Hello Internet - H.I. #135: Place Your Bets

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

Brady and Grey discuss: weak sauce water, the uncertainty of the hotstopper pilgrimage, reliving Dinosaurs Attack! through the eyes of the young, should people be able to write, sportsball corner, placing bets, Réunion, and the night sky. Sponsors: Audible: the largest selection of audiobooks and original audio performances anywhere - start a 30-day trial and get 1 audiobook and 2 Audible Originals absolutely free by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet or text "hellointernet" to 500-500, and finish 3 audiobooks by March 3rd and get a $20 Amazon credit. HelloFresh: tasty recipes & fresh ingredients delivered to your door - get ten free meals during HelloFresh’s New Year’s sale - go to hellofresh.com/hellointernet10 and use promo code hellointernet10 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 Aarke The Mighty Black Stump Vantablack Dinosaurs Attack! Spencerian cursive Palmer cursive South Australian handwriting Long Bets Réunion The night sky is increasingly dystopian

You're like that guy that, you know, from the company that owns the Titanic getting on the raft when he shouldn't. You're like, stuff this ladies first, sort of, you know, women and children first convention. I'm looking after number one. I only got one life to live, you know. Yeah. Every death is the death of a whole universe. This universe isn't going anywhere. I have some follow up for you, Brady.

All right. And I don't know any nice way to say it. so I'm just going to come out and say it. Yep. But your home-brewed sparkling water. Yep, the Ark. It's weak sauce. Really? Interesting.

My wife and I, we were recently over there at your house, and we got to try the Ark in person. Yep, yep. It looks great. You're totally right. Aesthetically, it's right in the crosshairs for both my tastes and my wife's tastes on like what would be cool to have in the kitchen. And you were a real man of the evening

showing off the Ark, pulling the lever, showing off the fancy glass bottle, all of this. But on the way home, my wife and I both agreed. We were like, that's sparkling water. Let's be honest with each other, right? That was weak. That was barely sparkly, wasn't it? So you're just basing it on that experience.

I'm assuming he bought one, tried it, and tried all the different strengths and lived it. But you're just basing it on farting around at a party for 10 minutes. Yeah, I'm basing it on all the sparkling water I drank at your house and on the fact, okay, so listeners, the way this thing works is you pump it, right, by pulling this handle, which is fun, although I imagine not so fun when you're doing it dozens of times a day, but you pull this handle and Brady, you were very concerned about doing more than four pulls of the handle. I just don't know what happens if you just keep going. I've pushed the limits more since that night.

Okay. So how many pulls of the handle are you doing now? I now happily would do six or seven. Oh, okay. I can see already we're progressing up the scale of how much sparkle you need. No, it's not that. I thought you were going to say when you said I've got bad news here and it was about that,

I thought, okay, he bought it and he didn't like it and I just cop it. If you're basing it just on that visit, to be fair, I haven't really got that much time for what you've got to say about it because, you know,

I'll listen because I'm polite, but I'm not going to put much stock in it. But I will say, I thought the novelty would wear off and it wouldn't do me much good for my water consumption. My water consumption, thanks to this device, is through the roof. I like it more every day.

I'm always refilling my bottles. Go through a couple of liters a day now. It's not as hardcore sparkling as what you would buy from the shops, but I like that. I like it toned down, you know or so i love the bottles i find them way more satisfying to hold and drink than the bottles you buy like you know from the shops as well they've got a real sturdiness to them they've got a good drinking girth which you know i like i love the metal lids and the metal base i'm'm like, last time I spoke on the podcast about it, I would have given this device an eight out of 10.

I've gone up to a nine and a half. Oh, wow. Okay. Totally recommend. And you can give me all your weak, sore stories till the cows come home. If you haven't tried it, I don't know exactly where you're coming from. But also, maybe it's just not for you. I'm loving it.

Is the sparkle relationship to pull a linear one? Would you say with your seven pulls, you're getting basically twice as many sparkles as you were at four? I don't know. That's not that important to me. Because if sparkling water is too sparkling, I find it like a bit off-putting. Like I find it hard to drink a lot. You know, I find it hard to sit there and have a big glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug,

glug, glug, glug, glug, if it's like super sparkling. So I like it toned down a little bit, but I've sparkled it up a bit more since probably when you were here. Yeah. But see, this is also where I wonder, like, again, the drug addiction factor here. Even you have doubled your daily take of sparkles since the time that I last saw you. And if it's under your control, how many pulls of the lever are you going to be doing a year from now? I don't know. I still will stick with four or five. I've just occasionally done six or seven.

Right. Okay. But also you don't store these for as long. I don't know. I say don't knock it until you've tried it properly, but it's an expensive thing to try properly. Okay. Maybe you've walked me back a little bit into having to consider it again. Look, I know you're a fussy guy and both of you in your house have exacting standards. Maybe it's not for you, but you cannot base any judgment on us faffing around after a few cocktails at a party.

Right. So I can't base it on the Brady in-person demo. That's a terrible way to base a product. I was more just trying to make you fall in love with the look of it that way. Okay. Well, sold on that, but I'll have to see about the sparkles then. But your problem was you feel like it didn't put enough bubbles, like it wasn't enough bubble power, right? Yeah. It was like the dosage wasn't high enough. I wasn't getting anything out of those sparkles. Do you ever find that your sparkling water can be too sparkling? No, I haven't met a sparkling water that's too sparkling yet.

I sometimes will find that. I sometimes find it's like I can't down it quick enough if it's too sparkling. Well, this again, though, I'm not trying to optimize for velocity of intake, though. So maybe this is where our drinking preferences are different. You know that feeling sometimes where you're like really thirsty and you want something really cold just to smack the back of your throat and you want to like have a good half litre in one big go. If it's too bubbly you get all burpy and it gets all like bubbly. You've got to have, I want

just enough sparkle that it feels lovely going in but not so much that it like. That it inhibits the velocity. I understand. I think for me, I've never had that feeling of, I need to maximize the intake of the liquid. And so I agree that if I was trying to drink my maximum sparkles quickly, you'd quickly run into some logistical problems. Like that just wouldn't work out very well. So I think perhaps this is just an intake difference for us. And it's also why you really like those girthy bottles. Speaking of drinks and things, I've got a really, really quick piece of news because this is something that haunts me now. The Mighty Black Stump Cafe Black Stump Espresso, which has been

out of stock of hot stoppers for a while now. And a lot of people have been telling me about it. It feels like people are going to Adelaide just for this reason. I assume they're not, but... I wouldn't assume that, Brady. It's crossed my radar as well. I don't know, like probably on the Reddit of people going and then there not being hot stoppers there and it's crushing every time to see.

I would hate to think people aren't going to the Mighty Black Stump just because of a lack of hot stoppers, though. Just visiting the building is a Hello Internet pilgrimage. I'm sure I've said this before, but I think it's more of a pilgrimage because of the uncertainty. It's a Hello Internet lesson that sometimes life is crushing and it cares not about the effort that you've exerted. No, but the site of the building is what it's about. It's not about the piece of plastic.

It's like looking up at that building and imagining, oh, yeah, it's about. It's not about the piece of plastic. It's like looking up at that building and imagining, oh yeah, it's about the building. Anyway, for what it's worth, I've sent a restock in the post yesterday. So there will be hot stoppers again for some finite period of time, starting at some point in the future. I get the impression that you imagine people would be traveling from all over the world to go see the mighty black stump were it not for this podcast that in an alternate universe it would still be a world-renowned tourist destination for adelaide and australia no obviously not but i do like to think though that people when they finally see it go do you know what it has got a certain something because i think it has got a certain something because i think it has got a certain

something yeah like when when i go to it i've been to it a few times since it's rose to fame here on hello internet and every time i've gone back i have looked at that building and thought it's blackness and its look has a certain coolness about it obviously it's not a hugely tall building i get the joke that you know i used to think it was big because i'm from adelaide but it's not a hugely tall building. I get the joke that, you know, I used to think it was big because I'm from Adelaide. But it's still, despite that, it's got this kind of design and blackness to it that I think is amazing. And I hope some of the people who go there have looked at it and thought, actually, that's pretty cool. They should paint it Venta black. I think it almost is.

That's what I like about it. I think it's got a blackness that is beyond normal blackness. But that would be cool if it was like a cutout from the sky. Just that void. Well, that's kind of how I see it already. Anyway. Right. Hot stoppers.

