Sad Boyz - They're Censoring The Whole Internet (w/ Tom Scott)

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

Tom Scott joins to discuss age verification on the web across the world, and how he overcame his fear of rollercoasters. Watch Jarvis & Jordan on Tom's show Lateral Sad Boyz Nightz 127 ⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Over 100 Bonus Episodes: Sad Boyz Nightz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ✨⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Find Us Everywhere⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠✨ 00:00:00 Tom Scott! 00:04:45 Regional Driving Culture & Rules 00:06:43 Crazy Malls 00:17:46 Dollywood 00:23:31 Regional Accents 00:27:10 Internet Age Verification 01:01:45 Game Shows 01:14:19 Sad Boyz Nightz CREW: Guest: Tom Scott Hosted by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jarvis Johnson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jordan Adika⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced & Edited by Jacob Skoda Produced by Anastasia Vigo Thumbnail design by @yungmcskrt Outro music by @prod.typhoon & @ysoblank Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Sab Boys, a podcast about feelings and other things also. I'm Jarvis. Jordan, this is fireworks. Oh, okay. You're doing... This is for Tom. I see. Oh, yeah.

And we're joined by a very special guest today. Tom Scott. Hello. You are a part of the British Gambit. Or, no way. Not the Gambit. The British Gauntlet. The British Gauntlet is what happens when we send various...

That's a shame because the British gambits are really bad opening in chest. The British Gambit is, yeah, bad opening in chess. The peeky blinders. Maybe. who knows we'll go by the Gambit you may Taha The Gambit is

You never know what Tom's gonna say He's a renegade A fire brand Believe that People think you're so considered But this guy off microphone I know I turned up in blue flannel today

Everyone else is in red And we gave you a very strict Dress code of red flannel No months pre-production Yeah How are you doing? I'm good Yeah it's

I've been away for well I've been away from parts of YouTube for a while. Right. But my podcast never really stopped. Yeah. Lateral. Lateral.

Yeah. Thank you for being on it. Yeah. Get the plug in early. Well, also, I will say that it's really fun to have like the different kind of countries of YouTube, not physical countries, but just like, you never know how related people are. So when we were on lateral, I had so many random people being like, oh, my God, you were on lateral. And that was the first time they were learning what I've been.

been up to the past eight to ten years. I was here from secondary school friends for the first time of any content ever about Leroyal. Because you used to do computer stuff. Exactly. So it was I used to do. Like, we've both left that in the past. Yeah. Tom, don't leave me hanging. Oh. Yeah. Shout out to leaving it, leaving things in the past. I had to make the

split second decision there of whether I try and high five you badly with my offhand or swap the mic over. That's the kind of gotcha journalism we do here on Shabwe's. Keep you on your toes. Tom Scott, unsure which hand to use for high five. Scandal. Spitting newspaper like it's 1970. It's a black and white photo that says Tom Scott.

Yeah, you had a connection to a demographic of friend that I have not spoken to. Wow. It was refreshing. And they were like, wow, you did okay. Thank you so much. So you've been well. You told us before the show that you've been on a bunch of roller coasters. And you've talked about it a lot.

So we won't go too much into it. But I do want to know what sparked this new journey. This thrill seeking. I did a video about three years ago now where I got over my phobia of roller coasters and that basically turned into an obsession and I will happily monologue about that for an hour so we, and I think I did on Hank's podcast

a while back. So we can move on for that. What have I been doing on like the 18 months I've been away? I've been on a lot of roller coasters. I mean, that's not a euphemism. You went straight from that helicopter to a roller coaster. That's life though. Isn't life it?

Life is a roller coaster. There we go. You've just got to ride it. Ronan Keating. Wow. See, that's a reference that the Brits of the room will have got, which I think has gone straight over Jarvis a second. Completely over my head.

Do you get it? I'm with you on that one. My mum hated that music. But I... But the contrarian that I am. Never made it big in the US. It felt very strange to me that when Better Man came out, Robbie Williams.

Because I had never... I just hadn't thought about Robbie Williams for a decade. Well, I didn't know who... I'm being honest, I didn't know who he was. He never broke America Well, a couple of songs Broke America but he never got there

We watched We were just like watching movie trailers On our Patreon I guess Patreon.comso sad boys And and uh You guys like your slop And I was like Do you know who this is

And Jordan's response was kind of Like this is huge But maybe operating in the kind of Kiley Monog sphere Where huge breakout songs But I couldn't tell you about their life And yeah It's wetter right

Weta burned so much money on this incredible render of CG Bob and William Monkey and I couldn't tell you what the movie would be about. I assumed it was singing. Apparently it's beautiful. Yeah. It's what I've heard. I've heard it's really good. My favorite Kylie fact is

that Kylie Jenner tried to trademark the word Kylie for cosmetics and Kylie Minogue team were like, no. No, you don't get to do that. You might not have heard of us for a bit. We own Australia. Whenever I go to LAX, at every terminal, there's like a makeup

like a vending machine that is full of the Kylie cosmetics like makeup. I don't even know what product it is, but it just says Kylie a hundred times. Oh, wow. We should buy some. Okay. One thing that keeps throwing me off about the streets of London is that in America, I actually don't know if it's illegal or not, but you, when you park on the side of the street, you only park in the direction of traffic. on that side of the street in the U.S. And so here it's like,

yeah, I was going to teach a friend that because he's pulling up in the U.S. I'm like, oh, you can't, you can't do that. You have to. Right. You have to, is it legal to turn in the road here? I don't know. It's in the UK. Check the state. Yeah. I do. I like the, uh, my, my, my partner is from Michigan and it's so funny the things that people will take pride in culturally state to state. And sometimes if I've, uh, if a car was somebody from Michigan, they're like, you don't even understand the Michigan left. you're able to do this kind of specific U-turn that no one did.

It's like people that can't explain the off-side rule. Right, yes. Okay, but what is it? And I'm like, you wouldn't even get it. I hate Michigan leaps. I have a harsh stance on this. It's just a U-turn with a stoplight. Yeah.

It's you're on the left side of the road. You have to turn right and then U-Turn, right? Yeah, because imagine a, imagine a stoplight, if you would. Okay, imagined. Love them. You know how most stoplights, when it turns green, you'll wait for the traffic to go and then you'll turn left. Oh, like if you're a yielding left turn. They don't do that.

They don't have that in Michigan. What? They, I think they, well, I think they do in some places, but more often they'll have a Michigan left where you have to turn left into a, like, where normally you would just do a U-turn and there's a stop light and then you wait for that light to turn green. It's just a U-turn, and everyone I've talked to from Michigan is like, yeah. Yeah, the Michigan left. Yeah. It's funny. It's a lot.

What's wrong? Skib. It is, I think, better. It stops you crossing oncoming traffic at a dangerous point. It's tricky from L.A. to be like,

you guys don't get dry. It's a shit. I've got a British question. So American pride is certainly a thing and in America it's a little cringe to be overly patriotic.

But one thing I've noticed about British products like at the grocery store, if you get butter it'll be like now this is British butter or the milk it's like now this is fine fat-free British milk

UK Union Jack well yes except if you're in the regions or if you're in other countries outside England like Scotland they'll have a saltine they'll have a Scottish thing on it

Cornwall down the south west we'll have a Cornish flag on it I see I was so curious about that Cornwall especially is really I went to college in Falmouth Right. And the Cornish connection to England is its step-sibling kind of connection.

Yes. Cornish connection sounds like a radio program. You are thinking of Cymourri connection, which is a radio program. Wow, look at us. Cornish connection would be a radio program about walking on a cliffside. And we're like, wow. Really beautiful cliffside, though, to be fair. And eating a pasty.

