Hello Internet - H.I #81: Adpocalypse

Episode Date: April 27, 2017

Grey + Brady discuss: CGP Grey (the penguin) update, Kindle text, listener emails, St April Fools' Day, /r/place, following the rules in sports, the YouTube ad adpocalypse and the news, and West World. Brought to You By Harry's: Quality Men's Shaving Products Squarespace: start bulding your website today with a free fifteen day trial Audible: get a free 30-day trial by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Tallest Buildings in Adelaide Missing At-Ats? Bristol penguins donated to zoo in Georgia devastated by flooding Hello Internet complaining about Kindles Kindle gets ragged-right text at last Kindle Oasis with Ragged-Right Text, now Grey Approved! San Joaquin antelope squirrel photos [SFW!]: 1 2 3 4 r/place Hello Internet on r/place Subscribe to The Economist How Ads Work on YouTube Advertiser exclusions Brilliant solution Westworld

All right, I'm going to minimize the Brady for maximum bandwidth. Yep. Brady's going to make the don't minimize me joke. No, I haven't made that joke for ages. No, you haven't. You haven't. I almost messed up. I never don't think it though. Remember a while back I told you about my little experiment where I changed my gray icon on all my system from being your flask and gear symbol to like a smiling gray face.

Because I thought it would make me feel more fondly towards you when you send your robotic text messages and emails to me that used to infuriate me. Yes, yes. You found my messages too brief and too cold and you thought a happier picture might improve the situation as I remember. How's that going? I think it's worked, you know. Oh yeah? I think it has worked. So after running the experiment for a while, my advice is if there's someone who pisses you off a little bit with their messaging, change the picture to like the friendliest possible

picture and it changes the way you view the person. Like a text messaging psychological start over. That's what's happening. Yeah. You just look happier more of the time to me. And I don't imagine you being all sort of grumpy and robotic with your brief replies. I'm picturing you smiling as you think about me. Brady, every time I send you a text message, I send it with a smile. Yeah, you're a real smile a minute, you are. I'm amazed I even have a picture of you smiling. That was a great get. So, Grey, you know I have a picture of you smiling. That was a great get.

So, Grey, you know I spend a lot of time thinking about the mighty black stump. Yeah, I do know you spend a lot of time thinking about the mighty black stump. There is now a Wikipedia article just dedicated to the tallest buildings in Adelaide. And whoever made that, by the way, you are my personal hero. I was a little bit humbled, though, when I saw that the tallest building in Adelaide is actually the 115th tallest building in Australia. I was going to add like Wikipedia, they have the lists of everything.

But I was wondering a list of the tallest buildings in Adelaide, how tall can these buildings actually be? And that sounds like that's the answer. This article, though, makes for fascinating reading on numerous levels. It does. Partly because there's a whole bunch of buildings that have been approved or under construction, and it's just going to turn the world upside down. I mean, a whole bunch of the approved ones will be taller than the Black Stump. One will even be taller than the current tallest. So it's all happening in Adelaide. Yeah, I imagine. So I'm looking at this list and the Mighty Black Stump, also known as the Grenfell Centre on this list, which I think probably should be amended

if someone's really diligent out there. It's number three on this list. This is what I want to talk about. This needs to be settled. Because you may remember when I spoke to the sort of the building manager of the Mighty Black Stump when I visited, he told me that it was the second tallest building and he was upset that there were articles going around that were claiming it was third. And this third place position for the Black Stump is becoming more and more entrenched on the internet. And fair enough, if that's the fact of the matter, I'll accept it. But I've got a suspicion that it's not. Oh, do you? You think this Telstra house, which is claiming to be one meter taller,

you think there's some shenanigans going on there? Yeah. And I don't know whether or not this 103 meters versus 104 meters, I think maybe that refers to like the top of the building and not maybe masks and things on top which probably should be included i don't know but i want to get to the bottom of it but i have no resources available to me other than the internet and the internet has this kind of self-perpetuating aspect to it where everyone just copies everything else off the previous articles and i get the feeling that everywhere i look i'm just reading the same stuff from the same source yeah so i

need someone with like contacts and influence and maybe access to sort of blueprints and surveying equipment or something but i want to settle once and for all what is taller between telstra house at 30 perry street and the Grenfell Centre at 25 Grenfell Street to be second place as Adelaide's tallest building behind Westpac House, which is a runaway winner, obviously. Runaway winner, of course, obviously. I've loaded up Adelaide here on the 3D Apple Maps on the computer. Yeah. I was just trying to see which one looks taller, as though I can see a meter's difference in this 3D representation of- They're quite close to each other, these two buildings, by the way.

It looks like they are across the street from each other. Yeah, not quite. Actually, no, are they even on the same block? Or am I looking at a different building? I think maybe Telstra House is maybe not quite the same block, I'm not sure. Yeah, see, here's the thing, Brady. I know this is once again evidence of how the mighty black stump is mighty in your mind, but is not necessarily super obvious on the actual skyline of Adelaide. I think it is because it's like so black. It's like it's been painted with that

Venta black that is like the blackest substance known to man. Like when you look at the Adelaide skyline, it's not noticeable because of its height. It's noticeable because of its blackness. No, no, of course. I understand. No, they are right next to each other. It looks like there's a tiny little church in between these two rival buildings for second place in the city. They're right next to each other. Yeah, actually, yeah, they are very close to each other now that I look at the map. But this needs to be sorted, Gray, by experts. And it needs to be sorted in my favor, preferably. Again, do you want to count? It looks like there's a little antenna on top of the mighty black stump.

Should antennas count? Do you think that it should count if it works in your favor? It shouldn't count if it doesn't work in your favor? I think that sums up my attitude, yes. Okay, that's the way that works. Yeah. Can we get some people to do that kind of surveying you do when you're looking at mountains with these two buildings in Adelaide?

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping for. Triangulate from known heights, the heights of these two buildings. I would like to see that. And, you know, I don't want to make promises, but H.I. Medals of Honor could be at stake here. Depending on the result. Yeah, depending on the result. And be aware, dear listeners, I will find it nothing but hilarious

if the Grenfell Centre Mighty Black Stump is firmly solidified in third place. That would be hilarious for me, not so hilarious for Brady. Well, interestingly, I'm looking at that picture that you sent. And I mean, Telstra building does look a little bit taller from that angle, but you can't really tell. Also, by the way, you don't know this, but I'll tell you so that you're fully in the picture. The tallest building is also in that picture, just the bottom part of it. In the top right corner of that picture you sent, you see like a sort of a brownie beige building. That's the tallest building.

But so what you're telling me, no matter what the current situation is, which of these buildings is a meter taller than the other, there's going to be a lot of new construction in the ever dynamic urban core that is Adelaide that's going to dwarf all of these buildings? Is that what's happening here? Yeah, well, not too tall, because one of the nice things about Adelaide is it's not too tall. They do that on purpose, because it's a pleasant place. We don't want all your big, nasty skyscrapers. Nothing worse than a skyscraper, the pinnacle of human achievement. You don't want that in Adelaide. Don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong.

I do love a good skyscraper. The funny thing is is I'm here saying, come on, someone help me out. My job when I was the civic reporter at the Adelaide Advertiser was actually going to the Adelaide City Council archives and looking at all the planning applications and getting them all out because I would report on, you know, new buildings that were going to be built. So I am the man to do this. But unfortunately, I'm just too far away from Adelaide now. You don't want to do it for the love of journalism, Brady? Go fly down and do a little investigative reporting yourself to find this out? No, you don't want to do that? Well, maybe. Maybe we could sort of kickstart this as a sort of a mission to go down to Adelaide and measure some buildings.

I feel like there's got to be a video in this somewhere for you, Brady, right? On your building file channel or whatever, like somewhere there's a YouTube video of you going down to Adelaide to measure these two buildings that are next to each other. There's got to be a place that you have to put that. Or for the book I'm writing, I've got a publishing deal now, the comprehensive history of the Mighty Black Stump. From when it was just a twinkle in someone's eye right through to when it was finally surpassed as the tallest building in Adelaide. Somehow this feels like an inevitability. I'll just wait for the publication. I don't know. I guess a lot of Tims would buy it.

But other than that, I don't think there's going to be. And obviously that building manager of the building might buy it, the one who thinks I'm crazy after I gave him a t-shirt. Brady, I don't think this is a project that you're doing for the money. I think this is a project you're doing for the love. I can just interject that. All right. This is a passion project of yours. Mighty Black Stump, watch this space. Come on, let's pull together here. Wisdom of

the crowds and all that. Let's figure this one out. Speaking of architectural marvels that have been written into hello internet lore, I am going to Dulles this weekend. Oh, are you? I am. I'm flying to Washington. No, not even this weekend. I'm in two Dallas this weekend. Oh, are you? I am. I'm flying to Washington. No, not even this weekend. I'm in two days time from when we're speaking. Brady, you exhaust me with your seemingly, from my perspective, constant flying. I know that I have like a selection bias here that I hear about all the times that you're

flying, so it feels more frequent than it probably really is. But it seems to me like you are constantly jaunting to different areas of the world to film things, to go on vacation for exciting travels, to meet Russian poets. You're just doing amazing things around the world constantly. And I feel like I can never keep up. At this point, I would interject and correct you and add some clarification, but you just made me sound so awesome that I'm just going to let that fly. Yeah, no, just let it slide, man. It's totally fine. And this is how you are in my mind. You're like some kind of modern adventurer, except with airplanes,

with the amount of traveling that you do. The Russian poet thing was a nice touch as well. It made me feel like Lord Byron or something. I'm just describing your life to you, man. That's all I'm doing. That's not how my life feels, but it's so cool. I'm just going to keep going.

I am going to washington for the national math festival as part of my numberphile and msri responsibilities i'm looking forward to doing a couple of live shows with matt parker and oh very exciting one with cliff stull the crazy klein bottle guy who's also good value so i would spend more time promoting it but by the time this podcast has gone out it will have been and gone. And then I'm going to Miami where I've never been before for a brief holiday. And then I'm coming home. But the thing I want to know from you is how to prepare myself for my Dallas experience, because I'm pretty sure this is going to be my first time there. What do I look for? What do I do? Like, talk me through it.

Well, it all depends on where you're getting in. I presume that you're going to be landing in the international terminal because I get tweets from people who are like, oh, I'm in Dulles. It's not so bad. Right. And that's the voice that they're using in my head when they tweet those things. And that is because they are in the domestic AB terminals, the terrible terminals, the old terminals with inconsistent heating and low ceilings and smelly carpets is the CD terminals, which are generally used for international flights. So I'm going to guess that you're probably in there. Yeah. Now, can we remember off the top of our head, one of those gates was a cursed gate where an accident took place on a previous episode of Hello Internet? I'll look that up.

We got to find that out, Brady. So that's obviously one of the tourist spots that you need to go and point at. That's got to be on your list. Take a photo of it. Yep. Yeah. Now, it's funny that you mentioned this, because I have not verified this. I'm going to be relying on your journalistic skills to verify this. I have just heard today, breaking dullest news, that the AT-at transports are no longer in operation at that airport oh yeah i don't know if it's true i can't verify this firsthand i'm going to rely on you to let me know what the situation is down there with what happened did luke skywalker cut a hole in the bottom of one and throw a charge into it yeah or disney was like you need to pay us licensing

rights for using those things one of the two i know that there has been a bunch of redevelopment work at Dulles to try to take it from worst airport in the world to just marginally acceptable airport in the world. And as part of that, I saw construction on some kind of train transport between the terminals last time I was there. And so I've just heard that that is now done. And those at-at transports might be over, which quite frankly, I'll be a little sad about if that is true, because it was by far and away the most remarkable and most interesting thing at Dulles Airport. And now even that will be gone,

which makes it even less interesting. Oh, I'm gutted. I was so looking forward. That was the one thing I was looking forward to. I know. It's the only thing a person can look forward to at that airport. I hope I'm wrong. I'll hear about that from you in the future. Otherwise, no. The best thing I can tell you to do is if you're landing there,

just get out as fast as you can after visiting the cursed gate at Dulles Airport. All right. I'll let you know how I go. I'll report back with pictures and all that sort of stuff. Pointing, pointing pictures.

Speaking also of sort of breaking news of things we like to follow and again i'm a little bit in the dark here but this is potentially huge cgp gray the penguin the lady penguin right if you have a look at the link that i've put there in the notes apparently bristol zoo where cg Grey the penguin lives, has sent 19 of its young South African penguins to Tbilisi. Is that how you pronounce it? The capital of Georgia. Oh, yeah, Tbilisi. I'm very familiar with Tbilisi.

That is exactly how you pronounce it. 19 penguins have been sent there to the penguin pool at Tbilisi Zoo. They had some problems there recently with flooding and the zoo suffered a lot of damage and animal losses, along with human losses. And sort of because Bristol is sort of the sister city of Tbilisi, the zoos are sort of friendly. So these penguins have been sent.

And if it's a young South African penguin and 19 of them have gone, you know what I'm thinking. Are you telling me that cgp gray the penguin might have died in a flood in georgia is that what you're telling me this article that you've sent me says 281 of the zoo's thousand plus animals died in this disaster no gray the penguins have been sent after the flood to help restock the zoo. Oh, okay. That's less alarming. Yes.

Sorry, other animals. You are not named after me. I care much less about your well-being. So what I'm saying is, I don't know, but it's possible that Grey has left the country. This is going to make it much more difficult for you to keep up your regular and ongoing correspondence with CGP Grey the Penguin that you have so diligently maintained lo these past years and months keeping the audience updated on what she's up to you've been so diligent about it this is going to make that a bit more difficult but I'm sure you'll keep doing just as good of a job as you have been doing in the future if she actually has left well I was finally psyching myself up to go and do this visit

now maybe she's not even there I love that you're telling yourself like oh was finally psyching myself up to go and do this visit. Now maybe she's not even there. I love that. You're telling yourself like, oh, you were psyching yourself up for this visit. Like, oh, I was just about to visit. I feel like when I was a kid and my parents would yell at me to clean my room, I always had this feeling like, oh, I was just about to, right? But there's no way I was really just about to. Like now that I'm being told to do a thing,

like you have this reverse memory of like, oh, I was just about to. Why did you have to bother me? So I don't think you were just about to. Like now that I'm being told to do a thing, like you have this reverse memory of like, oh, I was just about to, why'd you have to bother me? So you, I don't think you were just about to visit this penguin. You only feel that way because now there's a possibility that you can't. Okay. That's true. But isn't it really frustrating in those times when you were just about to do something and then you get told to do it and you're like, no, no, I really was just about to do it. But how do you distinguish that feeling from just the constant feeling of when it does happen? I think this is like a false memory. You know when you were really going to do it. So anyway, CTP Grey, the lady penguin, wing tag number A20583. I don't know where she is.

It's been a holiday here in the UK since I found out the news. Frustratingly, it's been a four-day holiday over Easter. So I can't contact anyone at the zoo. But we need to get on this. I think the more exciting thing is for some Tbilisi Tims with a zoom lens to go out to the zoo and try to find the lady penguin CGP Grey out there if they can. I think that's what should happen.

