Hello Internet - H.I. #88: Do Not Ring Bell

Episode Date: September 19, 2017

Grey & Brady discuss: space flags for the people, YouTube fair use (or not) continued, Space X feedback, listener images, changes in spoiler culture, and the rules of portrait photography. Sponsors: Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month - 15 day free trial Squarespace: start building your website today with a free fourteen day trial and 10% off first purchase Audible: get a free 30-day trial by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode on the reddit Hand-made Hello Internet flags by Kate H.I. 86: Banana Republic Bold Guy vs Parkour Girl H3H3 reacts to Bold Guy vs Parkour Girl Victoria Bitter 1988 Hello Internet at Congress Random Acts at Basecamp HI Flag at Trafalgar Square HI Proposal Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize

So Brady, I am recording Hello Internet on the road this time. You are. So I'm not in my normal podcasting home studio where everything is just the way I like it. So I'm in this hotel and I'll just say that sometimes when I put the do not disturb sign on the door, the sign, it's not always respected. Sometimes people still like ring the little buzzer at the door they don't always respect the do not disturb sign so before this podcast started i thought i know what i have to do i have the regular do not disturb sign up but i wrote a little note and i stuck the note on the outside of the door over the buzzer button, which says, do not ring bell.

Here's the thing, though. Like as soon as I put it up, and now that I'm here, and now that I'm recording with you, I feel like I have put a big sign on the door, which is essentially asking, nay, begging all passersby to ring the bell. Oh, like not necessarily staff, but just like skellywag stag parties and stuff like that. Anybody. I'm pretty close to the stairwell. So there's a high volume of traffic by the door.

And so this is going to be seen by pretty much everybody on the floor. And I think the reason I'm thinking this is because I'm pretty sure that if I walked by somebody's door and there was a sign that said, do not ring bell, I'm not saying I would ring it, but I'm saying I would pause. I would pause and I would look and I would feel the call of the button. I just don't know if everybody can resist that kind of thing. So I wouldn't feel that cold. But reminds

me of a story that I know of someone who once was on a train and there was this guy in his seat who was asleep. He'd put a sign in front of him, like on his table saying, please wake me up before Reading train station. And the train was now like three or four stops beyond Reading, and someone had just written on the sign, ha ha. Oh, God. That's pretty mean. Not even waking the person up, just like wanting them to know that I knew something bad had happened to you and hadn't acted. That's terrible. I know.

That also just feels like a very different situation because in that moment of please wake up at Reading, you're being a hero by performing an action. It feels like it's extra vindictive to just like, nah, I'm not going to poke this guy who's requested it to be woken up. It feels like it's anti-civilization somehow to not do this tiny gesture that allows you to be a hero. Whereas the do not ring bell sign, it feels like a temptation for a scallywag who can just get away with it, right? Like an anonymous scallywag and press the button and run away. It feels like it's a different kind of thing in my mind. Like the sort of person who takes their photo next to the do not

stand on the grass sign, standing on the grass sort of thing. Like that kind of rebellion as opposed to like just like being actual nasty right yeah it's an actual nastiness yeah anyway i am going to be nervous throughout the recording to see if we actually make it to the end without there being any bell ringing so great just a quick update on space flag the miniaturized handmade hello internet flag that flew into space did you hear that people flew into space where did it go in space brady it went into the void of space oh okay it didn't go to a planet much to my wife's disappointment so we did mention in the last episode that my friend kate who made like handmade the miniaturized flag because she's like into making all these

little stitchy crafty things and kind of got roped into making a space flag and I did say to her look I think some people might want one of these flags would you be willing to make some she was actually abroad for the launch so she didn't get to enjoy the glorious moment but she is excited to hear it happen and I said to her look are you going to make some flags for the Tims? And the thing is they take a long time to make. And like she has other things she's supposed to make. And also I think they're a bit boring to make because they're like, just like,

with all due respect to the nail and gear flag. How dare you, Brady? How dare you? I mean, it is just like a gray rectangle with a little white thing stitched onto it. But she has agreed to make some. We haven't agreed how many yet. It will be severely limited.

And because they take her a number of hours each one, the cost per square centimeter may not be appealing to all. As anybody who looked through the show notes in the last episode could see from that gorgeous macro photo that you sent me of the close up of the flag that went into space. This is very, very labor intensive work on a small scale. This is not mass produced. You're getting a lot of human hours per square centimeter of this thing as well. You are.

So I will put a link and if you want, not the space flag, because the space flag obviously is going to be going on its world museum tour, possibly ending up in that secret pyramid underneath the Louvre where all the best stuff's kept that no one knows about. I don't know, maybe. So you're not getting that one. You're not getting that one. But you're getting the same style made by the same person. And because I'm obsessed with certificates of

authenticity, I will even personally sign a certificate of authenticity to say that this is not the authentic one that went into space, but it was made by the same person. You're including a certificate of anti-authenticity? Is that what this is? A certificate of non-authenticity, a certificate of semi-authenticity. There is an authentic element to it insofar it is the same design and made by the same person but like it's a replica space flag unless of course you buy one and send it into space in which case it too will become a true space flag okay right okay in fact if you are in the business of sending miniaturized

hello internet flags into space this is your moment you know and it's actually quite cheap compared to most space components i would imagine yes compared to most space components the flag is going to be quite cheap compared to most miniature flags it's going to be horrifically expensive yeah we'll see so go and have a look and i'll tell you what if you don't want the flag just go and have a look at kate's shop because she makes nice stuff and you know she might cook me dinner one night if someone buys something from her shop so gray and i benefit in no way from this we are getting no money from the space flags this is not a hello internet enterprises venture this is just doing our bit for the bristol craft scene this is entirely kate's doing with the of the people

design of the flag brady is adding his certificate of semi anti-authenticity to go along with it as a little bit of a bonus just off though just the goodness of my heart because he's he's such a good guy but yeah thanks to kate for making the authentic flag that went into space and even if you're not interested in one of the flags, go check out her store in the show notes. Well, here we are again, listeners. It's time for a Backblaze ad. And as always, sponsors buy slots on this show because people keep signing up, which of course is great. But I always feel a sense of nervousness that Backblaze even keeps buying these ads because it means that so many of you are out there, still digitally unprotected, that you're

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keep your data protected. Backblaze.com slash hello internet. All right. Last episode, we were talking about the automatic slash maybe manual system that YouTube now has for determining how advertiser friendly videos are on the system. I know. My derangement controversy. Your derangement controversy? What do you mean your derangement controversy? Is this how my video about mathematical derangements controversy what do you mean your derangement controversy is this how like my video got my video about mathematical derangements got oh yeah right no of course yes yeah i just like the algorithm got completely confused by your word derangement and i was thinking exactly i don't remember a brady going crazy but i certainly wouldn't mark that

as advertiser friendly i'll tell you that right now. Like YouTube, you just marked me as an advertiser friendly for a moment. I totally did. I had no idea what you were talking about. It was all just jibber jabber all of a sudden there, Brady. But yes, that is exactly what we're discussing is your video's title, Confusing Algorithms. Now, of course, as is the way of these things, the very Hello Internet YouTube video that i was uploading while we were recording that episode came marked back as unfriendly for advertisers which we mentioned in the show a little bit of a cliffhanger for of course what would happen i think i figured out why that may have been flagged by the way why because it was called like banana republic so

