Hello Internet - H.I. #127: Very Hello Internet

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

Grey and Brady discuss: the annual heat wave, Plŵgpopeth, being remembered for a thousand years yet again, correctly reporting the Apollo anniversary, Grey unintentionally fuels several conspiracy theories, new airport security features and possible paranoia, sneaky sportsball corner, and Formula 1: Drive to Survive. Sponsors: 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 to get your first month for free Hover: the best way to buy and manage domain names - go to hover.com/hi and get 10% off your first purchase from Hover Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode on the reddit BBC: UK heatwave -- Was Thursday the hottest day on record? Grey Hot Drop Leif Erikson Herodotus Sagas of Icelanders HI: Guns, Germs, And Steel Advertiser Sunday Mail Apollo 11 Anniversary Cover The Melbourne Herald Sun Apollo 11 image Grey Granny driver? Decide for yourself! One in eight men believe they could win a point against Serena Williams Birmingham Commonwealth Games logo unveiled Rees-Mogg style guide Formula 1: Drive to Survive

I've got a chompers in the house and really doesn't like it when his pack isn't completely together. He was arriving and my wife was leaving and it can be an upsetting time for everyone. But I've dragged a bed into the recording booth and he's now curled up behind me. So I think, I think we're good for the show. You're back in the UK now, aren't you? Yes. I'm back in the UK now, aren't you? Yes, I'm back in the UK. You missed the heatwave. I mean, are you saying that I missed summer? Is summer the thing that I missed?

I'm here for the tail end of summer. I know you're very reluctant to ever grant heatwaves to the UK because you think there is like an overreaction to summer. But like, we've had the hottest ever summer temperature in UK history. If you can't give us a heatwave now, when are you going to give us one? Well, I heard the inevitable arrival of this topic. I knew this was going to come, that we were going to revisit this, because I got back to the UK on Wednesday, and Thursday was apparently the hottest day on record. And I would like to tell you,

the person that I heard this from was the man in my house who was doubling the size of our air conditioning system that day. So last summer, we had scheduled in to install this strange system because we can't have anything on the outside of the building. So we have to do this weird and complicated internal system. And getting it done was an enormous hassle. And we had scheduled for next summer to double up and get to where we're supposed to be. And so, yes, they were doubling up the air conditioning on what is supposedly the hottest day of the year. And the AC guys were

telling me all about it. I'm like, oh, we're getting a lot of calls from people. We have a lot of business where people want to install air conditionings. So maybe, maybe people of England are finally seeing the light that it is hot in the summer and you should install air conditioners. And yes, there are records about it being hot. So I will totally grant that when we have the hottest day of the summer, that is a record setting day. 100%. That's a record setting day. Of course. Of course it is. I was completely charmed by the story about this hottest temperature that I want to share with you because it just, I don't know, it just presses all my buttons. So I thought I'd share this with you

from the BBC website because Thursday was the uk's hottest july day on record right but was it the uk's hottest day ever this was the question oh okay well the met office says we can be sure it's the second hottest but they'd confirm that they won't be able to confirm what is apparently its highest reading until next week. Basically, this is because where they recorded the highest temperature of 38.7 Celsius, which beat the previous record of 38.5 set in 2003, this 38.7 was recorded at the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens. Now, it says here, unlike the other weather station readings that report instantaneously, Cambridge University Botanic Gardens. Now it says here, unlike the other weather station readings that report instantaneously, Cambridge University Botanic Gardens only reports at the end of the day.

That's why it took the Met Office until Friday to release the provisional figure. But a Met Office official explained any reading that challenges the all-time record must be carefully vetted. Now each of the UK's weather observation stations is checked over every two years to make sure everything is still in good working order. This official said thermometers should be in shade and in ventilation. Because of the sensitivity of this reading, because it's the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK, we want to double check.

So the Met Office is sending out an engineer to inspect the station and the equipment. They'll go out, they'll check the site looks fine and that there's nothing untoward there, that there's no overgrown tree or a new building that could change the readings. As well as checking the area, scientists will pour through all the readings from the data check there wasn't a sudden spike at the time of the hottest reading. They would expect a gradual increase throughout the day and any sudden change could indicate some temporary interference like a car parked nearby.

It should be early next week when they can confirm the reading. He insisted he'd be surprised if the reading did get discounted. So it was two years ago was the last time they checked the thermometer? Yeah, a year and a half ago that it had its proper inspection. I guess it didn't occur to me until now when you say like, what is the hottest day in a country? That they mean the hottest temperature anywhere in the country? Yeah. It seems a little strange to me, but I guess it makes sense if your country is the size of the UK.

I feel like it should somehow be averaged across the entire country. This very quickly becomes a kind of calculus problem of summing up and averaging the temperatures over all of the measuring stations. But over what time period as well? I think you could give it at any point, right? Because it's like the highest that was reached. I'm just thinking like in America, it occurs to me, I've never heard like, oh, it's the hottest day in America, because that barely makes any sense as a statement. People will say, oh, the hottest temperature ever occurred in Death Valley today. But that's a very different statement from saying like, it was the hottest day.

But I guess it does make more sense in the UK. But so it's really like the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK. Within the confines of the country. Right. Yes. We're not including the Commonwealth in this measurement, right? Just within the United Kingdom. Yeah, territories and islands and things, yeah. I also, I don't know, I always find these sorts of articles a little bit frustrating as well because they just, they raise a million more questions than they answer.

I thought that was a pretty good article. Okay, we need to go check that there were no spikes or anything. I just start to wonder straight away, like, wait, this thermometer, is there like some guy who just goes out every hour and writes the numbers down? Or is it digitally recording continuously

throughout the day? And in either of those circumstances, how do you not know immediately if there was a spike in the temperature readings? I find it confusing about what is the thing that could cause the delay of a week? Are the records on the back of a donkey slowly making his way towards the main office? No, it's the check that's causing the delay of the week. I understand that it's an automated station, and it must just do its data dump once a day back to the met office ah okay that's what you're presuming that would make sense i guess and when they did

the data dump they were like oh this one here in cambridge we got a record here bill and then they're like well hang on there could have been a car park next to it or they could have like built a building next to that station in the last year with an air conditioning unit right next to it. But also what I want to know is like, okay, is there a security camera on the thermometer? Was there a merry prankster out there with a torch next to the thermometer on a day that we were already expecting to be really hot? I want to know how it's going to be verified.

I want a Netflix documentary on how they verify what the hottest temperature is. Because I feel like there's just a million details I want to know. Dude, I'm totally up for that. I watched that 100%. I can't remember if it was Into Thin Air or it was one of those books talking about the fastest wind on Earth, where we don't know what the number is because every time this tries to get measured, the weather station breaks.

It's like Chernobyl, right? We only have measurements where it's like, oh, it's above 3.6, but we have no idea what the actual fastest wind on earth is because we haven't had a weather station not break in what we presume is the most obscene conditions. But yeah, no, I would totally watch that Netflix weather documentary for sure, 100%. I was also reading this book, which brought up a thing that never really occurred to me, but it was simply talking about how much more accurate weather predictions have become over the last 50 years. And I know that everybody likes to give the weather people like a hard time about these

predictions. But it was a really interesting thing talking about how in the last 50 years, I forget exactly what it was, but it was something like the five-day forecast has become as accurate as a six-hour forecast used to be. I was like, whoa, that is quite an improvement. And I do imagine it is a side effect of the hard work of all of the people doing this thing that I want to know the details about right now, which is exactly how are you going to verify that it's the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK? But can I ask Brady, by you, did it feel like the hottest day ever recorded? Did you wish that you too, like me, had installed air conditioning in your house? Well, funnily enough, I had to spend almost all of that day driving. I had a really long drive to Wales. So I was in an air conditioned

car the whole time. So I was lovely and cool. So you did install air conditioning in your car? That's quite reasonable? Well, yeah, my car has air conditioning. I also did a hot drop in Wales. Oh, yes. So first of all, I wanted to find out what the Welsh word for a hot stopper was. You mean you're trying to create the Welsh word for a hot stopper? Create the Welsh word, yes, indeed. Sorry. Somehow I don't think that's a pre-existing thing in ancient Welsh. So I spoke to some Welsh people and we came up with, oh man,

Welsh is like the hardest pronunciation language of all. Anytime I'm in Wales, I look at some of the names of places. I honestly wonder if it's some sort of joke by Welsh people on outsiders. This would be hilarious. Pwg pweth. Pwg pweth. Great. Perfect. Yeah, something like that. It basically means plug hot.

But then I was at the Royal Welsh show, a big agricultural show, and I said I was going to be there. And Tim got in touch and said, I'm not there, but my parents are running like a jewellery stand there selling jewellery. So I went to the jewellery stand and I gave them a hot stopper to pass on. And then I tweeted back to this Tim and said, I've left a hot stopper at the stand for you. And then this Tim then sent a text message and he showed me the text exchanged with his father. And I love the text he sent to his dad. He just wrote, did a random Australian just leave one of those plastic muddlers you get in coffee at your stand? And the dad wrote, yes, he did. What's it all about? Random Australian plastic

muddler you get in coffee. A plastic muddler. This is how things are being perceived, I suddenly realized. I like that. I like that. Yeah. I wonder if we were doing it at similar times, because I too left a hot drop in America. And I'm trying to think about how to post where I put it now that I have no social media presence. I think I'll put it up on my YouTube channel. But I'm realizing like, I'm slightly concerned about if it's still going to be there or not. But yeah, so you never know when a hot drop is going to happen anywhere. Random Australian dropping it off somewhere in America, there's a hot stopper. They can happen at any moment.

