Hello Internet - H.I. #50: Queen of Spades

Episode Date: November 6, 2015

Brady and Grey discuss: a first cup of coffee, Rice Rats vs Swamphen, Brady Travels, AirBNB and the sharing economy, first thoughts on the Hello Internet Flag Referendum, Brady's refuses to play games, Hotstopper awareness auction results, the county flags of Liberia, things people happen to be doing while they are listening to the Hello Internet podcast corner, bi-weekly weigh in (YOU SHOULD CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE TEAM!), YouTube Red, and answers to some listener questions for the fiftieth episode. Brought To You By: Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month Audible.com: Get a free audiobook by signing up at www.audible.com/hellointernet Igloo: An intranet you'll actually like. Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode Brady's first cup of coffee Marco Arment Tiff Arment Brady points The view from the MSRI director’s office Team Rice Rat Team Swamphen Hello Internet #6: Brady's Cat Pee Story AirBNB HI: The Shortlist HI flag voting rules Uno HeroQuest Hotstopper Awareness CGP Grey the penguin County Flags of Liberia Japanese Prefectural flags Hello Internet in Kenya Hello Internet in the locker room A Hello Internet historical landmark *Hello Internet FITOTRON 5000 exercise shirts* YouTube Red Pew Die Pie's YouTube Red show Hello Internet discusses YouTube Red before we knew anything about it John Green discusses YouTube Red Bow down before Taylor Swift's view numbers Apple Music royalty payments Mean Girls Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Henry of Minute Physics BrainSTEM conference John Green VidCon Brady: British Numbers Confuse Americans Derek's of Ver-ih-TAH-see-um video of the BrainSTEM conference where educational YouTubers met for the first time Accidental Tech Podcast John Gruber The Talk Show The first episode of Hello Internet

Well, here we are. Episode number 50. Amazing. You don't sound very amazed. So, we're going to do some sort of 50th episode celebration stuff a bit later. So, I guess we can talk about 50 and reminisce and talk about the good times and the bad times. Should we do what TV shows do when they need to cheap out? Should we have a clip show? Lots of flashbacks.

A music montage, yeah. A bit of green daytime of your life playing in the background. Yeah, yeah. We need to think of just the barest structure to hold together a bunch of clips of things that have happened into the past because the production budget is running out and you need a last episode.

That's usually what TV shows do. Do you think you could edit something together that not only had sort of the key highlights and a few laughs and stuff, but you could, you could wring out a few tears as well? Do you think you could get some emotion out? Or do you think we're too impersonal that there have been no moments where people would sort of tear up and go, I love those guys. I don't think the two of us are the kind of guys who have tear jerky moments. We're a bit emotion light, aren't we, in that respect? We are unserious, unless, of course, it is Plane Crash Corner. If it's Plane Crash Corner, then it's deadly serious.

Quite literally. Quite literally. We'll come to the 50th shortly, but I should apologize in advance for the poor sound quality on the 50th. But I am once again on the road with some dodgy sound setup going here which is a series of ropes and rocks and things like that you know holding everything in place so uh apologies i'm not using my usual setup yeah that's because you are at the spiritual home of numberphile oh gray you know i love it when you say that then I always say to you, what's its actual name? And you never get it right. Oh, I should have prepared.

The, uh, cause I, the mathematical sciences research institute in San Francisco. In Berkeley. Oh, Berkeley. I am. I've been, I've been in New York for a week and now I'm in Berkeley for the next two weeks. Did I get that right though? Mathematical Sciences Research Institute? You did.

Oh, I'm very proud of myself. I know. I know. I'm, I'm, I am impressed. I am impressed. That's where I am. I'm in a little, I'm in a little video room here where I camp for a couple of weeks when I'm filming all the mathematicians here.

You have been a whirlwind traveler. I have. There've been, there have been some interesting adventures, but I think the highlight and the thing that everyone's going to want to know first and foremost is that I drank my first cup of coffee. I cannot believe that you drank a cup of coffee. Pretty amazing, hey? You've stirred up the people on the internet as well, because there have been just,

it's like a Russian revolution where people want to tear down the statue of you being hard as nails and rejecting a cup of coffee. It's like you are a, you know, you have failed to live up to that statue. No, grey, grey. If there's something you really, really don't like, and then you go through and have it anyway, that is what is hard as nails. Having the coffee is what makes me hard as nails. I see how you're trying to play this, Brady. It seemed like in the video that you enjoyed your first cup of coffee.

Is that a fair assessment? It was a little bit hard to tell how much you really liked it and how much you were being polite. Well, to give people a little bit of background, I was at the house of a person called Marco Arment, who is a very famous app developer and computer guy and also a very well-known podcaster. But he's perhaps most known for his love of coffee

and being a complete coffee snob. So when I said I was going to his house, he sort of, he knows I don't drink coffee, but he joked, I'll make you a coffee, haha, but not really. And when I got there, he was offering me a drink and said, oh, do you want a cup of tea? And I just said, I'm not going to come to the home of someone who is famous for their love of coffee and not have a coffee. That would be crazy. I think he was a bit taken aback, but I'm like, no, I'm going to do it. I'm going to try.

If I'm ever going to do it, why not do it? If I'm going to lose my virginity, I want to lose my coffee virginity to someone who knows their coffee. Seems reasonable. So he brewed one up. He also recorded it. There is a video of it. There is even audio, so people can enjoy it. For those who care about such details, it was some Kenyan coffee, and Marco roasts it himself, so he roasted it to a certain level

that he thinks is just right and is not the norm, and it was made with an aero press, whatever that is. I didn't really see what he was doing. There was some contraption that looked like a huge siphon that I used to use to clean out my fish tank. But he made it with that, whatever that was. And he gave it to me. And he asked if I wanted milk or sugar, which normally would have been my thing, I imagine, because I like milky, sugary things.

But I said, no, I want it. If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it properly. If I'm going to be a bear, I'm going to be a grizzly. And I partook of the coffee. So, the question is, are you going to drink coffee again? Was your first experience something that you would want to repeat? I'm not in a hurry to have another one. In many ways, it was what I expected.

It sort of tasted like it smelled and it was quite bitter. I believe your exact words were, it tastes like dirt. I was surprised how earthy and dirt-like it tasted. There were definitely nuances of dirt. Mm-hmm. And I don't mean that in an entirely negative way. Right. It just kind of tasted a bit...

I don't know if all coffee is like that or just this kind of, you know, Kenyan roast that was done by the coffee guru. You started in at the deep end. Like, that's a pretty intense coffee. And yeah, without anything to dilute it at all, that's going to taste earthy. I mean, I'm drinking coffee right now and I still haven't worked my way up to the no additives whatsoever to coffee. Like, that's really intense. I did get a pleasantness from it.

I didn't feel affected by the caffeine or anything. It was quite a small cup, of course. And I think I was being treated gently because it was my first time. But it didn't feel like some crazy drink. And certainly, you know, I certainly found it more pleasant than I find in tequila or Sambuca, both of which I have quite, I find quite unpleasant, quite unpleasant reactions to those. But I certainly would drink a coffee before I did tequila shots.

Okay, that's where it is on the hierarchy of drinks. Yeah, it comes in above Sambuca and tequila, tequila and lychee juice, but below most other things. It was also, I was given a very, very nice piece of apple pie by Marco's wife, who is a woman called Tiff, who more importantly was wearing a Reunion Swamp Panty shirt. First one I'd seen in the wild. Well, you were wearing the Jamaican rice rat shirt. I was, and that was the first time I'd worn it. I'd got a tip off that she was going to be wearing the reunion swamp pen. So I thought I'd be provocative and turn up in a Jamaican rice

rat shirt just to sort of have that thing going. But I believe she put that up on Twitter, I think. Yes. Yeah. We'll show the pictures. Yeah. Well, I was only asking because in that picture, you are pointing at the shirt. And I feel like on your travels, you have sent me just a series of pictures where Brady points at things. This is what it looks like from my end when Brady goes traveling. It's like you've met up with several people and you have sent me pictures of like, here's you pointing at this person. Here's you pointing at this bag of coffee that you got from Marco. Here's you pointing at this other shirt over here.

This is what Brady does when he goes on vacation. He points at things and he takes pictures of him pointing at things. Well, I've got to guard your eye, Gray, because you never, whenever I send you a text or a picture, you never get the point. And I have to explain to you why I sent you the picture. So I figure if I start pointing at things, you'll at least know the point of the picture. So what are you saying here? That this is for my benefit? That you can't even trust me to look at

a picture and derive from it the thing you want me to derive from it? Yeah. Here is the Statue of Liberty. It's the big green thing there. I think we have never had any kind of misunderstanding over a photograph that you have sent me. Not once, not ever. That's what I'm going to say. I'm sure we have. I don't need your pointing. I tell you what, I had a fantastic experience just before we started recording though. Well, I had a terrible experience, but it turned fantastic.

Oh, yes. I got a cab from down on the flats of Berkeley, down near the university, up here to the spiritual home in the clouds, because the spiritual home is actually up in a mountain, very appropriately. And I left in the back of the cab a little important black case of mine containing all sorts of valuable equipment like GoPros and stuff like that. And then I didn't realise I'd left it behind. I was rather upset. And 20 minutes later, half an hour later, the taxi driver obviously found it, drove back up the mountain and returned it. There are good people in the world. There are indeed good people in the world. Of course, the taxi driver obviously found it, drove back up the mountain and returned it. There are good people in the world.

There are indeed good people in the world. Of course, the Hello Internet relevant question is, did you tip him for his goodness? Well, unfortunately, he came in and dropped it at reception and no one told, like the building, the people at reception knew I'd lost this thing. And I told them, oh, I think I may have left it in the cab. He came in and dropped it off so they knew exactly whose it was and what was going on. But they didn't tell me and the taxi driver was in a hurry and left straight away.

So I never got to see it. And then the receptionist just came and said, oh, look, Brady, your bag's back. And I was so happy. I was like, oh, is he here? Is he still here? Did you get his contact details? If I had his contact, you know, I would have given him a hundred.

He saved me hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I would have had to rebuy all this stuff. I would have given him a huge tip. But no, and hundreds of dollars. I would have had to rebuy all this stuff. I would have given him a huge tip. But no, but I will go back down to the cab rank this afternoon. And there aren't millions of cabs in Berkeley. If I see him again, I will give him some cash. Are you going to try to track him down? I would love to track him down and reward him.

I did give him a decent tip when he dropped me off in the first place. So maybe that helped. Maybe he thought fondly of me in the first place. But right. If you hadn't tipped at all, all of that stuff would be on the black market right now. It would. It would. It'd be on eBay.

I was just looking up while you were talking where MSRI is, because I can never actually remember where the heck Berkeley is in relationship to San Francisco because of the same place in my mind. And I wanted to see where you actually are at the moment. And you weren't kidding. MSRI really is up in the mountains. So right on the summit, the view's ridiculous. The view is over the whole of San Francisco Bay, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, all of San Francisco proper, all down across the Berkeley campus. The view is ridiculous. The director of MSRI has the best view of any

office I've ever been in, bar none. Can you take a picture? Can we see the view? I will take a picture from his office and share it. Make sure you are pointing at the window so that I know what the point of the picture is. I will do that. I will do that just for you. The problem is though, you know, a picture never looks as good as the reality, and everything looks really small. Because with your eyes, you're looking at it going, oh, my goodness, it's the Golden Gate Bridge. And then you take a picture and it looks like five pixels. But actually, with your eyes, it looks amazing. Yeah, it never fails that when you hold a camera up to a scene, it's like, oh, everything is way further away than my brain thinks it is.

So, how long are you at MSRI for? I'm here for two weeks. I'll be seeing all the mathematicians and a couple of talks. This has become an annual pilgrimage for you, has it not? I come here a few times a year. Oh, semi-annual, bi-annual? Three or four times a year. So, try to quad. Quadranual?

Four times a year probably does the trick. So, you got to fill up on all of your footage that you then edit later? Yeah. I went to this conference in New York. It was really good. I haven't spoken to you about it since I went because we were talking about it beforehand. And I'll tell you what, I actually really enjoyed it. It was put on by this group called the Simons Foundation who are really into education outreach. And it's the foundation run by this Jim Simons guy we've talked about before, who's the mathematician who became really rich by, you know, doing stock market stuff. Right, right. The guy who only puffs a single puff from each cigarette. Is that correct?

Am I remembering that story the right way? You are misremembering it correctly. Oh, am I? Okay. Yeah. So, anyway, he gives a lot back. And one of the things is he runs his foundation. And so, I was asked to go along. And one of the main things was coming up with ideas about making society more interested in science and mathematics and stuff. Yeah. The impression that I got from what you were talking to me about it was about increasing

science literacy in the general population or just more broadly? Yeah. Increasing the sort of the science and math literacy of society. You and I could talk about it for hours because this is obviously the topics that you and I are really interested in. But I did have a funny experience that I think you will enjoy. So, we were broken up into these groups and it was kind of like brainstorming and coming up with ideas.

And I mean, you know what these kind of things are like. And so, I ended up in a group, in a subset of a group, and you ended up in groups depending on your interests and what you want to talk about. And I won't even bore people with the details of that. But the upshot was we had to come up with a bunch of ideas and make them into these little posters, like little pictures that would be put up on the wall. It was actually, it was more fun than it sounds. It doesn't sound like everyone's cup of tea. It sounds a little kindergarten is what it sounds like. Yeah, but they weren't like posters like with crayons.

They had little pro forma sections in them, like what's your idea? What's it summarise in a sentence? What will it cost? You know, what are its weaknesses and stuff like that? And we sat around coming up with ideas and we'd come up with maybe, you know, our little group, our little group had maybe come up with 10 or so. And then we sort of looked at them and we thought, do you know what the problem here is? They're kind of, a lot of these ideas aren't like really new.

They're like ideas that people have had before or just variations on what's being done. And I think we felt like we played it a little bit safe. So I sort of said to the other seven or eight people in the group, why don't we for the next 10 minutes just go crazy and come up with the craziest, stupidest ideas and see what comes from that? And everyone was like, yeah, let's do it. So, I was throwing out all these harebrained Brady ideas, just all the first things that came into my head. And a lot of the people in the group were going, oh yeah, that's

really good. You know, that's actually quite good. And then I started thinking more about them and thinking, actually, this idea is better than I thought. And, you know, if you do this and that, and I became really enthused about them. So, I picked up all these proforma posters and I was writing down these ideas and I was giving them crazy attention, grabbing names and things like that. I was drawing funny pictures on them and being a bit wacky, but also sort of throwing all these curve balls up. And I put my posters up there with all the other ones. And then all the other groups all put their posters up. So there must have been 50 posters or something up on the walls

of this big meeting room we were in. And then what happened next, which I didn't know was going to happen, was the people running the conference gave all the delegates these red and green post-it notes. And you had to put green post-it notes on ones had to put green post-it notes on ones you liked and red post-it notes on ones you didn't like and write little comments. So, I went and sat down with a cup of tea and sort of watched what happened next. And for the next 30 minutes, I just watched my three or four posters just become this mass of red.

