H.I. No. 46: Superbowl of Flags

"H.I. #46: Cursed Tickets" is the 46th episode of Hello Internet, released on August 31, 2015.
==Official Description==
Grey & Brady discuss: teacher recruiting part 1, clarifications on Dulles, airline safety videos, the meaning of 'hard as nails', vexillology and New Zealand's 40 possible flags, the return of the bi-weekly weigh in, most livable cities, Hello Internet goes supersonic, plane crash corner, and tipping in America.
==Show Notes==
You're mum by the way. Lovely. Lovely. Are you genetically related or? I thought of you today quite a lot because I sat in on a strategy meeting about recruiting people to become teachers. Don't even ask me how I came to be in this meeting. Now the only thing I want to know is how on earth were you in this meeting? Why were you in a meeting like that? It's honestly too boring to even to... Oh, okay, I'll tell you. They were meeting with... It was like a government department that is involved in recruiting teachers. And they've employed PR people to help with it as well. No more cause. And they contacted Sam Martin, Professor Pollyakov, to meet with him and talk a bit about it. And I happened to be there that day filming. So Martin said, would I mind sitting in on the meeting? So I sat in on the meeting and put in my two cents worth. Because that's what I do. Right. And it was interesting enough. It's not for me to share what we were doing, talking about in a private meeting. But all the time I just kept thinking, what would they do if I said, well, my mate, CGP, Grace is, and telling them what you think about teachers, it would have put a real downer on the meeting. Yeah, I don't think that would have been good. I wouldn't tell them what I say in a meeting like that. You just keep your mouth shut in a meeting like that. I wouldn't take you to a meeting that involved recruiting people to become teachers because you are like, your teacher recruiting kryptonite. No, but you see, if I was in charge of the campaign to recruit more teachers, because they used to have these posters up around London when I was becoming a teacher, which would show they took two tax. One of them was, oh, look at all the children that you will inspire, and the other tack was just listing the starting salaries for teachers. So this was there. These were their two approaches to try to get more people into teaching field. But I feel like, no, no, you're going at this all wrong. The poster should just say, become a teacher and then below it, it should say 200 days off a year or whatever the actual number is. Yeah, just like a calendar, a big calendar of the year with all the holidays marked in like bright red. Yes. That's perfect. I can see it now. That would be the best teacher recruiting poster there could be. We must, in another podcast, talk about teacher recruiting because I actually told them what my idea was and it was a bit out of left field. And it wasn't that, but it wasn't far from that. And they kind of, I don't know, it was really interesting. And they looked a bit like, oh, that is an interesting idea. What is your idea? I want to know. We do this right now. Let's, we've got so much to get through great. Let's do it another time. Oh, you can't use the people like that. Yeah, I just did. Okay. All right. Because now, because now, like they're, they're guaranteed to listen to our next episode. So they can hear Brady's idea about recruiting teachers. Okay. I guess if you want to build up your idea that is the most amazing idea that will soon be adopted by the UK for recruiting teachers, you go ahead and build that right up next episode, people. I, I don't think it was that amazing. And B, I can guarantee it won't be adopted. Let's, let's actually do this podcast. Yeah. Does it feel different, Brady? Now that I am finally back in London, I think you were grumpy when I was in London, me being so far away from you. Does it feel different? No, not really, because I've been, you know, trying to get you to come up here to, to Bristol to come and see the Banksy thing and I can't do it. So you may as well be in America. Oh, don't even, don't even, don't even start with this. You always do this. You pretend like I'm not as interested in things as I actually am. And you just make me mad, Brady. That's, that's all you do. Yeah. Listen to that little giggle that you get so much enjoyment out of riling, like riling me up with these things. It does. It makes me happy. I just love, I just love staring up that emotion chip. Yeah. You really do. You really do. You've actually been quite radio silent the last week or so. So I, it doesn't feel that different that you're back in the UK, because now that you're on a similar time zone, I thought there was a chance I might hear from you, but I think I was hearing more from you when you're in America. This past week I have just been slowly trying to convince myself to get back into a regular working schedule after a long break. And it's just like, oh, I don't want to do that. But here we are. It's time to, it's time to get back for real. Well, you know what to do. Crack out the getting things down. Make yourself a nice mug of hot chocolate and get inspired. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot to you. Maybe I'll reread that book. That's that'll, it'll inspire me. How are you finding being back in London? What's, what's going on? What's your reflections? What's your follow up? Talk to me. No, it's just, it's good to be back. It's always good to be back after a long trip. And this summer was an unusually and unexpectedly long trip. So I'm very happy. You know, almost always the first couple of days I come back, I eventually do the thing I like to do, which is to take a walk along the South Bank in London. And then that whenever I do that, and then it really feels like, oh, okay, I'm really back now. I'm really in the heart of the city. Is this a podcaster? Are you writing your dating profile? I just like taking long walks by the river. Yeah, I do. I do like taking what long walks by the river. You should come with me sometime, Brady. I'll buy you flowers along the walk. Real ones or emojis? I don't know, which do you like better? I know you like the emoji ones. I do like the emojis quite a lot. We could just walk along, like texting each other emojis as we walk along the river together. Yes, we could. That would be very romantic. Modern romance. So you've done your walk by the river before I could get here. Of course, there had to be more flights. There are always more flights. I had to pass through Delos Airport one last time before I could come home. And I realized on Twitter recently that many people listening to the podcast, perhaps you listener to the podcast right now, Tim, have been presuming that all this time, I am incapable of pronouncing the word Dallas. Dallas Airport. I am not going to the Dallas Airport. The Washington Airport is actually called Delos, but I have seen so many people on Twitter commenting about my inability to pronounce the name of a city in Texas. It is not Dallas. It is Delos. That is the actual name of the airport. DULES. I thought Ronald Reagan Airport was Washington. They got a couple there. There are several airports out of Washington. I think Delos is probably the biggest, but yes, Reagan is another one of the airports. I think there are three. I don't know exactly, but Dallas is the one that I always go to. And someone sent me this thing, which really made me laugh because there's one guy said, I'm really confused about why Gray hates Delos Airport so much because every time I go, it's absolutely lovely. And then he realized on his trip that he went to a different part of the airport and discovered, oh, oh, right. And he sent me this picture showing the AB terminals, which are lovely and modern and new, which I don't think I have ever stepped in once right next to the horrible, horrible CD terminals that I'm always walking through that just look absolutely miserable. So apparently, even the people who are confused and they think, oh, Dallas is very nice. You have never been in the correct or really the wrong part of Dallas Airport. Why do you always end up there? Is that like some hub for United or something? That's exactly right. It's a hub for United, which is why I always end up going through it. And United uses the CD terminals, which were built in the 1950s with the adats. Why don't they spruce it up? Is United like a poor Elano? I don't know if it's just the real estate that they've bought there. The airport is busy building another set of terminals further away and a big train station between them. So I don't know if they're going to be bothering ever revamping their old ones that I'm probably always going to pass through. No, but it sounds like it could be hurting United, you know? It would make me not fly with them the way you talk about it. You know what makes me want to not fly United Brady? What? United Airlines safety video. Oh, no, I know this. I, because I do fly United a lot. And I know what you're talking about. I think I saw this stupid video two dozen times this summer. And every time it felt, it felt like an eternity. Now, do you want to describe it to the people or shall I? I'll put a link in the show notes so people can watch it. I'm just sort of having a look at it now on mute to kind of remind myself. And the thing, the thing about it is in this kind of ever increasing spiral to make your airline safety video original and different to the others, which is just getting out of control among airlines. What they've done is decide to talk you through the safety of the plane, but not user plane. So for example, they show you how to do up your seatbelt. And it's like a person in a taxi cab doing the seatbelt there. And then there's another woman talking about the exits and things like that. And she sort of is doing origami in some kind of Japanese dojo. And then someone else is talking about sort of seating and baggage and that. And she's on the back of an open top bus in Las Vegas. So it's kind of it's kind of some PR persons. Obviously said, hey, man, we're going to think outside the box and just take the airline safety experience outside of the plane, man. Yeah. And it doesn't work. It's let's use every mode of transportation, except the mode of transportation that you are on to explain the mode of transportation that you're on. Yeah, I'm looking at people putting on the gas masks and they're sitting in like a lift up a ski slope, like a like a cabin going up a ski slope. And now someone's doing the safety, like the life safety vests. And they're in a park full of kangaroos about how to handle a crash landing into water. Right. It's this video drove me crazy. And it made me crazy or every single time, every single time I watched it. Okay, look, it's a, it's a, it's a safety video. It's supposed to convey information to you about the plane. Now granted, almost everybody who's flying on a plane with any kind of regularity already knows all of this stuff. And so if I'm in charge of the airlines, I would think, okay, we're legally required to tell some people this stuff. Yeah. What seems to me the obvious purpose of the safety video would be tell the things you are legally required to tell them and do it as quickly and as simply as you possibly can to get it out of the way. But it seems like airlines decide to go with the opposite choice, which is let's try to make it fun and engaging for everybody. And I think this is just, this is just the wrong, wrong way to do it. Because can anybody make a video that is fun to watch several dozen times in a row? Nobody, right? Nobody can do that. You just, you strip all of the humor out of it. If there is any joke in it at all that works, it just dies from repeated, repeated beatings. And the airline stuff is just not even, it's just not even that funny. But this United One just it absolutely, it absolutely kills me. It's not funny. It explains, it explains things I already know in a way that somehow manages to make them confusing because they're showing you all different stuff every time. And the one that really gets me, which for anybody who hasn't watched the video, pay particular attention to this the next time you see it. Because they want to show different people all over the world doing different things. Every little scene change requires a five second establishing shot. So there's a woman in Italy and they can't just cut to the woman in Italy. They have to show her walking down the street for a moment and someone on a scooter passes her. And then she turns around the corner to then explain to you the thing. It's like, no, just cut to the person doing the thing. Do it all, you know, with CGI or in a white room or with people just showing you stuff, but when you have to have these establishing shots, it just goes, it feels like it goes on forever. And looking at the time of this video, it's four and a half minutes long. Four and a half minutes long to convey how much stuff. Here's how you buckle up. Oh, by the way, put the air masks on when they come down, put your seat back up when we're taking off, you know, the end. There's not that much to actually say, but they take so long to say it. Maybe devil's advocate for a moment. Okay. I've one final thing to complain about, but you go ahead. You try to convince me otherwise. Okay. I'm going to try to convey. Well, well, yeah, I'd soon have smashed my head against a brick wall and change your mind, but let me be devil's advocate anyway. First of all, you're a bit of an edge case in how often you