Hello Internet - # H.I. 134: Boxing Day

Episode Date: December 30, 2019

On a chill boxing day, Grey and Brady discuss: post-final-Star-wars-trilogy feelings, the endings of things, Cybertruck, xmas hotstoppers, gong baths, imagine an apple revisited, Brady's idea for youtube rewind, still more straws, and meditation... results? Sponsors: Linode.com - Cloud Hosting Service: get started with a $20 credit at linode.com/hellointernet HelloFresh: tasty recipes & fresh ingredients delivered to your door - 10 free meals in your first month go to hellofresh.com/hellointernet10 and use promo code hellointernet10 Audible: the largest selection of audiobooks, start a 30-day free trial by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet or text "hellointernet" to 500-500 Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode on the reddit The Star Wars discussion London Harry Potter World Servant Chalet Girl The Cybertruck Framed Germany hot drop 'Winter Wonderland' hot stop drop SHOWNOTES UPDATE: hot stop drop found Christmas Village Nightmare Aphantasia Faceless Voices Pi Million Subscribers - Numberphile Captain Disillusion impersonations

Merry Christmas, by the way. This is the first time we've spoken actually since Christmas. Yeah. Merry Christmas, Brady. I currently have my bare feet on my Christmas present from you. Well, you and your wife. I'm sure she did the actual heavy lifting, but... I don't know why you would say something like that. That's how it is. The gifts come from couples and couples get equal credit. That's how that works. Okay. Then, well, my gift from you two was a little electric rug that you used. What am I supposed to use it for? Put it on sort of parts of my body to like warm my muscles and stuff like that? Yeah, I like that you're calling it an electric

rug. It's a heating pad. Heating pad. I will tend to use it if I'm sitting in a chair for like my back. I think that's the intended one. I don't think it's intended to be used as an electric rug, but I find it charming that this is the purpose that it has assumed in your life. Yeah, I'm using it as like a little foot warmer. Because I'm always really impressed by heated floors in bathrooms. And it's like I've got a little heated floor under my desk now. Just my little tootsies are just sitting on it, just keeping old Toasty warm. I'm glad you have toasty tootsies for this episode of the podcast.

This is like a very chill boxing day for the both of us. Yeah. Just like low-key hello internet. Yeah. Christmas has passed. The Star Wars season has passed. Just taking it easy for today's show, I think. Rather than saying the year out with a bang, we're going to say it out with more of a whimper. Yeah. How are you feeling in the post-Star Wars season now? Have you had a bit more time to digest it? We had our big talk about it for the special episode. Any thoughts, Brady? I'm interested in the number of people who say they liked the film.

I feel very vindicated because I saw it got such a low score on like Rotten Tomatoes and stuff. But a few people have said they liked it, which has surprised me. But all the people who said they liked it which has surprised me but all the people who said they liked it have been quite chilled about our review still it's not like they're all like up in arms they're i think they've just come to expect that from us now so they're just kind of like well i thought it was good but i'm happy for you guys to have your annual whinge the one thing that baffled me though is the number of people who said they listened to our Star Wars reviews each year, but have never seen the films, but enjoy the reviews. Like they say, oh, I always listen to them.

I really look forward to them, but I've never actually watched one of the films. And yet they'll sit through two hours of us talking about it, which is, I don't know, is that a credit to us? Is it an indictment on them? I don't know what it is, but it's something. Yeah, I don't know. Is that a credit to us? Is it an indictment on them? I don't know what it is, but it's something. Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, I'm on the other side of this where there are plenty of YouTube channels where I'll watch them talk about movies or TV shows that I have no intention of ever watching. That's true, actually. I'm really into a podcast about boxing,

and I don't particularly enjoy boxing, but I love listening to them talk about it. Okay, well, your boxing example doesn't work for what I was going to say here. At least with the YouTube channels, the stuff that I'm watching is highly edited. It's intended to be an entertaining thing in and of itself. Whereas our Star Wars episodes, while I do think that last one was a particularly good one to go out on as far as show quality goes, I don't think we're making a lot of concessions to the person who has no idea about Star Wars in our explanation. Whereas lots of YouTube channels will sort of presume that maybe the viewer is not super familiar with what's going on. So I feel like we're not helping out the listener at all. So I can't believe that

people can make it through an episode of that without having actually watched it. What have been your reflections since? Just like watching the first of the new trilogy was a cathartic experience, I felt very cathartic yesterday of getting the final edit up, putting it up for Christmas, sending it out for people to listen to, and feeling like we're done with this. The obligation, the life debt has been paid. We've gone through the whole series here and it's all over. And I feel very cathartic about the whole thing. When you first came up with Hello Internet, like you said, oh, I think it's

time for me to do a podcast. And I think maybe I'll give Brady a try. He'll be a good guy to do a podcast with. Did you think we would spend as much time talking about Star Wars as as we have i didn't really have any expectations for what the content of the show was going to be and that's probably the best you know i didn't sit down and plan out nine trilogies of what hello internet is going to be in advance right this was much like the producers of star wars now i was just winging it with Hello Internet. Like, let's see week to week what it is that we talk about and what makes it into the show and what doesn't make it into the show. Well, come on then.

You must have a few little final gaps or things you want to plug from that last review. A few little, oh, I forgot this. I forgot that. I mean, look, there's a million things that when doing the edit, I kept thinking, oh, I wish I had mentioned this. I wish I had mentioned that, you know, but it's fine. We don't need to go through that. Everybody can go through all of that. I think it was very nice. Like there were a bunch of nice messages that we got from people who also felt like this was the closing of a whole period

of time. And like, oh, you know, thanks. I've been listening to these on the night shift for years, that kind of stuff. Like it was really nice to get those messages. But one of the things that has been creeping into my mind, and I don't know how I'm going to feel about this in, say, a year, maybe we're still too close, but I find myself wondering if I'm ever going to watch the original trilogy again. I don't know if I will. Interesting question. I know that I watched it after The Force Awakens came out. I had watched it again after that one.

But right now, I find myself in this melancholy mood of, I don't know if I can go back to the originals. I think it's that thing of the later movies, whether you want them to or not, they're in your mind, you know, they plant ideas, they plant connections. There's things you know that happen and maybe it'll take 10 years,

you know, maybe it'll be a really long time, but I don't think I'm going to be watching them again anytime soon. What do you think, Brady? Like, when's the last time you've watched them? I don't think I have voluntarily pressed start on an original Star Wars film for more than 10 years. But I will sometimes watch one if I catch it on like normal TV, because I do sometimes have interactions with live TV. So, the only time I ever see the films is through that.

And I've just seen them too many times now. I think the only thing that would make me watch the original trilogy again will be if, for example, I had children and then I have to, you know, pass the baton on and watch it through their eyes. I think that is the thing, only thing that could possibly take me back to the original trilogy. I can't see why else I would watch something that I know off by heart is a little bit dated. I mean, I also think that you would be fighting an uphill battle in, say, you started today, and then you want to have kids of an age where they can even

watch the Star Wars movies. At that point, you're talking about a movie that's going to be more than 50 years old. And I don't know how much that's going to be like trying to show a kid Casablanca and be like, oh, this is a great movie. It's like, no, it's not. I don't agree. I don't agree. I have friends now who show their children the original films with some success. Not always success, but some of them have success. But you're right. You're right. But I think that's just because they're old and I've seen them lots of times and there's so much other stuff I want to do with my time. I certainly don't think it's anything to do with the new films having sullied them.

Sully is a strong word. It's that feeling of association or you can't stop your mind from thinking things. Can you think of something else in your life that you've liked and that enjoyment has been diminished by something that's happened subsequently in this way? How do you feel about watching films with actors in it who've been like disgraced in some way? Like the example that jumps into one's mind is perhaps Kevin Spacey, who has this amazing body of cool films that he's been in. And now he's a little bit of an unpopular figure. Like, can you still watch films with actors or comedians or celebrities in them who've been disgraced in some way? I'm very on the side of like the art is not the artists. Yeah. I think that's a harder position to hold in the modern world because of people's expectations sometimes. But I do still think that that's a thing that like you can watch art and separate it from

the person who made that art. Now, of course, that's on, there is a sliding scale here. Why doesn't that apply to the Star Wars films then? Why can't you look at the original trilogy as a quarantined piece of art, separate from all these prequels and sequels and millions of other things? I think it's because it's like, what is in universe and what is not in universe? It's like what the actors do outside of the movie is separate from what happens in the movie.