Tbilisi Tims, you are called upon in this moment. You weren't expecting this, but we're relying on you. So put on hold that trip to Adelaide you were doing to survey the mighty black stump. And first of all, head to your local zoo and check out the penguins. I mean, I'd feel a bit sad if they went there and it turns out Grey hasn't been moved. But that's part of it. That's part of it. Just go carefully catalog all of the serial numbers of all of the penguins and let us know. Let us know what the situation is. I wonder if it kept its wing tag and number

or it has to get like a Tbilisi wing tag with a new number and the other one's been cut off. I don't know. Hmm. It feels like there should be some sort of international identification number system for zoos transferring animals back and forth. Otherwise, like if you're loaning a zoo zoo an animal how do you know if you got the same one back if you're allowed to cut off the tags i feel like those tags have to be the same everywhere good point they don't like they come on and off very easily either but they must come off there because presumably the wing grows and they need to put bigger tags on i don't know there's a lot of unanswered questions here i feel like we're rapidly wandering into like meat security questions here. It's like somebody out there, it's their job to deal with the technology behind the tags on a penguin wing. They're like screaming at the podcast right now going, I know the answer

to this question. I do this all day. This is the third podcast this week I've heard get that wrong. Speaking of animals, Audrey's snoring a bit, so I'm just going to give her a little nudge with my foot. Stop snoring. Stop, so I'm just going to give her a little nudge with my foot. Stop snoring. Stop it. Aw. I'll send you to Tbilisi. Oh, poor Audrey.

I would never do that. She knows it. Her little delicate background snores, they can be part of the podcast. It's totally fine. This episode's been brought to you by Squarespace. Whatever you're looking to do in business or your career or just creatively, make sure your next move is with Squarespace. This is a powerful and elegant tool to design websites, blogs, portfolios, pretty much anything you need to do online. Maybe a podcast even. Squarespace is going to have you covered. To find out more, go to squarespace.com slash hello. And there's 10%

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You may remember, Brady, on a podcast long ago, I may have complained a little bit about the way Kindles format the text on screen. I don't know if this sounds familiar to you or not. It was a minor annoyance of yours, I seem to recall. It was a minor annoyance that was like a dagger in my soul every time I tried to use a Kindle. Yeah. So much so that I eventually abandoned my beloved Kindle

and went over to iBooks because Apple knows how you're supposed to format text on a screen and Kindle did not. Well, I would be remiss if I did not mention that remarkably, as of yesterday, a mere several decades after Kindles have come out, they have finally released an update that allows a reader to have a ragged write on their text, to left align all of the words on the page. It's an amazing moment for all of us. I must have received 10, 20,000 tweets letting me know that there was a software update for Kindles that finally allowed the thing that I asked about for so long, for so passionately

that I wanted. It is now here and it's available. If you have a Kindle, people, go update the software on your Kindle. You too can experience an amazing reading experience. It's huge, mate. It's like the JFK assassination. Where were you when Kindle finally went right ragged? I remember where I was. I was at home. I had a Kindle and I was pressing the update my Kindle finally went right ragged. I remember where I was. I was at home. I had a Kindle and I was pressing the update my Kindle button, right? Like I want to see this software update, like update, update, update. And my Kindle was going like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like there's no software update available. And I was shaking my fist. I'm like, curse you CDN. Like this update hasn't been distributed yet to the UK or wherever it is in your Amazon network. So actually like,

I like, I want to see this right now. So I went onto the Kindle support page and like hard downloaded the software update, manually transferred it via USB over to the Kindle, did like a forced reboot update of the device. It was like, I need to see what this looks like firsthand. I can't trust people's reports of how it looks. I need to see this for myself. And the answer is, it looks like books

are supposed to look. So it's fantastic. That sounds like quite a day. You know, sometimes I think I couldn't make up stories to make you fit your stereotype any better than the actual stories that you tell. What do you mean, Brady? I couldn't have made that up. If someone said, make up a story that makes Grey sound like really pedantic and nerdy and into technology, I wouldn't have come up with a better story than the one you just told. What, about doing the manual update? Like who actually sits looking at a screen saying, curse you CDN.

But that's what it is. Like they just haven't distributed the update to all of the networks yet. I know. I understand what happened. I didn't want to wait. It seems very straightforward to me. Okay. That's all I'm saying.

And is this going to result in you going back to Kindle? Here's the interesting thing. The interesting thing is, why did I have a Kindle to update in the first place? Because I had abandoned Kindle a long time ago and I hated their old paperwhite Kindle. So Amazon has been very slowly trying to make their typography better. And over the summer, they introduced a precursor to this, which was actually hyphenating words correctly. So they used to never even break words at the syllable level on the edge of a page. They used to just have these horrific, ugly gaps. And what I wanted to see this past summer, because I have been making a real concerted effort to try to read more books

over the past year or so, essentially to take time away from Reddit and Hacker News and to divert that time more into books. And that was one of the things that when I was using Kindle years ago that I really liked is that I always found that having it as a separate device was helpful to reading more as opposed to reading on my iPad. But I gave it up because I couldn't deal with the formatting. So when they introduced some slightly better typography, plus when they introduced the latest version of the Kindle, which is the Kindle Oasis, which actually is designed with

revolutionary buttons for turning the page, and it's designed actually to be a good ebook reader, I thought, I'm going to give this a try. Like, I'm going to give you a second go here, Kindle, and see how it works. And I was using it for the summer. I was using it for a little while. I found that the hyphenation alone did not make enough of a difference. Like, it's still very annoying for the little narrator in my head to be speeding up and slowing down ever so slightly, even if it was way better. So I put it away reluctantly. Like I was hoping that that Kindle experiment would work, but it didn't quite take. But that's why I had it in a drawer. And so when I heard this news, I was like, I'm updating this right away. So it just happened yesterday.

I've been reading a couple of books on the Kindle. Annoyingly, Kindle, for some reason, they don't do it with all books. They only have this available for some books. So you have to check in advance. But I'm going to give this a real go and try to use the Kindle again as a dedicated, separate reading device, because I really do think that is a big advantage. Plus, it doesn't help that Apple has not updated their software for iBooks in like three years. They've added no new features. And Kindle has very slowly been adding useful features over this time. None of them are deal breakers on their own, but each one is like a nice little addition.

So the Kindle is, again, an attractive option that I'm going to give a real try this time. So I'm very happy about this. Wow. Now that the Kindle influencer CGP Grey has been fully wooed, I think it's your move, iBooks. What could iBooks do to get you back to iBooks? Here's the problem, right? iBooks always has one major disadvantage, which is that it's always going to be on an iPad. And I do really like having a separate thing. I find it's nice to have a separate thing that's like a physical reminder of, oh, you should be reading a book. As dumb

as that sounds, I really do like that. Even when you're traveling, Gray, like when you're thinking, oh, going on the plane, got to pack my iPad and my Kindle. Wouldn't it be better to have one device? It would be better in terms of packing to have one device, but it is that extra reminder that I find is visually there. So it's more top of mind that this is an additional thing. I really do like that. And iBooks is always going to lose that battle in that I'm always going to be able to do something else. And I'm aware that when I'm reading on an iPad, even on my like super locked down, I can only do very few things on this except read iPad. I'm still always tempted to like flip away and oh, let me just quickly add something to a little note that I

have somewhere else. I'm still more likely to flip out of it. Whereas with a dedicated device, I'm less likely to flip out of it. So it's always a big advantage to Kindle. I don't know what iBooks could do. But it's funny because I went back and I read that old article that I wrote when I was talking about originally switching from Kindle to iBooks. And I made a note about how like, oh, Kindle's software development is glacially slow. And so like iBooks obviously will be developed more quickly than that. And it's like iBooks hasn't changed at all in that whole time. And it like turns out glacially slow development is faster than nothing at all.

So iBooks is the tortoise like winning this race against a hare that is totally napping. Gray, as always, there's been lots of listener emails. Never really know which ones to put on the show, but I've got a couple here that caught my eye that I'll tell you about. That's the right thing there, Brady. You don't mention how many, because then I can just cut them. Sometimes you're like, oh, I have exactly three listener emails, and then I have to cut that sentence and then just have a number of listener emails. So this one came in from a Tim. You two unveiled the world of podcasts to me,

and I'm a longtime listener to your show now. Nothing compares to a long and naughty episode of Hello Internet. I just had my wisdom tooth extracted and you guys made me bear this horrid procedure. Ever since I was a child, I never liked any form of surgical intrusion, unlike those children who do enjoy it. I was going to say, who are those people? I'm sure there's at least one, one weirdo. But for the most of us, no, no, thank you. And I absolutely despised this appointment at my dentist. So what this Tim did was he listened to an episode of Hello Internet while having the procedure done. Thank you guys for making my tooth surgery more tolerable.

And please keep producing the world's most interesting podcast on the internet and on vinyl. This is some serious sucking up going on here yeah i know gray wants proof and as my wisdom tooth had to be sawn into tiny pieces in order to even get it out of the guns oh god i'm sending you a picture of my medication instead of a shattered tooth and there's basically a picture of a whole bunch of medical things plus a phone listening to hello internet as proof the thing i found interesting though was this tim also pointed out the episode that he listened to during the procedure i'm guessing you won't be able to

guess what it is no but it was episode 35 which is entitled are my teeth real so very nice choice so great i had a question i was going to ask you as a result of this letter. But I don't need to ask you because coincidentally, we have another email from another Tim. This is an Australian Tim called Sandra. Sandra says, using all my titles here, so showing total respect, Dear Dr. Brady, hard as nails, soft as cushions, Harron. Isn't it posh as cushions? Yeah, I'll forgive that one because the heart was in the right place. Yeah.

And the doctor counts for a lot. I know you really like that one. It's a bit like getting like an MBE or an OBE wrong, you know, soft as cushions, posh as cushions. As long as cushions are in there, we're okay.

So anyway, this one from Sandra says, I've just had my upper right wisdom tooth extracted. Tweet us if you're having a wisdom tooth removal. No, only tweet Brady. Like Brady, we've got a lot of people listening to this, right? The number of people who are getting a wisdom tooth extracted. Tweet us if you're having a wisdom tooth removed. No, only tweet Brady. Like, Brady, we've got a lot of people listening to this, right? The number of people who are getting a wisdom tooth extracted right now is a non-trivial number.

All right. Only tweet me if you're having a wisdom tooth removed. You are in the chair and you are listening to Hello Internet. Yeah, and only tweet Brady. No, come on. Surely you would allow a tweet for that. That's not how this works. Again, didn't you learn?

Haven't you learned from the tweet of me, if you're not on a plane, debacle that will haunt us until the end of time? Yeah, but that opened the door for everyone. Surely my more detailed description there is going to keep it specific. Not as the podcast keeps growing, man. Like we're getting into big numbers here. So no, I want to make it real clear. Tweet Brady. I admire your ambition that you're worried about the number of people who are right now sitting in a dentist chair listening to Hello Internet.

But anyway, so Sandra had wisdom tooth removed. Now the dentist made the offer to keep the extracted tooth. Sandra declined. Instead, I've donated my tooth to the student hospital for education purposes, which I didn't even know was a thing. I would have thought wisdom teeth were a dime a dozen. But anyway, my question to you is whether you, and Gray, if he wants to answer, have had your wisdom teeth extracted? And if so, did you keep your extracted tooth? You strike me, I think this is me, Brady, you strike me as someone who would

hoard his teeth. Kind regards, Sandra. Have you had your wisdom teeth extracted gray if you wish to answer i know you know your medical records are your own business but i think we can safely go into the wisdom teeth territory yes i had one of my wisdom teeth removed because it was causing a problem in the back of my gums yeah i had one of them removed in retrospect. Very sketchy dentist office that was just up a staircase on this high street. And I'll never forget that it was done so quickly and sort of without ceremony. The whole, it just made me- Where did you have this done?

This sounds well dodgy. Some back lane. It was in London. I mean, this was like 12 years ago now. I still do pass that staircase every once in a while. And I'm like, oh yeah, I know there's a little man up there who pulls out teeth. Yeah, I know that spot. Is it like the dodgy guy that does your iPhone screen for 10 quid or something? I think that's essentially what it was, right? Yeah. I would have been like a very poor student at the time. So it was i needed a discount dentist but yeah

i remember it because the guy reaches in there and he's like wiggling around and he seems to not be able to get the tooth out and he looks at me and he goes i'm gonna really lean into this one and before i could do anything he kind of like got up on top of me and just leaned like right into this tool that was holding onto the tooth. And it was the loudest, most terrifying crack in my head that I'd ever heard. Oh, and you think playing crash court is inappropriate? You're asking this question. That's what happened.

He got the whole thing out, but it was like, he did it so quickly because I think he knew I would object much more sternly if I had a moment to realize what was happening. And he's like, I'm just going to throw my body weight into this one, buddy. Like, that's how we're going to get this tooth out. So, yes, I've had one wisdom tooth removed and none since then. What about you, Brady?

I bet you're a guy that doesn't like going to the dentist. Oh, yeah, of course not. Of course not. No, who does? I don't mind it. I don't mind it. What do you mean you don't mind it? I don't know.

I always have quite pleasant experiences when I go to the dentist. This is again, you live in this whole like Brady alternate universe where everybody is friendly and things are always pleasant. I don't understand. And were you given the option to keep this tooth or had you already sold it to sell on some black market down the back lane or something? I don't even remember if I was given the option to keep it. Obviously I don't have it. Why would anyone keep a wisdom tooth? I don't remember if I was even given the option or if it was immediately sold and is in somebody else's head in China now. Like I have

no idea. I have not had my wisdom teeth removed. I've never really had a bad dental procedure. Whether I'd keep it or not, I probably would. I don't know what I'd do with it. But what would you do with it? Why would you keep it? I don't know. But I know about a year ago, Audrey had to have some teeth removed because she had some teeth problems. And I have got those teeth somewhere in my room in a little tiny little test tube because they're so cute. They're like this little tiny, cute little dog teeth. And she's got such tiny teeth, Audrey. They're like, you know, little pinpricks. Do you take them out every once in a while? Do you show them to Audrey?

