Oobah Butler: The Digital Mirage

Summary

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What Now? with Trevor Noah

Episode: Oobah Butler: The Digital Mirage

Release Date: April 16, 2026
Host: Trevor Noah
Guest: Oobah Butler (journalist, filmmaker, prankster, cultural provocateur)
Notable Contributors: Ryan

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Trevor Noah sits down with Oobah Butler, best known for his legendary "fake restaurant" stunt that rocketed to #1 on TripAdvisor, and for his broader explorations of digital manipulation, viral pranks, and the blurry border between fraud and social experiment. Together, they unpack the psychology and mechanics behind online scams, fake realities, hustle culture, and societal trust in digital constructs—using Butler’s viral projects and investigative work as a lens into our increasingly synthetic world.

Throughout, the conversation is candid, highly entertaining, and packed with wicked insight—showcasing Trevor’s probing-yet-playful style and Oobah's wry self-awareness. The discussion traverses digital trust, social engineering, bot-fueled realities, and the hidden economies shaping our perceptions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins of Oobah’s Pranking Philosophy

[14:44] – [19:54]

• Oobah’s formative years in rural Feckenham, England, shaped his affinity for mischief and creative deception. Growing up in the working-class outlier family of the village, he learned to seek attention and manipulate narratives.
  • “I’m the youngest of six. So, sort of desperate for attention. That kind of, that kind of type.” —Oobah [20:27]
• Early jobs in bars and restaurants contributed to his understanding of the tyrannical power that customer reviews (like on TripAdvisor) hold over businesses.
• He honed his skill for professional “bullshitting”—writing fake five-star reviews for restaurants as a side gig, cementing his understanding that a huge swath of our online reality is curated or fabricated.

2. The ‘Shed at Dulwich’: Anatomy of a Viral Scam

[14:52] – [61:17]

• Oobah recounts the legendary "Shed at Dulwich" project: creating a fake, impossible-to-book restaurant, complete with a website, burner phone, mood-based menu, and staged photos of ‘gourmet food’ that were actually household objects.
  • “One of the meals that looked like a delicious meal was like an egg on my foot… another thing was, you know, urinal cakes you get, and that was made to look like a pan-fried scallop.” —Oobah [45:51]
• By manipulating TripAdvisor’s flawed verification process and getting friends (then strangers) to leave reviews, the Shed climbed the rankings, generating viral mystique and relentless demand.
  • “Fully booked for the next six weeks became my mantra from then on.” —Oobah [51:54]
• The episode dives into the psychology of exclusivity, social proof, and the ‘myth of scarcity’—and how easily our desire to belong outpaces skepticism.
  • “You encapsulate in one story: Hype. Myth. And just how we in the world all want things that aren’t even real.” —Trevor [19:26]
• Oobah ultimately “opened” the Shed for one night, serving real customers with fake gourmet food (microwaved TV dinners spruced up with micro-herbs) in a highly manipulated, theatrical setting—revealing how context, reviews, and peer pressure override our senses.
  • “We trust online hype more than what we put in our mouths.” —Oobah [67:29]

3. Reality Engineering, Bots & Digital Deception

[69:00] – [80:59]

• Oobah and Trevor discuss the proliferation of bots and the scale of digital misinformation—estimated at around 40% of all online content and comments.
  • “I remember reading the other day that about 40% of all internet like comments and content activity is bots.” —Trevor [70:44]
• They examine how easily our own perceptions are swayed by crowd behavior and online commentary, and how algorithms and digital incentives systemically reward hype over substance.
  • “I realized the comments were slowly shaping what I was thinking about 100%.” —Trevor [69:01]
  • “How can that not shape your reality?” —Oobah [70:56]
• The conversation touches on ghost kitchens and fake storefronts—the evolution of online falsehoods into omnipresent, profit-driven phenomena.

4. Satire vs. Fraud: Where’s the Line?

[17:26] – [18:19]

• Trevor explores the legal and ethical difference between ‘fraud’ and ‘prank’—noting that documenting or announcing intent transforms crime into social experiment.
  • “The loophole is, you gotta say ahead of time to a camera: ‘This is day one of planning this prank.’ Then it’s not fraud.” —Trevor [17:59]
• The panel reflects on the fine line between clever commentary and manipulation, and how a well-documented prank can become a viral social critique.

5. Hustle Culture, Scam Economy, and Get-Rich-Quick Fantasies

[116:15] – [125:06]

• Oobah discusses his most recent project: attempting to make £1 million ($1.3M) in 90 days, highlighting the blurred line between hustle culture and outright scam.
  • “It’s not hustle culture, it’s scam culture… with someone always being the victim.” —Trevor [117:16]
• They dive into how modern hustle discourse is fueled by selling hope, not actual value or production—which echoes his earlier, more literal experiments in hype and deception.
  • “Ask yourself where they get their money from. If that person gets all their money from you, telling you how to make money… they’re making their money from you.” —Trevor [119:58]
• The financial markets (“the biggest eight companies… the value of these stocks now, I’ve no… no semblance to reality.” —Oobah [118:06]) and crypto speculation are dissected as real-world examples of digital mirage economics.

6. Privilege, Class, Gatekeeping, and Digital Democracy

[90:09] – [98:47]

• The conversation veers into English and American class and privilege—how social mobility, accent, and opportunity are regulated by often-invisible gatekeeping, paralleled by online ‘gatekeepers’ in platforms and perception.
• Trevor introduces the ‘golf handicap’ as an analogy for privilege; class/race/wealth can shift a person’s “starting point” in unpredictable ways.
  • “The handicap can change. And I think that’s interesting, the variable. Yeah.” —Trevor [95:09]

7. Culture as Societal Mirror

[128:42] – [133:11]

• Wrapping up, Oobah reflects on the value of using social experiments and gonzo journalism to spark dialogue, rather than dictate answers.
  • “I want to make really interesting things… in conversation with the world. Humor is a massive part of it for me.” —Oobah [127:24]
• Ryan observes: "You are setting off a tinder box for us to start having conversations and doing our own research so we can arrive to a conclusion that we’re happy with." [129:49]
• Trevor notes the power of direct experiment-as-mirror: “If you show it in the right way… it allowed people to observe it in a non-judgmental way…” [133:06]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the psychological power of hype:

  “You created this fake world… people were dying to go to this restaurant. People were like, ‘Oh, when I go to London… where I wish I could go, but I can’t get in…’” —Trevor [19:26]

• On the digital mirage:

  “Our lives are curated by… manipulated realities, aren’t they?” —Oobah [26:00]

• On online reviews:

  “I want to know what the worst experience in your life could be… I go read one star reviews. Yeah, I always want to read the one star reviews.” —Trevor [23:05]

• On viral satire’s impact:

  “You made me realize… my dream has always been to be a massive fraudster. But then I go, you go to jail. And then you do it. And I was like, oh, there’s a way to do it and not go to jail.” —Trevor [17:12]

• On bots shaping online reality:

  “How can that not shape your reality? If… 40% of everything we read is [by] bots?” —Oobah [70:56]

• On the nature of privilege:

  “Privilege attached to your whiteness… it’s not a constant. In golf, they go to your handicap… it can go down and it can go up.” —Trevor [95:09]

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Detailed Segment Timeline

| Timestamp | Segment & Highlights | |-----------|---------------------| | 00:44–03:11 | Opening banter, playful game; Oobah’s upbringing in Feckenham, setting the tone for his blend of irreverence and mischief. | | 14:44–22:26 | Beginnings: Rural childhood, first jobs, and the pervasive influence of TripAdvisor and online reviews. | | 22:30–31:27 | Oobah’s early gig writing fake reviews: exposing the mechanics—and willingness—of online deception. | | 33:31–35:11 | Social experiments & gonzo journalism: fieldwork with extreme reviewers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the mindset behind “helping” the public with negative feedback. | | 44:15–61:17 | The “Shed at Dulwich”: Details on building the fake restaurant, gaming TripAdvisor, creating artificial demand, and eventually hosting a night for real customers. | | 67:29–80:59 | Reflection: Why it worked, what it revealed about digital trust, the rise and role of bots, viral hype, and the nature of “ghost kitchens.” | | 86:28–115:08 | Amazon stunt – “Release Energy” (bottled driver urine): Investigating labor abuses and breaking the ‘Amazon spell’ through satirical product stunts. Oobah’s broader method of using viral meta-commentary to catalyze conversation about big issues (tax avoidance, labor, infrastructure). | | 116:15–125:06 | Hustle/Scam culture: Oobah’s quest to earn £1 million in 90 days, the ethics of get-rich-quick schemes, and how modern ‘hustle’ is often a personal brand scam. | | 128:42–133:50 | Final reflections: Why satire can outstrip traditional journalism; democratization vs. gatekeeping; the power, but also fragility, of cultural consensus and digital trust. |

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Episode Takeaways

• Oobah Butler’s exploits—specifically the fake restaurant and Amazon “urine energy drink”—are not just pranks, but provocative experiments that unmask the mechanisms of digital culture, manufactured reality, and collective self-delusion.
• Through a blend of satire, documentarian rigor, and social engineering, Oobah’s work exposes how much our perceptions, decisions, and even our sense of community, are shaped by systems that incentivize hype, misinformation, and performative participation.
• Trevor Noah’s probing questions and personal takeaways highlight that none of us are immune to these forces, but becoming conscious of them can change our behaviors and attitudes—whether we’re reading reviews, trusting headlines, or buying into the next big promise.

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Listen if you want to:

• Rethink your trust in digital crowds
• Find out how a shed became London’s #1 eatery
• Understand the line between social experiment, art, and fraud
• Question the modern economies of attention, hype, and hustle
• Laugh at the absurdity and pathos of living in a world where reality is up for grabs

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Uber]

Foreign. I grew up in a little village called Fekenham. In. In England.

[Trevor Noah]

Sorry.

[Uber]

That was ridiculous.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I'm sorry. Feckingham is like.

[Ryan]

Why do you look at me?

[Trevor Noah]

No, come on. You can't tell me you didn't enjoy that. Feckingham. You seem like you're from Feckenham. In fact, from now, I'm going to say that about you. My friend Eugene from Feckenham. You've been fecking my whole life. You're fecking them. If I saw one, I just.

[Uber]

As you say this. I can't wait to clip that for my mom. And Trevor Noah. Same economicist that says, I'm already. I'm cooked here. I'm done. I'm happy.

[Trevor Noah]

This is what now with Trevor Noah. All right, Eugene, let's play a little game. You know, make something fun. Two truths and a lie. Here we go. One, I've had to tell a world leader that their fly was undone. Two, when getting dressed, I don't do sock, sock, shoe, shoe. I do sock, shoe, sock, shoe. Three, I've been a Verizon customer for 11 years. What do you think?

[Ryan]

Very confused. First of all, why would a world leader own a fly? Because those things just come uninvited. Secondly, lying to your friends is not cool. There's never been a game.

[Trevor Noah]

No, Eugene, Fly is for, like, the zip is what? And then it's not a lie. It's a game where I'm trying. It's like I give you information. Okay, I lied. All three are true, Eugene. And in case you were thinking, you know, Verizon isn't as expensive as you think. In fact, if you bring in your AT&T or T mobile bill, they'll give you a better deal. And the reason I've been with them for this long is just because I travel so much. I need a network that's reliable. That's right. A better deal on the best network with the most ways to save on plans, streaming and phone deals. Take your AT&T or T mobile bill to your local Verizon store today. Get your better deal and start saving for real. Based on RootMetric's best overall mobile network performance. US second half 2025. All rights reserved. You must provide recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person redeeming the deal. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions apply. So do you understand how two truths. And do you understand it now?