And like, I think the thing that I was aware of the last time I watched the original trilogy a little bit is even just, I'm always aware of like the special editions that originally came out that added stuff that even when you watch the original version, you sort of know there's like junk that was added in the back of this scene. I cannot talk about this or think about this, even all these years later, without feeling an

absolute gut punch that I showed a special edition at our Hello Internet, David Prowl's special screening at Bristol Zoo. That is still one of my great regrets in life. Like, even now, my heart sinks and I feel this thing in the pit of my stomach, that mistake. Yeah. And there were people there who that was the first time they'd ever seen Star Wars, Brady. I don't even care about that. Like, I don't care about them. I just like, I'm just ashamed of myself. Yeah. So, I just think there's like an in canon and outside of universe distinction that occurs a little bit.

Okay. So you don't quarantine the original trilogy from the other Star Wars films in that way? I would say, at least for me, it's psychologically harder to do that. It's like, this is a story and you've seen different parts of it and now you're trying to go back. And I think maybe the only other example I can think of is I've never seen the Harry Potter movies, but I did really like the Harry Potter books. You've never seen the Harry Potter movies?

No, no, I've never seen them. I went to the making of Harry Potter world the other day in Watford, just outside London. Just for two seconds, people, if you have seen and liked the movies, you need to go to that place. Oh, yeah? Is that worth it? If you've seen the movies, yes. What if you haven't seen the movies? I feel like I want to go.

I would go to like a Harry Potter. If you haven't seen the movies, go straight over your head. Because it is unbelievable if you've seen the movies. It's like if you could go to a museum with every single Star Wars prop and Star Wars set ever made and used, and you could just go to them all and see them all tomorrow. Is it like a theme park or? No, no.

It's like going to, you're not going to the actual movie where you are going to the site of the movie studio. But what they've done is they've like shepherded off a whole massive part of the movie studio and they've just turned it into this place where you can walk around and look at all the sets and all the props and everything that was used in the making of the films. It is remarkable. Like, it is crazy the number of things they've kept.

Because those films are so dense. They've got so much stuff in them. And they've just got it all there. Like, you just walk around a corner and suddenly it's this other, you're in the bank, you're in Gringotts Bank.otts bank it's like oh my god this is it from the movie here it is i can walk around it i'm here so it's the original stuff yes most of it's relocated they've disassembled the set like brick by brick and moved it across the other side of the lot they've done it in a really clever way like they shepherd you through it in a really clever way and it's like

four or five hours of just like having your mind blown. If you're very familiar with the movies. If you've never seen the movies, I think it would quite possibly mean nothing to you at all. You'd know all the names and the places, but it wouldn't flicker the same way. You should see the film. They're good films, Grey. No, but okay. So here's the thing.

Like the Harry Potter books caught me at just the right time when i read them the first three were out and maybe the fourth had just been put out i can't quite remember where i was in the timeline of this you know so i was sort of reading them as they were going along and like they just hit me in the right way like i absolutely love them. But the thing with those books is it became very clear to me in book five that like all the promises of this consistent world were not going to be fulfilled. That in four, you can start seeing the world is getting a little bit shaky. It's like it's starting to fall under its own weight. And by book five, when they have all the wizarding government, it's like this whole thing just doesn't make sense. Like this premise can't hold together anymore. Anyone who thinks that she had that thing planned out from the start and stuck with it is like deluded. Yeah. Allow me to introduce you to George Lucas,

if you think that's the case. I don't know why people tell this story. You got lucky and you had to keep going. Happens to all of us. That's how you end up with a YouTube channel. I don't know if George R.R. Martin has said the same story or anything, but I feel like it's okay to not have the whole story planned out in the beginning. That's fine. You don't need to tell us a story that you do, but like, that's an

example of, I remember when the books were coming out, I would reread the earlier ones when the new one came out to be like, re-caught up with it. You know, but by book six, I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. Like it's just falling apart. And then it kind of ruins and colors the earlier books in some way and the films are the same the films feel that way too like the last couple of films which are good you do get like oh my goodness so what dumbledore's got a brother now and who's that who's that person in the flat yeah albus dumbledore he was there right from the beginning brady right he's mentioned right at the start there's a way in which the original trilogy is now connected to a later story yeah that i find as dumb as this is because it's all made

up anyway right yeah i always found it easier to mentally cordon off the prequels because it's like oh this is a bunch of nonsense that happened before and who cares? And it infected Vader a little bit, but not a lot. But when there's a trilogy that happens after, it renders all of the actions of the original trilogy and those characters kind of meaningless. Yeah. I mean, from big things to little things like at the end of return of the jedi when han and leia finally have their kiss in the forest and they realize they're gonna everything's good and that's like you know that ends their story nicely they're

happily ever after knowing that later on he became some hobo wandering the galaxy while she's stuck with all the politics and right that's like. And obviously, I'm not going to go over the emperor going down that shaft again. But I mean, that completely changes that scene now. It matters that a story has an ending that is satisfying. And I'm just aware of this in a lot of media. We mentioned on the Star Wars special episode that I hadn't watched Game of Thrones because I always regarded that with a bit of a, I'm going to wait and see. I'm going to hold off here because I thought the whole situation of HBO is doing one season at a time. They're burning through this source material. The original author hasn't finished stuff and seems to be

having a really difficult time getting his book finished. It's like, this seems just like a recipe for disaster that the source material isn't done. I think you should watch that. I want to watch it again. And I've seen it two or three times. I think that's well worth watching. But I know though, that it seems like it's universally regarded that people are really unhappy with the last season. No, only the last two episodes of the last, or maybe the last three episodes of the last season. It's not like it turned out it was all a dream or something like that.

Things didn't go the way they hoped for their characters. And, you know, that's tough luck, you know. I would have done it differently, too. I was disappointed by it, too. But I want to watch it again. And everything that came before is so great that that doesn't really matter. It's a good use of your time. I don't know. I feel like I have a hard time going along with that. Maybe I'll try it. Maybe I won't. I know my wife is very insistent on, okay, it's finally over. Can we watch it now?

It is a classic. It's an old time classic TV show. Despite some people not liking the last few episodes, you know, lots of people are unhappy with the end of classic TV shows. A lot of people don't like the last two minutes of The Sopranos, but The Sopranos is classic. Okay. Again, I'm just going from secondhand accounts, but it seems like the dislike of Game of Thrones is that it's unsatisfying. Whereas you take the end of The Sopranos, people would argue over it. And you can have people who say, oh, I don't like that ending. But you can make a really good case for that's a good ending for the show. I know I do think it's a good ending for the show.

Yeah, I'm in that category as well. And so it doesn't strike me as like there were some controversial decisions made for how to end a series. It sounds like it was just an unsatisfying ending. But like, to give you a different example, I'm watching another Apple Plus TV show that I got stuck on this weekly release, which really annoys me. It's this show called Servant, and it's an M. Night Shyamalan TV show. I'm very aware of, oh, I'm really enjoying this. It's filmed really well. The cast is good. I know even though I never saw him in Harry Potter, it has the like one of the Ron Weasley

is in it and he's great as this like grumpy guy. And I'm really enjoying this show, but I'm very aware that it's all because they're setting up like, oh, it's a mystery. What's happening? And the whole thing that's going to matter is, is this resolved in a satisfying way? Like when it is over, can I recommend the show to someone or not? And that's the way like the endings infect the stuff that comes before.

