H.I. No. 75: "World's Most Interesting Podcast"

"HI #75: 'World's Most Interesting Podcast'" is the 75th episode of Hello Internet, released on December 19, 2016. It is the only Hello Internet episode with more than three sponsors.
==Official Description==
Brady & Grey chat about: the world chess championship, Norwegian Bank notes, Brady does antiquing through twitter, behavior control and Santa, Brady’s level of fame, a bird comes back to grey, the new elements, ugly YouTube ads, and consumable synthetic muscle tissue.
==Show Notes==
I know you don't like talking about dreams, but it's not normally that's the thing I get my first. I'll kill. Well you don't normally open with dreams my friend. So one might a bit of follow up and I feel kind of almost guilty now to our Norwegian listeners after my fun little joke last episode about Magnus Carlson being from Sweden, which I deliberately said and then pointed out he was Norwegian. That did cause a minor cuffuffle among Norwegians who love their Magnus. So apologies to those people. It was a joke, which I said very quickly. It was a joke. But how much feedback did you get, Brady? Because you are deliberately provoking feedback from people who listen to the podcast pause immediately in their rage and reply to you. So I'm curious how much feedback along those lines did you actually get from people? Probably 20 to 30 people. That's not too bad. That's not too bad. And I did get a few tweets where people were like tweeting angrily at me and then a few seconds later, like sending apology tweets. My favorite, which I think I shared with the Twitter audience was I was looking at my timeline and there was one person who followed me two seconds later, angrily tweeted me five seconds later sent a tweet saying sorry and you could see the whole thing play out on the Twitter timeline. I mean, real time is quite funny. I will point out that Magnus Carlson did win the World Chess Championship. Oh, did he? Okay. Did. But in circumstances that make me unhappy. Oh, why? What happened? Well, they played best of 12, which might sound silly because it's an even number because you get so many draws in chess. It's irrelevant whether you play an even or odd number of games really. They won one game each and all of the rest were drawn. This was against the Russian Surjay Karayakhan. It was six points all after 12 games because you get half a point each for a draw. And then the way they decided it was with this tie breaker situation and there were this series of tie breakers. They were going to go through the first was in one day they played a best of four rapid chess games. Alex B. Yeah. Maybe it was like ourish games. And if that didn't sort it out, they were going to go to a faster version. And if that didn't work out, they were then going to go to this form of chess called Armageddon chess, which has got super extreme time limits. And if no one has won by the time limit, then the person playing the black pieces is declared the winner. So there has to be a winner of Armageddon chess. Wow, that seems deeply unfair on every level. Well, I guess you know, what has the advantage of starting? And I don't know. It didn't matter because it was sorted out in the rapid chess in the first best of four. They played two draws and then Carlson won the next two to be crowned world champion. They already have like world championships of these other speeds of chess. So I think deciding like the ultimate world chess champion in the long form of the game, having it then decided with this other form of chess is deeply wrong. And also it's well known that Magnus Carlson is very good. You mean he's very good all chess obviously, but he's considered to have an even greater advantage over Karyak and at speed chess. And I think the feeling was once things sort of evened out, he would be happy to play for the draw because he thought he could take out the Russian in the speed chess, which he then did. And I think this is an unfair and a wrong way to have sorted out the world chess championship in the long form of the game to have the world champion basically decided by the guy who's the best at rapid chess. I'm not happy. I still think Carlson's the best chess player in the world. And perhaps I think the fairest thing to have done with a draw championship would be for the defending champion to have kept his title anyway. So I'm quite happy that Magnus Carlson has remained world champion, but I don't like that it was sorted out in this speedy chess format. Yeah, I'm going to completely agree with you here. I mentioned last time that I used to play chess and then I got kind of bored with the game when I realized it's about recognizing patterns. But I did for a while continue to play very rapid speed chess, so where you put maybe five or 10 minutes on the clock for both people. That was fun because it was just a totally different game. You couldn't spend a lot of time thinking about stuff, but I imagine for grandmasters who are really honed in on the precise nature of the game that the difference between the long form version and the hour version, like might as well be like a speed chess kind of game. I totally agree with you. It's like if they're doing a faster version of chess at the end, it feels like they should almost just arm wrestle for the championship. It feels a little bit like we're going to decide the world champion of one game by playing another game. I agree with you. I don't like it. I think they should just keep playing until somebody breaks the draw. If it takes 100 games, like just keep playing, that's what they should do. That could have been pretty awesome. Just so you know, by the way, the rapid chess can have different speeds between 10 and 60 minutes. In this particular case, it was 25 minutes with 10 second increments per move. That's still reasonably fast, though. Interesting. Yeah. The blitz game, if it went to that, it would have been five minutes with three second increments. Yeah. And then if it went to the Armageddon game, which kind of would have been kind of cool, it's actually white pieces get five minutes and the black pieces get four minutes on the clock. Yeah. Like I agree with you. It would be kind of cool to see it go to this Armageddon version, but it feels totally arbitrary. This feels unsatisfactory. This to me feels very much like what's called a penalty shootout in soccer. Are you familiar with the penalty shooter? That's the thing at the end where they kick four times. Five times each. So if a soccer game's drawn and a draw is unacceptable for some reason, like it's a knockout game in a World Cup or something, they would just take penalty kicks from the penalty spot past the goalkeeper, which also I've always thought was a deeply unfair way to decide a soccer game because it's such a niche discipline of the game. But I guess you've got to sort out draws in a timely way sometimes. I don't know. I feel like if it matters as much, we should just keep going. And I'll agree with you with the soccer game. It's like, oh, just keep playing. Someone will eventually score a point. We might be here for five hours, but what's the problem? Let's keep going. You do have a slight problem as well, though. This is another famous story that I'm assuming you won't be familiar with, but it's a bit of a classic in the world of sport. And that is in tennis, tennis sets are first to win six games. OK. But you have to win by two. So you can win the set six four or six three or six two, but you can't win six five. OK, so there's a margin you have to overcome. Yeah, you have to win by two. This is to compensate for the fact that a person who serves in a game has a big advantage. So you have to break the other person's serve at least once. This is why I exist. I like your intense sports voice. You use this every once in a while when you're talking about sports. This is my favorite stuff. It used to be in the olden times you would just keep playing. And it could go to eight six or it could go to 10 eight. And you would keep playing until someone got an advantage of two. Someone broke the other person's serve. This resulted in the introduction of the tie breaker. So for set of tennis gets to six o'clock, you play sort of a special kind of mini game called a tie breaker. It's like a penalty shootout or like a Blitz game of chess. Whoever wins that tie breaker wins the set seven six. You move on to the next set. But in Grand Slam tournaments such as Wimbledon, it's considered unfair to decide the whole match on tie breakers. So in say a men's game, which is best of five sets, the first four sets can be decided by tie breakers. OK. But if you get to two sets old and you're playing the fifth and deciding set, it's considered unfair to decide that with a tie breaker. So it goes to the old fashioned way of you have to win by two. And like you're saying, you could play forever. You'll just keep taking it in turns games, one person serving and the other person serving until someone wins the set by two. There was a very famous match in 2010 at Wimbledon between a guy called John Isner from the United States and a guy called Nicholas Mahoot who is French. Isner won the first set six four and then Mahoot won the second set six three. And then the next two sets both went to tie breakers and were shared. So it came to the fifth set. Both of them are quite good servers. So it's hard to break their serve. And this this set went for a long time. And in fact, it was finally won by Isner. The final set was one 70 to 68. Oh my god. And the tennis match went for over 11 hours and was played over three days. Whoa. One was serving, then the other was serving. And like they couldn't break each other's serve and it just kept going. It's been called the endless match. Wow. So that's the danger you could have had with Karyakhan and Carlson. Imagine that a year and a half just draw after draw after draw. Maybe in retrospect, I am. Under estimating just how closely matched the best in the world can be. And so my formula of just keep playing until you break the draw might actually be a terrible idea under many more circumstances than I think it would be. I was to a prefer it. Or you just say that the world champion retains their crayon if they can't be beaten in the format that is given to the challenger. I don't know. I guess that's a bit unsatisfying in this day and age, but I think that seems not unreasonable. Okay. I do have to say Brady, that listening to you describe lovingly all of the little details of the sport, which rapidly fly by me as soon as you have said them. I feel like I am forever dreading and looking forward to the inevitable day when you take me to a cricket game and explain all of the cricket to me. Like this has been on our list of things to do for a long time. I do want to have it happen. But listening to you talk now and I have that feeling of like that'll be a fun day and also an incredibly mentally exhausting day. For me too though. I'm so frustrated by it already because it hasn't even happened. I know. Because there's such a balancing act between just understanding the fundamentals of the game, the rules of the game. And then the nuance and the game within the game, which is what people love so much, but you can't appreciate that until you understand the game. You don't know which way to sort of tip it. Do I lovingly explain the game within the game and the nuance? Or do I have to just explain the basic rules and it's hard to get that right? I mean, this is actually like what our job is with making sort of educational YouTube videos as well, right? It's like this is always the problem, especially when you assume that the person listening, like in this case with cricket, knows essentially nothing. You can very quickly work yourself into a situation where it's hard as the more knowledgeable person to know where to begin. Because yeah, it's like there's lots of stuff that's interesting once you know all of the background, but it can be kind of hard to disentangle what's confusing. For someone new to this topic. And I think with the sport stuff, which you may find is you might have to go way more basic than you're even imagining because there's probably lots of things come into all sports that you just don't even realize that I am unaware of that we might have to start with ground assumptions. So. Okay. So the reason I brought it up was because we have a little bit of follow up. We were talking about the new Norwegian banknotes a while ago, which were quite some quite cool designs. And I was contacted by Tim the other day and he told me that the official now, the ones that we discussed way back when and linked to in the show notes have been slightly tweaked since and honed and refined and signed off. And they have now got their final newly designed banknotes. They don't look much different to me. They're pretty much how we discussed them last time, sort of nautical objects and things like lighthouses and fishing boats. And then on the other side, a really weird abstract, blurred pixelation of the same images. But that was all well and good. But then I was trying to read a bit more about it, thinking, ah, how are people responding to them? And at that point, I realized that actually still not in circulation yet. This is one of these new stories that has about 18 full starts. Like water on Mars. Yeah. Water on Mars. Exactly like that. Yeah. Although the designs have been finalized, they don't start hitting people's wallets and purses until around the middle of next year. But one thing that I did find interesting was this new story I read and said these banknotes have been described as the world's most beautiful banknotes in quotes. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I wonder who did that? And then I've done a bit more digging. And it seems like there's no real source to it. And it actually comes from the Norwegian bank itself. Was that by the design as mum or the head of the bank or some official design organization? And it did make me think it's amazing how just throwing something out there and especially putting it in quotes. Actually, I've got an idea. I'm going to do a tweet. I'm just going to write, hello internet, Colin and then quote marks, world's most interesting podcast. What I'll do then is I'll put a little dash 2016 because when you do that as well, it seems like more official. OK, perfect. I'm putting that out there. All right, I'll retweet it. It helps spread it along. You read it first on Twitter. So Norway may have the world's most beautiful banknotes. And they're now being discussed on the world's most interesting podcast. You're just putting that quote out there. We had a few retweets and likes already. So words getting out. I mean, you are a fan of these banknotes. As am I, what do you think of world's most beautiful banknotes? Are you willing to endorse that? Again, I'm a fan of these notes, but that exact quote, like the world's most beautiful. I'm not sure I could sign off on that. Maybe they're the world's coolest banknotes. That's what it should be, right? Brady Harren, 2016, world's coolest banknotes. But what this doesn't seem to me like is is almost designed by committee. Like, they've made some bold choices. It doesn't mean that I necessarily like everything that they have done, but I like that they're visually distinct banknotes. They look different from other stuff that I've seen. Thumbs up on this one, Norway. But most beautiful, I'm not 100% sure. I like your description way better. Well, maybe the bank of Norway will update their website and have my description instead. That would be a cue for the world's most interesting podcast. On this holiday season episode of Hello Internet, I want to welcome a fantastic new sponsor to the show away. First class luggage at a coach price. Just the other day, I found waiting for me in my office a surprise. This company had shipped me their travel luggage to take a look at. And I have to say, I am really picky about this stuff, but I am very, very impressed with their luggage. Away is a company that was founded by two friends from New York who found themselves at JFK with dead phones, delayed flights, and a bright idea. Luggage with power. That's actual electrical power is what they're talking about here. Not only have they manufactured a very high quality, really sturdy suitcase, they've also put into it a battery with USB and micro USB outlets to charge all of your devices while you're traveling. I don't know about you, but when I'm traveling, I always get really paranoid about the battery on my phone. Actually, paranoid isn't the right word, because I really do run into this problem all the time, where my phone just runs out of charge when I'm traveling. Even if I put it in low power mode, it becomes a thing that I have to babysit. But away luggage with their built-in battery will allow you to charge your iPhone five times over. Having that while you're traveling is just such an incredible piece of mind. It takes the phone's battery from something that you have to worry about and that you have to babysit to something that you just never have to think about. But this is just one of the features that impressed me with this suitcase. They're also using just such high quality materials. It just feels like a really solid suitcase as soon as you touch it. So many suitcases, they're really flimsy. Right? The zippers don't zip very well. Right? The outside materials don't feel sturdy and strong. Not this suitcase. It's made with premium German polycarbonate, unrivaled in strength and impact resistance while still being very lightweight. The other thing that really matters is it's a four wheel suitcase. Now, if you've never used a four wheel suitcase, you need to change the way you live right now. If you think two wheels is adequate, you are wrong. The difference between four wheels and two wheels on a suitcase is just as big as the difference between two wheels and no wheels. Being able to take a suitcase and have it have it by your side all the time, like a really well healed dog changes the way you can move around an airport. The suitcase is always just right by your side. It changes the way you interact with lines. It changes the way you move in a crowd. It changes the turning radius that you can make when you're moving around. It's so fantastic. But not all four wheeled suitcases are made the same. So when they sent me this suitcase, I took it out the other night on rough London streets under all sorts of different circumstances to make sure that these wheels worked really well. And I have to say they passed with flying colors. There are so many features about this thing. I couldn't possibly run through them all. But I do want to mention just a couple other quick things. They have a TSA approved combination lock that is built right into the top of the bag to help secure your belongings. But also make sure that the security agencies in the United States don't rip open your bags if they ever want to take a look on the inside. That's a thing that will really ruin your day, right? American security in the airlines is enough of a hassle. It's really unpleasant when they tear open your bag to get inside of it. A TSA approved lock that will avoid a really unpleasant situation on the other end of your flight. So this is also like four wheels. A bag has to have a TSA approved lock on it. Of course, the carry on size is compliant with all US major airlines, while also maximizing the amount that you can possibly pack inside of it with this clever patent pending compression system that they're using, which is quite neat. There's just so much about this that makes it a really great suitcase. It's obviously like an engineering mindset applied to the problem of traveling and packing. They're so confident in this suitcase. They offer a lifetime warranty. If anything breaks, they'll fix it or replace it. And they give you a 100 day trial to use it. You can take this suitcase on flights for three months to put it through its paces and see that it is the correct suitcase for you. And if you don't like it, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. So right now, go to awaytravel.com slash hi to get $20 off your suitcase. When you use the promo code hi during checkout. And if you order by 1 p.m. Eastern on December 21st with two day shipping, your suitcase will arrive in time for the holiday, which could be great for your travel or it could make a great gift. I'm just saying, you know, it's a fantastic suitcase and we all know people who have really sad suitcases and we're very likely to see them during the holidays. So fantastic gift if you want to do that as well. And if you're a really last minute shopper or you're listening to this podcast, late eGift cards are also available and also much smaller to put under the Christmas tree. So once again, thank you to awaytravel for sponsoring this episode of Hello Internet and you should go to awaytravel.com slash hi to check out their suitcase and get $20 off with promo code hi. Got a couple of you emails? I like this one. Hello, Brady. I'm a firefighter, paramedic in Virginia, stumbled across Hello Internet podcasts recently. I listen quite often during training exercises and workouts at the station. Due to the nature of the job, I've quite a bit of downtime and I've listened to the first 40 podcasts in about three weeks time, not bad. So within a month, I should be caught up to current. I wanted to share an interesting story regarding the podcast at my job. I was listening during a workout and we received a call for a structure fire just down the street. I rushed to throw in my gear and jump in the truck to head to the incident. Upon arrival, there was heavy smoking showing from the structure, a very frantic lady ran up to us. She stated her dog was still in the structure on the second floor. Oh no. Here he lapses into normal language. As we entered the house, so we now know what the structure is, I somehow restarted the podcast in my pocket and still had the ear buds in. I ironically was listening to the story of Derek the Skiediver in episode 44, Jump Out of Plains while listening to the podcast. So nice little symmetry there. And although it was absolutely incidental, I just wanted to let you know that you and Gray played a small part in saving a golden retriever from a burning building. Not bad, eh? Oh, that's fantastic. I like that one. And it does sound very legitimate with the firefighter lingo. That's fantastic. Yeah, I mean, like all these stories, it could be made up. I believe it. I believe it's true. There was no photographic verification provided, which I always enjoy in emails. But for all I know, that could be a work of fan fiction. But if so, well done. Yeah, I'll let it pass. But next time if you're a firefighter saving a dog in a burning building, we would like the headcam footage with the Hello Internet audio playing in the background at the same time, just to be sure. That would get you a Hello Internet Medal of Honor. I also wanted to share another view of your interaction from a while ago. I can't believe I forgot to tell this story, but also I just realised I'm on really an accidental pun form today, because this would be a truncated version of a story about trunks. Because as you know, I don't mind an old trunk, an old steamer trunk from the good old days. You have a magnificent one in your hands. Yeah, the coffee table in our lounge is a lovely old steamer trunk with old initials stenciled on it and still some old stickers from the days when it was going on ships and things. I love that they've got like names painted on them and they've got bit of a story to them. I like that they've got a history and they're also nice looking objects and they're quite useful for storing things as well. So it's win-win-win. So I recently had an email from a team in New Zealand who came across a trunk they thought I might like. I've got it here in the room next to me. You can tell how the story is going to end already. It was used on a passenger liner called the SS Ionic. I believe it's in Ionic Bond. Traveling New Zealand to London and the passengers name which is painted on it rather ornately is Miss Harron. It's always been my dream to find a trunk with like BJH but to have one with my surname which is reasonably unusual was a coup. So this Tim from New Zealand said look what I found in an antique store like around the corner and I was like can you go back and take some more pictures of it say went back and took more pictures and sent them to me and I was like you just got to buy that thing. You got to buy that for me now and send it to me. I don't care about the cost. So he did and I like I pay pay out him the money. Apparently he did a bit of negotiating for me and got a few New Zealand dollars knocked off the price and then he shipped it to me. I think the shipping cost more than the trunk itself. Right of course. Of course. And it now has pride of place in one of my officers here. I'll post a picture in the show notes if people want to see my Miss Harron trunk. It's quite big. I think you could probably fit seven or trees in it maybe. Wow. A trunk larger than us for seven two hours. Yeah. Maybe. You'd have to pack them in tightly. Of course you would. So it's a decent size but it was an absolute coup. So thank you very much. That isn't absolute coup. I have just delighted at the idea of you doing antique shopping through Twitter is essentially what you're doing like crowdsourced antique shopping is what's occurring here. This is amazing. Can I put a shout out for the other thing? I'm in the market for at the moment. In case any Tim's going to help me out with my antique. Oh my god. Please go right ahead. I guarantee you this will not be cut. The thing I've been the market for at the moment and I'm finding it hard to find and I do have very strict requirements because the room I need to get in is very difficult room to negotiate large objects into and also obviously it has to be in the UK because it's a big heavy thing I want. But what I want at the moment for my second office slash film studio is an old school tech studies bench with a couple of vices on it. You know there's old wooden ones that have got like a million old marks and dense in them. I don't know what you mean. A tech study bench. What do you call the subject at school where you would do like woodwork and things like that? Oh I can't like a sharp class I think is that what you mean? They're called tech studies in the UK and in Australia. So I want those old wooden benches where you would do woodwork at school on probably from an old school and I want it to be all dented up and have things engraved in it and like have a real history and a story and then I might like you know buff it up and polish it a bit. That would look nice wouldn't it? I think that would look nice. That would look absolutely lovely. So I'm on eBay looking at them so don't just send me like obvious ones on eBay because I would have seen them already. It does have to be a little on the small side but if you know you're