No, I showed my wife and I don't think she was particularly impressed. I wonder, is there anybody you could show these teeth to who would be particularly impressed? I don't know. You're right. I probably shouldn't have kept them. I think you can safely get rid of those, Brady. Let's start the dehorting process with something small. Tiny Chihuahua teeth. That's about as small as you could start with. Yeah, exactly. So there you go, Sandra. Grey has had it done quite horrifically by the sounds of it and did not keep the tooth and I have not had it done

and you will keep the tooth do you know what I think maybe I wouldn't oh wow I feel like we're making progress Brady I don't like teeth I don't like how teeth look when they're not in a mouth and in gums like teeth when they're out and you see like all the roots and the whole full horror of a tooth it's not quite as nice as when you just see the part that sticks out above

the gum they're not good looking things teeth i don't like how they've got those two little prong bits on the bottom that oh no no i wouldn't keep it the roots that dig into your gums brady that's you don't like to think about that don't like it your whole mouth is just just full of pieces of calcium that have roots that dig into your soft gums you don't like thinking about that although you just said who would like audrey's teeth sandra actually signed off her email as from sandra fellow aussie devoted hello internet listener and number four audrey fan bracket after you your wife and gray maybe that would be an appropriate gift to Sandra and I'll get rid of the teeth. Sandra, if you would like Audrey's teeth,

let me know and I'll get them shipped over to Oz for you. The crazy thing is I know that you will actually do this if it happens. I just, you know what? I'll take it. However you're going to get rid of those teeth, whatever you need to do, I think that'll work. I'll be happy if that's how they go. I'd put them straight in the garbage, but if you feel the need to send them to Australia, that works too. One last listener email. This is brilliant. Okay. You're going to like this.

Now you're bigging it up, Brady. I'm confident. You're confident? Okay. All right. You know, it's really got to work if you big it up like that. Well, one of the few things that I know you do like that shows your more human side are cute animals. I think you're a bit of a sucker for cute animals. I think you're wrong. Cute animals, no. Do not move my metallic heart. Audrey does. Audrey is a very nice doggie.

This is from Rosie. It starts off, Dear Brady, here's another things people do while listening to HI Story for you. Last summer, I conducted wildlife surveys in the Carrizo Plain National Monument in California. We spent one month trapping San Joaquin Antelope

Squirrels, a threatened species. Okay, I'm going to send you a picture of what one of these San Joaquin Antelope squirrels, a threatened species. Okay, I'm going to send you a picture of what one of these sandwaqueen antelope squirrels looks like that has been sent by... That's quite a name. That's quite a name for an animal. It is. Here's a picture of one via Rosie. So this was taken by Rosie in situ while doing the work. That's pretty cute. That's a cute little squirrel. They're pretty cute. They're cute little animals.

Looks very small. Looks like a very small squirrel. They're pretty cute. They're cute little animals. Looks very small. Looks like a very small squirrel. They do. Anyway, let's continue. In order to tell them apart, we marked their bums with Sharpie. Okay, we'll get there. I was running out of ideas for symbols to do, but since I had been marathoning HI while doing some of our more tedious surveys, I realized I could give a few of them hi themed names so attached are some pictures of squirrels named hello internet brady harron cgp and nail in gear and just so you can see what we're talking about here are you about to send me pictures of squirrel butts with names written on them? Yep. Here's the squirrel butt with BH written on it for Brady Haran. And then here comes the squirrel butt with CGP

written on it. So basically these tiny squirrels quite largely have had these things done on them, but best of all is the nail and gear. Here is an endangered squirrel in California with a nail and gear drawn on its bum in sharpie i would describe this as the rump of the squirrel is where this is drawn this is not what i was imagining around the actual real butt of the squirrel right that's what i was expecting you're sending me pictures of right this is yeah squirrel rump right not? Not squirrel butt. Just a safe for work. Yeah, exactly, right? If you're listening to Hello Internet at Work, you can safely click on this link

and not have to worry that your boss is going to come over at an inopportune time and ask, why on earth are you looking at photographs of squirrel butts? You can say, it's okay, boss. It's just the rump. Yeah, it's just the rump. Totally safe for work. That nail and gear on little squirrel, though, very cute it's very cute it is cool and also you know i've sent you bits of paper where they were

doing all the work anyway you get the impression how long do they need to track these squirrels for though because that has to come off eventually is this just a temporary tracking process that's going on here i imagine i imagine Anyway, she finishes her email with, ironically, CGP the squirrel ended up being a female, just like the penguin. It seems like this is how it works when CGP is a different animal. I'm sure you can guess what my one sentence reply to Rosie was. I cannot. Well, I wanted to know what the gender of Brady, HI, and Nalen Gear were.

Oh, right. Okay, so here's a little chart. Here's a little chart. Oh, you can look it up yourself on the chart. Brady's a boy. I prefer man, but okay, boy. Oh, H.I., and Nalen Gearwer. Oh, right. Okay, so here's a little chart. Here's a little chart. Oh, you can look it up yourself on the chart. Brady's a boy. I prefer man, but okay, boy. Oh, sorry. Wait, no, wait.

I don't think a male squirrel can be a man. I think that's a human. Well, it can't be a boy either. No, right? Because dogs can be a good boy, right? But you would never say to a grown-up dog that he's a good man, right? That's true. I do say to my dogs, good girl.

I've never called them a good woman. Yeah, right? that'd be super weird so i do call them ladies though i do call my dogs ladies that's also fine right you can say like oh hello ladies right when the two of them walk in the room i think i sometimes sing all the single ladies when they walk in the room okay it's a little too much personal information but that still works right that's fine i didn't sing it if i'd sung it that would have been Okay. Or I think you can address a pack of dogs as guys, right? All of this works. But I don't think it works if we're going to a man or a woman. So I'm going to stick with the Brady Haren squirrel is a boy squirrel.

Or could we go male? Or we could say he's a male squirrel. That is also true. Because that's what Rosie said. Rosie said Brady was a male. So was H.I. and Nail and Gear. So the only lady was CGP. That's fine.

I'm happy with that. That works. You're all right with that, eh? Yeah. CGP Grey the squirrel. She's the one actually making sure that there are more of these endangered squirrels in the future. She's doing the hard work. Yeah.

I'm not going to argue with that. Thank you very much. Definitely have a look at these pictures of squirrel rumps in the show notes if you are so inclined yeah if you want to see squirrel rumps we've got some you've come to the right podcast what's hello internet i've never heard that podcast oh it's that one where they always talk about squirrel rumps oh yeah yeah i like that stuff i love those squirrel rump guys they're awesome yeah who could have thought they'd get so many episodes out of it but anyway yeah i can't wait for all of this follow-up in the future right nail and gear squirrel spotted in the wild right someone's just walking around in california they happen to be a tim and right

by them runs a squirrel with a nail and gear drawn on the rump like what the heck no one's ever going to believe this speaking of things you would not believe, we have just passed another April Fool's Day. Why wouldn't you believe that? It comes every year. I thought that was a nice segue. You've just completely ruined it. Was that a joke? Was that supposed to be a joke? No, but... How was that a segue? Don't worry about it. Because like, things you wouldn't believe,

and April Fool's Day is telling people, you know, making people believe things that aren't... It doesn't matter. It's very clever. I'm sorry, Brady. It's very clever. That was a fantastic segue. Thank you. Thank you. It's going even better now.

10 out of 10 would segue again. So April Fool's Day, we've got to retire this thing. Thank God. I know. What a waste of time. It also feels like you've ruined it, everybody. Yeah. Right?

You have ruined it. You're all too into this. Now it's not fun anymore. Do you know what's ruined it, everybody. Yeah. Right? You have ruined it. You're all too into this. Now it's not fun anymore. Do you know what's ruined it, Gray? What? Social media and corporatization. Yeah. Social media.

That's a good one. But I was going to say it's companies getting on board now is the worst. I imagine there are businesses now that have whole departments dedicated to like next year's April Fool's Day joke. And like April Fool's Day is not about that what is the true meaning of april fools brady i actually don't know what its history is and i don't need to know because now the bloody subreddit's going to be full of it so i'm going to spend the next two weeks basically immersed in the minutiae of how april fool's day came to be i don't care how it

came to be i'm sure it's a good story i liked liked April Fool's Day back in the day when it was like a thing that maybe one newspaper would maybe do, or like your local TV station might do something every few years. And you know, there are some classics, but now it's just tiresome. Like what they need to do is that all the businesses and PR departments and companies and people in the world and news organizations that need to get together and say, all right, this year you can do one and no one else can do it. Because when every man and their dog is doing it, all giggling to themselves, like a dad, who's just told a dad joke, look what we just did. Like, oh yeah, look what you just did. And every single other person in my timeline just did. Go away. Yeah. You know what? That's what it is. It's like dad joke day. Yeah. That's precisely what it is. It's like, oh, Google has a video about their Google

gnome instead of Google home. And it's like, oh my God, I can't deal with this. This is terrible. Yeah. It's like dad jokes from corporations because real humor always has a little bit of like an edge to it. That's what makes it funny. But a company, they don't want to have any edge to anything. So it's just going to be some stupid pun, right? That's what they're going to do. And you also know they're like measuring their engagement with the joke compared to last year's April Fool's Day performance.

We had double the retweets of this year's April Fool's Day tweet that we did last year. And it's like, if anyone is going to be suckered in by some traditional day and a bit of tomfoolery, it's me. And I bloody hate it. Yeah. I'm actually kind of surprised that you're on this side of it. I assumed you were going to be on the other side of this, of like a let's return to the true meaning of April Fools. But I'm actually somewhat surprised that you don't want to go along with this fantastic tradition. Can't stand it. Get rid of of it for the past several years i have taken april fools as my annual don't go on the internet at all day and here's the thing in the past i occasionally would tweet about this like i put up a little image like i'm just not gonna be online today everybody like goodbye i

recommend you do the same thing like just unplug for a day you won't miss anything but i was aware this year that april fools again because of social media like it's it bleeds into it's actually a lot closer to two days like two and a half days yeah because you have people all over the world and the day after people are still retweeting stuff from april fools so i think in the future i might have to start quarantining this day with like a whole week around it. I'm like, I'm just not going on the internet at this time because everything is super dumb. It's super dumb and it's super frustrating. And the internet's full of untrue crap anyway. In an era of fake news, let's not even start on fake news. Let's just talk about stuff that's wrong or stuff that's supposed to be a joke. And this stuff lasts forever too. It's not like a newspaper story or an old tv

telecast on the bbc 40 years ago that went out and was forgotten yeah or the fish and chips was wrapped in this stuff hangs around forever as well yeah so it just becomes this like legacy of that's the point yeah it's not the old bbc broadcast about the spaghetti harvest yeah it's like guess what everybody every day is april fools on the internet in some way right where it's just like filled with stuff that can't possibly be real and trying to sort it out from It's like, guess what, everybody? Every day is April Fool's on the internet in some way, right? Where it's just like filled with stuff that can't possibly be real and trying to sort it out from the stuff that isn't. So yeah, it's a frustrating holiday. If it's not corporations being dumb, I also feel like it's a weird day

where it's like people have a permission to be like a jackass. Like this is a holiday that has almost no redeeming characteristics at all. I'm not sure I'd call it a holiday, but I know what you mean. Yeah, we put it in the pantheon of holidays, right? If there was St. Patrick's Day, Cupid's Day. I don't think there are people that have like a day off for April Fool's Day though. But anyway, the problem is every day has this done to it. Because now like there's like so much stuff.

There's so much Twitter and Facebook and there's so much PR and spin and stuff. Everything gets ruined. And I accept, you know, Christmas has to be ruined. That's what Christmas is. And all these major holidays, everyone jumps on. But it seems like anything that comes up now gets destroyed like this. And another prime example that you're probably not as exposed to because you don't have a mathematics YouTube channel, but I do. And that's Pi Day, this, you know, 14th of March, 3.14. Like when that sort of got a little bit of traction a few years ago, and like I put up a couple of Pi Day videos and, you know, it was a little fun thing. But now just like every man, woman, and their dog jumps all over Pi Day as an excuse for publicity and attention. And it's like,

oh, I almost want to pull off the internet now for three days before and three days after Pi Day, because I obviously follow a lot of mathy people and stuff. And so my timeline and Facebook and that just becomes a carnage around that time as well. This makes me laugh because I feel like you are at the center of a particular kind of storm here, right? It's like, I have a hard time imagining anybody who might be on the receiving end of more Pi Day stuff than you. It's like if we're complaining about, oh, hot stopper news, like there's just too much of it all the time. It's like, well, actually, we're like the nexus of all hot stopper news. This is not like a society-wide problem.

And I think that might be a little bit of pie day for you yeah it's like you're gonna be right at the center of this anyway april fool's day had enough of it go away i do have to mention one thing here though that i would be remiss if i did not mention which is that one corporation that i think at least does something interesting sometimes on April Fool's is Reddit. They don't do jokes, right? They're not doing some joke. They don't release like a dumb feature that they pretend is real. But they have done little like experiments on their user base sometimes over April Fool's. And the one that they did this year was actually quite amazing and did cross my attention, which was Our Place, this big pixel

art. I don't know if you saw this at all, Brady. Yes, I did. I did. I found it very interesting. So for listeners who are unaware, Reddit, what they started on April 1st, and they let it run for, I think, 72 hours in the end or something like that, was they created a blank grid that was 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels. And all of Reddit's users, every five minutes, could color in one of the pixels, any color they wanted. Over the 72 hours, I have to say, it was just a very interesting thing to see different groups of people coming together to try to represent their group on this piece of artwork that was being created. This was just a very interesting look into groups interacting with each other on the internet. Because it required teamwork, didn't it? You would have to say, okay, everyone,

let's target this portion of the grid and use of all our credits or our time or our colors to try and create this image. And other people might try and come in and encroach upon it. That's exactly it. As an individual user, all you could do was just put down a pixel. And there were plenty of people who were just essentially defacing the image by just putting down random color pixels all over the place. But then there were much bigger groups that were trying to say like, we will defend the American flag in the center of this image, right? But in order to do that, we need to convince a couple thousand people to keep this tab open in the background on their computers and monitor the American flag and change all the

colors to make it match. There was a group that was calling themselves just The Void, who was trying to black out the whole canvas. And it's really interesting, like people have put together time lapses of what happens with this image over time. And you can see like these factions coming and going and like The Void is growing growing and expanding and then people are working to push back the void and it's i found it a very very interesting thing and of course the most interesting thing is that the listeners of hello internet the huge number of tims that there are were able to secure a corner of the place for hello internet and so there's our logo. And not insignificant, Grey. They did a really good job too. They did a really good job. It is not just a tiny little thing. Like it's a decent little chunk of this thing. It's multiple images. Like we have our faces, we have flags,

rebel flags maybe, but they're our rebels, so it's okay. It was really interesting to see. And especially because this didn't really cross my radar until just i think maybe only two hours before the whole thing was going to shut down so i have to give total credit to our audience that this was 100 arranged and accomplished just by them but for anybody listening i'll put some links in the show notes of some of the time lapses what the final image looks like some close-ups of the Hello Internet section. I think this was a very interesting thing that occurred on the internet that was connected to April Fool's and is probably the best April Fool's related thing I have ever seen because it was actually interesting. It's got nothing to do with April Fool's, Gray, though, other than they did it on April Fool's. So I think I wouldn't count that as April Fool's, but I thought it was cool.

I guess we have to talk about this one red pixel that encroached upon our little territory and someone put a little red pixel on the little HI section of the image that unfortunately was there when it all shut down. So it's there for eternity. How do you feel about that? Oh, but I'm totally fine with that, right? Because that's what this thing is. I think that red pixel is an indicator of what this project was, right?

