H.I. No. 123: Pop Quiz

"HI #123: Pop Quiz" is the 123rd episode of Hello Internet, released on April 30, 2019.
==Website synopsis==
"Grey and Brady discuss: wax cylinder mass production, hanging out at a pub, RSS limits and (Goodbye Internet on Patreon), Grey has a pop quiz for Brady, YouTube legends, and a Brady paper cut."
==Release and commercial performance==
"Pop Quiz" was released to podcast clients on April 30, 2019. The corresponding video was premiered live on the Hello Internet YouTube channel on the same day and received 32 thousand views within its first 8 days of release. Its visual consists of still frames depicting, in both sequential and reverse order, the assembly of a pile of variously-colored cards that have question marks printed on them.
Brady minimizing as always just quietly into the background the problem is now you put it in my head that I hear you go don't minimize me right when I'm in a mind you it's in my head now to every time I do it I've got no room for anything in my head other than lyrics to Hamilton songs that's luckily for me you're a man obsessed Brady I was trying to convince the Duke to come with me because he's in New York at the same time as me no you didn't get him on board he was up for it but then I kind of pete it out he's pretty busy and I'm pretty busy and I do like that it's his wave form again though that the Duke he's in New York he's always possibly in every city that you're up for is it Brady how are the wax cylinder sales going well at the time of recording okay the previous episode what is that 122 what's this 123 yeah we're on 123 right now yeah so 122 was only released well you only put it up like an hour ago hour and a half ago so in my defense there hasn't been time for the teams to fully appreciate the magnificence of this idea let me look before you go any further there are you know to pull back the curtain I'm sure the listeners will be shocked shocked to hear that sometimes there's quite a long time between when we record and when I get the episode up and most of the time it doesn't really matter because we're not talking about stuff that's time sensitive but when I was doing the final final edit of the episode yesterday I think I was aware that whole episode was like what are we talking about April fools the new star wars trailer that went up Brady wants to sell some wax cylinders and there was something else in there it's like this was the world's most timely episode that took me basically a month to finally get around and I put it up mere minutes before we started recording the next episode yeah so I don't fully know what the response is being to the wax cylinder but we have sold through what has been made right as I look now I'm actually watching the emails come in as we speak so the number of cylinders that my friend is going to have to manufacture is steadily increasing as I speak so I haven't actually told him yet but he's going to get a phone call from me after this show saying you better crack out the yeah crack out the wax milter get to work so hasn't gone crazy but there's a steady number of orders coming in you you had ten pre made right there were ten ready to go they go and so we sold the first ten in whatever was the first ten minutes and now now here we are thirty forty minutes after the show has been released what is the current total for wax cylinders thirty five thirty five that's amazing who say we'll see what happens absolutely love this Brady this is one of my favorite crazy Brady projects for sure this is brought me a lot of joy thinking about it and smiling and thinking about people getting their wax cylinders sent to them in the mail absolutely love this there's been a couple of funny comments on the red and Twitter and so there's been quite a few funny comments one that I quite liked here though has kind of the opposite problem to what you'd expect and one person right here I bought the wax cylinder episode it was pricey but I have access to many antique wax cylinder players so I had to buy this person was like there's no way those guys can get me to buy their merch and then he's like I'm in a room full of wax cylinder plates he's like my dream target audience I love the mental picture of that someone's listening to the podcast sitting next to a wax cylinder playing like god damn it I can't not buy this there's another guy he said I didn't really want it but he ordered it because he missed out on buying the vinyl episode and he's regretted ever since and he said I'm not going to make this mistake again I'm just going to be sitting on his show for a life now he's going to be looking at it cursing me under his breath I really do love this Brady I mean sometimes you come at me with ideas that I am terrified by or I grown up but this this has been an absolute pure joy the anachronisticness of it is delightful beyond my ability to express it is next level and the thing I like about like some people have been joking or what next you're going to do an episode on papyrus or stone tablets and like yeah I hear you and I'm not going to rule those things out right but the beauty of the wax cylinder is like if it was on papyrus or stone tablet it would at least still be accessible like you buy the stone tablet and it's like a silver blade like just with your eyes this is so like hard to get at because of what you need to play it with it's a delight yeah I think it really maximizes difficulty while still being within the realm of achievable and it's like an industry standard it's not like we're like you know encrypted it in some way that makes it impossible it's like it is an industry standard it's just an industry standard from 120 years ago yeah I don't think I ever mentioned it to you but that was actually an idea of mine a while back I can't remember why but there was some show that I thought it was relevant to and my idea was to actually encrypt and put up an episode on the internet that was in an encrypted file because you can sort of set the key to gauge roughly how many years of computing time it will take to be able to crack it and to set like an internet time capsule a thousand years in the future but if people coordinated I can brought super computers down to bear upon the problem like you can bring that down but it's way less fun than a wax cylinder wax cylinder is just beautiful as beautiful and in every possible way no one has made the comment on red but in anticipation of it because I know people are going to want to incorporate this wax cylinder with the buzz and I was talking to my wax cylinder guy and he did have a request once from a bee enthusiast who asked for one to be made of beeswax but it turns out you can't make it out of beeswax for some reason but you can make a blend so for this guy he did put a little bit of beeswax in his normal wax concoction and turned that into a cylinder and then the bee enthusiast asked him to record onto it sounds of bees like audio recordings of bees say he then had this partial beeswax cylinder with a recording of bees on it I mean I cannot rule out the wax cylinder equivalent of the golden hot stopper you know so some day in the distant future when I finally retire and I get those hives going that maybe we'll come out of retirement for just over two minutes do you have a super special edition wax cylinder made with a blend of wax from grey hives that would be quite pleasing nice I faced time with my parents recently and the thing that they wanted to talk to me about was not what they'd been up to not what I'd been up to but about today's sponsor and how much they love it hello fresh my parents had gotten really tired of all of the restaurants in their local area and felt like they'd been probably served the same kind of processed food just with a different presentation and a bunch of restaurants they were quite frankly despairing every night about what to do for dinner but you know who solved that for them? Hello fresh did hello fresh is the meal kit delivery service that shops, plans and delivers step by step recipes and pre-measured ingredients right to your door so you can just cook, eat and enjoy now my mom would be the first to agree with me that she's never really been all about the cooking she's always just wanted food simply and that's what hello fresh delivers she tends to think of food as a hassle but hello fresh has made it just so simple she really enjoys the process since they've picked everything for you they pre-measured the ingredients and they give you simple instructions it's a fantastic way to get started with real food in your life my mom also doesn't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen and all of hello fresh's meals come together in 30 minutes max and call for less than two pots and pans if you two are in a bit of a food rut you should 100% consider hello fresh for $80 off your first month of hello fresh go to hello fresh dot com slash hello internet 80 that's the words hello internet followed by the number 80 and enter the promo code hello internet 80 now what's going to come to your door well you have three plans to choose from the classic the veggie and the family and you have an option to switch between them for when your tastes change get out of that recipe rut escape the local restaurants you're tired of like my parents did and discover new delicious meals with hello fresh once again to get $80 off your first month just go to hello fresh dot com slash hello internet 80 and enter promo code hello internet 80 thanks to hello fresh for supporting the show and thanks to hello fresh for making my parents a lot happier about their dinners so it's a bit of feedback that I thought was interesting because we've talked in the past about straws yes and the paper straws so I don't want to admit this because I've been trying so hard lately on the fitter tron but I had a major major lapse this morning and I went and gorged myself and McDonald's big Donald's breakfast no it was just after breakfast so I couldn't even have the breakfast gross if it was McDonald's breakfast no man can cast the first stone for that but yeah so anyway I had a drink and I know they had a paper straw and I was