Because I think a lot of the people there were maybe a bit more sort of conservative as well. And they were like, you know, serious people and administrators who look at an idea and straight away will see problems with it. But this is real life downvoting is what's happening to you. It was. It was like, it was terrible. And like the facilitators who at the time were saying, oh, this is great, Brady, you're being so creative and prolific, just kind of coming up and putting this consoling arm on my shoulder as sort of red post-it note after red post-it note with all of these comments and criticisms were like stuck up on all my ideas. And it was kind of what you... dog pile effect though after a while where if you're looking at all of these different proposals and one of them is just covered in red down votes who's going to be the guy who puts the lone green post-it on that one i know no one's going to do that when you're voting like that so openly and so publicly i mean i was sort of saying to people i'm taking this a bit of a badge of honor because

it shows i'm a cat amongst the pigeons and i'm you know i'm being disruptive but if i'm 100% honest with myself if i'd got if i'd got 100 green post-it notes, I probably would have really liked that as well. Right, yeah. You would have taken a picture of it and framed it somewhere. I took a picture of it with all the red just for my own memory and stuff. And for the show notes now?

No, no, not for the show notes. I don't want everyone to see the ideas. I don't want to get red post-it notes on Reddit as well. Anyway, it was actually, it was a really good conference. I really enjoyed it. Like I know before I went, you and I were talking, thinking, oh, this could be really challenging and difficult and that. And actually, it was a really great experience.

And I met some ridiculously smart and accomplished people. I was the red post-it note in the room anyway. So it sounds like it was one of those conferences smart and accomplished people. I was the red post-it note in the room anyway. So it sounds like it was one of those conferences where they're just getting together a bunch of smart and interesting people in a room and brainstorming and seeing what happens. That's pretty much exactly what it was. It was throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and Brady stuff as well. Those are the best kind of conferences though. Yeah. And at the end, everyone got up and did like pitches, pitches to the rest of the group to try and make the case for their ideas. And that was always good fun. I always like getting up and making a few

jokes. Well, I'm glad you had a good time brainstorming, but I'm sorry, your ideas didn't go down so well. The people running the conference did keep everything. So maybe, who knows, maybe in like a year or two, one of those ideas will end up being a big thing and I'll be like, oh, what the heck? Who who knows you would have read post-it noted my reunion swamp pen jamaican rice rat idea yeah without a doubt without a doubt i would have i would have read posted noted that but the people love their official unofficial official animals of the hello internet podcast i have seen many a fun photograph of someone wearing those t-shirts in various locations around the world, doing various things. That stuff is always delightful

to see. And just the other day, I got my Rice Rat and Jamaican Swamp Hen t-shirt. So I now have them in my house, freshly laundered and to be worn shortly. Brilliant. I've actually created like a little photo gallery for people wearing them as well. So we'll put that in the show notes and you can go and look at a whole bunch of people. I'm going to have to stop at some point. At the moment, every time I see one, I'm like, oh, I'll add that to the gallery. And then I'm realizing at what point will I just say, okay, that's enough pictures. Is this your team rice rat and team swamp hen pages though? Yeah, I think I gave him some name like that. Yeah, yeah. Don't pretend like you don't know.

You love stirring up a little bit of competition between the two sides. That's why they're on different pages, Team Rice Hen. Ah, Team Rice Rat. Team Rice Hen. Yeah. Swamp Rat, of course, sounds cool, but Rice Hen, not so much. Yeah, but that's why you have those two different pages. You like to rile up the crowd

a little bit. You're such an old man, how you always get Reunion Swamp Pan and Jamaican Rice Wrap mixed up. It's like my dad could never say Beverly Hills 90210. He used to always say, oh, you watching that Beverly Hills 90382 or whatever it's called. You sound like such an old man when you do that. I have cut many more of me messing up trying to say the two of them at the same time than actually make it into the podcast. So for every one time you hear me do this, I have done it at least five times in real life. So I did put at the top of the show notes here in the follow up, a possible corporate compensation corner.

Oh, the most exciting of the corners. It is. I mean, even I get bored by this corner. And looking at it now, I'm a bit reluctant to do it, but I'll just give an executive summary. I don't want to talk about it. Ooh, an executive summary of corporate compensation corner. This is getting better and better.

Yeah, I feel like you need a whiteboard in front of you where we can talk about circling back and tabling discussions. Low-hanging fruit. Yeah. My corporate compensation corner relates to Airbnb. Now, I have a bad habit whenever I come to Berkeley of booking my Airbnb place too late. And I always don't. And all the good places are gone. And I end up having to pick something I wish I didn't pick. I was really organized this time, Gray.

Before you go on with the story, I just want to remind the listeners, either in case they're new or just in case they forgot, that the last time you were out there, you booked a place that ended up having, if I can remember correctly, a crazy woman who had cats living in the apartment that peed all over the place that you were staying in some kind of hovel with a schizophrenic and cats all over the place was the impression that I had of your last Airbnb experience. That was actually my first Airbnb experience quite a while ago. And actually, it was the, it actually remains the nicest place I've ever stayed in,

except for that problem. No, it was actually a really nice house. Okay. Just one of the times. I stayed there a second time. It was so nice. But it just one- Jesus.

A woman in one of the rooms, yeah, she kind of decided to- She basically kind of just started squatting there when she wasn't supposed to be there anymore with her cat, and then her cat peed everywhere, and it just became a- yeah. Anyway, that's a whole other story. I just can't believe you ever decided to use Airbnb after that, if that was your first experience with it. I mean, since then it's been okay. It's been okay, except I always book too late and I never get as nice a place as I want or I never get quite the location I want. So, this time I got in really early. I planned ahead so I could have my pick of the best places

in Berkeley. I picked one that I thought looked really nice and I was really looking forward to staying. What could possibly go wrong? And then two weeks before my trip, I get contacted by the person saying, I'm cancelling your stay. Can they do that on Airbnb? Yes, they can. I guess they can, obviously. But is that within the terms of service, I guess, is what I mean? Like, apparently, I'm entitled to some kind of compensation and stuff. But we might come to that in a minute.

And also, apparently, they're not allowed to then re-let it to someone else. But this person who did this to me was perfectly upfront and said, oh, basically, the person who's staying wants to stay for six months. Basically, she'd got an offer she couldn't refuse. Right, right. Maybe she was doing a dodgy and doing it outside Airbnb to get around this you can't shaft people thing. So, I was really disappointed. I kind of understood because if someone offered me like a boatload of money and it just meant shafting one person, maybe you would think, okay, I don't know. Anyway, I got done over and I was really disappointed about it. I found another place

which I've checked into and it's not as nice, but it's fine and life goes on. But it has taught me a few things about Airbnb. People are really passionate about Airbnb. It has taught me a few things about Airbnb. People are really passionate about Airbnb. Like, it's a real- it has really zealous evangelists. And if you criticise Airbnb, it's like talking about gun control or religion or something. People get really upset when you say negative things about Airbnb. And I don't know if these are, like, paid people, because one of the people who absolutely went on a rant about it, I went and looked at their Twitter account and they seem to spend 90% of their time attacking random people who attack Airbnb. That was a real interesting thing for me. I'm yet to encounter a brand that has such zealous advocates.

Even today before the show, I put out a little call to our listeners saying, oh, if anyone's got a good or a positive story about Airbnb, let me know. Because I just wanted to get, you know, I wanted to take people's temperature. And a few people sent me their horror stories, but a lot more people sent me really long sort of advocacy emails full of telling me how great it was. So, it's a brand that a lot of people are really liking but i'm having i'm having problems with it and i i think it's a really good example of the problems of the sharing economy yeah i think the sharing economy stuff is is divisive or polarizing uh to many people and it seems like like i think we were talking about uber last time uber falls into this category of people have thoughts about Uber, right?

Either they love it, like I fall into that category, or there's a contingent of people who really hate it. And it seems like from your experience with Airbnb, it is doing the same thing. I've never used it for a bunch of reasons, but I can imagine that it would have the same reaction. The people who love it really love it. And that there might be some people who are just like, oh, it's awful and I hate it. I never use it.

I mean, yes, some people just seem to think that the sharing economy is, you know, the savior of civilization. Other people think it's like amateur hour and the end of all, you know, professionalism and business as we know it. And I don't know where I sit in that, but I do think the sharing economy has its problems. I think the personal- and it's funny to come from me because of the two of us, you would think I'm the person who's into more sort of personal relationships and one-on-one stuff. Yeah, it would seem like Airbnb would be right up your alley.

Yeah. And it's true. I've met some nice people as a result of it and I kind of like that. But the sort of personal nature of it does take away the unpersonal nature of businesses that in some ways lets them handle problems better. And, you know, a big corporation or a hotel chain is able to, while sometimes their personal service isn't good, in other ways, they're able to deal with a problem or they have the size to deal with a problem. Like if you've got a bad hotel room in a hotel for some reason, if a cat has weed on the bed in a hotel room, they'll move you to another room. Right. There are systems in place, it might be the way to describe it. It doesn't mean that they're great, but there's a three ring binder somewhere, which is filled with the DNA of the company and what to do when something happens. That's partly why I haven't used Airbnb

is because I feel like when I travel, I'm really trying to optimize for consistency and to minimize downsides. Like I'm very happy to go to a hotel where I think, oh, it's not going to be an amazing experience. I know it's not going to be an amazing experience, but I can also count on it not being an unexpectedly terrible experience. Like, there isn't a schizophrenic with her cats across the hall from me.

I will do almost anything to avoid that. And so that's why I always feel like I have stayed away from Airbnb for consistency's sake. But if I was ever doing what you're doing, which is traveling to a location and you're going to be there for more time than you probably want to stay in a hotel room, that is almost certainly the time I would give Airbnb a try as well. It's like, okay, I'm going to be in some place for two weeks. Let me see if I can find a place that I actually want to stay in for two weeks. But I would be very nervous until I actually saw the room. Explain to me, as someone who has never used Airbnb, what do you perceive of as the flaws?

Like, is my perception correct or is there something else that's wrong with it? No, I think what you say is it's a sort of a lack of consistency and not knowing what you're getting into. And there's always personal problems. Like because it's such a human thing, because people letting out their individual houses is such a human thing. There's always a problem. You know how your friends have always got problems. It's a bit like that. You know, the place you're staying's always a problem. You know how your friends have always got problems? It's a bit like that. You know, the place you're staying always has a problem.

Oh, I'm sorry, today's the day that, you know, my mum has to come around and iron the curtains and or, oh, this doesn't work or and you never quite know what you're getting into because quite often you're staying in the house of the person who's there or you're in a building attached to their house. Right. It's just, there's just a lot of, there's just always a lot of stuff to deal with. And then you'll hear from people who say,

oh, I went and stayed in a wonderful place in Vienna and I had the time of my life. Brady, how dare you say anything bad about Airbnb? But every time I've stayed in an Airbnb, there's been something, there's been something considerable that has, something considerable that has caused me a problem. But also, I keep doing it. I keep coming back because the price is good and the advantages are outweighing the negatives.

So I am using Airbnb again. I've used it every time I've come to Berkeley and this must be like the seventh or eighth time I've done it. So I am using it. There you go. Shut your face, Brady. How is the flag referendum going? The flag referendum, I'm so excited about. I still think it's one of the most exciting things we've done. Everyone has been sending us pictures, putting their postcodes in post boxes from around the world, which I have absolutely loved. I love also that everyone's

being really secretive about who they voted for. Like they'll always like obscure who they voted for with their hand or pixelated out and things like that. I noticed that as well. It's like everybody's being really coy. I have quite enjoyed it. Yeah. I can't wait to get all the votes, but keep the photos coming. The absolute winner of the best photo is the person who sent their postcard from the post box in front of the Mighty Black Stump. Yes. And you can see them putting in their postcode with their postcard with the building in the background. That was fantastic. Yes. And it is shot from an angle to make the Mighty Black Stump look genuinely mighty. It's a low angle, and it is shot from an angle to make the mighty black stump look genuinely mighty.

It's a low angle, so it looks like a tremendous tower in the skyline, like it's Orthanc or something, but it's actually just a regular building. I haven't been to the post box because obviously I'm not in the UK, but I did email them last night and I said, have any postcards been coming in? And they were like, yeah. They said, basically your box is full and now we've just got a cardboard box on the ground that we're using to keep filling it up. I think they said over 500 votes have come in so far. That's pretty good.

Yeah. But keep them coming. This is going to be awesome. And Grey and I are going to go through every one of the postcards. I'm going to look at every picture. I can't wait to do the count. When we announced the referendum, we intentionally did not mention any deadline like this was a conscious decision to not mention it partly because you were going to be traveling and we were a bit uncertain like oh you know when when is brady going to be able to get back and to count all all of these these votes so we didn't want to to say anything that might cut off when when someone was going to send the postcard. But the flip side to me is the mental image of this postbox somewhere getting just overstuffed with postcards while you are away. I find a very entertaining mental image. A lot of people were very upset about the fact we didn't,

and still haven't at this point, firmly named a deadline at what point we won't accept new postcards. I find that a bit strange. Like, I understand at some point we're going to have to say and make it really clear that the vote is no longer open. And, you know, we would put that on the voting webpage. We would say, don't send in your votes, the vote has closed. But the fact we haven't said that yet, people are so upset about it. And that makes me a bit suspicious of them. As a teacher, if you set an assignment and then everyone just

immediately said, when is this due? When is this due? Doesn't that just say to you, oh, they want to leave it as late as possible and they're being a bit of a slacker? If you're going to vote, just send your vote as soon as possible. And if you set a deadline that is just basically saying to people be a procrastinator yeah but people people know people know they need deadlines to motivate action there's some portion of the population that requires this and uh i'm gonna forget the details here but there's an example of a study of when you give students

the option to set deadlines let's say it's a university class and you say there's five essays that you need to complete in order to pass this class you can either have them all due on the last day of class or you can set your own deadline that you will fail that essay if you don't hand it in by. And a huge number of students opt for the option to set their own deadlines, spreading it out throughout the year, which just from a purely rational perspective doesn't make any sense. Because in theory, it's like, oh, you would want to give yourself the maximum amount of time to work on these essays

but people just know that like without a deadline and without a real consequence that some people are just not going to do it they're going to leave it all until the last possible moment so i think i think you are hearing from the people who know that they want a deadline to motivate their own actions. That's who you're hearing from who's freaking out about when's the deadline. But there are plenty of people who obviously just want to vote straight away. And that's what we've been seeing on Twitter is all of the postcards going into the post boxes around the world. What's more motivating, though, than knowing there is a deadline?

Because, of course, there's a deadline because we have to count the votes at some point. What's more motivating than knowing there is a deadline? Because of course there's a deadline because we have to count the votes at some point. What's more motivating than knowing there is a deadline, but not knowing what the deadline is? I think that's not motivating for some people. I think that's why you're hearing from them. They just give up hope and think, oh, I'll probably miss it anyway, so I won't bother. Yeah. Some people just feel that way, right? It's just like, oh, if a lack of knowledge leads to inaction. So we still we have no answer for those people right now.

We still have not firmly decided precisely what we're going to do. But if you are hearing the sound of our voices and you're the kind of person who needs a deadline, let's just pretend that the deadline is the day after you hear this podcast. Yeah. It's not really the deadline, but we're going to pretend if that's what you need, if that's what you need to get your button gear and send in your postcard for the Hello Internet flag referendum. Yeah.

And you can't vote for this without going to the page because that's where the address is. And if the vote is closed, it will be on the page at the top that voting is closed. So it's not like you're going to send it and not know that voting was closed. When you take the address, you top that voting is closed. So it's not like you're going to send it and not know that voting was closed. When you take the address, you will see voting is closed. Yeah.

