Hello Internet - H.I. #61: Tesla and King Tut

Episode Date: April 20, 2016

Grey and Brady discuss: the roofs of their houses, the mighty black stump, pointing at things, vandalizing wikipedia, the Tesla model 3, King Tut corner, The Cricket World Cup, the word brave, and spec work and working for free. Brought to You By Hover: The best way to buy and manage domain names. Use coupon code 'BLACKSTUMP' for 10% off Squarespace: Use code HELLO for 10% off your website Harry's: Quality Men's Shaving Products. Promocode HI for $5 off your first purchase Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes Discuss this episode on the reddit The Mighty Black Stump T-shirt HI ⌘X on YouTube: Listener Photos Pointing at Things Tesla Model 3 Model 3 Dashboard The Holden Callous/Calais King Tut's Tomb May Have Hidden Spaces Luxor Brady's Egypt photos Cricketeer hits four sixes The Creativity Debate Say no to spec

The day after our last podcast went up, when I went into Pret, the regular guy gave me the coffees with hot stoppers, didn't say a word. And now I'm super paranoid that he listens to the podcast and that there were thumbs in my coffee. I will start with a very small confession. At risk of eroding my hard as nails status. No, I'm sure nothing you have ever said on the podcast or ever will say could possibly erode your hard as nails status, Brady. Well, I guess I just want the people out there to know that even someone like me is human and has my moments of weakness.

Share with the group, Brady. My house at the moment has been having some work done on the roof. And there's all this scaffolding up the back of the house. And my house is very skinny, but very tall. So it's very, very tall. You're looking at, you know, almost five stories worth of scaffolding. Yeah, it's forever walking from your office down to the kitchen. I've never seen the roof of the house. And I thought, well, I should go up there and have a look while the scaffolding's there. So, the other day while the workmen were here,

they were just finishing up. I said, can I go up and have a look? Like he was about to leave, but I was basically saying on my own, am I allowed to just go up the scaffolding? And he said, yeah, yeah, you can go up. But he did warn me that first ladder is quite tricky because it's not quite long enough. It's quite, he said, he described it as quite hairy getting off the first ladder onto the first level of kind of platform. And then you've got to go up another ladder up to another platform. So, you're climbing up the scaffolding outside of your house, just from the garden up the wall.

That's what you're doing? Yeah. So, he left. So, I thought I'm going to have a go. I'm going to do it. And I got to the top of the first ladder, which covers about two or three stories, to the point where you have to kind of manoeuvre yourself off the ladder onto the first platform. And I couldn't do it. I just lost my nerve. And I sat there and I'm thinking, you know,

I was thinking, well, what would Edmund Hillary do? You know, he wouldn't stop. No, he wouldn't, Brady. But then I thought, if I fall off here you know, I was thinking, what would Edmund Hillary do? You know, he wouldn't stop. No, he wouldn't, Brady. But then I thought if I fall off here and like I'd probably die, it would just be such a lame story that I died falling off scaffolding just so I could go and look at the roof. Like, so I chickened out and then like an hour later, I went and did it again, climbed to the top and then thought, no, I can't, I can't do it. And the scaffolding's still there now. And actually, from my office, which is at the top of my house, you can actually open my window. And if you manoeuvre yourself cleverly, I could potentially shimmy out of my window onto one of the platforms and then see onto the roof. I'm looking at it right now. It's like it's within my grasp.

And I spent a good five minutes half in, half out of the window today thinking, do I do it? Do I do it? Do I make this little shimmy jump? And again, at the very last minute, I lost my nerve and I still haven't seen the roof. And the scaffolding is coming down in the next few days. So, I'm running out of time to be a hero. I don't know if you're aware of this, Brady, but you know, you can see your roof on Google Earth. I knew that was coming do you want

the same it's not okay all right you want to see it in person right you want to you want to like edmund hillary yeah to the top plant a tiny flag and touch it with you with your own with your own gray not a tiny flag i think you know perfectly well what flag I'd take up onto the roof. Yes, yes, that would be glorious. I think you have to risk your life now to get to the top of your roof to plant the flag for all to see for miles around in every direction. It would be glorious. I don't know what's going to happen, but it's this kind of, my failure is looking me in the face constantly through the window. The scaffolding's just saying, come on, workmen do this every day. You can't do it. You coward. I'm not entirely comfortable with heights.

Uh-huh. You might die from the heights. That's why. Yeah. I can see that would be quite nerve wracking. However, Brady, I will just say that it's funny that you're mentioning this now because quite recently I saw the roof of my building because I climbed upon it. Wow. Yes. Now, this is a long story that I will make very short, but falls under the category of a thing that you might like, which I think of as technology bites gray in the ass. So I had recently gone on this epic, epic quest to get a smart lock for my front door. So this is the door into my flat, not the door into my building. I wanted one of these things so that I could just, you know, they have like these proximity sensors.

So when your phone gets nearby, like it just automatically unlocks the door for you, or you can have temporary access codes. Like I decided that this was a thing that I wanted. Why are you laughing? Why are you laughing? Do you not think? Because I mean, how inconvenient are keys?

You're going to shave seconds off a month. And how much time do you think you've spent trying to find it already and stuff if you're just looking at the pure seconds of my life saved i'm gonna say maybe three or four full afternoons spent researching and trying to find the appropriate smart lock yeah that doesn't that doesn't look good when you say it like that when you put it on a on a spreadsheet and compare just those two numbers. Sometimes you just want a nice toy. It's the mental burden of it, you know, and I'm way more likely to forget my keys than I am to forget my phone. Like the chance of me forgetting my phone is zero. And I have definitely forgotten

my keys on occasion like an idiot. Yeah, but your phone and all that technology is much more likely to stop working than a key in a lock. Well, this is where we're going with this story. Continue. Continue as I continue to look out the window at the scaffolding. Anyway, it turns out that doors in the UK are built differently than doors just about everywhere else in the world.

So like smart lock companies, there just are very few options in the UK. So I ended up getting one, which seemed to be the only one that you could possibly get. And I installed it on the door and it was working. And I was like, oh, wow, isn't this great? Like, I'm super pleased with this. But lo and behold, something like a week later, it just suddenly stopped working while I was outside the door. I have a real problem now because last time when I had an old fashioned lock and I had accidentally locked myself out of the house, I, like you would do, called a locksmith to get myself back in. And that is one of those moments when you see how just like, oh, your lock, it's not preventing any actual burglars.

Like it takes the locksmith two seconds to break into your house. But my smart lock has no lock on it. Right. There's there's no there's no keyhole to pick. It's just a faceplate. Right. With with numbers on it. There's nothing nothing to open. So all the locksmiths were like, yeah, It's just a faceplate, right, with numbers on it. There's nothing to open. So all the locksmiths were like, yeah, you're just out of luck, buddy. You're going to have to breach that door.

So I'm standing outside of my apartment, sad and thinking, well, this is my own dumb fault. And as I was trying to think about, like, am I going to break down this door? Thinking about if I can actually push open the door with my own bare hands. I then remembered that there was this terrifying, scary ladder, which I could climb that goes maybe 15 feet over this open stairwell in our building, which will then give me access to the roof. And then through the roof, I could try to shimmy down to one of my own windows, which I was pretty sure I had left unlocked and I could break into my own apartment. That is what I ended up doing. Climbing out onto the roof of my building and shimmying down the roof toward my own window to break into

my own flat. All because of my dumb smart lock that I bought myself. But so I have seen the roof of my building. I think this makes me harder than nails than you. You know, Gray, remember when I told you that story about being locked out of my hotel room in the Maldives and swimming across that channel to get to the other room? And the first thing you did was like belittle me and tell me it was a nothing story and I wasn't that great. I could do that to you right now, but I'm not going to do that. I think you're a bloody legend for doing that. You are the Indiana Jones of locks. Good for you. I'm proud of you. I will send you a photograph of this terrifying ladder that I had

to climb to get to the roof of my building. But I will acknowledge that this might be closer on the end of the spectrum to your story about getting into your own hotel room. But I'm not going to lie. I felt like Batman for breaking into my own flat. Like, this is amazing. I am the coolest person in the world right now. I agree. I agree.

I think you're a total legend. You've inspired me. I'm going to get up the scaffolding tomorrow. I'm just going to think, what would CGP Grey do? That's right. Edmund Hillary, Edmund who? Wow, you've really downtrodden me now. I was like confiding in you about a deficiency and you've just said, not only are you deficient, I'm awesome.

I've been up to some mischief. Yeah, you've always been up to mischief. Mischief is your specialty. It is. It is. You love causing trouble. You love wind-ups. Yeah. You love giggling while you're doing these things.

I do. I do giggle. Just often just to myself. I know. I know. Yeah. So, among this week's wind-ups have been the release of our Black Stump t-shirt. I like your use of our there.

Our Black Stump t-shirt. There is a Mighty Black Stump t-shirt now available in the ilk of our official Rice Rat and Swamp Hen t-shirts. But because I didn't get your approval for this one in any way whatsoever i i've even put on the t-shirt that it's unofficial so so until further notice the the mighty black stump the grenfell center in adelaide is the unofficial toll building of hello internet and you can get a t-shirt saying so as well now i can't even remember why i did it it was because of it was something happened that made me do it. This is exactly it. You don't even know why you do anything, Brady. Who knows how unofficial t-shirts get made? They just appear, right? Like Brady just

somehow wills them into existence. Is this another one of the Teespring ones? Like, is there a time limit on this? Yeah, there's a time limit, but because this pod, because this podcast probably won't go out for about eight weeks, I'll renew it so people who've heard the podcast can at least go and have a look at it. Yeah, that's my production cycle is eight weeks. That's about right. Yeah. So, have you bought one? No, I haven't bought one of these t-shirts.

I have no idea. Why would I buy your unofficial, crazy, tall building? Like, I disagree with this shirt on so many levels. Yeah. Tall building. Like, tall building, first of all, should be in quotes. No, well, I was going to have it as the unofficial skyscraper of Hello Internet. But then I went on to Wikipedia to look up what a skyscraper was.

And although the Black Stump does appear on some skyscraper websites, it cannot be classified as a skyscraper. It's not a skyscraper. We all know which building is the actual skyscraper of the podcast, right? There's only one. The thing about- That's the Burj Khalifa. That's Burj Khalifa people. No, it's not Burj Khalifa.

