H.I. No. 45: Technobabble

"H.I. #45: Technobabble" is the 45th episode of Hello Internet, released on August 22, 2015.
==Official Description==
Grey & Brady discuss: balloons, passport scanners, freebooting leaves the nest and GIFs, stuff people do while listening to the podcast corner, gustatory synesthesia follow-up, Brady meets his favorite band, and The Martian homework.
==Show Notes==
*Discuss this episode
*Brady goes to a balloon fiesta
*Janet Folkes videos
*Gordon Bennett Cup
*Brady’s photo of the University of Nottingham balloon
*Solar Powered Balloon
*Hank: Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video
*Destin of Smarter Every Day
*Derek of Veritasium
*The Physics Girl
*Cassini mission
*If trains could be snakes
*Road trains
*Lexical-gustatory synesthesia
*Brady brings J. Willgoose Esq from Public Service Broadcasting to the Royal Society
*Public Service Broadcasting - Go!
*The Martian
*The Martian 'teaser' trailer
We need to go no go for recording the podcast. Odacity, go, hijack, go, place time, go, show notes, go, Roger that, we are Go for launch. I hear you went to a balloon festival of some sort. I went to a balloon festival with the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta. Oh, a balloon Fiesta? That sounds even better than a festival. I don't think that's like them being silly. I think that's what you call a balloon Fiesta. I think that's what you call a balloon festival. I think that's like the acknowledged name, like the collective now and maybe a Fiesta of Balloons. Oh yeah? What is the collective now for hot air balloons? I'm checking. There's our first Google search of the podcast. Boy, we are what? 15 seconds in. And already there is some breedy keyboard typing that I'm going to be cutting out. Collective now for hot air balloons. A drift of hot air balloons, according to one person. Then there's some... I am shocked. Oh, and I hang on. There's all sorts of things here. There's some silly ones here. So I think some of these aren't even true. I don't really believe most of these collective now. Yeah, I think it's just people making up words and you know how we feel about people making up words. It's delightful. It's how we feel about it. It's sometimes a free boot of hot air balloons. A free boot of infringements. That's what it would be. A free boot of infringements. Yeah. So I did go to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta for a day and got a special VIP parking purse. I got to go into the Balloonest Car Park, which got me not only to get me really close to the action, but also meant you could get out really easily, which is very handy because 200,000 people went to go and watch the balloons. And getting out for civilians is an absolute nightmare. Like hours and hours it takes to get out, but I went straight out the emergency road with all the vans that are chasing the balloons. So I had a much better experience than the average Joe. I'm going to be honest here. You told me you went to this hot air balloon Fiesta. What I had in my mind was some little local event with a few hobbyist hot air balloonists I guess. But 200,000 people, that's a serious, that's a serious number of people. This is a... It's a real deal. It's a real deal. I mean, I went to every morning and evening throughout the event, which goes for three or four days. They do these mass ascents where a whole bunch of balloons all sort of take off together. And I reckon 60 or 17 must have gone for mine. I made a video, I sent it to you. I mean, you saw the video and that's just some of the balloons going up. It's a big thing. You're googling images. What I was googling for actually, I was thinking, how big are balloon festivals? Because the only one I know off the top of my head is the one that happens in New Mexico every year. I mean, that's the granddaddy of them all this and that's... Well, this is why I was thinking, that's going to be my scale of comparison here. Because I think that's the biggest one. And I don't see numbers of people, but numbers of balloons is 500 at the New Mexico one. So you figure the one that you went to is just slightly less than half as big as the biggest. That's pretty impressive. And it's in your backyard. I mean, Bristol is one of the world capitals of hot air ballooning. The biggest hot air balloon company in the world is based here and a couple of other ones. It's a hotbed of hot air ballooning here at Bristol. And quite often in the evening, you'll just see one or two flying each night if the weather's good. But this is quite a sight when the fiest is on. And you'll see that you'll be... I was driving home one of the other days along the motorway and I just looked out to the left. And you just see dozens and dozens and dozens of balloons just like zooming past us. It's quite amazing. The idea of just on a normal day looking up in the sky and seeing a hot air balloon floating along, doing this little thing, that sounds delightful. That sounds like a really nice thing to randomly see in the sky. Just a happy little hot air balloon floating along. I have a real special relationship with hot air balloons to you over the years. I've through some films I made, which I don't even know if you know about. But there was a scientist at the University of Nottingham who in her spare time was this amazing world record hot air balloonist who did all these amazing things. And she talked to the university into buying her a hot air balloon and it became the University of Nottingham hot air balloon with all the branding all over it. And I sort of followed her through the journey of having it made. And I actually went on its first flight over the Swiss Alps and things like that. So I had this like quite long-standing relationship with balloons and this particular balloonist who really sadly actually then died. She got cancer and died which was really, really sad. But she always was a really, really amazing lady. And making these videos with her was one of the real privileges of my life. And I still can't see a hot air balloon without thinking of her. Her name was Janet Fox and she was an amazing woman. But because of her, I have this real love and interest in hot air balloons. So when I moved to Bristol, it was great. I was like, oh, I can go to this balloon fiesta and for the first couple of years I was here for some reason. I just never went. But this time I finally went. I went to the mass ascent. I took lots of photos, made lots of videos. It was great. It was really good. I'll definitely be going again. Yeah, you're going to become a regular. Yeah. I have learned you spend a lot of time waiting around when you follow hot air balloons and do things with hot air balloons. There was a lot of downtime. Yeah, well I noticed the footage on the video that you sent me is sped up in many places. Yes. Balloons are very slow and very, very just gentle. Manatees of the air as it were. They are. They get along. Would you go in one? No, never. I get a crazy feeling in my feet just thinking about being in a hot air balloon over the helps. You feel surprisingly safe in them, I find. The walls of the basket are relatively high. Yeah, you never feel like you're going to fall out or anything. Although I have to say I did one of the other events I went to with Janet was this balloon. It's called the Gordon Bennett balloon race. And this is actually different balloons. This is they feel balloons up with hydrogen. This isn't hot air. They fill them up with hydrogen. And then they just all take off on her race. And in this case, they just all went across Europe. And whoever goes the furthest before they have to land wins. And obviously you can't top up the hydrogen. You can only just let off weight. So that's how the race works. You see, and it's almost a bit of a, it's been a blinking contest. It's who's going to blink first. And they all just go for it. And Janet broke a world record on one of them for women, ballooners, to her and another woman broke the distance record for women. But on this particular one I went to, I went and waited and I watched them all leave, which was an amazing sight. I made a video of it. I'll put some links in the show notes for people who want to watch these. But on that particular race, one of the balloons that went missing and the people in it died, they got into a storm and couldn't get out and plunged into the ocean. So it's not without risk. And of course everyone's always seen these famous videos of the ones that catch fire. It's not good PR for balloons. But I think they're pretty safe. I'm very surprised to hear you say that there are still balloons that use hydrogen. Because of course, the only thing I can think of is the Hindenburg. I thought, oh, didn't we stop with the hydrogen at that point? This is quite specialized. This isn't like touristy stuff. This is a very special race for the pros. You know, cool race. Still though, a gigantic sack of hydrogen wouldn't want to be in a lightning storm flying in one of those. No, they think that's what happened to those people who died. But I don't know how it was resolved. Would they do balloons on air crash investigation? Does somebody write up a, whatever it is, the PCRB reports that you like so much? I'm sure that I don't know. I've never read a hot air balloon crash investigation report, but I'm sure the NTSB does investigate them. Yeah, it's aviation, right? Someone has to write a report. I imagine it's them. I don't know for sure. You've never seen a hot air balloon on air crash investigators? I don't believe I have. One thing that I did want to talk to you about from all of this, is it did occur to me while I was watching all these balloons taking off and 200,000 people watching absolutely captivated. And I think probably 90% of them taking photos. What a fabulous advertising billboard hot air balloons are. I think they're a great way to advertise. Most of them, I think, are sponsored by companies. Smart hot air balloonists get some company to pay for the balloon and have their name on it. And they've got a toy to play with for the next five years. And the company's got a big flying advert for the next five years. Oh, but I think they're a wonderful, wonderful advert or public relations machines hot air balloons. Because who doesn't love them? There's nothing but good will towards them. Everyone loves whether you're scared of going in them or not. Everyone loves a hot air balloon. That's exactly what I said before. To see one in the sky and it makes you smile. And then you think of Bob's burger joint who's also helped make that thing fly. Exactly. I mean, it was a genius public relations move by the University of Nottingham to give Janet the money for her balloon. Because she traveled all around the world with it. You know, there it was flying over the Swiss apps. In fact, on that first few days at Flew, I took a photograph of it flying over the Swiss apps. Just with my normal camera. And I'm no award-winning photographer. But when you've got a hot air balloon and mountains, you almost can't go wrong. I took this photo and thought nothing else, nothing of it. And a couple of years later, I was in the office of the Vice Chancellor of the University. And there's a huge framed picture of the balloon flying over the mountains. And I was in the waiting room waiting to meet him. And I was like, that's bloody my photo. I don't know how it ended up with him. I don't know who got it. I obviously gave it to the University to use. And it got blown up to the sort of the size of a window. And Frays, you didn't burst into his office and accuse him of copyright infringement. No, no. And he didn't ask action. No, no. The University of North taking them a good people. But it was quite amazing. I'm sitting there looking at it and I'm like, that's my photo. Amazing. But the reason I make the point is that it shows what wonderful public relations things they are. With all the great things these big universities do, the boss of the whole uni, the thing that he wants to have up on the world is this hot air balloon. Everyone loves hot air balloons. Yeah, it's impressive and it's fun. I wonder what the rates are for advertising on hot air balloons. I mean, I don't think they're interchangeable like that. I think the envelope, as it's called, the balloon itself, is a pretty permanent thing. I don't think you can chop and change the advert. So I think it's a one off, isn't it? I mean, one of the problems for hot air balloons is they're not clickable. That's one of the weird things in the world of advertising is precisely these brand moments. You can definitely say that the university of nodding him, for example, gets a lot of friendly PR and a lot of recognition from people around the world, from seeing the university of nodding him on the balloon. But yes, you can't track it like we do with our advertisements where there's a code that the advertisers know then exactly like, oh, what's the return on investment for advertising on various things? You never have any idea what the return on investment for advertising on a hot air balloon is. Or even just regular old billboard advertising. It's very hard to have any idea about how much is that worth in terms of just a raw ROI calculation. I mean, you're right. It must be a nightmare and to measure. But it's still a very real thing and a very important thing. That happiness that people feel is real, but it is impossible to put a number on. How much should we spend on hot air balloons this year? It's not only the happiness that's real though. Like it does convert into stuff. I mean, there's no better example than the videos I make with the university of nodding him. And I now go to the university, as I've said to you before, and I'll walk around there now, because I've been doing this way too long. Lots of people will come up to me and say, oh, you're that brainy guy. Do you know, I go to this university because of those videos. I watch someone else at school and I really love them and therefore I chose the university of nodding him. And you can't measure that. And the university probably doesn't know how many people are there for that reason, or how many people are there because they once saw the balloon. And they probably know that. But it was still money well spent or time well spent. That has to be very strange for you to know that there are students at the university directly because of your work. I think I feel like that's a very one-to-one relationship between you make videos and people make changes in the whole rest of their life based on those videos. I don't know if it's one-to-one because obviously there are really amazing people in my videos and a lot of other people involved in them. It's not just me who makes them. But in terms of that video to the person relationship, it is amazing. I always joke with people who say that I say, don't make any decisions based on me. I don't know where the cheese grater is in my house, yet alone what university you should go to. But go to the university of Nottingham if you're unsure. Yes, and when they say, where did you hear about us? You write down Brady's videos. Brady Harron. Brady Harron. I'd love a big gray balloon with H.I. and the big dotted square around it. How cool would that be? I think that would look really good on a balloon. That would be quite striking. I want to if gray is like an illegal color for a balloon or one you shouldn't use because it like merges into the sky and it becomes a hazard. Because I can't think of many gray hot air balloons I've seen over the years. I've seen quite a few. There might be a lure against gray balloons. I wonder. Maybe you could put blinking