fly and as particularly how often you've recently fly, so you were overexposed to this video. So we have to take that into account. But let's put that to the side for a moment. Say the airlines have access to, and I probably do, by this stage, because airline safety videos have been around for a long time, they have access to research and information and market research, which shows that airline safety videos are so samey and are so ignored by people that they are not effective anymore. And then say some accident happens where several people get injured in an accident and they file a lawsuit, which says, well, we, we didn't do what was in the video because we didn't pay attention to the video. And you know, we don't pay attention to the videos because you've been researching it for years and you know, we don't pay attention. Is it possible the airlines have had it brought to their attention by lawyers that they have to do new things to make their safety videos engaging and make people look at them because they're being ignored too often. And whether they're doing it well or not, that's another argument. And whether this is tasteful or stupid or dafred or well executed is another debate. But are they doing these outside the box things? Not because they're trying to be wacky or they've been conned by some PR people, but because they've been legally advised to make these videos, are catching and different. So people start looking at them again. I mean, if you're starting from the imaginary presumption that they have research that shows people don't pay attention, I mean, I guess it's possible. But you know what? I have research that shows nobody pays attention to these videos anyway. And it's called looking around on the airplane and everybody is ignoring the safety video, even these new ones. You're just, you're just confirming my point. And I, but also I don't think it's a stretch to imagine someone at some point has commissioned something into people's attention to safety videos. It sounds like the sort of thing that would definitely be researched. But even if it hasn't been researched, if someone could make the case that these things are being ignored, then they are worthless. I don't know. I think what I said seems quite plausible. There's only one part of the safety video that is different every time. And it is the most important part, which is where are the exits on this particular plane? And if you watch any of these videos, you see almost all of them do some kind of cutaway so they can drop in a separate segment about where the exit's on the plane. Yeah. And this is what drives me crazy about this united video in particular. And what's actually what I was going to call up is, okay, here's the one thing that's different that you need to pay attention to. And it's the moment that this woman walks into a dojo in Japan. And she says, oh, I'm going to tell you about the exits. And then she just holds up on camera a piece of paper and she starts to fold it. And then they do a little joke where she drops the paper off camera for a couple of seconds, pretends like she keeps folding and then brings it back up. And there's this amazing origami plane that obviously nobody could do in that amount of time. But it's the only part of the whole video where there's just like seconds of silence and nothing is happening. And it is the biggest, longest boring is run up to nothing is occurring. Before they then decide to have her segue into, let me tell you where the seats are on the airplane. So it's like, it's just crazy making to me that the worst slowest part of the video comes right before the part when you're most supposed to be paying attention. It's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. I agree. It's a terrible video. I've, I mean, I probably go on a different airline, because I don't have the commitment to United because of your stupid stand by my excellent stand by excellent. Well, excellent. When you're first class on the flight, you want to go on not so good when you spend two weeks waiting for you were trying to talk me out of going stand by on the way over. And I'm glad I didn't listen to you because I did get that first class upgrade. And boy was it sweet. Yeah, but you sweet sweet first class upgrade was totally worth. Weeks of standby without a two week. So that would do again a plus plus first class seat. Totally worth it. If first, if flying first class is worth two weeks of waiting, then good on you. You've made, you've made the right call. When we talk last time, I felt like you almost talked me out of it. Like, oh, maybe, maybe Brady's right. Maybe I should rethink this whole standby thing. And then as soon as I got in that seat, I thought, nope, not rethinking this. This is amazing. All right. Well, I'm happy for you then. But before we switch topics, I cannot let what for me is the amazing cherry on top of this pile of poop that is the United safety video, which is during the one scene when there's a family going up, going up one of those little, um, what do you call? Why do you even call them? They're on the mountain. What would you call one of those things? It's like a ski lift, doesn't it? It's like a, but it's like in a cabin. It's those enclosed ski lifts. Not, not there's an enclosed ski lift that they're going up. And again, establishing shot so you know where they are. It takes several seconds. There's this, this family is going up in a little ski lift and they look out the window and then going down on the opposite side. There are two people that are having a fight on top of the ski lift that's going down, which I presume is some kind of James Bond reference, but I'm not 100% sure. But anyway, it's a safety video. There's a fight that's happening in the middle. One guy gets knocked off the top of the ski lift and they put a will helm scream for him falling to his death from from the top of this, this lift. There's too many cooks boiling the broth on this video clearly. They're trying to cram so many ideas into it. They need a, that will helm scream to me is just the perfect cherry for this. It's like, boy, there is nothing that will take me out of a movie or anything more than that stupid will helm screen that is used as a sound effect in thousands and thousands of movies because audio engineers think it's funny. And it's even here in this safety video. So that for me is just the end of that. And like, can I just give a pre warning here? Because I know everyone's now going to send us YouTube videos of every safety video there is. Because it's quite common for people to make safety videos that are funny. It's supposed to be funny. And I've seen many of them and I've seen like things on like redder and Facebook and Twitter where someone says, oh, yeah. This is the most hilarious safety video I've ever seen. I've watched many of them. I can't think of one that I actually thought was funny. Oh, yeah, I completely agree. Even ones that were like, couldn't be more aimed at me. Like New Zealand has a whole bunch of Lord of the Rings themes want themed ones. At best, it is mildly amusing once. But that's it. Right. If you have to watch it twice, it's the same agony, you know, no matter what it is. I've never seen it done well. And yeah, I was actually clicking around and trying to watch a few other airline safety videos just to see what are the comparisons. And they're all just agony if you have to watch them again and again and again. I've watched the British Airways animated one probably 30 times. And obviously it's mind-nummingly boring because I've seen it so many times. But I find that one acceptable. I don't, I don't get angry at that one. I just kind of, I think, I think they made a good choice. But is it just a standard one where they just show you the things? It's very standard. It's animated so the people don't look real. So they're like cartoonish, but they're on a plane. And it's, I don't know. I've seen it so many times. I feel like I know the people and it's it's inoffensive. It looks sort of modern and now so it doesn't look kind of stayed in 1970s. Like a lot of safety videos. Can I, I think they've done quite well. It's not, it's not funny. It just conveys information. It's quite clean. I think, I think they've done all right. Yeah, I'm just clicking around through it on YouTube right now. And this to me looks like exactly what I expect from a safety video. It's showing you the actual things you'll be using, not a taxi, not a bus in Las Vegas. And it looks boring and they're just going to tell you what the things are. I would take that any day over a video that's trying to be clever and funny and that has establishing shots. Yeah. All right. Talk to me about dad jokes. You brought this up on the last podcast. This was just an off-handed remark on the last podcast, but I wondered what causes men to lose their brains when they have children and fall down into the world of pun humor. Yeah. I like what, what is the cause of this? Is it genetic? One of the better comments that someone left on Reddit summed it up this way, saying that once you have kids, all of your previous funny material, pop culture references in you window, profanity, doesn't work on young children. What does work are puns and corny stuff that this is what you're left with. And slapstick, but you haven't got the energy for slapstick when you're that dad presumably. Or you haven't got the agility. Remark about the energy. There was also this comment that I quite enjoyed where the person says, speaking as a dad of three, I can also say that it, dad humor, arises out of the insanity and desperation you feel after slogging away for endless sleepless nights, changing poopy diapers, then having to endure years of quote, conversations with overtalkative two to four year olds. You can actually forget what it's like to have a normal conversation with adults and what the conventions of normal humor are. So I like, I like these two comments because to me they fit together very well of, okay, I can understand that for some people their normal humor tools have been deprived from them. So they're resorting to puns to try to make their little kids laugh. And then this comment, I think, is the flip side of that, which is they just forget and they're too exhausted to realize you're talking to a grown up now. Like, please don't make puns at me. Like I find that offensive. Right. I'm feeling a bit self-conscious at the moment, right? Because it's becoming a bit of a recurring theme in these objectivity videos I'm doing for us to make puns in each video. Oh, great. To be a recording and then do like a lingering look at the camera as you make it. So, but I think I like to think we're being a bit ironic, but you've got to be worried now. That sounds like the kind of thing that I will let pass because the joke, it's a, like, it's a meta joke, right? You're joking about the joke. It's not the actual joke itself. But so does this sound like a reasonable explanation to you? Yeah. I, yeah, I think it's true. You have, you have less weapons in your arsenal when dealing with young children. I mean, my go to with little kids is always to make jokes about poo and we. That's, that's instead of puns. So I fun with little kids and I need to make them laugh. It's just always funny. You just say something like, are you going to eat some poo and they'll just laugh until they cry? So I always, I go with, I go for toilet humor. Right. Much to my sister's to cast when I do it. When I do it with, because she, because I then walk away as cool Uncle Brady and then she has to do with poo jokes for the next three months. You have just created an enormous amount of parenting collateral damage that you do not have to deal with. Yeah. Which makes the poo jokes even more exciting to go. Cool. Uncle Brady. Exactly. But yeah, so I read this and I thought at first that this seemed quite reasonable. But the more I thought about it, the less I was convinced about lacking humorous tools. Right. Simply because I remember, wait, I used to work around kids and I would never make pun jokes, but I could still get kids to laugh. And I taught even sometimes I taught like little, little-ish kids like I would teach kids who were maybe eight years old. And you like, you don't have to use puns to get little kids to laugh. And even now as an adult, like when my friends and I go around to like our parents who were in their 60s or something, but we're like now like in our 30s, the parents still make corny pun jokes to us and like they could be rude to us. Right. You know, because we're in our 30s, like you could make, you know, all sorts of jokes, but they don't. They still go to the puns. So yeah, you're right. Maybe there is something else going on. Maybe it's just an age thing. Maybe when you're of a certain age, like you know how, if you see someone who's really old wearing like jeans or something, it can sometimes look a bit weird or if there were certain clothes or certain hair styles that older people have, rightly or wrongly, it just doesn't seem quite right. And maybe it would be the same as well. If someone in their sort of, you know, 70s were making sort of crass jokes, or they were making really like hip pop culture references from the last month or two, maybe it would just look so unconventional that they don't do it. So they can conform to expectations. Yeah. I remember when I was a kid and annoyed by puns. I used to wonder what the hell is wrong with men in their 40s that they all make pun jokes. Like I used to think that it was age based. But as I have gotten older, I have, I