working a school in the UK and you're throwing away your tech studies benches on that but I will be fussy. Well in particular my wife especially will be fussy but I'm in the market so let me know. Keep an eye out people maybe we need to coordinate this on a separate thread on the Hello Internet subreddit or something. We'll see if we can try and crowdsource this for you in an organized fashion. I would love that if we had like a just a little subreddit for helping Brady findies woodworking bench. I didn't realize that you immediately are jumping to a dedicated subreddit because this is going to happen frequently. Oh no no no not a dedicated subreddit just a thread just a thread. All right I'll put a thread in the show notes for people to try to organize this for you Brady. I really want this to happen. Well it's most interesting podcast. So great we're approaching Christmas. We are approaching Christmas rapidly. I have a couple of Christmas related items. Something I've complained about before it's becoming an increasingly common complaint in the world at large but it has just reached ridiculous proportions now and that is some of the packaging being used by Amazon for receiving products. I'm talking oversized packaging the other day I had to buy two rolls of brown paper you know sort of the butcher's type paper I use in number file videos like a roll of wrapping paper basically that size two rolls put my order in a couple of days later for whatever reason the person who was supplying it only had one roll available and I had to wait a week for the second one so only one arrived and I am not kidding the box it arrived in was the size of a human coffin. I could have fit inside this box and I opened it up and it had lots and lots of like stuffing paper in there to stop this one small roll of paper from bouncing around and I took out my one little roll of wrapping paper and I had this enormous box that was so big I had to take it to the tip because I couldn't put it anywhere else. Oh really? And then a few days later I happened to be out when the second roll arrived and sure enough it arrives in a second coffin and the person because I wasn't there to take it inside the delivery man or delivery woman had to leave it outside my house by the front fence and it was raining so I also got rained on the stuff was okay in the end but I had to go to the tip a second time this time with a huge shopping wet cardboard coffin and throw that one in the tip as well and I was at the tip and I was I was throwing this thing away and some other guy was throwing something away next to me and I said look at this can you believe it I got sent this huge thing just for a small thing of wrapping paper that which sent him off on a rant about all the things he'd been receiving from Amazon with like he received one thing from Amazon that had stuffing paper in there as well for protection and he measured it and it had 30 meters of paper in this box or condensed down to look after whatever was in the box he was so amazed he measured the paper because he couldn't believe it. This is getting crazy and I know they're doing it for efficiency and I know you know you don't care that much about small things to help the environment when only big things matter but this is getting ridiculous. You are assuming things here and one of these is like this is exactly the kind of case where I think it does matter to care because how many packages does Amazon ship to my house alone hundreds a day as far as I can tell right so if like if you can get Amazon to make their packaging slightly smaller using less materials like I think that's the kind of thing that does have a reasonable impact and it works at scale so I assume like you are probably assuming that Amazon is doing this because on whatever spreadsheets they're using having a smaller number of different size boxes to work with is more efficient for them than having exactly the right size box but I have definitely been super aware of this of getting boxes that just seem comically missized for the object that is being shipped and my personal favorite example was just a couple months ago I bought like a USB thumb drive that I needed to transfer some files back and forth so a thing that was literally the size of my thumb came in a box that was the size of a shoe box but don't just write off like oh I don't care about the environment and small changes like this is exactly the kind of thing that I think does matter in trying to pressure a company like Amazon into using more efficient material because they must ship a bazillion boxes absolutely everywhere. The only thing that's given me a small amount of sympathy for them which is happening the last week or two as project revolution has started ramping up is I can see why you would want to over protect items because dealing with every email and everything about some minor bit of damage to a project revolution has become difficult and time consuming and I completely understand that I'm not complaining because if you know that's how it is and for every person that one record is very important to them and if it's not right it's not right so I'm not complaining about the people but it does make me realize that it's difficult and no matter what you do or how well you package something you know things happen and then it becomes difficult so I have got a little bit of sympathy for over protecting items but you do not need a coffin for a roller paper or a shoe box for a thumb drive. You're learning that being a one man logistics distributor is actually quite difficult that's what you're learning over there. Yeah and I do feel like that despite having a logistics company that's supposed to be doing the work for me. Customers support there's always quite a lot of it whenever you do anything. Anyway we're getting there people have been sending loads of photos of them with their records and that's really been exciting me so keep them coming and I hope you're all enjoying the vinyl addition those of you who are partaking. Let's stay on Christmas though because I have another Christmas story I'm really curious as to what you're going to think about this from a moral standpoint or a rightness or wrongness. Okay but it is a bit of fun. Neither you or I have human children. I have docky children but we don't have human children. It's a fantastic way to phrase that that's correct yes neither of us have human children I agree. Some of my relatives do who I've been spending a bit of time with recently and I was with my nephew recently and his parents and I was introduced to a piece of technology that they are using to help with behaviour control. I'm familiar with all the different modes of behaviour control for children and I'm also quite familiar with Christmas related ones I don't know if have you ever heard of the elf on the shelf? I have heard of this and it just sounds creepy to me but I've only heard about this in passing so my understanding of the elf on the shelf is that it's a stuffed toy elf that you put on the shelf and then you tell the child that it's like Santa's spy who's watching you all the time to make sure that you're being good. Is that the basic idea of the elf on the shelf? In a nutshell yeah that's it I don't know if it's stuffed but it's a toy elf. It comes with a book and you read the child the book at the start of the Christmas season which explains the backstory. I don't know what the backstory is and they give the elf a name and they're not to touch the elf they're told if they touch the elf the world will end or something like so trust me children are absolutely petrified of touching the elf and I have heard stories of children calling 911 in fear after they have touched their elf accidentally. Okay that sounds a little too effective. But it usually sits in inaccessible places to help with this no touching thing but every night while the child is asleep it moves. I think we all know how but let's not say in case there are any elf believers listening. Okay also terrifying okay. So it'll be like oh look last night the elf move from the top of the Christmas tree to the kitchen cupboard or something but it is watching them and so you can use this with little helpful reminders like oh you sure you want to break that Christmas ornament when the elf up on oh there's watching so it's very effective. I sometimes have joked why can't you just use this all year round but I imagine it would lose its effectiveness and it only really works when the Christmas presents are imminent and we have a bit of carrot and stick going on. So anyway that's the elf on the shelf it's been quite a zeitgeisty thing I think for a few years now. That sounds absolutely terrifying the way you describe it I didn't realize that the elf moves. That sounds like the plot of a horror movie and we just think like maybe the elf gets closer right but the worst you're being right you wake up in the morning right and the elf is right next to your head don't touch it don't touch it but it's right there you've been very bad or like you go into a room and there's like 90 of them ahead of the string and you've got to get through it like lasers in a back vault. The elf has brought all of his friends because you've been very naughty right they've been seeing what you're doing like oh god it sounds awful. Well you have like ten of them surrounding your TV remote control. Anyway I quite like it because it's like you know may I like books and toys and it's a bit old-fashioned it seems like something from another time it really does it seems like a bygone tradition or something it's surprising that it's a new thing but technologies moved on and last week I was shown a sort of a more modern equivalent apparently there's a few of these around I've just got one of them this is an app you have on your phone and I've got one here called Santa Claus it's the 2016 version of elf on the shelf because what happens is you configure the app and if you pay money you can configure it with even more power but I'm just using the free version here so I'm using it it's most limited and what happens is this app allows Santa Claus to call your phone in front of your child and conversations can ensue let me give you an example I'm going to open up my app now. What is this app called? It's called Santa Claus so I've configured the app I'm now going to schedule a call you can pre-program various savers and I've programmed one for someone called Gray who is my five-year-old child and you can choose a long list of reasons for the Santa to be calling the reason for this call is going to be a check on behavior to check if behaving and then you can tell the app when this mysterious phone call is going to arrive I'm going to say let's have it immediately so say my five-year-old Gray is being naughty or I want to modify his behavior. I feel really uncomfortable right now. I will sneakily pull out my app I will configure this call and let me press the button and then what happens in a few seconds my phone will go black so it looks like it's inactive because kids know this stuff so my phone has about to go black it's gone black and here we go what happens I've got it on speaker and a picture of Santa Claus says incoming call from Santa Claus with a red or a green phone I'm going to press green to accept the call because a picture of Santa I've pressed it there's even a timer like a phone call would have my name is Gray yes I'm five oh I'll be good I promise so anyway I've just hung up on Santa says call ended I swear to god that feels like real life black mirror somehow I just felt like something out of a nightmare I couldn't decide if it was good of that I was talking to my nephews parents about it because they've been using it but it's gotten to a point where they're a bit scared to use it because they're a little boy who's a great little boy he like he did something naughty the other day which he rarely does and at the minute he did it he liked looked at the phone I would fear and he thought Santa was about to call because Santa keeps calling whenever he's naughty like he looked at the phone and started like trembling so the the parents are like okay we gotta stop this I mean when you first had that thing ring and it started playing the music okay this is the first time I've ever heard it but I thought man that would take about one exposure to develop a Pavlovian response right to that music a far right I'm just like horror and I'm in trouble in the same way that you know you should never set a sound or a tune that you like as you're alarm clock in the morning because you will grow to load that song that thing makes it feel like Santa Claus is terrifying and the whole he sees you when you're sleeping he knows and you're awake thing like obviously that's creepy if you think about it but something about the way that app says it whereas like Santa directly addressing you they're like I watch you while you're asleep it's so cunning too it looks just like a phone call you know it's got the green and the red icons it's got a counter when the phone call starts like a timer and like a little icon for Santa so you can see the person who's calling it's it's devious yeah I find that scary and terrifying I can see how this stuff is useful for parents but something about it makes me uneasy in a way that I can't quite define if you are willing to pay there's all sorts of things you can build into it like you can take a picture of your house and then when you're having conversations of Santa a picture of your house will come up and