The Rest Is Entertainment - Did Mark Zuckerberg steal Richard's Books?

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Did Meta use millions of copyrighted books to train their latest AI chatbot? Has Amazon Prime struck gold with its latest comedy format 'Last One Laughing'? Will YouTubers ever crack traditional TV? Richard and Marina delve into the murky world of LibGen, the Russian illegal archive that has ripped both host's back catalog of books and the possibility that Facebook has used it to train their AI chatbot. 'Last One Laughing' is the Jimmy Carr hosted hit for Amazon Prime, have the streamers finally worked out how to make great comedy for TV? And is Bob Mortimer the UK's funniest comedian? Finally, we've been given a sneak peak at HBO Max's Jake and Logan Paul documentary series for HBO. Why can't influencers draw their loyal Gen Z fans to watch their reheated formats on TV? Recommendations: Marina - The Entertainment Strategy Guy (Substack) & Graydon Carter - When The Going Was Good (Book) Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Assistant Producer: Aaliyah Akude Video Producer: Jake Liascos Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Visit Sky.com to find out more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Sky, which has great TV lovers we are delighted about. It's fantastic news. I'll be honest though, I'm also a fan of Netflix, of Disney+, of iPlayer, and this is supposed to be an advert for Sky. Well, the good thing about Sky is that it's not just good for Sky shows, it's basically an all-you-can-eat buffet for TV lovers. Mmm, buffet. If you've got something specific in mind?

What about that thing you were talking about the other day? Memento Mori. It's a one-off drama some BBC I play if you like that sort of thing based on the novel by Muriel Spark that's nice So it's got everything the niche stuff the mainstream stuff It's got all the apps you like if you want to go straight to watching the best the TV has to offer without the fuss Of searching sky is a game changer. Just go to sky.com to find out more game changer. Just go to sky.com to find out more.

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde and me Richard Osmond. Hello Marina. How are you Richard? I'm all right. I'm not too bad. How are you? I'm not too bad. Thank you. I'm not too bad. We've got a full banquet to discuss today. Have we just can I fill in a couple of things before we do that? Firstly, on our bonus episode when we were talking about the Bee Gees walking out on Clive Anderson I said that Barry Gibb had been walking up and down outside Clive Anderson's dressing room Punching his fist into his hand. It was Robin Gibb. It was Robin Gibb doing that not Barry It's a great episode that if you if you haven't heard it. Also when we talked about Will Smith and the Wolverhampton Halls He's playing and you suggested maybe we do a sitcom because

he's playing there, Joe Pasquale is playing there, Jeremy Kyle is playing there. Dara O'Briain wrote in to say if it helps Marina sitcom the Wolverhampton Halls dressing rooms are the only ones in the country that have inbuilt saunas. Oh my god well that's a location. That's a hit isn't it? That interior sauna. Yes. Right I'm already thinking about this great okay well I'll keep you Oh my god, well that's a location. That's a hit, isn't it? That interior sauna, Wolverhampton. Right, I'm already thinking about this, great. Okay, well, I'll keep you posted on how it's progressing as a development project. This week, what are we talking about?

We are talking about... We're talking about Libgen and Meta. Libgen is the database, pirated database of many, many books, millions, that has been basically wholesale scraped by, in to train meta as AI Llama 3. Have meta stolen from us all? We'll talk about that. We're going to talk about Last One Laughing, which is a hit for Amazon Prime. Finally a comedy entertainment hit on streaming. Does this change everything? It just might.

And it's a terrific show as well. We're going to talk all about that and about Million Dollar Secret, which is done a similar thing for Netflix as well. We're going to talk all about that and about Million Dollar Secret, which is done a similar thing for Netflix as well. And we're also going to talk about YouTubers being brought in by streamers or channels, whether or not they do bring their audiences, whether YouTubers are saving TV, Beast Games, The Sidemen had a show inside on Netflix. And I have seen episode one of an absolutely cursed thing about Jake and Logan Paul called Paul American that is on Max. You can't watch it in the UK yet but allow me to have watched it for you.

Let's talk first shall we about Meta which owns Facebook and what have you. First of all the Atlantic who had a pretty good week last week. Yes they were the guys who were on the signal chat. The link that they were added to the signal Chat. But what I also did was publish a search tool that allows authors to see whether their works, whether their books or even their research papers are on something called Library Genesis, shortened to LibGen. It's a pirated website of 7.5 million books and 81 million stolen research papers. Yes, it comes out of Russia.