Where there are some people who are working against the coherence of the overall thing. But I love this stuff because, like, as much trouble as we give Wikipedia, I think Wikipedia is a testament to the fact that although people don't always think it, most people are good and helpful, right? A thing like Wikipedia could never exist if most people were what sometimes it seems like most people think anonymous people are, which is just a bunch of jackasses out to ruin everything, right? And it's like, if people weren't willing and able to coordinate and work towards the better good, something like our place could never have happened at all. It would just be a big mess of noise. But the fact that some people just want to see the world burn, that's part of

the experience of the internet. But overall, people wanting to work together and be good is a bigger part of it. So I feel like I'm totally fine with that red dot. That red dot is almost symbolic of the fact that coordination triumphs over chaos. So I have no problem with it. There's also a tradition, I think it's a Far Eastern tradition amongst the sort of famous old rug makers who would stitch these incredible huge rugs, that they put one stitch in the rug that is a mistake deliberately. And that's like a reminder that only God is perfect. You can't make a perfect rug. So maybe that's that imperfect stitch as well. I like it. I have to say it was interesting to see the final image. I think people should really take a look at it. Watch the time lapses. They're

very interesting. And I have to say, I'm so pleased and surprised that our audience was able to coordinate and accomplish this thing all on their own. It's very impressive. It's very impressive. Speaking of our audience and Tims, I would like to say a quick hello to the surprisingly high number of Tims that I bumped into at VidCon in Amsterdam, European VidCon. Oh, did you go? Which I mentioned I was going to.

I didn't know you were going. And although Grey is playing coy, Grey was there as well. Oh, was I? I didn't know I went. You were there. You were there. I had a really good time, mainly because I liked hanging out with you and some of our friends. I had a really good time doing that. I also did the things I had to do. I did a talk on the first morning and I also went along and did a little workshop with some Tims who had the surprise of Grey coming along as a special guest. You actually agreed to come along and talk with me, which was very kind of you. I was strong-armed into coming along by an unprepared Brady is how I would describe the situation. You absolutely were not strong-armed.

I said, it would be lovely for you to come along. It would be a nice surprise for the people who came, but you are under no pressure and it's completely up to you. I said, I would like you to do it, but if you don't like absolutely no problem, I completely understand. I think you were curious. I will in public, allow you to indulge that delusion of how things went on. It's not my personal experience of how it went down. But no, you did strong on me into going into a thing. And yes, I was there at VidCon in the end, much to my surprise. What did you think of it?

I mean, I haven't been to the big American VidCon for years. So I always forget that. Yeah. What was your overall impression of VidCon Europe? Any sort of quick executive summary? I feel like I'm just the worst person in the world to try to give an executive summary of these things. Because I am going in such a strange way. I feel like I am going as a tourist who is interested in this thing in a very abstract way.

Because I'm not there as a creator learning how to work in the industry. I'm also not there as one of the creators who, like you, is actually doing presentations and has an onstage presence. So I always feel like very much like an odd man out at VidCon. I feel very much like I'm not really supposed to be here. I'm here and just observing this like an anthropologist. I just find it an interesting experience. I don't know how other people experience VidCon. Like, I think it's a very different thing if you're going on a stage. I'm not asking how other people experience it. I'm asking how you experienced it.

But that's what I'm saying. Like, I experienced it as a tourist. Like, I think it's very interesting to see. I'm always very interested in how big things get pulled off. Like, I find it fascinating of like, how does this thing go from an idea in someone's head to, oh, there's thousands of people here. And there are also sandwiches on that table over there. And all of this has to be arranged somehow. And it all seems like it's just so far beyond the mind of a single individual person that

I don't understand how it's coordinated. Like, I always just find my mind being drawn towards that kind of stuff. And one of these days, I will get someone who's in charge of VidCon. Like, I will bully them into a corner and give them a pen and be like, draw for me the org chart on this napkin. Like, I don't understand how all of this happens. And I would like to see on a piece I don't understand how all of this happens. And I would like to see on a piece of paper, the logistics behind all of this. I find that stuff very, very interesting.

I have got a quick sports ball corner, Gray. Okay. Well, I've picked one that I think is relevant to you. You always do. Okay. All right, go ahead. Do you have some story about a person? Is that what you think is relevant to me? Yeah. Oh, okay. Here we go. Great.

Yeah. Nailed it. Perfect. 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10 sports ball corner. The topic is golf. Okay. But it's not the Masters golf, which everyone is going to be hoping I'm talking about,

which is the big tournament that just happened. Oh, is that what everyone's going to be hoping you're talking about? Yeah. Because I watched the Masters and I was like tweeting while I was watching it. Everyone's saying, oh, you've got to talk to Gray about this. But there's nothing to talk to Gray about the Masters. It was just a good golf tournament. But what I want to talk about is the tournament the week before

called the ANA Inspiration, which obviously is a sponsor's name. But this is one of the four major tournaments for women golfers. And I want to tell you what happened on the final day because I want to know you what happened on the final day, because I want to know what you think about this, whether you think this is a good thing and makes you happy and makes you happy with the world, or you think it's like a bit of a travesty. This woman, as you know, or as you probably don't know, typically a golf tournament is played over four days. You play the 18 holes over four consecutive days and whoever has the lowest accumulated score

is the winner. And this woman called Lexi Thompson was leading after three days and she was playing on the fourth day and she was still leading the tournament. She was streaking away and was going to win the tournament. It was clear. She had this comfortable lead. And then what happened was a TV viewer contacted the network and the organizers of the tournament and said, I was watching some footage from the third day. And when this woman picked up her golf ball from the green and like cleaned the grass off it, and then put it back down where she'd put her marker, she didn't put it in exactly the right place. It was like a few millimeters wrong. There are very strict rules about how this works with golf. So the people organizing the tournament went back and

watched the previous day's footage. And yes, she had breached this rule, which I think was so trivial, it hardly matters. But anyway, it didn't make a big difference, but she did technically breach this rule. The penalty for doing that is a two shot penalty. So they gave her a two shot penalty. There's another penalty in golf that if you sign your scorecard at the end of the day and the score is incorrect, you get a two shot penalty. And because she'd signed a scorecard that was now incorrect, although how could she have known otherwise? She got another two shot penalty. So she got this four shot penalty. They walk out to her on the golf course and say, because of what you did yesterday, which some viewer saw,

which we've now gone and found, we're docking you four shots. And she went on to lose the tournament in a playoff because of this. Now, I know that you're a big fan of TV replays and you think it's crazy that TV replays aren't used in sport. So I want to know what you think about this happening. By the way, one of the problems is when you're leading the tournament, you're getting filmed a whole lot more often. So you're much more likely to get caught doing this trivial little mistake. So that's one thing. But the thing I want to know is no referee saw it. No one saw it on the day. No one associated with the tournament saw it. She

was basically, you know, it was a telltale viewer sitting in their sofa at home you're told on her you're showing your hand there i think we can all objectively call this person a tattletale yeah exactly exactly so i want to know where gray a big believer in using of technology and replays and things in sport and getting a fair outcome feels about the story as I just told it. I will have an asterisk to this statement. But in general, I would say, what are sports but a collection of rules? Yep.

If we're just going to say that we're not going to follow those rules all the time, then what are we even doing here? Why are we all together? What is this thing that's occurring? Yeah. So if a viewer spotted a thing that none of the referees spotted, and it was technically something she should not do, it doesn't matter by how little she did the thing that she should not do. She did a thing that she was not supposed to do that was against the rules that encourages penalty, and then she received that penalty.

I don't see what the problem is. I think that viewer, I think we could fairly describe them as a rules hero. That's what that person is, right? They're calling in, doing their civic duty, right? Doing a thing that actually has an effect in the world, enforcing the rules and taking someone who would have, I think, again, we can objectively say, stolen a place in the playoff from somebody else and giving it to the person who actually won. So I see no problem with this.

I think this is great. Okay. All right. I mean, I also think part of rules need to be who has the power to enforce the rules. And I think you have to draw lines. The infringement has to be who has the power to enforce the rules. And I think you have to draw lines. The infringement has to be seen by the right person. But is that part of the rules? It doesn't sound like that was part of the rules. I also think there need to be lines drawn. Are we going to start going through footage from the 1950s and finding times where people broke rules

and start reallocating scores and trophies like back through the ages? Yeah, I would do that. I would happily do that. I would take a gold medal out of a retired Olympian's hand and give it to the deserved winner. And I would feel good doing it. Right? I would feel like I was writing an injustice in the universe. They're holding onto it with like their decrepit old claw, like, no, this is the most meaningful thing I've ever done. And it's like, no, you didn't do it. Somebody else did it. Give me that trophy and hand it to the actual winner and think about the joy in the real winner's eyes. So I feel like that person was a hero at home. My little asterisk is there's something that sounds like the second two-stroke

penalty sounds a bit like I don't understand the interpretation of the rules here. I totally, that one pisses me off more than anything. That one, I feel like we need to go to the rule book on that one. I think I could be persuaded that that is like an overly harsh interpretation of how this is supposed to happen. Yeah. Because presumably that is for like knowingly signing a wrong card. There's something about that one that doesn't quite sit right with me.

But if she didn't put the ball back down where it was supposed to go, it's like, hey, this is your job. You're supposed to put the ball back down in that spot. And I don't even have a problem with the fact that they're being filmed more. Like, obviously, everyone should be filmed all the time. But if the leader is being filmed more than someone in the behind areas, it's like, well, this is just like the robber in Settlers of Catan, right? It's like a Hubble the leader effect. And this is just what happens in this sport. So I'm okay with all of this. All right. I'm glad I brought it up. I'm glad you've cast a different light on the argument. I mean, do you disagree though? Do you think that the

Tattletail at home shouldn't have called in? They should have just kept it to themselves? Well, I'm not saying they shouldn't have called in. You can't stop people calling in. They'd feel guilty for the rest of their lives for not writing this injustice. But I do think it is a wrong decision. I don't think the arbitreness of people at home, who calls in and who doesn't, the decisions have to be made by the decision makers. And I don't think people at home should be acting as chair referees. I don't think it's right. I'm also fine with having a rule that says at the end of the day whatever happened becomes the unchangeable score like you can make that part of the sport and just have that be set down like hey listen we're not going to adjudicate

this over time so that in 50 years cgp gray can come along and steal gold medals away from our winners and give them to other people but you can make that part of the process, but it sounds like this wasn't part of the process for the Masters. I mean, I agree with drug cheats and things like that, losing medals retrospectively, but I do think this was wrong. And that extra two shots for signing the incorrect scorecard, which even you seem to grasp as being a bit weird, did cost her the tournament.

She would have won if it wasn't for that even. Anyway, see, I thought I had one that was half interesting to you. the internet, aka it's the place you should get your audiobooks from. You can get a free audiobook with a 30-day trial at audible.com slash hellointernet. That's where you should go right now, audible.com slash hellointernet, to get a free audiobook with your 30-day trial. Now, Audible, as always, likes for us to recommend a book, and I've been making a really concerted effort to try to read more and not just read more but also read differently. So I recently read a book that was a little bit out of the normal kind of thing that I would pick up but that I can highly

recommend and it's Tribe by Sebastian Junger. He's the same guy who wrote A Perfect Storm if you ever read that. It's a little bit of a difficult book to describe, but I can briefly say that it is a little bit about people in war, particularly men in war, and how that affects them. It talks about some of the difficult things, like why is it that some soldiers really find solace in being in a group in war, and why they can have difficulty reintegrating into society afterwards. That makes the book sound like it's a huge downer, but I actually found it a fascinating non-downer read. And it's also very short, which is a thing that I really appreciate in books sometimes. So if you're looking for a book to try, maybe something that's a little bit different than what you would normally

do, give Tribe a try on audible.com. So if you want to listen to it, Audible has it. With an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original audio shows, which is something that they have started now, news, comedy, and more, you'll always find what you're looking for. Once again, get your free audiobook with a 30-day trial today by signing up at audible.com slash hellointernet. That's A-U-D-I-B-L-E.com slash hellointernet. All right. So the next thing we're going to try to talk about is the news coverage that has surrounded YouTube advertising and a subsequent boycott and all this sort of stuff. Now, Gray and I have tried to discuss this a couple of times before. One of them made it to the show, but we've also tried other times and we've gotten a bit hot and

bothered talking about it. Because it always tends to veer into a discussion about our conflicting views on journalism and news coverage. And we've just thought, oh, that didn't go to plan. And we've cut it from the show. But we're going to try again. And we've also just had a few conversations in person which we weren't even recording but like we get caught in the vortex yeah of this topic so if this conversation seems a little strange listeners if it's made it into the show just keep that in mind this is like the fifth time brady and i are actually going to talk about this so here we go so i've tried something a bit different because I can never make my points and I sort of, I get confused and heated and then we start putting each other off and going down rabbit

holes. So what I've done is I've written like a statement or like an open letter. I cannot believe that you have done this. I find this hilarious. But I also feel like if I had known that you were really going to write like an opening statement, I should have written an opening statement too, right? And now suddenly we're in court and I feel like I'm at a terrible disadvantage because you are coming to the table with a prepared statement. And I feel like I'm walking up to the bench like, no, your honor, I'm just defending myself. I have no preparations. I've got no papers with me. And you're over there

with a team of lawyers, right? And you're all ready. You're like, no, we're going to fight this. Well, if it's any consolation, great. It's not like a crafted document. I did just hunt and peck this an hour before the show. So it's a little bit rough around the edges. You would like to enter a statement into the record. Yeah. And the reason is not because I want to have another like argument about the media, but when we start talking about what we're going to talk about, which is, you know, YouTube advertising and media coverage around it, I have criticisms to make of the media, like, you know, but I don't want to have to keep like adding little addendums or little

qualifications or prefacing. I want people to know where I stand about journalism and how it's different to you. Because I think most people know where you stand. I mean, most people know where I stand too, but anyway. You're setting up that framing because also you don't want me to respond to your opening statement, right? You just want to read it and then you want to move right along.

I just keep my mouth shut. I'm worried if you're too clever in your response, we're just going to have the same old arguments. But anyway, I'll read this and then you say whatever you want. And then we'll talk about what we're going to talk about. It's a little bit long. Sorry.

Go right ahead, sir. Enter your statement into the record. Here we go. The floor is yours. Dear CGP Grey. No, I didn't write that. Okay. All right.

I was like, you can't expect me not to say something if you're opening it with great addressing it to me. Okay. I didn't say that. It is kind of addressed to you, but it's sort of neutral. Okay. I want to say a few things about news and journalism before we get lost in the weeds. This is because, as you know, I get a little frustrated by some attitudes to news reporting. I'll preface all this by saying, I'm aware we probably agree on more things than we disagree on, and not everything I'm about

to say necessarily reflects your views. It's more general than that, so please don't think I'm putting words in your mouth. I'll also try not to use the word media too often, because that's so nebulous that it seems to confuse matters. I'll opt instead for journalism and reporting. But let me start by making mention of my nephew. He's 19 years old. He's a good lad. But he has never read a book. Not one, he claims.