if you haven't got a chimney he'll explain how he can get into your house without a chimney and so the whole charade dare I say it is really really elaborate it's really full on would you use that on a human child Brady would you feel comfortable using that on a human child well we are about to talk about some things about Santa Claus that young people might not want to hear right we're going to discuss some Santa secrets people here's your warning ho ho ho so in that context how is it different from what we've been doing all our lives with Santa Claus like we've been doing this for years anyway this is just a new tool in the arsenal we take kids to sit on Santa's lap and tell them that Santa and he sits there and says what do you want for Christmas and I'm gonna bring you stuff for Christmas so to look at this app and say that's outrageous how can we be deceiving children like this like we do it already I'm not saying that it's outrageous I'm just saying that it feels like a weaponized version of the traditional story like the regular thing is just fine but this is tuned so precisely that it becomes different in kind rather than just different in amount that's what it feels like right it's a weaponized Santa right it's like precision targeted to press all of the buttons of a child and that's what makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable as opposed to oh there's this folktale that we tell that happens to be useful around the holidays but we haven't like refined it into this precise thing I think that's why I feel a little bit weird and uncomfortable with that have I ever told you my story about learning the truth about Santa I don't think so tell me Brady so my parents were always quite big on me knowing the truth of life quite early they treated me quite grown up so I was told the shocking truth about Santa Claus quite early and I was told at the same time as my poor sister who was 18 months younger so she had 18 months less magic than me and I was told I was very specifically told not to tell my other friends because they still believe in Santa and it was explained to me like the utility of Santa and why the others must be allowed to believe right right so sure enough the next day I went to school and you know what the first thing I did was right I called together all the lads and said guys I got some big news right this is day one of investigative journalist Brady yeah making the story so I broke the story to like all the boys in my class 10 15 of them but the problem was the most popular boy in school like you know the cock of the roostore whatever you want to call him garbled Simon he didn't believe me he was a big Santa believer so he told all the other boys in the class guys Brady's talking rubbish and I was basically ostracized for the day I was a pariah right because Simon had decided Brady was telling mis-truths about Santa Claus so I was frozen out but obviously that night Simon went home and told his parents and said look Brady at school has been saying this stuff but he obviously said to his parents but don't worry I've taken care of it and his parents obviously felt sorry for me so they secretly told Simon and Simon and Lone look the Brady was telling the truth and Simon got the same talk that night about you know the shocking truth so it was so funny the next day like at recess Simon like convened all the boys in the class and we all sort of stood in the circle and he was like guys I've got some big news Brady was telling the truth and like then everyone believed because Simon told them that Santa wasn't real so for a day Santa like cost me you know my social status but then the next day I was like redeemed right but you got another source on the record right that's what we do all the more believable I should have done that in the first place I should have had two sources to start with that was my mistake but anyway I learned from that what was your Santa experience as a youngster I don't have a particular memory of freaking out the truth what I do remember is that there was a period of suspicion that I had as a child I was like I'm not sure the Santa story is holding together right and my parents cleverly delayed it for maybe one or two Christmases by modifying the story slightly by saying oh yes obviously some of the presents are from us and some of them are from Santa and whatever age I was I was like oh that explains some of these inconsistencies right I just got a little longer for a little while longer but yeah I know some people have traumatic discovery of a terrible truth about Santa I have no memory of when this occurred or how the details happened I don't remember it all when I found out the truth I'd love people to put in the reddit notes for this show how they found out about Santa because I'd be really interested to find that out I was a shock to me and my sister I remember that because it was done while decorating the Christmas tree of all times my mum was decorating the Christmas tree and called us in to tell us that we kind of had this like quite evil aspect to it there was a few seconds of like stun silence and like processing the information I think the first question was where the presents come from of course and that was explained and then it was what about the Easter Bunny and like say the Easter Bunny died that day too right we've got some sad news for you about him yeah and then there was like just more like desolation for like a minute or so and then it's the tooth fairy same all these people just all like came crashing down at once it's a weird moral dilemma about what to do with children and Santa Claus like if I had human children I'm not sure how I would handle that situation with Santa because obviously some people grow up and feel super betrayed over this in ways that like as an adult they still kind of feel quite strongly about and but I can never quite figure out is this a good thing that we do as a society or is it not a good thing that we do as a society overall is it a good lesson for children to learn like oh the adult world not only will it lie to you but there will be like a vast conspiracy to keep the truth away from you like in a way that you could not possibly believe as a child like maybe that's a good lesson for people to learn I don't know like is that the lesson Santa teaches us all I don't think that's the lesson that people take away from Santa I think they take away a lesson of personal disappointment so I have very mixed feelings on the cultural institution of Santa as it relates to children what do you think Brady I love it I love I love Santa like I love Christmas I love the like the idea the decorations this like idea of Santa I'm a little bit more ambiguous about the enormous conspiracy around Santa as he relates to children it all just gives us it gives the kids pleasure it gives us adults pleasure as we wink at each other and tell the stories yeah sort of related to something you said earlier though which I find a strange development in Santa Claus it you said how we bring kids to see Santa and have him sit on Santa's lap I have noticed with the friends that I have who have children who are in the Santa age range that all of the mall Santa's the rule is now that you are not allowed to sit on Santa's lap and so they all have pictures of their child sitting next to Santa Claus instead of sitting on his lap shaking his hand yeah I assume that it's part of this like bizarre paranoia that the UK has over pedophiles like oh mall Santa right might be a dangerous situation I was like I can't imagine a less dangerous situation than a mall Santa but the thing that bothers me about it is it's like okay the character of Santa Claus is someone who loves kids right and so it's like obviously you sit the kid on on someone's lap when you turn the photograph into a child sitting next to Santa now suddenly it looks really weird right now suddenly it looks like maybe there's something going on with that Santa right so it's like everything was fine before and then in your weird effort to be like oh we have to worry about pedophiles like you make the world look like it's more dangerous when children can't even sit on that Santa's lap so I have been annoyed by a series of photos that I have seen like this where the parents are saying oh you're not allowed to have the child sit on Santa's lap we have to sit the child next to Santa and look like a pretty big gap in between it's just weird it's really weird and I don't like it and I think it's one of these cases where the world has gone super paranoid I agree and show gray grays child protection is a serious issue and there have been a couple of stories in the last few weeks in the UK that have exacerbated the situation not involving Santa closer to his and but I think the child protection thing can go a little bit far and you're right it suddenly makes it an issue it like it tars the Santa with the allegation yeah exactly it totally does it's a case of trying to make a thing better but like you've made it worse you've made Santa look so much more suspicious hello internet listeners I know some of you right now are finding it just impossible to get the right gift for some of the guys that you know for some of the men 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Harries is a company that was started by two best friends Jeff and Andy who were fed up with being overcharged for razors so they started their own razor company to give people what they deserve a great shave at a fair price and for this holiday harries has ready to give shave sets all set at different price points starting at just $15 they all come with a razor handle your choice shaving cream replacement blades and a travel cover and going back to wanting to have a thoughtful gift their Winston set includes an engravable chrome handle if you want to add that personalized touch as a special offer for the hello internet audience we've partnered with harries to give you five dollars off your order when you enter code h i at checkout I've received these harries gift sets in person and they are just fantastic looking they're a really nice gift to give someone I love how all of the razors have a just really solid quality feel to them and the packaging is just so nice there's a lot of 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ratios of how much humble versus how much brag is in the story yeah okay so my sister who lives in Singapore was out the other day for her anniversary at dinner and her and her husband got talking to a couple next to them and they got talking about mathematics one of the people next and was really into mathematics and i think my brother and the author said oh my my brother and the author is a guy in england and he makes videos about mathematics mm-hmm and then suddenly this guy looks at my sister and says are you braiding her and sister she was like yeah and like he was so excited and then all the family was called over and like my sister had to pose for photos with them and her anniversary dinner she had to pose for photos with the guy sitting at the table next to them because like she was the sister of like someone who makes number five videos mm-hmm so this was a funny story and as you know i enjoy any chance i have to lord over my sister and she like hated it so i've been i've been giving her a hard time right that makes it 10 times better right exactly so not only do i feel like i'm mr big famous numberful guy who makes videos even my sister has to like pose for photos right it's like great somebody else rubbed it in my sister's face perfect yeah exactly that was all well and good and a couple of days later remember that's this kelvin medal from the institute of physics that's the symbols one we had the award ceremony for that the other day mm-hmm so we all dressed up in in our penguin suits and went to this award ceremony and it was really good and again we were feeling like the big superstars because we were getting our prize and before the award ceremony starts i'm told by one of the organizers i see those two young people over there they're like young gifted physics students and they're going to be presenting your award because they're presenting some awards it's kind of you know it's like an initiative to get young talented students engaged with professional physics and a treat for them and it's a nice idea isn't it having school students present the awards mm-hmm and the guy says to me and i think you know it's a bit of a daunting experience with them with all these old physicists around i think they'd get a real thrill out of getting to like meet you and have a chat with you because you know you're the like the youtube star person yeah this is a liberty yeah so i'm like oh of course i'd be really happy to talk to them it'd be really great what a great idea so i went over and spoke to them and i was talking to one of the guys and i'm like oh hi i'm Brady and it was explained to him that i was getting an award he was like oh that's really nice i'm like yeah i make these videos we're getting this award for 60 symbols and someone there said i do you do i do you watch 60 symbols and he's like blank never heard of it and i'm like oh okay let's brought me down a peg and i'm like so i'm trying to make conversation with this guy who doesn't know me from Adam and i'm just another boring old person to him mm-hmm so i said to him i do you watch youtube videos like science youtube videos and he's oh yeah i really love them mm-hmm and i'm like oh tell me some of the ones you watch and i was