Hello Internet - HI #121: Mr Speaker

Episode Date: March 31, 2019

Grey and Brady discuss: Hello Internet Shoes Revisited, buying the Black Stump, Algorithmic Mysteries, Brexit, and Vertical Videos. Sponsors: Try Dashlane here: www.dashlane.com/hellointernet (Plus, here's a promo code -> hello50 for first 200 people to get a 10% discount) Ting: a smarter, less expensive and more human approach to cell phone service - get $25 off your bill (or $25 off a new phone in the Ting Shop) at hi.ting.com Curiosity Stream: unlimited access to the world's top documentaries and nonfiction series - go to curiositystream.com/hellointernet and enter promo code hellointernet during signup process for a free 30-day trial Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show notes Discuss this episode on the reddit Tim shoes SHOES ARE BACK FOR A LIMITED TIME Black Stump for sale Unmade podcast Humble Pi (or here) Humble Pi signed by Bradley Brexit Briefly Revisited John Bercow What causes rare rainbow arcs? - Sixty Symbols Permalink

Audrey. You're always trying to cut Audrey out of the show, and I think she's perfectly fine being in the show. So Tim Cook's just been doing one of his, you know, things, his keynotes. I don't even know what he's doing. But I know it happened because my Twitter lit up with people telling me that he was wearing knockoff Hello Internet limited edition trainers. Really?

And I went and had a look at a picture. And the shoes he's been wearing do bear a striking similarity to our classics from a few years ago. This was just live now, which I totally forgot about. Just now. Hang on, I'll send you a link. I think this was supposed to be their boring one about TV programs or something. Oh, I couldn't give two hoots, but I'll send you a picture.

Well, Brady, if you're looking for something else to give $9.99 a month to, I think Apple's probably got a service for you. I've sent you a picture so you can see these trainers. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They look like them, don't they? They do. They do look like them.

I wish I knew he was going to be wearing them because I would have had them back in stock. I was going to say, there's a possibility that they're the real thing, but they're a little too dark. They're a little too black on the top versus the actual Hello Internet color. I don't know if they've got that white toe as well, but it did prompt me to email my shoe contact and say, so any interest in spinning up production again? If Tim Cook's about to start a new trend among nerds for wearing this kind of trainer, I think, you know, we should be there. Yeah. I think I want to capitalize on that if that is going to be the new trend among nerds. I'd also be happy if Mr. Cook, Mr. Apple is listening. And if he wants a complimentary pair, I'd be more than happy to send some along. I think

we can make that work, Tim. What did you do with your pair? Storage? Like are they archived? That's an interesting question. And when you asked me, I had that split second chill of horror wondering, where are they? I think I'm going to assume that they are somewhere under the aegis of my wife in the house, as is the Hello Internet record and a couple other Hello Internet items. So I don't know where the shoes are, but I'm just going to assume that they're being safely protected somewhere in the house.

I've got a safe pair of shoes that I thought I would start wearing when my old ones gave up the ghost because I'm really hard wearing on shoes. Yeah. But this is the absolute truth, Gray. My original pair that I probably wear almost every day just get better with age. They're like a fine wine. And this isn't even a sales pitch because you can't buy them anymore. This is just me saying they are like a fine wine. They are the best pair of shoes I've ever owned by some distance. Brady, I have this feeling like I want to stop

you from talking because if people can't buy them, I don't want you to talk about how great the shoes are now, right? You have to wait until we can make them available again. Oh, I'll see what happens. My guy might not want to make them anymore after last time, but I've put the email out. Maybe it's time for a redux. It is true though, that every time I see you, you're wearing them. And I'm not sure if that's a measurement effect that it's just every time you come to see me, you want to put on the shoes or if they really are wearing them every day, but no, I'm glad to hear that they're treating you well, Brady. I'm almost a little bit embarrassed when I see you and I realize I'm

wearing them because it makes me like self-conscious that you think I'm like a walking billboard. But then again, I just FaceTimed you and you were wearing a CGP gray hoodie over a Jamaican rice rat t-shirt. So you're shameless. You know what? I didn't realize it until the FaceTime camera came on. And immediately, even though my hoodie was zipped up 95% of the way, you were like, oh, that's Swamp Rat. I got it. Like you do immediately. You've got a sharp eye for the hello internet merch brady well speaking of the shoes and storage of limited edition shoes that immediately makes the mind jump to the future hello internet museum right as it does which also immediately makes it jump to its possible venue of the mighty black stump in adelaide there is incredible news about the Mighty Black Stump. Incredible news?

Incredible news. Very important news. Oh, very important. Okay. What is the important news about the Mighty Black Stump? The building is for sale. Oh. And I'm not sure this is something we should be ignoring.

Okay, Brady. You say should be ignoring. As though there is action that could be taken on this. Is there? I mean, I hear that Adelaide is just an amazing city that everybody wants to go to, with almost certainly then property prices to match. So I'm not imagining that a building in Adelaide could be gotten for a deal. I don't have any concept of what building prices are, but I think they're going to be rather beyond our reach. I've forgotten what I heard being rumored. I think it was like $200 million.

Let's say that is several orders of magnitude, at least, more than our ability to purchase. Yeah, but you always hear about, oh, there's been a new record set for the fastest and most successful ever Kickstarter. Like, maybe we should be the ones to break the record and have like a podcast by a skyscraper asterisk skyscraper before you make any decisions oh yes you're right let me hold back for a moment and be prepared to be swayed yeah before you make any decisions about trying to raise $200 million to buy a building. Right. Yeah. Let me read from the advertisement because

I have found the listing here. Expressions of interest are being sought. 25 Grenfell Street, Adelaide, South Australia. Postcode 5000. We have the land area, 1,900. I'm looking at all the square meterage i hate it when people are telling you about their house and they tell you like the square meters or square footage of their property that means absolutely nothing to me totally agree it means nothing at all it could be a postage stamp or it could be buckingham palace and the numbers i wouldn't know the difference yeah i was just just last night watching some property shows and it's always, they open up with the square feet and it's like, this number means nothing to me. I cannot conceptualize this square number of feet in anything that's meaningful.

It's the same when someone has a baby and they tell you the weight and they look at you expectantly, like you're supposed to go, oh, that's a big one. Oh, that's small. I have no idea. Tell me, is that big or small? I don't know. They just say pounds and ounces and it could mean anything. But at least with babies, it's very simple. You know that no matter what the person says, you have to make some general positive baby comment. You go, oh, that's great. I literally just did this with a baby yesterday and I asked, oh, how old is he? You know, and I get a number in weeks and I realized like,, how old is he? You know, and I get a number in weeks and

I realized like, this doesn't mean anything to me. I know, I understand an age. Like I know what a week is and a year. I have no idea whether a baby should be talking or walking though. Like if someone says they have a kid and then I say, oh, how old? And it's not there. And they say, oh, it's four years. I have no idea. Is that person walking and talking or are they pooing themselves or do they crawl? I don't know when all those things happen. I know when you're five, you go to school. So I know you're not crawling and pooing when you're five. Well, yeah. I mean, mostly you're not crawling and pooing when you're five. Yeah. For me, kids conceptually begin at about 11 years old, which was the youngest I ever taught. And it's like, oh, okay, you're 11.