So like, well, we'll see what happens with this show. And there's a way in which I'm at least right now feeling that way a little bit with Star Wars. Like, oh, the endings infect a little bit of what comes before. And that I've been ground into the dust into total apathy and indifference to the Star Wars universe as a result of all of the stuff that has happened over the past several years. So, okay. On the other side, I find it interesting that, like, I feel like there was a really good discussion in the subreddit. And there are lots of people who do like this movie. And I've been having a hard time like understanding what is it that people enjoyed about rise of skywalker and like i was i was trying to break it down earlier today and think about it and it's like what makes movies enjoyable and it's like it's way harder to talk about what makes movies good it's way easier and way more fun to talk about when movies go really terribly.

And people like listening to people do takedowns of movies, and that's really fun to do. But it's like, I look at The Rise of Skywalker, and I feel like, man, this movie hits none of the bullet points of movies. A movie can have a great story. It can have a really good style, even if the story doesn't make sense within the style. You can have a movie that doesn't have a good story, but it has such a charismatic performance by one of the actors or actresses in it. Movies can be good across multiple dimensions. And when people talk about really liking the last Star Wars movie, like I was looking through comments and I was visiting the Star Wars subreddit, I'm trying to read like when people say that they like it, what do they really like about it? And I think there's another dimension on here, which is the thing that of like where the apathy

has come from. And I think another dimension of what can make a movie enjoyable for someone is the world that it is set in. And so I don't know if I'm right or if I'm wrong, but I feel like the people who are really liking this movie really enjoy the world that it is set in. Like it's really hitting that bullet point for them. And so other things don't matter. And for me, that's like, I'm kind of done with the Star Wars world. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm out of here

for a little while. I was talking to a friend of mine today on text who liked it. And I was saying to him, why did you like it? Explain it to me. Like, I want to know. Yeah. And he told me all the things he didn't like about it and loads of them were the same as mine right and the reason he said he liked it and he used one word but i think he was using the wrong word in a way he what he should have said was your word he said i liked it for the nostalgia and that's the same thing as liking the world i think like all the things that exist in that world, lightsabers, stormtroopers, the outfits, the ships, the animals and creatures and things like that. That's what I think he was saying. He just liked being back in that world again.

He said it made him feel nostalgic. Yeah. And while I was not a big fan of Rogue One, I remember on the how can you rate movies scale, that was one thing that I did think that movie did really well. It's like, oh, they nailed the world of Star Wars in Rogue One. Like it looks right, it feels right, the equipment looks right, all that stuff was really good. Do you know why I think Rogue One's a half decent movie, by the way? I know we disagree on Rogue One. Whenever I see a clip from it, it makes me want to watch it again. Have you watched it again though?

I've only seen it twice, to be fair. Rogue One was on my mind because Chalet Girl is one of the regular Christmas movies in the Grey household, and it has the same main actress in it. And it's always just funny to think of, she's playing like this light comedy role of learning how to ski. And it's like, oh, all right, but you're also the girl who stole the Death Star plans. So it's like a fundamental comparison to draw. But I just like, those are just the thoughts. Like, I found it very interesting to try to figure out what is it that people like in

this movie. And this is where I've been trying to formulate my thoughts on movies. Like, movies can be good if they really hit it out of the park on any one characteristic. And you don't need a great story if you have an amazing style. You don't need a great style or story if you have an amazing performance. You can really nail it on one thing. And I feel like this has solidified in my mind that the world is a thing that can really hit it out of the park for some people. That's how I'm understanding people who watched it and were like, oh, I totally love this. It's hitting that the world part for them. And I'm happy for

them. Like media is subjective. And if you like the movie, I'm very glad you like the movie. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Linode. Linode provides virtual servers that make it easy and affordable to host your own app, website, project, or whatever in the cloud. Whether you are a Linux expert or just starting to tinker with code, you can use Linode. You can start from scratch and fully customize your server for any application or use Linode's one-click apps to deploy game servers, WordPress sites, and much more. Linode is your

step up to powerful, totally customizable cloud computing at an affordable price. Best of all, every plan comes with Linode's amazing 100% human 24-7 customer support and hundreds of docs to help you get started. Get a $20 free credit on your new account by going to linode.com slash hellointernet and using the code hellointernet19. Thanks to Linode for supporting the show. Are you going to pre-order a Tesla Cybertruck? I don't even know if they're selling them in the UK. No, I have not pre-ordered a Tesla Cybertruck. You can, I'm on the site now. Are you going to order a Tesla Cybertruck, Brady? No. What do you think of this thing? My thoughts are more at the negative end of the spectrum.

Okay. You don't like it? You're not a fan of the Cybertruck design? No. And I saw on Twitter one time, you do like it. Yeah. It's funny. I thought you would love this. Like, I don't know why. There's something about the Cybertruck seems like, like you would think this is fun. Like it's fun and awesome, but you don't like it. Tell me why. Well, I'm surprised you like it in some ways. I love everything about this truck. I think it looks cool. Like, I kind of see the appeal of the look of it, but I do think

on the balance of things, it's kind of ugly. It's so show-offy and attention-seeking. This is like driving a Hummer down Hollywood Boulevard or something. It's like, hey, everyone, look at me. I'm like, I've got the latest thing. It looks different. I want your attention. Have I got your attention yet? That's a different question would i buy a cyber truck for myself never i would never want to drive it because of exactly that reason like way too eye-catching i would not buy it like were money no object i would totally buy a model x which i think is a is a very blend in tesla car like i think it's a nice SUV, but it's also small. It doesn't stick out. The Model X 100% is the car that I would buy. I would not buy a Cybertruck, but that doesn't

change the fact that I love the look of the Cybertruck. And I'm glad to live in a world where this thing is going to exist. I think it looks really cool. I don't mind that it exists. Do you know what it reminded me of? What? Do you remember the film with Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise called Mission to Mars? Oh, yeah, yeah. Set in the future. I think it is potentially one of the worst films ever made.

I think it's like mind-numbingly boring and stupid. It's a film I really don't like. Yeah, there's like the countdown at the end with the rings and the aliens. Yeah. Yeah, but even before then it's weird. The scene I really don't like is in the middle of the film. They have like a crisis in space where they're going to Mars and they get hit by debris or something and it pierces the ship

and they have to like fix the ship. But to make it more realistic, they kind of do it in real time. Oh, God. And it's this really pedestrian scene, which is supposed to be tense and dramatic, but everything's happening really slowly. And anyway, that's by the by. At the start of the film, because it's set in the future, at the start of the film, they're on Earth as astronauts, NASA astronauts. And they're having some kind of party and i think gary sinise's character or one of the characters pulls up in his car and it's supposed to be a bit futuristic like a future car

and i remember just thinking that is like an ugly ugly car is that what cars are going to look like in the future and when they released cyber truck away, like my memory went to my impressions of that car. I've since looked up that car because I thought it was like a made-up car, like they'd made just for the film, but it looks like it was based on something called an Isuzu V-H cross convertible. But I just remember the car offended me in the film. I just didn't like it. And the Cybertruck reminds me of that.

Looking at pictures of it now, they don't look that alike, but that's what it kind of reminded me of at the film. I just didn't like it. And the Cybertruck reminds me of that. Looking at pictures of it now, they don't look that alike, but that's what it kind of reminded me of at the time. So you were offended by the ugliness of the Cybertruck? Yeah, I just don't like the shape and the proportions of it. Let me make a counterpoint here, which is I do like the look of it. You know, you don't have to strain your mind really hard to imagine why might someone not like the look of this truck? It's like cliched futuristic, Greg. It's like, you know how like everyone says in the future, people are going to wear these like silver suits with a big V on the front of them.

It's like if you said to someone, draw me a cliche future car. Yeah. This is what they'd draw. Yeah. But that's kind of why i love it i will totally not disagree with that point at all and that's that's sort of why i like it but that aside the thing that i like whether you find the design of the of the cyber truck appealing or if you don't find it appealing i find cars just shockingly boring and i really feel also like in the last 10 years, cars have become increasingly similar.

And I've always just sort of presumed that this is a side effect of things like computer modeling for fuel efficiency, you know, in wind resistance and on the road and all the rest of that. And like, there's going to be some optimal ratio of material weight and size and shape to maximize fuel efficiency. And like cars will trend toward that over time. When I look at cars, it's like looking at a herd of zebra and they're like, they all look the same to me and I can't tell them apart.