hoping he'd like say like number for all the periodic videos or something and then i could go yeah hey guess who i am mm-hmm so he starts listing off the ones he likes nothing i make gets a mention i'll tell you that right now but the one he mentions first that he absolutely loves is veritasium i love veritasium videos they're my favorite so after what happened to my sister i'm now forced to resort to fame by associations and i'm like oh i uh i know Derek like i might hang around and then he's like oh i really like this source and i'm like oh i know Michael too but like he's so excited that i know Derek mm-hmm so i uh i send Derek a text he's in California and i say i'm at some awards ceremony trying to impress some kid who doesn't know me oh my god my god i'm trying to i'm trying to because it had been my job to make his night like i'd been told he'd get a thrill from speaking to me and he didn't give two hoots about me i feel like you really just crossed the line right yeah this is like okay this is sort of a funny story about how someone doesn't know who you are and there can be these really weird awkward social situations where if you make your living in a public way and like someone introduces you in a way where they expect someone to know who you are like i've been in some of the situations and i hate it when someone introduces me like as this person they expect someone else to know and it's like please never do that there's no upside to it it can be super awkward so it's like i have so much sympathy for you in this situation and the odds are so small because like our audience is i really so small in this game of things these chances of someone knowing is so minute yeah it's this very interesting thing with youtube fame where it's like it can be large but it's so narrow at the same time it's not generalized fame like celebrity so yeah i go out of my way to avoid this situation since so i i'm listening to this story i'm totally with you i'm all on board except for now right when you crossed the line and you can message Derek can you like you're talking to this guy i didn't do this in front of the guy you know because i i text Derek occasionally we share photo so we're like you know this is something we would do anyway so i basically said i'm i'm at the subord ceremony and funny thing happened and the guy is a massive fan of yours and it doesn't know me from Adam and i'm supposed to be you know the star of the night so then i say to Derek i tell Derek the guy's name i said can you do me a favor and what a great guy Derek is like what a great guy he is he on the spot on like a sidewalk in california sent me a video of a personal message to this guy and like he also did it so well he made it really like charming he said hey said the guy's name i hear you're at the awards ceremony and i hope you have a really great night and i'm glad you got to meet brady and i'm glad to like very tasty and really classy like you know 22nd message and so then i texted it off to this guy and oh my god did that make his night he was so excited i felt like about one foot tall but i still delivered the goods and made his night thanks to a good friend Derek from Verestablia so it started all very braggie and by the end of it all i was pretty humbled that is humbled in the proper use of the term right feeling lower than you are as opposed to the way people seem to use it when they have achieved massive success and then say they feel humble so when i did receive my award i could i didn't like a spate or anything but i could have said i'm truly humbled to not and i would have been telling the truth i will warn you in advance brady just in case you needed it that if you're ever in a situation where someone knows who i am but doesn't know who you are don't expect me to send a charming video message to the person so that you can impress them yeah do you think i'd ask i don't know i don't know how much pressure you'd be under to deliver the goods of making sure that this person knows that you know a person on the other hand if it was like destined destined to probably make them a five foot paper mesh a sculpture or something if it was destined he'd be landing in a helicopter in 20 minutes so grey biweekly weigh in how you doing wow this feels really out of the blue what makes you bring up the biweekly weigh in brady you told me that if you love something you let it go and if it's truly yours it comes back to you i've come back to you wow yeah i feel like it's been a year i have no idea how long it's been it feels like it's been a long time i'm having another run at it just to be clear i'm really happy about this i just assumed i'd never be hearing these words ever again but it seems like right before christmas might be the worst time in the world to start up a health kick so so tell me what's going on what's going on i don't know just something happened something flicked in my mind and i've said i haven't sorted my food out yet okay that is a switch i'm yet to flick and we actually had to do our christmasy stuff with family early because my wife and i are working over christmas so we've done all that we've done some really bad eating the last week or two but what i have done is rejoined a gym i quite like nearby and i've started very regular personal training sessions oh interesting so you're working with a personal training i am when possible which is not always possible best case scenario three days a week wow that's fantastic how are you finding it i have done personal training before when it comes to exercise it's it's the way to go for me because i'm quite a proud person i'm not willing to like fail in front of someone even if it's just one person say if the personal trainer says all right i want you to do ten of them and then five of them i'm going to be hard as nails and say well all right i'm not going to let you see me not be able to do it so basically he knows i'm unfit and he says let's start with this and see if you can do it and every time i do something he's like oh wow i'm surprised you did that let's up the ante he's not realizing that i'm dying inside but i'm just like i'm just like pushing myself to the limits of human endurance so that i won't not be able to do something he asked me to do he could probably say go and lift up that car and i do it just out of sheer stubbornness great that seems like a good way to handle your personal health okay i've got to sort my food out because it's all for naught if i at the moment i'm just rubbing Peter to paypal but it's a start and i've done i've done five sessions so far and i'm gonna try and stick with it even stopping now would be a cause of great personal shame the only type the reason i left my previous personal trainer was because i left the city i moved away from notting him so i can't imagine stopping with a personal trainer so the only thing that's going to cause this to stop is me moving house like so i can no longer see him or the most likely scenario is him changing jobs or not being a personal trainer anymore but until then i can't really see what will stop me wow this is fantastic news i feel like i'm just totally unprepared for this i didn't know this was going to happen do you want to restart like regular conversations around this like do you want to do the way in with numbers again or what what are you thinking what's going on with your mind here i'm not thinking that i'm just letting you know i'm back on the horse and you know how well it's going by how often i bring it up uh-huh okay see that's what i was kind of thinking okay so so you're not committing to any kind of structured schedule here well i don't see a point now because you got where you wanted to be and you've got the body beautiful when you're living the dream now and so there's no real comparison to be made i'm just flying solo now i achieved the way that i wanted to which is under 200 pounds but i think to say that i have the body beautiful now it's not exactly you're an accurate description like i could definitely do a lot more and for various reasons in particular over the last several weeks like i have been very off the wagon as far as it comes to health and then when christmas is rolling around i feel like goodbye wagon i'll catch you in January right i'm not even i'm not going to make any kind of pretending so i am by no means on any kind of health but i'll just put it out there like if you wanted to ever do anything more structural more formal like i've got plenty of progress to still make even though i achieved my first goal so that would be something i'd be very open to baby steps cry baby steps i'm not going to pressure you that's right i'm gonna let this bird go fly back out and maybe we'll check in in another year and we'll find out how that personal training has been going you know at least in my own very limited experience with personal training like i found it shockingly effective in many ways that i wouldn't have expected because of that same phenomenon that when you're with somebody else they can push you much harder than you would naturally push yourself because there is that pressure of like well i don't want to look like a wimp so yeah i'm very happy brainy why have you got any limited experience with personal training why don't you use a personal trainer all the time okay this is going to be a very gray answer probably but i did personal training for about six weeks before this summer when i was going to do a bunch of traveling i was doing it basically because i was getting to the point where i was concerned that i could injure myself with the weights that i was lifting and so i wanted to work with someone to make sure that i was doing it not in a dumb way i couldn't just be doing it on my own anymore at that point so i was kind of intending to work with someone just for a limited period of time to make sure that i was doing things right but more than that i found it absolutely mentally exhausting to have like a three days a week kind of hour long meeting with another person early in the morning this does not work for me like my ideal morning is i get up and i don't talk to anyone until i've done all of my work and exercise and now it's like twelve or one in the afternoon that's my absolute ideal morning and so to have like a morning meeting with someone all the time i just found it really mentally draining and i was also aware that it it actually did have like an impact on my work being aware that like oh i i have to be at the gym at this exact time yes i find that like there's this lie that people say which is that there was like oh when you exercise it doesn't take that much time and it adds so much time to your life it's like i have never found that to be the case like exercise does take a lot of time and i think it's better if you just mentally accept that like this is going to take a big chunk out of your day yeah it's worth it yeah but it's just like accept the fact it's going to take a big chunk out of your day yeah but i found that by having the regular meeting with the trainer it was impacting it even more like it was taking more of a chunk and then i just find it exhausting to try to talk to someone at 10 30 in the morning and especially like constant small chit chat like i find that the most draining thing ever so i did it for a limited run i might do it again in the future for limited runs but i think i would probably rather kill myself than do indefinite ongoing personal training i couldn't possibly deal with that but it does bring me to the other thing i want to talk about about going to the gym hmm i just don't imagine you do this actually because even i find it socially awkward the changing rooms do you go into gym changing rooms yeah where are you going with this what's awkward in a changing room i don't know just some people are more have more of an exhibition a streak than others and i sometimes find i don't really know what to do with myself what you do is you keep eyes above waist level Brady right that's rule number one yeah okay yeah eyes up right that's if eyes are up all other problems are solved i don't see what the issue is and you're quite comfortable with that you're quite comfortable with all these new people around you and you're nuding up yourself yes yes we're all just nuding it up together in the changing room i just thought you're the last person in the world that would be comfortable with that i mean i'm totally fine with the changing rooms because it's again it's it's like the the social rules in this environment we're all here at the gym together we're all using shared facilities this is just the way it is i don't see what there is to be uncomfortable about this you're just like oh this is just a changing room we segregated by gender right for social politeness reasons and here we are we're in the changing room i'm actually surprised that you're not the guy who's chatting people up in in the changing room i figured you'd be your normal chatty self in the changing room but it feels like maybe no you're the guy looking down embarrassed all the time i'm surprised by this i wouldn't say i'm looking down embarrassed all the time i'm just i'm more just shocked that you're cool with it i don't know it just seems like these are the rules here there are yeah what else are we gonna do we all have to use the showers we all have to change our clothes as long as you follow the rule eyes up okay i just assumed you would be someone who would like just go home sweaty and get changed at home or build some kind of tau tent like a portable tent