So of all the things we had feedback from from the previous episode, I think the thing that was talked about the most was, will Neil Armstrong be remembered in a thousand years or not? Yeah. And who first discovered America and things like that. I had never heard of Leif Erikson, I'm going to admit it. But boy, have I heard of Leif Erikson now. So I'm presuming that Leif Erikson was the Viking who originally stepped on American shores? Vinland. Land of grapes and wine and things like that, apparently. Yes, it was Leif Erikson.

That's where Leif Erikson stepped when he discovered America. He was the Viking who did it. Apparently so. He's the Neil Armstrong of his time. Right. Now, Brady, do you think you've heard from more than or less than 100 people telling you about Leif Erikson? Probably at the moment, less, but we're heading towards 100 with a bullet. So I was thinking about that. I do find this a kind of endlessly fascinating question of people rolling off the back end of history. What? What are you laughing about there? It's just like, it's kind of sad, isn't it? Thinking of all these people with their big egos thinking they're important and they're on this like conveyor belt that just, they suddenly

just drop off the back. I like that you presume that all historical figures have big egos. There's probably names that we have on this list that were not big ego people. That is true, but most of them will be. Because you've got to have a little bit of something to achieve greatness. Some people achieve greatness without that, but I think most of them do have a bit of something. I think you are probably right. You're probably right that they've got a little bit of je ne sais quoi of trying to do big things. I would expect that to be overrepresented in the number of people who achieve big things over time. But I don't imagine that the Buddha was like, man, I want to be remembered forever. I can't imagine that that ego was at the center of what he was up to. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wouldn't necessarily

expect that. I'm willing to bet Leif Erikson, the Viking who set off on all these crazy voyages to go and find lands he'd heard of, did have a little bit of alpha about him. Okay, I was going to wait for the word, right? Because it's like alpha about him, totally grant by definition that basically has to be true, right? You're engaged in like risk-taking behavior. Sure, 100%. I do wonder a little bit about like how much he was going to think about being remembered for all of history and again thinking of that like how much of a concept would that have even

been in the year 1000 like how much would people even think about that as an idea pulling names out from history like when was herodotus is that the first historian guy i can't quite remember there's like a famous Bible one too, isn't there? Oh my God, I can't believe I got that right. That terrible classics class I had to take in university, that professor would be very proud right now that I remembered Herodotus. Oh, paid off. Yeah. Those hundreds of hours were totally worth it, so I could remember a piece of irrelevant trivia many years later. But yeah, Herodotus. Okay, so 425 BC.

So history, the concept of history starts in 425 BC. So maybe if Leif Erikson was a big Herodotus fan, he could have the idea of, I want to be remembered for forever in history. But I was thinking about that thousand year thing. And it's not just the concept of the name rolling off the back. There's something about it where like, so I had heard the name Leif Erikson before. I'm going to guess it showed up in American schooling at some point. Like this is the whole thing about Vikings.

There are statues of him in everything. Well, on his Wikipedia page, there's a statue of him in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he's looking quite impressive. So hello to all the St. Paul Minnesotans. I think maybe I give myself like a 40% probability that I might have guessed that he was the first Viking in America. But I'm not very confident about that. There's debate about that too, by the way. Well, yes, let's get to that in a moment.

But I think there's something else that I almost think is more interesting than is the name purely remembered. I think there's also a concept of the person being remembered as fundamentally different. Right. Whereas like Leif Erikson, first Viking to be in America. But can anybody name or say anything about the person? Like, I think there is a way in which you sort of count as being forgotten. If there's like a dictionary lookup happening of name one fact associated with it, right? Where it's like neil armstrong landed on the moon jonas sock polio there's a way in which that doesn't count as being remembered it counts as being a like a trivia question

do you agree or disagree with this statement well yeah i guess yeah of course like there's a difference between how you're remembered by your family and your friends, as opposed to your, like, defining accomplishment. These are two different definitions of remembered. And no one is remembered more than a generation or two for what they were actually like. Unless, like, it's we're talking about, like, you know, Abbott and Costello or something, and you can watch, oh, yeah, they were actually like. Unless like it's, we're talking about like, you know, Abbott and Costello or something, and you can watch, oh yeah, they were funny dudes or something. So that's actually exactly where I was going to go with this, is I think that once you get to the age of media, in any sense, written, you know, radio, television, movies, I do think that becomes a different kind of way that you can think of a person as being remembered. And it's like Abbott and Costello, I've totally listened to who's on

first, right? Even though it was created 300 years before I was born, you know, like I had to read Herodotus is really boring history of whatever back in college. I think like that kind of counts more and in a different way than the like, oh, I just associate a name with the thing. You're talking about people that imprinted their personality onto their accomplishments. There's two levels of it. There's like imprinting the personality onto the accomplishment, which I think is a higher level. And then I was going to say like even Neil Armstrong, I can kind of give him a lower level of this because you can watch him step on the moon, right? Or you can watch him step on that soundstage, whichever it may have been, who knows? I can't believe you're even giving that credence.

When you talk about the Earth being a sphere, do you also say, or maybe flat? Of course you don't. I can't believe you of all people even said that. I only said it to rile you up but like i do think there's there's another level of it and in all seriousness so the other connection of that like sort of joke there's this thing which i sort of don't even want to bring up but the leaf erickson thing relates directly to it and it is it is this tremendous uncertainty about history, especially once we get before the media age of any kind. So we heard about Leif Erikson.

And so I quickly look him up on Wikipedia. And this is the kind of thing that always makes me so uncomfortable and is also the thing that has killed so many videos. So you look at the Wikipedia article and it's like, Lee Farrikson, Norse explorer from Iceland, first known European to have set foot on continental North America before Christopher Columbus, right? Great. Great first sentence. It's very clear.

So then the next sentence is, according to the saga of Icelanders, and then it just describes again, like he established a North settlement, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh no, saga of Icelanders, and then it just describes again, like he established a North settlement, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh no, saga of Icelanders. That sounds like something that's oral history. So you click on saga of Icelanders. And again, the first paragraph sounds great. Saga of Icelanders, prose narrative. Mostly based on historical events that took place in the 9th, 10th, early and 11th century. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you scroll down a couple of paragraphs and you get to the part that just kills me. Eventually, many of these Icelandic sagas were recorded, mostly in the 13th and 14th century. And I have come to think of these as,

this is a little bit harsh, but it sort of falls into this category, like Lady Godiva stories, where so much of what at first glance you think is history, a piece of information like Leif Erikson stepped on America first. And you're like, okay, where'd that come from? Oh, it came from these Icelandic sagas.

Oh, okay, great. Were they written at the time? No, they were written 300 years later. I'm like, oh, okay. Maybe I'm being a little bit harsh, but my view of it is like, okay, well, this doesn't really count then. We do have archeological evidence

that there were Vikings, you know, in North America at a particular time. You can like carbon date that kind of thing, and then you can connect it through architecture or technology to a particular civilization. You know, so it's like, okay, these Icelandic sagas that were oral history, they weren't based on nothing. But when we get to a question like, was there a man called Leif Erikson who stepped on the land first? I feel like you can't place a lot of money on the table to bet on that. And I get uncomfortable with so many historical things, how quickly they descend into, oh, and this was written down 100 years later, and that's the historical

record that we have. Do you think I'm too uncomfortable with that, Brady? Do you think I'm being too harsh on history? Yeah, of course you're right. Of course, you know, things are... I mean, if you can't even mention the moon landing without the word soundstage, what chance has Leif Erikson got? I guess I'm uncomfortable because I haven't made a lot of friends in the historical community, especially after our Guns, Germs, and Steel episode. And I don't want to be this person, but I just constantly find myself running up against these incredibly sketchy recountings of things that we regard as historical facts. It makes me very uncomfortable. And I've

had like, there's like two projects that I've been working on, which keep running up against this exact same thing where it's like, oh, we know a bunch of facts. And it's like, oh, we actually have no contemporary record at all from the time that these things occurred. We just sort of say that they happened. I don't know. It makes me uncomfortable. And Leif Erikson, I was like, right at sentence two, I was like, oh no, it's one of these things again. It's oral history. Oral history isn't the same as written history.

I feel the frustration of not being able to know things for sure. Like, I like to know things with a certainty as well. I have quite a scientific mind and I like facts. But I also do have a soft spot for legend. Like when you travel around Israel, and particularly Jerusalem, there's like quotation mark historic sites everywhere. This is where this happened. This is where David fought Goliath. This is the legendary spot where all these things supposedly happened. Many of these things themselves probably didn't even happen, yet alone the odds of knowing where they happened. This is where Jesus did the Sermon on the Mount.

