The BBC aired QR codes during the World Cup asking viewers to sign up for TV licences at half-time. Marina Hyde's verdict: the sign-up numbers are so close to zero they can't be meaningfully charted.
Where this was said
At 12:35 · chapter starts 9:40
Faye Williams's question about her baffling experience watching a Chinese-produced Tom and Jerry film opens up one of the episode's richest segments. Richard Osman explains that Tom and Jerry has been on Chinese state television CCTV since 1991, airing nightly at 8PM, and became so embedded in Chinese popular culture that the country attempted to create its own rival — 'The Blue Mouse and the Big-Faced Cat' — in the mid-1990s [1] — Richard Osman "Tom and Jerry has been a fixture of Chinese state television since 1991, spawning a massive gaming franchise with 100 million users. China'…" 09:32 . It failed to dislodge the original. Today, a Tom and Jerry online game in China has 100 million users, and the franchise is huge across Asia. But the episode's most striking cultural fact arrives in the counterpoint: Winnie the Pooh, far from enjoying a similar ascent, is comprehensively banned in China. Osman traces the ban to a 2013 meme in which Xi Jinping was compared to Winnie the Pooh and Barack Obama to Tigger, following their White House meeting. Xi's furious response only intensified the satirical pile-on, and the CCP eventually moved to wipe the character from Chinese public life entirely. Osman delivers the punchline with characteristic deadpan: Winnie the Pooh is now 'just about the most banned thing that's possible to be banned in China'.
Tom and Jerry was broadcast on Chinese state television CCTV starting in 1991, airing nightly at 8PM, cementing its huge cultural footprint in China.
In the mid-1990s China created its own rival cartoon to Tom and Jerry called 'The Blue Mouse and the Big-Faced Cat'. It never came close to matching the original, proving Tom and Jerry's timeless global appeal.
A Tom and Jerry online game in China has attracted 100 million users, though Richard Osman notes that in China's context that isn't actually that many.
After a 2013 meme compared Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh following his White House meeting with Obama, the character became one of the most comprehensively banned things in China. Images, films, and merchandise — all gone.
A 2013 meme comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh after his meeting with Obama led to the character being completely banned in China.
Ten years ago, 90% of tech media coverage was relentlessly negative and Kalanick felt he couldn't speak freely. Today, the rise of independent podcasters and Elon Musk buying Twitter has fundamentally changed the game — and it's why he's finally willing to talk.
Kay Classman, 28, was arrested for repeatedly posing as a 16-year-old and enrolling in Bronx high schools across multiple districts. She wasn't a predator — just someone so sad and lonely she wanted her lost childhood back. That's somehow sadder.
Disney, Meta, and Paramount have collectively paid Trump roughly $60 million to settle what Galloway calls nuisance lawsuits — all routed to his presidential library. Newsrooms are folding. The White House is handpicking press pool participants. This is what the end of a free press looks like.
One cheap fake documentary made by a teenager in his mother's basement convinced 16% of Americans that 9/11 was an inside job. Social media didn't invent conspiracy — it just gave it a rocket engine.
A progressive organization with a stated mission to destroy Turning Point USA received millions from ActBlue and is now publicly pushing the narrative that TPUSA insiders and Israel murdered Charlie Kirk. Andrew Wilson traced the network of accounts all amplifying the same conspiracy in perfect unison.
The microphone-bomb theory fails on every physical front: no smoke, no ignition, mic on the wrong side of the wound. And the .30-06 rifle round used is extensively documented by the US Army — it does not always produce a through-and-through wound. Wilson argues this is a well-studied projectile with well-understood behavior.
Andrew Wilson publicly offered Candace Owens $300,000 to debate her theory that Israel and TPUSA murdered Charlie Kirk. She refused. He argues that flat-earthers will debate anyone, but Kirk conspiracy theorists won't defend their claims under scrutiny.
Erika Kirk became the CEO of TPUSA while grieving her husband's murder in public, and now faces tens of thousands accusing her of conspiring to kill him. Andrew Wilson calls it mind-boggling psychological torture. The sparklers at the memorial weren't suspicious — they were a grieving widow doing her best in an impossible situation.
Joe Rogan and Andrew Wilson watch a bystander video of the Corey Ruiz police shooting in Madison, Wisconsin live on air. The video is so blurry they initially think a female officer fired the fatal shots. They later learn a male officer did, after Ruiz allegedly pulled a knife and stabbed officers. Their conclusion: you cannot have a hot take on a story you don't understand yet.
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