they probably thought it was about like politics and stuff you mean they probably thought it was called like Banana Republic. So they probably thought it was about like politics and stuff. You mean they probably thought it was about a clothing manufacturing company? Banana Republic's also like a term, isn't it? Like a political term. It may be a term. I'm still holding the guess or assumption that the first pass of all of this stuff is being done by a straight up just machine learning algorithm. And the very idea of trying to come up with explainable reasons for why or why not things get flagged might not make sense. Maybe it was, maybe it is something

simple like that. It's just Banana Republic as a title is the thing that threw it off. This is exactly the kind of thing why this topic came up on the show and why YouTubers get all upset about it is because this kind of thing I, does have a sort of chilling effect on content production where you never know what's going to trigger the system. And then you mentally start erring on the side of classifying material into different bins and buckets. As we've discussed many times in the show, I understand why it happens. But this is where I start getting nervous about the control that these companies have over what people make and what people can promote on the internet but anyway all of that aside yeah our video got flagged so i thought oh this is exciting i get to go press the little button which says submit it for a manual review and

sure enough in a suspiciously short amount of time later i got the confirmation email saying that it had gone through the manual review and that episode was not deemed advertiser friendly. Wow. So it's got no ads on it still. Well, the mystery deepens because I wanted to today go get some screenshots that I could put in the show notes for today's episode. And when I logged on to YouTube, it was mysteriously gone. Now, now the video is 100% in the clear. I was looking through

my email, I was trying to find some kind of notification about this, or like, I couldn't find any contact from YouTube. Maybe it got stuck in my junk mail filter somewhere. But my subjective experience is submitted the video for review. It came back saying it was manually reviewed and unapproved. And then who knows what happened later on. It just got set back to normal. Maybe an engineer at YouTube listens to the show. Maybe the manual review is a many stage process. Who knows? As usual, YouTube doesn't seem to communicate what their process is very clearly, but that's what's going on with the

advertiser friendliness of the Hello Internet videos. That's interesting because my video that we spoke about at length last time that caused me the problem with the title derangement i contacted my partner manager at youtube and like gave it a you know hey man what the heck's going on here and he was like oh let me kick it up the food chain to our you know monetization team or something and within about 24 hours i got an email back from them saying it's all sorted and it was back to normal. But interestingly, in that 24-hour period, I got another email from someone like just a Tim saying, hey, I listen to Hello Internet and I also work at Google,

not at YouTube but at Google, but I've referred this internally in the internal Google system and I've been told they're going to sort it out as well. So they were getting it from all fronts on this one. And like the Hello Internet situation, I received no like formal notification or email saying, you're back in the club. It just sort of quietly happened. And another interesting thing happened

because I've had a few other ones flagged, just like minor videos on minor channels. So I pressed the button to get one manually reviewed. And this message came up on my screen and it said something along the lines of, it will be manually reviewed quicker if it gets X thousand views in a certain time. But what happened was I wasn't paying attention and I sort of clicked off that screen straight away and didn't read the message. And I was like, Oh, Oh, hang on. Oh, what did that message say? And like, I tried to go back and define it, what the message was and I've never been able to find

it again. But obviously there is some part of the system where you only get manually reviewed if the video is still getting the love. That would make sense. Like they would have to prioritize if there's actual humans on the other end who are looking at this kind of thing. And if there's a super mega viral video that's having a problem, I think everybody can agree that YouTube should probably be looking at that first before a video that has three views on it. Like there has to be some kind of prioritization on the other end. Unless it's my video. Well, unless you're Brady.

Brady has an idea of a certain level of respect that he should deserve. So he's going to get stuff kicked right up to the chain, right? There's a separate Brady process in YouTube. That's what I imagine he would want. I don't want any more respect than just what I deserve and no more. I, mere man of the people, want a system that treats everybody the same and fairly, you know, but we're different kind of people that way.

No, no, no, no, no. Everyone should get the respect they deserve. Right, no, I understand. The respect they deserve. Devil's in the details. But yeah, so this whole thing... It's broken, Gray. It's broken. It's broken. It makes everybody gun shy. Some people were sending me evidence again of, as you were questioning last time, the manual review, like, what does this word mean?

And people were sending me either videos or screenshots of examples of having submitted a video for manual review and getting the reply back in an impossibly short amount of time, right, when no one could possibly have reviewed it. So I think your doubts about the humanness of that is definitely warranted. And I particularly liked MC Hesher in the Reddit left a great comment. They said, it's manual review and manual stands for machine automatically notifies user a while later. I quite like that, right? That's what the manual review is.

And I could easily see that being the process. I have not yet heard from anyone who passed the manual review. That would be interesting to hear about. Oh God, you know what? That's an excellent point. I'm just realizing I haven't heard anybody who's gotten the opposite thing either. It's only denials. To be continued.

I don't want to solicit those replies, but we'll see what's going on in the Reddit and to be continued. Another thing we spoke about was the landmark court case. There was quite a bit of feedback on that in the Reddit, I noticed. Yeah, there was a lot of feedback on this. Obviously, it's a complicated case. I don't want to get into all the details, but there is something that I do want to clarify here, because when I was talking last time about this idea of, I had this feeling like the H3H3 video, I was using this phrase, obviates the need to watch the original video. A whole bunch of people were pointing out

to me a thing in the court case in the verdict, which was in a sense, directly addressing this idea, but I don't really think so, where the judge was talking about destroying the market value or damaging the market for a product, and how this is not an argument that can be used against fair use. And I think it's pretty clear why, right? Because if you're, say, reviewing a movie, like many YouTube channels do in a funny way, and there's nothing funnier than reviewing a terrible movie and just saying how terrible it is. This is just endlessly entertaining. And it's obvious that these kind of reviews damage the market for the very thing that they are building upon, like with fair use. So you can't use that as an argument. Everybody was bringing this up as like the judge has addressed this thing that you're talking about.

I don't think this is the same. And I'm just lacking the words to describe this. But I really do feel like there's something different here than simply damaging the market for the original thing. Because I really feel like if you watch the H3H3 video, people are pointing in the court case as well, it did use something like 75% of the original material. It really did replicate the experience of watching the original thing in a way that a funny review of a bad movie doesn't. Yeah. They both damage the market for the original. They can both have an impact on how much the original is viewed.

But I still feel like there's a separate category here where one thing is almost completely replicating the experience of watching the thing and adding something on top of it. And I've been trying to think like I need a comparison for this. And the closest thing I've come up with is simply the idea of commentary tracks. So lots of podcasts or YouTube channels will create commentary tracks that you can listen to while you're watching a movie, right? So, you know, Brady, you and I, we could get together some evening, watch 27 Dresses, record ourselves talking over the movie, and we could sell that as an additional commentary track that someone could listen to while they're watching the movie. And that's totally fine. But what we can't do is put up a video on YouTube of the movie with our commentary track on top of it.

Yeah. That is against copyright. And I feel like that's closer to the idea of what I'm trying to get at here. That a commentary track that would go along with the original media obviates the need to watch the original thing. And I think the H3H3 video is, in my mind, very close to that same kind of thing. Again, I think that that video is like the limit in my mind of what is acceptable. This is the thing that I'm trying to articulate. And I just want to clear up that it's not the same thing as damaging the market. In the last episode, I felt this way, and I'm feeling it again. And I know you keep saying otherwise, but I think somewhere in the back of your head, you don't think that was fair use.

