Oobah Butler: The Digital Mirage

Trevor and Eugene sit down with journalist and filmmaker Oobah Butler, whose work lives at the intersection of prank and social experiment. From creating a fake top-rated restaurant to exposing how easily online systems can be manipulated, Butler has made a career out of blurring the line between perception and reality. Together, they explore the rise of “scam culture,” how algorithms quietly shape what we believe, and just how much of the modern world is built on illusion. It is a funny, unsettling look at how easy it is to fake almost anything—and how hard it can be to tell what is real.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Where did you grow up?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  I grew up in a little village called Fekinam in England.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Sorry.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Sounds ridiculous.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm sorry. Fekinam is like- Why do you look at me? No, come on, you can't tell me you didn't enjoy that. Fekinam. You seem like you're from Fekinam. In fact, from now on, I'm gonna say that about you. My friend Eugene from Fekinam.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  You've been Fekinam my whole life. You're in Fekinam if ever I saw one.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  As you say this, I can't wait to clip that for my mom and dad. Trevor Noah saying Fekinam. This is, I'm already, I'm cooked here, I'm done, I'm happy.

• 0:44Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 0:51Trevor Noah?

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• 1:26Trevor Noah?

  This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. You know what's really frustrating? Knowing the exact information you need is somewhere on your phone, but still ending up wasting your time digging through five different apps just to actually find it. Thankfully, Google Pixel 11 is designed with Gemini intelligence, so it can proactively find the information I need right when I need it. Like my flight info and travel days, or my calendar when Eugene texts me to hang out. Oh, sorry Eugene, I'm booked. Learn more about what Google Pixel 11 can do at googlestore.com. These AI features are available in select countries and languages for users 18 and over, and make sure to check responses.

• 2:11Trevor Noah?

  You're booked forever, forever. This episode is brought to you by Verizon.

• 2:18Trevor Noah?

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• 3:03Trevor Noah?

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• 3:32Trevor Noah?

  Solitary athletes. It's sort of like they are paying for their wife to be able to be their companion in the world so that it's not a solitary anymore. So now, when you're riding a bike in the mountains, preparing for the, you know, during the off-season. Yes. You're not alone. Yes. And then when you, you have to fly to the Alps to go and ski every day to prepare for the thing. You're not alone, and you know what I mean? Yeah. Because the fundamental truth is, if she has to work. She won't be there. She just won't be there. And then you will, you, like, you know what it was like, comedy on the road? Yeah. That was not. Lonely. Yeah, it's. The amount of comedians who committed suicide in like a random hotel room somewhere. It's actually like a, like a really high number.

• 4:16Trevor Noah?

  If you look at the industry, it would always be like random comedian, dead by themselves. Yeah. It's always them alone. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So, I can, I can see that where it's like, it's more them going. Ah yeah, I'm like sort of paying for her to be able to do this. Let's go.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  I suppose it changes when they have, when they have kids as well, cause then that, then what do they bring the kids with them as well?

• 4:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, they do.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Do they, they do?

• 4:42Trevor Noah?

  They do, yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  The kids live on the road with them.

• 4:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Also remember that mo- most of them started being on the road when they were um thirteen, thirteen, fourteen.

• 4:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  They had to get out of school.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  That's all I know.

• 4:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  That's all they know.

• 4:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  They, they always, all of them say one thing. I missed out on my metric dance, I missed out on university, I don't know what it's like. So they always say, they look at their old friends as a distant memory.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Like they think when they were thirteen, their, their life stopped when they were thirteen, having school lunches. And all of a sudden, all of them have a, a common story. Uh, their parent came to school, spoke to the principal. Then the principal was like, hey, I'm sure you can uh, then they never saw their friends again. And all of a sudden, they were in a camp. They were wearing sponsored clothes, they were going downhill, they were surfing, they were doing all of this. And they've never returned again. So through their wives, they get to live vicariously, you know? They get to hear about how is it when you are at and then, then, then, then. But most of them don't also know how to be parents.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Because they're strangers to their kids. The, the biggest fear of retirement is, what am I gonna do when I? Off-season is a, is a torture when the kids get older, cause they think, what am I gonna say to this person?

• 5:47Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  We don't know the routine, she, or he or she doesn't know. I'm a stranger. I show up and they go, what are you doing? Yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  At least if you've got that like Red Bull sponsorship, you've got money. Whereas with like the Olympic athletes, that, it seems like they're.

• 6:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, they're just.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  They got no money either.

• 6:03Trevor Noah?

  That, that, that might be for me the, the, the most depressing trajectory.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Olympic.

• 6:08Trevor Noah?

  Olympic athletes?

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:10Trevor Noah?

  Because most of them don't get anything in that way.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 6:14Trevor Noah?

  They don't get the endorsement deals.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:16Trevor Noah?

  They don't get the ad campaigns, they don't get the reward money, they don't get anything.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 6:23Trevor Noah?

  You, it's almost worse for the ones that like win the gold or something. But like, you know those like golds that mean.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Skate shooting.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  I just never hear you say that.

• 6:34Trevor Noah?

  You see.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Like the way you said, skate shooting.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  Get in there.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  I've said get in there twice today. I could TK number one, I could TK sixtieth minute, get in there.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  Oh, when he had the assist from Salah?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a good goal. It's a nice goal.

• 6:55Trevor Noah?

  You, my man.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  You have something to say to me, Trevor?

• 6:56Trevor Noah?

  You, you know who you are.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Who am I?

• 6:58Trevor Noah?

  You're the great.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  Who am I?

• 7:00Trevor Noah?

  You're the great Gatsby of. The great Gatsby of football. No, of football. Because Eugene, Eugene knows nothing about football. And his greatest joy is acting like he's fully invested in it.

• 7:16Trevor Noah?

  And then like he'll, he'll absorb everything we say.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:19Trevor Noah?

  And then first he'll like throw it back at us.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Power a little thing back.

• 7:22Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 7:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:23Trevor Noah?

  But like impeccably, impeccably. And he'll just, I remember the first times he did it, I didn't pick it up. So you'd say something and then someone would go like, they'd be like, ah man, today's game, they'd be like, ah, sober slide. And then he'd be like, dude, sober slide. And then they would just go off. They'd be like, man, I just don't get rid of. And then like the last thing be like, like, why is he on the right? Then Eugene's like, why is he on the right?

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Those are old Valley Quins.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do. I mean, I'm, I'm, I just said it. You're talking sense. Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  We need him in the middle. Yeah, you're right.

• 7:56Trevor Noah?

  You'd watch people. You'd watch people have a conversation by themselves, just prodded on by Eugene. Just prodding him on, just prodding him on.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Just happened. You just got me.

• 8:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, well, he's fantastic at it.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  I, I just started, uh, I, I, cause I've been living here, what, lately, two years now. Um, and I just, I, I like, love sports, so I'll watch it. I'll watch anything, but I.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  Oh, you're one of those people.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  No, I'm, well, kind of, but I'm, I love football. I love cricket, which is why I asked, cause I was like, it's interesting. I don't watch much of it, but I watch like the England national team.

• 8:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  I don't watch much else. I'm not watching like Indian Premier League and like if it's on, great, but uh I started watching the Knicks. This year because of the because of the playoffs.

• 8:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  It's amazing. That was like, that felt like, okay, I get it. And and watching uh watching basketball without ever properly. Having people around me who know what's going on, you don't understand where the jeopardy is.

• 8:54Trevor Noah?

  All sports.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:55Trevor Noah?

  I feel like that's all sports.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  And the story, you need a story.

• 8:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  You need that.

• 9:00Trevor Noah?

  That's good.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was like, that was cool. I went la- I went last week, this week, when was it? Monday, last Monday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to Knicks and uh. There's some terrible team who all looks about fourteen years old. Uh they beat um North Carolina.

• 9:15Trevor Noah?

  I guess, I don't know.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  It's South Carolina.

• 9:17Trevor Noah?

  I don't keep up at all.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  It was, it was sick. It was great.

• 9:21Trevor Noah?

  I don't keep up at all.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  It was an accident. I was like, oh, probably like ba- baseball hasn't happened. Like, oh, maybe I'll like hockey.

• 9:28Trevor Noah?

  No, but if you like cricket, like if you like cricket, I think you will like baseball. Yeah, so when I was. I've always, I don't even think I haven't liked ba- baseball. I've just been like, what is the point of this? What are we doing here? When I went to a baseball game recently, I had a friend who came and sat with me for. He would just happen to be at the game coincidentally. And then he came and he said, I was like, oh, what are you doing here? And then. He's like, so do you, do you know what's hap- score was zero, zero, when like the, I don't know, seventh inning or something. Nothing was moving. I was just like, what are we doing here, guys? And then he sat down, he's like, man, what a great game, right? And I was like, ah, man, sorry, I don't. I was like, I'm.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  It's zero, zero. Not happening.

• 10:13Trevor Noah?

  But more than zero, zero, cause like, you know, like zero, zero in in soccer or in football for me has a lot of like.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Cause you're invested and you get.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  And also depending on where the time is.

• 10:26Trevor Noah?

  Yes, exactly, exactly. So now, he came and introduced that all to me. So he's like, okay, so you see this pitcher right now. He's getting close to his hundredth pitch. And so now they're trying to wear him out and get him to a hundred pitches. Because once, once he gets to a hundred pitches, then they have to bring in the new pitcher.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 10:45Trevor Noah?

  And you see, exactly. That's what I mean. I didn't know any of this stuff. So then I realized, baseball is all a game of like.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I'm good. Thank you.

• 10:54Trevor Noah?

  Baseball is almost like a.

• 10:57Trevor Noah?

  Have you ever played those those those games? They're normally mobile games, but you I used to play them back in the day on computer as well, where you were like chipping away at something, chipping away at something, chipping away at something, then the wall bursts and then it's like now the war starts.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, or or those where the where you hit the ball and then the balls get increased.

• 11:14Trevor Noah?

  Actually, yeah, or think of it this way, like, think of a TV show, right? Sometimes you'll watch a great show where it's like a Game of Thrones or one of those.

• 11:22Trevor Noah?

  And if you don't know the show,

• 11:27Trevor Noah?

  like, six episodes can be about what's gonna happen in the war.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:31Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? Every episode is just people looking at maps. My lord, my lord, if we assail their forces from this direction, my lord, then it should be easier. Oh, we're never gonna get through them there. What do you mean? And like, you don't know that show.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it sucks.

• 11:47Trevor Noah?

  You're like, this is terrible. What is what is happening? Nothing's happening.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:50Trevor Noah?

  Nothing's happening.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:52Trevor Noah?

  But to your point, because you know the jeopardy, you're like, oh, man, what are they gonna do? Are they gonna go here? Are they gonna?

• 11:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:57Trevor Noah?

  That's baseball.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:59Trevor Noah?

  So baseball is one of the sports where if you don't understand the jeopardy.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:03Trevor Noah?

  You I don't think you can understand this. You I don't think you can appreciate the sport because unlike basketball, unlike other sports where it's like, oh, ball goes there in, ah, ball goes there in, ah, ball goes there in.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:14Trevor Noah?

  No, baseball is like, oh, what are they gonna do? Are they now going to put him in? And you know, a right-hander throwing to a left bat. Oh, this is, you know, it's gonna be like this stressful. What are we? Oh, oh, oh. And there's this whole tipping point. I I didn't know this before. There's a whole tipping point where when the pitcher gets you, a hundred pitches is basically it.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  No idea about that. I had no idea.

• 12:36Trevor Noah?

  So you put your best, you put your best pitcher in.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:39Trevor Noah?

  You try and get as many outs as possible.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:42Trevor Noah?

  In as few pitches as possible.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Wear them down.

• 12:44Trevor Noah?

  But if you get to a hundred pitches, you like sort of have to take them out.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  Wow. Or they have to leave at a hundred.

• 12:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because they have to go rest their arm.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  It's like an Uber driver. So after twelve hours. Oh, is that right? Yes, they have to.

• 12:56Trevor Noah?

  No, you can't. After twelve hours, let's look.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  You died your best, okay? Dropped off a few grandies, two drunk people, that's it for you.

• 13:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, so you gotta, you gotta take them and you gotta.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  That kicks you out after that.

• 13:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you gotta, you've gotta, you gotta take the person and then rest and then, and then you get the really shit Uber driver in. Yeah. But that's basically, yeah. No, but that's basically what happened. Then the, apparently the drop off, so the, cause I was confused by that, but the drop off to the second pitcher is apparently quite high because all the best pitchers are on a team. Yeah, they want, they wanna all be the main guy. They're the best pitcher. So the drop off to the second one is like, they're way more hittable. They were like, this is where the home runs are gonna come now. This is where the ball. Makes sense. That's where the scoring is supposed to sort of happen. So it becomes this, this tactical game of like, when do you switch your pitches? When do you not switch your pitches? How you, you know, and then just because that guy came in and introduced it to me, I was like, oh, okay. Understand the tension. Okay, now I understand the tension. Yeah.

• 13:55Trevor Noah?

  Now, now I get, now I get why everyone in the stadium is like breathing these collective like. Oh, yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  So the only time baseball became fun is when it turned into the Kardashians.

• 14:07Trevor Noah?

  That's one way to put it.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  It became dramatic. There was a lot of tension.

• 14:11Trevor Noah?

  Or rather when some, or rather when someone showed me that it was the Kardashians. It didn't turn into.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  You know, there's one thing I want, have you been to the Super Bowl?

• 14:20Trevor Noah?

  No.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  I wanna do that.

• 14:21Trevor Noah?

  You wanna go to the Super Bowl?

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, but not for the football, for the pomp and ceremony.

• 14:26Trevor Noah?

  It's a thing.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  How's that accent?

• 14:27Trevor Noah?

  Thing. Yeah, I liked it. Yeah, I mean, it didn't even. It didn't flag up.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  You didn't, you didn't flinch once, no?

• 14:32Trevor Noah?

  No, I didn't flinch.

• 14:37Trevor Noah?

  Uh, but Uber, welcome, man. Welcome, welcome to the, to the podcast. This is. I should have this off the table. No, no, no. What do you mean? It's okay. What, you're gonna drink from the floor? Well, yeah, I was a couple of. You're just gonna like.

• 14:51Trevor Noah?

  Just like through your sleeves.

• 14:57Trevor Noah?

  Ah, no, man. Can I tell you, you're one of those, um, you know, you know, you form an idea of somebody in your mind before you meet them?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:05Trevor Noah?

  You're one of those people where the first time I heard about you, I was just like, wait, who is this person? Right? Because the first time I heard about you, it's when you created the world's most popular restaurant that no one could get into.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:20Trevor Noah?

  No one could visit. Everyone wanted to go like it was number one on TripAdvisor. Everyone in the world was like, you've got to go to this restaurant. It's the greatest restaurant. It had like, how many thousand reviews at one point?

• 15:31Speaker 01

  It wasn't actually that many, but it was, it was more the algorithmic hack.

• 15:34Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Like it had put it at the top of the thing.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. It was enough and they were done at the right time. And that was an accident. I wasn't being clever, but yeah.

• 15:42Trevor Noah?

  Accident.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Well, no, it wasn't, but it, it was, I was lucky, tremendously lucky that it worked, I think. So I'm saying like, I don't think. The fact that it actually, I mean, you, I'm interrupting you.

• 15:53Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, you're not. You can't interrupt me. It's your story.

• 15:57Speaker 04

  Trust me. You can't.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  You can't, you can't interrupt. Okay. I need to see, I, I need to understand where the jeopardy is. So I need to know.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, that, yeah, I mean, you said that that was the first time I think anybody heard of me, I think at all. It was, uh, yeah, tremendously lucky. Like it was kind of one of those things where it was like this, like idea that was like, I, I was doing on the side of other ideas. Yeah. It's like, okay, I'm going to slowly build this up. And the, and the longer it went on, the more silly it, it got and the momentum. Yeah. The more people bought into it. And I was like, at some point, someone's going to knock on my door and be like, what are you doing, you child? You know, and, and, and I was going to get in trouble and, and it would be taken down or what? I just didn't think. I thought at some point it would go wrong. Um, we're presuming now that the viewer understands what the hell I'm talking about.

• 16:51Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah. We'll give them a little context. That'll be fine. But for those, for those who don't know, it was basically a, you, you created a fake restaurant.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:58Trevor Noah?

  In London and it was a place that everyone was dying to go to. And then at some point publications started picking it up and they're like, oh, the best restaurant in London that you can't get into it. And then they wanted to cover it. And then publicists wanted to be a part of it. And it was a whole thing. And it becomes this whole world. And then I think at some point you did. Because it didn't exist, right? Yeah, it was completely made up. Yeah, you you created this fake world.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  I'm so into this.