Everyone knows that it existed. If your books are ever pirated in other countries, which they often are, this is often the source lipgen. They've been sued a number of times, they've never paid a penny because it's very hard to work out exactly who they are, where they are. So it is definitively an illegal operation and it holds copyrighted versions of lots and lots and lots and lots of books. And if you've ever written anything at all, you can put your name, go to the Atlantic article, which is great. You put your name in and see if your book is in there. Now, listen, that happens. There's all sorts of

pirate operations out there. Anytime we do anything in television, in listen, that happens, there's all sorts of pirate operations out there, anytime you do anything in television or film, anyone's going to pirate it. However, this site was then used by people who possibly shouldn't use it. Well by Meta, now there is a case proceeding through the American courts which was brought by Sarah Silverman, Tanehisi Coates, Andrew Sean Grier and a handful of others. They believed that their work had been used in an unauthorized fashion, you know, basically the copyright had been breached in order to train Lama3, which is Meta's AI. Good name for AI by the way, Lama3. I will give them that. I will stand up in court and

admit Lama3 is a good name. Throw them one bone. So, you know, if you want to be legally watertight, LibGen have stolen and Meta have used those stolen goods. And there's one other website that also, which is called Annie's Archive, which is a very similar thing to LibGen, it's got most of the same works on it, and they've used both. And again, they've been sued, Macmillan have sued them before and not made any money because they go into hiding. So lots of people are stealing here. Well, there's a memo cited in this filing with a reference to an escalation to MZ.

Now, some suggest this could be Mark Zuckerberg. So if it's not him, I don't know. Wow, everyone's trying to find MZ who did this. Apparently, they say it's quicker and cheaper and books are much more important than data, just stuff that's available on the web. So this is the point. So why are they stealing books? And the thing is that they're not stealing books so they can do a copy of your book. They can do, is what's happening and they will do. But what they were basically saying is we've got to train llama three. And the

best way to do that is via pros and that's via pros from, as you say, from articles, from books, from all sorts of things and They've started looking into licensing these things from publishers. That's the first thing they did. They said oh look We got there's all these books Let's look at how expensive that might be how easy that might be and in all these internal communications It becomes apparent that it is not particularly cheap and it is not particularly easy parent that it is not particularly cheap and it is not particularly easy. In the communication someone says, look, it is really, really important for Meta to get these books ASAP. Another person on the email chain said, look, I've spoken to publishers and this seems unreasonably

expensive. It's so sorry, you've had to pay for something. And also incredibly slow. So that's the situation they were in. And so they're going, well, what do we do? And then someone with the initials MZ, we don't know who it is, but certainly- It's escalated to a man with initials, or it might be a lady, MZ. It could be. It has apparently has then given the go ahead to Scrape Libgen, which as we say is a deeply, deeply, deeply illegal website. And there are even people saying on these email chains, torrenting on my company laptop

feels a bit wrong. Yeah. But it's like, don't worry, MZ, whoever he may be, or she might be, has approved this. Clearly this has occurred. And Metra are now saying, oh, it's fair use. Now fair use is a sort of technical term. They say that anyone that uses it, you know, authors are influenced by others, authors all the time, whatever Llama 3 does with this is going to transform the world,

so it will become something new in the same way that, you know, you're influenced by Midsummer Night's Dream, but you're not actually Stephen Shakespeare, which is another reminder that these are the worst people in the world. Yeah, because by the way, what they're saying, by the way, is true. I mean, you can, if you know, I can read an Ian Rankin novel and write an Ian Rankin novel, you know, I would never do it as well as him, but I can, I can ape it in the same way that he could do the same to me. That's all doable. You can't copyright an idea. If you want to write a book about before pensioners in a retirement home, you know, solving murders, you absolutely can.

You can do it. You can't copyright an idea, you can't copyright a vibe, but what you can do is copyright the text of your book. Okay, that's what you can do and that's what everyone does. Richard, are all your books on this web? Oh my god, all of them. Every single one is on LibJ. Every single British one. I've done two books, mine are as well. Everybody's books are. You'd have been gutted if they weren't. If you put your name on it.

Everybody's books are on this. And also the foreign language versions are on it. Everybody's books are on there. And also the foreign language versions are on there. There's the Danish version there, the German version, the Catalan version. I mean, there's lots and lots of versions. There's even like when Zandra and I used to do Pointless Christmas Cash-in books, even they are there. I'm glad that they've been using to train AI. So the argument is, I have a copyright in my book. If you want to quote my book, other than in a review, if you want to quote my book or use a chunk of my book or use the artwork of the book or anything like that, you ask

my agent if it's for a charity or something, we'll just say yes and you can have it, but we have to say yes, we have to have permission. And if it's for commercial use, we'll say yes or no and we'll then charge you. Now Meta have taken the copyright and the text of my books and of everyone else's books. They have not asked, if they had asked I would have said no. They have not paid definitely and they are doing it definitively. I mean it's absolutely out of the question. They've done it for their own commercial gain. Well that's what's interesting because actually copyright theft or copyright breach or whatever isn't generally a civil matter. Yeah. But

it becomes a criminal matter if it's large-scale and the material in our country in the UK and the material is used in business with the intent to profit then it can become a criminal offence supposedly punishable by up to ten years in prison or an unlimited fine and that's under the something called the Digital Economy Act. I'll tell you what, whoever, we don't know who MZ is in this email chain, but whoever that person is must be worried. There is a police intellectual property crime unit within the Met, actually they sit in the City of London Police and they have an ongoing operation which is called Operation

Creative which is about the theft of creative copyright. People are being stolen from, and we should say again that you, JK Rowling, people like that, you're not representative of authors. Most authors work incredibly hard for very small amounts of money. I can't remember what they say the average author makes. It's about £7,000 a year. It's about £7,000 a year, I was going to say. They've poured their heart and soul into these things and they are being stolen. Stolen.