He thinks they're boring and reckons he can get everything he needs from other sources, mainly YouTube and Snapchat, it seems. I can understand this. Why would anyone do anything they find boring? I guess I could argue that exercise is boring. Eating healthy vegetables is boring. That we do some things for our own well-being. That reading a book could be the intellectual equivalent of a session at the gym.

But as I'm someone who doesn't eat very healthily or exercise enough, that might be a bit rich. And it does sound kind of lame anyway. So why do I even mention my nephew's refusal to read books? Because the emotion it incites in me is so similar to the emotion I feel about people who willfully ignore the news. While their reasons and motives are different, I think this kind of willful ignorance and an accompanying broad brush generalization that so often goes with it

really frustrates me. So let's deal with the reasons I think we should pay at least some attention to news, to journalism, to reporting on events that are happening in our communities and the wider world. The first reason, I think, is just being a good, caring, empathetic citizen. Most of us live on a road or a community with a few dozen people, a city or a town with hundreds of thousands of other people, a planet with 7 billion other people. Now, you may not be directly affected by their hardships, their struggles, the events in their lives, but I think it is part of the human experience to know about and share some of this. Yes, it can be overwhelming and we can't possibly take it all in, but slamming the door on their

plights because we don't care or it makes us feel bad while we're eating our evening dinner is a sad state of affairs. I really think this is the most important reason of all to have some awareness of news because they're our fellow men and women and we should care about them. We should care about what they care about. I think it's selfish and it's not the kind of person I want to be to only care about things that directly affect me. By the way, and I guess this applies to people who are a bit more social, but I also think it's just good practice to know about the two or three biggest things that are going on at any given time just for like social reasons. Just to show you're a person who's aware of the bigger picture in your town or your country or on the planet, just so you're not the guy or the girl

at the water cooler who doesn't know that London Bridge is falling down. But another more important reason I think we need to pay attention to journalism is because a well-informed citizenry is pretty important to the way people in power can exploit us. Knowing what governments are doing, what political leaders are doing, what courts are doing, what the police are doing, what big business is doing. The fourth estate, our reporters, play a key role in this accountability. Public opinion is very important to people in power, whether it's polls, elections, or consumer habits. And I think it's important that public opinion is based on factual information,

not misinformation or no information. Where that factual information will come from, if not from journalists, is something I don't know. It certainly won't come from the governments and businesses themselves. And I can't see anything in the world of social media taking the place of old-fashioned journalism. If anything, much of what I see happening on social media seems to be a step in the wrong direction. Now, clearly, this is where someone listening might be thinking, well, journalists hardly do a good job providing useful or factual information. And yes, I was once a traditional newspaper and TV journalist and have some skin in this game.

But I think this blanket dismissal of journalists and large media organisations is silly. Just as silly as my nephew arguing that all books are boring or saying that all YouTube videos are frivolous or all politicians are corrupt, etc, etc. Yes, there are bad journalists and bad media organisations. Citing the examples of certain rolling news channels or some of Britain's scummiest tabloid newspapers are easy pickings. But there are also a lot of good journalists, a lot of good newspapers, good news websites, good TV news programs. Yes, even the good ones have their faults and they should be held to account for their misdeeds. But this dismissal of journalism because of those easy targets is, well, lazy.

Now, I'm not saying that we all have the same appetite for news, that we should all sit around and consume news for hours each day. I'd even argue that my own news appetite is quite low much of the time. I really only skim a newspaper for five to ten minutes over my breakfast and maybe dip into a website in a quiet moment just to see what the few top stories are. I'm also not recommending what sources of news an individual should use. Everyone has their own preferences, trusted sources and stylistic preferences. But I think a willful decision to avoid news is unhealthy.

It's a fast track to uninformed citizens who care about no one but themselves and see the world only through the prism of the select people they've decided to follow on Twitter and Facebook or which subreddit silos they've decided suit them best. It results in public opinions and beliefs, maybe even elections, being decided by people who are ignorant. Now, journalists are easy punching bags, like politicians, I guess, and they do not deserve a free pass. There are some very good ones, some very bad ones, and lots of just average ones. They're also employed by organizations with conflicted interests, barrows to push. This can color their coverage from time to time, and we need to see this. I've certainly picked on

journalists plenty of times here on Hello Internet. They're a frequent source of my paper cuts. But I think the role of the fourth estate is important. Ignoring them to the point of extinction is a sad situation, and I don't know what the world will look like without a free media. My last point is this, and I can never expect someone like you, Gray, to change your mind and suddenly become someone who consumes news, any more than I can expect my nephew to suddenly start reading books or me to start eating salads. But influential people dismissing the merits of the press, even indirectly by being a little too proud of an information-light diet, worries me. We now live in a world where numerous people in positions of power have made it their modus operandi to discredit and undermine trust in the media because this suits their own agendas. It's reached almost

farcical proportions, the way some people assume every utterance on TV or every word in the newspaper is a lie. Journalism is certainly at a crossroads and it's a messy problem involving changing technology, shifts in advertising and a strange political climate at the moment. I don't think it's necessarily our job to advocate, subsidise or save journalism. It has evolved as a business and maybe that's how it will die. But I do feel like there's a little more to the role

of journalists than just filling the gaps between advertising. And as my buddy here on the podcast is known for being a little disparaging towards the media, I wanted to have my say too, to say that I think it's a good thing. Anyway, now that I've said all this, I would like to get on with the show and give a kicking to the times of London. Your opening statement has been entered into the record, Brady. Obviously, there are many points that I would choose to disagree with. Of course. But I was intentionally keeping my hands off the keyboard and not making a point by point analysis or

noting the points where i feel like you're conflating two different issues i will ask you one question which you might not want to answer okay but i'm sort of curious about with regards to that statement let's say a listener to the podcast had at some point followed my advice and had stopped following the news and was moved by your opening statement to come back into the world of news. Where do you think they should start with that? Because I do find it interesting that you don't want to mention any particular source.

And I can understand very many reasons why you might not want to do that. Yeah. But I feel like that comes to a particular feeling that I have sometimes of, where do you think they should go if they are moved by your statement? Yeah, I mean, the reason I don't want to answer that is because I don't want to get into that kind of mix in a way. I think it's different for everyone. I would say there are certain newspapers, I guess, that some people refer to as papers of record, which are newspapers which supposedly are a little bit less politically biased, which are hard to find in the UK, but they're around. So I would say maybe

newspapers or websites that have less of a political agenda, I guess, is one thing I could maybe suggest. But I think there are lots of options. I don't want to start recommending it because I think this is what we do. We'll get lost in the weeds and we can find examples of where people have mucked things up. And I think people need to find their own way and their own sources. I'm genuinely, I am not trying to trick you here. I know you're not. I'm not trying to get you to name a name and then I'll point to a story that I thought was terrible that they did. What I'm trying to get at here is that i think this is a vastly more difficult task

than it sounds when you say something like oh people should read a newspaper of record because for someone like me like that doesn't necessarily mean anything like i don't know which papers you you mean by that and again i understand why you don't want to recommend something in particular i'm imagining someone who may have taken my advice in the past to disengage from the news cycle, who was looking for a re-entry point. And I just wanted to know if you had a particular place that you would recommend that they start. I have an answer for them if you don't want to give one. I'm just curious as to your feelings on that.

I feel like I don't want to have that discussion today, which is a bit of a cop-out. I feel like, you know, you gave me a lot of latitude. You let me have my say and you didn't slap down things you disagree with. And for me to now like go further and start going into the weeds that I was trying to avoid would be a bad idea. But I do think you should tell people what your advice is.

No, people are going to know, right? I'm going to recommend they read The Economist because when we had a now long ago deleted conversation about the news. Yeah. I don't really follow the news, but we do have a subscription to The Economist in my house. And as I mentioned before, my wife reads The Economist and she often recommends articles to me out of it. Yeah. And I did on a couple of Sundays just make an effort to say like, oh, I'm going to just read The Economist again, just a little bit more than I normally would, just picking it up and going through. And it can just reconfirm to me that like,

as a person who does not have interest in following the news, who would argue that on an individual basis, it might not be the best thing for a person to do. I do think that The Economist does a pretty great job of reporting on stuff in a way that is accessible for someone who doesn't necessarily have background information. I think I've mentioned previously on the podcast, but one thing I do love is their style guide is to always write articles assuming that a person has essentially no background. So they always explain what everything is so you never feel like you're lost. And I feel like they do a pretty good job of hitting things down the middle. And in my own research anyway, I have yet to come across any major howlers in The Economist in the way they report things. Unlike just about every other place I've ever gone where it's like, oh, this really interesting story. When you dig into it, it turns out to be entirely misrepresented.

So if people are looking for a place to enter the news, I would recommend The Economist. Use offer code Gray for no discount at, because this isn't an ad. But you know, tell them GREY sent you. So let's talk about the actual issue at hand. Yeah, so what we want to talk about is this ongoing brouhaha that is related to the news and is related to YouTube and advertising, which was, I think, started by the very article that you first brought up on the podcast a couple episodes ago. Which I foreshadowed as becoming a big deal.

Yes, yes. Which was in the Times, was it? Yeah, the Times of London. Times of London, yeah. Now, I do just want to enter it on the record that I had not read that article when we were discussing it on the podcast. It was a bit of a surprise to me. So I hadn't gone through it. And I think that slightly colored the conversation that we had, because I would have been vastly more angry had I actually read it, because I think that article is a perfect example of how news stories, I think sometimes intentionally misrepresent situations. But anyway, putting that aside so we don't get sucked into the weeds. The Times did an article describing how on YouTube there are advertisements that are shown against extremist content.

And this has since snowballed into what I think we can fairly describe as a very big problem for YouTube. There have been advertisers, big brand advertisers that have pulled out from advertising on YouTube. Lots of people can see it in the data that ad rates on YouTube have gone down. This is actually something that I can see directly in my own channel and on my own video, the most recent one that I put up, is at about 20% of the rate that I would expect it to be under normal circumstances. Some entire channels have been demonetized or very close to being demonetized for having advertiser-unfriendly content. This has turned into a very big brouhaha that YouTube seems to be having a hard time getting out from under. And the newspapers seem to keep liking to report on. That's sort of the state of the situation right now, would you say?

Yes, I think that's a pretty fair summary. Okay. I guess my more emotional reaction to this and my feeling about it is I am infuriated with this whole topic because I view this as a self-serving storm that the traditional news industry is cooking up that works tremendously in their favor and that is essentially a total non-problem on YouTube but that they can use to constantly hit and berate YouTube over. Like the question of the massive amount of content that is uploaded to YouTube, there is always going to be something that someone is able to point to as objectionable that YouTube will not be able to remove immediately. I view this as a kind of problem that is just intrinsic to the medium and is never going to go away. But the scale of the problem is never reported in these stories. So all of the examples I ever see are examples on videos with very low view numbers on channels that are essentially not watched.

And these are brought up as examples of, oh, look how big companies like Pepsi are funding terrorism through YouTube. And there's never any context of scale given to this. That's my frustration is when I see these things, it seems very much like these stories are not intended to be vehicles to well inform the public of how the YouTube advertising system works and how this process is happening and how an advertisement might end up in front of a video that it doesn't want to be in front of. There's no elucidation of this. It's just entirely presented as like, YouTube is facilitating the funding of terrorism with big brand money. And I find that incredibly frustrating. It is frankly, causing needless economic harm irresponsibly. Do you want me to start with the parts where I disagree with you or the parts where I agree with

you? You start wherever you want, man. Well, let where I disagree with you or the parts where I agree with you? You start wherever you want, man. Well, let's get the disagreements out of the way, I guess. First of all, let's admit we have a big conflict of interest here. You just said yourself, you know, we're very affected by this. So we need to bear that in mind. You know, this is hitting us in the hip pocket. And obviously the conflict of interest for the newspapers, starting with The Times, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

And it's been picked up by lots of other papers now who I think have seen the opportunity. This conflict is massive and I'm finding it rather tiresome. They flogged the dead horse way too hard to the point where I'm thinking, come on, enough's enough. And also, I don't know, you probably don't realize this, but in recent days, it's now switched to Facebook. They've said, gosh, that worked better than we thought. And now they're targeting Facebook and they're looking for examples of, you know, pedophiles on Facebook and all this sort of stuff. That's really funny. I feel like shock surprise there because it's like Google and Facebook are something like 80% of all the advertising money spent on the internet are spent on those two websites.

Yeah. I was like, oh, you turned your attention to Facebook. Yeah. Color me shocked. I know. I know. So I'm a little jaded and cynical about it. And I'm also rather jaded and cynical by how they keep referring to these investigations

they're doing. I don't think they have done like an undercover investigation they've probably used google ironically but they've just basically searched for extremist content i mean anyone can do this like this is not an investigation they've just like done something that any five-year-old could do in 10 minutes yeah so like bigging themselves up as these like people who've uncovered some mystery frustrates me somewhat. And the reporting of it, because it's an area I know quite well and you know quite well, some of the reporting of it has been not as thorough or accurate as it could have been.

So I'm quite upset by it. That's a generous description. But I think some of the things you're arguing about and some of the things that are upsetting you are not the point. And I think you're kind of getting lost in the minutiae of the details and ignoring the problem that does exist. If I can go off on a tangent for a second, this is what you remind me of at the moment. There's an episode of the TV show, The Office, The British Office, in which there's a pub quiz that goes to a tiebreaker.

The two guys have to stand on stage opposite each other and they have to say the answer first. Whichever one of you says the answer first wins. And he says a quote from Shakespeare and one guy says it and gets it wrong. But then he just keeps naming play after play after play trying to get it right. And he keeps getting it wrong. And eventually the other guy says the right answer and he wins. And then for the next couple of minutes, the guy who was saying answer after answer and got told off for saying too many plays

gets into this big argument with the quiz master about, you never said I could only say one, so that's why I was saying lots and lots, so I didn't break the rules. No rules were broken. You never said that. And he's ignoring the fact he never even said the right answer. And so it doesn't matter anyway. And he's so busy arguing over the minutiae of the rules. He's ignoring the fact he didn't know the answer and he lost the quiz

anyway. And I feel a bit like you're that guy. You're so busy worrying about the fact that they gave the wrong number for the amount of money or they didn't explain very clearly how the advertising algorithm works and that, you're kind of ignoring the fact that money that once belonged to a company is ending up in the pocket of people who've uploaded inappropriate content to YouTube. That's the problem. And how it happened and whether it flowed through an auction system or whether Joe Bloggs knew that the money was going to end up here or not and whose fault was

it and whether it was a bot or a human, that isn't really the argument here. The argument is there was money that once belonged to Pepsi, to use your example, and now that's in the pocket of someone who put something deeply wrong on the internet and they've been rewarded for it with money that once belonged to Pepsi. And that's what's upsetting Pepsi. Yeah. Oh yeah. So I saw you uploaded your video about how YouTube auctions works. I mean, it could be a coincidence, but I feel like you must've been motivated or sped up by this recent controversy. You felt like this was something that needed to be explained more clearly. Oh yeah. That was a video uploaded in anger. Yeah. And you did a good job of explaining how the system works.

