Hello Internet - HI #75: "World’s Most Interesting Podcast"

Episode Date: December 19, 2016

Brady & Grey chat about: the world chess championship, Norwegian Bank notes, Brady does antiquing through twitter, behavior control and Santa, Brady’s level of fame, a bird comes back to grey, the new elements, ugly YouTube ads, and consumable synthetic muscle tissue. Brought to You By Away: thoughtful travel luggage for modern travel. Use code HI for $20 off Harry's: Quality Men's Shaving Products. Promocode HI for $5 off your first purchase Audible: get a free 30-day trial by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet Squarespace: Use code HI for 10% off your website Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes Discuss this episode on the reddit World Chess Championship 2016 The Eternal Match "World’s most beautiful banknotes" “Hello Internet: “World’s Most Interesting Podcast” - 2016” Miss Haran case Help Brady find antiques The Elf on the Shelf - Wikipedia Four new elements — Brady Haran The Rules for Rulers - YouTube YouTube advertising formats - YouTube Help Westworld 1973

I know you don't like talking about dreams, but- Okay. It's not normally that scene I get my first, oh God. Well, you don't normally open with dreams, my friend. So, one minor bit of follow-up, and I feel kind of almost guilty now to our Norwegian listeners after my fun little joke last episode about Magnus Carlsen being from Sweden, which I deliberately said and then pointed out he was Norwegian. That did cause a minor kerfuffle among Norwegians who love their Magnus.

So apologies to those people. It was a joke, which I said very quickly. It was a joke. But how much feedback did you get, Brady? Because you were deliberately provoking feedback from people who listened to the podcast, pause immediately in their rage and reply to you. So I'm curious, how much feedback along those lines did you actually get from people who listen to the podcast, pause immediately in their rage and reply to you. So, I'm curious, how much feedback along those lines did you actually get from people? Probably 20 to 30 people.

That's not too bad. That's not too bad. And I did get a few tweets where people were, like, tweeting angrily at me, and then a few seconds later, like, sending apology tweets. My favourite, which I think I shared with the Twitter audience was, I was looking at my timeline and there was one person who followed me, two seconds later, angrily tweeted me, five seconds later, sent a tweet saying sorry. And you could see the whole thing play out on the Twitter timeline in real time.

It was quite funny. I will point out that Magnus Carlsen did win the World Chess Championship. Oh, did he? Okay. He did. But in circumstances that make me unhappy. Oh, why he? Okay. He did. But in circumstances that make me unhappy. Oh, why? What happened? Well, they played best of 12, which might sound silly because it's an even number,

but because you get so many draws in chess, it's irrelevant whether you play an even or odd number of games, really. They won one game each and all of the rest were drawn. This was against the Russian Sergei Karyakin. It was six points all after 12 games because you get half a point each for a draw. And then the way they decided it was with this tiebreaker situation. And there were this series of tiebreakers they were going to go through. The first was in one day they played a best of four rapid chess games. Oh, like speed chess? Yeah. Maybe it was like Irish games.

And if that didn't sort it out, they were going to go to a faster version. And if that didn't work out, they were then going to go to this form of chess called Armageddon chess, which has got super extreme time limits. And if no one has won by the time limit, then the person playing the black pieces is declared the winner. So, there has to be a winner of Armageddon chess. Wow. That seems deeply unfair on every level.

Well, I guess, you know, White has the advantage of starting and- I don't know. It didn't matter because it was sorted out in the rapid chess in the first best of four. They played two draws and then Carlsen won the next two to be crowned world champion. They already have, like, world championships of these other speeds of chess. So, I think deciding, like, the ultimate world chess champion in the long form of the game, having it then decided with this other form of chess is deeply wrong. And also, it's well known that Magnus Carlsen is very good. I mean, he's very good at all chess, obviously.

But he's considered to have an even greater advantage over Kariakon at speed chess. And I think the feeling was once things sort of evened out, he would be happy to play for the draw because he thought he could take out the Russian in the speed chess, which he then did. And I think this is unfair and a wrong way to have sorted out the World Chess Championship in the long form of the game. To have the world champion basically decided by the guy who's the best at rapid chess. I'm not happy. I still think Carlsen's the best chess player in the world. And perhaps I think the fairest thing to have done with a draw championship would be for the defending champion to have kept his title anyway. So, I'm quite happy that Magnus Carlsen has remained world champion, but I don't like that it was sorted out in this speedy chess format.

Yeah, I'm going to completely agree with you here. I mentioned last time that I used to play chess and then I got kind of bored with the game when I realized it's about recognizing patterns. But I did for a while continue to play very rapid speed chess. So where you put maybe five or 10 minutes on the clock for both people. That was fun because it was just a totally different game. You couldn't spend a lot of time thinking about stuff. But I imagine for grandmasters who are really honed in on the precise nature of the game,

that the difference between the long form version and the hour version might as well be like a speed chess kind of game. I totally agree with you. It's like if they're doing a faster version of chess at the end, it feels like they should almost just arm wrestle for the championship. Like, it feels a little bit like we're going to decide the world champion of one game by playing another game. I agree with you. I don't like it. I think they should just keep playing until somebody breaks the draw. If it takes a hundred games, like just keep playing. That's what they should do. That could have been pretty awesome. Just so you know, by the way,

the rapper chess can have different speeds between 10 and 60 minutes. In this particular case, it was 25 minutes with 10 second increments per move. That's still reasonably fast, though. Interesting. Yeah. The Blitz game, if it went to that, it would have been five minutes with three second increments. And then if it went to the Armageddon game, which kind of would have been kind of cool, it's actually white pieces get five minutes and the black pieces get four minutes on the clock. Yeah. Like I agree with you. It would be kind of cool to see it go to this Armageddon version, but it feels totally arbitrary. This feels unsatisfactory. This to me feels very

much like what's called a penalty shootout in soccer Are you familiar with a penalty shootout? That's the thing at the end where they kick four times Five times each So if a soccer game's drawn and a draw is unacceptable for some reason Like it's a knockout game in the World Cup or something They will just take penalty kicks from the penalty spot past the goalkeeper Which also I've always thought was a deeply unfair way to decide a soccer game Because it's such a niche discipline of the game

But I guess you've got to sort out draws in a timely way sometimes. I don't know. I feel like if it matters as much, we should just keep going. And I'll agree with you with the soccer games. It's like, oh, just keep playing. Someone will eventually score a point. We might be here for five hours, but what's the problem? Let's keep going. You do have a slight problem as well, though. This is another famous story that I'm assuming you won't be familiar with, but it's a bit of a classic in the world of sport. And that is in tennis, tennis sets are first to win six games.

Okay. But you have to win by two. So, you can win the set 6-4 or 6-3 or 6-2, but you can't win 6-5. Okay. So, there's a margin you have to overcome. Yeah. You have to win by two. This is to compensate for the fact the person who serves in a game has a big advantage.

So, you have to break the other person's serve at least once. This is why it exists. I like your intense sports voice. You use this every once in a while when you're talking about sports. This is my favourite stuff. It used to be in the olden times, you would just keep playing and it could go to 8-6 or it could go to 10-8 And you would keep playing until someone got an advantage of 2

Someone broke the other person's serve This resulted in the introduction of the tiebreaker So if a set of tennis gets to 6-0 You play sort of a special kind of mini game called a tiebreaker It's like a penalty shootout or like a blitz game of chess Whoever wins that tiebreaker wins the set 7, six, you move on to the next set. But in Grand Slam tournaments such as Wimbledon, it's considered unfair to decide the whole match on tiebreakers.

So, in say a men's game, which is best of five sets, the first four sets can be decided by tiebreakers. Okay. But if you get to two sets all and you're playing the fifth and deciding set, it's considered unfair to decide that with a tiebreaker. So, it goes to the old-fashioned way of you have to win by two. And like you're saying, you could play forever. You'll just keep taking it in turns games, one person serving and the other person serving until someone wins the set by two. There was a very famous match in 2010 at Wimbledon between a guy called John Isner from the United States

and a guy called Nicolas Mahout, who is French. Isner won the first set, 6-4, and then Mahout won the second set, 6-3. And then the next two sets both went to tiebreakers and were shared. So it came to the fifth set. Both of them are quite good servers, so it's hard to break their serve. And this set went for a long time. And in fact, it was finally won by Isner. The final set was won 70 to 68.

Oh, my God. And the tennis match went for over 11 hours and was played over three days. Whoa. One was serving, then the other was serving, and like they couldn't break each other's serve and it just kept going. It's been called the endless match. Wow. So that's the danger you could have had with Kariakon and Carlsen.

Imagine that a year and a half, just draw after draw after draw. Maybe in retrospect, I am underestimating just how closely matched the best in the world can be. And so my formula of just keep playing until you break the draw might actually be a terrible idea under many more circumstances than I think it would be. I would still prefer it. Or you just say that the world champion retains their crown if they can't be beaten in the format that is given to the challenger. I don't know. I guess that's a bit unsatisfying in this day and age, but. But I think that seems not unreasonable. I do have to say, Brady, that listening to you describe lovingly all of the little details of the sport, which rapidly fly by me as soon as you have said them i feel like i am forever dreading and looking forward to the inevitable day when you take me to a cricket

game and explain all of the cricket to me like this has been on our list of things to do for a long time i do want to have it happen but listening to you talk now and i have that feeling of like that'll be a fun day and also an incredibly mentally exhausting day. For me too, though. I'm so frustrated by it already because- It hasn't even happened. I know. Because there's such a balancing act between just understanding the fundamentals of the game, the rules of the game, and then the nuance and the game within the game, which is what people love so much, but you can't appreciate that until you understand the game. You know, you don't know which way to sort of tip it. Do I lovingly explain the game within the game and the nuance or do I have to just explain the basic rules? And it's

hard to get that right. I mean, this is actually like what our job is with making sort of educational YouTube videos as well, right? It's like, this is always the problem, especially when you assume that the person listening, like in this case with cricket, knows essentially nothing, you can very quickly work yourself into a situation where it's hard as the more knowledgeable person to know where to begin. Because yeah, it's like there's lots of stuff that's interesting once you know all of the background, but it can be kind of hard to disentangle what's confusing for someone new to this topic. And I think with the sports stuff, what you may find is you might have to go way more basic than you're even imagining, because there's probably lots of things common to

all sports that you just don't even realize that I am unaware of, that we might have to start with ground assumptions. So, okay. So, the reason I brought it up was because we have a little bit of follow-up. We were talking about the new Norwegian banknotes a while ago, which had some quite cool designs. And I was contacted by Tim the other day, and he told me that they're official now. The ones that we discussed way back when and linked to in the show notes have been slightly tweaked since and honed and refined and signed off.