like oh no not McDonald's too and to be fair I think I managed to get through my drink without you know a major structural failure but funnily enough when I got home the first new story I stumbled over on Twitter and the BBC website was this huge petition that has been started for McDonald's to bring back plastic straws and everyone's posting pictures of their straws which they say are terrible and they're you know dissolving away and so I've become a new like you know blood sport to post your pictures of McDonald's straws collapsing oh petition all the usual stuff but the funny thing is they went to paper straws because of huge public pressure for them to get rid of their plastic straws poor old McDonald's PR people must be thinking what have we got to do here? Rule number zero of the internet McDonald's you can't please everyone this is actually it's actually a thing that I've sometimes I talk with new or creators about is like it's really important in your mind to understand that like the comment section on videos or podcasts or whatever it is you're making it's very easy to think of that as one group of people and then you're frustrated when people complain about something and then you change it and then a different group goes like oh I can't believe you didn't do it that way that happens so often but it's like you have to keep in mind like it's different people it's a different group of people who are complaining about the one thing versus the other thing right and so I would never be in the group of people complaining about the plastic straws but then when they bring in the paper straws now I'm on team bring back plastic you know and it's different people you can't make everybody happy now I was caught out by this because I was on a little Easter picnic recently with some friends and we had realized that we had forgotten to bring utensils and so it was my job to go off and get some just temporary utensils and I went off to a little convenience store and I went in just buying you know to buy some plastic utensils and of course I realized oh I can't actually buy any plastic utensils because those fell under the same ban the only thing I could buy were little little wooden utensils it's the same gross texture problem that if you're eating something on a wooden fork it's like your tongue touches the wood or your lips touch the wood and it's just like it's so gross and so I find myself doing this move where you're like you're pulling your lips over your teeth and you put the fork in your mouth and then you're trying to slide the food off and push it off with your lips and then you can eat it and it's like why are we reduced to such barbarism like a game of operation yeah that's exactly what it's like it's exactly like a game of all sort of going it makes me think of when the plastic bag ban came in for the UK which I was annoyed at at the time but in retrospect I can now view as a paragon of the way things should be done because at the very least with the plastic bag ban in the UK you can pay 10 pence more and get a big sturdy plastic bag. You can pay to kill that turtle. Brady the way I think you're supposed to be thinking about it is that this is the tax that mitigates the externality of the plastic because of course I'm sure that's exactly where this tax money goes and it's not merely absorbed by the corporation and passed on to the customer. I'm sure it goes straight into the turtle choking mitigation fund that's where that 10 pence goes but like at least give me the option and I was sitting there in this general store and I asked the guy about like oh do you have plastic he's like no no we can't have plastic forks and it's just like I would pay twice as much if I could get the plastic forks versus wooden forks. Why do you should just put metal ones? I would have totally bought like iron implements to throw away immediately after the picnic if I could have but it was it was wood or nothing. That was the perfect opportunity grey. You could have been sitting there in that London park and everyone would go oh no we haven't got your tensils and you could have reached into your back pocket and you could have pulled out a handful of hot stoppers and you could have used them as sort of like chopstick jabbing implements and you could have all sat there and had your lunch with hot stoppers. Had I only thought about it we could have used the hot stoppers. I hope you had some on you. I hope you always have a handful in your back pocket. As with you there's always hot stoppers somewhere nearby. There are always in my pockets or in my jacket or in my bag. I really enjoyed the last time we got together in person at the pub when we signed this dinosaur attack cards. I love that you reached into your bag to pull them out and like out came up a hot stoppers. They're everywhere. Just prior to this recording with you now I was packing because I'm traveling tomorrow and I got out of bag which has all these different pockets and compartments and I pulled six hot stoppers out of different compartments in the bag. Each one in a different place they're like everywhere. It's like sand. We didn't tell people about the signed dinosaurs attack cards. Oh did we not? No. We never did. You go ahead. You and I got together at a pub and his very charming. You brought a bunch of packs of dinosaur attack cards. I bought the box. So here's again this is like flashback memory for me as a child. You bought the box that the stores would have on display and then you as a kid could go in and pick some packs out. And by them like never in my life could I have imagined that such a bounty could just be mine like a box of them or whole box of them unimaginable to child grey. We're technically grey though mine not yours. Well they're ours really. I haven't seen you money. That is very true. And I really wouldn't have wanted a box anyway. We must have looked funny there at the pub there with our glasses of water and a dinosaur attack cards between us. Opening them like school kids. I think we were clearly the manliest of men in that pub that evening. But yeah so we opened them up. I don't remember what it was. You opened up five or six packs or something. How's about that? Yeah you and I signed each of them. So you put each of our signatures in the borders. And then the idea is that we were going to send those off to some random Patreon supporters. I haven't done that yet. But you have to tell people what the first pecky opened had in it. Pretty much the first card you pulled. It was crushing a canine. It was. It was like I couldn't believe it. Which made me sad. If I were to ever frame a collection of dinosaurs attack cards I would not include that one. You can't do that. Wouldn't that be like if you had a framed collection of dinosaurs attack cards on the wall. And it was incomplete. Wouldn't that like just scratch your brain forever? No it wouldn't. Not when one of them is just so horrific that I don't want to see it. It gives me a little pang of sadness. Would you leave a blank space there where it should be or would you rearrange them so it looked like a complete set? What is this? 52 cards. So you end up with 51 and a prime number. So I think you would probably look better to just leave a gap. Okay. That's where that one goes. I was going to say, I'm going to say, if I was curating an art gallery that was putting dinosaurs attack cards on display, you'd have to like turn a corner to see that one. It's not going to be there. But I wouldn't want it just visible to any old child walking into the art gallery. It's like, oh, you have to turn the corner to see that one. But I still did sign it. You did. And that one's going out to one of our patron supporters. It was really fun. It was really fun to see them in person and to chat with you about them and to sign them out of pub. While I was drinking sparkling water. It was great. It was a really good time. So great. I think something that I hear from people about a lot, probably every day almost, is the fact that depending on how you listen to Hello Internet, what podcast player you use or things like that, a lot of people can't access the early episodes. They can only access the most 100 recent episodes and anything further back. Then 100 episodes, like won't appear on their podcast player and seems to have like vanished from the world. Some podcast players you can still get it and you can still get them on YouTube and you can get them via our website and stuff like that. But for a lot of people, they can only ever listen to 100 episodes. And I think we should explain what's going on. So if anything to reduce the number of people asking me about it, explain what's going on and how we hope could possibly be fixed. I feel bad for you because I think I disappeared from the internet just before this was really becoming a problem. Then it was really pushed over the threshold when we did the 12 days of Hello Internet. And suddenly a bunch of episodes got pushed off the end. So the short version of this is as it currently stands, Squarespace has a 100 item limit in their RSS feeds. And the whole way podcasts are distributed is by RSS feeds. And so this is something we just didn't realize when we started the show and didn't turn into a thing until when we hit episode 101. And then episode number one disappeared off the back of the RSS feed. It wasn't like a big deal at the beginning because as you say, like the episodes are up on YouTube. They're up on the website. You can access them. But as time has gone on and especially after the 12 days of Hello Internet, the percentage of the catalog that has fallen off the back of the RSS feed has increased. Yes. I spent a while trying to find a technical solution to this. I will just say that anything that has to do with messing with the RSS feed is a very delicate matter. Yes. It's something that is still ongoing, but it's the kind of technical problem that if you do it wrong, it can be really bad. Basically, we could lose all the teams and they wouldn't even know it. And they'd be like, oh, Hello Internet hasn't uploaded for a while. And it's because something changed with the RSS feed, but it didn't