lights around it. You could get around that. We could have the dots could blink. The hot air balloon you would have loved that was being tested at this particular fiesta was a solar powered hot air balloon and basically it was all pretty much mostly black and so it could absorb all the heat to heat up the air to keep it in the air. Oh clever. And you would have loved how it looked. It was like a kind of, I don't know, it just looked cool. It looked bad ass. Did you get a picture of it? I didn't see it the day I was there but I've seen some video of it so we'll dig some pictures up to show people. It was made by Cameron Balloon's I Believe if you're doing a search for it. I am. You can't tell when I'm typing now but you don't have my clicky keyboard. Oh no I can tell don't worry. I mean how you can still tell. Big time. Oh okay I see this one. I see this one. Yeah so it has the stripe, it's asymmetrical, a little bit black on one side, white on the other. It's cool looking. It is very cool looking. It's very cool looking. Interesting. It does have burners on board in case of the sun getting blocked and things. Yes. By the law it has to have burners as well to heat up the air. It has burners on board in case of clouds. I certainly would hope so. Even the world of hot air balloons has technological progress within it. Oh yeah, definitely. Let's move on from hot air balloons. What do we got in the follow up this tier? Let me have a look. I think you wanted to talk about how wrong I was on the internet. You were wrong on the internet. I mean surely you should know by now you should never state something as a fact on the podcast because everyone will immediately go and look and if it is not a fact. You're going to hear about it. But again this this I thought was funny. We're talking now about the neutral video that we mentioned. Offhandedly last time. Yeah. Having the same number of thumbs up and thumbs down. And this has been an interesting experience because again my Twitter feed is filled with nothing but pictures that are all the thumbnail of that image of the guy in the future on the clip and then someone circling below at the number of thumbs up or thumbs down being slightly off. Yeah. The thing that's interesting to me about this is I feel okay I make these YouTube videos that lots of people watch and I will have little errors in those videos and I hear way less about errors in my videos now than I do an offhanded remark which I'm clearly not even backing on the podcast. So I was just speculating idly that maybe this was hard coded into YouTube because I'd never seen it be different and holy god have I heard from people about how it's different. So it does seem that your speculation is correct that it is community powered and not hard coded which is impressive because there are many of these videos around YouTube and it seems that almost all of them are within five or so always of being the same on thumbs up and thumbs down. Gray nodes are diligent. Nords are diligent. There are probably a few people watching them with with OCD making sure to keep it even as much as possible. Yeah. So another little piece of follow up was something I forgot to tell you about which was a nice little story. Let's talk about airports for a second. Okay. You were having a moan about your airport you hate so much. Dallas. I do love a good moan about an airport. Yeah, especially Dallas. Yeah. Really, I do love a good moan about Dallas is actually what I'm saying. Yeah. There are many nice airports that I travel through about which I say nothing but I will talk endlessly about Dallas which I hate. I wonder if like the head of publicity and public relations at Dallas Airport gets like a chill down there spine every time in your house or internet is released. Yeah, he has a Google alert out that searches Hello Internet page for mentions of Dallas to know if he needs to go into into PR damage mode. Yeah. I didn't even talk last time about the birds that were flying in Dallas. It was just like oh there's too much to complain about. I can't even mention everything that happens every time I go. They're in a committee meeting right now saying how much people going to pay this guy got to shut him up. Today's episode is brought to you by Brady you're going to have to read this one. Dallas Airport, I will not accept your advertising dollars. If Dallas Airport wants to give us money for a PR spot you would have to read that one I think. And I charge them double. You'd take the money you just wouldn't do the read. Yeah, I think maybe that would even be better. Let me tell you about an airport. Well actually it is kind of a problem for the airport but it wasn't a problem for me and it became a wonderful experience. Okay. When I arrived at Marrakesh a few weeks back now we sat at the front of the plane so we got off first and we got to the passport control first. And there were lots of people standing around as they're often out at these airports in exotic countries, the culture which I don't understand. Lots of people standing around, none of them seem to be doing any work except for one guy who was stamping passports. And because we were at the front of the queue we got straight through. We were first ones through absolute breeze. And I think behind us there must have been some family of 18 people who all wanted to go through together and half of them didn't have their passport or something because whatever happened we were the we went through and then there was a long long long time before everyone else was going to get through. And I was waiting at the luggage caracer with my wife and all the bags started coming out. And obviously there was no one to take them. We were the only people in the baggage hall. We were the only people that the place was completely empty. It was amazing. It was a huge, huge area just two of us. The caracer filled up with all the bags that could take. And because there was no one to take them away, that was it. So they couldn't put any more bags on the caracer. So we were just standing there watching the same bags going past, not our bags. Thinking, well, we're going to be stuck here now until everyone else gets through passport control and creates some more room on the caracer. And there was still no one through, 15, 20 minutes, not a single soul had come through. Okay, this is getting suspicious. Yeah, it was a bit. So anyway, I was... I mean, how big was this plane? How far ahead were you? It was just an easy jet plane. Everyone was in the queue. The next people behind us were standing right behind us. Everyone was standing behind us. There was obviously some... I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, were you on a plane with nothing but the sketchiest looking people, all of whom need interviews through customs when they arrive? Like, how on earth can you be the only people? I don't know. I don't know, Gray, but I promise I'm telling you the truth. So I got to the point where I was edging closer and closer to the little hole where all the bags come out that leads to the outside. And I started like poking my head through to see if there were other bags waiting. And around the same time, this Moroccan man poked his head through to see what was going on. And one of the bags were moving. So we kind of met eyes. And he looked into the hole and saw that I was the only person there. And he straight away knew what the problem was. And I said, I'm trying to get my bag. And I could see all these trolleys parked on the tarmac outside with all these bags on it. And he said, which one? Which one is yours? So I ended up sort of pointed and he walked over to the trolley. And I was like hanging my head through the hole over the conveyor belt saying, see that black one under those two red ones to the right of that blue one? And he said, this one here? And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And he pulled that one out. And then I found my wife and said, yeah, that one, that second one up on the other trolley. No, no, not that one. That one. No, no, below that one. This one, yes. And he sort of pulled it out like a like a jenga piece and all the other bags came toppling down. And he got, so he got our two bags. And then he physically passed them through the hole to me, like, handed them to me, hand to hand. It was brilliant. And there was still no valley service. It was valley's, and I slipped him some money like I tipped him. I was like, thanks man. You say you saved me a lot of pain. And then we went off through and got our cab, got our car that was waiting for us, still no one had come through. So I would have been there forever waiting for those other people if it wasn't for that nice man at Marrake Shareport. So spend those two dollars wisely, my friend. That's all I had on me. I need two dollars on me. I felt guilty, but it was all ahead of my pocket. There you go. Marrake Shareport thumbs up. Yeah, thumbs up for the valley luggage service. Thumbs down for their passport control if you're not the first two people in the line, though. I'm very glad that your bags came through and that you have this nice little valley experience. That's nice and all. But my mind just keeps focusing on where were all the other people? That's the part of the story that I keep wanting to go back to. This feels like a mystery. Yeah, don't I? You don't think about who's behind you, Gray? You crack on. You walk fast to that passport control. Yeah. You hope, right? There's nothing but a bunch of children and slow old ladies in front of you that you can stride on by as fast as possible without actually breaking into a run so you look like a jerk. It's like, oh no, I'm just walking fast trying to get past everybody. Because if you're at the back of those big passport lines, forget it. The toilet come right. That is a terrible time to say, oh, let me just go to the bathroom and then you're behind 600 people. The toilet is not an option. This does just remind me that I made a little note about something on my last flight, where I wanted to tell you that you were correct about something. Wow. I like this. Wow. Brady is correct about something, Koana. We had a disagreement a while back about whether or not the self-checkout machines in the grocery stores are faster or not. Remember this? Yes. Yeah. Don't get excited because I'm not going to tell you that you're right there. You're totally wrong. Okay. Okay. However, I'm pretty sure I made some broad sweeping statement about how, oh, using the machines are always faster. Let me tell you, I ran into a machine while traveling. What I like to think of was I was just shaking my little fist thinking, Brady is right. This machine is terrible. And it was at Delus Airport when I was going through customs. The United States has the equivalent of the grocery checkout machines for going through US customs if you are a US citizen. Is this customs or passport control like immigration? I mean where they're checking your passport and seeing if they're going to let you into the country. Well, you know they have that at most UK airports now as well. Here's the details about these machines. Yeah. I've never seen them before and I walk up and I go, oh, okay. Well, I'm sure this is going to be great. A nice little automated machine. It's certainly going to speed up the line. No, it's not going to speed up the line. I have never seen a machine designed like this, but you are required to scan your passport. And I was standing there watching everybody else trying to scan their passport. And I'm trying to scan my passport. And the little machine goes, right, it keeps buzzing at me saying it's not scanning the passport correctly. And I'm looking around and I see maybe the 20 other people who are also using these machines. Everybody is having a hard time scanning these little passports. Yeah, it's something. What's going on? But I was determined I'm going to figure out this machine. I'm not going to ask the nice lady for help. I'm going to figure this out. The design of this passport scanner was that you have to hold your passport, stick it in this little tunnel basically for the scanner. You have to put your hand all the way in and inside the tunnel where you cannot see your hand, much like those secret voting boxes that we were talking about on our special episode. Inside there, there's a little lever that you have to reach for with your hand, that you can't see to pull down and it pulls down some scanner on top of your passport. But you have to do it physically with your hand. Otherwise, the machine will not scan the passport. Okay, that is a little bit more, that is weird. And I thought this is the craziest self-automated machine I have ever seen. And it did work. I pulled down the little lever so that it eventually scans my passport. It puts everything up on the screen and I confirm, oh, yes, this is me. Here are the reasons that I'm coming in. Blah, blah, blah. And of course, because it's the United States, the machine also takes a little picture of you, because I'm sure it's going into a gigantic database somewhere, you know, who knows where, but somewhere that goes into this database. And so this machine was just taking everybody a really long time. But I figured, oh, okay, at least I figured it out. I can make it happen really fast this next time. Next time I use it, it'll be great. But no, it gives you the little ticket. And then you just get in the line. Totally is normal. Then you still have to talk to the regular guy who asks you all the regular questions. You just show him that you did the little autoscan of your receipt. But he also scans your passport. It was just again, an astounding example of this bizarre airport inefficiencies. That's great. This machine takes longer and I still have to do all the normal things anyway. Oh, great. We could do a whole podcast about how I feel about those self passport machines. When I came back into Bristol just the other day, there were 40 or 50 people waiting in like the human flesh line. And there were five or six people in the robot line. And I saw I got into the robot line. And the woman there who was like shepherding people through just looked at me and shook her head and said, seriously, it'll be quicker over there. And I just nodded and walked away. I was like, I hear your sister. I hear you. That's the person to trust. I mean, the British ones are not as stupid as that what you just said with all these levers and that. And they're reasonably simple to use. I can use them. But I swear they must have some kind of brain-zapping laser. Because as soon as people walk into them, they become completely incompetent human beings incapable of doing basic procedures. And I just stand there watching them going, oh, for goodness' sake, I just want to go and yank the passport out of their hand and say, put it here, look there, step there, get out of my way. Crazy. The thing that really impressed me about these ones for the US customs was I have already scanned my passport earlier at the airport at a different machine which didn't have this mechanism. I have scanned my passport at many airports that don't have this mechanism and almost everybody who's on this plane with me has certainly done the same thing. Why on earth would you make this situation different for the second time for almost everybody who's getting off the plane? Right? Because everybody who's boarded that plane scanned their passport in one way when they were getting their tickets. And now you introduce this new more complicated thing at the end of the flight that they have to scan. It was just like, hey, whoever made these machines buy the scanners