Hello Internet - H.I. #98: The Dogfather

Episode Date: February 28, 2018

Grey and Brady discuss: earthquake zones, a Mr. Chompers update, the color of a tennis ball, ...dreams revisited, social media during disasters, some of the activities people might engage in while listening to Hello Internet corner... and another new corner, and the Amazon HQ2.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the greatest Two Guys Talking podcast available online. A wide-ranging, anglosphere, first-world-issues-driven discussion between two highly qualified edutainment YouTubers. Find out the inner workings of how YouTube helps its creators, listen to the excitement of Plane Crash Corner, and learn the crucial role that flags play in our world. This description can't describe the podcast, but you can find out why thousands of people rate this as five stars only by investing your time and listening to the show. Five star podcast, five stars. Just to pre-warn you, if you suddenly lose me and everything goes wrong, it's because I'm currently living in an earthquake zone why my wife's not home today but i got a message from her saying did you feel the

earthquake and i'm like no what are you talking about and apparently there was a very minor tremor in swansea which is actually quite far from where i am but maybe some people may have felt it where i am and like you know a little minor tremor in England is like huge. I'm aware, by the way, Swansea's in Wales, but it's near England. Immediately opened up a map already and I typed in Swansea, UK. Like, where is this place relative to the Brady? Yeah. Is there a tectonic plate that runs through Wales?

I don't think so. I don't think so. It could be anything. It could be just someone like boiling too much water for their tea. And of course, there's a major incident in the UK. I can't stop myself like tectonic plate locations. Like what's the map of the tectonic plates? I don't remember. Oh, yeah. UK is like 2000 miles in any direction from a tectonic plate border. You do get little earthquakes and tremors.

How does that happen? I thought they only happen all along the tectonic plates. I don't know. There was one in Leicestershire a few years back when I lived out that way that I remember being, by UK standards, one of the biggest ones for a while. It was also was incredibly minor. I know. I feel like whatever this is, it's not an earthquake. A boulder has fallen off a mountain somewhere and people felt it in the ground and they

declare that it's an earthquake. No, it's definitely like proper seismic stuff, but it's just minor. Seismic stuff. I don't know, Brady. I'm dubious. I'm looking at this map. The nearest plate boundary cuts through Iceland or is just south of Spain. So I think we're no good. You don't only get earthquakes at like the mega plates. You get them in other places as well. I'm dubious, but we'll see if you get an earthquake during the recording. There's nothing on the BBC website that I can... Because the UK also won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics today, that has completely taken over the BBC website. But here on the Wales section of the website, I have earthquake felt across parts of UK. A minor earthquake with a

4.4 magnitude has affected parts of Wales and England. Shaking has been reported across South Wales and southwest of England, where I am, and the Midlands. There have been no reports of serious damage or injuries. The British Geological Survey said the epicenter was approximately 20 kilometers north-northeast of Swansea at a depth of 7.4 kilometers. Events of this magnitude only happen in the UK every two to three years, added i think i need to learn more about how earthquakes work yeah this is going to be one of those one where everyone starts posting pictures to twitter of wheelie bins fallen over and stuff like that and talking about the carnage that's the drama the perennial joke of like wheelie bins fallen over i've never felt an earthquake have you felt an earthquake i mean because obviously the earthquake that happened right underneath you, you didn't feel because it was

so minor. It wasn't right underneath me. I remember one when I was very young in Adelaide, when I was like five or six years old, because I remember I was looking at a birdcage at the time and the whole birdcage started shaking and I didn't know what was going on. And it turns out it was an earth tremor. But other than that, no. I was just wondering if all of your trips out to the spiritual home of Numberphile, if while you were there, you ever felt an earthquake, but I guess not. No, no, I've not experienced one. Do you feel a fear of it or an excitement? Like, I don't want anyone to get hurt or anything to break, but I'm quite excited by the idea of earthquakes. Is that bad? No, it's not bad. Natural disasters in the abstract are exciting

in like a SimCity 2000 style. It's like, oh, it's an earthquake, right? It's an exciting event. I'm kind of with you here, simply because I'm aware whenever I travel out to California, I'm always kind of hoping, right, for a little bit of an earthquake, because I've never experienced an earthquake. And so I feel like I'm disappointed by California not fulfilling my tourist checklist by giving me a little bit of a rumble while I'm there. They should have that in the ads where they have those California ads and they're saying, come out here. The sun's gorgeous. We're having a great time. And they've got like Rob Lowe and Arnold Schwarzenegger like prowling around on the beach. They should have a scene where like everything's just shaking.

You never know when it's going to be a party in California. I've driven into like what you would call a wildfire in Australia, you would call the bushfire. I've driven into a bushfire for work. In my news days. It was really cool. We went up to where all the roads were closed by the fire engine people. And we drove up and then the photographer leaned out and said, we're from the newspaper. And they said, All right, go on in at your own risk. And then we drove in. It was well exciting. Does that make you feel like a cool guy, Brady, to be able to wave your press pass and say, I want to go into to wave your press pass and say, I want to go into the danger zone?

Come on, man. It's pretty hard as nails driving into a wildfire. Do you have footage from that? Have you ever put up footage publicly of that? I was a newspaper journalist. I was with a photographer. There was no filming. Okay, so you were just painting a word picture of the brush fire.

I was. I was interviewing people. There were people in their rooms pouring water all over their house and filling all their gutters with water. And I was saying, what's your name? How do you feel? Right. They're like, shut up, man. I'm trying to protect my house. Yeah. You're there with your little hat with the press card in it and your little diligent notebook. Those were the days. We might come to that later in the show because I've got a bit of a treat for you later. You always know how to make me apprehensive. You're like, now it is. The treat, the Brady treat, it hangs over the podcast for me. Yeah. What I call the treat for Gray actually

means a treat for me that you have to endure. I know. I know. Well, let's do something that you enjoy first. Oh, yeah. Let's talk about your foster dog, Mr. Chompers. Mr. Chompers. How's things going? You still seeing him or you got sick of him? I mean, come on, Brady. You're not really asking that question, are you? I know exactly how you feel. It's like as a new you, all the photos and videos I get sent. It's amazing. You're worse than me. I have a new one to send you. I should send you more slow motion Mr. Chompers, Mr. Chompers photos that I absolutely love. Your slow motion of him trying to catch a ball was brilliant. I've never seen a dog miss a ball by as much as he missed that ball.

He gives it his all. But I can say that Mr. Chomper's core competency does not lie in the catching of tennis balls. Or even seeing them lying on the grass. He actually has to step on one before he finds it. Well, we'll come to that later. I have a way that I want to try to help Mr. Chomper see the tennis balls better. I have some theories on that. But no, he's not very good at finding them. He's not very good at catching them. But it does make for hilarious slow motion videos of him attempting to catch the tennis balls. But no, it has been great. I have just come off the back of a full week with Mr. Chomper's. Wow. His various other caregivers were unavailable.

So my wife and I stepped up to the challenge immediately. Hey, we're available all week. My wife happened to have the time off. And so we have had Mr. Chompers with us every day, all day this week. And it has been amazing. And at the end of the week, we have been officially upgraded to dog godparents so i am now mr chomper's dog godfather dog father tell me about like the announcement because it's like a proposal tell me how they broke it to you was it like a big moment like we've got something we want to ask you it was done all formally or like were you taken out to dinner no no it was a casual affair and it was just the obvious correct thing to do because of how much we take care of and are deeply concerned about the well-being of mr chomper like if mr chomper's

had to go to college i feel like i would chip in for his college fund without any hesitation right so like yes it makes sense that i would be his dog godfather or dog father, as you say. I'm taking this responsibility very seriously. To be a godfather to a doggo, it's serious business. Do you have to do a ceremony where like you say, I renounce Satan and all that sort of stuff? You're not going to get that because you haven't seen the godfather movies. I was going to say, I have not seen the godfather.