I know you're not willing to say it on the podcast, but that's what I think you think. Like, I think you're not sure that that was the right decision. I think you're in favor of fair use. I just think you're not entirely convinced that that was fair use. I really do think that video sets the absolute bare minimum for what I'm willing to accept. Like, that's why I actually think this is a really interesting case. But this is also in the context of fair use laws as they are currently written. Maybe what I'm advocating for is, I think in the internet world, there needs to be something that needs to be added to the concept of fair use that would then make this video no longer actually apply.

Maybe that's what it is that you're hearing when I'm talking about this. Obviously, the court case would stand as it is, right? Laws don't get enacted retroactively. I'm not saying that it should be overturned. I'm saying that I think there's an additional idea here that under my conception of fair use in the internet world, I would want to add some kind of clause that would say, ooh, actually, maybe this doesn't quite cut it, because it does obviate the need to watch the original thing. Just one last thing, by the way, about that discussion we had. I don't think we spent enough time

just emphasising how unbelievably bad that Matt Hoss video was that they were critiquing. Like we kind of got so lost in the weeds of what's fair and what's not fair and who created what and what's original. We never just stepped back and said, isn't it incredible that a video that bad gets made? And like it was terrible, wasn't it? It was terrible.

And like offensive and poorly done in many ways. Like it was ripe to get the Mickey taken out of it. It was ripe for the picking. Don't get me wrong. It was a video posted onto the internet that basically had a please don't make fun of me sign attached to it. And it's like, well, now you've made me do this by putting this sign on here. I was just going to keep walking by, but now that you put this sign on here, I can't help it. And of course, with all these things, like the reason this case

becomes a big thing is because it's a perfect storm of a whole bunch of elements. And it seems like the creator was rather prickly about his obviously terrible video getting torn to pieces. Like, and that's, that's what was really driving this thing. And that's why this court case got pushed all the way to the conclusion. Whereas perhaps someone taking advice of lawyers might not push that all the way to its conclusion, because like, this is not a good reason to push this forward. I think this was part of the problem that H3H3 had was the way to mock this video was to show the video.

Like it mocked itself. And that's kind of how they did it. That's the way they mocked it was just to say, you know, this speaks for itself, man. They could have just re-uploaded the whole video as a parody and said, isn't this funny? So they didn't actually need to do much to mock it, which was kind of maybe their semi-undoing,

although I realised they weren't undone because they won the case. But like, you didn't need to like much to mock it, which was kind of maybe their semi-undoing, although I realized they weren't undone because they won the case. But you didn't need to put much critique or craft into editing it. You just had to say, can you believe this? Just look at this. Can you believe it? Behold this terrible video that has been made. I am never surprised that terrible videos get uploaded to YouTube. People make terrible things all the time. And if you make a terrible thing, you probably have terrible judgment about how you think that thing is going to do in the first place. I think that those two things are correlated. Like your inability to perceive how a thing might be perceived might also be the same thing that leads you to make

something that's terrible in the first place, which then makes you more likely to upload it to YouTube. Like, I don't think these are disconnected traits. But yeah, so that's why we didn't really discuss the original thing very much. But also it's partly because I think the more interesting discussion is around the ideas about the thing. It's a bit like when you talk about free speech issues. You necessarily have to have conversations about defending the kinds of speech that you don't like because good speech doesn't need defending.

And the copyright thing is the same kind of thing. It's like the copyright cases are about terrible stuff, right? It's like there's a reason why that's what ends up causing these to be the focal points of the discussion. But just because artwork is terrible doesn't mean that it forfeits its right to copyright protections. He says, I've looked it up. It does remind me of one of my favorite quotes from one of my all-time favorite speeches in one of my all-time favourite movies, when President Andrew Shepard says in the American President, you want free speech, let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing centre stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this is the land of the free, then the

symbol of your country cannot just be a flag, The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free. Man, I love that speech. I love that film. I don't think I've ever seen that movie. Oh man, it's great. You'd probably like it. I don't know. Maybe you wouldn't. I'm going to say you have a pretty bad record in my book of recommending movies to me, Brady. Do you like The West Wing?

I could never really get into The West Wing. I sort of half watched it when it was on. Well, then you probably wouldn't like it that much. I tried years later to get into it, but I think it showed its age. I think it was a show of the time i'm watching it again now i'm loving it well i think there's a difference when you enjoyed a thing at the time you can re-watch it again my perfect example of this is ghost in the shell it is impossible to recommend to anybody to watch now really but it's it's like i can re-watch that and

still have the same feelings of the first time i saw it. So maybe West Wing is like that. I sometimes go on YouTube and watch TV ads from my childhood that have been like uploaded to YouTube and I love them. Like, you know, ones that I still know the lyrics off by heart and sometimes you can find one on YouTube. So you're watching like awkward compilations from the 80s on YouTube. Is that what you're doing? They're not usually awkward ones. Oh, okay. What are they? There are a few Ocker ads, actually, that I would like to find. Oh, yeah.

There was an ad for a beer called Vic Bitter, which was the most Ocker ad I'd ever seen. I wonder if that still exists. Hang on. Oh, great. Do you want to send it to me, Brady? You sound so happy. Sorry.

All right, I'm sending you this. Okay. to me, Brady? You sound so happy. Sorry. All right, I'm sending you this. Okay. This has got a bit of ochre in it. I still know it off by heart. Nothing's going to translate better across the internet and across time than cross-cultural nostalgia. All right, I'm watching it. It's all about when you want to drink a beer.

Okay, so it's a bunch of men doing manly things, right? Fixing trains. Yeah yeah and like wearing white singlets and drinking beers together like after doing work and whenever they have to do anything that's not manly like that guy who's getting married and like he's having to wear the suit and stand next to his wife he looks really really uncomfortable and it's only a beer that can help him but when they're doing all the other stuff like throwing out bales of hay to cows it's like yeah this is brilliant now let's have a beer. That's ochre, man.

That's ochre. I particularly like that there's a guy who's printing the news, who's all like, this is some manly work here, printing the news, wiping his brow. It used to be hard, sweaty work. If nothing else,

just make sure you put into the podcast that line where he goes, matter of fact, I got it now. A hard-earned thirst needs a big cold beer and the best cold beer is big a long cold dick it can come at any time you're taking a vow or feeding a cow matter of fact i got it now that's like a legendary line from that ad taking a vow or feeding a cow. Matter of fact, I got it now.

It's pure poetry, Brady. A hard-earned thirst needs a big cold beer. And the best cold beer is Vic, Victoria Bitter. They didn't pay a cent for that ad, but the sales of Victoria Bitter have just skyrocketed across Australia. I want to hear you say, and the best cold beer is Vic in your CGP Grey voice. And the best cold beer is Vic? Why do you want this from me?