So that is hellointernet.fm slash flag vote. I'll just say my other favorite thing about this referendum so far is I've seen a number of comments, all of which are along the same lines of people saying how they have spent more time agonizing over this election than they have spent agonizing over the actual elections in the various countries where they live like we we happen to do this right at the time uh canada was having an election and i've seen from a bunch of canadians saying how they spent way more time thinking about the flags than they did about that

election yeah a few other places around the world that have had elections have seen the similar things where people are like, man, I'm just agonizing over these flags, but I cast my political vote without even thinking about it. And also, I don't want to talk about the specifics because if we talk about it, it will conflate the problem. But I do like that there've been that little controversies breaking out as well, where people will say, this shouldn't even be in the poll for this reason or this is insensitive or there are issues to do with this. Just like the New Zealand one, there's all these little pockets of controversy and things like that. So, people are, you know, it just shows even having an election, the silliest thing in the world, you know, a podcast flag, you'll still have all your things will still get inflamed and controversial.

Exactly. It's a microcosm of the bigger thing is precisely what it is and uh at least my own my own final comment is when talking about people who are indecisive over the flags and thinking thinking about it long and hard i actually find myself in this category because when we recorded that episode, in my mind, I had an idea of what the order was going to be. Not exactly, but roughly, I had a pretty good idea of how I was going to vote. But the instant the episode went live, I found myself just filled with doubt and uncertainty. And even now, I keep thinking about my own vote. How am I going to vote? I have thought about this so many times. I don't have an idea in my own vote. How am I going to vote? I have thought about this so many times. I don't have an idea in my own mind of how I'm going to vote. I might miss our own deadline.

Me neither. I honestly don't know what to vote for. I'm like, I'm really conflicted about it. Yeah, it's one of these things where as soon as it's real, it's somehow different. And so the instant it went up, all of certainty was was cast to the wind and just gone now i'm now i am i'm entirely unsure about what to do why do you care though you're always the guy who's like oh one vote can't make a difference anyway so i care because it's fun obviously the one vote doesn't matter but it's a fun thing to do and i feel like i should probably vote in my own election

or maybe i should abstain maybe it's it's like the queen right she like I should probably vote in my own election or maybe I should abstain maybe it's it's like the queen right she's not allowed to vote in the elections maybe I shouldn't vote in this election maybe you shouldn't vote in this election you consider yourself more like the queen than the president of hello internet uh yes I guess I am cgp gray the queen of hello internet yeah there we go I'll take queen. That's fine. What are you? What are you, Brady?

What do you think of yourself as? Court jester. You're the court jester? Yeah. That works. No, I don't know what I am. I'd be, I'd like to be, I'd like to be something a bit cooler than that. I'd like to be like, maybe you're the queen and I'm your hard as nails knight.

Who like goes and jousts. I'm thinking more like in a deck of cards, the jack, but I don't ever really know what the jack is. Yeah, but he looks hard, doesn't he? He's got a sword and stuff. He does. I'll take that. I'll be the jack. Yeah.

What does the jack do? If you're the queen, if you are the queen of Hello Internet and you're in a deck of cards, what suit would you be? If you were a suit, what would you be? Just in general, what suit do you feel like best represents you? Spade. Yeah, I would have said spade for you. I'm not pretty enough to

be the queen of hearts. You seem like a club kind of guy. Oh, no. Diamonds? I think diamonds. I'd like to be. I wish you'd said diamonds. I'm sorry, I didn't say diamonds, but it seems like clubs.

I've never liked the clubs. I just think they're a bit flowery and curvy. I just don't. I want to be a diamond. Okay, we can say that you're the diamonds, if that's what you like. Although I do like the idea of being a black one, so I kind of wish maybe like a black diamond.

A black diamond? But now you're just making up things. Yeah, you're right. I can't do that. Let's be honest. If I was going to be any card, I'd like to be the draw four from Uno. The what? I don't know Uno.

Oh, right. The draw four card from Uno is like... I still get excited when i see one because if you get one it's a really powerful tool oh you know players will know what i'm saying okay we should play uno sometimes i have no idea no i don't play i don't play games i don't like you you are you are just here's the thing okay listeners here's the background you need to know about this there have been several incidences at conference where Brady in theory could play a board game, but he always backs down. He always says, no, I'm not going to play a board

game. And your reasoning, if I can try to say it for you, is that you get too intense about the rules of the board game. And winning. Yeah, winning, but also that there are people who are sometimes wanting to play fast and loose with the rules, or they're trying to optimize for like, oh, let's everybody have a good time and let's have fun. And you know that when you play, you can't deal with that. Is that a correct assessment? Yes. Okay.

Stephen, here's the thing. This is precisely why I would want to play a game with you, because I can never stand it when people are like, ah, you know, whatever, is that the rule? Most of the time we're like, no, we have to follow the rules. This is why the rules are here. This game makes no sense unless we're following rules. Like that is the whole thing that it is.

If there are no rules, what are we even doing? We're just having imaginary playtime together. You can't just do this stuff. But it's lose-lose, Gray, because say you and I were to sit down and play a game together. There are only two things that are going to happen, right? I'm going to win. And then I'm going to feel like, oh, well, what's the point of that? We're supposed to have fun. And all I've done there is beat my mate and made my mate a loser. Or the other option is I'm going to lose. And I'm going to hate that even more because I was sitting down supposed to be having fun and I've just become a loser. So like I'm a loser whether I

win or lose. I guess the problem is I think that fun can be derived from following the rules precisely of the game. And there just seems to be many, many board players who disagree, who they're trying to optimize for fun first and bend the rules to their fun. And it's like, no, following the rules is fun. I love that you just like following rules. I made a film with a friend of mine who actually lives in San Francisco. And he's like a game developer.

And I was talking to him about when he was a child, like what he was into. Did he always think he'd be a computer programmer? And one of the things he used to do as a little kid was make like the instruction book or the guide for like pretend games that he would like to make. And he couldn't make the game and he didn't know what the game would look like, but he would just like making like the rule book

and the instructions for the game just because he loved game rules so much i imagine you would like that just making up instruction books rule books yeah i didn't um i never did that that kind of thing but uh when i was much younger i played um not dungeons and dragons but there was a game called Heroes Quest, which was basically like a baby's first Dungeons and Dragons. And in that game, I always took the role of the dungeon master, which means that it was my responsibility to design the board and the level through which the other players would move and i always found that very appealing so i think that's in the same universe of i'm not playing the game but i'm setting out all of the spaces through which the other players are going to move and like what traps are going to be where and what creatures are going to be where and having to do

it in in such a way so that it is it, so that hopefully the players win, but they feel like it was a challenge. So I think it's in the same universe of this. Let me tell you some other stories about games one day. I could talk for a long time about games I used to play as a kid that you'll find that I think will really appeal to you. But we are in follow-up, so we better crack on. Oh, yeah. Is this still follow-up? I still say, Brady, you and I should play some games sometime.

Yeah. All right. All right. We'll sort something out. Just a really quick update. The Hot Stopper Awareness Auction raising money for the Children's Burns Trust has ended. It sold for a very impressive, somewhat impressive, £920 for our fracture of a reunion swamp pen. So one very generous buyer will be receiving that signed by us

and we are very grateful. They have raised Hot Stopper awareness and they've also raised a boatload of money for a really good cause. Thank you very much. And also I also created a boatload of money for a really good cause. Thank you very much. And also, I also created a page where people could just make donations to the Children's Burns Trust in the name of Hot Stopper Awareness if they chose to, and some people have been doing that as well. And both Gray and I really appreciate it.

Yeah, of course. And that money will be going to them soon. And also, what I want to do now is I want to talk to, maybe we'll talk to the bank of Hello Internet or whoever does our banking for us. And I need a giant check now because obviously I'm just going to electronically transfer this money to the Children's Burns Trust.

But we need a giant check for publicity purposes so we can really increase the pressure on Starbucks. So we need hard copy photos of of this giant check for 920 pounds and hot stopper awareness written on it so if anyone knows where we can get one of those giant checks they use for charity auctions and stuff let me know i'm in the market for one yeah i'm making a note now giant check from back i mean they come from somewhere right well they're just stunted up aren't they by printing companies surely but i always assumed that they were real that those things were legitimate that it's oh yeah i mean because the whole if you ever look into how checks work there's

all these crazy rules around what is and what is not a legitimate check let's let's talk to our bank yeah that's why i'm making an i'm making note of it i want to see if we can get a gigantic legitimate check oh that would be amazing and like well a note of it. I want to see if we can get a gigantic legitimate check. Oh, that would be amazing. Then we'll see if we can hand it over to someone outside of Starbucks or something. I can already hear my bank manager getting irritated by this request.

One last little bit of follow-up. Yeah? CGP Grey the Penguin. Oh, yes? We have never actually known the gender of CGP Grey the Penguin. Oh, yes. We have never actually known the gender of CGP Grey the penguin. This is the penguin at Bristol Zoo that is named after Grey in his honour as a little thank you for our fundraising efforts there. But it's not until a penguin is about six months old or so that they do the tests to find out if it is a boy penguin or a girl penguin. The penguin sexing.

Yes. I now know the gender of CGP Grey the penguin. Oh, yeah? Mm-hmm. Are you going to hold us in suspense here, Brady? I'm trying. Is it working? I feel like we win either way.

So, like, I'm not on a particular team here. Well, we were referring to you as a queen of Hello Internet a moment ago. And I'm here to announce that CGP Grey, it's a girl. Oh, isn't that nice? There we go. So that famous penguin bearing your name is a lady penguin. Oh, nice little lady penguin. Yeah.

I hope she likes the name CGP Grey. Yeah, I don't know. How do you feel about this? You're pleased with that? Yeah, yeah. Of course I am. And also, if it's a girl, it's just funnier this way. The girl penguin is named CGP Grey.

So I think it's totally a win. There we go. It's a girl. There you go. So people can go visit her in the zoo. Do that. More updates to follow as and when they come in. Sometimes, listeners, there are coincidences you just can't believe.

Last time I was talking to you about our dear sponsor, Backblaze. I mentioned in the ad read that between then and the next time I was going to talk about Backblaze, just statistically speaking, we were guaranteed that someone in the Hello Internet audience was going to have a catastrophic computer disaster. That's just the way things work when you start talking about large numbers. Well, little did I know that the person who was going to have a catastrophic computer disaster was me. That's right. Between the last Backblaze ad and this one, I had my main computer, the computer that I record this very podcast on, go from a beautiful, working, functioning machine to an unusable brick in the space of about 15 minutes.

Now, if you make your living on the internet or just on a computer in general, having your computer break is an extraordinarily stressful experience. But almost always it's the data on your computer that matters way more than the physical device itself. Maybe you're working on a video for YouTube. Maybe you're working on a podcast for something. Maybe you just have photos of your baby that you can't ever replace if they're lost. This is why I run backups is precisely for this moment. And if you don't have a backup system running on your computer, as far as I'm concerned, you're not running a functioning computer. This is just something that you have to have because you never know when disaster is going to strike. And Backblaze is the service that I can wholeheartedly recommend for when you have a computer disaster. I have hundreds of gigabytes of data with Backblaze so that when my main computer goes up in a sad little puff of smoke, I don't have to worry about the data itself. I just have to worry about replacing

the machine. Backblaze just couldn't be simpler. You're going to go to backblaze.com slash hello internet. You do have your browser open right now. Yes, to type that in backblaze.com slash hello internet. You do have your browser open right now. Yes, to type that in backblaze.com slash hello internet. You're going to download just this little piece of software and it's going to run on your computer silently, invisibly in the background, just keeping an eye on all of your files and uploading all of the changes, all of your work to the cloud for safekeeping, along with their 150 petabytes of everybody's data. These guys are the pros. They've restored over 10 billion files for their customers. They have iPhone and Android apps so that you can access your data from anywhere. And if you have a total, total failure like I do, and you need to get up and

running immediately, you can place an order for a USB hard drive from them to be shipped right to your door with everything on it. I mean, if you're not in a rush, you can re-download your hundreds of gigabytes of data. That's totally an option. But if you need it now to finish the project that you're working on, this is something that they can do. There's no add-ons, there's no gimmicks, no hidden charges. It's just $5 per month per computer for unlimited, unthrottled backup. So you can get a risk-free, no credit card required trial by going to backblaze.com slash hello internet. Get Backblaze and protect your data today. Now, I don't know if you saw this Liberia stuff, Gray. Like, one or two podcasts ago,

I sprung a flag on you that you were like asked to look at and kind of review on the spot. The Cyprus flag, yeah? That was the Cyprus flag. As a result, we've been contacted by someone who asked you to cast an eye, not over the flag of Liberia, which is a perfectly serviceable flag, but the Liberia county flags. Now, have you seen the Liberia county flags yet before you look at them? No, I have. I mean, I was typing it into Google right now, but no, I have not seen them.

So I haven't pressed return or anything. Okay, so if you go to flag of Liberia on Wikipedia, at the top you'll see the Liberian flag. It looks a lot like the American flag, except it has one star instead of 50. Right. But if you scroll down, you will see the county flags of Liberia. Now, I thought this was a joke. But obviously not. And I think this is worthy of

people's time just to have a look at the... Liberia is apparently subdivided into 15 counties, each of which has its own flag. There's obviously like states, you know, things like that. Each county flag bears the national flag of Liberia in the canton. So, in the top corner, you see like a miniature version of their flag. And then obviously they're free to do what they want with the rest. These are awful. It is extraordinary what these people have done.

I would like to say they've used clip art, but I don't know where you would find clip art that bad. Yeah, that's the best way to describe this. So all of the flags have the already very busy Liberia flag up in the corner. Up in the corner, very small, I might add. So it looks odd, the proportions of it. If you think of, for example, the current New Zealand flag that has the Union Jack in the upper corner, it's maybe half that size. It almost looks like a stamp on the wrong side of a postcard. It looks like a little pull-down menu or something sitting up there in the corner.

Yeah, yeah. So they all have it in the corner, except as I'm scrolling through, just one of them, Grand Cape Mount County, doesn't put it in the corner like everybody else. They have it a little bit away from the corner. So that's always great. Not even consistent with everybody. Good job there, Grand Cape Mount County. Yeah, they're just... It's so... I am struggling to describe this for someone who's just listening in audio form. It's basically like a child using MS Paint. Yeah. And not even one who's very good at it. Like an unusually artistically untalented child using MS Paint to draw pictures.

Yeah, I think that is exactly right. It is, every one of these things is childish in a way that is quite surprising. I mean, okay, so let me try to, let me- I'm going to put you on the spot here, Gray. Yeah. I'm going to put you on the spot. I'm going to lay down the challenge here and now for you to name which one you think is the worst. And beautifully, there actually is a county called Maryland County in Liberia. And their flag is a candidate for

worst in the bunch. But don't let that bias you. mean i'll just but i okay let me just try to describe something for the listeners here and i'll take the maryland county flag as an example okay so once again i will paint a beautiful audio picture for you listeners of this disaster in front of me liberia flag in the upper left hand tiny corner yeah the flag is is divided it's like a tricolor in horizontally right so there's three horizontal stripes the top and the bottom one are yellow the middle one isn't a stripe though it's just a picture yeah it's so it's so bad um okay so there's like there's a picture of a i'm presuming it's a lighthouse that someone has drawn the windows on the lighthouse are uneven

one of them is touching the top in a way that wouldn't possibly work the very tip of the lighthouse is floating above the lighthouse a bit a bit like the eye on the u.s one dollar bill like it floats on the top of the pyramid it kind of looks like that and then presumably they've drawn like lines coming out from the lighthouse that i presume are supposed to be the light itself but they're all uneven some of them are joined at the base some of them aren't and so this lighthouse is all white it's on on a green hill, I guess, maybe. But the green is very bright. It makes you think of MS Paint because it's like when you select the default color green in a painting tool.

