I worry about you.

Do you?

Yes. Why? Because how does this benefit you in any way?

It was just— look, it's better than just watching Lucky Ladders on ITV or Homes Under the Hammer.

How is it?

Well, because—

Because what?

Because it's different. I am adding to the richness of my experience so that if I ever go to a dinner party again, I can regale people with stories of my travels. Smashing Security. Smashing Security, Episode 259: Techquilibrium and Mediocre Linguistic Escapades with Carole Theriault and Graham Cluley. Hello, hello, and welcome to Smashing Security, Episode 259. My name's Graham Cluley.

And I'm Carole Theriault.

And Carole, this week it's just you and me.

Yes.

The reason is not because of your jury service. That's over now, isn't it?

Yes, my jury service is over. I have done my civic duty.

Was the right person punished if they were punished?

Yes, the right person was certainly the defendant as far as I knew. Yep. But I have more exciting news for you, Mark.

Oh yes, go on then.

Yeah. Today, in a few hours, I'm going to be recording our very first Sticky Pickle of Season 4. And I haven't spoken to Maria in over a month, so I totally miss her and I can't wait. I have a great one for her today. Actually, can you do something for me? Can you do the exasperated sigh, like when I called you to do this show? When you answered the phone, right? You made it. You said, hang on, and you made this sound. Can you do it now? Yeah. Can you put a bit more voice into it? Like really? Okay, perfect. Anyway, that is going to be the center of my story. Okay.

Well, on with this week's show then.

Yes. But first, let's thank this week's sponsors, 1Password, Thinx, and Uptix. It's their support that helped us give you this show for free. Now coming up on today's show, Graham, what do you got?

Wordle.

Oh, Wordle. Okay. I haven't actually played this, but everyone I know has been playing it. So there you go. And I am going to explain the term techquilibrium and see if it's a good idea for us to maybe engage it in our lives. All this and much more coming up on this episode of Smashing Security.

Now, Chum Chum, you've just admitted to me something which I wasn't aware, which is that you've never played Wordle.

I tried and I actually couldn't figure out within the 30 seconds that I attempted how to actually do it. I really couldn't figure it out. And I just thought, I actually don't care. I'd much rather do anything else. Well, but I did feel like a bit of a plonker.

For anyone who doesn't know, Wordle is an immensely popular fairly new free web-based word game created by a chap called Josh Wardle.

Oh, he missed a trick there with the name. Just saying, Wardle, Wordle.

He did, he did. He missed a chance there. He should have changed his name to be actual Wordle.

Yeah, much easier.

And what it does is it has a brand new 5-letter word each day. It's the same word for all of the world. And you have 6 attempts to try and guess it. And you guess it by entering 5-letter words onto the Wordle website.

Okay, you have 6 tries to try and get this 5-letter word that is regenerated every day.

Right.

Gotcha.

So I'm thinking of a 5-letter word right now, okay? And you put in your first guess. You tell me what your first guess is.

Okay, irony.

Irony. Okay. So what I can tell you is that your R is a correct letter.

Right.

But in the wrong place.

Right.

And the N is a correct letter, but in the wrong place. Right? So you've got clues. You've got clues. The rest of your letters do not appear in my word.

Okay. So then if I said round, for example.

Round, for instance. Yeah. So you've now actually got the R in the correct place. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Okay.

And your N is still in the wrong place.

Okay, okay. So now my R is in the right place, my N's in the wrong place, and then I would come up with another word where it would be R—

Exactly. And you can see how, you know, over a few go— we won't, we won't do this.

You only have 6 goes, and if you get it, yay, and if you don't get it, oh well, you have to wait till the next day to play again.