No, that's not Oka. And the best cold beer is Vic. You want me to put on a silly voice? I will do no such thing. There are no silly voices on this podcast, Brady. You have to sound like you're feeding a cow. I don't know what feeding a cow sounds like i'm sorry i've never fed a cow actually no maybe i have fed a cow you didn't feed a cow the australian way of just throwing bales off the back of a truck you probably like just like put some grass in their mouth or something no i fed a cow when they took the middle school kids on a field trip out to a pretend farm to try to show kids in new york what urban life is like. This is where milk comes from,

kids. And we're all horrified, right? Imagine if you'd gone out with the guys from the Victoria Bitter ad. That would completely freak you out. We have to stop or I'm going to start looking at more Australian ads. And that will be the end of this podcast. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by Squarespace. Squarespace is the world's easiest, award-winningest place for you to make your website. When I said at the start there that this episode is brought to you in part by Squarespace, it's not simply because they're one of the sponsor slots, but it's also because Hello Internet itself runs on Squarespace. I didn't really know how to make a podcast when we started this, and Squarespace made it super easy

for me to do that. It helped turn what was just an idea for a thing into something I could easily do with some drag and drop tools. If anyone I'm talking to even vaguely mentions the idea that they need a website for a thing, I always tell them to use Squarespace. So if you have any idea for a website that you want to make, Squarespace is where you need to start. They help turn your idea into a place that you can showcase your work or they can help you create a blog where you want to self-publish your content. Or if you have products that you want to sell, Squarespace has a whole commerce side to their platform as well. And if you're not a designer, don't worry, Squarespace has a whole commerce side to their platform as well. And if you're not a designer, don't worry. Squarespace has beautiful templates that you

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Right. And I thought doing that would result in lots of cheer pressure and complaining and people would start writing me big, long emails and writing monologues telling me why I'm wrong and telling me all about how great SpaceX is. And that's exactly what happened. I do have to say, Tim's in the Reddit. I'm glad you're there. I always love the conversation. The Reddit for me is where the real action of the podcast happens, right? After hours on the Reddit, people leaving comments, competing with each other to make funny jokes. It's always great. it's one of the parts of the doing the podcast i enjoy the most and of course talking to brady i enjoy talking to brady the most and the comments equally but

i was a little bit dreading the spacex feedback and there was a kind of wall of monotony to the feedback about spacex as well i wasn't even the main brunt of it. Like you got much more of it than I did, but there was a little bit of a feeling of being in school while someone's telling you about a thing that you're supposed to care about because it's super important. You're sitting there and they're telling you it's like, yes, but the legislative branch of government is very important and you need to be. And it's like, oh. The thing is as well, Gray, I almost felt sorry for them because, and I don't know if they were self-aware enough to realise this, but they couldn't win

because I'd basically said, I don't think SpaceX is that great. It's just all right. But the thing that annoys me more is people who contact me telling me why SpaceX is great. It would be like me saying, CGP Grey, you have blue hair and you're just the sort of person who would deny having blue hair as well. Right, exactly. Because now what can you do? Like you're like, uh, and that's kind of the position these people were put in. They were pinned into a corner.

I believe the phrase for this is a Kafka trap where you like linguistically given someone no way out. The people who are most X are the ones who most vehemently deny being X. And it's like, oh, okay, well, there we go. There's no way out of this one. Yeah. So that's what you did to those poor SpaceX fans. So those people who wrote me big, long emails, can I just say, thank you for listening to the podcast. And I did skim read what you wrote, mostly. Yeah, I also feel like I put people in a bit of a difficult position as well, because I don't know if it came across, but the main thrust of my argument was I just sort of lack interest in

SpaceX. And as I've said many times on the podcast, I think interest is one of those things that needs no explanation, and is just a thing that exists or doesn't exist and is ultimately unexplainable. And so it's like, yes, I totally should be one of those people sending you, Brady, an email about how great SpaceX is. But just for whatever reason at this moment right now, it just it doesn't actually pique my interest. Like you can't talk someone into being interested into a thing. Perhaps when they get closer to their stated mission of putting humans on Mars, like it'll get more exciting then. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm the same. I'm not anti-SpaceX. I'm just not super excited by that. Everyone's saying, oh, but their plan is to put someone on Mars. You know, the day that spaceship's going down to land on Mars, I'll be watching. I'll be super excited then. I will turn on the news that day, right? Like that's definitely a thing you'd want to see.

I do have one question for you, though, because I'm interested in one kind of feedback and what you think about this, which was a lot of people were saying that you have an idealized image of the sort of heroism of the NASA days and like why NASA was doing what it was doing. I'm just curious if you have a response to that, that your NASA fandom is actually just very similar to SpaceX fandom. Well, you've probably pulled the same trap on me that I pulled on them there. Like, what can I say? If I say, no, no, no, they were the real heroes and I know it. Like, yeah, maybe, maybe, you know, it was before I was born.

I wasn't around for the Apollo missions. And I'm sure lots of people around the time of Apollo, certainly during the 60s when they were just building things and testing things, I'm sure lots of people saying, yeah, mate, talk to me when they're on the moon, i'll be interested maybe it's the same thing but i can't critique myself on that i read books and i watch movies and tv shows and i look at it and i think wow that looks amazing but maybe i'm wrong but they were putting footprints on the moon and when they put footprints on mars that'll awesome. Will that be more awesome than footprints on the moon?

That is the question. Which is more awesome? Setting foot on the moon, setting foot on Mars? All right. I'm going to say setting foot on Mars is more awesome than setting foot on the moon. And my reasoning for this is while they are both people landing on foreign objects, I think the tremendous difference in distance between these

two things, it's like that saying where a difference in amount has become a difference in kind. So that I think while superficially they look like they're the same kind of thing and one just seems like it's second, the challenge of landing on Mars is so much incredibly harder than the challenge of landing on the moon. I think when I do the mental calculus of that, it's a more impressive thing to put a man on Mars than to put a man on the moon. Do you think the same thing, Brady? No. I knew it. I knew the moon is more impressive. Okay, what's your argument for the moon being more impressive? Just that it's first?

First. Yeah. There were two things. The main thing is that it was the first foreign body. And we went thousands and thousands and thousands of years without setting foot on another thing in space. And then we did it. And if 50 or 100 years later, we then do the next one. When you look at that span of human existence, it's just a tiny split second later, isn't it? And also, this is less my argument, but it is also part of my argument. The moon is like this glorious, gorgeous companion that we've had in space for as long as we've been on the planet. It's been this gorgeous pearl that we've just looked at and dreamed about. And then we did it, we stepped on it. And that was amazing. And Mars is more just this like red dot that we're aware of, but isn't really part of our amazing. And Mars is more just this like red dot that we're aware of but isn't really part of our consciousness. The moon is part of like every human's consciousness. It's one of the first words you can say as a kid.

It's this thing you look at in the sky and you're like, Mum and Dad, what's that thing? Like, you know, the moon is very special to humans. So the moon has a more special place in the human heart and it was the one we did first and i agree mars is you know way way harder but in the span of human history it's too close to the moon in terms of when we did it i'm assuming though we do it at some point in the next hundred years yeah i think it's too close in terms of time and it's not quite as special an object and it wasn't the first object in space we did you don't need to explain to me the difference between the moon

and a planet or the distances involved or any of those things i understand them all yeah if you said to me do you want to be the first person to step on the moon, which is obviously something I can't do, or do you want to be the first person to step on Mars, which is incredibly unlikely that I'm going to be given that opportunity. But if I could have had either, I would have taken the moon. I'll grant you that in the waiting room before you can pass on to the next life, when you are finally forgotten from all of the history books and everybody's memory, I think that the first person to land on the moon is going to be remembered on a thousand year timescale more than the first person to land on Mars. I'll concede that.