that were made by that other company. And then it will be at least be consistent. You give people a fighting chance. Might cost a hundred bucks more per machine, that was nothing, so. It may be, but I was looking at those machines and I'm looking at everybody struggling through them and I thought, there is no way this is clearing the line faster. My suspicion is that the whole purpose of that machine is actually the part where it takes your photo. I thought, this is why they're doing this. It's to build some gigantic database. It's not at all about making the line any faster. They take your photo when you go through the flesh line as well, though. You have to look into the little camera and they take your picture. They have never done that if you are a US citizen before. No, okay. Right. So it used to always be, oh, we only take pictures of dirty foreigners, but now it's, oh, we also take pictures of dirty Americans. Trust nobody. They take my photo, all my fingerprints, and then give me a 20 minute interview about YouTube videos. Air travel, always fun. We have a new sponsor for this episode of Hello Internet, and that is JustWorks. If you have a small business, then JustWorks is for you. JustWorks.com helps you run payroll, fill out W2s, negotiate healthcare prices. As a small business owner, these are all things that you have to do, but they take away time from you focusing on the core of your work. Let JustWorks take care of that for you. JustWorks will process your payroll automatically, set up your team's benefits online, and help you save on healthcare. It's just that simple. If you go to JustWorks.com, you can see examples of their clean looking software to help you manage benefits, your payroll, your HR tools, a company dashboard, and compliance. So if you are running a small business and you feel overwhelmed by the amount of busy paperwork that you have to do, which isn't really the core of your business, go check out JustWorks.com. And when you go there, use the offer code Hello Internet for 10% off your first year. This saves you money and lets JustWorks know that you came from our podcast. JustWorks.com helps you take care of your small business and your team. I just want to very quickly do my new favorite thing, which I know you don't like. I'm quickly going to give people an update on where the two Hello Internet flagships are as we record. We are the only podcast in the world that has official flagships. But they're not official flagships. They're not official flagships. There's nothing official about them. They're unofficial flagships. They're like mascots. They're like, they're mascot ships of Hello Internet. I of course I'm talking about Anthem of the Seas. Currently sailing off the coast of Spain towards Southampton. It's coming to England, Gray. Oh wow, are you going to go meet it? Do you know what I'd like to because I looked a little bit up about where it's going to be over the next year or two? And it's actually about to leave Europe. And I don't think it's coming back for quite some time. This might be a really chance. Do you want to head down to Southampton and have a look at it? Probably not. You and America still. Anyway, it's traveling at 20 knots. I just love saying knots. So what's a knot though? I never know. It's about a mile per hour. Why don't they say miles per hour than if it's about a mile per hour? No, I can't. I'm tying knots in ropes and sailing and stuff. But I just think it's cool to say knots. So for once Anthem of the Seas is actually sailing and not sitting in a port. But our second mascot ship, our second flagship, Majesty of the Seas is docked at Key West. So for those of you who are following the progress of our mascot ships, there you go. Following the non-live progress of the ships. Because by the time they hear this podcast, those ships are somewhere else. They will long have since left Southampton and you will have had dinner with the captain or whatever you're going to do when you're going to go down. Imagine that if I had dinner with the captain of Anthem of the Seas. No. That'd be pretty special. We could talk about knots and if you were having dinner with a ship captain, what sort of things would you want to ask? Well, I'd really want the ship captain to take me down to the engine room. Oh yeah. That's the thing that I would want to say. I'm totally on board with you there. Straight to the engine room. I'd be like, stuff this mate. Let's eat on the move. I want to pull the horn. Yes. I want to see the engine room. I want to talk about huge propellers. And I want to see your maps. I expect to hear all about the engine room after you have dinner with the captain reading. Well, hey, I don't know. He might not take me down. He might have lots of questions he wants to ask me about videos and podcasts. And we might reach an impasse there. I'll be like, show me your propellers and who will not tell you tell me about what software you're at it on. That's going to be the conversation. Tell me about your bandwidth problems. I'm looking to YouTube. How long does it take to process the videos? I'm so excited. I'll only show you the engine room if you tell me what CGP grade really looks like. Let's move on from ships. Because if we talk about them for any longer, I'm just going to give you too much of an excuse to cut this section of the podcast. It's already going to be short, but I can already feel your finger hovering over the cut button. In fact, you've probably stopped recording at the moment. I'm taking a little break. Thank you for indulging me. Shall I indulge you even further by introducing the next topic, which is, free booting takes the world by storm corner. There comes a time in life when your children leave home. You're no longer responsible for them. You no longer have to give them money, but also they no longer have to obey your commands. This is a natural part of life. And so it is with the word free booting. I think free booting has come of age in the last few weeks. And you and I as co-founders of the word, apparently, hello internet as the parents of this word, this new use of the word for the illegal taking and re-uploading and hosting of online content, particularly videos. We have to let it go. It's gotten bigger than us. And it has left the nest and gone into the world to blaze its own path. And while I will forever be proud of it and our little role in its creation, it's moved on. It has moved on. There have been a few articles. And I think the reason why you are describing it this way, in that the word has moved on is that we have, for the first time, seen people use the word free booting without making any reference to Brady Harin and CPG Gray as the creators of this word. Yeah. Which is fine, but in addition to that, it has sort of also gone into some bigger, bigger arenas now. I mean, we saw Hank Gray and user in his excellent article that he recently wrote about what about free booting? We've seen it on the BBC website. We've seen it in places like Slate. And it's just being used as the normal word now. And the days of us getting excited and going, oh, look, that's a little victory for us. They're over. But also, I think it's really important to really quickly point out that while we will always joke around about the word and its humble origins here on Hello Internet, free booting itself is a very serious issue. Do you know what, Gray? Yes, it is. Well, why are you laughing? I'm agreeing. You're not even laughing. I'm laughing because of your tone of voice, Brady. It was a bit after school special, wasn't it? Yeah, that's exactly right. I know. It's like, we've all had fun this afternoon, but drug addiction is a serious problem. And you're like, is it? Because the way you're saying it, even though it is a serious problem, certainly doesn't sound like it is. There was a funny story in a picture that came from a destined in Alabama, I think a week or two ago. He's obviously been a real campaigner on this issue. And he has also been one of the real trailblazers using the term free booting. And his local TV station in Alabama, I think. I haven't actually spoken to him about this, but this is what I've sort of sketched together from various text messages we've shared. I think his local TV station decided to do a story about free booting and Facebook free booting. And I guess they were taking the parochial angle of, you know, local guy makes good and leads the charge, sort of thing, you know, local Alabama man and YouTube star campaigns against the mighty Facebook. So I think they did an interview with him and spoke to him about it. I haven't actually seen the report yet, but what happened was, they then said to him, are, destined, can we please use some of the footage from your free booting video to kind of illustrate our report? You know, you know, examples of the stuff that was free booted and presumably footage of destined, which makes perfectly sense, because you know, they want to couch him in the terms of being this YouTuber and show, show an example of it. So of course, destined said, yes, you know, okay, in that go ahead, you can use my footage. So do you know what they did? They went into destined's video about free booting. And the one clip they took out to use was the clip that he borrowed from me of Audrey playing with bubbles. And they put that into their report and had it like marked youtube.com slash smad of every day. And there's Audrey chasing bubbles around. Perfect. So I got free booted. Destin of course did have permission to use that, that bubbles footage, but I don't know about Alabama television stations. I don't think permission is a transitive property. No, Destin thought it was hilarious. Set me a photo of the from the report saying, have a look at this. It is pretty funny, but that you touched upon the reason why I think this word has now come into its own is that while you know, it has left our house of Hello Internet. And it has gone in many ways to the house of Facebook to cause a lot of problems. Because that's where I see it always being used in context is talking about the changes that are happening at Facebook as Facebook is clearly making some moves into the video world. But that's where the word is always being used about how Facebook is making money off of other people's content and not sharing back the revenue and intentionally dragging their feet. And so this is where I have seen it being used is describing this as Facebook free booting almost all the time. And that was partly the topic of of Hank's article. Yes. Talking about how Facebook is doing things like inflating the numbers of views on their videos by huge orders of magnitude. If a video appears anywhere on someone's Facebook feed, even if they don't look at it itself, like Facebook counts that as a view. Yeah, they sneak in and start applying before you have time to react. Yeah, they started, they started playing immediately and they're like, oh, you watch this for a tenth of a second before you hit pause, that totally counts as a view. And that's part of the reason why the view numbers on Facebook are just astronomical. You see numbers just in the tens of millions or billions or trillions, you know, like there's not enough humans on earth to have caused all these views. Facebook's like, oh no, it totally counts. All of Facebook's little tricks are kind of a little story right now. And that's where we also see the word free booting come into play because it's a nice alliteration. It is Facebook free booting is a nice alliteration. And I can't even take credit for that. I think Destin started that with his videos. I will do a quick little serious thing then before we continue with our various bits of follow up because seeing what we're talking about free booting because I have had a little interesting interaction over the last couple of days. So I thought I'd tell, well, I'll tell you about it. I haven't told you about it yet. And those people listening to Halloween can eavesdrop because that's pretty much how this works. Yep. Now there is a this all relates to a Twitter account, a Twitter feed. At this stage, I don't, I'm not going to say what it is. Partly because I don't want to give them free publicity. Partly because also I don't want to sort of be, you know, Lynch Marble, Judge and jury over an individual. You know how I feel about that. So I don't want to be too guilty of it myself. After the last episode where you say you don't like Lynch Marbles, it would not seem great if you were at the head of a Lynch Marble today. Exactly. But there is this Twitter account which I came across this week. I actually just sent the Twitter handle to you not 20 minutes ago. How would you explain this Twitter account to people? I'm just scrolling through and looking at it right now. And this is an account that tweets gifts. And they're tweeting gifts mainly from science or science related videos. Yeah. And as I'm scrolling through, I mean, it's just an endless list of stuff they didn't make. Much of which is actually watermarked with the real creators. Sometimes, yeah. One of the videos I'm looking at right now is a gift. And it is clearly cropped very awkwardly. So this is one that someone decided they could take out the watermark. Yeah. But it is basically a free-booting type of account because they're taking the best parts from various science videos, from various creators. Yeah. And tweeting it without any link back to the author even at a bare minimum. Even if they were doing that, I wouldn't condone it. But they're certainly not doing that either. People on the internet always go, isn't it okay if someone just credits you and the answer is no. Like, it's not. Credit doesn't make it okay. But they're not even doing that. That the barest of bare minimums of saying, oh, this comes from a video with whatever. They're just saying, look at this cool explosion. Look at this cool science experiment. And all the gifts are, again, like the prime five seconds of a whole lot of science videos. Exactly. I think this is like the online video equivalent of one of those rooms that have a police station just full of stolen property. Infernal property. Full of infringed property. It's a free-booting fiesta. Yes. And there are lots of Twitter accounts like this. I'm, you know, this is a problem. And we talk about free-booting being a big problem on Facebook. And it is. And I think, you know, that's the most important place at the moment. And it seems to be where the battle line is drawn. But I think this sort of gif-gif free-booting is also a really big issue. And perhaps once Facebook sought their house out, this is the next place where this battle needs to be for. So anyway, I was going through this Twitter feed. And there were. And there still are lots of clips from my videos in there. Now, I am far from the Ernie victim. As we speak now, you will see Derek numerous times. Other videos from people I know are so one there by the physics girl. And I'm sure Destin must be on there as well, because his videos are so good for that sort of thing. This is one of the parts of free-booting where I feel like you're a bit lucky here, because a CGP-grade video doesn't really make sense if you haven't got the whole video. You don't normally have a gold and bullet that can be stolen from your video. But I do have the problem where someone takes all of the slides from my video and writes an article with a little caption below each of them. It becomes like a PowerPoint almost. It'll turn into one of those crap slide shows where they try to get 20 clicks out of you. Okay. I can understand why it happens, but the gif-free-booting is huge. Yeah. Where