I feel like I'm missing out on a godfather reference there. We still need to watch the godfather at some point. I feel like we mentioned that years ago. Gray, the first two Godfather movies are two of the most magnificent films ever made. I know. People always tell me, okay, now that I am a Godfather, we have to do this somewhat soon is to actually watch The Godfather. So I can feel like I better understand my responsibilities.

Another traditional role of godparents. And this is something that you're always fascinated with when you're a little kid, isn't it? You always say to your parents, if you die, what happens to me? Is that part of what your godfather role entails? If the actual chompers owners pass away, heaven forbid, is it going to be in their will if we die that you guys get to look after the dog? Is that going to be put in writing? Because we're thinking of putting in our will what happens to our dogs if we die. It's an important thing. I don't know if it's in their will, but I'm that going to be put in writing because we're thinking of putting in our will what happens to our dogs if we die it's an important thing i don't know if it's in their will but i'm certainly going to suggest it and maybe facilitate it that this becomes uh officially part of what's going

on in the will what happens to your dog goes if you die do you have you written this down in the will it's not in writing but we have people who we would like the dogs to go to some friends of ours so we need to formalize it. I guess it really does need to be formalized. I know that I have had to promise my parents many times that if they die, I will come and take care of Lucy. I will retrieve her from America. And I will definitely do that.

I was going to say, am I technically Lucy's dog godfather as well? No, I'm just part of the family there. That's a different thing. Yeah. No, no. I remember when I was little and I would ask my parents that it wasn't my godmother who I would have gone to. I actually would have gone to my auntie. So my godmother wouldn't have like inherited me. Well, there was the point of being, I don't understand what the godmother

thing is. I don't understand that then. I mean, in my case, my godmother was like the real traditional godmother role, like spiritual guidance and things like that. And she took that role very seriously. She died not that long ago, actually. She was a magnificent woman. And like she didn't foist it on me. But whenever I'd call or anything, she'd always like whenever I'd move to a new city, she'd email and say, oh, I've had a look and I found out there were some churches in the

area and here are the addresses and things like that in a kind of a hands-off way. She always took her role really seriously. She was great. And she was one of the people who I would always visit when I went back to Australia for a cup of tea and a biscuit. You're being a very good godson there, Brady. I don't know if I was a good godson, but she was a good godmother. I don't know if my parents ever formally set up godparents for me. As a kid, I asked that question too. I knew that I was going to my aunt if anything happened to my parents but i don't remember if there were any official godparents if they were they certainly were falling down on their job of providing spiritual guidance yeah i can't say i got friendly reminders when i moved to different locations about where

the local church was but i'll make a note of that as part of my godfatherly responsibilities if mr chomper is looking for spiritual guidance, I will take it on as my responsibility to find some for him. So what else is happening in Chompers world? Congratulations, by the way, I should say. That's like a, you know, it's a big deal. Thank you. It is a big deal. Did you think about it? Like, did you say yes on the spot? Or did you say we need some time to think about like something of this magnitude? No, there's no thinking about that. You just looked into those chompy eyes and said, of course.

Of course. I've helped raise him since he was a little puppo. Am I going to say no to this? Of course not. I'm not going to say no to this. And he's so big now, Brady. I weighed him the other day. He is 26 and a half pounds.

That's 12 kilograms. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, he's a bruiser. Audrey's only just over two kilograms. I was going to ask what the size comparison is here. Lulu's over 20 she has a frame like a bird right i think she has very light bones bit muscle as well i was not going to disparage her muscle i just think mr chompers is built like a brick and yes yeah lulu is built like a graceful bird oh wait supermodel yeah like a supermodel very different structures for these

dogs but yeah no he's a big bruiser i have helped raise him since he was a little pup and i'm very happy to be his godparent but i do have to say there's a thing brady which i'm so aware of which is in my mind the mental real estate that mr chompers takes up is crazy. There is just a ridiculous disproportion to the amount of time my brain just spends thinking about Mr. Chompers versus other stuff. And it's like, oh, he's just taking up residence in my brain. If Mr. Chompers isn't around, like you asked me a long time ago, I'm always thinking like, I wonder what he's doing right now. I wonder if he's okay. And I find myself wondering things like, how can I make Mr. Chomper's life easier? How can I make it better? And we've continued down the path of purchasing very many things from Mr. Chomper's, including, I don't know if you've seen this, Brady, but these water bowls that's a little bit

elevated off of the floor so that he doesn't have to lean down all the way to drink off of the floor. So it's a little bit higher up. Lulu can't eat without one of those. She has one of those that's elevated for her food. She can't eat off the ground. She can drink off the ground, but she won't eat if it's on the ground. She just refuses. She's too fancy for eating off of the ground. No, she can't get down to it properly. So her food's always up high. Also to stop Audrey stealing it. That little fat, greedy Audrey. You couldn't possibly elevate her food off the ground anyway. She's so close, right? There's nothing you could do.

Audrey's such a little piggy pig. And like Lulu's so gentle and nice that sometimes Lulu will like get like a crunchy biscuit and like put it in her mouth and start crunching it. Little crumbs will fall out. And Audrey waits underneath her and eats all the crumbs as they fall down. That's terrible. What a little piggy. Well, it's very good of you to get that doggy bowl then.

But yeah, we got the same thing for Mr. Chompers for his water bowl. Mr. Chompers doesn't seem like he would need the height though. He seems quite low to the ground. I don't think he needs it, but it's clearly more comfortable for him. So we had the two water bowls out to see which one he preferred, because of course he can't just tell us. He can only look at us with his sad, chompy eyes. And you think, is there a way I could make your life better, dog? And we thought of the water bowl and he seems to clearly prefer the elevated one. But as you mentioned before, he's really bad about finding and catching these tennis balls. Yeah.

I was thinking about it, and I was remembering my own video a while back, which mentioned dogs are not good at being able to distinguish red green, that the sensor in their eye is not as attuned as it is in human eyes. And it just so happens that the tennis ball that we got for him was a red tennis ball. And I was wondering, oh, maybe that's why he's having a hard time finding it in the tall grass. So I was looking around, and I was going to get him a different replacement tennis ball for the park. And in the course of having this conversation with my wife, we stumbled upon a disagreement that I found quite surprising, which is for professional sports, for a regular tennis ball, Brady, what color would you say a tennis ball is? Like at Wimbledon, they're using tennis balls. What color would you say that is? Do you know what, Gray? As I answer this,

I saw you tweet that. You posted a tweet, obviously, when you and your wife were having this discussion. You said to all the people who follow you on Twitter, what color is a tennis ball? And I think the options you put were green and yellow. And I hadn't seen your options yet. And for some reason into my head, I said, oh, it's green, isn't it? And I watch a lot of tennis. I said, green. And then after two seconds, I said, that's crazy. It's not green. Where did that come from? Clearly it's yellow. So I could see why an argument would start because for some reason, green seems like the answer to me. But when I really stopped and thought about it, I thought, no, of course they're not. They're clearly yellow.

So I say tennis balls are yellow. You are on the side of sanity here. Yeah. But yes, it came up with my wife and I where I said like, oh yeah, we've got to get him a standard yellow tennis ball. And then my wife says tennis balls are green. And I think, what world do you live in that you think the tennis balls are green? How can that even be possible? And so, yes, we got into quite the disagreement about it.