It seems like which piece of information will be lost to the dustbin of history first. And I think the first person on Mars will be the one that is lost first. I feel like I can sympathize with you. But something in my brain is a bit like you're saying, oh, it's more impressive when the first guy from England sets sail and lands on the shores of Ireland than when he sets sails and lands on the shore of America. It's something about that was like, it's more impressive to land on America from England for the first time than it is to land on Ireland. Let me play your game on you then. Which is more impressive? The Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk or the first flight

across the Atlantic Ocean? Well, okay. Unfortunately, you've picked something that doesn't work very well for you because I think that first flight is deeply unimpressive. It barely deserves the word flight. Sorry, North Carolina, who's all, every one of your license plates says first in flight. I am deeply unimpressed with the Wright brothers first work. Go watch the video. It's not that great. Yeah, I know. And I know how short, I mean, it was less than the wingspan of a 747, but I still think it's the one. And in the grand scheme of things, when we're doing who knows what in space in a million years, the flight to the moon will be

like the Wright Brothers flight. People will laugh that we were impressed by it, but it's still the one for me. I'm looking forward to these emails. God. Now I'm going to have all the Mars cheer pressure team onto me as well. I can't believe I'm having to defend myself as like a lover of space. I'm sitting

in an office surrounded by space memorabilia. Like this to me is just the way of the world because it doesn't matter if we're talking about space or if we're talking about politics or if we're talking about anything. It's like you get attacked from two groups, the group that is the most different from you. And then the... We haven't done any viewer images for a while, like, you know, pictures that people have sent in. Oh, yeah. You can always send them, people. Messageforbradyatgmail.com. It's a number four instead of the word for. Why isn't it the word for but i think

that confuses people yeah well they're confused now because now you're talking about it they're thinking oh they talked about it but which one actually was it it's the number four i don't know why it's the number four though it should be four f o f o it should be f o u r it should be messages f o u r brady that's what it should be yeah you're removing all the confusion brady's such a common name i think message for brady with the word for it was probably taken for all i know i don't know it's message for brady with the number four look if you don't understand what we're talking about then you're probably not someone whose email i want to read in the first place so let's just move Let's start with, this one's come from a

Tim who recently, well, it was recent when they wrote the email, went on a trip to DC, Washington, USA and had a tour of the Capitol. The tour was incredible. And I met a representative congressman of Minnesota, my state of residence. I love how proud Americans are like talking about their representative or their congressman. Look, every American is from a great state. So anyway, this person met their congressman who was on a break and took them on a deluxe behind the scenes tour. And they got to see all sorts of things. And they posed for a picture together on the balcony of the Speaker, which overlooks the Washington Monument. Apparently it's a big deal, that balcony.

And I will send you the picture of the two of them together on the balcony. And being a loyal fan, this person asked to pose for a photograph with their congressman holding between them his phone with Hello Internet playing in the middle. So it's like, yes, congressman, I'd love to have a picture with you. But do you mind if I also hold my Hello Internet phone so that you and I could share the moment? I think that's a good move for congressman. I think being a Hello Internet listener gets you

votes. I think gets you lots of votes. Yeah, you think he's jumping on our coattails. So anyway, there you go. If you ever get to meet someone really, really famous and have that once in a lifetime photo, make sure you too hold a phone between you with the Hello Internet logo, because you may get mentioned here on the podcast. And if you're in political office, I'm very happy for you to endorse the Hello Internet podcast. But what must you have been thinking when this guy said, do you mind if I just hold my phone here with this thing, this podcast playing? I don't know how that was explained. I think politicians must have to deal with this kind of thing all the time. I bet when people visit their politicians, they always want

to take a picture. And I bet there's a pretty high frequency of, oh, I would like X in the picture as well. I bet this this guy this is like the it's like the third phone photograph he took of the day i think that's what happened you reckon yeah you're probably right that's what i reckon brady enhance oh yeah no you've no great you uh as always you are eagle-eyed and that pin was mentioned actually that is the official pin that only congressmen get to wear and the sender of the email even pointed out to me you can tell he's a congressman because he's wearing that's interesting i didn't i did not know that congressmen have a special pin that only they can wear huh interesting we had another interesting message this came from rebecca who describes

herself as a girl tim but i don't think you need to describe yourself as a girl Tim. A Tim is a Tim is a Tim. Agreed. But Rebecca came to the Random Acts of Intelligence event that was held in Huntsville, which apparently she says was in November 2014. Can that be right? Was it that long ago? I think so. I think so. Goodness. So after the show, Rebecca managed to get Dirk and Henry's signatures on her Random Acts of Intelligence poster. But she was unable to get yours or mine because the signing queues were moved outside. And I think she basically lost interest. But that's my words, not hers. I remember freezing to death outside when they moved the lines.

That's how they actually disperse the crowd. go outside where it's physically uncomfortable for you to stay here too long so anyway rebecca has used this to sort of contrive quite a tale here which i won't read in its entirety but the main thrust of her narrative is that in order to try and get my signature she thought it would be a good idea to go to Everest Base Camp because that's a place that I was likely to be. So she tells her tale. But what she says here. In true Hard as Nails fashion, I decided to go to Everest Base Camp during the July monsoon season. For while Gray said about the trip, no, not in a thousand years am I stepping in that helicopter going to that bridge in that country.

Sounds like me. I knew you may have been up to the challenge. Rebecca was blocked by the 2015 earthquake, but after eight days trekking through the summer, the sun, the rain and snow, she reached Everest Base Camp and she took her random acts of intelligence poster with her in case I would sign it. She was disappointed to find I was not there. Oh, that is disappointing. But she did send a picture.

So here is a picture of Rebecca on her way back down from base camp. But I know that sign she's posing with there. And it's not very far from Everest base camp itself. So there's Rebecca who took her random acts of intelligence poster all the way to Everest base camp in a tube and took this picture. And she actually sent me this and I got in touch with her and this is the ulterior motive for me talking about this on the podcast gray i said to rebecca if you send that to me here in england i will sign it for you so she has sent it to me and i've signed it but i've

misplaced her address and she's not replying to emails so rebecca i have signed your poster which has been to random acts of intelligence everest base camp and has now crossed the ocean to me if you want it back i'm going to need an address otherwise it's going to stay on my desk and i'll give it another three weeks before it goes into a drawer and then gets forgotten forever it gets filed away in the mausoleum. It's in another box in an Indiana Jones style archive in Brady's house. It'll never be found again camp all the time somehow. It seems like while you're telling this story, some part of my brain was honestly expecting it to conclude with, and I was at base camp and I signed the poster for her.

And now we have a picture. I know that that can't possibly be true, but there was some part of my brain which just felt like, this is how the story will end. Alas, not on this case. Funnily enough, Derek was there, but he'd already signed the poster, so she didn't bother. Yeah.