Go, people. Go visit to take in the mighty black stump. Not the journey at all and the possible crushing defeat at the end and the excitement of uncertainty. No, no. Those aren't the reasons you go. You go to see the mighty Blackstump. And buy a drink. You only get a hop stopper if you buy a drink. I've been having words with the guy that runs the place because I'm worried he's just... My concern is what's happening is people who aren't Tims are arriving and saying, oh, have you got something I can put in my drink, like a stopper I can put in my drink? And he's

like, oh yeah, I do actually. He's pulling them out from under because i can't believe all those hot stoppers have gone to tim's i cannot believe that many people who listen to our podcast have been there to get them so i think he's being naughty and just giving them out willy-nilly so i'm i'm having really harsh words with him saying do not give them to people if they're not listening to the podcast you know one per person right and he also says he'll only give them if people if they're not listening to the podcast right you know one per person right and he also says he'll only give them if people buy a drink right so which which is totally fair but this also to me it really encapsulates a brady here and it's like i love that you do your projects but this is also why i always feel like i'm keeping myself one arm's length away from

getting too involved with any of them because there's always these unexpected problems that you bring upon yourself through these involvements and and now it's like oh we need to send hello internet secret shoppers to the mighty black stump to have quality control about how they're being handled oh that's an idea someone could just turn up and like not ask for one specifically have you got something i can yeah but like this path doesn't lead anywhere fruitful. And this is why it's like, oh, Brady's still dealing with returns from the record from years ago, right? Like there's still shoes of different sizes around, you know, like all of this kind of

stuff. It's like these projects, they are delightful, they are charming, but they have long half lives of minor problems. I will take them to the grave. By the way, speaking of Project Revolution, there could be some news coming there very soon. Oh, really? Watch this space.

Make sure you're following us on Twitter and stuff as well, and especially Patreon people as well. You'll get the news first, but watch this space. I'm intrigued. Interesting development. I have no idea what but watch this space. I'm intrigued. Interesting development. I have no idea what Brady's talking about. No, no. I think you'll quite like it, but I haven't got all my ducks in a row yet, but there's something going on.

Yeah. As always, Brady always thinks I'll quite like it. And I immediately get a sense of dread in my stomach of like, oh God, what is this? I've got some dinosaurs attack news. Okay. I've got some dinosaurs attack news okay so over the Christmas period I was entertaining some family members including a little nephew who is he's either five or six years old is this the normal nephew that you talk about or is this a different nephew this is a different one okay this isn't the one that listens to hello internet This is a different one on the other side of the family. Right. So he was over and he is like properly into dinosaurs. Oh, yeah.

Impressively so. So, you know, you pull out pictures and models and things of a dinosaur and then he'll say, oh, that's a, you know, Allidoo Wackysaurus or something I've never heard of. And then I'll look at the caption underneath or something written on the back and I'll be like, he's right. It he knows that he knows all these names not just you know tyrannosaurus rex and brontosaurus like he knows like all the proper names he's really into it so he was over he's only a little guy but he's you know he's he's learned to read and stuff

kids can read at five okay he's not a bad little reader, actually. He might be six. Anyway, I was trying to be cool Uncle Brady, right? Right. And I suddenly remembered I had all these packs of dinosaurs attack cards upstairs. Okay. But he's a five or six. So, I'm like, hmm.

It's fine. Just don't tell his mom. It's fine. Well, no. I went the opposite way. I basically sneaked his mum upstairs and said, look, I've got these cards, but, you know, it's not for me to decide whether or not these are appropriate for your son. So, I showed her a few to give her like a taste for it, you know, with a few pictures of dinosaurs biting humans in half and stuff. And she had a look and she said,

ah, that'll be fine. Yeah. So, I got the okay. So, I went downstairs and I said, ah, that'll be fine. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, I got the okay. So, I went downstairs and I said, look what I've got. I've got a present for you. Do you want to open some cards? And he's like, and they're all about dinosaurs. And he was well into it. And I was like, I was the man then. So, because I was able to give him like pack after pack, like a magician pulling, because I bought like boxes of them.

So, I said, here's a pack. And this was the first time. time i mean we've joked about how horrific these cards are but this was the seeing it through the eyes of a five and six year old especially with mum watching was a whole new experience because he's just learning to read but he's pretty good and seeing a little kid like that you know the mouths of babes, this five, six-year-old boy, open a card, look at the caption and grapple with a word like Holocaust. Massacre. And his mum can't see the card and she's just watching him go,

what's a Holocaust? I was something like, wow, these cards are full on. I didn't realise. The best thing was afterwards though, after I gave like wow these cards are full on i didn't realize the best thing was afterwards though after i gave him all these cards he put them all in order number order which was really satisfying to watch watch a little boy learn how to put his collector cards in order wow you you really opened a lot of packs with him then yeah probably five or six but like i thought now i'm gonna do a bit of foley work i thought now just to relive the experience i'm gonna open a pack here okay you hearing that i'm always hearing your excellent foley work all right let's see if this was the pack here i was living in absolute fear he would open the one with the the dog being squashed by the dinosaur yeah the unacceptable card he didn't open that

one if he had opened this one oh my. I'm glad he didn't open this pack because the first one I've opened is, you know, that one, it's card 31 for the aficionados out there. What's the name? Our Forces Flattened. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I'm like, I'm sure I can get it just from the name. They're all burned into my brain. Yeah. And you know, which one that is? What's this? What's that one? Yeah. That's, that's the one with the general in the footprints and there's the rats eating his smushed body. And he has the top secret file is in his hands. Oh my God, Grey, you're amazing. So that one would have been like a real horror for him to open.

So I'm glad he didn't open that one. The next one's pretty generic. That was fast food frenzy. Yeah. Brontosaurus at the fake McDonald's with the guy screaming in the foreground. Brilliant. For five extra points, do you remember the name of the fake McDonald's? Is it?

It's not Burger Barn, is it? Yes. Wow. Okay. You're amazing. Also in this pack, 39 Trilobite Terror. Oh, yeah. I think that's one of the bad ones.

That's like- Yeah, it's boring. Isn't it just a guy screaming and there's trilobites on his face? Yep. Exactly right. That's one of the weak sauce dinosaurs attack cards. They had a lazy day that day. But the next one is probably, for mine, one of the iconic cards in the series.

I mean, I don't pretend to have your knowledge of these series, but this is a classic. And that is card number five. Do you remember what it is? Is five... I don't know if this is five. I just know it's early in the series. Is five homeroom horror? Yes. Yes. Oh, fantastic. That's so satisfying. I got that right.

Homeroom horror. Yeah. There we go. Classic, classic card. I don't know if my little nephew got that one on the day. Classic wish classic card. I don't know if my little nephew got that one on the day. Classic wish fulfillment card. Last in the pack is number 29, a monster in the museum. Oh, yeah, yeah. Does what it says on the tin there. Yeah, exactly.

So there you go. Dinosaurs attack. Christmas fun for all your five and six-year-old nephews. So question though, did he find them gruesome? Like, what was his emotional response to the cards? At one point, he did say, I don't like that all the people are dying. But as it went along, I think he started taking some satisfaction from the cards in which humans were fighting back.

I was also interested. He had no interest in the back of the cards. He wasn't interested in all the news reports on the back, the little newspaper headlines. Yeah, or the other novelty stuff they had on the back. Yeah, he wasn't too into that. To be fair, it's also pretty small writing. I think if you're just getting into reading, that might be a challenge too far for, oh, I've got to read this boring newspaper article in tiny, tiny font.

And also the stickers. All he wanted to do was straight away take the sticker off and stick it on something. That's what stickers are for. No, that's not what collecting is about. I didn't say collecting, but what stickers are for is for sticking. How old were you when you got into these cards? I don't know. But what I was just thinking about in general is, in some ways, this is a dumb question. But I also think it's an interesting question, which is, why is it that little kids,

and particularly little boys, get so obsessed with dinosaurs, like not even, oh, they're interesting, but the phenomenon that your nephew was having of, oh, I can name all the obscure ones. It's such an interesting and unusual behavior. Why is this thing so particularly fixating in a way that like the details are all, they're all consumed and like able to be recalled. It just, it seems like a, like a real outlier for like universality and detailedness among kids. I know.

I think like certain children are like that. And I was like that in terms of, I can't speak to why they like dinosaurs over butterflies or birds. I mean, I could make some obvious guesses. They're awesome. They don't exist anymore. They're huge. They've got big teeth and stuff. But once you decide you're really into something, I think you do get really into naming them and classifying them. I was obsessed with cricket as a boy. I was completely obsessed with cricket. And I could tell you all the player statistics and how many runs they got and what their averages were and how many catches they took and what their middle names were. Because you just look at it so much,

you know, you look at the back of these cricket cards all the time. And it's the same with the dinosaurs. You just like massive exposure. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I just think the dinosaur one comes very young. Like, I don't know a nice way to say this, but I think preteen and teen obsessiveness over a topic strikes me as very natural because it's almost like you see kids sort of defining themselves relative to the outside world. And so, I don't know, at that age, it seems sure, whatever. But there's something about the dinosaurs, which just comes so soon, so strong, and so universally that I find it a bit striking. And I was actually thinking about it because this may seem like a bit of a derailment,

I was reading this article about the experience of being a garbage man, and that one of the facts of being a garbage man is that you know on your route every day there's going to be like a parade of little boys who are watching you like everywhere you go all across the city that like there's little boys looking out the window or sitting on the front stoop or like they just want to see the garbage truck come by yeah i've had that i always like that as like every street they go, they're just used to this fact that like, there's all these saluting young lads who just want to see the garbage truck. Yeah.