• 17:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  For me, I'm in.

• 17:26Trevor Noah?

  So I'll tell you, you know, people always go like, why do you have somebody on? Through and through for me. You made me realize, so you live my dream. That's why you're here. You live, no, genuinely, you live my dream. And I'll tell you, because my dream has always been to be like, like a, like a massive, like fraudster. But then I go, you go to jail. And then you do it. And I was like, oh, you, there's a way to do it and not go to jail. It's good B and Y.

• 17:55Trevor Noah?

  You're saying. Because I was like, this to me is fraud. This seems like massive fraud. But if you film it and if you, if you have a camera where you're like, so I'm gonna do this fraud.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:05Trevor Noah?

  Then now it's a prank.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:07Trevor Noah?

  It's in line between fraud and a. Hey, my friend.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  It's a good one.

• 18:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. It's a loophole. Yeah, the loophole is you gotta say ahead of time to a camera.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Oh, it's like.

• 18:15Trevor Noah?

  Hey, guys, this is so day one of planning this prank. Then it's not fraud.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  So when you're like, oh, yes, so let me get this right. So if you are.

• 18:23Trevor Noah?

  Move your thing there so Hannes doesn't shame.

• 18:24Speaker 03

  If if there's a camera and then you're just talking to it.

• 18:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Then it's a, it's a diary confession.

• 18:31Trevor Noah?

  Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  But if there's a car behind it, it's a deposition.

• 18:35Trevor Noah?

  That's the difference. Basically, it's who brings the camera. If you bring the camera.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  It's a porn.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  So I'm.

• 18:46Trevor Noah?

  You you're not wrong. If you bring a camera, it's a porn. If someone else brings the camera, it's a sex tape. Yeah, that's against the law. Yes, you see, so.

• 18:58Trevor Noah?

  But like, so so let's talk through this and then when I get into like how you. Yeah. How you even get into this world. Yeah.

• 19:07Trevor Noah?

  You have. The the number one, talk me through how you start the scam. Like, where did you even begin the idea of I'm gonna create the world's most popular restaurant that doesn't actually exist, but gets all these reviews and then gets written about and then people wanna pay exorbitant amounts of money to come to, but they've never been to it like, cause you, there's a few things that you do here. You you encapsulate in one story hype, you encapsulate myth, you encapsulate like just how we in the world all want things that aren't even real.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 19:40Trevor Noah?

  Cause people were dying to go to this restaurant.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:42Trevor Noah?

  People were like, oh, when I go to London, like, you know where I wish I could go, but I can't get in, oh, and the food is amazing. But it's not real. I was like, this this man has tapped into every single thing that's sort of like wrong with the world, and not today, just like, it's sort of like the human brain. So so walk walk us through how you created the greatest restaurant scam. How does it start?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I mean, I suppose that I'd been, when I was younger, I used to work in sort of bars and restaurants and stuff like that. So I'd been in those contexts, I'd been.

• 20:17Trevor Noah?

  Where was this, by the way? Where did you grow up?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  I I grew up in a little village called Feckingham in uh in England.

• 20:23Trevor Noah?

  Sorry.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Sounds ridiculous.

• 20:24Trevor Noah?

  I'm sorry. Feckingham is like.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Why do you look at me?

• 20:27Trevor Noah?

  No, come on, you can't tell me you didn't enjoy that. Feckingham, you seem like you're from Feckingham. In fact, from now on, I'm gonna say that about you. My friend Eugene from Feckingham.

• 20:38Trevor Noah?

  You've been fecking my whole life. You're a fecking if I saw one.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  I was just saying this, I can't wait to clip that for my mom and dad. Trevor Noah saying Feckingham is just, that says, I'm already, I'm cooked it, I'm done, I'm I'm happy.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  No, I mean, so I grew up in the middle of nowhere, basically.

• 20:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  My mom's, my mom's family have been there for hundreds of years. Got web toes to prove it and all that. You know, no, not really, but uh may as well do. Um and then my dad's family are from Birmingham and Ireland and like so. Um, we grew up there, uh, I I'm the youngest of six, so sort of desperate for attention, that kind of, that kind of type. Um, we were sort of token working class family in a kind of village of like lots of very hello, how's it going there?

• 21:22Trevor Noah?

  Also like a posh vibe.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  And then farmers, posh farmers.

• 21:26Trevor Noah?

  You're right in the middle.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  And then a lot of the, yeah, no, a lot of the people who you would have worked in the mills and stuff have moved a long time ago. But my mom's fam, our family's still there. So it's like a fun environment to grow up in. Um, and yeah, I suppose I just did like, like I, I didn't go to college. I stayed in Feckham way too long. Uh, and I would take jobs that I could get. And one of the first sort of set of jobs I would get was working in bars, working in restaurants. And um, in those contexts, I remember just hearing about TripAdvisor constantly and how if someone left a one star review, it would be a problem, you know, for everyone, what, what, what, what happened last night, you know, it would be like, it was a very serious platform.

• 22:06Trevor Noah?

  It holds that much power.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:08Trevor Noah?

  I've, I've sort of heard about this from outside, but really, so if you work in a food or beverage establishment, if someone leaves a one star review, it shakes the place up.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  It's still the same way. It's just the, I think it's migrated slightly. I think Google reviews is probably the number one there, I would say, but like, it's like, like when I was doing that, when I did that, TripAdvisor was the biggest tourist website on the planet.

• 22:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  I would say it's probably still.

• 22:29Trevor Noah?

  It's still big.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Probably one of the top three or something.

• 22:32Trevor Noah?

  No, it is, definitely.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  But yeah, I mean, it, it still happens now. If someone leaves a one star review, it's on you. So it's interesting. Yeah.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, wait. So when they leave the one star, do they say it was him that I'm leaving the one star for or because of?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Well, that does happen. Yeah. It does happen. Yeah. Yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  It's like a daily petty version of the Michelin star.

• 22:50Trevor Noah?

  It's, it's terrible.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  It really is.

• 22:52Trevor Noah?

  Have you, have you never read? I love reading Google reviews.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  No, I don't, I don't.

• 22:54Trevor Noah?

  No, literally. And then they'll, they'll.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  I've got Ryan.

• 22:57Trevor Noah?

  They'll literally go, we do have Ryan. They'll literally go, they'll just be like, um, one star. And then I read, I like reading the one stars because I go to leave one star for a place. Because remember, that's the lowest you can leave, basically. So you left one star.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Yes, the worst experience you could possibly have.

• 23:14Trevor Noah?

  Yes, this is the, so I wanna know what the worst experience in your life could be.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  So you go in there.

• 23:19Trevor Noah?

  So I go read one star reviews.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:21Trevor Noah?

  I always wanna read the one star reviews.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:22Trevor Noah?

  And then it's like, especially in a, in a place that has like, let's say a place has an average of four point six or four point seven.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Then is that one, one star?

• 23:29Trevor Noah?

  Thousands of people have said, this is four point seven worthy.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:32Trevor Noah?

  And then someone has a one star. I'm like, okay, I wanna know what happened in your life.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  The shop across the road.

• 23:36Trevor Noah?

  And then you go in.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  Competition.

• 23:38Trevor Noah?

  Yo, you go in.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  That is, that definitely happens. Definitely, definitely, definitely.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Yes, cuz the, the, the number one whistleblowers in any situation are people who didn't get the contract.

• 23:51Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Or the competition.

• 23:52Trevor Noah?

  I like that.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 23:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, so then you'll go in and then it'll, it'll be, it'll sometimes be like, um, great food, great ambiance, great atmosphere.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  So compliments first.

• 24:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, all these things. Then it's like.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Unreasonable. They're establishing that they're reasonable.

• 24:08Trevor Noah?

  Yes. I like this, actually. I like this. Then, then they'll, then they'll go, then they go like, appetizers were a little expensive, but still great. And then they'll be like, Eugene, our server, totally unprofessional, didn't like how he treated us, should be fired.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Just like that.

• 24:32Trevor Noah?

  That's it.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  One star.

• 24:33Trevor Noah?

  One star.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  So I'm the problem?

• 24:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I, I, so, so I ended up, I actually, before I did the restaurant thing, so what happened was, yeah, so I had that little experience. Years, five, six years pass, then I start, uh, working as a writer, trying to work as a writer, to move to London.

• 24:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Try and start hustling, try and like, what can I get paid for? What gigs can I get paid for?

• 24:55Trevor Noah?

  And all this life.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  And, uh, and the, I, there was a, like a freelance website, and it was called, uh, People Per Hour. And, uh, they would, like, people would advertise, like, writer, we need a writer to do X, Y, or Z. One of the gigs on there was writing fake five star reviews for restaurants.

• 25:11Trevor Noah?

  No way.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  To juice their ra, to juice their ratings.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  God loves you.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so, so I started doing that and, and I would just go like, go on their website, go, all right, okay. I went there, I had the whatever.

• 25:23Trevor Noah?

  No way, wait, wait, wait. Uber, you can't just skim over this because I'll tell you, I'll tell you why, because right now what you're doing, I think, for me, and I, I think other people is, you are. Exposing the very underpinnings of how like we think society works.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 25:39Trevor Noah?

  No, cause a lot of people, they like people trust reviews.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:43Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? And more than that, people trust well-written reviews.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 25:48Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? So if you go on like Amazon, or if you go on TripAdvisor, you go on Google, you go on any of these. The better written the review, the more you trust it.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. So I'm not a regular user of drinking glasses. And so when I began this journey, I thought to myself, where would I find the right drinking glass? And you're like, oh, I'm in, I'm in.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:09Trevor Noah?

  And now you're telling me that this is a freelance job that people get hired to do.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  I mean, I would say now it's way more advanced than that. This is, this is eight years ago, seven or eight years ago. So I think that that now is what the manipulation of it is far more sophisticated. I mean, we all know this, that. Uh, our lives are curated by, um, I don't know, manipulated realities, aren't they? And then, you know, people's decisions with my thing, which we're getting on to.

• 26:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Was based on a, on a false reality that had been constructed and sold to us as legitimate. And I think what my, the reason why this ended up becoming this huge viral story and that you saw it and everything was like. That it tapped into this whole thing about this like, oh my God, this, it's like taking, what is it? The blue pill or the red pill? I don't know. I've lost track.

• 26:55Trevor Noah?

  The red pill.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  The red pill. You take it, you have it, and then you see how things work. And like, I don't know, now it was, it's fascinating. How many bots there are, how many things like that, how much of our online experience is falsified? I think back then, yeah, it was, I was getting paid.

• 27:11Trevor Noah?

  You were the bot.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  I was the bot. I was the bot. I mean, look, I didn't do this.

• 27:15Trevor Noah?

  I never knew there were human bots. You're writing these fake reviews.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:19Trevor Noah?

  You're, you're in this world. What made you a good fake reviewer?

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Uh, willingness and.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Openness to mistruth.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  No, I look, I. Oh man. I don't know, I, yeah, I suppose, I mean, literally what I just said is true. Like, I, I think I'm a bullshitter at heart. My dad is a bullshitter. I actually, my, my great uncle, like, no, no, great granddad moved to the US, right? Temporarily, he came back, went back to Birmingham, England. He came here, and this is a real story, came here and sold, uh, rabbit droppings, so rabbit shit, rolled in flour and sold as a medicine. My man. That's real. That, I didn't know about this. I did not know about this until this year. It's in your DNA.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  There is rabbit shit in my DNA.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  You know, I'm like, but in all honesty, like, there was always like a, it felt, I suppose it felt faceless and it felt, I didn't do loads of it, you know, I'm not like I'm, I'm earning bank by writing these things. How much did you earn per review? Ten pounds, so what, thirteen dollars fifty? Yeah, no, I mean, that's uh, ten pounds.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  Eight years ago.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  That's a lot of money.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a lot of money. Ten pounds per review? Yeah. Pumping those, did you have like a limit? I, I would guess that I probably only wrote about twenty of them. And then what happened? Well, I mean, I just found other gigs. I was doing other things. So, so, but it was that, it was not like the main job that I had. It was, I was in London, I'd just moved there and I had, I'd no rea, I hadn't been to college, I had no reason to think I could be a writer. But I was trying to do stuff, just get to get paid for it, to legitimize it and trying to do something.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Trevor, you have to love white confidence.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  You truly do.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  I was going to, but in the middle of writing, I realized I'm not qualified.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  But anyway, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. Come on, look, it's, it's, it's medicine. Have a bit of that. Uh, take the red pill.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Take the brown film.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  With rabbit drumsticks. Okay, sorry, sorry.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  No, no, it's true. No, you're, you're, you know what? You're absolutely right. I mean, we grew up, we grew up in a kind of like a weird kind of like a, we, as I said, we were kind of the weird kind of scumbag family in the village. That everyone would throw their kids at. So all the rich kids would hang out at our house and it was all loads of fun, but I was raised by my elder brothers, basically. Mum and dad were out. Mum was a nurse, dad was sold records. Oh, really?

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Mum was a nurse, yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, um, dad sold vinyl records on the markets and always had loads of office jobs. Mum was a nurse. It was loads of us and it was sort of just like, it felt fun and naughty and life, when it feels fun and naughty is kind of always, I don't know. There was, I suppose I didn't engage with like the gravitas of what I was doing. I was lying in order to manipulate people's experiences, but I was being paid to do that.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  But it like, it didn't seem that unusual. But having worked in restaurants as well, I was like, this is crazy. And I was like, because wait there, I used to get told off if someone left a one star review. So like, I'm now in the, the, the, the, the, the environment is, is, is not trustworthy. It's, so I suppose that stuck in my head and what made me think, think about this was when you guys were talking about one star reviewers. I actually, so what happened was I started writing for, I do an internships at like websites, music websites generally. Started doing more gonzo journalism style stuff, kind of weird music reviews, weird stuff like that. And then eventually it led me to working with Vice. And that was, that, that you remember Vice?

• 31:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I still love Vice, yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Um, but like that, that then changed my life. And then I started making a living doing it. So then it's like I'd write three or four things a month. Different weird things. And like, one of the things I did on the journey to get into the fake restaurant was I, I wrote a piece about, um, TripAdvisor's harshest reviewers.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  So I took them out for, for lunch. I contacted them and said, I'd love to go to lunch. Cause I wanted to understand the psychology of like, why would you go to a restaurant and just leave a one star review? Like, you know, it's such a funny thing to do with your, with your time, unless like you've been, you know, uppercutted by the waiter or whatever.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  It's such a weird thing to do with your time.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Well, that's your fault. Don't come into, don't come to uppercuts if you don't want a kid in uppercuts.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Play extra for the uppercut there.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Special interest. But like, so yeah, I took out these, it was actually three different guys. I took them all out and I reviewed them. So I reviewed them like a restaurant. And I did that and all of them were kind of very strange and quite invasive and complicated. One of them was one of the funniest guys I've ever met in my life and he made me take him to the Posh's restaurant in London or one of them at the time, Lagavroche. And he went through the whole meal and he was complaining the whole time. It was like being with Larry David. He was just the whole time being like, excuse me, is that actually a, oh, sniffing the wine doubting the sommelier. I have a high bar for, for shame, for like shame, public shame. But this guy was insane.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  I don't know if you just get this right, I've talked about this a lot, but like, he was like, he said to me, it was like, the whole time he complained and I was like, this guy is fascinating. And he was like, you know, the reason I do this is I, I'm, I'm like, he saw himself as some like vanguard. I'm doing it for people, self sacrifice. I'm doing it. I'm holding the door. And, and, and he, yeah, exactly. At the end of the evening, I remember saying to him, so what, what do you think about Lagavroche? And he's like, oh, it's, it's one of the best restaurants in the world. I was like, after spending two hours with him. Of him complaining through the whole meal. It was insane. And I was like, how many stars? He went, three. And that was it. For the best restaurant.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, so, so I'd been in those, that psychology of reviewers and reviewing was interesting to me. And then, but then that, while I was doing that, I started thinking that was when the idea for the restaurant kind of came. It all kind of fell together and I knew I had to write three to four pieces for Vice a month and The Guardian, I was writing for a little bit. And it, and yeah, I kind of found a style luckily, which was this kind of like, uh, um, gonzo style, social experiment-y style thing. Did another thing where I went door to door. I pretended I was joining, uh, joining the Jehovah's Witnesses. Oh, nice. And I went door to door and, and learned how they sell door to door. How do, how does that work? Cause I, I don't, I don't know any of anybody who's.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Open the door.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  Or like, how does that work?