yeah portable tent to bring with me like you don't even let people see your face this is a totally different context you're mixing context here Brady one is not applicable to the other all right enough locker room banter enough locker room banter but i'm very happy for you Brady this episode is brought to you in part by my favorite place to get audiobooks the only place i get audiobooks audible dot com with an unmatched selection of audiobooks original audio shows now news comedy and more you can get a free audiobook with a 30 day trial at audible dot com slash hello internet that's a UDIBLE dot com slash hello internet all one word the book that i'm currently listening to on audible is what i think is a perfect example of why i like to use audible for audiobooks so much that book is called cod by mark kirlansky a biography of the fish that changed the world and yes it is actually a book that is entirely about cod how cod influenced the ability of transatlantic voyages because of how easy it was to store and how long it lasted and then onward to its effect on the famous triangle trade routes like it's very interesting to listen to but i am absolutely sure that if i ever had to sit down and say i'm going to read a book about cod that would never happen but this is why i like audiobooks and why i like audible i can pick a book on a topic like this and when i'm walking to and from the office when i'm just doing errands and particularly around the holiday season there are very many errands to run i can just listen to a book about a topic and be informed and i really like it i listen to a ton of non-fiction audiobooks of this kind and i'm currently listening to cod and quite liking it so if you're listening to this podcast right now you're the kind of person who would also enjoy listening to audiobooks and you should really give audible a try they have just such an incredibly large catalog there is always going to be something for you to listen to so if you go to audible.com slash hello internet to get your free 30 day trial you can give cod a listen or you can try that author's other book called salt or you can find any book on any topic in their enormous catalog that is of interest to you really give it a try when you're doing some errands when you're walking around when you're commuting audiobooks really add a lot to my quality of life and i think they will to yours as well so once again please go to audible.com that's a u-d-i-b-l-e.com slash hello internet to get your free audiobook with a 30 day trial thanks again to audible for supporting the show and for making my walking around time much more informative and interesting you know we'd love the elements here you know i love the elements and i feel like you have a soft spot for the periodic table of course those four new elements oh god. Nihonium, Muscovium, Tennasane and Ogginesson have now gone through the consultation process they've been signed and sealed and stamped and authorized and they're now on the periodic table for all time i thought we should mark that and i marked it with being of an experiment as you know i've made videos about every single element of periodic videos so obviously we had four new videos to make now that these elements are official just so that the collection is intact of course so we made the four new ones the other day and tell me what you think of this because all four were approved and authorized or once they kind of did them as a batch through the process i decided for fun more than anything to release all four videos at once simultaneously okay so you did four separate videos launched at the same time four separate videos put them all out at the exact same time so one o'clock yes today or the day before bang press the button four new videos from period of videos all at once treating each one individually like stand alone so they can sit on the website alone and that sort of stuff do you think that was a good idea do you think that was a terrible idea what do you think about that i presume that you're asking from the perspective of maximizing views is that what you're thinking that is one of the factors obviously it is not a good idea for maximizing views i was aware of that like that was a sacrifice there were pros and cons to doing it and i'm wondering if you think it was a stupid thing to have done or it appeals to your brain or you think i was big silly if i was running periodic videos i think i would not have released them all at once i don't think it's terribly silly thing to do but it just seems like so much of our careers is dependent on the youtube algorithm and what the youtube algorithm wants to promote and wants to show people and i can't imagine that releasing four videos at once is the kind of thing that the people who are designing that algorithm would expect a channel to do and so with us factor in correctly to how it should be handled so i don't know what your view numbers were like on those videos at all but my feeling is if i had multiple videos to release i wouldn't release them all simultaneously now every once in a while i have released multiple videos on a single day usually where i have a video and then there's like a little footnote that i want to include with the video that's not a main thing and if i do that i'll at very least try to put a lot of time between them so like one will go up in the morning and then one will go up later in the afternoon because i i just feel like at the same time i'm not sure that the algorithm would like that and we all have to serve the algorithm really that's my feeling on this i didn't feel that way about this i didn't feel obviously i didn't feel i should be serving the algorithm because i did it and i knew i knew the algorithm would like it but there were lots of factors that came into it and everything you say there is true but i guess i felt and also i am a bit less beholden to view counts than you are because of the way my business works right yeah that's very true that's very true yeah a few interesting things failed i mean my biggest concern was alienating people and people feeling clogged like because i don't even know how people get their alerts anymore would they get for emails would their subscription box or list be full of my stuff and it would piss them off because they're like oh god four videos in a row from the same mob you know unsubscribed so that was a concern spreading them out though like over the course of a week also felt like a concern because the videos do have a certain same units to them obvious reasons so it could be like ah you did this last week ah you did this the week before and it will almost give people more time to unsubscribe like they take the heat once they'd forgive at once but after four weeks in a row they'd be like okay now you just taken the piss i'm unsubscribing right is they're getting a plavlovy in response to your element upload like oh no here comes another one ripping off the bandaid if you've got to put these four videos out that have got similar elements to them because they're all super heavy elements synthesized in similar ways right let's get it all out the way at once but i also just like to the idea of it being like being of an event and a bit of a surprise and unexpected like people going wow when i woke up this morning i never thought there'd be four new videos from this one channel and i think for some people it was bit of like an event i was also really interested to see how the four would compare on their views like it was a nice test wasn't it of four videos that are all very similar which one would people click on which element name appealed to them one of them did a lot worse than the others and i wonder if that was algorithmic like whether or not four videos is one too many and like one was below some fold or not on some email or something but i feel like my guess is you're releasing them all at the same time but youtube has some concept of the upload time versus the release time my guess would be like the first one and the last one would do better than the two in the middle i don't really have any reason for that but that's just kind of my gut guess for what i would expect no in terms of when i actually uploaded them because obviously i couldn't upload them all at the same time the first two i uploaded did the best hmm the thirds done the worst oh no who knows i haven't done the analysis well enough i'm sure there's something interesting in there somewhere hmm and subscribers did dip it did hurt subscribers at one point the professor in the videos contacted me said i think subscribers have actually dropped in the scheme of things i think it was still up for the day net but it was a dip but it caused a visible dip when you released all of them people were like too much periodic videos thank you very much yeah but in some ways i don't mind that because if you're subscribing to a channel that is made its name by making videos about all the elements and then releasing four element videos in a day puts you off then you're probably not the best subscribers for us to have and if like facebook having like too many followers that aren't true believers can dilute you and hurt you algorithmically then maybe sometimes it's good to get rid of the chef yeah i mean this gets to you know the thing about we just have no real idea how youtube is handling these things behind the scenes and talking about the subscriber numbers i mean you know we've mentioned it you know many times when youtube read conversation has come up and with other things but i just personally don't really put a lot of stock in that subscriber number anymore like i'm not even really sure what it means no especially with this change that youtube has made where there's a way essentially now where you have to double subscribe or like you can subscribe to the channel but then you're also supposed to press the little bell next to the subscribe button which says that you actually want to get notifications about when this channel puts out new videos it's an interesting thing that youtube is still kind of built around this idea of rewarding people for subscribers obviously like with all of the silver play buttons that you have littered around your house they built around this idea but algorithmically i think the evidence just keeps piling up that the subscriber things don't matter so i agree when you put out four videos this is the kind of data youtube won't give us but i would just love to know how did youtube handle telling your audience that these four videos exist it doesn't make any sense when you have these subscriber numbers and then you look at video view numbers and they're just all over the place yeah so without cheating or looking at your screen grey shut shut your eyes your eyes shut my eyes are shut i told you those four new element names how many of them do you remember oh god uh tenacine aganesan niponium oh i failed i'm sorry i'm sorry i cannot get the last one it was muskovium oh muskovium and it's not niponium it's nihonium with an h because both nipon and nihon can be words for japan i think and they've gone nihonium hmm i'm gonna count that i think that's close enough yeah do you think i'd get that on jeopardy definitely not what is niponium i think they'd give that to me they definitely would not 100% speaking of youtube stuff we discussed these new ad formats or at least new to us ad formats that were popping up which is the sponsored item ads i was looking at a video that was describing how to build a secret cabinet in your house and underneath the youtube video were a bunch of ugly ads about how to buy a secret cabinet on youtube instead it's like when you buy a new car and suddenly you look around the world and it seems like this car is absolutely everywhere i don't know if it's just like i just tuned into this thing and now i see it absolutely everywhere but i have now seen these ads on my own videos where youtube is trying to guess a product that is related to my videos and have a huge amount of space underneath the video directly related to trying to sell people that physical item my favorite example of this is my video on the rules for rulers which is constantly trying to sell people rulers right actual rulers you would use to measure the length of objects if you go watch that video underneath it it's trying to sell you rulers for like 99 cents 50 cents to buy a cheapo plastic ruler we've discussed it before that youtube has this it doesn't look like the prettiest website but i've got to say like to load up my video and to see a bunch of junky plastic rulers for sale below the video directly while the video plays and it also has a little pop up that occurs part of the way through the video on the top of the screen that says click here to open up the slide over to buy some rulers it's so awful like it's just an awful ugly ad format i was looking through the youtube analytics data and you can it's always a little bit unclear precisely what we can tell the audience but you can see how much the different types of ads will earn for your channel and those pre-roll videos right they pay the most and other different kinds of ads pay the least and i can't even find where these paid object ads are supposed to exist so i've been seriously considering going through my videos and trying to make sure to disable this kind of ad across all of my videos because i think that the sheer ugliness of it is just not worth it like it just crosses a real line for me of how hideous these things are and if they're not even earning any money i