have now realized, no, it is the men who have children based that I can see men who have children suddenly reach for puns much more than similarly age men who don't. So I don't think it breaks down just a long age. But go on and grab you must have a theory, please. I mean, I just, I guess my theory is that babies break men's brains in this song in some way to just make them less funny. Maybe it's maybe it's evolutionary, great. Maybe we have this inbuilt edginess to us like this edginess, this aggression, this sort of this cutting humor. That's part of us. And for evolutionary reasons, when you are suddenly given the responsibility of looking after children and bringing them up, there's some evolutionary reason that that kind of edginess and that cut and that aggression to all parts of us, including our humor, needs to be dulled and it's dulled forever. I think that's genuinely sounds plausible to me. That's why I think there's something about the parenting that changes people. People are very, very different human beings before and after they have children. And so I'm still, I'm still going to put the call out there. I want someone to do their PhD thesis on dad humor. And I want to see hormone measurements. I want to see genetic analysis. I want this, I want this to go deep. That's, that's what I want. Yeah. And it's to be one of those things as well where they like show them pictures of like violent acts and see how they respond to them and stuff like that. Let's get on this. Let's get on with people. Yeah. Well, we're delegating. We're delegators. Yeah. I don't mean we're going to get on this. I mean, someone listening, I'm handing you a PhD thesis. It'll be amazing. Well, speaking of kind of aggression and, and that kind of stuff. And also I did very briefly mention these objectivity videos. I just like to say there was a recent, the most recent video in this series involved me trying to undo a lock. And I couldn't undo it. And in my defense, the reason I wasn't undoing it was because it was a very ancient treasure chest. I was trying to unlock and I didn't want to break it. Were you trying to, were you trying to, were you trying to crack the lock or you were just simply trying to open the lock? I had the key. It was just a very big key and it was a big stiff-iled lock. And I was, and you had to turn it all the way and I couldn't quite turn it. And I could have pulled a bit harder, but I was worried maybe I was doing something wrong and I didn't want to break it. For example, if I gave you the key to my house and you couldn't unlock it, you wouldn't like turn hard on harder because you'd be scared of breaking the key, wouldn't you? You'd think maybe I'm using the key incorrectly. So let me just stop for a second and reassess. It depends. Depends on the details. All right. Anyway, anyway, it was a, it's this precious old 100 zero treasure chest and I was trying to turn this big key and I couldn't, I couldn't get it open. I didn't want to turn any harder. So I turned to Keith, who you've met and who's, he's somewhat older than me and he's quite a slight man. And I said to him, Keith, you know, Keith said, do you want me to do it? And I said, yeah, you go ahead because Keith works there at the Royal Society and he's in charge of the library. So if he brings the lock, you know, that's okay. Right. It wasn't me that broke it. So Keith then took the key, gave it a turn and bang it, it opened. Right. As a result, I'm getting all these comments under the video from people saying, well, I guess Brady's not hard as now is after all. Her, her, her, her, her, her. And there's all these hard as nails comments under the video. And the thing I want to say, I don't want to dwell on my excuse for not doing it. That's that's by the by. Being hard as nails doesn't, is nothing about strength. I think it's more a kind of a tolerance to pain and an ability to put up with things. You can be weak. I'm not saying I am weak, although probably I'm, but you can be weak and still be hard as nails. The fact, the fact, if I wasn't able to open that lock, maybe I wasn't able to open it. If I was not able to open that lock, that does not mean I'm not hard as nails. It just means I'm a bit weak. I completely agree. That's how it originally came up. It was. You were talking about the Grand Canyon and going down the Grand Canyon without any water. It's tolerance. It's not, it's not physical strength. I can't pick up a bowler, but I won't cry if you punch me in the face. Right. Right. Don't try that out internet. I just wanted to, yeah, I just want to be clear on that. I don't think I've lost my hardest nails status because I didn't unlock that chest. Now I should have unlocked that chest, by the way. I just didn't want to break it because I'm pretty strong as well. Whatever you got to do to feel better, buddy, whatever you got to do. You think the lady does protest too much? Yeah. This is like you told me a really long story about how your wife opened the pickle jar. You know, they're like, oh, but it was a, oh, and don't, you know, but I could, I could starve myself to death longer than she could. And I'm very hard as nails. And it's like, okay, man, you know, you didn't need to draw this attention to it. All right. I still think your heart is nails. Thank you. Thank you. Today's episode is brought to you by Audible. Audible has more than 180,000 audiobooks and spoken audio products. Pretty much anything you ever want to listen to Audible has it. One of the reasons I like listening to audiobooks is that it allows me to get through books that I want to finish, but that for whatever reason I just can't get through in printed book format. Many, many times that's nonfiction books, but recently I actually had that experience with a fiction book. No, it's not the Martian. I've read a lot of Stephen King books in my life. He's probably one of my favorite fiction authors, but I was always aware that I had this whole in my Stephen King knowledge, which was the gunslinger Stephen King's seven book long series. I tried several times to actually read through the books, but for whatever reason they just didn't stick. So I decided to give them a try on Audible and over the course of several months. I worked my way through the 136 hours of spoken audio book. That is the Dark Tower series. If you are going on a very, very long road trip and need something to listen to, this might be something to give a try. I would never have gotten through it all on my own just trying to read it or it would have taken me years. So thanks to Audible, I feel that this missing piece in my Stephen King collection is now complete. So if you want to listen to it, Audible has it with more than 180,000 audio books and spoken products. You're going to find what you're looking for. Get your free audiobook and 30 day trial today by signing up at audible.com slash hello internet. That's audible.com slash hello internet. And thanks to Audible for supporting the show. I had a Skype conversation this week or the week just gone with a hello internet listener named Max. And Max is 11 years old, which I'd never occurred to me that we had listeners that young. 11 years young, but I tell you why he's a smite on the ball there. The only problem I have with Max I must say is he is definitely more team gray than team Brady. And that's fair enough. I know a lot of people are people, you know, may agree with one of us more than the other. He definitely falls into your camp. I'm entirely comfortable with that. What I was less sure about was when I Skype called him and he comes up on the video screen. He was wearing a CGP gray t-shirt. Oh man. Like how is that for so in my wounds? He wasn't wearing a hello internet t-shirt. He was wearing a CGP gray t-shirt. And he's talking to Brady and he's talking to Brady. You know what Brady? That's exactly the kind of thing that I imagine little Brady would do. You would do that exact same thing because you just love pressing people's buttons. So I think you got a little taste of exactly what kid you would do in that precise situation. I was slightly placated by the fact his brother who's been who was also on the call and also listens to the podcast was more team Brady. So he was I think he was trying to like make me feel better and said, oh I like you better Brady. So anyway, we're the nice conversation. We chatted about all sorts of stuff. One of my favorite bits was at the start. I said, I said, hey guys, I'm Brady. You know, you might not know who I am. And they said, yes, we do. You love playing crashes. This is your defining characteristic. I know. I know. But we talked playing crashes, but we talked about shredders. I showed them my shredder. Yeah, you would have liked that. We talked about Audrey and we put Audrey on the call. They asked to see the baseball bat that I used to tap Audrey with. So I think they didn't believe it existed, but I showed them that. I showed them the silver buttons. It was basically a big show and tell. I think I think they wanted to go, but I just wanted to keep showing them stuff. You kept showing them everything in your office, which is quite a lot of things. We must have been we must have been going for half an hour has asked pulling stuff out and like a like a magician. And they're looking at their watches. And I have much longer. So anyway, we had a great chat. And I did I made an agreement with Max. I said, because he's a good fan. I said to him, we will agree to talk about the topic of Max's choice on the next podcast. Lucky for you and lucky for me. Max loves Vexology. And I just occurs to be the sentence Max loves Vexology would be really useful in Scrabble, but he loves it. And so he just said talk flags. So I said, I reckon we can probably accommodate you on that one. We can probably talk some flags. So we're going to talk about flags. Interestingly, he lives in Illinois. So and Chicago has a popular flag as you know has after the flag gate video. Well, I still haven't watched the flag gate video, but the Chicago the Chicago one is the it's the three stars or there was four stars, four red stars on the way backgrounds. It's sort of a central plank in that flag gate video of your mates. So yeah, no, it's a Chicago flag. I think it's it's a solid standard flag. I'm not sure I would hold it up as an amazing flag, but I feel like it's like it's a solid middle of the pack. You can't make fun of it. People can identify with it. Does its job flag? You send more and more like Roman mass every day. I asked Max what his favorite flag was and he he actually said the UK flag. I do like the I do like the Union Jack. You know, I had that whole plan to save it in case the Union broke up. Yeah, and in true Brady style, I was able to then pull out a an antique Union Jack flag that I had in my office, which which I which I quite enjoyed. I'm looking at it right now. And you would have been proud because he said he likes it because it combines three flags. And yet it follows the rules of flag design. Hmm. What have you done where you've created 11 year olds who are really interested in the rules of flag design? It's great to be really interested in the rules of flag design and to look at good flags. I asked him what he thought of the US flag and he said too many stars. Hmm. Yeah, thoughts. Thoughts. I've said before the US flag. It's a little busy. You know, it's a little much. But the US flag it's at like a 12 and we need to dial it back to a seven. That's that's a bit the way the US flag is. I much prefer the Betsy Ross version of the US flag. The one that has at the very least dials it back to have the ring of stars in the blue patch on top. I said to the guys maybe they should put three stars on it one representing each time zone. And they can have this four time zones. No, there you go. That's what I know. What's what are they? Oh, no, wait a second. There's no wait. There's five time zones. Well, I guess this is also is a question of do you want to count American Samoa and all the craziness? But no, you have East Coast time zone. You have the central time zone. Central is where Destin lives. You have mountain time zone. I forgot mountain, which has a Mizzula, which is the heart of the YouTube educational world. You have the West Coast time zone and then you have the Hawaii Alaska time zone. I won't count that one. But why wouldn't you count that one? If you're going to make a flag that's based around time zones, you've already started with three. You're down by at least two. I also suggested what about a staff at each like major league baseball team? Well, at least they politely laughed at my dad jokes. You're just sighing at them. Is that a dad joke? It's just a terrible idea. That's not a joke. No, it was. It was a joke. It was corny. Is that corny? It's Mark Watney humor. It's, you know, it's just a terrible terrible idea. Okay, if we're looking at American Samoa, there's also Samoa standard time. So that's six time zones. I've opened a can of worms when I brought up time zone. UTC minus 11. Yes, I do like time zones as well. Quite interesting. Yeah. And NASA runs on Greenwich time. NASA does run on Greenwich time. I do like the Union Jack, but I also really like the 1606 variant on the Union Jack. Oh, yes. Oh, look at 1606 variant is a classic. Are you just screwing with me? You don't know what looks like. I'm hungry. For a minute there, I thought you really didn't know. I prefer the 1608 adaptation, but the 1606 is okay. Okay, I'm going to send it to you and I'm going to make you look at it. All right. So it's missing the red diagonals. Yeah, it's