
*Numbers Confuse Americans
*The Talk Show
*Accidental Tech Podcast
==Other==
Look at you though, you're torn, I can see it. You can see it in your beardy face. Are you well? It's been a glorious, glorious day. Where I live, what's it been like where you live? It has also been a bit of a glorious, glorious day. Yes, it has been very lovely, and I have actually been out and about for most of the day. So I've got to see the sunshine. Really? What do you do? What do you do when you go out and about? I can't really imagine that. I imagine all those people and objects everywhere would just freak you out. Well, yeah, cities are busy, but that's what's nice about them. Today was a sad day because it was an errands day. And I tend to group together all of the errands that I have to do until I basically have an entire day's worth of errands to run or places that I need to go. And so let me just get it over all at once. And so that's what I was doing today. Moving about all over the place, going to the bank, going to the post office, going to office supply store, going to a whole bunch of places. So that's what I was up to today. What was the most loathed one, that the one you least wanted to do, but it just had to be done? Uh, I would say the bank, I always hate going to the bank the most. It's just, it's sad. They make you take a little number. You have to sit there. I don't know. It's just, it's not, it's not ideal. So bank, bank is my least favorite. Post office is a relatively, relatively close behind that as also not necessarily super fun. So that's why it was, it was just, it was a day of doing things that I've been putting off. But I still think if I put them all off so I can do a bunch of them together, that's way better than spreading it out over a longer period of time. I hate the post office, but do you know one that I love, like the I find surprisingly satisfying? What? Going to the tip of the rubbish dump. I love filling the car up with stuff and like driving my big car to the tip and like this throwing, there's something really therapeutic about throwing huge objects like into these huge skips and like I feel like really manly and like I hang out with the other guys at the tip and I say, where does this one go? You make, where does the wood go? Where does the metal go? And then I throw it in and it bangs around and I do enjoy, I do enjoy the tip. It's my favorite chore. And I always feel really satisfied at the end of it. Oh, you wouldn't be surprised to know that I, I can get right behind you on that one. Clearing out a whole bunch of stuff, getting rid of a whole bunch of junk is great. And the place like a dump is pleasingly industrial. There's big machinery. Yeah, there's visibly things going on. It's very understandable. So yes, I'm with you on that one as far as Aaron's go. But since I have neither a car nor any idea, the closest big garbage dump would be, that is something I haven't gotten to do since I'd lived in America, I guess. I mean, probably now, yeah. Maybe last time I got to properly go to a dump was 10 years ago with my father who was always taking stuff off to the dump to get rid of it. So yeah, it's been a long time. Maybe if I come to visit you, we can have a little outing to your local tip. Is what you call it apparently? Yeah, I would be so up for that if you want to do that. I'll even save a few things, it's a big things that you can throw in. Yeah, stuff that makes really big loud noises is the best. Something that really clangs when you throw it down a shoot or something, that's great. I like this as a plan. Speaking of eras, we are supposed to be doing a follow-up. Oh, yes, I guess we are. So also, can I just apologize? For some reason, my dog has become very restless and shaking at the background and walking around and she's normally quiet as a mouse. But she's usually in the background. And I have known that she's there in the background. And as a tiny, tiny Easter egg, I intentionally left in a little doggy sound in the very first episode of this podcast. So I hope listeners go back and they listen very carefully. You can hear a slight collar shake in the background. So she has always been with us since day one. She has. Well, if you leave, I don't know if you'll leave it in this time, but she had a massive shake a minute ago. So I mean, you would definitely be able to hear that one while you were talking. Well, anyway, this is probably not the most interlating podcast talk we've ever had. Come on, man. Let's follow up. Last time you yet again, waited in to the education sector, all guns blazing. Basically saying schools have zero educational value and they are merely childcare centers. I don't think I missed it. Maybe, maybe, I don't know, maybe I'm not quite. I feel like your summaries of my arguments are always or is a bit more harsh than maybe my actual arguments are. But that's your prerogative. I guess is the summer, summer-uppable person. Yeah. Yeah. I think I said very clearly at some points that I am not claiming that nothing is learned in schools. After all, they do do de-animalized children. So at least there is that. Yeah. But yes, yes. I would say that the thrust of my argument was that schools are probably doing less of what they explicitly say they do, which is teaching children about the world and about things. So yeah, that was the argument. And? Well, yes. So I would, is a little bit unfair because we are recording this podcast, Mirror, Hours, After, having made the episode originally available. So I put it up this morning and it is now evening time here in London for us when we're recording. So we don't exactly have days worth of feedback to go through. But looking through the stuff that we've gotten so far on the Reddit, I would say that my prediction from last time seems to have held, which is that my argument was remarkably uncontroversial. Yeah. You know, the Reddit thread seems to be the initial feedback. Now, of course, again, it's a little bit unfair. There hasn't been a huge amount of time. But yeah, I've just seen stuff from students saying similar things that that's how they feel about school. Or I even thought one comment which sounded like what I said has on my students react. They found it very enlightening to think about school this way that it made more sense than thinking about it as learning a whole bunch of stuff with the future. So yeah, maybe uncontroversial, but maybe we just need to wait longer. Maybe tomorrow there will be lots of angry teachers on the thread after the full work day in America has ended. So is there anything in particular that has become up that you wanted to address or expand upon in the wake of your comments? The one point that I think I made less clearly maybe in the episode than I wish I had upon listening to it later is a question about the effectiveness of schools in that. When basically that, when kids arrive, you can make very good predictions about how they will do later on. And I know that I said that in the episode, but I think I didn't connect it clearly enough to this point about if the school is educating or changing the kids that shouldn't be as much the case. There should be more variation when the kids arrive. And you shouldn't be able to have a sort of 90% prediction rate of how is a kid going to do based on how they did when they showed up at the door versus five years later. So I think that's part of my feeling about this uncomfortableness of being a teacher and seeing that over the years and just coming to face to face with, oh, I'm not sure how much academically, at least the kids have been affected while they were in our care in the school. So I mean, it's not the teachers I'm worried about. I'm imagining how dispiriting that must be for parents to hear that if their kids not particularly bright right from the outset, you know, the school's not going to turn them around. As if I was a parent, I wouldn't want to hear that. Yes, yes. Yeah, you don't want to hear it, but there you go. You don't want to hear it. Guy listen to some other podcast. Yes, perhaps. I would just say that I had to put this. Parent teacher evenings were always very interesting experiences as a teacher. I think quite unusually, I actually really enjoyed parents parent teacher evenings and getting to top the parents. Most teachers I know absolutely loathed. But I did kind of think it was fun. But parents opinions of their own children are just are very interesting sometimes. And some parents know exactly who their child is. And some parents have just no idea who their child is. And that's I would say that sometimes just interesting to see how that plays out. And so let's say we have a kid who is not doing very well in school. Sometimes you get parents who are just completely oblivious to that fact or who think that maybe with more effort on the part of the entire educational system, their child will do better. And it seems like maybe that's not the case. But then you also have parents who know exactly who their children are. And sometimes you would get, let's say, parents who were very saddened by that fact. It was always just very interesting talking to the parents about the kids and how they viewed them. But yes, it isn't the best. It is not the most hopeful view of what the school system does if you're entering it with not the best academic results. And in particular, the economist I mentioned last time had a table in a paper he wrote, which was talking about entry into college. And your ability to predict whether or not someone will graduate with a bachelor's degree within six years. And the numbers were just astounding about, you can say that somebody is entering college and say, very accurately, this person has a 5% chance of actually graduating from college, given what you know about them at the start, or you can say this person has a 95% chance of graduating. And again, I just think that that feeds back into the school is doing something else. But it is largely acting as a filter for the kind of person who arrives. It's not necessarily modifying certain kinds of people to be better. I felt a bit like some of the things that were discussed in the last podcast, not completely, but maybe slightly diminished the importance that we put on the role of teachers. Yeah. What do you say to that? I would agree with that as a general statement, because the school is a collection of teachers. But it is a difficult subject to talk about. Difficult as in, it's just hard for you to find the right words without coming out incorrectly. Or is that what you may know? Well, it's difficult partly from a social perspective. We were talking about last time. You want to think certain things about the education system and thus how teachers within them are acting. Yeah, there's a certain kind of societal expectation about how you're going