And we can see that they're being stolen. It's often a legal website and they haven't asked. They haven't asked permission and they've done this. Now, it seems to me when I hear things like, you know, I know I keep coming back to this, but when I hear the Culture Secretary giving an interview about Gino D'Acampo, what about giving an interview about this? It's like there's been a break in at the houses of all the most famous authors. And by the way, tons of authors who are nothing.

Every author who lives on your street. Yeah, every single person. And they have done this. Now, the trouble is, is that the government, you know, they're trying to relax laws in this very way. And because they're going to say that they want there to be an exception for a text and data mining. Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, says that this would really help and we're not going to move forward with AI unless we allow this. And obviously, masses of creators were opposed to this. And the consultation period ends. And it seems they're going in one direction. I have to say after this, I mean, where are they? This is a genuinely awful thing to have happened.

Yeah, I agree. And listen, I get it. If I'm a government, I get it because you have to attract as much AI money as possible. It's not going away. It's not going anywhere. For the, for if you're Metta, which is a, you know, got a market capitalisation of over a trillion dollars, I get that you have to keep up with the, you know, the other AI companies, you know, those magnificent seven companies, they literally, virtually

every single gain in the stock market in the US and the UK last year came from AI related companies. This is an absolute train. And Chris Lohan, who is the, I think he's the Global Affairs Chief of Open AI, who will also not blame this in this, what we're concentrating on for now. He said, well, no, look, you sort of have to let us do this because, you know, the Chinese are doing and the Russians are doing it. So, you know, you're going to have autocrats stealing your stuff or us.

Well, open AI of course were very upset when they felt that DeepSeek had copied their work. I mean, they were really upset about it. They said, oh my God, did someone scrape your work without permission? I can't bear it for you. I get all of it. I absolutely understand all of it. I understand why culturally it's happening. I understand for business reasons why it's happening.

So anytime you mention this at all, it gets obfuscated by a million people coming in and saying, yes, but, yes, but, you know, but people can copy people and, you know, we do have to get on with AIR. So forget all of that. Not interested in any argument at all around it, because there's a million arguments we can have and a million brilliant things that AI is going to do. So I'm not interested in any of it. What I'm interested in is that Meta, and there's an email chain that said it,

said, we want to have books. It is expensive and time consuming to do so. And they then scraped copyrighted works from lots and lots and lots of British and American authors. But let's worry about British people for now. Listen, if Metra have been unlucky, I apologize to them if this is just a mere misunderstanding, but it really, really, really looks like you've scraped stolen material. There are greater crimes in the world as well. You don't need to tell me that. That's absolutely fine. But we're an entertainment podcast and we're talking about books and in the world

of books and in the world of authors and it doesn't seem currently to be any redress for that and there should be. Are you going to do something? Are you going to, are you going to find? It's hard to know what to do. What could you do? I know. Because you could spend your entire life taking meta to court. I mean, this is, this is the culture we currently live in, in that people can sort of do whatever they want if they have enough size and enough scale and are then brazen enough to say, no, no, no, no, it's fine what we did.

No, no, sorry, you've misunderstood what we've done. They've done it now. They've done it. They've done it now. That's the trouble with all of these things is that, you know, you can't sort of remove the inputs because it's done and it's trained. And you know, they're doing it to lots of other industries, by the way, but as I say, we're an entertainment podcast, so it's interesting to talk about this specific example of what

they've done. What are we to do? And it feels like there's absolutely nothing we can do. It feels like there's going to be no recourse at all. HarperCollins, they were offered £2,000 for a three-year licence to AI their works, and some authors took them and I don't blame them, I would take that money. They're not looking for most books because they want to copy books. They're looking for books because they want their language model to be good and books tends to be the best place to find good prose. You know, that's what they're doing. And if you can make some money out of it, then make some money out of it. Please God make some money out of it because most of us are going to

not make a single penny. By the way, I do understand, you know, you've got to be on the AI train, but you mustn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And that's why occasionally you do have to as creators just say, no, look, we do get it and we want as much AI money in the UK as we possibly can. And you know, it's going to decimate so many of what we currently know as the creative industries, but it's also going to create other interesting creative industries. And we'd rather that was in the UK than it was elsewhere. So I absolutely understand it.