And they have now got their final newly designed banknotes. They don't look much different to me. They're pretty much how we discussed them last time, sort of nautical objects and things like lighthouses and fishing boats. And then on the other side, a really weird, abstract, blurred pixelation of the same images. But that was all well and good. But then I was trying to read a bit more about it, thinking, oh, blurred pixelation of the same images. But that was all well and good. But then I was trying to read a bit more about it, thinking, oh, how are people responding to them? And at that point, I realised that actually still not in circulation yet.

This is one of these news stories that has about 18 false starts. Like water on Mars. Yeah, water on Mars. Exactly like that. Yeah. So, although the designs have been finalised, they don't start hitting people's wallets and purses until around the middle of next year. But one thing that I did find interesting was this news story I read. It said these banknotes have been described as the world's most beautiful banknotes in quotes.

And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I wonder who did that. And then I've done a bit more digging and it seems like there's no real source to it. And it actually comes from the Norwegian bank itself. Was that by the designer's mum or the head of the bank or some official design organisation? And it did make me think. It's amazing how just throwing something out there and especially putting it in quotes. Actually, I've got an idea. I'm going to do a tweet.

I'm just going to write, Hello, Internet, colon, and then in quote marks, World's Most Interesting Podcast. What I'll do then is I'll put a little dash 2016, because when you do that as well, it seems like more official. Okay, perfect. I'm putting that out there. All right, I'll retweet it and help spread it along.

You read it first on Twitter. So, Norway may have the world's most beautiful banknotes, and they're now being discussed on the world's most interesting podcast. You're just putting that quote out there. We had a few retweets and likes already, so words getting out. I mean, you are a fan of these banknotes, as am I. What do you think of world's most beautiful banknotes? Are you willing to endorse that?

Again, I'm a fan of these notes, but that exact quote, like the world's most beautiful. I'm not sure I could sign off on that. Maybe they're the world's coolest banknotes. That's what it should be, right? Brady Haran, 2016, world's coolest banknotes. But what this doesn't seem to me like is almost designed by committee. Like they've made some bold choices. It doesn't mean that I necessarily like everything that they have done,

but I like that they're visually distinct banknotes. They look different from other stuff that I've seen. Thumbs up on this one, Norway. But most beautiful, I'm not 100% sure. I like your description way better. Well, maybe the Bank of Norway will update their website and have my description instead. That would be a coup for the world's most interesting podcast. On this holiday season episode of Hello Internet, I want to welcome a fantastic new sponsor to the show, Away. First class luggage at a coach price. Just the other day, I found waiting for me in my office

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Hello, Brady. I'm a firefighter paramedic in Virginia. Stumbled across Hello Internet podcast recently. I listen quite often during training exercises and workouts at the station. Due to the nature of the job, I have quite a bit of downtime and I've listened to the first 40 podcasts in about three weeks time. Not bad. So within a month, I should be caught up to current. I wanted to share an interesting story regarding the podcast at my job. I was listening during a workout and we received a call for a structure fire just down the street. I rushed to throw on my gear and jump in

the truck to head to the incident. Upon arrival, there was heavy smoking showing from the structure. A very frantic lady ran up to us. She stated her dog was still in the structure on the second floor. Oh no. Here he lapses into normal language. Oh, no. Here, he lapses into normal language. As we entered the house, so we now know what the structure is, I somehow restarted the podcast in my pocket and still had the earbuds in. I ironically was listening to the story of Derek the Skydiver in episode 44, Jump Out of Planes, while listening to the podcast.

So, a nice little symmetry there. And although it was absolutely incidental, I just wanted to let you know that Ewan Gray played a small part in saving a golden retriever from a burning building. Not bad, eh? Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. I like that one. And it does sound very legitimate with the firefighter lingo. That's fantastic.

Yeah, I mean, like all these stories, it could be made up. I believe it. I believe it's true. There was no photographic verification provided, which I always enjoy in emails. But for all I know, that could be a work of fan fiction. But if so, well done. Yeah, I'll let it pass. But next time, if you're a firefighter saving a dog in a burning building,

we would like the head cam footage with the Hello Internet audio playing in the background at the same time, just to be sure. That would get you a Hello Internet Medal of Honor. I also wanted to share another viewer interaction from a while ago. I can't believe I forgot to tell this story. But also, I just realized I'm on brilliant accidental pun form today, because this will be a truncated version of a story about trunks. Because as you know, I don't mind an old trunk, an old

steamer trunk from the good old days. You have a magnificent one in your house. Yeah, the coffee table in our lounge is a lovely old steamer trunk with old initials stenciled on it and still some old stickers from the days when it was going on ships and things. I love that they've got like names painted on them and they've got a bit of a story to them. I like that they've got a history and they're also nice looking objects and they're quite useful for storing things as well. So, it's win, win, win. So, I recently had an email from a Tim in New Zealand who came across a trunk they thought I might like. I've got it here in the room next to me.

You can tell how the story is going to end already. It was used on a passenger liner called the SS Ionic, I believe, as in Ionic Bond, travelling New Zealand to London. And the passenger's name, which is painted on it rather ornately, is Miss Harron. It's always been my dream to find a trunk with, like, BJH, but to have one with my surname, which is reasonably unusual, was a coup.

So this Tim from New Zealand said, look what I just found in an antique store, like around the corner. And I was like, can you go back and take some more pictures of it? So, he went back and took more pictures and sent them to me. And I was like, you just got to buy that thing. You got to buy it for me now and send it to me. I don't care about the cost. So, he did and I PayPal'd him the money. Apparently, he did a bit of negotiating for me and got a few New Zealand dollars knocked

off the price. And then he shipped it to me. I think the shipping cost more than the trunk itself. Right. Of course. Of course. And it now has pride of place in one of my offices here. I'll post a picture in the show notes if people want to see my Miss Harron trunk. It's quite big. I think you could probably fit seven Audrey's in it maybe. Wow. A trunk large enough for seven chihuahuas. Yeah, maybe. You'd have to pack them in tightly. Of course you would.

So that's a decent size, but it was an absolute coup. So thank you very much. That is an absolute coup. I am just delighted at the idea of you doing antique shopping through Twitter is essentially what you're doing. Like crowdsourced antique shopping is what's occurring here. This is amazing. Can I put a shout out for the other thing I'm in the market for at the moment in case

any Tim's can help me out with my antiquing? Oh my God. Please go right ahead. I guarantee you this will not be cut. The thing I'm in the market for at the moment, and I'm finding it hard to find, and I do have very strict requirements because the room I need to get in is a very difficult room to negotiate large objects into. And also, obviously, it has to be in the UK because it's a big, heavy thing I want. But what I want at the moment for my second office slash film studio is an old school tech studies bench with a couple of vices on it.

You know, those old wooden ones that have got like a million old marks and dents in them. I don't know what you mean. A tech study bench? What do you call the subject at school where you would do like woodwork and things like that? Oh, I call it like a shop class, I think. Is that what you mean? They're called tech studies in the UK and in Australia. So, I want those old wooden benches where you would do woodwork at school on, probably from an old school.

And I want it to be all dented up and have things engraved in it and like have a real history and a story. And then I might like, you know, buff it up and polish it a bit. That would look nice, wouldn't it? I think that would look nice. That would look absolutely lovely. So, I'm on eBay looking at them. So, don't just send me like obvious ones on eBay because I would have seen them already.

It does have to be a little on the small side. But if, you you know you work in a school in the UK and you're throwing away your tech studies benches and that. But I will be fussy. Well, in particular, my wife especially will be fussy. But I'm in the market. So let me know. Keep an eye out, people. Maybe we need to coordinate this on a separate thread on the Hello Internet subreddit or something. We'll see if we can try and crowdsource this for you in an organized fashion. I would love that if we had like a just a little subreddit for helping Brady find his woodworking bench. I didn't realize you immediately are jumping to a dedicated subreddit

because this is going to happen frequently. Oh, no, no, no. Not a dedicated subreddit. Just a thread. Just a thread. All right. I'll put a thread in the show notes for people to try to organize this for you, Brady. I really want this to happen.

World's most interesting podcast. So, Grey, we're approaching Christmas. We are approaching Christmas rapidly. I have a couple of Christmas related items. Something I've complained about before. It's becoming an increasingly common complaint in the world at large, but it has just reached ridiculous proportions now. And that is some of the packaging being used by Amazon for receiving products. I'm talking oversized packaging here. The other day,

I had to buy two rolls of brown paper, you know, sort of the butcher's type paper I use in Numberphile videos. Like a roll of wrapping paper, basically, that size. Two rolls. Put my order in. A couple of days later, for whatever reason, the person who was supplying it only had one roll available and I had to wait a week for the second one. So, only one arrived. And I am not kidding. The box it arrived in was the size of a human coffin.

I could have fit inside this box and I opened it up and it had lots and lots of like stuffing paper in there to stop this one small roll of paper from bouncing around. And I took out my one little roll of wrapping paper and I had this enormous box that was so big I had to take it to the tip because I couldn't put it anywhere else. Oh, really? And then a few days later, I had to take it to the tip because I couldn't put it anywhere else. Oh, really? And then a few days later, I happened to be out when the second roll arrived. And sure enough, it arrives in a second coffin. And the person, because I wasn't there to take it inside, the delivery man or delivery woman had to leave it outside my house by the front fence.