It is the Shard. I don't think you realize how Mickey Mouse the Shard is because you've been living in low London for too long I am perfectly well aware of the actual height of the Shard my point is always that it is hugely impressive precisely because there is not anything nearby right I've said I've said it before I've been in the Shard I've been in the Empire State Building I've been in other tall buildings the Shard feels the tallest even though I know it is not remotely as tall. Oh, dude, you haven't been in a tall building till you've been in the Burj Khalifa. That's true.

I'm not traveling that far east anymore. I think the Shard, nah. We'll talk about the Shard another day. We can argue about skyscrapers, but what we won't be arguing about is whether or not the tiny black stump is a skyscraper. I will totally on record here say that I was wrong about something because on our YouTube channel, where we sometimes release little bits of the podcast that have been cut, I put up a conversation between you and me where we were arguing about in a listener photo that someone had sent in whether or not the stump was visible in the background. And I will concede some people were doing some like CSI-ing,

aligning of photographs later after that thing went live. And when we put some images side by side, I will concede that when you claimed those four black pixels that you said were the mighty black stump, I was wrong. You were right. It was barely visible on the horizon, right? So like, I will totally grant that. However, what I would really like to see is, will somebody please take the image that Brady has chosen for this T-shirt of the mighty black stump and put it next to an actual image of the mighty black stump? Because the actual skyscraper is a stump, right? That's why we call it that way. It is barely not a cube.

Meanwhile, Brady, the way you have drawn it on this t-shirt, it is a huge building. This is what the Black Stump dreams that it is, but it is not. That's why I look at this shirt like nothing about this shirt is accurate at all. It's what the Black Stump was to me as a boy. Like, it's like, oh, I see it's got a Wikipedia page now. Thank you, hello internet people who clearly created this page. Does it really? It's 103 metres. Wow. 26 floors. I just searched on Wikipedia for mighty black stump. I'm not

pulling up anything. Is it under a different name it's under grenfell center oh that's not as that's not as fun but it's got alternative names the black stump mighty black stump is a grayism there was never a mighty in the name of the black stump okay it does have a wikipedia page i think that you know someone on wikipedia should make mighty black stump redirect to grenfell Center. You know, no one will notice. You can totally slip that in, Wikipedia editors. But it is also skyscraperpage.com. So take a look at this t-shirt, people, and you decide whether or not there's any reality represented on this shirt. Okay.

I don't think you've done a good job selling it. So I think we'll have to do with a rather flat sales, but that's all right. I've ordered one. We all know that's precisely the reason this shirt came into existence. Brady wanted a Mighty Black Stump t-shirt and Brady will now have a Mighty Black Stump t-shirt. I'll tell you what, any Tims who get a Mighty Black Stump t-shirt and take a photograph of themselves wearing it in front of other skyscrapers are in for some Hello Internet love. I can tell you that right now. Oh, are they? Are they in for a Hello Internet love?

Well, at least from one half of Hello Internet. I think the other half might ignore them completely. I don't know what you're talking about. Long live the mighty Blackstump. Another thing which you give me a hard time about. I give you a hard time about nothing. Well, one of my personality quirks that you have pointed out is my penchant for pointing in photos, pointing at the thing next to me or the thing behind me. So I took a photograph the other day. I was in the National Portrait Gallery, which, by the way, how good is that place? I'd never been there before.

Have you been to the National Portrait Gallery? Yeah, it's been a while since I've been there, but I used to go there much more frequently. And yeah, it's a pretty cool building. Yeah, I just love the portraits. I could have spent hours in there. There's a pretty cool building. Yeah. I just love the portraits. I could have spent hours in there. There's a great place. There's a few great places in there to work, which I used to work a long time ago.

But there's like a little cafe area up on the second floor. It's a really interesting building. I think it's laid out well. I like it. And I guess there's portraits in there as well. I loved it. I loved all the portraits. And one of them was of General Montgomery.

And in his painting, he's pointing at a map behind himself. And so I took a picture of me in front of that, pointing at the picture of Montgomery pointing. I actually took it for you. But then I also put it on Twitter or Instagram or whatever the social media of the day was someone else sort of appreciated the metaness of this so they took a picture of themselves pointing at the picture of me pointing at montgomery and then and then someone saw that

and took a picture of themselves pointing at this guy pointing at the and it's kind of gotten a little bit out of hand now and i think at last, we're sort of at 20 to 21 levels deep of Inception, where everyone's taking a picture of the picture before with themselves pointing at it. So it started off as a fun picture for you, Gray, but it's turned into one of these lovely little internet things. So thank you, Tims, for humoring me. This is an absolutely delightful internet thing. Yes, I like that we have taken what is a Bradyism

and turned it into a chain of people. And I've been seeing some of this on Twitter. And I like the variations that some people have done on the theme. Like I saw one person who had the picture up on their Apple Watch. And so then it's them pointing at the picture on their Apple Watch. Like people always do incredibly clever things with this.

And I saw that you are trying to track this on your website. Like you put a list of a whole bunch of the ones that you could find. Like you were trying to track the longest chain. But this to me seems like a super fun tim community thing and also like this is the kind of thing where the chain has obviously broken off like it very quickly ends up branching because people are working in parallel to each other like i almost i almost want to see like someone map it out like wikipedia style of a link from from each picture to each picture wow i have super enjoyed this and i feel like this is a thing that everybody can get in on taking a picture of themselves with the picture that is the chain

heading before them like what is the longest chain of tims that we can build i i see no reason that we can't get a thing that's a thousand tims long there's there's no reason that we can't it's just a question of can it be tracked? The completionist in my head is going to want to track that on my blog though, and I can't devote any more time to it. Well, you know, that's your problem. That's not my problem. I want a chain a thousand Tims strong. That's what I'm looking for. It's totally doable, right? Like there's, everyone can get in on this. It sounds like a Bible verse or something, doesn't it?

A chain a thousand Tim Strong. Or like a, yeah. It can never be broken. A chain a thousand Tim Strong can never be broken. So saith CGP Grey. Exactly. I like it. I like it.

I love this internet stuff. I love that people think to do it. I love that people then take their own fun versions of it. Like, this to me is just such a pure example of internet delight. Like, the internet is always so fun, whether it's like screwing with Wikipedia or making chains of Tims. Like, there's always something that the internet is up to. Photoshop battles. I just love this kind of stuff so much. The problem is, though, it escalates so much and everyone wants to be the person who does the thing that's different to everyone else. So, like, for example, one person pointing to the picture on their Apple Watch, that's quite cool because it's like a different

one in the chain. But that's only cool if everyone else has done it pretty normal. But if every single person is trying to outdo the person before, it's suddenly like, I don't know, the exceptional loses its specialness and it just becomes a great big mess. Yeah, of course. Of course things turn into a gigantic mess. Like, what do you expect? Oh, it's going to end in a nice, orderly, tidy fashion? No, of course not, right? It's going to end in a huge mess. That fashion no of course not right it's gonna end in a huge mess that's just the way these things are supposed to go yeah there's gonna be people

taking pictures of themselves riding dinosaurs with pictures in the background like you never know where it's gonna end well there is now yeah you know someone someone's gonna be in the mighty black stump taking a picture of themselves someone's gonna be in dullest like you know we'll hit we'll hit all the memes we'll hit all the things all the permutations link in the show notes for how to continue this chain people i'm just trying to keep a mental note in my head at which wikipedia pages are going to be locked as a result of this podcast today i don't i don't know what you i don't know what you're talking about there's always a few victims look look but i know okay like i do okay i do want to address a slight thing because because there's this thing that happens which is yeah sometimes sometimes i will call out for

wikipedia modifications to be made right and and like i throw my hands up in the air and it's like i don't know who or what is going to do these things like i'm not responsible i'm just tossing ideas out there like i know i have i have no responsibility for what happens i do have to say though actually i just remember i have to say i i saw shocking shocking wikipedia vandalization the other day. On my own page, nonetheless, someone, some traitor replaced the mighty nail and gear flag on my Wikipedia page as the official flag of the Hello Internet podcast with the rebel scum flaggy flag. Oh, my goodness. That's like, no, Joe, that's a capital offense in some countries. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it.

Looking at my own Wikipedia page and I scroll, scroll. Like, what the, what is this? That's not the official flag. But there's Wikipedia with this lie about it being the official flag on there i could i could not believe it i couldn't believe it is the most shocking vandalism i've ever seen on wikipedia say what you will about my private life or parentage but don't change the flag yeah my god man like is nothing sacred yeah it's the institution of the hello internet podcast that's that was that was democratically installed.

Yeah. As a side note here, I still don't understand why Hello Internet doesn't have its own page, why it's just on my page. Like, if I'm going to call for Wikipedia vandalization, like, can we get its own page instead of it just being on my page? But anyway, whenever I do call for changes in Wikipedia, like we did last time with Bhutan, where I made a reference about how the disambiguation page did not refer to Bhutan in the way that you thought it did. And then there was a hilarious edit war that lasted like 40 edits before some moderator came along and locked it down and said, oh, no one can change his page anymore because someone's screwing with it. Without a doubt, every time I might cause one of these things to occur, I do get feedback from people who are like, oh, you shouldn't encourage Wikipedia vandalization. Like, that's not good. Wikipedia is this cultural institution. It should always be protected. And I feel like I agree with that. Like, I agree with that in principle. But I also think that if wikipedia can't protect itself from the most

minor and good-natured of vandalization if it can't handle like the tiniest amount of good-natured poking then it does not deserve to exist so i i feel like these these are just these are just tiny like almost like building up the immune system of Wikipedia. Like, look, here's just some germs. You have to be exposed to them and you have to be able to deal with this stuff rapidly and everything will sort itself out. Like I'm always impressed by how fast actually

some parent comes along and locks down the fun on a controversial Wikipedia page. I thought no one will ever notice that the disambiguation page is being screwed with by a bunch of Tims. But it was like so fast it got locked down. So Wikipedia has grown up. It can handle itself, people. I don't know, Greg.