Exactly. And how frustrating. And what people are doing is people are sharing how well they've done, but they're doing it in a clever way. They're doing it in a way which doesn't reveal what the answer is. So Wordle, what it does is it represents whether your letters are in the correct place or not with different colours. So a green square means you've got a correct letter in the correct spot. Ding, ding, ding. Yellow, correct letter but in the wrong spot. Grey, the letter isn't in the word at all. So what people are doing is they're sharing their coloured squares on social media sites like Twitter. They're showing off how well they've done at the game each day. Now, I thought that that actually sucked. That's not very good, is it? If you're visually impaired. Because if you're using something like Twitter with a screen reader, you don't want your screen reader babbling away saying, "Grey square, grey square, yellow square, grey square, green square." Oh, for goodness' sake. You know, it's excluding people.

This is a very unusual approach to a game. I would imagine that most game apps exclude people. Like, how do you play, you know, Fortnite. Well, if you're visually impaired, for example. So I don't know why you're going after Wordle.

Left a bit, right a bit, there's a peeled banana running towards you.

Virtual reality. That whole world is a bit of a problem for those that are visually impaired.

I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg will solve that.

Oh, Marky Mark.

Anyway, so I thought that's a bit of a shame, but actually it turns out some people have already thought of this. So there is a website called, well, it's got a weird name. It's w-a and then the number 11-y. So it looks like Wally, but with ones instead of Ls, .co. And that will translate your colored squares into descriptive text. Rather than saying gray, gray, gray, gray, gray, gray, or something like that.

Yeah.

It will say line 1, nothing. Line 2, 4th and 5th perfect. Line 3, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th letters perfect, or something like that.

Right. Okay, great. That's cool. So someone invented this to make it better for those that were visually impaired, which is a cool thing.

Well, yes. Although again, I wonder how much fun really is that? I don't know. I've got to put my hands up now. I've only played Wordle once.

You also have very tiny eyes as well. So maybe that's why. Maybe you should go on this site and play.

I didn't have any problem with the colours, Carole.

Okay.

That wasn't a difficulty. But anyway, you are probably thinking, where's the real story here, Cluley?

Yeah, I normally think that around this time in the story.

Yeah. Why are we discussing this on Smashing Security? Well, there's two possible reasons. One is the impact on productivity because—

That's not normally your focus of concern, but okay, that could be what you're going after.

Because so many things are eaten away at our time already. You've got Netflix playing away in the corner of your screen. Maybe you're one of those people who go to the office, you think you're, you know, I just need to go in for a work meeting, then you're ambushed by a cake and cheese and wine and nibbles from Marks & Spencer. People seem to prefer that.

But to be fair, Wordle only has 6 guesses. How much time does that take really out of your day? Probably, what, 10 minutes?

Ah, well, times by millions and millions of people around the world, Carole.

Yeah, if only everyone stopped having to go to the bathroom, how much time would we all save? Okay.

You could always wear one of those spacesuit diapers, couldn't you, if you're really dedicated to your job? And I think that is actually easier now many people are working from home. You could pipe yourself into the lavatory and just keep on working. Why not? So sysadmins, they used to worry about smartphones being brought in and people downloading torrents and now there's Wordle. So that's one argument. Another argument is it's ruining social networks. Because rather than influencers posting filtered selfies of themselves in their bikinis or—

Very important things that we need to see every single day.

Every single moment of our lives. Re-sharing cat memes.

Also extremely important.

That's what the internet was invented for.

Exactly.

People are bragging about their Wordle score. People are worried about Russia invading Ukraine. And what we're doing is we're actually playing Wordle.

Has anyone actually said it's ruining social networks?

I just did. And it's rather dull and self-aggrandizing. Oh, look at me. I just completed the Wordle.

Okay, so you're annoyed your Twitter feed has been disrupted by information that you don't care about. Boo-hoo.

I've seen actual friends of our podcast, former guests, posting up their Wordles. Yes. And I just think, come on, Stockley, seriously, get a life.

I think just because you're not on the train, you're very, very intolerant.

I played it once and I thought, okay, well, I get it, you know, and I'm into games. I just thought, big deal.

Now, oh, well, then the whole world should follow you. I agree. Okay, crack on.

Thankfully, someone agreed with me and they have come to our rescue and the rescue of sysadmins and social network lovers. Because they created a bot and the bot they called Wordlinator.

Right. And can I guess what it does?

