Hello Internet - Two Turtle Doves

Episode Date: December 26, 2018

It's Boxing Day, Brady. I could have googled this five seconds ago. Do you know why it's called Boxing Day? I have no idea why it's called Boxing Day. You know how there are things you're told when you're a kid and the adults are making a joke at your expense and you don't realize it and you think they're telling the truth? I think that has happened to me with Boxing Day.

And I think I spent 20 years of my life thinking it was called Boxing Day because of boxing matches. Like big boxing matches were held on Boxing Day. Is that? Are big boxing matches held on Boxing Day? I don't think so. But maybe they once were. Or is it as simple as because we put things in boxes? That just seems, doesn't seem right. Maybe YouTubers can start having boxing matches on Boxing Day. That would seem like a thing to do. Oh, look at you, Brady. You're going to go look it up.

Looking up things, who cares? I thought it was you put things back in boxes and you're returning them. That's what I thought was Boxing Day. Etymology. There are competing theories for the origins of the term, none of which are definitive. The dictionary gives the earliest attestations from Britain in the 1830s, defining it as the first weekday after Christmas Day, observed as a holiday. Servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas box.

Ah, this rings a bell now. A Christmas box given to the servants. In Britain, it was a custom for tradesmen to collect Christmas boxes of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas. Makes sense. So it does seem to relate to presents. I'm not saying anything about boxing matches. So I think I was having the Mickey taken out of me.

So we've still got this huge mountain of Christmas cards in front of us. It's actually been three minutes since we recorded the last episode. You're ruining it. You're ruining the magic. Should I ruin the magic? I'm sorry. I mean, we recorded an episode on Boxing Day morning. Yeah, we're getting together.

Grey's getting the train to Bristol 12 days in a row. 12 days in a row, yes. Although we will actually be together on Boxing Day. As we usually are. Most years, I think we've made that work out. Yeah, it's a bit of a tradition. So that's why we're recording in person right now on Boxing Day for people. This is quite weird.

So we'll be able to listen to this together on Boxing Day that we recorded. I don't want to listen to an episode of Hello Internet with you. Once the episodes are recorded and they're edited, they go up and I never listen to them again. You move forward in life. You don't look back. All right. Let's go through some Christmas cards. All right. Should I go first don't look back. All right. Let's go through some Christmas cards.

All right. Should I go first this time? Yeah. All right. Let me take this one. Randomly chosen. It has something written in it in another language on the front. It says Prettige Kerstagen.

And it's a picture of an old-fashioned picture. Oh, it's from Amsterdam. From Ralph in South Holland wishing us happy holidays and best wishes. Just a simple question. The sort of question you said not to ask. Okay. I don't think I put this one on the pile so I think you must have put it on the pile.

Maybe I did put it on the pile. Oh no I did put this on the pile. It says what is your favourite Christmas food or snack? Favourite Christmas food or snack favorite christmas food or snack it's harder with christmas like other holidays have more clearly defined foods christmas is difficult it's difficult but more fun in a way because there are so many more options like when i think of Christmas food, I think of when as a family, we opened presents on like Christmas Eve, my parents would often just put out like little bowls of snacks,

you know, chips or M&Ms and all this, like this kind of stuff. And I know like, that's, that's what I think of as like very Christmassy kind of thing. It's just like, there's a little selection of foods to munch on while you're opening packages.

But I can't think of a like a definitive christmas food this is this is totally like a thanksgiving question it's not a christmas question what meal do you have on christmas day like what's the christmas meal for your family like would it be uh like a turkey or a roast chicken or oh god my parents are going to probably be so appalled i don't have it i don't have in my head a clear mind you know what's blocking what's blocking my thought is my wife has gotten into the habit of making Christmas tacos, which are absolutely delicious. She has this particular recipe that is fabulous. And I think we've had Christmas tacos for many years in a row.

But I cannot think of something in particular when I was a kid. So I'm realizing as I'm talking, the thought in my head is like, you idiot, just say Christmas tacos. Yes. Christmas tacos are my favorite Christmas food. Yeah. On the second day of Christmas, my wife made for me two Christmas tacos. Yes.