to talk about these sorts of jobs. And maybe if schools are filters rather than places that are necessarily changing the bulk of students, it does force you to come to some interesting conclusions about what is actually happening within these walls. And someone actually sent a link to me on Twitter about this. But here is an example of just, it's not about teachers, but I think this is an illustrative example of forcing a rethink about something. And it's when I was doing my teacher training, I came across a few academic papers that I thought were really interesting and they were about homework. And how does homework affect the academic results on an end of your exam? If you give a student lots of homework, or if you give a student no homework, or what kind of homework do you give them, homework that elicits thought-provoking answers or just multiple choice homework, right? It was basically, what can we do to maximize the end of your results as far as homework goes? Yeah. Actually, do you have any guesses? What do you think would be the optimal homework strategy if you were trying to make sure that a kid does really well at the end of the year? Do you know what, can I take a pass on that question because I hate homework so much. And I never really did homework. Like homework was a real, like I just avoided homework and revision for test. And so I just don't even want to think about it. So I'm just going to be neutral on this. You just tell me. Make sure I don't forget. Ask me again, my own personal homework experience in school at the end of this. But, okay. Okay, so you're taking a pass on that question. And interestingly, the result was basically, there is no difference between any of these strategies, giving lots of homework, giving no homework. It doesn't change the end of year academic results in any significant way. Right. And we're talking about extremes here. Hours of homework versus no homework, it doesn't matter. It does not change how kids do at the end of the year. And so I think this again, it forces you to come to some strange conclusions. Like boy, the thing that teachers say and that we think is the thing that is contributing to how well kids do on a test or how well they learn something turns out to not have any effect whatsoever. And I think that's very interesting. Do you know, the reason I brought it up, I saw someone else on the Reddit who asked the question basically along the lines of I'm thinking of becoming a teacher. It's like the profession I want to go into. Am I making a mistake? Is this a good profession? I mean, you went into that profession. What do you say to someone who asks you that, should I become a teacher? Well, that was a big sigh. I feel like I have become famous on this podcast from my size, which I never knew to use. That's your size with the GHS, not with a ZE. Yes, yes. I can hear you're a reluctance. Like I've cornered you into some question. This is actually not reluctance. The thing that I'm trying to formulate is that's a very hard question to answer in absence of all kinds of other information. That's why hesitant because when someone talks about becoming a teacher, I would say as a general statement that being a teacher is a better job than many, maybe most jobs, but it's hard to talk about that just in general. And I have a slightly biased perspective because I was qualified in the UK as a science teacher. And because of that, science teachers are in high demand, particularly physics specialists are in very high demand in the UK. And that meant that I basically was able to have the pick of any schools that I wanted to work at. And I applied to a couple of schools and they all said yes. And I just went to the one that I wanted to go to the most. And when I switched schools, the exact same thing sort of happened, I found a school that I wanted to go to and I applied to it and they just said yes. But that's a supply and demand issue there. Right? And so if you are an English teacher, you're going to have a much harder time. And so I think I'm, I have a generally positive experience of being a teacher, but I'm in a better position, probably than most people who are going to enter that labor market. And so that's why it's a harder question to answer. On a just a general basis, but taking it away from kind of economic and job opportunity factors. What about just in terms of the reward of the job in terms of a lot of people become teachers because they want to, you know, we hear this, you know, shape and life's. Oh, no, don't, don't make me go down this path, Brady. Oh, no, this is supposed to be follow up. And no, no, no, follow up. OK. Should I tell the really depressing story or should I not tell the really depressing story? Well, you guys will tell it now because you can have to either edit out that last comment or edit out this old story. So I go ahead. OK. So here, here is, this is, this will be a slightly roundabout way, maybe, of answering this question. OK. When I decided to become a teacher here in the UK, I went through a training program. It's called a PGCE postgraduate certificate of education. And I was on a great course. I had some great mentors. It was overall just a very good experience. It's kind of like a fast track, isn't it? I still have this hard time understanding the English education system as a whole. So I just know this one little path that I happen to follow. But yes, it is a year-long program that presumes that you already have a bachelor's level degree in whatever it is that you want to teach. So when I did physics at my regular college, I didn't specialize in education. So this is in the US. This is sort of like the equivalent of a master's of education. But anyway, it doesn't matter. OK. So I did this course. And I'm going to say maybe at the start, there were probably about maybe 40 of us who were training to be a physics teacher in the UK. The group as a whole, the majority opinion was the boy, I can't wait to inspire the next generation and change young minds kind of attitude about being a teacher. But as the year went on, people dropped out, people with drew. And I couldn't help but notice that the more I can't wait to change young minds, a person was when they came into the course, the more likely they were to drop out over the course of the year. And so these are the kind of more starry eyed? I would say starry eyed was inversely proportional to probability of graduating. OK. And I was in a, I would say more pragmatic, little clutch of friends in that group, people who were not starry eyed, other people might call us cynical, but I would say pragmatic. And I couldn't help but notice that my little pragmatic group had a very low drop out rate. Until at the end, I think eight of us graduated in my group. When I would say maybe only one or two of those, I want to influence young minds kind of people. And the rest of us were, man, summer vacations are awesome, kind of people. And so what happened in the sort of course of that course that made the starry eyed people drop out? What did they find out or see or learn that made them kind of lose hope? I think there are two effects here. One effect is something I think of as the, I'm going to start a restaurant effect, which is when people think about jobs or businesses that they could start, I think people have a tendency to think about stuff that is visible, that they're familiar with, obviously. It's harder to think about things that you're not familiar with. So when people think, oh, I want to start a business, they look around and they see restaurants and they think, oh, I understand what a restaurant is. It's cooks and waiters and I know all these things. And so they imagine themselves as starting a business. That is a restaurant. Anybody who knows anything about the restaurant business knows it's just about the worst business that you could possibly go into. The failure rate is almost absolutely certain, but you only see the remaining successful restaurants. And I think teaching has a little bit of the same kind of effect that disproportionately when people are thinking about jobs they can do. Like I mentioned in the last episode, everyone is familiar with education and everybody kind of thinks they understand what it's like to be a teacher because they've been seeing teachers all their life. So my guess is that relative to other, relative to other occupations, there might be an over application of people to become teachers just in the same way that like too many people start restaurant businesses. So I think that's part of what's going on there. But the second thing that I would say happened is mainly just kind of the PGCE course was another example of just an excellent filter in that actually being in front of classrooms and actually teaching kids, it is both a very different experience than you think of it as a student. And the job is a very different kind of job than it appears as a student. So teaching the actual time in front of classes is actually a relatively small part of the job. And an enormous part of the job is a lot of stuff that surrounds that. And I think that's hard to come to grips to sometimes. And I think you do also have to realize for the first time when you're actually teaching a bunch of kids, one, how this idea about influencing individual kids is very hard when you actually are teaching, in a year, 200 or 300 kids. You start having to really realize the math about how much individual time can you possibly spend with any of those kids. And also, I think many people who go into teaching had some kind of experience being tutors at one point. And when you're a tutor, you're kind of by definition, usually involved with people who are motivated to some extent to learn. And so when you're in the teaching program, you are forced to be in a room with people who really don't want to be there. And that is also what I think people just don't realize is a very different experience of everybody who's becoming a teacher loves their subject and love the classes in their subject. And then you have to realize, oh, most people don't love my subject at all. And I actually don't have the freedom to teach my own subject the way I wanted to. So I think it's a really harsh awakening, as a side note here. I think the people that I feel the sorryist for are the music teachers. And that's because I think if you're a music teacher, you must love music. But you have to listen to people just massacre music all day long. That's, you know, I think it's very different to see someone just not be able to do a physics calculation or just have no idea about the solar system. I feel like those music teachers have to come face to face with the abyss every day. And so I feel like those guys are the real troopers. If you could be a music teacher for many, many years, you deserve some