The Society of Authors has put together a letter which I've signed. I never signed open letters, but this I just thought, yeah, listen, we've all been robbed from and Kazoo Ishiguro signed the letter. So I thought, well, if Kazoo Ishiguro sign a letter, then I'm going to sign it as well. But what can they do? What can any of us do apart from try and put a bit of pressure on the government? But I just the case that's proceeding through the US US courts is significant and clearly it's only because of discovery During that case that you know about this would you consider being part of a sort of class action here? Yeah

But what's what's the end game, you know, they not going to pay a significant amount of copyright money to half a million different authors. That's not going to happen. So what is it that we can do? I would be comfortable if we were able to sue and get a very, very large amount of money which goes into some sort of trust, some sort of charitable trust, and work for authors and work for the people trying to get into the publishing industry, you know, something, some big kind of amount of money that could do some good. But we watch this space and, you know, anyone who is interested, you know, do get in touch with us. But it feels like an impossible task, I would say. But yeah, you know, just like someone who goes into a bank with a gun and steals a load

of money I mean that's what someone has done I'm aware that copyright theft is different to bank robbery I'm using as a hypothetical example let's chase the bank robbers and you know I'm listening I'm very very comfortable with late stage capitalism you know always happened I mean that's you know I've my whole life has been spent you know working in places where there's IP and there's copyright and all that stuff and I've exploited my own stuff, you know, many times. I'm happy to do it. I understand how people do it. I understand how the industry works. I get all of that stuff.

Well, we have got something celebratory you'll be glad to hear after the break. Should we go to some adverts? Yeah, let's do that. Come on capitalism, do your best. This episode is brought to you by Sky where you can watch unmissable shows which includes the new season of the multiple Emmy award winning Hacks starring Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder. We love Hacks so much. Absolutely love it.

I'm so looking forward to this new series. For people who don't know Hacks, Marina, talk us through it a little bit. It's focused on the relationship between the older comedian who's played by Jean Smart, Deborah Vance, who's one of those real old showbiz troopers. She plays Vega, she does residency, she's sort of, yeah, almost like a Joan Rivers-y type character. Exactly. Old school. She's the boomer and Hannah Imbinder is kind of Gen Z-er. It's really interesting on the stuff between the ages. Yeah, so she plays Ava Daniels who essentially becomes Deborah Vanceson's writer. So she writes for very cool, very hip things. Having sort of been cancelled for a joke at the start.

So we start in the culture war and we continue in it and but what I love about the show particularly is the absolute reverence for comedy and the the graft and the craft of it and what a tough kind of man's world it remains definitely definitely and so how hard it is to what a tough kind of man's world it remains. Definitely, definitely. And so how hard it is to be a woman in that male dominated industry. Yeah, amazing on showbiz, amazing on comedy, amazing on the industry, but also just the relationship

between the two of them is a really lovely generational, sort of, it's like a sitcom thing. It's very dramatic, but a lot of comedy in there as well. They've got some terrific gas stars in this season. They've got Helen Hunt, Tony Goldwyn, Eric Balfour and obviously the returning cast who are pillars. Yep, the mix of comedy and drama is spot on. You can watch season four of the Emmy award-winning hacks right now on Sky. Welcome back everybody. Now, as promised, we would...

I'm Sarah Churchwell, author, journalist, and academic. And I'm David Aldoushoga, historian and broadcaster. And together, we're the hosts of Goalhanger's latest podcast, Journey Through Time. We're going to be looking at hidden social histories behind famous chapters from the past. Like, what was it like to actually live during Prohibition? Or to have been there on the ground for the Great Fire of London? We'll be uncovering it all.

And we'll have characters and stories that have been forgotten, but shouldn't have been. This week, we've got one of my favorites, Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for US president all the way back in 1872, 50 years before American women could even vote. She was also the first woman to address Congress and to open a brokerage on Wall Street, where she made a fortune. It's an incredible story, but it is also full of contradictions. She was a trailblazing woman in politics, but later in life she also turned to the pseudoscience of eugenics.

So join us on Journey Through Time and hear a clip from the Victoria Woodhull story at the end of this episode. Love to celebrate something which is something of a hit for Alison Prime. Last one laughing. Last one laughing. The world of comedy entertainment has been Prime. Oh, I know. Last one laughing. Last one laughing. The world of comedy entertainment has been absolutely eviscerated recently. It was one of the areas that's absolutely disappeared. You know, panel shows, those sorts of things have absolutely gone. And Amazon launched Last One Laughing.

And it is a palpable hit. It's a format where essentially you must not laugh. Jimmy Caron. They put a selection of comedians, and by the way, the cast list is incredible, in a sort of studio house as it were for, this will come to this bit because this is genius, for honestly like half a day. Yes, for six hours. And they've got six episodes out of this.