I don't know what I feel about that. I guess I'm in the same boat as you. But when there's a big forest fire raging, you sometimes get troublemakers who go and light small fires somewhere else and divert resources, fire department resources, to put out some little fire. And it's like, hang on, guys, they're trying to put out a major fire here. Don't take them away from the job at hand. So are we sending important people that should be looking after important pages on Wikipedia and they're having to go and deal with whether or not Bhutan

should be called the Forbidden Kingdom. Seems like we seem like we're being part of the problem and not part of the solution. Of course we're part of the problem and not part of the solution. I don't think any part of calling for people, well, not directly, of course, just insinuating, but like for calling for people to screw with Wikipedia pages is remotely like, oh, I think I'm part of the solution. Hang on a second. Hang on a second.

A minute ago, you were talking about how we were building up the immunity of Wikipedia. And we were like, you were talking like we were, you know, doing them a service by helping them. And now you're like, oh, yeah. No, obviously, we're part of the problem in the same way that like germs are a part of the problem, right? I don't actually, like this is actually a thing that i just don't know i assume that there must be some kind of algorithms that alert people to no one has modified the bouton page in months and suddenly it's gotten 300 edits in an hour like i'm assuming that there must be some kind of algorithm that alerts moderators to something fishy is going on over here like i

have i have no idea how wikipedia works but there has to be automated tools in place to try to catch vandalism at this stage like i i'd be shocked if there if there isn't i'd be really curious to know but yeah i i think i think wikipedia it it has to stand up to this kind of stuff if it can't withstand if it can't withstand in jokes on the of stuff. If it can't withstand in jokes on the Hello Internet podcast, like it can't withstand anything. a domain for a fun little project I've been working on and it was so easy. Within seconds I'd found out what was available and grabbed the one I wanted. A few seconds later I had it diverted to another placeholder page. It was so simple and I think I'm so scarred by other domain registrars I actually thought I must have done something wrong but I hadn't. Everything was

working. Hover is that easy. So if you've got an idea, a project, something you might want to work on now or maybe something in the future, it's always smart to grab a good domain name and we recommend doing it with Hover. It's such a clean and simple site, even a caveman like me can use it. There are no scammy attempts to sell you extra stuff you don't want and things you should want, things you would expect like who is privacy, they're included in the price, no extras. They've got good volume discounts and also this useful valet service. So if you've got other domains with other registrars and you want to get them all under that one hover umbrella, they'll help you do it really easy because apparently that's pretty complicated if you try and do it yourself. Give them a look. We bet you'll

like it. And as a Hello Internet listener, you can get 10% off your purchase. That's 10% for everyone, not just first-time customers. In fact, I got the 10% off when I used it earlier today. To do that, you just need to use the checkout code BLACKSTUMP, all one word. So go to hover.com, and if my correct pronunciation is confusing some people, hover is spelled H-O-V-E-R.com, and then that checkout code BLACKSTUMP for 10% off, and to let Hover know you came from the podcast because what other podcast are you going to come from using a code like blackstump. As always our thanks

to Hover for their support of Hello Internet I do I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask you about the new Tesla because although you would never admit this and you hate me saying this I think you're a bit of a Tesla fanboy. Oh, yeah.

What makes you think that? It's just a little hunch I have. And so the release of this new, is it the Tesla 3? Is it this sort of? Yeah, they're calling it the Model 3. The Model 3. And this is kind of supposed to be the every man, every woman version of the car, presumably.

It's a bit more affordable. They seem to be doing it via some kind of glorified Kickstarter where you pay now and maybe get a car later. If this isn't a catastrophe waiting to happen, I don't know what is, but anyway. You have to have faith in Elon Musk here, right? That's the thing, Brady. You have to have faith.

Faith. I think it's going to be the rocket all over again. I think it's going to be grand and maybe one day good, but there might be a few bumpy landings first. What do you mean by the rocket all over again? What do you mean by that? Well, he's having problems with his rockets, isn't he? When they try and land on the ship, they keep falling over and blowing up. I have to admit, I haven't been following the SpaceX news, so I am unaware of that. He's had a few crash and burn moments.

But, you know, good on him. Good on him. What do you think of the Tesla Model 3? I will confess that, yes, indeed, I am quite interested in Tesla. That is something you have picked up on, which is a thing that I find fascinating because I am just not a car person. I do not care at all about cars. But the way I always describe Tesla to everybody in my life is that there's no car inside these cars. Like a Tesla, there's no car here. And all of the stuff that I don't like about cars, internal combustion engines, spark plugs and wires and liquids on the inside, like all of that stuff is just gone. And then once you remove all of that, suddenly things that I find interesting, like battery technology and essentially computers on wheels, like, oh, that's what this car is. And so I think it is super interesting. I think it's super interesting. I've been really following Tesla ever since they did that big battery announcement,

which I don't know, was that two years ago? That was really the first time it came across my radar that they were pushing into this industry of making batteries and things. And like, I find myself in this, in just this funny situation of like filled with desire to own a Tesla, even though I have no use for one in my life whatsoever. I normally never feel this way about things like wanting a thing that could serve absolutely no function in my life. But I would totally love to buy a Tesla and just like have it in front of my house. And I would just look at it and be like, wow, look at this Tesla that I own. I can't drive because I don't have a driver's license in the UK. And even if I did, I would have nowhere to drive to because everywhere I need to go,

I can walk to. But still look at this amazing Tesla in front of my house. It's mine and I own it. Like, that is totally what I would do. You'd have a gorgeous car that's not a car to go with your watch that's not a watch. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It is just so funny to be aware of that feeling within myself.

Wait, think it through, man. You have no use for this. It's like, yeah, but I totally want one. I get that. I get that. I imagine you do get that because you have lots of things. You must feel this way about all the things in your life. What about, how do you feel about the Model 3 versus the other ones that are the pro versions that are out there? Are they the pro versions? I don't know. I don't know

if they're the pro versions. I feel like the Model 3 is not as good. I feel like the Model 3 is like the 5C of the range. Oh, those are fighting words. I don't know. I could be wrong. I mean, I'm happy to be told I'm wrong, but it just feels like it's the one for everyone. Did you watch the actual announcement or have you just heard about it? No, I've just heard about it, really. You know, skim read a couple of articles i have to say the thing that i think is the absolute coolest and greatest about the model 3 is when they did the announcement

right and they showed off the model 3 at the at the very end of it. The thing that's really caught my eye was the dashboard of this car. Like, just like there's no car in the car, there's basically no dashboard in this car. Like, there is nothing like a traditional dashboard on the front. It's just flat. And there are only two things in there. There's the steering wheel, and there's this gigantic touchscreen, but there's none of like the knobs and dials and vents and like all of just the crap that's always at the front of a car that caught my eye right away. And I was like, I have never seen a more beautiful car interior than this one. Like, this is amazing. Great. You're not going to be surprised to hear I disagree with you a little bit.

How can you possibly disagree? Doesn't that look amazing? I'm looking at it and it looks okay. It doesn't look bad. But the problem is I really like car dashboards. I'll tell you a story, Gray. Why do you like? Okay.

You know I like to express myself through stories. Right. Okay, everybody. Time to take a seat. Time to take a seat. Gather around Papa Brady again while he tells you a story. This time about a car dashboard. Okay. When I was a wee lad, my neighbour and I used to get a lift to school every day with our friend and our friend's dad.

And our friend's dad was well off and had a really posh car. And he had a car which, at the time, we we called a holden holden being like a make a car like a ford okay a holden callous in later years i learned that c-a-l-a-i-s is actually pronounced calais and has a place in france so he actually had a holden calais but i wasn't i wasn't posh enough to know what that meant, and no other was my friend, so we just used to say, oh, our friend's got a Holden Calas, and we called it that for years. It had something I'd never seen before,

and that was an electronic dashboard. Not dials, actual digital numbers that showed the exact speed, you know, 32 kilometres per hour, And I was transfixed by this. And I would stare at it. And even the fuel gauge was electronic with, like, you know, little blue bars that showed how much fuel you had. And this was, other than Knight Rider, this was the first time I'd seen a dashboard that could do this.

And Knight Rider was pretty important to me. So, from that point on, i became obsessed with car dashboards and i used to get notebooks and design the dashboard of my dream car like with a with a with pen and like and i even remember i i invented a car called the zetron that had this amazing electronic dashboard that i that i spent hours and hours drawing and then i realized like oh i should probably design the rest of the car as well after i'd spent, like, five days on the dashboard. And I was really bad at drawing and didn't understand how cars work. So, I just, like, drew the side of a car and said the engine goes here.

Right, right. But I would spend forever on dashboards. So, like, car dashboards are very special to me and I really like them. Like, you know, like a mechanical watch. So making a car that doesn't have a dashboard, be it old-fashioned dials, which I've probably got more into now because of my sensibilities, or even electronic ones like Knight Rider, it feels a bit sad to me to think that you could have a car with no dashboard. I'm sorry your old ways are dying, but this new dashboard is so sexy.

Like, how can you be sad about this? It's like they didn't finish it. It's like, oh, we'll put the dashboard in later at the moment. But we haven't done that yet. But for now, we'll just have. Yeah, I guess. No, this is the thing. It's beautiful.

It's beautiful. Don't you want to be a bit James Dean or something? And that's probably a bad analogy saying he died in a car crash. But yeah, great, great. Why don't we talk about that next time i'm going on a flight don't you want to be jefferson airplane like no i don't don't you want to be a bit richie valence uh yeah all right we'll see we'll see i i do like teslas i've been in one and uh i think they're really cool and i do like that i'm still so envious of the fact that you've been in one. I have yet to actually be in a Tesla.

