H.I. No. 134: Boxing Day

"H.I. #134: Boxing Day" is the 134th episode of Hello Internet, released on December 30, 2019.
== Website synopsis ==
"On a chill boxing day, Grey and Brady discuss: post-final-Star-wars-trilogy feelings, the endings of things, Cybertruck, xmas hotstoppers, gong baths, imagine an apple revisited, Brady's idea for youtube rewind, still more straws, and meditation... results?"
== Release and commercial performance ==
"Artisan Water" was released to podcast clients on December 30, 2019. The corresponding video was published on the Hello Internet YouTube channel on the same day and received 26 thousand views within its first 16 days of release. Its accompanying visual consists of a looping animation in which cardboard boxes are raised onto a futuristic moving platform.
Merry Christmas, by the way. This is the first time we've spoken actually since Christmas. Yeah, Merry Christmas, Brady. I currently have my bare feet on my Christmas present from you. Well, you and your wife, I'm sure she did the actual heavy lifting, but I don't know why you would say something like that. That's how it gives the gifts come from couples and couples get equal credit. That's how that works. Okay, then. Well, my gift from you too was a little electric rug that you use. What am I supposed to use it for? Put it on sort of parts of my body. To like warm my muscles and stuff like that or? Yeah, I like that you're calling it an electric rug. It's a heating pad. Heating pad. I will tend to use it if I'm sitting in a chair for like my back. I think that's the intended one. I don't think it's intended to be used as an electric rug, but I find it charming that this is the purpose that it has assumed in your life. Yeah, I'm using it as like a little foot warmer. I'm always really impressed by heated floors in bathrooms. And it's like I've got a little heated floor under my desk now. Just my little tutsys are just sitting on it just keeping a toasty wall. I'm glad you have toasty tutsys for this episode of the podcast. This is like a very chill boxing day for the both of us. Yeah, it's like low-key hello internet. Yeah. Christmas is past. The Star Wars season is past. Just taking it easy for today's show I think. Rather than saying the year out with the bang we're going to see it out with more of a whimper. Yeah, how are you feeling in the post Star Wars season now? Have you had a bit more time to digest it? We had our big talk about it for the special episode. Any thoughts breeding? I'm interested in the number of people who say they liked the film. I feel very vindicated because I've got such a low score on like Rotten Tomatoes and stuff. But a few people have said they liked it, which has surprised me. But all the people who said they liked it have been quite chilled about our review still. It's not like they're all like up in arms. I think they've just come to expect that from us now. They just kind of like, well, I thought it was good, but I'm happy for you guys to have your annual win. The one thing that baffled me though is the number of people who said they listened to our Star Wars reviews each year. But have never seen the films. But enjoy the reviews. Like they say, oh, I always listen to them. I really look forward to them. But I've never actually watched one of the films. And yet they'll sit through two hours of us talking about it, which is, I don't know, is that a credit to us? Is it an indictment on them? I don't know what it is, but it's something. Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, I'm on the other side of this where there are plenty of YouTube channels where I'll watch them talk about movies or TV shows that I have no intention of ever watching. That's true, actually. I'm really into a podcast about boxing. And I don't particularly enjoy boxing, but I love listening to them talk about it. Okay, well, your boxing example doesn't work for what I was going to say here, though. At least with the YouTube channels, the stuff that I'm watching is highly edited. It's intended to be an entertaining thing in and of itself. Whereas our Star Wars episodes, while I do think that last one was a particularly good one to go out on as far as show quality goes. I don't think we're making a lot of concessions to the person who has no idea about Star Wars in our explanation. Whereas lots of YouTube channels will sort of presume that maybe the viewer is not super familiar with what's going on. So I feel like we're not helping out the listener at all. So I can't believe that people can make it through an episode of that without having actually watched it. Well, it would have been your reflection since just like watching the first of the Neutriloge was a cathartic experience. I felt very cathartic yesterday of getting the final edit up, putting it up for Christmas, sending it out for people to listen to and feeling like we're done with this. The obligation, the life debt has been paid. We've gone through the whole series here and it's all over and I feel very cathartic about the whole thing. When you first came up with Hello Internet, like you said, I think it's time for me to do a podcast and I think maybe I'll give Brady a try. He'll be a good guy to do a podcast with. Did you think we would spend as much time talking about Star Wars as we have? I didn't really have any expectations for what the content of the show was going to be and that's probably the best. I didn't sit down and plan out nine trilogies of what Hello Internet is going to be in advance. This was much like the producers of Star Wars now. I was just winging it with Hello Internet and like, let's see week to week what it is that we talk about and what makes it into the show and what doesn't make it into the show. Well, come on then. You must have a few little final gaps or things you want to plug from that last review. A few little. Well, I forgot this. I forgot that. I mean, look, there's a million things that when doing the edit, I kept thinking, oh, I wish I had mentioned this. I wish I had mentioned that. But it's fine. We don't need to go through that. Everybody can go through all of that. I think it was very nice. Like, there were a bunch of nice messages that we got from people who also felt like this was the closing of a whole period of time and it like, oh, thanks. I've been listening to these on the night shift for years, that kind of stuff. It was really nice to get those messages. But one of the things that has been creeping into my mind and like, I don't know how I'm going to feel about this and say a year. Maybe we're still too close, but I find myself wondering if I'm ever going to watch the original trilogy again. I don't know if I will. Interesting question. I know that I watched it after the Force Awakens came out. I had watched it again after that one. But right now, I just, I find myself in this melancholy mood of, I don't know if I can go back to the originals. I think it's that thing of the later movies, whether you want them to or not, they're in your mind. They plant ideas. They plant connections. There's things you know that happen and maybe it'll take 10 years. It'll maybe it'll be a really long time, but I don't think I'm going to be watching them again anytime soon. What do you think, really? Like when's the last time you've watched them? I don't think I have voluntarily pressed star on an original Star Wars film for more than 10 years. But I will sometimes watch one if I catch it on like normal TV because I do sometimes have interactions with live TV. So the only time I ever see the films is through that. I've just seen them too many times now. I think the only thing that would make me watch the original trilogy again will be if, for example, I had children and then I have to pass the baton on and watch it through their eyes. I think that is the thing, only thing that could possibly take me back to the original trilogy. I can't see why I also would watch something that I know off my heart is a little bit dated. I mean, I also think that you would be fighting an uphill battle in say you started today and then you want to have kids of an age where they can even watch the Star Wars movies. At that point, you're talking about a movie that's going to be more than 50 years old. And I don't know how much that's going to be like trying to show a kid Casablanca and be like, oh, this is a great movie. It's like, no, it's not. I don't agree. I don't agree. I have friends now who show their children the original films with some success, not always success, but some of them have success. But you're right. You're right. I think, but I think that's just because it's their old. And I've seen them lots of times. And there's so much other stuff I want to do with my time. I certainly don't think it's anything to do with the new films having Sully. Sully is a strong word. It's that feeling of association or you can't stop your mind from thinking things. Can you think of something else in your life that you've liked and that enjoyment has been diminished by something that's happened subsequently in this way? How do you feel about watching films with actors in that who've been like disgraced in some way? Like the example that jumps into one's mind is perhaps Kevin Spacy who has this amazing body of cool films that he's been in. And now he's a little bit of an unpopular figure. Like, can you still watch films with actors or comedians or celebrities in them who've been disgraced in some way? I'm very on the side of like the art is not the artists. Yeah. I think that's a harder position to hold in the modern world because of people's expectations sometimes. But I do still think that that's a thing that like you can watch art and separate it from the person who made that art. Now of course that's on like there is a sliding scale here. Why doesn't that apply to the Star Wars films then? Like why can't you look at the original trilogy as like a quarantined piece of art separate from all these prequels and sequels and millions of other things? I think it's because it's like what is in universe and what is not in universe? You