And it was raining. So, it also got rained on. The stuff was okay in the end but i had to go to the tip a second time this time with a huge sopping wet cardboard coffin and throw that one in the tip as well and i was at the tip and i was i was throwing this thing away and some other guy was throwing something away next to me and i said look at this can you believe it i got sent this huge thing just for a small thing of wrapping paper which sent him off on a rant about all the things he'd been receiving from Amazon with like,

he received one thing from Amazon that had stuffing paper in there as well for protection. And he measured it and it had 30 meters of paper in this box all condensed down to look after whatever was in the box. He was so amazed he measured the paper because he couldn't believe it. This is getting crazy. I know they're doing it for efficiency reason. And I know, you know, you don't care that much about small things to help the environment when only big things matter, but this is getting ridiculous. You are assuming things here. And one of these is like, this is exactly the kind of case where I think it does matter to care because how many packages does Amazon ship? To my house alone, hundreds a day, as far as I can tell, right? So if like,

if you can get Amazon to make their packaging slightly smaller, using less materials, like, I think that's the kind of thing that does have a reasonable impact. And it works at scale. So I assume like you're probably assuming that Amazon is doing this because on whatever spreadsheets they're using, having a smaller number of different sized boxes to work with is more efficient for them than having exactly the right size box. But I have definitely been super aware of this, of getting boxes that just seem comically missized for the object that is being shipped. And my personal favorite example was just a couple of months ago, I bought like a USB thumb drive that I needed to transfer some files back and forth. So a thing that was literally the size of my thumb came in a box that was the size of a shoe box. But don't just write off like, oh, I don't care about the

environment and small changes. Like this is exactly the kind of thing that I think does matter in trying to pressure a company like Amazon into using more efficient material because they must ship a bazillion boxes absolutely everywhere. The only thing that's given me a small amount of sympathy for them, which has happened in the last week or two as Project Revolution has started ramping up, is I can see why you would want to overprotect items. Because dealing with every email and everything about some minor bit of damage to a Project Revolution has become difficult and time-consuming.

And I completely understand that. I'm not complaining because, you know, that's how it is. And for every person, that one record is very important to them. And if it's not right, it's not right. So, I'm not complaining about the people, but it does make me realise that it's difficult. And no matter what you do or how well you package something, you know, things happen and then it's difficult. And like, no matter what you do or how well you package something, you know, things happen and then it becomes difficult. So, I have got a little bit of sympathy for over-protecting items, but you do not need a coffin for a roll of paper or a shoebox

for a thumb drive. You're learning that being a one-man logistics distributor is actually quite difficult. That's what you're learning over there? Yeah. And I do feel like that despite having a logistics company that's supposed to be doing the work for me. Customer support. There's always quite a lot of it whenever you do anything. Anyway, we're getting there. People have been sending loads of photos of them with their records and that's really been exciting me.

So, keep them coming. And I hope you're all enjoying the vinyl edition, those of you who are partaking. Let's stay on Christmas though because I have another Christmas story. I'm really curious as to what you're going to think about this from a moral standpoint or a rightness or wrongness. Okay. But it is a bit of fun. Neither you or I have human children.

I have doggy children, but we don't have human children. That's a fantastic way to phrase that. That's correct. Yes. Neither don't have human children. That's a fantastic way to phrase that. That's correct. Yes. Neither of us have human children. I agree. Some of my relatives do, who I've been spending a bit of time with recently. And I was with my nephew recently and his parents.

And I was introduced to a piece of technology that they are using to help with behaviour control. I'm familiar with all using to help with behaviour control. I'm familiar with all the different modes of behaviour control for children. And I'm also quite familiar with Christmas related ones. I don't know if you have you ever heard of the elf on the shelf? I have heard of this and it just sounds creepy to me, but I've only heard about this in passing. So, my understanding of the elf on the shelf is that it's a stuffed toy elf that you put on the shelf and then you tell the child that it's like Santa's spy who's watching you all the time to make sure that you're being good. Is that the basic idea of the elf on

the shelf? In a nutshell, yeah, that's it. I don't know if it's stuffed, but it's a toy elf. It comes with a book and you read the child the book at the start of the Christmas season, which explains the backstory. I don't know what the backstory is. And they give the elf a name and they're not to touch the elf. They're told if they touch the elf, the world will end or something like that. Trust me, children are absolutely petrified of touching the elf. And I have heard stories of children calling 911 in fear after they have touched their elf accidentally. Okay.

That sounds a little too effective. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it usually sits in inaccessible places to help with this no touching thing. But every night while the child is asleep, it moves. I think we all know how, but let's not say in case there are any elf believers listening. Okay. Also terrifying.

Okay. So, it'll be like, oh, look, last night the elf moved from the top of the Christmas tree to the kitchen cupboard or something, but it is watching them. And so, you can use this with little helpful reminders like, oh, you sure you want to break that Christmas ornament when the elf up on, oh, there's watching. So, it's very effective. I sometimes have joked, why can't you just use this all year round? But I imagine it would lose its effectiveness and it only really works when the Christmas presents are imminent and we have a bit of carrot and stick going on. So anyway, that's the elf on the shelf. It's been quite a zeitgeisty thing, I think,

for a few years now. That sounds absolutely terrifying the way you describe it. I didn't realise that the elf moves. That sounds like the plot of a horror movie. I would just think like, maybe the elf gets closer, right? The worse you're being, right? You wake up in the morning, right? And the elf is right next to your head. Don't touch it. Don't touch it. But it's right there.

You've been very bad. Or like you go into a room and there's like 90 of them hanging from a string and you've got to get through it like lasers in a bank vault. Yeah. The elf has brought all of his friends because you've been very naughty, right? They've been seeing what you're doing. Like, oh God, it sounds awful. Or you have like 10 of them surrounding your TV remote control.

Anyway, I quite like it because it's like, you know me, I like books and toys and it's a bit old fashioned. It seems like something from another time. It really does. It seems like a bygone tradition or something. It's surprising that it's a new thing. But technology's moved on. And last week I was shown a sort of a more modern equivalent. Apparently there's a few of these around. I've just got one of them. This is an app you have on your phone. And I've got one here called Santa Claus. It's the 2016 version of Elf on the Shelf. Because what happens is you configure the app and if you pay money,

you can configure it with even more power. But I'm just using the free version here. So I'm using at its most limited. And what happens is this app allows Santa Claus to call your phone in front of your child. And conversations can ensue. Let me give you an example. I'm going to open up my app now. What is this app called? It's called Santa Claus. So I've configured the app.

I'm now going to schedule a call. You can pre-program various receivers and I've programmed one for someone called Gray, who is my five-year-old child. Okay. And you can choose a long list of reasons for the Santa to be calling. The reason for this call is going to be a check on behaviour, to check if behaving. And then you can tell the app when this mysterious phone call is going to be a check on behavior to check if behaving. And then you can tell the app when this mysterious phone call is going to arrive. I'm going to say, let's have it immediately. So say my five-year-old Gray is being naughty or I want to modify his behavior. I feel really uncomfortable right now. I will sneakily pull out my app. I will configure this call and let me press the button. And then what happens in a few seconds,

my phone will go black. So it looks like it's inactive because kids know this stuff. So my phone has about to go black. It's gone black. And here we go. What happens? I've got on speaker. And a picture of Santa Claus says incoming call from Santa Claus with a red

or a green phone. I'm going to press green to accept the call. There's a picture of Santa. I've pressed it. Hoo, hoo, hoo. What do you do? This is Santa Claus. There's even a timer, like a phone call would have.

What's your name? My name's Grey. Good. I'm five Oh my god Oh no Make sure that you're still behaving. Remember, I see you when you're sleeping. And I hear when you're awake. Oh, no. If you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

I'll be good, I promise. It was jolly nice talking to you. Thank you. I have to go now. So anyway, I've just hung up on Santa. It says Cole ended. I swear to God, that feels like real life Black Mirror somehow. It feels like something out of a nightmare.

I couldn't decide if it was good or bad. I was talking to my nephew's parents about it because they've been using it. But it's gotten to a point now where they're a bit scared to use it because their little boy, who's a great little boy. He like, he did something naughty the other day, which he rarely does. And the minute he did it, he like looked at the phone and with fear. And he thought Santa was about to call because Santa keeps calling whenever he's naughty. He looked at the phone and started like trembling. So, the parents were like, okay, we've got to stop this.

I mean, when you first had that thing ring and it started playing the music, okay, this is the first time I've ever heard it. But I thought, man, that would take about one exposure to develop a Pavlovian response right to that music. I'm just like, horror, and I'm in trouble. In the same way that, you know, you should never set a sound or a tune that you like as your alarm clock in the morning, because you will grow to loathe that song. That thing makes it feel like Santa Claus is terrifying. And the whole, he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake thing, like, obviously, that's creepy if you think about it, but something about the way that app says it,

where it's like Santa directly addressing you. They're like, I watch you while you're asleep. It's so cunning too. It looks just like a phone call. You know, it's got the green and the red icons. It's got a counter when the phone call starts, like a timer and like a little icon for Santa so you can see the person who's calling. It's devious. Yeah. I find that scary and terrifying. I can see how this stuff is useful for parents, but something about it makes me uneasy in a way that I can't

quite define. If you are willing to pay, there's all sorts of things you can build into it. Like, you can take a picture of your house and then when you're having conversations with Santa, a picture of your house will come up. And if you haven't got a chimney, he'll explain how he can get into your house without a chimney. And so, the whole charade, dare I say it, is really, really elaborate. It's really full on. Would you use that on a human child, Brady? Would you feel comfortable using that on a human child? Well, we're about to talk about some things about Santa Claus that young people might not want to

hear. Right. We're going to discuss some Santa secrets, people. Here's your warning. Ho, ho, ho. So, in that context, how is it different from what we've been doing all our lives with Santa Claus? Like, we've been doing this for years anyway. This is just a new tool in the arsenal. We take kids to sit on Santa's lap and tell them that's Santa. And he sits there and says, what do you want for Christmas? And I'm going to bring you stuff for Christmas.

So, to look at this app and say, that's outrageous. How can we be deceiving children like this? Like, we do it already. I'm and say, that's outrageous. How can we be deceiving children like this? Like, we do it already. I'm not saying that it's outrageous. I'm just saying that it feels like a weaponized version of the traditional story. Like, the regular thing is just fine. But this is tuned so precisely that it becomes different in kind rather than just different in amount.

That's what it feels like, right? It's weaponized Santa, right? It's like precision targeted to press all of the buttons of a child. And that's what makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable as opposed to, oh, there's this folk tale that we tell that happens to be useful around the holidays, but we haven't like refined it into this precise thing. I think that's why I feel a little bit weird and uncomfortable with that. Have I ever told you my story about learning the truth about Santa? I don't think so. Tell me, Brady.