Well, we'll sort that out. We'll sort that out sometime. Yeah. I really like one of these days I'm going to take a ride in a Tesla. I am, I'm just dying for that day. I have a little theory that I want to put on the table about this Model 3 though, which is, so as we are recording, you know, it was just announced whatever it was last week, the week before, and it's not going to be available until next year,

right? Which, which means it's probably not going to be in people's hands for like 18 months at least. And so just like with the previous Tesla, the model S like that, that was sold to people. And then later in its life cycle, through a software update, Tesla introduced what they're calling the autopilot features. And autopilot is Tesla's semi-autonomous driving system. So it's the thing that allows the car to park itself. It's a bunch of auto braking stuff. And I think most interestingly, it is the, again, they call it like cruise control, I think for legal reasons, but it is the self-driving on the highway thing where the Tesla will stay in its own lane and it'll be able

to drive on the highway. I am willing to bet money that this Model 3 is designed to be a fully autonomous car and that that will come in a future software update from tesla like i just i would bet almost anything that that's the case that like just like with the model s where they over engineered it so they could introduce more features later i'm willing to bet almost anything that this model 3 is designed to be like a fully fully point-to-point autonomous car and that like they will they will introduce that in a later software update like once it is in people's hands i i would be shocked if that's not the case so i think we might actually be looking at the first consumer available, complete point to point self-driving car in the Model 3. But it's just a guess. It's just a guess, but I'm putting it out there. Cards on the table, Grae, if you put a deposit down. I don't have a parking space,

right? You have. You have. No, I haven't put down. down no i haven't put down a deposit but i have no parking space yeah but you're not going to get one for two years anyway i think you have i have not i i have not put down a deposit on this one i have not put down a deposit on it like honest to god what would i do i i i yeah i have no parking space to put it you already told us what you'd do you'd park it in the street and admire it all day long i don I have no parking space to put it. You already told us what you'd do. You'd park it in the street and admire it all day long. That's it. I don't have a parking space. There's no parking space for me to put it. You can sort that out in the next two years. Yeah, I guess maybe. I probably will move in the next two years. So I'll be sure to be looking for

a parking space for my Tesla as part of my next apartment move for my Tesla that will never go anywhere. You can park it at my place and come up here for weekends. I'm not leaving my Tesla at your house, that's for sure. You think I'm going to leave my precious Tesla at your house? No way, buddy. You'd put a little doggy basket on the inside. You'd have Audrey and Lulu sleeping in there.

That's what would happen to my poor Tesla. In a very typical greater Brady shift in news stories, we should move from the announcement of a new self-driving car, maybe by Elon Musk to the news that has been catching my eye in the last couple of weeks. And this is to do with a new discovery in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Oh my God. Wow. There's a new King Tut news.

How can there be, how can, okay. How can there be discoveries of things in his tomb? Wasn't his tomb open like a hundred years ago? Well, let's, let's, let's start from the beginning. Tomb of a guy from what? 5,000 years ago? 2,000 years ago? I don't even have any idea.

His tomb was discovered in 1922. So, yeah, getting towards- So, it's 100 years ago. Yeah. So, as a boy, Gray- Of course, this is how all the Brady stories start, right? Okay, yeah, as a boy. I'm asking about you as a boy.

Oh. You as a boy. Were you captured by the spell of Egypt like I was? I was under the spell of Stargate as a boy. That's about as close to being super interested in Egypt as I ever got. Really? You didn't go through a phase where you're really into like mummies and pyramids and all that sort of stuff?

No, no. A bunch of dead people wrapped in rags? No. You know what I want? I want wormhole technology that's why that's why stargate was my thing like oh yeah if we have to have egyptian culture to get it you know whatever that's a small price to pay i was not ever into egyptology as a kid you know other than like the most minor of passing like interest like oh hieroglyphics are kind of

cool you know really lots of kids are into it though it's not like a silly question like were you into dinosaurs as a boy like you know things like that is there a human alive who wasn't into dinosaurs dinosaurs are awesome yeah well they're just like fleshy dead animals aren't they that don't exist anymore how can you justify dinosaurs and then yet say mummies and pyramids aren't cool because dinosaurs are like fun monsters each egypt ancient egypt it's just like ancient anywhere else you know it's like a thing we did mummies and pyramids aren't cool. Because dinosaurs are like fun monsters. Each Egypt, ancient Egypt, it's just like ancient anywhere else. You know, it's like a thing.

We did it as humans a while ago. It didn't last. I can't agree with you on that. I think, well, just because this Egypt stuff has survived, but they're a pretty awesome culture too. Anyway. I almost don't want to say it, but I do think Egypt is like,

well, it's an interesting connection to guns, germs, and steel, because I think Egypt is an interesting culture of like, why didn't the Egyptians take over? It seemed like they were doing quite well but we'll just put that to the side i'll just i'll just mention it and then we'll just we're gonna move we're gonna move right along like they had domesticated horses quite a long time ago i wonder why oh well we gotta go we gotta go you're arguing the other argument there aren't you so for those of you

who don't know let me quickly run you through the entire history of egypt no no for those of you who don't know, let me quickly run you through the entire history of Egypt. No, no, for those of you who don't know, I'm assuming you have not been to Egypt then, Gray. No, I've never been to Egypt. Egypt is an awesome place to go. Probably not at the moment. They've had their nose bloodied a little bit lately by a few incidents, which is hitting their tourist trade quite hard,

which also makes this story even more interesting. But one of the coolest things you can see. But before you continue with the story, like are the incidences remotely relevant? Because of course, as always, I have no idea what you're talking about. Well, there's been some terrorism things. There was a plane was shot down

just to get a bit of plane crash corner in there for your Russian passenger plane and things. So they've, yeah, it's become a bit of a, and a lot of flights to certain areas now have been banned by certain countries. So they're having a tough time, but they've got some cool stuff. And one of the coolest places you can go is near Luxor, which used to be Thebes, which used to be the- I've been to the Luxor.

Yes, well, yes, near the city of Luxor is a place called the Valley of the Kings, which for a long time is where all of the pharaohs were buried. It's this valley in the middle of nowhere. It's really hard to get to. And if you ever want to kill a bunch of time on the internet by looking at cool websites and Wikipedia and reading about something, the Valley of the Kings is brilliant because the Valley of the Kings is an amazing place.

A lot of people get excited by the pyramids, but I think the Valley of the Kings is way more interesting. And I went and saw the pyramids and they were amazing, but I was 10 times more excited about the Valley of the Kings. It's got all these really, really elaborate tombs, these tunnels with many, many chambers, and they're all decorated, and they were the burial sites for all these pharaohs. And they were all empty, and they were all looted, and all the stuff was stolen from them, or they were then later disassembled when the Valley of the Kings

was kind of shut down. Can you go in them now? You can, you can, you can go in them. And in fact, it was brilliant when I went, I was really lucky. I got there really early in the morning when it was surprisingly empty and they give you a ticket. And I think you can go in like three or four of your choice with the ticket I had and you choose what ones to go into. That does sound pretty cool. I have to admit that does sound pretty cool. It is, it is an amazing, amazing place. But the famous, famous story story of course is that in 1922 this egyptologist called howard carter found a tomb that no one knew was there because it was buried under rubble and it was really small and when they uncovered like the door the seal was

still on and it was pretty much untouched it still had all the stuff in it that was amazing and it's what really brought Egyptology back into the public consciousness. And they found this tomb of Tutankhamun. They got his mummy and the famous mask and all the gold and all the treasures that were in there. It's a really famous story. And you can go into that tomb. And I went into it. And the reason it's different from all the others, which turns out to be quite important, is that it's very, very small. It's just two rooms you can stand in basically and then two really, really small little storage rooms

off to the side of them. So famous tomb, tourist attraction, world-famous treasures that are all over the world. Most of them are in Cairo, although the mummy of Tutankhamun himself is still in his tomb. It's one of the few things that's still in there, out of respect for him, I guess. That's the state of play.

Okay. Now, the reason his tomb is very, very small has always been quite well understood, and that is he died very young. He was like 19 years old when he died, and most pharaohs spent all their life building their tombs. That's why there are all these elaborate tunnels and things in the Valley of the Kings. That's what the pyramids are.

They're basically tombs that the Pharaoh spent all his life building for the day he died. But because Tutankhamun died suddenly and young, he hadn't built his tomb. Right. So, the belief has always been they used another tomb that was already there, probably for some lesser person. You can read about all the theories about who these people were. This is like the janitor's closet for somebody else's tomb. Well, kind of.

Well, we'll be there. We've got to bury him somewhere. A bit more important than that. But anyway, so it was quick and hasty. And that's why his tomb's different to all the others. And it's also because he was a quite insignificant king with his little tomb. It's why it kind of got lost and forgotten. And amazingly, why it kept all its treasures so the news that has recently come out is this british egyptologist has been studying one

of the walls which has all these nice paintings on it and he thought he saw the outline of a door there which somehow everyone seems to have missed for the last nearly 100 years. And there's now this theory that there are further rooms. And what these rooms are are unknown. Could it be that this was a bigger tomb and they blocked off the second part of the tomb and then, you know, did Tutankhamun's little area and there's a whole other brick bricked off tomb deeper in. Or are these just other rooms with treasures in them?

Or are these just boring rooms that were used by the embalmers? No one knows. And now they're going in there with radars. And the theory, which I thought was an absolute crackpot theory a couple of months ago, and I even said to my wife over breakfast, I'll bet you anything this is not true, seems to be gathering more and more momentum that there is more rooms beyond these walls in Tutankhamun's tomb. Now, this raises interesting questions as well, because if there are rooms there, what do you do?

Do you smash this amazing wall with paintings on it that's world famous in Tutankhamun's tomb to see what's behind it? Do you risk damaging this most famous tomb in all the tomb to see what's behind there? Do you risk damaging this most famous tomb in all the world to see what's behind? And they haven't got the best reputation in the world in Egypt for looking after their nice old stuff sometimes. The Cairo Museum is unbelievable. I can't believe how it's the seemingly little they care

for some amazing things in there. And there's this famous story about Tutankhamun's mask itself that just came out in the last couple of months where some worker knocked his chin off and then stuck it back on with super glue. So they're not the sort of people that I would want banging around walls inside Tutankhamun's tomb. So the two things I'm wondering here are, what do they do?

And secondly, how on earth have they missed it for so long? This is like one of the most famous places in all the world. Even Grey's heard of Tutankhamun's tomb, surely. Yeah, yeah. And there's some doorway, well, bricked over doorway to a secret room that some guy just studying pictures has found. If Indiana Jones and Lara Croft have taught us anything, it's that somewhere in that room is a switch to open that door.