I understand. I have some mental framework for what you are. But from like, birth until 11, it's all a fog of who knows, I have no idea. Well, let's skip the square footage of the Mighty Black Star, because that's of no interest to you. But let's just get to the purple pros an iconic asset is the headline 25 grenfell street iconic yeah love it it says here positioned front and center in the core of adelaide's office precinct grenfell center at 25 grenfell street is instantly recognizable as one of adelaide's most prestigious and high-profile A-grade office towers. The landmark building is home to the elite, dominated by key corporate tenants capitalising

on stunning views of the Adelaide Hills, Greater Metropolitan Area, and to the coast, enjoying the comfort of building services that have set the standard in South Australia's capital city. I mean, the implication there is they've made black really trendy, that all the buildings look like it, but I don't think that's the case. Well, setting the standard is referring to the comfort of building services. Oh, okay. Maybe it's like their coffee shops have hot stoppers. That's the standard level for comfort. Unbelievably, there's not a single word about either the cafe or the hot stoppers.

Right. I think they're missing a trick there. Yeah. I mean, they could say the building, a frequent focus of international discussion. They could add even more, like alluding to the Hello Internet podcast in their ad. I think they could do that. It could be referred to as a Tim Mecca. This office building stroke pilgrimage site. I'm just sowing seeds,

Gray. You don't have to make a decision now. Expressions of interest close on April 18th. I understand that you're trying to sow seeds, but they will not find fertile ground here. You're not going to sway me to start a campaign to own an office building in Australia. It's not going to happen. I hope the mighty black stump finds a good home. I hope whoever purchases it takes good care of it. But I'm not looking for ownership in Adelaide commercial real estate. Many, many magnitudes of order beyond our scope. Who knows?

Maybe later. Maybe it'll come on the market again in a few years. We'll reassess at that time. Yeah, okay. I can promise you that, Brady. If it comes on the market again, we can discuss it again. So, you know, our friend Matt Parker has a new book out. It's like a mathematical book. It's called Humble Pie, available in all good bookstores, including a bookstore I went to yesterday. And in the acknowledgements,

Matt has put my name and he's deliberately spelled my name incorrectly because it's a running joke between us. And he's called me Bradley Haran in the notes. So, I saw a copy of the book and I went up to the owner of the store. And you know how authors sometimes go into books and like sign copies of their books to add value to them i went up to the owner of the store like the manager okay and i said do you want me to sign this book i think he at first thought i was the author and he said oh that'd be fantastic yes thank you and then i thought i better clarify and i said oh i should let you know i'm not the author i'm just a guy who's in the acknowledgements. I tried to explain why he should let me sign it. And I said, I'll tweet it. And like, it would become desirable because I was trying to help

Matt. You know, I was just doing it because I thought if I did that tweet, it would just raise awareness of his book and I'd be doing Matt a favor. Right? Okay. You're doing Matt a favor, but also you're going into the bookstore and being like, hey, let me sign some of your books here. Let me do you a favor bookstore. No, no you a favor bookstore honestly my motivation was purely just it was just an excuse to mention his book again and create buzz because i owe matt a few favors and i can't just keep saying buy this book buy this book it was like a publicity stunt really okay right so the manager's like looking at me and he's like i could tell he was really uncertain about what to do and And he thought I was just a complete weirdo. And at that exact moment, like his deputy or the guy standing next to him working in

the store just leaned over and said, I know who this guy is. I listened to his podcast. You should let him sign the book. So this Tim came to the rescue and then the manager was like, all right, then do it. Thank you. I signed the book. Sure enough, someone came in and bought it afterwards. And, all right, then do it. Thank you. I signed the book. Sure enough, someone came in and bought it afterwards.

And, you know, everyone loved it. It was a thing. But the guy wasn't going to let me do it until his assistant manager, Tim, swooped in and vouched for me. Okay. I mean, you know me, Brady. I have a reluctance to random audience interactions just when you're going about your daily life but i do have to say that swooping in is amazing yeah i feel like if i'm ever in a situation where there's some kind of problem i would love nothing more like um you know the border agent is giving me a hard time and i would just just love the supervisor be like hey i listened

to this guy's podcast you should just let him in and then it's fine right that would be great it was a total rescue too because i was i'd been a bit worried about doing it and then i'd done it and i was sinking and i was thinking oh my god like i'm just a nobody and this guy knows i'm a nobody and now i look like an idiot. Right. And this guy just like suddenly turned me into a somebody for a few seconds, just to like give me some credibility. I was able to walk out of the shop with my head held high. I mean, I would describe it a little bit worse than that, because it's not that you look like an idiot. It's you're feeling like a nobody and you look like a nobody who is grasping

at the thinnest of threads to hold on to for any kind of notoriety. Yeah, that's right. I'm in the acknowledgements. Yeah, my name's wrong, but I'm in there. I was mentioned in the acknowledgements. Please let me sign this book. This is what notable people do, right? Yes.

Oh, it'll be. I'll put it on my Snapstagram. Don't worry, sir. Like the book will sell immediately. It's not a good look, Marino. So that's why that is quite frankly, an amazing save on behalf of an audience member there. That is a perfect save. Just for context. So people know, cause now I'm feeling like an idiot on my own podcast.

Okay. All right. I feel like we know everything we need to know here. I mean, people have a long history with you, Brady. And like they've listened to the show. I think people can surmise the situation here, but please give it a bit more color. It's an ongoing joke because Matt got my name wrong in the first edition of his first book, and his new book is all about mistakes. He deliberately spells my name wrong. And it's

like the final sentence of the final acknowledgement. It's like a punctuation point on the book. And we make a big joke about it. And it's like a punctuation point on the book and we make a big joke about it and it's like a known thing that if anyone buys one of these bradley editions right i'll sign it as bradley right so it's not like i'm just like you know my name is like in an index somewhere in a book and now i want to go around and sign all these books it's like this is like a joke of the thing and And for the subset of Matt Parker fans who also know what Numberphile is and know who I am, this is like a little joke in the community that he keeps calling me Bradley. Do you feel better with that explanation, Brady?

It made sense in my head. Anyway, the book sold, thank goodness. Because if I just vandalized this book and then no one ever bought it, then I would have felt really stupid. Well, you're being a good friend, supporting the book, going around into bookstores and signing it as Bradley. I just did the one. That was the joke.

I said, this is the one and only that I've... Oh, I give up. I thought you'd be there for me. I thought you'd be there for me. The Tim pulled me out. You've put your foot back on my head and pushed me under the water. I have totally not done that. I've totally not done that, Brady. I mean, look, I'm just letting you describe the situation. And I think it's an amazing story. It is perhaps the best way an audience member, a Tim, could ever come in and save you, save you from this horrific,

uncomfortable situation. It really is amazing. There have been calls for him to get a Medal of Honor. I thought maybe that was overstating the case, but you're making me think maybe he does deserve one. I mean, the amount of social awkwardness avoided is tremendous. So, I mean, it can at least go into consideration. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by Dashlane. We all have way too many passwords to remember.

