Hello Internet - H.I. #102: Secret Cinema

Episode Date: May 24, 2018

Grey and Brady discuss: the looming UK hotstopper ban, Grey has a coffee revelation, final thoughts on the non-existent political beliefs of dogs, charitable interpretations of people's words, Plane Crash Corner, Brady's bylines, Grey & Dragons & Death, and a visit to a secret cinema. Sponsors: HelloFresh: $30 off your first week of HelloFresh at hellofresh.com/hellointernet with promo code Hello Internet Brilliant: go to brilliant.org/HelloInternet and sign up for free -- first 200 people get 20% off the annual Premium subscription Skillshare: start learning today -- get 2 months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for only $ 0.99 at skillshare.com/hello Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode on the reddit UK Hotstopper ban coming Hello Internet discusses So You've Been Publicly Shamed Buffer CGP Grey on Instagram Livestreamed plane crash Brady's bylines GDPR Grey's adaptation of The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant Original Short Story version of The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant Secret Cinema Blade Runner

When I messed up the high five with the parkour dude at the end in front of everybody. Apparently he's a really famous parkour guy, that dude. And he was doing all these like cool hangings and twists on all these rails and bars. And then he jumped down onto the floor and he ended up landing right next to Gray. And everyone was like cheering him because he's just done this cool thing. And he was standing right next to Gray. And I don't know what made it happen. But then suddenly you two just like high fived. And it felt like you initiated it. Like you guys said, yeah, man, that was cool

and gave him a high five. My experience was entirely different because I wanted to be at the back of the crowd, but because we're in a big circular thing, the back can at any moment become the front. And I was directly below where the parkour guy was. In the spotlight. I was originally standing in his way. Police officer moved me so that I wouldn't be directly below where he was going to jump. So yes, I ended up inches away from his landing spot. And for the record, he went for the high five. I did not go for the high five.

Oh God, why Brady? I thought he was going for like... Because he came in from the side, right? He didn't do a front the high five. Oh God. Why Brady? I thought he was going for like, because he came in from the side, right? He didn't do a front on high five. He came in for a high five from the side. And so I interpreted that as you want to do the high five grip, but he didn't want to do the high five grip. You just sort of tried to grab him. I just sort of grabbed his hand and then he had like oh yeah oh yeah a lot of people were pretty upset about that actually there was a lot of talk about that as we a lot of

a lot of people saw it that's for sure who's that guy that doesn't know how to do a high five and it's like it's extra worse because it's like oh this guy has clearly just demonstrated that he's the coolest dude in the whole room and he landed next to the uncoolest guy in the building the guy that doesn't even do a high five is the fact that i grabbed his hand like i i think i would have preferred to just straight up miss i think i would have felt better than if i hadn't sweetly closed my hand around his because i thought we were going for like the closed hand high five it's awful he thought you just really fancied him. Oh, God. Never mind.

Brady, I've come across some dire news. Very, very disturbing. Very disturbing news indeed. It looks like the UK wants to ban hot stoppers. Scandalous. I mean, obviously the popularity of them, since we started producing them and leaving them at random places around the world, this must be causing some kind of public order problems,

or maybe they're worried about riot scenarios, maybe. I don't know. I don't know what their concern is, but this is true. Well, according to the headline, they call hot stoppers a blight. So I think that, yes, I think the tremendous popularity of the hot stoppers as blight. So I think that, yes, I think the tremendous popularity of the hot stoppers as of late is causing the UK government great concern. Like they're saying

that they're potentially sources of pollution. I don't really see how objects as precious as particularly the Hello Internet hot stoppers could possibly be considered pollution. But to the UK government that wants to ban hot stoppers, I say, do you not care about the little children who could be burned from hot drinks? Is this something you just don't care about at all, government? I cannot believe that a government would be so callous about the safety of its own citizens. It's very disappointing news. They're referring to the stirring sticks, but you're right. I wonder if the Children's Burns Trust has taken a position on this as yet.

I sure hope they have, because obviously our number one concern with hot stoppers is not my own selfish desire to shape the world as I want, and to have my life made a tiny bit more convenient. But our primary concern is the safety of children because that is how you win every debate in the public realm. So I find it upsetting here that the government might ban hot stoppers. I hope the people make their voices known to their local representatives. If there was ever a time, people, to contact your local parliamentarians,

now would be that time to write in a letter and let them know your feeling on how important hot stoppers are for protecting the nation's children from burns. I forget all this net neutrality rubbish and contacting politicians about that. This is the burning issue. That's terrible. That's absolutely terrible. Thank you. This is the burning issue. That's terrible. That's absolutely terrible. Thank you. I'm here all week. Grey, I don't think you've thought this through. This is actually a real opportunity for us.

Okay. Because if shops and Starbucks and all these places are banned from distributing these sticks, surely there's no law that's going to be created that's going to stop me from having plastic commemorative Hello Internet sticks made for whatever purpose you may want. I mean, I can't help it if you put it in a drink. That's not what it's made for. It's just a commemorative Hello Internet stick. And if I then distribute these, like suddenly we've got a really scarce item here. This is a huge increase in value in our hot stoppers. People who already have one, they're sitting on a fortune. You know what? You're right.

You have an excellent point there. Because they do refer to plastic straws and drink stirrers. It doesn't say hot stoppers, which we all know are Hello Internet commemorative items. That's an entirely different category of thing. And like you say, if someone uses it to fit in the lid of a drink, that's none of your business. Like if someone takes a Q-tip and doesn't use it for, what is it, like cleaning babies or something,

and instead uses it to clean their ear, which is an off-label. A Q-tip isn't responsible for that. That's not what you're supposed to be using those things for. So yeah, I think you might be right here. Yes, the Hello Internet commemorative hot stopper sticks are just commemorative items. Yeah, you can wear them in the lapel of your jacket when you're going to a dinner.

That is true. Think about how sharp you would look. You could use them as cuff links. They could hold your cuff together. You put them in your hair when you wear your hair up in a bun, and you can stick it in the bun, in the side. There are so many things that you could use them for. Certainly not stopping hotness in your drinks.

You could use them as a Q-tip. Right. Not that we're endorsing that. Do not stick a hot stopper in your ear. No, but you're not supposed to stick a Q-tip in your ear, right? Again, yes, you could use a hot stopper as a baby cleaning assistance device in some manner, I'm sure. I don't know. Tweet grey a picture of you cleaning your baby with a hot stopper. Yeah, you could wrap a little, I don't know, like a rag around the end of it and then clean

your baby. Isn't that how you clean babies with like rags? I don't know how that works. I'm also thinking if for some reason the government did try to crack down on us unfairly, well, this is a ban on plastic things. Maybe this is an opportunity to mint more durable hot stoppers as well. Maybe that's a thing we could have at the back of our mind for the future, maybe. It doesn't have to be just plastic hello internet commemorative sticks they could be made out of all sorts of material what are you talking about like metal ones or wooden ones i feel like the sky's the limit platinum gold i don't know there's many materials that such things could possibly be manufactured out of platinum hello internet

hot stopper wow i mean look i'm just the idea man right i'm not the one who's gonna have to figure out how to actually get it manufactured at a facility overseas somewhere. You know, someone else might have to pick up the slack on that one, Brady. You know, I'm just throwing ideas out there. It's just a thought. But a platinum hello internet hot stopper, it's an attractive idea. I don't like this you being the ideas man and me being the grunt man. I'm an ideas man.

I'll manufacture my own ideas. Thank you very much. I never said that you're the grunt man, Brady. But we all know that if someone is going to be the person who can make dreams reality, that's Brady. All right. I'm all right with that. You're the dream reality manufacturer.

That's what you are, Brady. Anyway, get your hot stoppers while you can. If Gray and I leave them around the place now, the stakes are higher. Yeah, that's true. Because A, you don't know how much longer they're going to be available for. And B, you got to get them quick before the rain comes and washes them into a creek or a lake and the government gets even angrier at us. I just realized I have never hidden hot stoppers in the UK. And so before they're made illegal,

I think I'll have to do a couple of hot stop drops in the UK somewhere. Yeah, like I got to do it quickly before this unjust law comes into action. Do you think it should be a hot stop drop or a hot drop? I like hot stop drop. I think it sounds funnier to say hot stop drop. But I feel like hot drop is inevitably what it's going to be because the shorter thing always works out. Like shorter always wins when it comes to logistics.

If you can save a single syllable, people will do it. I very often back the losing team on what the word should be for a thing. So I feel like I'm trying to play a different calculus here. It's like, oh, I like hot stop drop, but I don't think people will stick with it. I think people will stick with hot drop. Yeah, I agree. It's got to be a hot drop. Keep your eye out for UK hot drops, people. They're coming. We're going to have to do some before this law goes into effect. Or maybe we won't because that's how it works with whimsy. That's true. Yes. You never know with whimsy. We're not even bound by what we say in the show, except for the rules about how many hot stoppers to take, those you do have to follow.

So we had a tweet from a guy called Fraser. This was an issue that I didn't realize was an issue, but I'm sure you will have views on it. And it said, I hope CGP Grey and Brady Heron can take on the challenge of educating hot beverage service professionals everywhere that the lid drink hole, so the little hole in the plastic lid, goes opposite the cup seam, the seam in the paper cup, and not at it. Is this an issue or something you have? If when the person puts the plastic lid on your coffee cup, if the little hole to drink out of the lid

lines up with the seam in the paper cup, obviously Fraser gets very upset by this. Wait a second. He means the seam in the cup. So where the cup itself, yeah, it's because it's a folded piece of paper. Yeah. Is that why the coffee dribbles sometimes? Because the hole is where the seam is. I feel like you've just had a moment. I have. I really just have because sometimes I get my standard Starbucks order and it's just, you know, it's like filter coffee with pouring cream, which always has to be specified in a very particular way to get what I want in the UK.

But luckily, Starbucks, UK wide seems to have implemented this as a drink that Americans will order so I can get everywhere. But I do get it. And sometimes I feel like, why am I an idiot who can't drink this without spilling it on myself? And other times I don't. And you're telling me, or Fraser is telling me, that it's because it lines up with the seam. This never occurred to me, but that makes total sense. I mean, Fraser hasn't said that specifically, but I'm assuming that's what happens. You get less integrity in your seal where the seam in the cup is, presumably. I'm assuming that's his concern. I'm going to have to pay attention now when it dribbles and I feel like an idiot

to realize, no, I'm not an idiot. This cup lid was put on wrong. I was sure this would be something you'd be all over. Brady, would I notice pinnickety little things like this in the world? Especially pertaining to like coffee, which you have only a passing interest in. A man who's created an entire podcast and industry around how he likes his Starbucks coffee. And who I really do feel like has successfully changed the ordering process at Starbucks for to make it the way that I want. Like I can now very confidently go into any Starbucks and give them my order. And the hit rate has gone

through the roof over the years. And I will totally take personal credit on that. But no, no, I wouldn't notice these panicky little things. I never tuned into this. And I feel like the challenge of educating people on this has begun where I feel like I have just had my eyes open to this situation. I hope it becomes one of those little things. I don't know if you like when you go to pick up coffee sometimes, if you're at the right angle, where you wait to get the coffee delivered, you can sometimes see like the funny little instructions that they have to the baristas behind the scenes. I always like to try to lean over and spy on what those instructions are. I don't know about this.