Go on, you guess.

It removes Wordle stuff from your Twitter feed.

Well, wouldn't that be good? Not quite. It doesn't quite manage to do that. So there are ways of removing Wordle content from your Twitter feed. The most simple way would be to mute any tweets containing the word Wordle. That would work. But the Wordlinator wanted to go one further. He wanted to teach these people a lesson. So what it does, according to its profile, it said it was sent from the future to terminate Wordle bragging. And what it did was it scoured Twitter for people's posts bragging about their Wordle successes.

Yep.

And would post messages in reply saying, "Stop it. You're making the rest of us look bad. Your punishment is tomorrow's Word." And then it would give the following day's Wordle answer.

Ah.

Because Wordle, some other sites out there, was revealing its answers in the source code of its webpage. You could find out what the answers were going to be coming up.

See, my problem with the whole thing is because there's one word a day and you've got a 24-hour span of people, surely someone in Australia might get it before, you know, and then be able just to ruin it for everybody.

Well, yes, but only if everybody in the world followed them on Twitter.

No, I imagine that that would be a way of getting it to follow because— well, I don't know. Would people retweet it? That's interesting. Yeah, okay.

I think generally people who are into Wordle are sort of playing by the rules. And they're thinking, you know, well, let's all just have fun here. So this bot was posting messages saying, "Stop bragging. This doesn't make you look smart. Get on with your life." Or, "Guess what? People don't care about your mediocre linguistic escapades. To teach you a lesson." Now, no one, it turns out, likes to have their linguistic escapades described as mediocre.

And so I speak from personal experience. I couldn't even do it. I couldn't even figure out how it works. So I'm lower than mediocre. I'm the bottom of the barrel. I will never bore anyone with my Wordle scores.

I'm saying nothing. And so they started to block the Wordlinator account so that they wouldn't get spoiled by seeing the answer for the next day.

Right.

And a lot of people, I said, said, well, you know, they don't really need to run this bot. They could just mute the word Wordle entirely from their Twitter feed.

Oh, right.

I mute things on Twitter,

I mute things G. Clooney.

Right. Whatever it might be, you can just block it.

Got it.

Yeah. Which is of course anyone's right to do that. And then Twitter stepped in. right? I mute words NFT, for instance.

Twitter. I love that it's a person. I'm just trying to profile what it would look like, a mafioso boss, you know, wearing hipster gear when carrying a latte, or I don't know.

Until quite recently, Twitter had one of those sort of beards, one of those trendy young—

Yeah, Jack Dorsey,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, Twitter has rules and it has rules about bots and automations. And one of the things it says is that reply and mentioning things on Twitter, that's designed to facilitate communication and make it easier.

Jack Dorsey, cool

And it says automating those to reach many people on an unsolicited basis is an abuse of the feature and is not permitted. And so Wordlinator was zapped and the account has been suspended.

meditation dude. That's right.

It is no more. How do you feel about that?

I'm just so grateful that you've shared this very important cybersecurity story with us.

Well, I think it does have—

No, but really, it's, you know, I'm going to give this a lot of thought.

Thought. That is— how many letters is that? Is that 7?

6.

Isn't it?

No, that's T-H-O-U-G-H-T.

Carole Theriault.

Yes.

Impress us. What story have you got this week?

Okay, well, let's say that I'm getting a little worried about you. And basically, after the story you've just presented, I am a little worried about you. And it's not your love of tuna for breakfast or the fact that you've got life-size posters of the Beatles in your house. You can feel part of the gang. It's because I'm a little worried about your phone usage.

My phone usage?

Yes. I'm not saying you have an addiction. I'm not saying you're addicted. You have it all in hand, or do you think it's all out of control?

Oh, I think most people probably have it out of control.

Hey, I'm not asking about most people.

Oh, okay.

I'm talking about you, Mr. Cluley.

Is it out of control? Well, I don't know. What is out of control?

I mean, I will tell you. I can tell you. I have a quiz for you.

Oh, good. Oh, I love a quiz.