I see it, for example, is on Reddit. Yes. And I cannot believe the number of times when a gif of a video makes it to the front page where even linking to the video would be a vastly more enjoyable experience than linking to the gif. I find it very surprising, but there's something about gifs and their looping-ness that seems to really, really catch people's minds and encourage spreadability. Even in situations where a gif seems like the worst possible way to show whatever it is you want to show. I find it very, very surprising how fast and how far just the worst gifs can spread. Yeah. So I went to a couple of the gifs here on this account that were from my videos. And I kind of was just lying in bed. So I actually decided I'd have a look at what the process is for making a copyright report on Twitter because I'd never done it before. Oh, yeah. I never had to do it either, interesting. Yeah. So anyway, I went through the process. It wasn't too bad. Like all these copyright processes, they put quite a few hurdles in your way and they make your work for it. But I did it. For two of these gifs that I'd found, I reported them. They'd been on the Twitter feed for quite a while. They'd been retweeted and favoured in the thousands of times. So they had gone everywhere. Their day was done. But I reported them just out of, I don't know, partly because I wanted to see the process. And reasonably quickly, I got an email back from Twitter saying, we've removed them. There you go. I then scroll down the Twitter feed and found a bunch more of mine. I thought, oh gosh, how many of these do I have to do? But before I got to any of that, I received an email from the person who runs the Twitter account. Hey, Brady, I saw you filed a copyright claim for one of my gif images I've shared. I've removed both of the pictures. Well, actually, I think Twitter removed them, but maybe he removed them first, I don't know. And then he said, do you think it's possible to remove the copyright claim from my account? Yeah, I've had this thing I can do. And then he helpedfully said, and is there more content you want removed? I will gladly do so. So I didn't reply to that, because like you said, we get that kind of thing a bit. So let me interject something here, which is just so the listener understands. The reason it sounds like Twitter has a similar-ish system to YouTube, and the reason he wants YouTube to remove your copyright complaint is at least the way it works on YouTube is that if a YouTube channel has, I think it's three simultaneous outstanding copyright complaints against it, that channel, the whole thing will just get taken down. So there's a cumulative punishment for repeatedly infringing copyright on YouTube, which is a channel ban if it happens enough. But if you convince the person who filed the claim against you to remove it, you just basically have another free shot at infringement. Every single time I ever file a copyright complaint against anybody, I hear back from them saying, oh, we took it down and please remove the complaint, which as far as I'm concerned is just a request. Like, please allow us to continue infringing copyright in the future. That's the only way to interpret that message. But then I got an even longer email. Brady Harron, I am the owner of Twitter.com slash the name of this account, which is a page I've built as a hobby from finding and sharing science related, give images from all over the internet. I do not profit from the tweets. I simply do it for fun. Let me stop there. Can I just say that this Twitter account has approaching 900,000 followers. And if you think building a following of 900,000 people on Twitter is not a form of profit. Profit you have made with this material which I think a lot of you shouldn't have. I beg to differ on that whole profit thing. But and then the final sentence is, would you mind taking down the notice? So do they want me to withdraw my thing? And also, I thought this was unbelievably cheeky. And also, would you send the clips you would like me to upload? Anyway, I did reply at this point. I believe I was polite and respectful when I wished them success. But I also made my position clear about what I thought was not right about what they were doing. I got another really long reply. I won't read it all, but I'll try and find a couple highlights here. Brady, I'm sorry you feel this way. I've been going through all the content trying to remove anything that seems to affect your YouTube channel. I thought it was more of a free promotion. As if someone wanted to watch the full clip, they would search online and find your video. I'll stop here again for just a second. That's a crazy claim. Because there's virtually no identification of what the clip is or where it's from. And you would have to have very good Google food to go from these animated gifts to find my video. But that's by the by. People don't do that anyway. Once they've seen the money shot, why would they do that anyway? I never upload the actual video, only ever a four to five second gift, and no sound. And I mostly find my content from Reddit or NineGag, which is why I was unaware. So they're saying I didn't even know where it came from. I just took it from somewhere else. Right. Other people will watch this video, but I don't even know where it's from. Yeah. Science gives a very popular unread it. And usually if you look at the tweets, someone posts the video. So it does do traffic to your videos. Also, I thought I was within fair use policy as I'm sharing for knowledge purposes only. I also state in the Twitter bio that I do not own the content. Can't be right now, didn't I? And I think this bullet belires their true knowledge. And also this is also in their Twitter bio. And there is and there is a removal request. I have my email in the bio and I always remove. So I mean, he's basically saying I've put the email there because I'm always getting complaints and told to remove stuff. He says, hopefully we can resolve this. I'd be happy to work with you in the future. I feel like someone has come into my house and taken a whole bunch of my things like my TV and my sofa and my computer. I know you think it's different because let's just tell what I feel like. I feel like I've taken my TV and my sofa and my computer and my fridge and all these things. And so I've suffered. I have suffered even unknowingly in this case, but I've suffered for a little while. And then I have found out where my TV and sofa is. And I've said, oh, I want it back. And this person has said, look, here's your TV and your sofa. And I know you've kind of done without and I've benefited from having it for the last few weeks. But I've given it back. Can you not press charges because I don't want the police onto me. Because if the police are onto me, I won't be able to go and steal everyone else's TV and sofa. So can you not press charges so the police won't prosecute me? Oh, and by the way, I've still got your computer and your fridge. But if you want them back, I'll give them to you. But don't stop me from taking other people's stuff. It's crazy. I'm displeased. Your analogy is terribly tangled, but we will draw from at the value that is within it. Because in this analogy, if we were continuing it further, other people would be coming to his house and watching stuff on your TV. And he would be asking if it's okay for him to continue using the TV as long as he tells everybody that it's your TV. That would work. Well, in this analogy for you. No, that's great. That makes sense. Or is improving the analogy good for you? Or is this falling down into a mess of unutility? No, I like it. I like it. No. Even hard stuff. Even hard stuff. It's absolutely terrible. The one point that jumps out to me on this, which is conversation that I see happen over and over again on Reddit. And I stay out of it because it's frustrating. But I just want to put on the record here is someone will link to, say, a free-booted material or they'll link to a gif or they'll link to some subsection of someone's content. And because Reddit is usually pretty good about someone knows where this thing is from, the top comment will almost always be, oh, the source is this thing. So if you click on the discussion, you'll see right away at the top, here's where it comes from. Now, as someone who has had many things on Reddit, I've even gotten things on the front page of Reddit and has also been someone who's had in fringe stuff get very high on Reddit. And then I see the top comments as, oh, the source of this is originally CGP Gray. I actually have a bunch of data about what the difference is between those two things. And everybody seems to think that, oh, the source comment makes it all okay. But it can be a difference of two orders of magnitude. How many people click on the link on Reddit to go to the infringing versus how many people click on that comment that says, oh, the original source is from here. So it is by no means making up for it or making it okay. I just see people say, oh, isn't it free promotion? Aren't you happy to get this promotion? And I always feel like if the people making the things are don't want this kind of promotion, it should be pretty clear to everybody in the discussion that no, it's not the kind of promotion that people want or it is not as helpful as people think it is. But I just see this argument over and over again where people say, oh, anybody using your material is just great promotion. And I even get tweets sometimes where people say, oh, I saw your video on some news channel in some foreign country. I know isn't that great promotion for you. And it's always like news to me that is there. And no, it's not any kind of great promotion almost always. And I would never agree to it if they asked me ahead of time, which is precisely why they don't. So it's just further discussions in the frustrations of online creators. When this exchange first started, it did cross my mind that maybe I was going to be dealing with like a kid or a teenager because you know, kids in teenagers can get lucky and have awesomely followed Twitter accounts as well. And so, and there were at points during this exchange where I was so stunned by the naivety being displayed that I thought maybe it was a child. I mean, reading back, I think it is an adult and there are a few things that tell me that I am dealing with an adult. But the naivety and the lack of understanding of what's going on here is studying to me. And for someone like that to then have willed the power of 900,000, Twitter followers is we live in worrying times. You know, some of the guidelines about what counts as copyright infringement. And people always say, though, I didn't make any money off of it. But one of the key factors is does the use of the material impact the market for the original thing? Yeah. And without a doubt, these gifts just totally decimate the market for the original thing. There's nobody who follows through and wants to watch the rest of it because they've already seen the heart of it. Like that's not what fair use is. But everybody seems to take fair use as, oh, I'm not making any money. And I like sharing this. So isn't that fair? And the other thing I find a little bit frustrating is there seems to be this mindset towards educational material that it's different and that it's sort of altruistic. And because it's sharing knowledge and sharing knowledge is like a good thing. And it's not just trying to sell cans of Coca-Cola that everything could be shared. And it's all one big group hug. And if I'm sharing knowledge and talking about knowledge and facts and information or I'm helping educate people and I'm using your awesome footage to do it, that's okay because education is good. And education is good. But I'll tell you what, you go and start a Twitter account where you just show gifts of every home run hit in Major League Baseball each day. And you see how long that account lasts. I've spoken to some people who work in the world of writing educational books. And the things that publishers will say to them is just shocking where it's like, oh, do you want to get paid what a normal author would get paid for your education book? Don't you just want to write a book that's read by a lot of people and we don't really need to pay you for that, right? Because you just love sharing knowledge. And we'll just keep all that. It's like the money, there's still money somewhere. It hasn't just disappeared. But yeah, there's this weird in the whole industry of media production, this kind of this presumption of discount towards anything that is vaguely educational. It's I think it's kind of understandable that feeling, but it's still very frustrating if you are the producer of educational material that also lots of people want to watch. That's popular. Well, let's take money out of the equation for a second. Let's pretend we live in a world where money doesn't matter and we have a different currency. And say the currency was Twitter followers or YouTube subscribers or just fan base. Because in many ways that is our currency. This person and people like it are stealing that. They're building their following based on my content. And people may not even know this stuff came from me and they could have been people that started following me instead. So even if they haven't stolen dollars from my wallet, they've stolen another form of currency. I often think that the real currency that we deal with on the internet is human time and attention. And that sometimes that converts at a rate into dollars. But when you're on the internet, that is really the currency exchange that is happening between various parties. Is how is human time and attention spent in various ways? And I do think those are two slightly different things. How much time do you spend on something and how much attention do you pay to something? That's like the bottom level of the economy really. And then other things are built on top of that, but particularly on the internet. Or yes, a science, Twitter account that's taking other people's stuff. You can measure the amount of human time and attention that they have acquired for themselves. Do you have any other thoughts hearing any of that exchange? Were you struck by anything? This interaction with a real life free booter? I mean, not really. It's just it sounds so very similar to the same things that I get from myself every time you try to track someone down, which is why I don't really think that it was, as you were saying before, a naivete. I just think it's a situation where if I'm hearing the same thing from everybody every time there's anything going on about infringement. It's like I think they know and they're just running down the list of plausible liability reasons, trying to delay or tire you out in the interaction so you just give up. Yeah, maybe I'm not, maybe I thought this person was stupid, maybe I'm not giving them enough credit. All right, there we go. Enough of that. This episode has been sponsored by Fracture. Now, this is a great service. You get your pictures literally printed onto pieces of glass for display in your home or your office or wherever else you want to. Well, look at pictures. All sorts of sizes are available and I really recommend their website for some nice shots and video about how it all works. They obviously explain it way better than I will. Now, we've been talking long enough about these guys. Some of you have cottoned onto how cool they are and are getting your own pictures fractured. And as is the way of the world, some of you have been emailing us the results. I was particularly impressed by one from Jake who had some really nice family shots done. They caught my eye because Jake was wearing a Liverpool football club shirt that always earns an enthusiastic reply. But they looked really good. You also might remember Derek, the sky diver from a previous podcast. That's Derek, Derek, not Dirk, Derek. Well, he takes awesome freefall photos and he told me that he's now sent off to have one of them fractured and I guess put up on the wall or something like that. I told him when he does what he should do is take the fractured picture up on a sky dive with it and sort of hold it up as he falls and then get that picture fractured. So then he'll have like a fracture of a fracture. There's some sort of photographic inception going on here. Now, if you've got pictures gathering virtual dust in your computer archives, why not get them out and have them on show. And this really is a brilliant way to do it. The website is fractureme.com. That's obviously where you can get them but also learn all about how it works. It's really brilliant. And here's the important bit. The code HelloInternet, all one word, will get you 15% of your first order. 