Okay, so it seems like there's always some kind of rotating initiative about what do you want the baristas to pay attention to. And so if I can see the little rules, sometimes there'll be a little sign over there that says something like, don't forget to greet the regulars by name or something. It's like a little reminder. I just saw one on my most recent flight back from America that was make sure the white dot is visible in the center of the latte. And it had some funny thing underneath it, which was like, make sure all your hard work is visible, right? So that like people can see the white dot in the center. And so maybe if this is a real thing, someday in the future, there can be a policy reminder for all the employees to make sure that the lid goes opposite where the plastic seam is. I do have to say, though, like, while that would be a concern, my much bigger concern and the thing that I do pay attention to and the thing that makes my skin crawl is how often when the person grabs the lid to put on top of your coffee cup, they grab it right on the hole. Like they put their disgusting finger

right on top of the hole or on the lip where the hole is. And every time I see that happen, I do just reach over and take another lid for myself and remove the lid that they gave me and put on a new lid. That's a thing that I noticed, but the position of the lid on the coffee cup, I haven't noticed. A whole new thing for you to be neurotic about. I love it. I'm not neurotic, Brady. That's a slanderous representation of just me wanting things the way that I want them to be. I'm waiting for the day you get to Starbucks and lean over for that secret look at their instructions. And they've got just this sort of grainy CCTV picture of your face. And like, if this guy comes in, don't touch the hole, make sure he gets his

cream the way he wants it. There's this whole list of things. Give him a hot stopper. Don't look him in the eyes. Don't say his name. That's it. As long as the final two instructions are don't look him in the eyes, don't say his name. I don't care how many other pernickety instructions are above those final two. Can I ask what name you give when you're asked to give a name at a coffee place? I'm not going to tell you my Starbucks name. So you have got a Starbucks name though? Of course, I've got a Starbucks name and an Uber name. Who doesn't have fake Starbucks and Uber names?

Everybody does this. I haven't got a fake Uber name. You can give Uber a fake name. They don't check. I've got a whole fake persona for my Uber pickups. Every once in a while, people do notice when I get in the car. But no, it's like the Starbucks name. Everybody has to have a fake name. I tested out a bunch of

different names to see what was most easily understandable by a variety of baristas in London, because here you're dealing with just a tremendous range of backgrounds and like what sounds are more recognizable to people from different places speaking English as a second language. And I honed in on one that had a basically perfect hit rate compared to all of the others. So that is the one that I use as my Starbucks name and precisely because I put so much effort into it, I'm not going to reveal it here on the show. I'm going to guess. You have a guess and I will neither confirm nor deny if you're right.

My guess is Ben. I'll tell you right now that it is not Ben. All right. How many will you tell me are wrong before you stop my elimination method? No, that's it. I'm only going to give you the one. And right now, before the Reddit dives into this, I'm not going to tell any of you people in the Reddit. All right. Say you were with me at Starbucks. Would you give your fake name? What name would you give if you were with someone else?. Would you give your fake name? What name would you give if you were with someone else? Because it would look a bit weird. Okay. Yes, you're right. It has been weird a couple of times, but no, I always give my fake Starbucks name without even thinking about it. Or like if I climb into an Uber, they call out

the fake Uber name and I'm like, yep, that's me. Thumbs up. So you've also learned to respond to the fake name. Like it's not like they'll be saying coffee for Ben, coffee for Ben. And you're like looking off the other way and not even looking around. It's a well-adapted alias. I'll respond to that in particular circumstances where it's like I'm getting service where they need an identifier

and I don't want to give a real identifier. What's your Starbucks name? I haven't got one, but I totally want one now. I'm going to come up with one. You should. You definitely should. But no, but Brady, what you can't do, I can feel already,

you're probably going to do something silly. Yes. No, Brady, you got to go for something short, simple, and immediately understandable. No, because my fake Starbucks name is for a different reason to yours. I'm not trying to protect my identity. It's just to like have fun. Is it to try to make the barista's eyes roll when they take your order and you say, you're Lord Fuzzy Pants?

That would be a bonus. Hot chocolate for Mr. Snuffleupagus. Yeah. Dr. Snuffleupagus. Thank you very much. That's what you'll say. If you come up with one that makes you smile, will you tell people on the show what your Starbucks name is or will it be a little secret that makes you smile?

I don't know. I do like the idea that it's secret, like just for the sake of a secret. I feel like if you come up with one that you really, really like, you will be incapable of not sharing it in some form at some point. You're saying I can't keep a secret? No, I'm saying that because of the reason

why you're doing it, you want to, I guess, make yourself smile and make the barista's eyes roll. I feel like that is intrinsically the kind of thing that is almost impossible not to tell people because it's fun, right? Whereas my Starbucks name is entirely utilitarian. And were it ever revealed, I would immediately drop it and just switch to a new one, right? And be like, forget it. This is done now. I'll just, I'll just pick another one. Would you be able to walk away, like in heat, would you be able to walk

away from a bad scenario? Or would you let it go with some regret? Would it be able to walk away? Like in heat, would you be able to walk away from a bad scenario? Or would you let it go with some regret? Would it be like, oh, I'm really sad to be retiring that name. It served me well. Or would you be dispassionate and just let it go? No, totally dispassionate. It's a label. It might as well be like a number that I give them.

And this is the identifying number. And I'm just trying to pick something that's easy for the other person to hear and easy for me to recognize. All right. I look forward to hearing what you settle on, Dr. Snuffleupagus. Kaiser Soze. Hello, Internet. Is there something you'd like to get better at?

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of the last three shows. Yes, between our previous recording and now the Nazi pug verdict came in. Count Dankula is not going to prison. And instead, he is going to have to pay an 800 pound fine. So he was found guilty, but he was not given the maximum possible sentence. He was instead given a fine. Just over a thousand bucks. What do you think of the results of this case, Brady? Well, reading through comments from the previous time we've spoken about this, because this isn't like a topic that I'm as passionate as you about, people think I don't care or I have like really different beliefs to what I actually have.

And like now everyone thinks I'm like some kind of like sympathizer or like, I don't know what people think. But because I'm just like, oh, what do you think, Graham? You talk about it. I'm like, oh, yeah, fair enough. Just to interrupt you there, if you read through the comments, because this is something I do want to touch upon, you will find people thinking that you and I believe everything that it is possible to believe across the entire spectrum of this conversation because it sort of drives people crazy. But I do think you are on the worst end of it because like you say, you're less intense about the topic. And then I think people

have weirdly interpreted your comments like all over the place in strange ways. My feeling is he shouldn't have been in court in the first place. When he did end up in court, he shouldn't have been guilty. But because he was found guilty, I'm glad he got not too draconian a sentence. I also think he was a bit silly to make the video. It's been an interesting result. I think my summary of it is obviously I'm glad that this guy isn't going to prison. It would have been crazy had he gone to prison. Yes.

But I also think, at least from some of the reaction that I have seen, a lot of people seem to be regarding this as some kind of free speech victory. But he was still found guilty. I was reading through the verdict, and the judge's quote is like, I find you guilty of gross obscenity

transmitted over an electronic communication network, right? Which again, could be like anything. So he's still found guilty. He was still fined. The thing that I think is easy for people to not pay attention to is that he's also had his life put totally on hold for two years as this court case has been the center of his life. And as he has reported, like prevented him from being able to find work and live any kind of normal life until it's resolved. That is a particular kind of punishment can be right in a situation, but the counterparty can make your life being punished by just like being dragged through the courts for a long period of time. So, yeah, I don't know. I think the people who are acting as though it's a victory are like weirdly over optimistic and kind of forgetting about the actual details.

It's like, oh, but he's still found guilty. So it's a bit of a strange result. But again, I'm glad he's not in prison. But I don't feel like anything I have really discussed in the past has changed my feelings on this, because the maximum penalty is still there to be metered out in theory. And he was still found guilty at the end and convicted and is paying a fine. So I feel like that's the end of the pug in particular. But there's two things that have come up a bunch when we've discussed this every time that I think of as like meta points that I just want to address.

One of those things is the concept of charitably or uncharitably interpreting the words of another person. I feel like if there is one thing that I have really deeply and quite shockingly learned over the course of doing this podcast in particular is just how difficult human communication is even under the best of circumstances. Right. Like you and I are just talking to each other and it is so easy for us to misunderstand each other while we're having a conversation or just feel like, oh, the other person doesn't really get where I'm just constantly surprised at like the weird ways people interpret what we are saying about a topic or like where someone says like, oh, CGP Grey thinks and they say a thing and it's like, I don't think that at all. I don't understand how you could even possibly think that. That's like the ground level of human communication is much, much more difficult than people think it is. I definitely think that's worse in text than spoken word, though. Like I'm far more likely to misunderstand what someone's saying in like a YouTube comment or a Reddit comment than if I hear them speaking on a podcast.

I do think it is a bit easier with the spoken word. It still happens. Oh, without a doubt. You have like the hierarchy of making it easier or worse. And a podcast is a million times better than something that is just written in text. Video is better than a podcast. And also much to my surprise, I've really been convinced that in person is not just better than video, but it's like a thousand fold increase again, that if you're talking to someone in person, there's a lot of intangible things that aid in communication. But even still, under the best of circumstances, most people overestimate how well their thoughts are being actually understood by whoever they're talking to. And I think that people also

overestimate how well they understand the other person's position. There's a really good concept, which is trying to like, if you're in an argument with someone, trying to state the other person's position in a way that they would agree with. And if you have ever actually done this in a conversation, I've done it a few times with people, it is shockingly hard to do, to be able to like rephrase someone else's argument and have the other person say, yes, that is what I'm trying to say. I do feel like quite often though, you are trying to hit a moving target though as well. Like when you're arguing and talking, you're not exactly sure what you think yourself and what you state back to me may be what I was thinking a minute or two ago. But now that I hear

you say it like that, it's like, no, no, that's not what I mean. So it's even harder than you think. That's an excellent point that I wasn't even considering here. But yeah, without a doubt, there have been times where we're having a conversation and sometimes you can hear it on air where it's like, I say a thing and then minutes later I'm like, I don't think I actually think that thing. Like, why did I say that? Or like, I'm thinking about that after when I'm recording the podcast. It's like, why did I say that? I don't think I think this now.

And it's like 24 hours later as I'm editing the show. It is on top of that. It's a moving target. People's opinions change. So all of that is just to say, under the best circumstances with two people who are trying to understand each other, it is still very hard. where someone is taking your words and they're not like doing a straw man, like they're not making up an imaginary version of you, like they're not constructing a totem of you in their head to argue against. But they are doing a thing which is taking the least charitable interpretation of your words and presenting that as your argument. I've just seen this phrase floating around on the internet talking about trying to have a charitable interpretation of what someone

is saying as opposed to an uncharitable interpretation of what someone is saying. And I've become aware of this idea, and I just feel like I want to pattern amplify that a bit through this podcast that it's useful to be aware of this idea. Like, are you just taking the most uncharitable interpretation of what the person is saying and assuming that to be their opinion? Or are you trying to give them like the benefit of the doubt that they are like a good person with good goals and like maybe they're just not expressing a thing in words you would use. I think that's a good idea to have in mind, particularly in text conversations. some wildly uncharitable interpretations of our conversation, which feels like, yeah, you're not distorting the actual words, but you're trying to like read into something that isn't there. Good on you for trying, Gray. I've just given up.