change in your player. And here's the big thing, right? This was the deep fear in my part when I was looking at a bunch of different things was precisely because of Hello Internet's random upload schedule. We could have many, many people not clock for a long time that a Hello Internet episode had them come out. So we're still trying to work on this in a bunch of ways, but as it currently stands, like the best thing would be for it's Squarespace to increase the RSS limit, but we're trying to work around that. I've put an aura in the water in the last week or two on this one because I want Squarespace to increase the limit because other shows are being affected by this. I have other podcasts which I use Squarespace to deliver the RSS feed on. And one day hopefully they too will reach 100 episodes. So I could run into this problem time and time again. There has been no shortage of people who have been sharing their expertise on the topic online. Some people think it's reasonable to have this limit. Other people say there is no need for this limit or it could be increased or you don't have to have a limit. Everyone has different levels of understanding of how this works. The person I spoke to who I think knows the most about podcasts and podcast players whose expertise I would not question believes Squarespace could change this and there's no reason for them not to. So I've been asking Squarespace to change it online in my sort of, you know, my unique ways. And this is semi-awkward because they have sponsored the podcast in the past. I will acknowledge the awkwardness of this, a former sponsor of Hello Internet. And by the way, a former sponsor who I really like and whose products I still use every day quite happily. And I would quite happily steal this is not paid they're not sponsoring this episode. I would still quite happily recommend Squarespace to someone who's doing a website. I quite like them. I'm totally in the same boat. It is this really weird awkward position. I still genuinely do recommend Squarespace and they aren't sponsoring this episode. It is like this weird position to be in a like they formerly sponsored the show. Yeah. And I've reached out to them and like this is a thing that I'd really like to see changed. But there hasn't been so we say much motion on that. But I would put a caveat on my recommendation. And that would be as things stand at the moment, I would not recommend Squarespace to someone who wants to start a podcast. If you were doing a podcast that you thought had even a chance of going beyond 100 episodes, there is this hard limit that they have not moved on that is going to become a problem for you in the future. Is something to bear in mind until they change it. I'm sure they will change it. I'm sure they will change it in their infinite wisdom. Yeah. It's almost inconceivable to me that they won't eventually change it. But it is just a thing that has been a frustration and it's a thing that we've been working on behind the scenes. But also I really do want to mention it right now people that, you know, while you can tweet at Brady that you're not on a plane, like you don't need to tweet about the limit, like it's a thing that we're aware of and I feel really bad for Brady getting bombarded with the question. But this is how you should tweet. You should tweet at Squarespace help. Yes. That's how you should tweet. If you want to tweet at someone, that's who you tweet at. And use the hashtag Squarespace Beyond 100, which is the hashtag that I'm using at the moment to make my campaign to get them to give this some thought. Because the other thing is right about websites. If you start, you might think, well, I'm not going to start podcasts. So this doesn't matter. I just want to have my website, you know, for smith.com. The thing is everyone's getting a podcast these days. Yeah. Listen to me, Tim. It's only a matter of time before you start a podcast. And when you do, the most logical place to put it might be on your current website. Yeah, for sure. So you want that website to be equipped to go beyond 100 episodes. It's very frustrating. Very frustrating. But we are sorry. And trust me, Gray and I have been talking about this for quite some time now. Yeah. We've had a lot of conversations about this. But it has pushed us to do something that has been on the back of our minds for a long time anyway. And this has acted as a little bit of a fire to make us do it sooner. And that is we're going to put the back catalog up on Patreon. So there's going to be a Hello Internet tier where you can have the whole back catalog in the RSS feed. Like if you want to listen to it in your podcast player. Again, I do just want to specify depending on which podcast player you use, you may be able to already listen to the whole back catalog. Like we're not trying to hold the back catalog ransom. No. So we're not trying to do what we want to do. For example, Overcast has hard wired Hello Internet. So you can listen to all the episodes. So if you use Overcast, which you should because it's a great podcast player, you're not having this problem as far as you're concerned, all these early episodes still do exist and will continue to do so. Overcast has the back catalog because Marco has hard coded it into his app. So because he listens to this channel. So he's like manually put it in as a fix. So if you listen on Overcast, you can get the whole back catalog. I'm fairly confident that it's pocket cast on Android has also done the same thing where they've like hard coded in the back catalog. So if you use them, like you can still access the whole back catalog. And the thing that we have been thinking about doing for a while and just haven't quite thought about how to do it properly is to be doing a little bit of a Hello Internet after show. Because after the show stops, Brady and I are usually chit chatting for a while. And we've been thinking about some way to like to do something with that, that more relaxed, that much less professional version of Hello Internet. Hard to imagine it got even lower. Right. It's like, boy, if you thought casual conversation about paper straws, you know, it was just the peak of professionality. Well, let me tell you, we can go a bit lower. But we've been thinking about it for a while and like what to do. And then Brady, you came up with, as you do, the perfect name which crystallized the project. What is the name for the Hello Internet after show? It's good by Internet. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. I totally love that as a name. And so as a bonus for the Patreon supporters, we're going to have that available as like a little after show that we're trialing to be part of that RSS feed. So I feel like this is a little bit of an experiment. So we're going to see how this goes. But that's what we're doing. We're going to try like goodbye Internet, a little bit of a relaxed, unprofessional version of the show after the show. Yeah, just wind down with a couple of cocktails. Yeah, reflect on the show. Just chill out. Two dudes keep talking. Yeah, I mean, instead of the high production, tightly edited, zero-flab version of the show that you get, there might be a little flap in the Goodbye Internet after show. So this is something that we're going to try. It's going to be up on Patreon and it just happens to be combined with the back catalog because of the RSS limit. Yeah. But again, just want people to be where like you can listen to the whole back catalog and we would really like the RSS limits to be lifted so that it's just available to everyone. But this is another option that we're going to put out there with a little bit of an incentive to encourage you to be a Patreon supporter of the show. All right. Does that sound good to you? Sounds good to me. All right. Partly, listen. Now Brady, you know, sometimes we've had conversations and I sometimes doubt the general knowledge of the population about almost anything. And sometimes I feel that you overestimate how much people know about things. Sometimes maybe I underestimate how much people know about things. But just this morning while doing something for a different project, I stumbled upon a little paper that tickled me greatly which perfectly addressed this question. How much do people know? It's this paper called General Knowledge Norms by Sarah K. Talber and some other researchers. And it's a really interesting little paper. There was this like general knowledge survey that was done in the 1980s of college students. Yeah. And they took this general knowledge survey and they updated it in 2013. They took it out in relevant questions. And they again redistributed it to several colleges asking people just like general knowledge questions. Wow. And I love this thing. And they have a list of questions. Yeah. I thought you and I could perhaps go through some of these questions. Yeah. Yeah. Does that sound good? All right. Shame me. Shame me publicly. I don't want to shame you. I'm not here to shame you at all. I did the first few. I'll let you know when I get to the parts where I don't actually know it. But here's the thing. It's great about this paper. The questions are ordered in increasing difficulty. So how many people got the question wrong goes up as we go on. Okay. All right. Are you ready, Brady? I'm ready. Question number one. Yeah. What is the name of the horse-like animal with black and white stripes? Are these like trick questions or are they? Okay. So two things to know. There's no trick questions. Yeah. All of the answers are a single word. So is that a zebra? That is indeed a zebra. That is the answer to that question, zebra. And we stop now. Congratulations. Use gourd 100% Brady. You're going to Harvard. You're going to Harvard. Now, here's a question for you. What percentage of college students do you think answered that question correctly? As long as they weren't second-guessing themselves, I would say 93%. Oh my god, Brady. It is 93.3%. That's amazing. Did I get an extra point for that? I think you do. You totally get an extra point for that. I cannot believe you said 93. Wow. That's amazing. That is absolutely amazing. I'm on fire. You are on fire. Now, don't get cocky because that's the only question that top-notch 90%. Oh, really? Okay. Listeners, you too, we want to participate in this quiz as we go along. And as always, with these things, you know what I'm going to tell you. You have to say the word out loud or it doesn't count because you're going to trick yourself otherwise. When I went through the first few of these, I said them out loud because otherwise you're tricking yourself and you just, your memory plays tricks on you and you're like, oh, I totally got all those questions. No, you didn't. You didn't get all those questions. All right. Question 2, Brady. What is the name of the long sleep some animals go through during the entire winter? Hibernation. Hibernation. Correct. 