This is the church we've built on a little hillside by the Sea of Galilee where he gave the sermon. And how could you possibly know that? But it just becomes the historic place to celebrate a thing that may or may not have happened. I still get quite lost in the magic of those places. And it almost becomes that the place has been celebrated for so long that that's almost why it's historic. Whether or not Jesus ever gave a sermon on that mount becomes irrelevant because for hundreds of years, this is where it's been celebrated to have happened. And even that's historic now. So I kind of don't mind getting a bit lost in all the magic of it all, even if the origin of it all has been lost in time and is probably not genuine. You use the phrase like lost in the magic of it all. So even when you're enjoying these places,

though, you're not really taking them seriously. Or is that unfair to say? I'm taking them seriously, but I'm taking them seriously for what they are, for them being a place where we celebrate something, whether or not we're celebrating a myth, or we're celebrating an event in the wrong spot. I'm taking it seriously as the place we celebrate it. The few square meters of this planet where we decide to make this the site of it, even if it's not the site of it. And while there is a bit of a flaw to my reasoning there, I'm okay with it.

I'm okay with it. Like it would be weird if we celebrated the spot of the Trinity nuclear test and we celebrated it in New York. That would be weird. If you know where something happened, that's where you want to mark the point that it happened. But if we don't know if it happened or where it happened, then I'm all right with having another place where it's celebrated, especially if it's been that for a long time, which is like everything in Jerusalem and Israel

and stuff's like that. This is where the church for the Sermon on the Mount has been for hundreds of years. I guess the uncomfortableness is part of me wants some way to put an asterisk more clearly on all of these things, where we say like, oh, this is where David fought Goliath, asterisk, to indicate that there's some level of uncertainty. And even in the Leif Erikson one. Now, again, I'm basing this entirely on two paragraphs of Texo. There could be more evidence that I'm not aware of, but this is a general situation that does come up where I feel like I kind of want Wikipedia like opens with this really strong sentence,

but I would like something that's not a footnote, that's something more of like an asterisk. He was the first known European to have set foot on continental North America, asterisk. This episode is brought to you in part by Ting. Go to hi.ting.com to get $25 off your mobile phone bill. Ting is a different kind of cell phone company. There's no contracts or anything.

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So when you go to hi.ting.com to get $25 off, that's basically like getting your first month for free. So make a smarter choice for your mobile phone and get $25 off at hi.ting.com. That's hi.ting.com. Thanks to Ting for supporting the show. And thanks to Ting for helping people save money on their mobile phone bills. So speaking of the moon landing, there's something I want to show you. Yeah, yeah. What do I want to show you.

Yeah, yeah. What do you want to show me? So the paper I used to work for in Adelaide was called The Advertiser, but it had like a Sunday paper, essentially the same company, same building. So for all intents and purposes, it's the same. So I'm going to send you the front page of the Sunday Mail celebrating the moon landing, the 50th anniversary, of course. And I want you to talk me through it. So this is the Sunday Mail that I'm looking at here. What do you see? 50 years ago today, Australians watched on as Neil Armstrong became first man to walk on the moon. Only Australians, no one else is watching. Very parochial. I was going to say, I think in your speech last time else is watching very parochial i was gonna say i think i in your speech last time i enjoyed the parochial part of it because yes it does seem there's a way in which

sometimes trying to embiggen a thing makes it so much smaller and yeah it's like that subtitle makes me laugh what do you think of the imagery i mean i don't know like i don't know what to say except that it looks like a newspaper newspapers look like garbage with ad banners on them. Like they all look ugly. I think this looks ugly. Yeah, there is a crappy ad on this and a stupid story down on the bottom half of the page. But I'm talking about the Apollo part of the page. But the words like Sunday Mail have been dirtied up, I guess, to make it look old.

Yeah, it looked like moon dust and stuff. Yeah, moon prints. There's a little ad over the main photo about a souvenir poster that's inside the newspaper. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I am not attuned enough to newspapers to know what I'm supposed to be looking for here. Nothing particularly stands out to me. Let me tell you about the two things about that photo that concerned me as they were talking about Australians watching on as Neil Armstrong took his famous walk on the moon. One, there was no lunar rover on Apollo 11. The lunar rover didn't start till Apollo 15. Oh, really? There's a lunar rover in the background. Oh, yeah. I guess that's right. Yeah. Also, astronaut spacesuits on the moon didn't start having red

stripes on them until the later missions as well. So you could differentiate between the commander and the lunar module pilot. This astronaut has red stripes on his suit. Also, there is no good photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon. This photo is of Gene Cernan from Apollo 17. And they've used it as they're like, Australians looked on at this historic moment as this astronaut stands next to the flag saluting. It's not like there aren't photos from Apollo 11. In fact, some of the most iconic photos of all Apollo are from Apollo 11.

Right. They've put a picture from Apollo 17 as their huge front page commemorative photo marking the day 50 years ago Australians looked on as Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. So you think this is like me just being relaxually? Okay, no. I was sighing there because I'm trying to classify all of my thoughts. Do you think if you're doing a front page commemorative edition for Apollo 11, you should use a photo

from Apollo 11? That's the question I'm asking, basically. Okay, so I'm hesitating here because I feel like I'm trying to be very delicate. And one of the things I want to be a little delicate about here is I feel like you have very high expectations for what the newspaper is going to show on its cover, which is all about selling the newspaper. Just before you continue, you don't have to tread carefully here. I want to know whether or not I'm too close to this and this doesn't matter. That it doesn't matter that they're using a photo of a moonwalk from 1972 for their commemorative 50 years ago, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969. Okay. I will agree with you that I think it's wrong that they didn't use a photo from the actual

event that they're talking about. Right? Like 100%, I agree with you. Okay. I was going to guess that it was like a composite photo or something. I think I didn't say anything partly because I don't really have high expectations that the hero image that they're going to use is going to accurately represent anything that they're talking about. It's like, how often do YouTube thumbnails really accurately represent whatever the video is? It's like, well.

That's true. But there are great hero images from Apollo 11. Yeah, but they're not in color. Yes, they are. Oh, there are? Okay. Yep. Yep. So in my head, all it is, is the broadcast, the live broadcast. No, there's great photos. Let me send you a few. The live broadcast, just to be on the opposite side of this for a second,

the live broadcast that would have been impossible to pre-record and broadcast as live with 1969 technology. That wouldn't have been possible to pre-record the whole thing. So I guess in my head, it's all low quality, grainy, black and white stuff. I'm sending you some Apollo 11 images, some of which, some of the most famous images that even you will have seen before. So, okay. Yes yes they totally should have used oh that last one you sent me is really good actually no that one's been faked a bit what do you mean it's been faked a bit well there's a second astronaut there which is fake oh i didn't

even notice the second astronaut but how about this this is oh no that's been it's hard to find ones that haven't been faked up a bit i'm enjoying this moment right now like it's because i'm looking at google images and not a NASA site and I'm just depending on my knowledge. But if I went to a NASA site, I would get all legit images. That's fair enough. I also feel the need in this moment just to state very clearly for the record, because we've now hit these two topics that I've sort of joked about. It's like, no, Gray does think that climate change is a thing. Gray does think that we landed on the moon, right? Like just to get it 100% on the record, because people lose their minds over this stuff. Anyway, you don't think it's that big a deal?

I'm going to phrase it this way, that I'm not surprised, like, as a comparison, like, what is important in the world? And my wife and I started to watch a movie the other night, which was about some tennis match. And the movie starts off by talking about how important the tennis match is for the world. And I couldn't deal with the movie after that because it's like, it's not important. You know, it matters to the people involved, but importance is a word that's like a tricky word.

And I think people want to like add on a lot to it. So is it important that the sunday mail gets the image right for landing on the moon i would say no like it it's not important because nobody should be using this as the primary source for what did it look like when we landed on the moon fair enough yeah right so like i don't think it it doesn't matter yeah in the same way as if at the time say when the like the photos were released if nasa put up a bunch of doctored photos at the time the event occurred and said look look, we landed on the moon, that is important because

these should be the images of record. And later we can have a sort of different idea about what did it look like. But the primary source has to be as primary and as accurate as possible. I don't think it's important for the Apollo historians that the Adelaide Sunday Mail got the picture wrong on the front page. I think it's important to the Sunday Mail though, to their credibility that when they're doing a story about the most famous event, probably in recent human history, you know, it's like if they were running an anniversary story about 9-11 and they ran a picture of like the wrong building on fire right like how bad would that be that would be very bad yeah yeah if they had an image thing remembering the twin towers and they showed the chrysler building yeah it'd be pretty bad yeah the patronus towers or something

yeah exactly exactly i think also part of my problem is simply that there's so little on the moon to show, right? Where it's like, we've got moons, we've got astronauts, there's dirt, there's a flag, there's some space stuff we brought with us, right? Yeah. It's almost like if you're showing a picture of the moon now or a picture of the moon a thousand years ago, not a lot's going to be different. So I agree with you.