I just so don't look forward to video comments and discussions and podcast comments and discussions. And now it's just like I find myself dipping into them a little bit less now because it's just like, Why do you feel that way? Maybe it's just been too many years of it now. It's all a big game to people to find those uncharitable twists or mistakes or misspeaks.

Or like, if every time you spoke to someone at the pub and they misspoke, you called them out on it and said, oh, you just said the wrong word or you used incorrect grammar or wrong punctuation or what you just said then, if I didn't know you better, could have sounded like this. If you did that to someone every single time they misspoke at the pub, they wouldn't be your friend anymore. They would just stop inviting you to the pub. But on the internet, everyone just does it all the time. So it's like going to the pub with a thousand people who are just trying to call you on everything. And it's like, oh, and they're allowed to do it. And I'm glad there's an

audience. It just like grinds you down, doesn't it? After a while, you can't explain to them all. You can't have a conversation with them all. So I don't know, I guess I'm taking a more gray approach to life and just not letting those things in, in the first place. I think in this case, I am lucky because I just don't take comments personally on the internet. Like I've grown up among the internet comments for all of my life. I feel so immersed in it that I still really enjoy internet discussions as a general idea. Like when a video goes up, I really enjoy the discussions about it. I genuinely think particularly for Hello Internet that like the show is made better if you also participate in the comments. Like the discussion afterward in many ways is one of my favorite parts of the show.

But I just mentioned the charitable and uncharitable thing because there is a strain of what you're talking about. And I do think that there is something that like the modern interconnected world encourages people. And I think you really hit on it there to like score points against other people in a particular way, like constantly looking out for gotcha moments. And I don't think I'm ever going to convince those people of anything. I do think that having language like uncharitable interpretation, like that's a good thing for more reasonable people to have as a tool to push back against those kinds of commenters, instead of them feeling like, oh, I just I got to say my thing and it went unchallenged to have like a particular point to push back on. So that's that's why I mention it. I do still really like online discussions, but I agree with you that

particularly in the past few years, I think of it as like some kind of poison or sickness that is spreading through certain kinds of internet commenters. Do you think it's changing or getting worse or I'm getting jaded by it? I still go in every hello internet comment section for three or four days every day after an episode. And I still go through the comments in my videos for the first few days of every video. So don't get the impression that I've like, you know, banned it or don't look at it anymore. And I think I don't take it personally.

I think I'm pretty good at just like, you know, saying, oh, well. There's an exhaustion that's difficult to explain, especially when you see the same thing. It's a mental exhaustion at that frustrated feeling of people not getting it, either not getting you or not seeing the wood for the trees or like one example could be spending two weeks making a video and then getting 500 comments under it saying oh you forgot to put a comma in that sentence and it's like i spent two weeks trying to explain something about mathematics or some deep thing and all you want to do is find the mistake and like okay yeah i don't think i've ever made a video without some kind of mistake in it. But like, is that what we want to talk about after all that? It's just like the wrong kind of conversation. It's like, again, bringing it back to real life. If someone sits down and has like some serious

or important news for you, you know, they want to tell you about some death in their family or pregnancy, or they're getting married. When they break the news to you, your first reaction shouldn't be, oh, actually you misspoke. You should have said I and not me when you said that. That's what it's like. It's like, oh, you're trying to convey information and ideas and people are like going off on weird tangents or misunderstanding. You're saying, oh, you know that thing you said, that sounds a bit like you think this. I know you probably don't, but it could be taken that way. I think this is not you getting jaded. I don't think this is you spending a long career on the internet. I really think that this is something that has gotten worse over time. I feel like,

particularly in the past few years, and also I think with the arc of this show, where we started talking about this idea, probably the first time was when we discussed the book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed. I think about that a few times now, because that book was almost talking about what seems like a much more innocent idea of like, oh, this mob justice that strikes randomly on the internet, which may be horribly unjust. And now I think some combination of essentially everyone in the Western world being on the internet for as large of a portion of the time as they do, plus a decent portion of the population now never having known any kind of world before this, plus factors like the non-zero artificial AI bot-driven war for our attention, I think a combination of all of those factors has led a portion of the population to be like the worst commenters in the world, constantly looking for the most uncharitable reading of what you could possibly have said, so that they feel like they're scoring some kind of points when they announce to their own audiences like that you've done a thing wrong or they feel

like they've one-upped that youtuber because they found a trivial error in his video i really do think that it it has gotten worse i don't think it's unsalvageable which is why i mentioned the charitable versus uncharitable readings at all but i don't think that it unsalvageable, which is why I mentioned the charitable versus uncharitable readings at all. But I don't think that it's you being more cynical over time, Brady. I do feel it in myself sometimes too, when I'm going through my Twitter timeline and looking at all the tweets and I see things that I think there are mistakes or snarky comments I could make back for just no reason. And sometimes I'll sit there and I'll get as far as starting to type it. And then I'm like, what am I doing? I'm doing it now.

I'm not being higher than high and mighty. I feel it in myself sometimes. It's awful. I think of it in my mind as a kind of sickness or infection, because I do think that it's something where if you're exposed to it a lot, that can kind of happen where you feel reflexively the same way. I feel like I have very slowly and somewhat erratically, but since we read the So You've Been Publicly Shame book, I feel like I have withdrawn from a lot of kind of behavior that I used to engage in on the internet. And I also feel that even as a man who is relatively isolated from all these things,

the average of my contact with the internet has been going down. I do find myself using Twitter much less. I find myself using Reddit much less. I think it's because I do still enjoy these things, but it does feel like there's this part that it's not just bad that it's there, but it's bad for your brain to be exposed to it on a regular basis. And so that's why I feel this like, pulling back of how much time I spend on these things. And I've been seriously considering doing again at some point in the future, like a real

full blackout for a while, and seeing how that that goes but do you know what i did the other day well i did about a month ago i took facebook off my phone best thing i've done in ages what did you use to use facebook on your phone for scrolling through people i know and friends and seeing what they're up to and stuff you don't feel that you're missing out having removed it no and i do it less it's not like i'm going onto my computer and doing it instead like it's been brilliant i would love to start taking other social media off my phone. I'm close to doing it. I'd love to take Twitter off my phone, but it's quite important for me to have Twitter on my phone because I tweet when I'm out and about for my work. I don't think for work reasons,

I don't think I can quite take Twitter off my phone. Twitter in particular is the one that is a useful professional tool. It feels like it has a genuine bang for the buck in terms of professional output versus input. So I can't ever imagine a world where I don't use Twitter in the same way that I don't use Facebook. It would just be such a bad career move to do that, that it's not possible. But I don't have Twitter on my phone. I only put it on my phone, like if I'm at conventions or other times where professionally it makes sense. But I took Twitter off my phone years ago. And I'll tell you that like the thing that I found the best about that, and why I would suggest you

take it off your phone if you can, is because it stops this little demon process from running in the back of your brain constantly that's thinking, what should I tweet? Or like, is this a funny thing to tweet? Or like you have a little joke pop up in your head and you're like, oh, maybe I could turn that into a tweet. I didn't realize how much my brain was thinking that until I took Twitter off the phone

and it just wasn't an option anymore. And I swear, like, I felt like I got back all of this mental real estate. That's why I have like no problem whatsoever about taking these things off the phone and only using them under like very particular circumstances. But like that being said, I'm terrible when I'm just at home on the couch on my iPad. Then I do like the exact same behavior that everybody else does, which is like I'm just kind of scrolling around Reddit and Hacker News and Twitter and bouncing back and forth between all of them. And it turns into a gigantic angry thread of people being angry. And it's like, why am I even reading this? I don't know because some part of my brain wants to read it, but I think it's bad for my brain to be exposed to this. So it gets everybody, it gets everybody in the end, but I think the more you can limit it, the better it is for you. So. I'm close. I was almost going to pick up my phone and do it now,

but I need to think about it some more. Come onady do it do it have your thumb thumb hovering over the twitter bot here's what you're probably thinking there are times when you need to tweet things is that right yes okay so here is how i started this is like my nicotine patch right for how i began. There is an app you can download called Buffer. And Buffer will allow you to send a tweet to Twitter without having to be on Twitter to do it. And so that's how I started. I uninstalled Twitter. I put Buffer on the phone. And so then I thought, oh, if I need to tweet something, like I want to promote a video or for for some reason, I want to put a tweet out there, I at least have the option to send things into the world without having to see what everybody's arguing about on Twitter at this particular moment. That's probably not the main reason I

would take it off, though. The main reason I would take it off is to stop that time sink where I wake up in two in the morning and just start seeing what's happening in the news or I'm trying to concentrate a tv show and I suddenly look at twitter and it's like oh Manchester United have scored oh it's true I didn't even know they were playing what's so it's that time wasting that I want to get rid of but I don't want to cut myself off from the world the way you have I like knowing that some big things happen. Someone famous has just died or there's just been a big sporting moment has happened or I do like those regular updates that Twitter is so good for. I don't know if I want to lose them.

I'm not saying that even I don't look at it at all. I use Twitter all the time on my iPad. I have it open on my computer when I'm doing stuff. I just think that the phone in particular is a good place to remove it if you can. I think you're right. I think you're right. Do you want to take it off right now, Brady? I'm doing it, Gray. I'm doing it right now. Hang on.

I'm really happy right now. Hang on. How do I do it? You have to hold down for a second and it'll start to jiggle and then you press the X. I did it. I'm so happy for you, Brady. Snapchat's going too because Snapchat's dead now. I'm keeping Instagram because you have to post the pictures from your phone on Instagram.

So I can't really use Instagram other than on my phone. But I am going to, I'm ditching Reddit as well. Okay, good. I think that's a good decision. Now, this is probably the worst time I could ever mention that I now have an Instagram account, Brady. I just got one. Okay. That's all right. I like Instagram. Why have you done that? Well, I've only done that because we were discussing a while back the idea that there

was this anti-verified person on Instagram who was pretending to be me who was using the CGP Grey name. Well, after many back and forths with Instagram and discussions about trademark infringement and many other things, I was finally able to wrest control of slash CGP Grey on Instagram from the anti-verified individual who had it. Good news. Well done. So I guess I need to install it on my phone now is apparently what I have just learned from you. What do you want to do with Instagram? I have no idea, Brady. I have no idea, but I feel like I have it. Everybody tells me that it's the one that's good. And this very conversation, like you going through what you

want to get rid of, you want to keep Instagram on your phone. It seems like this is the one that people like. So I have an Instagram account now, people. I'll be giving it a try and I'll be seeing if what people say about it, that it's the good one, really holds up. But I don't really know what I'm going to do. But now I can actually give it a real go now that I have my name. My only problem with Instagram is it's owned by Facebook. What kind of problem could that possibly be? Yeah. Gray, I want to keep the corners alive.