Way too many. So what do you start doing in that situation? You start having bad passwords. And reusing passwords and having lame passwords, that is bad internet security. That is begging for some kind of problem. Enter Dashlane, the password manager endorsed by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, and is the top rated one on the App Store with an average score of 4.7. Dashlane generates secure passwords for you, so you don't have to worry about remembering

which passwords have a number or which passwords require capital letters, or you don't have to have passwords written down on a little sticky note next to your computer. Dashlane will create the safest possible passwords and remember them for you automatically. And those passwords of yours are automatically synced across your various devices for a seamless browsing experience on anything that you're using. And that includes Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac. So if you want to give Dashlane a try, they have a free version that allows you to store

up to 50 passwords on one device. So this way it lets you see if you like Dashlane, which you will. And then when you want to upgrade to the premium version, you can get 10% off with the promo code HelloInternet. So you can go to dashlane.com slash hellointernet and then enter promo code hellointernet to get 10% off. The premium version is $4.99 a month and this will give you unlimited password storage, sync your passwords across all of your devices, instant form and payment autofill, VPN and Wi-Fi protection, and a whole bunch of stuff. So once again, to try Dashlane, go to dashlane.com slash hellointernet and get 10% off with the promo code hellointernet. Thanks to Dashlane for supporting the show. And thanks to Dashlane for

keeping the passwords of 10 million users in 150 countries secure. I want to tell you a story of something that happened to me yesterday. Okay. And it's like a mystery that I want you to you a story of something that happened to me yesterday. Okay. And it's like a mystery that I want you to help me solve. Just to be clear, it's a mystery. It's not like a puzzle, right? Yeah, it's a mystery.

It's like an Agatha Christie. Okay. I'm going to lay out the story and then you're going to tell me like how it happened or who done it because I can't figure it out. Okay. All right. And if anyone can figure it out, I think it's you. Oh, pressure's on now. So, yesterday morning, I was recording another podcast with my friend Tim.

He's in Australia. And I spoke to him about an advertisement from our childhood that was on TV in Australia. And I had searched for it on YouTube before. It was for a car dealership, for a Mitsubishi car dealership. And it had this really terrible jingle that I wanted to discuss. It wasn't that beer commercial or whatever? What was the thing you liked with the beer? You're like, oh, this beer is really Aka or whatever. Yeah. It wasn't the West End one. No. Okay. So anyway, so I looked it up to refresh my memory and I spoke to Tim about it and I said, oh, do you remember this advertisement?

And he said, no, I don't remember actually. And he had no recollection of it. And I thought, fair enough. Spoke about it for a minute or two. Conversation moved on. We kept recording. And I reckon 40 minutes later, completely unrelated, no segues involved. We were moving on to completely

unrelated topic he brought up the fact that he'd been searching youtube the week before and had stumbled over this video about this incident that happened in a snooker tournament a game of snooker and there was this like argument between the players and whatever. And I had not heard of it. I'd never seen it before. He told me about it. I was like, oh, I've never seen that. It's a really interesting story. I didn't look it up or search for it.

I just heard his account and found it very interesting. I said, oh, nice one. That was it. Later that night, so five or six hours later, I was starting to edit the podcast. So I thought, oh, the first thing I want to do is was starting to edit the podcast. So I thought, oh, first thing I want to do is I want to get the audio from that Mitsubishi ad. So I did the search on this Mitsubishi car dealership on YouTube, up came the video, and I was like, great, I can snatch the audio, a bit of the audio from this that I want to

use for this podcast. And the second or third recommended video on that little bank on the right was this snooker incident that I'd never heard of, I'd never seen before, I'd never searched for, I knew nothing about. It couldn't be less related to a Mitsubishi car dealership video with 900 views from Adelaide. No links whatsoever. And it's there recommended on the right. Funnily enough, I was going to need to look for that in the next 20 minutes because I was about to search for it because I wanted to find out about it. I had no idea how the link was made.

So the first thing I thought, like the obvious thing I thought was, oh, maybe after the podcast, Tim searched for that Mitsubishi ad himself because he wanted to see the Mitsubishi ad his previous search or something maybe had been the snooker thing the week before and they got linked in that way which in itself I thought was a bit creepy but it made sense so I texted Tim straight away and said did you look up on YouTube search or do anything at all to do with that Mitsubishi car ad that I told you about? He said absolutely nothing. He didn't look for it, didn't search it, didn't put a single keystroke

into his computer looking up anything about that Mitsubishi ad. I didn't do a single thing looking for that snooker video. How the heck did YouTube, my YouTube, connect that Mitsubishi car ad with a snooker video when the only link was a verbal discussion that I'd had with Tim while recording? I cannot figure it out. It's too much of a coincidence to just be a boring coincidence. My wife straight away said, your phone's listening. I can't believe it, but maybe it's true. I've always thought that's just like conspiracy theory, nutso stuff that our phones are listening to us. But I can't believe it but maybe it's true I've always thought that's just like conspiracy theory nutso stuff that our phones are listening to us and but I can't think of any other reason I can't do it so that was gonna be my question is do you think that it's a device listening to you I don't believe it but right it's almost like someone who doesn't believe in ghosts having a

ghost walk in the room and saying I just I refuse to believe in you I don't know what else it could be that's why I was hoping you would tell me the obvious thing that I've missed. The thing about, are your devices listening to you? I know plenty of people who talk about, oh, you know, I was discussing this thing and then I went on my computer and there's ads for the thing. Right. And they're like, obviously my phone is listening to me and telling Amazon what I'm talking about. And they're putting ads on there. Like, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Like I generally disregard that because like the banality of the coincidence is like so boring. You could die, you know, like, Oh, I was talking about needing this product that

almost every human on earth needs. And then there was an ad for this product. Like it fits exactly into my demographic. Like they must've been listening. It's like, well, no, probably not. Be honest. Does my story sound like that? Here's where I'm going with this. Your story is not one of those stories. You know, taking it as read, it doesn't fit into the vast majority of like conspiracy theories about, you know, my phone was listening to me and it showed me this thing. I don't think it fits into that. But the thing is like, it's not crazy that the devices are listening. Thinking about in particular, like last time I was in Las Vegas, the hotel that I was staying in had an, like an Amazon Echo in the room. And it's one of these things, like I looked at that Echo and I think,

well, now you really are a device that just sits there and your your whole job is to just listen to me and it just kind of made me a little uncomfortable and it was this weird situation where i was having this passive aggressive fight with the cleaning staff because i kept unplugging the echo and then they would keep plugging it back in which also kind of creeped me out because then oh this is obviously an item on the checklist or like they're using the echo during the job or whatever but like how do you know every time to plug it back in like i don't like this i was discussing it with my wife who thought i was being totally off the board paranoid just like yeah what are you doing unplugging this echo well in order for it to recognize when you say,

you know, hey, Alexa, turn on all the lights. Yeah. It has to listen all the time. Yeah. And, you know, you take Amazon's word that they're like, it's only on the device. It's only listening for the trigger phrase. It's not really doing anything.

It's like, but do I trust Amazon that that's true? It's like, well, I don't trust them any more than I trust Facebook, which is not at all. I trust everyone more than Facebook. You know what? That's true. Okay. You know what? That is true.

Facebook would be at the absolute bottom because, again, they have the spider bot CEO running it. Amazon is just above it. You know, we made fun of that Amazon Echo commercial years and years ago, which by the way, I went looking for that a couple months ago and I couldn't find it. Amazon took down that original terrifying one where like the Echo follows you around the house, like it's looming over you in bed. You know, like I didn't trust those things, but I did eventually cave and I got Apple speakers in my house and those do the same thing. Like they're just listening for, Hey Siri. And it's like, do I trust Apple? I do, but just barely like, but not a lot. Like it still makes me uncomfortable when I think about it. So like, I really don't think it's crazy town anymore

to speculate on the idea that there is information being captured and it's being used. And your story isn't the craziest version of it. I do think you have the problem of like, how was the device listening? You know, was it the computer listening to the audio going through it? Like, what was it? Who knows? Like, was Chrome able to get access to just the system audio in a way that it wouldn't be able to get access to the microphone? Like, that's a possibility.