[Ryan]

I understand that you didn't have to lie first before telling me that Verizon is the best.

[Trevor Noah]

No, I wasn't lying, Eugene. It's not a lie. I wouldn't lie to you. It's a game. Okay, I'm sorry I lied. Ah. What's a booster?

[Ad Voice 1]

Somebody that steal clothes from a store

[Uber]

and sell at a discount price.

[Ad Voice 1]

It's like community service.

[Ryan]

I Love Boosters is the must see movie of the song.

[Trevor Noah]

Starring Keke Palmer and Demi Moore in

[Ryan]

a crazy heist comedy set in the cutthroat fashion world.

[Trevor Noah]

The Velvet Gang, they're boosting from my stores. Critics are hailing I Love Boosters as wildly hilarious and outrageous, provocative and really fun.

[Ad Voice 1]

Come on, let's take all of it.

[Trevor Noah]

I love Boosters.

[Ryan]

Rated r. In theaters May 22nd.

[Trevor Noah]

Get tickets now. 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 as solitary anymore. So now when you're riding a bike in the mountains, preparing for the, you know, during the off season.

[Uber]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

You're not alone.

[Ryan]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

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 that. You know what I mean?

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Because the, the fundamental truth is. Yeah. 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 committed suicide in like a random hotel room somewhere.

[Uber]

Jesus.

[Trevor Noah]

It's actually like a, like a really high number. If you look at the industry, it would always be like random comedian dead by themselves. Yeah. It's always them alone.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you know what I mean? So I can, I can see that where it's like, it's more them going. Yeah. I'm like sort of paying for her to be able to do this. Let's go.

[Uber]

I suppose it changes. And they have. When they have kids as well. Because then. Then what? Do they bring the kids with them as well?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, they do.

[Uber]

They do. They do.

[Ryan]

The kids live on the road with them.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

Also remember that most of them started being on the road when they were 13. 13, 14.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

They had to get out of school.

[Uber]

That's all I know.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

All they know. 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.

[Uber]

Like, oh, that's interesting.

[Ryan]

Like, they think when they were 13, they. Their life stopped when they were 13, having school lunches. And all of a sudden all of them have a common story. Their parent came to school, spoke to the principal. Then the principal was like, yeah, I'm sure you can. Then I 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. But Muslim don't also know how to be parents.

[Uber]

Right.

[Ryan]

Because they're strangers to their kids. The biggest fear of retirement is what am I going to do when I. Offseason is a. Is a torture when the kids get older because they think, what am I going to say to this person? 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.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, they're just.

[Uber]

They got no money either.

[Trevor Noah]

That.

[Ryan]

That.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah. Olympic.

[Trevor Noah]

Olympic athletes.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

They don't get the endorsement deals.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

Yes.

[Trevor 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 skeet shooting. Skeet shooting. Get in there.

[Uber]

I've said get in there twice today. AKA TK number one, a K. 60th minute.

[Ryan]

Oh, when he had the assist from Salah.

[Uber]

Yeah. It's a good girl. It's a nice girl.

[Trevor Noah]

You, my man.

[Ryan]

You have something to say to me, Trevor?

[Uber]

You.

[Trevor Noah]

You know who you are?

[Ryan]

Who am I?

[Trevor Noah]

You're the great. Am I? You're the Great Gatsby of. The Great Gatsby. Of football. No, football. Because Eugene. Eugene knows nothing about football. And his greatest joy is acting like he's fully invested in it. And then, like, he'll absorb everything we say, and then first he'll, like, throw it back at us.

[Uber]

Throw a little thing back.

[Ryan]

Oh.

[Trevor 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, sobberslide. And then he'd be like, dude, sobuslide. And then they would just go off. They'd be like, man, I just don't get what. 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?

[Ryan]

Those are all very good.

[Trevor Noah]

And you. Yeah, you do.

[Uber]

I mean, I just saying that you're talking sense. Yeah. What is the owner? Right. We need him in the middle. Yeah, you're right.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

It's just happened. You just got me.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, he's fantastic at it.

[Uber]

I, I just started. I, I, Because I've been living there, what, lately? Two years now. And I just, I, I like, love sports, so I'll watch it. I'll watch anything, but.

[Ryan]

Oh, you're one of those people.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Uber]

It was amazing. That was like, that felt like. Okay, I get it. And, and watching, watching basketball without ever properly having people around me who know what's going on. You don't understand whether.

[Trevor Noah]

But I feel like that's all sports.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I feel like that's all sports and the story.

[Uber]

You need a story. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, you need that.

[Ryan]

That's good.

[Uber]

Yeah. And it was like, that was cool. I went, I went last week, this week. When was it? Monday. Last Monday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to Nick's and there's some terrible team who all looks about 14 years old. They beat him. North Carolina, I guess.

[Trevor Noah]

I don't know.

[Uber]

South Carolina.

[Trevor Noah]

I don't keep up at all.

[Uber]

It was, it was sick. It was great.

[Trevor Noah]

But I don't keep up at all.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor 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 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, he's. I was like, oh, what are you doing here? And. And then he's like, so do you, do you know what's happened? Score was zero, zero. We're in 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? I was like, ah, man, sorry, I don't. I was like, I'm.

[Ryan]

It's 00.

[Uber]

Not happening.

[Trevor Noah]

But more than 00, cuz like, you know, like 00 in, in soccer or in football for me has a lot of like, it's a lot of tension.

[Uber]

Cuz you're invested and you get, and you get.

[Ryan]

Depending on where the time is, where the jeopardy is.

[Trevor Noah]

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 100th pitch. And so now they're trying to wear him out and get him to 100 pitches. Because once, once he gets to 100 pitches, then they have to bring in the new pitcher.

[Uber]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Trevor 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 now I'm gonna. Good, thank you. Baseball is almost like a. 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. Oh yeah.

[Ryan]

Or those where the, where you hit the ball and then the balls get increased.

[Trevor Noah]

Actually.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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. And if you don't know the show, like six episodes can be about what's gonna happen in the war. 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 that.

[Uber]

There what do you mean?

[Trevor Noah]

And like, you don't know that show.

[Ryan]

You so sucks.

[Trevor Noah]

You're like, this is terrible. What is. What has happened? Nothing's happening. Yes, nothing's happening. Yeah, but to your point, because you know the jeopardy. You're like, oh, man, what are they going to do? Are they going to go here? Are they going to. That's baseball.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So baseball is one of the sports where if you don't understand the jeopardy. Yeah, I don't think you can understand the. 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. No, baseball is like, what are they going to do? Are they now going to put him in and you know, a right hander throwing to a left batsman. Oh, this is, you know, it's going to be like this stressful. What are we.

[Uber]

Oh, oh, oh.

[Trevor Noah]

And there's this whole tipping point. I didn't know this before. There's a whole tipping point where when the pitcher gets you 100 pitches is basically.

[Uber]

I had no idea about that. I had no idea. So you put your best, you put

[Trevor Noah]

your best pitcher in.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You try and get as many outs as possible in as few pitches as possible down. But if you get to 100 pitches, you like sort of have to take them out.

[Uber]

Wow.

[Ryan]

Or they have to leave at 100.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Because they have to go rest their

[Ryan]

arm like an Uber driver. So after 12 hours.

[Uber]

Oh, is that right?

[Ryan]

Yes, they have. After 12 hours, like, look, you've done your best, okay. Dropped off a few grannies, two drunk people.

[Trevor Noah]

This is it for you.

[Ryan]

And then.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. So you got, you got to take them and you got to.

[Ryan]

That kicks you out after that.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you got to, you've got to, you got to take the person and then rest and then, and then you

[Uber]

get the really shit Uber driver in.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but that's basically. Yeah, no, but that's basically what happened then. The apparently the drop off so. Because I was confused by that. But the drop off to the second pitcher is apparently quite high because all the best pitches are on it.

[Uber]

Yeah, they want, they want to all be.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, 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 going to come now.

[Uber]

This is where the ball makes sense.

[Trevor Noah]

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 just because that guy came in and introduced it to me, I was like, oh, okay, okay. Now I understand the tension. Yeah, Now. Now I get it. Now I get why everyone in the stadium is, like, breathing these collective, like, oh, yeah.

[Ryan]

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

[Trevor Noah]

That's one way to put it.

[Ryan]

Became dramatic. There was a lot of tension.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

You know, if there's one thing on. Have you been to the Super Bowl? No, I want to do that.

[Trevor Noah]

You want to go to the Super Bowl?

[Ryan]

Yeah, yeah. But not for the football. For the pomp and ceremony.

[Uber]

It's a thing.

[Ryan]

How's that thing?

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah, I liked it. Yeah.

[Ryan]

I mean, it didn't even.

[Uber]

It didn't flag up.

[Ryan]

You didn't flinch once.

[Uber]

No, I didn't flinch,

[Trevor Noah]

But Uber. Welcome, man.

[Uber]

Welcome.

[Trevor Noah]

Welcome to the. To the podcast. This is. No, no, no, no. What do you mean?

[Ryan]

Why?

[Uber]

Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

You're gonna drink from the floor?

[Uber]

Well, yeah,

[Trevor Noah]

Just like through your sleeves. Oh, no, man. Can I tell you, you're one of those. You know, when you. You know, when you form an idea of somebody in your mind before you meet them.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor 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. Cause the first time I heard about you, it's when you created the world's most popular restaurant that no one could get into. Yeah, yeah. No one could visit. Everyone wanted to go. Like, it was number one on TripAdvisor. Everyone in the world was like, you've gotta go to this restaurant. It's the greatest restaurant. It had, like, how many thousand reviews at one point?

[Uber]

It was actually that many, but it was. It was more the algorithmic.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah. It was enough. And they were done at the right time. And that was an accident. I wasn't being clever, but accident. Well, no, it wasn't, but it was. I was lucky. Tremendously lucky that it worked, I think. So I'm saying, like, I don't. Yeah. The fact that it actually. I mean, you. I'm interrupting you.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no, you're not. You can't interrupt me. Your story.

[Ryan]

Just trust me. You can't.

[Uber]

You can't interrupt.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[Uber]

I need to see. I need to understand where the jeopardy is. So I Need to know. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

Tremendously lucky. Like, it was kind of one of those things where it was like this, like, idea that was like, I was doing on the side of other ideas. Yeah. I was like, okay, I'm gonna slowly build this up. And the longer it went on, the more silly it got on the momentum. Yeah. The more people bought into it. And I was like, at some point, someone's gonna knock on my door and be like, what are you doing, you child? You know, And. And I was gonna 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. We're presuming now that the viewer understands what the hell I'm talking about.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, yeah, we'll give them a little. Yeah, that'll be fine. But for those. For those who don't know, it was basically a. You created a fake restaurant 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 were 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. Cause it didn't exist. Right.

[Uber]

Yeah. It was completely made up.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. You created this fake world.

[Ryan]

I'm so into this.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

This is why, for me, I'm in.

[Trevor Noah]

So I'll tell you, you 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. Not genuinely. You live my dream. And I'll tell you what. Because my dream has always been to be, like, a massive fraudster. But then I go. You go to jail. And then you do it. And I was like, oh, there's a way to do it and not go to jail.