That is fair. I don't like that too. And there's a reason I'm kind of drawn to ones that don't go that way. Yeah. And so I'm glad that Tesla is doing this just because like, boy, this is not going to be a zebra in a zebra herd. I just like that something looks different and looks interesting. And I mean, I think the name Cybertruck also just tips its hand to what you're saying that like, yes, it's totally intentionally retro futuristic. I don't think you name something Cybertruck if you're not intentionally invoking what would an 80s movie think a car in 2020 would look like yeah like i think that's what

the name is is going for and i'm all right with that but it's not like what i'd actually want to buy and drive yeah and that's what this is like it's something to buy and drive tell me your thoughts on the how they botched the demo and the window smashed on on him yeah i saw the demo that the glass smashed i mean i don't know it's one of those things i mean this is just my annoyance with headlines as well as like yes everyone focuses on this thing about the window breaking during the demo of the cyber truck it's like is that really the most interesting thing about whatever happened you know it's also they had one prototype on stage like demos don't always work there's sort of a famous video clip of steve jobs kind of losing it on stage when one of the early iphones when he couldn't get it to connect to wi-fi and he

yeah tells a like a room full of reporters to all turn off their computers so his phone could connect to wi-fi for the demo it's great like that's never gonna happen steve no one's turning off their wi-fi connection for you you You know, demos go bad sometimes. And that always makes good stories. But I don't really care about the demos. I'm interested in what the thing is and what it's going to look like and what it's going to do. It's only like 100 bucks to book one. Yeah, again, well, I would not be buying one for myself. If I was buying a car and money was not an object, I would buy a Model X for sure. The only thing I'm going to be curious about is to see where does it actually get sold?

Like, I don't expect that it's going to be used as a truck a lot. Like, I don't think that's the market really for the Cybertruck. Oh, no. It's like those G-class Mercedes, which I love. No one uses them for four-wheel driving. They're like rappers and footballers. Yeah. I guess it looks like something that could be in Jurassic Park a little bit if you painted

it different colors. Yeah, and I like it because they're quite luxurious and nice, but they're quite boxy. They're not all rounded like the way cars are going at the moment. They don't look particularly efficient. They look like they're quite square, and I like that about them. They look a bit different. Yeah. So that's my expectation is that there's not necessarily a lot of people who are going to be replacing their pickup truck with the cyber truck, but who cares? Like it doesn't matter. Oh, they're just going to be a status symbol, obviously.

Yeah. I see people get mad about that of like, oh oh i don't know if this is going to compare as a truck or not and like maybe it does maybe it doesn't but you know i don't think that really matters it's like this is a thing that looks cool i mean that'd be quite good for me on a work level because like i need a car like that like when i go out on a job now i need i stack about seven to ten bags of camera equipment and tripods and stuff in the back of a four-wheel drive it's and when i look at how it opens up that's perfect for me that's actually kind of to 10 bags of camera equipment and tripods and stuff in the back of a four-wheel drive. And when I look at how it opens up, that's perfect for me. That's actually kind of, I'd find it quite useful. It'd be the most useful of all the Teslas for me. Brady, you need to get a Cybertruck. Please, Brady, get a Cybertruck so that I can see your Cybertruck. What if it was called the Cybertruck

Pro? Oh, well, yeah, I'd have to get one then. Unfortunately, I would have no choice. All right. I'm going to hope then that they release a Cybertruck Pro so that you can get one, so unfortunately i would have no choice all right yeah i'm gonna hope then that they release a cyber truck pro so that you can get one so that i can play with it just revisiting something from the previous episode i mentioned i did a hot drop in germany and a lady missed out went home sad and then it turned out her boyfriend had picked up the hot stopper without telling her and like gave it to her that night on a date as like a romantic gift. There's been like further developments. Oh my, okay.

Let me read this. My boyfriend promised me a t-shirt if I put the hotstopper in a frame. So, what's happened? If you click on the tweet, she had the hotstopper framed in this like, looks like a black frame with an orange background for like posterity. And then he made her a t-shirt of the framed hot stopper. Okay. This is getting very meta.

Yeah. So there's the framed hot stopper. And now she can wear a t-shirt with a picture of the framed hot stopper. I'm thinking of getting a t-shirt made with a picture of her t-shirt of the hot stopper. Well, watch this space for further hot stop developments. Nice work. They're really going in deep there. Germans love their hot stoppers.

Everybody loves their hot stoppers. Hot stoppers for everyone. I saw you did a Christmas Day hot drop. I don't like how you do these really sanitary hot drops though, where you put them in plastic boxes and wrap them in cling film and stuff like that. What do you want me to do? You want me to just throw the hot stoppers on the ground when I do a hot stop drop? Is that what you're- They're made of plastic. They're not like an unsanitary material. I mean, it's not like people

are picking them up in the dirt and shoving them straight in their coffee. I hope if you do use them, you clean them. I don't imagine people use them anyway. Look, I don't know what people do with the hot stoppers when they get them, aside from frame them and then obviously make t-shirts about having framed them. I mean, that's got to be one of the top use cases for hot stoppers. But no, I just like, I had a convenient hot stopper case that was just the right size. And I felt like a merry Santa Claus who loaded a bunch of hot stoppers into a little container to do a

hot stop drop. I don't know if those hot stoppers actually made it anywhere because I know I teased you a little bit last time because you were like, oh, I send out the dinosaur cards and I don't know if they actually make it to people. This was one time where I did a hot stop drop and I still haven't seen any feedback if anybody's actually found the spot and gotten any hot stoppers. No, I haven't seen any. And you dumped a whole stack of them too. Yeah, it's a real treasure chest of hot stoppers.

Mother load. Yeah, it is. I did a Christmas Day hot drop as well, but mine's even more Christmassy than yours. Oh, yeah. What was that? I missed yours. I smuggled one into the Christmas cracker of a friend of mine who I know likes Hello Internet. Oh, okay.

And when they opened the Christmas cracker, he got like his hat and joke and whatever else is in a Christmas cracker. And there was a hot stopper in there. Okay. I was like, why haven't I seen this? That's why. Because it was a personal hand-to-hand hot stop drop. I think the mistake that I may have made when I made the drop was I'm trying to think about like, okay, I need pictures. There needs to be clues so people can figure out where this location is.

And I took a picture of this entrance sign to a place in London called Winter Wonderland. Yeah. And now the thing is the hot stoppers were not actually in Winter Wonderland. I wouldn't do that to anyone because Winter Wonderland is an annual festival that takes place in London, which is like a Christmas village that was they saw the winter wonderland sign and they were like i am not going to winter wonderland for hot stoppers like nothing is worth that it's like i had dropped them in the seventh circle of hell and you know buried them under the ice right next to satan and they're like you know what i like hot stoppers i don't like them that much yeah so they weren't actually in Winter Wonderland. It's like, people, I wouldn't do that to you.

I would not make you go into Winter Wonderland to get them. They were Winter Wonderland adjacent. I was just trying to find a spot that would frame them where they were in the world. But I think that possibly scared off any London listeners who would know immediately what that place was and go, I'm not going there. That is a horror show. I forgot to tell you something about my visit to Instagram Island. Oh, yes. In the Maldives that I did. So, I'm not, you know, I don't usually do all the activities like, you know, yoga and stuff like that. But they had this special guest on the island. They have these special guests who are there doing like, you know, activities. It might be like a special

fitness instructor or influencer or something. Or as you say, an influencer for sure, 100% of the time. Yeah. Well, anyway, when I was there, there was this influencer slash, I don't know how to describe him. Like, he looked just like what he was which was this kind of uh spiritual meditation yogary type person from india and he had the long hair and the beard and he wore the all the right stuff like whatever you're picturing in your head is probably right okay and his big activity that he was doing was a gong bath have Have you ever done a gong bath? It will not surprise you, Brady.