89%. Okay. What is the name of the rubber object that is hit back and forth by hockey players? Say, calling it hockey so North American. Is that North American? What would you call it? Well, I was assuming you're talking about ice hockey because normal hockey, like just hockey, is a sport played with like a different kind of ball. Anyway, you're welcome. Wait, what? Ice hockey is what you're looking for. Yeah, no. Puck is what I'm looking for. Wait, wait, hold on a second. What the hell are you talking about? There is a sport called hockey that is not ice hockey. No, wait a second. What the hell's hockey? I don't understand. Like, they play it at the Olympic Games. It's got a different shape stick. It's got a round bowl. Hold on a second. It's a whole sport. I think you're making this up. I am googling hockey and googling for hockey. We're doing a general knowledge quiz and you do not know that hockey is a sport separate from ice hockey. What, where were they living in? What the hell is that? They're wearing like roller blades. They're not wearing roller blades. It says roller hockey. No, roller hockey is another... Just one hockey. Just hockey. No other word. Okay. Okay, hold on. Sorry. Okay, I'm just looking. I'm at Wikipedia. I'm going to type hockey into Wikipedia. Jesus. Wikipedia got damn it. Games played with curve sticks and balls go back to Egypt 4,000 years ago. I'm talking about field hockey. Field hockey. Field hockey is hockey. I've never heard of field hockey. Field hockey is a team game that goes back to the Middle Ages and Pakistan. This is the original hockey. I am looking at a picture of a relief from 510 BC depicting ancient Greek players on hockey ground. I mean, I imagine they probably didn't have the equipment for ice hockey in each increase. That seems like it'd be quite difficult. I literally didn't know that this existed. All right. Well, my bad. Field hockey, I suck it. The word you're looking for is puck because field hockey is not played with a rubber bowl. So you wanted a puck. There you go. That one perhaps was unfairly American. No, no, because with rubber, pen you in to giving the right answer. Oh, okay. Is that what I was talking about? It was a rubber thing. Yeah. Okay. What is the last name of the author who wrote Romeo and Juliet? Shakespeare. Shakespeare. Okay. How well do you think students did on that? Again, college students. American college students. Yes, American college students. That is actually quite a clever trick question because when you say what's the surname of it, sort of, you don't think of Shakespeare as a guy with like a first name and a last name. You sort of think of it just as Shakespeare. Yeah. So I can see how that would trip up Americans. I would say that the number was 72%. It's 84%. But I think that's like, I think you're totally right that it is a little bit of a strange phrasing. And I think that's partly because of them trying to constrain all of these to be single word answers. You also don't think of him as an author, do you? Or just say author or watch? Yeah, it says what is the last name of the author who wrote Romeo and Juliet? That's true. I wouldn't think of him as an author. There is one like that that's coming up which like the phrasing of it really, really got me. Here's the first one that I got wrong because I just cannot think of anything. What is the name of Dorothy's dog in the Wizard of Oz? Toto. Yeah, Toto. You're correct there. I could not bring up Toto in my brain for anything. I was really frustrated. I felt like I was owed this question. I tell you what, just so you know people, I answered that immediately. But gray in the edit, I think you should put a few seconds before I answer it so people have a chance to. Yes, for sure. I will do that. But know that Brady got it straight away. Yeah. For the record, all of the answers Brady gives immediately, even from this point going forward, the man is a machine. And correctly. Yes. Yes. Immediately and correctly. Are you doing all of them or are you skipping questions? So I'm skipping some because I want to get down to the points where I haven't seen them. I want to know how I did and the ones that you got right. Toto was like the 12th most correct question and it was the first question that I got wrong that I couldn't think of anything. But I mean, some of them, I feel like it's, I don't even want to ask you the question, right? What is the name of the remains of plants and animals that are found in stone? Right. I can't. Right. That's a fossil. I think you would get that. So we're just doing them more challenging ones now. Well, I mean, it depends. What is challenging? What is the name of the supposedly unsinkable ship that sunk on its maiden voyage in 1912? Titanic. Yes, it's the Titanic. Oh, this one, this was the next one I also got wrong. Again, a name question. What is Tarzan's girlfriend's name? Jane. Jane. Right. There you go. Again, had nothing. Totally nothing. So some of these questions start to be the questions where I feel like it demonstrates it's almost shocking to me how wrong people can be or like how infrequently people can get a question correct. So the 23rd most correct question is what is the capital of France? Right. I know the answer to that. It is Paris. It is Paris, correct. Paris is the answer. But of American college students, only 73 percent get that right. Do you think that's because they were being too clever and were wondering whether Paris is just the biggest city or do you think it's the biggest? I'll grant you that there is an element of two cleverness, right? But here's the thing, the actual survey and we're not going to go through all these questions, has 300 questions. And the students were asked a lot of the questions. And so I think it becomes apparent very quickly. It is not trying to be clever. That there's nothing in here that's trying to like trick you. There's no word play. This is not a cryptic crossword, you know, it was just asking you a question. And the thing that's interesting about like what is the capital of France? Paris is I'd almost want to know how many people could name any other city in France. But you know what I mean? Like it almost feels like Paris has to be the answer because that's the only French city people could possibly think of. Yeah, it's not like 27 percent said Bordeaux. Yeah. And actually there is later in the article they have the most frequent wrong answers to some questions, which is great. That would be an interesting quiz. Tell me the question and then see if I can guess what the wrong answer is. Well, we can do that. Oh yeah, that sounds fun. But like some of these questions I would regard as like trivia questions and I don't really think anything of people getting them wrong. So like the next question is what is the name of the short pleated skirt worn by men in Scotland? I think people should know that as a a kilt. Yeah. I would regard that as trivia. I could easily conceive of someone in college who just never happens to have come across this piece of information culturally for some reason. You know, whereas like the capital city of Paris feels like I would expect that to be more known. But I feel like if someone was making a joke about what a Scotsman wears under his kilt and you had no idea what was going on, I would feel like you have not been very exposed to the world. Yeah. Okay, so here's an interesting one as a non-American. What is the name of the ship that carried the pilgrims to America in 1620? Is that the Mayflower? That is the Mayflower. That's correct. See, like that's not part of my culture, but I feel like there's like a top 10 of other people's cultures that you should know. I don't know if I'd put that in top 10, but I feel like like I would forgive someone for not knowing that before. Right. Now, what percentage of American college students would you forgive for not knowing that? I think it should be 85%, but it's going to be 70%. It is 66% of American college students got that question right. Hmm. Now here's one. I'm going to ask you for the correct answer and I'm going to ask you what do you think is the most incorrect answer given? Okay. You ready? Yep. What is the name of the bird that cannot fly and is the largest bird on earth? Okay. So, I think the correct answer is the ostrich. Astrid is correct. I'm just trying to think how many Americans I think would know to say EMU? Or whether or not they've been foxed by flightless bird and they went for like penguins or something because they think of that as the flightless bird. I'm going to say they went for EMU, but it could be penguin. Okay. They didn't go for EMU. That was not the one. I don't think any Americans have ever even heard of such a bird. I know I never did. That's what you call an EMU. I'm still not sure if they're real or if they're like, you know, oh, drop errors, you know, it's like local legends. Okay. So, if they didn't say EMU, was it penguin or did they? Yes, penguin. And that's the reason why I remember this from the later part of the paper is that penguin was the most frequent incorrect answer given, which I actually think is kind of reasonable because it's the cannot fly is the part that sticks in your brain. And honestly, if you had like when I was going through these questions, EMU didn't even come into my head as a bird that can't fly. I think if you asked me this morning to list all of the birds that can't fly, I don't think I would have even put that one down. And it's a bird that we've discussed a bunch of times. Like it just holds no space in my brain. Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. So, one that has a fun incorrect answer that I remember. What is the name of the thick layer of fat on a whale? Okay. The thick layer of fat on the whale I'm going to go with. Is that blubber? Blubber, that's correct. Yeah. And the wrong answer. I can't think of any other parts of whales other than like they wouldn't say like amber gristle something because that's like two clips. No, Brady. No, Brady. That was not the most frequent incorrect answer. Yeah. No, I can't think what I would have said that isn't just ridiculous. They didn't write blubber. They wrote flubber. Ah. Okay. Okay. So now we're getting down to the part where I haven't seen these questions before. But here's one where the wording tricked me. Whereas like I could not get this because of the wording. Okay. Which game uses a rubber ball and little metal pieces? Oh, okay. Is that the, I don't know what it's called. It's got Jack or Jackson. It's not. Yes, Jack's is the correct answer. Yeah. Jack's is what we call it in America. But the way it's written like rubber ball and little metal pieces like I just could not in a thousand years of formulated Jack's out of that. It's because it's like that's not how this thing is described in my mind. How would you have worded that question? I would have said like where you bounce a rubber ball and pick up little metal pieces. Like it's too abstract in my brain. Like what size rubber ball, like little metal pieces, little metal pieces in my head got blocked by the monopoly pieces. When you said rubber ball, I thought squash. And then when you said metal pieces, I went monopoly, right. But then I very quickly jumped to Jack's. Okay. So now here's the thing to keep in mind. This whole survey, 300 questions. We're not going to do them all. We are now at an interesting point. So here is the final question that more than half of college students got correct. Okay. And it is the 44th question out of 300, right? Which I think is stunning. But so the question is no pressure Brady. What is the name of the legendary one-eyed giant in Greek mythology? Cyclops. Cyclops. Cyclops. Cyclops. 50.7% of American college students could remember that. This is the point of the quiz where I stopped reading it. And I thought, oh, this might be fun to do on Hello Internet. Now you're off the hook. Now we're just some questions where I have no idea what the answer is. And so the first one that's below 50% of people got correct is in what park is old faithful located? All right. That's in Yellowstone. Yellowstone. Yeah. Oh, god damn it. I'm going to tell you right now, I can't think of this right immediately. In which sport is the Stanley Cup awarded? That is ice hockey. I'm sorry, Brady. The quiz says the answer is hockey. It does not say ice hockey. What is the name of the chapel who's ceiling was painted by Michelangelo? No, that is the Sistine Chapel. Sistine Chapel. There we go. Oh, good. I skipped down a bunch. Okay. Okay. What is the name of the first artificial satellite put in orbit by Russia in 1957? That is Sputnik. Yes. 41% of people got that correct. How do you feel about that, by the way, Brady? 41% of college students getting that answer. I'm more surprised that Sophie got Stanley Cup. I don't want you to ask me a question and ruin my 100% record. Oh, I guess I just realized you had 100%. You know what? I was just so dazzled, I didn't even recognize it. You're going to cherry pick some hard ones for me now. Well, I mean, here's the thing. Now we're getting down to a question where only 39% of college students got it right. By the way, 67th out of 300. We're dropping really fast with these questions. What is the only metal at room temperature that is liquid? Well, it does depend on the temperature of the room, but the answer you're looking for is making. Oh, God, what a... Well, no, because obviously the answer is mercury, but there are some where you could be in a reasonably warm room where you could quite happily sit and the metal might start to go. What metal is going to go in a room where humans can sit? I find that hard to believe. Gallym. Gallym is a very low melting temperature. What's the melting temperature of Gallym? I'll look that up. That will melt in your hand like chocolate. Less than 30 degrees Celsius, Gallym will go. Really? I had no idea. Also, cesium will melt in sunlight because I've seen it melt in sunlight. So cesium will go at 28 degrees Celsius. So cesium also, I would very easily melt, so. Francium, although you can't see Francium. Rubidium goes at 40 degrees. Here's the thing. I thought you were just being like the technically correct nerd who's being like, wow, let me tell you. It depends how you define room temperature. Right. Mercury is lost. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Molecule. 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And in a study of 49 allergy sufferers presented at the American College of asthma, allergy, and immunology, Molecule's tech provided dramatic, statistically significant, sustained symptom reduction within one week of use. I love having my Molecule. If you're looking to get a filter for your house, I highly recommend you give them a try. To do so, visit Molecule that's Molecule with a K, so molekulle.com and enter promo code Hello75. That gets you $75 off your first order. Once again, go to Molecule with a K.com and at promo code enter Hello75. Thanks to Molecule for supporting the show and for keeping the air in my office nice and clean. Okay, here we go. 30%. What is the name of the kind of cat that spoke to Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? That was a Cheshire cat. The Cheshire cat. I'm actually realizing that at this very moment, it never occurred to me that the Cheshire is a type of cat. In my head that's filed under his name, he's the Cheshire cat. That's his name, Mr. Cheshire. I never quite realized that was a breed, although that feels really obvious now in retrospect. Okay, here's a slightly American one. What is the last name of the woman who supposedly designed and sewed the first American flag? I wasn't even listening to the question, but I heard the second half. So I'm assuming this is a Petsy Ross question. That's your ass. I do like they have this supposedly in there, right? It's not 100% guys. We don't know that for sure. I've always been kind of meaning to look into how much is that a real story or not. And I have a feeling it's a bit like the Lady Gdivey story, like it didn't show up until much later. Okay, probably your Hamilton- I'm not even sure Cheshire is a breed of cat. I keep thinking. I just can't stop thinking about that. That's why I wasn't paying attention to your Petsy Ross question. I've never actually heard of a Cheshire cat as a breed. Okay, well, that's, that's, I asked Mr. Google. Is Cheshire cat a breed? It's a fictional cat popularized by Lewis Carroll and Harold Alice of Entrance in Wonderland. It might be another name for a British short hair cat, like it said. Okay, okay. This is actually interesting. So the origin is unclear and it seems like it comes from the phrase grinning like a Cheshire cat. Why would a cat from Cheshire, which is a county grin? Maybe there's lots of mice there. There are already a bunch of disputes about whether or not it's even referring to the place in Cheshire. Right. Apparently, we're wrong. Cheshire is not a breed of cat. It is the Cheshire cat, but it comes from a phrase. I'd never said it was a breed of cat. I didn't mean to impune on your perfect 100%. No. I'm still on 100% remember. You're about to ask me a Hamilton question. I was really excited. Well, I don't know if this will help you with, if Hamilton will help you with this. But it's, what is the last name of the first signer of the Declaration of Independence? Oh. Can Brady get it? You're going to get me. You're going to get me because I don't know who the first signer of the Declaration of Independence was. The first signer. I can give you a hint. All right. I'll take a hint. There's a hint, which is in American English, it is a slang word for a signature. So it is handcuffed. It's handcuffed. I mean, he would have been my guess. Yeah. But I thought he was just always talked about because he had such a lovely signature. I didn't know he was also the first signer. I think it's mainly because he was like, it wasn't he the biggest as well. Right. I think that's the way it goes. He's like the first signer. And you know, when you're signing a birthday card for the office party and some jerk takes up 25% of the space to sign his name, I think that was also the thing with Hancock. He's like, he got right in there, gigantic name, taking up all the space. Look at me. I'm signing the Declaration of Independence. Like with a gun to my head, I probably wouldn't have said he was the first signer. He had, I always thought he was a notable signer. I didn't know he got to go first as well. I am astounded how low the answer to this question is, how few people can remember it. But I'm also going to peg that the updated survey was from 2013. And I'm sure that the answer would be higher now when it is, what is Batman's secret identity? Is Batman Bruce Wayne's secret identity? If you're a real nerd, that's the way it goes. It's like, oh, Wayne is the mask and Batman is the man. Okay. Again, you're being way too clever here. Yeah, Bruce Wayne. Yeah. But according to the survey, only 25% of college students got that right. But I think in 2013, we're still ahead of the like tremendous comic book, Marvel DC universe researchers. Like, I'm, I am sure that would have to be much higher now than it would have been. Batman was pretty omnipresent through the 2000s as well though. Like Batman has been coming back time and time again for a while now. You're right. It'll probably be even higher now. Yeah. I think it would definitely be higher. What are you laughing at there, Brady? How easy are these questions are? Well, okay. So that