the 1606 to 1801 union flag of Great Britain. That yes, it is. It's missing the red diagonals. And I think it looks very nice. I think it's quite bold. I do love the modern Union Jack, but I also I'm quite a fan of this variant. And to nerd out whenever I have an excuse to use it in one of my videos, if I'm talking about the UK in that time frame, I will almost always go with this because it is still recognizable as the UK flag. Most people won't notice that it's missing the diagonals, but it is technically more correct to use. And I like it better. So there we go. Do you know what I'd like about talking to you, Gray? What? I don't feel like such a nerd. So there we go. But the but the flag I feel like we need to talk about is the New Zealand flag. We've ignored it for too long. There's been a lot of movement in the world of the New Zealand flag. There's been a lot going on. The the Hello Internet listenership has been rumbling. There's been discontent at our snubbing of this issue. And I think it's time. I think it's done of this. Really? Well, I may be overstating the case, but we did get a lot of messages about it. Yes. We now have we as in the world now has the short list for potential alternatives to the New Zealand flag. Yes. So as a as a brief reminder to people, New Zealand is considering changing its flag. There's a short list of 40 flags that they're going to put to I think a popular vote to determine which people like. And then that flag, whatever the winner of that is, is going to go against the current New Zealand flag. Head to head to head in not the Super Bowl of flags. Yes, it is the Super Bowl of flags coming up here. So have you opened up your web browser to take a look at this? I am scrolling through them as we speak because you have never looked at this before. This is you're looking at this with virgin eyes. Are you not? That's well, I could agree with you and lie to the listeners, but I'm not that kind of guy. I have had a quick brails a few weeks ago when they first came out. I sort of scroll down to get an overview, but I have not looked in much detail. In the saying of this sentence, I've probably spent more time looking at the flags and I have previously. So this is my first proper look. Mm hmm. What do you think? What are you thinking? What are you first thoughts looking at? Well, my overarching comment looking at the mole as a group is well done. Like there, like whether you like them or not, or you think they're appropriate or not for New Zealand, there are very few flags here you would look at and think that's a bit of a stinker. Like most of them, I think, are quite good solid flags. I catching nice. If you do know something of New Zealand, you can usually find something in them that says New Zealand to you. My overall impression is positive. There is a clear cut winner for mine, but we'll come to that in a second. What's your overall impression of this collection? Yeah, I have to say well-designed flags. So the commonality, if you're not looking at this page is these 40 flags, many of them are incorporating the same design elements within them. So there is of course the Furn made famous by the All Blacks, which is used on many of these flags. There's also a symbol which I was unfamiliar, which I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it, but I think you want to call it the Kourou. Right. Does that sound right to you? That sounds pretty good. Yeah, let's say that's right. The Kourou is, it's a spiral and it's supposed to be a, it's another symbolic representation of a Furn. If you think of the way a Furn leaf unrolls, it unrolls in this particular spiral pattern. And so this Kourou symbol is like an abstract notion of a Furn. It also really brings up a lot of thoughts of waves. Doesn't it? It looks very wave like a lot. And obviously New Zealanders are sea-loving people. Well, this is one of the reasons why I was unaware of this symbol, but I really quite like it. And in many of the flag designs, the way they have done the colors of the spirals is invocative of the ocean and also of a Furn at the same time. So I have to say, if there is any alternate symbol that is going to be used, I'm quite a fan of this Kourou symbol. I think it looks good. And I think there are a bunch of good designs that are incorporating it. Yeah. I'm not a, maybe it's just me, many of the flags also have the stars. I'm not a huge fan of the stars. Mainly sort of the Southern Cross, which is on the current flag. Usually the stars are arranged with the Southern Cross, but you're there a real common thing. Yes, most of them have the Southern Cross. I should have clarified with that. Some of them have additional constellations nearby, which I'm not familiar with. But I'm not a big fan of the Southern Cross. I think stars are overused in flags, particularly on the American flag. Wait, too many stars. Someone just went star crazy. If I was in charge of a new country or I was in charge of a flag redesign for a country, I would lay down a no stars rule. You know what the world doesn't need? It doesn't need flags with more stars. I would make an exception for the Southern Cross though, Gray, because I think chucking stars on your flag just because stars are stars is I, I agree, a bit old hat. But the reason the Southern Cross is a bit different is it actually uses the constellation, a constellation, and that's unusual. And it's using a constellation that gives you a sense of place, you know, the Southern hemisphere. So it gives you a bit. It's more evocative of the place than just arranging 50 stars to represent 50 different things. So although you're entitled to your opinion, I think the Southern Cross, who maybe is a little bit of an exception here and shouldn't just be lumped in with all the other star users. I will grant you that it is an exception and that it is the best use of stars. But this is a case of everybody else has already ruined it. Like all of these other people who've used all of these stars in a dumb way of, hey, I have a flag. What am I going to do? Quick blue, put a star on it. All right, boom, we're done. Somalia, it's all set. They just ruined the stars for everybody else. So this, this is the best way to do it. But I would still, I would still put no stars for my New Zealand flag. The colors red, white and blue, which are on the current New Zealand flag are very common, but also obviously a real common theme through a lot of the flags, which is unusual on flags is the color black. I think the black ones are quite striking. Okay, there is one flag here, which is basically the all blacks flag, the silver fern on the black background. It's the one that's called silver fern brackets black and white and it's got by Kyle Lockwood written next to it. If you happen to be looking at the page. Yes, I'll put links in the show notes as well. The thing that irritates me slightly is it's not exactly the same as the all blacks flag. It's it's a much rounder fern, where as something I, I like about the all blacks flag is that that fern is more aggressive looking, it's sharper edges. So my, my feeling is if you're going to go with that look, you should make it just the same. So of these flags, I actually don't like the one that we originally discussed. You have to do the white fern on the black background because it's too similar, but it's not exactly the same and it just feels it just feels like, oh, we want to do this, but we're not going to do exactly that. So that would change pretty quickly. It would only take a year or two and two, you kind of, you know, you got used to the change. I mean, only if the all blacks then adopted this as their flag as well. You have to have the ferns match. Well, I don't think it's going to cause you a lot of disc, disc, you can say, I haven't, do you watch the all blacks play? Never. I've never seen the play once, but even still I know their flag well enough that looking at this one, I could look at it and say, that seems different to me. And then I had to go look up the all black one and confirm that yes, it was different. Okay. So that's why I don't actually, I don't actually like this one. But there are enough good choices here that I would actually have a hard time picking out which one is my top favorite. Yeah. I think New Zealand has a bunch of good choices here. I'm not sure it's my favorite, but I do, I do like the black and white Kuru design on one of the flags. I think that's very nice. Is it the one that's called Kuru black? Yeah. Kuru just in parentheses with the black. Right. I like that. But there, there's an alternate, an alternate color and slightly different ratio. It looks like which is on here, it's called Pico Pico, which is the Kuru with almost a two tone green color on it. I like that one. I think the colors are all wrong there. Yeah. I don't know if they're the best for New Zealand, but I like the way it looks. And I'm trying to look at the ones without stars, although I have to admit, I do kind of like this gray one with that is the Southern Cross horizon. Oh, yeah. Which just has the line through it and the stars, even though I said before, no stars of all of them, I think that one actually does look look the best. So I'm not sure I could easily pick one that I think is, is the winner on this list. Okay. Do you have anyone that calls out to you? I think they have to go with the silver fern. I don't disagree with what you said about the slight adaptation jarring with you. And I also think the fern is a little bit too big on the flag and could do with being a bit smaller. Agreed. It takes up a bit too much of the flag. But I think if they go with something else, they're overthinking it. Just do what you know is right. And I think that's the right thing to do. And you know, those are the points we raised. I think a minor. I think that's the right decision. I think using the the caroo, this kind of wave curve thing would be a mistake. I think it's a bit I do like how it looks, but I think it's a bit new age and a bit trendy and a bit fashionable. And I think it will go out of fashion. It looks like something that's designed by like, you know, a water company or something. And I think it looks a bit like a corporate design more than a flag. And I mean, that said the fern obviously is a very unconventional flag too, but that's an exception. But I pretty much agree with what you said. I do think the Southern Cross horizon one, although that looks like a CGP gray sort of logo in a way, is a nice looking flag. I think quite a few, I think the seven stars one is nice looking. I still think what I thought before they should go with the silver fan. I'm going to disagree with you on that seven stars one. I don't like that one at all. That one's not great. Cool. A little honorable mention here that I just want to point out, not a flag that I would pick for New Zealand. But I love since we were just talking about the Union Jack. One of the flags is called Black Jack. And someone has taken the Union Jack flag that's in the corner. They've turned it into black and white and red. And I can only describe it as almost Lord of the Rings of Fying the Union Jack because they have these little Kuru spirals at the end of several of the lines. I love that little modification of the Union Jack. I would never pick that as the New Zealand flag. But I think that is an interesting little design element that somebody came up with that I think looks quite good. It's a cool thing, but I think it shouldn't be on the list. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't put it on there either. If I had been on the committee, I would have said no, but you know, I would have passed the guy a note, you know. Mike Davidson say, oh, I like that. That looked that that's a nice piece of design work there. We shall wait with baited breath to see what the people of New Zealand do. Yeah, I'm really curious to see how this goes. So we will we will have to follow it up with this podcast that breaks flag news. And if you enjoyed that discussion, you can thank Max. And if you didn't enjoy that discussion, you can blame Max. This episode of Hello Internet has been supported by just works. If you have anything to do with pay rolls and tax forms, negotiating health care prices, then this is something you might want to pay attention to. The people that just works really seem to get that running a business looking after a team is full of little details that that can just get a bit overwhelming sometimes. But with a super helpful software, you can make sure everyone's getting paid, set up the team's benefits online and save on health care. It's super simple. Like it says on the tin, it just works. And that means you can get on with what really matters to you things like growing your business, making cool stuff, serving customers, not getting buried under an avalanche of admin. So to check them out, see what they've got. Go and have a look at their website. It's just works.com. It's a really nice clean website. Lots of good screenshots, demonstrations of how their software works. They've also got a really nice selection of case studies. Pretty easy to find is click on case studies and you can go and see how other businesses have been using this. I really liked them. They're sort of nice little testimonials. They're written in plain English. They really cut to the chase. So you can see what these tools are about and why they're worth using. Actually, I'd also recommend the new section on the site. They've got some nice links to external articles about the company. They give you some really good background. Let's