Six Geese A-laying

"Six Geese A-laying", released on December 30, 2018, is the sixth installment of the 12 Days of Hello Internet series. The series consists of twelve parts, released one day at a time from December 2018 to January 2019, that together serve as Hello Internets fifth annual Christmas special and as its 116th overall episode.
B: And on the sixth day of Hello Internet, my true love sent to me. ["Piano music plays"] Even more Christmas cards and postcards for us to read out and talk about. 
G: What do you got there? I have a Christmas card. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I think you like it. 
B: So it's an image of Santa and his sleigh being pulled by two reindeer, but Santa has had my head. I was going to say Photoshopped, but I would say more MS painted onto the... 
G: Oh, burn, Brady. 
B: And a gray face, like the cliched gray stick figure face, with a little red nose has been put onto one of the reindeer. So it's like gray, the red nose, reindeer pulling the sleigh. And it is very cute, not like super professional, but that's kind of the charm of it. 
G: There's always the charm of MS paint, right? It's like, it has a certain look. 
B: Right, yeah.
G: I think that's, this is nice. 
B: What does it say inside? 
G: Here's the thing, Brady, with these cards. So when I open them, some of them have been printed. And my first thought is always relief, because print is so much easier to read. But with the Christmas cards, I do find myself then followed up immediately with the feeling of, oh, but there's no charm. Right? It doesn't have the charm of the handwriting. 
B: There's no human connection. 
G: There's no human connection. And I have to say the handwriting on these cards ranges from unreadable,
B: yes, 
G: Literally unreadable, to handwriting that is so neat, I have to look at it closely to see, is this handwriting font that's been printed on the thing? Some of you have extraordinarily beautiful and neat handwriting. I can't believe it. So, but I'm aware that with the printed ones, I have this instantaneous mixed feeling every time. All right, now you're going to need to explain this one to me, Brady. 
B: OK. 
G: The suggestion from this Tim is the Halo device in Formula One. 
B: All right. 
G: I have no idea what this is. 
B: OK. 
G: So this is given Gray's love of rules, Brady's love of F1 and your previous discussions on For Safety. I believe this would be a great topic for Hello Internet. I have no idea what this is even referring to. 
B: I mean, this is something I was very worked up about at one stage. I even did have it in the Hello Internet notes at one point for Sportsball Corner, although Formula One has no ball. 
G: Right. 
B: But I've kind of like, the passion has gone out, the wind has gone out of my sales, but I'll tell you what it is anyway, because I maintain that Formula One is your sport, and you would get really into it. 
G: Right.
B: And this was a really interesting development in Formula One. So, there've been a few accidents over the years in Formula One. As you know, Formula One cars have these open cockpits, where the driver's head and helmet is exposed. And as a result, there have been accidents, particularly when pieces of car, particularly a wheel, although there was another incident where a spring came off another car, and it bounced down the road, and the other car coming at high speed, will collide with it. And sometimes the head of the driver will collide with the object,
G: Right
B: Which can have pretty catastrophic consequences, as you can imagine. So, there was all this research done into, how can we deal with this? How can we make Formula One cars safer? And there was talks about like, you know, a clear bubble or something like that. But the solution they ended up testing and deciding on is this thing called the Halo device, which is basically a big, huge piece of reinforced structure that goes around the whole cockpit, about the level of the top of your head. So, you can still look out of the car through air, but you've got this sort of big structure around you. So, if a big object comes bouncing towards you, more likely than not, it's going to hit this structure and be deflected off. 
G: So, it was just like, it's over your head, but it's not, you're not contained within a bubble. 
B: It's like a ring, so it's like a halo. There, okay. It's like, so if I was to drop something from above, you know, a tennis ball, it would still bunk bounce you on the head. And if I was at your eye level, and through a tennis ball at you, through the gap between the car and the halo, I could still hit you in the eyes, 
G: but you'd have to hit it really straight. 
B: You'd have to be quite accurate. So, if a wheel from a car comes bouncing down the road from a crash ahead and the wheel's going, bong, bong, bong, down the road, and you come driving at 200 miles an hour, chances are, rather than using your head as the thing it bounces off, it will catch this halo, this strong piece of presumably carbon fiber and be deflected away. So, I'm sure you're straight away thinking, well, this is a no-brainer. 
G: I'm wondering what the debate could possibly be. 