So that you can decide for yourself, and listeners, you can play along too. And we're gonna find out, you know, how addicted you are. Now, to make this fair, yeah, I thought I would answer from a bona fide addict's point of view because, you know, I have smoked cigarettes in my life, and at one point I was buying a pack a day. So I understand addiction, right? So okay, I'm going to answer these questions from that point of view, and you answer from your phone point of view, and let's see how we go.

Okay.

Okay, so you leave your phone at home, do you feel uneasy?

Yes.

Yes. Pack of cigarettes left at home? Yes. When I was smoking hardcore? Yes.

Right.

Do you check your phone within the first 10 minutes of waking up?

Yeah, what, 10 minutes? I'd be pleased with that. Yes, I probably do.

Yes, yes. Okay, me when I was a hardcore smoker, yes.

Oh really, smoking as soon as you get up? Oh my goodness.

Yeah, sometimes in bed. This was a long time ago, but yeah, attractive. Well, you know, I married a good one, so... Have you ever gone longer than 24 hours without your cell phone? Yes, you have.

Yes.

Why, when you were in jail, or when?

Well, when I lost it. I left it in a taxi cab in Edinburgh once. I went out without it for a while. It wasn't a very pleasant experience.

Were you stressed during not having your phone for 24 hours?

I spent all this time trying to locate it. I was tracking this taxi across Edinburgh and trying to get hold of it. It was very stressful.

I'm gonna put a yes there. Okay. So you lost it not by your own choice. Okay. And you were stressed the entire time.

Right. Okay.

So, you know, yes.

Okay.

Okay. Do you check your phone within 5 minutes of receiving a notification?

No, not always. No.

Okay. That's fair. That's fair. And do you check your phone on the loo?

Yes. A pipe.

I was young.

You have a pipe, right?

Not a pipe.

Why is it considered weird for women to smoke pipes? Why is that? That's very sexist, isn't it? What's wrong with a woman—

I don't think it's weird smoking a pipe. It's just not my thing.

I know, but it always seems a bit comedic, isn't it? A woman smoking a pipe.

And finally, do you— would you look at your phone while on a date?

Oh yeah, well, it might be my mum asking me how I'm doing or something. I mean, okay, that's great, sending tips. It could be you at the next table saying you've got parsley stuck between your teeth, you know.

Out of these 6 questions I've asked you, you've answered basically yes to 5 of them. Okay, so the thing is, you don't have to feel bad because half of the smartphone users in the US, according to this study, spend 5 to 6 hours on their phone every single day. And before anyone says, oh, that includes work, obviously I have to use my phone for work, this is hours that exclude work-related smartphone use.

Golly.

Only 5% use it an hour or less a day.

It's terrifying, isn't it?

It is terrifying.

Yeah.

And the problem is the phone addiction is getting harder and harder to ignore. Like, Rona, because of the whole Rona, phone usage has skyrocketed. And it makes sense that we may have let our guard down and we are collectively further down the addiction rabbit hole than we were pre-Rona. Except of course, those 5% who've limited their time to 1 hour a day. Good for you.

Good for you, monks.

Yeah. So I looked at a bunch of studies and there's a shortlist on what most seem to agree that's causing the problem.

Okay.

What do you think it is? Why are we so addicted to our phones?

It might be a fear of missing out.

Yes, that's the biggest one.

Oh, right.

And I would have thought, okay, some people have that, but it seems it drives compulsive web surfing or watching videos, playing games, check news feeds.

Yeah, I used

Yeah.

For example, I wonder how many people liked my super hilarious comment to Piers Morgan on Twitter, you know, or I wonder what Boris Johnson did today, right? to smoke on Or I wonder what the latest chess game—

Have you chosen all these examples at random? But just, I'm just wondering.

the loo occasionally. Yes, completely, completely, completely. But you know, is that FOMO if you want to know what the latest chess scores are? It is a bit, right? You wanna be in the know so that you can tweet about it and no one kind of tells you before you, you're like, I know, I watched it, I watched it. Now the other thing is repetitive negative thinking, or what they're calling RNT. And it's basically all about rumination and worry. Okay, these are the two forms of repetitive negative thinking. So worrying about what's next in the pandemic, or the climate wars, or the political upheaval you might be going through. And this uncontrollable repetitive thinking basically shapes future negative thinking, you know, and thinking that the outcomes are just going to be doom and gloom everywhere.