you know what they're about. I was having a read of some of them as well. Anyway, go and have a look. See what you think. You can get 10% off by using the offer code Hello Internet. That's 10% off. It also lets them know you came from here. So if this sounds like something you might be into, if you're someone who deals with payrolls, tax stuff, health care, all of that, justworks.com. And our thanks to them for supporting this podcast. Let's quickly mention our buy weekly weigh in. Oh, you want to finally do this? Okay, least least buy weekly weigh in the history of buy weekly weigh in. We haven't we haven't done it. I haven't weighed myself today, Gray. I haven't weighed myself in weeks. But I think we need to sort this out and get back get back on it. I mean, a few things have happened in. Oh, no, I'm not even I was going to say all things have been happening and I haven't been exercising and I haven't been eating well. But that's excuses. It's unacceptable. I am not going to fall back on excuses. I'm just going to say I'm rubbish. I haven't done it. I want to I'm willing to give it another go. Will you have me back, Gray? Oh, yeah, I will have you back without a doubt. I'm glad that we finally come come full circle on the buy weekly weigh in that it's going to happen again. But I want to say that it's oh, oh, yes, you know, weekwild. But I went to America with full knowledge that there was no way on God's green earth that I was going to maintain a diet for four or maybe five weeks in America. Because America is filled with delicious things to eat absolutely everywhere. And I was on vacation and I just thought, you know what? This isn't going to happen. And if I'm going to take the hits on the buy weekly weigh in, so be it. And we just ended up never really doing the buy weekly weigh in while we were on vacation. But so I so that's why you said quite about it. Wait, don't don't you dare. I wanted to keep doing it and you were like, oh, no, I've never weighed myself. We can't talk about it. But I wanted to track how fat I was getting over America because I thought I will do this. And I will own this. This is just what's happening. If anyone travels to the United States for that period of time and comes back weighing less, I want to give them a medal. Yeah. Yeah. That's like an achievement in gaming of you should get a little badge saying I went to the United States and I lost weight. Yeah. And also for me, it's an extra problem that I'm aware of all of this stuff that I can only eat in America that I know as a kid. Like I have this additional problem. I can only eat these when I'm in America and it's like, oh, but I'm not going to be here for another year. Maybe who knows how long and so it's an additional problem. I'm like that in Australia when I go back to Australia and I take my wife through supermarkets. I'm like, oh, my goodness, you've got to come down this all. There's something I have to show you. See this chocolate bar here. Like some sort of sad. Yeah. My wife does this in Hawaii with foods that I can only describe as absolutely revolting and disgusting. But there are all of these like Japanese candies or fish flavored candy things that she grew up with that each and every one of them tastes like poison. But because she grew up with them as a kid, she is delighted by them. And so when we're in Hawaii, we always have to go to the store and pick up these horrible, horrible looking things. Like, oh, it's fermented grapes that have been left underground for years and then they sprinkled fish bits on top of them and it's always delicious. No, it is not delicious. See, I've converted my wife successfully to a few Australian delicacies. I'm sure the things that you like in Australia, you could convince people to like. But this is a British too far. But everybody has that stuff with what you grew up with as a kid is just always tastes different to you. I'll drop a let me drop a few names in gray just for the Aussies out there that I've converted my wife to. Mm hmm. The cherry ripe cherry ripe the violet crumble. Violet crumble. And obviously Tim Tams Tim Tams. Tim Tams sound familiar. I think I've heard of Tim Tams. Yeah, Tim Tams, like a lot of English people like Tim Tams. They've kind of realized there, you know, they've realized the errors of their way. In fact, you know what my wife even will partake of Vegemite, which I'm really proud of. Not often, but occasionally. And that's that is very good. So to me, the apex of not dieting was I sent you a picture of this ice cream that I eat in America, which is I almost don't want to mention it out loud because I am convinced there is heroin inside of this ice cream. Because I'm not normally like an ice cream sweet kind of guy, but it's like, oh, if you take one bite of it, you have to eat all of it. Yeah. And it is blue bunny peanut butter panic. It is amazing. It is the best ice cream I have ever tasted and you just have to eat all of it when you have a single bite of it. And so I'm spreading this out into the world that if you ever see one of these, I'm just saying it might be worth several years off the end of your life to bring this into your experience because it is that good. The worst thing in the world was, okay, I've given up my diet fine, but I would eat peanut butter panic while watching a television show that was about people doing these wilderness survival. The primary, the primary endurance of which was there was no food to eat at all. So I am watching almost every night people starving to death on TV for my entertainment. While I have a pint of ice cream in front of me that I am eating, you know, just like a gigantic piggy monster. This is great. Well, Mr. Piggy Monster, what are we going to do about this biweekly way? Are we going to use the existing numbers? Are we like drawing a line and saying start from today? You tell me what to do and I'll do it. Yeah, I was trying to think about how to arrange this. I think the simplest thing to do is to say, let's just start over from this point. So I'll weigh myself after the podcast and tell you what I've lost next podcast. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, that's I think I will do the same thing. I'll weigh myself tomorrow and then the next time we record, we'll talk about we'll talk about what's happened. All right. That's the easiest thing to do. Okay. Because otherwise, like I've got some some lost ground to make up. Otherwise, it'll just be depressing. No, well, I mean, yeah, I'd probably like to start again now because I might have got myself up to a nice big, big number that I can start. I might get a few easy, I might get a few easy KG's in early on. Yeah, exactly. All right. All right. There you go people. We didn't forget. We didn't forget we were just ashamed of what piggy monsters we were. We were talking about going back to hometowns. I just really quickly wanted to mention an article that I read. You had something about Adelaide. Yeah. Well, we haven't mentioned much Adelaide yet in this podcast. So I feel like we should get one in there. Oh, okay. It's an article. It was in all the media, but I've just put a link to the economist here because I thought that would give me a bit more credit with you. Oh, look at you. Okay. And the list came out of the most livable cities in the world. Oh, yeah, they do this every year. The economists comes out all the time. I think these things are interesting. Yeah, they are interesting. Number one was Melbourne in Australia, which is a fantastic city. I love Melbourne. Yeah, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, these places usually do pretty well on these lists. And they do that is the case here. Number one Melbourne, number two Vienna, number three van Coover, number four Toronto, and then equal fifth with Calgary was Adelaide, Australia. No. Fifth most livable city in the world. Wow. Top stuff. I was just trying to look. I can't pull up the company that does it usually. It's the South Australian Tourism Commission. Yeah, exactly right. The livable city list is interesting because they're I like to read about the way they do it. And they're picking interesting markers. But one of the things is that America always does terribly on these lists. That it is almost always the top American city is Honolulu. But even then it'll be like 40th on the list. And then there won't be in another American city until 70th on the list. What is that that brings American cities down? What's there Achilles here? One of the big things is the average murder rate is usually one of the big problems. That'll do it. Is that violent crime per capita is not so great in America when you start ranking. First world cities against each other like that. That is usually counts against America. The other thing is I dimly remember is the problems with transportation is usually a problem for a lot of American cities as well. As in public transportation. They do it in some kind of measure like what percentage of your life do you spend commuting? All right. Because that's why that's what this list is supposed to be about. Which is the nicest city to live in? And if you're spending a big amount of your time commuting, that's not nice in your daily experience. Adelaide doesn't have a lot of murders, but I tell you what Adelaide has good murders. In fact, we could do a whole podcast one day about Adelaide murders. Oh, great. Great. You always have the the cheeriest of topics that you bring up. Anyway, I just I haven't got much to say either. I just wanted to bring it up because Adelaide. So another thing that I've been bringing up a lot, another one of the growing number of corners we have in this expanding polygon of a podcast is jobs and things that people do while listening to the hello internet podcast corner. Oh, this one I like. This one I like. I like this one here. This one's okay. This one's okay. I thought you were building up to something else and I was I was breasing myself. But no, this one I'm giving you the all clear on I'm all clear job. I've been getting lots of emails. I'm keeping them and I hope maybe to do more with them at some stage, but you know, we've got a crack on. We're busy guys. We've got we've got more Adelaide stuff to be talking about. So that's as quickly this is quickly do do one that really caught my. Again, as usual, Gray, this is going to involve sending you pictures because this person has sent pictures of themself listening to the podcast while going about their activities. There's two. I'll send you one first. This is the one that the public will be allowed to say. They won't be allowed to say the second one. I like it when we get photos that are so top secret that not everyone can see them. So here comes the one that everyone will say and you can tell people what this is. Gray. Oh, this this looks like hello internet at the front of. I can't even tell it's at the cockpit of something. Is it is it a jet above the clouds? Is that what I'm looking at? That's what it looks like. Let me continue this journey on a highway to the danger zone. Let me take you to Indian Ocean present day. Let us remove our shirts and play beach volleyball together. As I send you this next picture, you're making a you're making a movie reference. Aren't you? Obviously, obviously not one that you know. I don't know that movie here comes the next one. I know enough to know that the movie that you're making reference to but I've never actually seen it. Okay, this is this is looking in the other direction. Oh man, very cool. So can I can I describe this you can describe it we've been given permission to describe it. So this is a selfie of the person flying this jet with their mask down and a little piece of paper in front of them. That says hello Brady and Gray. Yeah, I say hello to you mysterious jet pilot. This is awesome. I've been given I've been given authorization to give this person an alias. And obviously I initially wanted to go for Maverick but I was asked not to use that. So we're going to call this person Viper. Okay. And I've got an email here from Viper. And it says hi Brady. I occasionally listen to hello internet flying a fighter jet. I thought I'd share as listeners have been sharing strange places to listen to hello internet. Now Viper acknowledges that this is rather an outlandish claim but I've shown you I've shown you the picture evidence. This is satisfactory to me. Of course, I never listen while performing mission or flight safety tasks that wouldn't be acceptable. And also I wouldn't have the mental capacity. However, as part of the job is sometimes flying long distances often over oceans with no scenery with no mental stimulation. It can be a struggle to stay alert for over 10 hours sitting in a hard ejection seat with no shelter. Oh man. There is no provided in flight entertainment and there's no one to talk to. So I found listening to hello internet is a great way to break them and not me. And it is a highlight of a long transit flight. 