kind of, you know, purple heart or, you know, freedom cross or something. That's got to be the good. So if someone is thinking, I think I'd like to be a teacher, what's the kind of the burning question you think they should be asking themselves? What little tests should they apply themselves to see whether they really have the right stuff? I mean, you sort of portray it as this kind of, you know, you like having some evocation and you're a little bit hard bit and like, what is that all there is to it? Like what's the, what are the, were there any other traits you in that little clique of success as PED? That group of people that I graduated with were just very pragmatic about everything and you have to be. I know if I was talking to someone, I think really, really just the main red flag is too much talking about how they're going to influence young minds. I feel like that is a very, very negative flag. But other than that, I'm not sure if the, if there's any particular traits that I can label as going in the other direction, oh, this is going to be something that's good. The starry eyedness is inversely proportional probably to graduating. But again, that's just my experience. I might have been an unusual group of people that was probably your little hard bit and group that scared off the other starry eyed people and they would have been brilliant teachers and you just sort of put them all off. No, I don't think so at all. No, that is not the, that is not the, you told me to come out and say that laugh. You told me to come back and remind you to tell me something about homework. Oh, yes. See now again, this is another story I'm not sure if I should tell. Ladies and gentlemen, if this podcast is like eight minutes long, it's because great cut over good stories. Okay, I'll tell this maybe we'll get through. My parents are also going to cringe at this because I know we have had discussions about my attitude as a student towards school sometimes. So sorry, parents, here we go. And also, if you are a student in school, you should probably not listen to the next five minutes or so, just skip ahead here. If you're in school, listen to your teacher do what they say and press the two minutes skip button every time, now. All right, so that's disclaimer. But I was a kid in school. My view towards homework was basically the same as yours, which was, well, this is totally pointless. This is boring. It takes a long time. I don't want to do this. And the school system that I went to, again, this is very, it's so different from England, but in New York anyway, in the school that I went to, what you got at the beginning of a course was a syllabus that outlined how much everything counted for. And so you would get a piece of paper that basically said something like, there are going to be four tests this year. And those four tests will count for 50% of your final grade. There's going to be 10 quizzes. Those 10 quizzes are going to count for 40%. And almost always the last bit was, and your homework is going to count for 10% of your final mark. So what I really liked as a student, what I found very satisfying was, at any moment you could calculate exactly where you were in class. How am I doing, what's my predicted level? And I knew the super validatorians, we had these little planners like most kids do, would have like graphs and charts in the back where they'd be keeping track of everything to make sure, everything has to be on track. Now, my approach was a kind of, I wouldn't have called it this at that age, but it was basically an 80, 20 principle applied to this work. And I said, wait a minute, homework is every night for hours. And you're telling me it's 10% of the final grade versus those four tests, which are half or more than half of my final result. And so if you look at my report card as a kid, it is basically straight A minuses and B pluses, because I decided I'm just going to take the hit on that homework. Right, you just give me a zero for that homework, I'm just not going to do it. And instead, I'm going to put my efforts towards studying for the quizzes and the tests, which matter the most, but that I can do in a relatively compressed period of time. And so I would say that when I was a kid, I had relative to many of my classmates, loads of free time, because I consciously decided to not do the homework. And it was great. And while I look back on that and think like, what would I have had a better life had I learned better work habits, which is definitely something that I did not develop in high school. And we can talk maybe some other time about how that really that really bit me later in life, not having learned those work habits. However, I am aware that if I was able to time travel back to my 14-year-old entering high school self, there is nothing I could say to that kid to convince him to do his homework, because he would tell me, but why do I want to spend all of this time on all of this homework? It only counts for 10%. And I would have to say, you're right. What did you do with all this spare time you had? I was a rather bookish kid. So you didn't do homework, so you could go and read books. And that's basically what I did. And I also, I was not a big, again, much to my parents, eternal suffering. I was not a big joiner, so I didn't join all these clubs. And this became more and more of a sore point as college applications approached. And you're supposed to have listed on there all the things that you do. Oh, you volunteered at the local hospital. And you rescued puppies on the weekend. And you did all this, and I didn't know those things. But so when I applied to college, my resume was a little thin, how we say. But what I think would saved me, I don't know if this is the case. You never know with college applications. But what I wrote a little letter basically saying that I didn't really join clubs, but that I spent most of my time reading. And I attached a reading list of all of the stuff that I had read in the past couple of years. And I said, this is my equivalent of extracurricular activities. And so I always feel like maybe that's what got me into college was that reading list, but who knows? Do you still have the list? Unfortunately, I don't. I had a major computer disaster in my senior year of college where I basically just lost everything. And so I don't have any of those records. And I really wish I did, because I'd be curious to go back and see what that looked like or see what my application looked like. But that stuff is gone into the digital ether. That was before I learned computer backups, how to do them properly. If I can just make a slight aside. So I have been basically saying how sort of dumping on schools for the past now podcast and a half. And if you include the language stuff, you could probably say the last four podcasts. Yes, thanks. That's even better. That makes me sound better. And talking about how colleges don't, maybe they don't do anything. I just would put in a word for my own college that I went to, which was in New York, while I have been saying negative things about the educational system. I would say that my four years were definitely some of the best years and the most positively transformative years of my whole life. And so when we talked about this a little bit after the last episode cut, but I am aware that there are none. None, what is your salary? What were your final GPA benefits to something like university or college in particular? And I think I definitely reaped as many of those as it was possible to reap in a four-year period. So I personally had an absolutely great time at, I can't tell. What an absolute cop-at, you big softy. You've just pulled the whole rug from under everything you've said for the last four podcasts by saying, this is just, we're just all cattle. And we're after these pieces of paper. And now you're here saying, but for me, it changed my life. It was wonderful. Well, I want to give everyone a hug. Now, first of all, I don't want to give everyone a hug. Let's be clear on that. Second of all, I would never have gotten into economics grad school. And then by the PGCE program, had I not finished those final courses to give me that piece of paper? So that's that argument still holds that my life would have been probably pretty disastrous still had I gone to university, but not finished that final course and not graduated. So that's, still say that that is a different kind of argument. And yeah, that's what I'm saying there. What? Whatever. Yeah. That you're saying. Any more follow up now that you've just undermined everything? I have undermined nothing. You got any more follow up? You big softy, you big marshmallow. Yes, that's me. I am very soft. No, I guess not. Do you have anything on your list that you want to follow? Did you want to mention this app that this guy has made? Oh, yes, of course, of course. How? I'll let you have the pleasure of doing it, saying it really, really, but little's me in a funny, back-handed gun away. Yeah, as you said, I almost forgot what I was thinking of my healthy and age in the university. We're a boy, the kind of man. Bookage that all gray. Yes. OK, so I just want to look up his name. Yes, so this is Nicholas Coralt. Yeah, you can hand with the pronunciation. That one. That's so hard. Yeah, well, I'm going to guess Nicholas Coralt, and I'm sorry if that last name is not correct. But he has made a little web application, which is called Brady versus Gray. And I'll put a link in the show notes. And I think he is using the YouTube APIs to automatically have a little tally that shows how many videos you have made since my last video. And what's it on at the moment? Yeah, so looking at it right now, I'm just loading it up here. It says question at the top. How many videos has Brady Heron released since CGB Gray last released a video? Answer nine. And so let's see, I have. And then it doesn't have. Yes, it lists them. And so my last video was uploaded on April 9. And so today, it stays with the 16th, is that right? Yes. So you have done nine videos between April 9th and April 16th. So that's that's, that's, there's not making me look so good. I do have help. By the way, I think people sometimes don't realize that. But there's two very talented people who have been helping me out lately, a guy named Sean who makes most of the computer file videos and I just occasionally swooping for some glory. And also a guy called James, who has been helping me out, especially on my test tube videos. So it's not like I am like making two videos a day on my own, you know, I do, I do most of my things. But the stuff that's really good, if you watch something on one of my channels, and you think, gee, that's really good for a Brady video, it was probably made by one of those two. Look how modest you are. No, well, yeah, unfortunately, it's