You know, well done. It was a really nice video. But I think it's completely irrelevant to this debate and it changes nothing. Well, yeah, I didn't really want to talk about this debate. I wanted to talk about a thing that I think is important, which is the understanding that humans are not assigning these ads. And I also just wanted to just re-emize, there's an enormous amount of content. But no, I made that video because as with all my videos, I feel like I want this to last beyond this particular debate, right? Which will go away

eventually. Of course. But I think it's completely irrelevant that like humans don't do it. YouTube are the enablers. Google are the enablers. Whether they've done it with an algorithm or 400 people in a call centre in China, however they've done it, they've created the system that advertisers put money into, the big black box. It doesn't matter what happens in the black box and then the money ends up in people's pockets, whether it's your pocket, my pocket, or some crazy person

who's uploading hate speech and how to make bombs and stuff. Right. This is the problem. And like, if the extent of the problem is being exaggerated, that is an issue. Don't get me wrong. But I do think a problem exists. I've always thought it's a problem, just like I think it's a problem that freebooters get money. Do you remember, I've said this a couple of times, I've even said it on the podcast, that I think the best way to get freebooting dealt with would be to get in the advertiser's ears and say to them, did you know that you're advertising on stolen content? This is exactly what's happened.

The Times have gotten in the ears via the power of their newspaper and their influence have gotten in the ears of the advertisers and said, do you know that some of your money is ending up here? Now, they've done it with what I think is a more disingenuous motive, but that's exactly what's happened, and YouTube have been caught doing the wrong thing. Yes. And they've had to act. They've been penalised for it.

I know it's been skewed. You can go ahead and explain how it's been skewed. But I think they have done the wrong thing. They have to act and they are acting. Yeah. But see, I have to fundamentally disagree with your description there of YouTube has done the wrong thing. Right. I don't think that is a fair description of what is occurring because what you're asking for is a perfect system that has to deal with essentially an infinite amount of content.

Yeah, but you're giving them a leave pass for that reason. You're saying because it's hard and because it's big, we've done enough. I don't think they have done enough. This is our fundamental disagreement. Because I do think, and the reason why the way all of the news stories have reported on YouTube frustrates me, is because I think that you have to report on the internet as a different thing. Like this is not a TV schedule. This is not advertising against known content. This is algorithmically matching your advertisement to what algorithms think the content is.

That's what advertising on the internet is. And I think if you ignore that, if you want to ignore the fundamental way that the internet works and then hold the company, Google, responsible as though they're putting ads on an episode of Seinfeld where you know what it is, hold them to the same standard of like, oh, we didn't air Seinfeld that evening. We actually aired a terrorist recruiting video and we just left all the ads in and hold them to that kind of standard. Like, I don't think that that's a fair assessment. That's why I think it is an important part of this story. How does the internet work?

But all of the newspapers are reporting upon Google and presumably now Facebook. I'm no friend of Facebook, but you can't report on them like they're just a bigger newspaper. It's a fundamentally different kind of thing. And I think what makes the internet different is what really matters in this story. And to ignore that is irresponsible. This is where we fundamentally disagree. But this is kind of where I think you're the guy debating after the pub quiz. All that matters is that Pepsi saw their advertisement that they paid for next to Bob the Bomber's video.

And like, that's happened. And YouTube took the money. They took the money. And when they took the money, they knew they weren't supposed to put it next to Bob the Bomber. They knew that. Even the way you're describing it, though, like is implying a kind of intent. Like, oh, well, ha ha ha, we're taking Pepsi's money and we're going to put it against this terrorist video. Okay. Let's not call it intent. Let's call it negligence. Negligence is also not a word that I can agree with. I know. I was just winding you up. But you're doing what I think exactly the newspapers are doing, right? They'll write a word

like negligent, right? And then you're implying a certain kind of thing. Like, it's super interesting because I wanted to check, like, right after this had happened, I actually bought a bunch of ads for my own YouTube channel on YouTube, because I just wanted to quickly see how the system was like after we had that first conversation. Yeah, just as I had remembered when I tried this years and years ago with other stuff, like the amount of options and preferences they give you to try to target your ad to exactly who you want. And the number of checkboxes that you can tick for all the kinds of things that you want to try to have your ad not be shown against. It's enormous. Like I've always said, like like they have an incentive what kind of stuff is there

oh they have all of this like inappropriate content but they also have things like gambling like they have a bunch of related kinds of things that you might not want your ads to run against this right or they have like mild violence they have a whole bunch of categories that you can specify you don't want your ads to run against. And there's no reason that they'd be like negligent where it's like, ah, ha, ha, we'll just have them take a bunch of these boxes and we won't do anything on the other end. It is in YouTube's direct financial interest to put the ads where the advertiser wants them to go. It's not a kind of negligence. To an extent, that's not completely true. It's in their interest to do it as long as it doesn't cost them too much to do that.

It's in their interest to do it because YouTube charges when a user clicks on an ad, right? So they are in the business of matching ads to interested viewers. They're not selling billboards on the highway here. At a price though, at a price to them. They're in the business of doing that at a price to them that isn't too great. Like they can't employ 400 million people to do it. Right, they employ no one to do it. They employ a computer to do it.

There's not a huge cost on the other end. There's not a big army of people where they're like, oh, if we get these people to slack off a bit, right? This is Google's whole thing is this kind of AI and categorization, right? This is their whole deep mind project. Like this is everything they do thing is this kind of ai and categorization right this is their whole deep mind project like this is everything they do is making this stuff good yeah and so that's why i think if you ignore this that is a kind of negligence if you just ignore how this system

is different how youtube is in the business of categorizing decades worth of content every day, and you find the couple of videos that no one has watched, and you keep refreshing and refreshing them until you find an ad from a big company that you know you can bully, because I think the other side of this is, I don't disagree with any of these big companies from pulling out because I think the newspapers and the news are able to bully these big companies into negative PR campaigns to move their money elsewhere. That's definitely true. I definitely agree with that. that they're threatening will happen, right? Like, boy, won't it be terrible news for you if we keep writing stories that associate your brand name with horrible thing in the title, which is exactly what we want to do.

So to me, this is like a mafia shakedown that they're doing here. It's like, we'll always be able to find of the decades worth of stuff every day, we'll be able to find something that has been miscategorized and we'll always be able to hold that over your head. So it'd be a real shame if we keep having to tarnish your brand all the time.

It'd be a real shame if we cause a constant problem for our main competitor for advertising dollars. So this is why I find it frustrating is I think this is intentionally misrepresented what this thing is. The internet is just not a newspaper. It's not a television schedule. It's a different kind of advertising. And I feel like pretty much everybody knows this, but nonetheless, traditional media can

bully companies into pulling their dollars off of it. Like, I would even believe that people on the board of Pepsi or whatever know what this whole situation is, but they're just pulling their dollars because they feel like we can't don't please don't put us at the center of the story. Like we're just taking our money out. Leave us alone for a while. I would believe that that's happening, that even the people in charge of the advertising of the big companies understand the situation fully, but just feel like, okay, we can't be involved in this.

Like we're forced to make a move here because of this story that has been generated. I agree with what you just said. I am not sure that the problem's quite as tiny as you say. Like you're making it sound like these are like five videos with eight views and they've made like 0.01 of a penny. I don't know. I mean, some of the examples I've read about have been, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views. It would be interesting to know the money involved and whether or not YouTube are willing to disclose that. I mean, obviously they're not willing to disclose that because the numbers probably will be quite big, even though you would call them small.

Yeah. Like they could easily say, oh yeah, we've looked at it and we've done an order and we've paid out you know 33 dollars over the last year to extreme content but obviously the number isn't 33 it's obviously numbers that are big enough that people are going to get spooked i don't know if they're numbers that are big enough that people are going to get spooked because the other thing that i've seen in the articles like i've seen people passing around that i find really frustrating is again this is a kind of thing that i see often in the news but this is an example of it where it's like you start talking about a really terrible thing but you transition into something else

and so i've seen articles where they start out by talking about like, oh, here's a horrible beheading video that Walmart ran an ad against or whatever. Yeah. And then they transition to videos that have, let's say, unpopular political speech that have hundreds of thousands of views in them and then they suddenly they start talking about popular channels that might say unpopular things right and it's like whoa whoa whoa you've done like a switcheroo here because you're kind of implying that this horrible thing is getting the numbers of this other thing that you're talking about yeah and if i didn't follow this

world as closely as I do, I would not be aware of what has just occurred. Like if I'm just reading an article, suddenly I think there are channels on YouTube that show terrorist recruiting videos that have millions of subscribers and hundreds of thousands of views. And it's like, those things don't exist. Those are not on YouTube. And so that is just another thing that I find really frustrating, where it's like, you, news article or news story are like you're no fool you're deliberately doing this thing of like talk about the horrible thing and then switch to the maybe controversial thing but act as though they're the same like it's a kind of false equivalence i think some of them are fools by

the way though i think in some cases they don't even quite get it themselves. I don't think they're as clever as you think. Well, there we go. Score one for the journalist then. Are they malevolent or just fools? I think that's exactly what you said, Brady Heron. I'm going to put that on a poster. No, no, I think you're right. I said in my statement, in my now famous statement, I did say that, you know, there are bad journalists out there and they need to be called out. And I think some of this reporting, you know, it's perfectly fair to call out and, you know, you make some good points about it.

But I do think big organisations and companies don't act to improve things until they're called out sometimes. And, you know, YouTube have now announced some, you know, new system and stuff. And I saw a few people tweeting saying, okay, that looks like an interesting thing they're going to do to get around the problem. Well, let's talk about this.

How have YouTube responded? Well, the main thing that I've seen, which I thought, I believe I said on Twitter, it's a brilliant response, is YouTube has decided that unless your YouTube channel has 10 000 lifetime views across all the videos yeah you will not be able to monetize the channel yeah right now 10 000 views is no money it's like a dollar especially after the ad boycott it's essentially nothing yeah so

this hurts no creators right nobody with less than,000 views is making a living on YouTube. And I thought this was a fantastic response because I viewed it essentially as YouTube had to be seen doing something. And here's them able to say like, okay, look, we're going to do this because we know that the videos people are pointing to have essentially no views, right? That they're getting flagged and they're getting pulled out of the system really fast. And so since the view numbers on those things are so small anyway, we can set a comically low threshold before videos can be monetized.

I think YouTube's response shows exactly what the level of the problem really is. It's like, okay, fine, we have to be seen to be doing something. So we're going to implement a, quote, solution to fix this trivial problem. I think it was a good PR move on YouTube's side. Like, I think that was a good decision to do. But what I don't think is happening is behind the scenes is YouTube is going, oh, geez, guys, we were never trying to find bad content before. And we were just taking all of Pepsi's money and running it on these horrible ads. Like, shucks, we better stop doing that. I think, again, with YouTube in particular, they already had a hell of an incentive to do this. So I really don't think that there's something going on at YouTube where they're trying to like

improve their categorization algorithm more than they already were doing but if they'd already had this system in place this 10,000 view system wouldn't it have been the case that there would have been no beheading videos with Walmart ads next to them in the first place and they wouldn't have had this ammunition okay yeah right, I would agree with that. But what I'm saying is, I think the amount of money here is so trivial that it is nothing, right? So what you're asking is, is the difference between a literal zero problem and a essentially near zero problem? I don't think that that difference is a significant difference. Well, it must feel significant when your stock price goes down by a billion dollars.

But this is my whole point. It feels significant because the news has made a thing out of nothing to their own advantage. Should YouTube have seen it coming? I don't know if YouTube should have seen it coming because I feel like you can't possibly see how your enemies are always going to attack you in the future. But this seems like a really obvious attack to me. I even suggested it in the context of freebooting.

Shame advertisers by showing them what their content is being shown against. Like, it seems like an obvious tactic. If you'd sat me down and said, Brady, we need to stop people advertising on YouTube, give us some ideas. I think I would have come up with that in the first hour or two. Okay. Right. Yeah. You're coming up with ways to attack YouTube. You're not selling me on what an amazing piece of investigative journalism they're doing here, right? No, no, no, no. But what I'm saying in the context of should YouTube have been prepared for it and

said, we need to make sure that we're not open to this attack because it's such an easy attack. I'm not saying it's not trivial. I'm saying it's easy to do. I guess I sort of see what you're saying here, but I feel like you're giving into my whole premise then that this whole story is like a made up nonsense story, right? Isn't that surely the infuriating part? And it's like, a gigantic company is never going to be able to protect itself from generated fury. You can never possibly foresee all of the ways that your enemies are going to attack you, especially if they're able to spin up non-problems into gigantic problems.

I guess what I'm saying is this does seem like an obvious one to me. And if you think the 10,000 solution has an impact, I'm surprised they didn't do it before. Yeah, but again, I don't see you're asking YouTube to be able to anticipate all of the problems. Yeah, I am actually. I think a big smart business does sit around and anticipate their problems and how they're going to get attacked and how to protect themselves against it, don't they? But presumably you would be concerned about your actual big problems first, and you wouldn't necessarily be sitting around and thinking, what are all of our tiniest problems?

I don't think this is a tiny problem for them. I think it's been shown to not be a tiny problem for them. This is where language is a thing though. Yes, this is now a real problem for YouTube that has been spun out of bullshit. That's my feeling on this. It's like you can't foresee all of the bullshit problems that someone is going to attack you with. Yeah, but I think this one could have been foreseen is what I'm saying. I would have foreseen it.

Well, that's because you think like a yellow journalist right because you know how the minds of journalists work and how they're going to attack their enemies so i guess youtube should hire you as a consultant that'd be good just sitting around thinking of all the ways you could attack them yeah i don't know great i don't know what to say because i don't know some of the stuff you're saying i don't know know if you're right. You're saying to me that the people making inappropriate content are making very, very little money, like nothing money. You're saying that to me. I don't know if that's true or not.

So I don't know whether to disagree with you. If that's true, there's nothing really you're saying that's particularly wrong. Yeah. Just to be clear, one of the bigger problems that is happening is this question of like, what is advertiser appropriate on YouTube? This gets very quickly into a realm where it's very hard to know what is happening. But like, I do sort of know through unofficial channels that YouTube does have behind the scenes, like bins that they put different channels into of saying like, oh, this is perfectly okay content, like this is unknown content. And there's a very different question about categorizing channels and what

happens to channels that are considered more or less advertiser friendly. I think that that is like a related problem, but a much more difficult to talk about problem because you just don't know. But one of the things that I do start getting very uncomfortable about is what you're touching on here is like, the boundaries of what do we consider okay and not okay content, right? And there's always like a huge gray area there. On one end, we have like the absolute stuff that everybody agrees is totally horrible. But then as you start getting towards the end of the spectrum, which is where I think the conflation starts beginning is like politically unpopular speech, which starts becoming like a gray zone. And you're like, well, is this okay?