So, my parents were always quite big on me knowing the truth of life quite early. They treated me quite grown up. So, I was told the shocking truth about Santa Claus quite early. They treated me quite grown up. So, I was told the shocking truth about Santa Claus quite early. And I was told at the same time as my poor sister who was 18 months younger. So, she had 18 months less magic than me. And I was told, I was very specifically told not to tell my other friends because they still believed in Santa. And it was explained to me like the utility of Santa and why the others must be allowed to believe. Right, right. So, sure enough, the next day I went to school and you know what the first thing I did was? Right. I called together all the lads and said, guys, I've got some big news.

Right. This is day one of investigative journalist Brady breaking the story. So, I break the story to like all the boys in my class, 10, 15 of them. But the problem was the most popular boy in school, like, you know, the cock of the roost or whatever you want to call him, a guy called Simon. He didn't believe me. He was a big Santa believer. So, he told all the other boys in the class, guys, Brady's talking rubbish. And I was basically ostracized for the day.

I was a pariah. Right. Because Simon had decided Brady was telling mistruths about Santa Claus. So, I was frozen out. Obviously, that night Simon went home and told his parents and said, look, Brady at school has been saying this stuff. But he obviously said to his parents, but don't worry, I've taken care of it. And his parents obviously felt sorry for me. So, they secretly told Simon and Simon alone, look, Brady was telling the truth.

And Simon got the same talk that night about, you know, the shocking truth. So, it was so funny. The next day, like at recess, Simon, like, convened all the boys in the class and we all sort of stood in a circle and he was like, guys, I've got some big news. Brady was telling the truth. And, like, then everyone believed because Simon told them that Santa wasn't real. So, for a day, Santa like cost me, you know, my social status. But then the next day I was like redeemed.

Right. But you got another source on the record, right? That's what made it all the more believable. I should have done that in the first place. I should have had two sources to start with. That was my mistake. But anyway, I learned from that. What was your Santa experience as a youngster? I don't have a particular memory of figuring out the truth. What I do remember is that there was a period of suspicion that I had as a child where I was like, I'm not sure this Santa story is holding together, right? And my parents cleverly delayed it for maybe one or two Christmases by modifying the story slightly by

saying, oh, yes, obviously, some of the presents are from us, and some of them are from Santa. And whatever age I was, I was like, oh, that explains some of these inconsistencies, right? I just kind of went along with it for a little while longer. But I know some people have traumatic discovery of a terrible truth about Santa. I have no memory of when this occurred or how the details happened. I don't remember at all when I found out the truth. I'd love people to put in the Reddit notes for this show how they found out about Santa, because I'd be really interested to find that out. It was a shock to me and my sister, I remember that, because it was done while decorating the Christmas tree of all times.

My mum was decorating the Christmas tree and called us in to tell us. So, it kind of had this like quite evil aspect to it. There was a few seconds of like stunned silence and like processing the information. I think the first question was where did the presents come from, of course, and that was explained. And then it was what about the Easter bunny? And like I said, the Easter bunny died that day too. Right. We've got some sad news for you about him. Yeah. And then there was like just more like desolation for like a minute or so. And then it's the tooth fairy. Same. All these people just all like came crashing down at once. It's a weird moral dilemma about what to do with children and Santa Claus. Like, if I had human children, I'm not sure how I would handle that situation with

Santa. because obviously some people grow up and feel super betrayed over this in ways that like, as an adult, they still kind of feel quite strongly about. But I can never quite figure out, is this a good thing that we do as a society? Or is it not a good thing that we do as a society overall? Is it a good lesson for children to learn? Like, oh, the adult world, not only will it lie to you, but there will be like a vast conspiracy to keep the truth away from you, like in a way that you could not possibly believe as a child.

Like, maybe that's a good lesson for people to learn. I don't know. Like, is that the lesson Santa teaches us all? I don't think that's the lesson that people take away from Santa. I think they take away a lesson of personal disappointment. So I have very mixed feelings on the cultural institution of Santa as it relates to children. What do you think, Brady? I love it. I love it.

I love Santa. Like I love Christmas. I love like the idea, the decorations, this like idea of Santa. I'm a little bit more ambiguous about the enormous conspiracy around Santa as he relates to children. Oh, it all just gives us, it gives the kids pleasure. It gives us adults pleasure as we wink at each other and tell the stories. Yeah. Sort of related to something you said earlier, though, which I find a strange development in Santa Claus. You said how we bring kids to see Santa and have him sit on Santa's lap. I have noticed with the friends

that I have who have children who are in the Santa age range, that all of the mall Santas, the rule is now that you are not allowed to sit on Santa's lap. And so they all have pictures of their child sitting next to Santa Claus instead of sitting on his lap. Shaking his hand. Yeah. I assume that it's part of this like bizarre paranoia that the UK has over pedophiles, like a mall Santa, right, might be a dangerous situation. I was like, I can't imagine a less dangerous situation than a mall Santa. But the thing that bothers me about it is it's like, okay, the character of Santa Claus is someone who loves kids, right? And so it's like, obviously,

you sit the kid on someone's lap. When you turn the photograph into a child sitting next to Santa, now suddenly it looks really weird, right? Now suddenly it looks like maybe there's something going on with that Santa, right? So it's like, everything was fine before. And then in your weird effort to be like, oh, we have to worry about pedophiles, like, you make the world look like it's more dangerous when children can't even sit on Santa's lap. So I have been annoyed by a series of photos that I have seen like this, where the parents are saying, oh, you're not allowed to have the child sit on Santa's lap. We have to sit the child next to Santa. And with like a pretty big gap in between. It's just weird. It's really weird. And I don't like it. And I think it's one of these cases where the world

has gone super paranoid. I agree. And I'm sure Gregory's child protection is a serious issue. And there have been a couple of stories in the last few weeks in the UK that have exacerbated the situation. None involving Santa Claus, as I hasten to add. But I think the child protection thing can go a little bit far. And you're right. It suddenly makes it an issue. It tires the Santa with the allegation.

Yeah, exactly. It totally does. It's a case of trying to make a thing better, but like you've made it worse. You've made Santa look so much more suspicious. Hello, internet listeners. I know some of you right now are finding it just impossible to get the right gift for some of the guys that you know,

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brag a bit, but there is also some humbling in it. I was trying to think what to call it in our new naming system. And I think it's like a humble brag, brag, brag, humble. Oh, okay. I don't know. There's a lot of components to it. You're going very German with the humble brag now. You're building up a unique word to have the exact ratios of how much humble versus how much brag is in the story.

Yeah. Okay. So, my sister who lives in Singapore was out the other day for her anniversary at dinner. And her and her husband got talking to a couple next to them. And they got talking about mathematics. One of the people next to them was really into mathematics. And I think my brother-in-law then said, oh, my brother-in-law is a guy in England and he makes videos about mathematics. And then suddenly this guy looks at my sister and says, are you Brady Haran's sister?

She was like, yeah. And like, he was so excited. And then all the family was called over. And like, my sister had to pose for photos with them at her anniversary dinner. She had to pose for photos with the guy sitting at the table next to them because like, she was the sister of like someone who makes Numberphile videos. So, this was a funny story. And as you know, I enjoy any chance I have to lord over my sister and she like hated

it. So, I've been giving her a hard time. Right. That makes it 10 times better, right? Exactly. So, not only do I feel like, oh, I'm just a big famous Numberphile guy who makes videos, even my sister has to like pose for photos. Right.

It's like, great, somebody else rubbed it in my sister's face. Perfect. Exactly. That was all well and good. And a couple of days later, remember that's this Kelvin medal from the Institute of Physics that 60 Symbols won? We had the award ceremony for that the other day. So, we all dressed up in our penguin suits and went to this award ceremony.

And it was really good. And again, we were feeling like the big superstars because we were getting our prize. And before the award ceremony starts, I'm told by one of the organisers, I see those two young people over there. They're like young, gifted physics students. And they're going to be presenting your award because they're presenting some awards. It's kind of, you know, it's like an initiative to get young, talented students engaged with professional physics and a treat for them.

And it's a nice idea, isn't it, having school students present the awards? And the guy says to me, and I think, you know, it's a bit of a daunting experience for them with all these old physicists around. I think they'd get a real thrill out of getting to, like, meet you and have a chat with you because, you know, you're like the YouTube star person. You're the celebrity. Yeah.

So, I'm like, oh, of course, I'd be really happy to talk to them. It'd be really great. What a great idea. So, I went over and spoke to them and I was talking to one of the guys and I'm like, oh, of course, I'd be really happy to talk to them. It'd be really great. What a great idea. So, I went over and spoke to them and I was talking to one of the guys and I'm like, oh, hi, I'm Brady. And it was explained to him that I was getting an award. He was like, oh, that's really nice. I'm like, yeah, I make these videos. We're getting this award for 60 symbols. And someone there said, oh, do you watch 60 symbols? And he's like, blank, never heard of it. And I'm like, oh, okay, that's brought me down a peg.

And I'm like, so I'm trying to make conversation with this guy who doesn't know me from Adam and I'm just another boring old person to him. So, I said to him, oh, do you watch YouTube videos, like science YouTube videos? And he's like, oh, yeah, I really love them. And I'm like, oh, tell me some of the ones you watch. And I was hoping he'd like say like number file or periodic videos or something and then I could go, yeah, hey, guess who I am. So, he starts listing off the ones he likes.

Nothing I make gets a mention. I'll tell you that right now. But the one he mentions first that he absolutely loves is Veritasium. I love Veritasium videos. They're my favourite. So, after what happened to my sister, I'm now forced to resort to fame by association. And I'm like, oh, I know Derek. Like, I'm a hanger on.

And then he's like, oh, I really like Vsauce. And I'm like, oh, I know Michael, too. But, like, he's so excited that I know Derek. So, I send Derek a text. He's in California. And I say, oh, I'm at some awards ceremony trying to impress some kid who doesn't know me. Oh, my God, Brady. I'm trying to-

Because it had been my job to make his night. Like, I'd been told he'd get a thrill from speaking to me. And he didn't give two hoots about me. I feel like you've really just crossed a line here, right? It's like, okay, this is sort of a funny story about how someone doesn't know who you are. And there can be these really weird, awkward social situations where if you make your living in a public way, and like someone introduces you in a way where they expect someone to know who you are. Like I've been in some of those situations. And I hate it when someone

introduces me like, as this person, they expect someone else to know. And it's like, please never do that. There's no upside to it. It can be super awkward know and it's like please never do that there's no upside to it it can be super awkward so it's like i have so much sympathy for you in this situation and the odds are so small because like our audiences are really so small in the scheme of things there's chances of someone knowing it's uh minute yeah it's this very interesting thing with youtube fame where it's like it can be large but it's so narrow at the same time it's not generalized fame like celebrity. So, yeah, I go out of my way to avoid those situations.