And the point is not to laugh. And they have to do various turns, they're involved in various challenges and that they're not allowed to laugh at each other and this is extremely difficult because people like Bob Mortimer. Is in there. I want to do. I mean these are people. They just they can't not be funny. What's wonderful about it actually first of all you're right it's a new way of using comedians in a way that we haven't seen before. It throws up all these pairings that you haven't seen before. I mean, I would now take a Richard

Iowadi and Bob Mortimer buddy and the thing. Could be a cop show. Just whatever they want to put them into. It's absolutely brilliant. But this is based on a format that's been around a long time, right? It's really successful all around the world. Yeah, it's a show originally it was called Last One Laughing. It originally had the title Hitoshi Matsumoto Presents Documental, which they changed the title for the UK. From the Japanese one, that's good. So that's a Japanese show. The format, very, very similar, funny people, six hours, a few tasks, a few challenges. Last one who doesn't laugh wins. It has been enormously

successful around the world, this show. It's become Last One Laughing in Australia and Canada and Ireland and all sorts of places in 23 territories. But Amazon Prime decided to do the UK version of it. And it's definitely a punt. There's been all sorts of these shows that have come out and done nothing. But the top 10 in streaming this week is all, is four episodes of Adolescence and six episodes of Last One Laughing. There might be a Reacher in there as well. It's an antidote to Adolescence, I would say. It's one of those shows that in certain territories has not worked at all. And in certain territories, Italy is a very good example. It's huge. And in the UK, it's become huge as well. And that all comes down

to how well it's made. This one is just so beautifully put together. It's made by Zepetron and Initial. And Zepetron and some of the gang there, Ruth Phillips, Chris Cohen, Richard Cohen, who've made Cats Does Countdown, Would I Like To, those shows, they know what they're doing. They're trusted by this group of people, which is why you've got such a great cast.

The cast is absolutely A-list. It is, so yeah, so Jimmy Carr is hosting with Roshan Conaty and they've gone for the rather likable, silly side of comedy. People who actually are funny in normal everyday conversation and people who then can make each other laugh as well. It's sort of amazing because actually the circuit can be so hateful. Yes. And they all really love and respect each other. But imagine they think, oh my God, you're going to be such a problem because I'm just

not going to be able to keep this right face. There's wonderful things all the way through where Bob Mortimer will start a conversation with Lou Sanders saying, Lou has to walk away because she knows he's trying to. Because they're all trying to get each other to laugh all the way through. But what happens when you get a very smart production company like Zepetron and Initial who make it and what happens, Amazon Prime's head of unscripted Kat Lynch as well as also knows how to make these shows. So what you get is just little things.

If you watch the Irish version, it's Graham Norton hosts it. And again, it's a great show, but he is by himself. And the first two episodes, no one gets knocked out. So it's just Graham sitting there. So by having- Having to do the Eurovision chat recently. Having two presenters, immediately they can be laughing all the way through and chatting. Loads and loads of format points which aren't in otherwise,

the head-to-heads which are particularly brutal in terms of making people laugh. Can I just say, it is so gripping this, by the way. It's that you feel like you're actually watching like a lot of these things, like a lot of unscripted programming, you end up feeling when it works well that you're watching something with the structure of a drama. Because you are watching, waiting for denouements, you're waiting, you know, like it can Richard Ayoade be broken.

Yes, exactly. So you're waiting to see it. That's what works really, really well. And it is a real antidote to, I suppose, you know, the kind of criticism at the end of so many panel shows and all that sort of thing is that there's a smugness. Maybe studio laughter, maybe it's whatever. And obviously there's none of that here. So it's a real, it feels very different, very paired back in a completely odd way. Yeah, it's very, very funny. And there are moments as soon as someone gets knocked out or gets given a yellow card,

if you laugh once, you get a yellow card. If you laugh twice, you get a red card. And in those moments where people have been given the cards, all bets are off and they are chatting and laughing. So, you know, when the game is not on, they can laugh. So you can see how much in normal life they would be laughing at each other. And then the second the green buzzer goes in there,

they're on again. You just see like Rob Beckett almost like swallowing his tongue. Because he just he can't Rob Beckett almost completely shuts down in this because he just gets to the point where he goes I cannot engage with anybody here and the producers are very very good at forcing people to engage and there's a you can play a joker at any time and your joker is you put on a performance. Bring your little suitcase of tricks.

Yes, exactly. And everyone has to sit and watch. You're not allowed to turn away. You have to watch. And Bob's and Joe Wilkinson's are especially great. Joe Wilkinson does a speech about the RNLI. Which is... I can't actually not laugh just thinking about.

But that's the other thing is that it is in a very modern way, it is incredibly suited to going viral. These little moments that can be clipped and put on social media, which I have seen all week. That I think is very interesting. The other thing I will say is, maybe it's just me, maybe it's places I walked, maybe it's buses I saw. I've never seen an ad spend like it. Seriously, there's a really cursed like travelator under the ground of Waterloo station. And I went on it twice in a week. And the entire travelator all down the side is massive pictures of every single person's head. And it was last one laughing like, well, my children were like, Oh my god, I've seen so much advertising for

this on YouTube. Everyone, everyone had, they have thrown the kitchen sink at us. And by the way, advertising is meaningless if you don't have a good show. Oh no, yeah, but they've really gone all out to make people know that this thing is happening. The virality of it, the natural virality of those moments is sort of perfect. But can we go back again to the fact that it's basically six hours, they're all in there for six hours and they've got six episodes out of it. It's amazing. I mean, that's the dream. because if you look up Big Brother or something, you've got to be in a house for kind of 10 weeks or something. Yeah, it's six hours. It's 52 cameras. So it's not a cheap setup. There's 52 cameras in there.