It's like this green is just a green that doesn't look good on anything. No one should use this color green, but it's the default color green for everything you ever do on a computer. Okay. Next to this lighthouse and 25% larger than it, is a tree. Like a sort of a palm tree-esque, but not quite a palm tree. Yeah. Okay, so imagine a child has drawn a tree, and they've made it look saggy, so it has leaves that are coming down.

The thing that amazes me is this drawing is just flat colors, except one part of the drawing is shaded, which is on the tree part. They've shaded in the bottom of the tree so that the leaves are, I guess they're trying to make the leaves look round, but nothing else on the drawing is shaded. And then in the background is a just

flat blue sky, which again is a horrible color blue that doesn't go with the green of the ground. And remember, listener, this is just a one third of the flag size strip in the middle. Above and below is bright, bright yellow. And there's also another flag on the top. It's awful. You're picking such minutiae to criticize as well. I mean, I even love that. Because like you can't take in the whole thing at once. Like it's just too much. I'm trying to think about how to describe this. This is amazing. It's like the president of Liberia asked his like 10 year old kid to design some flags and put them up on the fridge. And then someone said, actually, why don't we make them the actual flags? Yeah. I mean, these are just...

And I love how the Liberia flag and the Canton in the left corner, like doesn't quite fill up the whole yellow section, but it looks like it should, but they didn't quite do it. Yeah. It doesn't, I mean, just jumping over, there's another one with trees on it, which is River Gee County flag. Oh, that is my, I think that that's in my top two for worst. Okay. But this has what is literally the exact tree that every kindergartner in the world draws, where you have a trunk and then there is a green cloud shape on the top of the trunk.

And there's three of these trees. People, you have to look at this flag. You have to look at the flag of River Gee or River Gee County in Liberia. You have to stop the podcast now. You have to, if you don't have the internet, you have to walk into the nearest shop or whatever you're near and say, please, please, can I use your internet and look at the flag of river gee county in liberia do it right now yeah i mean there's there's a hill there's three trees on this hill um one of the things that i like here is the tree on the top they didn't even draw it entirely on

the ground and so the way it works is there's a tiny bit of sky poking below what should be the roots of the tree because they just didn't draw it low enough to the ground. Again, like when a kindergartner draws stick figure people and they're just floating above the actual ground, they're not touching the ground. I mean, is this a joke, Gray? Is this like, is someone taking the mickey? Has someone hacked this site? And because Flag of Liberia is quite obscure, no one would look like. I can't. And like the green of the leaves of the tree is the exact same green as like the hill. And because one of the trees is on the hill, you can't see.

And then there's a river flowing, which is just like a hand-drawn river, which is flowing like from the trunk of one of the trees. Yeah. which is flowing like from the trunk of one of the trees yes it these are they are so bad but perfectly not bad like maryland where it you know it hits the maryland point you're like oh this is amazing this is just crap like it is just absolute crap there's no way there's no other way to describe it yeah but i i honestly hope this is just masterful trolling that this is just a joke and that yes someone did this because the flag of liberia wiki page probably doesn't have a whole lot of people really on top of it to make sure that nothing like this gets slipped in i'm gonna

try and look for a secondary source yeah this is i was just opening up my own web browser like okay like uh liberia if we have been taken for a ride this is the best ride i've ever been on this is just great no see i'm seeing some of them in other sources but they're kind of also like sometimes they're a bit different like but still bad because it says on the wikipedia article that they do fly at this you can see them flying at like this some palace and i'm now seeing a photo of them all flying. So, I think this is real. It's amazing. That's amazing. They are special. And looking through some pictures here, it looks like other people

have cottoned onto the joy of these in the past as well. So, do yourself a favour, check out the county flags of Liberia. Grey, what are you going to throw out there as the worst? I think the worst comes down to- there are three candidates for worst, in my opinion. They're all so bad, it's hard to pick. They are all bad in special ways. River G, I think, has to perhaps get it. But Bomi County, the first one there, I think you could make a strong case for that one as well. And you could also make a strong case for Gabapolo County, which is the one with the diamond and a tree, which is just bad in many ways that the others haven't quite accomplished as well. It has a very special, special levels of badness. I can honestly say I am just overwhelmed looking at these.

I find this impossible to select among. It's almost like someone served me up several plates, each with a turd on them. And they want me to know, like, pick which one is the worst to eat. It's like, well, they're all terrible. It's more like I'm saying, which one are you unwilling to eat? Which turd is so bad a turd that you won't eat it and you're like well i don't want to eat any turds yeah the only one i'm looking at here is is uh sinoe county which is on the bottom is a flag that under normal circumstances i would probably make fun of but it seems like it is a glorious bastion of good design

yeah and like as a second option here there's grand bassa county another flag that i would totally make fun of under any other circumstances which which just looks amazing they're just the guy that the guy that designed sono county is like the johnny ive of liberia for the listener it's just the liberia flag in the corner and then it's it's just a green cross uh across the flag um and the grand basset county one is just a blue background and then there's a couple of red and white stripes on it oh it's awful but it looks amazing in comparison these are great so they're a real treat yeah listeners you do you do have to go look at these if you're listening in liberia and want

to share more information with us maybe maybe make the case for them. I mean, it's a completely different culture to what Gray and I are from. I mean, maybe in sort of Liberian culture, there's something about Liberian visual culture that makes these a real treat. And these have gone through years of iterations and they are the pinnacle of design. I mean, that is just not possible, Brady. That is just not possible brady that is just not possible i mean look look at the lafa county one the one that has a dis disembodied arm holding what holding like a rod of some golden thing across a river right it's holding a cylinder but here's the thing someone has done a 3d gradient effect on the cylinder gradients always

excellent on flags by the way right they just look amazing but the gradient has spilled over onto the fingers that are holding on to the cylinder there's no way that this is a refinement of anything this is just astounding this is astounding this is like the opposite universe version of the japanese prefecture flags that's what this is right they're really good are they they're japanese i think i've seen them they are good aren't they yeah you will have seen them they're very good but this is yeah this is this is. Right. They're really good, are they? I think I've seen them. They are good, aren't they? Yeah, you will have seen them. They're very good. But this is the reverse of that. Probably not the best way to calm down, but let's do a bit of listener corner. Yeah, what's in listener corner?

I've been getting loads and loads of messages and photos of people. And because I'm on the road, it's been a bit hard to get organized. So I will revisit your emails again soon. But I thought I'd share just a couple that have caught my eye, some recently, some less recent. So this picture has been sent to us by Dana. Dana says, Hello Internet was an invaluable companion to me

on my recent month-long trek through the desert of Kenya, for which I thank you both. Although I had other podcasts, only listening to Hello Internet could make the six-hour walks through the scorching heat feel more like three-hour walks through slightly less scorching heat. It was also refreshing to hear interesting and varied conversations in English as most of my travelling companions were more comfortable speaking their native language of Swahili.

I believe Dana, who is a university student from Canada, was in Kenya with a small organisation helping them understand family planning and birth control better in sort of some of the more underserved areas of Kenya. So she was there for a really good cause. But the picture she has sent us is of her holding her phone playing Hello Internet. And there's a bunch of camels behind her and she's in the desert. And I think that's just a really awesome setting to see us in. Yeah, it's a really great photo. It looks like she's at the head of the camel train and there's a big, big camel just looming right behind her as she's listening to Hello Internet. It's a really good photo. I really

like this. She says that that's a picture of her on the last day of her trip listening to Hello Internet. She says, Brady, given your adventurous inclinations, I really think you'd enjoy a similar experience. Gray, I'm not sure you'd need to be told this, but I would not recommend that you travel through the deserts of Kenya. There were no nice hotels there. Oh man, that was on my list. But if a listener says it's not a good idea. I have been to Kenya. I'm not surprised. What were you in Kenya doing?

Well, I went on a safari there in the Masai Mara. And I did it quite luxuriously. I stayed in like really posh, luxurious tents. And I had a really good experience there. I was not walking through a desert for six hours so that I could go to underserved communities and teach them about family planning. So, I think Dana will probably be going to heaven and I will not. But I have been to Kenya, but I did not do it in a particularly adventurous

or hard-as-nails way, which Dana definitely did. Dana, you are today's hard-as-nails person. Here's another picture from a viewer. This comes from Jesse. I'm a listener of Hello Internet Podcast that you do with CGP Grey, which is handy to be told. This comes from Jesse. I'm a listener of Hello Internet podcast that you do with CGP Grey, which is handy to be told. Thank you, Jesse. I do know what Hello Internet is, but I like that you explained it. And recently you talked about cool things that your listeners do, as well as you being tough as nails. Jesse says, I'm a college football player at Bloomsburg

University in the United States, and I regularly listen to the podcast during injury treatment or cardio. Recently, I was injured in one of our games, and when I went down, I thought to myself, I need to be hard as nails here. So, Brady, you managed to get me up. And after a nasty injury and recomposed myself, now I'll be able to listen to more HI while I get treated for the injury. And Jesse sent a picture of him in the locker room in his kit. He does look hard as nails. Yeah, he's looking very serious in this photograph.

And he's holding his phone playing Hello Internet as an awesome photo. Jesse, you also are hard as nails. We have a lot of hard as nails listeners today. I'm feeling particularly unhard today. Yeah, but you are the inspiration for some of this hardness, Brady. Yeah, I have. I can now sort of soften up a bit knowing that I've done my job. Right. Done your job acting as a beacon for everyone. I know.

I was an ambassador. If they really knew how unhard I was, there'd be a lot of disillusioned people now. Oh, this is a very special one just for you, Gray. I'm going to send you a third picture that has been sent to us by a Hello Internet listener. Okay. And I won't tell you what this is, but I think you may know the person who sent this has said that they have sent it from a historical podcast landmark. They believe this to be a Hello Internet landmark. We'll see if you agree.

A Hello Internet landmark or a historical landmark? Well to be a Hello Internet landmark. We'll see if you agree. A Hello Internet landmark or a historical landmark? Well, a historical Hello Internet landmark. Oh, a historical Hello Internet landmark. Yeah. We're 50 episodes long now. We can have historical landmarks. Yeah, I guess we can. I guess we can. Okay, what am I looking at? Oh, I know exactly where they are. I know where they are. They're on one of the at-ats at Dulles Airport. That's where this photograph is taken from. They are, so...

I would recognize that horrible, horrible space anywhere in the world where lots of people are packed in, lots of poles to lean against, while that giant tank of a construction shuffles you around the airport. Anthony says, I'm sure this is in no way original, but I found entertaining that when I went to the dreaded Dulles Airport for the first time, I was listening to the podcast and I entered into the famed At-At People movies. It was such an honor to see this historical podcast landmark. Anthony has held up his phone showing the podcast playing amongst all the crowded people in the at-at. I can recognise that from even just a tiny corner of the room. I know precisely what that is. Good stuff.

All right, Brady, are we going to do the bi-weekly weigh-in? We are. Now, I haven't got scales with me, but we were going to record this episode the other day, and we had to cancel at the last minute for various reasons. And I had weighed myself that day, which was four or five days. Was it four or five? I don't even remember when it was. So, I think we decided we were going to use the weights from that day as opposed to the weights now, because I think my weight may have gone up somewhat since because I've been indulging in New York. So, this bi-weekly weigh-in definitely is a bit of a historical one for practical reasons in that it's more difficult to consistently weigh

yourself while you are traveling and we have a weight measurement just before you left and then also just for practical reasons of maybe we'll just do the next weigh-in when you come back from america and see see what the damage done is. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Right back in time to when we were. So last Saturday was when we were going to record, which was, what date was that? That would have been the? 24th of October.

And our previous measurement was on the 10th of October before that. So how did you do in that period of time, Brady? I, again, went down. Oh, yeah? And in that period, I went down by 1.2 kilograms. Hey, very good. Very good, Brady. Thank you.

And you? I'm pretty comparable to you. I went down 1.6 kilograms. So slightly ahead. Sorry. It's very close. And of course, in real measurements, that is minus 3.5 pounds is the way that works. Nice work.

In actual measurements. We both did well. Yeah, I have to say. I have to say we're both doing well. I think this has been a good streak for us of consistent down measurements. And I have now, I've crossed the boundary of like being under 210 pounds, and I'm actually just now kind of hovering around 205, 206. And I've been seeing this on the scale. But there was something that happened which finally made some of the weight loss feel really real,

which was I was walking around one day and I realized like, boy, my watch is just so loose. Like I do not like having a loose watch at all. I always like having the watch rather tight. And I realized that I had actually lost enough weight that I needed to take a link out of my Apple Watch. And that was just one of those moments where it's like, boy, this feels really, this feels really real. Like I know that

the composition of my body is actually changing and I'm actually feeling pretty good, but that, that is definitely much more real when, when something like that happens. That's nice, man. That's a nice milestone. Well done, you. And you won. And so I'm happy to move on to the next topic now. Shouldn't we talk about shirts? We should talk about shirts.

Go on then. Speaking of... I'm just being a bad loser. I can't believe it. You're not being a bad loser. We both win. And besides, is anyone actually keeping track of these points? I'm sure someone's got some spreadsheet going somewhere yeah you know what like i have no idea what the points are but somebody some nerd out there has to be keeping track of the spreadsheets let's see

it in the reddit whoever whoever's actually been following from the beginning how we're doing there's been there's been that many exceptions and caveats and things that i don't think there actually is like a score sheet i think it's just just basically, it's more just like one-off moments of glory rather than a long-term. Right. But still, I'm sure someone out there is keeping track of things. But so one of the things that has been on my mind is I have seen enough feedback from people who are joining in with us on this hello internet fit-o-thon fit marathon thing that we're doing here this weight loss come on that's terrible okay this is why it's my job to invent words no i i'm amazing at inventing words okay i'm sorry i'm sorry you don't like it lost cast what lost i'm trying to come up with something

that's got podcast in it and like you know it's the hello internet fitatron 5000 that's what we're doing fitatron fitatron 5000 that i like there we go right all right and i think this machine that is the hello internet fitatron 5000 there are many people who want to get on board this contraption. Yeah. Like there's a guy I know who I saw talking to the gray health bot saying that he's in a race to try to beat me to 200 pounds. And I've been hearing from a bunch of people who have taken this on board as a time to try to get more healthy in their lives in one way or another, whether it's losing weight or exercising more.