B: Yeah, mainly the debate centered around the visceralness of it being open cockpit racing. Is this still open cockpit racing? I guess part of it is bravado and unnecessary. Yeah, we're taking risks, and this is a mad and machine rubbish. But they also, like, when it first came out, I really disliked them because I just didn't like how they looked. Like, I just think the cars didn't look as cool. And I just thought, you know, this is a real shame. It's really ruined the look of Formula One, where you used to see the drivers. You used to feel that you were watching people in cars and you could see the people and this sort of detracted from that a little bit. 
G: And now in my head, when I was imagining this, I imagined it as clear. 
B: No, it's not clear. You can still see the driver and the driver's head and the helmet. But no, they're not clear. They are made of structure. Yeah. 
G: If it diminishes the cool factor, though, I can see that it's a little bit of a debate because why do people watch sports and particularly something like Formula One is definitely a cool factor there? This is part of what is being sold. 
B: And they watch it for the risk. The question is, where do you take the risk away and where is risk of sexual? You could make a rule tomorrow saying Formula One cars can't go over 150 miles an hour. Then it would be safer. Or you could say, you know, they all have to wear a sumo wrestling marshmallow suits. And then a lot more of the impacts would probably not be quite as catastrophic, but it wouldn't be cool. So the question is, Formula One has put lots of new safety in over the last 10, 20 years. But how much safety you do put in versus the look of the cars, the sound of the cars and things like that and things people find cool. I have to say, though, now after, I've gotten used to them now. And that's why I say the wind has gone out of my sails. To me, it's just what Formula One cars look like. And I accept it. And you can say, if it saves a life, it saves one life, it's been worth doing. And they've been out there. 
G: Yeah, you can say that if you're an idiot. 
B: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I think the drivers mostly supported it, not all of them, but mostly supported it. And I think if you ask them now, they'd probably all support it. I think the world has just gotten used to it. But also, Formula One is such like a Hanna Fry had described it to me the other day as Formula One is just a maths competition. That's what she likes about it. So straight away, I think the people who designed the cars or a new piece of car as a new way to think about aerodynamics and how can we make the cars have better downforce and how can we design this? And it's just become part of what the cars are like. So 
G: You're in what I regard as resigned Brady mode where you just get the big Brady size. I'm like, I guess this is the way it is. And it's funny to me when we have topics on Hello Internet, sometimes when I'll see something in the show notes. And then when we come around to recording, I get the resigned Brady, who is in this exact mode of like, I was really angry about this a week ago. And now I just, the wind has gone out of my sails. 
B: There is a flip side to this. And actually, flip side was an unintentional pun. Because the Halo doesn't make it much more difficult to get in and out of the car. Because Formula One cars are hard to get out of anywhere. You've got to kind of clamber out of this cockpit. And in the last or second last race of the season, just finished. One of the drivers had a crash where his car flipped onto its upside down. So he was kind of dangling in his seatbelt. And then I think the car started to catch fire, or they were worried it was about to catch fire. And he found it incredibly difficult to get out of the car. Because of the Halo, it was constraining his ability to get out of the car, whereas if it wasn't there, he probably could have just undone his belt and found a way out. But he had to wait for people, the marshals, at the side of the track to come and flip his car back over. And then he was able to get out. So this, for the first time, created this counter debate, which had always been simmering underneath, saying, hang on a second, the Halo might stop something hitting your head, but does the Halo make the car more dangerous, harder to get out of in a fire, which would be really bad. There've also been arguments that the Halo can deflect objects towards the driver that would have otherwise missed. So I don't know, they're there now. I'm okay with them. You're going to look one up now. 
G: Formula One Halo is actually funny because I also only have the dimest idea in my head of what Formula One car it looked like. 
B: Okay, right. They were like indie cars. 
G: Well, yeah, it looks like an airplane with wheels on the ground. That's what that looks like. Okay, this is not at all what I was thinking. 
B: So you're looking at a Halo on a red bull Formula One car there. 
G: Okay, listen, this is a big chicken wishbone that's in front of the driver with the stem, the Y stem of it down in the front of the car, and then the two bones go on either side. 
B: Yeah. 
G: Because this is also the problem. In my head, I was thinking that there was already something over the head of the driver. I was imagining basically the shape of like a makeup mirror, one of those circular lights that vloggers shoot through that has a circle that you get like the circle reflected in someone's eyes. I was imagining like a circle over the person's head that was attached to a ceiling above them, but there's no ceiling above them for it to exist. So through that entire conversation, I had the wrong thing in my head by a very serious margin. 
