Hello Internet - Seven Swans A-Swimming

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

2018 comes to a close. Sponsors: Brilliant: sign up for free to master key ideas in math and science through problem solving -- go to http://brilliant.org/hello to get 20% off the annual Premium subscription

The countdown to the new year has begun in earnest now because it's New Year's Eve. Merry New Year's Eve, Brady. Merry New Year's Eve. I don't know what dimension of Cuba I'm now, but I've kind of lost track now. Hopefully, I am in New York right now. Yes, you are in New York and I've flown over to see you. You've flown over to record. Where did you fly from? Where you on new year's eve i took a direct flight from london i'm going to be home except i'm not because i'm flying out to see you in new york welcome here

to the city that never sleeps it sounds suspiciously like your house still the the ambient sound and foley work uh around us still sounds a lot like it's your home. But no, it's not. It's New York on New Year's Eve. I know. Here, have a hot dog. Oh, thank you so much. It's delicious. This is great.

All right. So this pile of Christmas cards is not getting any smaller, Gray. No, it is not. What do you got? Oh, I put that one in the list there because it looked vintage and antique-y. It was even sent in like a special piece of plastic i picked up the vintage looking one but brady has immediately no taking control of the situation i have no control over i just i'm a real sucker for vintage antique postcards like if i go to a secondhand store and stuff i could if my wife

would let me spend probably five hours in those boxes of old postcards, just looking through them. I love looking at old postcards. So someone sent this old sepia postcard, and it's like a lake with a mountain in the background. Hello, Brady and Gray. I'm Magnus. I'm writing to you from Northern Norway. We have a lot of Scandinavian Tims, don't we?

We do. Yeah. I was wondering if you two had any thoughts on my country. I think Grey once mentioned he visited. Anyways, I would like to say your show is the absolute best. P.S. This postcard is a picture of my city, Tromso, in the early 1900s. I live in the valley across the water.

P.P.S. Team Rice Rat. in the early 1900s. I live in the valley across the water. PPS, team rice rat. That's a lovely, lovely old 1900s Tromso. There's a lake and a big mountain in the background. Loving it. It looks very Norwegian. Have you been, so thoughts on Norway? This is what we've been asked. I don't have any original thoughts except the same thoughts everyone else does, which is it's gorgeous. I've been a few times. It's beautiful, but I'm also very biased towards Norwegian kind of beauty. I like cold. I like snow. I like mountains. So it's everything I'm looking for. It's gorgeous. I think it's the only Scandinavian country I

haven't been to. Really? Yeah. I must get there. I was going to say you need to remedy that. I want to go to that Troll's Tongue thing where Trolltunga or whatever it is where someone held that beautiful picture spot where someone held a nail and gear flag. It's one of the best nail and gear flag pictures we've ever got. That was Norway, wasn't it?

Yeah, that was. That was. You must rectify it. You need to do a hot stop drop at Troll's Tongue. Maybe. Maybe we'll do that in a really dangerous place. You can tape it over the edge, right, on the other side. You could do something like that.

I'm going to Sweden again soon, but not Norway. You can just pop over. It's right next door. Yeah. Just a quick pop over. I can't on that trip. I'm already all locked in, but maybe. I like that you're very seriously considering it.

I would. I could see it. I would. Brady does love his antique postcards, which I can verify firsthand from seeing them around in this house. And as we said at the very start of the 12 Days of Hello Internet,

Brady is sometimes the gatekeeper for physical objects. And I think antique postcards, it helps catch the Brady eye if you're trying to slide on through the system definitely it's a smart move it's one of it's a pro tip it's one of the few cases where a lack of color actually helps catch the eye so speaking of which i must show you the golden hot stopper which is upstairs it's here in the house oh my goodness i can't believe next episode people okay yeah because we're in new york right now yeah when we get back get back tomorrow new year's new year's day new year's day in the next episode of hello internet i am going to reveal to

gray the golden and we and i will get his live reaction you can hear his reaction as he sees it for the first time if that doesn't make you listen to the next episode nothing nothing will nothing nothing but for now let's make do with this pile of cards what if oh i've got another pile of cards what do you got there now that's kind of avoiding this one because it also has flaggy flag rebellion on it oh yeah i saw this one in the pile but i'm trying to pick them up randomly and it's like it made its way into my hands but again the holiday spirit, it made its way into my hands. But again, the holiday spirit.

So it made its way through. So Merry Christmas. We have two grown up reindeer with their nail and gear holiday sweaters. And one of them seems to have my hair and the other one has your glasses. So they are us nail and gear sweaters. So they're on brand. Yes, they are very much on brand. And then there's Rebel Rudolph, who's wearing the flaggy flag on his sweater.