Sorry, I'm learning. Good reference. Yes, sir. What have you seen while you've been in London, then? So we went to Tate Modern. which was awesome. What else did we do? I keep forgetting.

We saw big spider at Tate Modern. We did see the giant arachnid. I didn't actually... There's a few of those sculptures around the wall. This is my giant spider. Yes, no, no, no. Quite literally... Honestly, you cut...

Even height-wise, you got to nail it. As you're in train, there's like a ramp on the way down and then you're in this like mostly empty room before. It's like a load of a turbine hall. It used to where the turbines for the power station were. And when it got turned into an art gallery, like, okay, this is an in.

enormous exhibition space. Every six months or so, we're going to put a new thing in there. He's amazing. Yeah, it's beautiful. I guess it's the London place I've been to the most because it was like... The other power station got turned into a shopping mall. This one got turned into an art gallery. Do you know why the Westfield Mall here is gigantic?

It is one of the largest malls I have ever seen in my life. It's triple the size of the one in San Francisco. Yeah, we have a Westfield Mall in San Francisco, and it's tiny by comparison. And they put office spaces. We've got two of them. They're both that big. What the hell? There was going to be a third in Croydon,

but I think that's fallen through. Do they have their own county code? We were trying to leave and we couldn't figure out to exit. Yeah. It's an overnight mall. Yeah. And like the answer is because

there was the demand for it. Like a lot of shopping malls are closing down everywhere, but this is full. It's weird because malls just in general felt like such a fad. In a lot of countries, it was subsidized by the government or it was like a place to park money

where you were with limited risk and then they could afford to have these largely empty businesses. Oh yeah, they're owned by pension funds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like land conglomerates. That's the funniest thing is you can walk by

and there's a ton of fancy jewelry places that one person goes in. And there's four employees working there. Like none of this feels sustainable. Just in case somebody's getting married. Have you been to the American Dream Mall near New York, just over the border into Jersey.

I have it, actually. Okay. It is Mall of America, just a little bit smaller, and transplanted to, like, within easy driving distance of New York City. And it nearly didn't open because they were like,

brand new shopping mall, huge amount of stuff. We're going to open in 2020. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. Welcome to the mall of getting close to each other. I'm kissing.

But I went there a few years ago, for a roller co. Steepest one in the world? Inside of the mall? Inside, this is the thing. What? Right. Sorry, we're back to roller coaster.

This is why I went here. Like, you think Westfield's big. That place has a Nickelodeon theme park, which includes the world's steepest roller coaster. Okay. 122 degree drop, I think. Why not? Yeah, so you go over and...

It's not a good ride. It just kind of hurts. That is... It's also not been working for three years now. The record-breaking ones are often like that, where the engineers were like, what we did. Oh, I see why nobody else is doing this.

We're going to be on a Wikipedia page where there is past owners of the record as we continue this arms race of changing English. That was the coaster wars about 30 years ago. The most stabby roller coaster. That saw the ride at Thorpe Park. Don't go on it.

It's awful. It's like actively scary and cruel. No, it just hurt. It's just badly. Anyway, shell razor. Yes. Shell razor. That's very much.

Which is fully themed for kids, and it's just actually... Okay, well, I mean, this is to burn. It just hurts. The poor children. Right? Well, no, I think you're younger than about 20, you'll probably... You experience the forces differently? You'll bounce.

Whereas when you get to my age, I think I don't, you're in your 30s? Yeah, yeah. You get to our age, just like, no. It'll push my head into my neck and I will look like a turtle leaving its shell. My feet will switch. Right? Oh, my Lord. Look at the scale of that.

You get up to the top of the lift hill. They put a skylight in, so you've got to... view over New York City, as soon as it drops down. It seems like, like, mega blocks. Right.

My eyes are struggling to pass. The peak of a peak before a drop where it feels like the universe is in the roller coaster is saying, say your prayers, say good night. Oh yeah, there's one at Alton Towers that used to whisper, don't look down just before you went.

And they stopped doing that because the residents were like, we can hear don't look down every 15 seconds. Oh my God. You were, phobic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was the process of conquering that that made you so. But it would be a dream mile.

I'm not going to go on by a rollercoaster. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We're going to now plant roller coaster. Indoor water park. Stop. An indoor ski slope. Okay. Huge amounts of...

Like a dry slope? No, like a snow slope. Right? What? It sounds like a video game hub world. Yes. It's like a biome. I'm walking around and I'm sure it's busy some days.

It must be because it survived. But I'm walking around there's no one in this place. Loads of shopfronts. just blank. There is an indoor, like, botanical gardening thing. And all the shops are like luxury shops or experiences. There was one, like, pharmacy in there. And other than that, you don't go there to buy anything.

I pick up my medication. I go on the steepest drop. I try and snowboard home. The Westfields are at least in part shopping centers, what we used to call malls. Like, you did the ones, you know, the regional ones in the UK, Brent Cross, Meta Hall, things like there. shopping centres you go there to shop

this is like an entertainment destination this is where you take the kids for a day to keep them occupied while it's raining you think it's some kind of like speculative location and maybe we can replicate this and now there's so much surplus funding for something nobody's

going to yeah there was a great YouTube channel our Best Edmonton Mall oh it is a channel about the West Edmonton Mall but it's like oh yeah they used to have like a submarine ride and They used to have huge amounts of theme park rides and things like that, just because it was an entertainment destination. I love the idea.

I'm not sure what, like, the rollout pace and plan was, but I love the idea that nobody's using the ski slope. What about like a crocodile swamp steamed ride, just constant shots? One of my favorite, like, things that never got built was a thing called The Ride of Life, which there was a documentary on, uh, that's made it to YouTube. These feel like threats. I promise. This was Meadow Hall, which was shopping mall in South Yorkshire near Sheffield that was just opening. Absolutely mental night in Sheffield. Yeah, this is the 90s.

They were going to have an arcade and a food court. I'm like, you know what, said the investors. We want some sort of entertainment attraction there. We want it to be like a dark ride, like Disneyland dark ride. But we're going to make it really British. We're going to hire like artists and builders and men. makers to make different scenes for this dark ride. And the makers were like,

have you been to novelty automation? No. You were, you know, creating places. You're making this up. Maybe. Maybe he's a kid. No, no, it's only open in the last few years. Novelty automation is in Hoban, in London.

Tim Hunkin is the guy who runs it. He's a maker who's worked on, like, big automata physical stuff for ages. And he's like comedy satirical arcade machines with physical things. I don't want to spoil some of it for you. I will warn you that the airport security simulator does exactly the joke that you worry it's going to do. Oh, no. Well, that was fun. I can practice.

At Westfield, I had an airport security simulator where I bought this shirt and they, as I was checking out, they flagged me. It was a self-checkout thing. They flagged me. Someone came over, scanned it, confirmed that I was doing everything normally. Then I tried to leave them all and then it beeped aggressively. security guy pulls me. We have to go through the whole rigamar roll again.

You've got to stop shopping Blackley. Yeah, I mean, stop. It's the way you do it. It is the way I do it. I really, I was tiptoeing and I was like, I had a cloak over my head. You don't ever catch a me. Oh, all according to my plan.

I'm going back to the hood. Mm, a nine euro shirt or a nine pound shirt. I'm not, I'm going to try and untangle this three tangents deep thing, Ron. Go for it. Good luck. Novelty Automation. Yes.