It's a bad look for the newspaper. Yeah. But again, like this is where I feel like I'm treading lightly. I don't have high expectations that the newspapers are going to look good in these environments. Like I don't think that anybody's really going to these things to be super informed, except in the most passive of way. So this is totally for someone who just knows nothing about the moon landings and is like, oh, right, it's the 50th anniversary of the moon landings. It's not important to that person that they've seen the exact correct image. So I was curious about whether other newspapers in the same stable because

the same company owns various newspapers around australia so i was wondering what did anyone else do this on the front page and i don't think anyone did but i found out a bigger paper the melbourne sort of sister paper the heralderald Sun, made the same mistake. Was it a mistake or was it a deliberate choice? I don't know. They used the same picture, right? Let me send you how they used the picture. They've done a few things differently here.

They used it on an inside photo spread as a montage of pictures across a double page. So the two things they've done differently. First is I think their caption is more explicit if you read the top part of that caption. Neil Armstrong plants the US flag on the moon. They're now saying, this is Neil Armstrong planting the flag on the moon. So I think that's worse. Okay. Yep. That is worse. That's worse. Yeah. But also, look at the sky. Oh, wow. Okay. For the listeners, I didn't even notice. Yeah. They Photoshopped like the galaxy in the background. I don't know what it is, if it's the Pleiades or what it is, but it's all like these

blue glowing stars in the background. Yeah. It's brilliant blue, like in a movie starscape in the background. I mean, that's gone beyond sloppy now. That's gone into full naughtiness. Again, the reason why I have slight sympathy here is I fully expect that what's happening in the editor's room is like in movies when they have the concept of what will read to an audience. And so in movies, there are very many things where they do something where they know it doesn't make any sense, but this is like the literacy of movies. Like no one will believe the sky was black like that. Yeah, exactly. It's like the way, you know, if you've ever shot a real gun, like both of us have on a trip, and then you see gunshots in movies,

it's like, oh, guns are nothing like this, right? But if a movie showed the way gunfights really look and sound, people would think it was unrealistic. So I can understand that the newspaper is looking at a photo of a man on the moon and they're thinking, well, people know it's in space. Can we put some stars in the background to make it look more like it's space? Again, I'm not saying that's good, but I sort of don't expect different. And I expect that this is what you're going to get as they're like, man, we need bright colors. We need stars. We need it to look like the moon. It needs to look like an astronaut. I don't accept that. To come back to 9-11,

which I know obviously is an incredibly sensitive subject, but it is also a historic event, so I feel like I can talk about it like this. No, it's a good thing to compare. Yeah. If we were running 9-11 pictures and an editor said, oh, I always thought there was more fire when that happened. Can we put some more fire in there? Can you imagine? I mean, it's ridiculous, isn't it?

You don't doctor historic photos. I understand doctoring photos in newspapers. Barely a photo is published in a newspaper now that probably has something done to it. But you don't doctor, especially the moon landing, which already has this whole mythology of conspiracy theories and doctoring and tampering around it. To then go in and start doctoring the moon landing photos.

Whereas September 11th has no conspiracy theories around it whatsoever. Well, yeah, sorry. I wasn't saying as opposed to September 11th. Right, right. No, no, no. I'm just saying, is there anything that has more around it than the moon landings for saying the imagery has been faked. And now we are faking them and putting them in the paper. 100%. The moon landing is ground zero for conspiracy theories. It's like the first big spawns off the whole concept kind of thing, right? I guess I'm just, I'm thinking there's a little bit of a confounding factor, which is that September

11th was more recent than the moon landings. So you would have more people being able to firsthand knowledge call out that the image is incorrect. Whereas I'm a relatively science-y person and you show me the Sunday mail and I'm just thinking in the back of my head, it's a little photoshopped or something. But it doesn't clock to me that there was no moon rover. I don't know about the stripe on the uniform. I couldn't call that out as, oh, that's obviously Apollo 17. Five years, a newspaper has run a doctored image that shows the two towers both standing with a plane on its way to impact the first tower, of which there are no images that exist. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if that's a thing that showed up in a newspaper somewhere.

Again, I think the whole thing is like the concept of expectations. And I totally agree it's bad and it's a bad look for the newspaper and they totally shouldn't do it. And space nerds are going to call them out on like, oh, that's the wrong stripe on the uniform. And I'm glad that they do. I'm glad that's the world that we live in. But I don't think it's important. And I count myself also as zero surprised. But I'm very glad that you're here to set the record straight for the moon landings, Brady. And just a short shout out to Ireland, where they published a commemorative stamp for the moon landing, and they spelt moon incorrectly. This is the one euro stamp with Neil Armstrong, and they had the Irish version written in their language

and they, instead of the Irish word for moon, which I can't pronounce, but it's something like Gaelic, they put Gaelic, which is actually the Irish word for Gailey. So that was the first landing on the Irish language. That's, come on guys. M-O-O-N, that spells moon. Okay, Brady, I need you to sanity check me on something. I need you to tell me if I'm being paranoid, okay? Can you do that for me? Before hearing the details, my answer is probably yes. Okay, no, that's unfair. Look, I'm asking you to do me a solid here and just sanity check

something for me. So I've been traveling around the summer a bunch and the thing that caught my attention and everyone's favorite place, which is passing through security at the airport. This happened several times. It happened on the regular security line. And it also happened when I was using my special TSA jump the queue global entry pass, which is supposed to be like the easy security thing. And here's what happened. Several times at different airports, as I'm passing through, the security person asked

to see my phone. Now, this was not international. This didn't happen while I was doing the coming into and coming out of the country thing, which is a bit of a legal gray area of like, can they see your phone? These were domestic flights. And what they did was they did not ask me to unlock the phone or anything, but they said, we need to see your phone so we can run it through. I don't know the name for it, but it's the machine you sometimes see at the airport where they're using it as a bomb detector one. It's that machine where like they'll rub a cloth over your bag and they're trying to detect like nitroglycerin or other bomb related chemicals. Yeah. And they put it through the machine and the machine says like,

oh yes, you've been near bomb stuff. Also, one of the times I was traveling, I did actually set off that bomb detector thing. But then I got through, I don't know if I should like give the key. But the guy asked, oh, have you been on a farm recently? And I said, yes. And he's like, oh, okay, it's fine. Which again, these things always make me so uncomfortable. Like, oh, is that all I need to say? Sure, I was on a farm.

Why not? Because of what, nitrates and things like that? I presume that's what they're scanning for. So when they took the phone, I have like hawk eyes right on my phone. And I've quickly put it into that little mode where you can't unlock it using face ID. You hold down the two buttons and you feel your phone go click, click.

And you know that it's super locked. So I hand the phone to the guy and each time it seemed like they were doing what they were saying. I saw them take the phone. They put it in the little bomb scanner machine. The phone was never 100% out of my sight. Like I could kind of see it sticking out of the machine. The lightning port wasn't being used. And then they hand the phone back to me. So what I think people have told me, I'm crazy paranoid, but I think this is the thin end of the wedge to getting people used to handing over their phones that like the bomb detector, it's all a red herring. The real thing that they're trying to get you used to is when

you're passing through the airport, you may have to turn over your phone. And in the future, they might try to use these like cloning machines that are supposedly in force at the border. But I think they're trying to domestically get people used to taking the phones. And it wasn't just me. Like several times,

there were other grumpy businessmen who didn't like this at all of like, why do I have to give you my phone? And like no it's just for the bomb detector it's nothing else we're not doing anything but i i think they're trying to get people used to this am i being paranoid well yes i think they've probably just had some intelligence that people are going to be using phones and phone batteries as like you know for some attack of some sort. So they're just upping their game on phones. Oh, interesting. But I also think that is going to happen. I think the US and the UK and other places are definitely going down a path where like, you know, privacy and rights and like

the state imposing more control over people. I mean, I think this is going to happen. They're already asking for your social media and your Twitter details and stuff when you enter the country. And the next step is not getting you to volunteer your Twitter handle. It's just going into your phone and seeing what you've been saying about the government. And what can you do? Nothing. If you want to fly or travel.

That's an interesting point that you raise about perhaps there was just something about oh phone batteries being used as bombs because i know that they're all over lithium battery sizes they're very concerned about lithium batteries and everything so like i i had to double check a bunch of the things i was traveling with about the battery size because they can be very fussy about that. So that's interesting. That does make me feel slightly better. But then you slide directly into, you do think that eventually they're just going to say,

we have to see your phone to fly. You think that's where this is going? Yeah. I don't want to be that guy. And I don't think I really am that guy. And I certainly don't want to rabbit on a podcast where we prefer to joke around about flags yeah yeah moon landings but definitely we're seeing like you know the world is heading in a kind of more authoritarian type direction at the moment you know these things ebb and flow and the way things are ebbing at the moment

i think we're definitely moving towards a situation where the state is going to start demanding to know what's in our phone if we're going to enter their country and things like that. Yeah. I guess the thing that concerns me is just that these were domestic flights. Yeah. But I think like, you know, when things go in this direction, it's not just outsiders that the government starts looking at really, really closely. And going on planes gives you that excuse, you know, gives you that reason to do it. If we're going to let you on a plane, which we now know are these dangerous weapons, you got to tell us more about you, my friend. I don't mean to say that it's like, oh, all domestic flights are free of suspicion.

You know, the 9-11 flights were domestic flights. Yes. It's just like, I'm thinking of levels of security and it seems totally reasonable that the security at the border between countries is vastly higher than the internal security between internal borders. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. But like, okay, let's say you were in America and let's say they asked for your phone on a domestic flight and they take it away and they disappear with it for a while. And then they come back and hand you your phone. What would you do in that moment?