They just need to look. Pull forward the sarcophagi a little bit. You need to press on the cat's eyes. Somewhere, even though it's a thousand years old, there's some clockwork that'll just have that door just recess into the wall and slide over. Oh, yeah. How awesome is that going to be? Or it'll be like a Scooby-Doo episode. It's just like some curtain that people can run through. I'm with you on this one. This seems astounding

that anyone could miss it. So astounding that I have a hard time believing it's true. Like, do you have a picture of this wall? Like, in my mind's eye, I'm basically imagining like a brick wall on which you can see the thin outline of a door and people are like, oh, no one ever noticed. Do you know what, Craig? That's a good question. I haven't, I'm yet to see the picture that shows this door outline. Let me have a look. There is skepticism about this. It could all be, it could all be cracked up. You know what, I love? I love how Google knows. Google always knows what you're looking for. Because I start typing in King Tut and it goes, King Tut tomb secret door, right?

That's correct, Google. You know exactly what I'm looking for. So, the big, the story that's causing all the excitement, and I should have mentioned it, is the Uber theory that's most exciting. Is that the tomb, and there is reasons this could be true, is that it could be Queen Nefertiti's tomb behind Tutankhamun's tomb. And obviously she's one of the real glamour, you know. Oh yeah, of course. Pinups of Egyptology and finding her tomb would be quite the find. Yeah, all the young Egyptians have a pinup of Queen Nefertiti on the wall.

Yeah, well, she was this famously, this great beauty, wasn't she? Sure, I'll take your word for that. There's this like a statue of her that's kept in Berlin that's very famous. It's this sort of beautiful, it's one of the more famous pieces of each Egyptian relics. I'm looking here, I found a video that shows people standing in front of the wall where the door is. Yeah. And there is not what I was imagining. A thin outline of a door that no one noticed in this tiny room.

No, it's no. It's clearly been plastered over. I mean, like I said, I went there, like that picture you're looking at with his sarcophagus there, I stood right there and- And you missed it. And I missed it. So, you know, it can't be there. But like the thought that I could have been- that all that stuff could have been on the other side of that wall and I was standing right there genuinely excites me and like if they find another tomb i was saying if you're ever short on time go and read about valley of the kings also go and read about howard carter and the discovery of

tootin carmoon's tomb it's such an exciting story and there are such amazing pictures from the time like it's one of those stories from history that sends chills down my spine about what it must have been like to have shine shone a torch through those first holes that they were banging in the wall and seeing. He famously saw all this glinting of gold and someone said, you know, can you see anything? And he said, yes, wondrous things. And then all the stuff they pulled out of there.

I mean, it must have been like, you know, this amazing Christmas, the stuff they found in there. And to think that could happen again in our lifetime genuinely excites me. And it would be such a boost for Egypt too, after recent years. I have to admit, as much as I poo-pooed Egypt before, I'm sitting here thinking, could I imagine a better place for someone to find a secret door than in an Egyptian tomb? And I think the answer is no. There is no better place that I want to hear the news secret door than on Egyptian tomb. It just works perfectly. Yeah. And the idea that this, you know, I'm sort of getting ahead of myself here,

but the idea that this amazing cache of treasures and tomb of Nefertiti could be the other side of, could be, you know, a few feet to the other side of a wall that probably millions of tourists have been filing past for the last X years is also quite an exciting thought. So, I get really excited. I'm excited thinking about it. It makes me want to go back to Egypt. Yeah. You're going to travel there soon?

It has been talked about for the last couple of years quite a lot. Oh, yeah? It's going to be part of the year of fun? I don't think it's going to make it soon? It has been talked about for the last couple of years quite a lot. Oh, yeah? Is it going to be part of the year of fun? I don't think it's going to make it into the year of fun. I don't know. There's just so many things to see, Grey. You've got a whole world of fun waiting for you in the year of fun. Even a brand new Egyptian tomb can't make it on the list.

If they find a new tomb, I'd go. I think you wouldn't mind going to Egypt. Eh. I would need a good reason to go. Is there any old stuff there? Even though we've just been talking about, ooh, new exciting Egyptian tomb. It's like, eh, I'll see it on the National Geographic channel. You will too. They're the ones funding it.

Yeah. Funding all the radars. There you go. There you go. Perfect. Yeah, but you're not seeing it, are you? And you won't know what it feels like to be in there i only get 80 of the benefit for one percent of the hassle okay i just i think 80 overstates it okay you do get you do get some of you do get some of the benefit i'm looking at a photo now of the tomb

and i'm seeing a whole bunch of stuff i don't remember when I was standing there. But- Let me put it this way, Brady. Even if, let's say I get 20% of the benefit for 1% of the effort, still seems pretty good. Yeah, but that final 10% is the best bit. It's like you're climbing like 99% up the way Mount Everest and you're saying, but I'm not going to step on the summit because that might tire me out a bit. And I'm like, that last step's the one that matters. Yeah. But if there's anything that Everest movie taught me is that if you're near the summit, but not quite there yet, don't go all the way. Don't go all the way. It's not worth it, man. That is a bit of a theme of that movie. I'll grant you that. You should have turned back. That's what that movie says. Life lesson, turn back.

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cricket you know as you go through life like the dynamic of your friends changes and you work with new people and you meet new people and you get married and people come and go from your life and this is a wonderful and it's also wonderful that all these people don't have the exact same interests as you but unfortunately for me that now means i've reached a situation for various reasons including my own retirement as a cricketer some years ago that i that i now okay that i now have quite few cricket loving friends and that means when something amazing happens in the world of cricket i have no one to share it with i have no one to talk to. My wife tries and shows a little bit of interest and will ask a couple of questions, but she can only handle so much because she doesn't like cricket. Right.

And I would love to talk all about the World T20 Cricket World Cup that has just finished. God, it was good. Oh, it was a Cricket World Cup, huh? It was such a great tournament, Gray. And it had the most extraordinary ending to any sport thing I've seen. It was like Shakespearean drama. It was amazing. And I can't get enough of it. I'm still re-watching it and reading everything about it and reading all the fallout. And then like I talked to someone like you, who I talked to probably more than anyone other than my wife. And like, what can I say to you?

Did your team of cricketeers win no they didn't even make it to the final australia didn't basically the australians got knocked out quite early but there were so many games that all had so many amazing endings and like every game was quite thrilling and this form of cricketing which is called 2020 cricket is different to the normal cricket I like. I like the really long, boring ones that you can't believe last for five days. But these 2020 games are sort of fast and furious and they're all over in two or three hours

and they're lots of crash, bang, wallop. They're more exciting. They're more exciting for the non-purist, basically. They've jazzed up cricket. They've tried to make it a bit more sexy with fireworks and more smashing and bashing. And I've been frowning upon this for a number of years now, but this tournament turned me around because it was just so exciting. And it was England against the West Indies. Some people may not be aware of this, but if there's one thing in sport I love more than supporting australia it's supporting against england yes i believe i believe you have mentioned this

and i can totally understand this idea yeah it causes some friction in my house i was hoping the west indies would win england didn't start very well and it looked like they were going to lose the game i love how you're just i love how you're just plowing on with it. I'm plowing on. Because I want you to understand the theatre of it. And there is a bit of Hello Internet-iness at the end, maybe. Depending on your level of engagement. Yeah, right.

It's always my fault. It's always my fault. Everything's always about my level of engagement. It is. It is. It is. So, England started badly. They fought back magnificently to the point where they had the game won.

They had the game stitched up. It was the final over of the game. I know you don't know what an over is, but anyway, it was the final little set of balls to be bowled at the end of the game and the West Indies did this impossible improbable number of runs to win it so it was all over and I'm sure all the English people were planning their speeches and what dance they were going to do at the end when they won and I was already thinking about what an appropriate tweet would be from me to sort of congratulate England although I was seething inside that they'd won this game

and the guy that was sort of finishing the game at the end, the English guy, this bowler who just had to finish the game off and take them to victory, is this quite polarising character. He's quite arrogant. He's the new kind of bad boy hero of English cricket. And he'd been talking all week about how he loves winning the game for England at the end and being this guy that comes along at the death of the game, as they call it. Like a closer in baseball. He loves coming on in.

Oh, yeah, like a baseball closer. Yeah. Like a baseball closer. And so he was closing the game. It was his job to close the game. Right. And then the most extraordinary thing happened where this young West Indian, who I'd never heard of before. I don't even, I think he's a teenager.

He did the equivalent of hitting a major league pitcher for four home runs in four consecutive pitches. He smashed this guy for four sixes in a row at the end of the game. Oh, four sixes. Wow. He smashed him over the fence, out of the ground, four times in a row and single-handedly won the game for the West Indies. It was this remarkable finish.

And I was like, I'd never seen anything like it. And I was just alone in a hotel room. But then five minutes later, my wife did come back to the hotel room and I was like, you're not going to believe what just happened. It was the most amazing thing. And I was trying to explain it and I was getting probably a similar response to what I'm getting from you. But she kind of humoured me and watched the replays as they showed it over and over again. And then I just sat on my phone for hours just reading every single thing I could about it

and all the responses. And then all the speeches afterwards got all controversial and everything. It was so much fun. But the thing that I thought was very interesting was the scale of public failure that this bowler this chap called ben stokes went through and don't get me wrong he's a pretty good cricketer so this is the pitcher yeah he's called a bowler but he's like the pitcher okay he's he's the guy who just had to keep his cool not do anything stupid and win the game and then this other this other this other guy

came and did something exceptional and and won the game for his team instead. And this guy was just on his knees on the field in tears. And, you know, his friends were trying to console him. Literally? Was he literally crying on the field? Yeah, yeah. He teared up. You see the pictures. If you Google search Ben Stokes, I bet you the first few pictures now are him looking all teary. This is going to follow him for the rest of his life. It's the most extraordinary, extraordinary thing. It's a real shame. Yeah.

Everyone will remember you as a big crybaby. Yeah. And the next day, like, the headline on the back of one of the big British newspapers was Ben Chokes. You know, it was like, it was, so he was getting it. Everyone's kind of rallied around him now. And like I said, you know, it's a team game. The team got into this position and you can't blame one person for a failure in a team sport.

And that is true. And, you know, I agree with all those platitudes that people are rolling out. But the thing is, these death bowlers, these guys that come on at the end and make or break the game, like a closer in baseball, which you seem to know what that is, which mildly surprises me. I don't know what, I was just humoring you, Brady. Oh, you don't know what a closer is?