Arcade games like the vacation simulator, which is a chair and a TV screen on a tilt thing with a heat lamp. All physical stuff. And these are all original productions from this novelty animation. Well, there's a couple of guests things in there, but it's absolutely worth the visit. Cool. He was one of the makers for this,

and all the folks involved like, well, yeah, we're going to take the money, but it's going to be kind of satirical, right? We're playing about with this. and they created what like there's footage of some of the installations they were going to put in it and they're all they like if I'd have gone there as a kid

it would have terrified me like one of them The roller coaster of life the ride of life the right so you're just on a sofa going through these show scenes from birth to death oh oh god

there's a satire on consumerism in there there's a satire on like work it's all terrible there is a Rick and Maury subplot they're getting lost Where he plays through like days or something? About a month before they were due to put them all in there,

the backers just went, no, that's going to be retail space instead. So like, all the exhibits got broken up. We don't need a ride that simulates salvia for children. Let them do peony later. It would have terrified kids. Yeah, I don't want to encounter the idea of mortality in a simulation. Shopping malls. There we are.

That's how we got down there. We're pulling back. Keeping on the theme of experiences, you admit, mentioned going to Dolly Parton's very own Dollywood. I did, yes. And I don't know the first thing about Dollywood. Okay. You thought it was humid here, by the one.

Well, it's like 20-something degrees and like quite humid. It was 30 plus degrees, I'd, like, nearly 100 Fahrenheit. Yeah. And so much humidity. I'm just in the smoky mountains in Tennessee in, it's so much sweat. Yeah. I ended up walking like the equivalent of a half marathon that day because it's a big park and I just kept going and yeah that was a lot

And it is centred, the nucleus of it is where her actual house They have moved her I don't know if it's a replica or if they moved it But certainly Dolly Parton's childhood cabin is there There is like the Dolly Parton experience like a Yes it's a biography walkthrough thing It's more of like a hagiography because, like, if there's anyone who's, like, a modern American saint, it's Dolly Parton?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a real ride of life. You know, if you want someone who came from very humble beginnings and now has donated a hundred million books to children, that's pretty good. A self-admitted hillbilly origin, but with... Yeah. Yeah. How close would you say it simulates the experience of the two-scale cardboard cutout of Dolly Parton

having a storage unit in Gloucestershire? That's a... That's it. Why do you have that? I did. This was not an invite for question. Oh, okay. I see.

I sure he was. This was vague. That was on your rider. No questions about my Dolly Parking cut out. That could have been a theoretical. No, I was kidding. Not true. Dolly Parton basically bought her old local theme park, I think, in the 80s.

Oh, that's really cool. And so it has a Dolly Parton theming there. Yeah. She certainly turns up, she's on video on a couple of the shows, but mostly it's just a, it's a good theme park. I like the focus on the experience, and then Dolly is like, and also I'm here. I enjoy. Yeah. This got the steepest drop.

It'll separate your vertebrae from your hip bone. The teenage mutant ninja turtles could never. By the way, shout out Dolly Parton the legend. Heroes in a half shell. I went to the Smoky Mountains one time with my sister to do some hiking and camping. And we had never been to Tennessee and was so. excited to see the Appalachian Trail and all of that, and was not expecting the drive-through Pigeon Forge.

Right. Because just driving through the main strip, you see these big, like, replicas of the Titanic sinking. Pigeon Ford, have you been, wait, you were Florida, right? You know I drive in Orlando. That, but in Tennessee, and maybe a little bit cheaper. Okay. Um, like there is a Titanic exhibition. Uh, there is the Pirates dinner show and the Hatfield and McCoy feud dinner show.

Which is a hell of a thing to make a show out of. There's also, uh, like a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. And so it just looks like an upside down building that has been like ripped out of the ground. I do love stuff like that. But a lot of the time... When they say white people have no culture. Okay. I talk to, um, Hassan from Creators for Peace, uh, at Vidcom.

before I went out and he's like, yeah, I've been to Dalaiwood and he's like, that is one of the least comfortable places he's felt in the US. That's funny so. Because it is the whitest part of America I've ever been to. I've been through rural West Virginia. Pigeon Forge felt more.

It's also like most of the time, it's most of the time like there's not a lot of people there ever. So a lot of times you'll drive through it and it looks like the weirdest ghost town you've ever seen. Because everyone's really pale I do have a Yes And ghoulish

I have a similar story Not Dollywood But Dolly Parton Stampede In Branson, Missouri They've changed the name of it Yeah So It used to be the Dixie Stampede

A few years ago Okay okay okay And now it's Which is surprising How they change it For Branson Missouri A group of friends and I It is a good

Again shout out to Dolly Parton Because it's like hey Yes What if it was Dolly Parton, guys. But we like Dolly. I remember the story was Dolly was the one officially under the press release

who was like, oh, yeah, we've realized. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. But what they still do at Dolly Parton Stampede is that basically the the crowd is split into like two teams to like root for who you want

to win and they still call it the North and the South. Oh, okay. Yeah, I wonder what that's in reference. Yeah, all the way in like Grants in Missouri where every single place you look there is like the most abhorrent, like, political ads you've ever seen. You're like, all right, yeah, yes, the north and the south. Okay, this is what we're doing.

Dollywood was studiously, I don't want to say apolitical, but managing, in the same way that Dolly Parton has, managed to thread a line. Like, Dolly Parton has threaded that needle incredibly well. You know, gay icon, history of supporting queer folks. No mention of that in Dollywood, but also no mentions against it either. Right, right, right. see anyone there wearing anything political. There are a couple of mentions of faith.

It's the only theme park I've ever been to where it's a little chapel. If you're feeling guilty for being there on Sunday and missing church, there is a service once a twice for Sunday. I do think that's cute. But it's not overt. It's not cold out anywhere. There are like a lot of locals going,

or it was predominantly tourists? I do not know my accents in America well enough to be able to judge that. I didn't look at the plates as I was going through. Neither do, though. It's a fact, I got to the US and I'm like, well, I, you know, in Gloucestershire, there's an important ecology behind the Stonehouse accent, the Stroud accent, and then you got to California and everyone's like, I have no fucking idea. There's normal. Yeah.

And then there's weird. Which is me. I'm normal and I'm not weird. And then there's cowboy. There are way less people now than used to, like growing up in one place. A lot more people are going to be moving for work Or the parents are going to be moving for work I'm sure it's still a thing But I would suspect the mobility's a much greater

And their jobs far more often Are interfacing with people That don't sound the same as them Yes And they have to be understood by them Yeah Case in point Somebody may be reducing

And excising their farmer accent They grow up with For the utility of doing a pocket My dialect is over the Atlantic A lot of the time I will still say cell phone For a few weeks so I only got back from, like, VidCon, open source, all that.

I was in the US for a few weeks, which means I am now saying cell phone and mobile instead of mobile. It will take just a couple of weeks. Wait, what would cell phone be mobile phone? Oh, just mobile phone. So I'll go cell phone, they'll say mobile phone, and that'll be mobile phone. Yeah, right. It's a translation.

It's like Esperanza. It's like we're trying to find something that works. I uh the thing that locked in a lot of the terminology that I'm really struggling to get out of now is that there's some things that are commonplace here that are actually just a little uncouth there so toilet is a little too descriptive yeah yeah yeah so i'm loo lessover they just don't know what you're saying toilet has been replaced permanently in my lexicon with restroom and then sometimes is it uh Austin you you said washroom right that's pretty efficient. I don't my washroom either. The one that I grew up saying but realized it is more of a personal at-home

space is like a bathroom. Can I use this restaurant's bathroom? restroom in the streets, bathroom in the sheets. Don't like that at all. Don't like that at all. Near the shit. Food design this place. Go on. I can see the main topic on that.