know, it's like what the actors do outside of the movie is separate from what happens in the movie. And like I think the thing that I was aware of the last time I watched the original trilogy a little bit is even just I'm always aware of like the special editions that originally came out that added stuff that even when you watch the original version you sort of know there's like junk that was added in the back of this scene. I cannot talk about this or think about this even all these years later without feeling an absolute gut punch that I showed a special edition at a Hello Internet David Preyles special screening at Bristol. So that is still one of my great regrets in life like like even now my heart sinks and I feel this thing in the pit of my stomach at that mistake. Yeah and there were people there who that was the first time they'd ever seen Star Wars pretty. I don't even care about that like I don't care about them. I'm just like I'm just ashamed of myself. Yeah so I just think there's like a there's like an in canon and outside of universe distinction that occurs a little bit. Okay so you don't quarantine the original trilogy from the other Star Wars films in that way. I would say at least for me it's psychologically harder to do that. Yeah. It's like this is a story and you've seen different parts of it and now you're trying to go back and I think maybe the only other example I can think of is I've never seen the Harry Potter movies but I like I did really like the Harry Potter books. You've never seen the Harry Potter movies. No no I've never seen them. I went to Harry pot making of Harry Potter World the other day and what for just outside London. Just for two seconds people if you have seen and like the movies you need to go to that place. Oh yeah is that worth it? If you've seen the movies yes. What have you haven't seen the movies? I feel like I want to go. I would go to like Harry Potter movies. No if you haven't seen the movies go straight over your head because it is unbelievable if you've seen the movies. It's like going if you could go to a museum with every single Star Wars prop and Star Wars set ever made and used and you could just go to them all and see them all tomorrow. Is it like a theme park or no no it's like going to you're not going to the actual movie where you are going to the site of the movie studio but what they've done is they've like shepherded off a whole massive part of the movie studio and they've just turned it into this place where you can walk around and look at all the sets and all the props and everything that was used in the making of the films. It is remarkable. Like it is crazy the number of things they've kept because those films are so dense. There's so much stuff in them and they've just got it all there like you just walk around a corner and suddenly it's this other you're in the bank you're in Greengots bank it's like oh my god this is it from the movie here it is I can walk around it. So it's the original stuff? Yes most of it's relocated they've disassembled the set like brick by brick and moved it across the other side of the lot. They've done it in a really clever way like they shepherd you through it in a really clever way and it's like four or five hours of just like having your mind blown if you're very familiar with the movies. If you've never seen the movies I think it would quite possibly mean nothing to you at all. You'd know all the names in the places but it wouldn't flick at the same way. You should see the film they're good films grow. No but okay so here's the thing like the Harry Potter books caught me at just the right time when I read them the first three were out and maybe the fourth had just been put out I can't quite remember where I was in the timeline of this you know so I was sort of reading them as they were going along and like they just hit me in the right way like I absolutely love them but the thing with those books is it became very clear to me in book five that like all the promises of this consistent world we're not going to be fulfilled. Yes that in four you can start seeing the world is getting a little bit shaky it's like it's starting to fall under its own weight and by book five when they have all the wizarding government it's like this whole thing just doesn't make sense like this premise can't hold together anymore. Anyone who thinks that she had that thing planned out from the start and stuck with it is like deluded yeah allow me to introduce you to George Lucas if you think that's the case. I don't know why people tell this story. You got lucky and you had to keep going happens to all of us. That's how you end up with a YouTube channel. I don't know if George R.R. Martin has said the same story or anything but it's just I feel like it's okay to not have the whole story planned out in the beginning that's fine you don't need to tell us a story that you do but like that's an example of I remember when the books were coming out I would reread the earlier ones when the new one came out to be like re-caught up with it yeah you know but by book six I was like I'm not doing this anymore like it's just falling apart and then it kind of ruins and colors the earlier books in some way. And the films are the same the films feel that way too like the last couple of films which are good you do get like oh my goodness so what Dumbledore's got a brother now. Who's that who's that person in the flat? Albus Dumbledore he was there right from the beginning Brady right he's he's mentioned I'm right at the start there's a way in which the original trilogy is now connected to a later story yeah that I find as dumb as this is because it's all made up anyway right yeah I always found it easier to mentally coordinate off the prequels because it's like oh this is a bunch of nonsense that happened before and who cares and it like it infected Vader a little bit but not a lot yeah but when there's a trilogy that happens after it renders all of the actions of the original trilogy and those characters kind of meaningless yeah I mean like from big things to little things like at the end of return of the Jedi when Han and Leia finally have their kiss in the forest and they realize they're gonna everything's good and that's like you know that ends their story nicely they have to be ever after knowing that later on he became some hobo wandering the galaxy while she stuck with all the politics and right that's like sad like and obviously you know I'm not going to go over the emperor going down that shaft again but I mean that completely changes that scene now it matters that a story has an ending that is satisfying and I'm just aware of this in a lot of media we mentioned on this the Star Wars special episode that I hadn't watched Game of Thrones because I always regarded that with like a bit of a I'm gonna wait and see I'm gonna hold off here because I thought the whole situation of HBO is doing like one season at a time like they're burning through this source material the original author hasn't finished stuff and seems to be having a really difficult time getting his book finished it's like this seems just like a like a recipe for disaster that the source material isn't done I think you should watch that I want to watch it again and I've seen it two or three times I think that's well worth watching hmm but I know though that it it seems like it's universally regarded that people are really unhappy with the last season now I need the last two episodes of the last or maybe the last three episodes of the last season it's not like it turned out it was all the dream right or something like that things didn't go the way they hoped for their characters and you know that's tough luck you know I would have done it differently too I was disappointed by it too but I want to watch it again and everything that came before is so you're so great that that doesn't really matter it's a good use of your time hmm I don't know I feel like I have a hard time going along with that maybe I'll try it maybe I won't I don't like my wife is very insistent on okay it's finally over can we watch it now and it is a classic it's an old time classic TV show it despite some people not liking the last three episodes you know lots of people are unhappy with the end of classic TV shows a lot of people don't like the last two minutes of the sopranos but the sopranos is classic hmm okay again I'm I'm just going from second-hand accounts but it seems like the dislike of Game of Thrones is that it's unsatisfying whereas you take the end of the sopranos people would argue over it and you can have people who say oh I don't like that ending but you can make a really good case for that's a good ending for the show I know I do think it's a good ending for the show yeah I'm in that category as well and so it doesn't strike me as like there was some controversial decisions made for how to end a series it sounds like it was just an unsatisfying ending but like to give you a different example I'm watching another apple plus TV show that I got stuck on this weekly release which really annoys me it's this show called servant and it's an emnight shaman TV show right I'm very aware of I'm really enjoying this it's filmed really well the cast is good I know even though I never saw him in Harry Potter it has the like one of the Ron Weasley isn't it and he's he's great as this like grumpy guy and I'm really enjoying this show but I'm very aware that it's all because they're setting up like oh it's a mystery what's happening and the whole thing that's going to matter is is this resolved in a satisfying way like when it is over can I recommend this show to someone or not and that's the way like the endings infect the stuff that comes before so like well we'll see what happens with this show and there's a way in which I'm at least right now feeling that way a little bit with Star Wars like oh the endings infect a little bit of what comes before and that I've been ground into the dust into total apathy and indifference to the Star Wars universe as a result of of all of the stuff that has happened over