I feel like the corners aren't being watered and nourished the way they should be. So I want to do a few corners today. I feel like I want to sweep the corners. Yeah, I know you do. Appropriate metaphor to me. Oh, look at all this stuff I feel like I want to sweep the corners. Yeah, I know you do. That's the appropriate metaphor to me. Oh, look at all this stuff in these corners. Let's sweep it away. Let's start with the original and the best,

plane crash corner. The granddaddy of all of them. Because there was a story recently that I think, it just follows up on something we've talked about, because we always talk about if like something bad happened on a plane, like an engine blew up, would you have the presence of mind to photograph it maybe post it to your new instagram account right there was a new story that i read in the last few days that caught my attention there was an engine explosion

on a southwest airlines flight and it was very tragic because in fact someone died a woman who was sitting near a window she got partly sucked out of the plane and they pulled her back in, but she died from injuries. The plane landed and everyone else survived. And it was one of those ones where all the masks came down and there was a whole usual palaver. But there was one guy who not only had, I don't know if you'd call it the presence of mind, but there was one guy who not only thought to take pictures and video, he actually got his credit card out, bought Wi-Fi on the stricken plane and did a Facebook live. Really?

With his mask on. That is unbelievable. Mostly that's unbelievable because the few times I have ever tried to buy Wi-Fi on a plane, which I normally don't recommend that people do, I'm going to say when I have attempted it, maybe one out of five times have I been successful in actually purchasing the Wi-Fi on the plane. So I feel like that's a doubly amazing thing that a man could, under pressure, successfully enter his credit card number to whatever the form is

for filling out the Wi-Fi on the plane and then be able to live stream it. Like, I can't believe it has the bandwidth for that even. I mean, in his defense, his kind of excuse was he wanted to reach his loved ones and let them know that he was thinking of them if the worst happened. So I don't know if it was an attempt to get more likes or this could go viral. His reasoning was that it was for the love of his family, although his job is a digital marketer. So in the back of my mind, I am wondering whether he thought this is going to be awesome. Whether he set up the whole thing like Mr. Glass? Spoilers?

For what movie? Nobody knows, Brady. Anyway, thought that was worth a look. We'll put something in the show notes if you want to find out more details but how's that presence of mind that is coolness under pressure is what that is okay plane crash corner we had but i want to know what happened to brady's bylines brady's bylines is back i haven't heard it for a while so it's back it's back today i'm still in the very early pages of scrapbook one, because, you know, I really want to stretch this out as much as possible. And we've only done one before, and it was your very first article. So if we were jumping into

your second scrapbook right away, I would feel like that first year of your career was quite unremarkable, which surely can't be the case, Brady. My first scrapbook actually covers nearly three years. It was slim pickings in the early days when you were a cadet. It's later on where I start churning it out. Well, yeah, no, I hear that you get cheated out of bylines all the time by spiteful sub-editors. That has happened more times than I care to talk about. So I'm not going to do my second byline. We're not going to literally go through all of them in order.

That's what you're saying. No, just in case there are like completionists who are wondering what my second byline. We're not going to literally go through all of them in order. That's what you're saying. No, just in case there are like completionists wondering what my second byline was. It was a story about how fuel costs were tipped to a rocket before Easter. Right. But if you want to see that one, you'll have to wait for when Brady publishes the complete collection of his bylines. That would be brilliant. I think you should do it, Brady. When you're an old man, right, you can publish the seven volume set of brady's bylines do you remember the arcade game daytona like the racing game yeah yeah i remember my fourth byline was about that how it had become a huge craze and everyone was playing it let me tell you something i noticed though looking through the first sort

of five or six pages or seven or eight pages, there are a lot of articles that would be a picture of a cute animal that had just been born at a local wildlife park or a zoo or something where I had written the little article underneath. I think when you're a cadet and they just give you the rubbish jobs, if a photographer has taken some beautiful picture and they just need a couple of lines of copy, that's like what you give, you know, oh, let's get the new kid to do that. In my early days, I seem to be doing a lot of little captions for animal stories. This is just to give like a skirt of journalistic integrity to the fact that the newspaper wants to print a cute animal photo because that's what people like. Is that essentially what's happening there? That is exactly what is happening. Okay, got it. So there's like a great picture of a baby giraffe. So there's a baby giraffe where I've written the story about the new baby giraffe. People do like it when there are new baby animals born at zoos and things.

Oh yeah, of course. Who doesn't? Everybody loves baby animals. Exactly. So there are three or four of these. Okay. But the one I want to talk about is there's this picture here. And I remember this very well. four of these okay but the one i want to talk about is there's this picture here and i remember

this very well when i saw these animal pictures i was like oh there's one i have to find and i found it it's a picture of a cute little deer a little baby deer that had been born just after christmas and the photographer obviously put a little bit of tinsel around its neck and the newspaper wanted to run the picture and so brady call up the wildlife park where this deer was born and give us a few lines all they really care about is what the deer is called what its name is so i called this guy at the deer park and said it's brady from the paper i wasn't there when the photo was taken so i just call up and say oh we've got this cute picture of your deer tell me a bit about it it. When was it born? What breed is it?

And all that sort of stuff. And then I said, what's its name? And he said, I don't think they named their deers basically. They probably had hundreds of the things. And he said, it hasn't got a name. And I said, oh, well, they want to put a name on it. So can you give it a name for me? And he's like, I don't really care.

Why don't you give it a name? And I said, I can't name the deer. It's like, it's your deer. And he said, well, I don't care what it's care why don't you give it a name and i said i can't name the deer it's like it's your deer and he said well i don't care what it's called so you just give it a name and i said all right naming the deer feels like it crosses some kind of journalistic boundary like you're too involved with the story if only he knew that i was going to grow up to be a podcaster who was addicted to naming things so i said okay well when i come up with a name do you want me to call you back and check it's all right? And he said, I don't care. Just put it in the paper and then I'll know that's what the deer's name is. I feel like I could sympathize with this guy who's just trying to

get off the phone. Like, no, please don't call me back. Right. Whatever. No, you're wrong. This was like publicity for his wildlife park. This was brilliant, but he just couldn't come up with a name for the deer. So I was given the role of naming the deer. This story did not have a byline, by the way, unfortunately, for Brady's bylines. It was an uncredited journalistic skirt. That seems tragically unfair, given how involved you are in the actual story. I don't think I ever told anyone as well, because I don't know what the boss would have thought if he knew I named the deer. But anyway, I'll send you the picture in the article. We'll put it in the show notes

oh here we go all right he's a jolly good fellow fellow oh that's a pun for he's a jolly good fellow i didn't write that you sure i don't know that seems very brady no i wasn't wait a minute wait a minute so there's like three people involved with this story there's the headline writer there's the photographer, and there's you. A lot of people do different jobs at newspapers. It's not like a one-man band. No, but it's funny that it's a photograph with a caption. Okay, so reading the caption, reading the words that Brady of, what, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, wrote? Bearing in mind, when you're a new reporter, saboteurs rewrite almost everything. So

it's probably hardly a word that I wrote except the name of the deer i can't remember but all i remember is in the first year of your career as a journalist everything gets rewritten okay so now we've got we've got four or five people working on this caption for a photo there are more i could tell you more of them yeah okay santa's reindeer have been and gone, but this little guy is in Adelaide to stay. Garth is a fallow deer born during the festive season at Gorge Wildlife Park at Cuddly Creek. Sporting a bit of tinsel and a Christmas decoration, he seems to have caught the Christmas spirit despite his tender age. So you named the deer Garth?

Yeah, I was in a big Garth Brooks phase. I think I was actually about to go to a Garth Brooks concert around that time. Ah, okay. So this was not a Wayne's World phase that you were going through? No, it's named after Garth Brooks. We have now covered 100% of the Garths I could name. Well, how do you feel about that, Brady? Are you still pleased with yourself? Garth the deer. I wonder where he is now. Dead is where he is now, Brady. I don't know how long deers live, but he might be dead.

Yeah, not this long. I guarantee that. Let me check the exact date of that article. There is a 0% chance this deer is alive. Unless this is like the world's first immortal deer, this deer is not still around, Brady. December 26, 1995. 23 years. So I'm going to do a lifespan of fallow deer. Deers live five years. That's what I'm going to do a lifespan of fallow deer Deers live 5 years That's what I'm going to say I bet you it's 15

Fallow deer have an average lifespan of 20-25 years Garth could still be alive Oh Christ Gorge Wildlife Park Cuddly Creek You know what I'm doing this week I know Oh, Christ. Gorge Wildlife Park. Cuddly Creek. You know what I'm doing this week. I know.

I feel like I'm already seeing the future unfolding before me. Gorge Wildlife Park, still there. Do you think the deers have tags? I don't know, but I'm going to check this one out. Stay tuned, people. Now this is some real investigative reporting. Maybe it's going to be a theme of Brady's Byline after each one. Like, I follow it up like I bought the phone after the previous one.

Oh God, I forgot you did that. Yes. This is like ultimate investigative journalism. No, this is actually investigative journalism. I will 100% grant that. I find myself almost weirdly annoyed that you're going to spend this time trying to find out if this deer is alive. It's like I'm mentally shaking my fist at deer's prolonged lifespans. Like, why do they have to live so long? You're like, oh, I'm so happy for

Brady. He's deleted those apps off his phone to free up all that time to be more productive. Yeah, exactly. To be plowed straight into deer investigation. Brilliant is a site dedicated to math and science enrichment learning. Members solve fascinating, challenging problems designed to help them understand concepts at a deeper level. All the quizzes and puzzles on Brilliant are super interactive. And look, I'm going to warn you now, just a little bit addictive. I recently met up with a chap from Brilliant in San Francisco, and I was really struck

by how much time and passion goes into every course. They're real sticklers for detail, and these courses are labors of love. You can tell that when you navigate through one of them. The Brilliant attitude to learning is that doing the same problems just with different values doesn't improve understanding. It's far more important to develop intuition to really grasp concepts rather than memorize formulas. There are so many great resources here. I especially like the one on games of chance. But a thing I also really like is just dropping into the site and seeing their featured problem of the week. There's always three

basic, intermediate and advanced. For example, I just dropped in a few minutes ago and the basic one had a modified tic-tac-toe board. On this board, the middle square is blocked from use. You can only use the squares around the edge. And the question is as follows, in optimal play, will the winner be the person who plays first, second, or will it be a draw like on a normal tic-tac-toe board? Now you might feel like you know the answer, but how do you know? And well, are you right? To check out Brilliant and let them know you came from here, go to brilliant.org slash hello. The first 200 people who do that will get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

Premium subscribers get access to lots of extra cool stuff you don't normally see on the site. That address again, brilliant.org. This is good quality stuff made with care by clever people. Why don't you go and check them out? And our thanks to Brilliant for supporting this episode. Great, I've got one last corner. It's Brady's paper cuts. why don't you go and check them out? And our thanks to Brilliant for supporting this episode. Gray, I've got one last corner. It's Brady's paper cuts, but this is going to deal with something I know has been bothering you because I want to talk about email. I know you like me and everyone else in the world have been getting all these emails lately about

privacy and renewing your email list and stuff like that. You've been getting all these too, haven't you? Yeah, I almost took a screenshot of it, but it would have been annoying to try to block out the ones in between. But the other day when I opened up my email client, no joke out of 200 emails, 60% of them were these like, we're updating our privacy policy.