Yeah. That no, I have not done a gong bath. Do you know what a gong bath is? No. Please explain what a gong bath is. Well, what I thought a gong bath was, and I was pretty much right, was you sort of go into a room and you are immersed in the sounds of gongs and those sound bowls that you can hit with a little piece of wood and they make nice gongy metallic reverberating sounds

and you sit there and like meditate and bathe in the sounds, you know, that balance your energies and stuff like that. Okay. So, anyway, he was doing this gong bath, right? You could go and do it at like 5 p.m. And my wife said, why don't you come and do the gong bath? And initially, I was like reluctant. As you should be.

Yeah. But then she sold me on it, right? Because she's done them before. And she said, you don't have to do anything. You just have to lie on a mat on your back with your eyes closed, listen to nice sounds, and there's a 90% chance you'll fall asleep. Okay. And to me, it sounded like almost like having a massage,

except you're listening to you know weird nice sounds and i thought well who doesn't want to lie down for an hour and hear interesting sounds and fall asleep so i was like all right i'll do it so we went along there's probably about 15 20 people in the room it usually is held outside but the weather had turned and so they held it inside in this room and we all lay down on like yoga mats he spoke to us first and like that was five ten minutes of whatever i could have done without it but all right okay everyone lie down and we all lay down and then he just started walking around the room and standing at the front of the room banging on gongs and playing didgeridoos and

he had all sorts of like native instruments from around the world and he would make the noises of them and at one point i did nearly fall asleep and i was thinking that's all right you know i've done worse things and just as we were coming towards the end he said all right everybody stand up so we all got up and stood up and then it turned okay and he said everyone come and stand in a circle oh and we all stood in a circle and then we all had to hold hands and then we all had to make these funny noises repeat after me you know and make all these weird noises and pull all these faces and there was like no escape because you're in this room like and then he got out his guitar and started playing his guitar and taught us the words to these songs and we all had to sing along with the songs and you could tell everyone wanted

to leave but we had to sing the song and then at the end of singing this song he said shall we do another song who wants to do another song and who this song, he said, shall we do another song? Who wants to do another song? And who wants to, he actually said, who wants to do another song? And who wants to stop? And everyone just stayed completely silent, which he took as, okay, you want to do another song? Right. Of course. Oh God. As fate would have it, I was like right next to him. I was right, you know, so everyone was looking at me because I was standing right next to the guitar guy. So, like, I had to be seen to, like, be making some kind of effort.

I couldn't just look appalled. So, I had to be, like, singing the songs about, you know, how spiritual and lovely the ocean is and stuff like that. Oh, it was a nightmare. So, if you ever get asked to do a gong buff oh yeah yeah which i would be well on for for sure yeah that's right up my alley just just check there's no singing at the end just say is it just the sleeping gong part or do i have to get up and sing about the ocean at the end okay okay so many things so you were talked into this because you just thought it was

nap time. That's basically what you thought? It was like, yeah, it was just, you know, chilling out. You know, I'm always up for new experiences as long as I don't have to hold hands in a circle and sing songs. No, like, okay, yeah. I get the theoretical idea of try new things. Like, I get that. And, you know, on a holiday, you want to do things with your partner to like show a bit of willing and, you know, a bit of solidarity. This is the other factor I keep forgetting, that it's not just you walking into the goth bath. It's a team effort. Yeah, I didn't just go on my own.

Right. Okay. Like, yes, new experiences are good, but this is like when people are getting you to try new foods and it's like, yes, expanding your palate is good. But that doesn't mean that you are just the subject of everyone's ideas about what you should eat. Right. You still have a concept of, oh, I can try that. No, that's far out of the realm of what I want to eat. And activities feel like they should be the same thing. Yes, it's good to be open to new experiences, but you probably know things that you don't want to do.

If it had stopped with the gongs, I would have liked it. What, you would be recommending a gong bath if it had stopped with the... If you had said to me, if that singing part hadn't happened and you had said to me, oh, Brady, my wife really, really wants me to go to a gong bath. I'm a bit reluctant because, you know, what do you think I should do? I would have said to you, go along. It's harmless. You'll probably fall asleep. You won't hate it. You might think it's a bit weird and hippie, but no one will be looking at you. No one will judge you. You won't have to do anything that you're unwilling to do. You won't have to do anything that you're unwilling to do you won't have to wear anything weird you'll just have to lie there in shorts and a t-shirt and have

a nap in the dark and i would have said go ahead but knowing what happened in this last 10 minutes by the way my wife was appalled by this last 10 minutes as well it's not like she said wasn't that great she was like sorry i didn't know that was gonna happen yes no i would fully expect that of her yeah 100 i feel like I know exactly how she would react. Normal gong baths are fine. They're a bit boring, but- Okay. Yeah. But see, the way you framed it there though, you're not recommending the gong bath. This is, if somebody else wants you to do this and you're married to that person, is this a reasonable time to go along with something? That your answer is yes.

Yeah. But what you're not saying is if I was on Instagram Island just by myself and the choices before me are read a book on a hammock or go to the gong bath, you wouldn't be like, oh, you got to go to the gong bath. Gong bath, you can't miss. You can't be on the island and not do the gong bath. I know, but I would say do it. I would say how often in your life are you going to get to do one? Go and do one. Like, it was all right. It was all right. I enjoyed it up until the horror show at

the end. Why couldn't you walk out? How many people were there when the singing began? Probably a dozen to 15 or 16. A few of them were really into it. There was one couple you could tell wasn't into it, and the husband was pretty nonplussed. But most people you could tell were just like, okay, this is getting weird now. Right. But there was a visible door, like you could have walked out. Oh, it would have been a moment though. It would have been, can you believe that guy just walked out? Yeah. You know what? You're right. It would have been, can you believe that guy just walked out?

I wish he had taken me with him. Right? I mean, from your description, it sounds like most of the people would have thought that exact thing of like, I got to get out of here, you know? Because I'm thinking you and I were recently trapped in a situation where we were thinking, oh, I want to get out of here. But there was literally no exit. Like we were basically trapped in a pit of blackness and couldn't exit. So this is not the situation that you're talking about. Like there's a door and you could leave. I don't know, man. I think when someone starts like a sing-along party that was not on the brochure, you have every right to go. I didn't want to be that guy and embarrass my wife though. I understand that. Like, I don't think your wife would have been embarrassed. I think she would

have just wanted you to like take her by the hand and the two of you can run away together. And you would have won a lot of points for getting her out of that situation. It's just one of those moments you got trapped in. Each step seemed okay until you thought, it's okay, it can't get worse until suddenly you find yourself holding the hand of some Indian shaman with a guitar singing songs about the ocean. Again, this is how people end up in cults. And this is why you have to have hard lines of, no, I'm not singing. No, I'm not dancing. I don't want to be that guy. This is an uncomfortable situation. But the person who has turned a totally normal and harmless gong bath into that scene from the British office where David Brent is now singing songs in front of his employees, this is someone

else taking advantage of other people's politeness and other people's desires to be a good person. And I think when you find yourself in one of those situations, they are now exempt from the rules of civilization. It's like, no, I can just walk out of this room and it's totally fine. You're bending the rules here, man. We all got to get along and we all have to play along. But sing-alongs and holding hands after a gong bath, no, this is well out. I think you could have left, Brady. I think it would have been fine. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by HelloFresh. HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit that makes cooking at home fun, easy, and affordable. You can break out of your dinner

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I have a bit of anphantasia follow up. Some very personal anphantasia follow up. So this is the thing we discussed a couple episodes ago, which is the question of, do you or do you not visualize things when someone says, imagine a red apple? We went through on the show this idea of on a scale from 1 to 10, when someone says, look at your desk and imagine an apple, how vividly do you see that apple rated on a scale from 1 to 10? like you did a very personal one-to-one hot stop drop. I got some very personal feedback on this one from my father. Oh, I got on the same topic at Christmas by all my relatives too. Oh, really? Yeah. Not so much about the visualization of apples, but the, how you dream and how you have memories. Do you see them like as a first person shooter oh like

the first person in the third person one yeah okay so i'm facetiming with my parents and my poor father seems genuinely bummed and the thing that comes up in the conversation is he's like oh you know your mother and i we were listening to the podcast and you were discussing anaphantasia and and this thing about on a scale from one to ten do you see a red apple and my mother goes like yeah ten what do you mean like i don't understand how this is a question of course ten and my father in this moment he goes zero like what do you mean ten and so my dad very strongly came back with some of the things that we were talking about on that episode of he's like oh i i don't visualize anything and so i was talking to him about this and saying like, okay, well, you know, what, like, what does this mean? And he says, well, I never thought people saw things that like, this is just a turn of phrase that when people say, imagine a red apple.