would rather just not have my own audience see them and be just distracted by the hideousness of them what do they code like maybe some of my channels aren't enabled for them but just looking at one of my channels i can't even see what they code to disciple them so maybe i don't get them in the youtube back end they're called sponsored cards okay this is the ad type that exists what i think is really devious about this is the sponsored card description seems to be that it's just going to be an ad on the side but as best i can tell that sponsored card means that a youtube video will have that little slide over come out from the top like you've put in a card except the person can click it to buy a thing and also below the video it will display these big images to buy whatever on ebay that's related to the actual video itself that's certainly not clear from that name because i didn't even know that's what that was it's not clear from that name at all and here's the thing that i am wondering youtube is doing this move where they're clearly no longer interested in annotations so it used to be on youtube that you could draw a little box on the screen and people could click on that box and it would take them to another video or another website and we've complained mightily before about how annotations are really difficult to actually draw correctly on the screen the interface for them is pretty terrible but the advantage that they have is that the annotation click through is really high like in my videos if i put a little box on the screen and i say something like click here or even if i don't people know to click those boxes to go see another video or to go see another thing because you've got control over what's in the box that can be something visually interesting or relevant or right that's exactly it right you can put an image on the screen or you can just say click on my face and draw a box around your face and youtube has introduced these cards which when they first came out i know we discussed it but these cards which are just a little slide over that appears on the top while they work on desktop and mobile at least in my own experimenting they have horrific click through rates like a tenth the number of click through as compared to an annotation that's a real shame to grey because to be totally honest they're much nicer they're classy they're quite elegant they work well like i actually visually like the more they quite appeal to me but they just don't work yeah the the annotations can look kind of junky partly because it's hard to draw them partly because the colors aren't really great the thing that i don't like about cards is how they're a little bit of an interruption in the video because they're motion because they slide out i think they're a little bit visually distracting but i'll agree with you that overall the cards are a win in the looks department right but i find myself even though youtube is increasingly trying to push us away from annotations and if you go to add an annotation now they kind of make you choose between annotations and other features like they're obviously they don't want you to use them but i find like i still want to use annotations because they're so incredibly effective and they're doubly effective when you consider that half of the audience is usually watching on a mobile device where the annotations don't even work they don't even show up whereas cards show up on both but thinking about these sponsored cards what i'm wondering is is if one of the reasons that the click-through rates on these cards are so low is because some percentage of them are just ads and so the people watching youtube respond to them less because whatever it is maybe one out of 20 or one out of 30 times when the thing pops up on the screen it's not a message from the creator of this video it's why don't you buy a plastic ruler right now i'm just wondering if this is the reason why cards have such horrific click-through rates as compared to annotations because sometimes they're ads people have been conditioned to treat them as noise and not a message from someone they trust yeah that is precisely what i'm wondering if this is like the conflicted message because as soon as i've realized this i feel like boy i wasn't a big fan of cards in the beginning and unless of a fan of cards now that i know that the message can be mixed for the actual viewer i've just clicked through to youtube's explanation of what all the different types of ads are because we can't tell it's from their name what we're saying is allowed or not allowed on our videos i scroll down to sponsored cards and from their description sponsored cards are what i would have thought they are they're just little messages up the top with that little i symbol is quite tucked out of the way there's nothing in the official description of what sponsored cards are that says anything about big junky ads displayed under your videos like on permanent display trashing up the screen so either that's a being a sneaky sneaky and they haven't included it or it's not part of the sponsored card description and it's just something that we have no power over and it just goes on whether you want i agree with you right when i when i looked into this and i was trying to figure out why are these ugly ruler ads appearing below my video like i might be wrong about this but this is the best that i could track it down and in doing a couple tests of flipping the switch just temporarily to see it looked like flipping the sponsored card thing was the one that would change the junky ads at the bottom it does have this feeling of again that youtube does these things and the messaging is just never clear of like where are these ads exactly if if you're looking at youtube's official documents it doesn't seem like these are anywhere but they're clearly somewhere in the system youtube sure has a lot of different ad formats and it doesn't contribute to the overall niceness and nice-lookingness of the platform puts a few dollars in your pocket though CGP i mean maybe it's just suspicious to me because just like you say these ads don't seem to show up anywhere on the official documents about what kind of ads there are when i look through the analytics there is nothing in there that to me looks like here is the ad revenue that you got when somebody bought a ruler through your video and something like what are these things like what are these ugly things where is this money going what's occurring it's not clear at all there's no clear message from youtube about what these things are it's just a bad viewer experience in the same way that like i always hate those little overlay ads that pop up on the bottom third like i find them just so distracting from a video and that's part of the reason why i like i disable them on my videos and i think like these sponsored cards are like the same kind of thing again it diminishes the video that it's on in a way that i personally don't feel pre-roll ads or display ads on the side do those feel like they're apart from the video but this feels like it's just too much in the video itself can't disagree with you Gray and you're right if it turns out that the money from those junky ones underneath aren't going to the creators then that's going to be an interesting little tale to tell later like it's going to be interesting to see how some people would react to that i've actually never seen one on my video so i don't know much about them but maybe there's something dodgy going on yeah i personally suspect it's just that the revenue was so small that it's not really showing up on the analytics but who knows and again it's just that the message is always that it is unclear from the perspective of what is youtube up to what is youtube up to that could be on your graves now he relies the gp gray what was youtube up to he never knew he never knew no matter how much he looked at the analytics can i just say gray like people always ask us to watch different tv shows and movies and let me chat about them and we're always open to this and the one that a lot of people are asking about at the moment is the tv show westworld have you had a look at it by the way or when no spoilers coming by the way people we're not about to review or anything we're just i'm just asking grafys watch westworld i have not watched it i have seen 10,000 requests for me to watch westworld i did as a child watch the original movie or tv series that it's based on a book it's based on a book i think but there was a movie yeah okay i don't remember very much about it except the broadest overline but i know i saw the original as a child but no i have not actually watched westworld have you i have watched maybe the first four episodes and i'm not going to review it or spoil it except to say i've stopped if it is set as homework for whatever reason i guess i will do it because you know we do that for the tims but i certainly couldn't in good faith ask you to watch it hmm interesting you may love it lots of people certainly are loving the hell out of it and everyone thinks you will love it and things i will love it that certainly for whatever reason was not the case so far maybe it gets better maybe i was in a bad mood maybe i just don't like it very much but i've stopped so i'm not inclined to do it at the moment so i'll maybe i'll leave that bowl in your court or sort of floating there for discussion another day but we are seeing all the westworld requests kind of maybe stop because i'm getting lots of emails about it so it's not like we haven't seen it so you don't have to like tell us because we don't know about the show i've even watched the show so if you're about to send me an email recommending it like you're still welcome to do that but you don't need to do it because i am aware of the show yeah i feel like the volume of feedback on this has been so incredibly large that we do want to just touch upon it like we have heard we are aware i suspect i will probably watch it at some point and then maybe we'll discuss it based on if there's something interesting to talk about there but yes you don't need to keep tweeting at Brady and i that we need to watch westworld because we are very over aware of the existence of this although again i have to say our audience is the best audience because they know what to do people are just recommending the show and they're not saying anything and and that's perfect and i always just want to say like i appreciate that from everybody you're doing it the right way maybe we'll touch on it maybe we won't but we've certainly heard about it i by the way i watched that final episode no spoilers again but i watched that episode of black mirror that i hadn't watched the fifth one and i'm glad i did better than i expected so okay if if you didn't watch that one because we didn't talk about it much last time it's worth a watch you sort of said you said it was the worst and maybe you're right about that i don't know but still the worst of black mirror is still pretty good and i liked that episode good i'm i'm glad you completed off the season there Brady by the way when we talked about the name of the show black mirror and i said i thought it was because the tv show holds like a mirror up to society and reflects back what we're like to us but with this black tinge and to me that seems obvious that's what it was and then you came up with some lame o reason that you thought it was called black mirror which was basically along the lines of we'll hold these little rectangular mirror like devices which are phones right and i secretly thought to myself great doesn't know what he's talking about my explanation makes way more sense clearly i'm right and like mine's a really cool reason and i told my wife this you know why do you think it's called black mirror she totally agreed with me i went on to Wikipedia and i was reading a quote from Charlie Brooker who created black mirror talking to the guardian and he said various things and then he said the black mirror of the title is the one you'll find on every wall on every desk in the palm of every hand haha of shiny screen of a tv and monitor a smartphone i can't believe it you were right point to gray my explanation is way better but mine is way writer don't you think mine's better like it makes more sense that's mind reflects what the show is calling it black mirror just because we hold smartphones that are black black mirror is about all sorts of things that doesn't even involve phones but it's always holding a mirror up to our society with a dark angle and cast to it can't believe it here's the thing i think we're both right pretty in that the phone does contain a black mirror and i think we can still interpret it in in this way that technology is a black mirror that reflects us back to ourselves so i think we can both be right but i'm writer this episode of hello internet is brought to you in part by the one the only square space i do just have to say square space has been with us since the very beginning of this show and they are one of the sponsors that makes this show and so many other podcasts that i enjoy happen if you're listening to podcasts if you're thinking of making a website you should go with the sponsor that makes websites and makes podcasts happen and that is square space they're the perfect starting point for choosing a domain or making a website or an online store or anything that you want to do with your digital presence online there would i use for the very hello internet website there would i