And as crazy as this sounds, like I wonder almost if this is like an evolutionary part of the brain that just doesn't know where to direct itself in the modern world of like, hey, you know what you should pay attention to? Large animals. And like, you should pay them way more Large animals. And you should pay them way more attention way sooner than anything else. Is the garbage truck not like a big dinosaur that comes down your street with a big mouth that eats stuff? But this is what I mean. I don't think it's crazy to suggest that maybe these two things

are connected. That if you're a little boy and you have a brain that's worried about elephants and lions on the savannah, what is the closest thing in your world to a somewhat rare, dangerous-seeming animal? It has to be a garbage truck. It literally comes along and eats things on your street. But also, it has these death-defying heroes that jump on the back of it and ride on it while it's moving in a way that you're banned from doing. Like if you even go near a car, let alone sit on, stand on a car that was moving, your parents would freak out. And here are men who for their job, jump onto a moving vehicle and just hang off the back of it. They were heroes. It's the swinging off the back. That's the coolest yeah. Look at how jaunty he is in the face of danger.

Yeah. But you haven't learned how to catch and ride the back of a sandworm yet. So you have to stay far, far away and stay still. But I found something really charming about this idea of the young boy salute watching the garbage truck as it comes by. That this is just part of the experience of being a garbage man that you don't think of as an outsider. And I don't know i i i can think like maybe maybe there's just something built into the brains of children that large animals are things you should really pay attention to and having an obsessive catalog and collection of knowledge of all the dinosaurs at the age where you have just learned

to read is like par for the course. Like this is where you should devote all your attention, kid. That's what their brain is saying. I still do that salute of watching the garbage truck go past, but it's for completely different reasons now. I think there's this conspiracy theory against me where our garbage collectors don't pick up our recycling on purpose or they're really fussy about touching it. So I sometimes spy through the curtains to see if they're going to pick up my garbage or not. I do not have the same affection for garbage collectors that I did when I was a boy. This is one of these moments where I'm thinking like, do I want to go down this path or do we

just want to leave it here? But I have to know. One, why do you think this? And two, have you observed any evidence to back up your theory? There have been times where they'll leave the recycling because they think it's been sorted wrongly. Okay. Isn't that what they're supposed to do? Yeah, but they can be a bit too fussy about it. Okay.

Like, you know, oops, there's a can in that one that's only supposed to have bottles of paper and like, they went through a phase where they were being really fussy and they got over that. But the other day they'd picked up recycling from every box on the street except mine and it wasn't sorted incorrectly. So you have one data point to support your theory here? Oh no, I've got years of incompetence to point to. But also they picked up all the Christmas trees on the street and not my Christmas tree. Like there was a day where you can leave your Christmas tree out the front and they took every Christmas tree but mine. You have a specific day that you have to leave out the Christmas tree?

Yeah. You have an specific day that you have to leave out the Christmas tree? Yeah. You have an interesting relationship with the garbage. I do. I have an unhealthy relationship with the garbage collection. You literally do. Like, I feel myself tensing up because I remember, like, the last times we had these conversations, like, it went terribly wrong. And I'm thinking of my neighborhood, like, overflowing with garbage.

Oh, that's right. It got all funny. We both got very heated in that conversation. And honest to God, every time I go to throw out the garbage and I get to the last few surviving garbage cans in my neighborhood as they've slowly decreased the number, and I get to what is an Everest of overflowing garbage around the one remaining can, I think of you every time, Brady. And I'm like, how does he not think more garbage cans is the answer? How are we supposed to keep this garbage in our house? I don't understand. I can't even remember what we

argued about now, but I'm sure I was right. This episode has been supported by Hover. And today, well, let's do a little bit of role play domain registration. Let's say, hypothetically, I'm a big fan of Dinosaurs Attack collector cards, and I want to create like a wiki site dedicated to them. Now, I haven't made the site yet, but I'm aware these cards are red hot right now, and the best domain names are probably already being taken. Well, within just a few seconds on hover, I can see what's available and for how much I see. I can still get dinosaursattack.org or dinosaursattack.site. But here's one that caught my eye, dinosaursattack.wiki. It's not only available, it's on sale at the moment for only $1 to register it for a whole year. So let's get that one in the basket, in the bank.

Dinosaursattack.earth is also a good one, but I'll leave that for someone else. Now, after I've registered the domain with all my privacy settings already set to the maximum as standard on Hover, they're really good with that. I now have it sitting in my war chest for when that page is designed, when I make my dinosaurs attack wiki. When the time comes, I can easily attach the domain to that site. It's just a few clicks, but it's not just that. Maybe in the meantime, I want that domain doing some heavy lifting for me. No problems. Hover makes that easy too. I can divert the domain elsewhere. So for now, dinosaursattack.wiki is going to divert to my new Twitter account

dedicated to showcasing dinosaurs attack cards one at a time. There's a project I'm going to regret. Anyway, if you haven't used Hover yet, I really suggest just go and have a look at how clean, simple, and intuitive the site is. They really changed the way I look at domain registration and they've left the competitors for dead. Also, if you use our code, you're going to get 10% off your first purchase. So go to hover.com slash hi. Again, people, hover.com slash hi. It also means they'll know you came from here. I recommend them all the time, not just because they're sponsoring this episode. Check out Hover, folks, and check out my dinosaursattack.wiki. On a sort of related topic, I just thought you would be amused to hear this okay but last week i took the plunge and i have upgraded my offside storage unit oh to a bigger unit okay that was

inevitable so this day has come to pass yeah can you remind listeners because i feel like this is from a long time ago that this indiana Indiana Jones archive got set up of your things. But for anybody who's new here, what's the deal with your storage unit? Well, I just felt like I needed more space to store stuff. Right. What kind of stuff, Brady? Like stuff that I don't want to throw away, but I don't really need very often. Like your mountains of space stuff?

Some of it is like memorabilia and like old merch and stuff. Some of it's work related, like I store all the brown papers from Numberphile. So, you know, over 10 years or something, I've collected quite a lot of them. I can't really bear to throw them away. Yeah. Yeah. And I give you a pass on those. I think that, yeah, you should totally keep those. So anyway, because there are some changes happening in the house, I sort of have two offices in the house. And one of them is more of a storage and filming area. And I have finally surrendered that to the niceness of things my wife wants

rather than what I want. I was wondering what verb was going to be used in this sentence. So I do have to get more stuff out of the house and I'm just accumulating stuff and my unit was filling up and I need more space. So, I went in the other day and said, I think I was 30 square feet. Does that sound right? And I've gone up to a 75. Oh, wow. That's a big upgrade. So, it's the size of a small bedroom now. And I am finding it hard packing stuff up and getting Oh, wow. That's this big like freight lift so i put all my stuff on a big like trolley and i roll it into the freight lift but humans aren't allowed in the freight lift so i

have to like pull these big doors shut and then press a button and send it up to the floor where my unit is and then i walk up the stairs and meet it up there and then roll it out and take it to my unit and unlock it and like it's this really kind of menial mechanical job, but I can't do anything else at the time. You know, there's no checking Twitter and doing a quick edit and seeing what's happening in Photoshop and checking my email. And like I'm just completely lost in this moment of menial work. And I think that's really good for my brain. Like the only other times that happens is at the gym which i don't always love but i have to do and my other favorite pastime going to the tip you know going

back and forward to the car okay now let's take all the cardboard boxes out and walk over to the big cardboard skip and now i take out the metal and put the metal and then now the bits of wood like i think i really enjoy those moments of banality. It's so different from my normal job where there are 17 different tabs open and I'm always doing eight things at once. Yeah, well, like, one of the things that is nice about something like that is the clarity of the task of, like, oh, the door needs to close and the latch needs to go and then you press the button

and then you do the reverse on the other side yeah it's not something that you would probably want to do all the time but in comparison to your regular work where like when we make videos the whole nature of that work is uncertain like how many cuts does this need is this part interesting or not interesting or like should this be moved to the front or should stay where it is or like it's just uncertain you can have like clarity with the idea of like oh i'm sitting down to do an edit but the next steps aren't necessarily obvious and so i think that's that's what can make switching to that kind of work sort of nice and satisfying and if you are at the dump, like throwing out garbage,

it's satisfying when it makes a big clang, right? Like you feel like you've done something, right? Like, like you've thrown in the metal and it's like, pow. Yeah. And it's like that at the storage unit, the freight elevators like that, those big doors that you've got to pull shut, bang, and they make a huge, big noise. Yeah. That's like a certain kind of beast satisfaction like look at this stuff moving right look at this garbage truck smashing up the garbage in the back it's so satisfying everybody wants to watch it so i filled up my car tonight with another load to take and then my car wouldn't start my car's broken down do you think the garbage man sabotaged your car is that where I haven't rolled it out. So last time on the show, my poor, poor father got dragged into it.