So you're suggesting we just go, la la la la la la la, everything's fluffy, everything's wonderful here in the garden.

No, but I would say in the '90s, for example, I might go and watch the news after work right? 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock news, and then that would be it.

Right?

Right?

Yeah.

And then read the papers in the morning and share a few headlines, but it wouldn't take over our lives very regularly.

Very good point. Yeah, the world has changed in that regard, hasn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

And it's all about dopamine. Basically, addiction to anything depends on brain chemicals, and dopamine is normally the neurotransmitter responsible for this. So every time a notification, for example, comes on your phone, the brain releases a little dopamine shot. And the more this happens, the brain learns to release the dopamine even before the notification appears.

Hmm.

All this to say, the way we're using the phones is not good for us. And some of the things that it leads to is reduced attention and productivity. You lose interest in normal, enjoyable activities. You're irritable and uneasy. You huff and puff, sigh, exasperated a lot, right? Depression, relationship stress. I mean, imagine if you're with a partner who's on their phone all the time on the couch. Apparently people play on their phone while they're watching TV. Do you do that?

I might sometimes read the news, maybe, if the program isn't very interesting.

But you don't turn off the TV and then play on your phone?

I personally prefer podcasts.

Yeah. I'm the same.

So I guess I'd probably tune into my favorite security podcast and listen to that.

Right, as you're scrolling the news. Yeah, it disrupts sleep. It makes people anxious. Plus, according to Mental Floss, studies have shown that overuse can have a negative impact on our posture, eyesight, and hearing. So I want us to picture the near future us, okay? The smartphone generation. We're a bunch of sleep deprived, depressed, anxious, distracted hunchbacks with shitty eyesight and hearing.

Troglodytes.

Yes, this is the—

Hunched over.

This is gonna be the comeuppance that we're working towards. And can you imagine what people are gonna be reading? The great grandkids are gonna be reading in the history books about the information age.

But hang on, hang on a moment. Hang on a moment. I mean, you always get people sort of making these predictions saying, oh, it's the end of civilization as we know it because of this new technology. Did this not also happen when television was invented? Did this not also happen when people invented the sort of flip cartoon? You know, we flip over the pages and things move. Did this not also happen with the movies or knitting and 100 million other things which were brought in? Rock and roll. And this is going to be the destruction of all of us. And, you know, we've pretty much managed, haven't we?

Okay, well, you know what, you don't have to do any of these things because your phone addiction obviously is well under control.

I'm not saying it is. I acknowledge it's a problem.

I acknowledge it's funny because I was going to give some cute little advice here. And then I wrote here, but of course, you will probably resist them all. I wrote in caps because that strong dopamine monster you've been feeding daily for the last 5 years is stamping his little foot telling you to ignore what I'm about to say.

No, seriously, I want to hear your tips. Okay, so let's—

I'm going to challenge you to do one of these, okay? And I will do one too, okay?

All right.

Okay, so, and these are not, you know, get rid of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and stuff. You guys know that, right? Look, these are looking at gentler approaches. They're from Becca Caddy of Screen Time: How to Make Peace with Your Devices and Find Techquilibrium, hence the name of my segment.

Techwillibrium. I object to that.

I don't. I like it. I like it. Yeah, you're just grumpy because of the phone.

And so, you know,

Okay, you're grumpy because of your phone. Okay, number one, Twitter. Twitter comes back to your story, Graham. Mute topics and people.

Huh. Yeah, read receipts are a horrible thing.

They're a horrible thing. Get rid of them. Give you a bit more freedom.

I'm the same. Yes.

If you're on Facebook, neutralize your Facebook newsfeed or just make Facebook a desktop-only experience so you don't sit there just scrolling through it.