And I did put up that tweet. I tried very carefully to word it in a particular way, which is like not what color are they, but how would you describe the color? Because they are like a funny in-betweeny sort of shade. But, yeah, I put it up. And much to my surprise, it is nearing in on 30,000 votes and perhaps some of the most furious disagreement I have ever seen for any question I have ever raised with people. You know how you have to mute people when you get caught too much in the back and forth of their arguments on Twitter? It's like there's been a lot of Twitter

muting over this one. And this question has expanded out. I feel like I've stumbled upon something that is similar to that black and blue or gold and yellow dress that was on the internet a while ago. I'll put the tweet in the show notes because I do think there is a really interesting thing here, which was people going through and taking all of these pictures of tennis balls and trying to show what's happening. And when my wife said the tennis ball color is green, I thought, how can you even, like you said, like, oh, that's crazy. I did think it was my first answer, though,

for a few seconds before I stopped and thought it through. I thought it can't possibly be an answer. How could someone even think it's green? Like when my wife said, I thought that's clearly madness. But then what's really interesting is I realized, okay, in my head, what I'm thinking of is buying tennis balls in one of those little tubes in the store, right? Where you get like four of them in a plastic container. It's like, oh yeah, what color is that? That is obviously yellow. But if you actually look at photos of tennis balls in the environment, you can immediately see that they often look very greenish. If you have any kind of shade on it, it looks sort of green. But then I discovered that the disagreement goes further where it's like, no, the disagreement is actually that the color is just green.

But anyway, I have found it fascinating. And I think it's a great example of this thing where people all are, people are like assuming that we live in this shared world, but everybody is actually living in the world that their brain is creating in their own head, right? That it's just like a representation of the external world. And that the tennis ball one seems to be like, it just highlights that in a way where I find it amazing that the disagreement is so close, like it's almost 50-50 of people wildly disagreeing what it is. And so strongly that everybody thinks the other side is just totally crazy. You are perhaps the only person I have heard who has thought one thing and then shifted their position into the other direction. I know tennis balls can be different colors at different tournaments,

but have you looked up, for example, Wimbledon, which I guess is the best example. Have they got like an official standard color they demand from Schlesinger or whoever make their tennis balls? Like, is there an official color? Yeah. So I was looking into this and round one is simply that the official color is called yellow. Now that doesn't necessarily mean anything because you can call anything anything.

I was digging around and as best I could find the way that that color is defined is in terms of like measuring the wavelength of the light that comes off of the tennis ball under certain circumstances. And that falls into the category of what in the Western world people would traditionally call yellow if you were just looking at it separated from everything else. else. But I do find it's interesting that this particular shade under lots of circumstances can look kind of greenish. And I found it fascinating all of the photos where the

green people are trying to convince the yellow people of no, it's green and you're crazy. Wimbledon surely doesn't specify a wavelength, do they, to their supplier? No, but they specify a color. I forget what the name is, but it's fluorescent yellow number seven or whatever it is. And then like, what does that translate into in the sports world? It translates into this shade. And then how do you know that you're actually producing the shade? It's like, well, now you need machines

that can measure the wavelength of light and you're looking for something that's within this range. And then I think you would then take the wavelength of like a lemon and the wavelength of a lime. And if it's closer to the lemon than the lime, yellow wins. And if it's closer to the lime, green wins. I really want someone to do that experiment. Some physicists out there in the lab, right?

Get a lemon, get a lime, get a tennis ball, do some measuring and send us the footage, right? We'll take a look at that. Yellow is the official correct answer. Has your wife changed her mind or is she standing by green she's standing by green this episode of hello internet is brought to you in part by squarespace squarespace is the all-in-one place you need to go to if you want to create a website right now almost certainly you have some idea in your head that you would like to make into a website. But how does one build websites? Well, you could spend several years learning how to write HTML

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and use offer code hello to save 10% off your first purchase. Thanks to Squarespace for supporting the show. I just want to revisit a few things that we've discussed before. I know you hate hearing about dreams, other people's dreams. So I have a question for you. If I had a dream, because you know how some people think dreams are predictive, right? If I had a dream that involved very specific circumstances of your death and how it happened, would you want to know so that you could avoid the thing? Or do you think there's such a disconnect between a dream and things that happen in the future that you don't even want to know? You don't even want to hear it so you can avoid this thing? I'll put it this way, Brady. I would be just as interested in hearing about

your dream about my death that was specific as I would be in hearing a tarot card reader's specific prediction of my death, which is to say, not at all. Okay. That was just what I wondered. Yeah. These things are not predictive. However, I somehow suspect that if you did have a dream about the very specific circumstances of my death, that I perhaps could not prevent you from telling me the details of this dream. If I told you, would you then avoid the thing i mean it would depend on what the thing was and the amount of effort required i feel like

there's a i don't know like a psychological biasing here not that the dream is predictive but you have said a thing and then the question is does future me avoid the thing yeah it's like if you had a dream where i died in london it's like well okay well i'm not going to avoid the city that i live in yeah but if you say like oh i had a dream that you went to harrods and a christmas tree fell on you or something yeah you would be careful around christmas trees in harrods yeah or it's just a thing that i would be aware of now because you've told me a thing and if i'm standing next to a christmas tree in harrods it's like oh okay well here we are but you wouldn't modify your behavior and take a few steps away or anything. You'd be like, stuff that. If we really dig down deep here, I would hate it forever if you were right.

If by some freakish coincidence in the universe, I did die under a Christmas tree in Harrods, I would be so annoyed that you'd be like, oh, my dream predicted Grey's death. I would be shaking my fist in the afterlife saying that no, it was just a coincidence, but also regretting the fact that I had not stepped away from the tree. Okay. I was just wondering. Do you remember during, I don't even think it was during a plane crash corner, but let's just suck it into the all encompassing corner that is plane crash corner. When you discussed if an engine blew up or came apart in a plane you were on, and I sort of said, do you think you'd have the presence of mind to make videos and things like that? If you have a look at this Twitter link that I've just sent you, it's from a United Airlines

recent flight where the engine came apart, as they seem to do from time to time. Oh, Jesus Christ. Look at this person had the presence of mind to take a jokey photo. You want to describe what's happening in the photo? So the photo is out the window of an airplane in the uncomfortable seat where you have the perfect view of the engine. The engine doesn't look like it's damaged, but it looks like the casing around the exterior of the engine has blown away. So it's the cowling. There we go. So it has revealed the inner working parts. I can see the wires now

more precariously connected to whatever they need to be connected to. It's not a good look for the airplane. But this person has not just taken the photo. They have also raised up their safety manual so that it is in the same shot at the bottom. And they have put up a jokey tweet saying, I don't see anything about this in the manual with an emoji, an emoji airplane, and a hashtag for the flight number. So look at that. That's the world we live in.

Very well prepared. If you have a look at the Washington Post article that I've also put in the show notes, there's a video at the top of the article in which someone has videoed the engine. That's more harrowing. Suddenly it doesn't seem like, oh, it's just the cowlings come off, but everything looks nice. Oh God. Yeah. That is much more anxiety producing. Still someone's had the presence of mind to video it. Oh God. Oh, and did they leave from Hawaii or were they on their way to Hawaii? Oh God,

that's the worst. Hawaii is just in this, just in the middle of nowhere over so much ocean. I particularly don't like flights going there. There's just nowhere to land for thousands of miles. There's all sorts of social media postings from that plane. So obviously some people, you know, we always say, what would you do? We know what some people would do. I mean, i guess you do want to take a jokey picture certainly got a lot of retweets and likes and we all know that is what the economy is about these days right is yeah the economy is all about getting retweets and likes he is an engineer at google the person that did it and speaks at tech conferences he's probably thinking this is going to be some good stuff this is this is going to be good for my next talk. Fair play.