It's unremarkable because he's everywhere. Speaking of photos, the security guards at the monument at Trafalgar Square guarding the lines must fast becoming very familiar with the nail and gear logo for the number of people in hello internet t-shirts and flags who are posing for pictures I cannot possibly share all the pictures that people have sent of themselves at the Lions at Trafalgar Square there has been a lot and it's all been great it's been really great I've just arbitrarily chosen one which was tweeted

by Rich Wrigley, because it was one of my favorites, because it's a two-stage photo here. You can see in the tweet, there's stage one, climbing up to the line, flag in hand, and then getting up there and posing for the picture. Nice sequence. Nice sequence of pictures. Yeah, that's a good one. I agree. There's been a lot of flag unfurling and other forms of hello internetery around trafalgar square it's been great to see and yes i imagine that the guards are at least becoming somewhat familiar with this logo and wondering what's going on what is this what is this they probably think it's some nefarious organization and one one last one which was just one that caught my fancy this was a chap here again there's

a tweet that we'll link to in the show notes so people can see it this was a chap whose name is tom funnily enough but clearly does listen to a bit of hello internet and there is a picture of him having an incredibly romantic moment proposing to his well wife. And he did so wearing a Mighty Black Stump t-shirt. Oh, wow. And I think that's amazing. That's fantastic. That's really great. Not only is it great, it's also like the height of like ridiculousness. I even put this picture on my personal Facebook for my friends in Adelaide, because I said to all my Adelaide

friends, you know, like that building on Grenfell Street. I make jokes about it on this podcast and I made a t-shirt and now here's a picture of a guy proposing to his wife wearing a t-shirt of the Grenfell Center. It is absurd. It's the height of absurdity, but I absolutely love it. And it's a great photo. That proposal is taking place in a great location. They're in an open space surrounded by trees with the blue sky above them and a Mighty Black Stump t-shirt on one of them. Do you think it's acceptable that he wore a Mighty Black Stump t-shirt for proposing to his wife? Such a crucial moment in history. These events, it's impossible for people on the outside to pass judgment on the internals of a couple's relationship. So I'm going to say that because he did it, yes,

it was perfectly appropriate for this couple to do that. Because if it was horrifically inappropriate, I don't think the second photo would be the two of them walking hand in hand out of this location, right? It might be a much more angerful photo the second way around. So I think it went great. The question now is, which T-shirt is he going to actually get married in? No, Brady, you can't do that to people.

That's not fair. Don't listen to the Brady. Don't listen to him, people. He's just trying to put you into a trap there, buddy. This is already amazing. I wish the two of you the best. Another thing that we've taken interest in over the years are people who listen to a lot of Hello Internet in a short period of time for one reason or another.

And we have a message here from someone called Nathan. And he sent this a little while ago. He was doing a lot of listening to Hello Internet because I think it's when he first got into the show around the time between Episode 83 and 85. I mean, on our release schedule, that could be quite a lot of time. I don't particularly remember, but that was when he was listening. And at the time he was doing a lot of commuting, and he was also moving house and doing a lot of driving.

So he was listening to a lot of Hello Internet in a concentrated period. And if you're a details person, the order he listened in was he listened from 1 through to 83, and then he listened to 1 to 6, like started again, and then 84 came out. So he listened to 84 and then he went back and went from 7 to 50. And this was done in a short space of time. And he's given me the stats here. These are the numbers.

He listened to 30 episodes in 8 days from May 26 onwards. He listened to 84 episodes in 31 days. And his total between May 26 and July 27 was he listened to 137 episodes of Hello Internet in 63 days, over two a day for 63 days. And he's claiming that as a record if anyone thinks they can better it keep quiet i can understand this because i know i know with things that i've listened to or even like youtube series like you sometimes just get into a real groove with something like that if i went back through my own listening or viewing history there there are periods of time where it's like oh this podcast i listened to an ungodly amount of episodes in a short period of time i have also done that thing where

you go back through an archive and re-listen to a show so i i feel like i can totally understand this behavior although i would suspect that probably i'm thinking maybe you have never re-listened to a podcast brady i think think that I'm going to guess that's your behavior. You don't seem like a podcast re-listener to me. No, probably not. Most of the podcast-y stuff I like is quite contemporaneous sort of stuff. I like it. It's like a Hello Internet box set.

We're like a box set. You can binge Hello Internet. It's crazy. You can binge Hello Internet. There's many hours of content at this point to binge and it's relatively unhinged from time i don't think any of the episodes are too specifically located to a period in time i mean i guess this episode will seem a bit dated when someone is listening to it on mars and listening to our debate about which is more impressive or not

i guess there is a whole bunch to listen to i forget i can't remember if we came up with a term for it or not but i do think it's interesting that i've been seeing more and more comments in the reddit where people lament the fact that they have caught up two episodes and so people have been saying like oh they've been listening through the back catalog and then the most recent episode is the first one that they had to wait for or like the the new episode just came out as they finished the the archive and now suddenly they have to wait i know that experience too like i have definitely done that with podcasts that have long back catalogs and it's like oh great i'm binge listening through this whole thing and it's like but there comes a point where you know you're catching up to modern day time and then suddenly it's like, but there comes a point where, you know, you're catching up to modern day time. And then suddenly it's like, I listened to eight hours of this yesterday. And

then the brakes get slammed. It's like, but there's no more, like, there's no more for me to listen to. It is a weird moment of like, I'm all caught up. I've been binging this over a period of time and I want more. And there's, there's nothing, there's nothing more. There's a micro version of that that occurs when you watch normal television. If you have like a digital box, which, you know, I know you don't watch normal television, but if you're watching something that is currently on, but you're like 20 minutes behind, so you've got some like lag in the bank. So like when the ads come on, you can fast forward the ads and you're still behind. And the next lot of ads come on and you can fast forward.

And then the third lot of ads come on and you're fast forwarding through them. And suddenly like it stops and the ads start playing and you're like, oh, I've used up all my like credit. And now I'm just watching like in normal human time. And I can't use that buffer anymore. I thought you were going to say about just catching up to episodes of a TV show that's on the air. A behavior that I have noticed in myself is many years ago, I decided at some point like, oh, I'm not going to watch TV shows until like the season is out. Like I'll wait until season three comes out and then I'll watch the whole of season three and I don't want to watch it in any other way. But I have noticed recently that this behavior is like cranking up in my head and intensity. And now I

find myself thinking, I don't want to watch that show until the whole show is over. So it's like not even until the season is over. I was like, I'm going to wait until the whole thing is over. To me, the standard example of this is Game of Thrones. I haven't watched a single episode of Game of Thrones. And my feeling has always been like, I'm going to wait until it's done. I don't need to watch it at any particular time. I don't want to do this. Don't do that with Hello Internet, though, by the way. If you're listening and you're waiting for Hello Internet to be done before you start

listening, don't do that. You have to listen to it now. Don't wait. Get into it now. But TV shows, wait until it's over. You bring up Game of Thrones. There will be no Game of Thrones spoilers today. But it's something I had been meaning to bring up and that is have you ever known a tv show with such an anti-spoiler culture

around it as game of thrones like it is such a forbidden thing to spoil game of thrones above anything else that exists it's such a electric fence on social media if someone even says i thought last night's episode was quite good. Shut up, shut up. You're spoiling it. And by the way, I'm one of those people. Like I'm super red hot on Game of Thrones spoilers. Like even saying an episode was good, I get angry at people because that removes the possibility that it would be bad. And you've therefore spoiled something. And it's so hot around game of thrones i've always held that even opinions about episodes like good or bad are a form of spoilers which i think is

like an extremist spoiler position but i'm happy to hold that position i'm happy to mark out that territory but it's interesting you bring that up because i'm aware of this that there does seem to be a real culture of anti-spoilerism in Game of Thrones. And I will go even further than that. I have no evidence for this whatsoever. But I am convinced that Game of Thrones has played a not insignificant role in changing the whole culture around spoilers in a broader context. I'm aware that when we started the podcast, you know, three years ago or whatever now,

I feel like online land was still going through some kind of transition around spoilers, like spoilers were much more of a thing. I feel like in all kinds of media, people have almost entirely adopted a new norm around spoilers. And I feel like I remember it used to bother me much more as a spoiler extremist. But now it seems like everybody's gotten much more on board with the idea of don't talk

about stuff that could be potentially spoilers. And I think it really is the tremendous popularity of Game of Thrones and the spoiler nature of that show that has introduced a lot more people to the idea of a broader concept of spoilers and why it is a social good on the internet to keep your mouth shut about spoilers. I mean, the fact people watch shows in such a time shifted manner now as well, because of Netflix and the ability to record shows and stuff also, but Game of Thrones is kind of king of that hate the technological change obviously contributes to it i suspect that game of thrones accelerates that it's just like the

right example very intensely over a long period of time which contains the technological change that people are going through it's right at the axis for being able to lean on the lever the hardest about changing the culture around spoilers. And of people who commit spoilers, I found there are two types. One that I like and one that I have issues with. One is the person who may spoil something inadvertently and then like apologize and me a culprit and delete the offending item and just hold up their hands and say my bad i'm sorry i

wasn't thinking but the people who really annoy me are people who then try to defend why what they said is not a spoiler and in doing so perhaps commit even more spoilers like if someone says you're committing a spoiler, you're probably committing a spoiler and you don't have to say to me, no, no, no, that wasn't a spoiler because I didn't even mention. Right, yeah. Or that didn't actually even happen. I was like saying that didn't even happen.