Or the example that he used was if say my mom asks, well, imagine if we had this chair over there and it was red instead, right? He's like, I didn't think you were really seeing it, that you're really visualizing the chair in a different part of the room. So, that's weird. Does he have visual memories? Like if you say, oh, do you remember that time we went fishing at the lake? Would the pictures of that come back into his head like some kind of movie or video game? I asked my dad about that. And he just kept coming back with the same sort of thing of like, he can describe things for you, but there is just no visual component to it.

So what's he using to draw the information from to describe it? If you said to your dad, dad, go and buy me some apples. Right. And he went to the shop and he saw red apples and green apples and yellow apples and rotten apples and big apples and small apples. Right. And then he couldn't decide what one to buy. So he came back home and said, I wasn't sure what you wanted because there were so many apples. And then you said, oh, really? There were lots of apples where they tell me about them. Where would he draw the information from to tell you about what he'd seen 20 minutes earlier? So again, this is the thing where you're trying to paraphrase what someone else was describing, but he just says like, oh,

it's, it's word content. Like it's, he can describe the qualities of the thing, but it's not being derived from a mental image. Right. And I really believe my dad on this because it was just interesting that he was, one, clearly very surprised to learn that people were really meant it when they said something like, imagine this thing. And he seemed so bummed. I felt really bad. My dad, who's listened to Hello Internet for a long time, suddenly became this casualty in one of our sections of the show. Like, oh, we're discussing this thing about how do brains think. But he must remember what things look like. Like, for example, when your mum used to go away flying on travelling as an air hostess, and she walked back into the house having been away for three days, and this woman walked into his house with a face, and he looked up and saw this woman

at the door. Like, he must have looked at her and said, like, was he like, oh my God, who are you? And she would say, oh, I'm your wife. Like, what's he comparing her face to, to know who she is? Now, I feel like you're doing the thing again, where it's like Brady analogies, right? Or like the questions are totally different. I feel like you're framing this in such a different way. And it's interesting to me because, okay, I can't answer for my dad in this, but when you ask that question, like, it's very interesting to me that my mom said, oh, 10 out of 10 real apple. Like I can visualize it 100%. It's just as real as a real apple. And my dad's going zero out of 10. I didn't think people could visualize things in their mind. If he's in a different room to your mom and there's no photos of your mum in the room,

can he close his eyes and remember what she looks like and visualize what she looks like? So, I'm going to bet he answers no. Right. And where I was going with this is, when I answered this question on the previous show, I rate this as like a four. I can kind of see a ghostly apple. And so, when you raise this question, like my wife right now is in another room, right? She and her chompers are enjoying a Christmas movie. And if I, in my

head, try to think of what does my wife look like? I can get to like a four out of 10 scale of trying to recreate her face in my brain. Yeah. And so- Fair enough. I can get to a seven or an eight. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that if a woman who looked similar enough to my wife came by, that I would be confused just because I can't recreate her face. No, I have. Well, obviously your dad recognizes your mom. I am being a bit facetious. No, no, no.

But if he's a zero, that is interesting to me that he can't see her. Yeah. What do his dreams look like? Does he see things in his dreams? I know my dad does dream, but very rarely. Like this is the thing that's come up sometimes in the family, but like he dreams, but it's extremely rarely that he remembers his dreams. I've never gotten the impression that there isn't

visual content in that, but maybe, I don't know. But I just found it very interesting that this thing that online, where some people have this description, like we mentioned last time, the guy who's the head of Pixar says, oh, zero out of 10 for this. And other people claim it. I happened to hit upon someone in my immediate family who was really quite surprised by this. And one of his exact phrases that I wrote down was my dad says that this knowledge, he felt like it's driven a hole in his life. He just never realized that this was a real thing that people meant when they said they were imagining something. I know you don't know the answer to this. These are questions I would want to ask him.

What does he think when he sees someone draw a picture, not based on like a life model or anything, just like out of their head, like if someone just draws a picture out of the blue, could he do that? If I gave him a paper and some colored pencils and said, draw me Mount Everest, what would he do? Where would he pull from to put anything on the paper? The thing that came up was we were talking about books. So my mom was like, what do you see in your mind when you're reading a book? And this is where, again, I sort of realized, and I wrote this article a while back about how like my dad has always listened to audio books and radio dramas and things and my dad has always been a very verbal person and i think of like the sat scores they're divided into two categories you know you have math and you have

verbal i think if i gave those tests to my parents like my dad would do very well on the verbal section and my mom would do very well on the math section. Like he's always been like verbally weighted. And so he had sort of the same experience that I have with reading or with listening to audio plays, which then goes right back into the whole thing of, I think it's interesting to hear a voice without knowing what it looks like, that it somehow occupies a different place in your brain. And my dad's descriptions of reading books was sort of the same, that it's like, he's not really visualizing anything. There's like an idea of what's happening, but that's very different from a visualization. So I have a data point here that feels very real for a zero out of 10. And I mentioned it because like you're saying with your family,

this comes up with people. And I find it fascinating that just like with the sub vocalization, other people are extremely high on the, oh, this is just a difficulty of linguistics. All brains do the same thing. We're just having a hard time describing to each other in words. I feel even more certain that this is not the case. I have made several calls for feedback. I've gotten a couple of little like, oh, my department is working on something around this, but still nothing really solid. I bring all of this up because I feel like because of the experience of talking to my dad, if there are any other drive-by victims of the podcast who feel like they got really bummed out by this knowledge into their life that they never needed and didn't really affect anything,

like, I'm very sorry for bringing up this piece of information. And, you know, it's fine. Everybody's different and it's okay. Another question for your dad or people like him. I wonder if to him, photographs, photography is even more precious and miraculous. Like the idea of being able to immortalise an image to look at when you're not at the place, to him must be this like incredibly precious thing. Because otherwise you would never, ever be able to see that thing again. Does he take more pictures than normal people? Like, oh, I must take a picture of this because I want to remember all these things. Well, I mean, my father has always taken all the pictures in the family,

but I think that's a fairly common dad trope in all families. I don't think that's... Never in my life has my dad taken a photo on the Polaroid camera, pulled it out, looked at it and said, wow, what a miracle of technology that we could see a thing that otherwise would be lost to time like tears in the rain, right? Like he's never expressed anything along those lines. So if you were a little boy and you came home from school and you had been bullied and you said, daddy, someone bullied me at school,

your dad would never think to say, well, what did the boy look like? Because there's no way you could possibly know that. No, Brady, I feel like you're really going off the rails here. People can have thoughts about visual things without visual components. And I feel like I'm a real bridge person in here in this way of like, I'm halfway between these two things. And even to me, your questions sound crazy as someone who rates a four out of 10 on the visualization scale.

Would your dad be able to help like an identikit sketch artist? Like if they stood next to him and said, okay, what did the guy look like? What does your son look like? Dad, I'm so sorry. I brought this up. Brady's going to keep going. I'm so sorry, dad. Last episode, we talked about YouTube Rewind.

Yeah. And you asked me if I had any ideas about how one could be made. I haven't got there yet. Okay. I feel like I've gotten closer. Okay. Two possible ideas. One is I'm going to steal an idea from myself this week.

I don't think you can steal an idea from yourself. It's your idea, right? If I may talk about myself unhumbly for a moment, as you're well aware, one of my YouTube channels just went past a milestone that's quite unique to my YouTube channel because it's a number a YouTube channel and it went past pi million subscribers. The number of subscribers were the same as the digits of pi. Congratulations to you and Numberphile. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. So to mark the occasion, I made a little fun video and I got lots of people who have been in Numberphile videos, lots of people who've been in all my videos and all the YouTube-y friends that I could call in favors from or coerce to send me them saying digits. And then I made this short video that had a hundred odd digits of pi and each digit for just like half a second was said by a different person so it went by really really quickly you saw all these people grey you did it for me you're in it the duke did it you know destin all the mates and all the numberphile people and that and it was this short video bang bang bang bang bang you saw all these numbers and like looking at the responses to that, people quite liked it.