Did he listen to that episode? He did listen to the episode. Did he like her or was he mad at me? Well. Be honest. Here's the thing. You're asking the wrong question. What's the right question? Well, so I spoke with my father since he heard the episode where you had a million questions.

Did he bring it up or did you bring it up? Did you say, Dad, just so you know, Brady talked about you? Or did he ring you up and say, oh my God, I just heard it? No, no, no. He listens to the show. He heard it. A very high likelihood he was either going to the dump or at the gym when he heard it. Perhaps putting something in a giant freight elevator.

So yeah, I wanted to collect the reaction from my dad about being brought up on the show. Okay. For what he seems to be increasingly viewing as his cognitive impairment of inability to visualize things in his head. Before you do that, because this is really, I'm really excited about this. Can I just quickly say, there was an incredible amount of feedback both on the reddit and in emails from people who would put themselves in the same category as your father yeah and can i just say i read a lot of it and it was really really interesting and i appreciate how

much time people put into writing those things for us because it was really interesting to read from someone who is completely foreign to. But I cannot wait to hear what your dad, the source of it all, has to say. So it was very satisfying to me because my father's reaction was the exact same reaction that I was having while recording the show, which was, Brady's questions don't make any sense. I had one person that went through each one of the questions and just answered it for me. Like, here's what the answer is.

It was brilliant. So my dad and I had a little conversation about your interview style. It was how it started off with my dad being interviewed remotely. And I will forever agree that I think, and I know you always talk yourself down with this, but I think this is actually part of what makes you a fantastic interviewer, is you are able to ask the most annoying questions. They're like these splinters. And it causes this frustration because you feel like as the person trying to explain something, you've got to back up three levels to even try to start addressing what it is.

And like, I was really thrown during the recording and I couldn't figure out what it was live in the conversation. Like, why are Brady's questions annoying me so much? And my father, you know, he said something like, well, obviously none of Brady's questions make any sense. It was like for his subjective experience. And what we narrowed it down talking was like, many of your questions could be described as conflating two different things, conflating the act of visualization with the act of recognition. Yeah, fair enough. And before we go further, can I just say, and I think you're saying this anyway, but when you're interviewing someone or asking questions, it's not always about getting the answer to the question that you're asking. If you ask a question, people may take it this way,

but I don't necessarily take it as it's a betrayal of your misunderstanding. Sometimes it's actually deliberately making it sound like you don't understand because it makes people think about the information in a new way and say something that they wouldn't have otherwise said. This is exactly what I'm trying to say, right? This is like, I'm sort of phrasing it in a funny way, but I really do think that you have a real knack for asking these sorts of questions. Anytime, you know, like we were recently together, you know, the four of us, and my wife will always comment on like, Brady just asked great questions. And she'll point out some of the questions that you just ask just regularly during conversation. Like, it is a really interesting questions. And she'll point out some of the questions that you just ask just regularly during conversation. It is a really interesting skill. And I think your questions

about, you had a question about like, oh, if you asked your father how to draw Mount Everest, but he can't visualize Mount Everest, how does he draw it? This one particularly hit on a certain annoyance of like, I don't know how to explain this. And my dad was having the same thing of like, just expressing this idea that recognition is not visualization and it's harder to explain it on any more of a fundamental level than that. And so like the question back to you, Brady, is like, if I asked you, Brady, draw a tulip, like draw a picture of a tulip. Hmm.

Do you need to visualize that in order to be able to do it? Like, are you tracing on the paper something that you're visualizing in your mind? In the case of a tulip, I'm actually seeing a picture of a picture of a tulip because it's something I've seen drawn so many times. And I would just try to replicate that. Right. But you're like seeing that picture of a picture in your head. Yes. Interesting. Okay. And that's, what's amazing to me that someone that hasn't got that can even knows where

to start. What's the first line you draw if you can't even see a tulip in your head? Yeah. So when my dad was talking about the mountain question, like draw Mount Everest or like, or draw anything, he and I were both in agreement that like, there's no visualization in this process that like, you don't need to imagine the thing and then kind of draw it. That the drawing happens without visualization. That's like a foundational process that's difficult to describe any further. What does your dad want me to know?

There's nothing in particular that he wants you to know. Just that my questions were unfair. He thought your questions were ridiculous and betrayed a complete lack of understanding of the situation. I think that is like the main thing that he was expressing. Let me read a few comments that came in an email from a Tim called Kendra, who, rather than just saying those questions are ridiculous and refusing to answer them. Yes, that's exactly what happened.

Decided to actually answer some of them. Okay. Because Kendra also has aphantasia, which apparently you say incorrectly and drives everybody crazy. Oh, yeah. I've said anaphanasia because that's what the narrator in my head said when I read it and then I never heard it said out loud. And I have to say, I think that's kind of stuck. I think it sounds better as anaphanasia anyway. But anyway, please continue. Kendra wrote a very long email. So, I won't read all the answers, but I'll read parts of some of stuck. Like, I think it sounds better as Anna Fantasia anyway. But anyway, please continue. Kendra wrote a very long email. So, I won't read all the answers, but I'll read parts of some of them. Does Grey's dad have visual memories? Kendra can't answer for your dad, but Kendra answers. No, I can conjure emotions, feelings, sounds, but not visuals. I do have strong place-based

memories. If I don't go somewhere often, I can remember what was happening and the conversation, the company from last time I was there. What are dreams like? Do you see things in your dreams? Kendra says, my dreams are darkness with random colorful swirls, like when you close your eyes after staring at a light. They are like a podcast or audio drama. I hear them. I feel them. I smell them. Rarely, a picture kind of forms out of the swirl of colors, like a dinosaur in the clouds. You have to squint and be willing to see the dinosaur. In the high-like state of dreaming, this seems perfectly normal, but when I try to describe a dream when I'm awake, it's more like an incoherent audio book. What do you think when you see someone draw a picture?

Do you think that's amazing? How could they do that just out of their head? Kendra says, I love watching people draw. I think it's magical how an idea in their brain comes out by rubbing a stick against a processed dead tree there on paper. I also sometimes get distracted by my own drawing and writing and even typing. It blows my mind that things stored in my head come out of my hand and is there for all to see. Are photographs and photography something that's really precious and miraculous? Kendra says, I'm a photography bug. My parents

finally bought a digital camera so I could take as many photos as I wanted without having to pay to develop them. I really love taking pictures of my friends and family when we're all together so I can see them when they're not around. Well, yeah, yeah. The reason you take photos is because future you will totally lose the memory if you don't have a picture, but I think that's a universal experience. Would your dad be able to help an identikit sketch artist? Kendra says, for me, no, I couldn't pick a criminal out of a lineup. But that's also because Kendra also has a bit of face blindness. If I only have a brief interaction with someone, it's really hard for me to commit visuals to memory unless there's something distinctive about them, like a purple mohawk. If I was held hostage

for a long time, like half an hour, I'd probably be trying to commit visuals to mine, but it would just be facts like Caucasian, sandy hair, taller than the shelf, male, et cetera. So couldn't help with Identikit. I think once again, we have seen like, this is a topic that generates a tremendous amount of feedback from people about their subjective experiences of what is this or what is this not? And I am just increasingly convinced that I am right, that brains do very different things and that we have very different experiences. Just have a little bit of feedback on the meditation topic from last time

and then close that forever. Yes, please. We just sort of mentioned that at the end of the show and I wasn't necessarily planning to talk about it. And I was like, oh, I'm sort of frustrated and all over the place. But then feedback from listeners came in two very distinct categories. And it was like category one obviously gray should have never wasted his time trying uh meditation in the first place

like if there's anybody who doesn't need to increase the dial of metacognition it's him like obviously this is not an experience that would be valuable to him and then the other set of feedback is the feedback that i find incredibly frustrating. And it's like, it was like the Kafka trap sort of feedback. Like, well, obviously, if you are unable to meditate properly, you won't be getting something out of it. And so your descriptions of not getting anything out of meditation are evidence of the fact that you're not doing it properly. Which is just very hard to deal with as a piece of feedback because it's like, what is the action that's supposed to happen here? Or since meditation is supposed to be about this state of mindfulness, of letting thoughts pass through your head, like clouds passing over the top of a mountain or whatever metaphor, that when you're talking in a conversation about what the experience is like, you have to use words and thoughts to describe that experience. But people take that

as evidence of like, oh, you weren't really meditating because you're expressing this thought in words and like, that shouldn't be what this is. So anyway, I got one very long and very useful piece of feedback from someone who like worked in a lab with what I always want, actual brain scanners doing meditation research. And their conclusion is like, yes, there is a state that you can actually see with a brain scanner when someone does meditation that like the brainwaves change in a measurable way. And then like the person who is doing meditation or mindfulness will be able to say like, this is the point at which I felt like I was, quote, doing meditation. But that this is a thing that takes a really long time to be able to do. And their feedback was like, don't be meditating for 10 minutes a day. Like that's amateur hour

stuff. You need to meditate for an hour a day. Like this is how you'll be able to reach this other state. And at that point, this is where it's like, okay, this project is now well outside the realms of like, how much time am I willing to dedicate in my life for this thing, which may or may not be accomplishable at all. So I have decided I am officially closing the meditation project until or unless I'm in a situation where I can get actual biofeedback about are you or are you not making progress towards this very particular thing. Otherwise, this project will be forever mired in this subjective self-reporting land where it's just impossible to know if you're making progress.