the past several years so okay on the other side I find it interesting that like I feel like there was a really good discussion in the subreddit and there are lots of people who do like this movie and I've been having a hard time like understanding what is it that people enjoyed about Rise of Skywalker and like I was I was trying to break it down earlier today and think about it and it's like what makes movies enjoyable and it's like it's way harder to talk about what makes movies good it's way easier and way more fun to talk about when movies go really terribly and like people like listening to people do take downs of movies and like that's really fun to do but it's like I look at the Rise of Skywalker and I feel like man this movie hits it's none of the bullet points of movies a movie can have it can have a great story it can have a really good style even if the story doesn't make sense within the style you can have a movie that doesn't have a good story but it has such a charismatic performance by one of the actors or actresses in it movies can be good across multiple dimensions and when people talk about really liking the last Star Wars movie like I was looking through comments and I was visiting the Star Wars subreddit I'm trying to read like when people say that they like it what do they really like about it and I think there's another dimension on here which is the thing that of like where the apathy has come from and I think another dimension of what can make a movie enjoyable for someone is the world that it is set in and so I don't know if I'm right or if I'm wrong but I feel like the people who are really liking this movie really enjoy the world that it is set in like it's really hitting that bullet point for them yeah and so other things don't matter and for me that's like I'm kind of done with the Star Wars world there was fun while it lasted but I'm out of here for a little while I was talking to a friend of mine today on text who liked it and I was saying to him why did you like it explain it to me like I want to know yeah and he and he told me all the things he didn't like about it and that loads of them with the same as mine right and the reason he said he liked it and he used one word but I think he was using the wrong word in a way he what he should have said was your word he said I liked it further than nostalgia and that's the same thing is liking the world I think like all the things that exist in that world like Sabers Stormtroopers that outfits the ships you know that the animals and you know creatures and things like that that's what I think he was seeing he just liked being back in that world again he said it made him feel nostalgic yeah and you know while I was not a big fan of Rogue One I remember on the how can you read movies scale that was one thing that I did think that movie did really well it's like oh they nailed the world of of Star Wars in Rogue One like it looks right it feels right the equipment looks right all that stuff it's really good do you know why I think Rogue One's half decent movie by the way I know we took we disagree on Rogue One hmm whenever I see a clip from it it makes me want to watch it again have you watched it again though I've only seen it twice to be fair Rogue One was on my mind because Shaleigh Girl is one of the regular Christmas movies in the Grey Household and it has the same main actress in it and it's always just funny to think of she's playing like this light comedy role of learning how to ski and it's like oh all right but you're also the girl who stole the Death Star plants it's always like a fundamental comparison to draw but I just like those are just the thoughts like I found it very interesting to try to figure out what is it that people like in this movie and this is where I've been trying to formulate my thoughts on movies like movies can be good if they really hit it out of the park on any one characteristic and you know you don't need a great story if you have an amazing style you don't need a great style or story if you have an amazing performance like you can really nail it on one thing and I feel like this has solidified in my mind that the world is a thing that can really hit it out of the park for some people that's how I'm understanding people who watched it and we're like oh I totally love this it's hitting that the world part for them and I'm happy for them like media is subjective and if you like the movie I'm very glad you like the movie this episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Linode Linode provides virtual servers that make it easy and affordable to host your own app website project or whatever in the cloud whether you are a Linux expert or just starting to tinker with code you can use Linode you can start from scratch and fully customize your server for any application or use Linode's one click apps to deploy game servers WordPress sites and much more Linode is your step up to powerful totally customizable cloud computing at an affordable price best of all every plan comes with linode's amazing 100% human 24 7 customer support and hundreds of docs to help you get started get a $20 free credit on your new account by going to linode.com slash hello internet and using the code hello internet 19 thanks to Linode for supporting the show are you going to pre order a Tesla cyber truck I don't even know if they're selling them in the UK now I have not pre ordered a Tesla cyber truck can I'm on the site now are you going to order a Tesla cyber truck Brady well what do you think of this thing my thoughts are more at the negative end of the spectrum okay you don't like it you know not a fan of the cyber truck design no and and I saw on Twitter one time you do like it yeah like it's funny I thought you would love this like I don't know why there's something about the cyber truck seems like like you would think this is fun like it's fun and awesome but you don't like it tell me why well I'm surprised you like it in some ways I love everything about this truck I think it looks cool like I kind of see the appeal of the look of it but I do think on the balance of things it's kind of ugly mmm it's so uh show offy and attention seeking this is like driving a hammer right you know down the Hollywood Boulevard or something it's like hey everyone look at me I'm like I've got the latest thing it looks different I want your attention have I got your attention yet that's a different question would I buy a cyber truck for myself never I would never want to drive it because of exactly that reason like way too eye catching I would not buy it like we're money no object I would totally buy a Model X which I think is a is a very blend in Tesla car like I think it's a nice SUV but it's also small it doesn't stick out like the Model X 100% is the car that I would buy I would not buy a cyber truck but that doesn't change the fact that I love the look of the cyber truck and I'm glad to live in a world where this thing is going to exist like I think it looks really cool I don't mind that it exists mmm do you know what it reminds me of what do you remember the film with Tim Robbins and Gary Sonese called Mission to Mars oh yeah yeah and set in the future I think it is potentially one of the worst films ever made I think it's like mind-numbingly boring and stupid it's a film I really don't like yeah there's like the countdown at the end with the rings and the aliens yeah yeah but even before then it's weird there's the scene I really don't like is in the middle of the film they have like a crisis in space where they're going to Mars and they get hit by debris or something and it pierces the ship and they have to like fix the ship but they to make it more realistic they kind of do it in real time oh yeah it's really pedestrian scene which is supposed to be tense and dramatic but everything's happening really slowly and anyway that's by the by at the start of the film because it's set in the future at the start of the film they're on earth as astronauts, NASA astronauts and they're having some kind of party and I think Gary Sonese's character or one of the characters pulls up in his car and it's supposed to be a bit futuristic like a future car and I remember just thinking that is like an ugly ugly car is that what cars are going to look like in the future and when they released cyber truck straight away like my memory went to my impressions of that car I've since looked up that car because I thought it was like a made up car like they'd made just for the film but it looks like it was based on something called an Asuzu Vihi Cross convertible but I just remember the car offended me in the film I just didn't like it and the cyber truck reminds me of that looking at pictures of it now they don't look that alike but that's what it kind of reminded me of at the time so you're offended by the ugliness of the cyber truck yeah I just don't like the shape and the proportions of it let me make a counterpoint here which is I do like the look a bit you know you don't have to strain your mind really hard to imagine why might someone not like the look of this truck it's like cliched futuristic great it's like you know how like everyone says in the future people are gonna wear these like silver suits right big V on the front of them it's like if you said to someone draw me a cliché future car yeah this is what they draw yeah but that's kind of why I love it I will totally not disagree with that point at all and that's that's sort of why I like it but that aside the thing that I like whether you find the design of the of the cyber truck appealing or if you don't find it appealing I find cars just shockingly boring and I really feel also like in the last 10 years cars have become increasingly similar and I've always just sort of presumed that this is a side effect of things like computer modeling for fuel efficiency you know in wind resistance and on the road and all the rest of that and like there's going to be some optimal ratio of material weight and size and shape to maximize fuel efficiency and like cars trend toward that over time yeah when