From every company I've given my email address to in the last 20 years of being on the internet. It's like companies I thought blinked out of existence a decade ago. Everyone I've ever interacted with is sending out these emails. Yeah. Obviously they're super annoying. There's obviously been some law change that you and I don't know about that's requiring them to take people off email lists or something like that. I do know the law. I think there's something really weird about the law, actually. It's called GDPR. And it's an EU privacy law, basically. It's a law for like, if you are a company and you keep any kind of digital records about people who use your service in the EU, there's a whole bunch of

new regulations about what they need to do in order to be GDPR compliant. It includes things like companies, they have to update their privacy policy, which is why we're getting the million emails. You have to, as a client, be able to request a copy of all of the data that you have. They have to have a mechanism in place for deleting your data if you so request. There's a bunch of these kinds of things that are going on. What I do think is interesting and kind of weird in a way I can't put my finger on about this law, something about it is like this weird intersection of the internet and extra territoriality when it comes to laws. Because the reason we're getting these bazillion emails is because by default, like if all of these tech companies have any people who are using their services in the European Union, they have to comply with the GDPR in order to continue to function in the European Union.

And it's like I don't have a problem with the EU creating a law that applies to how its citizens' data is going to be handled. But there's something weird and a little bit uncomfortable about, because of the way the modern world works, the EU has essentially created a law that everyone in the world has to follow, even if you're not an EU company. I don't know. I don't think any part of this is necessarily wrong, but I just, I find myself coming back to thinking about this a bunch because there's just something that strikes me as a little bit off or weird about this that I can't articulate. I think the closest I've come to is like if a country like North Korea declared that, you declared that you can't make fun of the ruler in any way, and somehow North Korea was in a position where every internet company in the world had to update their policies that like, oh, there's no making fun of the dear leader allowed on our surface. And I'd be like, wait, why can North Korea enforce their law

in the United States or in the UK? Like, that's a little bit what the GDPR feels like to me. But anyway, that's why we're getting all these emails. Yeah, I don't know about that. It would more just be a case of, if you make fun of him, we're going to block you in our country. It's the cost of doing business in that country. And people wouldn't care about not doing business in North Korea, but they do care about not doing business in the EU. Like, obviously, that's why North Korea is not a good example. And the EU is a different kind of example. So again, like, I don't think anything is wrong here.

But I don't know. I just keep thinking about this. I'll tell you the thing that annoys me is all the emails in the subject field always say action required. That's rubbish. Action is desired at your end. Yeah, exactly. But not for me.

If it means you can't have my details, good. I've never even heard of half these companies. And they're telling me I have to go to their website and update stuff. Yeah, no, I completely agree. They're all like, oh, action required. You must do this thing. It's like, no, the only thing I must do is delete this email. So, Greg, I watched your recent video about the dragon. What's it called? Some fable of a dragon. The fable of the dragon tyrant. Yeah. So, you know, congratulations on releasing a nice video.

That did well. Thank you. It's been a while. Been a while. Do you know what though? It rubbed me the wrong way. Before you say anything, don't worry, because never in the history of my videos have I gotten, I would say like a wider range of feedback on this thing.

So whatever you're about to say, don't feel like you're alone. Okay. Because I haven't, yeah, I haven't really seen what the response has been to it. But like, it was technically really good. It was a really fabulous animation production. And I know you had a team of people on it and everyone did a great job. And your script was really nice as well and all that sort of stuff. So kudos for the technical side of things. Obviously, this is part of your ongoing saga of fascination with death.

I would phrase it as my ongoing quest to ever so slightly move the needle on the probability of my own death is the way I would phrase it. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's that. I feel like, why have you become so obsessed with your mortality in the last few years? Like, that's a deeply personal question, actually. I've probably come to think of it. You could say, yeah, my grandma died and break into tears. So I apologize, but I've asked it now. Yeah, no. Brady, boy, aren't you about to look like a jerk? Yeah. In all seriousness, though, this is one of these things where I think it's impossible

to do videos on a topic like death without having people think that you're really obsessed with the topic. I am not. It just happens to be that there was a plan to have three videos about this topic, and it ended up like they got spaced out over a long period of time then it ends up looking like oh i've been brooding on the topic of my own death for like a year i would say that that is that is not really the case i think anyone who listens to hello internet as well would have that reinforced that you have like an interest in death that's not typical you mean a desire not to die like i would describe a desire not to die? Like I would describe the desire not to die as not typical,

which I think is crazy. Like I can't believe how accepting people are of this. Surely it would be normal to not accept aging and death. I think it's more someone your age. Normally you start thinking about it when it's a bit more imminent. you seem to be jumping on the train a bit early well i like to be prepared it's like if you jump on the train late this is the kind of problem that it doesn't do you a lot of good to think about when you're 90 i think it's better to think about when you're younger like in all seriousness i really do think we are at a time when it is possible that the first immortal generation is currently alive. It's just a question of where is that cutoff going to be? And that's entirely a question about how many resources do we marshal on this project? And in what space of time do we do that? But I feel like you're paranoid about what side of that line you're on.

Well, I mean, I've said before, like, I don't put the probability of my death in a normal way at 100%. I think there is a chance that I'm on the right side of the line. But I don't have what I think viewers and listeners sometimes think, which is like an obsession with, ooh, I might just miss it. I think if I am correct about that statement that like the first immortal generation is alive today, I think I'm probably either like well within or far beyond wherever that boundary is, if you see what I mean. Like either this is going to be a thing that is solved, you know, within 20 years or it's a thing that's not solved until like 70 years. even just a tiny bit and like changing a couple of researchers' minds and maybe like, ooh,

maybe senescence is the area that you want to go as opposed to, you know, some other area of science. I have three quick points then. Okay. And I expect to be brutally slayed on all three of them because I don't think about this much and you do. And so you'll have really good arguments and thoughts about it. And I'm just kind of making it up as I go. Again, I think about this much less than you think I think about this much and you do. And so you'll have really good arguments and thoughts about it. And I'm just kind of making it up as I go. Again, I think about this much less than you think I think about it. I know. Well, you've thought about it enough to make a bunch of videos about it and you research your videos, which is, I've watched your video one and a

half times. So that's the extent of my research. So I'm going to go in reverse order of how badly beaten up I think I'll get over my observation. Okay. So I'll save my worst beating for last. My first observation about your video, unless I completely misunderstood it, the way you portray the fable and therefore the way you portray the world is that there are large groups of people,

even organizations and institutions that propagate the belief that death is inevitable and we must all accept it. And I agree with that. That's obviously true. Whether it's one of these truths that society tells ourselves, what do we call them? Necessary lies or whatever? I totally think it's a kind of necessary lie that for most people, yeah, you got to have it be a necessary lie. So it could be a necessary lie, or it could be institutions whose bread and butter is created by that belief being propagated. That is obviously the case. The thing that I don't think is happening to the extent that it felt like in your video is that those organizations are the

reason that more isn't being done to battle death and to like to try and bring an end to death. I don't think those organizations have like lobbying power, like big tobacco or the NRA or anything. And whenever any organization or government that has the capability to launch a big project into battling death, you know, wants to do something, they're being lobbied out of it by those groups. I think there is no one who is opposed to life extension or better yet eliminating death altogether. I don't think there is like an anti-group. And I think the reason it isn't happening is for other reasons. I half agree with you. I 100% agree with

the first point that progress isn't being held back by the pro-death lobby in Washington. I don't think that that's the case or it's not a meaningful factor in any way. Lack of progress is almost entirely a kind of apathy. I feel like the main thrust of Bostrom's story, like the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant, is just that it's very easy to accept the status quo just as it has always been. And I think that's applicable to many things. And so I feel like there's just a big amount of,

well, it's just natural and pushing back on it is pointless. I don't even totally agree. I agree there is that prevailing belief in society, right? That death is natural. The other problem is obviously combating death has about 40 different battle fronts because there are so many different ways you die. Oh yeah. No, it's enormous, impossibly large battle front. Yeah. Yeah. But even so, I think the reason that more isn't happening on those battlefronts isn't even because of that belief though. I just think it's because humans don't think much beyond themselves and the problem's not going to be solved in one generation. And people have other priorities.

They want a highway built. They want a school. They want whatever they want built, whatever governments have to spend money on. And in all this prioritizing, healthcare, and then also, I don't know what we're calling it, the battle against death. I'm just calling it the battle against death, has its budget and has its priority. And it is where it is, not because of the reasons you think it's because of. I feel like we agree though, because I would agree with that statement completely, that there are more visually obvious and pressing things that people in their everyday actually want. Like, I want this highway resurfaced. I want more housing available in the city. These are things that people are concerned with in an immediate way in their everyday lives. I feel like I'm just trying to make the point that this problem strikes me as weirdly invisible to a lot of people.

I'm just trying to make the point that I think this is a huge, tremendous upside if we were to but marshal more resources for it. You do have to look at probabilities. There are lots of things that would have a huge upside, but you've got to think, what's the likelihood of us being able to do it? Oh, yeah. And this is where legitimate disagreement occurs on this front, because many people are of the opinion that, like you said, the battlefront is so wide and across so many different areas that maybe this is just a terrible expenditure of resources and the probability of victory is very low. I am of a different opinion on that one.

I feel like we have gotten far enough with a bunch of tools of science that I still think that the probability is sort of low within our life. But I do think that it's worth marshalling more resources in a more concerted way on this particular area. But I think that the argument that there are greater and more pressing concerns right now and different ways that we should spend the resources of a society, I think that's a totally legitimate argument that can be put to the other side of it. All right. Let's move on to things that are going to rile you more maybe because of my poor use of analogies and joining dots where you don't think there are dots. But there was one part of your

video in particular that irked me. Well, there were a couple of bits that irked me actually. Actually, I'll tell you one that I just thought of that irked me that isn't my main point. But you know the part of the video where, like, the moral advisor speaks to the crowd and tells them why they shouldn't slay the dragon? Yeah. You were so sneery and condescending during that bit. Like, I thought the video was a bit condescending.

Okay. I think maybe that's why I didn't like it. I felt you were being condescending to me, even though I think in the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty much like-minded to you on this. So I thought you were looking down on us a bit. And when you parodied that moral advisor, maybe you did too good a job because I was like, oh, that's harsh.

That's a bit mean. Good acting, Gray. Good acting. So this is an adaptation of somebody else's short story done with permission. And this went through many revisions i will say that i went out of my way particularly to tone that section far down from the original version i don't even necessarily disagree with you on that point i think your voice acting was too good at that point you got too much into the cat i could feel your revulsion for those views that person has yeah i mean okay yeah voice acting is a different thing i'm not a professional

voice actor i did very many different takes of that and i felt very kind of silly doing actual little voice acting in a sense for the moral advisor but yeah i like i toned that down from where it was in the original quite a lot and And I think that's a totally valid criticism. So the thing that did irk me a little bit was the part towards the end of the video where the man goes up and says, my dad's on the train. He's on the last train. He's going to die. So spoilers, by the way.