right there to me, I feel like that nails a feeling that I have sometimes and we have a conversation, which is that you as a as a battle tested journalist, as a man in the world who's talking to professors, like I think you would crush the vast majority of this test. And so far, that has been proven true. There's a lot of popular culture questions in there too, surprising number. Yeah. There's a lot of like just what do you know about the world? I think this is basically like a baby crossword puzzle is what it is in many ways. But I think it is your experience as the kind of person that you are that like is why these questions are much easier for you. And I just think like the general public is much more narrow in their knowledge because like these questions are going across a broad range of stuff. So I think that's why you're getting down now into so like, okay, obviously you'll know the answer to this question. But here we are at question 94 out of 300. We have now reached the less than 20% of people get the question right territory. And the question is, what is the name of the mountain range in which Mount Everest is located? Right. Like Himalayas. Himalayas. Yeah. Like we don't even need to do that. But then like the next question that comes up is what is the unit of sound intensity? That's not a question I would expect anybody who hasn't had some familiarity with physics to be able to get that answer. It's a test of that. It's a test of that. It's a test of the answer. You know, because that one comes in at 19% of college students get that question right. And this is maybe the first question where I feel like I'm actually kind of surprised it's that high because when are you ever going to come across the concept of a decibel outside of a physics class or outside of a podcasting studio? Right. Like never. Well, you see it a lot in the news. Like everyone knows there's like jet engine sound and these different sounds and you often will see them described in decibels. Like even if it just seems like gobbledygook. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough fair enough. I wouldn't expect everyone to know decibel. And here's where the fact that it's college students kind of cuts me deep, but it's at 18.5%. What is the last name of the author of the book 1984? No. George Orwell. And that one seems pitiable to me that it's under 19%. Oh my God. I just, sorry. I just came across the next one, which is even more shocking. What is the last name of the man who assassinated president John F. Kennedy? Whoa. Wow. Oh, where do I start? You know what? Never mind. I take it back. I take it all back. You know what? I withdraw my statement about that. I'm assuming they want Oswald. Yeah. No, they want Oswald. But what do you really think the answer is pretty? Just one second, Gray. Gray, there's a giant wasp in my office that I thought would fly away, but if it's making so much noise, I can hear it through my headphones. I'm just going to go and move it. Yeah. If you hear me scream and pain, it means it didn't go to play. Okay. Got it. Come on, wasp. You're going downtown. Whoa. Come on. That's all right. It's a bee. Oh, okay. Then you're fine. You're good. I'm doing this for your own good. Hang on. I've got to be careful. I'll touch it. Hang on. Okay. Is the dramatic blow by blow. Hey, I'm using the Apple pencil. Oh, Jesus Christ. I've never used my Apple pencil. I don't even want to hear this. There we go. There we go. I'm back. It's like you tried to disappoint me, Brady. Did you hear it? That's the first time I've ever used my Apple pencil. I used it to flick the bee out of the window sill. It was the only thing to hand. So I just reached out and grabbed it. I mean, I almost don't even need to ask the question, but I'm presuming it was still in the box. You actually just used the box to flip it out the window. No. It's like the box is open. So you can see the pencil. It's like the box is acting as its holder. So I reached out and grabbed the actual pencil out of the box. Okay. I was holding my phone in my hand. So literally the way I got rid of the bee, which was on the window sill, was I used the Apple pencil and scraped it onto my phone. And then once it was on my phone, I flipped it out the way. Anyway, where were we? Where we were is what famous knot did Alexander the Great undo? Oh. I don't know. Hang on. I think you're going to lose your mind when I tell you it's because it's phrased in a strange way. No, it's not coming to me. It's the Gordian knot. Oh. No, I wouldn't have got there. So don't feel bad. Less than 1% of people got that question right. Okay. Yeah. And now we're into some of the ones that are just like, I have no idea. Like what is the last name of the first American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature? I have no idea. Right. No, I don't know. Not in a thousand years when I get that right. Oh, this one I do know. What is the last name of the inventor of the wireless radio? Oh, that was a machini. Yeah. That was machini. Although I feel like it's a bit of a trick there because I read a book a while back that was about the early days of radio. Like I hadn't happened to have read that book. There's no way I would have gotten that question right. There were those questions where there's debate as to what the answer is to especially with inventions. But is there a hardest question? Like what was number 300? So I don't know because at a certain point we get to questions that are just listed as 0.00. Okay. If anyone got it. Right. I don't know if anyone got it. But the one that is like at the absolute bottom of their list. Oh, maybe you Brady will get the one at the absolute bottom of the list. Yeah. What is the highest mountain in South America? Oh, I do know that. Do you though? Can you say it out loud? Oh, hang on. No, it's not the one I thought it was. I can't pronounce it. Does it start with A? Yeah, it starts with A. Yeah, I just can't pronounce it. It kind of looks a bit like anaconda, but it's not that it's a bit like that. Yeah, that's the one. It's the anaconda mountain in South America. That's the one. Yeah. Yeah. But at 0.00% that is the question that's on the bottom of their list. How do you, I'm looking it up now. How do you say it? Anaconda. It's not anaconda. 100%. That's anaconda, Brady. No way that's not the anaconda mountain. There it is. It's Acond Calgua. No, no, no. You have to be careful. So if you've done it on YouTube, there's that YouTube channel, which is supposedly how to pronounce words, and they actually tell you silly ways that seem right. That's not anaconda. So I think you stumbled upon that channel. Trust me. It's the anaconda mountain. That's the anaconda mountain. You heard it here first. I'm taking the point for that, by the way. Yeah, no, you should totally take the point for that. What's the second? What's 299? Oh, forget it. Who was the race horse of the year for many successive years in the 1960s? Oh, hang on. What is that? That's, that's ridiculous. It's a terrible question, but I feel like I should know it. I'm assuming it American race. What's a really famous American? Oh, what's the one that the film's about? I don't know what film you're talking about. Oh. I'm enjoying your sounds of pain, Brady. I know it. I know it. This one I'm not going to edit to make it sound like you got the answer immediately. Nah, it's painful just listening to me try to remember. What was it? Kelsau? Does that mean anything to you? Oh, no. No, yeah. So yeah, no, you were a million miles away. Didn't know that. But I'm just looking through. Some of the fun, like, incorrect answers is what is the largest planet in the solar system? And you guess what the incorrect answer is there? I bet the most common incorrect answer is the sun. The sun is correct. Yeah. This one I like, what is the name of the liquid portion of blood? The correct answer of course is plasma. But what do you think is the most common incorrect answer? Red blood cells? Water. Water is the answer. Water. Which I kind of think it makes sense. Yeah. So now, here's another one I really enjoy. The question, which I skipped over, is the thing is a little easy. What is the name of the extinct reptiles known as terrible lizards? Dinosaur's. Obviously. What do you think is the most common incorrect answer? That by the way, 25% of the incorrect answers. 25% of people said this wrong answer. Yes. You got to decide, did they get foxed by the lizards or did they get foxed by the extinct? Yeah, that's right. Like, what part of this trick them? Mm-hmm. Yeah. You're right to think that way. I'm going to go with dragons. Dragons is correct, Brady. Dragons is the correct answer. Is the correct wrong answer. I'm quite pleased I came up with that actually. Yeah. And also, quite frustrating, the most frequent incorrect answer to Batman's secret identity that 40% of people gave. Robin. Can you give it a guess? Robin. Ooh, that's a good guess. But no. Clark Kent was the most frequent incorrect answer. Really? Wow. That does surprise me. That does surprise me. Yeah. And I also feel like that would super annoy Batman. Yeah. Maybe it is cave, like, fuming about that. Like, I can't believe. But if we jump down, you did guess the most frequent incorrect answer to another question I skipped. What is the name of Batman's butler? Robin. That was the most frequent incorrect answer. You see it is Alfred. Yes, it is Alfred. That's correct. So anyway, I really enjoyed taking a look through this paper. I feel like it really confirmed for me this concept of, like, you can't assume that people know much about any particular random topic. And I almost want to, like, copy paste out the data from this and make a graph of just, like, just how rapidly the percentage correct drops off from Zebras, you know, all the way down to the Anaconda mountain. It is, like, the steepest drop off you have ever seen about how correct people get these answers. The thing about Anaconda mountain is everyone who has had no idea what the answer is. I'm going to think that I was really clever to get so close. And everyone from South America is going to think I'm the biggest moron on the