Okay. Let's open it up. What have we got? It must have something good inside to have gotten through the flaggy flag filter. Oh. Oh, I know what that is. That's the... Oh, yeah.

So we have like the sketch that was made by this Tim to create the postcard. So this Tim actually did the art and the Tim has included like rough drafts and working sketches that went into its production. And it says here that the one of you is obviously CGP Graindeer. And they've also put a little sketch note here saying in my mind brady's eyes are always twinkling so hence i think i'm supposed to have slightly twinkly eyes that's why you do you do have twinkly there's a little twinkle in the corner of my eye because my eyes are always twinkling apparently this is not true normally they're just very gray dead and have big bags

under them but so this is becca who this card is from becca also has a real pro tip on here which i like that the card is written out but the question is written in red so we can see it immediately as a very smart move very smart move there so the question is how do you feel about parents making good on holiday threats? Oh, okay. So if you don't stop, you're not going to get your presents. Or if you don't eat all your dinner, you can't watch TV for a week. Right. Or I guess it's like, this is the Elf on the Shelf blackmail.

Oh, yeah. You're being bad. Santa's not going to come. Yeah. Right. How do you feel about parents making good on those threats what's the worst punishment you ever got as a kid did you ever get threatened with a punishment that stuck like grounded for a month or like what was your crowning achievement of your childhood punishments no the problem much to my parents constant bane is I was relatively unaffected by their punishments.

So they would take away things or I'd have to sit in the corner and I would just sort of sit there until it was over. And my parents seemed to be always annoyed that they weren't willing to go far enough with the punishment that would actually really bother me. And all of the standard punishments of take away his favorite toy and be like okay well i can't play with that one so i'll play with my next favorite toy right like sit in the corner for a while i was like okay i'll just think about some stuff until this is over uh so i've i have heard that for my entire life my parents frustration with being able to properly punish me as a kid so i don't i don, I feel like my childhood, I escaped basically untouched by punishments.

It sounds like they just weren't willing to go hard enough. Like you really loved computer games and video games. Couldn't they just ban you? I got banned from the computer, but I always felt like I just sort of dealt with it. Like, okay, this is the way the world is now.

And I'll just wait the timer out. So you look, you look like you're unbelieving over there i know for a guy who for the last four or five years we've been joking as a robot how can i be shocked by this but i still somehow am what about for you i was like you know i was pretty naughty and got punished a lot got banned from tv a lot things like that but did you grow up in a smacking household or a non-smacking household? I know this is such like a controversial subject these days, but you know. Like only a couple of occasions when I was a really little kid. Yeah.

It might have only been once, but it's like, I know my parents are like, I ran out into the road. Okay. When I was just like, I'm just a kid who's too young to understand anything. And you see these parents who were like, now little Johnny, let explain it's like he's two right he doesn't like he barely understands your word he's not a person so yeah but i would say essentially an unsmacking household you there was some smacking which i didn't mind so that was that was sometimes a factor but the the punishment that i remember most was one of the chores that my

sister and i had to do was clean the kitchen like you know stack the dishes away and wipe down the surfaces and make sure the kitchen was clean at the end of the evening and we alternated there was a calendar on the wall and it just had my name my sister's name like a b and every second day had like a b, B, B. Those were the days I had to do the kitchen. And if it was done really poorly, you would get extra days. I would have to do the days of my sibling. Ooh, that's pretty good.

Yeah. That feels like that would be irritating. But I remember like I was sloppy and not good at it. And my mum's a woman of high standards. And my sister was very good at doing it. But when I would do it, there would always still be crumbs on the surface and this was done wrong and that was done wrong. And my mum would like lose patience. That's it, Brady, you've got kitchen duty for a whole week now. And she would go and replace my sister's name with B's on the calendar. So I'd have to do it for a week. But this problem then compounded because