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Well, well.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  The numbers.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  Open the door.

• 34:00Trevor Noah?

  No, I don't. I genuinely don't.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  It's the right question because I was thinking the same thing. That's why I got interested in it. Cause I'd been in a band and we'd failed and I was like, it must, it's so hard to sell a C D. It's like two thousand and fifteen, sixteen this was. And I was like, you can't, no one will buy a C D. What do people want to buy less than a C D? A Jehovah's Witness at the door. And I was like, if I could compete with them. This is all over the place. I'm sorry.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  No, this is great.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  But, but it's, but basically what happened was I, I, I then started going around with them from door to door and building data. And how many people out of a hundred doors would let me in?

• 34:33Speaker 03

  Wait, where did you find Jehovah's Witnesses that we're looking for?

• 34:36Trevor Noah?

  No, they found him, Eugene. Come on.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  They found me.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  They saw, they saw a lapsed Catholic and they thought. Opportunity. What's that medicine in his pocket?

• 34:50Speaker 03

  It smells like.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  But yeah, it was just like this, it was, it was in, it was in South London. So there was loads of like, you know, new churches and stuff like that around there. Um, it's very active religiously in South London. And, um, yeah, so it was like. I, I started going from door to door. I went to these seminars they had where they would go, they would be like, okay. And they would do like a, a role play, like you're in a.

• 35:13Trevor Noah?

  Oh, so they teach you how to do.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  And then they'd be like, they'd, they'd go like.

• 35:17Trevor Noah?

  Okay, there it is.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Role playing now, pretend you're answering the door.

• 35:21Trevor Noah?

  Go, Eugene.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  So I'm, you're, it's your house.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Hello. Hello there.

• 35:27Trevor Noah?

  Wait, you don't open your door. Are you talking through the door?

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Yes, I've got ring doorbell.

• 35:31Trevor Noah?

  I just want to make sure. Okay, sorry. Go ahead. Sorry, go ahead.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  This was before.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  Oh, before ring doorbell. When your face was the camera.

• 35:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, he said the CDs. He said the CDs.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Hi there. Would you like to learn about God?

• 35:43Speaker 03

  What about him?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  No, listen, you need to learn about God. Stop. What went wrong there?

• 35:49Trevor Noah?

  Um.

• 35:51Speaker 03

  I'm still holding the door handle.

• 35:53Trevor Noah?

  No, you, you, you, you were aggressive. You were, yes.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  No, yes.

• 35:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you were too aggressive. Okay, great. So how, what could I have done differently?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  I think what you could have done differently there is you could have asked him, maybe if he has troubles in his life, or would he like to learn about the love of Jesus? Or would he like to learn about something good? You've got to offer him something, I think.

• 36:13Trevor Noah?

  Fantastic. So do you want to try?

• 36:15Speaker 03

  So don't start with God.

• 36:16Trevor Noah?

  Do you want to try the second attempt?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Do you think you could do better?

• 36:18Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I was just watching. No, I can't. I don't know. I don't think I can do better. I was just watching.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  I can tell you now.

• 36:22Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  He thinks he can do better.

• 36:23Trevor Noah?

  No, I don't.

• 36:24Speaker 03

  If he doesn't do this now, I'll be tortured with it the whole day. Trevor.

• 36:27Trevor Noah?

  No, first I want to see a better version.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:30Trevor Noah?

  Because he just gave me the feedback.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  This is how it went, but I got excited about the idea of you doing it.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  That's how it should be. This is that one.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Okay, okay. Take two, take two.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Knock. So.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Hello there. What a lovely day. How are you?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Would you like to hear about, would you like to hear about the love of Jesus Christ? How are you feeling today?

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Phew.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. He loves me too.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  He definitely loves you.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Although I'm not wearing pants right now as I open the, he loves that.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  He's got a lot of space in his heart.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  Come in.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Come in. All right. So there's, stop. That's fantastic. So that's basically what it was like. The seminars are kind of, kind of like that. Uh, with more nudity.

• 37:21Trevor Noah?

  Don't go anywhere because we got more What Now after this.

• 37:27Trevor Noah?

  Fall has a way of turning an ordinary night into a reason to gather. Whether it is a football game, a Halloween party, or a dinner on a cold evening. Whole Foods Market makes those moments easier with comfort food, seasonal treats, and quality standards built into every aisle. Start with a Whole Foods Market Kitchen's lasagna, packaged soup, or a build-your-own-family meal from the prepared foods counter, which feeds four for thirty-five dollars.

• 37:58Trevor Noah?

  For game day, add made in house wings, frozen pizzas, and three sixty-five brand chips and dips. The limited time bakery lineup brings the season home with pumpkin blondies, apple brown butter cookies, and chocolate bourbon pecan pie. And with no artificial sweeteners like sucralose, artificial colors like red dye number forty, or high fructose corn syrup store wide, nothing gets in the way of the flavors you came for. Shop for flavors with higher standards at Whole Foods Markets. Earth can be a lot sometimes. Heat waves, gas prices, bad hair days. Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV.

• 38:42Trevor Noah?

  Turn off your problems and turn on your favorite movies and shows. You know, the ones you already love, from Anchorman, the legend of Ron Burgundy, to Dirty Dancing, to Top Gun Maverick, from Alias to The X-Files. It's all here and all free. Go where the TV is always good. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never. I think one of the things you realize when you start caring about clothes is that simple doesn't have to mean basic. Because a T-shirt is a T-shirt until you find the right T-shirt. Ooh, then suddenly you're talking about the cut, the fit, the weight, the way it falls on your body. Then you're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Look at the sleeve.

• 39:27Trevor Noah?

  And that's what I've really enjoyed about Quince. One of my favorite things is their Pima Cotton Lux Touch T-shirts. And it's become one of those pieces I keep reaching for. The cotton has this really smooth, premium feel to it. The fit is great, and it just lays really nicely. And I think that's what you sometimes take for granted with simple clothes. When they're done really well, they become the foundation of an entire outfit. You can throw on a jacket, a sweater, whatever you want, but everything works because you started with the right thing. That's what I like about Quince. It feels premium without feeling like you're trying too hard. It's effortless. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 40:12Trevor Noah?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. Hello over there. Oh, and if Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was What Now with Trevor Noah. It's the best way to support the show.

• 40:37Trevor Noah?

  This is great because you're showing me how, you know, to pull off one of the greatest scams that's ever been pulled off, you needed to have all the tools. Yeah. Like your origin story. So you had it in your DNA, right? You've got the grandfather who's like literally the snake oil salesman. Yeah, genuinely, yeah. You've got like your dad who's a bullshitter, but just like in life, he's like, he's because he's got it in him. Yeah. You're the you're the runt of the litter. So you're like, how do I get attention? How do I make my way? Yeah. All right, so you've got this vibe. Then you go to Jehovah's Witness training, the ultimate sales camp. So now you're learning how to like, how to sell people on a thing that they can't see. And like, you just have to get them to believe in it. And you know what I mean? And notoriously are not liked.

• 41:21Trevor Noah?

  And you meet the reviewers who teach you about reviewing and what reviewing is. So you've got all of these pieces. And then you go, okay, this is it. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna launch my, my fake restaurant. Yes. Yeah, so I, I, I basically just kind of had an idea, a thought about the platform. I knew that the reviews were a lot of them could have been falsified. It was very easy to falsify. Wait, I have one question before you get into that though. Yeah. I don't understand how you put the restaurant on TripAdvisor. Does nobody confirm these places exist or don't it? How does that work? So, yeah, no, I'll tell you. But basically like I looked into it. So the reviews are very easy to leave. The accounts you can create them very easily. And then the restaurants themselves felt out. It felt like something that would be impossible to falsify. Yeah.

• 42:04Trevor Noah?

  So I kind of just like, just started trying it out. I was like, okay, so.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Okay, so went on it, create a restaurant on TripAdvisor. What do I want as the name? So I was living.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  What do you call it?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  I was living in a garden shed at the time, at the back of someone's house. So I'd just moved to London and it was like, the only place I could afford. It was eight hundred pounds a month. Which is still not that cheap, but anyway, whatever. Eight hundred pounds a month. Uh, just, just all, all of it. It's, it's literally a.

• 42:29Speaker 04

  It was, it was a jet blue.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 04

  I, I just, sorry, sorry, I'm so.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  No, it's good. It's good.

• 42:38Speaker 04

  Say it.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  It was a.

• 42:40Speaker 04

  Say per person.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Per person. Oh, you're talking about the, uh, nothing beats a get to holiday. Yeah, that is absolutely hilarious. And, uh, yeah, so I called it the Shed at Dulwich. I was living in a garden shed in, in, in London at the time. Yeah, genuinely. Um, you had, you had to put like an address, so I just put the name of the road.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  And it didn't, didn't make you specify. And I was like, well, no one's going to know, cause I'm at the back as well. So it was, it was like.

• 43:05Speaker 04

  You've got cover.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  There's a load of people who, six people who lived in the house, the main house.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  And then at the very back, I was living in a garden shed. Uh, and then, well, no, she needed like a mobile, so I bought like a kind of drug dealer phone.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  I love it. Love it. Love it. You're living.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. You need a, a website and you need a, a email. That was easy to do. And I made this website with the help of my mate. So it was like, all these photos on there that looked like gourmet food and it looked like Michelin star quality food, but the images were actually like cropped versions of bigger images that like, six months later, when this all went viral and came out. I revealed was like, one of the meals that looked like a delicious meal was like an egg on my foot. And like, another, and another thing.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  And another thing was like.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  Been all our lives.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  It was like, you know, these urinal cakes you get?

• 43:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, no.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Made, made that look like a pan fried scallop. And like had it with, uh, with like a. Yeah, it does. It does. Put some honey on there, uh, some stones from a fish tank. And like, that was genuinely, it was like me and my mate Chris, unshaving foam. Or is it so sea foam, like shaving foam? It's me and my mate Chris, who I'd been working with for Vice, who used to have loads of fun doing these weird pieces. And I was like, come over and do this thing. It's not going to be paid. Cause I was doing this on my own.

• 44:25Trevor Noah?

  Right, yeah.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Vice weren't even aware that I was doing this and for a while, actually. And yeah, that kind of, we, I sent all this stuff off to Tripadvisor. The, the kind of concept behind the restaurant was like, uh, it was an appointment only restaurant. Like you can only get a table if you were, you have to apply and we'll like vet you and we'll see what happens.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, uh, yeah, that was kind of the concept. The, the meal, the, the, uh, menu was like, you order moods at the shed, not meals, like you have comfort or whatever. It's all like mood based.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Which was just, I was just trying to think of wanky things that would like sound like.

• 45:02Trevor Noah?

  I mean, it is brilliant though, because,

• 45:05Trevor Noah?

  you know, this is the weird thing about a scam is oftentimes a scam is more well thought out than a real thing. Cause I'm listening to this and I'm like, I wanna go to this restaurant, even though I know it's a scam. What mood, cause think about how many times you go to a restaurant and you're like, actually it's the mood that I'm looking for.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:22Trevor Noah?

  Not the food. Like, can, can I specify? Yeah, I would like that, actually.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, I mean, I.

• 45:29Trevor Noah?

  That's a genius idea.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Uh, to be honest, another one of the things I was weirdly even thought about this in a while, but like I was also doing little reviews for a, for a, like a newsletter, you know, like a what's new in London newsletter. They would send me to restaurants. So I was already getting a bit of a seeing what it was like out there.

• 45:45Trevor Noah?

  Right, right, right.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  I remember going to this meal in, um, in London at this restaurant and it was like, they was a, it was small, it was like a taster menu, but it was like, but it was like a 3D projection of like, uh, Marco Polo, like, and it was so crap. And it was just like so, all about the song and the dance and like the food. You get like this much, like a, a tea every half an hour. And then you're back to watching Marco Polo dance around your plate.

• 46:12Trevor Noah?

  Justin Blumenthal must never hear of you.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  I think we'd make money and and maybe a deposition. But like, yeah, it was just so so I'd already had that kind of like, it was one of the many things I was trying to do to make a living and writing these food reviews. And it was sort of like expose me to the bullshit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like. So you just compounded all the bullshit on this thing. You're like, okay, one thing on top of this, on top of this. I think any good satire, and you'll know this from doing the day show and everything, is like, any good, it has to be monkey see, monkey do. It has to be, it has to be what's going on out there in the world. Yeah. Like, and how do we, how do we take that to its sort of illogical conclusion? Like, what? Okay, there's this Marco Polo restaurant, you know, it would be even more interesting if the restaurant didn't exist at all. Yeah, yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  But this is all, I have the privilege now of thinking about this project like this. At the time, I was just sort of putting it together and seeing what would work and expecting it to not work. So like, I sent all that off, like all the, all the idea of it, the concept, all that, sent it off to TripAdvisor and expected it to not, not work, you know, to not go live. But it went live, no vetting, no verification, it was completely easy to do. I was live on the website and that was when I was like, okay, I suppose I'll try and get some reviews for this now. So then I started contacting friends and family. I hope you didn't call that other guy. Which one? From Mr. Bad Review Guy. Oh, him. Oh, no, he needs to be kept away.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  He needs to be kept away. I think he's spiritually the opposite to this. I just see, he sees it as his like greater cause in life. Ah, he was a sweetheart, but, you know, horrendous to be around. Uh, but he, yeah, so I just started having people write these reviews and I was getting family and friends roping them into it, implicating more people. Nice, nicely done, nicely done. That's another part of the scam. Got to get the whole conspirators, that's right. But I was filming little bits, you know, because I was mainly writing at the time. I wasn't doing documentaries yet. I only went on to do those. So I just liked writing because it was really nice to write something. It's just you, it's your voice, you have an editor, you collaborate and that's it. Right. Whereas when you're making TV, which I do now, there's thirty, forty of you and that's. Great, but it's different, you know, it's different.

• 48:26Trevor Noah?

  Um. So everyone's jumping in.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Everyone's leaving these five star reviews. We're going up the rankings, feels serene.

• 48:33Trevor Noah?

  Wait, wait, wait. So you start trip, you start going up on the TripAdvisor rankings?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:37Trevor Noah?

  Is this that moment where you go like, oh shit, we're on to something?

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, exactly. It was, it, it, it was, we were number eighteen thousand out of eighteen thousand in London. And then slowly it was like, you know, within about six weeks, we were up to number one thousand four hundred or something like that. And I was higher than my local restaurants in Dulwich where I was living. And I was like, that's bizarre. And, uh, but it felt like nothing. And then one day, the phone that I bought for the.

• 49:02Trevor Noah?

  The drug dealer phone.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  The drug dealer phone calls and it's like an actual human on the other end of the phone being like, oh, hello there. I know, uh, I love the sound of your mood based meal. Please can I have an appointment this Friday or whatever? And it was the first time that a real person started.

• 49:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Parroting the mythology to me. And, um, you know, I just said to them, I'm sorry, we're fully booked for the next six weeks. Put the phone down.

• 49:27Trevor Noah?

  Always gets them.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, it genuinely does. It gets me. Like, this is it. It's like. I could have easily been on the other end of that phone. I'm not saying I'm better than that.

• 49:37Trevor Noah?

  No, we all are. That's what I mean. It's like, it's so funny how that like, it always, doesn't matter who you are.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:42Trevor Noah?

  Fully booked for the, when you find out the thing you want.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:46Trevor Noah?

  Has been overly wanted and it's gone.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:48Trevor Noah?

  You can't, now you can't stop pining. You can't stop thinking about it. You know what I mean?

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:52Trevor Noah?

  Fully booked for the next six weeks.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  And that was like my mantra from then on. Just kept on saying it.

• 49:56Trevor Noah?

  Fully booked for the next six weeks.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:58Trevor Noah?

  For the next six weeks, fully booked.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it was like, you know, started out a few, few calls a day. I was getting emails. Then it just starts to get, just keeps on going up and up and up. And the people that you tell no to are the ones who a hundred percent will call back ten times, you know? And it's, it was just the momentum just started gathering. And that would been, so that, that's like four months in. Do you know what I mean? That's like been going on for four months. Slow drip of reviews. Cause I'm doing it while I'm having to make a living doing other things like. Uh, it's not like my mom and dad are paying for my rent and I can sit down. I'm working. And then I'm like, oh, I need to do, and scamming, scamming and scamming.

• 50:35Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  But like, you know, it was like, it it it it it just got more exciting the the more it went on. Got more real. People like the local council being like, we wanna relocate you to an area we're gentrifying. At reduced rates.