I when I look at cars it's like looking at a herd of zebra and they're like they all look the same to me and I can't tell them apart that is fair I don't like that too and it's a reason I'm kind of drawn to ones that don't go that way yeah and so I'm glad that Tesla is doing this just because like boy this is not going to be a zebra in a zebra herd I just like that something looks different and looks interesting and I mean I think the name cyber truck also just tips its hand to what you're saying that like yes it's totally intentionally retro futuristic I don't think you name something cyber truck if you're not intentionally invoking what would an 80s movie think a car in 2020 would look like yeah like I think that's what the name is is going for and I'm all right with that but it's not like what I'd actually want to buy and drive yeah and that's what this is like it's something to buy and drive tell me your thoughts on the how they botched the demo in the window smashed on honey yeah I saw the demo that the glass matched I mean I don't know just one of those things I mean this is just my annoyance with headlines as well as is like yes everyone focuses on this thing about the window breaking during the demo of the cyber truck it's like is that really the most interesting thing about whatever happened you know this also they had one prototype on stage like demos don't always work there's sort of a famous video clip of Steve Jobs kind of losing it on stage when one of the early iPhones when he couldn't get it to connect to Wi-Fi it tells him like a room full of reporters to all turn off their computers so his phone connect to Wi-Fi for the demo it's great like it's never going to happen no one's turning off their Wi-Fi connection for you you know demos go bad sometimes and that always makes good stories but I don't really care about the demos like I'm interested in what the thing is and what it's going to look like and what it's going to do it's only like a hundred bucks to book one so yeah again well I would not be buying one for myself if I was buying a car and money was not an object I would buy a Model X for sure the only thing I'm going to be curious about is to see where does it actually get sold like I don't expect that it's going to be used as a truck a lot like I don't think that's the market really for the cyber truck no no it's like those g-class Mercedes which I love like no one uses them for four wheel driving they're like rappers and footballers yeah I guess it looks like something that could be in Jurassic Park a little bit if you painted a different colors yeah and I like it because they're quite like like serious nice but they're quite boxy they're not like all-rounded like the way cars are going at the moment they look like they don't look particularly efficient they're quite square and and I like that about them they look a bit different yeah so that's my expectation is that there's not necessarily a lot of people who are going to be replacing their pickup truck with the cyber truck but who cares like it doesn't matter oh they're just going to be a state of symbol obviously yeah I see people get mad about that of like oh I don't know if this is going to compare as a trucker not like maybe it does maybe it doesn't but you know I don't think that really matters it's like this is a thing that looks cool I mean that'd be quite good for me on a work level because like I need a car like that like when I go out on a job now I need I stack about seven to ten bags of camera equipment and tripods and stuff in the back of a four wheel drive it's a and when I look at how it opens up that's perfect for me that's actually kind of I'd find it quite useful it'd be the most useful of all the Teslas for me Brady you need to get a cyber truck please Brady get a cyber truck so that I can see your cyber truck what if it was called the cyber truck pro oh well yeah I'd have to get one then okay unfortunately I would have no choice all right yeah I'm gonna hope then that they release a cyber truck pro so that you can get one so that I can play with it just revisiting something from the previous episode I mentioned I did a hot drop in Germany mm-hmm and a lady missed out went home sad and then it turned out her boyfriend had picked up the hot stopper without telling her and like gave it to her that night on a date as like a romantic gift mm-hmm there's been like further developments oh my okay let me read this my boyfriend promised me a t-shirt if I put the hot stopper in a frame so what's happened if you click on the tweet okay she had the hot stopper framed in this like looks like a black frame with an orange background so I feel like posterity mm-hmm and then he made her a t-shirt of the framed hot stopper okay this is getting very meta yeah so there's the framed hot stopper and now she can wear a t-shirt with a picture of the framed hot stopper I'm thinking getting a t-shirt made with a picture of her t-shirt of the hot stopper well watch this beast for further hot stop developments nice where they're really going in deep their Germans love their hot stoppers everybody loves their hot stoppers hot stoppers so you did a Christmas day hot drop I don't like how you do these really sanitary hot drops though where you put them in plastic boxes and wrap them in cling film and stuff like what do you want me to do you you'll need to throw the hot stoppers on the ground when I do a hot stopper is that what you're made of plastic like they're not like an unsanitary material I mean it's not that people are picking them up in the dirt and shoving them straight in their coffee I hope if you do use them you claim them yeah imagine people use them anyway I look I don't know what people do with the hot stoppers when they get them aside from frame them and then obviously make t-shirts about having framed them I mean that's that's got to be one the top use cases for hot stoppers but no I just like I had a convenient hot stopper case that was just the right size and okay I felt like a merry Santa Claus who loaded a bunch of hot stoppers into a little container to do a hot stop drop I don't know if those hot stoppers actually made it anywhere because I know I teased you a little bit last time because you were like oh I send out the dinosaur cards and I don't know if they actually make it to people this was one time where I did a hot stop drop and I still haven't seen any feedback if anybody's actually found the spot and gotten any hot stoppers no I haven't seen any and you you dumped a whole stack of them too yeah it's a real treasure chest of hot stoppers mother load yeah it is I did a Christmas stay hot drop as well but mine's even more Christmasy than yours oh yeah what was I missed yours I smuggled one into the Christmas cracker of a friend of mine who I know likes Halloween to net oh okay when they open the Christmas cracker he got like his hat and joke and whatever else is in a Christmas cracker and there was a hot stopper in there okay it's like why haven't I seen this that's why because it was a personal hand-to-hand hot stop drop I think the mistake that I may have made when I made the drop was I'm trying to think about like okay I need pictures there needs to be clues so people can figure out where this location is and I took a picture of of this entrance sign to a place in London called winter wonderland yeah and now the thing is the hot stoppers were not actually in winter wonderland I wouldn't do that to anyone because winter wonderland is an annual festival that takes place in London which is like a Christmas village that's also just a total nightmare world to actually visit and I think anybody who is able to recognize where that was they saw the winter wonderland sign and they were like I am not going to winter wonderland for hot stoppers like nothing is worth that it's it's like I had dropped them in the seventh circle of hell and you know buried them under the ice right next to Satan and they're like you know what I like hot stoppers I don't like them that much yeah so they were it actually in winter wonderland it's like people I wouldn't do that to you I would not make you go into winter wonderland to get them they were winter wonderland adjacent I was just trying to find a spot that would like frame them where they were in the world but I think that possibly scared off any London listeners who would know immediately what that place wasn't go I'm not going there that is a horror show I forgot to tell you something about my visit to Instagram island oh yes and the Maldives that I did so I'm not you know I don't usually do all the activities like you know yoga and stuff like that but they had this special guest on the island they have these special guests who are there doing like you know activities it might be like a special fitness instructor or influencer or something perhaps you say an influencer for sure 100% of the time yeah well anyway when I was there there was this influencer slash I don't know how to describe him like he looked just like what he was which was this kind of spiritual meditation yoghari type person from India and he had the long hair in the beard and he wore the all the right stuff like whatever you're picturing in your head is probably right okay and his big activity that he was doing was a gong bath have you ever done a gong bath it will not surprise you really yeah but no I have not done a gong bath do you know what a gong bath is no please explain what a gong bath is well what I thought a gong bath was and I was pretty much right was he sort of go into a room and you are immersed in the sounds of gongs and those sound bowls that you can hit with a little piece of wood and they make nice gongy metallic reverberating sounds and you sit there and like to meditate and bathe in the sounds you know that balance your energies and stuff like that okay anyway he was doing this gong bath right you could go and do it at like 5 pm and my wife said why don't you come and do the gong bath and initially I was like reluctant as you should be yeah but then she sold me on it right because she's