H.I. No. 65: Operation Zeus

"H. I. #65: Operation Zeus" is the 65th episode of Hello Internet, released on June 30, 2016.
==Official Description==
Brady and Grey discuss: the naming of new elements, Brady's new phone, changing the lives of criminals, Brady explains snapchat and possibly gets involved with criminal elements, and Grey travels to San Francisco for RelayCon and LA for VidCon.
==Show Notes==
I'm gonna be like the old folks home telling people who don't care about this podcast I used to do in the one time I got a quiz question right? I want to start with a listener male. Oh, oh, bold move, bold move. You're gonna open up with that, huh? Okay. All right. Go for it. And we've already agreed that this one's not allowed to be cut from the show, haven't we? Yeah, sort of, sort of, sort of, sort of an informal agreement that it won't be cut from the show because you spent a good 30 minutes searching for it. But go ahead, go ahead. Are you ready? Dear Brady and CGP Gray, I am a sheriff's deputy in the US and I spend a lot of time in the squad car to keep saying I listen to the podcast on my phone. Now he says he has two stories about unique circumstances where he's listened to the podcast. The first one is good, but I'm gonna go straight to the second one because the second one is great. Last night I had a rest of the person and was taking him to jail. Normally I ask them what radio station they want to listen to because I'm a nice guy. This individual was particularly rude and belligerent, so I put on what I wanted to listen to. I can officially confirm that a person was put into handcuffs and forced to listen to Brady's complaint about the Apple Watch for a good half hour against their will. So there you go. Hey, handcuffed in the back of the squad car forced to listen to me rant about Apple Watch just for half an hour. I think that person should get a discount on their jail term for a time served. Oh my God. Oh my God. The fact that it is you complaining about the Apple Watch makes that perfect. Like trying to think of a random segment that a random person could probably care less about it would be Brady complains about the Apple Watch. That's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. I could just imagine going all right, I'm sorry officer. I'll never do it again. I can fast. What do you want to know? What do you want to know? I'm going to turn everybody in. That's fantastic. That is a fantastic listener email. There we go. See? It is a segment worth keeping, isn't it? I promise you will not be kidding that one. But like I said, I keep them in if they're interesting and that was a really good one. I like that. So we have not spoken for many, many moons now and you're one over the world having adventures. Well, one moon. Yeah. Exactly one moon, not many moons, one moon. It doesn't have quite the same impact if I say we have not spoken for one moon. Yeah, I know, but I understand that. I understand that it doesn't have the same impact, but then it is also wildly wrong. Someday, some day, Brady, we may actually take a break from the podcast for many, many moons, but that day was not this day. We haven't spoken in exactly one moon. So no hyperbole here. You don't need to make it sound like it's been a long time. We have not spoken for many earth rotations. That doesn't have the same poetry to it though as many moons. No. No, you're arguing my case. I got to give you a hard time, Brady. I got to give you a hard time. So I don't even know what bits. I mean, we haven't got a whole lot to talk about from the last episode because the episode was the quiz. Unless you want to tell people again how great you were for getting that Jeff Doos on question right? I do think about it from time to time and it makes me smile. I will remember that moment for the whole rest of my life. That was that will be the best pub quiz moment I ever have was getting that cricketer question right? Wow. It was a great move by you. Now, four new elements have been named on the periodic table, Gray. Oh, so we spoke about this a while ago. And we were throwing out some names. And so yes, yes. Do you remember what we threw out? I actually can't. I can't remember exactly. Although one of them I got one of them was right because you know, I'm at a bit in the know when it comes to the periodic table in case you don't know. No, no, you've got you've got insider information there. I only remember we discussed the possibility of of fine me. I'm and I think we just remember we discussed that because people complained that we had brought it up once before two years ago on the podcast. People were like, no, you mentioned a thing twice. It's a duplicate content. No good thumbs down. So I remember people complaining that we had mentioned fine me him twice. And that is all that I can I can remember. I'll tell you why if that person doesn't like hearing the same story from me twice, they definitely would not like being married to me. But I can tell you we did talk about the possibility that one would be named after Japan. Oh, that's right. Yes. Yes, we did. Naponium or something. What was that? What was that? What was? Well, they ended up going for Nihonium. Nihonium. This is a hundred and thirteen. We also discussed Moscow and that has happened. We have Moscow. Viam. That's good. I like the sound of that for a hundred and fifteen. And then we've then here we get a bit more freestyle for a hundred and seventeen. We have Tennessee. Tennessee. Because this is a halogen. Obviously, obviously it goes down that column with chlorine and all these all the halogens. And therefore has to end with a and Tennessee is marking the Oak Ridge facility. Where a lot of work is done. All right. I think I think I can get used to that one. Tennessee. Then we have an even more exotic one. We have Ogoneson. Okay. What's our 180? What's Ogoneson for? Well, it's got the ON ending because this is on the in this is the column with the noble gases. And it's named after a person who's involved with all the Russian science. What's his name? Professor Yuri Ogoneson. Who I will also point out is still alive. And it's very unusual for an element to be named after someone's still alive. It's only happened once before officially. So it's that this is a this is a second time. Who was the once before name ball live? Glenn Seaborg. You're taking away all my good photo for future quizzes here. But anyway, there we go. Now, I will quickly point out these names are not a hundred percent official. We have a consultation period now. But and in a previous consultation period, a symbol has been changed, but never a name. So I think we're pretty good for the names barring some kind of catastrophe. Well, that's it's very interesting, very interesting. I like I like the new names overall. I think they I think they sound good and yeah, get get some more names on that periodic table. Can you remember them? Can you repeat them to me? Oh, no. You quiz me immediately. Go on. I just I messed up the first one the first time. So it's in my brain wrong. It's Nipponium. No, it's nehonium. Nihonium. Okay. So Nipponium, misgivium, tenacine. Yes. And oscleronitron. Oscleronitron. That's with the lab. No, but no, but that would have been awesome. And it's also an excellent title for the episode. But the the question I have is I mean, one of your claims to fame Gray is your memorization of the periodic table. Are you going to update this party trick? Are you going to learn these new element names or are you just going to be frozen in time as kind of the high school university guy who remembered the periodic table back then but hasn't updated his knowledge? I'm going to be frozen in time because I never updated it for I think it was wherever the heck it was at the time I never updated it. There was one I knew that I was supposed to when I never added it. So no, I'm not. There's not a party trick that I renew and it's a party trick that I get wrong. The older and older I get and the further and further I get from the person who used to have that memorized. So no, I will not be updating my repertoire. Okay. Can you give me the correct name of the last one? I was going to be in my head as oscleronitron forever unless you tell me. Organeson. Organeson. Which I'm not a big fan of as a name without your respect to where Russianness. Sounds a bit like a made up planet name. Organeson. Yeah, yeah. Oh no, the organesons are coming. Yeah, it sounds a bit like a made up planet name to me. I mean, I'm not in love with Tennessean either if I'm honest, but I might learn to live with that. But anyway, who am I to say? Until I synthesize an element on my own, I guess I'm just going to have to live with what other people decide as names. Get to it. I look forward to Bredium, Audrium, Lutishium. If they were going to name an element after me, would it be Bredium or Heranium? I like Bredium. I like Bredium. Yeah. Maybe that time, were you in the car that time I had some discussion about if you could have anything named after you? What would it be? I don't know. Lut, besides a penguin, of course. Right. What would be the most awesome thing to have named after you? You know, if you were quite egotistical or just, or even if you weren't, just if something was going to be named after you, what would be a cool thing to have it? What would you like? That's an interesting question. Hmm. Posing for the moment that you're a total narcissist because the thing that pops into my head immediately is, oh, the most amazing thing would be to have an entire galaxy named after you. But if you're a narcissist, while in theory that's great, people just don't come across that very often. People don't mention galaxies in discussion very often. No. So what you would actually want is something that people are going to come across a lot. You know, like, you get one of the continents renamed after you. What about the moon? People like at night, people sitting on a bench looking at the sky guy. Oh, look at the Brady. Isn't it gorgeous tonight? I love it when it's a full Brady. If you can't get it named after you, you could at least carve your name with an evil laser on the surface of the moon, that's what you could do. Just write your name on there. That'd be perfect. The highest mountain in the world would be quite good too. Of course, here we go. Here we go. You want to rename Everest after Brady? Wow. I mean, at least I've seen it. George Averist never even saw the mountain. Right, of course. Everybody knows that. That's a famous piece of information that everybody knows. Now, he never even saw the mountain. He didn't. It was pronounced Averist. Averist, really? Yeah. Well, one of the reasons he didn't want it to be named after him is he thought people would struggle with a pronunciation. And so it has come to pass. And so it is. And so it is. Anyway, I don't even know