[Uber]

It's called bmy.

[Trevor Noah]

Touche. Cause 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Then now it's a prank.

[Ryan]

Yes.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan]

It's in line between fraud and. That's a.

[Trevor Noah]

My friend.

[Ryan]

That's a good one.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

The loophole is, you gotta say ahead of Time to a camera. Oh, it's like, hey, guys, this is so day one of planning this prank. Then it's not fraud, so.

[Ryan]

Oh, yeah. So let me get this right.

[Trevor Noah]

So if you move your thing there so Hannah doesn't shame. If.

[Ryan]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

Then it's a. It's a diary. Confession.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly.

[Ryan]

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

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

So I'm you.

[Trevor Noah]

You're not wrong. If you bring a camera to porn, if someone else brings the camera, it's a sex tape.

[Uber]

Yeah. That's against the law.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes. You see? So. But, like, so. So let's talk through this. And then I want to get into, like, how you.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

How you even get into this world.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You have the number one. Talk me through how you start the scam. Like, where did you even begin? The idea of, I'm going to 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 want to 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.

[Uber]

Yeah. Right.

[Trevor Noah]

Cause people were dying to go to this restaurant. 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 us through how you created the greatest restaurants scam. How does it start?

[Uber]

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.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Sorry.

[Uber]

Sounds ridiculous.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm sorry.

[Ryan]

Feckenham is like, why do you look at me?

[Trevor Noah]

No, come on. You can't tell me you didn't Enjoy that. Feckenham. You seem like you're from Fekenham. In fact, from now on, I'm going to say that about you. My friend Eugene from Feckenham. You've been Feckening my whole life. You're a Feckenham.

[Uber]

If I saw one as you say this, I can't wait to clip that for more than that. Trevor Noah. Same Fekenham. It's just that says I'm already. I'm cooked here. I'm done. I'm happy. No, I mean, so I grew up in the middle of nowhere, basically. Yeah, 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 may as well do. And then my dad's family are from Birmingham and Ireland and like, so we grew up there. I'm the youngest of six. So sort of desperate for attention. That kind of, that kind of type. We were sort of token working class family in a kind of village of like lots of very. Hello, how's it going there? Also, like a posh vibe and then farmers. Posh farmers, kind of like. And then a lot of the. Yeah. And 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 family, our family's still there, so it's like a fun environment to grow up in. And. Yeah, I suppose I just did. Like, I, I didn't go to college. I stayed in fecund way too long 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 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 happened last night, you know, it would be like it was a very serious platform.

[Trevor Noah]

It holds that much power. Yeah, I've sort of heard about this from the 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.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

It's still big.

[Uber]

Probably one of the top three.

[Trevor Noah]

No, it is, definitely.

[Uber]

But yeah, I Mean, it still happens. Now, if someone leaves a one star review, it's on you. So it's interesting. Yeah.

[Ryan]

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

[Uber]

Well, that does happen. Yeah, it does happen. Yeah. Yeah.

[Ryan]

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

[Trevor Noah]

It's terrible.

[Uber]

It really is.

[Trevor Noah]

Have you never read I love reading Google? No, I don't. No, literally. And then they'll, they'll.

[Ryan]

Ryan.

[Trevor Noah]

They'll literally go. We do have Ryan. They'll literally go. They'll just be like, 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. Yeah. So you left one star.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Uber]

The worst experience you could possibly have.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes, this is the. So I want to know what the worst experience in your life could be.

[Ryan]

So you go in there.

[Trevor Noah]

So I go read one star reviews. Yeah, I always want to read the one star reviews.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then it's like, especially in a place that has, like, let's say a place has an average of 4.6 or

[Ryan]

4.7, then there's that one one.

[Trevor Noah]

Thousands of people have said this is 4.7 worthy. And then someone has a one star. I'm like, okay, I want to know what happened.

[Uber]

What's happening?

[Ryan]

The shop across the road.

[Trevor Noah]

And then you go in. And then competition. Yo. You go.

[Ryan]

That is.

[Uber]

That definitely happens. Definitely. Definitely.

[Ryan]

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

[Ad Voice 1]

Oh.

[Ryan]

Or the competition.

[Trevor Noah]

I like that.

[Ryan]

Anyway, so then you'll go in and

[Trevor Noah]

then it'll, it'll be, it'll sometimes be like, great food, great ambiance, great atmosphere.

[Ryan]

So compliments first.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. All these things.

[Uber]

Then it's like, reasonable. They're establishing that they're reasonable.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes. I like this, actually. I like this. Then, then they'll, then they'll go. Then they'll 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. Yeah, just like that. That's it.

[Uber]

One star.

[Trevor Noah]

One star.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

So I'm the problem.

[Uber]

Yeah, 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 working as a writer. Trying to work as A writer to move to London. Yeah, try and start hustling. Trying. Like, what can I get paid for? What gigs can I get paid for?

[Trevor Noah]

I know this life.

[Uber]

And, and the. There was a, like a freelance website and it was called People Per Hour. And 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 5 star reviews for restaurants. Deduce their ratings.

[Ryan]

God loves you.

[Uber]

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.

[Trevor Noah]

Not way, way, way. But 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 think other people is you are exposing the very underpinnings of how like we think society works.

[Uber]

Yeah, right.

[Trevor Noah]

No, because a lot of people, they like, People trust reviews.

[Ryan]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah, definitely.

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

[Uber]

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. The manipulation of it is far more sophisticated. I mean, we all know this, that our lives are curated by, I don't know, manipulated realities, aren't they? And you know, people's decisions with my thing, which we're getting onto.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

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.

[Trevor Noah]

The red pill.

[Uber]

The red pill. 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.

[Ryan]

You were the bot.

[Uber]

I was the bot. I mean, look, I didn't know.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Willingness and openness to mistruth. No, look, 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 U.S. right. Temporarily. Came back. Went back to the Birmingham, England. He came here. I. And this is a real story. Came here and sold rabbit droppings. So rabbit rolled in flour and sold as a medicine. That's real. That. I didn't know about this. I did not know about this until this year.

[Trevor Noah]

In your DNA.

[Uber]

There is rabbit in my DNA. You know, I'm like. But in all honesty, like, there was always like a. It felt. But I could. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

How much did you earn per review?

[Uber]

£10. So what, 13.50.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. No, I mean, that's eight years ago.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

It's a lot of money.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, that's a lot of money. I think £10 per review.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I would be pumping those. Did you have like a limit?

[Uber]

I. I would guess that I probably only wrote about 20 of them.

[Trevor Noah]

And then what happened?

[Uber]

Well, I mean, I just found other gigs. I was doing other things, so. So. But it was that. It was a. Not like the main job that I had. I was in London. I just moved there and I had no. I'd. No re. 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.

[Ryan]

White confidence.

[Trevor Noah]

You truly do.

[Ryan]

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

[Trevor Noah]

But anyway, it doesn't matter.

[Ryan]

It doesn't matter.

[Uber]

That doesn't matter. It's his medicine. Take the red pill, take the brown pill.

[Ryan]

Okay. Sorry. Sorry.

[Uber]

No, no, it's true. No, 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 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. Mom was a nurse, dad was. Sold records. Oh really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So dad sold vinyl records on the markets and always had loads of office jobs. Mom was a nurse, 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. Yeah, 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 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 doing 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, right.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah. 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 wrote a piece about TripAdvisor's harshest reviewers.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[Uber]

So I took them out for, for lunch. I contacted them and said I'd love to go to lunch because 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 T. Unless like you've been, you know, uppercutted by the weight or whatever. It's such a weird thing to do with your time.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, that's your fault. Don't come to uppercuts if you don't want to get an uppercut.

[Uber]

Pay extra for the uppercut there. Special interest. But like. So, yeah, I took out these.

[Trevor Noah]

These.

[Uber]

It was actually three different guys. I took them all out and I. And I reviewed them. So I reviewed them like. Like a restaurant. Hilarious. And I did that. And all of them were kind of very strange and quite evasive 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. The poshest restaurant in London or one of them at the time, La Gavroche. 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. Oh, sniffing the wine, doubting the sommelier. I have a high bar for like, shame. Public shame. But this guy was insane. Let me just get this right about. Talk to us a while. 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.

[Ryan]

I'm holding the door.

[Uber]

And.

[Trevor Noah]

And.

[Uber]

And he see. Exactly. At the end of the evening, I remember saying to him, so what. What do you think about like, I've rushed. And he said, oh, it's. This is one of the best restaurants in the world. I was like, after spending two hours with him complaining through the whole insane. And I was like, how many stars? He went three.

[Ryan]

And that was it for the best restaurant.

[Uber]

Yeah, exactly. So. So. So I'd been in those, like that psychology of reviewers and reviewers. 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 gonzo style, social experiment. E style thing. Did another thing where I went door to door. I pretended I was joining. Joining the Jehovah's Witnesses.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, nice.

[Uber]

And I went door to door and. And learned how they sell door to door.

[Trevor Noah]

How do. How does that work? Because I. I don't. I don't know any of anybody who's. Open the door.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Or like, how does that work?

[Uber]

Well, well, the numbers open the door.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

It's the right question. Because I was thinking the same thing. That's why I got interested in it. Yeah. Because I'd been in a band and we'd failed, and I was like, it must. It's so hard to sell a CD. It's like, 20, 15, 16. This was. And I was like, you can't. No one will buy a cd. What do people want to buy less than a cd? A Jehovah's Witness at the door, like. And I was like, if I could compete with them. This is all over the place. I'm sorry.

[Trevor Noah]

No, this is great.

[Uber]

But it's. But basically what happened was I. I then started going around with them from door to door and building data, and how many people out of 100 doors would let.

[Ryan]

Wait, where did you find Jehovah's Witnesses that were looking?

[Trevor Noah]

Well, they found him, Eugene.

[Ryan]

Come on.

[Uber]

They saw. They saw a lapsed Catholic, and they thought, opportunity. What's that medicine in his pocket smells like? 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. It's very active religiously in South London. And. Yeah. So it was like 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 role play. Like, you're in a. Oh, so they

[Trevor Noah]

teach you how to do that.

[Uber]

And then they'd be like. They'd go like, okay, there it is. Role playing. Now pretend you're answering the door. So I'm your. It's your house. Yeah.

[Ryan]

Hello.

[Uber]

Hello there.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

Yes, I'm opening doorbell.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

This was before.

[Trevor Noah]

I apologize.

[Ryan]

When your face was the camera.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. He said the CDs. He said the CDs.

[Ryan]

Hello.

[Uber]

Hi there. Would you like to learn about Guard?

[Ryan]

What about him?

[Uber]

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

[Ryan]

I'm still holding the door handle.

[Trevor Noah]

No, you were aggressive. Yes. You were too aggressive. Yeah, you were too aggressive.

[Uber]

Okay, great. So what could I have done differently?

[Trevor Noah]

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? Or. You've got to offer him something, I think.

[Uber]

Fantastic. Do you want to try? You could do Better.

[Trevor 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.

[Ryan]

I can tell you now he thinks he can do better.

[Trevor Noah]

No, I don't.

[Ryan]

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

[Trevor Noah]

No, first I want to see a better version, okay? Because he just gave me this how

[Uber]

it went, but I got excited about the idea of you. That's how it should be. This is how. Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[Ryan]

Knock. Hello.