done them before and she said you don't have to do anything you just have to lie on a mat on your back with your eyes closed listen to nice sounds and there's a 90% chance you'll fall asleep okay and to me it sounded like almost like having a massage except you're listening to you know weird nice sounds and I thought well who doesn't want to lie down for an hour and hear interesting sounds and fall asleep so I was like all right I'll do it so we went along there's probably about 15 20 people in the room usually is held outside but the weather had turned and so they held it inside in this room and we all lay down on like yoga mats he spoke to us first and like there was five 10 minutes of whatever I could have done without it but all right okay everyone lie down and we all lay down and then he just started walking around the room and standing at the front of the room banging on gongs and playing didgeridoo's and head all the time head all sorts of like native instruments from around the world and he would make the noises of them and at one point I did nearly fall asleep and I was thinking that's all right you know I've done worse things and just as we were coming towards the end he said all right everybody stand up so we all got up and stood up and then it turned okay and he said everyone come and stand in a circle oh and we all stood in a circle and then we all had to hold hands and then we all had to make these funny noises repeat after me you know whoo and make all these weird noises and crawl all these faces and there was like no escape because you're in this room like and then he'd got out his guitar and started playing his guitar and taught us the words to these songs and we all had to sing along with the songs and you could tell everyone wanted to leave but we had to sing the song and then at the end of singing this song he said shall we do another song who wants to do another song and who wants to he actually said who wants to do another song and who wants to stop and everyone just stayed completely silent which he took as okay you want to do another song right of course oh god as fate would have I was like right next to him I was right you know so everyone was looking at me because I was standing right next to the dog eye so like I had to be seen to like be making some kind of effort I couldn't just look up hold so I had to be like singing the songs about you know how spiritual and lovely the ocean is and stuff like that oh it's a nightmare so if you ever get asked to do a gongba oh yeah yeah which I would be well on for for sure yeah that's right at my alley just the original there's no singing at the end just say is it just the sleeping gong part or do I have to get up and sing about the ocean at the end okay okay so many things so you were talked into this because you just thought it was nap time that's basically what you thought it was like yeah it was just you know chilling out you know I'm always up for new experiences as long as I don't have to hold hands in a circle and sing sound right no like okay yeah I get the the theoretical idea of try new things like I get that and you know on a holiday you want to do things with your partner to like show a bit of willing and you know bit of solidarity this is the other factor I keep forgetting that it's not just you walking into the gongba it's a team effort yeah I didn't scum my own right okay like yes new experiences are good but this is like when people are getting you to try new foods and it's like yeah yes expanding your palate is good but that doesn't mean that you are just the subject of everyone's ideas about what you should eat right you still have a concept of oh I can try that no that's far out of the realm of what I want to eat and activities feel like they should be the same thing yes it's good to be open to new experiences but you probably know things that you you don't want to do so if it had stopped with the gongs I would have liked it what you would be recommending a gong bath if it had stopped with the okay if you had said to me that's if that singing part hadn't happened and you had said to me oh Brady my wife really really wants me to go to a gong bath I'm a bit reluctant because you know what do you think I should do I would have said to you go along it's harmless you'll probably fall asleep you won't hate it you might think it's a bit weird and hippy but no one will be looking at you no one will judge you you won't have to do anything that you're unwilling to do you won't have to wear anything weird you'll just have to lie there in shorts and a t-shirt and have a nap in the dark and I would have said go ahead but knowing what happened in this last 10 minutes by the way my wife was upholded by this last 10 minutes as well it's not like she said wasn't that great she was like sorry I didn't know that was gonna happen yes no I would fully expect that of her yeah 100% I feel like I know exactly how she would react normal gong baths are fine they're a bit boring okay yeah but see the way you framed it there though you're not recommending the gong bath this is if somebody else wants you to do this and you're married to that person is this a reasonable time to go along with something that your answer is yes yeah but what you're not saying is if I was on Instagram island just by myself and the choices before me are read a book on a hammock or go to the gong bath you wouldn't be like oh you got to go to the gong bath gong bath you can't miss you can't be on the island and not do the gong bath I know but I would say do I would say how often in your life are you gonna get to do one go and do one like it was all right it was all right I enjoyed up until that the horror show at the end why couldn't you walk out how many people were there when this when the singing began probably it doesn't a 15 or 16 a few of them were really into it there was one couple you could tell wasn't into it and the husband was pretty non-plussed but most people you could tell were just like okay this is getting weird now right but there was a visible door like you could have walked out it would have been a moment though it would have been can you believe that guy just walked out yeah you know what you're right it would have it would have been can you believe that guy just walked out I wish he had taken me with him right I mean from your description it sounds like most of the people would have thought that exact thing of like I got to get out of here you know because I'm thinking you and I were recently trapped in a situation where we were thinking oh I want to get out of here but there was literally no exit like we were basically trapped in a pit of blackness and couldn't exit so this is not the situation that you're talking about like this door and you could leave I don't know man I think when someone starts like a sing-along party that was not on the brochure you have every right to go I didn't want to be that guy and I embarrassed my wife though I understand that like I don't think your wife would have been embarrassed I think she would have just wanted you to like take her by the hand and the two of you can run away together and you would have you would have won a lot of points forgetting her out of that situation it just this one of those moments you got trapped in each step seemed okay until you thought it's okay it can't get worse until suddenly you find yourself holding the hand of some Indian shame and guitar singing songs about the ocean again this is how people end up in cults and this is why you have to have like hard lines of no I'm not singing no I'm not dancing like I don't care what the situation is I'm not dancing right as like you can't cross that line with me guru person because this is how you built a bacult would you have to think in these moments is I know you're feeling like I don't want to be that guy this is an uncomfortable situation but the person who is turned a totally normal and harmless gong bath into like that scene from the British office where David Brent is now singing songs in front of his employees like this is someone else taking advantage of other people's politeness and other people's desires to be a good person and I think when you find yourself in one of those situations like they are now exempt from the rules of civilization it's like no I can just walk out of this room and it's totally fine like you're bending the rules here man we all got to get along and we all have to play along but sing alongs and holding hands after a gong bath no this is well out I think you could have left Brady I think it would have been fine this episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by Hello Fresh hello fresh is America's number one meal kit that makes cooking at home fun easy and affordable you can 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during Hello Fresh's New Year's sale for 10 free meals including free shipping that's hello fresh calm slash hello internet 10 and use code hello internet 10 to get 10 free meals including free shipping thanks to Hello Fresh for supporting the show and thanks to Hello Fresh for shipping delicious easy to cook meals sustainably I have a bit of an a Fantasia follow up it's a very personal and a Fantasia follow-up so this is the thing we discussed a couple episodes ago which is the question of do you or do you not visualize things when someone says imagine a red apple we went through on the show this idea of on a scale from one to 10 when someone says you know look at your desk and imagine an apple how vividly do you see that apple rated on a scale from one to 10 yeah now like you did a very personal one-to-one hot stop drop I got some very personal feedback on this one from my father oh I got back on the same topic at Christmas by all my relatives too oh really yeah not so much about the visualization of apples but the how you dream and how you have memories do you see them like it's a first person shooter oh like the first person the third person one yeah okay so I'm face-timing with my parents and my poor father seems genuinely bummed and the thing that comes up in the