That's okay. There's spoilers. My dad's on the train. He's going to die. It's the last train. And the sad king says, if only we'd started, you know, a day earlier, your dad would have lived. Now I could see why that would be in the video and in the fable as a selling point. Like it's a good emotive moment that makes you think we've got to stop wasting time and do this because someone's going to be on the last train. So, you know, kudos to the storytellers for having that in there. I see its value.

But coming from you, I found it harder to take because you are Mr. Little things don't count. Don't bother voting. One vote can't make a difference. Don't bother voting. One vote can't make a difference. Don't bother recycling. One person recycling in their house can't make a difference. You know, sorting a few bottles in the grand scheme of all the recycling that needs to be done in the world. Little things don't count. And yet here you are in a video preaching a message of let's not waste a minute. Let's not waste a single minute. Every day counts. Is there not a contradiction

there of some sort? I felt something. I started chuckling there because, yes, I am without a doubt the number one advocate of individual contributions don't matter on collective action problems. 100% that is me. But there's two things here. The first is, I do think it is an important point, like the concept of the last train and someone is always on the last train. I do think that's a valuable concept in and of itself. And then secondly, there's a big difference between how I think about problems in the world and what are effective tools to motivate people to change their minds in real life. And so while I like to make videos like the Politics Explains videos that kind of run through the math of like, oh, here's why different voting systems are better than others.

Or I like to make videos that try to talk about logical reasons for believing things, I am under no illusion that that moves any kind of significant number of the population. The number of people who are genuinely moved by purely logical arguments is a small group of the population. And so if you want to make an effective argument that has a possibility of reaching people outside your normal audience, you need to have an emotive selling point. You were tugging at the heartstrings. If you want people to genuinely change their mind, you don't do it with logic.

You do it with emotion. And I think people who listen to this podcast, they won't like hearing that, but it's why the story is written that way. Yeah. I guess people who listen to the podcast and therefore know more about you, or me who knows more about you for the same reason, saw the hypocrisy. But I don't think it's hypocrisy to have an emotive punch at the end of a story. The story, it's going through it as a metaphor and talking about different things. And I feel like it has the concept of technological evolution in there, which is the whole reason why I feel like, oh, now we may actually be at a point in time where

we can do this thing. So like there is like, here's the reasons for thinking about this problem in a particular way. And then it also has an emotive point at the end. Again, a difference from the original story is I added the king's wife in there. Like in the original story, there is no queen who dies shortly before the completion of the project. So with the morality advisor, while I tried to turn things down as much as possible, because I was aware that that section in its original form, I thought when rebroadcast to a broader audience would be more off-putting than necessary. I did the exact opposite with the emotional point at the end. And I feel like I tried to crank the dial up on that because that's a way that you can impact people very directly. So if you want to call it hypocrisy, I suppose that you

can, but I just think it's like, how do you structure a thing where you want to change people's minds? I guess it's not hypocrisy. It's manipulative, but that's okay. That's what the video was doing. It was trying to manipulate people's views and there's nothing wrong with manipulation. Manipulation can be a force for good. Manipulation is a tainted word. But yes, without a doubt, I want to change the path of people's lives to marshal more resources into the projects that I care more about. And shock surprise, that's the goal of every human being on the face of the earth. Could you spread any more cheese on that ending where it was all about happiness and sunshine and making the world a better place?

You know, you got to wrap things up with a little bit of a bow. That's what you got to do, Brady. The one last thing I thought, and I know this is a really tired, cliched argument, and it's not, I don't think it's really my position, but it did make me think about it because of the way that you portrayed the dragon. because you kept portraying the dragon like as evil and a bad thing you personified him and made him a villain and that made me think like you know death obviously is not a villain or evil it's just it's nothing it's just a thing yeah Yeah. It's like entropy in the universe. And that did make me think, if it's not like an evil dragon and it's just a thing that has

happened, is it supposed to happen? I'm trying to think of things that have evolved and exist that aren't supposed to be in the universe. Does it have to exist? It did make me think that all of a sudden, because you so personified it, you actually made me think about how unpersonified it is. And you made me sort of think of it in less bad terms for some reason. And that did get me thinking, oh, it did kind of, you know, all these things have evolved to die. There's nothing that's evolved that doesn't die.

Like, why has evolution allowed everything to die? Funnily enough, the video for the first time made me think maybe death is supposed to exist. There are creatures that don't die that are natural immortals. So like evolution, not in all cases has creatures dying. Yeah. Planarian worms. Yeah. There's like, there are a few weird outliers. I think it's, is it lobsters? It's one of those things where I always think it's lobsters. And then I think, no, wait, I think I'm wrong about that. It's something else, but whatever. There are a few examples of this in the world. I know, unfortunately, like some species of jellyfish, which are abhorrent creatures, like they're naturally immortal, which is terribly unfair.

But when you say things like are natural or unnatural, I just like, who cares, right? Who cares what the natural state of the universe is? Because if we defeat death as a species, then that's natural too, because that's what we evolved to do. I think it's fair to classify human activities as unnatural. Okay. I don't really care what the goal of evolution is. And humans spend essentially almost all of their energy and time subverting the actual

goals of evolution. Like evolution wants you to reproduce and like that's its primary concern. And the machine of DNA that's in your body is like its whole concern is about replicating. But like I don't really care what my DNA wants. I care what I want. And to argue about death being natural, it's like, well, that kind of argument is like an argument against contraceptives. Like, well, no other animal on the face of the earth has has evolved contraceptives because that goes against what evolution wants. And I feel like, yeah, of course, that's what makes us human. That's like humans slogan is building up cities and insulating ourself from the random vicissitudes of the universe. If a comet starts heading towards the world, like, well, we're going

to try to nuke that thing out of the sky if we possibly can. Nothing we do is natural. And that's what makes us great. There's a saying that life finds a way, isn't it? You know, it's the Jurassic Park thing. Is it possible death finds a way? It is possible. We may live in a universe where machines that are as sufficiently complicated as humans are, that entropy just always wins. Maybe it doesn't matter how advanced your medical technology gets. You know, you can only extend healthy lifespans to like 150 and then entropy just takes over. There are many things that may be true in the universe. I suspect and I feel like there's enough reason to believe that that is not the version of the universe that we live in. I feel like we know enough about genetics and genetic machines and we have examples of creatures that are naturally immortal, even though they're much simpler than humans. So I feel like it strikes me as a possible project. But yes, it may turn out that we live in

a universe where it is an impossible project. One last question. I feel like we've had three one last questions, Brady. In the fable, it's sort of suggested that sacrifices have to be made for this project. The king sells his palace and stuff like that. What would you be willing to sacrifice, you know, as an individual and a member of society for this? Like, would you go to bread and water rations and live a less comfortable life

for a really, really concerted effort to end death? That's an interesting question. That depends on a lot of things. That becomes some kind of calculation about the probability of certain victory versus the probability of dying. And then it becomes like a micro level of the question that society is playing out on the macro level. It's totally the same thing. But that makes it more interesting to put it onto you. Because you're obviously not the president of the world, so you can't decide this.

But as an individual, your answer would be telling, wouldn't it? Sacrifice is a strange word, but this is a thing where I have dedicated a significant amount of professional time and money and effort to this project. Is it a sacrifice? Not really, because it's also partly my job, but it is totally doing some of the math. It is a project that has had a very large opportunity cost,

shall we say, for other things. Like in a way, I'm done with this project now, which in some ways is like an answer to what you're saying. I don't plan to spend a lot more time on this particular thing. And I feel like I have personally hit the optimal, like, investment versus reward outcome for this kind of thing, where I've made three videos, one of which maybe is actually convincing in some way. I can't conceive of any other way that I could

try to move the needle significantly. Like if I donated 100% of my earnings and lived like a pauper for the rest of my life to the, like a life extension foundation, I don't think that would move the needle as significantly as the videos have done. Although, oh wait, actually I just realized I do have, I may possibly be going to a life extension conference next year. That's a potential thing that's on the calendar, but I'm essentially, I'm essentially done with this. So that's the answer to your question. Hello, internet. Are you bored of the sad, unhealthy delivery food that you get sent to your house? Well, then today's sponsor HelloFresh is for you. HelloFresh is a meal kit delivery service that shops, plans, and delivers step-by-step recipes and pre-measured ingredients straight to your door so you can just cook, eat, and enjoy. HelloFresh sends you a box made up of fresh, responsibly obtained ingredients from carefully selected farms and high-rated trusted sources. And there's three plans for everyone

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Everything was measured just right in these little packages of just exactly what you need in order to make the meal. So I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, I don't want to go to the grocery store, but I also want tasty, delicious, healthy, easy to make food. I want HelloFresh. What do I need to do, Gray? Well, you need to go to HelloFresh.com slash HelloInternet and enter promo code HelloInternet. This will not only get the deliveries started to your door, but will also give you $30 off your first week with HelloFresh. Once again, visit HelloFresh.com slash HelloInternet

and enter promo code HELLOINTERNET to get $30 off your first week of HelloFresh. If you are ready to make a positive change in the way that you eat that is easy, with minimal fuss that also saves you time go check out hello fresh and let them know that hello internet sent you thanks to hello fresh for supporting the show and thanks to hello fresh for filling all of the office stomachs with delicious tacos so brady this past weekend you invited me to a thing, a secret thing, a secret cinema. Yes. It's been, you know, it's been going 10 years, the secret cinema.

I think I thought it was a brand new thing because I've only just heard about it this last year. I didn't realize it was that old. I thought it was newer than that, but I saw that line somewhere. Maybe I'll be fact-checked on on that one there's a tweets brewing up to let you know actually it's be charitable it's nine and a half years and that's it that ruins your whole conversation about it yeah so you invited me to secret cinema and like this is a company and it's an instance of what I have heard described as immersive cinema experiences. This happens to be one that is in London. And it seems like it's pretty big compared to some of the other things I've seen online. It's a big deal.

It's got a real cult following. It's very hard to even know how and where to describe it. But I can just say as an overall idea, they take a movie like a movie with a cult following or like a popular movie. And this company, Secret Cinema, builds a I don't know how to describe it other than to say almost like a like a mini theme park, a mini temporary theme park and experience around the movie. So you get a ticket and you are going to see a showing of the film, but you are seeing that showing of the film in a little universe of the film that has been constructed around wherever the theater is.