Like you're spoiling again. Like if I make some joke about, you know, the fairy on the green tree and then no such thing happens and someone says, oh, don't spoil it. I'm not spoiling at you, idiot. There is no fairy on the green tree. You're still spoiling. Shut up. Shut up.

Saying a thing has been spoiled is like describing an internal emotional state. You can't argue against that. I will add there's a final category, which is a thing that bothers me the most is apparently there's some kind of, I'm just going to call it BS study from years ago about how people who are spoiled

about the contents of movies enjoy the movies more, even if they don't think they do. All right, one of these things where it's like, oh, we did surveys about what people think about the movie. And like, we asked them questions before. Like one of these studies, I just feel like, yeah, let's see you replicate this a whole bunch of times but whatever it got published somewhere and i feel like i have been linked to this thing a million times where people are like

oh if someone spoils the thing for you even if you don't think you like it more science says that you do it's like that doesn't change anything about how i actually feel about this like don't try to pull this kind of kafka trap on me if it's like, I feel like I'm less happy, but you're telling me you're like waving this paper around that I'm actually happier. It's like, no, void and null. I'm not accepting this as a result. The only thing I'd say to that, I mean, my instinct is that you're right and it's BS. But the one thing that runs against that in my head is if you're going on a holiday, most people look forward to the holiday and they enjoy booking it and they enjoy the month or two of knowing they're going to go on the holiday. And if I just said to my wife tomorrow, surprise, we're going to Hawaii

in 20 minutes, she would still enjoy Hawaii, but she hasn't had those two months of looking forward to it and telling her friends and planning what she's going to do. So there is a looking forward to it component. I wonder if that emotion and that feeling, that phenomena does map onto seeing movies in any way. I'm not saying knowing how the movie ends makes you enjoy the movie more, but is there some component of like a looking forward to it-ness that that study is somehow tapping into or riffing off?

No, I'm going to say no, because going on a vacation, it's not a spoiler. But like you do before you go on your vacation, like look at what the rooms are like and look at the beaches and look at all the different photos and read everyone's reviews on TripAdvisor and like you immerse yourself in it for a month or two beforehand. So it's not like you arrive on the island and go, oh my goodness, I didn't even know there was going to be an infinity pool. Like you've looked at the infinity pool a thousand times before you get there. I feel like I'm trying to marshal in my brain some kind of argument for how knowing the infinity pool is there is not a spoiler, but I actually find like in some perverse

way, you're almost walking me into the argument that it's right because I'm aware like one of the things that I like doing the most on vacations is exploring new stuff right like I like to go wander around the hotel and find new things I was like if I knew exactly what the hotel was like it would be kind of like a spoiler. So I've kind of argued you the other way, rather than getting you to think it's okay to know about films. I've now got you to a point where you're not even going to look at hotels before you go to them. I think maybe I have just discovered that I thought I was the most extreme spoiler position that a person could have,

but I've discovered there's a whole vast new territory of greater spoiler extremism to be enjoyed. Hello, Internet. Today's sponsor is Audible with an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original shows, news, comedy, and more. Get a free audiobook with a 30-day trial at audible.com slash hellointernet. When you use Audible, you can listen to your audiobooks on your iOS device, Android, Amazon Fire tablets, or your computers. And your position in the book will synchronize across all of those devices. Plus, what's really nice, if you are listening to a book for a particular project and you also want to have the e-book copy of that, Audible has WhisperSync for voice, which will automatically keep the book on your Kindle in sync with the audiobook, which can be very nice. Often if I'm listening to a non-fiction book, I will get the e-book version so that I can open it up on my phone and highlight or make note

in a particular passage that I've just heard on the audiobook. It's really nice to be able to do that. Now when you sign up with Audible you get a free audiobook to listen to and you might want to try The Circle by David Eggers this time. It's a book I read a little while ago and Brady just messaged me the other day asking if I had seen the movie that's based on the book as a thing he wants to talk about at some point on the show. Now you you know me, I don't like spoilers, so I'm not going to say very much about the plot, except to just simply say that the book takes place

largely at a Google-stroke Facebook-like company in the current time or perhaps the very near future. So that's The Circle by David Eggers, if you're looking for something fiction to listen to. But of course, Audible's catalog is ginormous. If you want to listen to it, Audible has it, with an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original audio shows, news, comedy, and more.

You'll 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. Thanks to Audible for supporting the show and thanks to Audible for giving me many, many hours of things to listen to. I've got something else for you here, Gray. A bit of humans need not apply-ness going on here.

So the National Portrait Gallery has this annual photographic portrait competition called the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Gallery has this annual photographic portrait competition called the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize for photos of people. And they had 5,717 submissions this year. And they've got a short list of three, the final three that they've decided are the best. And they are going to then

tell us who the winner is in about a month's time. I'll send you the three finalists. Here comes the first one on my message. The first one appears to be like a woman looking out a sort of a smeared window. And this is a woman, I believe, in northern Iraq who's sort of fleeing the so-called Islamic State group. It's sort of a dramatic picture. So that's one of the pictures. Very emotional picture. I actually don't think it's that good, to be honest, but anyway. I think the window just looks a bit grubby, but what do I know? You're not a portrait photograph finalist, that's for sure, Brady. Exactly. And if I took that photo, it would be the greatest photo I'd taken in my life.

So what do I know? Here's another finalist. This is a gentleman, I believe, who was rescued from the Mediterranean. He was sort of fleeing political strife in Africa. A very good picture of this chap with the sea behind him. Very dramatic. I'm going to say that's a better portrait than the previous one. It's a very good photo.

Like I can't take my eyes off it. And the other one is a picture of, this is a woman named Erica. This picture was taken in Japan. It was in Osaka. I don't know. What do you think of that one? That's a strange photograph. It is a strange photograph because that is not a photograph of a person.

Erika is an android. Okay, yeah. This is what's causing some controversy because the portraits are supposed to be of humans and this person took this picture of Erika, the android, at the Hiroshi Ishiguro laboratories in Osaka University, Japan. And it's supposed to be some kind of comment on humanity and things like that. And so there's been this controversy, should it be allowed?