It is fair play. But I was just wondering, connecting back to your discussion about the excitement of earthquakes, there must be a thought that goes through a non-trivial number of people's minds now when something bad happens is, oh, this is going to get me a lot of thumbs up on social media whenever I post this. It's amazing to me. I don't know if you've seen, but in the week we're recording, there's just been a really terrible school shooting in America. And loads of the kids were snapping, like doing Snapchats, you know, look, someone's shooting up my school from in the classroom. And you could hear the bullets firing out in the corridor. And they were Snapchat recording from inside the closets they were hiding in, in the hope that the guy didn't come into

their classroom and shoot at them. So like, something like that like where you think all your attention would be taken up by some kind of survival instinct people are still snapping and recording when the SWAT team came into one of the classrooms this is filmed by the kids they're all holding up phones and the one of the first things the SWAT team says is all put down your phones put down your phones and all these snapchat kids have to put down their phones straight away so the SWAT team knows they're not gunmen and stuff. It's the first thing people think to do, even at a time like that. It's amazing. That's, that's fucking crazy. Oh my God. Hey, pro tip. When the SWAT team breaks in, don't hold up a black object toward them.'t do that i think i would want to be

quiet quiet in the closet i don't say anything that's crazy my honest answer is i don't know what i would do i don't know whether some part of me would think to record it like if there's that kind of training and instinct in me or not i don't know i may do it just the journalist in me may do it yeah you have an excuse there right you can oh, I'm a journalist and you pull out your press hat. You can then go walk up and do an interview with the gunman. Excuse me. Excuse me, sir. What's going on here? Ah, man, that is weird and crazy. And I'm not casting judgment on kids who have been through something that traumatic and what they did. And as I said, I think I may do it. But it was striking that it happened. Like it

did amaze me that one of the snaps said, I think he wrote something along the lines of, Hey man, someone's effing shooting up my school. And you can hear the bullets going. And like in his classroom, he's like taking a picture or filmed a computer screen with bullet holes in it. And it's like, Whoa, I don't know if that's calmness under pressure, or it's just that we think of our phones as so much part of us that snapping it is just like looking at it. I don't know. I don't know what it says about where we are, but it was really fascinating. Yeah, it is. I feel like I do need to back up a little bit and say, yeah, I'm not going to cast judgment on that either.

I feel like this is such a weird, shocking thing for you to bring up that I'm speculating about, oh, in a disaster, people must start thinking this thing. And then you have an example of not even just like a broad general disaster, but like a pinpoint human caused disaster problem where this is exactly people's reactions. I feel like I just don't know what to make of that. I just think it's the way we are now. It's just our phone is an extension of the way we see and communicate to an extent that these two examples, the engine on your plane coming apart or a gunman in your school using your phone even comes into your head. When that tree starts tilting towards me, I'll try to send you a snap of it, Brady. Should we do a couple of what people do while listening to Hello Internet Corner? We haven't done that for a while. It's been ages. It's been a while.

I still haven't done a proper look through my message for Brady at gmail.com inbox. So apologies for any gems that are in there. But I did have a really quick look and immediately found two that I thought were interesting. So I'm going to share them. One has a picture and one doesn't. Here's the one without a picture.

Okay. And it came from Emily, an avid listener, who also has noted that we haven't done this corner for a while because she wrote, I'd like to contribute to the long dormant things people do while listening to the podcast corner. She's a final year medical student. I used to live with a final year medical student in Nottingham. And the thing that I always found fascinating and loved discussing with him is the exact thing that Emily is bringing up in her email. And that is her cadaver, her body that she's been assigned. Oh, okay. Not her cadaver, but the cadaver that is given to her. That's been given to her to work on.

Right. Although I haven't had the pleasure of listening to HI during an operative procedure, students and residents rarely get to pick music or audio for those cases. I definitely look forward to the day when I have the seniority to freely do so. However, she talks about how she's currently completing a full body human cadaveric dissection anatomy for surgeons course because this course is very condensed they do a head to toes dissection in three weeks my colleagues and i are spending long days in the anatomy lab five to six days a week and the dissection work can be very mindless and repetitive

at times fortunately our lab allows us to listen to audio while we work but sadly no photos allowed i don't necessarily think that's sadly, but anyway, no photos are allowed. This is out of respect for the very generous donors who've allowed their bodies to be used for this, she says. So I have no direct photographic evidence. However, she does say she has spent many hours listening to your latest Hello Internet episodes, meanwhile carefully dissecting

various components of a real human body. While you lovely gents were discussing the legalities of the liver branding surgeon, I was carefully stripping tiny pieces of semi-liquefied fat from the heart of my donor to expose the coronary arteries. Livers are on the schedule for next week. I'll keep my eyes out for any branding. Wow, that's great. It's different. It's different.

It sure is different. I think this is the funny thing about people's work. It's like, oh, you have to dissect a cadaver. And you think, oh, this is interesting and shocking. It's like, well, yeah, it's interesting and surprising once, twice, three times. But everything becomes routine. And then there's a certain point where you feel like I need to listen to something while I'm doing this work. I know I'm stripping away the fat from around somebody's heart to expose one of their arteries for school, but it's also

kind of boring. So I think I need to have something on in the background. I guess this is the role that podcasts fill in the world. But yeah, that's weird and interesting. I'd like to sincerely thank you for helping me laugh through even the most difficult times in my four years of med school. I can only hope to repay you with my loyal listenership, continued Patreonage, and shameless flaggy flag promotion. Ooh, ooh, I don't know, Brady. Getting that flaggy flag at the end there. I don't know know i might have deleted that message because of that

she did a bit of her work there at the end but yeah well if you're going to med school maybe we can let that slide i've got one other quick one here this one has come from evan i've been a listener to hi since the beginning though i am a little behind on current episodes. If somebody else beat me to this idea, I apologize for cluttering your inbox. Well, no one has beaten Evan to this idea that I'm aware of. And this is a great idea. Idea, 10 out of 10. Execution, 4 out of 10. Sometime ago, you received a listener email from a performer aboard a cruise ship, I believe. We don't talk about that cruise ship for reasons that have been previously discussed. Brady doesn't talk about that cruise ship.

Right. Evan says, I happen to be a student aboard a tanker learning to be a mate navigational officer for the rest of the world aboard merchant ships of any size. The ship I am on is the Mississippi Voyager, plying the seas between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Not an impressive distance, but there is a chance that if you've flown out of LAX, the fuel for the jet came from this ship. Ah, okay. So I was going to ask, a tanker like an oil tanker?

Yeah, that's like a big tanker. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, the San Francisco end of our run is in Richmond, not far from the spiritual home of Numberphile. I actually see ships around there all the time. Maybe I've seen this ship. Anyway, let's get to the point of this message. Evan talks about the famous Jolly Roger, Hello Internet Jolly Roger, that tickled you in particular. It was a design that you liked. It was a kind of skull and cross bones depiction of us in Hello Internet style. So here is a picture. Evan has printed out the Hello Internet Jolly Roger and has kind of flown it on the ship as it passes under the Golden Gate Bridge. I like that. It's a class move. The only problem is it looks like he's kind of printed it on paper and he's just kind of holding it next

to a pole. If he'd make it put onto a flag and actually flown it properly, the Jolly Roger fluttering properly above a ship in San Francisco Bay, I'm just going to say it, that would have been a Medal of Honor on the spot. Oh, Brady, that's mean. You can't be telling people what they could have done to earn a Medal of Honor. I'm just saying, that would have been it. I would have been straight to the engravers. Well, I like this a lot. I still like it a lot.