conversation is he's like oh you know your mother and I we were were listening to the podcast and you were discussing anna Fantasia and and this thing about on a scale from one to 10 do you see a red apple and my mother goes like yeah 10 what do you mean like I don't understand how this is a question of course 10 and my father in this moment he goes zero like what do you mean 10 and so my dad very strongly came back with some of the things that we were talking about on that episode of he's like oh I I don't visualize anything and so I was talking to him about this and saying like okay well you know what like what does this mean hmm and he says well I never thought people saw things that like this is just a turn of phrase that when people say imagine a red apple or the example that he used was if say my mom asks well imagine if we had this chair over there and it was red instead right he's like I didn't think you were really seeing it that you're really visualizing the chair in a different part of the room so that's weird does he have visual memories like if you say oh do you remember that time we went fishing at the lake with the pictures of that come back into his head like some kind of movie or video game I asked my dad about that and he just kept coming back with the same sort of thing of like he can describe things for you but there is just no visual component to it so what's he using to draw the information from to describe it if you said to your dad dad go and buy me some apples right and he went to the shop and he saw red apples and green apples and yellow apples and rotten apples and big apples and small apples right and then he couldn't decide what one to buy so he came back home and said I wasn't sure what you wanted because there were so many apples and then you said oh really there were lots of apples where they tell me about them hmm where would he draw the information from to tell you about what he'd seen 20 minutes earlier so again this is the thing where you're trying to paraphrase what someone else was describing but he just says like oh it's it's word content like it's he can describe the qualities of the thing right but it's not being derived from a mental image right and I really believe my dad on this it because it was just interesting that he was one clearly very surprised to learn that people were really meant it when they said something like imagine this thing he seemed so bummed like I felt really bad like my dad who's listened to hello internet for a long time suddenly became like this this casualty in one of our sections of the show of like oh we're discussing this thing about how do brains think but he must remember what things look like like for example when your mom used to go away flying on traveling as an air hostess and she walked back into the house having been away for three days and this woman walked into his house with a face and he looked up and saw this woman at the door like he must have looked at her and said like was he like oh my god who are you and she would say I'm your wife like what's he comparing her face to to know who she is now I feel like you're doing the thing again where it's like Brady analogies right or birds like the questions are totally different I feel like you're framing this in such a different way and it's interesting to me because okay I can't answer from my dad in this but when you ask that question like it's very interesting to me that my mom said oh 10 out of 10 real apple like I can visualize it 100% it's just as real as a real apple and my dad's going zero out of 10 I didn't think people could visualize things in their mind if he's in a different room to your mum and there's no photos of your mum in the room can he close his eyes and remember what she looks like and visualize what she looks like so I'm gonna bet he answers now right and where I was going with this is when I answered this question on the previous show I rate this is like a four I can kind of see a ghostly apple and so when you raise this question like my wife right now is in another room right she and a chompers are enjoying a Christmas movie yeah and if I in my head try to think of what does my wife look like I can get to us like a four out of 10 scale of trying to recreate her face in my brain yeah and so enough I can get to a seven or an eight yeah but that doesn't mean that if a woman who looked similar enough to my wife came by that I would be confused just because I can't recreate her face now I have well obviously your dad recognizes your mum I am being a bit facetious no no but it is a but if he's a zero yeah that is interesting to me that he can't see her yeah what are his dreams look like just he say things in his dreams I know my dad does dream yeah very rarely like this is the thing that's come up sometimes in the family but like he dreams but it's extremely rarely that he remembers his dreams yeah I've never gotten the impression that there is invisible content in that but maybe I don't know but like I just found it very interesting that this this thing that online where some people have this description like like we mentioned last time the the guy who's the head of Pixar says oh zero out of 10 for this and other people claim it like I happen to hit upon someone in my immediate family who was really quite surprised by this and you know one of his exact phrases that I wrote down was my dad says that there's knowledge he felt like it's driven a hole in his life like he just never realized that this was a real thing that people meant when they said they were imagining something I know you don't know the answer to this these are questions I want to ask him what does he think when he sees someone draw a picture not based on like a life model or anything just like out of their head like as someone has to straws a picture out of the blue could he do that if I gave him a paper and some colored pencils and said draw me Mount Everest what would he do where would he pull from to put anything on the paper the thing that came up was we were talking about books so my mom was like what do you see in your mind when you're reading a book and this is where you know I again I sort of realized and I wrote this article a while back about how like my dad has always listened to audiobooks and radio dramas and things and my dad has always been a very verbal person and I think of like the SAT scores they're divided into two categories you know you have math and you have verbal I think if I gave those tests to my parents like my dad would do very well on the verbal section and my mom would do very well on the math section like he's always been like verbally weighted and so he had sort of the same experience that I have with reading or with listening to audio plays which then goes right back into the whole thing of I think it's interesting to hear a voice without knowing what it looks like that it somehow occupies a different place in your brain and my dad's descriptions of reading books was sort of the same that it's like he's not really visualizing anything there's like an idea of what's happening but that's very different from a visualization so I have a data point here that feels very real for a zero out of 10 and I mention it because like you're saying with your family this comes up with people and I find it fascinating that just like with the sub-vocalization other people are extremely high on the oh this is just a difficulty of linguistics all brains do the same thing just having a hard time describing to each other in words I feel even more certain that this is this is not the case yeah I have made several calls for feedback I've gotten a couple of little like oh my department is working on something around this but still nothing really solid I bring all of this up because I feel like because of the experience of talking to my dad if there are any other drive by victims of the podcast feel like they got really bummed out by this knowledge into their life that they never needed and didn't really affect anything like I'm very sorry for bringing up this piece of information and you know it's fine everybody's different and it's okay another question for your dad or people like him I wonder if to him photographs photography is even more precious and miraculous like the idea of being able to immortalize an image to look at when you're not at the place to him must be this like incredibly precious thing because otherwise you would never ever be able to see that thing again does he take more pictures than normal people like oh I must take a picture at this because I want to remember all these things well I mean my father has always taken all the pictures in the family but I think that's a fairly common dad trope in all families like I don't think that's like never in my life as my dad taken a photo on on the Polaroid camera pulled it out looked at it and said wow what a miracle of technology that we can see a thing that otherwise would be would be lost to time like tears in the rain right like he's never you know never expressed anything along this line so if you were little boy and you came home from school uh-huh and you had been bullied and you said daddy someone bullied me at school your dad would never think to say well what did the boy look like because there's no way you could possibly know that no like I just don't breathe I feel I feel like you're really going off the rails here like I people can have thoughts about visual things without visual components and I feel like I'm a real bridge person in here in in this way of like halfway between these two things and you're even to me your questions sound crazy as someone who reads a four out of ten on the visualization scale would your dad be able to help like an identity sketch artist if they stood next to him and said okay what did the guy look like what is your son look like dad I'm so sorry I brought this up breed is going to keep going I'm so sorry dad last episode we talked about YouTube rewind yeah and you asked me if I had any ideas about how one could be made mm-hmm I haven't got there yet okay I feel like I've gotten closer