10 hours in one of those little jet seats. How does he go to the bathroom? Do there were papers? I don't know. A Viper diaper. Viper here says, I have made a point of recently flying supersonic while listening now that Concord is retired. Perhaps I'm the only person who can claim this. So we have a supersonic listener to hello internet. I know what you're thinking. That's a hell of a risk to take with a $29 million dollar fighter plane. But a Viper flies an FAA 18, which is I'm not even joking here is my favorite fighter jet. Oh yeah, because Australians are quite familiar with FAA 18s and I've seen them in action quite a bit for various reasons. So I did say to Viper, you know, well, I guess the obvious question is how can you listen to hello internet? I presume he's not listening while he's inverted, but how do you listen? Yeah, I can see how he listens to it. He's listening on Apple standard headphones just stuffed under his helmet. That's how he's listening. Yeah, it's really funny to see someone flying a jet aircraft and also just using Apple standard headphones. It seems incongruist to me somehow. I guess they don't have an auxiliary audio input jack like in your car. It's standard in those jets. The noise level in the jets is less than you think the cockpit is sealed with engines far behind. The vast majority of the noise is directed backwards with the exhaust airflow. There are speaker equipped ear cups in the helmet, which block noise like earmuffs. Most flights are only an hour or two when we're rehearsing missions. Longer flights where podcasts this thing happens because obviously you only listen on these long flights. Only come along every few weeks during these missions where communication can be critical. We do wear additional radio earplugs like sort of formula one car drivers would wear. However, these become uncomfortable over time and we take them out for the long boring flights. And there you can just use earplugs and earphones and that's when he uses things like he says the radio speakers in the helmet are easily loud enough when the workload is low. And as you can see from the picture, I simply use iPhone ear pods under the helmet. I think an F-A-18 pilot flying faster than sound listening to Hello Internet qualifies as. Pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool indeed. I think I've been laboring under the misapprehension for a while that people that listen to the podcast. Sort of during boring moments or during drudgery and they'll listen to us for a bit of mild amusement and maybe a bit of a chuckle. I'm now realizing that most of the people who listen to Hello Internet just have such awesome exciting jobs like flying planes and directing space missions and driving awesome huge trucks. I think they listen to us just to calm themselves down because their lives are so awesome. They're like, oh, I just need to listen to a couple of guys who are really boring and have really boring jobs. What's that Hello Internet podcast? Where's that? Ladies and gentlemen, this is called selection bias. So I don't want to jinx anything but speaking of Viper and planes. I think maybe it's time to move to plane crash corner. Oh, you want to do this now? I think it's time. We haven't done plane crash corner for quite a while. I've noticed that we haven't done it for quite a while. There has been a clamor for it. Has there? I'm not even exaggerating. I think people, I think people have, there's been quite a bit happening in the plane crash world just lately. I can't wait to hear about it. Well, as I've said before, I don't think it's our job to be sort of, you know, a new service. Oh, good. We can agree on that. Yeah. And also, and also like, no, plane crash is pretty terrible. As I always say, but there's a couple of things that have come up worthy of mention. And I'm just curious as to whether they've crossed your radar as well. And whether you have any thoughts on them. Okay. Let me get my, let me get my, I always get worried when it's plane crash corner. Why? Because I never, I never know what kind of horror you're going to present me with. And I'm just going to go boy, that's, that's a terrible thing. That there are some terrible things here, but I'll go. Here we go. But let's, but let's not, let's not, you know, let's just deal with, let's just do with the facts. Right. Firstly, MH370, this was the Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing. Gosh, was it must be over a year ago now? This is the one that just vanished, obviously, and they went looking for in the, in the ocean. And they haven't found M, M each 370. Some news that did come up that we didn't discuss on the podcast was they actually found some debris from the plane. Did you know this grey? I did not know this. A, a flapper on, is that how you pronounce it? It's part, it's one of the sort of flappy things on the wing. Was found washed up. I don't know how to pronounce any of the parts. No, it's part of the wing. We're, we're pretty comfortable with the wing. Part of the wing was found on a, on an island called Reunion, which is in the Indian Ocean. It's just east of Madagascar. It's a, it's a French territory, which I'm sure you're probably aware of, because I know how much you love all these little, I am aware of this place. Yes. Yeah. So they did, and they have, I think they may have found a few other little bits of debris there as well. Now, obviously this plane did not get anywhere near Reunion. I don't think it could have. So we're looking at ocean currents here and over the course of a year or so. A few bits of debris have made it all the way to this island. I don't know how well this is going to inform the search for the main, the main wreckage. I think we can pretty safely assume now that there is wreckage somewhere in the city if they found a few bits. But I thought, I thought that was worthy of note because it was around the time we started the podcast that this, this tragedy happened. So it's sort of. I have to admit, I would never have thought after all this time they still wouldn't have found it. I'm, shows how naive I am. I was sure they'd find it within a few weeks, but here we are over a year later. And they've just found the first little bit of a washed up on an island. Okay. Yeah. The thing that it got me thinking about though was ocean currents. Because it got me thinking about things I was obsessed with as a little boy. Obviously playing crashes is one of them. Right. The black stump. The black stump, of course. But also ocean currents. I was always fascinated, especially the idea of messages in bottles, you know, going all the way across an ocean and ending up somewhere else. Mm hmm. And it did make me think if we were ever, if you were ever going to let me have another corner on Halloween snow. And I can stop you. You just spontaneously generate corners at this point. Right. I have been of a corner generating machine. But if I was, if I would, if I could have another corner, I would love a corner. And this would be a corner you could play too. I would love a corner where we just talk about those things that obsess you as a kid. That even when you grow up, I still a little bit cool and mysterious. And for me, these big, long ocean currents and messages in bottles would definitely qualify for whatever that corner would be called. Mm hmm. Things that Brady was obsessed with as a kid corner. Right. But anyway, the great coincidence was just as I was preparing to tell you about reunion. So I was just looking up the news website to see if there was any developments. Mm hmm. It turns out another one of my childhood obsessions has somehow got into the mix with the story. Because just in the last day or two, a volcano has started erupting on reunion. I love volcanoes, man. Do you see what you're doing right now, Brady? Well, you're making things, Brady was obsessed with as a kid corner, a real thing. Because now you're not actually talking about playing crash corners anymore. You've snuck in this new corner that you're doing. That's what's actually happened. I'm actually about to start secretly working on a list of things I was obsessed with as a kid. And sort of starts bringing you a few on you. So we have playing crashes, ocean currents with messages in bottles and volcanoes. Okay. Do you know about the Shoreham air show crash? I do not. I know nothing of this. You really don't know about this one either. You're always surprised, right? But I don't watch the news. I don't follow news stuff on Twitter. I, how would I ever hear about these things except from you? You go on Reddit quite a lot though. Yeah, but you forget that Reddit, because I have an account there, it's customized to the things that I'm interested in. And so I'm unsubscribe from all the general news. Where am I going to see this stuff? Well, videos, maybe and stuff. Anyway. But see, when you log on to YouTube, all of your related suggested viewing is air crashes, I'm sure. That YouTube knows you love watching. And so just all down the side, it's, oh, watch this playing crash. I'm actually careful to log out of YouTube and I start watching playing crash videos because I don't want to get recommended to me all the time. Anyway, there was a, that there's been a few air crashes just lately at air shows. I guess it's air show season, isn't it? Because I guess so in the Northern hemisphere because the weather's decent. But there was a particularly nasty one at a place called Shoreham down, down kind of your neck of the woods down there, south of England. Sort of Sussex, I think it is. But it was, it was an old plane. It was a, it's called a hawker hunter. And the pilot was doing a loop, a loop to loop at the air show. And something went wrong. We don't know what went wrong yet, but he crashed. But he crashed sort of along a road with all these cars on it, like in the direction of the cars as well. So it was almost like a, he just went along the road and just collected all these cars in this huge fireball. So this is a car air type landing. I've not, I've not seen car air, but I do know that landing and I don't know. Yeah. So anyway, really terrible. I think 11 people died amazingly, not the pilot who is not in good shape though. But, but all these people in cars, it's unbelievably bad. And it's also unbelievably bad luck. But I was just wondering your thoughts on air shows. Would you go to an air show? I went to air shows as a kid. You did. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I'm not sure I ever chose to go to an air show, but I know that there were times when I was there. I don't remember how I got there. My father took me there. That seems likely. Anyway, obviously a whole bunch of stuff about the safety of air shows has been coming up in the news and everyone's mulling over the distances to this and that. Well, they always use older planes at the air shows, don't they? Well, this is the other thing as well, using these old planes. And now in the UK, they've banned old planes from doing these loop to loopy hardcore, hardcore things. And they've also grounded these hardcore hunters for the time being. Yeah, because they're old planes. They're not as safe. They can't do this stuff. Yeah. You should ban old stuff that's not safe. I think they should do that with cars. I think there should be a limit to how old a car can be when it's still out on the road. The UK is really good for that. The UK is good for keeping old cars off the road because they have this annual MOT that your car has to go through. So if you've got an old beat up car, if it doesn't pass this test of various things, including pollution, admissions and safety and stuff, it goes off the road. I'm always struck when I go back to Australia by how much older and beat up the cars, same because they're a stringent there in the UK. All the cars always just seem so new and shiny. And that's because of the MOT. Keeping old one old bangers off the road. I did not realise that. Well, well done, UK. Well done, UK. Anyway, really terrible. Sure. But the other thing that I have found really interesting about this sure and tragedy is the way different media have handled the footage. This is this was very well filmed. This crash from various angles, including from people with very graphic vantage points. So I always I'm all and you're obviously the news media just takes all this footage and starts showing it. And I don't I think they just take it and then ask questions later. But the other thing I find really interesting is how the cuts they make to it. What they decide is okay to show and not show. I mean, do you have a particular example here of like is there any channels that are just all gore all the time? No, no, but I know you don't like talking about this stuff. Nope. The thing I find interesting is they like when a like when a plane crashes and obviously there's fire. And then the fire goes away. The big or the big fire goes away in a few seconds and then you just get smoke. They always cut the fire like they show the plane heading towards the ground. And then they cut. So you don't see the fire. And then they show a few seconds later all the smoke billowing up. They don't want to show the moment of the fire. Which I can understand, you know why? Because maybe that's like the moment. As I've mentioned before, one of the very few places I ever see the news is silently on a TV screen at my gym. And I think of that as the what's on fire channel because I swear if anything anywhere on the whole face of the earth catches on fire. They just love to show. And so every time I walk by that screen, I swear to God. It's like, oh, look at a thing that's on fire halfway across the earth. Oh, a thing caught on fire in your bias. Oh, what a great story. We can get our own footage there. That's so when you say that there's someone who's hesitant to show the fire. This is not my experience of what the silent news channel has on my gym, which is just things burning and people running all over the world. It's more like it's the moment it's the moment people die as well as not though. They're like willing to show up to half a second before it happens and they're willing to show from half a second after it