I was humoring you to your wife. I have no idea. But the thing is, these people are lauded for their bravery, right? Everyone says, oh, he's so brave that he does this for the team. But the only reason that you are described as brave is because if you fail, you fail in front of a billion people and get humiliated. Like, it's not brave if that's not the consequences. So when this does happen and then everyone piles in on him and says, oh, you choker, you mucked up, you should should have done this you should have done that you lost the game for england like i think that has to happen i think that's i think that is to be expected and that's why he was brave because if he failed he was going to get this and all these people saying don't pick on don't pick on ben stokes

you know he was brave to even bowl and you know no one no one else was coming forward to do it so he's he's brave for even trying yeah he was, but he's only brave because this is what happens. If everyone just said, oh, don't worry, mate, pat him on the back and said, oh, well, maybe, you know, maybe next year, then you're not brave. As you're having this conversation, I'm thinking like, oh, this is starting to fall into the world of like humble. Like, wait, what does the word brave even mean? So I just pulled it up here and

says brave adjective ready to face and endure danger or pain and i'm like okay all right yeah that works because if everybody gets together and agrees that we're all going to be nice to the final cricketeer who's pitching the last inning of the game yeah if we're all going to be nice to that guy then well it's not brave at all to be that guy right then it's just we're living in a nice happy world without any consequences where you know everybody's just fine with everything you can only be brave if everybody's going to hate you for falling down in the last quarter of the game then then you can be brave. Thank you, Grave, for humoring me and agreeing with me.

Do they pay the death cricketeers more money? Like, does he get more money for this risk? I don't know if sport quite works exactly that way, but he'll be doing okay. It seems like it should. It seems like it totally should. He'll be doing okay. I don't think he'll need to start a Patreon anytime soon. That's not about it.

It's about his relative risk and reward compared to the rest of his team. Well, he's one of the star players of the team. So I'm sure he's paid more than some. But do they pay cricketeers different rates? Is it like star players in soccer or whatever? Yes, of course. You do say cricketeers just to wind me up, don't you? You do know that's not the word.

I'm assuming that's a wind up. No, what's the word? It's a cricketer. Oh, I like cricketeer better. Do you? No, I like cricketeer much better. One of these days, we're going to sit down with a few beers and watch a day of test cricket. And I'm going to talk you through all the nuances of it.

We will. We will. That has legitimately been on our to-do list for quite some time. So here's my question for you though. Do you want to watch a day of test cricket, which is the one where they all wear white and the game lasts five days and it's all very slow and tactical? Or do you want to watch the crash-bang wallop of 2020 where they wear colour and smash the ball over the fence all the time? Wait, they don't wear colour in the other one? Is that one of the key distinguishing features? Yeah, in test cricket, both teams just wear all white.

And quite often the same colour hats as well. Do both teams wear all white? Yes. How do you tell them apart? One team's the batting team and one team's the bowling team. So they're not both on the field at the same time running around. Well, someone's running around, someone runs back. Oh, well, whatever. I don't understand how any of this works. I'm realizing like in my mind, like, oh, it's just, it's baseball, but somehow different and slow. And I don't understand precisely what's going on. You have much to learn.

You have much to learn. I feel like you're a young apprentice about to be taken under my wing and schooled in the ways of cricket. If I'm going to actually go with you to a game of cricket, it feels like we might as well do the long cricket game, but with the asterisk of, I make no promises about lasting more than one day. No, no, fair enough. I'm a little bit proud that you chose that one. I'm also not surprised though, because I think the fast paced game with all the excitement would be a bit much for your gentle disposition. Yeah. Yeah. Also, it's truly the way you describe it, it sounds like you have 10,000 things to explain as well. So, if the fast game is going really fast, you know, I might not be able to

keep up. I might not be able to keep up. You know, sometimes in quiet moments, I think about like the fact we might do a cricket podcast one day. And I think, how would I start describing cricket? Like, how would I teach someone who knows nothing about it how the game works and it gets it really escalates quickly even just in my head like and like oh I haven't even started and I have oh what about this and eventually I just have to abandon it in my head so I don't know how it's going to work for real it's going to be one tedious podcast this is like so many projects though are so many things that you try to explain where you realize they're just completely interconnected like i can easily imagine that in in a in a game like cricket or in any kind of sporting game the reason that everyone

is doing everything has 10 reasons so it's hard to know where to start with whatever is occurring but someday brady we will do that cricketeering podcast we came close that one time you got tickets for me once and i can't remember why but i didn't end up showing up uh but we will do it at some point we will all right thank you for that gray you you you took on the uh the wife role admirably there while i talked about cricket for too long i i wish i had the ability to ask more questions to humor you, but I do not. I'm very glad that your cricket World Cup game was super exciting, Brady. It was.

It was amazing. Commiserations, England, on that humiliating loss. This week's episode is brought to you in part by Harry's. Go to harrys.com and use promo code HI to save $5 off your first purchase. Harry's offers high quality razors and blades for a fraction of the price of the big razor brands. Harry's was started by two guys who wanted a better product without paying an arm and a leg. These are high quality, high performing blades crafted by shaving experts, giving you a better shave that respects your face and

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to. Just go to harrys.com and use promo code HI to get $5 off your first purchase. Thanks to Harry's for supporting the show. So you had a thing that you wanted to discuss, Brady. I mean, this seems like it's something that's more in your wheelhouse than mine in some ways. But it was brought to my attention because of an article that was written by an old friend of mine, actually, for a website or a newspaper in Vietnam, of all places where he lives. I didn't realise it was in Vietnam. Yeah, that's why all the people quoted in the article are Vietnam-based. But he wrote an article, and we won't go into it in much detail, but we'll put a link in the show notes. But basically, the main thrust of the article is about spec working.

Should people work for free? And this is an issue that is of interest to both of us, I guess guess yeah this this has been on our topic list for quite a while in in one way or another yeah because i think if if you work in in any kind of creative field at all this this idea of working for free is a thing that is unavoidable in one form or another. Like, it's going to come up and occasionally arguments about it erupt on the internet and in other places. So, your friend's article- Let me shout out his name. Yeah.

Johnny Aspen. How you doing, mate? because do you know what he i saw the article he wrote just you know via facebook and i i actually messaged him and said oh i really enjoyed your article john uh good stuff and then he messaged i hadn't spoken to him for about three or four years and he messaged me back and said oh that's great timing i was just listening to your podcast and i didn't even know he listened to the podcast. So, shout out to John if you're listening to the podcast. Hi, John. You're a Tim. You're a Tim.

So, anyway, the thing that got John writing the article originally was a video that's been doing the rounds about not doing spec work. I think it was made by an advertising company. And the underlying message of this video supposedly is, you know, don't work for free. Other people don't work for free. Why should you? It's just about 2 million views right now. So it's been this widely viewed video. For those who are perhaps unaware, there's this thing that some companies do. So when they talk about spec work, it is not uncommon for large companies to ask creative workers to produce work for

literally nothing on the promise of maybe getting future work. So speculative. it is it is speculative work right that's that's what the spec is short for so um like for example if if you're making a video you can ask for spec work for the music from people and say like oh just score this video and if i like the work that you've done maybe i'll hire you in the future. Right. And you would ask several people basically to do this kind of thing. And there and there are, I think, somewhat controversially, some websites that are built on this whole platform. So probably the biggest one in this field is 99designs. So 99designs is an example of this kind of thing where like, let's say for, let's say, just throwing an idea out here, Brady, let's say you were starting a new YouTube channel. Unlikely, but let's imagine that that was something you were doing.

It happens from time to time. Happens from time to time. Yeah. And you wanted to create a new logo for that channel. Okay. You could go to 99designs, and there are other websites like this, and basically say, hey, I'm looking for a logo. And a whole bunch of people on the website are then competing to make logos for you.

And this is a spec work. So you might get back like a hundred different logos and then you're selecting of all of those people, one of them to actually pay and to use the logo. So this is another kind of version of how spec work works in the creative field of like, do a thing. Maybe we will pay you, but maybe we won't because we're just going to select somebody else instead. Do a thing. Maybe we will pay you, but maybe we won't because we're just going to select somebody else instead. These are sort of, it's a subtle difference, but there are two different models going on

here, aren't there? One is do the work for free and maybe I'll give you other work one day. And the other one is get a whole bunch of people to do the work for free and pay the winner. Right. I think there are two different things going on there and I think they should be treated differently, shouldn't they? They're different.

I don't know. In my mind, they're just, I feel like they're two sides of the same coin. In both cases, you as a creative person are rolling the dice on will there or will there not be money? Yeah. But in one case, your work never sees the light of day. And in the other case, it does see the light of day and you get money for it.

So I don't know. I think of them a bit different. I think it's like one of them is like a job interview, isn't it? And if you don't get the job, you don't get the job. If I spend three weeks preparing for a job interview and I don't get that job, then I can't say to the person, well, give me three weeks of pay for the time I spent preparing for the job. So, I guess, what's the difference between sort of a job interview and trying to

show someone you're good enough and just doing work that gets used and not being paid? Well, this is where this whole thing gets super complicated really quickly right because you start trying to think about it in terms of job interviews and and i think this is part of the reason why uh bringing up this video in particular uh as a thing that that we wanted to discuss in in the context of doing free work is this is an example of trying to think about things in terms of analogies. And what I think is occurring here is like there is something about creative work that is different from many other kinds of work. And if you had to think about it, if I was asking you, list some things that you think are different about creative work than sort of standard work.

What would you put on that list? Creative work doesn't require qualifications sometimes, whereas some types of other work that you don't associate with spec work do, like a doctor. So, perfect. I think that is one of the things I would definitely list as I'm thinking of a thing that makes it different. There's no qualifications required. You know, nobody cares if you went to art school. They care if you can paint. Whereas I do care if my doctor went to medical school.

Quite often, and again, there are exceptions to this as well, but quite often I associate a physical item with a non-creative work. Like someone giving you a screwdriver as opposed to someone designing a logo. I know some creative work has a physical end, but... I agree. Tons of creative work. I think we can fairly say the overwhelming majority of creative work in the modern world is non-tangible, right? Especially for stuff that we're talking about with spec work, like in this case, like people are producing music, people are producing artwork, people are producing writing. They are not producing screwdrivers. They are not producing dining room furniture sets.