Like this was a total surprise to you. You didn't know. They disappear with your phone and 10 minutes later they come back. Like how would you react in that situation? I probably wouldn't react to the people very much because I feel kind of powerless in that situation. And if you kick up a ruckus, you can get yourself in a whole lot of trouble. I would go and change a whole bunch of passwords later on. I mean, there's nothing in my phone that is going to end me if people see it.

My only concern would be, you know, is all my money a threat or something? So should I change my bank passwords now that all this data has been put into some black box I don't understand? So, I'd probably, you know, protect myself from things like that. But what can you do? You can't do anything, especially as an outsider, if it happens in America, which is where I assume it would happen. Well, I can't sit there and kick up a fuss. I'll get thrown out of the country and I'll never be allowed back in. I guess the other thing that when I was discussing this with some people caused claims of paranoia is I think if I was caught off guard like that, which is why I had my eye on the phone for every split second, if they took it away and

I couldn't see it and they were gone for some period of time and then they came back, I would say, oh, thank you. Take my phone. And then as soon as I was out of view, it's like I would put that phone right into airplane mode so they couldn't communicate with anything. I would tell that phone to reset itself and then I would throw it in the garbage and get a new phone. I really have the feeling of like, if you have lost physical security over your device, you just have to assume that that device is completely compromised. I didn't even think of that.

You're thinking they're going to be able to surveil you at a new level or something because of something they've put onto the phone. Well, here's the thing. I use an iPhone, and as far as I can tell, Apple does a pretty good job with security. But ultimately, this is a trusting thing. Oh, I just kind of trust that Apple's pretty good job with security. But ultimately, this is like a trusting thing. Oh, I just kind of trust that Apple's pretty good at this. But there are companies out there that claim they can do things like clone the phone. And Apple is always sort of in a like a cat and mouse game about this.

And sort of interestingly, I came across, again, another one of these stories out of China, which I sort of want to verify of like, how true is this? But that China is starting to require passing into the country, lets them install an app on your phone. Whoa, okay. The question isn't, do I think something has been installed on the phone? Like if this had happened, the answer would be like, I'm not assuming that it would, but I just think in terms of a general security practice, if you lose physical control over the device, like it makes sense to just assume that it has been compromised. And yeah, then I would totally ditch that phone. And if the United States did start doing this as like regular checks for phones, I think I would end up just traveling with vastly cheaper phones that have nothing on them if I possibly can. A burner. Yeah. But like basically that. And then it's like, okay, now am I crazy?

Now I'm the guy traveling with like a burner phone or like I have a phone waiting in a locker for me upon arrival at the airport. I don't know. I just don't know how insane this is. But I just the phone is like, it's like someone is looking right into your brain. And then it's also the device that's with you all the time. So I think it is actually quite reasonable to be on very high alert about security around your phone. But I would say very few people agree with me. I mean, you're definitely paranoid. Like you're definitely the guy who's like only a step or two away from building some metal cage around his office.

Who says I haven't? You're also making a lot of sense. Okay. All right. I'm going to take that then as a thumbs up from Brady. Thank you. This episode of Hello Internet has been brought to you by CuriosityStream, the subscription streaming service full of all sorts of great educational smart films. As of now, and this is always changing, they've got something like 2,400

documentaries and nonfiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers. And they've also got some exclusive original stuff. You can get unlimited access starting from just $2.99 a month, but Hello Internet listeners can get their first month for free by going to curiositystream.com slash hellointernet and use the promo code hellointernet. You can check it out, see what you think of it all. CuriosityStream was founded by the same guy who started Discovery Channel, and it's got original content from all sorts of amazing people. Stephen Hawking, Sigourney Weaver, David Attenborough, Dirk Muller. So I went looking to find a video to recommend to

you, and I was browsing Apollo 11 videos, of course. But then I stumbled over a documentary about something I'd never heard of. Also from 1969 though. It's about an underwater submersible, like a submarine, that had its maiden voyage just a week before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. I won't give away too much. The film is called The Disappearance of PX-15. It's an older film from 2004. I'd never heard of of it i was really chuffed to find it so thanks curiosity stream it's full of great archive footage stories i didn't know about now if you want to sign up a reminder again you can get that free month-long trial curiositystream.com slash hello internet the promo code is hello internet there's also a link in the show notes

usual places thanks to them for supporting this episode. Someone posted a comment on Reddit asking, suggesting, theorizing, claiming that they reckon that you're a bit of a granny driver, that you would drive like an old lady. You were talking about your feelings about the Tesla and your feelings about driving and stuff like that. And they were speculating clearly from everything we know about Gray and everything he says, the guy drives like an old lady. Well, Brady, you have firsthand knowledge of my driving experience. You've been in a car with me. Can you settle it for the people? Do you think I drive like an old lady? I haven't seen enough to answer that based on me seeing you driving. And I will say for the record, I'm a bit of an old lady driver. So I'm not the best judge, but I think you would be. I think you're a worrier. I think the conversation we just had about mobile phones shows that you

are capable of worry. And driving is a big responsibility. It's a dangerous thing. And there are things you should worry about when you drive. And if there are things to worry about, you know, Gray's going to worry about them. I think that's a slanderous statement. I think I worry about reasonable things. But in this case, you can be a bad driver because you're an inattentive driver. You can be a bad driver because you're a reckless driver. And you can also be an overly cautious driver. And I will completely acknowledge that I fall into the category of overly cautious driver. And that does put me in some situations that are not always great on the road. So I do not think it is an unfair characterization to say

that I'm an overly cautious driver. I've just got the image of Mr. Magoo at the wheel of his jalopy going really, really slow. No, Mr. Magoo is a bad driver because he's inattentive because of his inability to see anything, right? So he's functionally inattentive. Whereas if anything, it's like, I am too attentive on the road. But like, that does get back to the thing that we mentioned last time about driving is a negotiation between all of the drivers on the road. And overcautiousness is a thing that people sometimes don't expect from the other driver, which can lead to ambiguous situations. I mean, here's the thing. If people want to judge for themselves, I have uploaded something like 40 hours of dash cam footage from me driving a few summers ago.

The only thing that I will say on that is you cannot pass judgment until the third video when I actually get out to Moab. Because if you watch the start of that drive, I am horrific, horrifically slow on the highway and driving horrifically cautious. But that's because it was a car I had never driven before and I hadn't been on a highway in 10 years at that point in time. Is there any like inner city crazy driving in it though? That's where how good a driver someone is

comes to the fore, not highways. Oh yeah, like later on in the video, I'm driving in LA and I'm driving in Las Vegas. Like I think people can make a judgment for themselves then. But yeah, I think it's fair to say that I'm an overly cautious driver. And that's not a humble brag. That's just a bad thing. I wish I was less cautious on the road. But, you know, I'll just keep waiting for myself driving Tesla.

Great. There's a few things I'd like to go through machine gun style. I know there's one big talk we still want to do, but there's been so many interesting little news stories and things in the last week or two. I want to just quickly run some of them by you, but don't feel like we need to get bogged down by these. Let me show you this first one. It was done a little while ago now. It was done during the Wimbledon tennis tournament but there was a poll done of people and i think it was something like 12 percent of men just normal civilian men like average joes believed that they would be able to take a point off serena williams if they played her at tennis the 23 time grand slam singles title winner i found this absolutely fascinating that this poll was even done and the result of it because like in years gone by i think it's

been a bit of a stereotype that men thought are women's sports not at a very high level and it's a bit of a giggle i think that's changed a lot in the last 10 years but still i found it interesting that over one in 10 men just walking the streets thought if they were playing Serena Williams at tennis, they could take a point off her. Are you surprised by this result? I'm 0% surprised. 0% surprised by this. I think this is just a side effect of the Dunning-Kruger effect of people just dramatically overestimate their skills at things they're really terrible at. Right. So like, I'm fully willing to bet that if you broke down this group of the, the headline

here says one in eight men believe they could win a point against Serena Williams. I would love to see a follow-up question for those one in eight, which is how frequently do you play tennis? I would be willing to bet that never is disproportionately represented on that group. That people who never play tennis disproportionately think they could score a point against the Women's World Championship. So I don't find it surprising because, I don't know, this is just a general rule of thumb when thinking about surveys, is I think people read surveys and then they, not explicitly, but they sort of implicitly imagine that the people answering the survey are a lot of people like them. Whereas my answer would be, no, I couldn't win a point against anyone in any amateur league, in any sport, anywhere in the world. I'll just lay that sentence on the table right now. I can hold a tennis racket, right? I had tennis lessons when I was a boy. And if I go out on a tennis court, I'll hold my own against someone

else who doesn't really play tennis. But then one day I was having a hit of tennis with some friends, you know, in a barbecue type scenario. And one of the guys there played suburban Adelaide tennis, like still many, many, many levels below, even being anywhere near a professional tennis player. And he came out and decided to have a hit with us. I couldn't take a point off him. I was amazed.