I was still bad at it. And now there were seven opportunities for me to do it for a week but this problem then compounded because i was still bad at it and now there were seven opportunities for me to do it badly and she would come in like the first day into my week and there would be another poor performance i said brady that's it another week right my sister would like be smiling with joy and i think it got to a stage where i was doing the kitchen for the next 19 years right like day literally page after page of the calendar was just filling up with bbbbb right there's another bbbbb the whole calendar every day for i probably still technically am on kitchen duty right now because the number of bees on that duty and that would break me that was like soul destroying like you know doing hard labor and then being told no now you've got more hard labor i like the idea as well that you're living in filth while this is occurring it's like brady has to clean the kitchen and the kitchen is never clean but

he gets it's like oh here we go i wasn't going to bed till it was clean one of my favorite stories my dad tells because as you know and i've made videos about the fact my dad was a soldier and he was in the vietnam war he had a mishap one time when he was in a tent and he accidentally discharged his rifle. And that's like seriously, that's bad when that happens. He was mortified. He was cleaning it and he'd done something wrong with, you know, the gun in the barrel and it fired and it fired out of his tent into the next tent and these two other chaps were sitting in the tent

and the bullet actually went between them and like hit a sandbag, like came within inches of being really catastrophic. So like my dad was in serious trouble for that. You can still tell how bad he feels about it when he tells the story. And he was given the punishment for like when his next lot of leave came, instead of getting to have leave, he had to like, I don't remember what it was, like 12 hours a day or something, just to fill sandbags and like build this wall of sandbags.

And it was really, really hard labor. It was a real proper punishment. And he tells the story about how he learned his lesson and he didn't do it again. But then this little twinkle comes into his eye and he says, I'll tell you what, Brady, I looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of those two or three weeks. He says, the muscles on me were unbelievable.

I had my biceps and you said I looked absolutely ripped after that punishment. I looked amazing. So there you go, punishmentsments what was the question again well i was gonna say like we never really got around to it and i do have an answer right which is making good on holiday threats yeah i think the big lesson with kids is don't make threats you're not willing to follow through on. That totally undermines your ability to extract the behavior that you want from making your holiday threats on kids. So if you're making promises on behalf of Santa

that you know is not going to be able to be fulfilled, you just look like a fool and then your kid learns like, oh, whatever, they're just threatening me all the time. I think the much smarter play is the truth that you as the parent you do not know the mind of santa you don't know what he's up to and uncertainty can be much more frightening than certainty well i don't think santa would look very kindly upon this behavior right and maybe he really needs you to be much better to make up

for this you could play that in a way where the uncertainty is more terrifying than the certainty of he's not coming and then he does was this attitude true also when you're a school teacher like and having to wield punishment and threat over students like you know what am i willing to do what am i not willing to do. Another terrible lesson I probably shouldn't mention. But yes, I learned, let's say very quickly, I learned that one of the schools I worked for made it very difficult for teachers to follow through on punishments like detentions and things. Just obviously made it an enormous amount of work for a teacher to follow through on a threat and so i just stopped making any kind of threats at all but i genuinely think that was a way better policy did you use the uncertainty i don't know if you're going to get a detention who knows what

would happen if you do that i did sometimes imply uncertainty but this is this is again we're going back to my favorite caesar milan i feel like i withdrew the threats but i learned management through personality of like i'm going to try to keep the thing under control through personality but yeah i made a very conscious decision at some point that i'm never going to be like if you keep that up you're going to get a detention because i knew i wasn't willing to go through all the paperwork required to make a detention happen so i just stopped and it was way better no threats is better than threats that you don't fulfill. All right. I feel like we should do one more quick card. What have I got here? Very simple card here. Season's greetings. Very

beautiful. Very classic. Dear Dr. Brady Haren. I'd love to do the percentage of the views, doctor. Dear Dr. Brady Haren. It should be 100%. Here's another thing that's happened a lot, but not, we haven't read it much first. It says, Dearady harron cgp gray and audrey lulu and mr chompers a lot of mr chompers yeah audrey and lulu are with us at the moment are we in new york still here in new york yes yes here in here in new york but yeah but mr chompers is not of course because he's back in london he is happy holidays from delaware the first state in quotes apparently that's that's delaware's claim to fame is that that is the first date were they first to sign something were they were they first on some list i was immediately

wondering like that sounds like a dubious claim you did you did do your dubious claim i asked when i said that it's a bit like the older twin like oh okay sure you get to lord that over people for your 10 seconds of being sooner oh look what the question is we're gonna have to scrap this one great because it says what is your vision for retirement for your actual old age retirement again we're being asked about retirements we must have put these cards in the in the pile separately wishing you the best for 2019 your loyal tim derelane well we i mean we've talked we seem to spend a lot of time talking about our retirement.

I don't think we can talk any more about our retirement. We don't have an answer for this question because we've already answered it. But I do now have a note about investigating this claim of Delaware being the first state. I want to know the details of this. That is the more pressing matter in this card, I have to say. Have you ever been to Delaware? If I have, I don't remember. Really? I may have driven through delaware isn't that the joke that delaware is really boring like is that the one in wayne's world it might be i think it was yeah it probably

is yeah i'm sorry delaware i can't say for certain if i've been there or not been there and sorry darylene not only we're not answering your question we're besmirching your state that you obviously have a lot of pride in because you wrote the first state in quotation marks with a block exclamation mark next to it. But I am a big fan of your very beautiful, minimalistic Christmas card. It is a nice Christmas card. Where is Delaware? I don't think I could point to Delaware on a map. I'm assuming it's over the east.