15% that's the word HelloInternet. Use that code. Fractureme.com. And now thanks to Fracture for supporting the podcast. Don't forget to send me your pictures when they're done. I've got something I'm really looking forward to, Gray. Things and jobs that people do while listening to the HelloInternet podcast corner. Oh, you have more emails. Oh, I've got loads. But I haven't got loads for you now. I'm just going to do a couple of quickies. First of all, my most important question is, are they printed on paper right now? Oh, I think that the paper is a fundamental part of stuff people do while listening to the podcast corner. I really like the paper. No, you've got paper. I wanted to set the mood before we talk about people's careers or other things they do, not just career. I saw a really funny comment either on Twitter or Reddit. I can't remember where and I can't remember who wrote it. So I'm sorry if I'm not giving you a name check. But they were talking about last times things people do while listening to HelloInternet podcast corner. You know how I built it up and said this is amazing. And you said, and you were worried it wasn't going to be amazing. They said as they were listening, they sort of thought to themselves or said out loud. If this job doesn't end up involving Barrico Barma, I'm going to be disappointed. And sure enough, we're delivered. We haven't got anything quite so presidential this time, but I've got two quickies that I like. I've received many. I am keeping quite a few of them and we'll do more and we'll talk about it more later. But we'll just do a couple of quickies now. This one comes from Emily and it says, Dear Brady and Gray, I was listening to the most recent episodes at work today and it occurred to me that you, especially Brady, might be interested in what I do. I'm a member of the operations team on the Cassini mission. Cool. I don't control the spacecraft directly, but I thought you'd both enjoy knowing that sometimes somewhere in the world there is someone listening to your podcast while she designs observations for a camera orbiting Saturn. Love the show. Emily. I mean Cassini is that's pretty good. That's the glamour mission for me as well. I mean, that's like that's the pretty boy space mission, isn't it? Well, all those great photos are Saturn. You can't go wrong. That's a pretty good one. Not. I mean, all the space missions are cool, but pictures of Saturn, Saturn is unusually photogenic for a planet. Yeah. So there's Emily obviously designing observations. I'd like to know more about what that means. Presumably she programs what way it's going to point and when to take all the pictures, but you can certainly email me again, Emily. You cannot email me too many times about what you do on the Cassini mission. I'd love to hear more, but that's that's a good one. Yeah, that is a very good one. And I'll just do one more. This one comes from someone who sounds very Australian. Comes from Dave. Dave says, get A fellas. First off, I'd like to tell Bradley, he he that I'm a fellow Adelaidean, but had to move for employment. However, as a kid, I did not find the Grenfell center, the awe-inspiring piece of architectural grandeur that he did. I also have never heard anyone but him call the black stump. That makes me think Dave might be younger than me, because it was only really famous before when it was the tallest building and when it was no longer the tallest building, it kind of fell into obscurity. But maybe who knows? Anyway, let's hear about Dave's job. Because that's where things get really interesting. Yeah, but you always have to mention those Adelaidean. Oh, yeah. You love the Adelaidean. Big time. Adelaide's like the secret keyword to getting through your email system. You just saying that has reminded me of several other Adelaide emails I've received this week that I could talk about, but I won't. Do you see? It's like it's a tight little cluster of Adelaide excitement in your brain. Although my job may not seem the most exciting, think again Dave, but here we go. I absolutely love it. I drive a fuel truck called an AB Quad in the outback Western Australia. Western Australia is the biggest state of Australia. It's massive. My truck fully loaded can hold roughly 135,000 litres of fuel, diesel mainly, and a bit of petrol for servos in remote areas. Servos as well. Australians call servo stations or garages. This AB Quad truck that Dave drives is 53.5 metres long. It weighs around 165 tonnes loaded and has 86 tyres. The run I do is about 1500 kilometres round trip from depot to the mind site towns. Obviously, there's a lot of mines in Western Australia and he's obviously delivering all this diesel fuel to all the mines. Anyway, enough about the truck. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was to read those words because I could have heard about that truck forever. Anyway, my feeling is the same. Wait, wait, wait, but more about the truck. No, no. We'll come back to the truck in a second. All I'm thinking of listening to this is, this sounds like a truck to have in a Mad Max style apocalyptic future. I know. This guy is prepared. Outback Australia, we're better for a Mad Max truck. Enough about the truck. I listened to your podcast on the 12 hour shifts I drive on the track. It was a good laugh hearing that people fall asleep during the podcast. If I were to fall asleep on the job, entire towns could be blown off the map. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo. Brackets, apparently because of terrorists, all recording of our trucks is banned and brackets. However, the one attached is near enough to what I drive and he attaches a picture of this sort of semi-trailer with one, two... Oh, let me see it. Let me see. Four or five fuel tanks telling behind it. And I'm going to send it to you now in between Audrey waking up and looking my hand. Hang on. Let me get it for you. I actually wasn't going to send it to you. I didn't think it'd be so into it. No, I want to see it. Coming. It's coming. Here we go. I want to see the gear, man. I want to see it. It's coming. Big time. Here it is. Hang on. You can play with Audrey. I'm going to look at this truck. Hang on. Oops. I'm sending that to Destin. He would like it, but he might get confused hang on. He's going to love it. I'd send a Destin. He'd probably reply with something like, yep, drove one of them yesterday. There we go. You should have it. Wow. If trucks could be snakes, that's what this looks like. Boy, that is really interesting. In Australia, you call these thing road trains. And I mean, you can see on the front there, it's got road train written on the front of it. But I've never seen one that long. I've seen one that had like two or three trailers, but obviously, they just need so much fuel with those minds that I have never seen anything like this. Just to describe it, it's, I mean, usually I've seen the truck and it has the single cylindrical container behind it that's on an additional four or five sets of wheels. But this picture that he sent of a similar truck has four of them, it looks like, chained up behind it. I didn't even know you could do that. No. That's a lot of fuel. Not bad one there. So it's not quite the presidential stairs, but in some ways, it's as impressive. This is very interesting to me. This is, I like logistics. Yeah. I wonder if these things are even allowed in the US. I've never, like I've driven a lot around the US on a lot of roads where there's a lot of cargo being transported. And I have never seen anything like this. So I wonder if it even exists in the US or if this is just a badass Australian thing. I don't know. We're pretty hard as nails over there. So I just did a search, a Google search on A, B, Quad. And it takes you to road train. And the top image is the one he sent. So that's obviously where he got it. So if you look at the Wikipedia article, you look at all the different rules and regulations and classes. And there's these K class ones. And it says, these represent the largest road trains operating in Australia and the world, called a powertrain or a body N6. There's a whole bunch of stuff about the model Wikipedia. Of course. Wow. This is exciting. I never knew these things existed. And now I want to see one in real life. I want to see one of these K trains with one, two, three, four, five, six, seven cargo slots behind them. I'm not lying, Gray. I want to see one with the Hello Internet podcast on a phone in front of it. I'm not going to lie. Yeah. Yeah. Any K train drivers if you're out there, if you have one of these trains, Hello Internet logo on your iPhone in front of this train. That would be that would be appreciated. But I would really like to see one in real life as well at some point. Very exciting. I like this a lot. What's going on over there? What's that noise? It's so watery. She's gotten up. How is Audrey making that much noise? She's quite noisy for a little one. I'll pick her up. You're going to make any noise for the microphone? No. No. Oh, now she goes silent. She's silent because she's getting attention. She just makes a little snuffling noise. You got the picture? So the dogs are sleeping at your feet? All right. Let's move on. I don't know what to do about Audrey, but I'm just going to leave her for a minute. If she starts getting too noisy, we'll take a picture. Yeah, we'll take a picture. On your bed. On your bed, little, little. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go and sit on the bed. There you go. Go to the bed. No, don't look like that. Is Lulu her bed? Pretty much. That's pretty much how it works. Okay, Gray. This is the moment we've all been waiting for. In the last podcast, we heard from a listener who has gastratory synesthesia. Yes. In this particular case, what happens is when they hear words, they taste them. Words have different tastes. And they sent a list of 10 words that they wanted to be said by you because they thought they would taste interesting. They particularly wanted to hear them. And there was one they wanted to hear from me as well. And obviously, this person tapped into the little bit of competitive nature between us and knew how excited I was that there was a word that might sound better from me. So they have been in touch since you and I read this list of words. And they tell us what each of those words tastes like and they tell us which one of us says it in a more tasty way. Are you ready for this? Okay, let's go. Because. All right, because. Now because tastes like frank and beans, and it tastes better when I say it, welcome. Welcome. Now welcome tastes like something that I don't actually know what this is, but maybe you do. A Graham Cracker? Oh, a Graham Cracker. Yeah, I don't know what that is. It's a... I was about to say in the most unhelpful way, it tastes Graham Cracker-y. But I don't know how... I feel like, oh, a Graham Cracker, there are things you give kids, you know, in kindergarten to munch on. Are they sweet or savory? Slightly sweet. They're like a soft... A soft... I don't know what to compare them to. It's soft. But why is it called a cracker if I thought crackers were hard? Well, okay, so here's the thing. It's... They're soft because when you're a little kid, you gum on them, right? And they sort of become soft in your mouth. I don't know how to describe them. Their cookie-like is the best description, maybe. Well, it tastes better when you say it, but only just, apparently it was very close run. Next word, before... Before. That is Ritz Peanut Buttercrackers. And that is a tie between the two of us. The next word is like... Like. That tastes like cottage cheese, and it tastes unusually strong when Gray says it. Unusually strong. Your like is very cottage cheesey, Gray. Next we have integral. Integral. Macaroni and cheese. Oh, that's nice. Gray sort of stumbled while saying it, so there was no taste when he said it. But to be honest, the way you, as in Brady, said it tasted worse than average. But I have a very high standard for this one, because of the way my calculus teacher said it, which tasted very good. Possibility. Possibility. This is Fucilli Pasteur or Pasteur with Red Sauce and Grated Cheese. Yeah. That's a complicated one. And the listener says, this one is kind of weird, though to be fair, all of this is weird. But the red sauce to cheese ratio was a lot higher when Gray said it. I have to say, listening to all of this, I am very glad that I do not have gustatory synesthesia. Waiting. Waiting. Tomato soup and it tastes better when Gray says it. Next word. Family. Family. Banana and it tastes better when Gray says it. I wonder if banana tastes like banana. I don't know. That's a good question, actually. When you say the food, does it taste like the food? I wonder if there are special words that are like, you know, like palindromes and things that taste like themselves. That's a good question. I didn't ask them. Passion. Passion. Some sort of barely carbonated fruit juice substance that I've never quite been able to place, but I think there is melon involved. And apparently, both of us pronounce it in a way that tastes better than average. Now, the last word, which is the one that he thought would taste better from me, was party. Party. Okay. That tastes like chocolate cake. Seems appropriate. And as I suspected, it tastes significantly better when Brady said it. Your accent makes words with the T and R sound sound better. Because when you say party, it sounds like the T becomes a D, like you're saying party, not party. Yeah, that's partly my growing up in New York sliding through there is the T to D transition. Yeah. I have a very hard time with words like that. Words like water. As I cannot say that word normally with a T sound, there's a D sound when I say water. You can tell, Gray, that the word naughty is completely tasteless. For me, the vast majority of words don't have a taste and naughty happens to be one that doesn't. So I replied with a few little follow-up requests. So I've got a little bit of extra information for you here. I asked whether our names tasted like anything. And apparently they don't. The only two names of people that do have taste apparently are Emily, which tastes like banana and Rachel, which tastes like cherry. And I did confirm that both Derek and Dirk do not have tastes. And also I can confirm that free booting does not have a taste. And that's about it for now. For what words taste like quarter? This is getting too specific now for you. All right, there you