I was like, oh my goodness, I didn't know people could serve this fast or hit with us. I couldn't take a point off him. I was amazed. I was like, oh my goodness, I didn't know people could serve this fast or hit this hard. And he was like a suburban tennis player. There is no way I would take a point off any woman in the top hundreds in the world. And don't go onto Twitter or Reddit and talk about double faults and stuff like that. That doesn't count. There was a viral video just recently that I think was made subsequent to this poll. I don't know if it was with like Dude Perfect or one of those type YouTube channels where they then had a hit around with Serena Williams

and she started whacking the ball at just normal guys who aren't good tennis players. And they had no chance. It was all over the place. Again, it's like a professional going up against an amateur. I don't find it surprising because again i i'm thinking of it just in terms of the people who are taking the poll that's why i would i would just love to see the statistics broken down for characteristics about the people who believe that they could and i think you would find this is not like middle of the bell curve people, right?

They're like, I've never played tennis before, but I think I could win a point against her. It's like, yeah, you know nothing. You know nothing about the sport. Continuing our little mini sports ball corner and local news. Oh, you're sneaking in sports ball this way. Okay.

Well, that was sports ball. The Commonwealth Games, which I used to think of as like the next level down from the Olympics, but I now think of as the Crap Olympics, are being held in 2022 in Birmingham. Oh, you must be excited. And they have unveiled their logo. When you say it's the Crap Olympics, are the Commonwealth Games,

are they like the Olympics in that they're like a cornucopia of random sports collected together? Yes, yes. You know, your athletics and your swimming and yeah. Oh, okay. Not all the same sports, but yeah, a big multitude of sports across multiple venues, but only for countries in the Commonwealth. As an Australian, like when I was growing up, the Commonwealth Games was like almost as big as the Olympics and we won more stuff at it. So it was really exciting. I now kind of, it's brand is diminishing. I think those things are related,

Brady. Tell me what you think of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games logo. I know that's what you want me to do, but I'm immediately distracted by something else, which is who's still in the Commonwealth? Like I always, who's part of this club? I, you know, I always just love the trivia fact that America has an open invitation to join the Commonwealth at any point that we have officially not responded to. We haven't turned it down. Oh, saying that's like talking about old laws that are still on the statutes and stuff like that. That is totally what it is. But I just think these diplomatic games are sort of funny, right? Of like, oh, we didn't say no, but we did say yes.

All right. So Commonwealth, the big players, it's Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, and then a bunch of countries that will be angry that I didn't mention them. But okay. So that's the Commonwealth. There's some pretty big countries there though. And like some pretty big numbers, India, Canada. Canada is physically large, but has fewer people than California. The UK. Yes. Yes. The United Kingdom is also in the Commonwealth. That is true. But not Ireland. Ireland wants nothing to do with

the Commonwealth. I don't know. The logo looks like a logo. It just looks like a corporate logo. Yeah, there's been a bit of flack. A lot of people say they don't think it's very good. And it doesn't look like a typical logo for a sporting event, in my opinion. Yeah, that's why I say it just looks like a corporate logo i see here on the bottom of the article that it's uh the shape is vaguely like a sort of super stylized b the letter b not the insect and it's connecting what like the hosting locations in the city the venues the sporting venues as they're spread across birmingham yeah it's sort of like a a tubey map style representation joining all the venues together,

apparently. Yeah. We'll put a link in the show notes so you can see the logo and why it's the logo. Yeah, I'll give it a pass as sort of just totally forgettable. I don't think it's as bad as the London logo was for the Olympics a long time ago, which was a pretty terrible one. I just can't imagine this one, like anyone wanting it on like a t-shirt or anything. I thought this London Olympics logo was rubbish as well, but I could imagine having a t-shirt with it on this. This Birmingham one, I can't imagine.

I don't think it's sellable. I'm not going to buy a teddy bear with that stylized tube map B on its tummy. I can give you that. That is a different, interesting way to think about it. I think the London logo is worse, but is more brandable. I can see it on merchandise in a way that this looks like the logo for a large pharmaceutical company. You wouldn't think of it as a branding opportunity for teddy bears and t-shirts. But also the color on this Birmingham Commonwealth Games logo, it's like some of those colors have been chosen to be deliberately unappealing. Like, you know, that green sick color, that's apparently the most unappealing color in the universe. And they want cigarette packets to be like this color, which has got this gradient through along all the way down the line,

like goes through almost the whole spectrum of format. Yes. Well, I mean, of the many rules we can have for logo designers, one of them should definitely be don't use gradients. Gradients are off limits. So you don't agree with the chief marketing officer for Birmingham 2020, who said that the logo is quote, bold and dynamic, just like the region itself, close quote. You don't agree with that? Also, this caption here says the logo was designed after 160 hours of in-depth consultation. 160 hours, that's not even scratching the surface of how much time Gray spends on a video.

That is literally true. That's not even impressive to me, 160 hours of consultation. That's like, those bodies that organize things like the Commonwealth Games and design logos can burn through 160 hours deciding what coffee to have. So you're not going to be getting a t-shirt to forever remember the Birmingham Games. Are you going to go? Are you going to check it out? Probably not. No. Wow. If they had a better logo, maybe they could have gotten you to go. So, Grey, I don't know if you're aware, but the UK has a new prime minister. I'm assuming you're not that much out of the news that you don't know that happened. Yeah. Yeah, I did come across that.

All right. So, as a result of having a new prime minister, we have a whole new government. And one of the people who's been given a very senior role in the government is a chap named Jacob Rees-Mogg. Okay. I'm not going to talk about politics because, you know, let's avoid politics when we can. But one thing you do need to know about Jacob Rees-Mogg is he's like, he's very old fashioned. Okay. He almost revels in his old fashionedness. He's very conservative, both with a capital C and a small c. And he's really, really old school.

And he's really, really posh. Like, he's like this typical old-fashioned British guy, right? And on his, like, first or second day in his new ministerial job, he issued a style guide to, like, all the people in his staff and department about things he wants done differently and the way they write and do documents and that. And that's what I've shared with you because some of these things, I thought you would enjoy. The Jacob Rees-Mogg style guide. This is legit. He's legitimately issued this to his staff. So, I don't understand when you say his, because I don't understand this

person's position. Is this a style guide for the UK government as a whole or for his department or? It's for people that are under him. It's not for the government as a whole. Okay. He's the new leader of the House of Commons. So I guess anyone who's doing any documents or letters or things on his behalf have been told to follow this style guide. Okay.

So it's a House of Commons style guide, like a congressional style guide. I'm not exactly sure which people have to follow it and which ones don't. Okay. Well, the one that sticks out to me. so there's a bunch of rules that are listed here yep and the one that surprises me is that is the very first one it says organizations are singular yep you know when people uh from different places talk to each other they love to talk about what's different right you know you say table we say table. You say bottle, we say bottle, this thing. Everyone loves to do that. And I think the most jarring, at least to my American ear, difference between the language is the plural organization. So when you say parliament has passed a law or parliament have passed a law, right? Yeah. Apple has released a new iPhone. Apple have released a new iPhone. Yeah. That one,

I find just incredibly jarring. And it's, it's a result of the organizations are plural. But because of its jarringness, it feels like maybe the most British grammarism that there is. So when you say this guy is very old school, I find it quite surprising that rule number one is organizations are singular. That's very surprising to me. I always find this the most difficult to grapple with when talking about sports teams. Australia has won the World Cup. Australia have won the World Cup. Sports teams are where I find the biggest conundrum. The New York Yankees have won the World Cup. The New York Yankees has won the world cup sports teams we tend to go plural don't we we treat them as a bunch of people right yeah whereas where the country is singular

i never really thought about it but i think if i'm talking about sports teams i use plural because then it's more clearly a group of people but he's saying you, the Ministry of Defence is a has, not a have. Has, not a have. The Ministry of Defence has issued a statement. Yeah. I mean, I think the one that is most indicative of who he is as a person is that all non-titled males have to be referred to as a squire after their name. But that's just like funny. But I thought the last four would be the ones that would interest you there.

He's insisting that they always have a double space after full stops. Well, I mean, that's just correct. Yeah. No comma after and. You'll disagree with that, won't you? Yeah, no, I like the Oxford comma is the way I want to go. I think that makes more sense. Yeah.

But also he's insisting they always use imperial measurements, which I find like a funny thing to make official policy. That one makes sense though, because the UK still does use imperial units for lots of stuff. Like in my head, it's all muddled up because I can't quite keep straight the few differences. Like when I go to the doctor, they want to know my height in centimeters. They don't want feet and inches, but yeah, it's still officially imperial. So that makes sense to me. And again, double spaces after full stops.

Yeah, of course. That's the way it should be. Obviously, that's the way it goes. He's also issued a list of banned words and phrases, which I find very amusing. You are not allowed to use any of these words or phrases. Very. Due to. Ongoing. Hopefully. Unacceptable. Equal. Very, due to, ongoing, hopefully, unacceptable, equal, lot, got, speculate, no longer fit for purpose.