It's on the east coast. It's on the east coast, a little south of New York. South of New York. But it's a little, it's like tall and thin. So it's just the East coast. Yeah. It's on the East coast, a little South of New York. South of New York. But it's a, it's a little, it's like tall and thin. So it's just on the coast. So it's got lots of coastline. Lots of coastline. What's its most famous city?

Like what's in, what city have they got? What's the capital? Delaware-tropolis. Delaware city. Capital of Delaware. I was sure you would know that. Can you name one city in Delaware? Yeah, I just did. Can you name one city in Delaware? Yeah, I just did.

Can you name a real one? I did name a real one, Brady. Oh, right. That's interesting, because I think of you as one of those guys who would be able to name all the capitals. The problem with the capitals is also it's always the one that you don't think it is.

But it's like the capitals are picked for these weird political reasons. But no, I can't name any place in Delaware except the most famous Delaware-tropolis as the city. Okay. So, I mean, we do have mobile phones with us and we could look it up, but I think it's more fun to not say it

and just drive people crazy, not knowing the capital of Delaware because we don't know what the capital of Delaware is, people. We don't know. And we can't hear you saying it right now. You don't know and we can't hear you saying it right now you're saying it we can't hear you saying it we don't know what it is we don't know and I genuinely think these conversations they're more fun when you don't look at the phone right is it like surely listening to us flounder around knowing nothing about Delaware is way more interesting than if Brady picked up his phone and said oh

the capital of Delaware is this and then oh it's phone and said, oh, the capital of Delaware is this. And then you go, oh, that's just over. Do you know what the capital of Delaware is, Tim? Do you know it? Are you saying it right now? We can't hear you. We can't hear it. We don't know.

Brady, don't tease the Tims. Tweet Gray the capital of Delaware. Yeah, go right ahead. I can't hear you. Since Brady mentioned it, I have been thinking about how many birds there are in the 12 days of Christmas. I don't know what the deal is with the birds, but the author of the song clearly wanted to give a whole bunch of them. But how many birds are there in total? I mean, on the first day, you get one present, you get the partridge. On the second day, you're getting two turtle doves and the partridge again, I guess.

So that's three birds on the second day, plus the partridge you have on the first day, which is four birds in total. On the third day, you're getting the three French hens, plus the set of two turtle doves and the partridge from the previous day that you've already had plus the previous previous day's partridge. By the fourth day, you're going to have 20 birds. 20 birds and four pear trees. Again, if those are real things. No one knows. It's a pretty mathy song. And in order to figure out how many total presents at the end, you can do that with something called triangular numbers, or also what's called a Pascal's triangle, where you can arrange dots

in the increasing shape of a triangle, and that gives you a visual way to figure out how many total presents you're going to get, how many birds, and how many pear trees. Huh, these triangle numbers, that sounds like an interesting thing. Where could I go and learn more about them, you may be asking yourself. Well, the answer to that question is Brilliant. Brilliant.org is an interactive learning site that helps you better understand math and science.

Listening to someone talk about triangular numbers is great as the first place to hear about the thing. But on Brilliant.org, what they do that is so great is they help you take math and science that you have learned and apply it to problem solving situations. Actively learning how to solve problems is a much better way to cement knowledge into your brain than simply hearing about it. Then, given that the new year is just around the corner, perhaps many of you would like to improve your math and science skills. If you want to do that, I highly recommend Brilliant.org. So you can go to Brilliant.org slash hello and sign up there for free to get started mastering key ideas in math and science through problem solving. Now they do have an annual premium subscription. And when you

use that link, brilliant.org slash hello, you will get 20% off that annual premium subscription and you will show your support for Hello Internet. So once again, that's brilliant.org slash hello to get 20% off a year of Brilliant Premium and to get yourself started on a better you who knows more about math and science. Well, that's it. That's the last little bit of Hello Internet in 2018. I know some of you want to know when the show is over. You don't like the cold closes. So, this is me now telling you that the show is ending momentarily.

I don't think letting you know that the show is about to end is better, but it is the holiday season. So this is my gift to you, those of you who desperately, desperately want there to be an indication that the episode is over. Hello, Internet. The 2018 season and this particular episode ends right now.