B: I would love to have seen what was in your head. So anyway, that's also a testament to how poorly I explained the device.
G: It's a bad name. It's a wishbone. It's not a halo. 
B: A wishbone. Well, you can't really use that because cars already have wishbones. So like, I think the name wishbone is taken in car naming. So 
G: I don't care. 
B: You're right, 
G: It's a wishbone 
B: I mean, I call it a halo, but the minute you held up your phone who showed it to me, I straightaway thought, that looks just like a wishbone. 
G: Yeah. 
B: A halo. We've got to get to a Formula One race. We've got to do something Formula One next year. That's on my list, along with cricket, which we still haven't done as well
G: Let's do that. 
B: But cricket will bore, Formula One will bore you in a different way. Should I get another one here? 
G: Yeah. 
B: We've got a one here. This one's typed. Covered in Danish flags. Dear Dr. Harren and Sir Grey, why are you Sir Grey? This is unearned. 
G: I was going to say this is an unearned peerage. That's what that is. I mean, I'll, you know, I'll take an unearned peerage. But I haven't been given one, so. 
B: I don't think you can be made a Sir anyway, can you? 
G: No. I think you can get the little suffix. 
B: Can they knight Irish people though? Could you use your Irish citizenship? Oh, yes. This is an interesting question. Maybe you could get a Sir. I think I would bet you could. Terry Wogan, I think, was Irish and he got knighted, didn't he? Now, you've suddenly raised my hopes that someday I could get an unearned period and be Sir. That would be pretty great. I think that petition's going to start tomorrow. I've been immensely enjoying H.I. since episode one. And it's still my favorite podcast that I listen to while commuting. That isn't on a. Thank you. This is interesting. While anticipating new episodes from Russia with Love is the one I keep returning to when in doubt of what to listen to next, what one is that? Must be the one where you went to Russia. You had a bunch of stories of going to Russia. That must be what from Russia with Love is. But surely that's not like his favorite bit. There must be other stuff in that episode. He actually likes not just my travel stories. No, look, Shaggy Dog, great stories are the best stories, right? Where you're like, where is this going? Nobody knows. And plus, we always make sure that the names of our shows really line up with the content of them. So that must be the episode about Russia for sure. Have I told you before on the show what my Niffy's favorite episode is? My little Niffy. I think you have, but remind. Penguin one. Right. Yeah, I don't know if I told you on the show, but whenever he gets to listen to a Halloween tonight at bedtime, and Mummy says, what one do you want to listen to? He always wants to hear the one where I break the news about the Penguin dying. He's like, he loves that episode. Put the Penguin dying one on. To each their own. I'm sorry I don't have any suggestions how to improve H.I. That's a shame we could have used some of those. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It says some nice things, but here's my favorite line towards the end. This is completely like unsolicited and got nothing to do with the sentence that came before. He says, my second favorite YouTube channel has become objectivity. Merry Christmas to both of you, and thank you for being you. He doesn't say what his favorite is. It chooses to tell me there is another one he likes more, but it just sits out there. My second favorite, you know. I wonder what the favorite is. It can't be you because you think he would have said that if it was your channel he would have said so because this is to us. So it must be like one independent of both of us. What is the YouTube channel you need to knock out of the number one spot? You don't know it's just a mystery. It's probably those, who are the two PewDiePie and T-bone or whatever it's called? There's been a lot of PewDiePie versus T-Series Christmas cards. Yes, it's very specific. A lot of people have asked us to talk about that. That's as much as you're going to get. And Brady doesn't like, Brady knows nothing. I know, I know PewDiePie, but I don't know this other one. It's not music or something, isn't it? It's an Indian music channel. It's an Indian mostly music, but not entirely YouTube channel. Have you ever watched any of its videos? I have never watched any of their videos. So your team PewDiePie then? I mean, yeah, hashtag subscribe to PewDiePie, obviously. Hello. PewDiePie is and forever will be the reigning clown prince of YouTube, so subscribe to PewDiePie. All right. So T-Barad, who wrote us that note, from the maker of your second favorite YouTube channel, may I wish you a Merry Christmas.
== References ==
Category:Hello Internet Episode
Category:Article
__NOTOC__