why we talk. Why we talk, oh, because the elements. I didn't even know why I was talking about having the moon named after me, but now I remember. I imagine you would just want some model of iPhone or something like, you know, or if you see in the new iPhone, Gray. What about a programming language? Gray would be a great name for a programming language. Yeah, but I'm not a total narcissist. So I'm happy to just have it be my name. Yeah. We're just pretending. I don't actually want the moon named after me. Are you sure? Are you sure that you don't really want the moon named after you because I think you might take it. I think you might take it if it was offered to you on a plate. In fact, the longer this conversation goes on, the more I feel like I'm fairly certain we've actually revisited this exact point somewhere in the past on the podcast about naming the moon after you. So that's outrageous. That's outrageous. And how dare you suggest people go to change.org? Exactly. I'm quite happy with the moon's current name. Okay. Good. You know what I love? I love your implicit approval or disapproval of everything in the whole universe when this comes along. It's like, I don't know the moon. Yeah, I give that a thumbs up. There's element names. Maybe I don't, right? As though everybody is petitioning you, right, about, what do you think about this? We call this object a chair. How do you feel about that, Sir Brady? And you go, yes, chair is a good name for this object. Yes, good. Waving them by next, next. Oh, this thing. Right. What is this? This is a mouse. Yes, that is a good name for this creature. Hmm, good, right, next, next. And that's what you like to do all day. But then very occasionally someone will bring something before me like copyright infringement and I will be known. Exactly. I'm exercising my veto on that one. And we are renaming it. Perfect. I love this. It's like everything is coming together in this moment. I guess like I'm getting a little window into your conception of yourself at this moment. I guess this is why Brady likes to name things. Be careful though, because you and I laugh and like we go along with this joke. But there is a small number of people who listen to the podcast who then think like I seriously, I'm serious. Yeah, like you do. Like you do. There's a small number of people who listen to the podcast. And you're going to be listening to me saying this right now later and thinking, you know, he has a point. He has an excellent point. Okay. Speaking of pretentious and pompous names. Uh-huh. Let's talk about this checklist of yours that you posted to Twitter quite a while back where you gave people an insight into what you call all your projects. And they have, and they have all these names like the blazing phoenix and Apollo and the Andromeda strain. I have never seen a more self-important, ridiculous list of names for mundane work than the names you give for your projects. Naming projects is fun. Naming projects is totally fun. Tell me some of the projects on your list at the moment and be honest. Okay. Yeah. Let me pull up the list. I'll tell you what my current ones are. Okay. So for the listeners who don't, who are not aware of what Brady is talking about, I posted a while back a screenshot of my to-do list when I was trying to grind through a few things before this very long month of travel that I'm on. And so I posted it. And it did seem, it seemed to get under Brady's skin because I like to use code names for the various projects that I work on in my system. And at the time on that list, I think I had something, oh, that's right. I had like project Gemini was on that list. And project Gemini was the video that I last put out, which was the, the UR2 twin-brain phenomenon video. All right. So I think like, oh, project Gemini. That's an excellent code name for that video. Okay. All right. Looking at my list right now, usually I have at least three of these things. I just this morning, canceled one called Project Narcissus, which was something I was going to do, but I decided it was no good. But I still have two active projects. One is called Project Pinion. And the other one is called Project Skyward. Those are the two that are still actively in development. First things first. Why do you have to give these things code names? Okay. First, code names are fun. Our code names not fun, Brady. Yeah, they're fun. Yeah. See, they're totally fun. And secondly, I do actually have a reason that I use code names for a bunch of the projects that I work on. Because you're weird and paranoid? No, I'm, okay. Paranoid. I don't even understand how paranoid fits into this. How are you envisioning me being paranoid? I'm not giving my project's code names. Well, I think you're worried people are going to find out what you're working on and you give them code names so that people can't find out what you're working on. Because someone's going to jump out from behind a pillar and smack you over the head and hack your phone and take all your ideas. Okay. Well, first of all, I don't think that's an unreasonable concern that someone is going to take on ideas. That's right. I think that that falls under the category of not paranoid when you're a YouTube creator. So yeah, I have to keep project secret. Obviously, they need to be kept secret. Because the ham, because the hamburger was waiting around the corner and he's like, I'm not struck thing to steal all your videos. You never know. You never know, baby. Okay. So not paranoid, totally reasonable. And then the second thing is that I have a practical reason for using code names, which is when I'm working on a video, there's two ways tracking what's occurring. I have a huge template in OmniFocus. It's like 80 items long at this point, which is all of the steps to move a video from beginning to end. And then I also have a series of Dropbox folders and files that are related to that project. And some of those files and folders need to be shared with other people. And so what I used to run into was this problem of, I used to just call my projects the title that I was thinking the video was going to be. So I would have called something like the last one out project, you are to write a project, humans need not apply a project, whatever, right? But the problem there is that since I spent a long time on these things over a period of a long time, I almost always end up changing the title, right? Like the original title that I'm thinking of ends, ends up not being the final title. And so in my whole system, every time I would change the title, it would mean having to change all of the references to that in my omnifocus project template system. And much more of a problem is that it meant that all of the files that I was using in Dropbox that were related to this, if they had a title like you are to dot md as the text file that I'm working on. If I change that title in the file, it breaks everybody that that file is shared with. And so if I've sent something off to an expert and then it comes back, like they want to go review it later. If I've changed the title in the meantime, then that link is going to be broken. They're not going to be able to see it. So this way, if I just name it Gemini.md instead of actually naming it the title, I have in my mind like, oh, I know what this is. Gemini is just the project that I'm working on for this video. And I can share out that file and everything stays the same. So I don't have to keep changing it around. So I have a very practical reason for doing this. And also it's fun. So there you go, Brady. Totally reasonable. Oh God, I'm sorry. I asked now. Basically, I could have answered this question without asking you. The actual answer to the question is, why does Gray have pompous code names for his projects? Is a combination of two things. His paranoia and his overly convoluted computer system he uses to work under. It's not overly convoluted. It's entirely appropriate to the task at hand. Mm-hmm. No, she's just snow. Yeah. He's so frustrating for me. The last thing in the world that I want to have is an overly convoluted system. I want to have an appropriate system. And that's exactly what I have. End of argument. This episode is brought to you in part by Hover. Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names. It's what I use to manage a huge number of domain names that I have. I really like them. And if I can get the domain name through them, I always will. When you have a great idea for your blog or store or startup, you need to get a great domain name for it. And Hover is the easiest, fastest way to do it. 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Give them a call and an actual person will pick up the phone and answer whatever questions you have. So if you have an idea for a website that you want to make, go grab the domain at hover.com. And when you go there, use the promo code quizmaster, all one word, quizmaster. That's right. That's me. Got that cricket question right, didn't I? Quizmaster at checkout. Save 10% off your first purchase. Thanks to Hover for supporting the show. So Brady, I understand that you ordered and have received and have been carrying an iPhone SE, is that true? Your sources in this particular case are correct. How did you find that out? Was that through Operation Zeus? How were you able to obtain this information? I subcontracted out the hamburger to spy on you to see what was going on with your life. There you go. I have got the, yeah, it's SE isn't that's what it's called. Yes. I never know what to call it because people, it's like a five, but it's not a five and all that stuff. It's the small one. I just got the SE. Yeah. So I am incredibly curious as always with these things about how do you feel about it and keep in mind that as you are talking about your Apple products, there may very well be someone in the back of a police car right now who is listening to this conversation. First of all, let me say to that person in the back of the police car, what are you doing with your life? You got to get things in order. Come on, you're better than that. Look at that. That was like the worst, that was the worst pet talk ever for some criminal, wasn't it? What do you say to someone who's like, you know, in that situation? Maybe I'll go over that. I feel like we have immediately jumped into the Brady solves all of the problems in the world, section of the podcast where Brady has just addressed all criminals and posed the question, I'm sure they have never heard, what are you doing with your life guys? You have to turn this around. Everything was going wrong and then one time I was in the back of this police car and he played some podcast and some Australian guy just said, he just asked me what I was doing and suddenly I thought, what am I doing? Yeah, what am I doing? And from then on, you know, yeah. And from then I moved off and got into cancer research and here I am now accepting my Nobel Prize. It's all because of Brady. My phone. So well, you did warn me and I did feel the first sort of few minutes when I got it. I was a bit freaked out by how big and crowded the icons felt and I felt a bit like a bit fissure price, you know, I felt a bit childish on the bigger screen the icons do lay out more nicely. But I got used to that very quickly and I have to say I am pleased. All the things I was concerned about like size of screen for viewing things have proven to not bother me in the slightest. And I really like slipping the smaller phone into my pocket. I like the feeling of walking at the front door and just slipping a nice small phone into my jeans. Yeah, it sounds really, it sounds really inappropriate, but that's, but anyway, there you go. Make of that what you will. I think it didn't sound inappropriate at all until you drew attention to how inappropriate sounding it was and now it does. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, people of the internet. And I like the size and I don't know if this is coincidental because I didn't like, you know, set up controls and do it scientifically, like probably someone like you would have. But I have noticed I have got a lot less pain in the back of my hand. Interesting. I was convinced I was having pain in my hand that was due to, I actually thought it was due to maybe my mouse or my work on tablet or something. I don't know, but since getting the new phone, I have not had that problem. So I am claiming it is because I'm not stretching around my phone and having all the problems that I was having with the largest grain. So I am saying win, win, small, the phone, good stuff. I am noticing my battery runs out a little more quickly than I would like, but I had that problem with the bigger phone too. So I just think I use my phone too much and don't charge it often enough. So I'm not blaming the small phone for that. I am saying small phone for the win. Small phone for the win. Excellent, excellent. I thought I'd use a bit of young people jargon there, you know? There you go. Hey, cool kids. What are you guys up to? Did I do that inappropriately? No, no, that was perfectly fine. Again, if you had just drawn no attention to it, you would have been fine. You would have been able to slide right by. Oh, no, no. I think your awkward pause drew enough attention to it. I am very glad to hear that you like your new phone. I was thinking some of our private conversations. I was encouraging you to get it. And you had said to me several times that you were convinced that your bigger phone was giving you some hand strain using it. And of all of the people I know, you were probably the one who was complaining most about the new now, what is it, two years old, iPhone six size phone. Like you just never seemed happy with it at all right from the beginning. So I am really happy that you have downgraded to the smaller size like I have. No, not downgraded. It's not downgraded. I have downsized. You have downsized. You have downsized to the smaller phone. Not downgraded. I am terribly sorry. I didn't mean to express it like that. I mean, technically it is a slower phone. It has a few things that are technically worse than the six. But I am imagining that you didn't even notice what any of those things were. And so you are perfectly fine. And I will feel no need to point them out to you. Right. Are you still happy with the smaller phone? Since you made the downsized downgrade down whatever, down phone. Down phone. I like that. Down phone is the verbiere. Oh yeah. I still totally love it. And the thing that has been interesting to me is I wanted to know how it would hold up on a very intensive travel period when I'm much more likely to be using the phone quite intensely. And I got a battery case for it for this trip. But I would have done that with any size phone that I've had. I've always felt that as soon as you use the phone a little bit intensely, you cannot count on the battery to make it through an entire day no matter what you're doing. So I am actually extra loving the small phone precisely because I have a battery case on it now. And it's like, well, if I had a bigger phone and had the battery case, I would just be so aware of this thing in my pocket all the time. But the little phone with a little battery case is like, this is perfect. Like I am guaranteed to be able to make it to the end of the day, no matter what I do, no matter how intensely I'm using the phone to do driving directions and map lookups and ordering ubers and all this kind of stuff. So I have to say, I am totally in love with the little phone and now doubly so on intensive travel periods like to be able to have the smaller device is just so much so much bigger of a win than having a slightly larger device. So I'm really happy about it. And I hope that people like you, that people like me keep buying this little phone. And so that they update it sooner than they otherwise would like, that's my big hope. So I guess I'm going to promote to everybody. Everybody out there going by the smaller phone so we can get a better smaller phone sooner. That's what I'm hoping for. I wonder what the sales figures are a lot. I'd love to know. I would love to know what's more. I would love to know what's more. I would love to know if we ask nicely. I'll send an email to Tim. Yeah. Do you listen to the podcast? We'd love to know the sales numbers. Of course he does. Of course he does. He's code Tim. Good point. Good point. Everybody who listens to the podcast is named Tim. And then also everyone who is named Tim by definition also listens to the podcast. Yeah, that's how that works. There I see no floor on that logic. Right. Perfect. Nailed it. Speaking of phones, I have installed a new app onto my phone that being Snapchat. Okay. I saw you. This is now where I will sound like the old and out of touch person going, ooh, for the win. I saw you installing the Snapchat onto your phone and then talking about your Snapchat chatting. And I saw this on Twitter and it was one of those moments where I was just thinking, I know nothing about this. I have no ability to understand what's going on. I don't understand the Snapchat. And I would like you to explain the Snapchat to me, Brady, because everybody seems to be talking about it everywhere I go. I see ghosts and people discussing the Snapchat and asking if I'm on Snapchat, which I'm not. All right. Let me tell you this. If not knowing about Snapchat makes you feel old, installing Snapchat on your phone will make you feel even older. Okay. Is it not like installing other apps? Is that not how that works? No, no, no. The actual installation is okay. But once you open up, I swear I have never felt more out of touch with technology and the youth of today than when I tried to understand how to work Snapchat. I honestly felt like a bear pouring at a brick trying to make like I was just like I was scraping the screen and shaking my phone and just pressing all these icons that I had no idea what they meant. Those symbols that didn't even know existed, I felt like an alien had given me the phone and said, here, go ahead, make a call. And I was like, I can't even unlock this thing. What is this device? For the first time in my life, I was going on to like Google and YouTube and putting in search terms like how does Snapchat work? Like I had no idea. It was unbelievable. It was it was utterly depressing. It was depressing. Anyway. That little piece of information right there, right going to Google and typing, how do I do the Snapchat? It's like you just you just know that you have lost before you have even begun. It's like when you're doing that, it's just over. I was one step from going to a bookshop and trying to buy like a dummy's guide or something. So what I'm hearing here is that you might not be the best person to explain the Snapchat to me. Well, no, I didn't give up. I persisted. Okay. And I don't know many people who use it despite the fact it's huge and more people use it than Twitter and all that, which is why I thought I'd need to have a look at this thing. I don't know many people who use it. The only person who uses it is a good friend, Destin, of Smarter Every Day fame, who loves it and uses it all the time and he's a real disciple of Snapchat. I had figured out how to use it before I contacted him because I couldn't contact him and just say like, you know, what does that blue button mean? So I'd kind of learnt to use it and then I contacted him and he gave me a little pet talk and told me why it was great. And I am now using it. I've been using it for two weeks maybe. I'm not exactly sure. I am called Brady Harron, all one word on Snapchat if you want to go and hang with me. And if I, if I, if I, and you never know, you might see all sorts of embarrassing things as I accidentally take photos at my nostrils and things like that. But I know, I know I'm using it so I can comment on what I think about it. Before you go any further because I think you might not realise how literally nothing I understand about Snapchat. I don't even know. Is this a messaging service like Twitter or is it like a, like a private messaging service like I message or is it like a Facebook? I know, I know nothing. Please explain. I would say it is a combination of I message and Twitter. I would say it, it merges, it's somewhere between those two. Okay. I mean, it's really hard to explain like from scratch isn't it? It's like saying, you know, what is blue? Like it's, it's quite hard. But using Twitter and I messages as a reference point, so probably not a bad, not a bad way to go. So there are kind of multiple ways to use it. Okay. Like there are multiple ways to use Twitter. So you can, you can have like a public before we come on to like the actual messages in the content. Let's just talk about the delivery of the content. And when it comes to the delivery of the content, there seem to be these two main ways. You can sort of create a publicly visible stream. That's called your story and you could put things on that through the day like, oh, look, I woke up this morning and here's my bacon and eggs and I took the dogs for a walk and here's a cute picture of Audrey and now I'm doing some work and now I'm feeding the chickens and anyone can go and look at this story if they sort of have added you and, you know, subscribed to whatever you want to call it. Okay. So people can follow you like on Twitter and follow a public stream of things that you're posting. Okay. Yeah. So you could go to Snapchat and say, I don't want anything to do with strangers, but I want them to be able to see what I'm doing and you could just post things all day to your story. Mm hmm. And I do that and I'll talk about, I'll talk about that again in a minute. So