You try and do the segue right now. Right in. Well, I feel like Anastasia was going to do it too. Well, here's what I'm here. Okay, so speaking of growing up in the United Kingdom. Oh, I thought you were going to go with In the Sheets as the Segwai. Oh, oh, oh, okay. Speaking of sexual promiscuity.

Speaking of being a toilet in the sheets. Nope. Still don't like that. Not speaking of some dirty toilet talk. Thinking of being a nasty voice. I should not have plunged into this segue. That was, there we go. We can do maybe a poll

And then we'll You do your poll on your own time It's like the end of rat battles of history Who won? So this is something that I wanted to talk to you about Because I am not very versed in it But it's something I've started becoming aware of Funnily enough, not since being here

But like the week leading up to it hearing about the UK age verification changes that have started to be implemented across the internet which has resulted in the way that I heard about it was like youths being can you tell I'm old

the youth of England having to trick having to upload photographs of themselves to prove that they're not underage which would involve potentially underage people submitting photos. But also, like, anyone. Because if you get an age verification prompt from unknown company, please give us a photo of you and we promise it'll be deleted after. That works well. That's great, you know, given all the other news about, what was the app that got?

Oh, yeah. The, um, the, uh, T, yes, the T app where in, and this is a thing that we know from, from working. Yeah, we both have background on this, right? In tech, is that like, if something is deleted more often than not. It is marked for deletion. Yes. And whether or not it's deleted is an open question. Put in the bin and kept in the house. Yes. Much like on your computer when you delete a file, it is not immediately deleted from your hard drive. It is put in basically free to write over space. And that is assuming someone hasn't put a little tap in there anyway to see what the photo is just copying them elsewhere. Exactly. Yeah. I have not talked to a single, techie who thinks that the implementation of this is a good thing or a good idea.

How do we get here? I'm actually like, so for people who aren't curious because there are like American correlates to this. Oh, yeah, there's US states that have the same requirement. Yes, yes, yes. For a long time, various UK governments from like all over the political spectrum have been like, we should stop kids being able to see porn, which to be clear, good idea in favor of this.

It is already a law. Yes, that is already a thing. And we also already had quite restrictive stuff. Like if you have an internet connection, if you are getting a new connection to your house, when you get that, by default, that will have child filtering on it. By default.

Interesting. And you have to go in and specifically opt out. It's one of the sign-up screens. Specifically here. Specifically in the UK. Yeah. If you have a mobile phone contract, by default, it will have child filtering on it, just by domain name,

and it's a very easy thing. You go to a website or you make a call and you just say, I want that turned off, and it's turned off. Right. So by default, we already have this. And then because reasonably protecting children is a very good political vote winner, that it's very hard to argue against.

Yeah. If you would like to continue to censor, right. That's a good way to argue. It's a Trojan horse in a way because, like... And there is a way to do this well. Right. Um, Google, okay, how much tech stuff do you want?

Can I, I, I'm going to try, because I keep getting emails about it. Because I used to do videos about computers. So I've had multiple emails saying, Tom, can you do an explanation? I don't do computer videos. Well, Jordan's not a computer person. Cool. And we're the only two. So we'll be able to know, we all have stand-ins for our audience.

All right. I am an optics and marketing for tech companies. Okay. So I know the aesthetics and the Trojan horses. Here is how you would do that properly, I think. You would be able to load your driving. license or your passport or prove that with one company. And that was probably be Google or Apple.

Loads of US states have digital ID now. So you can just, like, you get your code, you upload it for the phone. And the phone can use something called a zero knowledge proof, which is basically incredibly complicated maths that I'm not going to try and explain here. But it means that how you could do it with the cooperation of Google and Apple is, and Microsoft for desktop stuff, is you load it on. and then the website says need to check this person's under 18

your phone goes face ID, touch ID, password, something like that and they go yes mechanisms already in place using tools and the zero knowledge proof is like are you thinking of like hash comparison type thing? So it's zero knowledge both ways both ways, okay. The website only gets the information

you've given it over 18 or even like over 30 or are over 50 or lives in this. So there's some privacy stuff there. Like if you want to lock down a site to certain areas, actually there's some possible bad stuff there as well. Right, right. Like you could create all of the questions and kind of hit the thing.

But your phone's going to pop up. Over 18, yes. Face ID, touch ID, something like that. Yeah. Two factor. It's two factor for your age. The website doesn't know who you are. Yeah.

The phone or the service provider, does not know who the website is. I mean, there's obviously a way, but... Right, right. But it creates, it creates a difficult, like it creates an extra... Yeah. Apple and Google did that for COVID tracking, right? When governments were like, we need an app on everyone's phone

that tells you where people are all the time. Google Apple went, well... How about no? How about we do that in a privacy preserving way? They could, and I think they should do that for this. Because I'm not actually against the idea. sure, that that age check is a thing your phone can do. It wouldn't also wouldn't hurt for, like any two-factor,

peace of mind for the user and the convenience of the breadth of platforms. Yeah. Like in the case of, because you mentioned that you could elect to be more specific with your age, if you were, say, in the US to electively say that you are over 21, now ordering alcohol on new barretes does not require you to take your idea with you. Yeah, yeah, it's a very bad system. And also, there are loads of clubs in the way. London that scan your ID on entry with an automated system.

So that's going in a database somewhere. And there are clubs that will also scan the ID and have a network of people they're not going to let in. If you get banned from one club in London, you basically ban from all of them. The reason I mention that is you could just say, I'm over 18, this is my ID. They don't know your name. They don't know your address. They don't have all the other details.

But they know you're of age and they know you're this person without having some marketing database somewhere. I get everything. Is it potentially, partly technical ineptitude, in the case of, but I mean, more likely that the optics of this level of security are a much stronger cell to look how intense we're making it. I guess we care about the kids more than the left does. Right.

Yeah, that's certainly a part of it. I'm not going to try and play politics there. I'm not qualified to play politics there. Well, can we take a step back and talk about what it actually looks like today? Because I haven't... I wouldn't know. I haven't... What's a prong?

There's a prong website. Oh yeah, what is... What does it look like? What is... I was on a Bible website. Just call that up on a screen. No. No.

So if I'm like Anastasia, for example, isn't on Discord. And there's, like, for our Sad Boys Discord, we don't want adults talking to minors in the Discord. So... We're fussy like that. It's an age... It's an age...

restricted server, which is like, it's like, please don't lie, please, uh, be respectful because this is, you know, we don't want to create a space that could cause like this thing to happen. And we will just have to take it down. If it does, it's exactly. And so as a result, when Anastasia was logging into Discord here, you received the age verification stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it said that I need to upload my ID to Discord. And so is Discord holding on to? Yeah, apparently. That's insane. And a load of the other sites who don't have Discord's kind of scale

and don't want that data are outsourcing to a third party that just charges a few cents each time they do it and like that's... So there's just... So there's intermediary companies set up and benefiting from the complicated process. And I'm just trying to tease apart

some of the stuff we've already talked about. So when you were talking about, you know, I would only trust a Google or an Apple to do this, we're in a tricky situation because I tend to not want... want to entrust public services to these private companies. However, I... So ideally, this would work with GovUK or the equipment.

Like, you have your digital ID on your phone. That is a thing that already exists in US states. I think they're trying to do it here. But the side effect of that is we don't have ID cards in Britain. By law, after... We had ID cards during the Second World War. Someone could ask you to show your papers. But it's kind of been a point of pride for decades that a police officer,

unless you're being arrested, there are certain other powers. But, like, in general, you cannot be asked to show your papers in the UK. It's not a thing. Oh, they love doing that. America could never... If you have an ID that is on a government database, I am not in principle against an ID card or an IDA, or the government saying, yep, that's that person.