go. I heard you had an interesting meetup recently. I did. I did. And this is one to thank the Hello Internet listeners for in many ways. So I'm sure people will remember, but you and I both spoke about the album, The Race for Space, by Public Service Broadcasting, which I love. Yes. And you spoke quite highly of as well. I thought it was good. It was not for me personally. But actually, I have listened to it a couple more times since then. I feel like it might be growing on me ever so slightly, but I would still recommend that everybody give it a listen. Brilliant out. Brilliant. And for those who don't remember it's this, these musicians, this band that combine, just cool modern music that I happen to like anyway, with audio samples and historic audio samples from old propaganda films and newsreels and archive and things like that. So The Race for Space deals with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin and the Apollo missions using all the old broadcasts from the time and all the old NASA radio transmissions. And they do it in a really clever way, really clever way. Is the Brady album? It couldn't be more for Brady. It couldn't be more for me. And one of the songs they did before this, on one of the other albums, is about Mount Everest. So I was joking that these are like my dream people. So I was bigging it up in the flattering way that these things happened. A lot of the listeners gave it a try based on our recommendation. And a lot of people said they really liked it. And a lot of them said so on Twitter and on social media saying thanks for the recommendation and they kind of called it out and shouted it out to the band as well. This is that they're a London based band. So as a result, suddenly I think these guys were seeing kind of their Twitter feed full of a lot of talk about how the internet and at Brady Harrow and at CGP Gray. And so suddenly they sort of became aware, I think, that at least that we existed. So basically as a result, a little bit of Twitter conversation ensued. And they actually performed at the Glastonbury Music Festival that I went to. And I had actually arranged to try and meet up with them. And we sort of they joked they were going to buy me a side of helping them sell some more albums. But I ended up leaving Glastonbury early and one of the guys in the band wasn't well. So that never happened. So I thought, oh, that's an opportunity missed. But we have stayed in touch. And amazingly, the sort of the creative force behind the band, kind of the main man who's a whose stage name is Jay Wilgoose Squire. It's an interesting character. There's not his real name, that's a stage name. I'll apparently say. Anyway, I don't know how I think I must have used Jedi mind tricks. But I persuaded him yesterday to come along to the Royal Society and appear as a special guest in my objectivity videos. You bring everybody to the Royal Society. I know, I know, I think that was obviously the bait. So he came along and I'd actually arranged with Keith, the head librarian there. We'd arranged a series of really amazing space artifacts to do with Sputnik and Gagarin and Apollo. We got some real amazing things that I was drawing all over. And we took Jay down to see them and spoke to him and he appeared in the video and another video. And then we went out afterwards and he bought me my siders and we hugged out for a while and had a really good time. Got along really well. And it wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for Hello Internet and then the ensuing good comments from Hello Internet listeners. The main moral of the story here is if you ever do anything because of Hello Internet that you think could have any positive, any positive coming from it. And make sure you go on Twitter and tell the people because it really helps us do our job. Because I kind of imagine I would have ever got to have met Jay or did what we did if it wasn't for people on Twitter and it seems it seems like a little it actually really helps. So I think so thank you everyone and hopefully in the week that this podcast goes out that video might be out as well and people can people can have a look but it was it was really cool. Were you able to convince him to do that adorable two hour based album we were discussing last time? No we didn't get on to the topic of two hour based albums. I feel like a missed opportunity. He's a lot like you and a lot of ways great. There were a lot of things about Jay that reminded me of you. I think you two would get along really well as well. And one of them is his secrecy about upcoming projects which I guess is even more important when you make albums. So he was he was tight. He sounds like a smart man. He is a very smart man. He was tight lipped about the topic of the next album and rightly so. But it was good. It was really good. It was good fun. I was wondering if you had a fan girl in the meeting. I think I played it pretty cool. I mean you didn't squeal. No I mean I definitely let have a lot of respect for what these guys have created. I think it's a really great thing and I do have a disproportionate amount of respect for people who can create music. Like even my friend Alan who makes music for my videos and who wrote the halloween to that little jingle at the start of the show. I'm amazed by people who can do what they do. So I've got loads of respect but I don't know. Because of my job over the years I kind of get exposed to lots of people who are famous. So I don't get particularly starstruck. And it did help that when we were walking down the street together in London someone came up to us and recognised me and not him. Did you feel like that gave you an advantage in the celebrity meetup? The dynamic wasn't really like that anyway but it was funny. So yeah but yeah it was really good. It was really good. So I hope the videos turn out well and seriously like I can't recommend the album enough. The music video for Go which I think is really good was made by a company in Bristol I think for the song called Go which is the Apollo 11 song. It's got like something like 300,000 views. I think that's criminal. I think that is criminal. That you know Taylor Swift will have 100 million views on a video. Yeah I like Taylor Swift in her songs but that will have like 100 million and this can have 300,000. There's something wrong with the world. There's probably a gif of it somewhere that has 20 million views. A soundless looping gif. It was interesting how much we had to talk about in common about things like oh how do you use Twitter and how do you feel about copyright infringement and things like that. A lot of the things we had to discuss were surprisingly similar. Except I'm really crap at music and he made it really cool. Yeah the ability to make music seems like magic to me. Yeah just like how do you do that? I find it impressive as well when anybody has any kind of musical skill. I was talking to him about the random acts of intelligence show and I said if they don't put on one of their shows at that rocket center in Huntsville there's something wrong with the world. Can you imagine seeing them do their Apollo set under the Saturn 5 with all those Apollo spaceships everywhere? That would be pretty cool. It would be cool. The best setting for any show in the world and the best setting if you are space themed. What's next? Sorry I was just freaking out because I was trying to be a reporter and come up with some questions to ask you. You didn't do well, Greg. No I know I didn't. I'm very sorry. I'll never YouTube will never get you to be one of those people who interviews the president of the United States. I would never interview the president of the United States but yeah I was just trying to think there's something to ask you and it was just silence in my brain. I thought I assumed there was something going wrong in the office or your computer was breaking. That's how awkward and quiet you sounded. Was that just you trying to think of a question to ask? Honest to God Brady, I was trying to think of questions to ask you because you told me that I needed to be a little bit of a reporter if we do the segment and I was just I don't know what to ask. What do I ask? This is where I have told you many times that you have this natural interviewing skill that you seem to just disregard because it comes so naturally to you. Let me ask let's do it this way, Greg. All right. Yeah. I told I think I sent you a message saying oh I just met with the guy from public service broadcasting. Right. What do you want to know? What's the first thing you think? What's the first question that comes into your head? Not what do you think you should ask? What do you want to ask? Because that's probably a good start. What's the first question you have? Yeah. The first thing I asked you was how the two of you met up and that's what you told us. Okay I told you that because Twitter because he had seen all these tweets mentioning us so he kind of we got force-fitted to him basically and then I'd exchanged a few emails at the Glastonbury. We dealt with that. So now you know that. Right. And then on I message I also ask you if you fan-girled big time when you met the person. Yeah. And so we did that. Yeah. Right. And then I feel like I don't know what to ask next. Okay. There's nothing else you want to know. Okay. I guess the thing is I feel like oh if there's something interesting you'll tell me and I don't know what to ask. Isn't that- isn't that- well I know nothing about this situation. Aren't you going to tell me the interesting things about this situation? How would I know what to ask is interesting when I don't know what the interesting thing is? You know what the interesting thing is. Yeah. That's not really how journalism works but yeah okay. No this is not how journalism works and it's also why I am not a journalist. But I just say again every time we've ever discussed this you disregard your interviewing skills because they just come so naturally to you. And for me I'm panicked. I'm sitting here sweating trying to think of a question to ask you as you're telling your story. Okay. You don't have to say what comes into your head. Sometimes nothing comes into the head. Well. It's- It's- Then so be it. This episode of Hello Internet is also brought to you by igloo. igloo is an internet you'll actually like. igloo allows you to share news, organize your files, coordinate calendars, and manage projects all in one place. And igloo's latest upgrade Viking revolves around documents and how you interact with them, gather feedback, and make changes. They've even added the ability to track who has read critical information to keep everyone on the same page. It's like read receipts in your email but way less annoying. So that you can see who has read what or who has signed off on the necessary legal agreements or the completion of training materials. Most companies' internet are terrible. I know I have used several terrible internet that looked like they were built almost two decades ago now. If that's what your company is struggling with you should definitely give igloo a try. If you've never tried switching over your internet software you can definitely give igloo a free try. In fact their full product is available if your team size is under 10 users. So you can try it out with a small group before rolling it out to your main company if you want to. Or if your company is fewer than 10 people you're all set. Now go to igloosoftware.com slash hello so that they know you came from us to give igloo a try. igloo the internet you'll actually like. Homework. We mentioned last time the Martian as some homework to do. This episode is coming out relatively soon after the other one so maybe not everybody has read it yet I don't know. For the record everyone I said to Gray that I thought it was too soon to be talking about the book of the Martian a week after setting it as homework. But Gray insists we do it now. I don't insist. Well I guess I'm sort of insisting I am making you do this. But it's largely because I already read the Martian I think from my perspective two and a half weeks ago or three weeks ago and so I think I'm just going to forget the details if we wait any longer because it might be a while until we record the next one. I feel like the half-life of the Martian in my brain is quickly diminishing so we have to talk about it now. I do have some respect for that position Gray because I read it. I don't know when I read it. It must be six months maybe even a year ago around the time I recommended it on an audible ed. And I have forgotten almost all of it. I'm not going to be massively useful although I have read it. So I'm across the book but I won't have the kind of intimate knowledge of details that you will still have. You're already overselling my position here. Okay. But I guess the bottom line for the listeners is one, prepare yourself for spoilers from this point on and two, prepare yourself for perhaps the worst and least detailed conversation of any homework assignment we have yet given. Okay. Now naturally the first thing I want to know right and I know you've already got your little plan in place so I'm not going to be able to shake you from it but I am curious as to whether you liked it or not. Am I going to know that or do I have to wait for that to be revealed over a series of slight of hand greyisms? You always want to jump right to the heart of the thing. Yeah. Why do you always want to do this? Because I'm a journalist. It's an inverted pyramid grey. If the world ends before this conversation finishes I'll never know if you like the book or not. That doesn't make any sense to me. I also think it gives a context to what you're saying, knowing if you like the book or not. Like it changes the the the the salt the grain of salt I'm I'm taking with what you say. But anyway you do it how you want. What do you want to say about this book? You said it as homework you must have something you want to say. So the reason that I wanted to set it as homework was you know I don't read a lot of fiction books normally. I tend to read mostly nonfiction. This is a case where a bunch of people in my life and a bunch of sciencey people in my life as well all recommended this book. There was a bit of like a universal wall of recommendation from people so I thought you know what let me give this one a try. Even though again don't read a lot of fiction but I thought oh I've heard from people that I trust not only that I should read this book but also that they think I would like this book. So I thought okay I'm going to give it a try. This is the strange modern experience but I bought it while sitting on the runway at Dallas Airport waiting for my plane to take off to San Francisco and I realized oh I need to get something to do on the airplane and so I was able to just buy it on my iPad and have it download on the runway because I was being naughty and I hadn't turned off the data connection even though they told me to. Yeah. So it literally downloaded as the wheels were lifting off the ground. No. But you know you don't tell the flight attendants about that and it's okay. All right. This is the context and so I started to read it on the airplane. Yep. If you want me to cut to the meat of it. Oh. Sorry that was an adorable little sound. Oh you heard that. Yeah. That was the little that's the last noise Audrey makes as she's like nodding off. That's so sweet. She can interrupt the podcast anytime she wants with that adorable noise. She interrupted at a brilliant moment then because you were just about to give us the verdict on the book. If you want me to cut