I have got a story through the day that people come watch and they can see, they literally can see me, you know, walking the dogs and all the different things I do in one of my incredibly exciting days or maybe it's more interesting if I'm, you know, blowing stuff up with Neil in the chemistry lab. Okay. But question, these are photos that you are then posting. This is not, this is not like a periscope live broadcast or can you do that? I have no idea. I don't know about any live component, but they are photos and videos. Okay. I'll concentrate on the content in a minute. At the moment, I'll just continue on with the delivery because the other way that things are delivered are like personal messages, direct messages. And these can lead to an individual. They could, I could just send a picture to Gray of, of me in the shower saying, Hey, Gray, I'm in the shower, man, what are you up to? And you will receive that personally and click on a button and up pops the picture from Brady. I could send it to five or six people or I could send it to everyone I'm friends with. I could send it to hundreds and hundreds of people or I could send it to any person whose username I have. And when if they click on it and then click on my name, up will pop up the message. And that seems, that seems to be in many ways a bigger use of it. It's rather than sort of these big public streams like Twitter. It seems to more be small circles of friends or personal conversations. That seems to be a big use of Snapchat. That to me from my very little knowledge seems to be a strength is this more personal interaction, which is fantastic. It's not really what I'm looking for in a social media thing, especially one that none of my friends use. I'm obviously looking for more something where I can talk to people who have an interest in what I'm doing, but I do, but I do like interacting with people who watch my video. So it has more good to me than it would to you. Anyway, here we come into some problems with it for me. I will come to the content in a minute, but let me just talk about this problem. And I've been consulting with my good friend Destin about it. Because at first, there's this setting that says, you only receive these personal snaps from people your friends with. And obviously I'm friends with very few people. So I receive very few of these personal snaps, basically only from Destin and one or two other people. And it was recommended to me by Destin. No man changed that so everyone can snap you. He said, do it. They everyone do it. They both tell them something to snap you or Destin actually went onto his snapchat and said, everyone send Brady a picture of your dog. And so I did. And let me say it was really good fun. Everyone was sending me pictures of their dog or everyone was sending messages going, oh, Brady, it's so great. You're on Snapchat. And I was getting all these personal messages. And I really liked it for a day or two. That was really nice. But what happens then is after that has happened and people have no reason to contact you directly, you're just on their big long list now. And every time they do something banal like see a leaf on the ground or eat spaghetti for breakfast, they'll take a picture and they'll snap it to everyone on the list. And I'm on that list. And I'm on lots of people's lists. So suddenly I'm getting, I see all these names coming up. You've got snaps from Bill and Sandy and Superman 101 and CGP Gray. And you're clicking through them and some of them are personal and aimed at you, which is nice. And I'm like, hey, Brady, how you doing? Or I really enjoyed the latest Hello Internet. Here's a picture of me listening to Hello Internet on top of Killam and Jarrow. That's really nice. But in dispersed with all that, there are people who are just basically spammers who just want to tell everyone in the world everything. And that's fine, but I can't be doing with that because there are too many of them. So what I started doing was I started just blocking those people if they were like persistent. But I would allow other people to continue snapping me in case they wanted to say something to me. But then those people I were blocking were getting blocked from my Snapchat story, my public feed. So they were contacting me on Twitter going, Brady, have you come off Snapchat? I can't see you. Oh, okay. I see what's happening. I was being honest. I was saying to them, look, sorry. I think I must have blocked you because you were just sending me snaps that weren't aimed at me and you were clogging me up. And they were like, oh, sorry, I won't do that anymore. Can you unblock me so I can see your public feed again? I don't quite know if there's a solution to this. I don't know about or what to do. But. One of the reasons why I like Twitter is because the broadcasting following relationship is asymmetrical. That people can follow me who I don't follow them, which is what I want on my Twitter experience. That's what I want out of a social network. But it sounds like Snapchat is more on the Facebook end of following is a mutual thing that two people agree to follow each other. It can be no, no, because I don't follow anyone. Okay. I don't know about people who don't follow me to get access to me by sending snaps. That may have to stop at some point. Or I may have to just open the door occasionally, like say, today I'm accepting snaps because I want to see your pictures of a cloud. But then the next day I shut it off again. I don't, I don't, I haven't figured out how to use it yet. I do like the personal interaction because I like that more than you and I do quite like hearing from people directly in a bit of personal contact. But I don't like, I can't handle too much of it. So I haven't quite figured out how to use it. Even Breedy has his limits. And a few more negative things I'll say is I find that I don't like the design very much. It does seem too childish. The logo with that ghost I think is just God awful. And I don't know. Maybe it's past some Maryland point where people it's so bad it's good. But I don't know. I don't like the design. I don't like how it looks. It doesn't feel very cool to me. But maybe that's just a personal sensibility. And the young people obviously love it. Let me say some positive things though. What I do like about it is. I like that it's very visual because it's only photos and video most of the time. And you can do things to it. You can add emojis all over it or you can use your finger and draw pictures and you can add text. And I actually really like the creative side of it. It actually is giving me a creative outlet. I feel like I don't have anywhere else. Particularly to be funny. I mean, I don't know if people find me particularly funny, but I find myself hilarious. Of course you do. I quite enjoy being able to make a joke or from time to time. And I think Snapchat is really good for that. And I'm really enjoying taking a picture or making a video and making a corny dad joke or making a pun or drawing a funny picture or using an emoticon in a funny way. So I'm quite enjoying the ability to express that side of myself which doesn't work so well in Twitter. And I like that it's all done very visually. I'm finding it more than just a distraction. I'm finding it quite engaging in that respect. And I am liking some of the interactions I have with people who do it back to me and will send me a funny picture or a picture of them watching a video or reacting to what I do. So overall, so far, I'm sticking with it because I'm liking it, but it does make me feel old and it's not what I would make if I was making my perfect social media. And my recommendation is you stay away from it. You stay far, far away because there was nothing in this that you were like. It's funny you mentioned that because while we were typing, I literally opened up the shared task manager between myself and my assistant and I was like, make Gray a Snapchat question mark. I hear it's big with the kids these days, right? Like, task like is this a thing that I need to do? But so you are saying that no, I should not. I have nothing to gain here. I think you only gain if you're willing to give. And I don't think you are someone who wants to give what Snapchat wants. I think you have to sort of give of yourself a little bit more than you would be comfortable with. I already give so much of myself to the people really. You do give a lot of yourself, but I don't think it's for you. But if you go on, I'd be over the moon because I think it would be really funny. And maybe, you know, and you're a funny guy, so maybe you could express your sort of your droll, uh, rye humor in some quite interesting ways. I would love to see how you did it. Well, the other thing about Snapchat, of course, which I haven't pointed out that everyone knows is that they don't last very long. Obviously these things fade. They can be looked at once and they fade away after a day if they don't get looked at. They're also very fleeting. And therefore, it is a hungry beast. And I don't think you could feed this beast either. Because if you've got one of these Snapchat stories, it only shows you're last 24 hours of snaps. Oh. And then they fade away. So in this, you're willing to sort of sustain it and feed it on a daily basis. It kind of doesn't serve quite such a good purpose. So that's another, that's another strike against it for, for you in particular. So if I sign up to Snapchat and I say, oh, I want to see all the funny stuff that Brady's been up to, I only get to see the last 24 hours of funny stuff that you've been up to. That's right. Yeah, that's right. You can't, you can't go back over, you know, and see that classic Joker made three weeks ago or even two or three days ago. That's already gone. You're stuck with what I've done, which is, which is a strength of it as well. But is a weakness. So make of that what you will. And that's, that's a really interesting feature because I can see what they're going for with that because Twitter does have the problem of, oh, you're making an off the cuff remark, but it's there until the end of time, right? Like you just, you just happen to say something, but then that sentence is permanently archived forever. Yeah. So I can see what they're going for with Snapchat is to make it feel like it is more immediate, but that's to me seems like it's the worst of both worlds because I'm sure someone's somewhere is archiving all of this stuff anyway. So you have the feeling of temporariness, but there's still got to be permanent records. Oh, yeah. And everything, and also everything gets screen-capped. Like if you do, and you actually know if people have screen-capped what you did, there are stats on that. There's a symbol for everything. So if you, yeah, if you make accidentally make some incredibly racist comment and you've got a huge