[Uber]

Hello there. What a lovely day. How are you? Would you like to hear? Would you like to hear about the love of Jesus Christ? How are you feeling today?

[Ryan]

Yeah, he loves me, too.

[Uber]

He definitely loves you.

[Ryan]

Although I'm not wearing pants right now as I opened it. You love that.

[Uber]

He's got a lot of space in his. Come in, come in. All right, so there's. Stop. That's fantastic. So that's basically what it was like. The seminars are kind of like that with more nudity.

[Trevor Noah]

Don't go anywhere because we got more. What now? After this. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. Imagine this. You're at a checkout counter. You're ready to pay, when you realize you don't have your wallet. Dun, dun, dun. You could drive all the way back home and you could get it. But you remember that you have your Apple card on your iPhone so you can tap to pay with Apple Pay. Imagine that. No need to carry a wallet. But, you know, one of the things I do like about having my card on my phone is we live in a world where you lose your card and then you don't know where it is. And then you're like, what do I do? Well, if your phone is connected to your card and your card is connected to your phone, you know what's going on. The best thing about having the Apple card connected to your phone is, you know what every transaction is. You know, like, sometimes you're like, what did I spend this month? The Apple card will show you. One month. I had spent an obscene amount of money ordering videos online.

[Ryan]

Just videos?

[Trevor Noah]

They were just videos.

[Ryan]

What kind of videos?

[Trevor Noah]

That's not the point. The point is, I knew that I didn't want to order those videos anymore because I'd spent too much money on was videos on how to not spend money online.

[Ryan]

I felt like I'd been duped.

[Trevor Noah]

Point is, Apple showed me what I was spending my money on, and I was able to change my spend habits. And you can do it, too. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase with my Apple card. That's unlimited daily cash back no matter where I shop. Apply for Apple card in the wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval. Apple card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and [e-mail]. you know when the weather finally turns and everyone suddenly remembers they have friends? Well, that's when you know it's time to get outside, fire up the grill, and start planning all those sunny gatherings, pool days, weekend hangouts, Mother's Day, brunch, graduation. All of it. And what I like is keeping it simple. That's why I go to Whole Foods Markets, because they make gathering easy. You've got quality meat, fresh organic produce, and those seasonal bakery treats that somehow disappear before the guests even arrive.

[Ryan]

Hmm.

[Trevor Noah]

I wonder who that was for the grill. It's all the good stuff. Organic chicken breast, 365 by Whole Foods Market. Lean ground beef, ready to cook kebabs. That's the kind of setup where even if you're not a grill expert, people still respect what you're doing. Oh. And then you round it out in produce. Avocados, heirloom tomatoes, strawberries, mangoes, raspberries. Suddenly your table looks like you planned this for days. And if you want to go a little further, the desserts do the work for you. Mango yuzu, chantilly cake, strawberry pretzel cream pie. Those are the moments where people stop talking and just eat. Ooh.

[Uber]

Ooh.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, I almost forgot. This is one of my favorite options. You let Whole Foods Market do most of the work. Prepared foods has everything. Quiche lorraine, deviled eggs, family sized salads, cut fruit, veggie trays. You name it. You just show up relaxed, and people assume that you've been cooking all morning. And then you act like you've been cooking all morning. And if you really want to take it easy, well, then let Whole Foods Market catering handle it all. Same quality, same great ingredients, just none of the stress. Because at the end of the day, it's not about the grill. It's about the people around it and who prepared it. Me. Thank you very much. I'll take all the credits. Shop for all your summer favorites at Whole Foods Markets. If you're trying to be a little more intentional about what you wear day to day, well, quince can help you with that. They've got pieces that feel easy, comfortable, and still put together. The fabrics feel elevated. The fits are clean. It's the kind of clothing where you don't have to think too hard, but you still look like you did. And I've realized that's actually the goal. You don't want to be standing in front of your closet negotiating with your clothes. You just want to put something on and get on with your life. Quince makes that easier. Think 100% European linen shorts and shirts starting at $34. Lightweight, breathable, especially when it's warm, but still structured enough that you don't feel like you just rolled out of bed. And what surprised me is how they're able to price everything. It's about 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands, because Quince works directly with the factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you're getting premium materials just without the mockup. I picked up one of their linen shirts recently, and it has been in constant rotation. Don't get me started on those sweaters. Oh, so comfortable. You know, it's just those pieces that just work. You can wear it out. You can wear it casually. It's comfortable. It breathes. And every time I put it on, I'm like, okay, this feels like I made an effort and it didn't cost what I thought something like that would. That's the balance. I like clothes that feel good, look good, and don't make you overthink it. So refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quince.com what now for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com what now for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince, 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, right. 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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. Okay. 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? All right, so you got this vibe. Then you go to Jehovah's Witness training, the ultimate sales camp. So now you're learning how to position, 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. And you meet the reviewers who teach you about reviewing and what reviewing is. So you got all of these pieces and then you go, okay, this is it.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm going to. I'm going to launch my. My fake restaurant.

[Uber]

Yes. Yeah. So I basically just kind of had an idea, a thought about the platform that I knew that the reviews were. A lot of them could have been falsified. It was very easy to false.

[Trevor Noah]

I have one question before you get into that though.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I don't understand how you put the restaurant on TripAdvisor. Does nobody confirm these places exist or don't? How does that work?

[Uber]

So, yeah, no, I'll tell you. But basically like, I looked into it. So the reviews were 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

So I kind of just like, just started trying it out. I was like, okay. So, okay, so went on it. Create a restaurant on TripAdvisor. What do I want as the name? So I was.

[Trevor Noah]

What did you call it?

[Uber]

I was living in a garden shed at the time at the back of someone's house. So I just moved to London and it was like the only place I could afford. It was £800amonth, which is still not that cheap. But anyway, whatever. £800amonth, just, just all of it. It's literally, it was.

[Ryan]

It was a JetBlue. I just. Sorry, sorry, I'm so.

[Uber]

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

[Ryan]

Say good.

[Uber]

It was per person.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, you're talking about the.

[Uber]

Nothing beats. Yeah, that is absolutely hilarious. And yeah, so I called it the Shed at Dulwich. I was living in a garden shed in. In London at the time. Yeah. Genuinely?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

You had to put like an address. So I just put the name of the road.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[Uber]

And it didn't. Didn't make you specify. And I was like, well, no one's going to know because I'm at the back as well. So it was. I was like, got cover. There's a load of people who. Six people who lived in the house. The main house.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

And then at the very back, I was living in a garden shed. And then what else? You needed like a mobile, so I bought like a kind of drug dealer phone.

[Trevor Noah]

I love it. From your living. Yeah.

[Uber]

You need a website and you need a email. That was easy to do. And I Made this website with the help of my mates. So it was like all these photos on there that look 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, and another thing was

[Ryan]

like in all our lives,

[Uber]

it was like, you know these urinal cakes you get and that was made that look like a pan fried scallop and like had it with like us. Yeah, it does, it does. Put some honey on there, some stones from a fish tank. And like that was genuinely. It was like me and my mate Chris and shaving foam, those episode sea foam. Like. Yeah, yeah, 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. Because I was doing this on my own right time. 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 kind of concept behind the restaurant was like, it was an appointment only restaurant. Like you can only get a table if you, you have to apply and we'll like vet you and we'll see what happens. Yeah, it was like, yeah, that was kind of the concept. The meal, the menu was like you order moods at the shed, not meals. Like you have comfort or whatever and it's all like mood based, which was just. I was just trying to think of wanky things that would like sound like.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean it is brilliant though because you know, this is the weird thing about a scam is oftentimes a scam is more well thought out than a real thing. Because I'm listening to this and I'm like, I want to go to this restaurant even though I know it's a scam. What would. Because think about how many times you go to a restaurant and you like. Actually it's the mood that I'm looking for.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I.

[Trevor Noah]

That's a genius idea.

[Uber]

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, for a, like a newsletter, you know, like a. What's New in London.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Uber]

They would send me to restaurants, so I was already getting a. Of a. Seeing what it was like.

[Trevor Noah]

Right, Right.

[Uber]

I remember going to this meal in. In London at this restaurant, and it was like. It was a. It was small. It was like a taster menu, but it was like. But it was like a 3D projection of, like, Marco Polo. Like, and it was so crap. And it was just, like, so all about the song and the dancing ceremony and, like, the food. You're getting, like, this much like a. A pee every half an hour, and then you're back to watching Marco Polo dance around your plate.

[Ryan]

Justin Blumenthal must never hear.

[Uber]

I think we'd make money.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And.

[Uber]

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, exposed me to the. Yeah, yeah. And I was like.

[Trevor Noah]

Because. So you just compounded all the. On this thing. You're like, okay, one thing on top of this, on top of this.

[Uber]

Any good satire, and you'll know this from doing the day show. And everything is like, it. Any good.

[Trevor Noah]

It has to be.

[Uber]

Monkey see, monkey do. It has to be.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, that's true.

[Uber]

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, would be even more interesting if the. The restaurant didn't exist. Yeah. Yeah. 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.

[Ryan]

I hope you didn't call that other guy.

[Uber]

Which one?

[Trevor Noah]

From Mr. Mr. Bad Review.

[Ryan]

Oh, him.

[Uber]

Oh, no. He needs to be kept away. He needs to be kept. I think he's spiritually the opposite to this. He sees it as his, like, greater foot. Cause in life, ah. He was A sweetheart but, you know, horrendous to be around, but he. Yeah. So I just started having people write these reviews and I was getting family and friends, roping them into it. Implicate more people.

[Ryan]

Nice.

[Trevor Noah]

Nicely done. Nicely done.

[Uber]

That's another part.

[Trevor Noah]

Conspirators. That's right.

[Uber]

But I was filming little bits, you know, because I was mainly writing at the time. I wasn't doing documentaries.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Uber]

I only went on to do those. So I just liked writing because it was really nice to write something. It's just you, you, it's your voice, you have an editor and that's it.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Uber]

Whereas when you're making TV, which I do now, there's 30, 40 of you and that's great. But it's different. Yes, it's different.

[Trevor Noah]

So everyone's jumping in, everyone's leaving these five stars. Yeah.

[Uber]

We're going up the rankings. Feels.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Is this that moment where you go like, oh, we're onto something.

[Uber]

Yes. Yeah, exactly. It was, it, it was. We were number 18, 000 out of 18, 000 in London. And then slowly it was like, you know, within about six weeks we were up to number 1400 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. But it felt like nothing. And then one day, the phone that I bought for the drug dealer phone. 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, 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, was parroting the mythology to me and you know, I just said to him, I'm sorry, we're fully booked for the next six weeks. Put the phone down.

[Trevor Noah]

Always gets them.

[Uber]

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.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Fully booked for the. When you find out the thing you want. Yeah. It has been overly wanted and it's gone. Yeah. You can't now, you can't stop pining, you can't stop thinking about it. You Know what I mean? Fully booked for the next six weeks.

[Uber]

And that was like my mantra from then on. Just kept on saying, just fully booked

[Trevor Noah]

for the next six weeks.