It's technically against the rules. So humans don't even need to apply for the job of model in human portrait photos anymore. You'll have to take my word for this. But like the very first thing I did when you sent me this photo was I zoomed in on the face because it did just look weird. It doesn't quite look right. It was on the front page of the Times newspaper today and I just glanced at it over my piece of toast and I was like straight away I thought, that's not a human, is it? Now that I know it's not a person, I can say what I was thinking, which is like,

it looks like this person has something wrong with them. Maybe a genetic problem or something. The face just looks wrong. I guess if the question here is, should you be able to photograph a non-human in a portrait competition? No, clearly not. Thumbs down on that immediately. What is even the discussion here? The art gallery says,

the gallery has decided not to disqualify this portrait, though accepts it as a breach of the rules. The rules are reviewed every year, and this issue will be taken into consideration for next year. What? The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize is dedicated to showcasing the best in contemporary portraiture. There are occasions when particularly compelling portraits

raise interesting questions about the genre of portraiture, and these may be included at the judge's discretion. Okay, well, they wormed their way out of it with that last line there didn't they about like oh it's against the rules but we have a rule about judge discretion so now it's it's technically okay. Oh it's genius too because like you know basically a boring portrait competition is now on the front page of the times. No surely not Brady. You think do you think that was one of the motivations? I take it back sorry it's more about showcasing the best in contemporary portraiture

and raising interesting questions about the genre of portraiture. And now it is being discussed on this podcast. What is a portrait? And the answer is clearly not a photograph of a mannequin or an android is not a portrait. I don't agree with that. The photographer said that they had half an hour with Erica and a young researcher in which to take the photograph.

I find it weird that like there was only like half an hour. It's very like ex machina, isn't it? Like in terms of, you know, you can only have a certain amount of time with the robot. It was session five. And as soon as the photographer left, the android smashed its own hands to pieces trying to escape from the room. Yeah, that's what happened. It just like whispered, get me out of here. It's so creepy even just to think about it oh then of course if if i was in that room with them with android and it whispered get me out of here it's like okay

how fast can we set it on fire like that's gonna be my only goal they always make them kind of like reasonably attractive don't they these things like i've never seen like a fat one with a beard what do you mean in in your android portraiture you've never seen fat ones with beards what is the context in which you've never seen an unattractive robot is that what it is but they always make them like typically attractive like cliche attractive don't they because if they make them unattractive then we're more likely to kill them brady we're more likely to kill unattractive things that way i think that is true we don't eat super cute things really right like how bad do you feel about killing a

spider versus how bad do you feel about killing a bunny you meant it as a joke but i think that is literally true i had an experience this week i realized there are two times that i can think of where this happens. And this is a time when you feel this need to be way more serious and intense and sort of solemn than is natural. The first one is when you are at an airport and they ask you questions like, have you got anything dangerous in your bag? You know, have you got a knife and that? You know how you like, you feel this kind of strangeness come over you where you have to really intensely and seriously answer the question. Like, no, I will not joke. I will not laugh. I will not smile. This is a very serious moment between two people and I will take it seriously. Do you get that feeling when that question happens? I have a difficult time with that moment because of this pressure is

like my very intense desire to signal that i am the world's most boring man and that i'm also taking this very seriously and that i have nothing but the utmost respect for authorities in this moment always ends up making me just be weird my wife has commented on it she's like what the what is wrong with you i have ended up stumbling over really obvious questions like what are you here for and it's like uh i'm seeing some some family and then uh i've got a there's a yeah going into the country too i'm actually thinking of a few more examples as we speak but yeah yeah yeah that's true as well it's the to... Yeah, going into the country too. I'm actually thinking of a few more examples as we speak, but yeah, that's true as well. It's the same when you're going into the country. When's your flight home and stuff like that. Yeah, but it's like when I get pulled

over, when they're scanning me at the airport in security, it's the same thing. They ask me questions about packing the bags and it's like, I somehow stumble. I don't even know what I do, which is like, it's like a blind panic until it goes away. So yes, Brady, I know exactly what you're talking about. An intense desire to be more serious than normal. There's another time that happened to me this week that I realized happens in our lives. And it is different because it's a time that's usually associated with a bit of a laugh. But at the same time, that emotion comes over everyone as well for a few brief seconds. And that is the moment at a wedding when the celebrant says

does anyone here in the room know of any reason why these two people cannot be married and i know there's always a joke afterwards and everyone laughs when there's like a few no one objected right but for those few seconds like you feel like i must not move my hands i must not open my mouth i must and like this strange feeling comes over you like a call of the void quasi seriousness quasi it's a very weird moment it happened i was at a wedding on monday and it happened and i thought oh this reminds me of that feeling when they asked me about did i pack my own bags while i've been speaking about it i've thought of one other time that happens as well and that is when you're at an auction and it's like final bids. Do I have any more bids? And you're like in the room

and everyone, you feel this weirdness, like I must not move. I mustn't like wink or have a tick in my face or move my hand in case I ruin the whole auction and they think it's a bid. I have never been in a wedding where they actually ask that question. The weddings I have been to, this is simply not part of the ceremony. It's a legal requirement. Is it a legal requirement in the UK or in Australia? I think in the UK. I've been at religious and non-religious ceremonies. The one I was at this week was not religious in any way. But the question has to be put out there in case like, you know, for the sake of the registrar to know that you know one of them isn't already married or something like that that might make sense i've never been to a wedding in the uk i've only been to weddings abroad and i've never heard

that question asked but i would definitely feel the same thing like you need to sit there silently but what i like about this is you're relating this and i'm thinking i've never been to a wedding where they actually ask if there's any objections. And then you immediately follow it with your other example of being at an auction. And I'm sitting here thinking, have I ever been at an auction in my entire life? Like I think the closest I've ever gotten to being at an auction is bidding on eBay right back in the early 2000s. That might be the closest I have ever been to a real life auction. I like the idea that your weekends are filled with weddings where you're trying to sit still and then you go to some auctioneering.

What are you buying at auctions, Brady? I've been to a few auctions. I don't like buying things in auctions, except, of course, dinner dates with Darth Vader. Of course. There's an auction house on the way to my gym and I like old antiques and stuff. And the other day, the auction was on when I was on the way back from the gym and I just thought I'm gonna go in so I just pulled over and walked in and watched them auctioning off some stuff you know had a look in the cabinet looked at the nice old watches and bits of furniture I didn't bid on anything I just wanted to soak up

the atmosphere be truthful Brady was it on the way back from the gym or was it on the way to the gym it was on the way back because I'm always too late on the way. It was like for a personal training session, so I couldn't be late. No, of course not. Can't possibly be late for a personal training session. I think it was on the way back. Suddenly it's not so clear, is it? But you didn't buy anything at the auction, Brady?

Didn't buy anything at the auction. I'd rather not buy things in an auction. Don't like that level of attention. Oh, yeah. No, you don't want that attention things in an auction don't like that level of attention oh yeah no you don't want you don't want that attention brady i don't like attention i know i'm doing like podcasts and youtube videos and stuff but i think maybe what it is is is you want attention on your terms maybe maybe that's it but no the moments when you have to be solemn i'm sure i've mentioned it before but those are moments where it's like, I know what you're saying, but lots of times in these moments, not at security and if I'm

not at a wedding, but I often find that that makes everything funnier, like when someone wants you to be really serious. And the most strong example of this for me was always when I was teaching and I would bring all the kids into church. And we'd be sitting there in church. And there's something about the whole architecture of a Church of England church where they're like very intent on being super serious. Like it just makes everything funny. Even though like nothing funny is actually occurring but it just it's like oh you've taken what would just be oh we're just a church and whatever but now your

intense desire to make this really serious has made everything really funny and that's so that's a different kind of reaction to let's have a little solemn moment