Yep, absolutely.

On Instagram, hide your like count, Graham. Right? So when you say something funny or you post something great, you don't sit there addicted to how many people actually commented.

I'm not addicted to that.

YouTube, remove related videos so you don't get this constant stream of videos and videos and videos that you didn't actually—

Can you do that on YouTube?

Yes, apparently you can. TikTok. Okay, now TikTok is proving to be quite a big problem, especially for young kids. So set a time limit on how long you spend on TikTok. I mean, people who are TikTok addicts, go check your phone battery usage on your phone, and it often will tell you where you're spending your most time in terms of what apps have you logged the most hours with. It can be extremely shocking. Notifications. Take a hard line and turn off all that you do not need in order to make money or have a business. Right? Just go into your phone and check it when you feel like checking your phone. Don't be a slave to it.

I think I've been pretty good on that one, actually. I don't have many notifications. And the other trick, which I do, maybe you're going to come up to this, is where possible I have a different noise for different notifications or even different people. So if you text me, it might go beep or whatever it might be.

Do you know what yours is? I'm not saying you're a muppet, so you can decide to ignore it.

You think oh that's them.

Yeah, exactly.

But you don't have to look at it, don't pick it up, don't have to do anything. That's my tip.

Exactly. Email. Okay, email. Check emails twice a day. Now that's the one that I am definitely getting on board with.

Well, I'll be impressed by you checking your email more regularly, Carole. That'd be good.

Number two, on WhatsApp, I'm healthier. I'm even more healthy. On LinkedIn, unfollow annoying people. Okay, or do like me, just never go on it. And Messenger, make yourself unavailable. So don't sit there with the, hey, I'm ready for any conversation at any time on Facebook Messenger. disable read receipts.

How are you supposed to only check your email twice a day if you work in an organization? Is that going to be acceptable?

I think a lot of these things are about personal phone use. Not obviously, you're not trying to impact your work-related stuff, but for example, you may have a work-related email and you have a personal email.

Right.

So yeah, so there you go. I think if you, listeners, if you just take one of these and go, you know what, actually that might be a good idea, you just might get some of your life back. There does seem to be the start of some movement. I read about it in the BBC this week where people are actually just dumping their smartphone in favor for Nokia phones where they can just receive phone calls and send texts and receive texts.

Oh, the old-fashioned bricks. Yeah.

And of course play Snake.

Yep. Yep.

And apparently what one of them said, what led me to do this is I went to the park with my kids and there was 20 other parents there with their kids and every single parent was staring at their screen.

Yeah, but some kids are pretty ugly, aren't they? Secure your online payments and grow your business with Brex and 1Password. Growing businesses have enough on their plates, don't they? Well, let 1Password and Brex simplify finances and online security so you can focus on doing what you do best. Brex is the financial operating system that powers tens of thousands of businesses and now that power is accessible through 1Password in the browser. With this new integration, Brex customers can autofill their Brex corporate and vendor card information while checking out anywhere on the web, right from 1Password in the browser, making online payments simple, secure, and frictionless. 1Password's integration with Brex is available right now to 1Password Teams and Business customers based in the United States. To find out more about 1Password and Brex, check out smashingsecurity.com/brex. That's B-R-E-X, smashingsecurity.com/brex.

We are also sponsored by Uptycs. Uptycs is a cloud-native security analytics platform built to protect the modern attack surface. Platform.

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Pick of the

Pick of the Week is the part of the show where everyone chooses something they like. Could be a funny story, a book that they've read, a TV show, a movie, a record, a podcast, a website, or an app. Whatever they wish. It doesn't have to be security related necessarily.

Visit smashingsecurity.com/uptycs, that's U-P-T-Y-C-S, to learn more about Week. Pick of the Week. Better not be.

Well, my Pick of the Week this week is not security related. My Pick of the Week, I'm going to take you back to the year 1987, a truly momentous year, memorable year.

its cloud-native security analytics platform.

Do you remember 1987, Carole?