face of the earth. Oh, sorry. I just came across one that I think is a total trick question. This is the first one that I think is genuinely a trick question. Okay. Which planet was the last to be discovered? I mean, there are a few things going on there. But here's the thing. There's a wrong answer that 84% of people said what's the wrong answer. Pluto. Yeah. 84% of people said Pluto. Yeah. The answer that they're actually looking for was Neptune. No, that's not fair. Yeah, that's not fair. Totally. I will say that question is totally unfair. Even if it's not now, it was a planet. You know what? That's true. That's unfair, even in a historical context. Yeah. I think that's incorrect to say. And I'm trying to remember because, like, I did my Pluto video, whatever it is, like, seven years ago now. And even then, it hadn't been that long since Pluto had been overturned. You know, and this is like 2013. I feel like it's totally unfair. Also, great. In 2013, had they started discovering exoplanets? Because at that point, the answer was probably something called Starburst 1987 B or something. You know? I know that they had discovered exoplanets by that point because I remember bringing up when I taught physics lessons. I brought up the fact that, like, when I was at school, exoplanets were a speculation. And then now we had examples of exoplanets and we're almost certainly going to find out more. Like, I remember hitting that point as like a little thing in the lesson. So yeah, that's a trick question on all fronts. But otherwise, thank you to the authors of this paper. I had a delightful time reading through it. I like that. I like easy questions. They're only easy, Brady, because you're so good. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Audible. Audible is the audiobook company I have spent many, many, many happy hours with. I've been a member for so long I can't even conceive of when it would have started. 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Start listening with a 30 day audible trial and your first audiobook plus two audible originals. Visit audible.com slash HelloInternet or text HelloInternet to 500-500. And if you're looking for a recommendation for a place to start, I'm going to re-recommend an old favorite that I just re-listen to, which is American Wolf by Nate Blakezley. Summer time is coming up. If you're going to be visiting any of the national parks, this is a story about reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone National Park. I greatly enjoyed it, and if you listen to it, it will make your visit better. Perhaps you can even listen to it while in the park. So that's American Wolf by Nate Blakezley. And to get your 30 day audible trial, just go to audible.com slash HelloInternet or text HelloInternet to 500-500. Thanks to Audible for supporting the show, and thanks to Audible for the many, many, many hours I have spent listening to audiobooks. Great. I was listening to the radio the other day. I listened to a lot of radio. Okay. And I was on the sports station. Shocking. And they were about to interview a footballer, a soccer player, who is quite famous. And in the space of two minutes before he came on the air, they referred to him as a legend. We're going to be talking to a football legend. Okay. This is a real big deal, everyone. Make sure you're tuning in. We're talking to a football legend. It's not often you get a true football legend like this on the show. Okay. And you also get like, you know, movie legends, legends of the silver screen. And you can know, you can also sort of, you know, every field of endeavor has people who get the status legend. Sometimes these are given a little bit too liberally. Sometimes they have to be earned depending on your field of endeavor. Right. And Brady's the ultimate judge about if they're being given out too liberally. Exactly. Exactly. I see where this is going. Yeah. It did occur to me though. Most of the time to become a legend in sport certainly. These people have had careers of 10 to 15 years, you know, because you've got to be battle tested and have done stuff over a period of time. Now also occurs to me that YouTube is just over 10 years old now. And it makes me wonder, do we yet have or will there be a time when people are a legend of YouTube, a YouTube legend? Is there anyone out there like a creator or that who you think would be worthy of the term YouTube legend? Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce to you a true YouTube legend. Here he is. Here she is. Does anyone fit that bill yet? Now I have a person in mind, but I think I need a little bit of clarification here. I feel like from your story, part of it is that the person was doing it for a really long time, but they're no longer doing it. Actually, this person actually is still doing it. The person is Wayne Rooney. Okay. He does play in America still, but his best days are behind him. I think you can be a current. You don't have to be retired to be a legend in my opinion. It helps. Well, but it's not 100% necessary. You do have to be in the twilight if you career probably. The person who jumped into my head immediately is Natalie Tran. She had her 10 year anniversary on YouTube a couple of years ago. I would also say very shortly after the 10 year mark, she seems to have stopped producing videos. There wasn't any announcement or anything. It just sort of dwindled off and she disappeared. I feel like she had a really particular comedy style of like, Internet-y, like underplayed sarcastic style. I think the reason I'd also think of her as a YouTube legend is I think she was the one who really started this whole genre of as a person in your room trying to film a video. You only have you to work with. You do multiple filmings of yourself and you're talking to yourself in different characters. Maybe some YouTube historians could find earlier examples, but I think there's no way that Natalie Tran isn't like the oldest and most popular example of that format of. I'm going to film myself talking to myself three different times as three different characters and have recurring characters over the whole run of her show. That's the person who would pop into my mind immediately is like YouTube legend that is partly because of the concept of not really active anymore or maybe she's just going to sporadically upload a video going forward who knows. I really wish she would, but I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't upload ever again. Do you have any candidates in your head for YouTube legends Brady? I couldn't think of anyone I would have described as a legend, which is what disappointed me. I made me wonder if there was something about YouTube that doesn't lend itself to the idea of someone being a legend or a great maybe because it's a platform where we're all about tearing each other down. Yes, that's true. Everyone loves drawing. Don't like our talk, I piece. What is it in your head though that when you're thinking of a legend? Because I don't know, I feel like I could pick out other people who feel like legendary characters. You know, I'm talking about people like Pele and Humphrey Bogart and Don Bradman and the Beatles, you know, people who are above who almost come to exemplify the craft. I have an even better example. I have the equivalent of the Beatles for all of YouTube, even if they don't know it, is a Frank who is like the grandfather of a very internet fast cut, silly edited style. And who was a man who was frankly years ahead of his time because he was doing this stuff just in quick time before there was any YouTube. I will never forget, I'm sure I mentioned it before, but I'll never forget reading an interview with him talking about how he was hugely popular as the first person who was doing this kind of video style, talking to the comments and incorporating stuff he did to show I think it was three times a week. The show with Zay Frank, which was just so great, like I absolutely loved at the time. But he gave this interview about how it was just the worst part of being famous because he had all of the downside. He was living in New York at the time that people recognized him everywhere that he went. But he had none of the upside because there was no way to monetize anything. There were no ads of anything to speak of, you know, he couldn't do anything. He eventually had tried to like work out something with PayPal, but ended up giving up the show because it was just too early. But I don't know any creator who's been on the platform for let's say more than eight years who wouldn't list Zay Frank as someone that they followed and who was an influence. He feels like, oh, he's got to be the equivalent of something like YouTube's Orson Wells or The Beatles or something like that, just like an epic figure in the early days of the medium. I mean, then if you just want to talk about like a legend to someone who accomplishes tremendous success on the platform, you know, I don't know how you wouldn't consider someone like PewDiePie closing in on 100 million subscribers as something like a legend who's been on the platform for a long time and has unparalleled success for what is basically still an individual person running a YouTube channel. You know, like whatever you think of PewDiePie, you can't deny that he is like a giant in the field and has been a very interesting clown prince of YouTube for a really long time. So I don't know, I guess what do you think is lacking in legendryness from YouTube? I don't know. I think PewDiePie will probably be approaching legend status because yeah, he's reinvented him. I think a legend shows like longevity and he's done that and reinvented himself in a few different ways. Zay Frank is definitely like an influential person. So he has like a sort of a godfather type status. Yeah. So you were saying it was going to say Mickey Rooney. Mickey Rourke was the legendary football player. Like why is he a legend? Mickey Rourke, legendary football player. Whoever you were using as the example, Rooney. Well, Wayne Rooney. Sorry. That's a funny little brain tangle. Yeah, there are quite like that. I can almost see how some of those, you