So meditation, mindfulness, project, closed. Gone. Until I'm in a brain scanner. Then maybe. You don't make New Year's resolutions, do you? I do not. I do not make New Year's resolutions. Did you make a New Year's resolutions, do you? I do not. I do not make New Year's resolutions. Did you make a New Year's resolution, Brady?

Not really. Oh, but that sounds like you kind of did. Well, that's not what I'm here to talk about. That's all I want to know. What's your New Year's resolution? My wife made a New Year's resolution that I found very interesting and I thought you would find interesting. Okay.

Her New Year's resolution is to have a new signature. Okay. She's Year's resolution is to have a new signature. Okay. She's sick of her signature, doesn't like it that much, and said this year, starting from January 1, new signature. Did she pre-design the new signature? I don't know. I only remembered five minutes before we started recording, so I texted and said, have you changed your signature? She's like, yeah, I've been trying.

She said it's been hard. Sometimes the muscle memory takes over, but when she remembers, she's changing it. Have been trying she said it's been hard sometimes you just the muscle memory takes over but when she remembers she's changing it have you ever changed your signature uh yeah like it's a hard change not evolved just said you know what time for a new look as i'm sure i've discussed before like you know if you sign a lot of things like i did when i was a teacher your signature does simplify over time to just make the process of doing signatures better yeah but i do remember at one point just like oh i give up on this and just doing like a g and a line with the slightest hint of a y and it's like congratulations that's the signature now like the sort of signature you give the delivery person at the door which is like a cursory move of the finger on a no that's

a totally different level when someone shows up with those touch screens and they're like, you need to sign for this. I am now like a medieval illiterate and I'm making a mark on a piece of paper. Like you're getting like an X or a it's like, I don't know what's the deal with those screens, but the custom built ones, like the, where it's the hardware that's designed to capture your signature, that stuff, it feels like it's 1970s technology. It's like a resolution of eight pixels per square feet. Yeah. And also there's always like a problem at the border. Like it, you can't go too close to the edge. So don't even try. So that stuff is always terrible. And if it's someone who's using something like an iPhone, if they're a professional delivery person, usually that iPhone is in some kind of like protective case or it has something across the screen.

I don't even try with those things. That's why I said I just do like an X or a line. I don't care. And you don't care, buddy. So like we are we are simpatico in what's going on here like you need to see me make a mark on a piece of paper and I have made that mark and now now we will both go our separate ways so yeah job done there but I mean you must have done the same thing like both with the signature but also just with writing like I remember experimenting with different letters of like, oh, how do I want to do the

letter H? You know, what does an H feel like in my handwriting? Like, I think you spend some time trying to figure that out when you're younger and you're in a school system that makes you write everything by hand, like it's still the barbarous age. Do you think learning to write should not be taught in schools anymore? Yeah, I think I would probably pass on that for the most part. Should people be able to write? This is like a different, I don't know what you're asking me now.

Now, I feel like we've immediately slid. Should people be able to write with pencils on paper? Like, should they be able to write words? Is being able to type enough now? I think whatever level of handwritten literacy is required to learn to read is probably fine. Do you need to learn to write to be able to read? I don't know. I would guess you do.

Like, I think that those two things have to be connected. Or at the very least, I would bet it's a lot easier to learn to read if you're also practicing making the letters. When I was in year five, one of my best mates, his handwriting was all capital letters. And I thought his handwriting looked cool. So, I decided to make my handwriting all capital letters in year five. And from that time on, I've always written in all capital letters. That's just my handwriting. That's just how I always write. And if someone ever says to me, I'll write cursive or write lowercase,

like don't use your handwriting, capital letters, because that's silly, just show me what your normal handwriting looks like. And I do it. It looks like a year five boy's handwriting. Really? It's like frozen in time. I write like a little boy in year five.

I would like to get, for the show notes, a handwriting sample. I don't know i'm not i'm not sure about that here's the thing this might change my opinion on do people only in year five like can we stop with the handwriting knowledge at that point maybe maybe that would change it but i'm just gonna do it now for my own personal interest what do i want you to write like in like in lowercase i want you to write like a normal person would write with occasional uppercase but mostly lowercase letters oh actually that's not too bad

that's not bad but let me write in cursive when i write in like modern cursive that i learned that's worse normally hang on are you gonna send me a photograph of what you've done brady i'll send you a photo i think you'll be disappointed because I think it's like, I think it's actually pretty good. I'm pretty proud of it actually. I would say that's not bad. It does have a like, a little bit of charmingness, a little bit of youthful charm about it, is the way that I would say it. Okay. I don't think anybody would look at that and go, ah, did a child write this? Yeah.

But okay, so I think we can both agree that cursive or script is just write out. Like we don't need to have a conversation about should people learn cursive. That's like teaching someone Morse code. This is just like long gone as a required skill. Yeah. I mean, you do know cursive, right? I mean, you said you do or you learned it? Yeah, I learned this like Australian modern cursive thing. That was a trendy thing when

I was at school. Australian modern? What was it, like the Palmer method? Do you know? There's like Spenserian, which is the really old kind, and then there's the Palmer method, which is like modern cursive, which I think does lose all of the charm of cursive. This was definitely like that. It was like one that lost all the charm, but. Yeah. Then there's a few variations on the Palmer method that are like this similar kind of thing.

Oh, here it is. South Australian modern cursive. That's what I would have learned. Yeah. But this is a lot closer to like what in British schools they call joined up writing. Yeah. Which is now like so far from cursive that it's basically regular print letters. If you just didn't lift up the pen.

And they join them in weird places sometimes too, I feel like. Joined up writing to me always seems like the worst of everything. It's like maximally ugly. You get none of the benefits of cursive. And it's like, I don't know why they do that. But because it's South Australian, it's still awesome. I'm sorry. Yes. No, South Australian cursive is still amazing. Yeah, it's like, I don't know why they do that. But because it's South Australian, it's still awesome. I'm sorry. Yes.

No, South Australian cursive is still amazing. Yeah, it's right. Every young boy learns, you know, oh, you got to write out the sentences. The quick brown fox jumped over the mighty black stump. You have to write it a hundred times. And yeah, I'm sure that's what you guys have to do. Like, I don't know. I find cursive interesting, but it's like,

I think people just don't realize how much it's a byproduct of fountain pens and technology. It's not designed for modern pens. And that's why these modern cursives were the idea of like, oh, when we have ballpoint pens, this is the kind of cursive we'll use. Like, yeah, but you actually don't need it anymore once you have ballpoint pens. Like, we can just ditch this whole thing.

Yeah. Like, yeah, but you actually don't need it anymore. Once you have ballpoint pens, like we can just ditch this whole thing. I do still write in cursive, but there is now only one poor person in the world who has to deal with my cursive writing. And that is my assistant who sometimes has to take my notes on scripts that I still write in cursive and work with them. And like, I feel very sorry for her when she has to do that because my cursive is appalling. But the fact that even you still hand write shows that being able to write by hand is important, you know? No, no, no.

A million times no. Like, I am a person who literally writes for a living. Like, I am not a person to pick as an example of, oh, it's important that you need to know how to write by hand. Like if I exclude the times that I go over scripts to edit them, if you take out that experience of my handwriting, the number of times I write anything by hand is rapidly approaching zero. this is now like i go to the eye doctor and they have some form that they want me to fill out like this is like the frequency of how often do i need to write something out by hand it's very rare i mean like you must have the same experience right yeah i do

write things a lot like if i'm working i'll write things on notes next to me for some reason like it's always work related but yeah i might have to like say there's a someone says something in the video and i write it down a piece of paper because i've got to then take that to photoshop and turn it into text or something it's easier just to write it down than to type it okay like say there's a moment in the video where someone says i love hot dogs and i decide I want to make a graphic of that with a stick figure saying, I love hot dogs with a speech bubble, but I'm scared I'm going to forget what the line is. I'll scribble down.