[Uber]

Fully booked. Exactly. And it was like, you know, started out cute, few calls a day. I was getting emails. Then it's just starts. It just keeps on going up and up and up. And the people that you tell no to are the ones who 100 will call back 10 times, you know, and it's. It was just. The momentum just started gathering. And that would be. 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. Because I'm doing it while I'm having to make a living doing other things. Like, it's not like my mom and dad are paying for my rent. And I can just sit down. Yeah. I'm working. And then I'm like, oh, I need to do scamming and scamming. But, like, you know, it was like, just got more exciting the more it went on, got more real people like the local council being like, we want to relocate you to an entre. An area with gentrifying at reduced rates.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

People applying for jobs, things like that. Like, it was. It was very. It. The pla.

[Trevor Noah]

It showed how the government is reaching out to you.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And offering you tax incentives.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But you don't exist. Can I tell you something?

[Ryan]

You've exposed a lot about politics.

[Trevor Noah]

This is my thing.

[Uber]

Tissue.

[Trevor Noah]

This is. This is what I mean about you. Uber 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. We always, like, try find food. Try find. 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 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 walk in and eat the food.

[Uber]

Yep.

[Trevor Noah]

And then afterwards, look at the reviews.

[Uber]

Interesting.

[Trevor Noah]

You'll be shocked at how many times the review doesn't match up with how you felt about the experience.

[Ryan]

Yeah. Your personal experience.

[Trevor Noah]

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.

[Ryan]

Right?

[Trevor Noah]

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 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. Then I'm like, how. Who else? Did they move there? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Because, 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? Yeah. You know, the first restaurants to move into a neighborhood.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And now it's just a bunch of Ubers, no offense, taking chances.

[Uber]

All the other. All the other Jehovah's Witnesses.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah, I mean, I was getting called constantly. And what, the clientele starts changing from like, locals to then, like tourists. No. To then like influencers. Different people from like, kind of who were high up, professionals, like having their teams reach out.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Calling on behalf of.

[Uber]

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.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

Yeah. It was kind of interesting. I've never. I've actually never said that before. So there you go. And. And it was like. Yeah, I. It was fascinating having, like. And we weren't even number one by. That we were getting into the top 50. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

We just.

[Uber]

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. However, I need to land the plane on this thing. Who knows where it's going.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And then it was just like one of those things where I was in a meeting actually with Vice's. We were talking about another project wanted me to do, and my phone kept ringing and they're like, what the is going on? 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 a epic.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, this sounds amazing.

[Uber]

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 was the first time where I was like, okay, maybe. Maybe I could do on camera stuff as well.

[Trevor Noah]

This could.

[Uber]

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. Maybe we'll do that. It was like a final push. Then I started noticing things, like people were leaving reviews who had never been there. Who. Who I didn't know. I've never been there. Of course, I've never been there. People. I'm drinking my own.

[Trevor Noah]

This is how big it is.

[Uber]

Yeah, I know, it's. This is. Yeah.

[Ryan]

Do you have a table for June about the blue pill, the next six weeks?

[Uber]

But like, yeah, there are people who were leaving reviews who I didn't make leave the reviews. So it was almost like they said up the kudos of having been there. And so, you know, I reviewed, but

[Trevor Noah]

they were leaving five stars.

[Uber]

Yes. Yes, exactly.

[Ryan]

That's crazy.

[Trevor Noah]

We have. We have now we have reached peak. Yeah.

[Uber]

Yeah. And it was. Yeah, that was sort of. I think it was November 2017. That was then. And when we became. Yeah. The number one rated restaurant.

[Trevor Noah]

Congratulations, man.

[Uber]

Yeah, it was. It was crazy. I was. I was 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.

[Ryan]

Were you upset about the number eight?

[Uber]

No, I was just like, this is insane. And then it was number one. And I was like, then you were happy. Then you popped. It's just like.

[Ryan]

Local councilman.

[Uber]

It's just like one of those moments where you know that your life's changed. It's not because it's such an insane thing that would happen. For it to happen was so Crazy and so unlikely that I was like, oh, okay, this is. This is probably the craziest thing that's ever going to happen.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

You know what? You know what?

[Trevor Noah]

Who are you?

[Uber]

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

[Ryan]

The investment, the website, the burner phone

[Trevor Noah]

did all the work.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

No, no. So now it tips in. So now this is what I love, because I remember seeing the footage of the people. The night. Yeah, the night itself. This was just like, where I was, like, peak. So.

[Ryan]

So what is it supposed to be? Opening night.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Well, so this is where you've changed. Another thing. I'll tell you what I've changed in my life. This literally happened because of you.

[Uber]

Really?

[Trevor 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. Restaurant is 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.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then if I, you know, on the little street thing, I'll zoom in and I want to see this place exists.

[Ryan]

So you do the 360.

[Trevor Noah]

Yo, yo, yo. Let me tell you something. Try it. You're gonna see how many times the place doesn't exist.

[Uber]

Yes, it's. That's true.

[Trevor Noah]

You're gonna.

[Ryan]

But the food does.

[Trevor Noah]

Yo. You're gonna see.

[Ryan]

How many times was it Urine cakes all over again?

[Trevor Noah]

My friend, the place doesn't exist. Now, apparently they came up with a term. They call it ghost kitchens.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ryan]

You told me something.

[Trevor Noah]

The place doesn't exist, but the food does. London, even. Even in South Africa. Johannesburg. Now, it started as well.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then I go, but where is this? I'm like, I don't.

[Ryan]

I've never seen this.

[Trevor Noah]

And then I look nowhere.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Uber]

Be like, oh, you know, they'll try something that will get the, like, Zuma, whatever girls and then some. I get millennial guys, whatever. They'll have different marketing schemes. Same for the same thing, same place, same menu. Yeah, yeah, yeah, That's.

[Trevor Noah]

Same place. And all of this changed because of what you did. So tell us about the night. Cause now 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.

[Uber]

Yeah, it was. I mean, I lived in it. It was, like, pretty much a hole. And it was, you know.

[Ryan]

Which was number one.

[Uber]

It was number one. It was number 1. And it was, you know, it didn't look like the best restaurant in London. It looked like just a shack. And I kind of 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. 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. Yes. So we, you know, had a plan. It was all just based around

[Trevor Noah]

trying

[Uber]

to control the environment. But also. So basically, I had. I had eight real customers come in, had a table of two who had 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. At. Who I actually still can't mention because they weren't happy. And then

[Ryan]

try having shaving foam on. You'll be happy.

[Uber]

It sounds like a Balenciaga. It's not them, but. And then we added. We had two American newlyweds from. From California. I know, I know, I know, I know. But they. 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, man. And then. Yeah, that was. They were the. The final table or two. They were going to be eating at the Shed. So it's quite hard to, like. I want to, like, just try and capture this in, like, the best way possible. It was November. It was basically. Yeah, it was basically seven, eight years ago. This is so crazy. And it was cold. It was kind of wet. So I borrowed all of these heaters from my neighbors. I went around asking to mind if I borrow these for the night. Got him a bottle of wine. I borrowed. My friend ran A cafe around the corner. So I borrowed a load of the tables and the chairs and then I had half of the people who were eating there were my friends who were pretending to. That everything I served them was delicious and that they'd been loads of times completely normal. One of my friends, actually, now, people might know her, but Lolly Adefope, she's in, like, shrill. She's in Ghosts. She's in. She was in the new Amandio 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. Like, she was. She was. Yeah, she's one of the patrons. And it was. 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? Deny you your own. You know. And I hired this animal handler as well. So we had all these chickens running around. And the idea was 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

[Trevor Noah]

chicken and then we kill it live and.

[Uber]

Exactly the whole point. And I had a table of two of two of my mates eating on the roof on a table which looked like bizarre. It looks like from a cartoon.

[Trevor Noah]

But it was.

[Uber]

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. Yeah, I was like.

[Ryan]

You were separating them from reality.

[Uber]

I was trying, yeah. So the way that I did it, as well as 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 and we had it. It's all coming back to me and I'm talking about it. 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 microwavable 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. And yeah, I mean, it was like it. Basically we open for about three hours, trying to think of, like a way of encapsulating the vibe it was. It was. It was weird. And I'll focus on the newlyweds, the. The ones who are on their honeymoon, because we. I remember they did. They look kind of like. They're kind of slightly confused. But I, like, came. I brought them out there. Like, them. 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 my friend Phoebe, who now, weirdly, again, she writes on Ted Lasso.

[Ryan]

Not anymore.

[Trevor Noah]

I like that. It's like a super. I really do like that you created a. From this moment. It's like a, you know. Yeah.

[Uber]

Spin off.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

It's like an Ocean's Eleven that everyone went off to do their own thing now in the world. Yeah.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

And 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 a phone and, like, pauses for a second. We're all just watching her. And then she just puts it away without taking a photo.

[Trevor Noah]

That's funny.

[Uber]

And it was like, we. I was thinking that, you know, this isn't buying this. The jig is up. And it was actually one of the table of four. I was seeing him out at the end of the night. We couldn't. You can ask more questions. It's just. This is how. This is all. This is all coming to me. Yeah. And the guy, like, he would look. He, like, didn't look happy and put me to one side and he was like. So that about tonight, now that we've been once. Is it going to be easier for us to book again next time life. Which is like. Yeah, it was. That was like.

[Ryan]

I was the.

[Uber]

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

[Ryan]

you deserve number one.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Trust. All hype.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor 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, ha, what a bunch of idiots. No, it made me go, 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. And we're all just. You know what I mean?

[Ryan]

But.

[Trevor Noah]

But I. You can take it so you can extrapolate it to everything. So politics is. Is a simple example. You know, people will go, oh, yeah, this politic 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, because 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 100%.

[Uber]

Yeah, definitely.

[Trevor Noah]

So I would watch a video that I would think is funny, 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. What? Watch another video. And you know, I'd be like, oh, man, that's. I'll be like, that's cool. And people were like, this is so lame. This is. And I'll be like, yeah, that is lame.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Trevor 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You sit at a restaurant.

[Uber]

Yep.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

What? I'm that guy.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

The restaurant. If I'm undecided, I look at what looks good from other people's Table. And I'll be like, what? What are they having? But I also realized that if you watch on YouTube, if something's happening live and the comments are live as well, 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, 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 although we're using fake names, when you're making comments, our opinions are real, then they're not factual.

[Uber]

Then it gets interesting around how many. I mean, I mentioned it slightly earlier and it's 100% true. How many bots are now used on social media? How many?

[Trevor Noah]

Isn't it like 40 now? Is it 40 or.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

I remember reading the other day that about 40% of all Internet like comments and content activity is bots and that.

[Uber]

How can that not shape your reality? 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. 40% of everything we read in is. Did you see that the other day where they changed. They very briefly changed the Twitter or X I'm not going to act Twitter policy so that. Where you could see where the account was based on. Do you see this? I did not see those. Interesting. And loads of quite prominent noisy accounts were all just based in India and they were saying, you know, I'm based in the US or I mean.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Oh, they put it back immediately. And it was, it was, it was really interesting. And I think basically India, the significance of that is a load of the, A load of the farms are in India. So it's cheap. You know, loads of online labor is based out in India. Isn't it 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. No, no, I, I believed you.

[Trevor Noah]

No. Yeah, 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, you know, they're not physical, they're not easy to touch, they're not like, let's say we found out. And I mean, we still don't really do much about this, but if we found out that certain people, companies, actors, whatever, were poisoning 40% of our water.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

We would act a certain way and we would think a certain way. Right. For the most part, 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 40% of our air, we'd start acting. You know what I mean? And I know there's outliers and people like, oh, but there's companies who pollute. And that's part of the problem. But we don't think about that when it comes to our minds. 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Your children are online. 40% 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. 40% of the shit that's coming to her is poisoned. Your little son is on the 40%. Your grandmother is on the. Your grandfather, your uncle, your aunt. You like. 40% 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.