following, don't worry, there's going to be screen-caps firing all over the world. So don't, you have, it's not like you can say, oh, whoops, I didn't mean that. Jonathan, pretend it never happened. It happened. That reallyессa быв mortgage. This is, not even the worst of both worlds but then if there's a feeling of temporariness, that that temporariness is just a lie. It encourages you to do dumber stuff in public. Yes. Which maybe is exactly what's in that chat once right? Maybe that's exactly their goal. That is, the other thing about Snapchat is it is people doing dumb things. It is incredibly vacuous and it is nice. It does suit the narcissist personality too. There's no arms length because also you have to film the thing or do the thing immediately. You can't craft something over weeks and weeks and release it on Snapchat. It is very immediate. Which is nice and it gives this insight into people and you see into their lives and I quite like that. I love watching Destin feed the chickens or drive to work and I feel like he's my mate and I feel closer to him when I'm seeing him do these things. We can't talk on the phone every day. I like that. For this one-on-one friendship sort of thing, it's nice because I see what he's up to every day and he can see what I'm up to every day. For that wider audience thing which professionally is something you and I have an interest in as well, it's less useful. Less part of your professional modus operandi is to allow people into your life. In which case it's brilliant. If you're very dependent on that sort of personal relationship where everyone feels like they're your absolute best mate, then it works really well. And that transient nature of it too also sort of forces people's hands. You know they can't trick you. They have to feed you every day and give you this stuff every day. It works for what it wants to do but I can't see how that would work for you. This has been very enlightening, Breedy. This is very interesting. I feel like with you and I and anybody who makes their living on the internet, you have to have some kind of awareness of what's coming over the horizon. And Snapchat was one of those things where it crossed some threshold where I realized I can no longer ignore whatever this thing is. It's been on my mind that I have to, at some point, at least talk to somebody about what Snapchat is. Again, making a living on the internet, you have a professional responsibility to be aware of these things at the very least. And so the longer you're talking about Snapchat, the less it sounds like there is anything here for me, though I still might end up just making an account just so I can look at it directly myself and kind of play around with it. It's interesting to hear about it and I think I can see why it's gotten so popular. I'm sure everyone's screaming as well at their podcast player saying that Breedy's missing out some of the most important things. Of course. What I will do is you can download your own snaps and stories onto your phone to keep impermanently for yourself. So what I'll do is I'll get one of my stories that I've downloaded, one of my 24 hour sequences. And I will somehow make that available for the Hello Internet listeners in the show notes and they can go and have a look at what one of my 24 hours looked like just so they can see what Snapchat actually looks like and what I'm talking about. And you as well, Gray. Yeah, I'd be very curious to see that. Maybe you can do a series of screen grabs or something and I can put them all up as an image gallery somewhere. Oh no, you can put it as a whole video and you can sit and watch it for, you know, one minute or ever long at last and you can watch the day. So I'll figure out how to do it. I'll get it off my phone and give it to you. So if you don't want to download the app and you want to see what a Snapchat story looks like, hopefully we will enable that if I can make the app work. Right. If you can get the app working and for the percentage of hour listeners who are like, what is this Snapchat? Yeah. You and I are probably the only two people in the world who are talking about it. Like it's this strange reason. Everyone has actually on Snapchat at the moment while they're listening. Yeah, it was, that was essentially what was just going through my mind is what percentage of the listener base is not already on Snapchat. It might be just you and me. If you're like me, you might be a little put off when you listen to a podcast that sounds like it's been recorded in someone's echoey bathroom. But forgive me for this sponsorship read because I am literally in my bathroom as I speak. Here's the tap. And I'm here because I want to talk to you about today's sponsor, Harries.com. Harries offers high quality raises and blades for a fraction of the price of the big raise of brands. Go to Harries.com and use the promo code H.I. to save $5 off your first purchase. Now I've got not one but two Harries sets. That's a perk of them being a sponsor of the show. And I'm looking at them now. Here's my picking it up. I'll just tap my handle against the sink in case you don't believe me. Although why would you not believe me? Of course you would believe me. I'm holding it now. I've got the silver Winston blade. Really nice, really nice hand feel. But also kind of heavy. It feels sturdy. It feels expensive, which it's not. See, I like my products a bit sleeker and classier than the somewhat over designed products that some of the other companies make. And this really fits the bill. It actually looks like it was made to be in this bathroom. And another thing I like about Harries is the packaging. Normally I throw packaging away, but you can't throw the Harries packaging away. It's so nice. So there we go. They've got a cute little logo. All this stuff comes in great little boxes. Not all that silly blister packs and colourful silly stuff, but the other brands use. You feel like you're buying something really nice. Now I've also got here my spare blades. Let me do a blade change so you can experience this sound of a blade change. Now these blades aren't just easy to use. They're really good. Harries make their own blades from a factory in Germany. It was actually a blade factory they liked so much. They bought the factory. And that means you can get these high quality blades at factory direct prices. Now the starter set. For $15 you can get a handle, moisturizing shave cream or gel. I have the shave cream here. I don't know if there's going to make much noise for you, but I'll give it a little squeeze. Oops. Don't point the shave cream at your microphone on your chest when you're doing this. Smells really nice too. Does the job. But you might prefer the gel. I'm a cream man myself. So anyway that starter set as I was saying, handle cream or gel plus three razor blades. And then when you need more blades, they're about $2 each or less depending on how many you order. And you can do all this online and get to live and straight to your door. I was actually just looking at the Harry side a couple of minutes ago and at the moment as I speak, they're doing a limited edition starter set with a new handle, which isn't silver like mine, but it's this really cool matte black. It's actually really cool looking. I imagine that's a sort of one gray would like. I don't think it would fit my bathroom though. I have a little kind of chrome and stuff like that. So I think this silver handle is still the way to go for me. But I think a lot of you would like that black one. I'm not sure how long it's available for. So maybe go check it out. So anyway, I guess I better get out of here. Go to harries.com and use the promo code HI and that gives you $5 off your first purchase. That's $5 off something that's already incredibly cheap. And it will also let Harry's know you came from Hello Internet and that's good for us. Thank you for joining me here in the bathroom. I will get on with my shave and we can get back to the show. I was parking my car. I was parallel parking between two other cars. And it was quite tight. My car is quite big. And with the back sort of tow bar of my car, I did dink the car behind me. Like a little, you know. And I was like, oh, I'm sure people would know that feeling that runs through you when you dink another car when you're parking. It's not a nice feeling. This is a car tap. And I was like, is that what you call that? A car tap. I thought I'm going to call it, yeah. Okay. Right. I'm with you. So I was like, you've got to do the right thing. Don't you got to get out and leave a note because obviously there's no one in the car, the part car. And you got to leave a note and say, sorry, it was me. Here's my phone number. He was my snapchat. Yeah, exactly. And so I got out and I wrote a note. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I tapped your car. Here's my phone number. But this car was quite beat up already and it was covered in scratches and dense and I really struggled to find any mark that I'd left. And I thought I saw maybe that one there's mine, but there was more damage than I could have ever done. No. Okay. So I was thinking, I'm not going to get done over here. So I started taking lots and lots of pictures of their car, like their bumper, just to show it was already really badly damaged. And as I was doing that, the woman whose car it was came up to me and said, why are you taking photos of my car? And I was like, oh, sorry. I actually just reversed into it and see that little tiny mark there that's me amongst the sort of forest of other damage. She was great. She just shrugged to her shoulders and said, ah, don't worry about it. It's nothing. But then she said, oh, I guess my husband might be worried. So I'll take your number just in case. And I thought, oh, great. I know what's going to happen now. Yeah. You should have just hit and run, Brady. You should have just hit and run. Well, hang on. Well, okay. We're coming to that. So anyway, I spent a few days wondering if I was going to get a call and I never did. Obviously they were sensible and thought, well, it's fine. But finally enough, a few days later, I was sitting on a bench having a sandwich. And in front of me, someone else was reversing trying to get into a car space. And they banged into a car. And there were three or four other people that saw it happen. And this guy in the car looked at what he'd done from in the car. He was with his wife or partner, looked at what he'd done and then thought to hell with this and went speeding off. So I took down his license plate and I wrote it down and I wrote a note and I left on the car saying, if you're wondering where that dent on your car came from, it was this car. It was a, you know, Audi, whatever. And this is the license plate and here's my name and here's my number in case you need to find out what happened. Because