And so, I'm listening to this story. I'm totally with you. I'm all on board, except for now, right? When you cross the line and you message Derek and you're like, you're talking to this guy. I didn't do this in front of the guy. You know, because I text Derek occasionally. We share photos. So, we're like, you know, because I text Derek occasionally. We share photos. So, we're like, you know, this is something we would do anyway.

So, I basically said, I'm at this award ceremony and funny thing happened and the guy is a massive fan of yours and doesn't know me from Adam and I'm supposed to be, you know, the star of the night. So, then I say to Derek, I told Derek the guy's name and said, can you do me a favour? And what a great guy Derek is, like what a great guy he is. He, on the spot, on like a sidewalk in California, sent me a video of a personal message to this guy. And like, he also did it so well. He made it really like charming.

He said, hey, he said the guy's name. I hear you're at the award ceremony and I hope you have a really great night. And I'm glad you got to meet Brady and I'm glad you like Veritasium. Really classy, like, you know, 20 second message. So, then I texted it off to this guy and oh my God, did that make his night? He was so excited. I felt like about one foot tall, but I still delivered the goods and made his night. Thanks to our good friend, Dirk from Veristablium.

So, it started all very braggy and by the end of it all, I was pretty humbled. That is humbled in the proper use of the term. Right. Feeling lower than you are, as opposed to the way people seem to use it when they have achieved massive success and then say they feel humble. So when I did receive my award, I could, I didn't make a speech or anything, but I could have said I'm truly humbled tonight and I would have been telling the truth. I will warn you in advance, Brady, just in case you needed it,

that if you're ever in a situation where someone knows who I am, but doesn't know who you are, don't expect me to send a charming video message to the person so that you can impress them. Yeah. Do you think I'd ask? I don't know. I don't know how much pressure you'd be under to deliver the goods of making sure that this person knows that you know a person. On the other hand, if it was like Destin, Destin would probably make them a five foot paper mache sculpture or something. If it was Destin, he'd be landing in a helicopter in 20 minutes. So, Grey, bi-weekly weigh-in? How you doing? Wow, this feels really out of the blue. What makes you bring up the bi-weekly weigh-in, Brady? You told me that if you love something,

you let it go. And if it's truly yours, it comes back to you. I've come back to you. Wow. Yeah. I feel like it has been a year. I have no idea how long it's been. It feels like it's been a long time. I'm having another run at it.

Just to be clear, I'm really happy about this. I just assumed I'd never be hearing these words ever again. But it seems like right before Christmas might be the worst time in the world to start up a health kick. So tell me, what's going on? What's going on? I don't know. Just something happened. Something flicked in my mind.

And I've said, I haven't sorted my food out yet. Okay. That is a switch I'm yet to flick. And we actually had to do our Christmassy stuff with family early because my wife and I are working over Christmas. So, we've done some really bad eating the last week or two. But what I have done is rejoined a gym I quite like nearby and I've started very regular personal training sessions. Oh, interesting. So, you're working with a personal trainer? I am. When possible, which is not always possible.

Best case scenario, three days a week. Wow, that's fantastic. How are you finding it? I have done personal training before. When it comes to exercise, it's the way to go for me because I'm quite a proud person. I'm not willing to like fail in front of someone, even if it's just one person. So, if the personal trainer says, all right, I want you to do 10 of them and then five of them, I'm going to be hard as nails and say, well, all right, I'm not going to let you see me not be able to do it. So, basically, he knows I'm unfit and he says, let's start with this and see if you can do it.

And every time I do something, he's like, oh, wow, I'm surprised you did that. Let's up the ante. He's not realising that I'm dying inside, but I'm just like pushing myself to the limits of human endurance so that I won't not be able to do something he asked me to do. He could probably say, go and lift up that car and I'd do it just out of sheer stubbornness. Great. That seems like a good way to handle your personal health. Okay. I've got to sort my food out because it's all for naught if I- at the moment, I'm just robbing Peter to pay Paul. But it's a start and I've done to sort my food out because it's all for naught if I, at the moment, I'm just robbing Peter to pay Paul. But it's a start. And I've done five sessions so far.

And I'm going to try and stick with it. Even stopping now would be a cause of great personal shame. The reason I left my previous personal trainer was because I left the city. I moved away from Nottingham. So, I can't imagine stopping with a personal trainer. So, the only thing that's going to cause this to stop is me moving house. Like, so I can no longer see him. So, I can't imagine stopping with a personal trainer. So, the only thing that's going to cause this to stop is me moving house, like, so I can no longer see him. Or the most likely scenario is him changing jobs or not being a personal trainer anymore. But until then, I can't really see what will stop me. Wow. This is fantastic news. I feel like I'm just totally unprepared for this. I didn't know this was going to happen. Do you want to restart like regular conversations around this?

Like, do you want to do the weigh in with numbers again? Or what are you thinking? What's going on with your mind here? No, I'm not thinking that. I'm just letting you know I'm back on the horse. And you'll know how well it's going by how often I bring it up. Ah, okay. See, that's what I was kind of thinking.

Okay, so you're not committing to any kind of structured schedule here. Well, I don't see a point now because you got where you wanted to be and you've got the body beautiful and you're living the dream now. And so there's no real comparison to be made. I'm just flying solo now. I achieved the weight that I wanted to, which is under 200 pounds. But I think to say that I have the body beautiful now, it's not exactly an accurate description. Like I could definitely do a lot more.

And for various reasons, in particular, over the last several weeks, like I have been very off the wagon as far as it comes to health. And then when Christmas is rolling around, I feel like, goodbye, wagon, I'll catch you in January, right? Like I'm not even I'm not going to make any kind of pretending. So I am by no means on any kind of health kick. But I'll just put it out there. Like if you wanted to ever do anything more structural, more formal, like I've got plenty of progress to still make, even though I achieved my first goal. So that would be something I'd be very open to. Baby steps, Gray. Baby steps.

I'm not going to pressure you. That's right. I'm going to let this bird go, fly back out, and maybe we'll check in in another year and we'll find out how that personal training has been going. You know, at least in my own very limited experience with personal training, like I found it shockingly effective in many ways that I wouldn't have expected because of that same phenomenon that when you're with somebody else, they can push you much harder than you would naturally push yourself because there is that pressure of like, well, I don't want to look like a wimp. So yeah, I'm very happy, Brady. Why have you got only limited experience with personal training?

Why don't you use a personal trainer all the time? Okay, this is going to be a very grey answer probably. But I did personal training for about six weeks before this summer when I was going to do a bunch of traveling. I was doing it basically because I was getting to the point where I was concerned that I could injure myself with the weights that I was lifting. And so I wanted to work with someone to make sure that I was doing it not in a dumb way. I couldn't just be doing it on my own anymore at that point. So I was kind of int exhausting to have like a three days a week

kind of hour long meeting with another person early in the morning. This does not work for me. My ideal morning is I get up and I don't talk to anyone until I've done all of my work and exercise and now it's like 12 or one in the afternoon. That's my absolute ideal morning. And so to have like a morning meeting with someone all the time, I just found it really mentally draining. And I was also aware that it actually did have like an impact on my work, being aware that like, oh, I have to be at the gym at this exact time. Yes, I find that.

There's this lie that people say, which is that they're always like, oh, when you exercise, it doesn't take that much time and it adds so much time to your life. And it's like, I have never found that to be the case. Like exercise does take a lot of time. And I think it's better if you just mentally accept that.

Like this is going to take a big chunk out of your day. It's worth it. But it's just like, accept the fact it's going to take a big chunk out of your day. It's worth it. But it's just like, except the fact it's going to take a big chunk out of your day. But I found that by having the regular meeting with the trainer, it was impacting it even more. Like it was taking more of a chunk. And then I just find it exhausting to try to talk to someone at 1030 in the

morning. And especially like constant small chit chat. Like I find that the most draining thing ever. So I did it for a limited run i might do it again in the future for limited runs but i think i would probably rather kill myself than do indefinite ongoing personal training i couldn't possibly deal with that but it does bring me to the other thing i want to talk about about going to the gym i just don't imagine you do this actually because even i find it socially awkward. The changing rooms.

Do you go into gym changing rooms? Yeah. Where are you going with this? What's awkward in a changing room? I don't know. Just some people are more, have more of an exhibitionist streak than others. And I sometimes find I don't really know what to do with myself. What you do is you keep eyes above waist level, Brady, right?

That's rule number one. Yeah, okay. Eyes up, right? That's rule number one. Yeah, okay. Eyes up, right? Eyes up. If eyes are up, all other problems are solved. I don't see what the issue is. And you're quite comfortable with that. You're quite comfortable with all these nude people around you and you're nuding up yourself. Yes, yes. We're all just nuding it up together in the changing room.

I just thought you're the last person in the world that would be comfortable with that. I mean, I'm totally fine with the changing rooms because it's, again, it's like the social rules in this environment. We're all here at the gym together. We're all using shared facilities. This is just the way it is. I don't see what there is to be uncomfortable about this. It's just like, oh, this is just a changing room.

We segregated by gender, right, for social politeness reasons. And here we are. We're in the changing room. We segregated by gender, right, for social politeness reasons. And here we are, we're in the changing room. I'm actually surprised that you're not the guy who's chatting people up in the changing room. I figured you'd be your normal chatty self in the changing room, but it feels like maybe you're the guy looking down embarrassed all the time. I'm surprised by this. I wouldn't say I'm looking down embarrassed all the time. I'm more just shocked that you're cool with it.

I don't know. It just seems like these are the rules here. All right. What else are we going to do? We all have to use the showers. We all have to change our clothes. As long as you follow the rule, eyes up. Okay. I just assumed you would be someone who would like just go home sweaty and get changed at home or build some kind of towel tent. Like a portable tent. Yeah. A portable tent to bring with me. Like you don't even let people see your face.