And they're like, they've moved locations all over London, like depending on what they're doing, they pick some spot and they convert it. So as an example, I know one they did a while back was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And they found like a big building to turn into a mental hospital. And they have actors who are acting out parts

in this environment. So it's like So I couldn't believe when we went how just enormous. And everywhere I looked, I kept just thinking about the astounding number of man hours that had been poured into the creation of what we saw. Another example, one that I've done in the past, which is one I really wish I'd gone to was Back to the Future, because I believe that one was set in a big outdoor square, which was a replica of the main square of like Hill Valley from Back to the Future, like with the clock tower and everything. And you were like living the day in that square. And then I think the big film was then shown on the, I think it may have been shown on a big screen on the front of the town hall or

something. So that would have been a really cool big screen on the front of the town hall or something. So that would have been a really cool one. But anyway, we should probably talk about the one we went to because it's quite a good way of explaining kind of how it works. Yeah. So you brought me along to see Blade Runner. That was the secret cinema that we did together. Which you hadn't seen before, amazingly. Yeah. So I think I had tried maybe three or four times in my life to watch Blade Runner. I thought, oh, this is a movie that I should see. And I put it on and I failed repeatedly

to actually make it through Blade Runner. Oh, that doesn't bode well. But so when you invited me to go to the secret cinema blade runner i had never been to a secret cinema before i did have a little bit of mixed feelings i was like oh right blade runner i have repeated experience with you but in this kind of environment i figured there's no way i'm not going to make it to the end of the movie and i definitely wanted to to go to a secret cinema and see what they were like and so yes that's why that's why i agreed to come along now there is like lots of secrecy around you know but

i think the run must nearly be over so i feel like there's a culture of of secrecy around it but i don't remember signing anything when i walked in there people stop listening now if you don't want to know yeah like if you don't want to know about the secret cinema thing, obviously stop listening now. Obviously there's going to be spoilers for talking about what going to one is like. But I also feel this weird thing. It's almost like, like if we went into Disneyland and people were like, oh, but you don't talk about what Disneyland is like when you're outside of Disneyland. It's like, well, no, I can talk about Disneyland. Like I went to a place and I saw, like, I can discuss what it was like. And I feel like there's some kind of weird social pressure, like

around not discussing it, but we're going to discuss it. So like tough noogies. Is it the mouse trap by Agatha Christie that has the same thing, the play where there's this don't tell anyone who did it. And it's like, it's a great case. I think that sounds right. Yeah. That's a bit what secret cinema feels like. And I can understand that. But at the same time, I'd feel like this, this annoyance. Well, no, I'm going to talk.

Like I went to a thing. We're going to talk about it. I think it's totally fine to talk about it. And if you don't want to hear what it's like to go to a secret cinema, you have been fairly warned and stop listening now. So now we're going to start talking about it. First thing, we had to wear costumes. This got me off on a little bit of a wrong start for the Secret Cinema because I thought like, I want to just go to the thing and see the movie. Why do I have to dress up like I'm in Blade Runner?

When I was going through the registration process and finding out about all of this, because we went with our wives and you didn't know any of this yet. I was so trying to like handle how the news was broken to you. As I was finding out you had to do this like personality test and then get told what character you were and what costume you had to wear. I was like, all right, we have to really downplay this side of things to Grey, right? There was a lot of management behind the scenes going on. Well, i have to say you did a pretty good job because i did feel like oh this costume is an unreasonable burden but little did i know all of the unreasonable burdens to come but they were like revealed one tiny step at a time to me and so i kept feeling like okay fine

i'll do this thing too but no more right then it becomes like a sunk cost fallacy of like, well, I already have this hat and I filled out this online personality quiz. Now I have to bring in three photographs of memories and I have to find a picture of an actress from an old movie. And I have to, the one where I really drew the line was they're like, you have to leave a note somewhere in public for someone else.

And I was like, no, forget it. Like, it's too far. I have all these pictures in my hands. I have this hat. I have this jacket I'll never wear again. I have a fake name. And I have to remember this guy's job who I'm not. And it's like, no, I'm not writing a letter and leaving it underneath a park bench somewhere.

It's like it's not happening. Spoiler alert, people. This story ends with Grey high-fiving a parkour expert in front of about a thousand people. Yeah, the ratchet was cranked up. The ratchet was cranked up one bit at a time. That's what happens. Anyway, we're all dressed up

and we traipsed across London in our costumes. We arrived at one of the tube stops out in East London. Canningtown, wasn't it? Yeah, Canningtown. And it's just like a perfect venue because we get to the tube stop and they direct us a street over. And there is this giant warehouse directly under a bunch of electrical pylons. And this has been turned into this like weird post-apocalyptic looking processing area where we have to turn over our fake ID cards

that we also had to print and fold. And there were specific requirements for how the photographs were, like all this stuff. To be fair, most of that pre-do stuff is one of the, it's like when you travel overseas to a new country and they tell you, you have to do this and bring that and do that form. And you work yourself into a panic about what you have to have and do. And in the end, you didn't really need to do any of it. And it wasn't that big a deal.

Okay. I agree with you, but look, my anxiety levels were high. And one of these things is, yes, there's all of this stuff that they tell you that you need to do. And the anxiety is precisely from this feeling of, I don't understand how to prioritize these things. Like which of these things really need to happen and which of these things really don't. Because the list said just bring some of these and they didn't say what ones to bring and what ones not to bring. I looked very closely and there were some places where it said bring some of these things, but there were other places where they gave you a checklist and i was like you need to run through this checklist and do all of this stuff and there was contradictory information which didn't help my feelings about this either god it did remind me a little bit about when i was going through teacher training and there

there was like a thousand bullet points of here's the things that you need to do to become a teacher and it's like well obviously no human can do all of these things. So how many of these things do I need to do? And they're like, well, just do as many as you can. No, how many, right? Like how many? Don't tell me as many as I can. I need to know the minimum viable number of things that needs to be done.

And there was no information like that to be found anywhere. So I think I showed up with like 80% of the stuff and felt deeply uncomfortable about it. Like, man, I hope the fact that I didn't write that letter and leave it somewhere doesn't really screw me in the end. Well, I have to say, like to cut in and say about my experience of the very start. All of what you just said, like not knowing what I've got and what I have. And like I had a deck of cards in one pocket.

Oh yeah, the cards. And you had to have like umbrellas and stuff like that. You had to have all this stuff and then you walked in to like the area the first area this outdoor sorting area and they had all these tannoys doing all these like official announcements that were supposed to create atmosphere and all this loud industrial noise and then the people who were like inducting you who were like actors in character like are yelling at you and telling you what to do and they were giving you more stuff and packets of envelopes and telling you what to do. And they were giving you more stuff and packets of envelopes and telling you where to go and where not to go

and sorting you out. And it was really, really confusing and disorienting. And I don't know if that was deliberate. It was supposed to twist your brain. So you already felt really sort of confused and not know what was going on for what was about to come, or it was just like a bit poorly organized. But that first sort of 10, 15 minutes, I found deeply unpleasant. Yeah. I had the impression that that was on purpose. Right. Because they were playing over the speaker's announcements that you couldn't possibly pay attention to while someone else is also trying to tell you oh here uh hold on to this uh take this thing and put it inside of there don't forget this thing and make sure you don't like put this wristband on you need this you don't need that here are some clues here's an yeah and then also

like go over there someone will come and grab you which i always feel like is a very highly nerve-inducing moment because it's like will will they? Will someone come and get me or will I be forgotten forever? I don't know. That entryway felt, I don't know, like I was fleeing some kind of war-torn country and trying to get across the border. And I just don't know what really mattered. And there was just a huge number of people as well. And I like being organized and I had all the, I was wearing clothes I'm not used to wearing because I was wearing like, you know, fancy dress and hats and things. And I don't know what envelopes got my wallet and my phone. And then they've just given me something and I've put that in that wallet and I've put my ticket in what pocket. And I felt like I was losing everything.

And it was deeply uncomfortable for someone who likes to be a bit organized. Oh, I'm right there with you, buddy. Because when they gave us the second wallet, that's when I felt like my whole life fell apart. Because now that I had two wallets and one of them is like, one of them is my real wallet. And the other one is my LAPD wallet. And bizarrely for the time that I am in this warehouse dystopia, my LAPD wallet is vastly more important than my actual wallet. So like, where do I put these in my pocket? I must have checked wallets in quotation marks 400 times during the evening because I kept freaking out about like, oh, I've got my wallet. Oh no, wait, that's my real wallet. Where's my badge? I don't have my badge on me. Like, oh, I need the tickets to be able to get something to drink. If I don't have

the ticket, I can't drink in here. I don't know. Like, will they accept out money from the outside world? I don't even know. I want to say while I am sounding like I'm kind of freaking out about this thing, I have over the past year and a half, I've been really thinking about this idea of novelty in my life, because when you work for yourself and when you work on the internet in particular and you work making things largely on your own, like even this podcast, right? Like we're here talking together right now, but most of the hours spent on this podcast are spent alone, like editing it afterward or doing other stuff. Like the recording part is a small part. But so while, of course, I have spent enormous amount of time over the years to get myself into that position, I'm losing my wallet and not knowing what's important and having too many things to hold in my hands and being unsure. I actually really like that part because I felt like this is novel for me. Like when is the last time in my life I genuinely

felt unsure and unprepared about a situation? The answer is years, because I work to make sure that this never happens. And so I liked it. I felt like it was a good play environment for this sort of thing. Like I'm not really crossing a border. I'm not really in any kind of trouble. Like the worst thing that's going to happen is because I'm unprepared. There's some part of the experience that I miss out on, but the feeling is still just as, as amped up as it would be. And so I felt like I am enjoying this as an experience of novelty, even though there are an enormous number of things that I don't like about it. So anyway, we then got sort of ushered into the building itself.

This is what I would describe as like the theme park of Blade Runner. They have a Chinatown and they have restaurants and there's a big square in the center and there are nightclubs and there's rain coming down from the ceiling. It was so impressive. And what I also found really impressive about it is, I don't think it was a super large space, but they did a very good job of making you feel like you were in the center of a much bigger area than it actually was. I think part of that is you don't have enough time

to really fully explore the whole place. So you end up feeling like, oh, it must have gone on forever in every direction. Whereas the reality is like, oh, you probably saw about 80 to 90% of what's there, but you're aware of just enough things that you didn't see that it feels like there was much more. But yeah, it was super Blade Runner on the inside. It was incredibly impressive. Yeah, for anyone who's seen Blade Runner, those kind of, all those scenes in the little noodle bars

and in the rainy streets where a lot of the film is set, it was like, it felt like that, complete with occasional rainfall. And you actually had your dinner in there. So you would sit at like an outdoor noodle bar and have noodles in the rain and try and shelter from the rain. And there was all stuff going on with both the guests and actors and it was it was quite yeah it really i mean this

again they were like you're being led to different areas and people are telling you things and like someone mentions what the password for a particular computer is it's like gone out of my head immediately there's all this there's all this information about all these various things, but these things are impressive. But there is one aspect of this which makes me a little uncomfortable, and it is the actors. I really like the environment, but when you're up close and interacting with someone who is an actor in the scene, I always find it unnerving and uncomfortable. Even if you're at an actual theme park and you're going on a ride, like you're at the Star Trek ride at Universal Theaters. And there's a guy who's like, oh,

hello, welcome new cadets. Like this is the first day on the job. I hope nothing goes wrong while you're testing out this shuttlecraft, right? Like of thing i always find it uncomfortable and then this secret cinema is that turned up to 11 because there's a lot of situations where you could be talking to someone who's an actor just as a one-on-one individual and like they have clearly set up the whole place as a kind of human text adventure they'll say things like oh you know you you better watch out for a slick willy who runs the bar downstairs like keep an eye on whoever he's talking to right and so then you know like there's things to do if you go find who this person is and this is what the whole like bring a thousand items is because all of those little items were clearly keys to unlock different parts of this human text adventure you'd see people