use for cgpgray.com and whenever anybody asks me about setting up a website square space is my default recommendation why is it my default recommendation because it's at the intersection of easy to use and powerful and beautiful looking and flexible if you just want to put up a portfolio online just to showcase your work just maybe a single page showing off what you can do with a contact form or something like that that's really easy to do with square space if you want to have a complicated website with many different pages that's selling stuff that's something that you can do if you are a developer and you want to get into the code and customize everything to be exactly the way you want it to be square space can do that as well if you never want to see a line of code for as long as you live you never even have to know that that's a possibility with square space it's just fantastic all around they have beautiful templates created by world class designers you can customize the look and feel and settings of your website it's optimized for mobile right from the start so for example my own web pages i never have to think about doing a totally separate design for how is it going to look on the iPhone square space just handles that and it works and i have to say my personal favorite is i just never have to worry about it i never have to worry that when i was trying to upgrade a server that's holding my website that i've broken something and now i have a big hassle on my hands all of these worries are just gone with square space so you listen to podcasts you like podcasts you want to make a website you're going to use square space right now go to square space.com you can register a free domain name and start your free website right now and when you decide that you want to sign up with square space just make sure to use the offer code h i to save 10 percent this helps let square space know that of the many podcasts they help bring into existence it was hours that brought them to your attention so please use that offer code h i when you sign up with square space and thanks again to square space for supporting the show. okay brady i have a question for you that i feel like i don't know what your answer is going to be and as we have touched upon in the show i sometimes have like a very limited repertoire of conversation starters with people when i have to socialize of like let's get into an argument about free will like this is an interesting thing to talk about and then people seem to always get riled up about it i have a few of these that i try to keep in my back pocket but there's one question that i've come across recently that people seem to react to very often in surprising ways that i'm kind of adding to this list and the question is would you eat synthetic meat like a cheeseburger that was grown in a lab is that something that you would feel comfortable eating i'm asking this because i've been vaguely following this as a technology for a while but it seems like in the past year this is becoming a real thing that is probably within the next five years going to be relatively commercially viable where there is lab-grown muscle tissue that is meat and so there's a few companies that are doing this and i feel like i have a very poor sense of how you're going to answer this question well let me start by saying yeah i think i would oh yeah that's probably it i know they're making this stuff and it's like you know it's so stasis all like meat and have blood because i live in a half vegetarian household so i i eat a lot of meat substitutes already because i have to and so a lot of these things are already made in kind of weird ways now they all these corn products and things are made in interesting ways i know they're the same synthetic muscle tissue but they're already growing things to be meat like and i eat some of them i don't like them as much as me no they're never as good no some of them surprise you though occasionally i get surprised by how some of them can work okay but synthetic meat i think it would it would just depend on how good it was i guess i haven't thought about any of the dilemmas to it but i'm not too weirded out by it i'm fine fine would you eat it i feel like i'm not too surprised by that as you were just talking about i feel like you're a relatively adventurous guy and so i feel like you probably give almost anything a try and then it's not surprising it would come down to does it taste good or does it not taste good so i feel like i'm sort of unsurprised by that but i have definitely come across people who seem like they find the idea terrifying or repulsive but i have a hard time pinning down why right and i think that this is this is often a case with new technology stuff where people react poorly because it's a thing that's new or they can't articulate their reasons as to why i go off for a little bit when you describe a synthetically grown muscle tissue i prefer it when you call it synthetic meat right right right just just for the marketing people out there yeah what are we doing we're lab growing carcasses it's like no don't yeah when you call it like synthetic muscle tissue it suddenly seems more wrong that's that's not supposed to exist so i'm trying to think of a better name for it you know new meat yeah yeah we need to call like freedom burgers or something right like that's the much better name right just there's nothing to do with what it is meat 5000 yeah yeah my feeling on this is okay so i'm going to make it like a little bit of a prediction here but but i think like once this becomes commercially viable because right now it is just ridiculously expensive but like with any of these things like with gene testing technology like with anything the price is dropping very rapidly and i think there's going to come some point at which those lines cross of how much does it cost to raise an actual cow to full grown adulthood and slaughter it right and ship the burgers versus how much does it cost to grow synthetic meat in a lab like i think those lines are going to cross where synthetic meat becomes cheaper and i bet that once that happens the people who are having negative reactions to this i think this is going to become pretty standard pretty fast it's an interesting thing because okay this is going to be like a totally overblown metaphor right i just want to i want to want people to understand right i know i know that you will like this right but i just before i say the words i want people to understand that i'm aware that the thing that i'm about to say is an overblown metaphor but i think the synthetic meat reminds me of slavery so i think this is one of these things where if you go back and you look at the historical records people at the time like in the 1700s like letters from the founding fathers people knew that slavery was a bad thing but it took a long time before we actually got rid of it and my personal theory on this is that a lot of the reasons why various countries got rid of slavery at the various times that they did has much more to do with like the economics of the time and the available technology at the time then it does to do with the idea that people suddenly woke up and realized oh slavery what a terrible idea like this is an awful thing to do to our fellow human beings like i think there's a kind of technological economic change that encourages those sorts of things to happen at one time or another yeah and i think we're going to go through the exact same thing with synthetic meat in the next maybe 10 years or so that i don't think there's anybody who really argues for the way we currently produce meat as like a great humane amazing thing to do but i think we consume so much meat because of the economics of it and because of how much people like the taste of it but i think like as soon as these lines cross and it makes economic sense to be using synthetic meat we're going to have like a sort of similar thing to slavery where it's going to be very easy for people on the other side of this to be saying like well obviously factory farming was such a horrifically inhumane thing to do but we're only going to be able to do that once the economics also makes sense so we'll start fraying the cows once we can afford to free the cows exactly right it's it's like we know it's bad now just like people always knew slavery wasn't a great idea but i think when people are thinking about enacting change and when and when people think like oh we need to change the way factory farming is done so that it's more humane i come down on the other side of this is like if you really want to affect change in this way you should encourage research into synthetic meat right and you should try to get everyone you know on board with eating synthetic meat like that's the way you're actually going to change this kind of thing you're never going to change the factory farm you can only change the economics around the factory farm to make it unprofitable compared to the alternatives i don't think it's an overblown metaphor i can think of someone that lives in my house that will agree with you i don't know whether my wife would agree that with your synthetic meat argument i've never discussed it with her whether that's the that's the key but certainly i know lots of vegetarians who be quite comfortable with the way we treat animals being described as slavery it's quite inflammatory thing to say but i don't think that means it's wrong yeah maybe inflammatory is better but this is one of these things where i'm just kind of curious to see if it plays out the way that i think it will play out that it'll suddenly be like oh factory farming which we've always known is bad becomes suddenly intolerable right like we as a society suddenly decide that it's absolutely intolerable and and it's like we don't really talk directly about how it's related to the fact that synthetic meat is cheaper in the same way that at least in the limited way that i've looked into it particularly within the united states like a lot of things around slavery seem to be related to the farming technology at the time like in what required a lot of manpower versus what didn't and it's like oh it's funny how as the value of manpower goes down like the calls for getting rid of slavery go up and also become more effective i just wonder if that's going to be the same kind of case with the synthetic meat i don't know i find it interesting that when you're making the argument it's almost like a bit of an animal rights argument which is a nice thing to be making that you're stopping short though you keep saying factory farming like you're almost saying it would still be okay to eat a sheep if it's brought up in nice circumstances it's just the factory sheep you shouldn't eat it's almost like if you're going to be a bear bear be a grizzly grey if you're going to say that animals have these rights why are you stopping at factory farming why aren't you saying maybe we shouldn't be eating animals at all and we're just doing it out of economic expediency well i guess i'm saying factory farming here because the horrible thing is like the life condition and the death of the animal i'm just thinking out loud here but i could imagine a scenario where if let's say like the farm that exists on my package of eggs which is like a perfect farm and some hills where some chickens are running around and they're being totally happy chickens like if that if that farm actually exists and the chickens are living a happy life right up until the very end and they never see the very end coming i don't necessarily think there's anything bad with that if like a chicken lives a happy life and never suffers and we also eat the chicken i'm not sure i can really get behind the idea of that being terribly morally wrong i don't know i feel like i haven't really sat down and thought that through to it's full extent but i feel like i'm pretty okay with the idea of eating an animal that has lived a happy life i think i'm okay with eating happy chickens before we go i think there may be a call coming through if you don't bring it i don't want to hear it i swear to god i'm clenching up already i don't know i just i've got a feeling no i've been good though Brady i've been good oh Jesus let's find out let's answer this call oh god it's so horrible hello it's center here who am i speaking to say gp grey very well i don't think you would answer if i remember correctly your five years old is that right yes i am super listen i've decided to personally call you because i've heard that you've been a bit of a naughty boy that's not true that means i've had to put your name on my naughty list the elves and i are not impressed you must not true yourself and show that you can be the good child that i know you are my elves have told me that you can be very well behaved don't you tell me what to do Santa can you promise me that you'll be good from now on i'm rebelling against this system no i don't know i don't like this at all no it was jolly nice talking to you but i have to go now you know i'm very busy preparing for Christmas i'm going to take my new slave for a test drive remember it's very important to behave well or year round i hope i'll talk to you again soon very Christmas oh now he's being all nice he just put you on the naughty list imagine that getting a call from Santa being told directly you're on the naughty list that's it you might as well just give up it's just a total black mirror and nightmare it really is
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