[Ryan]

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. What do you mean? Oh, 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

Janet was the same mainstay. Was just like for the rest of your life, people were just having a good time. The Marboro man, 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. 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 now?

[Trevor Noah]

They're part of the product.

[Ryan]

The editing has become so great, and then these apps that are so on.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

You know the.

[Trevor Noah]

You know the voice personally, do you?

[Uber]

No, but it's.

[Trevor Noah]

But you know that voice.

[Ryan]

Trust me that much. But you know that book?

[Uber]

Because there's only, like the two.

[Trevor Noah]

There's the two voices, right? There's the one that's like, when I found out I was going to. Is that the AI one? Yeah, whatever that voice is. And then there's the other ones. Like, these men were fighting their way out of there.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But this one was like, I love that voice.

[Uber]

But who'd have thought they were bops?

[Trevor Noah]

It'd be so funny if they were real people. Somewhere, you know, there's somebody, like, at a restaurant, like, I called for a table for two. Could you tell me what time my reservation will be ready? 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 you see her, like, she's like, crying by the bed, and then her husband comes in and looks at her, and then she, like, sort of tells him, 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? He's like, who?

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Cause you found out your dad died in this moment. You're saying that you found it 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 where like influences now to your point, the way influences sort of started off. Started off was from a very authentic place. Hey, guys. So I went to this place today. Look, like you said, point of view and vibe. And then they became like a part of it. Yep. And then they started synthesizing things and then you run out of content. So you gotta 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? Yeah, that's exactly the one, I think.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, that's fully what it is.

[Uber]

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.

[Ryan]

And all this sold as 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

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.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

How it can prevent a break in people. And they started with the ads like that when people were shouting. Yeah, yeah. But then I realized the other strategy was Amazon packages being stolen from the door.

[Uber]

Yeah, right.

[Ryan]

And then all of a sudden, two steps running away 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 packages always explode before they get to where they're going. When no one ever gets out of shot.

[Uber]

You mean the. When they Fill it with like, confetti.

[Ryan]

Exactly. No, no, with paint.

[Uber]

Fat paint. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes, yes.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan]

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.

[Uber]

Right.

[Ryan]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Ryan]

And the packages are unmarked. Who gets an unmarked package delivered to their door?

[Uber]

But even just the pumping of viral content from. From did ring doorbells. That his package is 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.

[Ryan]

Reality.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

No, it's just, it's like. Yeah, I, 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 want to be one of those people who goes, nothing's real. Everything's fake. Because most things are sort of fake. And that's a good thing. Like our names are all fake.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

We respond to them. But. 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.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Because I go, like, it's just the color. I don't know. I swear in 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.

[Uber]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

It's like, it really makes me happy when I see people stop or go. Because I'm just like, I'm like, yo, it's juvenile. You know what I mean? People really stop.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Like when I see a car screech to a halt.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

Because the light just ruined that for me.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

But I'm like, I'd never say the same again. No.

[Trevor Noah]

So, so. But society needs these things.

[Ryan]

Acceptable absurdity.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes. Society functionally needs artificial constructs for us to function. Language, religion, culture, all of these things.

[Uber]

There's that book, that Harold Garfinkle book. Book in 60s. Some studies of ethnomethodology or something like that where he, he had a lot

[Trevor Noah]

of reading books in the 60s. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to go with you.

[Uber]

No, no, it's exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. It's basically is if I, I, I Find academic writing often really bad and really hard to get into because it's just so dense.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

But what's we saying this shots fired

[Uber]

and that's not their job.

[Trevor Noah]

No.

[Uber]

To be an academic. But you know what I mean? It's like when I've got. Got like, you know, you have writers who then read all that and then make it like something I want to read. But anyway, there's this book that he wrote, this Howard Garfinkle guy, I think this is actually. 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 subvert the. Just like things like the rules of waiting in line or going into a restaurant. And there's so many. They're very funny. They're very funny. But now I think 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.

[Trevor Noah]

I'll check it out.

[Uber]

Because it's just like. It's.

[Trevor Noah]

It's.

[Uber]

They're just. They're just very funny. It's funny. It's like.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, it just breaks how you. Exactly how you think reality would be.

[Uber]

All right. Loads of students. He's going to get all of his students to wait the same set of traffic lights and the whole day they're going to cross on the red. On when it is. Don't cross that. That would be like an experience. Yeah, yeah, that's like an example.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah, exactly. That's it. It's the.

[Trevor Noah]

So you see where the tipping point is. If one person. Person crosses at a red light, are

[Ryan]

they gonna follow or not?

[Trevor Noah]

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.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And if you all turn and we're like, what are you doing? They'll be like, but it. But it.

[Ryan]

Don't do that in the middle of traffic.

[Trevor Noah]

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 think the way we think is so fragile.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Definitely don't press anything We've got more. What now? After this. You know those things you keep telling yourself you're going to do? I should file my taxes earlier this year. I should go to the dentist. I should finally clean out that one drawer that somehow became a storage unit. You know, you should do it. You just don't. And for a lot of people, therapy falls into that same category. It sounds like a good idea in concept. You think, yeah, that would probably help. But then the process starts to feel intimidating. How much does it cost? Does insurance cover it? How do you even find the right person? And when would you have the time? So instead of figuring it out, you just put it off? Well, that's where Rula makes a difference. Rula is a healthcare company that helps make accessing mental health care feel more straightforward. They work directly with insurance providers, so you can see personalized cost estimates upfront. No guessing, no surprises. And sessions average about $15. With insurance, you can sign up and find a therapist in as little as five minutes, and appointments can be available as soon as the next day. And what I appreciate is that by removing those common barriers, the cost confusion, the time, the search, it starts to feel more possible to actually take that first step. Because sometimes the hardest part isn't deciding you need support, it's figuring out how to begin. And when that part becomes simpler, everything else becomes a little easier to face. So head to rula.com that's r u l a.com to find a therapist the easy way.

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[Uber]

I did another. I did another. So I met a film a couple of years ago, Channel 4, which is, like, part of the BBC. It's like, it was all about Amazon. Because you mentioned Amazon. Ring doorbell.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, the urine.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, I love this one, man.

[Ryan]

Tell me about it.

[Trevor Noah]

This, the urine. I'll give you the backstory and then you. You got to tell it.

[Ryan]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

So remember, story came out about Amazon workers being so pressed in their environment, in the warehouses, everything in their environment was timed. 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. It was a whole thing.

[Ryan]

Modern day sweatshop.

[Trevor Noah]

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 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. Yeah, what they would do is in the truck, in the way out, they would just pee into a bottle.

[Uber]

Exactly, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then just carry on working. No one would leave. No one. 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, man, come on.

[Uber]

Did you cover on the show?

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

What did Amazon say?

[Trevor 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.

[Uber]

I hope that's the business.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but, like, really, I wish one day a company would do that.

[Uber]

Be like, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then what we made them pee in bottles. You get your package? Yeah, you get your package, man. Shut. You know. No, but they don't.

[Uber]

Don't dust it for fingerprints.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but they, but they didn't. They basically. And they were like, oh, we're looking into this, but it's not what this is. No, this is fabricated. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But anyway, so that was the story.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

So I did the. So basically I. Yeah, I did this film hourong special about Amazon few years ago or two years ago. And it. One of the things I did is I went and worked in one of the warehouses, which is near where I grew up in Fenum. This is one one.

[Ryan]

So you got the job?

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

But how you see you. I need you to explain this is.

[Ryan]

Can you stop with the how already? You remember had blue eyes and blonde hair.

[Uber]

True. It's true. Yeah, it's true.

[Ryan]

This is a world that you and

[Trevor Noah]

I will never understand. Because can I tell you what's funny about Uber's stories? Is in Uber stories, he gets a job as part of a scam. Then there's someone else. Like, I just want the job. Just how did you get the job?

[Ryan]

Uber is the reason why. Is the reason why Idris Elbow will never be James Bond. Can never just work in. You. Me white.

[Uber]

Oh God.

[Ryan]

The CV has to go. Are you white? Yes. Okay then.

[Trevor Noah]

But you see, you know what? I like you using your privilege, my friend. These. Cuz these experiments, we can't be. Eugene and I can't be messing around now going. We. We would go to an Amazon factory, we be like, I'm undercover. And then 15 years later, we'd still be there packing.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You'd be like, what happened, Eugene? What happened, Trevor? I work here, man. Be like, you leave.

[Uber]

You came on.

[Trevor Noah]

It was a scam. No, man, Jeff's not going to be happy if we don't get these packages.

[Ryan]

Hold on.

[Uber]

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 of ice and because I grew up somewhere, I was 100% white, basically, and the fenum was 100% white.

[Trevor Noah]

Come on.

[Uber]

Like, you know, about half an hour away in, in. In Redditch. This is the cloak. Well, that's not even half an hour, 20 minutes away in Redditch place where we grew up, we. I Don't have a car. Grow up. So we just. I just. In the village is like, you know, there's a big South Asian diaspora. Yeah. Like, and traditionally there was a. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

But that.

[Uber]

I grew up working. I was working. And now, and particularly since I've moved here, I'm like, oh, no. Like, I've had to obviously completely be educated in that. Yeah. By friends, you know, and. And I try 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.

[Trevor 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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 fashion in moments, you know, like. So white privilege there was. It really had its moment. Check your privilege. Check it at the door.

[Uber]

Post your black square.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

And leave a review.

[Uber]

Five stars. Jerk chicken. Fantastic. Exactly. Curry goat.

[Ryan]

And I got curry go.

[Uber]

They go on the fish and chips. One star.

[Ryan]

Yeah, the.

[Trevor Noah]

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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

They distance themselves.

[Trevor Noah]

You see what I'm saying? So they'll put forth an idea and they work in a space where they study and they.

[Ryan]

Research is their favorite word. Yes, yes.

[Trevor Noah]

But it is an opinion.

[Ryan]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Right. It is an opinion. It may be an opinion that holds true for the most part, but it is still an opinion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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. Okay. So when people were like, white privilege, check your privilege. What? When I would talk to white people and who'd go. The thing that I saw people struggling with is there were people like, I'm poor, I'm homeless, I'm struck. Where's the privilege? Yeah, 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. Golf is one of my favorite, like, ideas for a sport. Because even though golf is the most. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's the most, like, removed. It's like, this is like elites.

[Ryan]

You've just not in Scotland.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

You'll grow up on a council estate playing golf.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Because like cricket. Yeah, yeah, the home. Because of the home of it.

[Uber]

Exactly. Whereas cricket in England's posh time.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes, properly.

[Uber]

And like. And I did it. South Africa, I'm assuming.

[Trevor Noah]

No. Yeah, Cricket schools are the.

[Ryan]

One of the best schools.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But cricket itself, though, in the township, they play it as well. Do you know what I mean?

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Uber]

And we have.

[Ryan]

Not as much anymore, but.

[Uber]

Yeah, 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 school.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

No, it's just weird, isn't it? Because football has become democratic. Because, like, you know.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it has. It's.

[Uber]

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.

[Ryan]

Go ahead.

[Uber]

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 sake. It's always like, just want him to not be going to a posh school. I just want him to go to a normal school. Who made it just a normal state school? Oh, man. Go normal state school. That's all I want.