okay two possible ideas one is I'm gonna steal an idea from myself this week I don't think you can steal an idea from yourself it's your idea right if I may talk about myself unhumbly for a moment as you're well aware one of my YouTube channels just went past a milestone that's quite unique to my YouTube channel because it's a number of YouTube channel and it went past pie million subscribers the number of subscribers were the same as the digits of pie congratulations to you and number final thank you thank you so to mark the occasion I made a little fun video and I got lots of people who have been in number five videos lots of people who've been in all my videos and all the YouTube friends that I could call in favors from or coerce to send me them saying digits and then I made this short video that had a hundred odd digits of pie and each digit for just like half a second was said by a different person so it went by really really quickly you saw all these people gray you did it for me you're in it Duke did it you know destined all the mates and all the number file people and that and it was this short video bang bang bang bang bang you saw these numbers and like looking at the responses to that people quite liked it well people liked seeing certain people they'd be like oh my god I can't believe low-spec gamer was in it oh look did you see that was cursed because I can't believe you left out so and say oh no no she was there she was there at one minute 38 and stuff like that right well if there's anything we've learned from Star Wars it's people like seeing things they've seen before yeah and it made me think a good thing to do is to get as many people as you can in mm-hmm but for very very short amount of time but with like a purpose and like a thing like like it had in common that everyone was saying a number but it wasn't some lame storyline where they were like you know throwing a bowl to the next person or trying to parachute out of a plane it was just everyone doing the same thing but in their way but also with like a purpose I'm not suggesting YouTube make a video of people reciting the digits of famous constants but it did make me think this is the thing to do get you get a really really high shot count you get everybody in there that are all taken out of their normal context the normal place and where you see them doing this other thing right it made me think this is a way to go okay this is a thing to do and it's easy that's not a bad idea so the concept here is you just want to double down on maximum amount of recognizability yes that's not a bad idea I would love to see the reaction if YouTube said hey guys it's YouTube 2020 and we're going to go through an avogadro's number of avogadro digits and I'd love to see the reaction of people being like what what is this yeah I mean obviously it has to be something a little bit more low-brow than the digits apart it was so much fun though all these people sent me these like videos of them saying all the digits from 0 to 9 yeah you showed me this project while it was partly done and you seem to be having a great time and also had a real nightmare timeline in front of you in your editing program of like all the little slices anyway that's one idea it's not there yet but it's like it's the basis of the idea it feels like something that could be workshoped yeah you just need to find what is the structure and it has to be preferably something a bit zyke guys do something from the year but something not too zyke guys see like not everyone playing Fortnite or something it's gonna be like I don't know right okay but I've had a second idea okay and that is they need to take the piss more my inspiration for this is do you remember a video made by captain disillusion a while ago now where in the course of the video he impersonated 6 or 7 youtubers and you used their genre he did you he used you he did the professor from my periodic videos tom scar v source destined bill words he did I think six it he might have done seven different people yeah because he's like really clever and great with effects and he did a few and I think his professor impersonation was amazing he really nailed that one his destined was also fantastic yes I particularly loved his line and he said I'm just a humble rocket scientist like I'll remember that forever and I think of that every time I see destined he didn't just do really well with the look right he obviously watches all these channels and he every little nuance and tick and personality trait he got in there somehow and you watch them thought you know this is genius but he was ripping the piss out of us as well like you know he was it was affectionate but it was also like oh you got me there oh you got me again like everything was great someone like him or a few people like him or somehow doing it where youtubers take the piss out of other youtubers not quite a roast but like where for example a whole bunch of youtubers were commissioned to remake some of the big videos of the year themselves as impersonations or tributes or parodies would be really fun it would be really fun to see yeah you know Casey Neistat pretending to be some famous beauty vlogger or you know it's a good idea and I think you could almost connect these two of you could have the structure be that it's a chain of people impersonating the other ones yeah right so one could have like oh PewDiePie does 10 seconds of being Mr. Beast Mr. Beast does 10 seconds of being eyed justine eyed justine does 10 seconds of being captain dissolution right and like you just you keep going right yeah I can see something along those lines of yeah like that's the connecting thread that each person is doing the other person that's not a bad idea yeah they should put you in charge of YouTube rewind Brady there you go it's two years you're still thinking of ideas in the shower you're still working on this one oh no yeah leave it with me I've already forgotten it completely and probably won't think of it again until December 2020 yeah what are they doing this year I'm calling it right now spreadsheet V2 that's what they're going to do I was in a little London hotel restaurant the other day ordered a cocktail it was served with a straw I hadn't used before it was a glass straw this never ends quite fat okay quite a bit of girth to it the walls themselves were fat but also the straw I had like you know good diameter okay best straw experience I've had in a long time oh okay so the viscosity was good for you it was brilliant great Reynolds number okay that's the Reynolds number yeah the viscosity would be for the fluid would I even turned to my wife who sick of me complaining about straws and I said this is a bloody good straw she almost fell off her seat this is the straw for me it was really good I like the idea that she's getting really sick of this because you and I were out the other night and we were at a place that had paper straws and I remember very consciously thinking as I was curling my lips around my teeth so that like I wouldn't have to touch the paper straw with anything on the inside of my mouth I could just have the like the skin on the outside of my mouth manipulate the straw I was thinking don't mention it in this group setting everyone here has already heard too much about straws just just suffer in silence and don't bring it up and that's what I tried to do then when they come out with the paper straws everyone looks at you and I thinking are they gonna say something no and it's like nope just don't say anything just keep it to yourself did I take a photo of I think I might be even taken a photo of for you I can't remember this glass straw since I know that the throughput is important to you yeah you want to maximize the amount of consumption per second possible twisting my words twisting my words glass sounds like it has a potential to have a higher throughput than plastic yeah do you think it was equivalent and or possibly higher possibly yeah it did have a high throughput it was a good straw I'm saying there's hope out there glass straws could be the solution for me okay if plastic is to be banned do you think it was actually glass it could have been a kind of plastic I did wonder that again like a glass straw seems like it's good unless you have catastrophic failure and then it's really bad like you know if you have structural failing of the straw I think that's why it was so thick hmm like I don't think I could have broken this accidentally so you're saying glass straw gets the thumb up from you yeah okay I want to keep people in the loop yeah I'm sure people are dying for for updates on what are our opinions of various straws and how do they rate and so there's there's hope with glass straws we can spend 15 minutes talking about whether or not your deck can visualize an apple I think there's nothing we can't talk about hello internet it's that time of year no matter what your goal is for the next year getting physically fit financially fit being a better person it's all on audible and to help motivate you audible is issuing a challenge to current and new members finish three audio books by March 3rd and get a $20 Amazon credit it's that simple finish three by three slash three and get $20 there's nothing to enter audible will keep track of your progress for you if you're looking for a good book about personal change I'm going to recommend triggers by Marshall Goldsmith definitely one of the better and more actionable books in this area that I've read now audible members can choose three titles every month one audiobook and two exclusive audible originals you can't hear anywhere else an audible members also get access to exclusive guided fitness programs to help start the new year off right and with audible you can listen on any device anytime anywhere at home at the gym on your commute or just on the go so to start listening today with a 30 day audible trial visit audible.com slash hello internet or text hello internet to 500-500 that's audible.com slash hello internet or text hello internet to 500-500 to get a 30 day audible trial thanks to audible for