all so true. But anyway, so check out the app. Yeah, check out the app. However, I have a feature request, I have a feature request for Nicholas. And this came up in the Reddit discussion. Somebody tallied not only the videos, but the views. And if you do a views per video calculation, I am still ahead in this game. And so I think this page is views per video. Yes, overly fair to you. It makes you look great. I would love a views per video calculator to be added to this page to even things out. Okay, but as long as there's also a total of views, calculation, I think that's not necessary. I think total views is not necessary. No, we just have just simply views per video. That is my feature request. I on feature request total views. That's not that's not required. All right, I'm going to let you go on that. Hello internet today's sponsor is audible.com, leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment. Listen to audio books whenever and wherever you want. Today, I'm going to do my first fiction recommendation and that's the stand by Stephen King. No spoilers here, but the brief overview of the book is that a play has broken out from a government detention facility and it is spreading throughout the world. You might think you know the story, but Stephen King puts his own special spin on the events. It's one of those epic sprawling stories that takes place across many locations with many characters and to give you a sense of how epic it is, the book is almost 48 hours long when spoken aloud by a narrator who does a very good job. When you have a book that you really like, you want it to go on forever and the stand is that book. So if you have a cross-country road trip on your schedule or you just have some big chunk of time where you want to be able to listen to something, the stand is the perfect book for that. I highly recommend it. And if you listen to my previous recommendation for Stephen King's book about writing, you will also know the kind of personal torment that he went through in making that book and that he still has about the existence of that book, which gives a little bit of an interesting backstory. So once again, that's the stand by Stephen King. I highly recommend it by me. I really like it. I think you will too. 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 and a 30-day trial by signing up today at audible.com slash hello internet. That's all one word audible.com slash hello internet to get your free audiobook and to show the audible that you came from this show and to demonstrate your support. And I'll also put a link in the show notes that you can click now back to episode 10. There was the ad, the ad on the previous podcast was for Squarespace. Thank you very much for their support. You record that after the fact. Where did you record that last one? It sounds like you were in a bath tub or something. Really? Yeah, it sounded really different. It's so cool. Yes, that pre... Well, this goes into what's happening right now. That last episode was recorded in my home office because I'm having technical difficulties at my office office. And so this episode that people are listening to right now, it might actually sound like I'm in a bathtub as well. And that's because I am currently at home talking into a closet on a very old microphone and mostly in an empty room with echoey walls. And so if the sound quality on my end is not so great, I do apologize for that. But yes, I'm having some microphone troubles that I cannot resolve. So I'm in this different set up for the moment. You know what, you wouldn't have this problem if you had more cushions and soft furnishings and knick-knacks in your house. Or I could just get some proper soundproofing, which is my ultimate goal to just have a space where I have the little egg shell kind of soundproofing. That is much better than just filling my house with knacks to hopefully absorb the sound in a random, unpredictable fashion, probably useless fashion as well. So that is not going to happen. But I'm terribly hunched over. I'm like a troll right now because I don't even yet have my desk or my chair. That was one of the errands I was running today is getting that stuff set up. So tomorrow I will have a chair and hopefully in a week I will have a desk. But right now I'm just hunched over. And so if I move too far away from the microphone, I just sound terrible. And I'm trying not to do that. But again, I apologize if I'm doing that too much. So sorry, internet, I don't mean to hurt your ears. Can we do my two segments now? Yes, what are your two segments? So first of all, it's Brady's playing Crash Corner. Oh no, you're making these real, huh? Can we have a jingle or something? Oh, maybe, no, let's not be bad taste. Let's just do Brady's playing Crash Corner. I know what you were going to say. The Brady's playing Crash Corner is just a minor clarification of something that came up in last podcast playing Crash Corner. And that is that you mentioned this play and that was flying from Kathmandu to look that exploded. It didn't explode. It collided with a bird on takeoff from Kathmandu. And then tried to get back around to the airport and was unsuccessful. So I just thought, you know, we're going to be clear on these things. You make fun of me for nitpicky corrections. But I can see when it comes to a subject that is near and dear to your heart, you want to make sure to get the facts just right. Well, yeah, of course. And now my other segment, which also I think should have like a sound effect or a jingle, but let's just see if it sticks first. And that is Brady's paper cats, which are minor things that annoy me, which I like to complain about. You came up with the name Brady's paper cats. That was mocking. I wasn't suggesting this is actually a weekly segment. But I can see that your mooney mind has latched onto this as a forum to get dressed. It's such a good name to Brady's paper cats. I need complaints with life. Here's Brady's paper cat for this week. And friendly enough, this is something that has been annoying me for quite a while. And I've noticed it. And you know how when people have like radio phonons about things that annoy you, like what you can complain? I always think this would be a good one for me. I don't know those radio stations where you can phone in and complain about things. Well, no, they're not radio stations dedicated to complaining. They just have like a little segment on a talk show. Anyway, you're distracting me. I still don't know what you're talking about, but I think this is just a good reminder. Richard Bacon, I would present to her I like on Five Live, has this weekly mooney where people ring up and complain about things. And then whoever's the best mooney of the week gets a prize. And they call the Mona Lisa and all that sort of stuff. I'm not surprised that you know about this. Have you competed for the Mona Lisa very often? I haven't. And I probably won't be able to now because I'm going to tell you my moan. And I wouldn't be able to win anyway because the thing I'm moaning about is something on his radio station. So I don't think they'd give me the prize anyway. But the reason I'm raising it is because I've been guilty of it in the last podcast. And so I was annoyed by myself doing what annoys me when I listen to other radio shows. Yes. So should I tell you what it is? I would like to know. When I'm listening to the talk show presenters on Five Live, I can always hear them clicking their mouse constantly as they go through all the running orders and things they need to for the next segment and things they're looking up. And it's this inciscent clicking. And because in the last podcast we had that silly gimmick where I released one of my videos. So throughout the podcast I was constantly like approving the comments. So I was constantly click, click, click, click. And when I listen back, I could hear myself click, click, click, click all the way through. No. So I get really annoyed by mouse clicking on the radio and I was guilty of it in the last podcast. So I apologize. I will try not to do it again. And that is Brady's paper cut for this week. Any thoughts? No. Do you like that one? Is that any good? It is something small to complain about. I do know, I do know, I used to listen to more Newsy podcasts. And yes, I was aware sometimes of hearing the clicking. I never knew that they were, I mean, I guess it didn't really cross my mind. But you know that they're running through a whole bunch of work stuff. I assume that they're on Reddit or whatever as they're bored, because the person across from them is talking and they is not their turn to ask a question or whatever. So yeah, I kind of assumed that they were just messing around. No, I know exactly what these guys are doing. But I just don't believe that they can't come up with some kind of solution to this, some kind of silent mouse or something. It's just ridiculous. But clicking mouse is better to use. It's like a clicky keyboard. You need a really clicky keyboard. Yes, I completely agree. But I think if you are a radio presenter, you can make this one sacrifice of not having a pleasing mouse. For the sake of the tens to hundreds of thousands of people who are listening. A pleasing mouse is really important though. Yeah, well, when they're off there, they can use a pleasing mouse just in the studio. You can't use different mice. You can use different mice. Then you have to adapt back and forth. I'm a big fan of the things that click, you press a button. You want to hear it. You want to know that like a switch has been thrown in the machine, it's made contact. It's, you know, it's a beautiful thing. And it happens thousands of times in your life. I do agree. I do agree. But this is actually an interesting debate I have in my house, I'll do with click pads on the MacBook Pro because you know how you can just tap the pad and that counts as a click. Oh, I see. Or you can press the pad completely and make it go click, like, you know, the tactile click. I prefer that click, but I get told off all the time and told why don't you just do the little tap. You don't have to make it click. No, I disable all of that. I don't even allow that to happen on my machine. Right. Now, you have to click. I never even, I never even quite approved of their move to the single, single track pad that also acts as the clicker. There's never a big fan of that. I preferred the separate buttons. But the best is of course, is an external, super clicky mouse. That's what you really want. Yeah, but when you're sneakily using the computer later night and you don't want to get caught, like, you know, you, the lack of, I know how ridiculous he dodged you, that sounds like he's going to stop it. I didn't mean it like that. I moved it just because, you know, I'm checking