There are, I was talking to Reeve Phillips and Kat Lynch about the show and how they put it together. There are spotters in the gallery, there are ten spotters for each of the contestants and the job of the spotter is literally they've got a camera trained on their contestant the entire way through just to see if somebody just walks into a corner and starts laughing. So they've got these people doing that. But it's, you know, everyone working on it is a traditional proper comedy entertainment production person and there's been so little work around. And so to have this and to have it as a hit and to have comedy really, really working on streaming is such a treat for everybody. And with a show that is so big hearted and so good natured and so silly and so unsynaical and it's not sort of pranks or people being mean to each other.

It's just a lovely, big, dumb, silly show. But yeah, listen, I feel like it cost a lot of money. I'll say that, not just in marketing. You can see, and also that caliber of talent, that's not coming cheap either. But you know, they only have to be there for a day. They'll definitely have a season two. I mean, yeah, I mean, without doubt, and I'm already looking forward to it. I just, when I watch it, I would be laughing within a second.

The minute Bob Watermore walks through that door, everyone's just like, oh no, I can't. They're like, God, here we go. But again, they cast it very well. They made sure that various people had their absolute nemesis there. It's lovely. All of those, you can see that. Yeah, they all have a very different comic energy. It does make you really think about the business and how people, I mean, she's got such a chaotic energy. I've been on her podcast, I absolutely love you, Luz Sander, she knows this. And it's such a chaos energy that it's very, very difficult to deal with. So really interesting to see if formatted entertainment can really start working on

the streamers. It's worked a lot in the form of dating, so dating shows have been very, very popular on the streamers, but less so in the world of formatted entertainment. Netflix have also got Million Dollar Secret out this week. Again, it's a bunch of people. They all go to a really beautiful villa on a huge lake in Canada. It's gorgeous. And one of them, they all go to their rooms, they will open up a trunk and one of them's got a million dollars in there. And essentially it's who ends up with that million dollars. So it's got that kind of traitors vibe. People say it's a rip-off of traitors, but- Well, that ITV hotel fortune

Fortune hotel, it's very similar to that. But to all of those people, I say genuinely that the traitors is a format. Every single company in Britain had a version of the traitors and has done for 10 or 15 years. It's the oldest format in the world. Every production office, everyone plays it. Everyone goes, how can we do this as a series? So when Traders is a hit, everyone's gone, well, should we repitch that thing? We've had for years and years and years. And so they haven't actually, Million Dollar Secret has a couple of things which the Traders

doesn't have. For example, the person who's got the million has to perform certain tasks during the day. So there are clues. But yeah, Last One Laughing and Million Dollar Secret, I thought great, you know, both ideas example the person who's got the million has to perform certain tasks during the day so there are clues but yeah last one laughing and million dollar secret I thought great you know both ideas coming out of the UK both employing lots of UK talent as well and you know hopefully it's it means there are sunnier uplands ahead but I would recommend both I mean certainly for a laugh last one laughing is really and you can really watch it with the kids you watch it with the

family it's just proper old-school silly so congratulations to everyone involved Last one laughing is really and you can really watch it with the kids who watch it with the family is just Proper old-school silly. So congratulations to everyone involved in that now. Should we wind up talking about youtubers on TV? There is that sense that in order for streamers or any form of more conventional broadcast to Kind of not lose out to YouTube. They've got to sort of import the stars of a completely different medium really and give them shows. And we've obviously seen Mr. Beast's Beast Games, which was for Prime, which was the biggest prize ever and

they're bringing it back and it's going to be three times the prize money. Yeah. Secretly not as big a hit as they say. Well, that's really interesting. Let's come to that. Okay. There's Max, HBO Max is their streamer, have got something called Paul America, that's Jake and Logan Paul, that I've seen some advanced copies of. It's now out in the US. It's so cursed and awful. Talk us through it.

It's a sort of supposedly a kind of fly on the wall documentary about their lives or whatever it is. You know, they keep calling it controversial. They keep telling you what it is. We're the testosterone Kardashians. We are America. It's so controlled by the creator in the front person and they're telling you what it's there's never a moment. There's sort of, It's the exact opposite of last one laughing, which is actually funny people in a room together wondering what's going to happen next. There are moments where you think I would love to know, can we stick with this? And

any good documentary would have stuck with it. There's a point where they say about their own children, Jake and Logan Paul, you know, there's more to life than marketing your kids. And their parents who are also in the documentary say, no, there's not. And you're like, oh, I'd like to, but we don't explore it. Of course not. Jake's girlfriend keeps telling him he's being his character. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. No, don't be interested by it because you're not going to go anywhere with it. We're going to have to wait 20 years for that documentary.

Yeah. Yes. And I should think it would be very dark. The Sidemen as well, who have a hugely successful YouTube channel, and they do lots of things. They do sort of spoof game shows. They're from the UK, the Sidemen. They include, I don't want to say musician KSI after the last effort. So I think I'll just have to call it YouTube boxer KSI.