And so I thought, let's make this official in some way. It's the official life goal of Hello Internet. I didn't realize what I had just walked into there. But yeah, so I like the idea of trying to do something official about it, even though now I'm just realizing that it is yet another official thing with the podcast and so i was trying to think like what what can we do and at least at the very start of this uh we've decided that we are putting up a hello internet exercise shirt yeah this is this is team hello internet fitatron 5000 is it too late for you to put fitatron 5000 just under the logo there? I

think you have to now, don't you? Just under the little HI. How awesome would that look? Because you would wear that. It's not like embarrassing because it's just a little secret. You got to do that. Yeah. You think we should put Fitatron 5000 underneath it? Oh, yeah. So you can get your official Hello Internet Fitatron 5000 exercise t-shirt to show sort of solidarity. So when you're out on your run or sweating in the gym, you can just look down and think Fitatron 5000. Yeah. That you're not doing this alone. That there are other people out there in the world listening to the podcast who are also taking this moment into their hands and deciding, yes, I'm getting on board

and I am going to increase my health. Whatever that may mean in your personal circumstances, if you want to lose weight, if you want to work out more, whatever it is that you're trying to do, there is a Hello Internet Fitatron 5000 team shirt for exercising in. And podcasts go along with exercising. So maybe you will be wearing the Hello Internet exercise shirt

while listening to the Hello Internet podcast while feeling the burn. Awesome. 50 episodes ago, there's no way you would have just made up something like Fitatron 5000 and then agreed to slap it on a t-shirt within eight seconds. If anything has changed about you while doing the podcast, it is that. You've brought out my wild side, Brady. That's what's happened. Yeah. I'm getting one. I want a Fitatron 5000 shirt now. I hope people do decide to take this moment on board. I mean, maybe it's just because I'm feeling like I really have crossed a bit of a milestone where I really can feel different. I know when I'm bored. I mean, maybe it's just because I'm feeling like I really have crossed a bit of a like a milestone where I really can feel different. Like I know when I when I first started talking

about losing the weight, you know, I was low energy and I was not feeling really good. But from the time that we started getting really serious about this, I'm down 10 pounds in total. And it's enough that I can really feel like it has actually made a difference. And I'm down 10 pounds in total. And it's enough that I can really feel like it has actually made a difference. And I'm really glad that I have done this. And as I expected, my energy levels have largely evened out since the beginning. So I'm feeling really positive. I'm feeling like I am on the other side of this. Like I went through like a difficult time and I've lost some weight and I'm feeling really good.

And if I can lose like six more pounds, that will be absolutely amazing. If I can get under 200 like that, that'll be just unbelievable. But so I'm feeling really positive about this. And I genuinely hope that other people listening take this moment to decide that they too want to try to get more healthy. Like don't do the thing that you're tempted to do, which is tell yourself, oh, I'm going to wait until New Year's to do that. No, that's a sucker's game, right? It's postponing this kind of stuff. That is not the Fitatron 5000 way.

It is not the Fitatron 5000 way. In some ways, this is a very hard time to start this thing. But you know what? It's always going to be a hard time. We're going into the holidays, whatever. It's only hard when it's hard. So I'm really hoping that some people do decide to take this up, get an exercise shirt, get your butt to the gym, join the team. Great. That was our emotional moment for our montage as well. Yeah. Where you talked about how, you know, I'm really serious and this has made a difference.

That was beautiful. Yeah. When we get up to 100 episodes, we can have the montage of people looking fit, if you'll still be doing 100 episodes. Hashtag Fitatron 5000. Just a little warning that this advertisement is aimed at more mature audiences, but it will be kept family friendly. See, one of our sponsors today for this 50th episode are our very good friends at audible.com. They are the leading supplier of audiobooks and other spoken material. You must know all about them by now.

Both Gray and I use Audible and their service is first class. Can't recommend it highly enough. Go to audible.com slash hello internet and when you sign on, you can download your first audiobook for free. Now this is normally the part where myself or CGPO will recommend one of our favourite books. But this time I've done something a little bit different. In honour of our 50th episode and my collaboration with Grey, I decided to download the audiobook 50 Shades of Grey. Not something I would normally have done. Now, this is a book for grown-ups. It is not for our younger listeners. And even for

adult listeners, I'm not entirely sure this would be one I would recommend. I'm about eight chapters in, so I can't speak to the whole book. But here are some reasons I think maybe you should listen to it. Now, number one is the title character is called Grey, and he's often referred to just as Grey. Now, this always brings a smile to my face. And in fact, sometimes he's even referred to by his initials, CT Grey. The character of Grey is a bit of a control freak. He has an office in a huge glass steel building. He runs this thing called Grey Enterprises Holdings. It is very fun to listen to if you're a friend or fan of CGP Grey. I have often found myself laughing out loud picturing him as the main character. The second reason is this is a very

famous book. It's been made into a movie. It has sequels. It's sold a boatload of copies. It's really entered popular culture. I think it's good to have sort of a grasp of books like this, to know what's in them, to know what they're about, so you can have an opinion yourself when they come up. I think that pretty much ends the reasons you should get this book. If you do give it a go, please bear in mind I have not recommended this based on its story, its content, or its writing.

Instead, let me recommend another audiobook covering the whole idea of relationships. The Mathematics of Love is by a friend of mine, Hannah Fry. It's a mathematician's perspective on everyday things like love and marriage, relationships, dating. It's really good fun, really smart. Somehow I think it might be a better fit for the average Hello Internet listener and more appropriate for the younger ones. It's also read by Hannah herself. I think she does a really great job. It's always good to hear a book read by its author and Hannah has a really fantastic broadcasting voice. You can actually hear a little preview if you go to the Audible

website before you've even committed to buy or signed up to Audible or anything, so maybe go check it out. That's the mathematics of love, Hannah Fry. But look, whatever you're into, whether it's Fifty Shades of Grey or the picture of Dorian Gray, Audible is going to have it. They've got a huge range. Don't forget, there's that free audiobook when you sign up. Go to audible.com slash hellointernet. Make sure you use the slash hellointernet

so they'll know you came from here on the podcast. That's extra brownie points for Gray and I. And our thanks to Audible for being part of our 50th episode. Now I've got to decide if I'm actually going to finish Fifty Shades of Gray. I think maybe I might. I don't know. Don't know. So the next topic is the thing we have to talk about that everyone wants us to talk about. And even people I've been meeting in the last few days have wanted me to talk about to them in person. And I just can't be bothered with it. I know exactly what you mean.

The elephant in the room for this episode is youtube red that has been the talk of the town in youtube circles and i feel somewhat the same way that you do of like oh this is you know like it's an important thing it's it's a big deal and i also feel a huge amount of do i have to like do i have to deal with yet another thing? I really don't want to have to deal with yet another thing. But, you know, we were asking people, you know, what do they want us to talk about? And by far and away, YouTube Red was the number one thing that people wanted us to discuss this episode. So we have to at least talk about it a little bit. I've been trying to do some information gathering because I know that you just, you really,

really couldn't at all. So I've tried to put together some stuff on it, but it's a weird conversation. It's a weird conversation to have. It sounds like you've been a little journalist on this one. You've been even like making inquiries and talking to humans and all sorts by the sounds of it. Yeah, I have had more conversations with actual humans than I would normally like in any research topic. But okay, so before we talk about the talking to humans part of it,

let's just back up for a second and pretend like someone listening has no idea what we're talking about. So like for historical context, you know, for people listening a hundred years from now who are really interested in the details of what was going on in YouTube at the time. YouTube just last week launched this product that they call YouTube Red and the executive summary of it is it is YouTube's subscription service. So they want people to pay YouTube $10 a month. And in exchange for paying $10 a month, there won't be any of the YouTube ads. So none of those pre-rolls, none of the annoying pop-up ads that appear on videos. That's the main thing that they're pushing, but it's also bundled with several other features. Google has some

music streaming service that I am entirely unfamiliar with. And that also comes with this YouTube Red service. They're also allowing background audio to play in apps on phones. They're allowing you to download videos for offline use onto your phone, say if you're going to get onto an airplane and you want to listen to something while you're in flight that's something you can do if you are a youtube red member and then the the last thing is they are allowing some creators to have exclusive behind a paywall content as part of youtube red so that you can have it's i'm not clear if it's just individual videos or channels but there is some some production of things that is going to be behind a paywall right to incentivize people to stump up some the money exactly the example they keep using is that pewdiepie who is currently the

number one youtuber he has made some tv show with the people from the walking dead and this is their their flagship example of if you want to see pewdiepie uh screaming and zombies and walking dead people like you need to pay youtube in order to get access to that it feels a bit like it's their netflix move like they want to have exclusive content and they want you to pay to get access to that content that's a fair summary. And obviously some of what I think we're going to talk about is what's happening with money now and what does that mean for the creators? And I think we'll come to that in a second. But can I just ask you for just a second to take off your hat of being a creator and pretend you've never made a YouTube video in

your life, but you do watch YouTube videos because you do watch some YouTube videos. I think you watch more than me. Is that an appealing product that's being offered? Is that something you're thinking, I'm going to sign on to that. I like the sound of that. Does that have appeal to you just as a consumer before we talk about all the other implications and things going on? Yeah. So I actually don't watch a lot of YouTube videos. I think I actually tend to watch YouTube a bit like a bit like someone who is unfamiliar with YouTube culture watches YouTube videos as in I find popular videos on places like Reddit. And so I will watch those videos. But I'm not like I'm not deep into the YouTube culture of watching videos. But but nonetheless, I might as well say straight

up that when YouTube Red becomes available in the UK, which it currently isn't, it's as we're talking, it's just available in America. I will probably sign up for it. And the main reason is I would just like to be able to have videos play on my iPad and on my iPhone immediately. I find it really annoying if I click on a link to watch a video or what happens frequently is someone sends me a video and it's like, oh, look at this. What do you think about this thing? And I just find it really irritating when I click that link and then I get a 30 second unskippable ad. Just like I'm not going to use their music service.

I don't really care about their exclusive content. I don't really care about the offline use. The background audio is nice. Like I'll probably use that. But I would pay the $10 a month just to get rid of unskippable pre-roll ads in front of videos. So I will probably sign up for this when it is available from the consumer perspective. And there's no ad blocker that can stop those unskippable pre-rolls. That does that job anyway. So that's why I mentioned on my ipad and on my iphone like on the computer you can get ad blockers that'll block that stuff but uh even

though apple has recently introduced ad blocking technology to their platform it doesn't work because the youtube app is this totally self-contained space where they control everything so you can't you can't run that stuff so if i didn didn't use my iPad and my iPhone as much as I do, this would be a less attractive option. But since I do an enormous amount of work on both of those devices, getting rid of the inbuilt ads is something that is worth it to me to do, just to get rid of that annoyance. Like, I never want to think about this again. That is my 100% I am a consumer, what is in it for me, I't care about anything else yeah perspective okay so there we go what about you um yeah i think i may sign on for for the same reason i think the only thing that appeals to me

is the not having to watch ads all the time. I don't run ad blocking software on my computer. So I get ads everywhere. I'm not judging or anything. It's probably more laziness and caveman-ness than anything. So I do spend a lot of my time not watching videos because of an ad. Like everyone's talking about some cool video on Reddit or something and I'm like, oh, wicked, I'll have a look at that. And then I start it and there's like a 30-second unskippable

and I'm like, oh, and I just go off and do something else and forget that I was going to watch it. So, I will get value out of it. And I also like, I'm just someone who likes having, you know, I do like having like the nice version of something. Yeah. So, if there's two, you know, if there's a, if I could have a MacBook and a MacBook Pro,

I like having the Pro because I feel like I've got the good version even if I didn't need it. That's a bad example because I do need a MacBook Pro. So, I'm a sucker for the upgraded deluxe version of something. And if it exists for YouTube, even though I don't particularly like the name, it might come to that later. Yeah, the name is great. Yeah. So I think there's a really good chance I'll get it.

And that's not TAS approval or disapproval of the whole concept because I don't really know where my head's at with that yet. But I do find ads an annoyance. And I realize I contribute to that annoyance as a YouTube maker who has ads on videos. But I get that it's an annoyance. Yeah, it's definitely an annoyance. Making them unskippable is the naughty part.

I try not to have unskippable ads on my videos because I think I don't like that. I make them skippable when i have when i have that fine grain control yeah this is this is where everybody has their own preferences about what counts as as annoying and what doesn't count as annoying yeah yeah anyway there you go okay so before we have this conversation it is the case that both of us will almost certainly get youtube red when it comes to the uk yeah i would say would say 80%, 70% maybe. It's very possible I won't. Like, I'm not, my position is not firm yet. Well, yeah. Well, you're not knowing much about it is a bit

of the thing. So, I went back in time because this whole project, the idea of a YouTube subscription service is something that we first talked about on the podcast six months ago, when YouTube started sending around notices to the creators that they wanted us to agree to this new terms of service and to sign on to this thing that was coming, which was the subscription service. And so I will put a link in the show notes to us talking about it six months ago. And the reason I bring that up is because there was a little comment when we were trying to go through like the contract that we had at the time, and how YouTube back then had a little notice about agree to this now. But don't worry, we will share more details with the creators closer to launch was the thing that we

heard from youtube six months ago and the meta story from a creator's perspective and i think one of the reasons why so many youtubers are talking about this why there's so many videos and so many articles about youtube bread is because of this massive uncertainty. That promise from six months ago about sharing more details was completely unfulfilled by YouTube. This thing was just suddenly launching and YouTube may be good at some things but communicating clearly with the people who create content for its platform is something that they are terrible at they are not good at clearly communicating what is going on and so I think a lot of people found themselves in the situation of basically YouTube says oh tomorrow we're launching a service that might radically change how you make money

on this platform. And we are going to offer no details on how that will be. Trust us, you'll make more money. But just, you know, if you want any details, we have none of them for you. That's a bit of the meta story from the creator perspective of how this seems to have gone down. There's just no real information for the creators. Do you have a theory about that? Do you think it's because the people you have access to don't know?

Or do you think it's like a deliberate, you know, obscuring of it? Or, I mean, do you have a, do you, or is something about the skill of the company? Do you have a, do you, can you expand on that? Or it's just, it's just the way it is? I don't know why, I don't know why this is the case. Here's the thing, like, all I really want from YouTube is some official link that I can go to that's like a policy page that explains to people who create things what is happening in the system. And that seems to exist nowhere. And for lots of things with YouTube about like what is allowed and what is not allowed, it's very hard to ever pin down an answer to some of these things. And let's just say, broadly speaking,

I have spoken to several people at several different levels inside YouTube trying to get answers about this. And the feeling that I have come away with is that one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing inside YouTube. And it's not just me that has been doing this. So again, some of the like slightly behind the scenes stuff is almost every large creator that I know, and if you go search for videos on YouTube where creators are talking about YouTube, almost every creator has done the same thing where they're trying to reach out to whoever they happen to know inside youtube to get answers to their questions and everybody knows different

people on youtube and then they're coming back with totally different answers about how this system is going to work behind the scenes and then this just contributes to this crazy rumor mill where everybody feels like, who knows what's going on? So it's like, Tim's secret guy on the inside of YouTube has said this thing. And Tamita's super secret guy on the inside of YouTube has said this other thing. And you just don't know what to go with. And so so, like I said, I've spoken to several people inside of YouTube who have told me mutually contradictory things. Like, it's just, it creates this whole feeling of untrustedness. Like, surely inside YouTube somewhere there is a document that says how this is going to work.

Or maybe they just haven't really decided yet and they're just throwing stuff out and seeing how people react. I don't know what it is, but I just get this feeling like YouTube is this big thing and there are parts of it that are not in communication with other parts of it internally. That's, that's my impression of, of what's going on. All right. So what is going on?