Well, people liked seeing certain people. They'd be like, oh my God, I can't believe LowSpecGamer was in it. Oh, look, did you see that was cursed? Because I can't believe you left out so-and-so. Oh no, no. She was there. She was there at one minute 38 and stuff like that. Right. Well, if there's anything we've learned from Star Wars, it's people like seeing things they've seen before. Yeah. And it made me think a good thing to do is to get as many people as you can in, but for very, very short amount of time, but with like a purpose and like a theme, like it had

in common that everyone was saying a number, but it wasn't some lame storyline where they were like, you know, throwing a ball to the next person or trying to parachute out of a plane. It was just everyone doing the same thing, but in their way, but also with like a purpose. I'm not suggesting you to make a video of people reciting the digits of famous constants, but it did make me think this is the thing to do. You get a really, really high shot count. You get everybody in there that are all taken out of their normal context, the normal place and way you see them doing this other thing.

Right. It made me think this is a way to go. Okay. This is a thing to do. And it's easy. That's not a bad idea. So, the concept here is you just want to double down on maximum amount of recognizability. Yes. That's not a bad idea. I would love to see the reaction if YouTube said, hey guys, it's YouTube 2020 and we're going to go through an Avogadro's number of Avogadro digits. And they're just going. I'd love to see the

reaction of people being like, what? What is this? Yeah. I mean, obviously it has to be something a little bit more lowbrow than the digits. It was so much fun though. All these people sent me these videos of them saying all the digits from nought to nine. Yeah. You showed me this project while it was partly done and you seem to be having a great time and also had a real nightmare timeline in front of you in your editing program of like all the little slices. Anyway, that's one idea. It's not there yet, but it's like, it's the basis of the idea. It feels like something that could be workshopped. Yeah. You just need to find what is the structure. And it has to be preferably something a bit zeitgeisty or something from the year, but something not too zeitgeisty, like not everyone playing

Fortnite or something. It's got to be like, I don't know. Right. Okay. But I've had a second idea. Okay. And that is they need to take the piss more. My inspiration for this is, do you remember a video made by Captain Disillusion?

Mm-hmm. Captain Disillusion, a while ago now, where in the course of the video, he impersonated six or seven YouTubers and used their genre. He did you, he used you, he did the professor from my periodic videos, Tom Scott, Vsauce, Destin, Bill Wurtz. He did, I think six, he may have done seven different people. And because he's like really clever and great with effects. He did a few. And I think his professor impersonation was amazing. He really nailed that one. His Destin was also fantastic. Yes. I particularly loved his line. And he said, I'm just a humble rocket scientist. Like,

I'll remember that forever. And I think of that every time I see Destin. He didn't just do really well with the look. He obviously watches all these channels and every little nuance and tick and personality trait, he got in there somehow and you watched it and thought, you know, this is genius. But he was ripping the piss out of us as well. Like, you know, it was affectionate, but it was also like, oh, you got me there. Oh, you got me again. Like, everything was great. Someone like him or a few people like him were somehow doing it where YouTubers take the piss out of other YouTubers. Not quite a roast, but like where, for example,

a whole bunch of YouTubers were commissioned to remake some of the big videos of the year themselves as impersonations or tributes or parodies would be really fun. It would be really fun to see, you know, Casey Neistat pretending to be some famous beauty vlogger or, you know. No, it's a good idea. And I think you could almost connect these two of, you could have the structure be that it's a chain of people impersonating the other ones.

Yeah. Right. So you could have like, oh, PewDiePie does 10 seconds of being Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast does 10 seconds of being iJustine. iJustine does 10 seconds of being Captain Disillusion, right? And like, you just, you keep going, right? Yeah. I could see something along those lines of like,

that's the connecting thread that each person is doing the other person. That's not a bad idea. Yeah. I could see something along those lines of like, that's the connecting thread that each person is doing the other person. That's not a bad idea. Yeah. They should put you in charge of YouTube Rewind, Brady. There you go. That's two ideas. You're still thinking of ideas in the shower.

You're still working on this one. Oh, no. Yeah. Leave it with me. I've already forgotten it completely and probably won't think of it again until December 2020. Yeah. What are they doing this year? I'm calling it right now.

Spreadsheet V2. That's what they're going to do. I was in a little London hotel restaurant the other day, ordered a cocktail. It was served with a straw I hadn't used before. It was a glass straw. This never ends. Quite fat. Okay. Quite a glass straw. This never ends. Quite fat.

Okay. Quite a bit of girth to it. The walls themselves were fat, but also the straw had like, you know, good diameter. Okay. Best straw experience I've had in a long time. Oh, okay. So the viscosity was good for you? It was brilliant.

Great Reynolds number. Okay. That's the Reynolds number. Yeah. The viscosity would be for the fluid, wouldn't it?. I even turned to my wife who's sick of me complaining about straws. And I said, this is a bloody good straw. She almost fell off her seat. This is the straw for me. It was really good. I like the idea that she's getting really sick of this because you and I were out the other night and we were at a place that had paper straws.

And I remember very consciously thinking as I was curling my lips around my teeth so that I wouldn't have to touch the paper straw with anything on the inside of my mouth. I could just have the skin on the outside of my mouth manipulate the straw. I was thinking, don't mention it in this group setting. Everyone here has already heard too much about straws. Just suffer in silence and don't bring it up. And that's what I tried to do. Then when they come out with the paper straws, everyone looks at you and I thinking, are they going to say something? No. And it's like, nope, just don't say anything. Just keep it to yourself. Did I take a photo of it? I think I may have even taken a photo of it for you. I can't remember.

This glass straw, since I know that the throughput is important to you, you want to maximize the amount of consumption per second possible. Twisting my words, twisting my words. Glass sounds like it has a potential to have a higher throughput than plastic. Yeah. Do you think it was equivalent and or possibly higher? Possibly, yeah. It did have a high throughput. It was a good straw. I'm saying there's hope out there. Glass straws could be the solution for me. Okay. If plastic is to be banned.

Do you think it was actually glass? It could have been a kind of plastic. I did wonder that. Because again, like a glass straw seems like it's good unless you have catastrophic failure, and then it's really bad. Like, you know, if you have structural failing of the straw. I think that's why it was so thick. Like, I don't think I could have broken this accidentally. So you're saying glass straw gets the thumb up from you? Yeah. Okay.

I want to keep people in the loop. Yeah. I'm sure people are dying for updates on what are our opinions of various straws, and how do they rate? And so there's hope with glass straws. If we can spend 15 minutes talking about whether or not your dad can visualize an apple, I think there's nothing we can't talk about. Hello, Internet.

It's that time of year. No matter what your goal is for the next year, getting physically fit, financially fit, being a better person, it's all on Audible. And to help motivate you, Audible is issuing a challenge to current and new members. Finish three audiobooks by March 3rd and get a $20 Amazon credit. It's that simple. Finish three by 3 slash 3 and get $20. There's nothing to enter. Audible will keep track of your progress for you. If you're looking for a good book about personal change, I'm going to recommend Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith.