happens. But they're not willing to show the moment does happen. It's an interesting and it might actually be a really good decision. I'm not saying it's a mistake or I'm against it. I just find it. I would love to hear the justification for it like it does seem interesting. If you're willing to show up to half a second before it happens and the half a second after it happens. Are you really being sensitive? If someone you really care about lost their life in that moment, have you really made things better for them by not showing? I don't know. Maybe you have. Maybe you have. Maybe it's a really good thing to do. I don't think their prime concern is, oh boy, I hope we don't upset people who have had family members die in plane crashes. I definitely think that's what it is. If that was their concern, why do they love to talk about plane crashes all the time? Why are they showing the footage at all? If it's just to convey the information that an aircraft has crashed, you could have a newsperson say that. But they show the crash because it's salacious. Yeah, but they wear this false cloak of sensitivity. That's exactly my point. They're wearing the shortest skirt that they can wear while still claiming, oh, look how decent we're being. But it's not the case at all. I guess that's what I was asking. You've answered my question about what you think about, which I find really interesting. Because that's what I'm saying. Is it sensitive? Is it sensitive to cut away for a second or two? No, I think it gives them a false cloak of feeling like, oh, we're being decent people. But they're not. They're not. That's my take on it. Do you think mainstream news media shouldn't show this type of footage? I know you haven't seen this, but it's basically just a plane doing a loop to loop and crashing into a road and a whole bunch of fire. And people did die. Yeah, I mean, this just rehashes the whole news argument. Without going down that argument of whether, you know, whether watching, if news media is going to exist, should they should they show this stuff? You know, I don't know. I mean, to me, again, I just, to me, the news is largely focuses on events that happen to catch people's attention. But that is of no, no value to almost every single person who's watching it. That's my fundamental point on this. It's like, well, you're asking me to pretend that the thing is something that it isn't. And its whole purpose is to gain people's attention. So like, yes, to suit its purpose, it shows accidents all the time. You know, that are individual events from which most of the viewers watching can learn nothing. So yeah, of course they're going to show that stuff. I mean, it's a different question of, you know, if I was, if I was King Gray, would I ban it? That's a different question that then gets into censorship issues. And I'm usually not on the side of censorship. So I'm like, yeah, I mean, of course, I wouldn't censor the stuff. But the thing that always bothers me about it is, is talking about it as though it's conveying useful, important information to people, which again, playing crashes, totally tragic, but they don't, to me, fall under the category of useful, important information to almost every single person. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. I can't argue with that. I can't argue with that. See, this is, this is why, this is why I don't like playing crash corner. It's the whole thing just makes me so deeply uncomfortable every time you do it. You ask Quimish. I'm not, I'm not squeamish. I am genuinely concerned about people who are listening. Like it's, it's a, it's an intrinsically upsetting topic and there is no way around that. And maybe this is just a case where my dial on this is turned up, is turned up higher than normal. I think maybe it is. Yeah. Yeah, maybe, maybe it's just me. Probably not. Okay. Well, thank you. You know, there you go. We've done playing crash corner. A lot of people, a lot of people have been in touch about those, those two, those two things. So we, we've, we've checked it. It's, it certainly is one of our weird corners. Today's episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by EGLE. EGLE is an internet that is actually built for the modern age. If you are listening to the podcast at work right now, it's highly likely you are using a terrible, sad internet that was built 30 years ago that is being held together today by the digital equivalent of duct tape. If this sounds familiar, you should give EGLE a try. EGLE is a place for you to share news, organize your files, coordinate calendars and manage projects all in one place. Their latest upgrade allows you to collaborate with your team, making changes and feedback on documents. And they even have the ability now to track who has seen what. So you know if everyone has gotten that latest document that you have sent out, or if everyone has okay, the project that you're working on. So if your company is using that legacy internet that looks like it was built in the 1990s, you should give EGLE a try. Sign up today for a free trial at igloosoftware.com slash hello. This lets EGLE know that you heard about them from us. So go forth and make your interneting better. EGLE, the internet you'll actually like. So the thing I had on my mind while I was in America is tipping. Because I live in the UK now. I've spent most of my, actually really, really, I have spent all of my adult life in the UK where there still is tipping. But it is much, much less than America. And I forget how much tipping there is in America and how many ambiguous tipping situations you can wander into. So this was just a thing on my mind while I was there for a long period of time. And especially when you're in a situation where you're traveling, you're using services, you're at restaurants or you're at hotels or you're at other places. And it just, it just comes up so often in America. And I find it absolutely exhausting. I just, I loathe tipping. And it is, it is not that it's not the money. Right. It's not like I'm cheap and I'm thinking, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to tip. What I hate is this uncertainty. Just the large number of people that I don't know the answer to, am I supposed to tip you? How much am I supposed to tip you? Is this a percentage moment or is this a couple of bucks moment or is this like $5 kind of moment? I find it just exhausting and it makes me want to avoid certain services. So for example, if you go into a hotel, I will go out of my way to never speak to the concierge. Because I feel like, if I speak to you at all, do I have to hand you money now? Do I have to hand you money at the end of my trip? Or like, is there a clock in your head of, oh, we've spoken to each other for 60 seconds and now I need to hand you $5? Like I would just, whatever, whatever services the concierge can provide, I would not, I would choose not to partake in any of them, even if I would benefit from them because of the ambiguity of the tipping. Because it just, but I feel like this is absolutely everywhere in America and it is very, it is a very frustrating situation for me. I'm probably more comfortable with social interactions than you are. Yeah, that's pretty fair to say. But I am 100% in agreement with you. And I think it partly it's because I didn't grow up with a culture of tipping as well. So I am also starting further behind because there's not much of a tipping culture in Australia. But I also find it really awkward and difficult and try to avoid it. I'm a big one for, no, no, no, I'll carry these 18 bags up to my room myself. Oh, yeah, the hotel bellman, I will and have taken bags from the bellman because like, you know what? I don't want to go up in the elevator with you and we're just standing here and I just know that you're here because you're waiting for two dollars from me or is two dollars even the appropriate amount. I don't even know. I'm like you though. I'm not, I don't think I'm a cheap person. You know, and, and of course I do tip because I understand that the economy has evolved in such a way that this is necessary and I don't want to do over people who work in service and I'm sure you're the same. So, so I do it's not cheapness and I and I respect that tipping has to happen. So I'm not saying, bet, you know, no to tipping, but I do think it's very unfortunate that things did evolve this way because it does create a lot of difficulties. And I guess the question is if, if that's true, if what I said is true and it's the same for you and I feel like it is the same for you. Why not overcompensate? Why not just hand out five bucks to everyone all the time because then it's it's not going to be. You're not going to, I guess what I'm saying is err on the side of generosity and just throw tips around all the time to everyone. Why don't you do that or do you think you look like bit of a douche if you do that as well if you hand someone five bucks and you weren't even supposed to tip them. This is exactly the problem is you have this narrow margin in which it is correct. Yeah. And under or over both of those are wrong and both of those are awkward. And I mean with with the over tipping, I mean what I was about to say is I would gladly quadruple the money that I spend on tips annually. If I could be guaranteed to remove all ambiguity from every tipping situation in the future. Yeah. All right. So like it is not a money issue at all. Yeah. Because I mean if you actually think about how much money do you ever spend on tips in a year it's not a significant amount of money. You know, so that's why it's like it's not about that. But it is weird and awkward to over tip just as much as under tipping. And this is actually a thing that I run into in the UK in the reverse because since I grew up in America, I do have some expectations of times when you're going to tip. Yeah. And it can be awkward in the UK when I tip someone who is not expecting it. Yeah. Because then it feels like it's almost like degrading. It's like, oh, like we were just two normal human beings. But then I handed you two pounds and you looked at me like suddenly I'm thinking I'm a man on a horse with a fancy top hat and I'm throwing coins on the ground for you to pick up you street urchin. Oh, we were normal people just engaged in regular commerce before. But now I have introduced this inequality that wasn't there before. So that's why it's it's absolutely it's absolutely just terrible and awkward and and it's very hard to do right consistently. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. There are a few places that handle it. Well, I've stayed at a few like results and places where the policy is just you don't tip. And then at the end you put a big one of money into a box that all the staff share. I quite like that. I quite like going through a week at a resort of not tipping all the people who are bringing me drinks and cleaning the room and doing all the things just, you know, no one's got any money on them. And then at the end you just put a whole big stash of cash in an envelope and that gets distributed amongst all the people. That I always think that's a good solution. And it's also quite often with sort of two retiped things. For example, when I've gone to the Himalayas a couple of times, you know, you're not tipping the porters and the Sherpas. And then at the end you just give them one lot of money as one mega tip for the whole trip and you've been given guidance on what a good amount of money per day is. And again, that makes things so much easier. Yeah, that makes things that makes things way better. But I think it's the decision fatigue of it as well. And one place that I'm aware that I use precisely because there is no tipping is Uber. So I semi frequently use Uber to get around London. And every time I use it, I am blissfully aware of the fact that this ride does not end with me then having to decide on a tip for the person who has driven me. And I guarantee I would use it way less if I had to. And I know for a fact that I would because there's a competing service called Halo, which used to be in the UK before Uber existed. And they did have a thing that popped up at the end of every ride where you had to make a decision about how much did you want to tip the person or the driver's expected tips. And I just hated that. I would way less use that service. And then when Uber came along and I realized, oh, I don't have to use the tips. This is great. It just takes this burden off your mind. And it puts you back on this this level of I'm just I am purchasing services and I don't have to make this additional decision. It's a crazy ride. Great. It's a crazy burden. I was saying to you know, I went to Morocco the other day and we arrived at Marrake Shareport. And there was a driver who picks us up and drives us for 45 minutes up to the mountains to the resort. And I swear I think 90% of my cognitive power during that entire drive was spent thinking about the tip situation. How much do I tip this person because I'm paying him this is he part of this stuff with this means insulting what currency do I use? Where's my wallet? I swear it's all I thought about for the trip. It's crazy. In America, I need to say ahead of time, restaurants are this special legal exception because what I think practically criminally is that they don't have to pay their staff minimum wage because they fall under this category of tipped employees. And so it's like, okay, this is crazy, but it's legal. So if there's any place in America which you always tip and you just don't even think about