This is a totally different context. You're mixing context here, Brady. One is not applicable to the other. All right. Enough locker room banter. Enough locker room banter. But I'm very happy for you, Brady. This episode is brought to you in part by my favorite place to get

audiobooks, the only place I get audiobooks, audible.com. With an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original audio shows now, news, comedy, and more, you can get a free audiobook with a 30-day trial at audible.com slash hellointernet. That's A-U-D-I-B-L-E dot com slash hellointernet, all one word. The book that I'm currently listening to on Audible is what I think is a perfect example of why I like to use Audible for audiobooks so much. That book is called Cod by Mark Kurlansky, a biography of the fish that changed the world. And yes, it is actually a book that is entirely about cod, how cod influenced the ability of transatlantic voyages because of how easy it was to store and how long it lasted and then onward to its effect on the

famous triangle trade routes. Like it's very interesting to listen to, but I am absolutely sure that if I ever had to sit down and say, I'm going to read a book about Cod, that would never happen. But this is why I like audiobooks and why I like Audible. I can pick a book on a topic like this. And when I'm walking to and from the office, when I'm just doing errands, and particularly around the holiday season, there are very many errands to run, I can just listen to a book about a topic and be informed. And I really like it. I listen to a ton of nonfiction audiobooks of this kind. And I'm currently listening to COD and quite liking it. So if you're listening to this podcast right now, you're the kind of person who would also enjoy listening to audiobooks,

and you should really give Audible a try. They have just such an incredibly large catalog, there is always going to be something for you to listen to. So if you go to audible.com slash hellointernet to get your free 30-day trial, you can give Codd a listen, or you can try that author's other book called Salt, or you can find any book on any topic in their enormous catalog that is of interest to you. Really, give it a try when you're doing some errands, when you're walking around, when you're commuting. Audiobooks really add a lot to my quality of life, and I think they will to yours as well. So once again, please go to

audible.com, that's A-U-D-I-B-L-E dot com slash hello internet to get your free audiobook with a 30-day trial. Thanks again to Audible for supporting the show and for making my walking around time much more informative and interesting. You know, we love the elements here. You know, I love the elements. And I feel like you have a soft spot for the periodic table too. Of course. Those four new elements, Nahonium, Moscovium, Tennessane and Oganesson have now gone through the consultation process. They've been signed and sealed and stamped and authorized, and they're now on the periodic table for all time.

I thought we should mark that. Oh, yeah. And I marked it with a bit of an experiment. As you know, I've made videos about every single element of periodic videos. So, obviously, we had four new videos to make now that these elements are official, just so that the collection is intact. Of course. So, we made the four new ones the other day.

And tell me what you think of this. Because all four were approved and authorized at once, they kind of did them as a batch through the process. I decided for fun more than anything to release all four videos at once simultaneously. Okay. So, you did four separate videos launch at the same time. Four separate videos, put them all out at the exact same time. So one o'clock yesterday or the day before, bang, press the button.

Four new videos from periodic videos all at once, treating each one individually, like standalone so they can sit on the website alone and that sort of stuff. Do you think that was a good idea? Do you think that was a terrible idea? What do you think about that? I presume that you're asking from the perspective of maximizing views. Is that what you're thinking? That is one of the factors.

Obviously, it is not a good idea for maximizing views. I was aware of that. Like, that was a sacrifice. There were pros and cons to doing it. And I'm wondering if you think it was a stupid thing to have done, or it appeals to your brain, or you think I was a stupid thing to have done or it appeals to your brain or you think I was being silly. If I was running periodic videos, I think I would not have released them all at once.

I don't think it's a terribly silly thing to do, but it just seems like so much of our careers is dependent on the YouTube algorithm and what the YouTube algorithm wants to promote and wants to show people. And I can't imagine that releasing four videos at once is the kind of thing that the people who are designing that algorithm would expect a channel to do and so would thus factor in correctly to how it should be handled. So I don't know what your view numbers were like on those videos at all. But my feeling is, if I had multiple videos to release, I wouldn't release them all simultaneously. Now, every once in a while, I have released multiple videos on a

single day, usually where I have a video, and then there's like a little footnote that I want to include with the video that's not a main thing. And if I do that, I'll at very least try to put a lot of time between them. So like one will go up in the morning and then one will go up later in the afternoon. Because I just feel like at the same time, I'm not sure that the algorithm would like that. And we all have to serve the algorithm, Brady. That's my feeling on this. I didn't feel that way about this. I didn't feel- Well, obviously, I didn't feel I should be serving the algorithm because I did it.

And I knew the algorithm wouldn't like it. But there were lots of factors that came into it. And everything you say there is true. But I guess I felt, and also I am, a bit less beholden to view counts than you are because of the way my business works. Right. Yeah, that's very true. That's very true. Yeah.

A few interesting things fell out of it. I mean, my biggest concern was alienating people and people feeling clogged. Like, because I don't even know how people get their alerts anymore. Would they get four emails? Would their subscription box or list be full of my stuff and it would piss them off because they're like, oh, God, four videos in a row from the same mob, you know, unsubscribe. So, that was a concern. Spreading them out, though, like over the course of a week also felt like a concern

because the videos do have a certain sameness to them for obvious reasons. So, it could be like, oh, you did this last week. Oh, you did this the week before. And it would almost give people more time to unsubscribe. Like, they could take the hit once. They'd forgive it once. But after four weeks in a row, they'd be like, okay, now you're just taking the piss. I'm unsubscribing.

Right. Is there getting a Pavlovian response to your element uploads? Like, oh, no, here comes another one. Or ripping off the band-aid. If you've got to put these four videos out that have got similar elements to them, because they're all super heavy elements synthesized in similar ways. Right. Let's get it all out the way at once. But I also just liked the idea of it being like bit of an event and bit of a surprise and unexpected, like people going, whoa,

when I woke up this morning, I never thought there'd be four new videos from this one channel. And I think for some people, it was a bit of like an event. I was also really interested to see how the four would compare on their views. Like it was a nice test, wasn't it, of four videos that are all very similar. Which one would people click on? Which element name appealed to them? One of them did a lot worse than the others. And I wonder if that was algorithmic, like whether or not four videos is one too many and like one was below some fold or not on some email or something. But I feel like my guess is you're releasing them all at the same time, but YouTube has some concept of the upload time versus the release time. My guess would be like the first one and

the last one would do better than the two in the middle. I don't really have any reason for that, but that's just kind of my gut guess for what I would expect. No. In terms of when I actually uploaded them, because obviously I couldn't upload them all at the same time, the first two I uploaded did the best. The third's done the worst. Who knows?

Who knows? I haven't done the analysis well enough. I'm sure there's something interesting in there somewhere. And subscribers did dip. It did hurt subscribers. At one point, the professor in the videos contacted me and said, oh, I think subscribers have actually dropped. In the scheme of things, I think it was still up for the day net, but it was a dip. But it caused a visible dip when you released all of them. People were like, too much periodic videos. Thank you very much.

Yeah. But in some ways, I don't mind that. Because if you're subscribing to a channel that is made its name by making videos about all the elements and then releasing four element videos in a day puts you off, then you're probably not the best subscribers for us to have. And if like Facebook having like too many followers that aren't true believers can dilute you and hurt you algorithmically, then maybe sometimes it's good to get rid of the chaff. Yeah. I mean, this gets to, you know, the thing about, we just have no real idea how YouTube is handling these things behind the scenes and talking about the subscriber numbers. I mean,

you know, we've mentioned it, you know, many times when YouTube Red conversation has come up and with other things, but I just personally don't really put a lot of stock in that subscriber number anymore. Like, I'm not even really sure what it means. Especially with this change that YouTube has made, where there's a way essentially now where you have to double subscribe, where like you can subscribe to the channel, but then you're also supposed to press the little bell next to the subscribe button, which says that you actually supposed to press the little bell next to the subscribe button, which says that you actually want to get notifications about when this channel puts out new videos.

It's an interesting thing that YouTube is still kind of built around this idea of rewarding people for subscribers. Obviously, like with all of the silver play buttons that you have littered around your house, they're built around this idea. But algorithmically, I think the evidence just keeps piling up that the subscriber things don't matter. So I agree. When you put out four videos, this is the kind of data YouTube won't give us. But I would just love to know, how did YouTube handle telling your audience that these four videos exist?

It doesn't make any sense when you have these subscriber numbers and then you look at video view numbers and they're just all over the place. Yeah. So, without cheating or looking at your screen, Gray, shut your eyes. Your eyes shut? My eyes are shut. I told you those four new element names. How many of them do you remember? Oh, Tennessee, Agneson, Neponesan, Nipponium. Oh, I failed.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I could not get the last one. It was Moscovium. Oh, Moscovium. And it's not Nipponium. It's Nahonium with an H because both Nippon and Nihon can be words for Japan, I think. And they've gone Nahonium.

Hmm. I'm going to count that. I think that's close enough. All right. Yeah. Do you think I'd get that on Jeopardy? Definitely not. What is Nihonium? I think they'd give that to me. They definitely would not. 100%. Speaking of YouTube stuff, we discussed these new ad formats or at least new to us ad formats that were popping up, which is the sponsored item ads. I was looking at a video that was describing how to build a secret cabinet in your house.

And underneath the YouTube video were a bunch of ugly ads about how to buy a secret cabinet on YouTube instead. It's like when you buy a new car and suddenly you look around the world and it seems like this car is absolutely everywhere. I don't know if it's just like, I just tuned into this thing and now I see it absolutely everywhere.

But I have now seen these ads on my own videos where YouTube is trying to guess a product that is related to my videos and have a huge amount of space underneath the video directly related to trying to sell people that physical item. My favorite example of this is my video on the rules for rulers, which is constantly trying to sell people rulers, right? Actual rulers you would use to measure the length of objects. If you go watch that video, underneath it, it's trying to sell you rulers for like 99 cents, 50 cents to buy a cheapo plastic ruler. We've discussed it before that YouTube has this, it doesn't look like the

prettiest website, but I've got to say like to load up my video and to see a bunch of junky plastic rulers for sale below the video directly while the video plays. And it also has a little pop up that occurs part of the way through the video on the top of the screen that says click here to open up the slide over to buy some rulers. It's so awful. Like it's just an awful, ugly ad format. I was looking through the YouTube analytics data. And again, it's always a little bit unclear precisely what we can tell the audience. But you can see how much the different types of ads will earn for your channel. And those pre-roll videos, right, they pay the most and other different kinds of ads pay the least.