The problem is when that becomes the database of everything, there's your health records, there's your criminal records, there's your tax details, and they're all on one database and one civil servant can just go, oh, yeah. Like that's so obviously about my index finger thumbprint to unlock my MacBook should not translate to every other available service. There should not be some, some Bobby that's able to access my 10 print on the land. And so to explain the implementation and why it's bad, they're by trusting either this random third party or each individual service with this PII,

this publicly identifiable information, which they generally don't want. Like that's- They don't want it. It's a huge, like for example, at every company I've worked at, there are very, their safety, like usually PII is stored in a separate encrypted database that the average employee doesn't have access to because I shouldn't have access to everyone's, you know, name address, like if social security number, that type of thing. And so when you have to upload this data, especially something like an image, to a bunch of random services, you have now multiplied the number of vectors by which something can go wrong.

Because now the weakest link is going to break. And that's all it takes. Very similarly to why you don't use the same password on every website because the second that you use that there is a working email password payer on a website. website, every fraud bot, bad actor is going to run that against every service to try and find access to whatever they can do to get money out of the equation. So getting access to your email or opening up a bank account or, you know, whatever. So that's why you don't want a single point of failure. And there's also the thing that it won't work. Just as a way to protect kids. The way that I found out about these privacy change, age verification changes,

was hearing that people were using the Norman Redis model from Death Stranding 2 because it was hyper-realistic. And you can open- And using Gary's mod, you know, like for the source engine to like open a mouth of like the G-Man. I suppose this Memoji of a surprised shock must be 18 or over. Yeah. I use a Snapchat filter of me as a dolphin where I can just like manipulate the phone. face as a puppy, create a V-tuber. Oh, another one of the fairly odd parents is logging into Pornhub today.

This is a good idea with a terrible implementation that might actually be impossible in practice. I, it's like, I did a video a long time ago about online voting. Like, same thing, good idea in practice, there's no way to do it safely or well. Is there any chance that the impetus for fighting back against this comes on behalf of Pornhub, for example, like their traffic and their utility will, I assume, absolutely crash with the tiniest bit of friction. Presumably, yeah. No, by Nintendo. The medical is going to get worse from that.

So, yeah, like, I don't know the extent to which lobbying is effective in the UK, but I would imagine there's a lot of money, just following the profit motive, there would be a lot of money to work against this because of how it impacts business. But also, Europe in general has probably been the most privacy forward with things like GDPR. You would think, but the Online Safety Act also technically requires scanning of communications for stuff we can't talk about without getting demonetized, even encrypted end to end. Now, they're saying they're not going to enforce that until it's technically possible. the EU is trying to do the same thing but you're asking an impossibility there

you're asking to build a backdoor that the good guys can get in and the bad guys can't and that doesn't as long as you promise that you're a good guy and this type of thing is something that Apple has been has dealt with before like the FBI has asked they've been fighting the UK government

on this so there is advanced data protection which is that your iCloud backup is fully encrypted that was basically made sort of illegal in the UK because that... And again, like,

if it was possible to get a court warrant that said, yes, you can look at that person's communication from this period with this. Right.

Actually, a good idea. Fine. But what they actually want is, yeah, we need the password and everything. So you cannot get advanced data protection on a new phone right now

over here. Your iCloud backup must be unencrypted. Yeah. And at some point, they are probably going to turn it off for older phones unless they win the court case.

Well, this is just a general, like, ethical issue with big tech, because if the issue is, like, any government, it doesn't matter. This is, like, kind of an apolitical point. Any government can be acting in a unfair way. Internationally. Internationally. And so the fact that if you are deemed to, if the thought police think you've been saying bad things in your DMs, you can subpoena Twitter and get access to that. information when you otherwise would feel like you had an assumption of privacy. The UK especially has some kind of arcane punishments that they can enact.

More than that, there are countries where criticizing the monarch is illegal. There are countries where criticizing the ruling party will get there. And this is why, like, you have, like, encrypted messaging services that, like, if you're a journalist, for example, in someone, and you were, want to communicate with, people who would otherwise like want a safe form of communication to share some atrocity that's become of them, you know?

Then we have, like, there's also a lot of illegal activity but like... It is one of those things where there is no correct answer. Yeah, it's like, I feel like there has to be these channels of privacy. I would fall on the side of privacy is better and then Christian is better. Exactly.

But I recognize that is not a certain opinion. And a very unpalatable pushback against the like nice, intuitive, digestible cell of, hey, we should be age-gating things. It's almost like making any of these points has to be front porch. It's impossible to argue because the counter-argument is you just want the bad guys to be able to do bad-guise stuff. Do you think there's like a... And not like an individual has a right to privacy. I remember I did a video on this a long time ago.

I remember there was a story about an attacker, a bomber. I can't remember the details of it. Having been, I think it was the Manchester bomber. He was reported to the police 10 times before anything happened. The problem is not insufficient data. Yeah, and that is, by the way, a common, like I watched a documentary about the two bombings that happened in London. 7-7, yeah. And then you also have this with things like September 11th, where the intelligence is there.

And these intelligence professionals who, you know, you have to take what they say as a grain of because they are mouthpieces for the government or intelligence agencies. But the people who seemed very distraught that these bad things that happened on their watch and are the like kind of sort of regular line workers are like, we have the intelligence, but we know something is going to happen, but we don't know when or where. And you cannot arrest someone for something they haven't done yet. Because there's a little book called 1984. But it's fine.

We have AI now for that. Sorry, I mentioned the horrible. No, but that's the thing. It's like, okay, so another downside of having all of this information in one place is what's going to stop a government from just having some sort of LLM trained on a database of everyone's information. Tom, do you feel like there's a cultural, like significant cultural difference in how, regardless of political identity or place on the political spectrum, more just the average largely disengaged or at least technologically disengaged, or at least technologically disenged. engaged citizen of the UK might kind of metabolize this sort of thing. Oh, almost certainly, but I'm not the person to ask about that. This isn't my constitutional right, but it is my...

I've been glued to a computer since I was about five years old. I'm not the right person to ask about that. It jumps out just because more than anything, it feels like it's breaking the cardinal sin. It's a bit rude. Yes. It's a bit like, you want to see my face? No, no. Excuse you.

Which, it has, it's kind of incredible how that supplanted most of the functions of Constitution because it's not the done thing. No, no, absolutely not. You could do it, but I'm in front of everyone. But that's against the rules. You don't get to come to Christmas. I appreciate just how fancy your accent got that. Well, I'm from the countryside.

I would like to see your encryption. please. You might think I'm not too interested in technology. My private key, you say. So I actually realized that we have a lot of similar legislation in some American states, but this is one of those weird like states rights type thing where there's not something coming from the top from the government, but there are these, well, we want to support family values type laws.

I actually, I know it's in a number of U.S. states, but not anyone that I currently live in, so... It's like a third of the United States. That's crazy, yeah. With the same implementation or similar from the term? No, so the thing about this that's a little less severe than the UK is that it's specifically for websites with more than a third of the website being pornographic material. Yeah. But in the UK, it's like even like Reddit and Discord.

And I think in these U.S. states, it's like specifically Pornhub and those kinds of websites. It's like the idea is good. The implementation is awful. The implementation is a moving target because this blacklist, I guess, of websites is they're never going to catch up. You can never legislate a blacklist. and then and then you don't want to have a white list like an allowed a permitted versus disallowed type type list

I don't know if those terms white list and black lists have become bad terms to use like for example we don't go with allow list and deny list I think that's what we would do these days but that's like no because

evil I wondered what you said the one was going to be there there are a lot of options and I'm not going near any of them like what is I don't know if we talk about this on the show, but, like, in, like, a database architecture, like, the concept was originally taught to me as a master slave architecture. Oh, yeah.