Is this not okay? Like then that becomes much harder. And to be clear, I am 100% on the side. Like if advertisers don't want to advertise on politically unpopular videos, like that's totally their prerogative. It's their money to spend. It's 100% their choice. Advertisers should be able to say like, don't put our videos on anything that seems remotely political. But then that starts getting into much more complicated questions about, like, what kind of content is YouTube implicitly through the way their system works promoting or not promoting the creation of?

This starts becoming a real mess. Like there are definitely channels on YouTube that get lots of views that you can point to easily that say like, oh, people don't like this channel and they're making a bunch of money. But I think that gets very easily conflated with the absolute stuff that we all agree is horrible. And so my stance is like the worst of the worst stuff is not making any money on YouTube. But that doesn't mean that like channels where we start having some disagreement over,

are they making money? Like those channels do exist. And I do think if advertisers don't want to advertise on them, that is the advertiser's prerogative. But that's a much subtler question, I think, than what most of these news stories are talking about. And I mean, Google's so loyal up the kazoo, they must have contracts in place that are saying, you know, we don't know what people are putting in their videos sometimes. And if suddenly CGP Grey uploads a video that's different to all the ones that have come before,

it's hard for them to realize that your tone has changed immediately. That is exactly right. As I mentioned on the show before, like I was told by someone at YouTube, like, oh, you are listed as one of the school safe channels. So YouTube has a mode, which is where schools can have a super lockdown version of YouTube. And it's like, okay, that's great. I know my channel is on there, but I could upload a video that's a different thing. Like how long does it take before the system would pull that? Yeah. Right. This is what I mean by like, you can never possibly have a perfect system here. There's always going to be a thing that you can point to. Yeah.

At the higher levels, it becomes a much more complicated issue to talk about. All right. What do you think in there, Brady? Well, my overall feeling is that the old school media, particularly the Times, has really overcooked this and I'm finding it a little bit offensive how conflicted they are and how hard they're going and they've moved beyond the bounds

of raising an issue and stirring up a bit of controversy and asking a few questions about accountability. They've totally moved over into feathering their own nest however i do think it was legitimate to point out that there's this inappropriate content around sometimes it's got ads on it is this something that should questions should be asked about i think that was legitimate i still think it's legitimate i don't know i think you're coming across as very much like so pro YouTube that it's almost like surprising me. It's an uncomfortable position to be in. Yeah. And I do think that YouTube, like any big company, will sometimes only act to improve

systems, whether it's their algorithm and how things are classified, when they have the blow torch put on them. So I do think sometimes it's good for a blowtorch, such as media attention, to be applied to companies to make them act and look at their systems and think, should we have a 10,000 rule? Is there more we can do? So I think it was fine to put a blowtorch on them, but I think the blowtorch has gone way too far to some kind of super duper mother of all flamethrowers and it's gone beyond the realms of what was fair reporting and i'm finding it quite frustrating what do you think the net result is if you think the blowtorch has been held too long and turned up too high and we also have to look at

creators on the margin right for whom this does have a an impact right and a decrease in like we're looking at all of the various things and the possibility of what YouTube can change. Yeah. In your view, do you think this comes out as a net win or a net loss? I think when all the dust settles, that for a few months or a year or two,

the needle has swung ever so slightly. Maybe the newspapers have stalled this move in advertising, maybe slightly. I think it's overall the trend will continue. I think the creators who are the big losers are kind of collateral damage. I mean, there's been a lot written about this. And I think the interesting thing is what a lot of the experts I'm reading are saying is that all these big advertising budgets that are being pulled out of YouTube are just going to go into sort of Google ads and search anyway, because they set aside, you know, $100 million a year for online advertising. And they're just going to reallocate it around the internet anyway, and Google's going to hoover up most of it anyway.

Well, it was going to go to Facebook, but somebody else's is next on the list. Yeah. And also, when you look at sort of the wording of all the media statements from the companies, they're never saying we're pulling all our advertising from the internet or Google. They're quite canny with their wording usually. So you can tell they're still advertising online. So I don't think it's quite the victory for newspapers that they probably think they've landed. The only real losers are probably you and me. Well, this is why I've arranged my whole business so that this isn't a problem yeah this is why i have my fantastic patrons yeah it is really interesting because i'm

i've been digging around in all the data for my own analytics behind the scenes trying to see what i can see yeah and i am fairly certain that the video i uploaded about the YouTube system has been put into some kind of political category because I could see what the CPMs were at the start. And like for the first two days, it was lower than normal. And then all of a sudden it crashed to almost nothing. And it's like, ha, this is really interesting. Like somewhere a switch was clearly flipped where the algorithm thinks, oh, this is a video maybe about politics or whatever. Like who knows what it is, but it's interesting because I've never had a video do that before, like comparing it with everything else where it's like, oh, okay, now this is earning essentially nothing. It's interesting to see, but I still say like it's creators on the margin who are

most affected by this but yeah i didn't hear a clear answer from you there of overall summing everything up is this whole debacle that happens on the long scale is it a net positive for the world or is it a net negative for the world what does brady think i don't know I think it just balances out. So it might as well have not happened. It's a net neutral. That's what you're saying? Like everything in the world, there are like winners and losers. Who are the winners? I feel like this is very important. Who do you think is the winner in this situation? Who comes out better after these news stories? Well, I'm sure if you ask Google and YouTube, if they could turn back the clock and have the stories not appear,

they would say, yes, let's have them not appear. And if you ask the Times, do you regret running them? Do you want to not do them? They would say, no, no, we're glad we did it. So based on that, clearly the winners in that battle is the newspaper. I think it will result in it being a little bit harder for people creating inappropriate content to make money so that's like a small positive that's come out of it I don't know how big a

positive because again I don't know how much money these make you tell me it's nothing you're more likely to know than me so I'm assuming you're right but I don't know that you're right regardless I think it will be even harder to make money with inappropriate content now. I think that's a good result. I think people who make their living via revenue on YouTube have taken a hit. I don't know how long that hit will last for. They are losers if they are making appropriate content, which most of them are. So I don't really think of it like that. I don't really think of it as winners and losers though. I just think it's like- Come on, Brady, you got to do the society calculus, right? We add up all the benefits and all the harms.

Is it net positive for the world or net negative for the world? I need a bit longer. I haven't got all the data I need. I haven't got enough data to know how big the problem was. Yeah, that is the big unknown. You think it's completely trivial. I think it's much, much less than the times made it sound, but I don't know if it's as trivial as you're making it sound.

I don't know if it was a problem. I think it kind of was a problem, but if these videos have made like half of one cent and they just screen captured the one moment in history when an ad was served against it, then okay, it was not a problem. I tend to think it must be a little bit worse than that. All I can go on is the fact that when people freeboot my videos, there's certainly a boatload of ads running against them. So whatever mechanisms are in place to stop freebooting aren't working and people are making money from that.

It's a little different. I don't think those things get flagged as fast as a terrorist recruitment video. I realize that. But what I'm saying is that's all I've got to go on. And if that's all I've got to go on, then history has shown me that these hosts of media aren't particularly super red hot on doing this. They do it, they get around to it. And if this has made them improve their systems a bit, if the new 000 rule is a big positive then something's come of it i guess but don't get me wrong i think it was a bit scummy the times have overdone it they're continuing to overdo it it's driving me crazy it's making me a little bit mad now when i read each morning it's like just because of the brazenness of it i think more than anything like the obviousness of it, I think, more than anything. Like the obviousness of it.

I just find it a little bit yucky. You know, like I don't care about Facebook, but I actually don't like Facebook. No, I don't like Facebook either, right? I still don't want to see their business slandered, essentially, by supposedly reputable news sources. I don't know, Gray. I've done a really terrible job of answering your question because I don't really think of it in terms of winners and losers. It's been a bit of a mucky episode, but, you know,

a Walmart ad running against one beheading video is also unfortunate. I understand why it happens and the system we work in, but I think you're a lot more of an apologist for these automated systems than I am. Apologist. Apologists. Apologists. Realist, Brady. Realist.

Realist. I think you can always make it better. And I think they don't invest in making these things better until they felt the heat. I don't think they should have felt as much heat as they have. When this much money moves around and investment is pulled, real lives are affected. And we shouldn't forget that as well. But I also think like in general terms, one of the roles the media can play is holding businesses to account that aren't doing enough to do their job properly. I don't know if that's what happened here. You say absolutely not. I say maybe they could have

done more. Maybe. I'd like to see some data. I do think that's a legitimate role for journalists to play. I don't think the Times should be beating their chest about investigations. I think this is trivial what they've done. They've just spun it into a clever story. But there we go. It's happened. That's what we can say for sure. It's a thing that happened. That we know. And I'll be interested to see how it ends. It'll never end.

They'll do this forever. They'll find another ad on some obscure video and then it'll all kick off again. It'll never end, Brady. That I can pretty much guarantee you. Or it'll end when the Times goes out of business. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by Harry's. Harry's was started by two guys, Jeff and Andy, who were fed up with being overcharged for razors. So they decided to start their own razor company to give guys everywhere what they deserve.

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I have finally finished Westworld. I started watching this and stopped. Then you told me you'd watched it and finished it so i i went back to it and finished it so that we can both speak from position of knowledge yes although at this point it has been quite a while since i've watched westworld so i think our conversation might be somewhat brief but i'm happy to discuss westworld a little bit because everybody seemed to want us to at least touch upon it. And as I briefly mentioned when we first brought it up, but you wanted to cut me off, this is an example of people recommending

a thing, recommending it in the right way, simply just saying, watch Westworld, not mentioning anything about it. And I watched the thing and I definitely enjoyed it. So this was a good recommendation from the audience, from my perspective. Now, since the Brady rule is that you have to lay your cards down on the table, we can't play poker across a smoky table with guns on our side. We have to just put it down on the table. What did you think, Brady? What is your opinion of the Westworld? Well, we've both kind of tipped our hands a little bit. Yeah, but you didn't finish it, so it doesn't count. No, but I did stop because I wasn't enjoying it. And a lot of people did say to me,

no, stick with it. It gets better. Which I don't agree with. I kind of do agree with i kind of do agree with it i do agree with that i enjoyed the second half more than the first half of the series so should i go first and say a few things a few of my thoughts yeah but so is that a you liked it this is worth watching this was a good use of my time okay it's a high quality show it's well made it's thought provoking. It's interesting. It has a lot to recommend itself. And I would say watch it. If someone said to me, Brady,

I'm thinking of watching Westworld. Should I do it? I would say, yes, definitely do it. Okay, great. That's what I wanted to know. That's what I was interested to hear. And frankly, I feel a little bit relieved that that is your opinion. Yeah. Because my feeling is like, if someone watches two episodes of Westworld and they don't like it, I don't think I could confidently say you should go on and continue to watch it. Because I feel like it is what it is right from the start and right through the end. So it's interesting that you had a bit of a different experience, that you liked it more as it went on.

Okay. I can maybe explain why that's the case. I'll say the things I didn't like about it okay because that's always the most interesting yeah it's and it's the easiest and the most fun is to complain about stuff yeah now westworld started at a slight disadvantage because i think i don't have a natural affinity for the wild west genre ah yeah and half the show is kind of Wild West-y. Obviously, half the show is in all the cool, super high-tech labs, but half the show is out in the theme park where it's all Wild West-y. And I just don't have a natural enjoyment of the Wild West genre.

Don't Australians have like a Wild West? There must have been like cowboy genres out in Australia, right? Yeah, we had our frontiers on that. That doesn't mean that I like the genre in films, just because I'm from a country where we had a frontier. No, I disagree. 100% of Americans love the west. That's how that works. Okay. So that was a slight disadvantage for me. And I certainly enjoyed the moments in the labs and things much more than the scenes out in the park that appealed to me more and another thing i would say about the series was i felt like like it was a bit of a slow burn on some of the storylines and i don't mind a slow burn

but i felt like maybe this was too slow a burn and some of the payoffs came a little bit too late. I think some of these storylines that you invested in that later on had a payoff, maybe they should have sprinkled in some of that a bit earlier because some of the stuff, some of the little twists and things that came later on, I thought, oh, that's nice. I feel glad I watched now. I felt like if they sprinkled them in earlier, it would have pulled me through the series a bit better rather than kind of backloading all of the twists and interesting stuff. And maybe that's why I enjoyed the second half more because I felt like at last I was getting some payment

for my investment in these stories. I was like, oh, okay. I see what you did there. Thank you. Took you long enough, but all right. Yeah, I'll agree that they probably could have cut one episode's worth of content and not really suffered anything. I think the biggest problem though, for me was there were too many storylines and characters that I didn't engage with and like. So, you know how when you're watching a

really good series that you really like, every time they cut to a new storyline or a new person and what they're up to, you're like, oh, I forgot about this. I love this one too. And there are very few where it's like, oh, this is the boring one. This is when I'll have a cup of coffee or not pay attention. Like a good series has none of them. A bad series has lots of them. Westworld had a couple. Like there were a couple of times when it was like, oh no, I don't like this one. I wish I'd go back to the other one. If you remember, which were some of the storylines you found less engaging? I can't specifically remember now in hindsight, but a lot of it was groups of people riding around on horses going places that I didn't

really know where they were going and why they were going there. It's a pretty big swath of things. I didn't like the people on the horses. Yeah. Just to mention very briefly, not to interject, but a thing that I found really interesting. So one of the ways I like watching a series like this is I sort of binge it all.

And then when it's done, the exciting part for me is like, now I'm going to go on Reddit and see what the discussions are when the whole thing is done and over with. I find that a very enjoyable part of some bingeable TV shows is like, I don't want to follow this as we're going along, but I'm very interested afterward. And like a perfect example of this is like Mr. Robot or Stranger Things, where people can point out stuff that you didn't notice. And so it's the same thing with Westworld.

It was like, okay, great. Now I want to go find all the details that people have found and all this fabulous stuff. But one of the other reasons that I think is very interesting is it seemed like there was a big consensus that people did not like the one storyline in particular, which was about the madam trying to escape from Westworld that had like a whole bunch of thumbs down of her constantly waking up in technology land and trying to escape from Westworld. And it's like, it's really interesting to see how there can be a strong consensus about a thing that I think if I had seen people talking about that going along, it might have infected my mind. But I thought like, oh, no, i i like that part i had no issue with

the whatsoever so that's why i was just kind of curious to see like did you hit upon the thing that at least commenters on the internet seem to dislike the most i liked that storyline i liked her as a character like i was interested like it kind of lost a bit of puff towards the last episode or two yeah but overall i liked her storyline, the Andy Newton's character. But the weak link for me for the show in terms of this kind of thing was in a show filled with like really good actors and actresses was Dolores, who was such an important character to the show. And she just got more and more important as it went along to the end where she was super important i just never really liked her and i don't know if it was the way she was written or if it was the way she was acted but i just never cared about her at

all like i mean i know she's a robot and stuff but like i just didn't care about robots i know i just never she was a big weak link to me from almost from the first five minutes of the series right to the end. I never warmed to her. I never cared about her. I never wanted bad things to happen to her or good things to happen to her. She just left me completely cold in every way. And because she was so pivotal to what they were doing. I don't know who the actress is actually or if she's like some mega superstar, but I felt like they could have done with like a real heavy hitter in the acting department in that role because, you know, you've got Ed Harris and Anthony Hopkins and you've got some good actors in that show and really like people who just really captivate you and she just was the opposite. Maybe it was supposed to be that way.