I thought, did I do the right thing? That felt like the right thing to do. You're a rat, Brady. You're being a rat right there. Well, I don't know. I'm open to that criticism. I'm open to that. Was I being a rat? Did I do the right thing or the wrong thing? I don't know. Well, first of all, for some reason that I cannot quite please, the image of you sitting on a bench, eating a sandwich, swinging your feet, looking around in the park, whatever, it just strikes me. It's very funny. A little Brady's just sitting here doing whatever and then suddenly finds himself in this situation, right? In the middle of this crime scene, exactly. It was like an episode of The Wire. Yeah. But meanwhile, before you were just watching a butterfly, I don't know what ever you were doing. Did I do the right thing or the wrong thing? Here's the conflict. The former teacher in me wants to say, oh, right, you did the right thing, Brady, right? You did the right thing. That was good of you to do. But the me in me feels like never get involved with anything. Right? I'll get that. I'll get that. Right. It's like doing the quick, like, risk-reward mental calculation and here, like, what is the best possible outcome? What is the worst possible outcome? The few times in my life where I have ever gotten involved in things like this, even though you're being a good Samaritan, I always feel afterward like I just wish I hadn't said anything, right? Or I just wish I had never gotten involved in this. It was just not worth it. You get dragged into other people's holobelus and she's like, oh, God, this is a huge hassle. So I would never say like, oh, you did the wrong thing, right? Me saying you were rat. I feel like that's just a joke. Yeah, no. But you actually are being as a responsible citizen. But there totally is a feeling of just like in my mind of just not getting involved in this kind of stuff, unless you absolutely have to. But I'm not the least bit surprised that you did. But how are you feeling about this situation? Well, let me tell you what happened next and you will realise why you were both wrong and right. So that night I got a phone call and I missed it and I called back and this really old man answered the phone and I said, oh, I'm returning a call because some message had been left and I knew it was about the incident. I'm returning a call and this guy said, oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, let me get my wife. Oh, you're such a hero. This is great for your ego. OK, yep. He may not have said hero. I might be. Oh, really? He might not have said that. Really? That's the part that might just be in your mind. I'm so surprised. Brady named the moon after me, Harry. Yeah, OK. I was being praised quite a lot. And then this old lady gets on the phone and you could only describe her as like the cliched, sweetest, granny sounding lady you've ever heard. And she told me how they just got the car. They'd been saving for years and it was a new car they'd gotten two days before and they were so proud of it. It was their pride and joy and it was a brand new car because the people around at the time said, that's a brand new car. They could obviously tell by the licence plate and how shiny it was. And this lady was like, we've been saving for years and we were so proud of it and we were so upset when we came back and I had a dent on only like the second day we had it. And then we saw your note and we're so grateful. I was like, oh, you couldn't have written this better. Not only have I been a good Samaritan, but I've been a good Samaritan to like a sweet old granny with her brand new car. So I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was like, ah, that's worked out well. I hit a car and I get off Scott free. That's like some old granny. So anyway, so then she was like, we're going to give your details to the insurance company. And then a few days later, I got a miss call. Oh, so and so from insurance company, we understand you witnessed an incident we'd like to get all your details and suddenly I'm like, oh, no. I'm like, I'm now I'm getting drawn into like a thing. Yep. Am I going to have to give like statements here? Like how is this going to go? Have a fun afternoon down at the precinct. Yep. Yeah, they're going to force me to listen to how they're into the episodes in a cell. So anyway, I didn't return that call because I think the onus is on the insurance company to call me back if they want to speak to me. They haven't gotten me yet. So it is a to be continued. I don't know whether or not, you know, I'm going to get my day in court and there's going to be like, you know, 12 angry men and all that sort of stuff or whether or not it's just going to dissipate. At first I felt really good about it like I'd done a good thing. Now I'm thinking, am I going to get into some kind of bureaucratic pain in the backside, which I, which, you know, fair enough, if I have to do it, I have to do it. But what else happens? Like, does my name and address go on some statement but then goes to the guy who hit the car and is he going to have my details and is he going to think I'm a rat? Is he going to send a couple of guys around with a crowbar and say, you know, look what you've done. You got me in trouble. I've got some criminal on the run and the reason he drove away is because he's in some, he's in some gang and now everyone else in the gang is going to be on to me because I had his parole revoked or something. Like, I'm totally with you on this one, right? I'm not, I think I am not even going to be making fun of you at this moment for having some kind of crazy thought because it seems totally plausible to me that this minor incident ends in a breaking bad kind of scenario. Right. Of course you're on my side. This is, I'm joking around and you're just like, this is completely how you think. This seems totally reasonable to me. All right. I'm like, yeah, yeah. No, yeah. This, it is, it is not unreasonable that there's a probability that you get involved in some kind of criminal element and end up being threatened and then have to do a favor for a guy and then five years later, you know, you're involved like deeply, deeply in the underworld all because you tried to help an old lady once. I know you find the word paranoia very emotive. What is this word for you where you're able to conjure up all these thoughts? It's like it's not conjuring. Right. I'm not pulling a dragon out of a hat here and saying, oh, you might get attacked by a dragon. No, it's just a simple possibility of, you don't know anything about the other guy and his car. You don't know anything about these people. Yep, you're up. So the possibility that they're involved like, oh, you know, the guy is a member of the Yakuza, right? It's like, you don't know. You don't know. Maybe. So it's plausible. It's not likely, but it's, it's not unlikely that there, you know, so yeah, I'm a little concern for you. I'm not going to cut with a horse, I said tomorrow morning. Yeah, maybe that's going to be follow up on the next show. I'm just, I forgot that you haven't saved the Godfather. I haven't seen the Godfather, but I do, I'm aware of that, right? That's one of those things you can't possibly not be aware of. You're aware. One of these days, I will see the Godfather, but I already know about the horse's head. Godfather, maybe he's just so good, Gray. Maybe after we do our Chick-Flick slumber party, we'll then follow it up with a Godfather's slumber party. Nice little shift in tone. Yeah. Well, I wish you the best with your old lady, stroke, possibly mafia situation. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by audible.com, who has more than 180,000 audiobooks and spoken word audio products. Get a free 30 day trial at audible.com slash Hello Internet. I've been flying and traveling a lot, and I particularly find that audio books are really nice when you are traveling on your own. There's a lot of in between time where you can't really sit down. You are in transit from one location to another. You can't really do anything, but you need to be looking around and paying attention to stuff. And I think audio books are just perfect for that environment. Now, if you're traveling to America this summer like I am, I can recommend to you American Gods by Neil Gaiman. As always with fictional books, I don't really like to discuss what they are about. I think it's much better if you just start listening to the book without the background and just let it explain to you what it is. And so I'll just say if you've read any of Neil Gaiman stuff before, you know probably what you're getting into. And if you've never read a book by him before, he's a great author, and this is a good place to start. So that's American Gods by Neil Gaiman. But whether you want to take my recommendation or you want to find something on your own, Audible has something for you to listen to. They have more than 180,000 audio books and spoken word audio products. And you can get your free 30 day trial today by signing up at audible.com slash hello internet. This gets you a free trial and let's audible know that you came from our show. So once again, thanks to Audible for supporting this episode and give American Gods by Neil Gaiman a try. So great. As we speak at the moment, we haven't mentioned this yet, but you are currently in the city of angels. Yes, I am. I am in LA at this very moment. The city which in my mind is always filed under the heading worst city in the civilized world. It's LA. That is where I am at this current moment. It's part of your part of a big road trip you're doing. You're previously in San Francisco and before that you're over on the east coast, I mean, there's so much going on. Can I ask you about San Francisco first? I want to talk to you about San Francisco. Yeah, yeah. So as I understand it, you were there for you sneaked into WWDC, the Apple Developers Conference, but you were also there for you were there for relay con, which is the get together for the all the podcast and the relay network, which you are part of. What was the best thing about your San Francisco trip? The one best thing, the highlight, the thing that you'll still remember in two weeks. I'll still remember two weeks from now. Well, I know you'd like to remember things for very long. That is totally true. That is totally true. And a great law. You'll be a whole new human within four weeks. So within the year, I'll be like practically a new human. Four weeks is a little bit of a short time horizon. Okay. But this trip has been a crazy trip and it's been it's been hard for me to even remember all of the things that I've been doing. But I think perhaps the most unexpected stroke interesting thing of the trip was that yes, I did sneak into the actual WWDC where I had absolutely no right to be using someone else's ticket. And