Before I say anything, I'm going to say this really clear listeners because i always see when i try to explain something like the opinion gets distorted when people are talking about it later on so i want to say this really clearly i expect that under the new system almost certainly almost every single creator will make more money with YouTube Red than without it. YouTube would have to really, really screw the pooch on this one to make it not work. And one of the reasons is if you can convince even a very, very small subset of your users to directly give you money which is what youtube red is trying to do they literally count like a thousand times worth people watching ads so you

i think people always imagine like what is the success of this service in terms of how many people sign up like what percentage of of the of the audience do they get? And it's like, you cannot imagine what a minuscule percentage they need to get in order to make this financially successful. Yeah. When someone sort of emails us or something or says to us, hey guys, you know, do you want me to watch your ads all the way through on YouTube videos? Because does that help you more? I don't, I mean, I usually don't reply, but if I was going to reply, I'd say, do what you want because that 0.00001 of a cent is, you know, that's your contribution. Your greatest contribution is just your attention and watching the video. Don't think that you're

making a huge financial contribution just by watching. You only make a big financial contribution if you, you know, give on Patreon or buy a t-shirt or something. That's when it actually starts to make a difference to my pocket. Yeah, that's exactly right. And again, some of the YouTube specifics, we're not exactly allowed to talk to them, but I will reference something that is in the public domain, which is John Green made a video talking about YouTube Red. And he mentioned a number in there, which I'll just talk about, which is saying that one person giving you a dollar directly, according to John, I'm not saying anything,

is worth a thousand to two thousand people watching your video. I'm just commenting on a number that John has said. That's all I'm doing here but so still creators want to know how is this how is this going to be working out now i've done a thing where i have spoken to a few people who are not in the industry but are familiar with the existence of something called youtube red and i asked them how do they imagine this works like what is the impression that you have gotten from youtube red and interestingly everyone has the same response so they're thinking oh okay how do they imagine this works? Like, what is the impression that you have gotten from YouTube Red? And interestingly, everyone has the same response. So they're thinking, oh, okay,

if I sign up for YouTube Red, I get these features and then some of my money, about half of the money, is going to be split up among the YouTube channels that I watch. So most people are imagining that this is not only just for these features, but it's like many of the fundraising things that exist. It is also a way to support the channels that you watch. And I just think it's interesting that this is the impression that outsiders seem to have. And this is one of the things i was trying very hard to

get confirmed and i would say i have satisfactorily confirmed is that this is not really how youtube at this moment is planning to distribute the money so if you sign up for youtube red yep youtube says you know they're going to keep half of the money and half of the money is going to go to creators, but it is not going to go to just the creators that you watch. So if I sign on and all I do is watch CGP Grey and Smarter Every Day, it's not like CGP Grey is going to get five bucks and Destin's going to get five bucks and destin's going to get five bucks and that's the way it is like that's not how it's split it's not like your views go to pay people you like right that's not how it's going to work the way youtube is running it is they're running it as one gigantic pool of money so they're taking half of the red subscription money and putting it into a gigantic pile somewhere, an enormous pile of money.

And then what they're doing is they're taking all of the videos across the whole of YouTube and saying, you, dear creator, what percentage of the total watch time of all videos on YouTube were your videos. And so, of course, obviously, that's a very small percentage of it, but it's a very giant pile of money if this works out well. And so, everybody gets a percentage of the total pile relative to the percentage of watch time that their videos were compared of across all of YouTube. That is the way that this money is going to be distributed as best I can tell from the various people that I have spoken to inside of YouTube. Are there different pools though, for example, like is Taylor Swift just going to get all the money

or are they making separate genres almost or categories? Or is everyone competing on the same footing? In our episode many months ago, we made a comment about how there was some language in their contract about dividing people up into different slices in different pools. So far, I have heard nothing about that, that it's just one gigantic pool. Now, Taylor Swift is an interesting example because i i still think that the music stuff is in is the only thing that's in a different category but i am not sure and i don't know the answer to that given that youtube is also combining this with or google is

also combining this with their music service this is just one of the very many things that is unclear because if they are doing it by watch time and they are including music in that pile it's like well all of the money essentially will be going to musicians because in terms of of watch time like the listener numbers on those music videos are just crazy high they're absolutely just crazy high but i that i don't know the answer to i don't know how that's going to work out the thing with with watch time that's also interesting, and it's where I know some doubt has come into things, has been people thinking, how does this benefit me due to the length of my videos? You know, someone who does very short videos obviously is only going

to get, you know, a minute or two of attention. And someone who has a long rambling video that goes for eight hours of them playing through a video game is going to have more of the watch time. Is that going to give them a huge financial advantage? And maybe it should give them a financial advantage if it does, I don't know. But there is a feeling that just making short, high quality content get penalized versus people who just keep you watching for a long time. Yeah. I mean, this is why all the YouTube creators care a lot about the algorithms, because the way they decide it affects the way the income distribution goes. But even still, let's take my channel as an example, right? Very short videos, very infrequently uploaded

that are contributing almost certainly to a tiny, tiny portion of the total watch time on YouTube compared to other stuff. Yeah. So I'm probably on the losing end of this, but I'm losing on the, I should say, I'm on the losing end of this in quotation marks because I still expect that because of how poorly YouTube ads pay versus someone giving YouTube money directly, even someone that the algorithm does not favor, I expect will still work out earning more in the end with YouTube Red than without it. Like that's that's my prediction right now. Like I am someone that this system is not very well optimized for, but I still think I'll probably be better off after than before. That's just my guess, just given the relative numbers for ad money.

It sounds like you've drunk the Kool-Aid, Greg. I'm trying to think about how to phrase the next thing, right? So despite saying that, despite saying that I expect that I'll probably make more money after than before, the thing that I find baffling about this whole process is, like we discussed on that episode six months ago, the whole thing doesn't feel like a system that I want to encourage. That I would, like YouTube has not set up a business venture here that I would feel like, I would love to, at the end of my video, tell my subscribers, you should sign up for YouTube Red. I will never do that under the circumstances as they are today. Because I think you can only ask your audience for a limited number of things. You can't at the end

of every single video ask your subscribers to do a bunch of things. You have to pick a small number of things to mention infrequently, I think, if you really want to have maximum impact. Yeah. And so my feeling is, okay, at the end of my videos, most of the time I mention something and I have a few things that I rotate.

It's like, okay, sometimes I mention my email list. Sometimes there is an ad at the end of my video that I've put there. Sometimes it's a link to go do something else or sometimes it's merchandise. Like there's a rotation of things that I think are worth mentioning at the end of my videos. YouTube Red will never make that rotation.

And I just feel like YouTube is missing out on something. They should design a system such that I feel that, yes, I should recommend to subscribers to use it. And I think the way people think YouTube Red works is a situation under which channels would tell their users to subscribe to YouTube Red. And so you can imagine, say, a channel that is smaller, that has a dedicated following of subscribers. If YouTube divided the money up among just the channels that you watched, smaller channels with dedicated followers would have an incentive to recommend YouTube Red. But under the current system, they don't. They don't have an incentive to recommend it. And I just feel like

it's a strange way that YouTube has set this up. Like you are a platform that depends on this enormous community of content creators to constantly make something. And there's a way in which you can build this business system so that people would recommend it, but you chose this option that makes it very hard for anyone to recommend it to their own viewers. Isn't that what you would want, YouTube? But there's never a situation under which if I had the decision like, OK, what am I going to mention at the end of this video? Am I going to mention Patreon or am I going to tell people to total watch time of my videos on all of YouTube from their YouTube Red subscription. I mean, that may also be the case if they did do the other model. If people signed on, were directly paying, you may still be better off on them giving money on Patreon.

But it just feels closer. You feel more attached to it if you feel there's like a kind of a user pays model and there's a direct link between the people who've signed on and you. If YouTube had a built-in system like that, they could make it right there on the page. Like there may be a case under which getting people to sign up for YouTube Red under this alternate model would actually be better because they're already there. Like they're on the YouTube page. Like maybe Google already knows their account details. Like they could make it super easy to sign up. Whereas anytime you send someone to a different thing, like go over to Patreon and now there's this whole other system and now you need to make an account over there. You always lose a surprising number of people

when you ask people to go somewhere else. So I can imagine that even if the ratios were different, like that the YouTube Red option under this alternate model might still work out better. But so I guess like that's my fundamental feeling of this is I just I like business arrangements where it feels like everybody wants to be a part of it and wants to recommend it. And this YouTube Red thing is a story of having been bullied by YouTube over the past six months to agree to this contract that we had no other choice but to agree to and like getting emails from YouTube about why haven't you signed this contract and like constant pop up notifications on our channels about sign the new contract, you to sign the new contract and so just this feeling of like getting bullied into this thing and that now that it's here that i would never recommend to my subscribers to do out of my own

self-interest it's like if you want those features like go sign up for it i'm probably gonna get it but it's just i don't know i just like I feel like I want a business, I want a business arrangement with YouTube where I feel like we are both benefiting from helping each other. Well, great. I mean, in a way, what you've said is kind of redundant at first, because you will always benefit more from someone doing something directly for you, like your Patreon or your t-shirts or going and joining your email list. There is never, ever going to be, there's no model possible that is like YouTube Red, where you would prefer that over people going and just giving all their money direct to you. So I think in a way, it's asking too much for YouTube to create a model that is so good

that I'm going to recommend it over all my other ways of making income. I think that's unrealistic. But what you say that I do think is true is the feeling that we were a little bit railroaded into it. And even if it does end up being for our own good, I do think it's left bit of a bitter taste in our mouths that we were kind of, that we were given no choice. And a wise man said to me, and that wise man was you, is that when only one party in a contract wants the contract to be signed, that usually means it's not a good contract. Yeah.

I think a better test for whether or not this is really good or not wouldn't be so much will I recommend it to my viewers. It would have been do I want to be in the program. They should have made a program called YouTube Red that was voluntary and I should have been knocking, banging down their door saying, oh gosh, I hope I get let in. I hope I get to be on the YouTube Red list because it's so obviously beneficial. But they didn't do that.

They made us suspicious by saying, we can't explain what this is. Trust me, it's for your own good. Sign here. And that has created doubt. And you make me me, it's for your own good. Sign here. And that has created doubt. And you make me think maybe it's created doubt wrongly, but that's where I think the problem has been in the birth process. And not that any of this matters to the viewers, but that's where the problem has been for us. Yeah. But people listen to this podcast to get up to the date behind the scenes news about the YouTube world, don't they?

Oh, no, no. I'm not saying we shouldn't listen to it. I'm just saying there aren't two billion people in the world really worrying about whether or not, you know, their particular creators are going to get a fair cut of the pie. It's definitely that feeling of railroadedness, of no one likes to be forced into a thing. And I think the reason why people don't like that feeling is yes even if youtube red works out better for creators which i suspect that it might the fact that they can railroad you into the thing and that they have railroaded you into the thing it's just a reminder that they can do this at any time with anything else yeah yeah and i mean i got i got an email from someone

at youtube that they were talking about how like you have to sign this thing otherwise we're going to take all your videos down like they're going to be private and nobody can see them and it was like a total mafia shakedown email like it was literally like it would be a real shame if everything you've worked for on youtube went away because you didn't sign this contract. And like, oh, come on. Like, really? Like, this is really the email that you're sending me? You got to be kidding me. It feels a little bit like the mob is visiting my corner deli that I own making sandwiches for the neighborhood. And they're like, it'd be a real shame if this place burned down, wouldn't it? Like, yeah, it would be. Yeah, I mean, it's really going to affect your livelihood

if your place burns down. So maybe you should give me all that money. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, you're right. It was not, I mean, I don't know. I mean, like, I guess they just got frustrated because no one was signing and they had to sign it. I'm absolutely sure that the emails that we got

from various people and that I've heard lots of people being contacted was entirely because everyone I know was playing this game of chicken with the agree button. Nobody was clicking it. I'm sure their agreement rate was less than 1% for the previous six months and then only in the couple days right up before it

did anybody actually click agree. They got almost every single sign up at the absolute last possible moment. I mean, I'm assuming, have you clicked the button? You must have. I actually didn't have a button. I had to print out and scan this tremendously large document, which was a bit of an ordeal. But I have signed the agreement. I had to, although my videos wouldn't be watchable in America anymore.

Right. It would be a real shame, Brady. I mean, what if they said, you know, we're changing all your videos to black and white and putting a heavy metal track under them all now. And if you don't want us to do that, that's fine. But they'll all go to private and won't be visible in america right and they could do that tomorrow as well yeah yeah over a barrel but

we always have been that's why nobody likes to be reminded of of that scenario yeah and so i just think it's like youtube is the biggest player in town they can obviously do this but it's like hey youtube if you wonder why sometimes very many of your large creators are very vocal in their criticism of the whole system, it's like stuff like this is why. It's just the way that this is handled in a very forceful manner. Is that inevitable, Gray? Like, you know how almost everyone hates their boss in a way, you know? Is it inevitable? Does every a way you know is it inevitable does every creator and hate the platform they're on you know we listen to podcasts that are made by app

developers and they're always whinging about how apple what the latest thing yeah the app store and i mean is it just human nature that every creator hates the platform they're on people who have got massive twitter followings hate the new thing that twitter's doing. And are we just all a bunch of winches? I mean, do human beings like to complain? Yes, I think human beings do like to complain. That's for sure. The only other thing that I just wanted to touch on, which was the main thing that I wanted to get confirmed, is I think there's this weird fundamental conflict in the YouTube Red business and the creators business. And this has to do with embedded ads in the videos. Yeah.

So like you do at the end of your videos, you say, oh, you know, thanks to Audible or for Squarespace or whoever it is, Harry's, you know, at the end of a video for sponsoring the video. I've done this in two videos in possibly not the next video, but the video after that, I'm planning to have a sponsor in that video. Like this is a thing that creators do to a greater or lesser extent. And we were wondering a while back, like, well, what does YouTube Red mean for this? Because if users are being sold pay ten dollars a month and you won't see any ads but creators are putting ads in their videos essentially burning them in making you know you can't get rid of them yeah yeah like what like what is youtube's position on this and the thing that made me particularly curious about this is one of the

very many reasons I haven't put ads in my videos for the large part is this has been against the letter of the law for YouTube for forever. That this is not allowed according to their official terms of service. Like I had my lawyer look over the contract, like, and I had some people confirm inside YouTube, like, no, this is against the the rules but so many creators do this that the impression that i have gotten over the past couple years is that youtube's real policy is we don't agree to this but we are turning a blind eye to this it's more honored in the breach than the observance but yeah but yeah because youtube is aware like oh well our own ads don't pay very well and the inbuilt sponsors pay much better and okay fine like we're just gonna we're gonna turn a blind

eye to this and we're just gonna let it slide even though it is against the letter of the law but so i was wondering like okay well what is what is the what's gonna happen with youtube bread like isn't this a conflict with with an ad for youtube yeah and again as best i can tell youtube has had an official policy change saying that burned in ads are okay as long as they follow a couple of guidelines and the main guidelines there are it can be no more than 30 seconds at the end of the video and it has to be a static image so that it can't be like the person talking to camera you can't be doing something it can't look like part of the video and it also can't look like a post roll ad so this is now the letter of the law according to youtube is that they are sanctioning these things in a limited manner.