Where you have, where you have a primary... Intuitively think, maybe it was a war about it. Where you have, like, a primary database that's being written to, and then replicas that, let's say, are read only, to, just because... Apparently to allow for scale. But the, but, yeah, that type of thing, I've been in... in like tech workplaces where people are trying to go through and like rename these things and then they're still pushback because it's like the well it's annoying or well it's like

does it really matter blah blah blah this whole thing is kind of highlighting for me like you know rightly so this is an increased degree of diligence right nothing nothing wrong with diligence bad implementation. But I did notice as soon as I heard about this, I felt almost like there was

suddenly I flagged a part of my brain that was, I was not thinking about but I was like, you know, how life can be, I immediately went to like,

well, you know, 15 year olds getting to the pub, you know, but they get on Reddit, just let them go ahead. And they were like, wait,

no, that's insane. I freaked out Americans with this a little while ago. I grew up playing slot machines when I went on holiday. Like, if you are under 18 in the UK,

you can play some slot machines. Like, it's low stakes one. I think it's like five or ten pens. In America, we have one called CSGO loot boxes. Yeah, it's like, no, no, no. But like, this is a physical thing. Like, you go to the seaside, you go to something like, and I guess there's not too much difference between that

and like the ticket machines. But this is like, no, they pay out money. I mean, you can play one in like, in the daytime weather spoons, The kids can use that one that's in the corner. Yeah, but that is technically over it. That's got a little thing that's over 18. Because it's in that, look.

It's in a pub and it's got a higher, I think it's like a pound of play or something like that. Maybe like a chippy then instead of those ones. Yeah, the ones are like 10, 20 pitts seaside arcades. Yeah, I grew up playing those going on holiday. Sometimes I, because I was the sort of nerd who worked out the ones that paid well, there you go.

I would occasionally come back from a day trip to the seaside with more money than I arrived with because I knew I play that machine at the right time. That is not a good lesson to teach you, that's really bad. At 20p is high stakes gambling at age six. Oh, right? And then you get older and you're like,

well, proportionally it's a thousand dollars. But if I said, yeah, that was perfectly normal. That didn't mess me. I don't think it messed me up. Didn't do it. That's the thing about gambling too is that you might not be the type of person. Right.

But the issue is that there's a, I don't know the actual presentest chance, but there's a 15% chance that that becomes an addiction. There is a book by Natasha Dow Shull, I think her name is, called Addiction by Design. And I think it's her PhD thesis turned into a book because the introduction is quite dense. Get past that, you're fine. But it is a long study over years of interviews with problem gamblers in Las Vegas and the machine designers. I thought it was going to be this fairly lighthearted read about how slot designers and casino...

No, it's harrowing. It's not a mechanical, it's more actual anecdotal. It is like kind of how it destroys lies. The thing that I learned from it is that problem gamblers, for the most part, are not trying to win. They are trying to stay in a flow state where they have the button and they have the reels and sometimes it wins and it's this complete hack of the brain's dopamine system. It's the process, not the result. It's the process. It's, yep, I'm going to get to sit here for eight hours and not really exist.

but at the same time like that I think that should be illegal but I also recognize that like betting 10 quid on the outcome of the match right it's fun that's the thing it's sorry I was going to say that that brings up an interesting thing where gambling in the United States

has become more and more legal where sports betting and even because it's a game of skill sports betting I know that he's going to catch the ball But even like if you think about some mobile games that we all play, it feels like gambling because it uses the same mechanics and you're spending money for in-app purchases potentially. This is all the same thing.

Like I, that kind of loot box addiction, whether that's a slot machine or a video game, I do think should be illegal. And I recognize that there are going to be libertarians out there very angry at me. But where do you draw that line? How do you draw that line? I don't know. Not a politician. Speaking of where you draw the line, one thing I, to wrap up this age verification stuff, unfortunately in talking about how it's one thing that to have a sentiment that is agreeable, but the implementation I feel is genuinely impossible. Yes. Because the logical extension of this is video cards now have boob detection. Yeah.

And then that is where they, like, it's like locked out at the heart. Every screen. Hey, the US government tried to do it for encryption. Right. They tried to, the clipper chip. Was that, I might be getting two things confused there, but there was certainly an attempt to require in the 90s that all computers had a little backdoor. Yes, but in then that type of thing is going to continue to.

Is that the clipper chip or was that something else? I don't know. I might, I might throw that one out to. But I do know that the general sentiment of a back door for the good guys is a thing that comes up time and time. again, because it's a very easy concept to agree with, but it is impossible to implement. And it is so odd, I mean, it's not odd, but I under, like, knowing what I know about encryption, you know, when Apple, and I'm not trying to defend this, like, trillion dollar

company, but when, when the FBI is like, Apple, please put a backdoor in the encryption so we can unlock the killer's iPhone, they, they, they, what their response is is, hey, that makes every, all of our security less secure. And I kind of don't believe you that it is only for the killer. And that's the thing, exactly. The way it used to work. Yeah, we should wrap this one up.

Like the way, yeah, clipper chip, 1993, the idea that every computer is going to have a built-in backdoor, it didn't work. That's such a good saying request. Well, remember. I was like, yeah, the worst thing you could do. Oh, they tried it.

Okay, cool. Remember, the world they're coming from was analog. If you want to, if you knew that that's the, the guy from the mob. Right. And we need to listen in on his communications. Then you would go to a court and you would say, yes, you can have a wiretap on his phone

because you have presented this evidence. And someone would have to physically go to the telephone exchange. And it was called a wiretap because it's like button to tap. Yeah. I'm listening. It's like a siphon. Yeah. And someone has to be there.

And I don't know when RICO was introduced, but that became even easier. Yeah. But like that's, that's reasonable, I think, because that's what I grew up with. Like, that is a reasonable thing, but that's not what they're asking for, they're asking for the, basically the contents of someone's external brain to sift through. Yeah. And everyone that they've talked with, no, absolutely not. Because, look, like, like, for example, like another analogy is a search warrant to enter a home.

Yeah. Well, uh, worse comes to worse, worst, they have a battering ram to push open the door. There is no battering ram to beat the encryption until we solve like p equals mp or whatever. Yeah. Until we ban. locks. We give a master key. And so that's literally what it is.

So that's where I was going with this is the government's like, but we should, the good guy should have a master key. And it's like that means they can get everywhere about every, no one has privacy. If they have a good guy to have a master key. We've accidentally put a photo of the master key up. Oh, sorry. Sorry everyone. The CIA and the NSA have all been hacked.

Like they've been hackers. They leave like the USB drives in the public toilet and it lets people like. There is software like. that we used to, the software that we used to spy on like the Iran nuclear program was like leaked by like a teenager and like made put on GitHub. You know what I mean? Like there are like suites of CIA intelligence tools that this is supposed to be so secure or whatever that we now have access to because, uh, because gray hat or you know, whatever hat hackers thought that they were that this was unethical and then did they like tried to battle this like with their you know it's like

the clash of these uh computing ethics and the result was uh we dumped a bunch of these like surveillance tools okay what's to stop that from happening to anything but even more than that you you use the term good guys they're not always good guys all the time yeah oh yeah that's a big quote the good guys thing is the what it's the thing that's hard to disagree with yeah because when you say good guys. You go, oh, yeah, good guys. And then you try to implement good guys, and that's impossible. And you don't mean the monarch in the other country who thinks he's the good guy for killing anyone who dares speak against him. Exactly. As a visa recipient from the U.S. government, I should, you know, I should qualify. They're so cool. They're so good. Well, no,

because Jordan is just, he just loves traditional values. That's why he's in a flannel today. That's why he asked us to wear one. I love. What's it called Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving. I love I love Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. I can't... You love the turkey. I love turkeys. You love it when the president

kills a turkey, or what does he do? Pardons it. He says this one doesn't have to die. He pardons a Turkish guy. I went to a Thanksgiving party once where someone deep fried a turkey. Legend. It was fashionable for a while.