I would like you to sing the rest of the song. What does she put in the tacos? Does she Christmas them up? Have they got like a bit of cranberry in them or a bit of turkey for novelty? Or are they sort of real Mexican style? It's a gigantic plate of tacos covered in cheese, but the whole thing is put in the oven.

So like the taco bit becomes crispy as well. Like it's just a big crispy pile of deliciousness. But as far as ingredients, I don't know. Like it just comes out and it's delicious and I eat it. No, so there's nothing like bespoke Christmas. there's no novelty to it other than it's just well executed yeah it's well it's well executed and it's on christmas what about you brady well it's funny i have like my australian christmas memories of christmas food and then obviously i've been taken into the fold of a new family and have a whole new bunch of christmas foods but back in australia

the thing i really loved having on christmas day was a big fresh prawn cocktail like with big huge big juicy prawns and prawn cocktail like seafood sauce and like dipping the dipping the prawns into the lovely sauce a pink sauce so i always associate big juicy prawns with christmas this is australian thing i mean i was gonna i was gonna say that seems incredibly unchristmasy but i am the man who has just said tacos as my christmas food and also remember like you know it's summer in australia no i know you're having white wine in the sun like exactly yeah so i do that i also do like i i associate it with like boxes of chocolates like roses and box of roses or quality streets and that.

But the other thing I do like quite a lot, the little hors d'oeuvre type things you get, which are like mini sausages wrapped in bacon. Oh, yeah. That's very English. Yeah. And I also, there's another version you get, which is almost like like a like a small cylinder of stuffing wrapped in bacon as well like a like a sage stuffing with a little bacon wrap around it i do quite like that i do i like my meaty and i like a good not burned but very well done roast potato like i don't i like my roast potatoes well done i'll always pick the browner ones right out of the out of i'll

cherry pick the best ones out of the out of the which is a bit naughty of me now i think about it but yeah and a big big dollop of gravy yeah do they do christmas crackers in australia yeah poppers yeah i always lose at that i always lose i never really thought of it as a competition but i guess this is your your competing side coming out that you're supposed to get the side that has more paper on it. Do you ever do the thing? You sit around the table and everyone crosses arms and holds the end of a cracker and everyone pulls at the same time.

So you could potentially win two or lose two. Like losing two, that's like the ultimate shame. Right, of course. Of course for you, Brady, that would be. And your competitive side is coming out and you want to win two when you do the Christmas crackers. Is it luck or technique winning the Christmas cracker, Paul? I think it's 100% technique for sure.

Yeah, it's all about the way you hold it. It's skill here, Brady. Never think for a second that it's luck. It's a skilled competition between individuals for those Christmas crackers. Do you wear the hat that comes out of the cracker? I've got a really big head. And every time I put on those paper hats that come out of a Christmas cracker,

it always splits apart straight away and breaks. So I don't get to wear it. Yeah, I'm not able to fit those little crowns over my head either. But I have gamely attempted under social pressure to put the little paper hat on your head. And it just never really works. Yeah. And I'm also, another thing I'm really competitive about

is figuring out like the riddle or the joke that comes inside like someone will say oh here's one what do you call a duck with three legs or something and you know it's always got some corny answer i'm always like don't tell me right i want to nut this one out i want to figure it out duck quack leg and i'll sit there and like a feather what can i how can I figure this one out? You're mentally exploring the pun space that's available with these words. That's right. The pun space. Yeah.

So anyway, there we go. Thank you, Ralph. We dealt with Christmas food snacks. Tacos and prawns. All right. I'm going to try and do a little foley work so people can hear all these cards. Big pile of cards in front of us. It's so nice and so Christmassy.

It really makes me happy. It is nice. All right, I'm going to grab this one. We've got a very fancy one. Oh. Talk about foley work. I can't believe you got that one. You're so lucky I wanted that one.

I found that one last night when I was doing a sort, and you got it. How do we make it stop? You have to shut it to make it stop. No, but there's... Oh, no, no, it's like a Christmas nightmare. Wait, no, but where's the sensor? Because I want to read it. Break in case it's too annoying.