I don't know how the permissions work. Like the computer needs to ask to get permission for the microphone, but can the computer listen to the system audio, which is the way like we're running podcasts through the computer? I have no idea. Part of the thing though is I don't want to believe that this could possibly be true. And if I had to try to sit down and think,

how could this happen without it being like, oh, the machine is listening? The only thing I can think of is that it's less of a coincidence than you think it is. Because it's not like these are two unrelated ads. You're actually falling into the demographic of Australians of a certain age being nostalgic about stuff from their past? Oh, great. I think I've just come up with another theory, which is maybe even more obvious. Okay. What's the obvious theory? Maybe the mighty algorithm in the sky and all the stuff that's understanding us has just linked Tim and I as friends, as individuals, like our profiles. It just knows that he and I

are mates. And it knows that he was searching for those snooker videos last week. And it knows that I was searching for this Mitsubishi car ad. And it's just like personally linked us. Maybe that's part of how the algorithm works. It figures out who your friends are. And it just starts recommending to you things that your friends are looking at. That's a possibility. I don't know if YouTube does that. I've never heard anybody who talks about this stuff knowledgeably knowing about YouTube doing recommendations on an individual level like that. I don't know. They don't make a lot of noise like Apple does about supposedly anonymizing your data so they don't consider you as an individual in any way. I think Google almost like they don't consider you as an individual

in any way i think google almost certainly does want to consider you as an individual so that's a possibility that they just know like oh these two users have similar behavior if it's not like oh your machine is spying on you then it has to be something like it's just less of a coincidence than it seems like for reasons that are not obvious i mean i don't think it's a coincidence at all but yeah but like that's the one possibility right it's like it links you and another user's behavior and it's recommending similar videos or searching for things from the past is a kind of demographic behavior that actually does link these videos even though they don't seem like they're really related that would be my guess but it is creepy world that we live in where you have to

think about what do the machines know about you and how are they recommending and shaping your behavior? I mean, this snooker video stood out like a sore thumb amongst all the other videos in the recommendation. It was weird. Yeah. It's a thing I've been thinking about a lot related to a bunch of different platforms. But I'm aware of YouTube always wanting to try to like shape my viewing experience. And so sometimes I don't even want to click on a video that I think I might be interested to watch because I feel like, oh, YouTube, please. I don't want you to start me down this rabbit hole of assuming I want to see everything in the world that's related to this. I once did an interview like on the record, like I made a video with the guy in charge of the YouTube algorithm. And he said on camera that exact same thing even he acknowledged that okay you got me

i clicked on it but it doesn't mean you have to show it to me for the rest of all time he realized that it's a bit of a weakness even he was like saying okay i watched that one surfing video guilty please stop the surfing videos yeah i mean if youtube is doing something like figuring out who your friends are and recommending videos based on your friends viewing i'd feel pretty uncomfortable with that i wouldn't then want to have to double think about it where it's not just oh my recommendations have been ruined because i watched this one video it would also be like oh and now my friends are going to get suggested this kind of video more like oh no right like just treat us as as individual like the reason this is on my mind lately is like my youtube is just filled with

clips from parliament now because i watch some live streams of parliament and it's like i cannot convince youtube that i do not want to see any more video clips from inside of parliament right but it's like hey buddy you watch two live streams obviously you want to see this stuff for forever like i have clicked on i'm not interested a million times on a thousand thumbnails and it's like i can't unconvince youtube i was gonna say they do have that do they do they have an i'm not interested option on yeah oh yeah i see it i found it yeah you know how you've been talking about liberally using the mute feature on twitter yeah since youtube is now where I'm spending a lot of my former social media time, I am very liberally using the I'm not interested option.

I try to click on that all the time and tell YouTube why I'm not interested. But sometimes it's just impossible to unconvince the algorithm about something. Yeah. I just watched one of your videos half an hour ago just to prepare for this. One of your Brexit videos is like homework. And just after watching one, I've got a thousand of them recommended here. That I think is good. Not interested.

No, no, no. That's what I want. No, algorithm, algorithm. A plus work. Send people all the CGP Grey videos algorithm. That's what you should do. Good bot. Good bot.

All right. Well, the investigation continues. I will go onto the subreddit to find out if anyone else has theories as to what happened. I'm sure there's a logical explanation, but it has me baffled. Thank you for sticking with me on that one. I know it makes me sound a bit like a tin hat person, but... The world has tin edges in a way that I think it didn't used to. And yeah, like learning how to think questioningly without going off the edge of the crazy cliff

is an important skill. And being able to like play around the edges of that is something that's useful to do. In a world where you're often on Wi-Fi, monthly data plans for your phone seem, well, they seem a bit antiquated. With Ting, who are sponsoring today's episode, you're only going to pay for data that you've used at the end of each month. Ting offers nationwide coverage on both T-Mobile and Sprint, so the phone you've already got is probably going to be working. Just grab a SIM from the Ting shop and you're off. There are also more savings to be had by putting multiple phones on a single Ting account

because the usage is shared across all your devices. Ting's red hot on customer support. They offer help via the phone, chat, email, social media. Plus you can get technical support via Discord. Very modern, these people at Ting. I'm not even on Discord yet. Now look, there are no contracts with Ting. You're not going to be locked in for life. So why not just try a month, no strings attached. You can use them with any phone from your Galaxy Note 9 to your latest snazzy iPhone. And here's the best bit. If you go to the website that I'm about to reveal, you can get $25 off your bill. Now, when you consider the average Ting monthly bill is only $23, that's quite a saving. The address, hi.ting.com. I like that

one. It's clever. That's hi.ting.com. $25 off, people. You're only paying for what you use. And by the way, also, if you like, you can use that $25 off on a new phone from the Ting shop. So check them out. Hi.ting.com. And our thanks to them for supporting this episode. So you did mention Parliament. What's going on?

Well, I know what's going on. I was going to say, you know what's going on, Brady. You've been watching live streams of the end of the world have you oh man well as you know i did make a couple of brexit videos and i i emerged from my normal isolation to uh a few weeks ago catch up on all of the brexit news that i could to try to make a couple of videos. And yeah, holy hell, has it been, it's been an interesting time, it seems to emerge and look around and see what's going on. Like trying to catch up on what's been going on with Brexit and like, holy hell, what a mess has this been? And what a mess are we currently in? Like it is almost like

a frankly unbelievable situation. I know it is. I've been so naughty, Greg. I've even been doing some political tweets. Wow. Slapping my wrist afterwards. But I just haven't been able to help myself. I know it's like social media suicide to talk about politics, but I've just been so frustrated. I just had to blow some steam. But I can totally grant it to you because I did this deep dive. All I was looking for is like, I was trying to find what are the overarching themes that come up a bunch? And this idea of like having conflicting wants is like an overarching theme that has routinely come up. And I was like, okay, there's like two areas where this is repeatedly become a thing. And so that's why I sort of ended up with the two videos. But my God, like going into the actual details, I don't know, like it makes my head spin. I found myself like, oh, okay.