I love hot dogs on a post-it note and then start a document in Photoshop or something and go, what was, what was the, does the stick figure have to say again? Oh, that's right. I love hot dogs.

It's written down. Okay. So you just happen to find that easier to do. I could also do it in shorthand sometimes too, if it's a lot of words, because I still know shorthand. Yeah. Yeah. You know how to do the order sign in shorthand very successfully. So like, I think, yeah, there's going to be a long tail on the usefulness of writing things by hand. And I was being a little bit glib and a little bit fast. It's like, I don't think we need it. But like the more I'm sitting here thinking about like, do I really mean that? You know, in the way that like you say things and

then you think, do I agree with that? I kind of think I do. You know, I mean, this also has to do with my very strong feelings that the decreasing marginal value of each additional year of school really drops off after grade school is like, maybe I can put handwriting in that bucket too. I've never really thought about it. But like, you know, when you finish grade school or primary school, whatever level of handwriting you have, then it's totally fine for signing packages when the guy comes to the door, you know, or filling in the form at your dentist's like, yeah, I think we could ditch this. I think we don't need to do it anymore after kids are 10 years old. We can just stop making them write things by hand.

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Go right ahead. I found this an interesting story, right? Okay. There's this guy called Dom Sibley. Okay. And when he was 16 years old in 2011, he was like pretty good at cricket as a boy. His grandfather placed two bets in the same year. One was 150 to one and one was at 66 to one that my grandson will one day play cricket for England.

And a week or two ago, he played his first game of cricket for England. So, the bet paid out. And this grandfather, who actually is dead now, but the family still had the betting slips. So, they cashed out the bet, won 21,000 pounds. So, even more dollars. Right. That's like $300,000. And I'm like, as you've probably figured out in recent times, I'm pretty like down on sports betting. I think it's a pretty insidious thing. But I do find this quite interesting. And it's not the first story like this I've read.

There was a guy who bet on his son playing soccer for England as well, and that happened at some ridiculous odds. I do find it funny, the notion of betting on your children's future, getting payouts. It made me wonder if you were going to bet on something to happen in the next 10 years or bet on something happening to someone you know, like having some level of success that puts them into the elite level. Is there anything you think you'd bet on? There's a website I always found charming.

It's called Long Bets. And it's this idea. It's people making public bets. Okay bets okay yeah it's run by this interesting foundation called like the long now foundation where their goal is to encourage long-term thinking so they've done i think we even mentioned it some of these weird projects like they had this rosetta stone this like modern rosetta stone with hundreds of languages on it that they've distributed across the world they've probably by now built like this clock that exists out in the desert in america somewhere which is supposed to last for 10 000 years and people can put a bet down yeah and some and people will then match and say all

right i'll pay out on that if it happens i think they needed to be i think supposed to be like longer than two years where you are allowed to like make a public bet against someone else. Here's one, Gray. Bet number 712. This was an eight-year period bet. Driverless cars will be commercially available in Las Vegas, Nevada by May 27, 2024. Trips may be point-to-point outside of the city centre with no requirement for any passenger to take over manual control of the vehicle.

Jeff McCauley and Stephen Zoff are the two people that have got money riding on this. Right. requirement for any passenger to take over manual control of the vehicle jeff mccullough and steven zoa for the two people that have got money riding on this right five hundred dollar bet i still think like i think of my humans need not apply video which i think came out in god i don't know now 2014 or 15 i don't know but like i've always had a 10-year horizon on that one of like, if I don't have what I think of as a true self-driving ride 10 years from the publication of that video, I will be surprised. I'd be like, oh, wow. I was wrong about my expected closeness of this technology. Listen to this one gray number 601 is the original url for this prediction www.longbets.org slash 601 will no longer be available in 11 years right there's someone

playing the metagame of yeah right someone put large hydrogen collider will destroy earth within 10 years i like that bet 601 though about the url because that's like yeah this is how you start to get a derivatives market built up right where you're not betting on the thing like you're betting on the meta levels of the thing so i like that like yeah i was gonna say like what i love about this and i love about this question is i just think i think bets are such a great way to sharpen the mind when thinking about a particular question. So I think that's why I kind of backed off when you said like, oh, what would you bet on in 10 years? Because like when you're just talking in a conversation, you can say like, oh, I think this or I think that. But when

there's something, I don't know if you have the same thing, but there's something about like formulating it as a bet that I feel like really sharpens the mind and like brings you to the forefront of like okay yeah how many years like what odds are you willing to give and how are we defining success yeah yeah like let's get out of conversation mode and then let's like buckle down into serious mode and the amount doesn't matter. Like, oh, bet a dollar. Like something about it still just really focuses the brain into, okay, like let's be serious about this now. And I feel like I've gotten more sensitized to that idea over time of like bets are a really useful way to try to think about the future and like what will or what won't change,

you know, like, like in terms of, of elections, like it's very different to say like, who do you think will win election X versus like, what are the odds that you would be willing to bet on of like this person or that person?

Like it just, it really focuses the brain. So someone put here, slaughterhouses will be banned in the United Kingdom by 2050. That's an interesting bet, isn't it? My initial response was, I would take that bet. But I'd immediately start putting an asterisk on it of, I think it might not happen because of religious exemptions. That's the only thing I could see as like,

oh, there still might be slaughterhouses for religious exemptions. Oh, yeah. But otherwise, I'd be like, oh, I'd take that bet. I'd totally take even odds on that bet. What about you? Yeah, I think that might be gone by then. The whole vegetarian veganism things had a real foot on the accelerator in the last two or three months.

It's been really interesting. I just laughed because when you said two or three, I was expecting the word years, which I would have agreed with. No, no. There's been a real acceleration. Mainly because of the company Gregg's that do like... Yeah, they sell donuts and stuff, right? Yeah, and they also do like pastries and lots of meat steak bakes and chicken bakes and that they launched this vegan sausage roll last year that took the world by storm and it's like the company's profits have gone through the roof because of it and now they're doing all these

other vegan products and their chief executive's gone vegan and they're everywhere gregs so the fact that they're going all vegan crazy has been quite a catalyst and now it's like vegan year at the moment, apparently. Everyone's going vegan for January. That's a brutal one. Movember is better. Veganuary, that's rough. I don't know, man.

I don't know. I think me placing a bet on me playing international sport for any country is probably, that window's probably gone, unfortunately. I think I've let go of that in recent months. You're not going to bet on any of your friends achieving greatness? I don't know. I think someone I know, I don't know who, but I think because of the people I know, I think someone I know will probably go into space, like a physics scale or a Destin or a Dirk or someone will end up know, end up doing some space thing before I die. Yeah. I mean, but that's just good hashtag content. Like someone's going to do that for sure. Like someone's going to make that happen. Who do you think will be the first YouTuber

in space? This is where I feel like I'm not up to date with who the big YouTubers are. If I had to pick an industry, like for sure, it'll be a beauty vlogger i will be the first youtuber in space like i wouldn't know who to pick in that industry but i'm pretty serious if we if we limit this conversation to who are full-time youtubers that it that like a beauty vlogger has pretty good odds of being the first one who's actually in space i don't know who they'll be but they'll be under the age of 25. Yeah, yeah. Those people are the ones really running the show. They've got the money.

They've got the pull. They've got the audience. They could make it work. All right. If you had to put a year down for the first human footstep on Mars, like I'm just going to give you a thousand pounds and you can place the bet on a year. What year are you going to put it on?

Oh, that's an interesting one. I don't know. Cause like that's such a high variance option. I'll put something on the table and I'll say 2032. If I'm picking a year, that's the year I'm picking. Yeah. That was my second choice. Oh, wow.

Okay. What was your first choice i was gonna say 2035 okay and then i thought nah maybe 2032 but i'll stick with 2035 okay what's your reasoning for 2035 i don't know it just feels like i reckon we need about 15 years there's no like pressure that means we must do it by the end of the decade type thing and it just feels like about the right pace. But if I'm wrong, like I used to think it would take longer, but now if I'm wrong, I think I'm probably wrong this side. Like it'll probably be sooner. Oh, okay. Interesting.

Because the commercial people are like really upping their game now, aren't they? So I've picked a number that I think is almost certainly the wrong number, but is in the middle of what strike me as two probability curves. And so I think of it in the same way that you do. Like, there's not an unreasonable chance that it's actually much sooner than we would expect. Yeah. But I also feel like maybe if it's not much sooner than we expect, it's going to be a really long time. Like the actual answer is like 2060, 2070. Yeah.