I like this. Okay, okay so there we go ah thank you very much whoever sent this in with instructions on how to make it stop okay uh elon has sent this one in oh my god okay this is a very long christmas card it like opens three ways into three panels here with and there's lots of writing on all the panels so you're gonna have a hard job finding where the, the nub of, the nub of, where's the question there. Okay.

Oh, they're from Israel and they wanted to let us know it's difficult to find a proper Christmas card in Israel for obvious reasons, but he managed. Okay. There's another thing in this card, which I think came up a little bit when we did the referendum, but it makes me smile to think of it again, where Elon here realized after he bought the Christmas card,

he didn't have any idea how to mail a physical letter to somebody else. Just through lack of experience? Yeah, just through, I literally have no idea how to send a letter, and he had to Google how to mail a Christmas card. That is so like a sign of the times isn't it there's a whole generation of people who will have to google how to send a letter for me this is checks like especially having as an adult moved to the uk it's like yes in theory as a functioning adult i should know how to write a check but i have to look it up every time because the uk checks are a bit ambiguous about like what goes on what line compared to American checks. And I've only had

to do it a handful of times in a decade. So it makes, it makes me smile. All right. Okay. There's many things in this card. Let me find, where's the question, question, question, question. I mean, you're in the show anyway, Elon, because you got the foley work with the music. Yeah. Oh, it's a whole long thing. Okay. You know, he figured out how to send a Christmas card. He just didn't figure out how to write one. I think we're going to have to skip this question.

Really? It's too elaborate. It's like, Elon, A plus Christmas card. I love the instructions, but there's a whole big story that involves a bus and pressing a stop sign. Oh, no, no. I think I remember this one. I think I remember this one. I think I remember this one. I think it was good.

Okay. Executive summary for it. Let me just remind myself. Yes, I remember this one. Okay. This is quite good. Okay. You give it to me then.

Rather than reading it, I'll just summarize what it was. Okay. I think from memory, what Elon was explaining was being on a bus and accidentally pressing the button to get off at the next stop when that wasn't his stop. And I was like, oh, no, what am I going to do? So the bus driver stops at the next stop because someone has requested it. And I think what Elon said, like the public shame of having been the person that pressed the button made him get off the bus

and walk the rest of the way home. So the question is if you were on a bus and you accidentally pressed the button and everyone knew the button was on you, would you like when the bus driver pulled over just hold up your hand and say sorry not me or would you like just put your head down and get off the bus and walk away i know i must have done this i don't think i've ever gotten off early but you would have you i think you are in the position especially if it's the people now you have to be like sorry sorry my mistake, my mistake. That's my guess.

I think you have to do that. Would you be willing to do that? Like being like the shy person or would you just anonymously get off? Well, I think what I would actually try to do is just like look down at my phone and pretend and maybe just hope that the bus keeps going.

But if you're getting off... But the bus is going to stop and the bus driver is going to look around. No, no, no. What I mean is like bus has stopped, bus pulls over i'm gonna be like oh i'm just on my i'm just on my phone and and just sort of hope hope for a moment that it just moves right along that would be my hope but if it didn't then i'd have to be like so you'd have to say sorry and it would be horrifically embarrassing and you would hope to never see those people on the bus again.

Audrey, you're starting to snore. You could get in trouble for that. I guess another version of this problem and an even harder one to deal with is in a lift. If it was just you and one other person in a lift and you were on the 10th floor and then you undercut them by mistake and press six and then you're like, oh no, I'm not on six. Do you get off on six

or do you just say to the person in the lift, sorry, on 10 we're just gonna have to i think at that moment what you do is you exaggerate your your flusteredness right you're like you're like oh oh i'm so i'm so sorry so like there are things going on i wasn't paying attention i've just flown in uh just you you have to like way over compensate for it right as opposed to the truth which is like i'm an idiot and i press the wrong button one more great you're gonna pull one more from the pile you can pull this one as well what do you got i've got a tiny one which hopefully has a tiny question it's a little mini card it's a little mini card with christmas sloths on the front of it a little christmas sloth on the back well you know the scientific name for the sloth? No. It's Brady. Oh, is it?

Yeah. Okay. Isn't a Brady puss a sloth? I think a Brady puss. I think that's a story your parents told you when you were a child. No, no, no. You were looking at sloths in Australia and they say, you know what those things are really called?