I am pleased to learn, meet with, ascertain, disappointment. The thing I love about this is that this guy's been wanting to get in power for a long time now he's like you know he's a real brexiteer and he's like been longing for power and he finally gets in power and he's got this long list of like gripes that he's finally dealing with and they're all these quite like seemingly like trivial things i love love it. I love it. Like the first thing he does in power is like said, finally, I can get rid of single spaces after full stops. It's beautiful. Look at it a different way, Brady. When you get in power, job number one is we have to communicate. And here are some rules on communication. So I think, I don't know, I'm not in government, but I have a little document that I use for style guide for my own videos and like where I just make little notes

for things. I'm just one person here, but it's useful to have something like this. And I think it totally makes sense to actually have this as one of the very first things that you do, because presumably on day two, people are already writing up documents for here's how things are going to change. And so that should be one of the earlier things that you do about how we want to communicate. And I think it's acceptable to have lists of banned words and phrases. And the very one makes me laugh because that's in my own style guide of like, try not to use this unless you're being intentional about it. Because it's a word that's easy to just throw in. It doesn't really add any context. It can be used for humor, but the word in itself is almost meaningless. And there's this famous quote, which when I heard it years and years ago, just completely changed my mind on it from Mark Twain, where he says, Oh, after you've written

a book, you should go through it and replace every instance of the word very with the word damn. And then it will make you realize how you don't need any of these damn varies. And you can just get rid of all of them. And it was like, he's totally right. Like this word just adds nothing. You know, like that was very interesting. That was damn interesting. Like, guess what? The word interesting is doing all of the lifting in that sentence. You don't need the word very at all. I have to say there's one on here, which I do really like, but it's the banned phrase invest in the context of a sentence like invest in schools. Yeah. I'm with that 100% because I think that's a word that is overused in many circumstances

as a kind of weasel word to change people's minds. Yeah. So, you know, you're not buying yourself a new car, you're investing in your transportation. And it's like, well, wait a minute. No, investments are things that should pay me more in the future than they pay me now. Well, I'm sure people would argue that's what schools do, Gray. Right. I understand that. But I think it is totally reasonable to say we're banning this usage because it is too carelessly used as a kind of convincing word. We're not paying for the nation's defense. We're investing in

security. And it's like, oh, you can just overuse it and then it becomes meaningless. I'm with that completely. But no, this is exactly what you should do. When you get into power, step one, fussy style guide for your underlings. Whatever it is that you think is important in the world, that you wish to spread the news about, you could probably use a domain name to help you do that. Well, Hover is here for you. Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names. It's where I go when I think of a domain name. Straight to hover.com slash hi to get 10% off. The message you want to send to the world starts with your domain name.

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Oh, you're a busy guy, Gray. Watching like a one hour TV show is a big ask. I've been putting off my homework until the last possible second and figure that it cannot be delayed anymore. So I watched the F1 documentary, the exact name of which alludes me at this moment, but I watched- Is it Drive to Survive? Drive to Survive. Yes, that sounds right. We've only watched episode one. There's multiple episodes, but we've just watched episode one. I didn't ask any more of Gray and I've only watched episode one as well.

I could say right now, I watched more than episode one. Really? Yes. I've only watched episode one. Is this your first ever taste of Formula One in any way? Because this is kind of like a behind the scenes documentary that they followed last season, the 2018 season. And they kind of have this like, you know, all access type thing behind the scenes as they go from race to race. And this episode one was sort of behind the scenes at the first race of the season, which is always the Australian Grand Prix.

Was this your first experience of Formula One? It's always the Australian Grand Prix. Okay. Interesting. For a number of years now. Yeah. Because I do say very first thing that I noticed in episode one is, oh, the main guy they're following is Australian and the race is taking place in Australia. And so I thought, oh, I see why Brady likes this. No, no, no. That's pure coincidence because, yeah, I think they chose to focus on him for that race because it was his home race.

Okay. I thought like, oh, we've got a little cross-contamination here with Brady topics of Australia and also F1. Pure coincidence, pure coincidence. But yes, this was my first real exposure to F1 in any meaningful kind of way. I've been vaguely aware that racing existed. I think it was only several episodes ago that you cleared up for me that F1 is a different kind of race than other races. I think mostly I knew about it because of Monte Carlo and like that famous racetrack and Ironman too. So like, I think that is primarily my exposure to F1 racing.

And so, yeah, I sat down, you know, all the screens were closed and I gave this my full attention because that's the way to see something. Like I'm not going to half watch it. Okay. So I don't quite know where to begin except to say like the first note that I wrote down was very early in the show. One of the managers or something is talking about how F1 racing is the ultimate drama.

This has to do with everything. You know, there's life, there's death, there's competitiveness, there's winning, there's losing. And this is kind of like a pet peeve of mine for sports in general. Like the tennis movie I made reference to earlier that you're watching,

that was the same thing. There's like a quote from Andre Agassassi about like oh in in tennis there is love and ties and whatever and it's like and it's it's the ultimate drama that that contains the entirety of the world and i've heard chess players say the same thing yeah all i'm waiting for is some youtuber to make the video about like youtube is the ultimate representation of life, right? Where there's everything that's like, oh, at least with YouTube, it would be kind of more true in that YouTube does cover this vast spectrum of humanity. Obviously, there is hyperbole, but yeah. I think the case can be made more strongly for Formula 1

than any other sport. And by the way, Formula 1 is not my favorite sport, but I think that argument could be made more strongly for Formula One than any other sport. and yeah i kept going back to that experience of sitting in a giant hall watching a rodeo and thinking i could see a man die out here like this man is trying to stay on top of a bull that is not happy about the situation and yeah i know i don't know what the fatality rates are in rodeo but that's like i kept thinking about that and F1, much more than chess or tennis, like the Grim Reaper is in the audience watching more attentively than he would watch other sports. I will give that, that this analogy makes more sense for this than others, because you do have the specter of death looming over the event. And it feels real in the same way that watching a rodeo feels like, ooh, this could go very wrong,

very fast. I think you've only partly taken on board what's meant by it, though. It's not just risk of death, like of humans dying when people say that. It's because of all the extremes of Formula 1. Like there are very few sports, for example, where only 20 people get to compete in the event at all. Like, you know, lots of people can try and win Wimbledon. Lots of people play baseball. But only 20 people even get to race in Formula 1.

So it's this hyper, hyper competitive thing to get into in the first place and also like the volumes of money involved are like crazy and the amount of like technology and science involved is crazy it's like all the different things uh at this like exaggerated level. And I think that's kind of what that means. It's like everything in vivid technicolor blown up to its extreme. I can see that. But you're right. There is the show, especially at the start and throughout, does have a lot of like self-aggrandization of the sport.

Yeah. And here's the thing. You're making a documentary about the sport. That's totally fine. The other thing that kept popping into my head is there's a Netflix show called Seven Days to Launch, I think is the name. And they did an episode on the Kentucky Derby,

which is a famous horse race in America that may or may not turn up in trivia quizzes for general knowledge. And that's a similar thing of like, people are really getting prepared for this. And they aggrandize the Kentucky Derby to an insane level, right? Of like, everybody really cares about the Kentucky Derby. It's like, well, no, not really. But everybody involved super duper cares. But I guess the reason why I mentioned it as a bullet point is, now I'm obviously not the normal viewer of this, but those kinds of things partly bother

me when I'm watching something because it's like the writing lesson of show, don't tell. And repeatedly in the first episode, I had the experience of, you're telling me this is really exciting, but you're not actually showing me anything. You doth protest too much, methinks. It's not that, but it's more like, oh, the people who are involved in this world are very involved in this world. And so, of course, it seems like all of life to them because that's what they're engaged with yeah and you know there was a lot of like you know guys saying oh your body is is ready for the competition and time slows down and everything is very exciting and but it was just a lot of like telling me i would rather see the guy getting ready for racing than have this like description of what he's up to but that is partly why i watched

further because like episode one i feel like like with any tv show i think you always kind of have to give first episodes a little bit of a pass because they have to set up things in a way that later episodes don't have to right so. So like episode one is like, bam, we got to give a splash. Oh, this is related to everything in life. It's so exciting. You know, the drivers are all on edge. Yeah. This kind of thing. So I wish I'd watched episode two now, but yeah. But so, okay, look, normally you ask me when we watch movies for my opinion upfront and I get resistant about it, but this time I think I need to give my opinion up front, and I get resistant about it. But this time, I think I need to give my opinion up front to continue to talk about this.

So... Okay. I have nothing against people who have sports in their life and enjoy sports. I feel like my philosophy in life is very, like, live and let live. You do you, I'll do me, and the only time we have problems is when those come into conflict. But most of life is like, you can just be your own person and do your own thing. And they're like, whatever you're really interested in. Awesome, man, do it.

I just read an entire book that was about truffles. Some people are really into truffles and that like the author of this book is really interested in truffles. Some people are really into truffles and that like the author of this book is really interested in truffles. And I got to the end of the book and realized I didn't even have any idea what a truffle looked like. It was like, you do you guys, this truffle thing, it seems really important to you. Contained within the truffle is all of life. And that's awesome. And so like I gave the show my full attention and I just could not get my brain interested in any part of this. Yeah. I'm not saying it's like, oh, this isn't good for anybody.