Simply because there's like very little actual motivation to go. Like the problem that I see is I think it's very difficult to imagine in a period of decades how Mars could be commercially viable to anyone. You kind of need like explorers and zealots to do that. And that's what makes it a really high variance situation. Yeah. But the other thing you're not taking into account though is the business advantage of doing it for pr purposes it would be such a pr win oh yeah spacex they're the ones that cracked mars i want to associate with them for all my space needs actually going to mars might not be commercially like they might not you know you're not going to go there and mine it or anything but

it might be such a big pr boom that you will become the go-to company for all things space because you're the ones that got to Mars. I don't know. I find that less convincing, but maybe I'm wrong there. Just because I feel like space by its very nature has to be a really, like it's such a specialized area of human exploration. I'm not necessarily convinced that accomplishing the problem of landing a man on Mars and returning him safely before the decade is out would be generally

applicable to all sorts of other space travel. I just think it's a very particular problem. So if I was betting, I wouldn't put a lot of value on just the pure pr value of being the company that got someone to mars first right like in terms of actual value but if you're if you're talking about like putting a man on mars is awesome like that's a whole different thing and like getting a bunch of people to work on that is a very different sort of human endeavor that's just why I think it's so highly variant is it's like, it depends a lot on excitement maybe in the shorter term. And if it doesn't happen out of sheer excitement, I don't know if it's just commercially viable for a really long time. But that's sort of why I went like 2032 is I was trying to pick a number that's like

in between my two actual predictions, but who knows? I don't know. That's a really interesting question though, Brady. I'm so pleased that this long bets website still exists. So I'd be just curious to see if people can pull out some of the particularly interesting bets that are on the site in the discussion. One more sports ball corner. I just felt like this should be mentioned. I don't know. I've told you many times how soccer leagues work in Europe, but you've probably forgotten every time. So just to remind you, in a soccer league in Europe, like in England or France, as I'm about to talk about, all the teams play each other twice.

And at the end, whoever has accumulated the most points wins the league. There's no playoffs. There's no knockout component. It's just whoever accumulates the most wins and things like that wins the league. But in addition to a league, they will have a knockout cup. And this is like playoffs. All of the teams from all of the leagues, they're not divided up now into the good teams and the bad teams. Just all of them are all thrown into a hat and they play each other in this sort of knockout competition until just two teams remain and they play

one game to decide who wins the cup that year. That's a whole separate tournament, right? That makes sense? Yeah. Okay. So, in France, it's a little bit different because in addition to all the teams in France playing, they also invite teams from all the regions and territories around the world to send teams in. Like, I don't know what all the French territories are, French Guiana and places like that. And normally these teams are cannon fodder and they send some team to get demolished by the professionals because they're all like amateur teams.

Okay. But this year, one of the French colonies sent their team over and they flew 9,000 kilometers to France to presumably get spanked. But amazingly, they won. They had a 2-1 win. And that means they move into the last 32. They're in the final 32 teams. Okay.

This is only the second time ever that one of these French teams from the far-flung provinces has made it into the final 32. Okay. The reason I wanted to bring it up on the show at all was because the amateur side that did it this year, they flew 9,000 kilometres to win 2-1, is called J.S pierre's saint something saint pierre they're from saint pierre but they're called saint pierre's okay and this is a team that hails from our favorite island reunion i don't know if they're called the reunion swamp Swamp Hens. One of their logos did have a bird on it,

but the logo I'm looking at now doesn't. But anyway, a bunch of people got in touch with me because they were so excited to read about Reunion in the news because this was like, you know, a big story for 12 hours in the world. And it was a soccer team from Reunion flying 9,000 kilometres to have a big famous victory. And everyone's like, go Swamp Hens. But here's the thing, Brady.

Can you even remind me how and why did we even get the Reunion Swamp Hen and the Jamaican Rice Rat as the unofficial animals of Hello Internet? Do you know what? I can't. Here's my best guess is, I think I was trying to show you a Wikipedia page and you got distracted by like the link at the top, which was something about the swamp hen or the rice rat.

That's my guess as to where this came from. But I'm kind of relieved that you too cannot remember exactly the details of how this came to pass. The reason I thought you might find it mildly diverting is because it involves territories of a country, and you always used to make videos about that kind of stuff. So in this French version of the FA Cup, they allow teams from Guadalupe and French Guana and Martinique, New Caledonia, Tahiti, St. Martin, all these exotic places all flying into France to play in their cup competition. I like the way you phrase that. You used to always, right? You sound just like YouTube comments where people are like, oh, you do two things in a row and someone says like, oh, this is always, right?

Or like the videos that someone remembers is like, they used to just make those videos. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you've made more than two videos about like regions and countries and geography and like borders. And I'm not saying that i only made two i just i think it's just the like you used to always is a very like youtube comment way to phrase how a channel used to be in the past yeah back when you used to actually make videos right yes that's right i don't make videos anymore well congratulations to reunion obviously they should be called the swamp hens yeah they should be their wikipedia article is really disappointing. Well, they must have a Twitter account. I think that Tim should go congratulate their Twitter account with,

Congratulations, Swamp Hens. They're a French football club from St. Pierre on Reunion. St. Pierre, I believe, is the third largest conurbation on the island. Oh, okay. They wear white and black. I know that. Oh, hang hang on here's the club website i'm just trying to find out what they're called what their animal is or something their emblem brady see they're they're just called the reunion swamp hens and the tims will go congratulate them and we'll let the team figure that out hello internet it's a new year and you

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If you're looking for a recommendation that's on theme, I just finished Range, How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein, which is all about the different kinds of backgrounds that successful people have. Is it better to be broad and shallow or narrow but deep? If that sounds interesting to you, Audible members can choose three titles every month, one audiobook and two exclusive Audible Originals you can't hear anywhere else. Also, Audible members get access to exclusive guided fitness programs to help start the new year off right. And you can listen at any device at any time. To start listening with a 30- two Audible Originals absolutely free. So again, to start listening with a 30-day Audible trial, visit audible.com, that's A-U-D-I-B-L-E,.com, slash HelloInternet, all one word, or text HelloInternet, all one word, to 500-500.

Thanks to Audible for helping people learn what they need to know to achieve their goals. And thanks to Audible for supporting the show. Okay, Gray, it's time. Okay. Starlink. Okay. Should we explain what it is? Everyone knows because they've all been asking us to talk about it.

Okay, well, you need to, when you say Starlink, you need to explain starlink to me because i need to explain it yeah you sent me an article which is about satellites in the night sky yeah with this headline that i adore the night sky is increasingly dystopian right oh good job there article author but i'm actually like, so I know about SpaceX. Obviously, we've talked about it on the show before, but I'm totally unfamiliar with Starlink. I don't, I'm not aware of this. It sounds like it's a project of SpaceX, I'm presuming. Starlink entails launching up to 40,000 spacecraft into orbit in order to create a network that will enhance global broadband communication. Awesome.

Other companies such as Amazon say they have similar plans. So there's this plan to put loads and loads and loads of spacecraft, create a big network in space to give better network connectivity and stuff like that. Is the idea like it's consumer-facing internet? Is that the idea? Do you know? I believe so. Yeah, well, if Amazon are doing it as well and stuff, yeah. Ping times to space are brutal yeah the problem is this is like and this is going to be like an exponential increase in the number of gizmos and gadgets up in space the people that are making the most noise about it are astronomers because these things actually are quite visible satellites are surprisingly visible in space i think because we live in cities, a lot of us,

we don't really see them because we don't see stars much at all. But if you go somewhere really dark and just lie down and watch space for a while, you see a surprising number of satellites now, and this is just going to go through the roof. And also they follow each other in these like trains, so they're even more noticeable. So astronomers are up in arms because at the moment they can still do astronomy with the existing satellites that are up there,

but these things are really going to start getting in the way of all their attempts at imaging things. They're probably not the most sympathetic group, but there are other deeper concerns about this practice, which seems to be going on pretty much unchecked. Okay, wait, I have to know why. Why are they not the most sympathetic group? Well, because they're such a minority.

Like most people would rather have better access to Facebook than care about imaging Andromeda. Oh, God, what a brutal way to say it. Oh, God, Brady, that's a terrible way to say it. Sorry. Okay, so you're saying they're not sympathetic because there aren't very many of them, so people don't care. Yeah, people don't care about space that much.

I thought you meant like, oh, astronomers, we all know what they're like. They're real bastards, and so people wouldn't care. It's just they don't have a lot of sway in the world because people don't care about their output that much. Yeah, that makes more sense. Yeah, the article that you sent me, it was an interesting read with a ridiculously overblown title. I don't know how the word dystopian is supposed to describe streaks in the sky, but okay, whatever.