It involves an oil drum. That's such an enormous space. A fire and like a chain to lower the turkey. That's awesome. That's like as to. take execution. The tuck is not live as it goes in, to be clear. No.

But, yeah. But they have put out safety warnings about it every year because of people who don't understand Archimedes' law and who fill the drum up, heat the drum, and then all the boiling oil spills out into the fire. I'm smiling, but that's horrific for everyone involved. You deep-dried that. Now I'm deep-tried. Thanksgiving itself.

One last point is that the U.S. had, you know, the U.S. has all these laws right now about pornography, but the U.S. also has a history of very loosely defining what pornography is. So, like, poetry by a queer poet was at one point considered pornography. And that's why what is lawful is not, like, if something is lawful, that does not necessarily mean it ethical. I grew up with Section 28 in effect, which was a British law that officially meant that teachers in schools could not, I think it was phrased something like promote homosexuality. But in practice, that acted as a full-on restriction. Like that's a fashion state. You could be told to anyone. That was in place until, I think it may have been the early 2000. I'm going to double check when Section 28 was revealed. It was while I was in primary

Because I remember a lodger that my mum had staying with us was celebrating and I didn't understand the context. Yeah. I'm like, I would not be surprised if the UK government tries to do that for trans folks. Absolutely. That's all repealed in 2003. That's crazy. That's crazy. Which, to be clear, is 22 years ago. I'm just going to remind you that is 22 years ago. I could, like, do math. Like an adult. It's also, like, yeah, I don't have anything. It was, um...

No, much as I would love to go on it. Like, the government is not great at listening to things like that, and petitions seem to be going nowhere. And it will always move. There is very little political benefit and a lot of political risk in going, actually, we don't want this but are you sure that's not a headline because that's the headline it doesn't matter what that you would have to be really

careful with the sentence as with everything like the the optimal result may be impossible and there may be a local maximum that it's easy to get stuck in absolutely a world where this

technology is used to block a video nasty what's the difference genuinely England's so Oh, sick. It's just, I feel like it's like a fundamental issue with governance that a lot of... Oh, we're getting deep. Okay.

You're not wrong. That many, many of the correct solutions to things are difficult and not flashy to market. Oh, that very... How marketable an idea is is so important to, like, what gets done. There was a sci-fi story by Greg Egan. I can't remember the name of it. It's in one of his short story collection. where he says that the government departments in the country in the future, I think it's

Australia, are now allowed to use their money for marketing because you get to choose where your tax dollars go specifically. And the military are doing real well. Yeah. And social services aren't. And it was just this little sideline in an all, generally dystopian story. It's like, oh, you're just, you're just going to throw that one in there. One good thing. Thanks. Great. Great. That's actually. sounds really good. Much like the gamblers who turn their brains off to just experience a flow state, I too feel that when I forget about the issues of governance and think instead about

trivial game shows. Excellent segue. Now that's a goodie. Oh, that was good. Tom, do you want to try an alternative? All right. All right. So this is a need to segue from age verification and governance into game shows.

Which is the next thing on our list here. No, I'm going to stick with you, Josh. I do not have any improv comedy skills. I'm leaving that one to you. Well, I would say that there was a flow state when we were on your show. You had plenty of very strong segues. Oh, nicely done. Yeah, that's because they're mostly written for me.

Producer David on Lutrell gives me a script. I was supposed to say, but I want you to give yourself some credit to because while you, I think, are very excellent with a prompter and a script, I think that it gives you comfort to go off. That's true. Because you can always come back to it. One of the things about running lateral is you have to simultaneously be playing the game. Yes.

But also, has that person said enough? There's this worked. And we need to make sure the questions are all about the same length. But we edit well. Like Julie is our main editor. I think that maybe something you definitely can give yourself credit for, for like kind of the entire Tom extended universe. things is that you have a very distinct house style, not just in the production, like you say,

it's extremely precise and extremely consistent, but even in your delivery, the way you communicate, the type of vocabulary you use, the accessibility of it. So I will give you a little bit of background here, which I think I've mentioned this in my newsletter. This is not a scoop, but I am going to be starting to film stuff again soon. It's probably not out until next year. Well, I have a clipper chip installed. In all of his cameras.

So I will be streaming a live feed on my Twitter. But the reason I'm making videos soon. The reason I mention this is I'm going to be working with a new edit team. Yeah. And it's going to be a different format. And we've got to figure out how to translate that house style. A different whole, was the fact that it's a different kind of, the return was because it's something fresh.

It's something fresh and new. It's not a massive departure, but it's a bit of a different style. The different editing teams, oh, I need to, I need to write down the rules that I don't know that's just in my head. That was a big part of us, like, building a team was just, how do you codify the intuition? It's not like there's a correct answer, but there is a, this is my style answer. And it's like the best result is likely 25% of that should change. I have, the new person will know better.

I've had to give an edit note once. And I will never. Just once. I will never give details on this. it was an impeccable edit there was absolutely nothing wrong that I could point to this is for one of the comedy shows

I just wasn't funny or at least it was it was just it wasn't right and like it was impeccable it was great there was zero problems I could point to it just like oh we're not funny anymore did we just mess this up I said oh no it's just someone with a it's just a different editor on this one

they followed the recipe to the letter and the it was just a slightly different recipe different stuff like I couldn't point to anything wrong I had to go ask, can we, can we make sure else? I do think a lot of the, and this is something that Austin, one of our editors who's here, we've talked about is like the actual skill set of the editing is something that you can learn, but the finding the funny or finding the nucleus of something, I much prefer a sloppy edit that can find the right stuff.

We're doing the thing where we're on a podcast, talking about how we make a podcast. We've got to cut that off. The thing about what we do. It always happens. So the thing about talking to my friends on camera is that it's so hard and I have the hardest job. Yeah, I was just thinking about that. We talked about the military. I'm essentially a Navy SEAL for podcasting and making, you know, going like, what if it was in the sheets?

To make this meta instead of being, you know, three people talking about podcasting while podcasting are talking about creating while creating. Let's look at panels of other people. That's the same way. Talking about. All right. I'll throw one out too. Okay. Look at this.

Okay. Look at this fucking shit. So you have assembled, what's our light out subject then? What are we got? Well, you are the czar of game shows, I think it's fair to say. You said that. You did not say that. You said, I ruled with an iron fist over all things game. I am the taskmaster. Oh, I'm not. I'll tell you what, I am, I'm almost angry about how good taskmaster is as a show. Yeah. That is a perfect format executed impeccably. Like, That is so good.

Don't watch the American version. Oh, yeah. It's almost too... Because I imagine we've exactly the same. Grew up. The main thing I watched was panel shows for so many years, and you can cycle through so many series, but to the point where you'll see them all

and have forgotten what you saw before, if you can see Jimmy Carr's teeth for 40 hours a week. No problem. There is a particular tenor and tone of that that definitely kind of infiltrate in my brain. But Taskmaster feels like it should have been created 50 years ago? Right.