[Trevor Noah]

So wait, all the English cricket players

[Uber]

are like most of them, but then the really great ones are always not posh kids. But this is my. This is now coming in my. Coming in my. Like, yeah, this is. 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 different.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor 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. Whereas, you see, like in golf, they go to your handicap. It's a very simple principle. It means at your current position in the game, this is where you're at. This is how much we need to adjust the game so that you have a fair chance. But that handicap can change. It can go down and it can go up. 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 much. As much advantage as you need. But they acknowledge that the handicap can change. And I think that's interesting, the variable. Yeah. 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 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 Rennie Edda Lodge. Maybe. Maybe. But she said something about. She said the phrase, and I'll paraphrase it, what 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. Because race is a proxy for class for most people.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I mean?

[Ryan]

It's shorthand for class.

[Trevor Noah]

It is shorthand. So it's like, yes, black attached to being poor. Yes. But 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.

[Uber]

Yeah. Yeah. I would say that just having an accent. I have a subtle accent, but I've lost it. The more time I spent in London and the more time I spent nine years in London. I've been here for two years.

[Ad Voice 2]

Years.

[Uber]

But, like, it's interesting just how obviously here it's like, you know, I'm just an English guy.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

Yeah. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

I can assume even, like the way you say Class. I'm sure people are like, are you sure you can afford this?

[Uber]

Right, Like.

[Trevor Noah]

No, it's true, though. No, but you're either.

[Uber]

You're either part of the. I mean, let, you know, go. You're either part of the. So 4% of the population in the UK go to private school and they represent most of the executive positions in all the companies. Yeah. And now they're getting into entertainment, which is fantastic as well. Let's love it. Let's keep. Let's have that. That's fantastic. 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 lordships that you can inherit all that stuff. So we still have like a proper class. Ruling class. Yes, proper ruling class. And that' probably English people watch this now would be like, you. You don't. Whatever. It's changed or whatever, but I don't think it has. And I think that, like, it will never change. And being here is crazy how. It's a different system. As you said, race pays is a much, much, much bigger part of it. You said race is a proxy.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but. Yeah, but I would argue in the us, what happens is 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, and not necessarily the possession of it, but the access that it gives you to things.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So if you. If you are in the business class lounge, right, there's going to 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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?

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Now. But now because of maybe fame, someone be like, oh, of course, Mr. Noah, come in. Like recently, when we were in Australia, this was so funny because here's my thing.

[Ryan]

I. I wasn't in Australia.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, he wasn't.

[Ryan]

He means we as in we.

[Trevor Noah]

So me and the crew. The royal we. Yeah, yeah, the Royal we. I was there by myself.

[Ryan]

I was very close with that.

[Trevor Noah]

No, so we're now we're in Australia and I was on tour there and. 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. 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. So 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. 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.

[Ryan]

Do you have the business class line? Cockiness of headphones.

[Trevor Noah]

Not. Not even. I'm just. We're just there away.

[Uber]

Suitcase.

[Ryan]

Yeah. The cockiness of business class.

[Trevor Noah]

One of one of the employees comes over. She walks up to us, 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.

[Uber]

Oh, God, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then I said, yes, yes, it is. And then she just stared at me because now she was hoping that I would now do the whole like, oh, sorry, I'm not. 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. And then she went, picked the wrong guy. Oh, you.

[Ryan]

You.

[Trevor Noah]

Are you in business class? And then I was like, why else would I be standing in this line?

[Uber]

Who's asking?

[Trevor Noah]

Then she's like, oh. Or I just. I wasn't sure if you're in business class. Then I was like, I don't know if this guy's in business class. 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

[Uber]

sure he's in business class.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes. You know, your money may be your favorite. It happens in your building all the time, my man. All these things.

[Ryan]

All the time.

[Trevor Noah]

All these things.

[Ryan]

Are you hurt?

[Trevor Noah]

But yes, but what? I. No, no, for sure, for sure. For sure.

[Ryan]

Did you hear the dial up facts?

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

analogy is really, is really good.

[Trevor Noah]

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 just going like, hey, man, white guy, you're a superhero. Nothing can go wrong in your life. And then white guy goes, a lot of shit. I don't have a job. I'm living in my mom's basement.

[Uber]

I'm selling rabbit shit.

[Trevor Noah]

I, I do. You know what I'm saying?

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Times are tough. Times are tough.

[Ryan]

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

[Uber]

one time was just once. And he deserved all of it.

[Trevor Noah]

All the he got.

[Ryan]

He deserved it.

[Uber]

That's good.

[Trevor Noah]

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, the, the academic discussion of ideas limits us because 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, you just do it.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

First of all, I feel like it removes the lens. So we are watching people leave fake reviews or write fake or come to a fake restaurant. We're watching people. You know what I mean? So, like your Amazon thing, which I want you to talk about, because it sort of goes into this world.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor 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 have really unscrupulous. Yes, they're convenient. Yes, they're great. But you know, at the same time, we have to ask ourselves if these people, you can go into that foreverness or you can just sell urine on Amazon, but you can sell Amazon workers urine on Amazon and prove that it exists.

[Uber]

Yeah, but.

[Trevor Noah]

And it makes such a. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like the. You know, it's trying to.

[Uber]

Yeah, I was trying to do is. It's sort of 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Uber]

Like something I remember when. This is an example. You guys won't. Won't know probably why.

[Ryan]

Because we're black.

[Uber]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[Trevor Noah]

I just had. And you were waiting.

[Uber]

I was waiting.

[Trevor Noah]

You had that in the chamber. You were like, oh, yeah. You're like, oh, yeah, I got you, little Uber boy. I got you any Move. Yeah. You know what? You were waiting.

[Uber]

He says.

[Trevor Noah]

Next thing he says, because I'm black.

[Ryan]

You could have said anything. Anything.

[Trevor Noah]

Anything. Anything. You could have said that. And if Eugene was ready with. Yeah, Eugene was ready for you.

[Uber]

The Blaster.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man. I've had a great time with you guys. Because I'm bl. Oh, man. I didn't think I was going to say that. Oh, man.

[Ryan]

I surprise myself sometimes.

[Uber]

No, there was a guy. There was this. There was a politician when we. When we. Anyway, whatever. He was a labor politician. Was a guy called Ed Miliband.

[Trevor Noah]

He. I remember Ed Milan.

[Uber]

Yeah, his whole thing. He looked like he was going to 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.

[Trevor Noah]

It was done.

[Uber]

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 son that printed it, which is a like, you know, rag that Murdoch Reoc

[Trevor Noah]

is runs one of those conservative tabloid. Yeah, yeah.

[Uber]

And yeah, he printed like a picture of him eating a bank but struggling with a bacon sandwich. And it was kind of over. It was. It was bizarre. I remember that was stuck in. In my head. It was like, there's a million examples of that. If here you probably sit and think of one.

[Trevor Noah]

There was one where Mini Mike was

[Uber]

one that Trump did to Bloomberg. That just killed it.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, that one destroyed it.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But there's also one where 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.

[Ryan]

It was over just like that.

[Uber]

Pizza. Pizza. Have you ever seen the ad? But this is a completely off topic. There was an advert where Trump eats the pizza back backwards. It's insane.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

But he states it backwards.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm gonna go look at this now

[Uber]

because I saying it's a picture.

[Ryan]

Advertise the PBC here.

[Uber]

Freewheeling.

[Trevor Noah]

I need to see this.

[Uber]

It's very bizarre.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah, you're right.

[Ryan]

We're losing that now.

[Uber]

Yeah. Should I backwards? Should I carry on with piss?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, Tell us the.

[Uber]

The. The.

[Trevor Noah]

Tell us. Tell us how you sold urine Segway.

[Uber]

While he w. He. While he pulls it up.

[Ryan]

Yeah, cuz he knows the story.

[Uber]

I'll help your appetite

[Trevor Noah]

while I prepare the pizza.

[Uber]

While the backwards pizza is in the oven, I'll prepar an aperitif.

[Ryan]

Yeah, I love that word, aperitif. Yeah, it sounds better than palate cleanser.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, there it is.

[Ryan]

Palate cleanser. Sounds like mouthwash.

[Uber]

I hope I haven't got this wrong.

[Trevor Noah]

There it is. Wow, this is crazy.

[Uber]

It's an interesting image.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, look at that.

[Uber]

He survived it. It almost helped him. Yeah,

[Trevor Noah]

that's what he says before he eats pizza. I love pizza so much. Give me my slice, Dud.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

This is a person who's probably never eaten pizza or, like, just lived in another world. He's like, yeah, regular people do. Like, is this how you do it? I do it all the time. I do it all the time.

[Uber]

You end with the finger. Bizarre.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[Uber]

To unionizing who went and worked there. We'd heard all this stuff, and now I was working with like Channel 4, which is like the BBC public service broadcaster is 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

Now I'm working in tv. It's different. 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 FEC and 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 privacy. Yeah, it's just like they scan you like you're like, like I don't know, going to, through TSA or whatever. Every time you come off the warehouse floor and 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 worse your score is. Basically. What else was there? Oh, there was a, there was a, another worker who actually went public after this but didn't want to go public in, in the film who left, had a, it was a couple 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. It's crazy, absolutely crazy. And 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 are you doing here? And I got pulled off there and yeah, it was, it was interesting. And then basically I wanted to do something about their workers. I want to come up with a stunt that would cut through and would have 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 Glendale. Just the one, the closest one in la.

[Trevor Noah]

In California.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah, just in la. 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. 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 10, if they catch you, you come back into the after your shift with a bottle of piss in your car. Then you get a point against your name and if you get 10 points you're in trouble. So what they do is as they're driving back in, they chuck it out the window because they think, okay, right, I need to get rid of it or I'm going to get in trouble. So what I did was sort of like I collected a load of the bottles of urine, repackaged them as like a, one of those kind of new influencer energy drinks called Release Energy. And, and then I actually released Infection

[Trevor Noah]

Bladder.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[Uber]

So I, no, no, then I put it on. I put it on. So, yeah, another thing as well was we spoke to female drivers who got UTIs from holding it in as well. Like, so guys would piss in bottles, they would get UTIs and then listed it on Amazon as a drink, said what it was on the label, didn't, didn't hide what it was. I 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 on, 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, and I made it a number one drink on Amazon. So it's literally a number one drink on Amazon on the platform. It became this big story, came out and massively viral again, was covered everywhere. But what it meant is that people were talking about this story, that if it was earnestly reported, that's exactly what the model that you guys have had at the show was, is. How do you make people talk about this thing?

[Trevor Noah]

How are you going to break the

[Uber]

spell of, like, because Amazon's in the way they run their user experience as a, as a customer is amazing.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes, Flawless.

[Uber]

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, yeah, it was crazy. And, you know, it ended up going viral. That stunt when it came out and was basically exactly what I wanted it to do, you know, And I had this other whole thing about filling in potholes at Amazon's expense as well. 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 2020, they paid zero in corporation tax in the UK. So I, I, I thought, you know, Amazon still uses the infrastructure that the, our taxes pay for, but they don't contribute. They don't contrib maintenance.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

All fair play. Amazon. Make your money, do your thing. 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?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

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 f for a refund, filled the packages with sand, and then sent it back.

[Trevor Noah]

And they just gave you a money?

[Uber]

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. Where were you finally?