It's just like people are interested in different things. And interest exists on a level that is not able to be or needed to be explained. It's just a property of your brain when related to certain subjects. And I was trying to figure out something like by the sort of by the time I got to the second episode of like, why am I just not interested in this? And one of the things that I can kind of, I've mentioned before, but it became a little bit even more clear watching this. And it's partly because of the, like you said before, the nature of how few participants there are on the actual race. When God was rolling the dice to create the character sheet

for me, how is this human being going to score on all of the various traits that we can measure a human being on? I think the reason why I'm just not very interested in sports is I score very low on competitiveness. And that's like the whole thing that sports is. Like I just, this doesn't register emotionally for me in the way that it obviously does for these guys. You know, to be one of these racers, you know, these 20 people on the course, you have to be one of the most competitive humans on the face of the earth. Like, you just have to be in this tiny percentile. All professional sports people have to be. Serena Williams has to score crazy high on competitiveness. It's just like a required part of that job. But I also think that there are some people of cross-population survey of how competitive are people, you would find that sports fans score higher in this competitiveness trait than non-sports fans. And it made me think of you, Brady. I think about our relationship that we've had lo these many years. And a thing that, especially in the earlier episodes, I think listeners can

go back and even hear it. I sort of didn't believe you often when you described your competitiveness. So like, I remember earlier in the show, we kind of had the idea sometimes of like, oh, we should play a board game. Or let me rephrase that. I mentioned it a few times, and you would bring up like, no, we can't play a board game because it me rephrase that i mentioned it a few times and you would bring up like no we can't play a board game because it's just too hardcore right it's like you get too intense yeah and i remember really not believing you or or thinking you were sort of joking around or it can't possibly be true yeah but this is like the fascinating part of trying to understand another person and it's tied up to me in this idea of human communication is so difficult and people always

over-assume that others are like them. These are all the things I'm thinking about while watching the episode. Like I was thinking about you a bunch and just- This is why you don't like Formula One, Greg, because you weren't concentrating on the sport enough. No, I was so f***ing bored by what was going on on the screen that i had to think about other stuff like honest to god like it really is the case of like it's boring like what are the like i don't care about any of this like it's not intrinsically interesting like it's just boring but like just

just to finish the thought with you like i have come to believe over time that you really mean it when you say that you are competitiveness. And it is a thing that knowing you, because I just don't think about it, I constantly get surprised at times you can be competitive in ways where I'm like, I don't even understand. It catches me off guard. And it is also a thing that catches me off guard, I could say, in my relationships with other men sometimes as well. It's like, oh, this person's being competitive right now in a way that I find just unexpected. So that's partly why I just, I find it boring because I don't find competition intrinsically interesting as a topic where I think people who

are into sports do find competition intrinsically interesting as a topic. And I want to be clear, there's nothing wrong about that. But I've also had this problem with, over this past summer in particular, I've been having a really hard time finding interesting nonfiction books to read. Like I've just been burning through book recommendations and all sorts of stuff. And I often find like a lot of these books

will try to frame a historical or nonfiction event in terms of competition. And those are always the books that I find the most boring the fastest. Like, just tell me about the thing. Like, I don't give a shit about any of the people involved. Like, I want to know about the event that occurred. And so when I was watching this F1 thing, I was kind of wanting is, can I have an F1 documentary that doesn't involve any of these people? I don't want to know about this dude from Australia and he's competitive with his teammates. I don't care at all. I'm sort of much more interested in the car. I'm much more interested in the logistics of how

the races occur. I would like them to, and I hope maybe later in the series, they do go more into the science and the technology of the cars. Because when you're watching a race, don't get me wrong, competitiveness is important. But when you're actually watching a race, all this stuff like tire degradation and grip and temperature and downforce and stuff becomes a lot more, like it's very omnipresent. And this first episode, I did feel glossed over how important the design and the technology and the physics is. I don't know if that is yet to come. This is also why I think you were totally correct in your assessment of, if there existed a sport for me, this would be the sport. And perhaps there is

some other venue into this. Like, like in all seriousness, if someone knows that there's an F1 documentary out there that exists, which is F1, but no people, I would totally watch that. I would be interested in seeing that, but this was not for me. And the reason why I watched the second episode is i did just want to see like okay let me first episodes don't count let me have this go more in depth but then the second episode just struck me as oh okay we're talking about the rivalry between this australian guy and his teammates and there's more rivalries over here and all of these guys really want to win and they're going to talk about how they really want to win.

And it just suddenly felt to me like, oh, I'm watching a reality TV show, except it's just F1 guys. And if I'm watching a reality TV show, I'd rather watch Terrace House. I mean, they've obviously decided the way to sell Formula One is by humanizing it a bit. Humanizing something's not the way to sell to grow is by humanizing it a bit. Humanizing something's

not the way to sell to great. But this is what I mean. I know that I'm the wrong audience member for this. I just, I know that I am. And also there's also the problems of like, I have so little in my life to compare this to. So, you know, like while they're racing around the track, what am I thinking? I'm thinking, oh, that kind of looks like when I play Mario Kart, right? And then it's like, oh, I'd rather play Mario Kart than watch people race on a track. Why do you like playing Mario Kart if you are not competitive? What I want to specify here is it is not that I am not competitive. That's why I use the phrasing like it's a trait that I score low on. Right.

Just compared to other people. But like it would be wrong to say that I'm not competitive because every human has it to some extent. It's just like did you score a 1 or did you score a 10 when the dice were rolled? Yeah. And so like when I play Mario Kart, I want to win. And it can be frustrating when someone like snatches the win right out from underneath you so like I still I experience this as a thing but I think like I can enjoy Mario Kart because I'm doing something yeah it's a bit like I have friends who really enjoy watching people

live stream video games it's just like sports where I can understand that the person is interested in this. The person can explain to me why they're really interested in this. And I can, on an intellectual level, kind of understand. But it's an activity that just holds zero appeal for me personally. I feel like if I'm watching someone play a video game, why don't I just play the game myself? With incredibly rare exceptions, that's the way I feel. And I think the sports thing is a bit like this. Like, oh, I'd rather be playing Mario Kart than watching this F1 documentary. the mental comparison of how much is this track in Australia like Rainbow Road is probably not helpful for the viewing experience of of me actually watching the thing so I'm very glad

that I watched the show I'm like I'm glad that I did finally get around to it and stopped putting off my homework but I like I don't really have a lot of notes on it because I just found myself uninterested. What did you think of the look and the production and the editing and the style of it? Because watching it a second time, I was just as impressed the second time by how cool it looked. I just thought it looked cool. Okay. Looked cool. I will totally give you 100% looks cool.

It was like an hour long music video yeah no it's filmed really well netflix is in a funny position i think in the last year where when i watch stuff on netflix i'm very meta aware of is this something that they wanted to spend money on or is this something they just wanted to get so they have something in the back catalog and and a few of their shows is like oh this show got netflix money and the f1 totally feels like this got netflix money it's also got f1 money i wouldn't be surprised if f1 have poured in quite a lot of the money too and they've obviously supplied a lot of their own footage because it's it is kind of a big advertisement for formula one isn't it yeah

that makes sense i didn't think about that but yeah yeah, of course, of course they would have to get the permission. Oh, I'm sorry. I just, I realized, I'm sorry. There is one point where I was emotionally engaged with the show and it was when they, when they showed that poor Australian's mother watching him race. Yeah. And she, she says this thing about how she had like seen races on on tv like when he was just a boy and thought oh all those poor mothers who have to watch their sons racing around the track and now she's one of those mothers that my heart genuinely went out to that poor woman i was like oh you poor woman having to like that mixture of emotions must be unique of my child is one of the best in the world at a thing,

but also I can't possibly relax until that thing is over. I think she must be having a quite rare human emotion and experience whenever her son is on the train. Like being an astronaut's wife. Yes. Yeah. It's that kind of thing. Someone you love is doing something that is singular,

but also you may watch this person die. I think that is an emotional experience that a very small percentage of the human population has. So I felt very aware of her in those couple of scenes where she's talking about watching her son on screen. So yeah, that was where I was most emotionally engaged. It's like, oh, you poor woman. thinks his name is like when he starts swearing all the time when things go wrong and he's got his cool accent i think he's become a bit of a cult hero in formula one because of this documentary i think everyone sees him differently now because of all his swearing and the way he talks i thought he was like a really charming character yeah i guess like i noticed him more than others yeah but i can't say i was like oh i'd love to see more of this person yeah it's

mostly like yeah it's a high stakes environment people are going to be upset when things go wrong of course yeah i've seen people flip out for the kentucky derby preparations you know it's it's like yes this is this is what's going to happen in a in an environment like this it's a huge pressure cooker but yeah i couldn't pick him out of a lineup. Like I've sort of already forgotten what he looked like. I don't know. I'm sorry, Brady. No, no. You shouldn't be apologizing.

You've done exactly what I asked you to do. You watched it and told me what you thought of it. I should be thanking you. I am thanking you. I'm very interested to hear what you thought about it. I wanted to like it more for you, is little bit what I've what I felt this morning. Ah, that's sweet. I don't like it because, you know, there is this thing where people who like something,

it's very natural that you want to share it with another person. Yeah, yeah. And it's very natural as a human to wish to reciprocate the feelings of sharing with someone else. But I think that this is this is a topic on which I cannot reciprocate.