Which should also limit their value, I'd imagine, you know, with those conditions, wouldn't it? You know, half the appeal of them is that they have the authenticity of being spoken by the people in the video and, you know, looking out at you and stuff. Yeah, I mean, you can still talk over the static image. Yeah, of course. They don't require it to be dead silence no no no just a picture of audible yeah no comment yeah just 30 seconds of silence yeah i i have seen i have seen uh creators do very interesting things with the ads at the end and like i found out like one of the things that i did on my videos according to the letter of the end. And I found out one of the things that I did on my videos, according to the letter of the law, is not allowed,

which is that I had the ad at the end, but then there was a five-second thing for people who stuck through the ad as a little reward. And they're like, no, no, no, that's not allowed. It has to be the last 30 seconds. You can't have anything else. And so all I can think of is like, okay, well, once again, I doubt how much YouTube is actually going to stick to this, right? Like, okay, this

is their policy. Like we'll see if they actually decide to crack down on it. But I just think this is, this is a bizarre thing. Like if your headlining feature is no ads on YouTube, I think your average user is going to be confused by that. Like, I'm paying money to not see ads. And there are ads in the video still, like, I'm not sure how much people care about the difference between a pre roll ad or a post roll ad and an ad that's burned into the video. If they're also the kind of person who is paying to remove ads. Like, I'm just I'm going to be very curious to see how this goes. Yeah. Will it bring it to a head?

Yeah. YouTube is in a very difficult position here, precisely because those ads pay way more than the YouTube advertising does. I mean, some, some creators are dependent on them, I would imagine. Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely some creators are dependent on them. And I imagine even, even under the most optimistic of scenarios of YouTube Red, I don't think they'll be able to match those inbuilt ads. So YouTube is just in a really difficult position here. And I think it is really interesting that, as far as I can tell,

they have officially sanctioned this. And I'm just very curious to see a couple months from now, how does this shake out? My only asterisk on this is, again, it's always like, I would love somewhere to see an official document somewhere in YouTube, like saying this is the policy and this is the thing, instead of just having to talk to people. But, you know, you never get that with YouTube. You never get that. The proof of the pudding is just going to be in the tasting, isn't it? Just people are going to look at their figures in a few months time.

Not this first month because of that whole other debacle to do with the free trial. But after all the dust has settled, if people are earning more money, I guess they'll shut up. And if they aren't, they'll scream bloody murder. So I'm going to be depending on you to tell me how it's worked out because I'm not very good at following that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, we can just mention it in passing that YouTube seems to be pulling the same thing that Apple tried to with their music service of everybody gets a free trial. And then the creator's going, hey, wait a minute, what like what happens to our ad revenue during this time? I think it's no small part because the ad revenue is the highest in this quarter. So people are

wondering like what like what's going to happen? There's a feeling that you have had, Brady, that I have, I've definitely come to agree with over time that I didn't use to agree with. And I feel like this YouTube red thing, and all of these details about like, you know, getting paid during the free trial, and like what's happening here. And I just, I just have this feeling in my mind of like, I just hate all this business. I just, you, you've said a while ago, like you just want to make videos. And I feel really the same way that over the past few months, I've just been aware of like more and more of my time has been sucked up in, in like business related stuff and talking about ad rates and like and and i just like i find it just i've just found it exhausting after a certain point and when you talk to other

creators it's very very natural that stuff turns toward business like we we've even done it that we start talking business like if we're just hanging out and I have, I have thought sometimes, have you ever seen mean girls, Brady? I have not. I know you like it. It's a classic.

It's a classic Brady. I should watch it. You should watch it. We should have a slumber party and watch mean girls. Oh, that'd be awesome. Maybe we'll do that when we count the votes. Yeah.

Maybe we will. Maybe we will. But there's um there's a very minor scene in mean girls that i have thought of a few times when i'm talking business with other creators and the main character hates the the nemesis girl in this movie but she catches herself always talking about the nemesis to everybody and there's a scene where she's talking to somebody else about the nemesis but her internal monologue is she's saying to herself why do i keep talking about this i am boring myself talking about this i don't want to talk about this but i can't stop myself from talking about this and i have felt that way a little bit with just some of this business stuff over the past few months is like man i just want to focus on videos like i don't want to have to worry about all of this stuff

but as the industry gets bigger and bigger it just it naturally becomes more and more a part of it and i used to think like people who would hire social media managers to like deal with all of the backend stuff for the business, I always used to feel like, oh, that's ridiculous. Like it's just so easy to deal with YouTube directly and just manage this stuff yourself. And I feel more and more like I can totally understand that

of just wanting to try to firewall you off from all of the behind the scene gears of the business and just focus much more on the on the creative end no i totally agree i totally agree it's one of the nice things about doing a podcast in some ways although i mean at the moment obviously we're talking about business but one of the nice things about doing a podcast is for like for two hours or so all you're doing is like making a thing like yeah it's two hours and like it's even better than like editing or animating or organizing or maintaining a website it's it's like quite an intense period of just like hand to mouth making

like the only time i get anything like it is when i'm filming someone or videoing because like that's almost got a one-to-one relationship between what you're doing and what ends up as output but even that has like a higher threshold a higher amount of stuff that gets thrown away and editing is obviously really labor-intensive and animating for you is really labor-intensive but podcasting's got a really good ratio of the amount of time I spend doing it to the amount of content that gets created at the other end. It feels like a really like rewarding use of time. Oh yeah. Yeah. I completely, I completely agree. And I have that same feeling that when we are making the podcast together, like I am very focused on this thing.

Like I'm very focused on the conversation that we're having and what we're talking about. And on the screen, you know, I just have the show notes and a reminder that we're live. And I watched the waveforms come across and it feels like, oh, we're making this thing that people are going to listen to. And we're focused on it now. And this is, this is nice. Like there's a big audience of people who enjoys it. And it's relatively it's relatively simple business wise compared to something like YouTube, you know, the back end stuff of it. Like it's very rewarding. It's very rewarding. This 50th episode of Hello Internet is also brought to you by our friends at Igloo. Igloo is the internet you will actually like.

They allow you to share news, organize your files, coordinate calendars, and manage projects all in one place. And Igloo's latest upgrade, Viking, revolves around documents and how you interact with them, gather feedback, and make changes. They've even added the ability to track who has read critical information to keep everyone on the same page. It's like read receipts in your email, but much, much less annoying. When you're working with a group of people, you want to be able to know who has read what, who has seen what, who has ticked what boxes, and Igloo helps you do that. You have a legal agreement you want everyone to sign, you want to know that everybody has actually signed it. That's not the kind of thing that you can just let some people slide on. Now, most intranets are awful. I have used many awful intranets at the schools that I have worked at, but Igloo is like a breath of fresh air. It just looks so much

nicer than those horrible legacy intranet systems that look like they're built on Windows 95, because many of them still are. So if you want to give Igloo a try, sign up for a free trial at igloosoftware.com slash hello. This lets Igloo know that you came from our show. That's igloosoftware.com slash hello. This lets Igloo know that you came from our show. That's igloosoftware.com slash hello to have an internet you'll actually like. Because it's our 50th episode, we invited people to send us questions. Yeah. Let's, so to end our 50th podcast, we're going to answer and talk about a few things that you, the listeners, Tim and Timettes. What did you say?

Timatinas? I think I said Timamitha. I don't know what I said. Timamitha? I don't know. I actually had a listener email this week, I think, offering to increase their Patreon pledge to our show. If we would replace Tim as our generic viewer name with their name. That's not for sale. That's not for sale. I don't know. There were no figures thrown in and I can't remember what the person's name was,

but I thought that was one of the best product placement ideas I've ever seen. Yeah. So we'd be talking about like, oh, Nike wrote in to tell us about whatever. Is that what you're trying to import here? Yeah, we hope you're enjoying the show, Forward Focus. Look, we're back at business again, Brady. We're right back at business. That didn't take long.

Sorry. Yeah, you're right. Sorry. But I just thought, I did think that was quite ingenious it was it was sent in amongst all the emails and questions so i thought what you were going to mention is my my favorite tim related comment that i've seen so far which is that tim should be the collective noun for a group of hello internet listeners yeah a group of tim a tim's right right a tim is a collection of Hello Internet listeners. I like that. Yeah, that's not bad.

That's not bad. Oh, yeah. And that was like, yeah, like how you have like nerd fighters and all your different armies. Ours was like the Tims. Right. Yeah. So, it's not for sale. It's not for sale, but make an offer.

But Brady still has a price um so i think probably the most common question that we've been asked by a mile was how did we meet yeah do you remember how we met brady i remember the very first time we met i remember where you were sitting i don't remember what you were wearing but i remember i remember the first time i laid eyes on you see this is this is so romantic i don't remember what you were wearing, but I remember the first time I laid eyes on you. See, this is so romantic. I don't remember anything about this. You're going to have to tell me the story. Do you not remember? I know the broad strokes of the story of how we first met, but I have no recollection for

the specific moment. So I am just as curious as the Tims are to find out the answer to this question. All right. This one's for you, Tims. Well, there was a conference held in Waterloo in Canada. It was organized by Henry of MinutePhysics fame. And he invited various educational YouTubers. And so, you were invited and I was invited along with numerous other people. And I remember I arrived at the hotel we were staying at the day before and I didn't know anyone. I'd never even met Henry. I'd only emailed with Henry.

I knew no one. I'd come over from the UK and I told Henry that I'd arrived and he said, oh, come and meet in my hotel room. I'm here with Dirk of Veristablium, although I think he pronounced it as Derek from Veritasium at the time. But he said, I'm with him and I'm with CGP Grey. So I went to the hotel room and I knocked on the door and the door opened. And there was Henry and there was Derek.

And from memory, I think I sat on the bed maybe or on a chair next to the bed with Derek. And he was like showing me some camera he had and I was meeting everyone for the first time and you were sitting in the corner well yeah okay yeah I remember this now now that you bring it up I remember this I don't know if I knew because I'm not someone who like researches who everyone was so I didn't know who was big and important and who wasn't and who but I do remember I don't think I knew who you were like I don't know who was big and important and who wasn't and who. But I do remember, I don't think I knew who you were. Like, I don't think I knew, oh, that's the guy or whatever, because I wasn't like a watcher of your videos. But I do remember.

And there were a lot of people at the conference. Like, it was quite reasonable to not know who the vast majority of the people were. I'll tell you a funny story about John Green at that conference later, if I remember, because there's a brilliant example of that. But then I remember you spoke and at one point I connected your voice with the UK video because I was very familiar with the UK video, which is like your big famous first breakthrough video. And because my brother-in-law really liked that and sent it to me. And I do remember at one point saying, oh man, yeah, I do know you're... And I remember commenting, wow, your voice is just like it is in the videos because a lot of other people aren't necessarily like that. But I do remember at one point saying, now I know who

you are because I recognize your voice from the UK video. That's my only memory of that first meeting. And then obviously, we hung out at that conference loads and loads yeah but is that what's your memory of that well the thing that i'm reminded of is yes i now remember that hotel room because that was when i first met henry and derrick of veritasium but the main memory i have of that moment was of going into that room and strategically realizing that I needed to secure the chair as fast as possible. That there was one chair in the room and there was a bed and it was a bit of like, oh, it's just a hotel room where people are going to meet. And I have gotten much better than I used to be, but like, I'm never good at meeting people at even at my best. And I was worse at it then than I am now. And so I just remember like, I walked into that room and it was like, okay, I need to get the chair and I need to get the corner of the room so that my back is to the wall so that I can like, I can see everybody coming in. And I also have, I don't have to deal with any of the awkwardness of standing

or like moving around or shuffling. It's like, no, I'm going to anchor myself to the corner and I'm going to be able to see everybody. And this is how I will deal with a parade of new people. That is my primary memory of that. You gave the impression of having, of being that guy. I am not surprised. I am, I am not surprised at all. That conference was for me, as it was for you, where I met many of the people that I now know on YouTube and would count as friends and associates. It was a great conference that Henry put together. And the backstory for me on that, which Henry knows very well, is that I was having a really hard time securing whether or not I was going to be able to go to that conference. Because that was actually happening a month before my contract was up as a teacher. And I had quit my job, but going to this thing, or sorry, not a month before,

it was two weeks before, because that's right, the conference was just a few days. But I, you know, I had quit my job long ago, the way it works in teaching is that you have to resign months and months and months before you actually leave. So my resignation letter had been in for forever. But my boss at the time just refused to have me be able to take some time off and go to this thing. Like it was a really, really big deal. And it came down to this big fight about like, I was going to have to break my contract as a teacher to go because they're like, oh, you can't just go to this thing. There's no legitimate reason for you to go. And it was a really stressful time in my life. And I was trying to make this decision of like, man, you can't just go to this thing. There's no legitimate reason for you to go. And it was a really stressful time in my life. And I was trying to make this decision of like, man, if I, like, if I break my contract and go and go to this conference, and then this YouTube

career doesn't pan out, it is going to be really hard to go back into the teaching world when the last job is like, oh, yeah, he just left irresponsibly at the end. And he's a teacher with a broken contract. That all eventually got resolved. But it was just it was one of these things where I had to make a very difficult decision to go to that conference. And I look back on that as that was definitely one of of the best decisions that I made was like, damn the torpedoes and damn all the problems that are happening around this. This conference represented the future career that I wanted. And if it meant screwing around with the past career that I had,

like that was the correct decision to make, even though it was very hard to do that at the time. It was a chance to make Brady Haran for you. And look what that led to. But this is exactly what I mean. I guess that is no joke. Because of that conference, we have this podcast. I think it would be much less likely that we would be doing this podcast now if we hadn't met up then.

Definitely not. Before I talk about, because we were also asked about how the podcast started, but before we sort of fast forward to that in our friendship, my favorite story from that conference when it comes to who knew who. I didn't know anyone. I don't know who's a big deal and who's not. And I wasn't into like much Green Brothers stuff at that point, although they were like massive. But I had figured out who John Green was. And John Green was already a really big deal then.

Not as big as he is now because of all the movies and stuff like that. So, I mean, you know, he's like a big megastar now. But he was like a really big deal already then in YouTube land. And my favourite thing was I was at reception and John Green walked in and just sort of loitered in reception and no one there knew who he was. And I walked up to him and said, oh, hi, I'm Brady. And I think he may have known, you know, hi Brady. And he probably had looked up who I was and knew that I made chemistry videos and stuff. And he was like, how are you? And we're having a little chat. And then some other people at the conference came up to us. And for whatever reason, they were very familiar with me and my work and had no idea who John

was. And I know that's really uncommon, but that was just what happened. And they were like, oh, Brady, it's so great to meet you. And they were like, oh, I'm even like a little bit starstruck. I've been watching your stuff for oh brady it's so great to meet you and they were like oh i'm even like a little bit starstruck i've been watching your stuff for so long and it's really nice to meet you and i'm like oh that's you know thank you it's really nice and then they they turned to john and like just put their hand out and said you know hi i'm sandy who are you and he was like i'm john i'm john green and they're like oh it's nice to meet you and and then which i find really funny because, you know,

John's such a big deal. But the best bit was then we all got on the bus and I was like, we were all sitting together. And these people who still didn't know who he was, we were all talking about what we were doing next. And a whole bunch of people were going from this conference onto VidCon, which was being held like the next week in California. Oh, yeah.

I forgot about that. And they turned, they'd sort of turned, they were asking, they said to me, are you going to VidCon after this? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I am. And then they turned to John and said, are you going to VidCon? And that must have put John in the most awkward position. Yes. And he sort of, I don't think he knew how to answer it.