you said if you want me to cut to the meat of it. Oh and I was thinking what does that mean does that mean he liked it or didn't like it. Because I didn't know you'd heard it. No. No that was that was absolutely adorable. Yeah so what I would say is if I'm going to cut to the heart of it there is no way in the world I would ever have finished this book where it not for the fact that I was on an airplane. Right. And had limited options of other things to do. Right. So I wouldn't say that it was a bad book. Yeah. I don't feel the way about the Martian say the way you feel about getting things done. But I... This is a long podcast if otherwise. Yeah. I made a note about it and the note at the top of my page was just meh was kind of the way I felt about the book but I did have some specific complaints. But it was just an interesting experience reading it because I could see why people would think that I would like this book but it was actually probably those parts that most annoyed me about the book would be the things that people would think that I liked the most. I didn't think you'd like the book. Oh really? How interesting. Didn't you recommend it to me? Martian I maybe I did but I wouldn't. I'm not surprised you don't like it. Why are you not surprised? I think. I mean this is what can more be about what you have to say about it. I did enjoy this book. This seems like a really enjoyable book. Yeah I liked the book but I liked it for a few specific reasons and those reasons aren't because it was a good book. The Martian is a book that will be liked by people who don't read many good books. The Martian is a book for people who don't know what a good book is actually like. Particularly science geeky people who don't read a lot of books or particularly who don't read a lot of fiction books and haven't got much to compare it to and just thinks it's awesome that a book has been written about Mars and modern science and almost the people who are almost blind cheerleaders for science and will just cheer the fact a science book has been written and has gone mainstream and it could and it could have been written in Latin and in crayon and they wouldn't care because it's a science book that's gone mainstream and that means good good good. So there's a lot of that going on you know if something science is in the mainstream it must be good and we must be cheerleaders because we cheer everything science and I find that a bit frustrating and it's also not a particularly well written book you know it's pretty it's pretty basic you know it's not it's not a brilliantly crafted book and it's not full of many clever twists and turns plot-wise it's just a pretty linear story so that's the things that's wrong with it. There's a few things that are good about it which I may talk about in a minute or may not depending on where things go and things I liked about it. I mean the Da Vinci code is another example of a book that's not a particularly good book but is very compelling to read and I found the Martian a bit like that I always had to read the next chapter because it was very it had certain hooks through it that were very clever much like the Da Vinci code does and you can sit back and be sniffy about the Da Vinci code and say oh it's not a good book but when you're reading the Da Vinci code it's like heroin and you had to read the next chapter and I found the Martian a bit like that the Martian is a bit like I cannot stop because I have to read the next chapter and it's not because I can't wait to see what brilliant turn of phrase is going to be used just for other reasons but it's interesting to hear you say that you felt compelled to read it because I did not feel that way at all right and I was so close to putting down the book so for those who haven't read it this is no spoiler it starts off straight away with the premise that a man has been left on Mars after a space expedition there and a storm has forced the rest of his crew to retreat and it starts off as this first person narrative basically of him saying he's on Mars and he's screwed and he's injured and how is he going to try and survive on the planet yeah which is a good a good premise for a book right it's a compelling story about a man trying to survive yeah it's sort of cast away in space perfect that's how you would pitch the movie that might very well be how the movie was pitched cast away in space and we should come back to the movie trailer later but I'm reading it and the first seven chapters are all told from the first person perspective of this guy and Mark what Nate is the hero so I found the first two chapters like oh okay this is interesting premise it's good so far but after about chapter two all I could think of as I'm reading this book was techno babble on Star Trek and in Star Trek they always have techno babble which boils down to someone says something is broken and then another person has a made up series of nonsense words about how they're going to fix whatever the thing is and I just always feels like can we just move past this I why does this always have to be the plot point of made-up problem made-up solution neither of which matters it just matters that the thing got fixed I don't remember thinking that to be fair in the book I don't I do I do remember getting fatigued by fatigued by the number of things that break and then get fixed it's a bit like okay here we go again but I never I never remember thinking or that would never happen and that solution seems furched I always thought well that probably would happen on Mars and that probably is a way you could fix it so I while I found found that found a bit repetitive in that sense I don't remember thinking techno babble this is why I think people would think that I'd like it because they're plausible solutions he's actually talking about actual things so I have I have a little segment here that's highlighted as a as a passage from the book where he says I need to ration my EVAs as well as food the CO2 filters are not cleanable once they're saturated they're done the mission accounted for a four hour EVA per crew per member per day fortunately CO2 filters are light and small all told I have about 1500 hours of CO2 filters after that and then he just like he goes on and on with this description about all of the equipment yeah and I just I just kind of frust I find it kind of frustrating because it's almost like it's written as though it's a real story but I can't get past the fact that everything in it is made up right that the author has is providing the character with a certain number of air filters that he's going to be able to get through or like descriptions of machines that have to be connected basically Apollo 13 style right of oh we have this square peg to fit in this round hole but I'm just constantly aware of the author as creator of problems for which the character mark is going to give me far too detailed descriptions of how to fix them and I just found it really really tedious in the first seven chapters and sometimes sort of talking to that point but from a slightly different angle I thought again my memory is not as good as yours because it was a longer time ago but I thought the problem there was more a case of the author was trying to to justify everything like he was trying to show that he'd done the math to show that this is what would happen it's a bit like okay you don't need to you don't need to prove to me that yeah that he has this many filters for this reason because this and that and this is what would have happened if they're disaster hadn't struck it was a bit like all right okay man it's all right you know you've done your homework I know you've done your homework it doesn't mean you have to show me all you're working out exactly I just read I'm randomly flipping through the book on my paint on my computer and I just stopped at another sentence to be viable soil needs 40 liters of water per cubic meter my overall plan calls for 9.2 cubic meters of soil so I'll eventually need 368 liters of water and it's like god damn it dude like I don't need all of this it is just too much and I'm flipping through pages and the number of paint okay two pages over right this is like several paragraphs after the thing that I just read you in 62 square meters I could grow maybe 150 kilograms of potatoes in 400 days that's a grand total of 1,150 calories a sustainable average of 200 it's like it just flip flip flip I flip over to the next page okay there's numbers all over that page I flip over to the next page there's numbers on this page flip over there's no numbers on this page finally oh no there is there's a number 106 in the middle I'm flipping over again there are at least 20 numbers on this page and it's just forever I almost I almost don't know why like I made it through this first section but I was at whatever it was chapter 6 and I said I said to myself in my head if the next chapter is like this I'm just going to stop like I'm not going to go any further because I cannot stand this and perhaps unfortunate for me again not like I didn't like the book but I could have done something better with my time on the flight the very next chapter is where it finally switches perspective and it goes to NASA headquarters and them trying to figure out what has happened and so I thought okay book I'm going to give you I'm going to give you a little bit more time because maybe you just wanted to establish all of this but for me it was it was just it was unfortunate because there was just enough of the other stuff that I ended up feeling like I'm going to keep finishing this book but all things told I would rather have read a different book than this book but yeah I just found almost all of the sections where Mark is talking about his solutions to the problems just way over tedious and I think you're right it's like someone who's very very eager to show you all of their work it actually reminds me of back when I was in college I had a job doing research for one of the professors and for various reasons at some point we went to Washington DC where we had to present to some congress people what what our research projects were and what we were working on and I never forget that the professor told me before we went into some of these meetings he wanted to impress the fact of your day may be filled with all of the details of what you're working on and that's what's on the top of your mind but when you're talking to somebody else don't tell the congress person about the details that seem important to you you have to think about what he might be interested what are the practical results of this research you know or or why the funding should continue but you don't want to talk about how hard it is to do all of this research and the complicated data analysis spreadsheet you had to use for high energy frequency plasmas this does feel like it's just too much like there's a way to move the story forward without having all of the details he showed he showed you too much detail of how the sausage was made and it put you off the sausage if this was a book about a real event that had occurred I may find those details much more interesting but but again it's just like it's just the fabricated nature of it and I have I have a note here where I wrote made up solutions to made up problems and then in brackets obviously that's every book yeah but this just this just bothered me for some reason um I can't quite put my finger on on why but it just it really did it really did bother me and I found a I found it rather rather tedious was there anything redeeming about the book for you oh I have more things to complain about but I was going to ask if there were other things you like about the book what do I like about the book yeah what do you like about the book the I do like the nostalgia I do like spoiler alert nostalgia I do like that they use previous historic NASA missions and equipment that has landed on the planet nearby to save the days that I have to say that was the best part that was absolutely the best part so I liked that yeah he uses he uses one of the previous crashed missions on online to contact maybe it was so general I don't remember exactly but I have to say when that development happened in the book I thought oh that's very clever that's a good way to do things so so I liked that but I think the biggest strength of the book from memory is and you and you perhaps don't feel this way by the sounds of it but I think it's the like ability of the main character I don't know if it was skill or luck but I think the way that Mark Watney the main character was written appealed to me I liked him I liked that he was funny and had a sense of humor like I found him funny like because at the obviously the first part of the book is him writing a journal like a like a he's keeping like a log isn't he that people were probably fine after he's died he suspects but he keeps a journal and I think his person I think the personality of this main character I really liked him and I liked that he was had a little bit of rebel streak to authority through him and I think he is what made me care the reason I cared about the book is because I liked him and I cared about what happened to him I felt I felt a relationship with him and I actually thought whenever they went back to NASA or they went back to the other spacecraft that's heading back to earth the people that have left him behind I found all of that completely boring because there were no characters there I cared about there was no one I liked and I thought that was all quite perfunctory and wasn't very believable to me it just felt like a any old book but I thought Mark what knew the character I liked him I thought he was cool I wanted to be his friend he's smart then he's funny and he's joking around but he's resourceful and and there are all those problems with the way things were written and there's all that tedious detail to get through about liters of water and spreading dirt but but I liked the guy and I wanted him to somehow get get out of this problem and that's what kept me going I couldn't I just wanted to know whether or not my mate was going to get out of it or not. Of course I'm the reverse here where I found the sections where they switch the narrative to NASA and everybody running the mission as like a as a relief in the book I thought oh boy I want to find out if this team of people can pull off this mission and what are they going to do which again is it kind of ridiculous because that is also a made up problem that they're coming up with made up solutions for but I found that the details whenever they were talking about the NASA section were at a more appropriate level and I enjoyed those sections much better. Well the the data maybe true but I thought the people were I can't even remember any of them I can't remember us I can remember the captain of the ship I think but I can't remember any of the other characters they were completely just went by me like bland no bodies. Yes but I have a note here that I was laughing at when you were describing you're like of the main character because I wrote does anyone find this funny question mark question mark because this this was my other main main bullet point which is do you read any Stephen King books? Well I'm listening to what at the moment but I haven't read a lot I've read two or three maybe yeah yeah I knew you were listening to the JFK one but you haven't you haven't read a bunch of his books. Not definitely not a bunch. Okay a thing that I kept thinking when I was reading this is there's a certain kind of humor which I find in books which I felt that this