Evan, you're a smooth guy. And that was a cool move. Sorry about the Medal of Honor, but you just didn't quite go the extra mile. So you're tormenting people, Brady. I'm just saying. Great picture. I suspect that the flag manufacturing facilities on an oil tanker might be quite limited. And I think this is pretty great. And I also forgot how much I do like that Jolly Roger. I haven't seen that in a long time. And I really like it. I really like it. Top movie. And the picture will be in the show notes. So that's a fantastic effort. Yeah, no, that's great.

Thank you. While you were talking, I just quickly googled the Mississippi Voyager. And of course, just like with any ship, you can find it on all of these ship tracking websites. And as we speak, it's off the coast of California, about halfway between Monterey and Morro Bay, heading south. Hello, Internet. Jolly Roger flying proudly. This episode of Hello, Internet is brought to you in part by Audible. You know Audible. They're the ones that provide the world with great audiobooks. If I open up my phone right now, it looks like I have about five unread books in my queue downloaded onto my phone,

so that at any moment I'm stuck somewhere, I have something to listen to. If you're listening to this podcast right now, which definitionally you are, you're already the kind of person who could get into audiobooks. If you like podcasts, audiobooks are right up your alley. I get my audiobooks from Audible, and you should too, because Audible just has an unmatched selection of audiobooks, and they also have original audio shows and news and comedy and more from the leading broadcasters, entertainers, and publishers. Anytime there's a book that I want to listen to, Audible has it. And I'm currently listening to Pirate Hunters, Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship by Robert Kirson.

This just showed up on my Audible recommended page, and how could I not give it a listen with a title like that? So far, I'm really liking it. It's the story of modern treasure hunters trying to find the Golden Fleece pirate ship, which went down in the Caribbean after a battle with the British Navy. I don't know if they find it, so no spoiler alerts, people, but it's an interesting book so far. If you're looking for something different, maybe you want to give Pirate Hunters a try.

And you can do that because Audible is offering our listeners a free audiobook with a 30-day trial membership. Just go to audible.com slash hellointernet and browse the unmatched selection of audio programs, download a title free, and start listening. It's that easy. Go to audible.com slash hello internet or they have a new thing here. Text hello internet to 500-500 to get started today. Thanks to Audible for providing me with many, many hours of enjoyable audiobook listening. And thanks to Audible for supporting the show. Gray, while we're doing corners,

can I launch a new corner? It's been a while. I feel like there's two things that happen here, Brady. Corners collect. You always use the thin end of one corner to start me off on a collection of corners in the show. Corner baguette corner. Right, yeah. Because Brady's like, oh, I just have a quick corner.

Let's do a quick corner. It's like, okay. But in the quick corner, it opens the door now yeah because it's pretty like oh i just have a quick corner let's do a quick corner it's like okay but in the quick corner it opens the door now now it's open to many and then corners of course multiply i am but a helpless observer in this process so of course it is it's like you put water on the gremlins and now you're just watching them just don't feed me after midnight gray then you'll really regret it god that is exactly what it feels like brady that is maybe the most perfect analogy on the show so go ahead out pops another corner what's this one going to be this corner i have very humbly labeled brady's bylines Now, I tell a lot of war stories about my newspaper days, don't I? I've already done it in this episode. Yeah. To be fair, you have very interesting war

stories. Thank you. That is generous of you. Although perhaps not true. But anyway, when I was on the newspaper back in Adelaide, every story I ever had in the paper, I cut out and put into a scrapbook. A lot of journalists did this back in those days. And I've been thinking about why they did it. And I'm putting it down as 40% vanity. 40% it was like a really useful resource to look up your stories because it wasn't as easy to do it electronically in those days. So if you wanted to refer back to what you'd done in the past, it was handy to have some scrapbooks there on your desk

so you could go and see what you'd written previously. And the other 20%, I can't remember what I decided it was. It's fallen out of my head, but it was very interesting. So just pretend it was something interesting. And if it comes to me, I'll tell you another time. Anyway, these scrapbooks have lived in Australia for many, many moons because there are seven of them and they're quite big and heavy. But on my most recent trip, I went and got them from my mum's garage and shipped them over to the UK and they have arrived and they now sit proudly in my office and I can thumb

through them from time to time and remember past glories. And what I thought it might be fun to do is occasionally when I find one that catches my eye or I think might interest you or tickle you, we could discuss it here on the show and have a bit of a laugh or maybe a very serious intellectual conversation too. Can I make a request here, Brady? Yes. Can I get a photo of the situation? I feel like I need to visually understand what we're talking about here. I just wanted to know before I inevitably agree to this,

because I can't stop it from happening. There are literally thousands of articles, so we're not going to do all of them. God, I hope not. Yeah. I just want to see. I want to see what this looks like. Oh. You can see a few coins there just in the left of the shot for scale.

Oh, okay. Right. So we have the seven volumes of Brady's work. So I thought we should start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. Right. And I'm going to send you my first ever byline. This is a big deal for any journalist.

Like the first time your name appears in the paper on top of a story, it's like historic moment for you. I'm sure you can imagine. It's like a very special moment. And my first ever byline I think might tickle you. I think the article just might interest you. So I'm going to send it to you. I'm looking at the dates that I can see faintly on the books here.

So I'm guessing this is from 1995. This was March 21, 1995 on page seven of the advertiser. For the first time, my name appeared in print above a story this is so dated and it's about mobile phones conversation piece for executive high flyers the world's smallest telephone that you forgot you didn't read the most important part oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i skipped right to the caption by brady harron there we go thank you you like that yeah the world's smallest telephone comes at a big price at a mere 86 millimeters sony's cm-r111 is the world's smallest commercially available mobile phone and it's on sale in adelaide for 15001,500. No.

You're not going to be one of those people. This is my first byline. $1,499. Pointlessly precise. $1,500. Do you like the on sale in Adelaide too? It's so parochial. Like you've got to make it clear that you can buy in the city that the newspaper is in. Oh, that's why that's there.

It's not like it's only on sale in Adelaide. It's just you can get it in Adelaide. I mean, this is so long ago, I thought it might be some kind of crazy prototype that they only have a few of. And so yeah, like it was actually manufactured in Adelaide. And then you were going to tell me some story about how all mobile phones were actually invented in Adelaide. But so no, this is just pandering to the local Adelaide readers to let them know that yes, in your city, you can purchase this thing. That's why it's there. Providing a service, Greg. I'm sorry. Yes, providing us. I mean, in 1995, it was more of a service. Yes, that's true.

The last two paragraphs, I think might tickle you at the bottom of the first column. A small microphone in the earpiece picks up vibrations in the cheek, enabling hands-free conversation. But there's a catch. The analog CMR111 could be obsolete in five years if the digital system takes over. Quote, it will be a long time before digital technology can be brought down to that size, and analog phones are still more popular than digital, Mr. Beauchamp said. This isn't even really like a phone. is like a walkie talkie no it was a phone it was just on the analog phone network okay so this is the old analog network had a wireless component i didn't even know that that was like a thing

i wonder if that's what my my dad's cell phone, it was definitely a digital system. Wow. Anyway, I guess this is how they do mobile phones in Australia. It is like walkie talkie sending Morse code signals, which are then converted into voice sounds. Two cans with a really, really long piece of string. That's what it sounds like is going on here. But don't you love like there's this phone and it's like, obviously it's not a smartphone because it's too long ago, but it's just a phone and it's like the size of a hand. There's a picture on the article where the phone is sitting like on a hand and it's like, obviously it's not a smartphone because it's too long ago, but it's just a phone and it's like the size of a hand.

There's a picture on the article where the phone is sitting like on a hand and it's about the size of a palm. And this was like, whoa, man, science fiction. How small can they get? I find it funny that we've gone the other way now and phones started getting big again. They like shrunk and shrunk and shrunk.