Those are different things that are occurring. There's one other thing that I'm thinking of which makes creative work different from other work, which is that tons of people want to do it. Right. Tons of people want to work in creative fields. Yeah. If you're just carving up broad sectors of the economy and you say like service work, you know,

white collar work, creative work, you know, like these broad you know white collar work creative work you know like these broad broad swaths of the of the working world i think there is no part where supply and demand are more mismatched right like the number of people who would love to be poets professionally is large and the number of people who can be professional poets is like two, right? Like there's just a huge mismatch with that. I heard you make a little sound. Do you think there are more than two professional poets in the world?

Yeah, no, I'm trying to think who the two are. Okay. I call Maya Angelou and now you name one other. I don't know. Who's the poet laureate at the moment in the UK? I hope it's not the one you just named.

There you go, right? Yeah. I think these factors together tell you something about why is it that spec work can even exist in the first place? Why is there a sector of the economy where companies can say, do work for us on the promise of no money and people do it? Yeah. I think this is one of the keys. You don't have physical manufacturing costs. There are no qualifications because your work is the qualification itself.

And there is also a huge number of people who want to work in this field. I think those three things combined are the reason that spec work can exist. I'm not saying that's an argument for why it should exist or if it is good or bad. We're simply saying, like, why can this exist? Because I think if you had a situation where something like, say, McDonald's said we would just love people to come in and just work for us for free. No one's going to do that. It's just not going to happen. But you can be a company and say, create artwork for us or write for us or do any of this kind of stuff. And people will do it for free on the promise of maybe money or even just the promise of exposure or the promise of building a resume at all. Like, that's why this can happen

in a way that it just doesn't happen to such a large extent in other sectors of the economy. I agree with you, Gray. So, the million-dollar question then is, should it exist? Is it good or bad? I mean, you've sat on the fence and just laid out the current climate. There are some people, I mean, there are lots of people who do it. There are lots of people who ask for it to be done. There are people who campaign against it and who think it's this insidious practice. Where do you sit on this spectrum? We watched this video before, the Say No to Spec video. It kind of rubbed me the wrong way. So what's occurring in this video is there's a guy who's going around and he's asking a bunch of people to do work for him for free. People in non-creative jobs. That's the key. So he goes into a restaurant and he's asking for a free breakfast. He goes to a personal trainer and he's saying, oh, you know, train me for free for a month

and maybe I'll use you as my trainer in the future. He goes around to a whole bunch of different people asking for... Like a picture framer. Yeah, that's right. A picture framer. A coffee shop. Yeah. Yeah.

He's asking for all of these things for free on spec work. The video annoys me on two levels. It annoys me because one, I think it is using the standard Brady tactic of a misapplied analogy, right? That they are intentionally selecting careers for which it is insane to imagine that spec work could possibly exist. It's not going to occur because the economic situation just isn't. Like the guy's not going to give you the economic situation just isn't like the guy's not going to give you a free breakfast because it doesn't just cost him his time to make the breakfast it costs him materials to make the breakfast right it's just it's just not comparable this is the and he's not going to land a hundred thousand dollar breakfast contract the next day because

he made you one good breakfast right exactly like the upside for him is that maybe you get one breakfast a week in the future, right? It's like no upside guaranteed failure, right? The second thing that bothers me, and I think this is where the question about working for free gets complicated fast, is that he is going to people who already have profitable businesses. Yeah. Like that is the assumption here, right? That he is going to someone who works all day as a picture framer, who works all day in a restaurant, in a restaurant that exists.

So it's profitable. Like he's going to this gym that exists that is presumably already profitable. And so I think not only is it a misapplied analogy, but it's also missing a fundamental difference in the creative world about like established professionals or new people in the world. And so like it's wrong. It's wrong in its argument in every way that it possibly can be. Now, I think, again, you can build an argument against spec work,

but this is like the most disingenuous way to possibly try to do that. Yeah. And it's an advertising company that made this ad. And they're the one group that are looking at spec work completely differently. I'll tell you what bothers me about the ad as well. Probably the one occupation that didn't sit right with me was the fitness instructor, because he's saying, give me a free fitness lesson. And if I like it, I'll do some more. And the fitness instructor is like saying, no way, man, that's not how I work. The funny thing is,

that is how fitness instructors work. And they all the time do free lessons for people in the hope of getting their business. Like at most gyms, you can go and do like a free half hour session with the instructor to see if you like Yeah. Like at most gyms, you can go and do like a free half hour session with the instructor to see if you like them. And my gym actually has a mandatory free fitness instruction as part of becoming the gym. Like you can't join this gym unless you give us an opportunity to freely pitch our services to you.

Yeah. And it was the one that didn't sit right in like the whole, the occupations they were showcasing as well, because sort of being a fitness instructor is a little bit more like a creative occupation than, you know, making breakfast probably. No offense to all the brilliant cooks out there, but it was the one that seemed a bit more like it didn't belong. And funnily enough, it's also the one that doesn't fit with my experience of reality. I have had a free fitness lesson. I've never had a free coffee on spec. Here's what I want people to think about when

they think about working for free. Because this is also a thing that I have been on multiple sides of. In some of my previous careers that I attempted to do, I did work for free. I'm in a position now where people often ask me to do work for free. Like I have been on both sides of this. And I'll use an example, like from the photography world, where this is an argument that comes up all the time about should people who are starting their career, like in photography, should they do work for free right like should you do a wedding for free or should you charge right out of the gate and the thing that i can never help but notice is that in in this this kind of argument that occurs people who are established professionals are the ones who always are pushing for you shouldn't do work for free yeah in the

same way that this advertising company has put together an advertising campaign saying don't do spec work don't create your music and don't create your graphics for free and the thing is like i feel like i can't help but notice that's super self-interested like dear listener can you imagine if if i made a video saying don't make your videos for free only make your videos when you charge for them like when when you have a sponsor at the end who's going to pay for them. It's like, do you think there might be a reason why I would not want people to just make videos for free? It's like, of course,

because it's a way of reducing competition, right? If you are the established professional, what you don't want is a bunch of people creating free work, right? Like it's pulling down the market average. And so I just, I think that for people getting started on their careers and like, this is the key thing for people getting started free, like your huge advantage, Like this is the one thing that you have going for you. And yes, like spec work totally sucks in a lot of ways.

Like, are you going to put in a bunch of hours and maybe not get paid for stuff? Yes. And that totally sucks, right? That is sort of awful, but it is also your competitive advantage. This is just how things go. Like I even remember when I was qualified as a teacher

and looking for a job, one of the things that I heard from my advisors was they were pointing out like, yeah, you're not an established teacher, but that is actually your advantage because you're super cheap to schools, right? Like schools will be happy to bring on a new cheap teacher because it costs them way less

than bringing on old established teacher like the spec work thing is just a more extreme version of that like if you are working in a creative field you can do something for free which is totally a version of like getting your foot in the door into a field and like starting to build up your own professional reputation so gray i i agree with you and i thought the same thing about all the people who seem to be the most vehement in their statements about being anti-spec work are people i would love to put in a lie detector or get in a time machine and have a look what they did when they were starting out because I bet most of them did it yeah exactly exactly but there are a few questions then spring to mind the first one is when do you make the switch from being someone who's making the sacrifice and doing it for free or doing things

on the cheap to try and get that start to being someone who says, no, you know, I'm worth more than that now. And I should be paid accordingly. How does that switch happen? My feeling on this is there's a supernatural switching point, which is that when you start having more work to do, then you have time to do it. That to me seems like the most obvious point at which you can legitimately

start charging money. I actually think that you could probably start charging money before then, because like, if you're getting a bunch of work that is, that is like a signal from the world that you are producing something that other people value. Again, like just speaking in super broad terms about creative fields here, like if people

keep coming back or if or people are accepting your spec work on a regular basis, that is a signal to you that you're doing a thing that is good, which is an indication that you can have prices like you can start raising prices. But without a doubt, when you start running out of time when so many people want you to do stuff that whatever amount of time you have in a week to do work on the side or to do spec work like when that's running out then you should totally charge more like this is how economics work like when the supply starts getting constrained like you should raise the price and in this case the supply is your available hours to do things. When that supply starts getting limited,

then the price should go up. The other question is, and this is, I'd like to hear some words of reassurance or scaremongering, whichever is necessary. Now for the people who are sort of sitting higher in the tree and they're swimming in money and things are going really well for them in the creative world i guess their fear fear is these swarms of people below who are willing to work for free are going to topple them from their perch that's the fear isn't it that's why they're making like no spec campaigns and things like that it's not because they care about the little people i think it's because they care about their position on the perch if you're on a perch and you're making a good living from creative work, why should you not be scared of all the spec workers taking all your work away?