And thanks to Uptycs for sponsoring the show. Yes. I think Billy Idol put out his album then. It was a good year for music.

The Bangles were walking like an Egyptian.

There you go.

Roseanne, The Cosby Show, A Different World. They were the top TV shows.

I dated a guy who used to be a drummer in a band, and they did a cover of Walk Like an Egyptian, but they changed the last word to Erection. Yeah.

How would that walk?

Yeah, well, you tell me. I don't know.

Rather than—

I'm sorry, I was pivoting. I was pivoting.

Rather than feet, would it have two large beach balls at the bottom rolling along? Anyway, so Cool Ranch Doritos, they were a big deal.

And I still love those.

Still love those. 1987, they were very hot then or cool. And in 1987, junior members of the British royal family thought it would be a wonderful idea to raise some money for charity by holding It's a Celebrity Knockout at Alton Towers theme park. Do you, Carole, know what It's a Knockout is?

No.

That's because you're North American. But if you were European, you might know it as Jeu Sans Frontières.

Okay.

Games Without Borders.

Jeux Sans Frontières.

As I said.

Mm-hmm.

Which was a concept originally dreamt up by Charles de Gaulle. No relation to Asterix.

Okay.

And it was designed to foster good relations between the French and German youth and then spread throughout Europe. And what this was, what it became at least, was a huge TV show where there would be competing teams doing silly things, normally outside, involving buckets of water and great big costumes and outfits. And you'd, they'd fall in the drink or they'd get covered in foam and you'd sort of compete against each other.

And there is a TV show right now on like that, isn't there? Where they have to go through a kind of maze of events, waters and slides and big hammers.

And there's, there's, is it called Instant Wipeout or something like that?

Wipeout.

Yeah.

Wipeout. Something like that.

It's a bit like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's physical activity, and you're sort of running back and forth. And I used to love this as a kid, watching Eddie Waring and Stuart Hall. Less said about him, the better. But in 1987, Prince Edward, he brought together Princess Anne, Fergie, and His Royal Highness, as he was then, Prince Andrew. And they decided for charity to do a royal Knockout. The Grand Knockout Tournament. And this was shown on TV. It took about an hour and a half where they brought dozens of celebrities together to play these games.

Oh, it wasn't like the Queen was out there bashing someone on the head? No. Well, the Queen, the Queen didn't show up. It will not do.

Yes. Because it was considered unseemly and a bit silly.

Yeah.

And to be honest, it was rather cringy.

Oh, can we see it?

Well, yes, because what I've done, the way I amused myself the other day when I had the flu was I sat down and I watched on YouTube.

Give into your addiction. Give into your addiction. It's a Royal Knockout 1987. There are top stars like Geoff Capes without his budgerigar. Meatloaf. RIP.

Christopher Reeve before the accident. Emmeline Hughes, Toya Wilcox. And this—

Toya Wilcox.

Oh yeah, loads of— all the big names were there. And it turned into a complete PR disaster because it was rubbish television. But also, as I recall, Prince Edward sort of goofed up the press conference afterwards. Maybe I'll put in a link to a video where you can find out what happened at the press conference. The press turned on him as a result. But I kind of like old television, and I found it rather nostalgic to watch this with my fingers over my eyes thinking, oh my God, this is awful.

I worry about you. Do you? Yes. Why? Because how does this benefit you in any way?

It was just— look, it's better than just watching Lucky Ladders on ITV or Homes Under the Hammer.

How is it?

Well, because—

Because what?

Because it's different. I am adding to the richness of my experience so that if I ever go to a dinner party again, I can regale people of stories of the Grand Knockout tournament of 1987 and Emily Hughes's performance.

The day you go to a dinner party and rather than regale people, ask them questions, this is the day that I will, you know.

Anyway, it's a Royal Knockout, 1987. I think it's a fascinating moment in the destruction of the royal family and their public image. And I don't know if it ever got repeated or not, but you may want to watch it. And that is my pick of the week.

Okay. I don't know if I'll go watch that.

All right.

I don't know.