giving actors like oh here's a photograph of my memory and then they're led to some other part and it's all awesome but i just find it very, these too close of an interaction with the actors. And I was able to put my finger on why. And it's because it feels like interacting with someone who is wearing a mask. All of the things that you have learned about humans in your life for how humans react to various inputs like none of it applies here because you're not interacting with sally you're interacting with this member of the lapd who's doing a certain kind of role i think there's just some uneasiness for me about that where it's like, oh, you're not a person. You're a person wearing a mask. And I don't have a reasonable Bayesian output of

expectations for what you're going to say based on what I might say. Obviously, that is a weird scenario. We don't encounter much in life. But I do feel like it was kind of necessary to catalyze everyone else who were there as guests to get into it. We didn't particularly play the game, did we? they would say, go and find a guy in a leather jacket and talk to that person. And we kind of have ignored most of that and just wandered around and watched. We were terrible at the game because my only mission was I really want some noodles because I'm hungry and my wife wants some noodles too. So they're like, oh, you got to go to this bar. And I'm like, yeah, no, but I got to get my wife some noodles. But like, we were like detectives, like we were like detectives

like we were like cops that was our our role and there was one time when we were going to go into the nightclub and the guy who was like the bouncer on the door was supposed to be some sleazy dodgy guy and was giving everyone a hard time to get in and stuff and then we just thought hang on we're cops and we like pulled out our badges and said we're coming in like don't give us a hard time and he was like oh oh cops okay yeah go on't give us a hard time. And he was like, oh, oh, cops. Okay, yeah, go on in. And like, he played the role that he was really intimidated by us because we were cops and we went straight in.

And like, from that point on, I felt like a bit like I was a cop and I had a bit of power in this place. Like, and even though I didn't like play the game, like I quite liked that. I sort of, that's when I felt like I got into it a bit, even though I didn't play the character, it felt like I was part of the environment. You didn't play the character, but you certainly enjoyed the power. Yeah. I feel like if you didn't have the actors there to keep nudging everyone, like there are a few times through the time, even if you're not playing the game where you kind of

pretend to be that person for fun and like the actors help catalyze that quite a bit. So, you know, it was a bit cheesy sometimes sometimes i don't really think the characters or the actors were ever really cheesy like they didn't trigger that for me but i agree like they're 100 necessary i just realized like oh i've kind of clocked a thing about why am i uncomfortable in the interactions but i completely agree that if you did the exact same thing but it was just an environment and there were no actors there a tremendous amount of the experience would be lost but i feel like if i were to do it again i would go in there knowing that like i don't really want to directly interact with the actors but i am very happy that they are here acting like dungeon masters who are establishing the world

like it was the same thing with the costumes. Like, I really didn't want to put on a hat and a jacket and really go undercover and take off my glasses and put in my contact lenses. Like, oh, now no one will ever be able to recognize me. I didn't want to do it, but I was very aware that once we were in the environment, it would be a totally different environment and feeling

if everybody was there in civilian clothes. The simple fact that lots of people were wearing hats and trench coats, it just changed the feeling. And I can't fully get into it all the way. I can't not think of the people as actors and I can't not look at all of the pieces and think about how they're all working together. But the actors plus the environment really create the feeling. And again, I tremendously enjoyed it as a novelty experience, even though almost every part of it I was resistant to on the way in. The thing that I hope comes across, people might think this is like a station by station

adventure where you're following a plot and going from place to place and things unfolding. But you really are just free to roam. And there's just little things happening that you can stop and observe or be part of. And everyone seems to be just doing their own thing. And you just wander about and see what happens. It's not interacting with npcs on rails you're interacting with npcs in an open world sorry actors to call you npcs but you know that's that's what you functionally are in this environment how'd you like watching the movie

brady you've seen it like a million times right how did you enjoy it with actors around i've seen it probably four or five times but yeah we then got seated in this like back part of the warehouse where they had like bleachers and cinema screens but then all around the cinema screens was all this rigging and platforms and in front of the cinema screens was this large concrete area like a road so as they showed the film there were also interactive moments like quite often during the film like in pivotal scenes you could be looking at the screen but there were also interactive moments like quite often during the film like in pivotal scenes you could be looking at the screen but there were also actors kind of acting out and miming what was happening in kind of a stylized way and also quite often when things happened in the film that

had sort of light features to them like a lightning strike would happen they would flash lights in the actual building as well or if a hovering car flew over you with orange lights, there'd be a sweeping orange light going over the audience and stuff like that. So there were all these extra elements added to try and make the film more immersive and not just watching it on a flat screen. Yeah. I had a divisive experience with this. I enjoyed the additional environmental elements. So when they're in Chinatown, they had additional signs to light up around the room. I thought that was nice.

I don't actually think this stuff really adds anything to the movie, but it's fun. I'm not the prime audience for this. A guy who wandered in off the street and is like,

oh, Blade Runner, I've never seen this movie before. Let me go to a whole fantasy land constructed around Blade Runner that requires an enormous amount of upfront effort to go to. I think my wife and I may have been the only people in that whole event that had not seen the movie earlier. So I don't think the immersive stuff added anything, but I did think it was fun.

I particularly liked it on busy street scenes. They would have a bunch of people just come out on bikes and moving carts and doing stuff in front of the movie screen. I like that the best. The thing about the whole evening that I liked the least was actors acting out what we're seeing on the screen at the same time. Like I felt like that added nothing and if anything, just detracted. And I feel like even if I was a real fan of the movie and had seen it a bunch of times and already knew these scenes, I don't know, maybe your experience was different, but I just, I can't see how that's enjoyable to see someone who's not Harrison Ford pretend to be Harrison Ford.

My feelings on that is as follows. Like if I was seeing the film for the first time, I would find it particularly distracting. Knowing the film reasonably well, the first time it happened was during a very famous scene in Blade Runner when Deckard first meets Rachel in this big open room, which has all got all this sort of yellow backlit it's a very stylized iconic scene and when that scene was happening up on one of the like railings they had this like bright yellow light and they had actors dressed just like them doing the meeting and using the same kind of choreography as the scene walking past each other and that and i thought that is very artistic the way they've done it their silhouettes it looks. It's like a nod to a very famous scene.

Yeah. And I thought, oh, this is good. Just cherry picking two or three iconic scenes and having a little homage to it at the same time is going to work really well. And I felt really positive about it. That was the best one. That was the best one, yeah.

But then as the film went on, they did it too much and they were doing it all the time. And during a few really important scenes as well like the final scene in the rain but in the fight and that sort of stuff they were doing it then and i felt like they shouldn't have been doing it then because you should have been watching the screen and not figuring out where the actors were going to pop out next and what they were going to do i thought they laid it on too thick i thought if they did it four or five times for particularly stylistic moments it would have been good

but they did it a little bit too yeah that's a good point for a moment that you could envision as a poster of the moment yeah like that scene of of the two characters meeting yeah it seems like yeah you could pick out a few of those moments but what i don't need to see is a guy who's not harrison ford and a guy who's not the replicant fighting above the movie screen while the actual fight is occurring. Like the fight stuff was the worst. Like, please don't do this. This is terrible.

And they're having those like stage fights, you know, that are very. Yeah. This doesn't look even remotely real. So I was just mostly not looking at them and grateful when they moved off to like a far end of the screen. I'm like, oh, thank you. If you're now out of my peripheral vision doing whatever it is you're doing, pretend Harrison Ford.

Yeah. I think they didn't quite get it right, but it was okay. There were a few good moments. Do you feel like you were able to even absorb the film in that environment or was it too much? I was able to absorb the film. The actors were less distracting than you probably thought they were. I think if I was in your shoes, I would be thinking,

oh God, these are probably super distracting for someone who's never seen the film before. Yeah, I was glancing over at you a bit occasionally thinking, I wonder if this is distracting. But every time I looked over at you, you were just looking straight at the screen. I could tell you weren't paying any attention to the actors. Yeah, they were more ignorable than you would probably estimate they were. Because you are able to pay more attention to them because you already know what's happening on the screen and whereas i don't

so i'm just looking much more at the screen with blade runner yeah i don't know i guess i'd give it a like a meh out of 10 i'm glad i saw it i guess it felt to me if i try to put it in words it felt a little bit like watching a screening of citizen kane where i recognize the cultural importance of this movie having watched it i am glad that i have finally made it all the way through blade runner because it is it is such a like a culturally important movie for the sci-fi world yes that's how i feel about it it's culturally important i feel like i'm able to put on the goggles of the time and say at the time i can imagine what this was like it is of its time like the pacing of the film and yeah there's a thing

about it which it is very of its time as a modern viewer like i have a harder time putting on the goggles of it as it was but i think that's because this is the first time you know i'm seeing it now and it's like i'm so far past when the movie originally came out that unlike other movies that are older where i can more easily slip into the mindset of like oh yeah how was this thing when it came out like it's harder for me to do that with blade runner so i couldn't exactly recommend that that anybody go see the movie on its own merits but that's why i file it under the the citizen kane banner like i'm glad as a moviegoer that i have seen the movie citizen kane because i feel like it contributes to the language of cinema. And there are times when you can pick up on the references of like,

oh, they're doing the Citizen Kane thing here. Like if you think about movies lasting over time, and obviously the vast majority of movies do not, but a hundred years from now, people will probably still be watching and discussing Citizen Kane. I think it's fair to estimate like a hundred years from now, people will probably still be watching and discussing Citizen Kane. I think it's fair to estimate like a hundred years from now, Blade Runner will also be one of those movies that people will still be watching and discussing. So I'm glad I saw it. It was nutritious, but not delicious.

Yeah. Maybe that's a good way to put it. I really liked the guy who played the main replicant. He was amazing and he totally stole every scene he was in. A lot of stuff that was just weird that didn't quite work for me in the way that it's weird. I'm glad that you brought me along, Brady. I'm glad that I saw it. I'm glad that I went to Secret Cinema. Overall, big thumbs up. Even if the movie I'd be like, eh, that's a movie on its own. So it's okay.

It's okay. But it's not thumbs down or up for you on Blade Runner as a film. Oh yeah. Let me think. Let me do it the Brady way. Like on the 360 degree circle, where is the thumbs?

Well, if we're putting zero at the top. Wait, I don't know. I don't know where our zero mark is. It's a clock. Where is the hour hand pointing on the clock? Oh, where's the hour hand pointing on the clock? 9.30, I guess. That's where I'd put it. 9.30. Oh, so it's below the horizontal. No, wait a second. No, that's the hour hand pointing on the clock? 9.30, I guess. That's where I'd put it.

9.30. Oh, so it's below the horizontal. No, wait a second. No, that's above the horizontal. No, hang on. We're doing the hour hand, right? Yeah, so it's... You're on the other side of the clock.

I was on the... Yeah, okay. 9.30. So just above the horizontal. Can I just say how much in this moment I particularly enjoy this way of ranking movies because not only have we turned the binary into an infinite circle, but it's also an infinite circle that's symmetric on either side

makes it doubly confusing