Where does it say that? The headline on the one I'm looking at here says, Be wary of Elon Musk despoiling the vault of heaven, which is even more dramatic. Wow, okay. Elon Musk despoiling the vault of heaven, which is even more dramatic. Wow. Okay. Then we're caught in the crossfire of generating clicks across the internet, right? Yes. Yeah. Who can describe this in the most dramatic way? Despoiling is great. Actually, as a little minor note, a thing that I've noticed, I made this video ages ago about how like, oh, things that make you angry, like this research, like things that make you angry are the most shareable on the internet.

And it seems like this has evolved slightly, both with the research and what happens on the internet, that the subcategory of anger that really works is anger that hits on the concept of disgust. And when you tune into this, you can start noticing it everywhere of like, this is the hammer that people really hit on is like disgust. So that's why I was looking at like just spoiling, right? Like that's a sort of disgust word to try to crank up the clicks. But it's- Yeah, it is good. Anyway, yeah. This image, which is a little brutal of like this hexagon that's been put together of the observations from the telescope at night trying to take pictures of the night sky, does have these, I don't know, 20 or so horizontal streaks across the image. Yeah. That is pretty bad. Like if you're trying to do astronomy,

that would be hugely frustrating to have to throw away big portions of your image or to just have like little strips of your image that you can use. That would be super frustrating. And reading through the article, what made me laugh is this image is the result of 19 satellites.

But as you keep going through the article the numbers just keep getting larger and larger of like oh yes these were 19 but there's another 60 being launched on monday and the fcc has approved the launch of 12 000 more and there's 30,000 applications in progress. And like, I can easily imagine that this in a relatively short period of time could basically render ground-based astronomy ridiculously impractical. And that sucks for astronomers, but you you know you're not wrong when you say that people want their facebook and deep space astronomy what have you done for me lately that's not what i'm worried about though i mean you know i love astronomy more than most people right so obviously i feel sad for astronomers not being able to take pretty pictures and learn about you know galaxy evolution

but i do realize that's not super important for people's day-to-day lives. But I am worried about, well, I'm worried about a few things. I'm mildly worried about what it will mean for things like asteroid observation, which is important. You mean as in trying to spot objects coming towards Earth? Yeah, planet. It's a global killer. Right there. Okay, great. Perfect. planet it's a global killer right there okay great perfect it also you know makes me a bit worried about trapping ourselves on earth as we put more and more debris up in space that i would

list as my one concern yeah because like these things eventually are going to start smashing into each other and things are going to go wrong and we're going to get more and more cluttered up there and eventually we're going to trap ourselves on earth yeah i know we need more stuff up there but it just feels like we haven't really thought about it we're just doing it not thinking about it yeah but when it comes to like the wholesome argument which i'm sure you're expecting from me which is when you laugh that's what i'm waiting for yeah i do think it's a bit like short-sighted to fill up the only thing that no one owns with debris visual clutter it could be advertising next but for people in 100 200 years to be denied a view of space which is the only thing which like no one owns and no one can ruin like you know you can ruin your own country but no one's supposed to be able to ruin space

to do that just seems like thoughtless. And I wonder if it's necessary, especially the way technology is changing. Like for say in a hundred years, everyone in the world will be able to have perfect internet on their phone because of some new technology that doesn't require something as crude as satellites. We will have for this brief period filled space up

with tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of objects, which will ruin everyone's view of space for hundreds of years and have possible other repercussions without having ever really thought it through and for a very short term benefit. To address those two points, the thing about getting trapped on Earth, that strikes me as the immediate concern. I used to do a lesson on this forever ago. I don't know if it still exists, but there at one time was in Google Earth, you could subscribe to NASA's public data of all of the objects in space orbiting the Earth. And it was always a great lesson demo to be able to pull out and show, oh, here are all of the objects orbiting the earth right now. And it always got a bit of like a dramatic gasp from

students, partly because the icon size wasn't like, it's not possible to have it be to scale. So like, so it just looks terrible. Like it looks like there's a bunch of garbage just flying all around the earth, which is kind of great. Like, oh, yes, the satellite icon they use is like a thousand times larger than the actual satellite can be. I do think it is a civilization-worrying problem, the problem of space junk and inadvertently trapping people on Earth. And, you know, for those not aware, it's not just about the stuff that's orbiting up in space. It's the concern of starting a cascade of failures. That if a couple of objects collapse, they break into lots of pieces.

And then you start to get a cascade effect of more stuff breaks. And a single screw orbiting around Earth is a deadly projectile for anything trying to get into orbit. That strikes me as the main concern here. The visual one, I don't know how to rate that. I love, at least in the article that I'm looking at, they have this sentence, which you'll enjoy, where there's a demo video of what might the night sky look like with all of these satellites. This is in the Vox article, yeah. Yeah. And it says, keep in mind, this is a YouTube video and may not look all that impressive. Which I just kind of love, like, what do you mean it's a YouTube video? I don't like the way you phrase that, Vox. Yeah.

And their time lapse is deeply unimpressive for, oh, this is what the night sky would look like sped up with 12,000 satellites. Yeah. So I'll agree with you that if someone is putting a bunch of satellites up in outer space and then drone-like having them fly in synchrony to spell out Pepsi across the night sky, I will be severely irritated. That's bad. But if we just have a bunch of dots that move across the sky at night, I don't know, I have a hard time rating that as like despoiling the sky. Surely this is just like seeing airplanes at night as well,

flying across the night sky. Yeah, but they're not permanent. You can stop them with the slash of a signature. Like, would you accept dots going all over the Mona Lisa? Well, if it meant that we could get internet all across Earth, I would say for sure. Right. Obviously. Mona Lisa's way overrated. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

That's part of the calculus here, is it's not just a question. Like, if you're asking in the abstract, is the night sky improved by putting a bunch of dots on it the answer is no but if you're weighing it against the like the practicalities of increased communications technology it's like well you know maybe i'm willing to make this depending on what we're talking about here you know yeah i just hope it's not a short-term fix but coming back to what you said before though i mean you said it almost casually, where you said that you only have one concern, like for civilization. Like, surely if something is a concern for civilization, like that sounds like a pretty big deal. So, if there's even a chance we're going to trap ourselves on Earth because of our desire for

better Instagram, then we're going to look pretty stupid one day, aren't we? As we're all dying here on this planet, you know, from global warming or getting hit by asteroid or whatever finishes us off, and people go, oh, gee, why didn't they leave? Oh, they couldn't. They were trapped. They were trapped on their planet by all this stuff. Oh, that's so sad. How did all that stuff get there?

Oh, they put it there themselves. They put it there themselves. How come? Oh oh because of twitter all right okay maybe they should be dead they were really frustrated that the uploads took so long from instagram island yeah exactly yeah so i'm aware there are you know i live in a part of the world where I have really good internet access. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know there are people that have no internet access. I'm not blind to that. And if everyone in the world, including people who have no internet, could have good internet, you know, and the only price was it's harder to do imaging from ground-based telescopes and astronomers

have got to find more tricks and fixes to get looks at things, I would say, yeah, I'm sad about that, but yeah, of course we've got to do it. There are all these other implications and it just happened as well. It wasn't until the first Starlink satellites were launched that even astronomers started talking about it. I can't believe how under the radar this was. Yeah. This is a bit like when a tech company descends on your city and drops a bunch of electronic scooters from an airplane and they just run away and leave the scooters there. Nobody was expecting them to just show up. And it does feel like the satellites were a bit like that of getting launched quite suddenly.

Yes, I did say the existential threat to humanity quite casually. There's something very interesting about existential threats, Brady. And it's that when I find myself thinking about them, you know, everything in life is a trade-off. There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. You can have more of this, but it'll get you less of that or whatever. Like that's everything in life. Yeah.

But existential threats are very hard to square with where does this go in your mental model? Because the downside is, oh, everything you and anyone has ever or can ever love is gone forever. It's like, wow, that's terrible. If the word bad means wow, that's terrible. You know, if the word bad means anything, that's bad. You know, that's really bad. And so like,

I always found myself kind of thrown in trying to think about this stuff because you're trying to like balance an equation, but one of the terms is negative infinity. And it just makes it hard. Like, you know, if you sat down and you thought, okay, let's list out a bunch of existential threats. And it just makes it hard. If you sat down and you thought, okay, let's list out a bunch of existential threats. We've talked about AI on the show a while back, which I was convinced I changed my mind on of like, oh, this is an actual threat that's really worth considering. And you just mentioned planet killer asteroids coming for the earth.

And then there's the super volcano under Yellowstone National Park and like there's all of these possible things. And it's hard to know how to do the math on, well, what's the probability of these events? So that's why I think I can kind of casually make reference to civilization being trapped on Earth and inevitably dying here because it's hard to know how to square this against the benefit of, oh, but my internet's a little faster, or I have internet when I'm lost on a lifeboat somewhere in the middle of the ocean, that kind of thing. It's hard to know how to think about that in relation when doing a trade-off calculation. I just don't know how

to think about it. CBT