So to actually understand what's going on here, like I need to know all about the politics in Northern Ireland. And it's like, oh, okay. So we kind of go back to like the troubles and it's like, how did the troubles begin? And then it's like, okay, wait, far back too far back wait what is the balance in parliament right now for what people are arguing over it's really quite astounding and even for me like you know not a real newsy person normally when i finish a video it's like closing a book and putting it on the shelf for a topic forever like i never think about it again it's like a great book and putting it on the shelf for a topic forever. Like I never think about it again.

It's like, great, this is done. Like it goes into the archive. But I think this is maybe the first time ever I finished a couple of videos. And then that was the week where there were like three votes in a row. And I just had the parliament on live for a huge portion of time. I was just watching it. I'm like, this is incredibly atypical behavior for me. But it honestly felt like there's only two levels of understanding of this problem.

There's extremely high level, like you just want the broad overview. And then there's the, I need to hear it firsthand from parliament what's occurring because do you know what i mean like it almost felt like a thing that's impossible to summarize yeah i mean i haven't been going that far i haven't been watching parliament but you've gone next level there but but i don't know it was just like i too found myself unable to turn away and it was like again this is maybe the closest I've ever gotten to sports because when the big votes were happening at night, I can't remember where it was, but I Googled and I found the parliamentary list of the amendments. And so like, I had like, okay,

here we go. What's coming up next? Amendment I, right. And I'm looking at it on the list and like, oh, amendment I, you know, changes this paragraph over here. I'm like, okay, we're going to boom. Let's see if this one passes, right? Because before they do the vote, they vote on all these amendments. And it's like, I was right there with it. I was in a little cabin, literally inside the Arctic Circle, but I had Wi-Fi and I was like constantly updating to see what the results of the votes were. It really is an unbelievable situation.

And it's an unbelievable situation on absolutely every level. What have you thought of Parliament? I mean, you're watching it at peak craziness, but it's always pretty crazy. Yeah, I am watching it at peak craziness. I mean, look, I have over the years tuned in and out sometimes of watching Prime Minister's Question Time. Because even when I was younger, I remember my dad would sometimes like in the morning just put on Prime Minister's Question Time as like an when I was younger, I remember my dad would sometimes like in the morning just put on Prime Minister's Question Time as like an interesting thing to watch. By the way, all the people who are rushing off to Reddit to complain about Grey calling it

Prime Minister's Question Time, don't bother. Why? What is it? It's called Prime Minister's Questions. Oh, whatever. Listen, hear me out. There's a certain subset of people who, it's like apostrophes, because there's a famous political TV show who it's like apostrophes right because there's a famous political tv show in britain too called question time right people often like conflate the two and it's a favorite pastime of people yeah telling people off for saying prime minister's

question time i mean i'm sure but this to me is like the daylight saving time versus daylight savings time yeah it's like yes i will grant that you are i just don't want to have to wade through them on reddit i don't care if you say i'm just saying don't go into reddit and talk about it because it makes it hard to find the diamond comments when every third comment is someone thinking they're the first person ever to point out that it's not called prime minister's question time okay well i'll you know keep the reddit clean guys right so for people who don't know prime minister's questions is this time when members of the parliament like basically get to ask questions of the prime minister and it's basically just a big shouting match well that's the thing that's that's amazing

about it because i don't know how the australian system. Okay. I've never seen Australian prime minister's questions time down under. Like, I don't know how that goes. It can get pretty raucous. Yeah. But like, my frame of reference is the American House of Representatives and the Senate, which is so boring, you could use it to interrogate prisoners. It is like a joke in America that C-SPAN, which broadcasts what Congress is doing, is just ungodly dull. You cannot believe how boring it is. And Parliament, for whatever its democratic flaws might be, my God, is it fantastic to watch. It is a great show but i think if if

someone is unfamiliar with politics you might assume that like it should be the reverse that american politics should be full of lots of like yeehawing and shooting at the ceiling and people yelling at each other and that the british version would be all like state and formal rules. But like British politics is unbelievable. Like I kind of love how often they will just directly insult each other. Like someone will get up and be like, they'll give their speech and then another guy will pop up and it'll be like, the right honorable gentleman from North Shropshire doesn't know which end of a sheep to shag. Right.

And it's like, rah, and everybody starts to yell. And it's like, it's always amazing. And it just. If he's from Shropshire, I'm sure he knows which end of the sheep to shag. It's unbelievable. And I think there's a couple of contributing factors to it. One of the contributing factors, I'm absolutely convinced, is the smallness of the room that they're in. Right. There's a little table in the center, and I don't know, what is it? Three rows of benches behind them. There's not even enough seats for everyone in that place.

Yeah. It's this tiny room. And so when the different sides are arguing with each other, like you're right in the other guy's face, you know, and they're right there. In my head, I imagine that room is incredibly overheated. And so it makes everybody angry. Whereas the American House of Representatives is a gigantic cathedral that seats 500 people. And they all have their little assigned seats with their adorable name tags in front of it saying, oh, this is the senator from the great state of Utah. And they're a million miles away from yelling at the guy from Maryland. And it's just not the same. So I honestly think it's a good thing. Even though it's raucous and it's yelling,

there's something about it that feels more honest it is still a game of politics but then like the formalness or the like the weird politeness that i'm i'm sort of used to in from most of american politics is this like weird indirectness so i don't know but like do you agree or not i hate it i hate questions hate Prime Minister's questions. Really? Yeah, because it's still everyone trying to get that soundbite on the news. And it's almost like kids posing, Mummy, look at me, look at me, take a picture of me. Use my soundbite on the news. And someone will just ask,

because the opposition leader will get three or four questions as part of the rules. They get the first few questions. And he's not even asking questions. He's just trying to get that snazzy soundbite that someone's written for him to get on the news. And it's so transparent. And I know this is like a bit of a common complaint about politicians, but there's no

actual like questions being asked and answered. It's just trying to ask a controversial question that will get you on the news. And then the prime minister never answers the question and just says what she wants to say. And it's almost like, did you hear the question? That wasn't even the question you were asked. Why are you saying that? But that's just how politicians answer questions. And then it starts alternating between government questions from like, you know, friendly MPs and questions from opposition MPs. And it goes from these ridiculous antagonistic questions that are just soundbites to get on the news to these Dorothy Dix's that are like, oh, can the prime minister please tell me how wonderful the government has been on the issue of animal rights for the last 20

years? And the prime minister can launch into some pre-prepared, you know, message of the day that they want to get across. And it just feels like a complete and total waste of time. They get heated and there's yelling and people get told off and it becomes a bit of a shouting match. But again, they're just doing that to try and get on the TV. Letting TV cameras in there seems, dare I say it,

almost like a bad thing. Really? I wouldn't change it. Okay, all right. People have to see what's happening in their parliament. I say it, almost like a bad thing. Really? I wouldn't change it. Okay, all right. People have to see what's happening in their parliament. I think it's important. But letting the TV cameras in there, it's almost like switching a camera on in a room full of vloggers.

For a minute there, I was like, can I push Brady into suggesting that there should be no cameras in government? Like, oh, no. I mean, televising court cases has always been a fraught issue and a lot of people still don't support it and i completely understand and the same things the same reasons for being cautious about televising court cases is the same reason televising parliament has turned it into a bit of a mess yeah i'm not against televising parliament i'm in favor favour of it. I mean, if we didn't televise parliament now and just locked them in a room and told them to sort out Brexit, maybe they would.