It was like a race to the bottom. And then suddenly it was like, nah, let's make them big. I personally think that that stuff is driven not by fashion, as people seem to think, but as it's driven by technology, like it's driven by the screens getting cheaper yields for larger screens getting higher, which was a real problem with smartphones in the beginning. And also just the fact that people do more and more on their phones. So they want bigger phones to see more stuff. It's funny to see this thing, which is, I do like this. It could be obsolete in five years.

I think that's my favorite part there, right? Because now it's like, oh, you don't get a full year with your phone before it's obsolete, right? By the time it ships, you're already under the one year counter before your phone is like, oh, you have the old one. If you've got a five-year-old phone that still works, you know, you in the news yourself yeah that'll be a modern brady's byline he'll come over and interview you to talk to you about your old phone because this was my first byline so it was like you know i was king for a day in my mind the cruelest thing was an unusual thing happened

and that was the story got picked up by our sister paper in sy, the big paper. And that's like, whoa, it's also getting a run over there in the Telegraph. But they chopped my byline off and it ran without a byline over in the Sydney paper. There's nothing worse when you're a newspaper journalist than a saboteur to taking your byline off. I will still never understand this thing where someone can just take your name off at newspapers. I don't get it. I'm baffled by your belief that it's like a God-given right that your name should be on it. Like I find that strange. Just to be clear, I feel like it should be an editorial policy that either

everyone has bylines or no one has bylines. The newspaper or the magazine is the entity speaking, like The Economist does, where there's no bylines. Or here's articles that are clearly written by humans. But I just find the in-between baffling where it's no bylines. Or here's articles that are clearly written by humans. But I just find the in-between baffling where it's like, oh, some of our stories we put the bylines on and some of them we don't. And how do we decide that? I don't know. Some sub-editor playing God in the basement of the newspaper decides whose names get to be there and whose names don't. There is a degree of that, but normally the policy will be a byline goes on if it's long enough. So you don't have a byline on like two sentences, you know, a car crashed into a tree,

two people are dead. You won't get a byline on that. It has to reach like a critical mass of length. And then it also usually has to be a reporter who's on staff. So if you've just taken copy from the wires, you normally don't have a byline on that. So if it's some story from... Yeah, but yeah, the Associated Press seems like a different thing though, because that's like newspapers getting together and outsourcing most of the stories that they don't want to deal with precisely so that they can just have material. But a byline will also go sometimes just for space reasons, like, oh, we want to get that last sentence squeezed in the bottom. can we cut sometimes it's the

byline what we can cut is all the credit i know i know i'll tell you a story about what was nearly my first byline then we'll leave brady's byline okay but i remember my first day on the news floor after training i was sent to the wasteland of the newsroom which was this job called night chores which already tells you what a terrible job it was yeah Yeah. Wow. That's a brutal name. You had to work late and do chores. And it was things like literally editing the radio program, like the radio stations would fax what was going to be on the radio tomorrow. And you had to type it all in and make sure the radio program was right. You had to watch the TV news and write a summary of every story on the TV news and then photocopy your summary like 50 times and hand out the summaries to every single one of the sub editors, most of

whom usually threw it in the bin straight away, except for one who loved reading it and finding all your mistakes and then coming up to you and giving it back to you with circles around all your spelling mistakes and typos and things like that that you'd made. So he was a popular guy. Right. Yeah, of guy. So it was a terrible job. It was a terrible job through the night. You had all these terrible chores you had to do. But when you're the new cadet reporter, you do it for three months and then you move on to something else that might be more interesting. So I trudged onto the newsroom for my first day of night chores. The chief of staff saw me walk in and he knew I was one of the new cadets and he didn't know I was on night chores. And I was going to be trained by the guy that was doing night chores before.

And he said, Harron, come over here. There's been this big storm. We want three or four reporters to report on it. And then the guy who was supposed to be training me sort of wanted to say, no, no, you can't let him do that. He's got to learn night chores. But it was too late. The chief of staff had assigned me onto the big story. So that other cadet and me, along with two other senior reporters,

spent the night phoning around the state, doing all sorts of stuff, reporting on this big storm that was lashing South Australia. It was a really big deal. I did lots of hard work and we all put all our copy together and wrote a big, long story about it and it ended up being the front page story four of us wrote it together and what normally happened there was like an unwritten rule that the limit on the number of bylines was three and the head sub-editor like got the story and he saw and he was putting it on the front page and laying it

out and he said four bylines and he turned to one of the reporters or someone and said, like, we can't have four. Like, who did most of the work and who did the least work? And the reporter sort of said, oh, no, it was all pretty equal. We all did an equal amount. And he was like, who's this Harron? And they said, oh, he's the new cadet. It's his first day.

And the subreddit just said, oh, well, he'll have other chances. And he cut my byline off it on the spot, deleted Brady Harron, and then published it. The front page story the next day. Front page, three names, not my name because of this three name limit. And I was denied a front page on my first day. And it was months and months until I got to write that crappy mobile phone story.

It was night chores after that for months. Oh, the front page, it burns, Brady. I know that you hope all of your stories will make it to the front page. I know. Front page on your first day on the newsroom. It would have been a first. It would have been glory. John Whistler, if you're listening, I remember it was you that cut it.

Wow. Some resentment, they do burn. They burn slow and forever. Those hard lessons made me better. I love all those tribulations that happened to me stay tuned to hello internet we'll be back soon with another brady's byline soon huh maybe you know that expression makes my blood run cold well i don't think i'd truly experienced that until something went wrong with my computer and I realized I'd lost all my data forever. It's only happened to me once, and that was during an era I refer to as BBB, before Backblaze, because now I live in a constant

state of peace and happiness, knowing that Backblaze is endlessly purring away in the background, ensuring all my data is stored safely in the cloud offsite. And if you'd like to experience the joy of unlimited backup on your Mac or PC, go to backblaze.com slash hellointernet. There for just $5 a month, Backblaze is going to back up your documents, music, photos, videos, all those projects you've got on your computer, the lot. And it's not just a break glass in case of emergency service. You can also access your data anywhere in the world via the web or an app on your phone.

That means you can restore any file, even just a single file, if you ever need it away from your computer. This is really handy. I mean, I haven't had the full disaster requiring the whole Backblaze backup restoration process, but several times I've found it really useful to be able to go into my phone and get hold of a single file while I'm out on the road. For a fully featured 15-day free trial, that address you need to go to is backblaze.com slash hello internet this is a move you won't regret they also have a business backup option by the way so you might be interested in checking that out it's the same address backblaze.com slash hello internet but hit the business backup link at

the top of the page don't postpone this you never know when your data disaster is going to strike, but you'll sleep easy knowing Backblaze has your back. Okay, Brady, I have a news story for you. You're such a news hound, Gray. Yeah. Always trolling the websites for the latest stories. Yeah, I've got the latest in orthogonal news stuff that's interesting to me and maybe not other people, but Amazon is looking for a new headquarters. They want to build a second headquarters for their company. And they're in the process of trying to pick a city to build this headquarters in. And I find myself really fascinated by this whole thing. It's almost like what it must be like for people to follow sports, because there's been a winnowing down process of cities in North America that are competing to get the new Amazon headquarters. And I find myself thinking about this a bunch. I find it

really interesting. But yeah, they're in the process of trying to find where to build what they're calling HQ2 for Amazon. So interesting, isn't it? Like some developments, if you tried to build something like a power station or something, it would be like not in my backyard and everyone would be shunning you. And it would be like, where can we dump this big industrial complex that no one wants? But this has become like the most desired thing in America. And everyone's bending over backwards and offering the world in exchange for building their headquarters in their city. I mean, it's getting almost ridiculous.