supporting the show and thanks to audible to being the place where I get all of my audio books and you should too we never really followed up how things went with you with meditation like people like Tim's even asked me sometimes and by the way you will get blocked or muted if you ask me to ask gray things but some of them have asked whatever happened with gray and his meditation I didn't eat them but think I must ask him sometime it's so painful Brady yeah okay so like I have this on my private list of like hello internet stuff and what has been on my private list of hello internet stuff for a long time is meditation follow-up yeah because I was like oh we're gonna meditate for the next 30 days and I said this I don't know 180 days ago now I think is is the other thing and people always want that close bracket right like it's so unsatisfying it's like this bracket was opened and like where is the close bracket have you not run the trial yet or you're not ready to talk about it yet or what's the status okay I'll talk about this a little bit so I can I can relieve us of this okay I tried so hard like yeah the whole reason I brought this up on the show is I really want to put myself on the hook for giving meditation a real try like I'm really gonna do this I'm gonna get it on record just like with the running do it for a period of time so I can make a solid decision about this is for me or this isn't for me and just be done with it and yeah I think there is maybe no simpler task that I have ever attempted that my brain has pushed back against harder than this one and the best I've done is like 10 days in a row of maybe 10 minutes of meditation it's not that I hate it it's not that it's hard it's just like my brain does not want to do this it is really pushing back and I have not gotten the resolution that I want because it's because like I wanted to do it for a long period of time but I've just been incapable of doing that but what what hasn't helped is so during the longest stretch I happen to be around some friends who were like oh yeah I meditate and it's great and it was just the same frustrations again where I was talking to them like okay hey what do you get out of this and all of their descriptions were just totally unhelpful to me with they're like oh I immediately feel better I meditate and I'm instantly getting these mental benefits from it and like I'm sitting there getting absolutely nothing out of it and just like with anaphanthesia or just like with with so much of this mind stuff it's so hard sometimes to know what is it that you mean by these sentences like what is it that you are describing I don't know I may have to just like give up on this project entirely because the things that people talk about just don't resonate with me and don't really make any sense so like my friends were talking about it allows me to perceive that there's a greater distance between my thoughts and myself and I can't say I don't understand how you could confuse those two things in the first place I don't understand what you're getting out of this I think people who get into meditation like are different to you I think so I know some of your friends who are into meditation and they're in many ways they're quite like you so you would probably think oh you're quite like me you have a similar brain to me and you like meditation but those ones who I'm thinking of they also have some parts of them that are quite different to you like a more open-mindedness and a more acceptance of like this spirituality or or just like a more acceptance of of the world like in a way than you are what do you mean by that I don't know like I know it's a bit of a like a cliche and a trope that CGP grace bit of a robot but they're less robotic than you know it's not a trope for no reason yeah yeah so like they're less skeptical than you maybe so skepticism is orthogonal to this because there's there's a lot of meditation and mindfulness stuff that doesn't require like woo-woo levels of spirituality yeah yeah and so that is what I'm focusing in on 100% and the people that I'm talking to are not like spiritually involved in the meditation like they're being pragmatic about it as well that it's it's kind of like oh this is like exercise but for my brain yeah that's why I feel this frustration of it seems like there's something here but I'm just not driving anything out maybe they're more experimental than you they're more the sort of people that would eat something because their friends had taste this which you would never do whereas if you're going to run experiment it will be involved you know spread sheets and AB testing and like controls and that where they're more like oh yeah okay I'll eat a lychee see what it's like yeah okay but so like here's one like the exercises in meditation right where they're trying to introduce a concept to you and so the concept is trying to get you to notice your thoughts and this goes back to subvoicalization as well notice that your brain is talking to you all the time and that you know even in moments when you think you're being still you have to learn to recognize that you have this monkey mind and your brain is chattering so there's there's a lot of like listen for this and pay attention to this this is a thing that's a distraction in your life that you don't notice unless you pay attention to it sometimes and again like I listen to all this stuff and I go who doesn't know that their brain is sort of chattering away all the time like it just seems like a bizarre kind of thing to have to tell someone that oh don't you know that your brain is talking all the time and that's what thoughts are it's like yeah it's like listening to a lesson where someone's trying to tell you look around and you'll notice that there are different colors in the world and you know you may not have noticed this unless you pay attention and so notice the way that the sky is like the water and it's like what the f*** are you talking about like how I don't understand how you're trying to explain to me what blue is like I see what blue is and it's this weird thing of like notice your thoughts in this way or the other one that is used is like a metaphor for sound where they're like now that you can hear your thoughts and it's like yeah we're all here we can hear our thoughts like notice that just like sounds in the world come and go and you have no control over the sounds you just hear them you just perceive them notice that your thoughts are the same way like you're not in control of your thoughts thoughts just appear and then they fade away and they last as long as thoughts do and like I just constantly find myself like yeah of course like who doesn't think it in this way so like that is one level of my frustration is it just seems like sort of a super obvious point but the dual frustration is that people seem to be getting something out of this knowledge that I just I don't understand or it's like they're clearly benefiting from like clarity of mind with this in a way that's like I don't get this there's like some part of this that seems missing to me but this like boils back into what has been clearly a point of interest of mind for the last year of how are brains different how are brains the same like I don't know and I feel like meditation hits on another one of these points that for some people it seems to really trigger something and for me a lot of it seems self evidently obvious but also like there's nothing for me to gain here as well the closest thing I can think of that is like an analogy to this is stoicism so lots of people will recommend to me stoicism and they're like you should read this book on stoicism and I have read some of those books and they always strike me as yeah this is all the stuff that you should figure out when you're a teenager like this is what growing up is like these books don't seem to contain any novel or new information like what is stoicism like in a nutshell I don't even know what that means it's like this philosophy this is again is where like I'm a very hard person to explain it because it seems like ideas that are just obvious so be concerned about the things that you can affect don't be concerned about the things that you can't have an effect on and it's like yeah of course that's sort of things that are usually written on those posters that have a picture of a jetty with some white text underneath I think that's slightly unfair okay stoicism has a lot about like recognizing that you're this is where like it lines up with meditation very well like recognizing that your emotions are not you like there are things that you experience and so that you have some ability to be distant from them or you don't have to like react to them immediately and yeah it's just like people recommend me books on stoicism and I've read a couple of them and then I've just stopped because I'm like it's all obvious stuff the reason why I haven't still 100% given up on the meditation is there's something that feels to me about this that it's a bit like those seeing eye puzzles where if you just unfocus your eyes in the right way you can see the thing and it is incredibly difficult to describe to someone how to unfocus their eyes to see this thing it does feel like there's a kind of un-focusing here that I'm just not getting maybe so that's where we are I've tried a bunch but I also find myself incredibly resistant because I don't feel like I'm getting anything out of this and I don't see a clear direction of like what is the thing that I'm supposed to be doing here and then triple leaf frustrating friends are like oh it's great I get so much out of meditation I was like okay so I don't know that's the feedback I may never touch on it again I'll only ever bring it up if I'm successfully able to do it over a long period of time but I'm probably gonna shelve it for now is a result and thank you for for forcing me to follow up on this one instead of just constantly dragging it out thinking like no I'm gonna knuckle down and do it for a month and then talk about it
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