• 50:50Trevor Noah?

  No ways. Come on. What are you talking about?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  People applying for jobs, things like that. Like, it was it was very, it the plot, it showed how.

• 50:59Trevor Noah?

  The government is reaching out to you.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:02Trevor Noah?

  And offering you tax incentives.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:05Trevor Noah?

  But you don't exist.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't.

• 51:08Trevor Noah?

  Can I tell you something? You've exposed a lot about politics. This is my thing. And politicians. This is this is what I mean about you, Ube, is like, you. I don't I don't think you understand what an impact you've had on my life from afar, because you you're the reason like Ryan, who's like sitting here, like Ryan. We'll always like try fine food, try fun. And Ryan's like a super foodie guy. But one day, randomly, Ryan was like, I've started doing something crazy. And I think it was like after this, it was like, we just go to a place. We don't look at the reviews. We don't even look a place. We just go find a place near you.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:43Trevor Noah?

  Walk in and eat the food.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 51:45Trevor Noah?

  And then afterwards, look at the reviews.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 51:49Trevor Noah?

  You'll be shocked at how many times the review doesn't match up.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:51Trevor Noah?

  With how you felt about the food. Experience, yeah, your personal experience. Just your personal experience. But a lot of that came from you because we were like, wait, wait, wait, wait. If you can create a whole fake world of the best food, then maybe there's also a fake world of the worst food. Right. Like, maybe this place is getting shit reviews because people just don't like its vibe. They haven't got the mood right there. Just just walk in and eat the food. And then the second thing you did, like, and I didn't even know about the government side of it, is you just made me realize how much we all, all of it, like you said, no one's sort of better, how we all

• 52:27Trevor Noah?

  are so easily duped into accepting a version of reality. That we like willingly, you know what I mean? Like every, the fact that the government contacted you and wanted to give you tax incentives, but had never been to the restaurant. Never seen it. Had never seen it, had never seen a tax return, had never, nothing.

• 52:48Trevor Noah?

  Then I'm like, how, who else did they move there?

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:51Trevor Noah?

  That's what I'm thinking.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Trevor Noah?

  Cause you know, sometimes you in a neighborhood and then all of a sudden there's random restaurants that pop up and you're like, who, how did these restaurants get here?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:59Trevor Noah?

  You know, the first restaurants to move into a neighborhood.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:02Trevor Noah?

  And now it's just a bunch of Ubers, no offence.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Taking chances.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  All the other, all the other drivers witnesses.

• 53:16Trevor Noah?

  So, okay, so this thing, so, okay, now you're at like the peak, cause I mean, once government's calling you, it's, it's, it's on now.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I was getting called constantly and what the clientele starts changing from like locals to then like tourists. To then like influencers, different people from like, kind of, who were high up professionals, like having their teams reach out.

• 53:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, calling on behalf of.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think I can say it now because I don't think they exist anymore, but like Universal Studios wanted to bring their teams, their team over. Yeah, yeah, it was kind of, I've never, I've actually never said that before, so there you go. Uh, and, and it was like, yeah, I, it was fascinating having like, and, and we weren't even number one by that, we were getting into the top fifty, you know, it was like, and, and I think the thing is, is like, you said earlier about we had loads and loads of reviews, we actually didn't, we had, we just, all of our reviews were five stars. And there was the way the algorithm was functioning was like about, almost like it, maybe it functioned like momentum. Because I was doing it part time until it started getting crazy, I was like, okay, this is the best project so ever, I need to land the plane on this thing, who knows where it's going.

• 54:21Trevor Noah?

  You were like, I need to get into this restaurant.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  He takes weeks. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Um, yeah, and then it was just like one of those things where, uh, I was in a meeting actually with Vice's, uh, we were talking about another project we wanted me to do and my phone kept ringing and I'm like, what the fuck is going on? The drop telephone. Yeah. And I was like, well, actually, I've been working on this other thing on the side and they were like, oh, wow, this sounds like an epic.

• 54:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, this sounds amazing.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, I've been filming all my, me taking all the calls, I've been filming myself, so, yeah, okay, sounds good. And I wanted to write about it anyway, but that, that was the first time where I was like, okay, maybe, maybe I could do on camera stuff as well, this could, this feels like it could be that. So then they started, I started thinking about how I wanted to, what, what next? And I thought, if I can get as many people as possible to leave reviews in the next two weeks, maybe we'll make number one. Maybe we'll, maybe we'll do that, it was like a final push.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Then I started noticing things like people were leaving reviews who had never been there, who uh who I didn't know, not never been there, of course they've never been there. People, I'm I'm I'm bringing my own.

• 55:27Trevor Noah?

  That was so good.

• 55:29Speaker 04

  This is this is how big it is.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, it's this is, yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Do you have a table for two?

• 55:33Speaker 01

  I've had the blue pill now.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  In the next six weeks?

• 55:37Speaker 01

  But like, yeah, uh there were people who were leaving reviews who I didn't make leave the reviews. So it was almost like they still have the kudos of having been there.

• 55:44Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  And and so, you know, I reviewed.

• 55:46Trevor Noah?

  But they were leaving five stars.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:49Trevor Noah?

  Yes, exactly.

• 55:50Speaker 03

  That's crazy, man.

• 55:51Trevor Noah?

  We have we have now we have reached peak.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it was uh, yeah, that was sort of, I think it was uh November two thousand seventeen, that was then. And when we became, yeah, the number one rated restaurant.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  Congratulations, man.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was it was crazy. I was I was uh, I remember checking the thing because we'd gone up. We were like top three and then we went down to number eight and I was like, wow, what a story, top ten.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  Were you upset about the number eight?

• 56:18Speaker 01

  No, I was just like, this is insane. And then it was number one and I was like.

• 56:22Speaker 03

  Then you were happy, then you popped.

• 56:24Trevor Noah?

  It's just like.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  The local councilman.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  It's just like one of those moments where you know that your life's changed and it's not because it's such an insane thing that would happen. For it to happen was so crazy and so unlikely.

• 56:38Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh, okay, this is this is probably the craziest thing that's ever gonna happen to me.

• 56:43Trevor Noah?

  You think you you had maybe a little bit of an imposter syndrome, like you felt like you didn't deserve to be there?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  No, I I thought I did, I thought I did. You know what? You know what, Trevor?

• 56:53Speaker 03

  Who are you?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  You know, I did think, no, I've worked hard to get here.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  The investment, the website, the burner phone.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  I mean, I mean, you did all the work.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Well, the funny thing is, is like, no, go on, sorry.

• 57:08Trevor Noah?

  No, no, so so now tips in. So now now this this is what I love because I remember seeing the footage of the people, the the night.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:16Trevor Noah?

  The night itself. This was just like where I was like peak, so.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  So what is it supposed to be, opening night?

• 57:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, well, so this is this is where you've changed another thing. I'll tell you what I've changed in my life.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 57:27Trevor Noah?

  This literally happened because of you.

• 57:29Speaker 03

  Really?

• 57:29Trevor Noah?

  Literally because of you. And then you'll tell the story of the night. So when I order food now, especially like in New York, but when I order food, I'll go to a restaurant, like I'll see any place, whatever it is, restaurants are strong, so we could take out whatever the food is. But now I cross-reference it with like an actual map. So I'll go, you know, it'll be like Eugene's Rabbit Cakes. And I'll be like, oh, this place looks good. But then I go to Google Maps or whatever. Look. And I look for. The address of. Yeah, right, yeah. And then if I, you know, on the little street thing. I'll zoom in and I wanna see this place exist. So you do a three sixty. Yo, yo, yo, let me tell you something. Try it.

• 58:13Trevor Noah?

  You're gonna see how many times the place doesn't exist.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  It's, that's true.

• 58:16Trevor Noah?

  You're gonna see. But the food does. Yo, you're gonna see how many times. Was it urine cakes all over again? My friend, the place doesn't exist. Now, apparently, they, they came up with a term, they call it ghost kitchens.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:28Trevor Noah?

  Remember you told me something about this? The place doesn't exist. So New York, London, even, even in South Africa, Johannesburg now, it started as well. Yeah. I'll be like, oh, this place looks good, the food looks good as well, that's the main thing, it's got good reviews. And then I go, but where is this? I'm like, I don't. I've never seen this place. And then I look, nowhere.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  And they also, they do this thing as well, they have three different names for the same menu.

• 58:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Be like, oh, you know, they'll try something, they will get the like Zuma, whatever.

• 58:53Trevor Noah?

  Yep.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Girls and then somewhere get millennial guys, whatever, they'll have different marketing schemes.

• 58:58Trevor Noah?

  Same, for the same thing. Same place.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Same menu, yeah. I do, yeah, yeah.

• 59:01Trevor Noah?

  Same place. And all of this changed because of what you did, so tell us about the night. Cause, cause now you, you took it like, I mean, you went fully into this thing. Because the reviews is like, all right, whatever, but then you, you're like, I'm gonna make a real night and people are gonna come to it.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, I mean, I lived in it, it was like a pretty much a shithole and it was, you know.

• 59:23Trevor Noah?

  Which was number one.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  It was number one, it was number one. And it was, you know, it didn't look like the best restaurant in London, it looked like just a shack. Um, and I kinda thought, you know, I'd done so much and I'd proven this big point about online reviewing and like this platform was able to be manipulated. Wow, the crazy, all these people want this thing, but there's almost like the, the, the most crazy thing would be to now try and get away with opening it for one night only. And serving sort of real customers, real food.

• 59:55Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  So we, you know, had a plan, it was all just based around, um. Trying to control the environment, but also, so basically I had, I had eight real customers come in. I had a table of two who were two locals who'd been trying to get a table for three or four months. Had a table of four who were from a big fashion agency who I actually still can't mention because they weren't happy. And then, uh.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Try having shaving foam on you.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Steve, you'll be happy. It sounds like a Balenciaga piece, you know. It's not them. Uh, but, uh, and then we added, we had, uh, uh, two, um, American newlyweds from, from California. I know, I know, I know, I know. But they were, they were like, oh, you know, they've been in, they've been in Paris, eating on the banks of the Seine the night before. Oh, man. And then, yeah, there was, they were the, the final table of two that were going to be eaten at the shed. So it's quite hard to like, I wanna like, just try and capture this in like the best way possible. It was November. It was basically, yeah, it was basically seven, it was eight years ago. This is so fucking crazy.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Um, and it was cold, it was kind of wet, so I borrowed all of these heaters from my neighbors. I went around asking, do you want to have a bar of these for the night? Got them a bottle of wine. Uh, I borrowed, uh, my friend ran a cafe around the corner, so I borrowed a load of the tables and the chairs. Uh, and then I had half of the people who were eating there were, um, my friends who were pretending to, uh, that everything I, I served them was delicious and that they'd been loads of times completely normal. Uh, one of my friends, actually, she's, now people might know her, but, uh, Lali Adaphope, she's in like Shrill, she's in Ghost, she's in, um, she was in the New Armandio Nucci, she's so funny, but like at the time she wasn't that famous and she was one of the like local celebrities who I had.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Like she was, she was, uh, yeah, she was one of the patrons and, uh, it was, uh, yeah, the plan for them was to try and create the same psychological space as Tripadvisor. You know, you have people around you saying something's great. Will that deny you your own senses? Will that deny you your own, you know? And, um, it, I, I hired this, uh, animal handler as well, so we had all these chickens running around. And, uh, the idea was that, that, that, I mean, we never actually did this, but the idea was that we said to all the customers, you know, this is like lobsters at a fancy restaurant, like you can, you can. Pick a chicken and have it.

• 1:02:18Trevor Noah?

  Chicken and then we kill it live and.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. The whole point, and I had a table of two, two of my mates eating on the roof on a table, which looked like bizarre, it looked something from a cartoon. But it was, the whole thing was like, I was trying to short circuit their brain as much as possible to try and make them not engage with the reality they're in.

• 1:02:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  You were separating them from reality. I was trying, yeah. So the way that I did it as well is I met them on the street and blindfolded them and walked them two or three minutes down and then down this garden path. Because I genuinely thought if they'd have seen the front of the house and they'd sit there and, and we had a, it's all coming back to me now I'm talking about it. We had a, we had a DJ playing the sound of a real restaurant as well. And he had, and he had a little sample pad that when he pressed it, it was the ding of a microwave. And the reason was because the food we were serving on the night was actually just microwaveable TV dinners, but made like ready meals, but made to look like Michelin quality food. So we put like edible flowers, micro herbs on it.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Um, and yeah, I mean, it was like, it, it, basically we, we opened for about three hours. Trying to think of like a way of encapsulating the vibe. It was, it was, it was weird. Um, and I'll, I'll focus on the newlyweds, the, the ones who are on their honeymoon. Uh, because we, I remember they did, they looked kind of like, uh, they're kind of slightly confused. But, uh, I like came, I brought them out there, like their, their meal, which was comfort. And it was like mac and cheese, basically, but made to look like fancy mac and cheese. And I like, uh, my friend Phoebe, who now weirdly, again, she writes on a Ted Lasso.

• 1:03:59Trevor Noah?

  Uh.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Not anymore.

• 1:04:01Trevor Noah?

  I like, I like that it's like a super, I really do like that you created a, from this moment is like a, you know?

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Trevor Noah?

  Spin offs. Yeah, it's like an Ocean's Eleven that then everyone went off to do their own thing now in the world.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Because at the time it was like, yeah. I don't even know. We were all just like, I mean, we were like, this isn't gonna work. Um, yeah. And she, she was like, put it down. She was like, namaste. And then she like said, she disappeared to a part of the restaurant. And we were watching on, watching them on and the, and the lady, I remember looking at the lady. So she's like this, she's the new, the, the bride.

• 1:04:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  And, uh, she looks at the food and she was saying before, she's a foodie. She loves restaurants. She loves eating and all this stuff. She looks at the mac and cheese through her, her phone. And like pauses for a second, we're all just watching her and then she just puts it away without taking a photo.

• 1:04:48Trevor Noah?

  That's funny.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  And it was like, uh, we, I was thinking that, you know, this isn't.

• 1:04:54Trevor Noah?

  The jig is up.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  The jig is up.

• 1:04:56Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  Um, and it was actually one of the table of four. I was seeing them out at the end of the night. We couldn't, you can ask more questions. It's just, this is how this, this is all, this is all coming to me. Um, yeah. And the guy like, uh, he would look, he would like, didn't look happy. He put me to one side and he was like, so that about tonight, um, now that we've been once, is it going to be easier for us to book again next time?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Which is like, yeah, it was, that was like.

• 1:05:24Trevor Noah?

  That was the.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, the big moment. It made me think, you know.

• 1:05:27Trevor Noah?

  Made you deserve number one.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  No, it just made me think that we trust like online hype more than what we put in our mouths.

• 1:05:33Trevor Noah?

  Well, I thought you.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Trust all hype.

• 1:05:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Like we trust, I mean, yeah, that, that whole, you know, here's what I, what I loved about the scam is you didn't make me feel like any of those people were idiots.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 1:05:48Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? So even when you watch the footage, when you see what's happening, I genuinely didn't think to myself, ha, what a bunch of idiots. No, it made me go.

• 1:05:58Trevor Noah?

  We take for granted how easily we all are manipulated. We also take for granted how we think of what is and what isn't in society.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Trevor Noah?

  A- a- and we're all just, you, you know what I mean? But, but, but I, you can take it, you can extrapolate it to everything. So politics is, is a simple example. You know, people will go, oh yeah, this place, politics is really good, really smart. And then if somebody says it around you, then do you think that now? Or do you not think that the comments that you see on your social media, what are they making you think or not make you think? So when you go down, like, like, you know how sometimes, I don't know if you've ever done this, I'll watch a video or I'll see a post or, you know, whatever it is. And I started saying to myself, I don't know where this came from. I started going, what do you think about this? Before I went to the comments.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:06:50Trevor Noah?

  Because I I realized at some point, I was clicking on videos or posts. And then I would read the comments and I realized the comments were slowly shaping what I was thinking about it.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:07:01Trevor Noah?

  So I would watch a video that I would think is funny.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:07:03Trevor Noah?

  And then I'll go into the comments and people like disgusting. I can't believe that this is not. Then I'd be like, yeah, man, that that wasn't nice. Well, I'd watch another video and you know, I'd be like, oh, man, that's I'd be like, that's cool. And people were like, this is so lame. This is and I'll be like, yeah, that is lame.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:19Trevor Noah?

  But you you don't realize how you how it's actually happening to you. Do you know what I mean? I think I think there are very few people. There's obviously people on the fringes. But I'm sure like most people don't realize that this is happening to them. Like you're saying, the the yum around you.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Trevor Noah?