They're called Brady pusses. Yeah, the three-toed sloth is the genus Brady puss. Ray's doing an old man trying to read small handwriting. No, it's more like the handwriting is really a thing. Oh, okay. If you could look into your future anytime in one minute moments, how forward would you look? Into my future or just like the future of humanity? Your future.

You can look at one minute. A one minute segment. At any moment in your future, where would you look? Presumably I have some control over this. Like I'm not going to jump forward and just watch myself asleep or something, like by coincidence. Yeah, let's say you have some reasonable amount of control

this is interesting isn't it because this is you know i'm getting to a point in life now where like my death starts factoring into this like do i and do i use this information to find out about like you know like is this a situation where i'm saying okay gray i'm going to choose 45 years into the future what's happening and you're like brady i got some i got some news for you mate let's let's maybe lower let's maybe go for a lower time period i don't want to tell you why but let's just choose it so let's take that out of it i don't know like are you feeling your mortality in this moment brady i feel my mortality every time i get out of bed in the morning but it's a good question it's a good question but i don't yet know what my answer is to it have you got an answer popping into your head or well my immediate thought is

essentially the same question that you have but i would do it in a different way because what i would say is i want to see a thousand years into my future right because i want to know i want to get that piece of information is there a future a thousand years from from now for you like or are you dead because i think a one minute interval doesn't really give you it's hard to imagine what useful information you could extract in the future unless in some kind of like back to the future way we're able to plan for it like oh i want to look 10 years in the future and then i remember 10 years in the future to have like on a piece of paper what stocks to buy right for past me we can create a paradox assuming you can't quite do that

i would just basically want to try to use this to know did the low probability event of extremely extended human lifespan happen or not and that is the useful piece of information to have. Like, yes, extremely long human lifespan happened. So you can kind of prepare for that. Or, no, it didn't. And you can also prepare for it. So, first of all, it does raise the interesting prospect that you'll spend one minute looking at your head frozen in a freezer. I didn't think about that. Yes, that's true.

But, like, say, like like you are alive in a thousand years or you're dead in a thousand years and you find that out, you say that you can prepare. What preparation is he going to make? Like either way, what would you do different right now? If you know you're alive in a thousand years or you know you're dead in somewhat less. I think if I knew for sure that I'm just going to have a normal human lifespan, which, by the way, listener, again, I do keep in the vastly most likely probability.

But there is that little part of me which is like there's a 1% chance that maybe not. I really think that being like, no, this is not going to happen, would change some things like i i i don't i feel like i can't quite put my finger on something specific but i think it would change the way i think about things to know that there is a zero percent chance you can't you can't give me you can't give me one example of something you do differently like are we talking about things like financial planning or um like because you can't financial plan for a thousand years can you so or are you talking about like risk management in your life or i don't really know what you're i can't even think of one thing if you told me brady you're going to be alive in a thousand

years i promise i can't think of one thing i'd do differently now maybe i'd be more relaxed about things like holidays like i wouldn't be thinking, oh, I must go and see Iceland because I want to see Iceland before I'm dead. I'll probably think, oh, well, maybe I'll go and see that in a couple of hundred years. Yeah, actually, I can come up with something, which is on my projects list, in a way, I have some projects that would involve a bunch of learning.

And I'm aware of with a regular human life, feeling like you have to make some actual hard decisions about what projects that involve it like a serious and time investment, can you do or not. And I think to know that there was going to be extended lifespans, I would feel like you with the trips, more relaxed about this, like, okay, I can focus on this one thing now because I know I will have time in the future to do this. So I can go and learn another language and it's not like a waste of time. Exactly.

Exactly. Perfect example, Brady. Okay. Yeah. I like that it's already like things for projects though. It's like YouTube videos. Now I have to plan for a thousand years of YouTube videos and Hello Internet episodes. Oh, a thousand years of YouTube videos and Hello Internet episodes.

Oh, a thousand years of Hello Internet. That's a lot of Hello Internet. Well, speaking of a lot of Hello Internet, we'll be back tomorrow. We'll be back tomorrow. For another 12 days of Hello Internet minisode. I'm going home now and I'm going to see you again in Bristol tomorrow. Bye. Bye.