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly.

[Uber]

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 law stores. And I made a. An Amazon business account for that company. And then so technically 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 man. So, yeah, I managed to get around getting in trouble by using the same way that they avoid paying taxes. And yeah, the name of the company was Whole Maintenance and Repair Corp, which as an acronym is hmrc, which is the British irs. Yes, it's. Yeah, but yeah, that was like, 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 sort of, I suppose maybe captures how slightly the works 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 fiction that would somehow almost go up to the line before they go. They cross it. Yeah, I opened the Shed for one night only when we opened the Shed for one, not only there was 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.

[Ryan]

Just do those things.

[Uber]

Let's just have a chain of restaurants called the Shed and get a load of investment, whatever, burn it work. What? Make the. Take some money.

[Trevor 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, Cuz like it's also, it's another insane project. But you basically set yourself the target of making. Was it a million dollars?

[Uber]

A million pounds?

[Trevor Noah]

Three.

[Uber]

$1.3 million dollars in 90 days.

[Trevor Noah]

90 days.

[Uber]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

But you, but you. It has to be legal.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And it had to be.

[Uber]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. So this came out just two months ago. This is another latest film for British television. But what it, you know, that film, what it, it was a kind of reaction to hustle culture, you know, and like how much of our cultural oxygen is just around making money and how much of that. You know.

[Trevor Noah]

So here's what I, what I, what I don't like is, is. And this happens with various different fields and spheres, you know, is when people talk about hustle culture, it's now been co opted by a group of people who sort of. Because 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 hustle.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you know what I mean? You hustled.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

No, you're right. Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor 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 as quickly as possible. 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 that will never pay money back? Are you, you know, that whole.

[Uber]

And this is the thing. Thing that you're 100. 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. Yeah. The whole world's changed. And now we are living in the fake reality. Like we are all, we're all dining at the.

[Ryan]

The fake has become real.

[Uber]

We're all eating the microwavable 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 in video, apart from them. They make chips.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

How many of them? The value of these stocks now a. I've no. No semblance to reality.

[Trevor Noah]

No.

[Uber]

It's like now that everybody is making a shed and it's all, It's. It's all been. The whole economy has been remade. Like 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

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 client to 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, as you're saying.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Ask yourself where they get their money from.

[Uber]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But ask yourself where they get their money from. If that person gets all their money from, you from you telling you how to make money. Yep. But they aren't going off and doing investment things that this. They aren't. They're making their money from you.

[Ryan]

Yeah. It's like getting a financial advisor. Once you're successful, you're like, where was the advice?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it's like all of these things if we're not careful. But it is true. It's fully that.

[Uber]

It's like.

[Trevor Noah]

It's like 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So what are you saying? We shouldn't. It's like. No, I'm not saying don't advertise a thing.

[Uber]

Is it?

[Trevor Noah]

But don't act like you did use it.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Don't act like. You know what I mean? Don't act like you. There's certain things where you're like, oh, man, at what cost?

[Uber]

The crypto thing's 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. The shed thing. No, but like the Amazon thing planned out and I kind of know what I'm going to do. You never know you're going to get caught when you're working at Amazon on the floor and they pull you off and say, what the hell are you doing here?

[Trevor Noah]

You should have been like, man, my life fell apart, man.

[Ryan]

Can I be

[Uber]

before you kick me out?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you'd be like, yo, 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. Yeah.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

No.

[Uber]

After you were kicked out, I remember saying. I said to like, because I had to get training to do undercover. Because I like, this guy's basically a bullshitter and we're letting him do a proper journalist 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.

[Ryan]

You did it.

[Uber]

You are promoted.

[Ryan]

But you found me.

[Uber]

They were like, we are going to rescind your permission to do this? No, but yeah, so over coming back. Yeah. So that. That doc, the one about making a million, you know, you follow me around for 90 days. The thing that I just kept on getting thrust down because it was. It's basically. I moved to New York while I was making that. Yeah. It's reacting to being in New York. It's a very unique culture, I think, in terms of.

[Trevor Noah]

In what way?

[Uber]

Hustle. Just hustle. Yeah. And the way. And that comfort with which people. And I don't even 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. It's got ikram, and within 10 minutes of meeting him, he's like, we're making a company together. It's worth $10 million 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. Yeah. And then, you know, in the time that I, I know him throughout the thing, he tries to say to me, you should make a cryptocurrency with me. I said, I don't know, man. You know, don't like that stuff. I don't love it. Not saying it's bad, just personal.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Uber]

You know, 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 fact check this and it's tricky, but he basically, the coin that he asked me to get in with him on was like, ended up becoming. This is easy to fact check. The number one trending meme coin on the planet for a day made $250 million. This thing did. And it was like if I. And I think the thing that I can't fact check, but he said if you'd have put in $500 that day, you'd have made a million. And it was just like one of those things where I was like, yeah,

[Trevor Noah]

but, but you see, the, 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.

[Uber]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Right, right, right, right.

[Trevor Noah]

That's my issue with all of these ideas.

[Ryan]

There's no way you made it.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah. Because you, you didn't make the thing.

[Ryan]

It comes from somewhere.

[Trevor Noah]

Because if we look at like, no,

[Uber]

that, that's 100% right.

[Trevor Noah]

But you get what I'm saying. A lot of the time 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Service of good.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

It's a promise.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But then at some point it became. I'm saying this is worth this. I'm going to take all of your guys money, it's going to be worth this for a more and then it's not going to be worth it. Yeah. Instantly, overnight, all I've done is I've gone and then sucked in all your money.

[Uber]

Yeah, it's true.

[Trevor Noah]

I've just sucked in all your money.

[Uber]

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

[Ryan]

Yes. And they put it in. Yeah, it comes from somewhere.

[Uber]

That's the, that's. And that was like what happened to my mom and dad when we were kid. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Ah. But also those things are shortcuts to jail. Well, no, you never know though. That's true though. Well, I mean like now getting 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, that's

[Uber]

like, see, that's like.

[Trevor Noah]

Because when do see you stop.

[Uber]

Yeah, it's true.

[Trevor Noah]

You put 500 in, you make a million. Why would you not put in the next 500,000 to make 10 million, 100 million? When do you stop?

[Uber]

It's true.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Ryan]

know what to stop.

[Trevor 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.

[Uber]

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.

[Trevor Noah]

At this moment.

[Uber]

It didn't a year ago. Yeah, it's changed. They've now. It's now not A security crypto is not a security. So it's regulated by some other. Some other regulatory body that has like one guy. One guy.

[Trevor Noah]

It's just the guy who vibe. Just vibe checks it. Now he just sits there and he's like, cool. Yeah, cool.

[Uber]

Puts his finger in the water. That's all right.

[Trevor Noah]

So.

[Uber]

So, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

What would you say? Your. Your dream and your. Because, 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 know, and I don't want to put too much weight on this. 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? Change or, you know.

[Uber]

Yeah, I mean, I suppose that it's hard. I definitely. There's definitely a world view, isn't there? There's definitely. And that's as I've had the privilege of doing this now for nearly 10 years, which is nuts. 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. Yeah. Like, you know, I can look at the. The Amazon piss thing and be like, this is probably possible. And I think because of my experience, I know that. Or, you know, going like that film we've just made about get rich quick and that being in those rooms and asking a billionaire to give him. Give me a million, why not, please? And just like, seeing. I don't know, I suppose that you said the grand omission kind of distracted myself thinking about.

[Trevor Noah]

No, yeah. Just like, what do you.

[Uber]

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

[Ryan]

No, I don't.

[Trevor Noah]

I don't know.

[Uber]

I think first and foremost, I. I do just consider myself sort of a. An artist and a creator of stuff. And I, I am. I want to 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 when you're working with, like, Channel 4, which is like a public service broadcaster.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Uber]

I'm going to evidence this and I'm going to. But working on projects here now. I'm really excited by looking at like culture here and how that really plugs into the moment that. Because I think culture is actually a really great way of talking about all of that stuff. If you focus on little pieces of tech. Like, you know, I think there's almost like, like

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

It just has to be. Yeah, but. And becomes easier to like why is the clothing popular at the time? Why what is or isn't popular? Why is it. Do you get what I'm saying? 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 but if you look at the plant you can know.

[Uber]

Yeah, it is interesting. This is the first time in my life I've been an immigrant somewhere. That's quite interesting. Interesting. Moving here for the first time and being, 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 is being the outsider.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah. Different world.

[Uber]

Yeah. And I think that. Yeah. I don't kind of. I feel like I'm making no sense at the moment.

[Ryan]

No, no, I think I'm realizing what you're saying. I think two things that I picked up from here is we're constantly fighting this battle between gatekeeping and democracy. Advertising was one of those. It was a well regulated and gate kept industry until it was not. Now people are creating their own adverts without safeguards and research and experimentation.

[Uber]

That's true.

[Trevor Noah]

I didn't think about that.

[Ryan]

And the other one is basically what we started with when we were speaking about academia and how they write papers. It's just basically a debate between experimenting as a scientist, which is what we're enjoying now. You do experiments and you get a result a bit quite quicker. Instead of someone taking five years to write the paper and do research. 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 if it's true or not. Like, as your lawyer would say, it's very illegal. I think what you are doing is you are setting off a tinder box for us to start having conversations and doing our own research so we can arrive to a conclusion that we're happy to. Happy with. Because one thing, if it's popular opinion.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

Where you're watching from.

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan]

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?

[Uber]

Yeah, yeah, great. I mean, as you was saying that, 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 front thing and I've never watched

[Ryan]

it and I heard it from YouTube.

[Uber]

Is that right?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Uber]

So you've never. You never. Oh, amazing. All right, so if it made sense to you, hopefully.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, no, it completely makes sense.

[Uber]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

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

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I love that you said scientists or experiments or sociologists. 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, and they sent like a white guy. He's like cutting, like, cutting it full on, like, with a, like very, like, like hokey. I'm breaking a lock. Not like very like bang bang. You know what I mean? And people would just walk past me like, okay, whatever. And then they send like a white woman. People would help, be like, yo, hold on, hold on. You doing that wrong. Hold on, hold on. Let me, let me get that for you. Let me. Yeah, just river. And then. No. And then at some point, someone to even like push it. Someone's like, oh, is this your bike? And she was like, no. And they're like, they're like, all right.

[Uber]

Having a fun Sunday.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. And then, and then they sent like black teenagers to go and do it. Yo.

[Uber]

Minutes.

[Trevor Noah]

While they were just like standing there, people were 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 car 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 small. It's not a paper.

[Ryan]

Yes.

[Trevor 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.

[Uber]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And I think the thing that was interesting about. 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 they, 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. Think of influence differently. You may. I was like, oh, damn, you gotta. You know what I mean? But I, 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. Thank you. Fecking them and find out that's what, that's what he's doing.

[Uber]

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

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

[Uber]

And as you thing in America that that's good enough for me.

[Ryan]

And as you leave, f will say, did you.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, no, no, I did.

[Uber]

I tell you, two miles down.

[Trevor Noah]

He did.

[Uber]

I did.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man. Uber. Thanks for joining us.

[Uber]

Thank you very much.

[Ryan]

It's really great.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes, I loved it. Enjoy New York. Yeah.

[Uber]

Thank you.

[Trevor Noah]

What now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with SiriusXM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackle. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiou. Music, Mixing and Mastering by Hannis Brown Random Other stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of what Now.

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