Yeah, I think it's interesting, because there is a certain amount of not in my backyard ism about the Amazon headquarters. There is some resentment about the way Jeff Bezos is playing this. But my feeling is, Jeff Bezos is genius. This is a totally genius way to do this because phase one of this project was Amazon announcing, hey, we want to build another headquarters. We're looking to spend billions of dollars and we're looking to hire 50,000 people. Cities in North America, why don't you submit your bids for the reasons why we should build our headquarters in your city?

Like hosting the Olympics. Yeah, that's 100% what it was like. It was like, hey, we're not going to do anything to look. You just send us a nice thick folder with reasons why we should even consider you city. Which when it's like a crazy frenzy of people thinking about like bringing Amazon to every place in the world. And Amazon let it stew for a while. And then they announced 20 official candidates for Amazon headquarters too. This is like the second round. And I feel like, oh, this is like how sports

brackets work, right? We started with all of the cities in America and now we're down to 20. And I don't know if they're just going to announce the winner, or if they're going to do other rounds. But I find myself really hoping that they do another round, like cut it down to 10, right, have an announcement of the 10 finalists, and then the five finalists, and then announce who it actually is going to be. Like from the perspective of Amazon as a company, it was a totally genius thing to do. Because in round one, you never know how some city might really sweeten the deal for you. So you're opening yourself to all of this potential upside. And then in round

two, when they scale it down to places that they're seriously considering, like they put all of these cities in a position where they're all going to try to slit each other's throats for who can have the best incentive for Amazon to pick their city as the location. And they've also really cleverly poured cold water on that usual backlash you would get from cities saying, no, no, no, we don't want you here. We don't want your big, ugly company in our city. Because even though those people will exist, it's going to be like the municipality itself that like bid to have Amazon. So Amazon will just reply, well, sorry, but your like city bid for this and wanted it. And they actually like begged us to come here.

So they're also like scuppering that usual debacle as well. Yeah, they're going right at the municipal level. And there's an official page on Amazon where you can see their official map of all of the cities. Like you can see that they really want to turn this into a thing. They're like, click here to download a high resolution version of our map of the candidate cities. And then it goes through all of these little facts about like all the amazing things Amazon will do for your city if they show up. I think it's absolutely fascinating. For listeners, I'm going to run super quick. Here are the candidate cities. West Coast, there's only one, LA. LA is the only West Coast city. Middle of

America, we've got Denver, Dallas, Austin, Nashville, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Columbus. Maybe it's middle of America, maybe not. Sort of Pittsburgh and Chicago. And then on the East Coast going down, we've got Boston, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Montgomery County, Washington, D.C., Raleigh, Northern Virginia, and Atlanta, Miami. Those are the cities that they're considering. And I think it's really fun to think about where might Amazon go. This is kind of playing a game of what is it that Amazon wants. Oh, I'm sorry. I totally forgot.

We do have a token Canadian, and that is Toronto. Toronto, you have no chance of winning. There's no way Amazon's going to pick you. I don't know why you're there, but you're there. Why is it so heavily weighted towards the East Coast? To be clear, this isn't like a delivery hub or where they're going to store all their books and, you know, USB cables to be sent out to people. This is like for coders and programmers and like technical people, isn't it? This is also what I think is the genius of Amazon is they are kind of pitching it as this could be the seed of another Silicon Valley. Wouldn't you like to plant this seed to see if

it grows in your city? Because yeah, they're bringing in a bunch of technical people like that's who they want to hire is get like a groundswell of programmers in these various locations. I think it is so East Coast based simply because if you're looking at what they were talking about in their first round, which is they wanted cities above a certain size. They wanted cities that were growing. And they wanted cities that had an international airport of some kind. It didn't matter if it was small, but international flights needed to be possible out of your airport. why it ended up in that direction. If those are the constraints that you're going to put on it, it's like, well, there's not actually a ton of other places. And then I suspect that like the Cascadia region, the Northwestern part of America is out mostly because that's where Amazon's current headquarters is. And so they're looking for a place that wouldn't be drawing from the same

talent pool as their current headquarters. At least that's my guess. That's my guess. Because you'd think San Francisco or somewhere near there would have been half a chance if you're looking for smart computery people. The impression that I get is that in San Francisco, the competition for talent is just so incredibly fierce that they don't want to wade into that pool. And so what they're trying to do is go someplace where geographically, maybe they can attract a different bunch of people who either just don't want to be in San Francisco or who would rather be closer to where they're from. I suspect that's also why there's a bunch of East Coast options as well, because you'd be

drawing from a very different talent pool if you were on the other coast. So I personally, I enjoy speculating about which of these cities might be the one that Amazon actually pulls. I just realized, I don't know, but I presume that somewhere there's a place that you can go bet. There must be public odds on which city it's going to be. People love to bet on things, but. What are you going to predict, right? Okay. So I want to hear your predictions. I think there's like a 70% chance it's going to be one of three. Because I look at this map. And I cannot help but note that there are three cities suspiciously close to each other. And it's Montgomery County, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia. And I was like, man, those cities are all in very quick driving distance from each other. And I'm going to suspect it's going to be one of those three,

because by picking three so close to each other, it allows Amazon to have them bid against each other more fiercely and still get a geography that they want. And other fact which makes me pretty confident about it's going to be one of those three is that Jeff Bezos has recently purchased an enormously expensive house in Washington, D.C. So any of those three locations would be convenient driving distance from his new house.

Those are my top picks. Further down the list, if I have to fill out the rest of it, I think Raleigh has a good chance of being the city. There's a lot of smart people in Raleigh and it's growing and it has an international airport. I pick maybe like Denver as the dark horse candidate. But I think that that little trio around DC is the most probable one. What do you think, Brady? Everything changed when you told me that bezos has just bought a luxury house in

the area so but if you didn't know that if you didn't know if i didn't know that i would have bet on newark because i think they're going to want to be near new york city but they probably can't afford new york City real estate. And Newark is close enough to New York to kind of, they'll still call it like, you know, Newark and Newark and all that, but they'll probably be able to get the land they want. And it's sort of commutable to New York City. Cause I think people want to be near and around New York City and you need to have a really desirable city nearby to keep talent because all these smart people they want are going to want to live in a cool place. And I don't think the other places are cool enough.

So Newark would have been my New York or Newark. But I think Newark for what I said and my dark horse would be Austin because I think Texas are quite good at getting things to be built in their state. And Austin's pretty cool and edgy these days and a cool place to be near rather than Dallas. So that's my prediction based on very little knowledge. Yeah. Austin is another good dark horse, I suspect. New York City, obviously out because it's just going to be too expensive. And I imagine that New York is not going to be super interested in bending to Bezos. That's because they know they don't need to. Right. Exactly. Of course.

Including Amazon. Right. That does put they know they don't need to. Right, exactly. Everyone wants to be there, including Amazon. Right. That does put Newark as the interesting second location. And I realized that this is my growing up in New York bias showing straight through that my brain just can never seriously consider Newark, New Jersey as a serious location. We're just like, oh yeah, Newark, New Jersey. It's the inferior New York. We all know that. Nobody wants to be there.

But you know, everyone will live in cool Manhattan apartments and they'll have Amazon buses shipping everyone to and from Manhattan every night and morning. And then that'll get him in big trouble. If I'm turning up my maximum logical robotness, Newark should be pretty high up on the list. But the me who grew up in New York just can't place it there. I can't emotionally think of it as a serious contender. But I do suspect that many of these other cities are simply here just to put pressure on the other cities to have the bids. Like Boston, come on.