Your choice. Your choice.

Yeah, my choice. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. So this weekend doing laundry, right? And I was listening to a podcast as one does, right? I was listening to the Daily from the New York Times. And on Sunday, they have the long read, which was really great. And I recommend it was all about disgust. Where does it come from? How does it present itself? How do we react to it? I'll just wait to be asked. See, ask a question. Anyway, really interesting. But that's not my pick of the week because whilst I was listening to this article, it got me thinking about this Netflix show I've been watching with my Wookiee. And it's so disgusting, but I'm addicted. It's called Brand New Cherry Flavor. You read about it?

Is it disgusting in a good way, or disgusting disgusting?

Yeah, but holy poop, man, right?

I haven't heard of it. What's the premise? What's it about?

Variety said it best when it said, "Netflix's Brand New Cherry Flavor makes for a trippy, disgusting descent into hell." And the story's this, okay? It's the '90s. Young film producer Lisa Nova creates a short horror film that makes it all the way to the top. It's nothing anybody has seen before. And it kind of made me think of the whole Blair Witch thing when Blair Witch came out.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, her short film is bought by a producer with the promise that she will be directing the feature film. But the producer starts reneging on his offer very early, and then even decides to literally strong-arm her, which unleashes this Costco-size can of unpredictable hell that starts to ensue from there. It is just wacky, fresh, gross, scary.

Gross? Do you mean guts and disgusting sort of body horror, or—?

Well, there is disgusting stuff. Yeah, it's a bit— I think there's a bit of that. Punching onto the whole B-horrors that we had back then, you know, Bad Taste and all those kind of films that happened. Yeah.

Would you let a 7-year-old child watch Brand New Cherry? So Carole, what's

No, I would not.

A 12-year-old? Nope. 15? Nope.

I wouldn't even say yes to 25. I'm not sure I should have watched it.

your pick of the week?

Okay, this is so on the point of— I was actually surprised that some of the scenes are actually in this. It's that kind of— it's almost as disturbing as you can get.

Is there nudity in it? Yep. Is there nudity of hot people in it? Yep.

And not so hot people. Oh, you see. So basically, our film producer is so determined to get what's hers, right, and get back at this guy that she basically gets— puts a hex on him. Oh. And that's all I'm going to say. But all I— well, no, I want to say one more thing. I will never look at tiny baby white kittens again, ever. In my whole life the same way again. Oh, so— and the sounds keeping— I'm still— I still have the noises that they use inside it to try and, you know, when something horrible happens. Well, what was the pleasure in watching this?

Where was the enjoyment? I'll tell you.

You know how people sit there, all you phone addicts, that they're just going, oh, Reddit, or, you know, Facebook, Twitter, you know, and there's no joy, there's nothing, it's just— Right? This— I felt alive watching this. I was curled up in a ball. It's being on a super scary roller coaster. It is— you don't know where you're gonna go and you don't know how you're gonna feel. So if it sounds your thing, you need to get a little boost of alive and gross, check out Brand New Cherry Flavor on Netflix. There you go. That's my pick of the week. Brand New Cherry Flavor.

It sounds quite a lot It's a Royal Knockout, to be honest. It's similar levels of horror. Well, Carole, that just about wraps it up for this week. Next week, should we have a guest? Please.

I've got one in mind. I've got one in mind.

Okay. All right. Okay. Well, that just about wraps it up for this week. You can follow us on Twitter @SmashInSecurity, no G, Twitch wouldn't last to have a G, and we're also on Reddit. Go and check out the Smashing Security subreddit and make sure you never miss another episode of our show. Follow Smashing Security in your favorite podcast app. App such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

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Until next time, cheerio, bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Graham, you did remarkably well for someone who felt under the weather during the show. I don't even think we brought it up.

No, we— it didn't get mentioned. There were no coughing, no sneezing from me, no rushing off to get a glass of water.

Yep, there was no interruptions at all. I think you did remarkably well. And I'm looking forward to editing this in right now. Yep. Okay. All right.

I'll hit stop. Me too.