Reddit when I should be going to sleep. But you don't, you don't go on Reddit that much. I know. And you're too busy making videos all the time. I do. I can't read it. I mean, I don't go on as much as you, but I do go on Reddit a lot. I thought you just grace us with, with, with your presence on the Hello Internet threads. No, I'm, I'm not like a, I'm not like hugely proactive in terms of commenting, but I'm a big consumer. I love, I spent hours and hours on, ask Reddit. Yeah, ask Reddit is very good. Yeah. There's a lot of good sections on there. Yeah. I went, I went through all that in the video, but you know, who is the, who was the biggest redditor and I do not know where he finds the time? Yeah. Is destined from smarter every day. Yeah. That guy is all over the Reddit. And I do not know where he finds the time, but he's, he's, I, I, I feel like I virtually run into him on Reddit all the time. Really? He beats me to interesting subreddits. That man is, that man is a machine. I don't know how he does. He's superhuman. I don't think he sleeps because not only does he make all those awesome videos, but you know, he's got a job and a family and he's, you know, good family man as well. And the Eric and there must be eight of him. Yeah, there, there have to be. He sometimes sends me messages at odd times where it's, it's four in the morning, you know, he's coast time and he sends me a message to ask about something or other. And so he has, I do not think that he sleeps. He is, he is superhuman. And if you don't know who doesn't is, you should go watch his videos. And I will put a link in the show notes. He has lots of very cool slow motion stuff. And yeah, very good sciencey channel to check out. Or just go and read it and you're probably bump into in by the sounds of it. What's he called on Reddit? Mr. Penny Whistle or something, isn't he? Destin is Mr. Penny Whistle, which is an excellent name. The other thing that if you look up his user history, the number of times he has just posted some funny picture and gotten onto the front page of Reddit is also very enormous. He's very good at the Reddit. It's not just his videos or that he shows up. He just, you know, he makes images or posts stuff and it gets to the front page. So he's very good at everything. He does that, man. I'm envious. Oh, there's something else I was going to bring up. View counts on videos. Yes. Just, I guess it ties into what we were talking about as well. Just how important are view counts on videos? You know, how much cache and how much sort of credence is lent to a video by its view count, which is, I think it's something we've discussed before. You know, when someone looks at a video, they look at the view count and decide if the video is any good, not the content of the video. And I had an interesting little experience with this today, which I thought I'd share. Either just with you or with the audience, depending on how brutal you are with the editing this week. But basically, yesterday I was sent a video by a young viewer. It was such a cute video of him, Rollergy Yachtsy. I went, I went even bother with the story behind it. It was just rolling dice. And it was very cute. And it happened to be his birthday today as we record this. And because, I don't know, it just caught me at the right time. And for whatever reason, I decided to make him a little response video. So I used his video and I got a few of the other number file contributors in myself and we all recorded a birthday message to him, saying, happy birthday, Evan, you know, we loved your video and all the best to you and stuff like that. What a good person you are. Yeah, well, there you go. So anyway, I posted it to number file, but I posted it as an unlisted video so that, you know, it didn't go out to 900,000 subscribers and cheese them all off when they're saying, we weren't hardcore math. What's with this fluff? Anyway, right. But I went on to Twitter and Facebook and told some of the viewers about it so they could go onto the video and leave a message in the comments saying, happy birthday, Evan, so that when he watched it, there were lots of people saying, happy birthday to him. And then I sent it to him via his mum or whoever was looking after him. So I got a video back today from the people which showed his reaction to seeing the video and he was so excited and it was so cute and he was like, his voice was going high bitch and he couldn't believe it and it was so much fun enjoying his excitement like when you watch someone open a present. And then he opened the YouTube video page and the first thing he said was, well, it's only had 260 views. First thing he said, he didn't look at the video or the content or anything. And like, apparently he spent the rest of the day being quite excited. I'm told, but you could always say like he was disappointed, like the disappointment that, you know, oh, he's going to be on a number five video and then 200, you know, you know what this was, spreading? What was it? This was a failure in marketing. You need to sell this as a secret video. That's right, that would turn this whole situation around because I can understand from this kid's perspective, oh, I'm going to be on a number five video. I'm going to be internet famous and then boom, 200 views. It's, you know, it doesn't even hit the 301 limit. But did hit the 301. It did hit it. When he opened it. Not when he opened it. And so if you sold it as a secret video, that would be much more exciting. So marketing failure, that's what I, that's what I chalked that one up to. I was going to ask your opinion on this today, actually, but you were so, you're so hard to contact you in the day. And I was going to ask your opinion on whether or not I should release the video to the masses. Well, I haven't seen it, so I can't pass a judgment on that. What would be the, in saying it, what would be your criteria to give me a yes or no? Well, I think this is partly a question about your generosity because presumably the kid would be excited to be number file famous. And so if you release it to all of your subscribers, he will be. But I think depending on the content of the video, if it's just a bunch of people wishing someone a happy birthday, you also have to weigh that against probably a not insignificant proportion of your subscribers being irritated. And then here's the thing that I would worry about, Brady. The future birthday requests. You know that you are going to start to get inundated with everybody's birthday. And then you're just going to seem like a, like a capricious person for granting the magical birthday happiness to this one kid. But then everybody else who writes into you and lets you know about their birthday or post a Yachty video on their birthday, they get nothing. And then you've made them feel worse. So I think you have to weigh the some aggregate of a single child's happiness versus all of the sadness you will produce plus the lost hours of your life dealing with birthday requests forever. Wow. This is how I think about it. That's how I would think about this. Can you guess what I might think would be a good thing to do? Well, you wouldn't have done it first place. Let's pretend I would have done something like this. Okay. Yeah. I would have released it as the secret video. I think that's, that is already above and beyond. But to release it to the general audience, you will reap what you sow. I, I just got a Skype message from Destin, finally enough. I'm just going to tell him that I can't talk. Because we're talking about him. Yeah. We can't talk because we're talking about him on the podcast. Okay. I'm typing in the dark here. Okay. I've told him that. Okay. Well, I tell you what, after the podcast, I'll show you the video and you tell me what to do. I have, I have, I have given you a framework in which to make a decision. The decision is yours. I mean, the thing I'm more wanted to talk to you about was what, was what you felt about the importance we put on the view counter. Well, I, I, that's the thing that I'm going to do. Well, I, that, that's a, again, a hard question to answer in the abstract. In some ways, it is the most important thing because the view counter is proportional to the advertising, which is proportional to our incomes. So the views need to be decent in order to be able to earn an actual living on this. So that, I mean, that's, that's one way, that is one way to look at it. But like we know, someone sends you a video, you know, a friend or a family or you used to see something on Twitter and you go and check it out. You know, is, is the view counter the first thing you look at? It's, it's hard not to look at it as, as the, as the first thing. Does that then color the way you absorb the video? Yeah, I mean, it has to, it has to color the way you, you view the rest of the video. I, this is the, it's not, this is not exactly it, but this is similar to the, you know, it's a psychological bias, but basically the anchoring effect where people perceive things very different. They perceive things very differently based on what they perceived just before the thing. And so I imagine there has to be some kind of anchoring effect with the view numbers. That if you see something with a huge number of views, it affects how you perceive it versus if you see it with a smaller number of views. And, I mean, I'll never be able to find this, this, this paper, but there's, there's an experiment that was run. Sorry internet, I might get the details of this wrong bit, but the gist of it was having people listen to a random selection of unknown music and having them determine what songs they like the best. And not, not surprisingly, the view numbers or the listen numbers on, on the songs influence people's opinions about what songs they thought they liked the best. So I'm sure that, I mean, there has to be a similar effect with the videos. The original, the original study was talking about the interesting thing was about the, the superstar effect. So, you know, why do some musicians end up as just, just make a superstars? And if you run the experiment multiple times with different groups of people, but the same set of music, and everyone can see everybody else's views and you slightly randomize it at the start, the, the superstars are different every time. People still have preferences for what is bad music or what is good music, but the, the absolute top 1% is, is somewhat random, who actually ends up there. And it depends very highly on the initial number of views that you get. So, yeah, the view counts have to affect how people perceive the videos. Yeah. Yeah, just, it can't be any other way. And that, that's just the way the universe is, I guess. Yeah. Do you feel okay about that? I feel like you, you, you have some sort of sad reservation. No, no, no, no, I