  You sit at a restaurant.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:34Trevor Noah?

  The person next to you is like, mm, oh, my god, oh, my god. And you're like, what are they? Oh, that looks good. What are they having? You lean in and you're like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, excuse me, what?

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  I'm that guy, yeah. At a restaurant, if I'm undecided, I look at what looks good from other people's um table and I'll be like, what what are they having? But I also realized that if you watch on YouTube, if something is happening live and the comments are live as well.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  Reading the comments while you're watching the content makes you realize we're not watching the same thing. Because also their comments are influenced by where they find themselves. Some people are watching from work.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Some people are just catching the tail end of it. Some people have been watching, they're fatigued. And then you're watching it going, that comment that you just made is totally unrelated to what's happening now. But everyone else who comments after it is like, yeah, you must be right. Because the the although we're using fake names when we're making comments, our opinions are real. But they're not factual.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Then it gets interesting around how many, I mean, I mentioned it slightly earlier and it's a hundred percent true. How many bots are now used on social media?

• 1:08:37Trevor Noah?

  Hmm. Isn't it? Isn't it like forty percent now? Is it forty or?

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  I don't know the number, but it's it was a shocking number.

• 1:08:45Trevor Noah?

  I remember reading the other day that about forty percent of all internet like comments and activity is bots.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  And that, how can that not shape your reality?

• 1:08:58Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  If like my one review for the Greek restaurant in whatever Peckham can influence people's minds and my mind, then like, how can that not? Forty percent of everything we're reading is, it's, did you see it the other day where they changed the, they very briefly changed the Twitter or X, I'm not calling it X, Twitter policy so that the, where you could see where the account was based?

• 1:09:21Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Did you see this?

• 1:09:22Trevor Noah?

  I did not see this.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  That was interesting. And loads of quite prominent noisy accounts were all just based in uh India. And they were saying, you know, I'm based in the US or I'm in.

• 1:09:33Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no. And then they changed it back.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Oh, they put it back immediately. And it was, it was, it was really interesting. Uh, and I think basically India, the significance of that is a load of the, a load of the farms are in India. Um, so it's cheap, you know, loads of online labor is based out in India, isn't it? Um, fascinating, absolutely fascinating. So I was, I mean, I just thought, well, there's bigger and better scams to come. No, I didn't think that.

• 1:09:58Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I, I, I believe you.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:10:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but, but, but you are right about that. And you know what? This is what I, what I think about is like, in society, we struggle with certain paradigms because

• 1:10:13Trevor Noah?

  you know, they're, they're not, they're not physical, they're not easy to touch, they're not, like I,

• 1:10:18Trevor Noah?

  let's say we found out, and I, I mean, we still don't really do much about this, but if we found out that certain people, companies, actors, whatever, were poisoning forty percent of our water.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hmm.

• 1:10:31Trevor Noah?

  We would act a certain way and we would think a certain way, right? For the most part.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Trevor Noah?

  People start putting regulations into effect. They go, oh, you're not allowed to do this, you're not allowed to do that. If we found out that people, companies, actors were poisoning forty percent of our air.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Trevor Noah?

  We would start acting, we would start, you know what I mean? And I know there's outliers and people like, oh, but there's companies that pollute and that's part of the problem. But we don't think about that when it comes to our minds.

• 1:10:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Trevor Noah?

  We don't think about it when it comes to this thing that we can never see. And yet is almost more important than everything else in the world.

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Trevor Noah?

  Your children are online. Forty percent of the stuff that they're consuming is poisoned. And I'm not saying the stuff that comes from other people. I'm just saying like fake, completely poisoned stuff is going into their heads. So your little daughter's on the phone. Forty percent of the shit that's coming to her is poisoned. Your little son is on the forty percent. Your grandmother is on the, your grandfather, your uncle, your aunt, you like. Forty percent of the things you're consuming are poisoned. And yet we don't think, like that for instance, should just be like a rule in a way. You can be anonymous, but the way you, where you're posting from should have to be.

• 1:11:42Speaker 03

  But I always think it's gonna be the human weakness for the longest time. Any dilution to any poison is just adding the human element.

• 1:11:49Trevor Noah?

  What do you mean?

• 1:11:50Speaker 03

  If you're selling something dangerous, as long as you put someone in there, that's why they had to put regulation for advertising with cigarettes. People were having such a good time smoking.

• 1:11:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Janet was the same. Mainstay was just like.

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

  Then people were just having a good time. The Marlboro Man.

• 1:12:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  All of this stuff. It was, once you put the human element, the danger, the poison gets diluted because you think this person is doing it. I could be doing it. I could be having a good time as well. And I think the scourge or the opposite of what we're feeling with bots is influencers.

• 1:12:24Speaker 03

  So the bots can do exactly what the influencers can do, but once you put a human in it, is it really that bad? Because also I've seen the trend now, the content that influencers are taking is not taken by the influencers anymore. It's more stylized now, it's more cinematic. They're actually featuring in the ad where they were supposed to be doing it from the point of view. So now you see all of them, where else before you used to see their hands or their feet and them interacting with the product. But now I'm like, who's the other person operating?

• 1:12:48Trevor Noah?

  Now they're part of the product.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  The editing has become so great. And then these apps.

• 1:12:52Trevor Noah?

  It's funny you say this. Sorry to interrupt you. I saw, I saw a video the other day um about this. It, it was just so good, man. There was a, a video and it, it starts so sad. It's, it's this TikTok. And it's this woman and she's by her bed and you know, the, the caption reads that, you know, the thing and, and you know, that voice comes on. It's like. Why, why you choose the person in your life?

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  You know that voice?

• 1:13:17Trevor Noah?

  You know the voice.

• 1:13:18Speaker 03

  Do you know that personally, do you?

• 1:13:22Trevor Noah?

  But you know that voice.

• 1:13:25Trevor Noah?

  But you know that voice. Cause there's only like the two voices, right? There's the one that's like, when I found out I was going to. It's that voice?

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  The AI one.

• 1:13:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, whatever that voice is. And then there's the other one's like, these men were fighting their way out of land. Yeah, but this one was like.

• 1:13:39Speaker 04

  You are that voice.

• 1:13:41Trevor Noah?

  I love that voice.

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  But who'd have thought they were bots?

• 1:13:46Trevor Noah?

  It would be so funny if they're real people somewhere. You know, there's somebody like at a restaurant, they're like, I called for a table for two. Could you tell me what time my reservation will be ready?

• 1:13:59Trevor Noah?

  So like, and in the video, there's this woman and she's by her bed and the caption reads, like, be careful who you choose as your partner because they will need to be with you in the toughest times, blah, blah. And she's like, this is the day I found out my dad died or the moment I found out, something like that. And like, you, you see her like, she's like crying by the bed and then her husband comes in and like looks at her. And then she like sort of tells him, um, I just found out my dad died. And he, you can see he's like, no, and then the video, and he embraces her and it's sad and it's beautiful. And then it jump cuts to some guy who's like, okay, okay, hold on, hold on. He's like, who put the camera there?

• 1:14:36Trevor Noah?

  He's like, who?

• 1:14:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:38Trevor Noah?

  Who was filming this? Did you put a tripod? Did he start filming?

• 1:14:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:43Trevor Noah?

  What, cause you found out your dad died in this moment. This, you're saying that you found out in this moment. So when did he, how did this? And he was just punk, like he was just puncturing this world. This thing you're talking about.

• 1:14:58Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:14:58Trevor Noah?

  Where like influencers now, to your point, the way influencers sort of started off, started off was from a very authentic place.

• 1:15:06Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:15:06Trevor Noah?

  Hey guys, so I went to this place today, uh, look, uh, like you said, point of view and vibe. And then they became like a part of it.

• 1:15:12Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:15:13Trevor Noah?

  And then they started synthesizing things and then you run out of content. So you've got to like make the content. Now you have to suffer tragedies. You have to discover things, you have to fight, you have, you know what I mean? And so, sorry, go, you get what I'm saying? It's exactly the world you're talking about.

• 1:15:28Speaker 04

  I think, um.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  And the whole point was that it was democratized, right? That was the whole thing. It was like, okay, anyone, you know, I can just do whatever. Now it's like, now it's almost like every single member of the public views themselves as an influencer.

• 1:15:40Trevor Noah?

  Oh, that's fully what it is.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  And then, and then there's a, there's these people above who get, you know, who get paid money to do, who actually get, still get money from brands.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  And also it sold us almost autonomy of some sort. Because you can name your price, you can do it your way, but we'll obviously have the last day of how it's done. And then you can just put it out there and you have no control of it from then onwards.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  Because that's what happens with influencers. But when I realized what Ring Doorbell was, because it's not popular in South Africa, but it's popular here.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Speaker 03

  I was thinking to myself, there's only two ways that they can sell this thing. It's either by fear, break-ins.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13Speaker 03

  How it can prevent a break-in and people, and they started with ads like that when people were shouting. We're all, we're all done.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  And then I realized their other strategy was um, Amazon packages being stolen from the door.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:16:27Speaker 03

  And then all of a sudden, two steps running away, wah, explode. And people started finding that funny and they thought, well, if I have a package that gets delivered and I want to make sure that, then I think to myself, this, these people are actors. Because the package is always explode before they get to where they're going. No one ever gets out of shot.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  You mean the when they fill it with like confetti?

• 1:16:48Speaker 03

  Exactly, not with paint.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  Fat paint, yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  But no one has ever gotten inside the car and the thing is because that would have been funny and genuine at the same time.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:57Speaker 03

  But everyone is, whoop, whoop, whoop. And I'm like, oh, there's one way to sell this thing.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:17:02Speaker 03

  And the packages are unmarked, who gets an unmarked package delivered to their door?

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  But even just the pumping of viral content from, from did Ring Doorbells that is packages being stolen is an amazing advert for a Ring Doorbell. You're so right. I've never even thought about that. That sucks, God. Yeah.

• 1:17:21Speaker 03

  Have I punctured your reality?

• 1:17:23Trevor Noah?

  I mean, you constantly, you are a puncture in my reality. That's, I mean, come on.

• 1:17:28Speaker 03

  I'll drink that.

• 1:17:29Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:17:30Speaker 03

  No, it's just, it's like, I, yeah, I.

• 1:17:35Trevor Noah?

  Because I, because I understand that, you know, living life is the paradox of what is and what isn't all the time. So I don't ever wanna be one of those people who goes, nothing's real, everything's fake.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:17:49Trevor Noah?

  Because most things are sort of fake, and that's a good thing. You know, like, like our names are all fake.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:55Trevor Noah?

  We respond to them, but that's not a thing, really. You know what I mean? So there's certain constructs that society has to agree on for things to, like a traffic light. I'm always fascinated by traffic lights.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Trevor Noah?

  Cause I go like, it's just the color. I really, I don't know, I swear on my life, I don't know why I get, I like get giggly. When I'm at a traffic light and then I go, guys, this is not real.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:16Trevor Noah?

  It's, it's like, it really makes me happy when I see people stop or go.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:21Trevor Noah?

  Cause I'm just like, I'm like, yo, it's.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  It feels juvenile.

• 1:18:23Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? People really start, ah!

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:26Trevor Noah?

  Like when I see a car screech to a halt.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Trevor Noah?

  Cause they're like, ah, the light.

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  Just ruin that for me.

• 1:18:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I'm like.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  I'll never see the same again.

• 1:18:33Trevor Noah?

  No, so, so, but society needs these things.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Acceptable absurdity.

• 1:18:37Trevor Noah?

  Yes, society functionally needs artificial constructs for us to function.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:18:44Trevor Noah?

  Language, religion, culture, all of these things.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  Where's it, uh, uh, there's that book, Harold Garfinkel book in sixties, uh, some studies of ethnomethodology or something like that where he, uh.

• 1:18:55Speaker 04

  I wasn't reading books in the sixties. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to go with you.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  He, he, no, no, no, it's exactly what you're talking about.

• 1:19:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  It's basically, it is a, I, I, I find academic writing often really bad and really hard to get into because it's just so dense.

• 1:19:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  A lot of academics can't write and they're kind of hard, hide behind language to cover it up, but.

• 1:19:13Trevor Noah?

  What's we saying this?

• 1:19:14Speaker 04

  Shots fired.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, and that's not their job. Their job is to be an academic, but you know what I mean? It's like, uh, when, well, I've got like, you know, you have writers who then read all that and then make it like something I wanna read. But anyway, there's this book that he wrote, this Harold Garfinkel guy, I think this is, it's actually, um, and he just had a load of his students doing loads of really absurd things that subvert, I think it was in New York maybe, uh, subvert the, um, just like things like the rules of waiting in line or going into a restaurant and I can't, there's so many, they're, they're very funny, they're very funny, but now I think uh, ethically slightly dubious, like, I think as an academic to do them, but like, yeah, I think that there was, I think you would might, you might like it.

• 1:19:54Trevor Noah?

  I'll check it out.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  Because it's just like, it's. It's they're just they're just very funny. It's funny. It's like, oh.

• 1:20:00Trevor Noah?

  Well, it just breaks how you how you think reality is supposed to work.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  All right, loads of students. He's gonna get all of his students to wait at the same set of traffic lights. And the whole day, they're gonna cross on the red on when it is don't cross. That that would be like an experiment he might do.

• 1:20:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  That's like an example.

• 1:20:14Trevor Noah?

  And then you see what happens to the people around them.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's it. It's the impact on the people around.

• 1:20:18Trevor Noah?

  You see where the tipping point is. If one person crosses at a red light. Are they gonna follow or not? No one will. Two people, no one, three. And then you get to a tipping point where like the group does it. And you see a person go, oh, I guess that's what we do. And they just like, they just waddle across with you.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:33Trevor Noah?

  And if you all turned and were like, what are you doing? They'll be like, ah!

• 1:20:37Trevor Noah?

  But it but it. Don't do that in the middle of traffic. No, but I I don't know, man. I just I just think like. Yeah, I think like the reality that we accept or the reality that causes us to fight, the reality that causes us to hate other people, the reality that causes us to think the way we think is so fragile.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, definitely.

• 1:20:56Trevor Noah?

  Don't press anything. We've got more. What now? After this.

• 1:21:02Trevor Noah?

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• 1:21:47Trevor Noah?

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• 1:22:32Trevor Noah?

  Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

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• 1:23:17Speaker 05

  That's C-O-O-P, sleepgoods.com/comedy.

• 1:23:26Trevor Noah?

  I did another, I did another, so I met a fellow a couple of years ago, Channel 4, which is like part of the BBC. It's like, uh, it was all about Amazon, because you mentioned Amazon Ring Doorbell. Oh, the urine? Yeah. Oh, I love this one, man. Tell me about it. This, the urine. I'll give you the backstory and you, you gotta tell it. Yes. So remember a story came out about Amazon workers being so pressed in their environment? Yeah. In the warehouses. Everything in their environment was timed. Their, their performance was measured, they were tracked across the floor. Some of the worst, like, working conditions in that way, right? And because they weren't unionized, no one could do anything about this, a whole thing. Modern-day sweatshop. Yeah, basically. And like, one of the worst things about the story was the drivers and the workers in the warehouse would talk about how

• 1:24:11Trevor Noah?

  Their time was so, you know, like, it was like, like in a draconian way, measured to the, to the finest degree. That they couldn't even risk going to the, to the toilets. They couldn't go to the bathroom. So what they would do, yeah, what they would do is in the truck, in the way, they would just pee into a bottle.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:24:30Trevor Noah?

  And then just carry on working. They, no one would leave, no one would, so yes, modern day sweatshop. And then the story like blew up and it was like the Amazon workers are peeing into the bottles and then Amazon was like, meh.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  Did you cover it on the show?

• 1:24:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, we did, we did, yeah, we did. And it was, we were just like, what the, what the hell?

• 1:24:44Speaker 03

  What did Amazon say?

• 1:24:45Trevor Noah?

  Like the cost of, what does Amazon ever say? Do you know what I mean? Come on, what is, these people, they've never come out and be like, yeah, we make them pee. I mean, you know how it is, bro.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  That's the business.

• 1:24:55Trevor Noah?

  No, but like really, I wish one day a company would do that. Be like, yeah, and then what? We made them pee in bottles.

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  You get your package?

• 1:25:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you get your package. Man, shit, you know, no, but they don't.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Don't dust it for fingerprints.

• 1:25:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:09Trevor Noah?

  Um, but they, but they didn't, they, they basically, and they were like, oh, we're looking into this, but it's not what you, this is no, this is fabricated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But anyway, so that was the story.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Trevor Noah?