But now they can't afford to be seen on TV as weak or compromising or anything like that. You have to be seen as strong and someone who doesn't change their mind. And you can't give away that 10 second soundbite where you say, oh, maybe we should change their mind. And you can't give away that 10 second soundbite where you say, oh, maybe we should change our mind or maybe we should do a deal with each other. Because then you're weak, you're weak and you're on TV being weak. And that's going to haunt you for the rest of your life. You have to be strong. You have to be a strong leader on TV and aggressive. And I think it results in bad leadership. Yeah. See, I agree with all of those points, but I think those are points fundamental to politics.

And you still have all of those problems in American politics. And so I think this is why I like the raucousness. Yeah, American politics is completely televised as well. Yeah. But I mean, if we're going to have people who don't answer questions and people who can't compromise in the public eye, at least I'm going to like seeing them get angry and insult each other in a tiny room, right? Like, it's way better than just having to listen to boring speeches where they're doing the same thing, but at one-tenth the speed and one-one-thousandth the fury level.

And even though she doesn't answer the questions, and this is true of all prime ministers, not just the current prime minister, even though the questions, you know, really are being properly answered, in my opinion, I think it is good that once a week, the person leading the country has to get up in a public forum and at least be, you know, have their feet held over the coals, even if they do avoid answering some of the questions, you know, in other countries, your leader can just say, no, I'm just, you know, you can't have access to me. I'm above all this. So I think that's positive. Yeah, I completely agree with that. However, having said all of this,

I have a complaint to lodge with parliament. And it's about the person who, at least in my social circle, seems bizarrely popular, so now I want to complain about him. Yep. It's Mr. Speaker. John Bercow is the current Speaker. Okay, I was like, I have no idea what his name is, because he's just Mr. Speaker. It's the guy who, I mean, he's doing the Speaker of the House role. So it's the role.

He's kind of like the chairman. He's the chairman of the meeting, isn't he? Yeah, he's the chairman. He's not part of the debate. He's the person that you need in one of these situations. There needs to be someone. He's the referee. Yeah, someone who's like the ref.

Who's like, hey, here's a bunch of rules. You talk, you know, you talk. What's the procedure going to be under these things? And I've been looking at Mr. Speaker and I was like, I'm watching him. I'm watching him real close during these live broadcasts. And I'll tell you the thing that made me think, I don't know about this guy straight away. And it was his choice of tie. he does wear flamboyant ties yeah so like

here's the thing you know if you haven't seen prime minister's question time there's like a camera that's looking down this long room where you know the people are on either side and he's sitting at this big chair in the center being like the chairman dude it's a very prominent person in the room and he seems to always wear these like colorful ties they're not ridiculous like he doesn't have dinosaurs attacking people on his ties or some like dumb design like it's like 90s ties they were like 90s it was cool in the 90s to wear big wide flamboyant colorful ties yeah they're ties that would not be out of place on a clown. And from my teaching days, this is like a yellow flag for someone in a position where they're supposed to be controlling a room.

He looks like he should be wearing Donald Duck socks as well. I guarantee you he'll be wearing silly socks, for sure. 100%. Here's the thing. I've just spent all this time saying, I love the raucousness of prime minister's question time, but Mr. Speaker, I cannot get past my perception of him as the teacher who is like popular, but isn't good. And that's my impression of him is like, man, there's a raucousness here, but it always feels like the raucousness it's like out of his control. Like, I think he is letting it be too much because he can't control it because he's letting it go. Oh, there's so many things like he's hitting all of these like checkboxes for me or like

warning behavior in a teacher trying to control a room. And it's like, I've seen people do this kind of thing. So one of these things is like, he's always riding the border of, is he angry or is it all funny, right? So that then has people in the audience, you know, people in the class, always kind of like pushing the boundaries of, oh, he's clearly smiling because he thinks that this behavior is sort of funny at the same time that he's yelling order, order, asking for the room to be order. And it's like, that's a mixed message. You're not getting people to do something that you want. And you can go on YouTube

and there are all of these clips of him saying order 10,000 times in all of these different ways of people are like, oh, it's great. I love this guy yelling order, order. But to me, it's like, no, no, no. This is the fundamental problem here, dude. You're issuing threats without ever following up on them. And so the word order means nothing. It means nothing to the parliament because they know you're just going to say it 30 times and all the people in the room are doing is gauging like is he actually getting angry so he's not controlling the room through his words it's like he's controlling the room through how much can the parliament push him which is no control at all and i find it frustrating because it's like, raucousness is good, but you, like, it has to be controlled.

Like, we need boundaries for this. And he, like, I just don't think he's doing it well. It's a pretty hard job controlling that group of people. Okay, don't get me wrong. I understand that it's a hard job, but I think, like, a perfect example of, like, a problem that happened, the details don't really matter, but basically he eventually had it with, like,ottish mp and he kicked the guy out and then

the whole the whole scottish delegate walked out of parliament this is the problem yeah but here's what i think the fundamental problem with that was and it's like i did this too in my early days he got like angry and kind of arbitrarily enforced, oh, I'm going to kick this guy out, which seems to be his only real power. Like he can expel someone from parliament. And it's like, people did get angry when he finally kicked someone out because it felt like nonsensical, right?

Like, oh, you've yelled order five times and now this guy gets kicked out. And so we're all furious that our colleague has gotten banned. So we're all leaving. And I feel like if he yells order, people should know it's serious, right? That he's going to yell order at you. And then if he has to yell order again, you're out of here. He wouldn't have to do that very often before people would actually start coming to order when he yells order. This is like an age old problem, this is true everywhere in the world. This is true of soccer referees. A soccer referee makes

a decision and notoriously soccer players all run up to the referee and say, oh, that was bad. You should have done that. And they all crowd around him and try to almost bully the referee. And the referee just says, go away, go away, stop, stop, stop. All the referee has to do once is pull out the red card from their pocket and say, you're off, you're out of the game. And then everyone would run away and not do it anymore. But the referee is not willing to use that power. And it drives people watching crazy. But you also kind of have to realize that the players are more important than the referee. And the people doing the talking in the parliament are more important than the speaker. Here's the conflict. At any particular moment, I'll agree with you. And at any particular second in time, that statement holds true. But over the aggregate course of a session of

parliament, that statement is not true because without rules we have nothing but we have no civilization everything crumbles to dust and so i like i totally think that for something more important than a soccer game like i don't know the government yeah you can have raucousness but when the speaker calls to order like he has to be able to back that up with the real threat because otherwise it becomes like this weird arbitrary thing of like every once in a while he kicks someone out and like who knows when that's going to happen but it never happens enough that anybody feels like it's any kind of threat and so like he just he really grates on me like dude you can have people yelling but you also have to be able to back it up. Like I've seen people who can crowd

control in this way to be like, here's going to be the chaos, but now here comes the hammer. Like, and we're all serious. I almost want to take him aside and be like, Hey, listen, if you're just going to change one thing, at least when you're trying to get everybody to be calm, don't start talking before the room is actually quiet this is like teacher 101 if you need to say something important wait until the room is actually totally quiet before you start talking again don't wait until it's just like kind of quiet and then you talk because if you do that the volume immediately goes back up and then you you're yelling order, order, order again, and we get nowhere. And the sport of rugby, people know, the players know, you do not argue and get in the face of the referee. And if you do, you're off the field. And when a referee makes a decision in rugby, no matter how bad it is,

the players just like steer clear and don't all like surround him in a circle and start the bullying because they know you just don't do that in rugby the marker has been laid down i don't mean to go off on a rant on mr speaker i think it's just i've been having this frustration because i've been polling all of the people in my life for their like brexit odds because i've just been kind of interested in like oh what do you think's going to happen what do you think's going to happen and near universally you, people tell me whatever they think their Brexit prediction is. And then they also throw in a like comment about how they really like Mr. Speaker and he's funny. And it's just like, it's been driving me personally crazy.