And like it was some act of genius, but she was a real weak link in the show for me. And one last criticism I'll make before I hand the floor to my good friend is a criticism you often make, which I think is one of my favorite ways you criticize things, but it is always a criticism is your woe dude criticism. Like that's your way of saying something's trying to be smart but it's not your kind of frat boy puffing on a bong going whoa dude this is like philosophy i think as i liked westfield but westfield was whoa dude for the pseudo intellectual people who like trendy glass concrete architecture and cool iPads and people who say AI and cognitive a lot. Like it was woe dude dressed in sheep's clothing. And like most of the time it was, you know, whoa,

what if the robots are alive? Whoa, what if this is that? Like it was woe dude all the time. But for Redditors who think they're too smart to say woe dude, there was a lot of that. I like how you portray that as a general criticism, whereas it was a criticism of one particular book was the woe dude. But I totally get what you're saying. And this is always whenever watching anything that you have a feeling of, if it strikes you, you're always willing to go along with stuff. And if it doesn't it strikes you you're always willing to go along

with stuff and if it doesn't strike you you're not willing to go along with stuff like that's how all movies and media work and i can totally see how especially in the earlier episodes if you're not going along with it like the ridiculous set where it's like we we all work in 100 glass offices can feel like it's a little much i I can definitely see that. And they do have a little bit of their techno jargon when they're talking about, oh, these robots, they have reveries, and they're able to remember their past selves. It is a bit like, you're going a bit far here. Like this stuff doesn't really matter, these details, and it feels like you're just doing something to do something. So I can see how you could feel that at certain parts in the show.

But I liked it. I am genuinely glad that you liked it. I'm glad that you didn't feel like it was a waste of your time. No, definitely not. Tell me your thoughts about it. Tell me what captured you and what you liked and didn't like. Here's the problem for me, Brady, is I feel like this show was the center of a bullseye for a few things that then allowed me to go along with a whole bunch of other stuff. And so center of the bullseye number one is I love this environment of it's the wild west,

but it's also the future. I love this in Westworld. I love this in Firefly. One of the video games I play the most called Rimworld is also set in this kind of like, it's the Wild West, but it's also the future. I don't know why, but I feel like this setting really nails it for me. I feel like there's something about the fact that the American idea of the Wild West is such like a made up thing anyway. Like what Americans think the Wild West was is like nothing at all like what the actual Wild West was. Something about that to me kind of lends itself in a strange way to the science fiction genre.

Like it's such an artificial setting that I think using it as the setting for this park just works perfectly. It's like this Wild West, it wasn't real in the first place. And now we're creating like a little fantasy place for people to ride around on horses. That is totally the center of the bullseye for me. The other thing which is going to be a little bit hard to explain is this show was very enjoyable to me on another level, which is I have played in the past massively multiplayer online role playing games.

So things like World of Warcraft. And I would just love to know, but like, I think the writers of the show had to be fairly heavily influenced by the way those games work, because so much of this show felt like, oh, we're going to do World of Warcraft, but we're going to put it in a real world setting. So there's lots of elements in the show that I felt like I'm enjoying this on two levels, because it's like, oh, the show is happening. But it's like, they're kind of calling out, oh, yes, some of these characters, these are where quests begin right this is the exact way it works in world of warcraft these are the narratives they call them yeah the narratives right but it's like in world of warcraft those characters have like golden exclamation marks

above their head so you know like this is where a story can begin yeah or the idea that like it gets more dangerous the further out from the center of town you go it's like oh of course there's like the protective starting newbie area just like in all of these games and the further you get from that the more dangerous it gets so i feel like there were so many things that felt like they were intentional calls or references to a particular kind of way that certain video games work and then that works for me on an additional level because in those, I never really care about the game at all. I only care about just exploring, like, and riding around on a horse. And then so it's this double thing where it's like, oh, of course, in Westworld, what do they do? They're riding around on horses, like they're exploring this whole world.

So I felt like, again, it just hit me in the right spot in a couple of ways, that a bunch of stuff that in another show I might have been annoyed with or find tiresome, I felt very happy to just go along with it. So I felt like I was really on board with this show. And just in a way that TV shows are made, like what you were saying before, I felt like this is a well-crafted show. I like it when it feels like effort has been put into making an interesting watching experience. I thought it's a show that did a great job of naturally exploring its own premise. So a lot of the things that they did of like, oh, of course, we're in an amusement park where some people are robots. And so since those people who are robots, they don't age, we can show you things out of order and you won't realize it until later.

Yeah. Because the robots are always looking the same, but the people who aren't robots look different. I didn't see that coming, to be honest. That was quite well done. Yeah. I have to say, like, sometimes when you're watching shows, you feel like, oh, I know where this is going. And even in a show like this, you're like, someone's going to be a robot who isn't a robot like obviously right we know this is how these stories work but i still felt like they did it in an interesting way adding in this fact that you're constantly seeing stuff out of order and not realizing it added to the interestingness of it and i went

back and watched a few of the earlier episodes again knowing that and i was like oh yes this is doubly clever like i'm getting an enjoying viewing experience the second time through in a different way which by the way is one of the reasons why i love the reddit because people were pointing out that if you know that there are these two different timelines there's all sorts of little clues in all of the scenes that let you know where you are in time. Like stuff in the background is different that you just don't notice on the first walkthrough. So I have to say, I just felt like really great show, explored its premise. I liked it a whole lot. I'm frankly a little concerned that there's going to be a season two

because I feel like it's a nice little self-contained thing. I don't really feel like there's a need for another season here. At the end, I didn't, because I didn't know if they're making season two or not, but I did think, well, obviously they're setting up season two, or you could end it there really classily, but they're going season two, are they? You can never end it classily, right? I've seen a couple of shows where I feel like, oh, what a nice complete first season. We could end it there. Oh, there's going to be another one. Are we going to go to Samurai Land for season two that they hinted at? I feel ready to be disappointed by a second season because the first season was just such a nice

self-contained thing. So I really liked it. Was there anything you didn't like? What did you think about all the storylines and the characters and the acting? And what do you think of the character development? You haven't talked about that side of things at all really well i guess because again i was mostly on board with it i agree with some of the things you say like there were a couple places where i felt like it was dragging a little bit towards the end but again i'm also marathoning these things over two days and i feel like that leads to a very different viewing experience than if you're watching it segmentedly. So I really don't have any major complaints.

I just think it was interesting and well done. And I liked it. Two thumbs up. And it's probably one of the, I mean, I'm going to say one of the top TV viewing experiences I've had in a very long time. So I don't actually have a long list of complaints. But I do recognize that there are things that I would complain about in a less well done show. But I was fine with them in this show. I'm very happy with it. I guess, like a thing that I think is a kind of interesting question, which is not really about the show, but like, I've been wondering, and I don't have a good

answer to this. I would like to know if you would go to Westworld. Like if this was a real thing, would you go, Brady? I feel like I have no idea how you would answer this. I reckon I would. Yeah, you would? Okay, why would you go? Oh, I like a good adventure. And, you know, I like that it's kind of exclusive and posh as well.

Is that part of what you like about it? Interesting. Yeah yeah it looks like they take care of their customers you know you think you get the respect you deserved inside the west yeah and i'd like the adventure of like getting to you know have adventures with guns and stuff without being scared of dying so you know because i quite like you know i like playing paintball and things like that i always find that quite adventurous you know, because I quite like, you know, I like playing paintball and things like that. I always find that quite adventurous, you know, running around the forest and shooting and stuff. Here's the thing that I've wondered that so that the fakeness of it wouldn't bother you. Like the fact that it's all set up and that you know that you're protected, that wouldn't undermine it for you? No, I think I would appreciate the safety of it. In the context of it's a place where you go to escape and have adventures and

you know you know i wouldn't go there trying to like you know make new friends but uh what about you would you go to west world oh my god yeah of course in a heartbeat i would go why because that to me seems like the perfect kind of adventure to have where i don't want to ride around on a horse in the real american west yeah because i can die of thirst or get stung by a scorpion. Like there's all kinds of bad things that can happen. Yeah. And so I would ride around in Westworld for the same reason that I rode around in World of Warcraft. Because there is some kind of pleasure to exploring new things.

And that could be achieved in this kind of environment. And the fact that it's a safe environment allows you to have a certain kind of more adventurous fun than you normally would. So, oh yeah, I would be on board immediately. And also I would go to Westworld. You can keep your samurai world. That sounds really boring and uninteresting. I have no desire to go there. To take it a step further and to take it where the show took it, would you have ethical concerns about what was being done to the hosts? Is it cruel what they're doing to those robots? So that's the interesting question, right? I think if a real life Westworld had this kind

of technology and the robots were actually conscious, then to me, it's unambiguous. This is morally reprehensible, right? This is essentially slavery. I don't think there's any way you can argue around that if they're conscious. But what I have found really interesting is it seems like people disagree on the morality of it If Westworld works in a sense the way it's supposed to, that the robots are just complicated toasters, right? That there's nothing inside, that they don't have any actual feelings, that they're just simulating experience and emotion.

And then I feel like, well, I have no problem with this in the same way that I don't have a problem with Disney's Hall of Presidents, right? Like there's no moral problem there. You've just made a thing that's much more convincing. But it's interesting that like, from people I've spoken to about the show, it seems like in some people's minds, there's a line that gets crossed if a thing becomes too convincingly human then it's immoral even if the thing isn't conscious where do you sit on that line what's the question is the question that if it seems too human will i start thinking it's conscious there's two questions what i think is the easy

question is westworld wrong morally wrong if the robots inside of it are conscious creatures? Yeah, if they're conscious in the way that I'm conscious. Yeah, in the way that you're conscious, right? So like when people are stabbing them, they're feeling pain. Yeah, stabbing them and raping them and shooting them in the head. And if they're conscious, then yes. Yes. Yeah, that's the easy question. Yeah. yes yeah that's the easy question yeah the harder question is it morally wrong

if they're not conscious if they are like a mechanical object that experiences nothing then in most cases no because it's no different to shooting a bottle off a shelf at a shooting gallery if it's just a inanimate object okay so what do you mean by most cases though? Well, it does start raising questions where you're tapping into the dark side of the humans. So if a human's going to this place to start performing depraved acts and feeding and fueling sides of their personality that are morally ambiguous you

could probably have conversations around that is it right for you know a married man or woman to go to this place and start performing acts and doing things that they wouldn't do in the real world because they can get away with it there then then you could start having a conversation around that i don't know where that conversation would take you but that obviously is questionable isn't it like you know you're displaying your murder you know or going there to act out your murderous intents is that a good thing to do is it good for there to be a place where people can act on impulses they wouldn't act on in the real world sometimes Sometimes I think that's okay. Other times, maybe not.

I don't know. Yeah, I think there's two questions here in this, which is someone's actions in Westworld, even if there's nothing morally wrong because the robots are not feeling anything, it feels like it could raise some questions about the person though, right? Like if you know your buddy goes to Westworld and he spends his day torturing the robots slowly and in detailed ways, I'd feel a little uncomfortable letting him take care of my dog for the weekend, right? Because I feel like you're getting some information about the person.

And that's like an uncomfortable thing because you're finding out something about a person. But it's more than just finding out about it. Is it also cultivating it? Is it starting to, you know, breed those impulses and make them more likely to be act upon? That's where it becomes an interesting question. That is an interesting question. But what I also find interesting though, is that I have found disagreement with people about whether or not that would be wrong for someone to do, right? Even if the thing isn't experiencing anything. It's interesting that there seems disagreement over here. And like when I was watching the show,

I kept being aware of like, if I was in Westworld, I would be playing it the same way that I played World of Warcraft, which is essentially like, I don't care about your quests, right? I just want to ride my horse around and explore these different areas. And if I did do any of those

quests or those adventures i was trying to think like where is the line how far would i want to push this line and it's like oh i could see a fun adventure where i'm shooting bandits at a distance and an adventure like there's some guys on a mountaintop that i'm shooting yeah but boys it gets closer and closer it becomes more and more uncomfortable sticking a knife in their gut yeah right yeah and it's like that's what i was trying to think it's like okay hand-to-hand combat with knives even if i think the robot is unconscious that feels uncomfortable like that would not be an enjoyable experience yeah i think like it's just interesting to kind of think it through it's like oh i could imagine enjoying an adventure where you're shooting someone at a

distance but like the hand-to-hand stuff it's like even if this is not a real thing like this this robot is not conscious it's not experiencing anything it's like i don't want to do this right like i don't want to slit a guy's neck right up close even if none of it's real and i'm ultimately safe and no one is being harmed like it just it would feel like it's personally crossing some kind of line like this is not an enjoyable experience and i would find it concerning if we're in west world and like somebody else is is doing that all the time it's why i think the show is an interesting point of conversation around some of that stuff.

It's sort of like the holodeck question. Like you mentioned before, on Star Trek, when they use the holodeck, like, can you cheat on your spouse in the holodeck? There's some disagreement about whether or not that's cheating. It's a question without a good answer. Indeed.

Indeed. Anyway, two thumbs up from westworld for me if you haven't watched it and you've listened somehow go watch it i guess did you see how netflix now has switched to you give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to a show at the end and no more star ratings oh have they yeah oh i can't believe you haven't seen that everyone's been pointing that out to us oh i miss i missed that somehow you must take that as a big victory did i promote that in the past at one point did i say did i promote everyone's been pointing that out to us oh i miss i i missed that somehow you must take that as a big victory did i promote that in the past at one point did i say did i promote everyone's talking to me like it's a victory for me but i keep thinking why are you saying that's a victory for me that sounds like a victory for gray you know me i'm i was using minutes on a clock to rate if i ever promoted that i don't remember but you're more like thumbs up or thumbs down

to whether things are good or not you're not one for like you know three and a half stars or seven out of ten you're like thumbs up or thumbs down aren't you yeah i like thumbs up for movies yeah because i think maybe what people are remembering is i know we had a conversation a long time ago about with five star ratings on youtube before youtube switched everybody was either giving things five stars or one star like that that's what tends to happen with ratings that are five so like i bet that happens with uber right that the ratings are like yeah five stars or one star yeah i remember it being born out of you giving a thumbs down to her which i couldn't believe like oh yeah thumbs down strong thumbs down yeah yeah i'm

sticking by that rating by the way yeah okay yeah just to be clear yeah i recommend nobody watch her boring you you and you did how you did bite your tongue enough oh good yeah i'm glad you you thought i bit my tongue enough yeah i let that statement slide no that's a compliment to you by the way that wasn't like that was that was like saying you were very gracious. I was sticking a fork in my leg the whole time. Like, don't say anything. Don't say anything. You were very gracious.