And I can't even find where these paid object ads are supposed to exist. So I've been seriously considering going through my videos and trying to make sure to disable this kind of ad across all of my videos, because I think that the sheer ugliness of it is just not worth it. Like it just crosses a real line for me of how hideous these things are. And if they're not even earning any money, I would rather just not have my audience see them and be just distracted by the hideousness of them. What are they called? Maybe some of my channels aren't enabled for them, but just looking at one of my channels, I can't even see what they're called to disable them.

So maybe I don't get them. In the YouTube backend, they're called sponsored cards. Oh, okay. This is the ad type that exists. What I think is really devious about this is the sponsored card description seems to be that it's just going to be an ad on the side. But as best I can tell, that sponsored card means that a YouTube video will have that little slide over come out from the top like you've put in a card, except the person can click it to buy a thing. And also below the video, it will display these

big images to buy whatever on eBay that's related to the actual video itself. That's certainly not clear from that name because I didn't even know that's what that was. It's not clear from that name at all. And here's the thing that I am wondering. YouTube is doing this move where they're clearly no longer interested in annotations. So it used to be on YouTube that you could draw a little box on the screen and people could click on that box and it would take them to another video or another website.

And we've complained mightily before about how annotations are really difficult to actually draw correctly on the screen. The interface for them is pretty terrible. But the advantage that they have is that the annotation click-through is really high. Like in my videos, if I put a little box on the screen and I say something like click here, or even if I don't, people know to click those boxes to go see another video or to go see another thing. Because you've got control over what's in the box. That can be

something visually interesting or relevant. Right. That's exactly it, right? You can put an image on the screen or you can just say, click on my face and draw a box around your face. And YouTube has introduced these cards, which when they first came out, I know we discussed it, but these cards, which are just a little slide over that appears on the top, while they work on desktop and mobile, at least in my own experimenting, they have horrific click-through rates,

like a tenth the number of click-throughs as compared to an annotation. That's a real shame too, Grey, because to be totally honest, they're much nicer. They're classy. They're quite elegant. They work well. Like, I actually visually like them more. They quite appeal to me, but they just don't work. Yeah, the annotations can look kind of junky, partly because it's hard to draw them,

partly because the colours aren't really great. The thing that I don't like about cards is how they're a little bit of an interruption in the video because their motion, because they slide out. I think they're a little bit visually distracting. But I'll agree with you that overall, the cards are a win in the looks department right but i find myself even though youtube is increasingly trying to push us away from annotations and if you go to add an annotation now they kind of make you choose between annotations and other features like they're obviously they don't want you to use them but i find like i still want to use annotations because

they're so incredibly effective and they're doubly effective when you consider that half of the audience is usually watching on a mobile device where the annotations don't even work. They don't even show up, whereas cards show up on both. But thinking about these sponsored cards, what I'm wondering is, is if one of the reasons that the click through rates on these cards are so low is because some percentage of them are just ads. And so the people watching YouTube respond to them less because whatever it is, maybe one out of 20 or one out of 30 times when the thing pops up on the screen, it's not a message from the creator of this video.

It's why don't you buy a plastic ruler right now? I'm just wondering if this is the reason why cards have such horrific click-through rates as compared to annotations, because sometimes they're ads. People have been conditioned to treat them as noise and not a message from someone they trust. Yeah, that is precisely what I'm wondering. If this is like the conflicted message, because as soon as I realized this, I feel like, boy, I wasn't a big fan of cards in the beginning. And I'm less of a fan of cards now that I know that the message can be mixed for the

actual viewer. I've just clicked through to YouTube's explanation of what all the different types of ads are, because we can't tell just from their name what we're saying is allowed or not allowed in our videos. I scrolled down to sponsored cards and from their description, sponsored cards are what I would have thought they are. They're just little messages up the top where that little eye symbol is quite tucked out of the way. There's nothing in the official description of what sponsored cards are that says anything

about big junky ads displayed under your videos, like on permanent display, trashing up the screen. So either that's being a sneaky sneaky and they haven't included it, or it's not part of the sponsored card description. And it's just something that we have no power over and it just goes on whether you want to or not. I agree with you, right? When I looked into this and I was trying to figure out why are these ugly ruler ads appearing below my video, like, I might be wrong about this, but this is the best that I could track it down. And in doing a couple of tests of flipping the switch just temporarily to see, it looked

like flipping the sponsored card thing was the one that would change the junky ads at the bottom. It does have this feeling of, again, that YouTube does these things and the messaging is just never clear. Like, where are these ads exactly? If you're looking at YouTube's official documents, it doesn't seem like these are anywhere, but they're clearly somewhere in the system. YouTube sure has a lot of different ad formats and it doesn't contribute to the overall niceness and nice lookingness of the platform. Puts a few dollars in your pocket though, CGP Grey. I mean, maybe. It's just suspicious to me because just like you say, these ads don't seem to show

up anywhere on the official documents about what kind of ads there are. When I look through the analytics, there is nothing in there that to me looks like, here is the ad revenue that you got when somebody bought a ruler through your video. And so I feel like, what are these things? Like, what are these ugly things? Where is this money going? What's occurring?

Like, it's not clear at all. There's no clear message from YouTube about what these things are. It's just a bad viewer experience and in the same way that like i always hate those little overlay ads that pop up on the bottom third like i find them just so distracting from a video and that's part of the reason why i like i disable them on my videos and i think like these sponsored cards are like the same kind of thing again It diminishes the video that it's on in a way that I personally don't feel pre-roll ads or display ads on the side do. Those feel like they're apart from the video, but this feels like it's just too much in the video itself.

Can't disagree with you, Gray. And you're right. If it turns out that the money from those junky ones underneath aren't going to the creators, then that's going to be an interesting little tale to tell later. Like it's going to be interesting to see how some people would react to that. I've actually never seen one of my videos, so I don't know much about them, but maybe there's something dodgy going on. Yeah. I personally suspect it's just that the revenue is so small that it's not really showing up on the analytics, but who knows? And again, it's just that the message is always that it is unclear from the perspective of what is YouTube up to? What is YouTube up to?

That could be on your gravestone. Here lies CGP Grey. What was YouTube up to? He never knew. He never knew, no matter how much he looked at the analytics. Can I just say, Grey, like people always ask us to watch different TV shows and movies and have a chat about them. And we're always open to this. And the one that a lot of people are asking about at the moment is the TV show Westworld. Have you had a look at it, by the way?

No spoilers coming, by the way, people. We're not about to review it or anything. I'm just asking Gray if he's watched Westworld. have not watched it i have seen 10 000 requests for me to watch westworld i did as a child watch the original movie or tv series that it's based on a book it's based on a book i think but there was a movie okay yeah i don't remember very much about it except the broadest overline, but I know I saw the original as a child. But no, I have not actually watched Westworld. Have you? I have watched maybe the first four episodes and I'm not going to review it or spoil it, except to say I've stopped.

If it is set as homework for whatever reason, I guess I will do it because, you know, we do that for the Tims. But I certainly couldn't in good faith ask you to watch it. Interesting. You may love it. Lots of people certainly are loving the hell out of it. And everyone thinks you will love it and thinks I will love it. That certainly, for whatever reason, was not the case so far.

Maybe it gets better. Maybe I was in a bad mood. Maybe I just don't like it very much. But I've stopped. So, I'm not inclined to do it at the moment. So, maybe I'll leave that bowl in your court or sort of floating there for discussion another day. But we are seeing all the Westworld requests kind of maybe stop because I'm getting lots of emails about it. I'm a bit sick of it. So, it's not like we haven't seen it. So, you don't have to like tell us because we don't know about the show. I've even watched the show. So, if you're about to send me an email recommending it, like, you're still welcome to do that,

but you don't need to do it because I am aware of the show. Yeah, I feel like the volume of feedback on this has been so incredibly large that we do want to just touch upon it. Like, we have heard, we are aware. I suspect I will probably watch it at some point, and then maybe we'll discuss it based on if there's something interesting to talk about there. But yes, you don't need to keep tweeting at Brady and I that we need to watch Westworld because we are very over aware of the existence of this. Although, again, I have to say, our audience is the best audience because they know what to do. People are just recommending the show and they're not saying anything. And that's perfect. And I always just

want to say, like, I appreciate that from everybody. You're doing it the right way. Maybe we'll touch on it. Maybe we won't, but we've certainly heard about it. By the way, I watched that final episode. No spoilers again, but I watched that episode of Black Mirror that I hadn't watched, the fifth one. And I'm glad I did. Better than I expected. So, if you didn't watch that one because we didn't talk about it much last time, it's worth a watch. You sort of said, you said it was the worst and maybe you're right about that, I don't know. But still, the worst of black mirror is still pretty good and i liked that episode good i'm glad you completed off the season there brady by the way when we talked about the name of the

show black mirror and i said i thought it was because the tv show holds like a mirror up to society and reflects back what we're like to us, but with this black tinge. And to me, that seems obvious. That's what it was. And then you came up with some lame-o reason that you thought it was called Black Mirror, which was basically along the lines of we all hold these little rectangular mirror-like devices, which are phones. And I secretly thought to myself, Grey doesn't know what he's talking about. My explanation makes way more sense. Clearly, I'm right.

And like, mine's a really cool reason. And I told my wife this, you know, why do you think it's called Black Mirror? She totally agreed with me. I went onto Wikipedia and I was reading a quote from Charlie Brooker who created Black Mirror, talking to The Guardian. And he said various things. And then he said, the Black Mirror of the title is the one you'll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand, the cold shiny screen of a TV, a monitor,

a smartphone. I can't believe it. You were right. Point to grey. My explanation is way better. But mine is way righter. Don't you think mine's better? Like it makes more sense?