  I now hand over to my, my, my favorite scam artist in the world.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  So I did the, so basically, I, yeah, I did this film, hour long special about Amazon a few years ago, uh, two years ago. And uh, it, um, one of the things I did is I went and worked in one of the warehouses, which is near where I grew up in, but, uh, Feckingham, this is one, one in.

• 1:25:37Speaker 03

  So you got the job?

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  I got a job. Uh, I worked there undercover and I had a camera on.

• 1:25:42Trevor Noah?

  But how? You see, you, I need you to explain these things.

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  Can you stop with the how already?

• 1:25:51Speaker 03

  You ever had blue eyes and blonde hair?

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  True, that's true, that's true.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:25:59Speaker 03

  This is a world that human eyes will never understand.

• 1:26:03Speaker 04

  Cause can I tell you what's funny about Uber's stories is, in Uber's stories, he gets a job as part of a scam. He's like, then there's someone who's like, I just want the job.

• 1:26:14Speaker 04

  How did you get the job?

• 1:26:15Speaker 03

  Uber is the reason why, Uber is the reason why Idris Elba will never be James Bond. He never just work anywhere.

• 1:26:24Speaker 04

  Have to be white. Oh god. The TV has to go, are you white? Yes. Oh god. Okay, then.

• 1:26:30Trevor Noah?

  But you see, you know what I like, but you're using your privilege, my friend. Because these experiments, we can't be, Eugene and I can't be messing around now.

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:26:37Trevor Noah?

  We would go to an Amazon factory, we'd be like, I'm undercover. And then 15 years later, we'd still be there packing.

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:45Trevor Noah?

  You'd be like, what happened Eugene? What happened Trevor? Ah, work here, man. I would be like, you can leave, you came on, it was a scam. No, man, Jeff's not gonna be happy if we don't get these packages. Hold on.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  It's true, it's true, it's true. No, you're absolutely right, like, you're absolutely right. Remember when I first started doing stuff for Vice? And because I grew up somewhere, I was 100% white, basically. And the feckin' them was 100% white.

• 1:27:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no feckin' them, come on.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the mid, like, you know, about half an hour away in Redditch, this is the cloak. Well, that's not even half an hour, 20 minutes away in Redditch, really close to where we grew up. We didn't, I didn't have a car growing up, so we just, I was just in the village. Is like, you know, there's a big South Asian diaspora.

• 1:27:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  Like, and traditionally, there was a Caribbean diaspora as well, but it's sort of lessened over the years, more in Birmingham. And it was interesting having that experience of having, of having my white privilege called out for the first times in the comments and stuff. And having grown up with, as white, but without money, I was like, my privilege? But, but I grew up working, but I was working. And now, particularly since I've moved here, I'm like, oh no, like, I've had to obviously completely be educated in that. By friends, you know, and I'm trying to get my head around that. But yeah, it's massive and I was an idiot for, I wished I was taught about that in school.

• 1:28:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but here's, here's the thing that's complicated about it. I'm not an academic, but I fight with academics about this all the time. I think some of these concepts, while true, are not explained correctly to people.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:22Trevor Noah?

  Hmm. You know what I mean? So I remember when people would talk like, you know, because some of these things become, you know, in vogue. Fashionable. In moments, you know, like, so white privilege, there was, it really had its moment.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:32Trevor Noah?

  Check your privilege, check it at the door.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  Post your black square.

• 1:28:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, you post that black square. You know what I mean? So.

• 1:28:41Speaker 04

  And leave a review.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  Five stars. Jerk chicken, fantastic.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:28:52Speaker 03

  Curry gold. And I've got curry gold.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They go on the fish and chips, one star.

• 1:28:59Trevor Noah?

  The, um, yeah, the food was terrible, but I understand why. Five stars. No, so here's, here's, so here's, this is just my opinion, but I mean, a lot of these things are even the academic ones, even, and that's maybe my first issue, by the way, is that a lot of the time academics will make it seem like it isn't their opinion.

• 1:29:19Speaker 03

  They distance themselves.

• 1:29:20Trevor Noah?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 1:29:21Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:29:21Trevor Noah?

  From, from. So they, they'll, they'll put forth an idea.

• 1:29:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:29:25Trevor Noah?

  And they work in a space where they study and they were.

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  Research is their favorite word, yes.

• 1:29:28Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but it is an opinion.

• 1:29:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:29:31Trevor Noah?

  Right? It is an opinion. It may be an opinion that holds true for the most part, but it is still an opinion.

• 1:29:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:37Trevor Noah?

  So, the argument I would have with people is this, you may be right, you may be wrong, but you also have to acknowledge the way you're explaining this to somebody is, isn't correct, right? Because you make it seem like it's a hard and fast rule that is constant in every single environment in the exact same way all the time.

• 1:29:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Trevor Noah?

  Okay. So when people were like, white privilege, check your privilege, right? When I would talk to white people and who'd go, the, the thing that I saw people struggling with is, there were people who were like, I'm poor, I'm homeless, I'm struggling.

• 1:30:06Speaker 03

  Where's the privilege?

• 1:30:07Trevor Noah?

  Where's the privilege?

• 1:30:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:08Trevor Noah?

  Right. Please can you help me figure out where, because I would like to access it. I would love to access this privilege. And the best analogy I came up with was golf.

• 1:30:21Trevor Noah?

  Golf is one of my favorite, like, ideas for a sport. Because even though golf is the most, you know what I mean, like.

• 1:30:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:33Trevor Noah?

  Not in Scotland, it's the most like, it's like, this is like elite.

• 1:30:36Speaker 03

  You've just described absurd.

• 1:30:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Kids don't grow up on a council estate playing golf.

• 1:30:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like cricket in India.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  That's where it's.

• 1:30:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, the home, because of the home of it.

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. Whereas cricket in England's posh, they're properly posh and like, and I don't, South Africa, I'm assuming.

• 1:30:50Trevor Noah?

  No, yeah.

• 1:30:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Cricket schools are the, one of the best schools.

• 1:30:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but cricket itself though, in the township they play it as well, do you know what I mean?

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:56Trevor Noah?

  And we have.

• 1:30:57Speaker 03

  Not as much.

• 1:30:57Trevor Noah?

  Anymore, but yeah.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  We have a huge South Asian diaspora in England. No South, well, very few South Asian Asian players play for England. It's kind of insane. It's all posh private schools.

• 1:31:07Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, I mean, but that's who you know, where you know.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  No, but it's just weird, isn't it? Because football has become democratic, because you like, you know, it's it's it's. I think it kind of always has been, to be honest, but football is democratic, whereas it's interesting that like these old school sports like cricket, we're on a different thing now.

• 1:31:23Trevor Noah?

  Go ahead.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  No, no, no, just like it's interesting the way I always look when I'm watching cricket as a as a fan. And I'm like, new new players come through, great. And I go and I I do this every time. Wikipedia, what school? For fuck's sake.

• 1:31:35Trevor Noah?

  It's always like.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  I just want him to not be going to a posh school. I just want him to go for gone to a normal school.

• 1:31:41Trevor Noah?

  Government school who made it.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  Just a normal state school.

• 1:31:44Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  Good normal state school. That's all I want.

• 1:31:47Trevor Noah?

  So wait, all the English cricket players are like.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Most of them.

• 1:31:50Trevor Noah?

  Huh.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  It's about, but then the the really great ones are always not posh kids, but. This is my, this is now coming in my, coming in my like, uh.

• 1:31:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  My, this is, that that's the thing we're, I mean, this is a classic, isn't it? But we're obsessed with class in England. It's it's different.

• 1:32:05Trevor Noah?

  But you see, now that comes back to what we're saying about privilege.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  That, yeah.

• 1:32:07Trevor Noah?

  The loop of privilege is this. When you go white privilege, if you're not careful, you make people think that that privilege attached to your whiteness is a constant thing, right?

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:32:20Trevor Noah?

  Whereas you see like in golf, they go to your handicap.

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:32:23Trevor Noah?

  It's a very simple principle. It means at your current position in the game.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  This is where you're at.

• 1:32:28Trevor Noah?

  This is how much we need to adjust the game so that you have a fair chance.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:32Trevor Noah?

  But that handicap can change. It can go down and it can go up.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:35Trevor Noah?

  Right? So if you get good enough, we're not going to give you any advantage. But if you get bad enough, we're going to give you as mu- as as much advantage as you need. But they acknowledge that the handicap can change. And I think that's interesting.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  The variable, yeah.

• 1:32:46Trevor Noah?

  So it's not, because I don't like that we make these things seem permanent and constant regardless of the situation you're in. Because class, and there was a, there's a writer, I I wish I could remember her name, was one of the most brilliant writers. We'll just put her on the screen while I'm saying this. Her name is.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Uh, Rennie Edelidge.

• 1:33:03Trevor Noah?

  Maybe, maybe, but she's she said something about, she said, the phrase, and I'll paraphrase it, where she said about the US and many places. She said, I can't wait. For America to finish the conversations about race so that they can understand that they're just at the bottom of discussing class. Yeah. Because race is a proxy for class for most people. Yeah. You know what I mean? A shorthand for class. It is shorthand. So it's like, yes, black attached to being poor. Poverty. Yes, but it it does not mean that black itself will always be the thing that suffers. It means that poor will always be the thing that suffers. Yeah.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say that just having an accent, I have a subtle accent, but I've lost it the more time I've spent in London and the more time I've spent, nine years in London, I've been here for two years. Um, but like, uh, it's interesting. Um, just how, obviously here, it's like, you know, I'm just an English guy.

• 1:33:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  And a white English guy, but I'm an English guy.

• 1:33:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  But it's like in England, you know, you you you're always where what class you grew up with, you know what I mean? It doesn't matter how much money you have, really.

• 1:34:06Trevor Noah?

  I can assume, even like the way you say class, I'm sure people are like, hmm.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:10Trevor Noah?

  Are you sure you can afford this?

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:12Trevor Noah?

  No, it's true, though.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  No, but you're you're either part, you're either part of the, I mean, you let, you know, you're either part of the, so four percent of the population in the UK go to private school. And they re- represent most of the executive positions in all the companies.

• 1:34:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  And now they're getting into entertainment, which is fantastic as well. Just love it. Let's keep, let's have that. That's fantastic. Uh, but like, you know, you either want, so basically it's like, and then they have, you have hereditary positions of in the government, the House of Lords, you have a lordships that you can inherit, all that stuff. So we still have like a proper, proper ruling class, a proper ruling class. And that's like, um, probably the English people watch this now would be like, fuck you, you don't, whatever, it's changed or whatever. But I don't think it has. And I think that like.

• 1:34:56Trevor Noah?

  It will never change.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  Being here is in crazy how it's a different system. Is, as you said, race plays is a much, much, much bigger part of it. You said race is a proxy.

• 1:35:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I, yeah, but I would argue in the US, what happens is.

• 1:35:12Trevor Noah?

  Money becomes the class like so. Yeah. So what happens is, yes, race is a big one. But then one of the tools that can help you is money. So convince. And not necessarily the possession of it, but the access that it gives you to things. Yeah. So if you if you are in the business class lounge. Right. There's gonna be an element, but still your race might be the difference where like, let's say you walk ahead of me into the business class lounge. Yeah. You'll just you might just walk in. And then when I walk in, someone will go, excuse me, are you business class? You know what I mean? Yeah. Now, but now because of maybe fame, someone will be like, oh, of course, Mr. Noah, come in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like recently, when we were in Australia, this was so funny, because here's my thing, I. I wasn't in Australia. Yeah, he wasn't. He means we as in. We, so me and the crew in Australia.

• 1:35:57Trevor Noah?

  The royal we. Yeah, the royal we. I was there by myself. Very classy.

• 1:36:03Trevor Noah?

  No, so we're in Australia and I was on tour there. And there's moments where, I think you know what I'm saying. There's certain racisms or whatever you want to call it, prejudice, where you just have to laugh at it and poke it. So we're standing in, and it's very distinct. We're flying Qantas Airlines, that's really how you get around Australia in that way. Yeah. And I think we're flying out of Perth. And it's myself and my two friends from South Africa, so it's me, Ryan, Slabohos, so it's here we are. And we we're standing together in this line. And then the promoter, Sebastian, he's with us. So Sebastian's the only white guy. Right? So we're all there together, but we're together in the line.

• 1:36:51Trevor Noah?

  Airport's basically empty. We're in the business class line, right? Confidently in that line, it's clearly marked and we're in it. Do you have the business class line cockiness of headphones? Not not even, I'm just, we're just there. Okay.

• 1:37:06Speaker 04

  Away suitcase.

• 1:37:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. The cockiness of business class. One of one of the employees comes over, she walks up to us.

• 1:37:17Trevor Noah?

  Walks past Sebastian, that was the key thing, walks past Sebastian, who's like in front of us, says nothing to him. Comes straight to me and then goes, she's like, oh, excuse me, oh, this is a business class line. Oh, God.

• 1:37:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:33Trevor Noah?

  And then I said, yes, yes, it is.

• 1:37:37Trevor Noah?

  And then she just stared at me, cause now she was hoping that I would now do the whole like, oh, sorry, I'm not in, but I was, I was just enjoying it so much. I was like, I was like, yeah. And the way I said it, I was, I was like, yes, this is the business class.

• 1:37:51Trevor Noah?

  And then she went. Pick that up, guy. Oh, you, are you in business class?

• 1:37:58Trevor Noah?

  And then I was like, why else would I be standing in this line? Who's asking? Then she's like, oh, all right. I just want, I want to show if you're in business class. Then I was like, I don't know if this guy's in business class.

• 1:38:11Trevor Noah?

  But she didn't know that I knew Sebastian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm just pointing at this random white guy. Then I was like, I don't know if he's in business class. Yo, are you in business class? This is a business class line. And then she's like, oh, yeah, I'm sure he's in business class. I was like, why am I not in business? And then you could see she just like, she had this moment where she was like, ah. So those are moments where I go. Yes, you know, your money, maybe your favorite. It happens in your building all the time. My man, all these things. All the time. All these things.

• 1:38:40Trevor Noah?

  But yes, but what I, no, no, for sure, for sure, for sure. And you hear the dial-up fax. That's, that's, but that's what I mean is like, I feel like what we don't do enough of is. The handicapper analogy is really, is really good. Yeah, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't discuss these things dynamically. And then, and then we live in a world where, and maybe the bots don't help, right? Is that we don't get into a position where we can then discuss it as people and say, okay, so when does this happen and when doesn't it happen and how does it happen? Because otherwise you're just going like, hey, man, white guy, you're a superhero. Nothing can go wrong in your life. And then white guy goes, well, a lot of shit. I, I don't have a job. I'm living in my mom's basement. I'm selling rabbit shit. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Times are tough. Times are tough.

• 1:39:23Trevor Noah?

  You can never live that one time. Your grandfather's like, come on.

• 1:39:28Trevor Noah?

  Only that one time. It was just once and he deserved all of it. All the shit he got, he deserved it. That's good. That's really good. So now we, we, we're like, you know what I mean? And, and so, so what I, what I, this is part of what I like about your work is, sometimes I think as people.

• 1:39:49Trevor Noah?

  The the academic discussion of ideas limits us.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:39:54Trevor Noah?

  Because i- i- it's like, how do we see the world? How do we think we see the world? How do we want to be seen to be seeing the world? How do people see us seeing the world? How do they respond to how we see the world? How do we see them seeing? It's too much, it's too much. But then when you conduct it as like a, just an experiment, as a thing that people do.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:40:10Trevor Noah?

  You just do it.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:13Trevor Noah?

  It it it, first of all, I feel like it removes the lens. So we're watching people leave fake reviews or write fake or come to a fake restaurant.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Trevor Noah?

  We're watching, we're watching people, you know what I mean? So like your, your Amazon thing, which I want you to talk about because it's, it's, it's sort of goes into this world.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:32Trevor Noah?

  It's one thing to write an article about, hey, guys. Amazon doesn't really do a good job of protecting you as a consumer, as a customer. They, they're really unscrupulous. Yes, they're convenient, yes, they're great.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:44Trevor Noah?

  But you know, at the same time, we have to ask ourselves i- if these people, you can go into that for everness. Or you can just sell urine on Amazon.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  But, but I.

• 1:40:55Trevor Noah?

  You can sell Amazon workers urine on Amazon.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:58Speaker 04

  And prove that it exists.

• 1:40:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but and, and it, it makes such a.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:02Trevor Noah?

  Sometimes I feel like the, you know?