We know it's not going to be Boston. That's not going to happen. Indianapolis, no way. Columbus, no way. Not going to happen. And Toronto, again, just token Canadian there for baffling reasons. not going to happen. And Toronto, again, just token Canadian there for baffling reasons, not going to happen. So I kind of say like, I love this idea of considering locations. Because it's a thing that my wife and I have done a couple of times in our life

is essentially this version of like the Amazon HQ2, where we have been freer in where it is that we're going to live. And we pull out a big map of the world or a map of America. And we think, okay, blue sky here, where could we possibly want to live? And I find there's like this interesting fact that the world can seem like this crazy open place that's huge. But as soon as you start getting past requirement number two or three for where you want to be, you rapidly diminish down to a very small number of locations. And so when we were thinking about where do we want to live in America, it's like, okay, great. We've got all of America.

But then you do the same thing of like, okay, well, we want to live in a place that's above a certain size. And it should also be like this or like that and you realize oh there's actually so few places and i find that fascinating that even on the world scale you can very quickly run out of places where you would seriously consider actually wanting to be and that's also partly why i suspect that this whole thing by amazon is is really a bit of a ploy, that they have a very good idea right from the start of where they want to be. And this is just about trying to get the best deal out of the city where they already know that they probably want to

be. You don't think the cities are savvy enough to know this? I do think that the cities will know this. I mean, you're not going to have dumb people as the mayors of major cities. And that's why I look at that little trio cluster as Jeff Bezos putting the municipal governments in a prisoner's dilemma with each other. Oh man, economists are about to crucify me if I get this wrong. I think this is called a Nash equilibrium. This is where even when you know the strategies of the other players, you don't change your strategy. Like they all know the game that they're in, but it doesn't change the way that they're going to actually end up having to play the game if they want to win. Part of my newshound following of this story is I saw some people were trying to convince the municipal governments to work together and to refuse to

negotiate with Amazon for tax breaks and other things for the city. And it was like, yep, there we go. It's just a perfect prisoner's dilemma. It's like, yes, the more people you get to agree to refuse to negotiate, the more the one person who breaks with that group stands to win, which makes it incredibly hard to enforce everyone working together on this. So it doesn't matter if they know. And that's also partly what I think is just interesting about this. And people do get riled up about the idea that the municipal governments give these big tax breaks to companies.

And I can understand that. I can understand why that happens. But again, I feel like if you are a city government, the thing that you mostly want most of the time for most places is for economic growth in your area. If you can buy the arrival of 50,000 well-educated employed people in your municipality, if you can buy that with tax breaks, like it's a great deal. That's why the cities want to do that. That's why they compete with each other because I think they win out in the long run from taxes and revenues raised from people living there than they do from the lost taxes directly to Amazon itself. Why isn't this more common? I know there is always a bit of wheeling

and dealing behind the scenes when big facilities get built, but this seems more like overt and glitzy. Why isn't every new place that gets built like this? Yeah, it's an interesting question because the last thing I can think of like this, which I think was much less successful was one of the Musk orbit of companies

was building that gigantic, the super battery manufacturing plant, which I think is like the biggest manufacturing plant in the United States. And it's in Nevada now. And I'll see if I can rustle it up for the show notes. But there's a really interesting article which was talking about the process by which the state was determined that this was going to be built in, which again again came down entirely to tax breaks and stuff but i feel like that came across much more as the traditional narrative of companies squeezing the governments right to get the thing that they're looking for in a negative way yeah this is why i find this interesting because i think like bezos and amazon have pulled it off in a way that makes it like an exciting competition. Yeah.

I do think the fact that it is Amazon really helps with that. The fact that they are looking for programmers, or they're not looking for assembly line workers really helps with that. I wouldn't have thought Amazon is a company that doesn't have a lot of love. Maybe this is my personal biases here. I think that Amazon is a surprisingly interesting company. And I suspect that a lot of surprisingly interesting company. And I suspect that a lot of people have good associations with it because like Amazon is the company that brings

you all the things, right? Like when you need things, Amazon brings them to you. But it's also the one that is like a pain in your butt. It's always the one that didn't deliver the thing. It's like you have so much interaction with it. It's annoyed you lots of times as well. Oh, they always do too much packaging. Oh, they always... They do love their packaging. Oh oh man is that for sure like people love complaining about amazon and it's kind of it sells a lot of cheapy stuff so sometimes it feels like a bit trashy and i wouldn't have thought it was like a prestigious brand the way that say apple is or tesla some of those more like glitzy companies. I always think of Amazon as a

cheapo company. I know it's worth a lot of money and like they do good stuff and I use them every single day of my life, it feels like at the moment. But I wouldn't have thought it had that same cachet about it. Maybe it's just me. Yeah, I don't know. Like I wonder if there's like gallant polling on these kinds of things. I just know, at least for me mentally, when I get annoyed quote with Amazon, I'm not really getting annoyed with Amazon. I'm getting annoyed with the delivery company that is standing between me and Amazon, right? Where like, Hey, Amazon is the company that has given me the things and you delivery company have screwed up the relationship between the two of us by standing in the way. All right. So all of the problems I have are not really Amazon's fault. And I feel like my brain categorizes them in a different area. So they get it in the neck

a lot about their employment practices. They don't know Amazon. Yeah, there are a bunch of articles about those warehouses, which I have to say do not look like fun places to work. I don't know if anybody is listening to a podcast right now in one of those Amazon workplaces. You probably get prodded with a big electric stick if you do. Yeah. You may be allowed to listen to podcasts while you are disassembling corpses, but not if you are packing boxes in an Amazon warehouse, I imagine. They might be a bit more strict about that. I mean, that's the other thing that helps is that they're not doing a competition about one of their distributing centers, right? It's the sexy side of the business. I wonder if other companies will try to replicate this if they have a big construction project that they want to do somewhere. And it would make total sense for them to do it.

Excuse my naivety here, but considering this is their second headquarters, so they already have a big headquarters full of lots of smart people who code and make a website. I'm amazed they need another 50,000 people to run that website. What do all those people do? Brady, this is a constant wonder for me. This is a conversation I have with lots of people because I find there is something that I cannot understand about the world, which is why companies are so big sometimes. I don't understand what all of the people are needed for.

Like the website works. And I'm sure it needs to be updated from time to time and things need to be fixed. But 50,000 people to keep it going? I know they have their little other things on the go, like their films and things like that, but still. And their Amazon web services, which runs the entire internet. But even still, when you say 50,000 people, I feel like I don't have any understanding

what these people are doing. The only way I can kind of understand it is to try to think that the more people you add, the more layers of management you also need. Like as you keep adding more people to this pile, each additional person requires more people. And that's why it's so big but even that like it's not a satisfying answer and i find this at every scale like i also find this even just on the youtube scale like i am often surprised by let's just say youtube channels that i feel like oh this

is probably a one or maybe two person operation then i discover is a 30 person operation i think like i don't understand, like, what are all these people doing? And you can talk to each individual person and they tell you what their job is. But it still seems to me like, I don't understand why all of you guys are here. Like, it seems like this should be two people at most. Is Numberphile the opposite of that, Greg? Do you look at Numberphile and think, how can that be done by just one or two people? You joke, but that really is true. I mean, you are at a particular end of the spectrum for how much output a single person can produce. And of course, you are working with other people who like

pre-produce the content for you in some sense that you're editing, but even still, like you are one dude making a lot of YouTube videos. Maybe I should put a bid out there in America and ask which city wants me. I want a few generous tax breaks and I'll come and live in a crummy little apartment in your city for a year or two, pour a lot of money into your hot dog manufacturing economy. Thank you. Oh no. Oh no. Oh, poor boy. Продолжение следует...