Are they American? That must be Americans that say that. No, they're not entirely entirely americans thinking it through like it's actually disproportionately people from europe that might be partly what it is right not brits yeah because brits are quite used to this and he's quite a polarizing character the speaker even before all the brexit stuff he was he's always been a person who enjoys the limelight it would be fair to say and his wife very much enjoys the limelight and goes on like reality TV shows. Oh no. Okay. That's bad. There must be a video in it somewhere for you because the role of Speaker is so fascinating

in the British Parliament because they appoint the Speaker and then both parties agree to never run against him or her in elections. It is a strange thing. Like I don't understand. I mean, to be fair, I don't really understand the mechanism of Speaker of the House in America. Like, I don't know how dissimilar or similar it is. Right. I think more than this weird thing about how, oh, he's a member of parliament and no one's going to run against him in his seat. It really feels like the person who is chairing the meeting shouldn't be a member of parliament for one of the

teams yeah but when you become the speaker you sort of half put that to one side you are supposed to become a bit more neutral but you also still have to like kind of realize you're working for the government yeah like the speaker of the house of representatives in the u.s is a complete politician aren't they they're like a political leadership role. That is totally true. But I also, like, I don't know, because, you know, no one can watch more than 30 seconds at a time. I don't know how much the Speaker of the House is running the show in the same way that, like, the chair does. Like, they may very well be doing that. But, like, if that is the situation, I would still feel like, I don't know, this feels like a position where we

should have, like, like a librarian should be appointed to this position, right? Like someone who's not intimately involved in this way. It feels like it's begging to be a, at least somewhat politically neutral position. And it feels strange that the party in charge just picks like, oh, this is the person who's going to chair it. I have to say, I don't think this is a problem with the parliamentary system, the fact that the speaker is appointed, because they're usually appointed on the nod of both sides. They're someone that both sides say that they can handle.

They do become a neutral person. I mean, John Bercow, the current speaker is, well, in the last few weeks has become notorious for not doing what the government wants always. I mean, it's become a real sticking point, obviously, in the last week or two that he went against the government's wishes and how they wanted things to be run. There haven't been a lot of really, really bad cases where the Speaker has been perceived to be too biased. I don't think it causes the problems that one would imagine,

that the Speaker is just appointed from the benches of the majority party. It always seems to work. They always seem to agree on someone who everyone can get along with, because if you couldn't, Parliament would grind to a halt. Yeah, I mean, that is fair. And again, on my list of frustrations his neutrality or the fact that his seat is unrepresented is like these are the minorest of concerns and my majorest of concerns are dude you need to back up your threats well it seems like your biggest concern are his ties if we're going

on the order that you raise the issues well no no no, no. It's just like the tie is what, that's what made me squint my eyes. I think I have a mental model of what kind of person you are based on. Like me with people who wear hats. Yeah. It's like that. Like, hmm, I have an idea and we'll see if this is verified.

And sure enough, it was. And the Scottish MP thing walking out was like, you totally caused this problem with your inconsistency, dude. Like this this is not this has nothing to do with them and this has everything to do with you and also youtube just been driving me crazy with recommendations of like compilations of him and funny moments in parliament i'm like i can't stand this like you're driving me crazy he loves it he loves it those compilations just make him do it more he loves the attention oh yeah i totally think sometimes he's doing the order for the cameras like he 100 is and that's

that is a great frustration but i have been sucked into the like sort of news cycle and at time of recording who the hell knows what's gonna happen but but it really is all up in the air at this point in time. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is the subscription service with over 2,400 documentaries and nonfiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers. This includes original content featuring Stephen Hawking, Sigourney Weaver, Miki Okaku, and many more. And you can watch it on so many different platforms, on the web, on your Roku,

on your smart TV, on iOS, on Apple, Amazon, Kindle, anywhere. And because this is the internet, it's available worldwide. The content spans science, nature, history, technology, and so much more. For example, a documentary that's caught my eye features all of the underwater parts of the national parks. The national parks are gorgeous, but I never really thought about places like Devil's Hole, an underwater cave inside of Death Valley National Park. Very cool. So go to curiositystream.com slash hellointernet for unlimited access to the world's top documentaries and nonfiction series. And for our listeners, enter promo code hellointernet when prompted during the signup process, and your membership is completely free for 30 days. That's curiositystream.com slash hellointernet. Thanks to CuriosityStream for supporting the show.

There's one more burning issue that I really was hoping to raise in this episode, Gray. Okay. Now, I could cut straight to the chase, but that's not my style. Right. No, we get the Shaggy Brady story first. Yep. I prefer to think of it as a narrative. Whatever works for you. I was walking along by the sea one day, quite literally. And I looked directly up and I saw a strange rainbow configuration that I'd never seen before.

It wasn't like a normal rainbow. There was a rainbow on the horizon, but above there were these two other rainbows doing these weird arcs that were touching each other at a tangent. I'd never seen anything like it before. And I thought, oh, this is good Snapstagram material. So, I made a little 15, 20 second video to put on my Instagram story of this interesting thing I was seeing in the sky. Okay. So, you're all like double rainbows across the sky. Yeah. I thought it was interesting. And I said, oh, look at this. Isn't this interesting? Post it to Instagram. Lovely. Job done. So, I later found out that what I had seen was quite an unusual thing to see. It was rare. Mm-hmm. And one thing led to another, and we ended up making a YouTube video about this thing

for one of my channels, my physics channel. Mm-hmm. So, the video that we posted starts with the professor who's explaining it mike merrifield who are from the university of nottingham says oh brady recently saw this interesting thing so we're going to tell you about it so i got the footage off my phone inserted it into the video is this like you know from the wild moment it's like raw moment oh look here's the actual moment that started all. And then the video cracks on for however many minutes

and we explain in the usual way what it was, how it works, science, science, isn't it wonderful? So I got lots of comments and I wouldn't call them mean comments. I had no problem with the comments, but I had lots of comments complaining about the fact that the video that I put in, the moment from the wild when I had seen it, was vertical because I filmed it vertically because I was posting it to Instagram. And everyone was like, oh, man, I hate people who film things vertically. Oh, I can't believe it. Brady, you're supposed to be professional.

How could you film anything vertically? You're an idiot. And I was very much like this myself a few years ago. If I was ever watching the news and they said, oh, look, here's footage of the moment that the dam burst or the cyclone hit or the plane crashed. And we'd be watching some numpty filming it with their phone going, oh, look, this is amazing. And they'd be filming it vertically. And I always sit there going why do people film vertically this is crazy people should film horizontally and i realized that my attitude to this in the last two or three years has changed completely okay and i think there is nothing wrong with filming

vertically i think there's nothing wrong with putting it in your videos. And I am going to go so far as to say, I think the use of the vertical footage in my video enhanced the experience for viewers. Okay. Enhanced is a bold statement there. Let me explain why I think it enhanced it. Okay. Yeah.