But you should be scared. You should be terrified. Yeah. This goes back to the popularity thing from before, where if a lot of people want to do something and also a lot of people are able to do a thing you should expect like the average price of that thing to go down yeah so we live in a world where a large part of the population ends up having a fair amount of leisure time in which they can do creative work. Like that's a thing that exists in the world now that didn't exist so much a long time ago for a large portion of the population. I don't think it is unreasonable to be worried about people doing free work in your field

because again, like the very fact that there are people who are willing to do the thing for free like that like that is that is a an indication to you that like there are tons of people who want to get into that field and does being the best at something not count because i mean i would happily play cricket for australia for free right but the guys who are playing cricket for australia are earning a ton of money and I'm not getting any phone calls. Right. You're not getting any phone calls. But that's precisely where I was going with this, is what we are indirectly describing here is superstar economies. A field that a lot of people want to go into tends to have this distribution where there's a small number of people who are doing very well,

and there's a ton of people who want to get into that field, and like the average price of their earnings is very low. Hollywood is, of course, the perfect example of this. LA, the city that crushes people's dreams. Every day, boatloads of people land in L.A., like dying to to work in the movie industry. And so I'm sure like and all of their dreams are just crushed to a first approximation. But like you and you end up with like this superstar effect where some people through hard work and also through luck end up becoming like the focus of a large number of people's attention. This is what the art world is in all forms like this is what the music industry is. This is what all of these fields are like almost by definition, an area of the economy where tons of people want to work is also an area of the economy that can't help but create like this superstar effect. And I think

even to a lesser extent, you can see it in places like the advertising industry, that there are advertising companies that are extremely well known in their field and they become like the companies that everybody wants to work with. Like this is just what happens. I guess the real, the real lesson here is, is like, just, just like Hollywood, these kinds of fields, they're not, they're not fields that you can like wholeheartedly recommend that people should go into. It's very hard to recommend that anyone become an actor or an actress. Like, you know what? It's probably going to be a bad idea. Like that's probably not going to work out for you. But you can't convince people to not do it because these fields are very attractive, which leads to this whole phenomenon in the first place. Your advice to people who want to break into sort of creative fields and have this

conundrum before them of do I do spec work? Your advice is do it. Yeah, do it. Get your foot in the door, get yourself out there. And then if you're good enough, hopefully you'll be so much in demand that eventually you will be able to command high prices. Yeah, I would agree with that wholeheartedly. Yeah. You know, my overall advice, like if I'm speaking to generic high school kid who's thinking about careers and I don't know anything about the person i would advise like don't go into this field right this is probably a bad idea because you'll have to do spec work right like you want to you want to go into a creative field like okay yeah great you and everybody else like tell me about your future career as as a as a professional cricketeer right like lots of people want to do this, you know,

so it's going to be a horrible grind in the beginning to try to get your way to the top. Like, so it's probably a bad idea. But if you are going to go into this field, don't fall for this sweet siren song that the established professionals will tell you of like, don't work for free, man. That's a terrible, your work should be respected. Like they're singing a song that you want to hear. Don't fall

for it because it's just a trap. Look at the people who are singing that song and don't listen. Free is your huge advantage. And I think, I guess the final thing that I would say is that you should probably pay close attention to whether or not people are using your work. Like, don't waste years and years of your life doing spec work for free. This should be a thing that you say, like, OK, I'm going to try to do. I'm going to try to break into field X and I'm going to define some amount of time that I'm going to spend on it and see if people are interested in the work that I'm doing. And if they're not, then I'm going to move on, right? Because it's just everywhere you look, it's just a graveyard of people who have failed trying to do this exact same thing.

Gray, you talk about the establishment having this siren syrupy song of saying, come on, don't do the spec work. It's, you know, you deserve more. It's the thin end of the wedge. And I hear that and I understand it. But don't we also hear about the establishment and the big organizations doing the opposite and having another siren song where they say, come on, do some work for us for free. You'll get good exposure. This will be good for your career later. You might land some contracts because of it. And isn't that just another form of exploitation of people? You're talking about two different groups here.

The advertising agency doesn't want creative professionals sort of doing the spec work for free. But companies that need ads certainly will ask for free ads. So it's like your fellow creators are singing one siren song to you, and the people who want the creations are singing another siren song. Yes, exactly. The creators who have been successful are the ones who are trying to say, like, don't work for free.

Don't drop the prices down. That's what you end up hearing. I have done things on spec definitely i also have done things for less than what i think they're worth uh voluntarily i remember the early days of periodic videos working insane hours like 20 hours a day working all night making all these films about the periodic table that no one was watching just thinking if i do this and make all of these videos i think someone will notice and it will and it will i was being paid at the time but

but you know it was it was quite a small grant uh so i consider that semi-spec work and and and that spec work worked it paid off for me those three or four weeks i remember not sleeping and just making all these videos and putting them on youtube. At the end of those few weeks, I did get a bit of luck and it got noticed and it led to more work. So, my experience of spec work was it was the making of me. And I don't know whether you consider your Britain video to be spec work or not, but it was certainly the making of you as well. And you did that for free and probably not knowing if anyone would ever watch it yeah well that's what that's the whole youtube economy is based on like you know well i mean i guess i guess it's a bit different now because you can start making money off of the advertisements right from the start but again it's it's such a small amount

of like no one's making any youtube videos at the very beginning that have a high return on investment in terms of your time right like you're you're not, it's just not happening. So yeah, you're basically doing work kind of for free, trying to build an audience and build a future career on YouTube. From talking to you about this, it seems that you have, and I'm not surprised by this, it's one of your defining qualities. You seem to have tremendous faith in market forces and the economy and things sorting everything out like there's there's high demand there's low demand that drives costs up and down etc do you not think there could be any protections in place to stop people being exploited should we just let the forces take care of it or would should there be something to protect people from being exploited by spec work?

If there's this glut of people who are ripe for the picking, should we let people pick them? Okay. Always, I disagree with your phrasing of things, Brady. That's another of your defining qualities no it's one of your defining qualities that you that you intentionally provocatively i think misrepresent what it is that i'm saying never it's not that i have i want to be clear here it's not that i have tremendous faith in markets i i view markets almost like a natural phenomenon. They are a byproduct of the way our monkey brains interact with the universe.

It's just like a part of nature almost that humans compete in various ways for limited resources. I just acknowledge that this is a thing that exists in the world. I am not a markets are a great solution for absolutely everything guy. I think sometimes markets are good solutions and sometimes you need counter market solutions. It depends on what it is you're trying to achieve and what you're trying to do. I just think there are many cases where people try to futilely fight against markets. And this whole notion of like, don't do spec work is precisely one of these moments of like, there's nothing that you can do to fight against this.

You don't think there's a counter-market solution to prevent spec work becoming too widespread? I don't think there's much that you could practically do to stop it. Like, I think you could try to do things like make websites like 99designs or similar things. You could try to write laws to make those things illegal, but I still think you're only ever going to be able to nail down the most obvious cases of what's happening. I think it'll just end up becoming a much more informal process if you try to get rid of it. Because I just think that tide of tons of people want to break into a cool field and will be willing to do lots of work at little or no cost to do it. I just don't think that you can fight that.

I think that will find a way, one way or another, into people just offering up their work for the possibility of payment in the future. I think there's very little that you could possibly do to stop it. It is interesting because sometimes it feels like certainly a lot of creative and artistic people feel like they live in a society where art is not valued. And then when we have the situation where you're saying, you know, everyone wants to be an artist, so of course you can't demand high prices for your work. that just sort of reinforces this perception that some people have that art isn't isn't valued enough and they sort of strengthens their position doesn't it and makes them say no my art is valuable and you should be paying top dollar for it don't treat us like second-class citizens yeah but it isn't valuable right like and and and that's also why

the art world has the same kind of superstar effect. Like almost by definition, you know, paintings are valuable because a bunch of monkeys have agreed that that painting is valuable, right? Like there's nothing, there's nothing intrinsic in it in the same way that like a liver transplant is an intrinsically valuable service that a professional provides. Right. And a Monet is not the same thing.

A Monet is like an artificial value. You get a lot of liver right? And a Monet is not the same thing. A Monet is like an artificial value. You get a lot of liver transplants for a Monet. Right. You can get a lot of liver transplants for a Monet as long as the monkeys all agree that the Monet is worth a whole bunch of liver transplants, right? But it's like the painting doesn't do anything directly for you, right? It's not valuable in this direct way.

So like art is not valuable, but ends up in this same kind of superstar effect. I think an interesting, to slightly shift, I think an interesting other field that has this phenomenon a little bit is actually the thing that I'm always promoting, which is computer programming. And it's one of these things that like, I feel like, you know, having grown up in exactly the time that I have that when I, when I was a kid, there was kind of this idea that computer programming was an incredibly rare skill, but this was actually just a side effect of like, well, not very many people had computers. And then I think that it's interesting, like it has turned out that while computer programmers are not a huge portion of the population, there are lots of them. who have the skill to be able to create applications on their computers. Like that is an intrinsically valuable skill,

but it's also a case of where like the simple supply of people ends up driving down the value of the product they produce. And I think we see this in, for example, the number of free apps that are available on your iPhone. It's astounding how ridiculously cheap apps are on your iPhone for the most part. And part of that is just like, there's so many people who want to be app developers. It's a cool job to have. Like, oh, I'm just going to sit in my house and program away at my computer and I'm going to be able to do whatever I want. It's

like, well, guess what? There's tons of people who want to do that. And just like people who produce art, there are tons of people who can do that as like a part-time thing. Or there are lots of people who, just like people enjoy creating art, there are people who enjoy programming. And so that enormous, I don't want to say glut, but that enormous supply of people who are able to do a thing changes the competitive landscape of that thing itself. I'm always promoting the computer programming as like an incredibly valuable skill, but it still has this same kind of effect that like lots of people want to do this.

And you can end up with this similar kind of superstar effect that you see, like a small number of apps make an enormous amount of money and a huge number of apps make basically no money whatsoever. The price you pay for an enjoyable job. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. You know, if you're looking to get a job that

everybody wants to do, then it's going to be hard because you have an enormous amount of competition. Like that's just the way the world works. You don't get a lot of spec work toilet cleaning on the on the flip side of this i taught at a school uh that we will say had just a very large number of very well-to-do students at one point and uh i was showing them a video about something or other it doesn't even matter but at one point in video, they show an assembly line that's producing kitchenware for your household. And on the video at one moment, there's a guy whose whole job was moving a sheet of metal from one metal stamping machine to another metal stamping machine that would turn it into a bowl and then taking the finished bowl off and putting it on a conveyor belt. And that was all he did, like move the piece from one side to the other,

one side to the other. And for some reason, this caught the attention of the students in the class. And these kids were in year nine, so they're like 13, 14 years old. And again, all from very well-to-do families. And one of the girls said, is that that guy's job? Like, is that all he does all day? And so I thought like, oh, this is a little teachable moment, right? Let's have a little conversation about that. And I said, oh, yeah, this is what this person does for a living. And I'll never forget because she said, he must get paid so much money to do a job that's so boring.

And then that was my moment to be like, let's talk about the value of skills. Like, this is going to be a moment for me to try to sell engineering degrees to everyone in the room right now. Like, I will never have a better moment to sell it than this. Because like, that is the other side of the supply equation. Like, if you can have an unenjoyable job, but if there are lots of low skilled people, like that doesn't drive up the price of that job, that also drives the price of that job down. And what a magic moment and great example of the important role that teachers play in the shaping of students.

I changed lives that day.