• 1:41:04Speaker 01

  It's, it's trying to, that, yeah, it's, I was trying to do is, it's sort of a, trying to figure out like, what is a? It's essentially like that same thing of like, what is a symbol or a, often in like, in, in the world, like the stuff that catches on and the stuff that actually starts changing people's minds or something is like, just a really simple symbol.

• 1:41:23Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Like something, I, I remember when, this is an example you guys won't, won't know probably.

• 1:41:30Speaker 04

  Why, because you're black?

• 1:41:32Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, I, I'm sorry, I, I just had.

• 1:41:36Trevor Noah?

  And you were waiting.

• 1:41:37Speaker 04

  I wasn't waiting.

• 1:41:38Trevor Noah?

  You had that in the chamber, you were like, oh, yeah. You're like, oh, yeah.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 1:41:43Trevor Noah?

  I got you, little Uber boy, I got you. Any moves?

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:48Trevor Noah?

  You know what you were waiting?

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  Next thing he says?

• 1:41:49Trevor Noah?

  Next thing he says, because I'm black.

• 1:41:52Speaker 04

  You could have said anything.

• 1:41:53Trevor Noah?

  Anything, anything, anything, you could have said that. And Eugene was ready with it.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  Under the table.

• 1:42:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Eugene was ready for you.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  The blaster.

• 1:42:02Trevor Noah?

  Eugene was ready for you.

• 1:42:04Speaker 01

  And solo.

• 1:42:07Trevor Noah?

  Oh man, I've had a great time with you guys because I'm black.

• 1:42:12Trevor Noah?

  Oh man, I didn't think I was gonna say that.

• 1:42:16Speaker 03

  I surprise myself sometimes.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  No, there was a guy, there was this politician when we, when we, anyway, whatever. He was a Labour politician, he was a guy called Ed Miliband, he uh.

• 1:42:24Trevor Noah?

  I remember Ed Miliband.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. His whole thing, he looked like he was gonna become the Prime Minister, this was like, you know, after five years of like bad Conservatives and Lib Dems. And he ate a bacon sandwich badly. And then it was like, it was all.

• 1:42:38Trevor Noah?

  It was done.

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

  It was done. And it was almost like that encapsulated, he was this out of touch. You know, whatever, and it was like, you know, the sun that printed it, which is a like, you know, rag that Rupert Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch is uh runs.

• 1:42:52Trevor Noah?

  One of those Conservative tabloids, yeah.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and uh, yeah, he printed like a picture of him eating a bank, he's struggling with a bacon sandwich and it was kind of over, it was bizarre. I remember that was stuck in my head, it was like, there's a million examples of that if he uh, you probably didn't think of one.

• 1:43:07Trevor Noah?

  There was one where.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Mini Mike was one that Trump did to Bloomberg, that just killed it.

• 1:43:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that one destroyed it.

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:13Trevor Noah?

  But there's also one where uh, who, who ate pizza with a knife and fork in New York? They were running for president. Was it, was it Mitt Romney? Maybe it was, I don't know.

• 1:43:22Speaker 03

  It was over just like that.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  Pizza, pizza, have you ever seen, but this is a completely off topic, have you ever seen an advert where Trump eats the pizza backwards? It's insane.

• 1:43:32Trevor Noah?

  Can I tell you, that's why I think Trump doesn't eat anything in public anymore.

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  But he stays it backwards.

• 1:43:38Trevor Noah?

  I'm gonna go look at this now because I.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  It's insane, the pizza advert, I think.

• 1:43:43Speaker 03

  Can do it now.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  I actually didn't think of that, thank you.

• 1:43:48Speaker 03

  We're not the BBC here.

• 1:43:49Trevor Noah?

  I actually need to see this.

• 1:43:50Speaker 03

  Free wheeling.

• 1:43:51Trevor Noah?

  I need to see this.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  It's very bizarre.

• 1:43:54Trevor Noah?

  You know what, what sucks though is like, now in like a few years, all of these things will become boring because people are like, oh, that's probably AI.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Images, yeah, yeah, you're right.

• 1:44:02Speaker 03

  We're losing that now.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Should I?

• 1:44:06Trevor Noah?

  Backwards.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  Should I carry on with piss?

• 1:44:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, tell us the, the, the, tell us, tell us how you sold urine.

• 1:44:11Speaker 03

  Nice segue.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  While he, while he, while he pulls it up.

• 1:44:17Speaker 03

  Tom, because he knows the story.

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  I'll help your appetite.

• 1:44:22Trevor Noah?

  While I prepare the pizza.

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  While the backwards pizza is in the oven. I'll prepare you an aperitif.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:32Speaker 03

  I love that word.

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Speaker 03

  Aperitif.

• 1:44:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:35Speaker 03

  Sounds better than palate cleanser.

• 1:44:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, there it is.

• 1:44:37Speaker 03

  Palate cleanser sounds like mouthwash.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  I I hope I haven't got this wrong.

• 1:44:41Trevor Noah?

  There it is. Wow. This is crazy.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  It's an interesting image.

• 1:44:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, look at that.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  He's he survived it. It almost helped him. There.

• 1:44:50Speaker 04

  Gee.

• 1:44:52Trevor Noah?

  That's what he says before he eats pizza.

• 1:44:53Speaker 04

  Gee.

• 1:44:56Speaker 04

  I love pizza so much. Give me my slice. Gee.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  It's funny, mate. Is that how they do it in Queens? I mean.

• 1:45:03Trevor Noah?

  This is. This is a person who's probably never eaten pizza or like just lived in another world.

• 1:45:09Speaker 04

  He's like, yeah, regular people do it. Like, is this how you do it? I do it all the time. I do it all the time.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  You end with the finger.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  Bizarre. Uh, yeah. So basically I went and worked at this warehouse. I got a job there. Didn't keep the job. Uh, was I was, uh, I worked there for a few days because it was the closest warehouse outside of, uh, the one in Staten Island.

• 1:45:32Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  To Unionizing. We went and worked there. We'd heard all this stuff. And now I was working with like Channel Four, which is like the BBC, public service broadcaster. It's like six months of legal work to get in there with a camera, you know, it's not, I can't just like start writing reviews.

• 1:45:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  Now I'm working in TV. It's different. Um, so we had to prove wrongdoing. We had suspicion of wrongdoing. We went in there eventually. It was crazy. It was like this dystopian, like you go have airport style security scanners. You have to go when you come off the warehouse floor and I. I worked back in Studley near Feckham. I worked in a car factory. It was nothing like that. You know, there's a level of respect that you have in it when you're working in a warehouse even. In Amazon, it was.

• 1:46:12Trevor Noah?

  And privacy.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just like they scan you like you're like, like, I don't know, going to through, uh, TSA or whatever, every time you come off the warehouse floor. And, um, they monitor you. So you have this score that that this is what happens. They they they. Everybody on the, you have this thing that's connected to your account and the more you scan and the slower you. Scan the worst your score is, basically. Um. What else was there? Oh, there was a, there was a, another worker who actually went public after this, but didn't wanna go public in, in the film. Um. Who left, had a, it was a couple of weeks before I got there, before I started working there, had a heart attack on the warehouse floor. And then was, had to leave in an ambulance to the hospital and then got a warning, formal warning for leaving work early.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  It's crazy, absolutely crazy. And, uh, yes, it's this sort of dystopian thing. I got caught on the third day, someone recognized me for my other work and pulled me to one side and they're like, what the fuck are you doing here? And, uh, I got pulled off there. And, uh, yeah, it was, it was interesting. And then basically. I wanted to do something about their work, cause I wanted to come up with a stunt that would cut through and would, would have a, a level of impact. So I, I was hanging out outside a lot of the fulfillment centers and noticed there were bottles of piss everywhere outside of the fulfillment centers. I was, it was initially I spotted them in, uh, Glendale, uh, just the one, the closest one in L A.

• 1:47:32Speaker 03

  In California.

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, just in L A. And then I was in, I did it in London, the one in Queens. Every single one I've been to, and I, I probably still exactly the same, there's bottles of piss outside all over the world. Um. And I stopped, spoke to drivers and they told me that this was them. And the reason why it worked that way, I stopped someone else and she. Was a manager, who have a dispatch manager who manages the drivers. And she said, the way it works is if you have ten bottles. If they catch you, you come back into the, the, after your shift, um, with a bottle of piss in your car. Then you get a point against your name.

• 1:48:06Speaker 03

  No man.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  And if you get ten points, you're in trouble. So the, what they do is as they're driving back in, they chuck it out the window. Cause they think, okay, right, I need to get rid of it or I'm gonna get in trouble. So what I did was sort of like, I collected a load of the bottles of urine, repackage them as like a, one of those kind of new influencer energy drinks. Called Release Energy. And, uh, and then I actually.

• 1:48:31Speaker 03

  Release infection.

• 1:48:34Speaker 03

  Bladen, okay, so.

• 1:48:35Speaker 01

  So I, no, no, then I put it on, uh, I put it on, so yeah, we, we, uh, another thing as well was, uh, we spoke to a female driver. Who got UTIs from holding it in as well, like so the guys would piss in bottles, they would get UTIs. And then listed it on Amazon as a drink, uh said what it was on the label, didn't didn't hide what it was. It was like, this is bottles of urine collected from Amazon drivers. And then I made that in the same way that I kind of did the restaurant, because I knew it would be a story if it worked. Again, I didn't know it would work. I thought it would be flagged because it said urine, urea on it everywhere. It was listed as a drink, as an energy drink. Um and I made it a number one drink on Amazon. So it was literally a number one drink on Amazon on the platform.

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  It became this big story, came out massively viral again, was covered everywhere. But what it meant is that people were talking about this story that if it was earnestly reported, basically exactly what the model that you guys have had at the show was, how do you make people talk about this thing? How are you going to break the spell of like, because Amazon's and the way they run their, like the user experience as a, as a customer is amazing. Yeah, it's flawless. So it's like, how do you break the spell a little bit? And I never once in the film said, delete your Amazon or whatever. It's like, no, no, let's just like, make people think about this thing. But it ended up being like, uh, yeah, it was crazy. And, you know, uh, it ended up going viral, that stunt when it came out and um was basically exactly what I wanted it to do, you know?

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  And I had this other whole thing about uh filling in potholes at Amazon's expense as well. Uh like I basically noticed how Amazon, you know, don't pay much towards taxes. Essentially, they they like avoid a lot of corporate taxes. Like in twenty twenty, they paid zero in corporation tax in the UK. So I, I, I, uh, and I thought, you know, Amazon still uses the infrastructure that our taxes pay for, but they don't contribute, they don't contribute to its growth and maintenance. Yeah. Oh, fair play, Amazon. Make your money, do your thing, but you got to pitch in. And like, how quick can Amazon make a prime delivery without the roads that our, that our taxes pay for?

• 1:50:39Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  So what I did is I ordered a load of cement from Amazon and then I went in, fill in potholes around in California and in the UK and, and filled them, filled them in. And then I went down to the beach, fudged for a refund, filled the packages with sand.

• 1:50:54Trevor Noah?

  And then sent it back. And they just gave you your money.

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  They gave me my money back. And I remember telling, in the film that I made about this, I tell my lawyer and he's like, that's not clever, that's just fraud.

• 1:51:04Trevor Noah?

  Where were you?

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  Finally.

• 1:51:05Trevor Noah?

  My whole life.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  The camera doesn't matter, you've committed fraud. But basically what I'd done, and this is kind of the, this is, this was to make a bigger point, was I, before I did any of that, I went and I made an offshore company in Belize. That has very secret privacy, privacy laws. And I made a, an Amazon business account for that company. And then so technically, the, the, the crime was committed by this offshore company in Belize. It was an offshore, offshore issue. Which is the same mechanic that Amazon uses to avoid paying taxes. It's like the same setup.

• 1:51:38Trevor Noah?

  Man.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  So yeah, I managed to get around getting in trouble by using the same way that they avoid paying taxes. And, uh, yeah, the name of the company was Whole Maintenance and Repair Corp, which as an acronym is HMRC, which is the British IRS.

• 1:51:53Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, but yeah, that was like, it, you know, that's like, that film two years ago, the first one we talked about, eight years, seven, eight years ago. You know, in that time, you have to, that's sort of, I suppose maybe captures how slightly the work's moved on. Do you know what I mean? Like, you're kind of slightly trying to, I don't know. It's a similar thing. And I think that the world has changed a lot in that time. I think that like now where it used to be that, that, you know, I was creating these things that were like fictions. That would somehow almost go up to the line before they go, they cross it.

• 1:52:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  I opened the shed for one night only. When we opened the shed for one night only, uh, there was a, a company in Dubai wanted me to open up the shed in Dubai. And to make it a real restaurant chain and all that stuff. If I'd have wanted to, if I was just making money, I'd have been like, well, screw the film.

• 1:52:44Trevor Noah?

  Just do this thing.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  Let's just have a, a chain of restaurants called The Shed and get a load of investment, whatever, burn it, what, make the, take some money.

• 1:52:52Trevor Noah?

  I mean, that's one of the more recent projects you've started working on that I think has, has also given me a, a clearer view of how. How fragile the money ecosystem is that we live in? You know, cause like it's also, it's another insane project, but you basically set yourself the target of making, was it a million dollars?

• 1:53:13Speaker 01

  A million pounds, yeah.

• 1:53:14Trevor Noah?

  Million pounds.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  One point three, one point three million dollars.

• 1:53:16Trevor Noah?

  In?

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  Ninety days.

• 1:53:18Trevor Noah?

  Ninety days, yes. But you, but you, it has to be legal.

• 1:53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:22Trevor Noah?

  And it had to be.

• 1:53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right, yeah.

• 1:53:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this came out, this is two months ago, this is the latest film for British television. But what it, you know, that film, what it, it was a kind of reaction to uh hustle culture, you know? And like how much of our cultural oxygen is just around making money? And how much of that, you know?

• 1:53:41Trevor Noah?

  So here's what I, what I, what I don't like is, and this happens with various different fields and spheres, you know, as.

• 1:53:53Trevor Noah?

  When people talk about hustle culture. It's now been co-opted by a group of people.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:00Trevor Noah?

  Who sort of, cause hustling was a thing that a lot of people did in like a really meaningful way. I, I know it sounds crazy to say that, but it's like, a lot of people hustled.

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:08Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  I think we all hustled.

• 1:54:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you hustled to do your thing. Your parents hustled, your hustling was like, I gotta, I gotta hustle, I gotta.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  No, you're right, yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:15Trevor Noah?

  Really what this, this is, is like, it's scam culture. It's not hustle culture. It's scam culture. It's how can you make as much money as possible?

• 1:54:23Speaker 03

  As quickly as possible.

• 1:54:24Trevor Noah?

  As quickly, but also most importantly, most importantly, with somebody else being the victim in some way, shape or form, are you selling some sort of online course? Are you getting people to invest in a thing?

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:54:36Trevor Noah?

  That will never pay money back? Are you, you know what I mean?

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  Our whole, and this is the thing that you, you're a hundred percent right. And I think that the thing that, as I said, from the start of when I started doing what I was doing to now.

• 1:54:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  The whole world's changed and now we are living in the fake reality. Like we are all, we're all dining at the shed.

• 1:54:53Speaker 03

  The fake has become real.

• 1:54:54Speaker 01

  We're all eating the microwaveable ready meals. We're all eating my egg on a foot. Like the way that I see, I look at the stock market, the biggest eight companies, how many of them actually, Nvidia, apart from them, they make chips?

• 1:55:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  How many of them, the, the, the value of these stocks now are, are of no semblance to reality?

• 1:55:10Trevor Noah?

  No.

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  It's like now. Now that everybody is making a shed.

• 1:55:14Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  It's it's all been, the whole economy has been remade. No one's actually making anything. So it's like, when you were saying about, you're exactly right about the culture of these money, the hustle culture thing is the grift is taking place when you are convinced that this person can lead you to the promised land of financial security.

• 1:55:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  The moment, like my mom and dad, when we were kids, were lost a load of money in a pyramid scheme. Well, not a load, but enough that it was significant in our house and a very popular one, which everyone would know. But like that, that like could have made me kind of a little averse to those types of things. When I hear about constantly having people say, oh, you should buy into this crypto.

• 1:55:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:57Speaker 01

  Buy into this, this, this, you know, this course that can help you make a load of money and make you rich or whatever. I've always thought the structure of the way that a lot of people, a lot of people are monetizing their audiences is like they're selling them hope.

• 1:56:12Trevor Noah?