character Mark Watney had which to me just seems like saying silly things and I find no humor in this at all and I like Stephen King quite a lot but one thing that really irritates me when I read lots of his books is when he wants to have a funny character it reads the exact same way as the Mark Watney character in this book reads of Stephen King will have a character say a silly thing and it just it does not register with me at all it does not move the humor needle at all and I just find it an extraordinarily grating personality. Yeah so all of the sections where he's making jokes is just none of that registers and I would be the annoyed guy at NASA like can we move along here you know we we have something to do. That's just you I mean I mean you're you're humanator is is not always the easiest thing to move anyway. There's lots of written stuff that I find funny but this just seemed another incarnation of the same way that when an author wants to make a character funny I feel like the characters are always funny in the same way where they're really just silly or wacky and I highlighted this was almost at the very end of the book but I highlighted the one passage that really put me over the edge in terms of this kind of joke yeah like NASA's asking him if he needs anything and and he says if I could have anything it would be a radio to ask NASA for a safe path down the ramp well if I could have anything it would be a green skinned beautiful queen of Mars to rescue me so she can learn more about this earth thing called lovemaking and I just feel like it's not funny it's just silly it's like that one was just like it just I groaned out loud I think on the airplane. I can't remember that one and the way you read it certainly it certainly didn't make me I'm not giving him any favors yeah with with the way I'm reading that kind of gallows humor I don't know I imagine I would be like that confronted with that situation I would have that kind of gallows humor he whether whether I mean he was definitely corny he was definitely like making dad yeah corny is a good way to put it but that was his personality and like when he started having email contact or text contact back with NASA and he starts making like silly silly jokes to him and they tell him to be serious like that's just what he's like he's like he's a corny dude and he's these are a corn bowl but that that is a personality trait I know corn bowl corny people and some of them are friends and I like them and I would not describe them as like comedy geniuses but I like them and that corn bowl corny joke nature to him and that gallows humor he keeps using isn't the only part of his personality but I don't know he just seemed like a real character to me and whether you whether you'd like a character or don't like a character if a character seems real I find that quite compelling and I feel like for whatever reason I remember thinking when I was reading it like what need to seem like a real guy to me he did he I don't know I just I did kind of like him but also more importantly I believed I believed he was real and therefore I wanted him to live and all those NASA people were just cardboard cutouts sitting sitting sitting sitting at computers and analyzing data and thinking and even the people in the ship were kind of characters so I feel so guilty we we made a mistake we must go back yes I will agree with you there even though I enjoyed the sections where they're they're talking about the astronauts who are currently in space aside from the captain I kept being aware of I don't know how many other people are on the ship now or just I'm confused with the dialogue because yes there was there were no distinct characters there whatsoever and I think oh I like the NASA sections better but casting my mind back I have this vague recollections of there's a director and there's like a pushy PR person and there's the hardworking woman who get he made the breakthrough lot yeah yeah it's very it's very hard to to come up with anything in particular but you you you're totally right with the corny and this is just a a personality difference because you mentioned for example dad humor and I have always thought but what is it that happens to men where it seems like once they have a child there's some chemical shift in their brain where now puns are the height of humor and I just I've never found a pun funny but I have definitely seen men all of a sudden after having a baby shift into this bizarre dad humor and I really think it's some kind of biological shift I wonder if I were to have a baby would I suddenly think that puns are punny right because they're not it's but it's just that kind of stuff drives me crazy and yes this sort of humor was along those lines so it's why I would be much much more resistant to it yeah I'm not a big I'm not a big fan of that stuff but sidebar is there a biological change in men when they have children about the humor they like I demand answers someone's PhD in neuroscience needs to be on this topic all right so thumbs down from Gray I'm giving it a thumbs up it's not a masterpiece it's just I just it's the other thing is it's easiest part of read it's it's not yes it's that's the other reason it's like it's like a hot knife through butter reading that book you just it's a real page you're not you're not sitting there being challenged in any way and that it was always helpful that may definitely contribute to why it is a more popular book I mean I have to say I'm always very happy to see anybody who starts off as self-published as this author was achieve phenomenal success I always like that so easy to read definitely definitely goes along with that and helps grease the wheels the only other thing I did want to talk about was just the movie a little bit yeah how did you I guess you didn't go through this experience that because I read the book before the movie was announced I was going to say how did you feel when you heard that Matt Damon was going to be Mark what may two things here the first was when I decided I'm going to buy the Martian and give it a try when I went to buy it the cover is a big picture of Matt Damon's face and this is always something that drives me crazy with books like I've never ever you know when I used to buy a lot of books I'm sitting in her room right now with a whole bunch of books that have been collected over over my lifetime my parents lifetime and I would never ever ever buy the movie version of the book yeah I can only assume that they sell well because they always come out but I personally hate them and I'm always suspicious of the kind of reader who would buy the movie cover of the book I'm totally with you on that one great yeah and I had a thought which if anybody at Apple is listening I was looking at this thing and I thought this is an electronic book it's not a real book why can't I select the cover that I want to have in my library why do I have to have Matt Damon's face looking at me if this is not a physical object anymore I should be able to select whatever the first edition cover was but no Matt Damon was there and it was almost enough to make me not buy the book but I did overcome at the last second to get it just as the wheels were lifting off Matt Damon's but it did also cause the problem as I was reading the book I kept thinking Matt Damon is he this character remotely I don't think so I mean I can imagine that would have really affected how much I like Mark Watney and like I mean Matt Damon does some more right stuff and he does some rubbish and and you know you can think what you want about him but I did have a blank slate for my Mark Watney and if I had Matt Damon preloaded as Mark Watney I might not be saying quite the nice things about him that I am or maybe I don't know I'll never know because I can't do it again but I don't have strong feelings about Matt Damon one way or the other so it's not like oh I don't or do really like him I just at a few times I thought because of the humor I thought I have a hard time imagining Matt Damon do this but I didn't feel like Matt Damon was in my brain as I was reading the book because I thought these characters seem so different okay he seems like a very strange casting choice for this person yeah but so I always knew that the movie was out and just just before we started recording this podcast I thought oh I want to watch the trailer because I'd seen some people talking about it when it first came out and the trailer is the perhaps the most magnificently spoiler-tastic trailer I have ever seen it was astounding I mean the trailer is whatever it is two or three minutes long but it hits every single plot point in the whole book yeah I was amazed I'm trying to remember actually I have watched it a few times and I do remember I showed it to my wife because she knew that I enjoyed the book and I said oh they're making it to a film let's watch the trailer together and I think we watched it twice like I do remember being struck by the quantity of spoilers you know I do I do agree with your observation but do you mind if I look at it do you want to watch it again yeah I do let me watch it you watch it right now I'm watching it I'm watching it okay you watch it I'm gonna watch it again as well it is a good trailer if you ignore spoiler issues it does make you think I want to go and see the film I watched it Gray so you just watch the trailer again I watched it there was one thing I thought they didn't spoil but I'm wrong I did spoiler all of the major plot points the trailer hits yeah which if you're listening to us talk now we're assuming that you're okay with spoilers it's the storm that comes his hab has an explosion he finds the probe he communicates with NASA NASA comes up with the plan to rescue him the astronauts already in space decide to do a mutiny and turn their spaceship around and they show the final takeoff where he is rescued from Mars it was just amazing they even have a shot showing like the number on the wall how many days he's been alive and things like that so though it's almost it's almost deliberate you know what there are so many spoilers it didn't even cross my mind that showing him writing 461 on the wall is also a massive spoiler how long is he going to survive the it's it's amazing I will I will say this though if you hadn't read the book a lot of those spoilers would have been lost on you that is true like you would have the takeoff you probably couldn't have clocked that that was him taking off from Mars somehow you could easily have missed that you wouldn't have clocked that was the old NASA probe that he was rubbing the dust off and using to to get back in touch with earth you definitely wouldn't have picked up on that if you didn't know the book or you weren't very afraid with Mars in history so in some ways the spoiler is only spoiling it for people who've read the book anyway and it's telling us what things have made it and what haven't it I don't think it shows him flipping his vehicle which is was a big moment in the book as well wasn't it when he dropped when he's driving long distances and he yeah that's true that's true I don't think they show that maybe they hadn't filmed that yet so they couldn't they couldn't cram it might not it might not be in there but I will I will just say again that at least for me when I watch these trailers what I mean by spoilers is even if I don't know what the thing is like I'm very aware of shots like oh there's a different spaceship taking off and when I'm watching the movie my brain just has a little checklist of all of the shots that we saw in a trailer and is ticking them off and I've been in movies so many times where I'm just sitting there and my brain is thinking oh there's two things in the trailer we haven't seen yet we haven't seen he seen him go up to a pile of robotic stuff and we haven't seen that second spaceship so I'm just waiting and just I hate that so much so yeah even if you don't know what's going on it's still spoilers I haven't got your memory for trailers so I don't have quite the same problem but you are you're right and that is that that trailer is that is basically the whole film from start to finish yes if they as look you know the only thing they don't rule out is that if the last second he dies because of some mishap in the transfer or something but they didn't show him back on earth that they're going to be lying by a lake having a drink right yeah tossling his kids hair or whatever that's the way and hollywood would want to end the movie the my my final thought on this though is watching the trailer I thought this is going to make a way better movie than a book I'm there there are times when books are turned into movies that are superior than them and watching the trailer I thought oh I bet this is going to be a much much more enjoyable movie than the book because I think the movie is going to force it to cut down on the techno babble a little bit yeah and seeing Matt Damon playing the character I thought okay he's just playing a character but it it doesn't necessarily have to be exactly like the guy in the book he can just be a you know a slightly wisecracking astronaut and it's much more palatable sometimes on film he'll be more edgy or a bit more map yeah a bit more yeah a bit more Jason more a bit less exactly exactly he can be more Jason born and less Mark Watney and so I just I that was my conclusion was I thought this is probably going to be a movie that is way more enjoyable and successful than the book is I think I think the movie will be poorer for not having that initial written log and I think there's something quite special about the transition from him only being able to write to then being able to you know text and that and I think turning into a vlog which is what they're going to do because they have to do to the medium they have to do yeah I think that's a loss I think something's lost there but I don't know I'm always a bit worried about Martian films because I always have high hopes for films about Mars and they so often disappoint mission to Mars for me remains the worst film ever made in the history of movies yes although that is a bit of a mirror than flag that film because whenever it's on TV I will watch it because it's so bad it wraps around yourself and I enjoy the bear so I've watched that film way more than I've watched some films I love but but Martian films very often miss the mark so let's hope let's hope this one's okay there's mostly my my final thoughts you're going to disappoint a few people that really loved the book because when you set it as homework a few people got pretty excited because they love the book so much so you're going to disappoint a few people there but you've got to call up you got to call it as you say it grow and my disappointment for things shouldn't affect how other people feel about things it's not relevant yeah if they if they read the book and they enjoyed it I hope they did yeah I would never wish a bad experience on anybody I would hope that they enjoyed the book but you know we have to complain about something on the podcast yeah that's that's how this works yep all right there we go the Martian you Rick yet again we have recommended a book for homework and then when the time comes to discuss that one of us has absolutely slammed it and thought it was a waste of time to read it yeah it's to say not awful but I would have I would have rather read almost anything else they're not going to put that on the cover are they not awful but I would have rather have read almost anything else CGP Gray hello internet
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