it, it is restaurants. And my feeling with the tips and restaurants is because of the legal situation, this is non optional. You are in a structurally in a position where stiffing a waiter or a waitress on a tip in a restaurant in America is a huge dick move because of the way they are actually paid. So you have to do this. But again, when you think about you get a meal and you're at this restaurant, it's just such an unpleasant way to end it with this little moment of, I have to evaluate this other human being now on a very numerical scale that is directly with money. And how much did I like the service? How much did I not like the service? And it becomes also a weird thing when you're in a big group of people like you together, you have to decide about the tip. Because tips by definition come at the end of services, they always put a little sour note on every interaction no matter how good it is. Hasn't it become a bit standardized though with percentages when it comes to that kind of restaurant scenario? I mean, I know everyone has a different percentage. I was looking up some numbers beforehand because I was thinking when I went to America this time round, I was really aware that the standard tip advice for restaurants that I was seeing was in the 20 to 25% range. And I thought, wait, but I remember as a kid, I thought it was in the 15% range. And I wanted to try to look up some data. And this tip inflation thing is definitely the case that the average tips in the 1950s were 10%. And they just keep slowly creeping up over time of what the number is. And so then it's like, oh great. So now I have an additional thing to worry about with tips, which is that if I'm not keeping up with the tipping news, I will just eventually become a cheap skate in comparison to everybody else because we're having an arms race in tips. The research on this seems to suggest that there's two reasons why tip inflation occurs, one of which is that in group settings, there are individuals who want to be extravagant with tips. And this ends up causing everybody else to start calibrating what an average tip is. So most people want to pay the average. But if you're going out with groups, a couple of extravagant people start to bend your notion of what an average tip is. And then the second thing is that former wait staff, not surprisingly, tend to be much higher tipers. And so as you're getting wait staff circulating through the population, they too bring up the average of what a tip is. So even then it's like, oh, is there a standard tip? Okay, maybe in my mind, I thought it was 15%, but then I arrived in America and discovered, no, that's no longer the standard tip. Now it's at least 20%. I was like, oh, okay, this is an additional stress that I wouldn't have considered before. But even still when I was there, I was trying to look up like under what circumstances should I tip people and it is just hugely complicated and wildly disagreed upon. And the one that seems to be the most controversial is the cleaning staff at a hotel. Do you leave a tip for the cleaning staff at the hotel, which to me was an amazing thing because I had never heard of this. What do you mean you're supposed to leave a tip for the cleaning staff? Aren't I paying for a hotel room and presumably the staff to clean it? Are they a whole different category of employees? Why do I tip just the cleaning staff? Why don't I tip the other people in the hotel? It seems like to me that one was quite a surprise, but it seems like it's very standard. It almost feels a bit like how the greeting card industry sort of creates these days and events to sell cards. Oh, the different workers creating sort of new tip genres that you didn't even know existed before. And now it's like, oh, so like, like, there was like suddenly, Father's Day and Mother's Day and all these days appear. And suddenly there's, oh, there's tipping the toilet cleaner is a new thing and tipping the person who replaces the toothpaste and tipping the person who clears the gutters. If in America people are getting screwed over because they're in the class of employees that you don't need to pay minimum wage, you have to tip those people. There's no way around that. And so I thought, okay, well, maybe this would make like an interesting video. Let me try to find out who exactly are the and it varies state by state. It's just impossible to know. There's no way any reasonable person can travel and be expected to have any idea of which employees fall into this category and which don't. And this just to me adds to this whole burden. But I was making a list as I was traveling around because there was one there was one person I'll get to that just put me over the edge. And I was like, okay, I have to talk about this. But like the the shuttle driver at the airport, who's driving everybody around. And I happened to get off the shuttle bus first and I gave the guy a couple dollars. And then everybody else who got off the shuttle nobody tips him. And I also had a slight weird moment handing him the dollars and was like, oh, okay, I did it wrong here. This person's not expecting money. And now I feel like I've made awkward between us because I gave him two dollars. Was two dollars too much. Was it too little? Is everybody else just being a dick? I don't know. You know, there's the restaurants, like there's all of this stuff. The Bellmen, the concierge, all of these people. But the one that put me over the edge that I thought I don't understand this world anymore was I was at a buffet breakfast at a nice restaurant where we're paid for buffet breakfast. Now the buffets are weird because you have these waiters that are sort of half waiters. And I presume that you still tip them as well on a buffet breakfast. Even though they're just bringing me coffee, like there's literally nothing else they bring me because I get everything for myself. But I guess I still I'm supposed to tip 20%. It seems all very confusing. But okay, fine, fine. 20% of what if it's like included in your overall bill? Yeah, but they had like 20% on the coffee. Oh, like now I just look like a miser. I just look like a terrible person. But the one that put me over the edge was I went up to get an omelet in the buffet. And the omelet guy had a bowl for tips in front of him. And and people were putting tips in the end. That was the one I just thought I have lost I have lost any ability to understand anything in the world. Am I am I supposed to tip the omelet guy in the buffet that I have paid for and also tip the waiters is just this endless endless confusing thing to me. And I hate it. I hate the mental burden of it. I hate the cognitive load of it. I hate the social awkwardness of it. And I hate the fundamental unknowability of it. There's everything about it. I hate. Have you managed to put any sort of procedures or coping mechanisms in place or is this one really got you flamixed? This one has me flamixed because in the restaurants it's like, okay, that's just easy. It's a no brainer. I'm just going to tip the standard amount. I'm not I'm not going to vary it for service because it's not even optional. You know, this is as far as I'm concerned. This is a required thing. So okay, fine. That one's really easy. And that's the one that causes me the least stress. But it's all of the other ones that I find really frustrating. And there's there is no solution to this at all. There's no solution to it. And it's just particularly bad in America. So it's a bit of a relief actually to be back to the UK and one, not being a situation where I'm traveling so much that you run into those situations more. And two, it's just less expected in the UK. Yeah. How do you you don't have problems with tipping in the UK in any way? You're pretty you're pretty seamless there. You know, you know, you're doing. I tip in restaurants and the one that I do is I usually tip the delivery people like if I'm getting food delivered to the house. It's one of these things where if you just think about it too long, it just doesn't make any sense. Because like, okay, I tip the pizza delivery guy. But I don't tip the guy who delivers all the Amazon boxes. Yeah. Is it like, well, why is it because it's food? Is that why I like, I feel like this is a restaurant that has happened. The guys who deliver the pizza in my case are usually sort of a lot younger. They're always guys actually, but there was a lot younger. And I always assume they're like more exploited. Whereas the people who deliver like my groceries and a lot of my packages always seem to be quite well to do adults. And I assume they're being better paid. I'm probably completely wrong. There are so many problems with tipping. And one of the things to try to cut off people in advance is that everybody thinks that they do tipping based on service. And they talk about, oh, it's this important feedback loop for quality of service. And the studies on this come back and say, no, this is not an effect that the service that you get at a restaurant or the service that you get in any tipping situation has a less than 1% impact on average for the amount that someone tips. And all of the things that matter for changing tipping, they're just weird human prejudices. So the number one thing that someone can do to raise the amount of tips they get is be an attractive person of the opposite gender of the person who's tipping you. And it's like, oh, is that how it's nothing, it's nothing to do with service. This is just like this bizarre human bias expression machine. So once again, like people who are attractive benefit hugely and people who are unattractive get the short end of the stick of this one. Like, well, that's not really fair. And then this is built into someone's compensation. I, oh, that's terrible. The thing that gets me the worst with tipping is that suddenly I have to carry a bunch of cash around. Yeah. And there's nothing worse than realizing I'm in a moment when a tip is forthcoming and I have no cash on me. Because I'm really used to in the UK with the the Chippenpin cards. And now with the Apple Pay of just I hardly ever have any money on me. And suddenly when you're in America, it's like, oh, no, you need to always have a wallet filled with dollar bills just all the time because you might need to tip someone at any moment. And that is just an awful part of it too. There's no solution to this. I was just complaining. It's a difficult world we're living. That's all there is. Have you ever had a job where you were tipped? No, never. Have you? No. I should have put out a tip jar at some of my jobs. I should have done that. Yeah. When I worked at the library and I was getting people books, I should have just stood there really awkwardly after I handed their book for a while. Just waited for a dollar bill across my palm. Gazing at your fate. Exactly. Isn't that the universal symbol for please give me a tip? Is someone lingering awkwardly? Yeah, showing you other things like, oh, he's the light switch and he's held to open a code. Oh, God, I forgot about that. I have yet to successfully figure out what is the code word for? I understand how to use the lights. You don't need to send someone up to my hotel room to explain to me what the bed is and where the toothbrushes go. I don't even know what that person is. Is that the bell hop? Whoever the person is who comes up to the hotel room with you, I always feel like I try to say as strongly as I can. I do not require your services. I can use this key. I can figure out a room. Please don't come up. Again, it's not cheapness, but it also gets awkward when suddenly two or three different people get involved and like, five people have brought your bags up and two more have come to show you around and, oh, hang on. Now what do I do? It's the elevator. That's the worst part. It's going up in the elevator with the person. Oh, I have to make small talk with you. Can I tip you in advance to not help me? This is actually, I don't know if I've told you this before. But in London, some buildings have a porter in the bottom of the building. It's like someone who keeps an eye on the door like in the bigger apartment buildings. Yeah. So I've never lived in a building like that. But my strategy has always been that for whatever reason I end up in a big apartment building where they have a porter at the bottom, I am going to pre-tip that person their Christmas bonus with the explicit instructions of, please, please don't think that I'm a terrible person. But I just want to be able to walk in this door every day and just ignore you and pretend that you're not here. And I will give you a bigger Christmas bonus than anybody right now up front in advance so we can avoid a year's worth of awkwardness. Here is your bonus. I just want to walk in. Please don't ever say hello, Mr. Gray. I just want to walk right past the desk and go to the elevator. Here's some money. Just pretend I am the invisible man and we will both be happier. That's my plan for a porter. What happens when someone is filling in or it's Tuesdays when Jeff comes in at work and then Sally comes in for two months? I will pay those people in advance to ignore me as well. I will eventually be extorted for my invisibility and I will be happy to pay it. You let this weird eccentric billionaire that people look, he gives you lots of money but you mustn't look at him. Perfect. That sounds great. If I become that eccentric billionaire, I will be a very happy man.
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==References==
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