Definitely one of the better and more actionable books in this area that I've read. Now, Audible members can choose three titles every month. One audiobook and two exclusive Audible originals you can't hear anywhere else. And Audible members also get access to exclusive guided fitness programs to help start the new year off right. And with Audible, you can listen on any device, anytime, anywhere, at home, at the gym, on your commute, or just on the go. So to start listening today with a 30-day Audible trial, visit audible.com slash hellointernet or text hello internet to 500-500. That's audible.com slash hello internet or text hello internet to 500-500 to get a 30-day Audible trial. Thanks to Audible for supporting

the show and thanks to Audible to being the place where I get all of my audiobooks and you should too. We never really followed up how things went with you with meditation. Like people like Tim's even ask me sometimes. And by the way, you will get blocked or muted if you ask me to ask Grey things. But some of them have asked whatever happened with Grey and his meditation. I then mute them, but think, hmm, I must ask him sometime. It's so painful, Brady. Yeah. it's so painful brady yeah okay so so like i have this on my private list of like hello internet

stuff yeah and what has been on my private list of hello internet stuff for a long time is meditation follow-up yeah because i was like oh i'm gonna meditate for the next 30 days and i said this i don't know 180 days ago now, I think is the thing. And people always want that close bracket, right? Like it's so unsatisfying. It's like, this bracket was opened and like, where is the close bracket? Have you not run the trial yet? Or you're not ready to talk about it yet? Or what's the status? Okay. I'll talk about this a little bit. So I can relieve us of this. Okay. us okay i'll talk about this a little bit so i can i can relieve us of this okay i tried so hard like yeah the whole reason i brought this up on the show is i really wanted

to put myself on the hook for giving meditation a real try like i'm really gonna do this i'm gonna get it on record just like with the running do it for a period of time so I can make a solid decision about this is for me or this isn't for me and just be done with it. And I think there is maybe no simpler task that I have ever attempted that my brain has pushed back against harder than this one. And the best I've done is like 10 days in a row of maybe 10 minutes of meditation. It's not that I hate it. It's not that it's hard. It's just like my brain does not want to do this

and is really pushing back. And I have not gotten the resolution that I want because I wanted to do it for a long period of time, but I've just been incapable of doing that. But what, what hasn't helped is so during the longest stretch, I happen to be around some friends who were like, Oh yeah,

I meditate and it's great. And it was just the same frustrations again, where I was talking to them like, okay, Hey, what do you get out of this? And all of their descriptions were just totally unhelp where I was talking to them like, okay, hey, what do you get out of this? And all of their descriptions were just totally unhelpful to me. They're like, oh, I immediately feel better.

I meditate and I'm instantly getting these mental benefits from it. And I'm sitting there getting absolutely nothing out of it. And just like with anaphantasia or just like with so much of this mind stuff, it's so hard sometimes to know what is it that you mean by these sentences? Like, what is it that you are describing? I don't know. I may have to just like, give up on this project entirely, because the things that people talk about just don't resonate with me and don't really make any sense. So like my friends were talking about, it allows me to perceive that there's a greater distance between my thoughts and myself. And again, it's like, I don't understand how you

could confuse those two things in the first place. I don't understand what you're getting out of this. I think people who get into meditation like are different to you. I think so. I know some of your friends who are into meditation and they're in many ways, they're quite like you. So you would probably think, oh, you're quite like me. You have a similar brain to me and you like meditation. But those ones who I'm thinking of, they also have some parts of them that are quite different to you like a more open-mindedness and a more acceptance of like the spirituality or or just like a more acceptance of of the world like in a way than

you are what do you mean by that i don't know like i know it's a bit of like a cliche and a trope that cgp gray's bit of a, but they're less robotic than you. Yeah, it's not a trope for no reason. Yeah, yeah. So, like, they're less skeptical than you, maybe? So, skepticism is orthogonal to this, because there's a lot of meditation and mindfulness stuff that doesn't require, like like woo-woo levels of spirituality. Yeah, yeah.

And so that is what I'm focusing in on 100%. And the people that I'm talking to are not like spiritually involved in the meditation. Like they're being pragmatic about it as well. It's kind of like, oh, this is like exercise, but for my brain. That's why I feel this frustration of it seems like there's something here but i'm just not driving anything out maybe they're more experimental than you they're more the sort of people that would eat something because their friend said taste this which you would never do whereas if you're going to run an experiment it'll involve you know

spreadsheets and ab testing and like controls and that where they're more like oh yeah okay i'll eat a lychee see what it's like yeah okay but so like here's one like the exercises in AB testing and like controls and that where they're more like, oh yeah, okay. I'll eat a lychee, see what it's like. Yeah. Okay. But so like, here's one, like the exercises in meditation where they're trying to introduce a concept to you. And so the concept is trying to get you to notice your thoughts. And this comes back to sub vocalization as well.

Notice that your brain is talking to you all the time. And that, you know that even in moments when you think you're being still, you have to learn to recognize that you have this monkey mind and your brain is chattering. So there's a lot of like, listen for this and pay attention to this. This is a thing that's a distraction in your life that you don't notice unless you pay attention to it sometimes. And again, I listen to all this stuff and I go, who doesn't know that their brain is sort of chattering away all the time? Like, it just seems like a bizarre kind of thing to have to tell someone that, oh, don't you know that your brain is talking all the time and that's what thoughts are?

It's like, yeah. It's like listening to a lesson where someone's trying to tell you look around and you'll notice that there are different colors in the world and you know you may not have noticed this unless you pay attention and so notice the way that the sky is like the water and it's like what the are you talking about like how i don't understand how you're trying to explain to me what blue is. Like I see what blue is. And it's this weird thing of like, notice your thoughts in this way. Or the other one that is used as like a metaphor for sound where they're like, now that you can hear your thoughts.

And it's like, yeah, we're all here. We can hear our thoughts. Like notice that just like sounds in the world come and go and you have no control over the sounds, you just hear them, you just perceive them. Notice that your thoughts are the same way, like you're not in control of your thoughts. Thoughts just appear and then they fade away and they last as long as thoughts do. And like, I just constantly find myself like, yeah, of course, like who doesn't think it in this way? So like that is one level of my frustration is it just seems like sort of a super obvious point. But the dual frustration is that people seem to be getting something out of this knowledge that I just I don't understand. Or it's like, they're clearly benefiting from like clarity of mind with this in a way that's like, I don't get this. There's like some part of this that seems missing to me. But this like boils back into what has been clearly a point of interest of mine for

the last year of how are brains different? How are brains the same? Like, I don't know. And I feel like meditation hits on another one of these points that for some people, it seems to really trigger something. And for me, a lot of it seems self-evidently obvious, but also like there's nothing for me to gain here as well. The closest thing I can think of that is like an analogy to this is stoicism. So lots of people will recommend to me stoicism, and they're like, you should read this book on stoicism. And I have read some of those books, and they always strike me as, yeah, this is all the stuff that you should figure out when you're

a teenager. This is what growing up is. These books don't seem to contain any novel or new information. What is stoicism in a nutshell? I don't seem to contain any novel or new information. What is stoicism in a nutshell? I don't even know what that means. It's like this philosophy. This again is where I'm a very hard person to explain it because it seems like ideas that are just obvious. So be concerned about the things that you can affect. Don't be concerned about the things that you can't have an effect on. You know, it's like, yeah, of course. The sort of things that are usually written on those posters that have a picture of a jetty with some white text underneath. I think that's slightly unfair.

Stoicism has a lot about like, recognizing that you're, this is where like it lines up with meditation very well. Like recognizing that your emotions are not you, they're a thing that you experience, and so that you have some ability to be distant from them, or you don't have to react to them immediately. And yeah, it's just like, people recommend me books on Stoicism, and I've read a couple of them, and then I've just stopped because I'm like, it's all obvious stuff. The reason why I haven't still 100% given up on the meditation is there's something that feels to me about this that it's a bit like those seeing eye puzzles where if you just unfocus

your eyes in the right way, you can see the thing. And it is incredibly difficult to describe to someone how to unfocus their eyes to see this thing. It does feel like there's a kind of unfocusing here that I'm just not getting maybe. So that's where we are. I've tried a bunch, but I also find myself incredibly resistant because I don't feel like I'm getting anything out of this. And I don't see a clear direction of like, what is the thing that I'm supposed to be doing here? And then triply frustrating friends are like, oh, it's great. I get so much out of meditation. And it's like, okay, this is, so I don't know. That's the feedback. I may never touch on it again. I'll only ever bring it up if

I'm successfully able to do it over a long period of time, but I'm probably going to shelve it for now is the result. And thank you for forcing me to follow up on this one instead of just constantly dragging it out, thinking like, no, I'm going to knuckle down and do it for a month and then talk about it.