think you're completely right. I'm just thinking I should go to like some of my less successful videos and just write on them that their secret videos. And then people weren't, weren't feel so bad about the low view counts on them. I'm sure that would work very well. This is our 10th podcast. Yes. We always said we were going to do 10. Yes, that was the plan from the start. So, this feels like a time to reflect, Yes. To look back at the highs and the lows, Yes. The good times in the bed. The podcast also goes all Cp are now. Yeah. We need some, some sort of sad, but also slightly hopeful music. I'll get Alan, I'll get Alan to make something and you can just play it under this little bit here. Yes, yes. Think about the highs and the lows, where we've been, what we've done. The good times in the bed. The good times in the bed. The laughs and the tears. The tears that I might have caused other people listening to the show are very sorry. Yeah. So, how are you feeling about it? I don't know. I'm feeling, I am feeling very mixed about this podcasting experiment. I think maybe like we were talking about before with people become teachers because they know about teachers. One of the things I've been thinking about doing some sort of podcast for a long time, because I am a huge consumer of podcasts. You know, I have listened to podcasts for years and years just all the time. So, it was something always in the back of my mind to do as a project. And just like becoming a teacher, when you try to do a podcast, you discover it is a very different kind of thing than maybe you thought about it in the beginning. So, I have definitely enjoyed it, but it has been very interesting. How has it been different? What's something that was different to what you expected? Well, the thing that strikes me about it the most is listening to myself speak extemporaneously. So, as we discussed on a previous podcast, when I prepared for lessons as a teacher or when I prepared for speaking engagements that I had, I did a lot of practice with those presentations. And I was, my style was to seem like I was speaking extemporaneously, but it was relatively well rehearsed. But now this is the real deal on the podcast. Like today, we both kind of showed up with nothing and just said, oh well, I guess let's hit record and let's see what happens. And so, hearing myself actually talking in a genuinely unstructured, unprepared way is a very strange experience. And the thing that causes me a lot of pain when I listen back is I think of like the previous episode with schools. When I'm editing it, I listen to myself and I think, why don't you finish that thought? Or the obvious conclusion to come to is this, why didn't you say that? And it's a very, it's a strange thing to hear yourself making an argument and then also be wondering why you're not following up on what seems like the most obvious thing to follow up on. Because you've got this crazy Australian interrupting over time and asking stupid questions, that's why. Sometimes, but but but sometimes it's like I can hear myself lose the plot of my own argument in the middle of it. And it's also just as anyone has ever had the experience of hearing your own self recorded is it's always just horrifying to hear yourself back. And I was discussing this with with some comment around on the thread. But there's also just a really big difference in seeing yourself on a video clip or hearing yourself and an audio clip for a brief period of time. And then as as with some of these shows going back and listening to yourself talk about something for two hours is a is a whole other level of pain. Because at that scale, you can't help but start tuning into all of your own personal audio ticks or the way you say things or your particular inflections. And every one of them becomes a tiny dagger of pain in in the way that you perceive yourself. And and in your head you think you're being so smooth and so convincing. And then you listen to yourself and and you have to face the reality that maybe you're not so smooth. Maybe you're not so convincing. But here's the interesting thing that I want to ask you on that point. Do you have that same kind of feeling listening to yourself. Do you do you find it an awkward experience when you listen back? I haven't hated it as much on the podcast here as I do when I'm in videos in my own videos. I don't like seeing and hearing myself in my own videos. I mean, I don't like how my voice sounds and you know, I listen and think, I wish I sounded less breathy and I wish that my voice was better. But I have found it a lot more tolerable here than anywhere else. And the other and the other thing that I have found is again, almost opposite to you. And maybe it's because you do more of the talking and I do more of the asking. But I'm always amazed how much I say exactly what I wish I would say. Like, like, I'll be I'll be listening to you talk. And this question will come into my head that I really want to ask you. And then I will ask the question in the podcast and like, I always think asking questions because I never prepare questions. And I just sort of, you know, and I always think it's quite a random thing. But now I'm beginning to realize maybe it's, you know, it is just the natural way I think because nine times out of 10, even the wording of the question or some or even some corny joke or remark that I'll make to you is exactly what I'm thinking I should make. Maybe it's because I remember saying it the first time around. I don't know. But that has been the thing. And like, I will laugh something you say, as you say on the podcast, when I'm listening back. And then I'll hear myself laugh on the podcast exactly the same way. I'm really surprised how predictable I am. To myself. So you, you were thinking of a question, you hear yourself ask it and then you think, oh, good on me for asking that question. That was that was exactly what I wanted to know. Yeah. I mean, it's a funny thing because of my, my, because you know, my job is asking questions. That's what I do on my videos as well. But recently I went to a lecture given by a woman who was really fascinating and interesting and asked in the audience. And I had all these questions I wanted to ask like all the way through the lecture, like depending on what she was talking about. And I found a really unusual experience to not be allowed to interrupt and ask the questions I wanted to ask. And I was just having to sit there passively and sit through the lecture. So I've become a bit spoiled in that way. So in that respect, I haven't, I haven't hated listening to myself as much as I expected to. The thing that I thought would be interesting for you, unless so for me again, because this podcast is almost like a lot of my videos. It's, it's someone talking and me asking questions. So it's not a big stretch for me. But obviously it's a big stretch for you because you're used to these tightly prepared, structured, short pieces of communication in your, in your typical videos. And in some ways, this is the exit, this opposite in almost every single way. Yes. How have you found that aspect of it, not, not, not kind of the torch and soul, or I hate my voice, or I wish I did a better job, but just the actual changing format. Yeah, it's, it's, it's very different and like is it liberating in some ways? Do you like being able to just expand on points and not have to summarize it in one pithy sentence? Or do you, do you not like that kind of flabby nature of podcasting? This goes to the heart of, of why I was thinking about a podcast as a thing to do because when, when I first got into podcasting, and I mean, this is now, I mean, whenever, whenever the, the first iPod came out, you know, back in the day, I've been listening to podcasts for a long, long time. And they started out as, as real produced radio show, but as, as time and technology marched on more and more people, normal people started doing podcasts that were in this genre that I think of as the two dudes talking genre. And there are, there are a ton of podcasts which kind of fall into this genre. It's not always two guys, but it's, you know, it's usually two guys, at least in the kinds of podcasts that I listen to. So we're not breaking your ground here exactly then. No, this is not, this is not new ground. And I have to say that those kinds of podcasts I found very hit or miss. So I have a tendency to go through podcasts where I will suddenly in a burst subscribe to 20 new podcasts and then with a little back down some sort of growing and winnowing my podcast list. And so I have, I have overtime added a lot of of two dudes talking podcasts and then realized, you know, I hate 19 out of 20 of these and cut them back. But I would keep one or two and I do think while we are not breaking new grounds with the two dudes talking genre, I, I think that that kind of communication was, was a new sort of thing that you can have a, in quotes show. That's two people having a casual conversation, but that's still broadcast and the key to all of those podcasts that I kept was basically, do I like the two dudes? Do I find them interesting? And I almost didn't care what they're talking about in particular. And so our definitely shows that I have listened to where I have no ability to really judge what they're talking about, but I like the personality of guys and so I listen to that. Yeah. And so because, because that format exists, that was getting on my mind about maybe this is something that we could do and you don't know this Brady. That first video that we did the Americans, you gave it some terrible title. It was that Americans don't understand numbers. Yeah, numbers confuse Americans. Yeah, you gave it some slanderous title. I don't remember exactly what it was. I always meant to change it, but then so many people commented on the title. I felt like I couldn't now change the title. So, I mean, this was a long time ago now, but you asked me to do this video where we're talking about numbers and you cut it in with another American in the UK talking about numbers. And it's not normally this sort of thing that I agreed to, but I agreed to because I was treating that as a kind of test run of can the two of us just talk over Skype together in a friendly kind of way. Like do we do we do we work together as a pair talking about things? So that was a kind of job interview that you didn't know about for a future podcast. So I feel like in the final episode, I have to reveal that to you. It's a secret I've been holding. And now you know. Wow. There you go. Yes. So. I like that video. I think that came out very well, but that was also a video where I see the power of the editing. And so that's why I wanted to make sure that I edit these things. You don't edit these very much. They like, well, you know what? I don't always know how much you edit edit these podcasts because excellent. Yeah. I listen back to them. And I think, oh, yeah, he's, you know, I might realize you've taken something out because we discussed it. We discussed and said, oh, that didn't work. Let's just chop it. But quite often I'll just be doing something during the week. And I'll think, oh, yeah, I remember discussing that with Gray. And then I'll go, hang on a second. I did discuss that with him, but it wasn't in the podcast. Well, yeah, sometimes it doesn't make it. It's usually boring stories by me that get cut. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you did have, you did have seven segments today for Brady's paper cuts. And I don't know how many of them are going to make it through. It's just so, so many. But yeah, so I guess all of this was just leading to trying to answer your question that I, I like this format. But part of that is contingent upon the listener's understanding that this is just a conversation between two dudes. And I don't have, I've notes and we're just talking about stuff. And one of the things that is both interesting in writing and in this case of hearing yourself talk and editing it later is the number of times that you can disagree with yourself. So I find this often when I write things down for scripts or for some other projects that I'm working on, where I'm writing something down. And I'll write a sentence. And then upon editing it back, I'll think, I don't agree with this thing that I said I think, and I wrote it down in this way. Because writing is a kind of externalized thought process. And editing is revising your thoughts. And I think that that's very helpful to the thought process. And there have been times where I have written something, an intended article for my blog. And then it doesn't get published because I have unconvinced me of whatever my point was that I was trying to make through the process of, okay, let me structure this. Let me really think what my points are. And so when you talk about the podcast, you only have half of that. So I can hear myself making points. But there isn't any any ability to go back and to revise and to say, you know, that was a weak point. Or there have definitely been things where I have said something. And I thought, you know what, I don't know if I really agree with that. Or I don't know if this is actually the best way to make a point in a convincing kind of way. And listeners to the last episode who listened all the way to the end, well, no, I left in a point where we talked about how long the podcast was. And I think the final version ended up being much shorter because that that was one place where we were talking about some things and in the editing later, it was the first time I really did this in the podcast, but I thought, I said some things that I just, I don't think I can express them this way or that's not a good way to express them. And so I cut it out. But yes, so I said, I like this podcast, but I feel like you, dear listener, this is this is a, like a conversation between friends. And you're here listening to me and just like with any conversation between friends, you can't necessarily hold any of the conversation lists to a particular sentence they said forever. Yeah. And this, this is a lesser bar of statements. And so I think my, my videos are a very high bar of statements. I think about those things a lot before I say them. But this is different. And so the answer to your question is, yes, I find this an interesting different sort of format. I do, I do worry a little bit about putting stuff out there that I do know and editing later on as I've done all the podcasts where I think, ooh, I'm not sure I really agree with whatever that was, but I, but I put it out there because that's what this is. It's a, it's a conversation and it's one of the reasons why I really like having feedback at the beginning that there's a chance maybe to revisit things that we've said before. And there's a chance for me to, if I've come across something new in the interim to, to change my mind about whatever we're going to talk about in the future. So yeah, that's a very long answer to your question about how I feel about the point. I couldn't even what the question was, but I think people get that though. I think people get that it's like not quite so concrete. And it's a bit more just kind of thinking out loud and getting stuff wrong. And like I don't think you need to worry about it. It's just like the same way you leave in the ums and hours and when you misspeak. That's almost leaving that stuff in not only does it save you about three weeks of work. But it also is a signpost to people that this is just, this is just rough. This is not, this is a rough copy to thinking about ideas and opinions. I mean, my hard life is like, I don't know what my opinion on something is and I just argue will argue the opposite of whoever I'm happy to be talking to. And then the next day I could be arguing the exact opposite. And there are very few things that, you know, I feel so strongly about that. I think I'm a bit wishy-washy in that way, not that I don't have strong opinions, but maybe I can just see both sides of things more easily than a lot of other people. Like I never understand why people are so passionate about certain subjects because I always can just see I see both sides of it. Yeah, I mean, I like cricket, you know, I don't understand how anybody could be really passionate about that. And I'm glad you also don't feel very strongly about that. Yeah, but if I was talking to the world's biggest cricket fan, I could quite easily see here and make the case that actually is a bit boring. So I could do that. You can make the case, but you wouldn't feel it. You wouldn't feel it deep down. Yeah, probably one of the only things I wouldn't get on board with as people saying the moon landing's were fake. I'm not, I'm not having that. But other than that, I'm pretty easy going, because there anything you think we did wrong? Right. There's nothing that we have done wrong, but I would say that there is a difference that some people can notice, which is that the first three episodes were different from the first three episodes. And that's because the first three, they were relatively well prepared. That was that was before we made any of this public. And I did spend time trying to create a bullet pointed list of points that I wanted to make and things that I thought were more convincing. Now, once you're thrown into the lion's den of actually speaking about it, it still was a bit muddled. But those were prepared arguments that I kind of wanted to make. I have always known that as this has gone on, that if it is to survive, it's going to survive as the two dudes talking genre. If people are interested in participating in this conversation, listening to us talking on the Reddit, saying hi on Twitter, this is an internet conversation, which is kind of why it's hello internet, right? It's not just you and me, it's you and me in the back and forth with our silent participants right now. And then our vocal participants when we put it up. And so that's why it transitioned from something that was very well prepared and structured in the beginning to this, because that is the only way that it can have a longer life. Because I already spend too much time preparing the videos that I make. And there is not mental space in my life for trying to structure an argument on a semi regular basis, you know, to then to then argue back and forth with you about. So that that I think is a transition that some people have noticed and I'm perfectly okay with some people saying, oh, the later episodes are not for me because I understand that I do this with podcasts as well, subscribe to a bunch. And then you realize, you know what this this particular conversation is not a conversation for me, but the ones that I do listen in on, I know I really like being there as the silent participants, whenever those shows come out. That's that's something that is is just a kind of technical point about the podcast that seems really obvious to me, but if maybe other people just sense some sort of shift, but couldn't articulate it. So that's that's me trying to articulate a little bit what has gone on as as the podcast has gone through these 10 episodes. I can imagine that I mean, if someone is listening because they're like, you know, a fan of your videos and a fan of you, they'll probably, you know, take some level of interest, no matter what you're talking about because because they like you for whatever reason. I say that as if I can't imagine any reason to like you, but that's not what I meant, but there are many reasons to dislike me. The, and I can imagine someone like who's quite into YouTube thinking, well, these two guys met YouTube videos. So when they're talking about that, you know, I guess they know what they're talking about to some extent. But yeah, would we start going a bit off-paste and talking about just like personal opinions on all sorts of stuff. I guess that's when you venture into, we're hang on. Like why would why do people want to hear you and I talk about hanging a mirror or things like that. So I guess that's when it gets a bit. Yeah, and that is what defines the two dudes talking genre is those kinds of moments. Yeah. And this, we probably need to get better at that then. I think I think my hanging a mirror anecdote was, you know, and not enjoying a movie. Yeah. But leave that in. I can't even remember if I left in your movie, your movie review of the place of smoke. No, yeah, you did leave it in. Thanks for that. It was brilliant. It was brilliant. Well, it could have been good if you had like taken the bait, but when you said, I haven't seen it, you left me nowhere to go. You left me in the wind. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. So anyway, you could have like said, oh, what didn't you like about it and tell me more, but you were like, no, I haven't seen it. Next. My level of interest is zero. Do you think do you feel like, because I'm not a podcasting, well, I wasn't a podcast this night before we started this. And I have since gotten gotten into a small handful of all recommendations from you that I've gotten very into. If I'm honest, I really enjoy them now, but I was bit of a, I was bit of a novice, whereas you obviously have this long history. Is it something you're influenced by? Like can one have a podcasting style and therefore be influenced or are you just, you know, are people just themselves? Or do you feel like having listened to so many you kind of, you know, do you take on a persona? I mean, how does that work? Well, because I listen to some of your podcasting heroes. That's like your little joky term for them. Yeah. I listen to some of those guys, you know, who you've named before, you know, the kind of John Syracuse and the world. They do great podcasts and I've become a real big fan of them too. And occasionally there are little bits of you in the pod in our podcast where I think, oh, that was very much like something they would say or do or some little, some to some little thing. And I wonder if that's just because you're like those guys and that's why you like them because they're kind of like you anyway, or whether or not, you know, you're a bit influenced by that. Do you have a, I would just, yeah, I would guess it's more. Well, let's put this way. There's a, I forget the name for this, but there's this interesting phenomenon when if you, if you ask people about other people, can you describe this other person? They, they will give you answers that are very narrow and very definitive. That guy is a jerk, you know, she is very nice. Yeah. But if you ask them to describe themselves, people talk about their reactions to things situationally. I was grumpy this morning because I didn't have my coffee in a, or I was feeling really happy. And so I was in a generous mood in a people kind of acknowledge external factors. And that people will also acknowledge for themselves that they are different in different situations. So again, if you think that people think someone is a jerk, they imagine he's a jerk all the time and he's a jerk to his wife and his dog and his postman. And he is always a jerk. And this person who is nice is nice to everyone is just flowers all the time. And if you think about that, you can, you can understand that. You know, you, you can see how this, this is the case. Just imagine other people you know when you're life. And if you have some boss that you hate, it's hard to imagine that that boss really loves their dog and goes home and like, oh, I'm here as a model. It was like shaking the dog and like really happy, right? It's, it's hard to visualize. Were you calling the dog smuggle? I was, I think I was trying to say smuggle wounds. I don't know. I was trying to get some ridiculous cute thing to say about a dog. Okay. So, so, so anyway, the point of this is just that this is one of those cases where, as I am me, I am aware of the different facets of me in a way that, that other people are not. And so, when I'm on this podcast and you, and you ask, oh, am I being influenced by other people or is it, is it, what is it? This to me feels much more like the when I'm in a social situation. And this is, this is the social side of me. I'm making a real effort to be a much more talkative, much more outgoing person. So, the, the podcast me is, is this side of my personality that is not often expressed, which is also why it's, this is an interesting thing for me to do because I would say the, the majority of, of the time of my life, I am, I'm very, very quiet, very sort of introverted and just sort of want to be left alone. And, and so, when I, when I do this, I kind of, I gear up for this in the same way that I, I gear up for going out to a party with a bunch of people. I was like, okay, I have to, I have to switch into the different personality type. And so, and so that's what this is. The reason why it might sound like some of the other podcasters is because this aspect of my personality is, is maybe similar to that sort of aspect of those other people's personalities. And that's why I like to listen to their shows. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's that there's different sides to people and the listeners now are hearing this external, external side of me. But, I mean, I'm thinking about you and you always seem relatively consistent to me, but this is just me kind of falling for the same sort of bias, I imagine. Or I don't know, how do, how do you, are you a different sort of person when you're doing interviews or when you're, when you're talking to me as opposed to the rest of your life? Um, you seem really consistent, but I said I think I might be falling for that same bias. I don't know, I don't feel, I don't feel very different. Like, like doing these is not a big deal to me and like I don't go into a mode or anything, it's, it really is just a case of, you know, you say, well, let's call it 730 and start chatting and, and we chat before we start recording. And then the only differences we've pressed a red button and then we just keep talking and then. And then as you know, we're soon as we stop recording, we end up talking for another hour after this about, yes, whatever. But secret after show. Yeah, yeah, so I don't like, I don't know, I feel like I am aware of the audience at all times when we're recording like I am. I'm, I'm not so lost in like just to chat with you that I forget that what we're doing has, has listeners. And I guess that colors, how candid maybe I would be about certain things. Yes. And maybe you know, it makes you tread a bit more carefully. But I think it's pretty much, it's pretty much what I'm like and I am just, you know, I am listening to what you say and then just whatever pops into my head. I then say or ask. I guess as you mentioned before, you have proved this because you at a later time think the same thought. So maybe you are the one super consistent human. I'm the robot. So consistent human. That would be like an awesome like Isaac, SML star, twist to the whole thing. Wouldn't it, if it turns out I'm a robot. Yeah. You've come across the turtle in the desert. It's upside down. Why aren't you turning it over Brady? This robot thing by the way, which has been a little running joke. Yeah. 20th, which I've quite enjoyed. At first a few people seem to get a bit riled by on the reddit and think that I was like being unfair or mean to you. I think people now get that kind of way of friends and it's joke. But what do you think about that? That's people having this seeing you as this kind of methodical being. Like have you kind of enjoyed playing to that or do you sometimes feel a bit like, you know, I'm flesh and blood. Do I not bleed sort of thing? Well, I wish I didn't bleed. And I would say that if there is a fundamental core that runs through my personality at all times, it is a relative methodicalness. And I can say that from I have gotten similar comments my entire life and as you were saying just moments ago, we're always aware of the audience when recording something like this. And there's always things that you would say in private as opposed to in a public form. And I would say there are many times in my life where people have said like, oh man, you have just come to like the coldest conclusion possible based on these possible facts. Like that is that's just unbelievably unhuman. I think, well, yes, but you're not arguing with my conclusion or the starting facts. And so I do, yeah, there is a certain kind of methodicalness that I do try to apply to just about everything in life. But yeah, I mean, obviously, like everyone else, I am susceptible to all kinds of cognitive biases and all of that stuff. But I do try to be methodical and that is a kind of feedback I've been getting from people in my life for all of my life. And I think one place that this comes up where I know with family sometimes it drives some members of my family a little bit crazy is that when I make decisions about something, if it turns out later that I'm wrong or I just don't agonize about decisions or I don't agonize about past decisions. And I think that people sometimes perceive that it's just like, how can you not agonize about the fact that you were wrong? And it's like, well, I made a decision based on the things that I knew at the time. And there was no other decision for me to possibly make given the information that I knew if I knew what I knew now then, then I would have made a different decision. So there's no point in running over this. So you're incapable of regret? I would not say that I'm incapable of regret, but it's just... I don't ever regret, do you ever regret things? I can't think of anything I regret to be honest now because... To say that I am incapable is a very different statement from do you regret? Maybe you're saying maybe one day you regret something, but you never have in all your life until now. Regret is a... Regret presumes that you could have acted differently under the circumstances under which you found yourself. So you're just saying regret doesn't exist? I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it implies there's like an impossibility in some ways with regret. So it's impossible to regret? No, people obviously do regret things. It's just not sensible because you made decisions. I can understand regret if a decision is made on the edge. If you're 51% one way and 49% another way and you pick the wrong one, then I can kind of understand regret. But I would say that I don't often find myself in those kinds of situations where it's 59, 41% for something that's important. I usually find that most decisions seem pretty heavily weighed one way or the other. And then that makes regret more difficult because all the evidence at the time was pointing in one particular way. Can you regret not having had more evidence at the time? How would you have acquired such evidence? I don't know. This is my point right. If the previous me in a way that you don't know, which you know regret. Yes, but the version of me who made the past me who made that decision didn't know that he needed more evidence. And so could not have pursued such actions. And so therefore, there was no regret to be had. So back to my original statement, you're incapable of regret. I guess I'll say that if I haven't yet come across a major decision that was very much on the edge in which I decided wrongly. I think that circumstance is a circumstance under which I can easily envision genuine, genuine regret. But as I said, I often just think, I made the decision that I made at the time and I would have made the same decision again given the same information that I knew then. But yes, this is all to say that yes, I have been hearing the robot slash computer comparison from everyone in my life for all of my life. So it's no surprise that it comes up when people listening to the podcast hear me just talking about stuff. I think since almost the third or fourth podcast, some people have been saying that they hope there will be more. We've never really, I don't know if we know, but I guess it's something to think about addressing at some point. How are we going to address this? Are we going to decide now or have we decided or are you going to let people know or how should we leave that? Or is it just a big mystery? Is it just another abrupt end in like the other ones? It would be really terrible if it ended right now. Oh God, that's terrible. .
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