[Music] welcome to your biscuits I’m Lincoln I’m Rhett it’s time for another conversation with someone interesting from the internet and this week that person is Thomas Ridgewell aka Tom Scott yep Tom first became known for his co-authorship and voice-over work on the popular animated series online eddsworld and also way back in 2006 he started his own YouTube channel TomSka basically sketch comedy animations and action videos we’ve been huge fans of time we were a lady to find out that he knew of our work from way back in the day so it was really cool to catch up with him at VidCon to have this conversation his channel is approaching three million subscribers he’s got over 525 million views and he’s updating his content regularly showcasing his distinct sense of humor here’s a little sample of his work in this sketch picture-perfect released in November 2013 it’s got about two million views in this Tom attempts to teach his fellow youtuber crabstickz how to paint Chris I’m gonna teach you how to paint why because I want to build the only type of ship that doesn’t sink the Titanic no a friendship also the Titanic did sink impossible Chris I want you to paint me done show me that is a shoe you have painted a shoe it must be this brush try again done sure me imagined you being Chinese this time that is still a shoe yet somehow more racist Dan this senate phobic brush only a bad workman blames his tools why not a work woman now is not the time for feminism Chris when will it be time Tom try again Tom’s most popular series is his asdfmovie as de fée series flash animation that consists of rapid-fire short skits featuring various stick figures having quick dialogue exchange Eggers figures figures as eye figures figures emphasis on the GU er the assitive series as a whole which has seven episodes in ancillary content has just over 290 million views almost 300 million views on this stuff here’s a taste of episodes seven ma’am I’m afraid I caught your son doing homework no thanks mr. muffin but I want a guy hey Stacy do you want to go to the prom with me I’m sorry but I’m a ghost but you’re not dead by Brian okay you get you get an idea pretty random stuff but hilarious now I really enjoyed this conversation with Tom I feel like this was a very honest very poignant conversation with him yeah I mean I say this is one of my favorite ear biscuits thought-provoking poignant did you say poignant I did say poignant did you did you say the G did you pronounce the poignant I could say poignant if you want me to you could say that if not good say figure yeah we talked to Tom about the interesting ramifications of his upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness and his path to agnosticism we also talked about what business he has making a bona fide sex education video on his channel he did just that and we had an extremely open discussion about him losing his best friend and creative partner ed Gould creator of eddsworld to leukemia in March of 2012 yeah I mean I think in our conversation the way he put it back to us was he asked us what would it be like if one of us lost the other how would we carry on personally and creatively so I really appreciated the fact that Tom went there with us any open we had a conversation about that painful part of his life and and and how he’s continuing to deal with that here it is our ear biscuit with TomSka [Music] do you live life at the pace of asdf movies make you say it both ways you don’t care I don’t mind how you say it of okay it’s um but usually has to I say asked if because in my naive little mind I was like everyone will figure that out but it was very wrong people say STF and I really hated that for a while then I realize actually no that making it easier to share because they’re seeing how to spell it to people so no I appreciate these people but do I live my life at that pace because there’s like a it’s a breakneck pace like joke joke joke I’m in and out to the next thing to the next thing yeah is that how your brain or your life works just definitely how my brain works and that’s really exciting in my life not so much my life is a lot of sleeping just touched a lot of it you know for me a very successful day is a day where I come up with one joke but to put it in perspective the speed of my brain and my life has changed so much that I made one joke that’s in one of my asked of movies hey check out my new camera bang oh wait this isn’t a camera that was like the first animation I ever made back in about 2004 and it was a minute and a half long same joke 1jo same drug three-second long joke it took a minute and a half to tell and now you know ten years later there what in the ivory made it you know it’s it’s three seconds long and that’s just that it’s just my comedic timing has condensed fun in fact though I put that that was my first ever animation went live on Smosh com long long before YouTube really before they yeah like that’s yeah I’ve been around since way before YouTube that’s it’s just YouTube happened and that was lovely it was like how did you know calm how did Smosh calm Ian and Anthony created it before YouTube yeah but it was just for their friends cuz we talked to him about it yeah how did you get on that I’ve been in the I’ve been in the scene I’ve been in the game of really long time I was but were you like you were on their forums as a user and you submitted videos and and I wish I could find them now I guess that’s the only place I know I uploaded it but it’s I think it’s long gone but I had a history of getting banned off forums for being a disagreeable twelve-year-old but oh you got kicked off a smashing I got kicked off everything absolutely everything but like by being belligerent and in the forum just being very 12 you know you’re average you know twelve-year-old halo playing I slept with your mother last night kind of attitude that was that was me entirely so when I’m it and lately I’m going through this kind of wave of really wanting to encourage people to not be awful that’s purely because I was so awful and I see that in my own audience I’m like I think you guys are a lot like me and and and if you are then no please don’t be like me but you know I was I was on I was on smart come ages ago and and what did that look like did that look terrible asmath it looked pretty yet doesn’t like no this style was a stickman animation this is all you the time yeah yeah this was back when I didn’t know how to animate oh I don’t know how to animate now I just hire people who have way better than me right so you write and direct everything and you’ve got animators yeah I wanted to be a voice talent I wanted to be an animator originally but I just didn’t have