Yeah. Britain's got talent judge KSI. Yeah. Anyway, they met via sort of multiplayer group. They started, you know, they moved into a mansion. They started on Grand Theft Auto, right? They were like a little social group. Yeah, they were in a social multiplayer group for Grand Theft Auto, one of those rock star groups. And they met that way. And now they do, they actually recently, you know, they sold out Wembley again to do their charity football match not so long ago. But the reason we're talking about them in this particular segment is because they had Inside, which is a sort of version of Big Brother, everything these people produce as well is incredibly derivative in the way that Mr. Beast thing was just so based on

Squid Game. It did well for Netflix. Actually, I don't want to say that it did too well. It did okay. But there is this sort of thing and rather like Beast Games, which you alluded to, Beast Games was the idea that, you know, this is the man with the most, he's a million miles ahead of anyone. And if we get him on our platform, then all his followers will come. Now, the trouble with Amazon is that we never really, they call it like a date a date because we don't know what counts for Amazon views. But we do know some things. There's a very good guy who writes about things like this called entertainment strategy guy. He's got a stub stack. I recommend following him if you're interested he's very interesting. He said what do we actually know about we know that

they'll tell you how quickly it got to a certain number of years so we can compare like with like on Amazon's release date. So we know red one that rock Christmas movie got to 50 million viewers. We don't know what a view is but we know whatever it got to 50 million of them in three days. They'll tell you which territories is number one. And by the way, if you spent that much money on a TV show and spent that much, you would expect to be number one in most territories in the world.

So Red One got to 50 million views, whatever a view is, in three days. Fallout got to 65 million views in 16 days. Beast Games got to 50 million in 26 days. Now that is interesting. That doesn't, you know, this is not like, you know, this is not like fallout or reach of this show. It's just a kind of what my children will call pretty mid. Yeah. So it sits in the middle of things that Amazon prime may, it's not, you know, you, it's not a flop, of course it's not, but it's very, very expensive.

Enormously expensive. Now, so the idea that YouTubers can save TV, TV, I think, is people are saying, oh, pay me according to my YouTube numbers. Now, that's starting to look a bit stupid. Why should we? Because when you come to our platform, it doesn't mean that you bring all these supposed 350 million. In fact, what it is making people do is say, well, can you explain to me YouTube's

numbers, actually, now? And so people are saying, what is a view? It's not a complete watch. What does it count? How much of it is AI scraping the content? They think a huge amount of YouTube views is AI scraping it. Like Entertainment Strategy guy, if he wants to, he tried to break down recently something when they say, okay, if they say, oh, it's got a million views.

And sometimes that's put against like American broadcasting and said, oh my God, this has got X million views. It's so much more popular than something that's on NBC last night. Well, he said, okay, if it says it's a million views, 500 K would be international. So it doesn't even count 250 K of them are bots, 125 K of them maybe watched a clip. Only maximum 125 K people watched it all the way through, even if it's a short thing.

So we don't really know what these things mean, only maximum 125k people watched it all the way through, even if it's a short thing. So we don't really know what these things mean, but just putting these people onto your more conventional form of content delivery, you know, your streamer or the PSPs, you can't compare it and they don't bring 350 million subscribers or whatever people thought Mr. E. Well, that's it. That's, that's, you know, the proof is in the pudding and you're always looking to try and bring audiences to your platform. Always, always, always auto your format.

And if it works, it'll work. And there will definitely be YouTube talent who go to streamers or go to terrestrial broadcasters who make great television and, you know, become stars for many years to come, because it's just a different way of bringing people through. But yeah, as you say, I've yet to see it expand either the fan base of the YouTuber or expand the fan base of the platform. They seem to be quite discrete units, those two things. YouTubers are taking the money. I don't think they're that bothered about being on those platforms, but the money they're being offered is so completely ridiculous because it's that

thing when someone doesn't understand something, they get frightened by it and offer us a lot of money. Yeah. Because then maybe it will come maybe it will, you know, bring them some magic. You never know. And also there's a lot of people in your organisation who need to have meetings with people in other organisations and eventually something happens in one of those meetings and it ends up on TV. See Sidemen have done all sorts of things. They've used, they've done the wheel, they've done the chase. And so, you know, those companies will let the Sidemen come in and film and, you know, which feels like it should work for both groups of people. I don't think the Sidemen doing the wheel has particularly done a lot for the wheel. But if you know what

I mean, it probably did something for the Sidemen and said it's something, you know, expensive. There's all sorts of things going on now. I think they just did supermarket sweep as well. So if you're a free mental or these companies have got lots of IP, you've caught you sort of going to team up with this gang. But at the moment, the big sort of breakthrough thing in the same way that that last one laughing has really broken through this week and Mr. B sort of broke through but only because of it by brute force is it's hard to see the thing the thing that's organically come out of YouTube and has succeeded on a

platform that isn't YouTube. They don't need to succeed on a platform that isn't YouTube. That's the weird thing. YouTube is the biggest platform of them all but there's something terrestrial about streaming that YouTubers want it gives them some sort of I think it gives them money Honestly, I feel they don't care that much about it And I think they're very exposed when they go on it because people actually look at what they're doing then and then they say oh This is so derivative. It's not good. There's a way of being on camera that works on YouTube Yeah, but when you see it, they're so knowing, they're so aware of the camera. Adam Curtis always says that when he's looking

for sort of documentary footage, he says almost anything after the invention of the smartphone is now completely useless because people are so aware of their life being a performance. So you never sort of catch people unawares any longer. They were fun. You know, the side bending the wheel is perfectly watchable. It's perfectly watchable, but it's interesting. Beast Games never troubled what they call the interest charts where people search for TV shows that they've heard about and they want to know. And it's a way of kind of monitoring buzz, I guess, about certain things.