  That's, that's, that's the biggest thing for me is like it, and they, they do a good job of conflating it with the hard work that people are doing and the, because what, what they do is they're really good at, I find they're really good at hiding in crowds. Is the way, is the way I like to think of it.

• 1:56:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:29Trevor Noah?

  So what they'll do is they go like, oh, so what are you saying? There's something wrong with making money? It's like, no, no, no, no, no, you slick. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with me. Are you saying it's wrong to sell things? I'm not saying that. Are you against capital? I'm not saying any of these things. What I'm saying is you are running scams on people, right? I ask people this all the time. When you're going to go to a course where someone's going to teach you how to make money.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:56:52Trevor Noah?

  Ask yourself where they get their money from.

• 1:56:55Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:56:56Trevor Noah?

  Right? I'm not saying don't go.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:58Trevor Noah?

  But ask yourself where they get their money from. If that person gets all their money.

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  From you.

• 1:57:03Trevor Noah?

  From you.

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:57:04Trevor Noah?

  Telling you how to make money.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yep.

• 1:57:07Trevor Noah?

  But they aren't going off and doing the investment things that they're they aren't. They're making their money from you. Yeah, it's like getting a financial advisor. Once you're successful. You're like, where was the advice? Yeah, like, yeah, it's like all of these things. If if we're not careful.

• 1:57:24Trevor Noah?

  But it is true. It's fully that. It's like it's like it's like the the. And it has become it has become way more scammy in in that world. But then the art and craft of hiding in the crowd is then making it seem like it's like the all of us. Yeah. So what are you saying? We shouldn't like, no, I'm not saying don't advertise a thing. No. But you don't act like you did use it. Yeah. Don't act like you you know what I mean? Don't act like you. There's certain things where you're like, oh, man, at what cost?

• 1:57:52Speaker 01

  The crypto thing is fascinating. Making this film. So it was literally a follow doc. A lot of the stuff I do is way more like I'm like, it sounds a mess, but. I mean, the red the shed thing, no, but like the Amazon thing planned out. I know kind of what I'm gonna do. You never know you're gonna get caught when you're working at Amazon on the floor and they pull you off and say, what the hell are you doing it?

• 1:58:08Trevor Noah?

  You should have been like, man, shit, my my life fell apart, man. Can I pee?

• 1:58:15Speaker 01

  Before you kick me out.

• 1:58:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you'd be like, oh, man. You know what's funny is after they after they kicked you out, you got a you got a notice on your record. They're like, left early.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  I I remember getting loads of emails from them saying, why haven't you shown up to work?

• 1:58:30Trevor Noah?

  No, after you were kicked out.

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  I remember saying, I I said to like, because I had to get training to do undercover because I like this guy's basically a a. A bullshitter and we're letting him do a jour a proper journalist's job here like we're training him. And I was like, if I get caught, can I just say I'm doing undercover boss? And just say, congratulations, congratulations, you did it.

• 1:58:54Trevor Noah?

  You did it.

• 1:58:54Speaker 01

  You are promoted.

• 1:58:55Trevor Noah?

  You found me. It took you a while, but you found me.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  They were like, we are gonna rescind your permission to do this. No. But, uh, yeah, so I would come about. Yeah, so that that doc, the one about making a million, you know, you follow me around for ninety days. The thing that I just kept on getting thrust down, uh, because it was it's basically I moved to New York while I was making that.

• 1:59:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  It's reacting to being in New York. It's a very unique culture. I think in terms of.

• 1:59:18Trevor Noah?

  In what way?

• 1:59:18Speaker 01

  Hustle, just hustle.

• 1:59:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

  And the way and the comfort with which people, and I don't necessarily mind this, but it's it's very different to Europe. The way people talk about money, the way people breathe money, the possibility of money, the way it moves around. You know, you meet someone, you know, one of our main contributors in that is the co-founder of Venmo, Scott Icram. And within ten minutes of meeting him, he's like, we're making a company together. It's worth ten million dollars already. And I'm like, what? Like, what is this guy talking about? But like, he's made Venmo, so clearly he knows what he's talking about.

• 1:59:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  And then, you know, in the time that I I know him throughout, he tries to say to me, you should make a cryptocurrency with me. I said, I don't know, man, you know, I don't like that stuff. I don't I don't love it. Um, not saying it's bad, just personal.

• 2:00:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  Personal, just have a little bit of an aversion to it. He asked me to get involved in a coin with him. And then if if I'd have invested in that point, we tried to factor this and it's tricky. But um, he basically, the coin that he asked me to get in with him on was like, uh, ended up becoming, this is easy to factor. Um, the number one trending meme coin on the planet for a day, made two hundred and fifty million dollars, this thing did. And it was like, if I, and I think the thing that I can't factor, but he said, if you'd have put in five hundred dollars that day, you'd have made a million. And it was just like one of those things where I was like.

• 2:00:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but but you see, the the the sentence that isn't completed is, this is this is what I like about these money stories. They say you would have made a million.

• 2:00:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00:43Trevor Noah?

  What they should say is you would have taken a million.

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 2:00:47Trevor Noah?

  That's my issue with all of these ideas. There's no way you made it, yeah. Yeah, because you you you didn't make the thing. It comes from somewhere. Because if we look at like.

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  Oh, no, that that's a hundred percent right.

• 2:00:55Trevor Noah?

  But you get what I'm saying.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  No, no, I do get what you're saying.

• 2:00:57Trevor Noah?

  People make it seem like, the reason I would say people used to use the phrase, you're gonna make money. Is because really it was an exchange of a service of a good, of a service of a good.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:08Trevor Noah?

  All right, I need a leather shoe from you, Eugene. You need oranges from you. And we're gonna use money to help smooth over this project. It makes it makes sense.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  It's a promise.

• 2:01:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but then at some point, it became, I'm saying this is worth this. I'm gonna take all of your guys' money. It's gonna be worth this for a mo-, and then it's not gonna be worth that.

• 2:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:24Trevor Noah?

  Instantly overnight, all I've done is I've gone, and then sucked in all your money.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  Yep. It's true.

• 2:01:29Trevor Noah?

  I've just sucked in all your money.

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  The only money that exists within that coin is stuff that other people who have also had hope of put it in.

• 2:01:36Trevor Noah?

  Yes, and they put it in, yeah, it comes from somewhere.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  That's the, that's, and that was like what happened to my mom and dad when we were kids. It's the same thing, you know, it's the same thing. So look, I'll be honest, I have no regrets. I would rather not have that money and that sounds high and mighty, but I just wouldn't, like, I just.

• 2:01:49Trevor Noah?

  Ah, but also those things are shortcuts to jail. No, you never know though, that's true though. Well, they have to change the. Pardons and now people are, yeah, but those things are all temporary. They genuinely are. I think they're all temporary. It's a shortcut to jail at the end of the day.

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  It, that's like, see, that's like.

• 2:02:05Trevor Noah?

  Cause when do you stop?

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 2:02:07Trevor Noah?

  You put five hundred in, you make a million. Why would you not put in the next five hundred thousand to make ten million, a hundred million? When do you stop?

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 2:02:15Trevor Noah?

  And then we wonder why these guys get to that point. It's because along the way.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  Like, you know.

• 2:02:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, there's no need to stop. You don't need to stop, you don't need to stop, you don't need to stop. And then at some point, you're just like, oh, do it.

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  But it exists as a, the way that the, it's regulated now is exists as a sort of loophole, doesn't it, at this, at this moment in time? It didn't a year ago.

• 2:02:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:34Speaker 01

  It's changed. Now, it's now not a security. Crypto is not a security. So it's regulated by some other debt, some other regulatory body that has like one guy, one guy at a desk.

• 2:02:45Trevor Noah?

  It's just a guy who vibe, he just vibe checks it now. He just says, then he's like, cool.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, puts his finger in the water. That's all right.

• 2:02:52Trevor Noah?

  So, so.

• 2:02:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:54Trevor Noah?

  What would you say your, your dream and your, cause. Like when I, when I, when I read how people have tried to categorize you, people call you a prankster, people call you a. But I don't know, you, you know, and I, I don't want to put too much weight on this. I, I feel like. It's sort of evolved in your world and now there's like a mission behind it in some ways. What would you, what would you say you're trying to achieve with these films? When, when somebody's watching them, what, what are you hoping to reveal? Or what are you hoping to change? Or, you know?

• 2:03:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I suppose that it's hard, I def- there's definitely a worldview, isn't there? There's definitely, and that's as I've have the privilege of of doing this now for nearly ten years, which is fucking nuts. Um, like, you begin to try, take your work more seriously and you understand, like, okay, I I know what I can offer and I and I can see things about the world that I've learned in this weird journey.

• 2:03:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:49Speaker 01

  Like, you know, I can look at the the Amazon piss thing and be like, this is probably possible. And I and I think because of my experience, I know that. Or, you know, going like that film we've just made about uh get rich quick and that being in those rooms and asking a billionaire to give him, give me a million, why not? Please. And uh just like seeing, I don't know, I suppose

• 2:04:12Speaker 01

  that you said the grander mission, kind of distracting myself thinking about.

• 2:04:15Trevor Noah?

  No, yeah, just like what do you.

• 2:04:17Speaker 01

  What is the goal? Is that what you're saying? To try and change people's minds or?

• 2:04:21Trevor Noah?

  No, I don't, I don't know. I just.

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  I don't know. I I think first and foremost, I I do just consider myself sort of a a an artist and a creator of stuff and I I am, I wanna make really interesting things that are in conversation with the world. And and you know, humor is a massive part of it for me. I'm trying to be entertaining. I want it to be funny. I want it to be. But I do also want it to be illuminating. And what I will say is, um, when you're working with like, uh, Channel Four, which is like a public service broadcaster.

• 2:04:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  And maybe maybe even empathize with this with being on the show, like you have a different, almost like you you take a different set of um, uh, questions that you ask about an idea while you're coming up with it. You're like, okay, well, this is gonna be, I wanna talk about this company, Amazon, but also I need to justify that I can talk about piss and stuff. So I'm gonna evidence worker exploitation.

• 2:05:14Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 2:05:14Speaker 01

  I'm gonna evidence this and I'm gonna, but uh working on projects here now, um, I'm really excited by looking at like culture here and how that really plugs into the moment that, um. Uh, cause I think culture is actually a really great way of talking about all of that stuff.

• 2:05:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, it is.

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  Everything. If you focus on little pieces of tech, like, you know, I think there's almost like, um.

• 2:05:40Trevor Noah?

  Culture, I always think culture is a manifestation of what the society is experiencing.

• 2:05:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:45Trevor Noah?

  It just has to be.

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:05:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but and it becomes easier to, like, why is the clothing popular at the time? Why?

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:52Trevor Noah?

  What is or isn't popular? Why is, do you get what I'm saying?

• 2:05:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:55Trevor Noah?

  All of that is just, it's like the plant that grows from the soil and then it's sometimes it's hard to know what's happening in the soil.

• 2:06:01Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 2:06:01Trevor Noah?

  But if you look at the plant, you can know.

• 2:06:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  It is interesting. This is the first time in my life I've been an immigrant somewhere. That's quite interesting. I'm moving here for the first time and being, I, you know, I moved to London and then I moved to, I moved to New York. And that is an interesting experience and I suppose that's what I'm propelled by at this moment in time.

• 2:06:18Trevor Noah?

  Is being the outsider.

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's a different world.

• 2:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that, um, yeah, I'm kind of, I feel like I'm making no sense at the moment.

• 2:06:27Speaker 03

  No, no, I, I think I'm realizing what you're saying. I think two things that I picked up from here is, uh, we're constantly fighting this battle between gatekeeping and democracy.

• 2:06:36Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:06:37Speaker 03

  Um, advertising was one of those. It was a well-regulated and gate-capped industry until it was not. Now people are creating their own adverts without safeguards and research and experimentation being done.

• 2:06:47Trevor Noah?

  That's true. I didn't think about that.

• 2:06:48Speaker 03

  And the other one is basically what we started with when we were speaking about, um, academia and how they write papers. It's just basically a debate between, um, experimenting as a scientist, which is what we're enjoying now. You do experiments and you get the results quicker. Instead of someone taking five years to write the paper and do research.

• 2:07:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:06Speaker 03

  So now we've circumvented that whole process and actually inverted it because you create the experiment and then we do the research. So you're basically going, here's what I, I've experimented. Go ahead and find out.

• 2:07:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:16Speaker 03

  If it's true and as your lawyer would say, it's very illegal. I think what you are doing is you are setting off a tinderbox for us to start having conversations and doing our own research so we can arrive to a conclusion that we're happy with. Cause it's one thing if it's popular opinion.

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:32Speaker 03

  But if you came up with that, like we're saying, when you're watching a live, uh, anything on YouTube and the comments are different because it just depends.

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:39Speaker 03

  On where you're watching from.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:40Speaker 03

  And right now what you've just done is you've given us all a POV and access to just look at it and go, what am I seeing?

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh yeah, great. I mean, as you were saying, I think that I was thinking about you watching it when it came out. I mean, I wouldn't even think about that, the idea that you were watching this restaurant thing.

• 2:07:57Trevor Noah?

  And I've never watched it and I heard it from YouTube.

• 2:07:59Speaker 01

  Is that right?

• 2:08:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:00Speaker 01

  So you never, you never, oh, amazing. Alright, so if it made sense to you, hopefully it makes sense.

• 2:08:04Trevor Noah?

  Oh, no, completely makes sense. Yeah.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:06Trevor Noah?

  But that's why I say that's what the thing, that's what it does.

• 2:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:09Trevor Noah?

  I love that you said scientists or experiments or sociolish, whatever it is. It is finding the right lens or mirror, putting it on society. And if you show it in the right way, I, you know, I think of one of the most impactful videos. It went viral, it keeps going viral every few years. It's from a long time ago in the US, though. There was a local sort of news channel thing. They just did this simple experiment. They put a bicycle in Central Park or one of these parks and it was locked to a pole. And then they just sent different people to break the lock and they just wanted to see what happened. And they sent like a white guy, he's like cutting, like cutting it full on, like with a saw.

• 2:08:54Trevor Noah?

  Like very like, like hokey, I'm breaking a lock, not like subtle at all, very like bang, bang. You know what I mean? And people would just walk past and be like, oh, okay, whatever, and then they sent like a white woman. People would help. They'd be like, yo, hold on, hold on, you're doing that wrong. Hold on, hold on, let me, let me get that for you. Let me, yeah, just, and then, no, and then at some point, someone, she even like push it. Someone was like, oh, is this your bike? And she was like, no. And they're like, and they're just people, they're like, ha, ha, alright.

• 2:09:29Speaker 01

  Always having a fun Sunday.

• 2:09:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. And then, and then they sent like black teenagers to go and do it. Yo, while they were just like standing there, people like, hey, what are you doing, what are you doing? And they're like, no, my bike, I locked the, I didn't, I lost the key. They're like, no, no, I'm calling the cops. No, hey, then they would even like pull out the key and be like, no, no, here's, they're like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm calling the cops, you know? And that's small, it's not a paper.

• 2:09:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:09:54Trevor Noah?

  It's not a newspaper article, it's not, but the one thing you saw from the people who were watching was they were just like, damn.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:04Trevor Noah?

  And I think the thing that was interesting about it, and you said something about this in a conversation we had, is it allowed people to observe it in a non judgmental way. You know, so it wasn't them saying like, you white guys, you have, look at your privilege. No, you could just use your own language in your own head to see the world and come to your conclusion. And I think that's what you're doing is genuinely, you made me think of, you made me laugh, definitely. But you made me think of restaurants differently. You made me think of reality differently. You made me think of influence differently. I was like, oh damn, you gotta, you know what I mean? But I appreciate it. I'm excited to see what you come up with. Thank you for joining us. This was, this was amazing. I love it.

• 2:10:44Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 2:10:45Trevor Noah?

  Fecking them and find out. That's what, that's what he's doing.

• 2:10:47Speaker 01

  Fecking them and find out. That is gonna be, I tell you, on the sign. Fecking them and find out.

• 2:10:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

• 2:10:55Speaker 01

  If I achieve one thing in America, that's good enough for me.

• 2:10:59Trevor Noah?

  And as you leave, Fecking them will say, did you?

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, I did. I tell you.

• 2:11:05Trevor Noah?

  Two miles down.

• 2:11:06Speaker 04

  He did!

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  I did.

• 2:11:08Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man, Uber, thanks for joining us.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 2:11:10Trevor Noah?

  It was really great.

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:11:11Trevor Noah?

  I loved it. Enjoy New York.

• 2:11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 2:11:17Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.