Mine reflects what the show is. Calling it Black Mirror just because we hold smartphones that are black. Black Mirror is about all sorts of things that doesn't even involve phones. But it's always holding a mirror up to our society with a dark angle and cast to it. Can't believe it. Here's the thing. I think we're both right, Brady, in that the phone does contain a black mirror. And I think we can still interpret

it in this way, that technology is a black mirror that reflects us back to ourselves. So I think we can both be right. But I'm Ryder. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by the one, the only Squarespace. I do just have to say Squarespace has been with us since the very beginning of this show and they are one of the sponsors that makes this show and so many other podcasts that I enjoy happen. If you're listening to podcasts, if you're thinking of making a website, you should go with the sponsor that makes websites and makes podcasts happen and that is Squarespace. They're the perfect starting point

for choosing a domain or making a website or an online store or anything that you want to do with your digital presence online. They're what I use for the very Hello Internet website. They're what I use for CGPGrey.com. And whenever anybody asks me about setting up a website, Squarespace is my default recommendation. Why is it my default recommendation? Because it's at the intersection of easy to use and powerful and beautiful looking and flexible. If you just want to put up a portfolio online just to showcase your work, just maybe a single

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just fantastic all around. They have beautiful templates created by world-class designers. You can customize the look and feel and settings of your website. It's optimized for mobile right from the start. So for example, my own web pages, I never have to think about doing a totally separate design for how is it going to look on the iPhone. Squarespace just handles that and it works. And I have to say my personal favorite is I just never have to worry about it. I never have to worry that when I was trying to upgrade a server that's holding my website that I've broken something and now I have a big hassle on my hands. All of these worries are just gone with Squarespace. So you listen to podcasts, you like podcasts, you want

to make a website, you're going to use Squarespace. Right now go to squarespace.com. You can register a free domain name and start your free website right now. And when you decide that you want to sign up with Squarespace, just make sure to use the offer code HI to save 10%. This helps let Squarespace know that of the many podcasts they help bring into existence, it was ours that brought them to your attention. So please use that offer code HI when you sign up with Squarespace. And thanks again to Squarespace for supporting the show. Okay, Brady, I have a question for you that I feel like I don't know what your answer is going to be. And as we have touched upon in the show, I sometimes have like a very limited repertoire of conversation starters with people when I have to socialize of like,

let's get into an argument about free will. Like this is an interesting thing to talk about. And then people seem to always get riled up about it. I have a few of these that I try to keep in my back pocket. But there's one question that I've come across recently that people seem to react to very often in surprising ways that I'm kind of adding to this list. And the question is, would you eat synthetic meat, like a cheeseburger that was grown in a lab. Is that something that you would feel comfortable eating? I'm asking this because I've been vaguely following this as a technology for a while, but it seems like in the past year, this is becoming a real thing that is probably within the next five years going to be relatively commercially viable, where there is lab grown muscle tissue that is meat.

And so there's a few companies that are doing this. And I feel like I have a very poor sense of how you're going to answer this question. Well, let me start by saying, yeah, I think I would. Oh, yeah? That's probably it. I know they're making this stuff and it's supposed to sizzle like meat and have blood. Because I live in a half vegetarian household. So, I eat a lot of meat substitutes already.

Because I have to. And so, a lot of these things are already made in kind of weird ways aren't they all these corn products and things are made in interesting ways i know they're not the same synthetic muscle tissue but they're already growing things to be meat like and i eat some of them i don't like them as much as me no they're never as good no some of them surprise you though occasionally i get surprised by how some of them can work okay. But synthetic meat, I think it would just depend on how good it was. I guess I haven't thought about any of the dilemmas to it, but I'm not too weirded out by it.

I'm fine. Fine with it. Would you eat it? I feel like I'm not too surprised by that. As you were just talking about, I feel like you're a relatively adventurous guy. And so I feel like you'd probably give almost anything a try. And then it's not surprising that it would come down to does it taste good or does it not taste good? So I feel like I'm sort of unsurprised by that. But I have definitely come across people who seem like they find the idea terrifying or repulsive, but I have a hard time pinning down why, right? And I think

that this is often a case with new technology stuff where people react poorly because it's a thing that's new or they can't articulate their reasons as to why. I go off it a little bit when you describe it as synthetically grown muscle tissue. I prefer it when you call it synthetic meat. Right, right. Just for the marketing people out there. Yeah. What are we doing? We're lab growing carcasses. It's like, no, don't. Yeah. When you call it like synthetic muscle tissue, it suddenly seems more wrong. That's not supposed to exist. So, I'm trying to think of a better name for it. You know, new meat. Yeah, yeah.

We need to call them, like, Freedom Burgers or something, right? Like, that's the much better name. It just has nothing to do with what it is. Meat 5000. Yeah, yeah. My feeling on this is, okay, so, I'm going to make, like, a little bit of a prediction here. But I think, like, once this becomes commercially viable, because right now it is just ridiculously expensive, but like with any of these things,

like with gene testing technology, like with anything, the price is dropping very rapidly. And I think there's going to come some point at which those lines cross of how much does it cost to raise an actual cow to full grown adulthood and slaughter it right and ship the burgers versus how much does it cost to grow synthetic meat in a lab like I think those lines are going to cross where synthetic meat becomes cheaper. And I bet that once that happens, the people who are having negative reactions to this i think this is going to become pretty standard pretty fast it's an interesting thing because okay this is going to be like a totally overblown metaphor right i just want to i want to want people to understand oh right i know i kind of think right i know you? I know that you will like this, right? But I just, before I say the words, I want people to understand that I'm aware that the thing that I'm about to say is an overblown metaphor.

But I think the synthetic meat reminds me of slavery. So I think this is one of these things where if you go back and you look at the historical records, people at the time, like in the 1700s, like letters from the founding fathers, people knew that slavery was a bad thing, but it took a long time before we actually got rid of it. And my personal theory on this is that a lot of the reasons why various countries got rid of slavery at the various times that they did has much more to do with like the economics of the time and the available technology at the time than it does to do with the idea that people suddenly woke up and realized, oh, slavery, what a terrible idea. Like this is an awful thing to do to our fellow human beings. Like I think there's a kind of technological economic change that encourages those sorts of things to happen at one time or another. And I think we're going to go through the exact same thing with synthetic meat in the next maybe 10 years or so. That I don't think there's anybody who really argues for the way we currently produce

meat as like a great humane amazing thing to do but I think we consume so much meat because of the economics of it and because of how much people like the taste of it but I think like as soon as these lines cross and it makes economic sense to be using synthetic meat, we're going to have like a sort of similar thing to slavery, where it's going to be very easy for people on the other side of this to be saying like, well, obviously factory farming was such a horrifically inhumane thing to do. But we're only going to be able to do that once the economics also make sense. So we'll start freeing the cows once we can afford to free the cows. Exactly, right?

It's like, we know it's bad now, just like people always knew slavery wasn't a great idea. But I think when people are thinking about enacting change and when people think like, we need to change the way factory farming is done so that it's more humane. I come down on the other side of this. If you really want to affect change in this way, you should encourage research into synthetic meat, right? And you should try to get everyone you know on board with eating synthetic meat. That's the way you're actually going to change this kind of thing. You're never going to change the factory farm. You can only change the economics around the factory farm to make it unprofitable compared to the alternatives. I don't think it's an overblown metaphor. I can think of someone that lives in my house that will agree with you. I don't know whether my wife would agree that with your synthetic meat argument,

I've never discussed it with her, whether that's the key. But certainly, I know lots of vegetarians who'd be quite comfortable with the way we treat animals being described as slavery. It's quite inflammatory thing to say, but I don't think that means it's wrong. Yeah, maybe inflammatory is better. But this is one of these things where I'm just kind of curious to see if it plays out the way that I think it will play out. That it'll suddenly be like, oh, factory farming, which we've always known is bad, becomes suddenly intolerable, right? Like we as a society suddenly decide that it's

absolutely intolerable. And it's like, we don't really talk directly about how it's related to the fact that synthetic meat is cheaper, in the same way that at least in the limited way that I've looked into it, particularly within the United States, like a lot of things around slavery seem to be related to the farming technology at the time, like in what required a lot of manpower versus what didn't. And it's like, oh, it's funny how as the value of manpower goes down, the calls for getting rid of slavery go up and also become more effective. I just wonder if that's going to be the same kind

of case with the synthetic meat. I don't know. I find it interesting that when you're making the argument, it's almost like a bit of an animal rights argument, which is a nice thing to be making, that you're stopping short though. You keep saying factory farming, like you're almost saying it would still be okay to eat a sheep if it's brought up in nice circumstances. It's just the factory sheep you shouldn't eat. It's almost like if you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly gray. If you're going to say that animals have these rights, why are you stopping at factory farming? Why aren't you saying maybe we shouldn't be eating animals at all?

And we're just doing it out of economic expediency. Well, I guess I'm saying factory farming here because the horrible thing is like the life condition and the death of the animal. I'm just thinking out loud here, but I could imagine a scenario where if let's say like the farm that exists on my package of eggs, which is like a perfect farm and some hills where some chickens are running around and they're being totally happy chickens. Like if that farm actually exists and the chickens are living a happy life right up until the very end and they never see the very end coming, I don't necessarily think there's anything bad with that. If like a chicken lives a happy life and never suffers and we also eat the chicken, I'm not sure I can really get behind the idea of that being terribly morally wrong. I don't know.

I feel like I haven't really sat down and thought that through to its full extent. But I feel like I'm pretty okay with the idea of eating an animal that has lived a happy life. I think I'm okay with eating happy chickens. Before we go, I think there may be a call coming through for you. No, Brady, I don't want to hear it. I swear to God, I'm clenching up already. I don't know. I've got a feeling.

No. I've been good, though, Brady. I've been good. Oh, Jesus. Let's find out. Let's answer this call. Oh, God, it's so horrible. Hoo, hoo, hoo.

Hello. It's so horrible. Hoo hoo hoo! Hello! It's Santa here. Who am I speaking to? CGP Grey! Very well. I was hoping you would answer. If I remember correctly, you're five years old.

Is that right? Yes, I am. Super. Listen, I've decided to personally call you because I've heard that you've been a bit of a naughty boy. That's not true. I'm afraid that means I've had to put your name on my naughty list. The elves and I are not impressed. You must be good yourself and show

that you can be the good child that I know you are. My elves have told me that you can be very well behaved. Now is your chance. Can you promise me that you'll be good from now on? I'm rebelling against this

system. No, I don't know. I don't like this at all. No. It was jolly nice talking to you, but I have to go now. You know, I'm very busy preparing for Christmas. I'm going to take my new sleigh for a test drive. Remember, it's very important to behave well all year round. I hope I'll talk to you again soon. Merry Christmas. Oh, now he's being all nice. He just put you on the naughty list.

Imagine that, getting a call from Santa being told directly you're on the naughty list. That's it. You might as well just give up. It's just a total Black Mirror nightmare. It really is.