had like Mickey Rooney and Mickey Rourke and all these things are overlapping. That's quite a good word. I mean, I think sport throws around the term legend a little bit willy nilly for my liking. OK. But I don't know. I don't know. It just got me thinking. I just wrote YouTube legend in the show notes. I didn't think much beyond that. And that's why I wrote it. So the more I think about this, the more it feels like YouTube should clearly produce people who are more like legends than sport possibly can. And sport engenders a lot more hero worship than YouTubers do though. I think because people, I think people look at YouTubers even ones they like like love and do kind of think, yeah, but I could do that. Or they feel close to them and they feel accessible. Whereas there's something like heroic and legendary about someone who's performing feats that you feel like you couldn't perform. Yeah, that's a good point that there's a closer experience between the audience and the person. I have had a few conversations sometimes where people were like, oh, I thought I was going to be really easy to make YouTube videos. And then I tried and like, oh my god, it's a million times harder than I thought. It's always really satisfying. Yeah. If you're doing it, well, it should look easy, but it's, you know, it's a lot of work. But I was just thinking like in sports, you're ultimately going to have something much more like a normal distribution of achievements. Whereas in YouTube land, you can have something that's much more like an exponential distribution of achievements like PewDiePie, who's has so many subscribers that he's just in a whole different league than other people. Whereas I don't feel like in sports, you can have someone who's not only better, but they're like a hundred times better than the next average player in the game. But I think maybe you're right. Like sports players are still more distant and there's something about the medium that makes people feel more approachable so that there isn't so much hero worship. But also there's something about sporting accomplishments that has a degree of writing yourself into the history books. And this will be remembered. I scored the winning goal in the World Cup final. You know, you did a great thing that will be immortalized. Whereas if you make a really good video, then for a week you went a bit viral. And then that's it. And it kind of just gets lost in the mush. You don't see a YouTuber walk down the street and think, see her over there. Back in 2015, she made one of the all-time great videos, you know. It was a real classic. Yeah, that's true. It's very true. It's spitted out. Like, you know, eat your McDonald's. You don't save her like you would save her. That great match back in 1983 when you scored three goals to win the game for Liverpool. Yeah. That is an excellent point. There's not going to be any YouTube almanac that you could take back in time to make a fortune with because nobody's doing that. No, we just get YouTube rewind. Oh, burn. Let me end this episode with I'm going to call a paper cut more because you'll realize it's a clever play on words in a minute. It is kind of a paper cut. OK. I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing people we know. Oh. People we know do this thing. OK. It doesn't annoy me, but it just, it's just something wrong with it. Tell me if there's something wrong with me or I'm right about this right. OK. This is having a book signed by the author. You know, it's a nice thing. I quite enjoy it. Some people really like having a book signed by the author. I've got a whole shelf of books I'm looking at right now that are signed by authors. Because it seems everyone I know writes a book now so I always get them to sign one for me. And I like having that. You know, the moment that Matt Parker signs his book for me or Hannah or Alex or someone signs their book for me is a nice moment. But the thing is because everyone wants signed books now, there's this market in selling signed books. And what they do, and this is probably how it's always been done, I guess, is the author gets like a thousand single pages that are going to be inserted into the book before it's bound. They sign all these individual pages, just single leafs, ship them back to the publisher. And then however, book binding is done. These pages are inserted in the book and hey, presto, you've got a book that is hand signed by the author. Now I understand why they do it. I understand they've probably always done it. And I've only just become aware of it because of social media. So every author is now thinking, look at me signing my bits of paper and tweeting about it, and Instagram it about it. But I suddenly feel ripped off because not that I have bought one of these things. I feel like the nice thing about having a book signed by the author is that the author held the book. Like you can look at that book and go, not only have I got the book, but the author handled this object. It was once in their hand. Maybe I was with them. Maybe I wasn't, but at least I know this book was. All of these words on the pages were once in the proximity of the writer and they gave it their blessing. And now I feel like here are 300 pieces of paper, one of which was once in the proximity of the author, 299 of which weren't. And it somehow feels less special as a sign book to me. Am I being completely stupid? I don't think you're being completely stupid. I'm slightly laughing over here because I can only think of examples of people that we know is how I discovered about this as well. Like it's just... Exactly. And people who I really like as well, and this is not just like those people. And I understand the efficiency of why they do it. I'm not criticizing them in any way. But now I have this realization. Now the curtain has been pulled back, admittedly by my friends. Right. And now I'd never look at sign books the same way again and they don't feel anywhere in your especially to me. Yeah, obviously the logistics of, if you're going to sign 100,000 copies of a book, that you can't ship that many. And the author could go to the factory. I don't think that that matters. And here's one of the reasons why it doesn't matter as well is because when you have to do anything in such an incredibly repeated matter, it becomes a real factory line. And so even some of these things that we've seen where the person's just signing papers, there's still so many papers and so little time that there's two assistants who are helping move the papers along, right? Of like bundling them up and flashing them out in one thing. So then it becomes a question of the author has spent exactly as long as it takes to sign the signature on the page. Here's the thing. I don't think your reaction is overblown because I too had the same reaction of... Oh, I think I would rather not have known how that sausage was made. I think in particular with books, because books are objects that are to be handled. That's part of the selling part of a book. Is this physical thing? And if you have a lot of books, you lend books out to friends, you know, friends lend books to you, books get passed around. Maybe it ends up in a library at some point. And obviously the fact that the author has touched it doesn't magically imbue the book with anything. But the question is like, why does a person want something with a signature? And I think the reason that they want the signature is because of that concept that this person handled the book and now I have it. And it's like, it's like the author has passed it personally to you. It's provenance. It's part of its story. Yeah. But now the story is only attached to one leaf of paper in the book and it seems like... Yeah, I'm thinking it's like the man in the high castle where the antique's dealer has a certificate to certify that the lighter was actually in the president's jacket, right? It's like this kind of thing and it feels like the signature page I thought sort of certified that the author had handled this book, but it doesn't. It certifies that the author handled that page. Yeah, and not even handled it by the looks of it. They were assistant hands on it. And they just like went whoosh. Right. Yes. What actually occurred is the bottom fleshy part of their hand rubbed across the page and they were signing it with their pen. Or if they're really pro level, I don't know if you've seen this, but some artists have this. I don't even want to call it a glove, but if you imagine a glove that just goes over your pinky and the bottom part of your hand. Oh. And... Why could you use one of them? I've seen people who use iPads in particular use them because then it stops physical contact with the iPad, but it's also just for artists to not constantly have friction between their hand and the bottom of the paper. And so I could imagine if I had to sign 100,000 pieces of paper, I would buy one of those little pinky hand gloves. And so then if the author's using something like that, the only thing that's touching the paper is the tip of the pen. Don't get me wrong. Most of the people I know who do this don't actually charge more for the signed book. Like it's just like a nice thing they've done. So I don't feel that people are being scammed. I just feel like it's not that special. Like I kind of like, am I crazy here? Am I the only one who thinks this isn't that special? Do know though if you receive one of our signed dinosaurs attack cards, Gray and I spent considerable time mulling over what was happening on each card as we signed them. Many of those cards got a good 20, 30 seconds of discussion time before being signed. Yeah. Those cards were not signed in an efficient manner. They were passed back and forth. They were discussed. Details were re-react upon. Yeah. Find details that we hadn't previously seen. Yes. Well, you're right. That teacher is stabbing that dinosaur with a brule. Yeah. That's the obvious detail to notice. But there's so much to be revealed in those cards. But yes, they existed in our hands. They existed between us on a pub table on a very loved leave thing.
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