It's a fact of life now that a lot of content that people film, they're filming for social media. They're not filming it for YouTube or television. They're filming it for other people to look at on their phones, on Instagram and on whatever, Snapchat and things like that. Yeah. And I mean, that's got to be 90% of all media captured in the world at this point. Exactly. So I think my initial decision to film it vertically, because I was thinking at the time, this is just for Instagram, was a fine decision. Now, later on, it turns out what I filmed was more interesting than I thought. And I wanted to use it in my video. But I think putting it in the video as vertical footage,

it's almost become part of the grammar of watching television, 16 by 9 television. Part of the grammar of watching that is if you suddenly see something vertical, that's a visual cue to the viewer that you're about to see something that was filmed in the wild and was filmed by a normal person. And therefore, the fact we're using it means it must be special. It must be rare. We couldn't obtain this via our usual methods of sending out a television crew. There wasn't time to film this 16 by 9.

We had to depend on an amateur. You're seeing something exclusive. And the price you're paying for that is we have to show it in this unusual format. And I think that straightaway sends a message to people. If I'm watching the news and I see something vertical on the news now, I'll look straight away because I'll be thinking, why are they using this? It must be amazing. It must be incredible. And it's also this nod to the fact this was done away from professional time.

This was done in the wild. And I think when I dropped that vertical footage into my video, even though it was filmed by the same person, me, this was telling people, oh, the thing you're looking at now, like you weren't even meant to see this. This was something else. Be quiet. You're looking at something special.

And I think it works. And I would almost like choose the vertical format for that Brady in his off time moment versus Brady in his professional making a YouTube video moment. I think it works. If I went back in time and I knew it was really rare, would I have done a second lot of shots that were 16 by 9 as well? I probably would have. And maybe I would have ended up using 9 as well, I probably would have. And maybe I would have ended up using them as well.

But I kind of feel good about it. And I no longer, when I'm watching the news and I see them using vertical footage, get all sniffy and say, oh, what numpties, why are you filming that vertical? I completely understand why they were shooting it vertical now. Of course they were. They weren't thinking it was going to end up on the TV. Or even if they were, who cares? That's what civilians do now. Civilians shoot vertical, professionals shoot horizontal, and sometimes the civilian material is more special than the professional material because professionals can't be everywhere.

I'm no longer sniffy about it, and I'm surprised people still are. Rant over. Well, I mean, I think you're thinking of this from a very particular perspective as the YouTube creator, which is the useful grammar of being able to distinguish the two modes of Brady's out for a walk on the beach, thinking Brady thoughts. And a beautiful moment occurs and he just takes out his phone and he films it. Versus cutting back to the office where a professor is explaining how this works. That's totally correct that there is a useful grammar there to be able to distinguish visually to the audience what these parts are.

And so I guess I can kind of go along with your statement there of enhancing the experience from that perspective, that it makes it clearer to the viewer what this is or what that is. It's not just about differentiation, though. It's about the little signals that it sends off in people's brain, hopefully, the little chemicals it releases that says, oh, exciting thing, different thing. It's not just, you know, A shot and B shot. But I think that rolls up into the whole idea of it's a different thing because most of the

video you're watching is filmed in 16.9. Or why does it catch your attention more on a news broadcast? Because most of the news broadcast is still 16.9. And then you just have this vertical section. So it's the different thing. In the same way that if like a section of the video you're watching is black and white, you know, it's going to be more attention getting because the rest of the video is in color. I think it falls into that sort of category. I don't know that like the thing about people leaving comments about, oh, it's a vertical video.

I feel like I want a name for this kind of phenomenon. It feels like a kind of correction bandwagon that just doesn't matter prime minister's question time yeah let's just say like yeah it's exactly like when people want to tell you that it's prime minister's question time versus prime minister's questions you know it's like okay thanks is not remotely relevant to human communication and it doesn't matter ever but it's a little bit different like the thing about vertical video is a bit different because it's not like showing off your superior knowledge is it it's more yeah it's not the comment where someone wants to tell you oh i know a thing better than you do and i know it along a pointless axis that's not relevant at all

to the main thing right which you know is you know, is very, very common on the internet. The vertical video thing feels like, I don't know, like I almost want to point to, there's a very old video on a YouTube channel called Glove and Boots where they made like a public service announcement to friends don't let friends shoot in vertical video. Like, and it's a funny video. I like their channel, but I almost wonder, like, how much of people feeling like they need to comment on vertical videos can be directly pointed back to something like this,

where it's created a bandwagon where people just leave this comment. I don't know. I can't quite find the edges or the shape of this in my mind. But while I don't like watching something in vertical, I just find it uncomfortable.

I wouldn't want to watch a whole video in vertical, no. Like even the little segment that you showed. I always find it distracting. I also find it distracting because you have the problem of what are you going to do with the black bars on either side? And there's always like a question in my mind of what method is the person going to use? Are we just going to have the pure black bars that seems to have fallen out of vogue are we going to use the expand the video and blur it in the background thing which

you have to do well to make it look good and many people don't you know or as in this video of yours brady you chose a kind of snazzy stop motion black smudges on either side. That's just the generic background of all 60 symbols videos. That's what's in the background with text and all sorts of stuff. That's like a channel wide motif. So that's my equivalent of black. Yeah. But you're going with a motif that's moving on either side. You have to add something there. So I find the vertical stuff just uncomfortable. But the comments about the verticality feel incredibly pointless. And I don't a vertical video, you know, say I'm out in a park with the chompers, is very high because the phone doesn't always rotate fast enough. So it's like even though I'm holding the phone horizontally, when I hit the video button immediately because it's like, oh, this moment is adorable and it must be caught on camera,

you know, I press the button faster than the phone recognizes that I've turned it horizontally. So it's like, oh, great. Now I've got this vertical video of this amazing slow motion ball catch and vertical videos, they just happen. It's a part of life. And you're also right that it does complicate the issue even more with some social media platforms using the vertical video as the default standard anyway. So I really feel like this is some kind of internet complaint from about 2012 that needs to be put to bed. I think we need to realize it's a mixed economy now. I still don't think you're giving the dues to the value of the different format, not just like as a cue for being different, but for being

native. Like you look at films like Blair Witch Project or a better example, maybe Cloverfield. It works because it feels more authentic and it feels authentic because of the inferiority of it, because professionals didn't make it. And I still think the vertical video carries that message with it. This is the real deal. This is authentic. What everything else you've seen up to now is just is polished and prepared and scripted. And but this thing you're seeing now, because of its crappiness, it's almost like authenticating

it. I get that. But, you know, I watched the Blair Witch Project and I enjoyed it a long time ago. I don't think that whoever is working on their vertical video found footage project is a thing that I could watch enjoyably. You know, even though it's like, wow, it feels so authentic. It actually is found footage because it's all vertical. I don't think that would be an enjoyable viewing experience. So, like, we agree, but I'm not going all the way with you here.

I just think it's useful for the signaling of what it is. But I'm not like looking forward to vertical videos.