And he said, he just sort of, he was a total gentleman, but I just think he kind of froze I don't think he knew how to answer it. And he said, he was a total gentleman, but I just think he kind of froze about what to say. So he just kind of went, yeah, yeah, I am. Actually, I own VidCon. Right. And I gave him such a hard time about that. And so for the rest of the conference, I was always, hi, I'm John Green. Yes, I own VidCon.

The minute it came out of his mouth, he was like, oh, no, that just did not come out how it was supposed to come out. I gave him a razzing the rest of the conference about that. That's your specialty, Brady. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, that was funny, no one knowing who anyone else was. Anyway, so that was kind of, I don't think I was humble bragging then. I'm trying to figure out if I was brag humbling.

You were just telling a story. That's all you were doing. You were just telling a story. There's no humble bragging-ness in it or anything. It was just a story. That's all. So anyway, for people who asked how the podcast started, which we have discussed before, but we sort of,

we didn't become bosom friends as a result of that, but we started seeing each other at various conferences. And also because you and I are the two guys who lived in the UK, we would occasionally see each other in London if I was coming to London for the day. I would sometimes contact you and we'd just go for a drink or something. Yeah, very occasionally though, because I think we originally saw each other more in San Francisco. There were two YouTube education conferences that happened in the subsequent years. And that's what I mean. I feel like if we hadn't met at that first conference, we wouldn't have been as friendly at those subsequent conferences. And I think that that helped things along.

Like, oh, I know this person from this other thing. And you feel closer than you would have if you were just meeting them for the first time yeah it was a bit like the people that went to the waterloo thing were almost like a little subset of that that had that extra history wasn't it yes exactly that's exactly right you have a bit of an extra history and yeah so then we we met occasionally in london but not very not very. So, what's your perspective on how the podcast started? Well, I didn't, I know our podcast is, but I was not a podcast listener. And I didn't know that you were particularly into podcasts because it was not something we

would ever talk about. So, I didn't know you were actually a bit of a podcast fan and a big devourer of podcasts. It's just not something I knew about you. But I was making a video for Numberphile at one point, and it was all about the different perspectives that Americans have on numbers and sort of the way numbers are said and the way we deal with numbers in everyday life. And I'd interviewed an American woman about it, but I felt like the video wasn't quite strong enough and I wanted to sort of juice the video up a bit. And I knew that you, I think I had talked about this sort of thing with you before and I knew it was a sort of topic that would be of interest to you. So, I asked you if I could do a little interview with you. And I had interviewed you before for other videos, sort of, you know, with your face obscured and stuff. Yeah. Just as, you know, as sort of meta type things that YouTubers do together.

So I said to you, could I interview you just over Skype or on the phone or something, or I'll come to you in London and I won't show your face or anything and just talk to me about it and then I'd have you animated. So there'd be like a little animated grey. So you would be like the second interviewee on the topic. And I thought this was going to be quite a hard sell because, you know, you're always pretty cautious and reluctant to do new things. And you were like really up for it, like straight away.

You were like, yeah, I'll totally do it. And I was like, I think I was probably saying, do you want me to come to London for it or something? And you were like, no, no, I'm going to record it at this end and I'm going to record it on my computer while we do the Skype call. And you were like really proactive with all the ideas of how you do it. Like you were unusually agreeable for you. Yeah. Suspicious in retrospect. Oh, well, I wasn't, yeah, I wasn't suspicious, but I was surprised. So, like, you know,

I phoned you up on Skype and I asked you the questions I wanted to ask you and you chatted about them in your usual way. And it made for a really nice video. I think the video has actually may have got to a million views now. So, you know, it made for a really nice watchable video, you know, mainly thanks to you. And you did that. And then I don't remember how you approached me after that. You didn't mention a podcast at the time then at all. But subsequent to that, at some point, you brought up the idea of doing a podcast. And I sort of said to you, I'm always up for doing anything new. And, you know, I enjoy doing things with you. So I'm sure I was agreeable from the start.

But I did say I don't listen to podcasts very much. So you gave me a couple of podcasts to listen to. You gave me probably a list of five or six. But I do remember there were two you said in particular I should listen to. You gave me probably a list of five or six, but I do remember there were two you said in particular I should listen to. And the thing that's funny about that is the two you suggested I listened to, I remember, were the Accidental Tech Podcast with Marco Arment and John Siracusa and Casey Liss, which is just guys talking about technology, and the talk show with John Gruber, which is, again, it's another Apple-y one. This reflects that you're quite into Apple-y stuff.

You suggested listening to that as well. And I listened to a few episodes of those and I quite liked them. And the reason I find that's quite funny is that now at our 50th episode, the last two days I actually spent visiting both Marco Arment from ATP and John Gruber from the talk show. So it's kind of like really fitting that just as we're doing our 50th, I've actually spent some time like in person with two of those people that I listened to around the start to kind of get an idea of what a podcast is and how it can work and things like that. So I listened to a few of them and we talked more and the rest is history, isn't it? I just pulled up, because I wanted to check the dates, I pulled up the video that we did. And the video that you have renamed now, British Numbers Confuse Americans, a number file,

it's at one and a half million views. Oh, right. And that was July 25th, 2013. Right. And then the first episode of Hello Internet went up on January 31st, 2014. So about half a year later, roughly speaking. And yes, as listeners may have picked up in life. And I thought, oh, maybe a podcast is something that I could do. But it's a thing that you just can't do it alone. Like it, the kind of thing that I thought maybe I could do, it requires someone else to work with it. Like it's a team effort. It can't be a solo thing. And so it had always been in the back of my mind. And yes, in the beginning of 2013, when I had been doing YouTube for a little while,

I was much more seriously thinking about, okay, I do need another side project here. I want to have something else to work on in the afternoons when I'm not very productive at YouTube work. And so I was getting more serious about the podcast. And I was trying to think about who would make a good host. And essentially, that was a list of one person, which was you. I don't know why. But it just seemed very natural to me that you would be the person that I would try to do this with, even though I couldn't clearly think of any reasons, except for, you are a very good interviewer. And I am not very good at talking. So it seems like

if I'm going to work with someone, I have to have someone who can help the conversation go along. And the listeners don't know, but like I have to edit myself to make myself sound way less awkward when the show goes up versus when we record it. I have to give you a lot of credit, Brady. Like you do a lot of heavy lifting of keeping the show going. And I really do appreciate that. That is very kind of you, but it's also a gross exaggeration. And I will say and hope that Gray doesn't edit out that he doesn't edit himself out in that way. And he actually does. What you hear in the final show is quite a quite accurate depiction of our conversations. I make it much less

awkward the thing you are bad at is asking me questions yeah but you're getting better at that too it's awful it's all i really do i like i we've talked about it in private i try so hard to get better at this but i am just so bad at it i just this has never been a skill of mine but yeah so that's why when you asked about me doing this video, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to test a podcast with the exact person that I thought a podcast would work great for.

And so that's why I was like, oh yeah, let's do this. No, no, no, I don't want to do it in person. I explicitly don't want to do it in person. We're going to do it over Skype. And then over the next few months, yeah, we started talking more seriously about doing it and recording the few episodes in advance. And then whatever it was, half a year later, it finally went up live. And so that's the full story of how this show came to be. that we've been asked by a few people is, would you rather fight 100 Jamaican rice rat-sized

reunion swamp hens or one reunion swamp hen-sized Jamaican rice rat? The thing is, more than one person asked that question. Yeah. And some people got it wrong as well. Some people were like, would you rather fight 100 reunion swamp hen-sized Jamaican rice rats or one Jamaican rice rat-sized reunion swamp hen?

I mean, that's a no-brainer, obviously. But what are your thoughts on that? A hundred rice rat-sized swamp hens or one swamp hen-sized rice rat? Maybe one rice hen. I'd fight one rice hen is what I would do. Yeah, this is not playing to your strengths of getting these mixed up, is it? I swear. As soon as you finished that sentence, I forgot which way around it went. And when you said, oh, some people got it wrong the other way. I was like, how was

that different from the first one? I think these creatures must be roughly the same size. I mean, we're not talking about a horse-sized duck or a duck-sized horse here. No, it's not that extreme, but they're not that similar sized. I mean, a rat, a swamp hen is a big bird. I mean, but how big? Big like a turkey or big like a duck? Big like a turkey. It's like a turkey?

Yeah, bigger than a turkey, I'd say, but smaller than what you would call an emu, and I would call an emu. Emu? Don't start me on your pronunciation of emu. It's an emu. It's not an emu emu don't start me on your pronunciation of emu it's an emu it's not an emu okay so the question is it's a rat the size of a turkey or a hundred turkeys the size of a rat no yeah yeah a turkey's relatively big i think a rat a rat the size of a turkey sounds a little intimidating yeah it does doesn't it a bunch of turkeys the size of a rat the size of a turkey sounds a little intimidating yeah it does doesn't it a bunch of turkeys the size of a rat

but they got those beaks they got beaks and there's a hundred of them I think this is not an easy question I think it's I think it's maybe worthy of further consideration I don't think it's the sort of question you can you can just rush into it's like voting in the Hello Internet flag referendum.

This needs consideration. Because killing a hundred of anything is a lot. Yeah. And they would have their little beaks. Yeah. I think if I have to pick, I think I would fight a rat the size of a turkey rather than a hundred turkeys that are rat-sized. Hmm. of a turkey rather than a hundred turkeys that are rat sized but i think there's a bigger downside though with the rat the size of a turkey like i think that thing could actually kill you

yeah whereas you can just kick away little things i always like to think just like keeps keep kicking them and yeah but but like but a hundred of anything is a lot like if a hundred toddlers rushed you you can kick them all away. Like no matter how small and useless they are, you can't kick them all away. Well, I'm not going to discuss if I would kick a hundred toddlers. If they're attacking. That's all I'm saying. Okay.

Yeah. Anyway, maybe we need to discuss that further. That's a topic for another show. I think the Reddit should discuss this. I think the Reddit should have a big conversation about the strategic advantages and disadvantages of both. You go next. What do you like?

Someone asked about our Myers-Briggs personality types. Do you know about Myers-Briggs, Brady? Yeah, I kind of do. I think my mum got into them at some stage when I was young and stuff. Do you have any idea what your Myers-Briggs personality type would be? Are these the ones that are like called like JNTs and all that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing.

I don't know. I did it when I was like a boy, which would mean nothing. But, you know, when my mum was into all that sort of stuff, I think she got me to take one. I'm like, what are you reading, mum? She said, oh, take this test. Yeah. And I don't remember what I was then.

And so, obviously, I don't know what I am now. Yeah. I can, I mean, there is almost certainly not a teenager on the face of the earth who hasn't at some point done the Myers-Briggs personality type tests that exist of various qualities around the internet. My feeling on Myers-Briggs personality types is that this is astrology for smart people. Like this is just like, it's the same kind of thing that there are these broad categories that everybody just can read something into. And I mean, astrology is just obviously bunk and lots of people still get sucked into it. But there are plenty of people who are like, oh yes, I'm totally into Myers-Briggs.

But astrology, oh, no, I would never get into that. But it's like, you know what, dude, this is the same thing. That's what this Myers-Briggs stuff strikes me as. Just broad descriptions that everybody is going to match up with. So that is my verdict on Myers-Briggs. So another thing that we've been asked about a lot over the last 50 episodes, but we were asked a lot of it especially for this anniversary episode, is about the issue of guests on the podcast.

Yeah. That comes up a lot. People are like, oh, you should have – because obviously, you know, we've got lots of interesting friends who we talk about all the time, obviously. Right. Or just guests in general. It's not something we've ever done. It's not something we really discuss done it's not something we really

discuss so we at the very start we discussed that it's that it was an option you know there's no there's no ban on it we've never said we wouldn't do it but it's something we've we've never done we don't really talk about it much either though like do you any thoughts on that you wish to share with the group are we having like an official policy about no no no i mean i think i think the most important thing about this is we've got a policy on nothing because right we're guys who like changing our minds but the thing i think about it is be careful what you wish for and i've never quite understood why people want it so much because my attitude to that is like, I really like ice cream. And I also really like ketchup. But I don't like ketchup on my ice cream.

So, like, and I think there's an automatic, I think there's almost become like a culture of assuming if you like one thing and you like another thing, the two should be mixed. And I don't see that at all. Like, I listen to podcasts that don't have guests. And I'd be really disappointed if I tuned in one day and there was someone new on it because I've kind of bought into one thing. So, I don't know what it would be like if we had a guest and we may find out one day when you at least expect it. But I'm surprised. I'm surprised that people think it's such a big deal. And I think we've partly created the culture in the youtube world especially by doing like collabs all the time yeah it's almost like there's almost like

this expectation that like oh if i like this person and i like this person and they do a video together that's the most awesome thing you could ever imagine right but like i i don't completely buy into that i like i quite i think it's perfectly nice to have. And I would also say among, among a couple of the people that people say, oh, you should always get them on the show. Some of those people who I've spoken to have always said to me, don't ever get me on your show. Like that would, you shouldn't do that. That would be crazy. So anyway, what, do you have anything to add to that? I think it was asked enough times to be worth answering. Oh, yeah. It's always asked. And it kind of ties into another question that I saw some people ask,

which is, what do we think of the show now versus when it started? Because if you go back and you listen to those first few episodes, they're very different from what the show is now. They were much shorter and they were much more focused on a topic. And now the show is a very different thing. And my feeling was always that those first few shows were never what I thought the show would eventually be. I thought that if it was going to succeed,

what it is now is exactly what it would be. I thought that if it was going to succeed, what it is now is exactly what it would be. It would be the two of us being able to talk about whatever, hopefully in interesting ways that people want to listen to. So where we are now is what I imagined that the show would be from the start. And I viewed those first few episodes as, well, we have to do something or we have to start with topics. You know, it has to be cut in this particular way, but these are almost aberrations, these first few episodes. Yeah. You can't do follow-up in shows where there's nothing to follow up yet. Right. It's just that the whole structure of it doesn't exist. And as the show goes on, you build up this whole world of in-jokes and past references.

And that to me, as a person who listens to a lot of podcasts, is one of the very special things about what a podcast can deliver. This conversation that continually flows and continually builds on itself. And my view on guests is, like you, I'm not ever going to rule out something. I'm not going to say, oh, no, we'll never do this, ever. But I just think that this show is so much the two of us. The changing who is on the show or adding people, even if those people are great, it just fundamentally changes this feeling from the listener's perspective of they are a friend sitting at a table listening to a conversation between friends and they just happen to be

a mute partner in this. Like that is the feeling that I often have when I listen to podcasts is like, oh, okay, I know these people. And I'm listening to them talk about interesting things. And I just happen to not be contributing in the conversation. And my own experience as a podcast listener is when shows change, like sometimes shows will bring on like a guest every once in a while, or they'll change hosts or whatever. I just never like that. I always react negatively to that, even if they're bringing on someone who's interesting or who I like in a different context. So I would be very hesitant to bring on a guest because I just think that that changes what the show is. And it's very different from

what the show is providing for people if it provides anything at all. So, that's kind of my feeling on it. I saw a comment. I'm sorry, I can't remember where it was. It was probably Reddit or something. But someone said something that did tickle me. They were trying to describe to a friend what Hello Internet was. And the way they described to their friend was, it's two guys on a podcast talking for a couple of hours about what they spoke about on the last podcast. I think that sums it up. That is beautiful, Brady.

That is exactly what we do here.