It's like the platonic ideal of the game show. Absolutely. What did you grow up watching, like game show or panel show-wise? So it was all very traditional in the same way that I think we just kind of import a lot of US formats. We had, I think, card sharks. We called it to play your cards right. We had a match game, but we called it Blankety Blank.

Oh, is that the same thing? That's the same thing. Oh, I've never seen Match game. But it's blankety blank. We had a lot of US formats, and then it got to the 90s, and we started exporting formats. Who wants to be a millionaire was British. The weakest link, I think British. I think so, yeah.

Then the reality shows came along. They were originally Dutch. Big Brother, I think, was Dutch. I think Endemol and that production company. Like, when you said the phrase, Tsar of game shows, all I will say is if I would go on a game show, my specialist subject would probably be game shows. Yes, that would be your university challenge tier focal point. I got to do university challenge.

So this is basically college bowl. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like quiz bowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The most nervous college students in the world. Right. But they do an alumni version at Christmas. And, like, I'm not famous enough to go on, like, big celebrity shows.

But the list of people who are okay going on what is basically one of the hardest game shows in the world. A lot of celebrities aren't really, really up for that. So, oh, he's an alumni of York. Do you want to... Yes, I did make the team when I was at uni. I'm absolutely going in for that. This is my chance. I forgot the name

of the... It is a hyper-specialist. It's shot like inside the actor's studio in a black void one-on-one into his... Mastermind. Mastermind. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the idea of going on mastermind and my specialty subject being the Simpsons.

Yeah. Then I would watch Mastermind think pretty, I'm pretty confident I could research all these things and then they would do general knowledge and ask a collection

of hyper-focused people about like which one's milk and which one's cream. And they're like, oh, I know. Mastermind was translated to the US

because it's dark to you guys but it was an ESPN sports show and it was sports nerds with a specialist subject on one thing and then a general... Is that around the horn? No, no, no. Okay, do you know what it was called?

No, but there was a slightly brighter studio. It wasn't themed after a World War II interrogation, which is what mastermind was. That's so crazy. Two minute drill. That's a subject more American. That is such a specific sports thing. Yeah, yeah. Braid fight.

Oh, yeah. It was absolutely, it was more aggressive. They had, I think, five questioners from various. sports. Yeah, they really went in on that. It was a very, it was a very American interrogation. I always thought I would be good at Jeopardy until they asked questions about opera, which is a lot. And I'm like, I got nothing. Well, good luck, because I have prepared. Oh, no. Um, Pavarotti. Correct. Yelling. Good singing. What is opera? No, I'm asking, what is it?

I was always enjoyed the weakest link as a kid. And then as I got a little bit older, it was replaced by fear of Anne Wittaker because I went from like, he-he, look, she'd be bully, and then I would see somebody closer to my age and I'd like, don't be bully me. Don't tell me that I wore bad shoes for the show or whatever.

Did you say Anne Widdickham? My misdemeot. Anne Robinson. Anne Robinson. And Wittickham was the politician who went on to present a game show called Cleverdick's. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Remember after, Jacob, we watched like the Super Bowl. The floor. Thank you. Have you heard about the floor?

So it's a current game show of... Is everyone like ABC or some major network? It's on a major network. It's Rob Lowe is the host. And I was on vacation with my friends. We were all staying in a little house together. And we saw a clip on TikTok of the floor. We were like, what the hell is this?

Because they'll show a photo of strawberries and the lady dings in goes, Strawberries. Yes, I have seen a clip of this. Why is this a game show? And it's like everyone, everyone is an area expert in something, but then, uh... So you have a piece of the floor that's like your expertise. And you're trying to conquer the whole floor.

But it starts very easy. Okay. And some of the expertise are like groceries, toiletries. Right. Like, yeah. Roman leaders. But so... But then it goes to physics.

Yeah. And apparently this. According to, I don't know what site this is, but according to this headline, it was created in Holland. That makes sense. There are a lot of Dutch producers of game shows. Weirdly, a lot of stuff's come out of it. I think the mole came out of there. I think the traitors came out of there.

I say this is like Sweden and music producers. Yeah, kind of. The one I've seen in terms of translations, have a look for something called Beat the Bridge. Beat the Bridge? It's a game show network one. Beat or beep? Beat. Beat.

This is a UK show called Bridge of Lies, which is, A, a better title. Yeah. And B has a, like, a complicated grid on the floor. Almost like a grid of hexagons. The correct answers you have to step on, the bad ones you have to avoid. There's a time, there's all sorts of rules.

And it's actually kind of complicated. It's presented by a soap act. I think it's... Is it was a Kemp? Oh, wow. Yeah, that would be great. Right. Oh, have they taken it down

because it was mocked too much. Beat the bridge. Oh, we must be able to find a hidden. Beat the bridge is a series of 50-50 choices on the bridge. And they're all quite easy. And this magic LED floor is not this thing that contestants

have to plot around and go, oh, well, I can go back there and get some more money because I've got three minutes left on the clock. So if I'll do it. 50-50 choice. Here's the next question.

It's just the set. Here's the next question. What's your favorite meal? The reason I mention is, Someone linked it to you, which said, look at the first shot of this. The first shot is a crash zoom from the wide shot of the studio into the host's face. And it wobbles a little. And they don't quite get it right.

And there's like an awkward half second before he does his introduction. Like, you could have reshot that. You could, you could absolutely have reshot that. But it's game show network. It's like, we did not. It's the first draft will be, have to be good enough. That's the virtuoso element, right? People think shows like this would be easy to make,

but it's that tiny amount of precision that keeps you immersed. This is why we are holding microphones, right? You don't shoot for the moon and miss. Like, you make the best version of what you can make. Yeah. And if you're going to make a TV show, you make a TV show. If you're going to make a podcast, you make a podcast. Yeah.

We were going to show clips of game shows, but it turns out that you have invited someone on who's... I just want to... Your brain is clips. So maybe we can do this on Savoy's Nights, are our Patreon exclusive podcast, where Tom will be joining us. I'm also interested in a fun, like, little interest area of mine is game show fraud. Yeah.

And there's a lot of interesting... We're steaming mad. Controversies and going back to like the 50s and like radio call-in shows and trying to make a show more popular by having a popular character that people follow along with. Yep. So maybe we'll talk about that over on Sabloy's Knights. I'm loving hearing about this. This is all new to me. And also, potentially, we'll look at the clips then. Yeah, maybe we'll look at them over there.

So, but Tom, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It's always interesting on these podcasts, where it's like, and we have hit time. That's it. It's great because someone is doing their dishes right now, and they're like, shit, I have to find a new episode. My intrinsic, oh, we need a beginning and the middle and end,

and we need to call back to the thing we said. I can't remember what we set up at the start. Oh, I don't think I... It's the improv brain. We went back to... You know what we kind of did. We went back to British game shows. We started with, like, what you've been doing in London.

It's almost a full. Almost a fool. As a couple of patriots. It's nice to wrap it up right in place. God save the queen. Get the hell out of this country. A king. King.

God save Charles. Oh, yeah. He needs all the help he's got. God needs to step. Thanks again, Tom. Well, do you want to promote anything? Lateral. That's an episode.

There was an episode of Lampus. with these two on it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So we went on Tom's game show slash podcast lateral. It was an incredible time. I had quite the joy.

It was a couple episodes, actually. And so you can check those out. We'll have the link in the description. But Tom, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for the invite. We end every episode of Sad Boys with a particular phrase. We love you. And we're sorry.

Boom. Bang. Bang. All right. Sorry. She's dead looking that future girl Future girl yeah we're on now Take my money go away

Oh you wanted Girl too rich for me