that was that was a really interesting experience to be able to see that like the Apple Conference that you always hear about on the outside. I was able to see it from the inside and sit in on developer sessions where again, I had no reason or right to be there. But it was just that that was really interesting and an unexpected thing that kind of happened at the absolute last moment. That's going to be quite an interesting memory that's laid down that I will have for quite a long time. Well, bearing in mind that your lawyer is not present. How did you get into WWDC? How did you sneak in? I'm not I'm not exactly sure that I can reveal on the show how that happened without getting parties unnamed in trouble on that one. I could say like, oh, maybe somebody else's identification fell on the floor and maybe I picked it up. Maybe that's how that happens. Well, I'm the last person you should tell Grace, because you know what a rat I am. Yeah, I know you are a total rat, right? You'll be you'll be emailing Tim straight away. I mean, like, listen, I just wanted to report an incident. I'll just leave a little piece of paper under his windscreen wiper saying, look, I don't want to, you know, get too involved, but you might want to look into the CGP grey character. Right. And was WWDC the fairy tale that you dreamed it would be? The Navanna of Apple products? Well, you know, they don't have the actual Apple products out there. It's a big conference. It's a big conference is what it is. And it was lots and lots of people that look just like you, I imagine. Oh my God. I never blended in more than I did at WWDC. Yeah, it was it was fantastic. Like no need for camouflage here, right? I think that perhaps there is no conference I could go to where I would be more of an anonymous human being than WWDC. I mean, it's like, and I think nobody will notice me for anything. It was it was it was just like perfect, perfect anonymity at WWDC. Were you wearing a reunion swamp shirt? I was not wearing a reunion swamp shirt. Was anyone else wearing one? Did you see any Hello Internet shirts there? I actually didn't see any Hello Internet stuff. Although I did see a couple of CGB gray shirts there, but I didn't see any Hello Internet ones. I'm sorry, Brady. There were no reunion swamp hen rice rat shirts visible. Well, I know that there was a mighty black stump t-shirt in the keynote. Oh, yeah. How do you know that? Because I saw a photo of someone wearing one. Oh, did you? I missed that. I missed that. See, my operation Zeus has contacts everywhere. I know everything that's going on. Is Operation Zeus a good name for your spy program? That seems like a terrible code name for a spy program. You need a sneaky name, right? It needs to be like Operation Slytherin or something. Like that's a better name for a spy program. Okay. I'll come back to that. I want to think of a better name. This relay con where you wear all the podcasters got together and you hung out with people and also got to meet people who listen to the podcast. Did you enjoy meeting strangers? The thing that I always need to preface this with is with meeting strangers. I am much better meeting strangers when I am prepared to meet strangers. This was one of those things where I knew I was going to go to an event. The bigger scale of it, I also knew I'm going to be in San Francisco for a week. I'm going to be hanging out in and around the kind of WWDC crowd, which is probably much more likely to recognize me than a random sampling of the population, which turned out to be totally true. Being aware of that in advance, I could mentally prepare for that. The whole week, I felt a bit like I was on duty in a sense. I was available for people to come up and say hi. In a bunch of situations, I felt like my unofficial name tag was I was wearing my CGP gray hoodie. Yeah. A bunch of people came up and they said hello. Because I was prepared for it, it was totally fine. I am ready to say hi to people and under those circumstances, I can be, I think I can come off as a regular, normal person to interact with. So it was good because I was prepared. But if I had been recognized and come up to that many times just in a normal week in London, I would not be dealing very well with that. They would not go as smoothly. If people just randomly came up to me on the street and said hello in moments when I was not expecting it. It would be a sign you were doing awesomely well though. Yeah, but then if you're too well, right? I need to pull back on my YouTube career here. I honestly think if people started recognizing me as frequently as they did in that week, I would make fewer videos and podcasts like immediately. Right? Like I have to pull back. I have to pull back. This is not the life that I want to live. I am not a vlogger. It looks and sounds like it was quite a good fun time. Now San Francisco is, you know, your second spiritual city to after London. You've made it clear that if London gets wiped off the face of the earth and San Francisco is you back up. Well, how did you find a week in San Francisco? Well, I'm not exactly sure I've raised it that way. But I will say that I kept thinking about how whatever it was a couple of podcasts ago when we were discussing cities and how cities go and how San Francisco would be on my list of possible places to live in the United States were I to move back to the United States. But I kept thinking about those words. Those words of mine, I felt like they were haunting me for the entire time I was in San Francisco because I don't know how to say this in a nice way. But I have never come across a higher density of just random, crazy street people anywhere in the world than in San Francisco. Like San Francisco is where crazy people are professional about their crazy. It was absolutely unbelievable to me. I don't know if you've seen this when you were there, but the amount of crazy people on the street was a constant topic of conversation among everybody there because if you left the hotel and walked in any direction, it honestly felt like it was the walking dead in some places. Like you would turn down a street and you would feel like you were in some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland with zombies wandering around. It was striking. It was really striking and very unexpected in a way. Have you seen that at all when you're there or you were like in a different part of the city? I mean, I'm mainly over in Berkeley, which also has its share of, it's got quite a hippie sort of eccentric reputation. But over in the city, so far I do go, I don't know. I see a bit of it, but I realise that it does have quite an interesting, you know, more alternative population. And it also attracts a lot of people who have been down on their luck. For some reason a lot of those people tend to flock to San Francisco. I don't know why, because the climate's not as good as it is further south, but that seems to be a real mecca for people who are sort of, you know, looking for a new start. But maybe I'm just a bit more immune to it. What are some of the things you saw that stuck with you? I mean, here's the thing. I had this feeling of I live in London, a city that is not a stranger to crazy people on the streets. And I had just two weeks before going to San Francisco, I had spent some time in New York, which is a city that I spent some time in growing up and have been too frequently. And there again, you see, you know, like homeless people on the streets and just like lunatics. And anybody who lives in a city, anybody who lives in a city, you develop this kind of crazy radar where you're walking down the street and you learn to identify people coming in the other direction that you just, you identify them in your vision and you feel like I'm going to walk as far away from this person as I can while still being on the same sidewalk together, right? Like you just give this person some space. And I always imagine that if you were flying a drone overhead in a city like New York or any city in the world, you could very easily use like a computer algorithm to identify the crazies because they would have like this little periphery around them, like of extra space where people just don't go. In the same way that I imagine flying a drone above a police car on the highway is going to be surrounded by a bubble of people going exactly but not faster than the speed limit, right? Whereas outside the visual range of that police officer, everybody's going faster. Yeah. Like I'm aware of crazy people, but in San Francisco, the density was so high it was startling. So one morning I went out for a walk and I just sort of went out and as you do, like I'm just going for a walk and sort of like collecting my thoughts and I wasn't paying any attention. I'm just walking down some streets randomly. And at one point I suddenly realized like, oh, I don't know where I am, but I've just gotten into like a terrible part of town. And I looked around and I did the actual count of there were 25 people in my field division and every single one of those 25 people my brain was recognizing as a threat. Like this person is a potential threat. This person is a potential threat. This person is a potential threat. This is just not my experience even in the worst parts of London that you end up on a street that really felt like the city had just officially decided we are abandoning this street. Like we are just leaving it to the zombies, right? They can just have it. We're not even going to go down there. I just kept finding myself to this ridiculous amount, like mentally sizing up if I could take a guy on the street, like if it came to that because you just had like crazy people walking up and it's like, okay, could I take this guy in a fight if it absolutely came to it? Like he looks like a lunatic and then he passes by and like here comes up somebody else who's like, okay, what about this guy? You know, what's the situation here? It was just very, very startling and surprising. And I mean, apparently talking to some of the locals, I happened to be staying in literally the worst part of San Francisco. So I was at like ground zero for this sort of thing. But it was just really striking and surprising and there were just so many things that I saw that I thought like I cannot believe I am seeing this. Like I can't believe that this is America. I wanted example. The most extreme example was on the second to last day was I was just, again, just walking out to get some supplies and walking down the street. I saw someone just basically step into the road, drop their pants and take a **** in the middle of the street. I'm like not against a street corner or anything, right? It's not like, you know, not any kind of human privacy. It's just like, oh no, you know where I **** in the street, right? That's where I do this. Oh, okay. Well, that's