Everyone who knew about it knew about it immediately. Yeah, they knew about it immediately. Maybe they persuaded their parents to subscribe to Amazon if they didn't already, but they didn't bring in like these unbelievable numbers of subscribers They'll stay in business and there's a season two of it because why would you not then everything corporation? They're the biggest company in the world and they've got plenty of money and it doesn't really matter

But it's not like fallout or reach or any of their really big shows It just sort of bubbling along somewhere in the middle. It's not really like Last One Laughing. No. You know? I have got a recommendation. Oh great. Yeah. It's Graydon Carter, he's the former editor of Vanity Fair.

It's a memoir called, his memoir of sort of being a brilliant magazine editor, When the Going was Good. Like you talk about 90s money, it's really... Oh I can't wait. This is when magazines ruled the world, okay? And got something that went viral the other week was, there was a sort of preview of it by a guy called Brian Burrow who wrote a book called Barbarians, the Gate and various other things.

He explained that, he said, I don't know if I'm revealing any house secrets here, but there was a point when I was on the payroll and I was required to produce three stories a year and I was paid £498,000 a year. It's like, sorry, what? And that was Vanity Fair, right? Anyway, but Graydon Carter is a brilliant rack and terror of his own life. And you know, you just do so many things, you come in contact with so many things. He starts things, he starts the Vanity Fair Oscars party, all these kind of mad stunts, it's a real yarn of a lost world. And that's, you know, it's sad that it's that lost world, that lost world of magazines.

The money used to be in magazines because that's where all the advertising was and that's where all the eyeballs are. And you know, that's why Amazon can now spend all of this money on Mr. Beast because that's where all that money's gone. Yep. It's all there. And there'll be the Sidemen in 20 years time will be doing an anecdote about getting paid $495,000 a year

for doing two viral videos. Greeting one Kit Kat. Yeah. What's the name of the book again? When the Going was Good. When the Going was Good. Graydon Carter. Graydon Carter.

Marina, thank you so much. Thank you. Question and answer one on Thursday. We will have a question and answers edition on Thursday. And a special bonus for our members. If you want to become a member you can sign up at therestesentertainment.com and we'll have that on Friday. And if you want to ask a question it's therestesentertainmentatgoalhanger.com. We did our special with the director

and DOP of Adolescents last week which people loved. This week it's the two of us I'm afraid. I'm so sorry. We'll be answering the questions. I can only apologise. Other than that we'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday everyone. Well, that wraps up another episode of The Rest Is Entertainment brought to you by our friends at Sky. Now, what have you got on your must watch list at the moment? At the moment, the white Lotus enjoying the latest season. Oh, it's such a treat.

Oh my God, it's incredible. It's so good. A dark treat. A dark treat. The visuals are really great and with your Skyglass TV, you'll be able to enjoy it all in its 4K glory. And also the built-in sound bar means you can also listen to it in its full whatever the sound version of 4k glory is but it sounds immense I'll say that.

It is indeed it brings everything to life and it really gives that cinema experience at home. It feels like Jason Isaacs is in your house like sometimes I go downstairs I'm like Jason Isaacs come on man. God bless you please. But he's not there. No. But for our listeners who want to experience this with Skyglass 2, visit sky.com to find out more.

I'm David Oleshoge. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on. You see spiritualism kind of working its way up the social hierarchy, up the ladder of respectability, because people are desperate and they will cling to anything. And remember that we're still in an age of great religiosity. And so if kind of traditional Christian messages are not enough consolation, then you might seek something more direct like trying to speak to a lost loved one. It's also worth saying that historians have pointed out, I think this is really interesting, that in an age where telegraphy had just been invented, you suddenly have telegraphs which

can send invisible messages across the ether, apparently. Almost magically. Almost magically. And suddenly people can receive them. It's not really that much of a stretch to then start to imagine people receiving messages clairvoyantly. You start to think about telekinesis, you start to think about the idea of invisible movement of messages, invisible transmission.

It's a really interesting idea, isn't it? I mean, I think it's a really, really smart idea and it suggests the ways in which other cultural factors can help influence those kinds of trends. Why would you suddenly believe in spiritualism while of telegraphs? Well, why not? Who says it's not possible, right? If you want to hear the full episode, listen to Journey Through Time wherever you get your podcasts.