interesting. Did they like adopt an appropriate position besides the fact they're in a street? Like they didn't just like say standing up. Did they? No, no, no, no, they just dropped their pants in squat, right? And I'm like, oh, okay, right? Well, you know, that's a thing. That's a thing to see. Thank you San Francisco. That's lovely. That would have been a good Snapchat. Jesus. Okay. So the other small thing, which was just like a thing that I was aware of, but it's like, oh, okay, well people here, homeless people seem to enjoy sleeping across the sidewalk, right? Not against a wall or anything, but just kind of laying down in the middle of the sidewalk in absolutely everybody's way. And then this is where they're going to sleep. And this is like, oh, not just one person. This is a bunch of people. And that kind of thing is like, okay, you're kind of extra crazy to be doing this. All right? Like you're obviously not in a good situation, but then also deciding you're going to sleep in a place where if you moved three feet in one direction, you would be less likely to be stepped on, but you're feeling is like, ah, the hell with it, right? I'm just going to sleep here in the middle. It's like, oh, okay, well, this is a frequent occurrence is diverting around someone who's just sleeping in the middle of the street. And for the entirety of my trip, I kept thinking something about this is just different than other places I have been. What I finally pinned it down on is realizing, okay, well, you walk around in a city and, right, you often smell urine wherever you're walking. It's like, oh, okay, well, this is like not a nice area because it smells like pee. But the number of places in San Francisco where I was walking around and it didn't smell like pee, it smelled like death where the feeling was, I don't even know what is occurring here, but dear God, I don't want to know what's occurring here. Was so many places. I don't know. It was so striking and such a weird experience, especially considering that a number of times when I was walking from the hotel to some other place, like where was I walking to? I was walking to the interior of an ultra modern air condition brand new office of a multi-million dollar tech company. That was the super weird experience of this, this kind of out on the streets, it is the living dead and then inside it is, oh, look at us, we're a magic tech company building the future. It was just strange how many of these offices I would be standing outside of and feel like, man, I can't wait to get inside and be safe. And then on the inside, it was like, oh, we live in the year 3000 here. It was very, very strange. It was very weird. There are a lot of places in San Francisco that are the smell like way or way. Yeah, but I found myself praying for the weed smell. I'm like, oh, boy, I wish it just smelled like weed here. That would be a tremendous relief. That would be a tremendous relief. I think in San Francisco seems to be specializing in venture capital and tech companies, but it also seems to be specializing in just a kind of aggressive craziness. And I keep saying craziness as opposed to just homelessness because while obviously a large number of these people were homeless, the thing I said before about how you identify in your mind, people as being threats. It's like you're the monkey in the beginning of lawnmower, man. It's like threat, threat, threat, right? You see them on the streets. So many people who, like, obviously were people going somewhere in who had some job to get to, we're still setting off this little internal trigger in my mind. So I was like, okay, San Francisco, you specialize in craziness in a way that is deeply unexpected to me. Well, I mean, part of that maybe means when you're in San Francisco, you need to recalibrate your crater, but also it probably just does have more crazy people. You're definitely right because the number of actual physical altercations that I got into was zero in my time there. And the number that I was prepared for was probably in the low hundreds. It's turned up a little bit high. I mean, it was. I really did at one point. I found myself, again, like an idiot going for this early morning walk. And I was like, oh, what a lovely park that I'm in. And then suddenly I kind of again, like, reassess the situation of everyone around me. And I felt myself thinking like, I wish I had a knife right now. Like, I would feel way better if I had a knife stuffed into the back of my jeans at this moment. So yes, my crater might have been turned up a little high. But yes, the number was still quite alarming. And I don't know. It's one of those things. This is, again, we can, we could get into the Brady and Grey, try to solve all the problems of the world section of the podcast. But I also just found myself constantly thinking about how this is such a difficult problem to try to solve and thinking about, like, you know, if I was suddenly the mayor of San Francisco tomorrow, like, what could you practically try to do to make this better? And it's very difficult to think of all around politically feasible solutions to something like this. It's just not an easy thing to think about. As your overall impression of San Francisco moved, because last time, I got the impression that if you weren't going to live in London, San Francisco would be an option for you. Do you still feel that way? Like, has it changed your view of the city in terms of desirability? Or is it just sort of, you know, coloured a little bit? That's an interesting question to ask because I feel both ways about this, that the city itself in terms of a place to walk around and a physical place that is a city, I find myself liking much, much, much less than I was thinking that I might. And I had been in San Francisco before, but this was years ago and very, very briefly. Like, I had not spent a serious amount of time in San Francisco. So the city, I found like, annoying in a bunch of ways, like, at least in no small part because it's just like, oh, well, I don't like that it's so hot. I don't like that it's so hilly. I don't like that my threat radar is being set off so constantly. Like, these are a bunch of things that I don't like about the city. But I can just double down on the thing that I was saying is attractive about San Francisco is that I think there is perhaps nowhere in the world that has a higher density of interesting people working on interesting problems. And that is the attractive part of the city to me. And I feel like I really got to experience a full week of this in my travels of every day all day was meeting with and talking to various people who are working on various projects, all of which are interesting. And people are working very hard on solving challenging technical problems. And I think like, like, that is the attractiveness of the city. It's just this high, high density of smart, interesting people solving interesting problems. So I still find that a very attractive thing. But now I just feel like, oh, it's really unfortunate that it's in San Francisco over here. Hey, why doesn't everybody just can we just relocate everybody to New York? Maybe we could do that. Maybe that would be better. The other thing that's worth talking about then and it's worth talking about now because as we're recording it hasn't happened yet really, but it will have happened by the time this is released. I'm guessing is you're at VidCon, which seems like something I didn't think you'd ever go to, but there you go. You're there. How are you feeling about that? What's going on? Yes. Yes. Why are you laughing? I'm laughing because even I find it funny that I'm at VidCon because it feels to me like, why am I at VidCon? Why am I here? Because you're a sell out. Well, I mean, the funny thing is, and this is one of the, again, we will have to see what happens, but I am at VidCon in the most unofficial capacity ever. Like, I'm not doing any presentations. I'm not doing any panels. I'm not doing anything. Yeah, you're a bet you do. You think you're not a bet you get dragged onto a couple. You want to put some money on the table right now because I will be willing to bet you anything that I don't do any panels while I'm here. How much do you want to bet Brady? 100 bucks. You want to bet 100 bucks? Okay. I'll bet you 100 bucks. So I'll just say it again. I'm not doing any presentations. I'm not doing any panels while I'm here. Yeah. I feel almost like I am at VidCon as a tourist. Like I am here because this event is such a huge item on the calendar of everyone who works at YouTube. And I've never been. And when I was planning what was going to happen this summer, the fact that WWDC and RelayCon were happening so close to when VidCon was happening. And I so hate travel that I like to try to group everything in big blocks that it almost seemed crazy to me not to try to go down to VidCon since it would be right after because it's like I'm never going to fly out to California just for this kind of thing probably. But if I can combine two events, then suddenly my brain likes it way better. So I did get a ticket to VidCon and I am down here now and I am interested to see what this thing is really like. But the funny thing is just before we recorded this podcast, I went right when it opened to get my tickets, my like I'd go through my registration thing because I didn't want to get stuck in like an enormous line with tons of people just as with WWDC where I said like, Oh, here I am just an anonymous person. Like I just I totally blend in no one's going to notice me even registering for the tickets straight away at the VidCon line is like, Oh, God, I am so not the median person at VidCon right? Like looking around in the room, it's like, okay, there's already 500 people here waiting to get tickets. And the median human is a 14 year old girl. And I just I feel like way out of place on this line getting my ticket for VidCon. So that is least is my one little initial experience with what it is like so far. All right, well, I look forward to a more full briefing when the time comes. Are you feeling like dread or are you feeling like an excitement or what would be the which is winning this sort of arm wrestle between your conicuriosity and your fear? As with all these things, my my feeling is interest, right? Interest is this human emotion that exists sometimes for some topics. And this is this is my feeling now is I am interested to see what this is like. I have seen videos of it on YouTube. I have heard many people talk about it, but I have had no firsthand experience of it. So I am interested to see how it goes, but I have no fear or dread because I have no responsibilities while I'm here. I'm just a tourist. I'm not doing anything except collecting your $100 at a later point in time.
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