the patience for it but I yeah I write I direct undirected couple kind of you throw a quote saying when it comes to animation because really it’s so much down to the creative genius of the animators you’re working with but but you do a lot of different things yes I don’t like doing the same thing too many times but so as DIF ones are the you know the far and away the most successful on your chance it’s a lot of really successful stuff there by the way but you put out number seven just a few weeks ago and it’s the anunciar and it’s a month it’s already gotten up to fourteen million years or fifteen million it’s just like all the other ones yeah and that’s and that’s that’s that’s really lovely and that’s such a comforting thing like I figured if I uploaded one of those and it doesn’t work then either decides change so I’m just not funny anymore either you describe them I describe that series specifically as yeah quickfire animated sketches very Americanized I think really when I began I did a lot of American accents now I’m trying to do mostly British accents because you know I used to market upon a for me I always find American accents funnier with with call me like like like swear words are so much funnier when said with American accents and British accents in my opinion but I think Americans would beg to differ but for me right did you personally from Yorba I think the f-word went set by Americans sort of funny really well it’s not one of those words that changes a lot somehow somehow it just sounds perfect when it comes out of my number American you’ll basically engineer these things to be the Quickfire now so how is that kind of jokes at their absolute course or any joke and any any joke any narrative you can tell you know a dozen different ways you can tell it over the course of an hour or over a minute or I think you can condense any narrative into about three seconds at its core and some others it’s some of them completely random like well there’s the this one’s not random but it’s the this the Sun and then there’s a planet orbiting on the Sun and it just says you’re fat yeah and you’re out that’s it that’s it there’s no setup even it’s no that’s just fine it’s completely minimal it’s it the whole point is that I try to take absolutely I even know why that’s funny sometimes it’s just I’m just like I just know it is it just yeah you don’t need to explain it yeah actually being that quick you know may be a question it made it funnier yeah you know it was funny period but then because it was funny and it was over it became even funny surprised why did that happen yeah you just did just wait what and it’s just this confusion yin and yet cuz comedy is core is the subversion of expectations yeah and sometimes just the lack of a joke is funny yeah well I I thought something was gonna happen but it didn’t happen I’m laughing or something so random like that what was the feather joke oh hey baby you allergic to feathers no hey baby you ain’t know it’s two guys in it set it up two guys in a bar there’s a there’s a there’s a man and he slides up to a woman at a bar and he says hey baby are you an angel because I’m allergic to feathers and then he throws up on her like he’s violently so yeah like that’s like the way a lot of jokes get rain is you’re out that’s it yeah that’s it but a lot of jokes I write come from like here’s a thing that here’s a trope here’s a catchphrase a cliche how can I just break it which is pretty standard but yeah so it’s like hey hey baby are you an angel why did you do the hug from you when you have flow from having that kind of stuff and for then I was like what if it’s like allergies related because it originally it was a comic that I read when I was 16 where the loss panel is just he’s just broken out with his face is just inflated because he’s having a Ledge reaction but well you know I’ve changed him throwing up to make it more appealing and then quick fire and explosive right in the way that the vomit looked it was like as tall as his head and as straight as an arrow chunk size moments reject I’ll now I’m tempted to you know to come up with some analogy or some reason you know for why that content works so well like oh well the mindset of today’s youth is just so fragmented all over the place and so your frenetic Gigi yeah and kids don’t need a story anymore they just need a stream of jokes and Tom Scott is proving it ruining the youth of tomorrow honestly I think it’s a very simple analysis as far as I’m concerned it’s incredibly funny the jokes are really really funny and it’s just you’re like that was funny that was funny that was funny that was funny and it just after a while there’s just this overwhelming like how are almost funny yeah I think that’s a good lesson good what did I say over no I’m a green you use the word overwhelming I said like over warming or something that word that yes I’m also contributing to global warming but yeah it’s just a cavalcade of everything being so funny and there’s no duds kind of a thing is experience agree entirely for everyone I put out and I’m sure there’s about three that I go why did I do that what I’ve seen with even within a video there’s always about three that get made you know within the loss like two days of production oh my goose was funny at the time and I look back and I’m like that’s awful that’s that’s not a joke but then other people like them and I just kinda have to go like okay but I have very high it you wouldn’t guess it but I do have very high standards of what what doesn’t what does not go in because it’s not just random I think one of the things that I’ve observed about it is I think a lot of people see certain content that might be popular today like what you’re creating and they’re just like oh it’s just random and people just like random stuff and so it’s like you know we could just throw a bunch of words and characters into a blender and mix it up and the kids will love it it’s like no I you know we I want to give art this generation more credit than most people really make the fact that they like what you’re doing that encourages me as a comedian oh wow well ya know III don’t I absolutely disagree when when people do say that you know it’s just like this this mindless comedy and just like kids today are stupid dumb yeah I do have I do have a lot more faith in them I just think that people do typically outgrow the animations over time I’ve witnessed you know you know I’ve been doing them for long enough now that I’ve witnessed a generational shift you know naughties kids started watching them and now they’re teenies kids we all really have a name for these two decades do we not season teenies yeah cuz then it’s the 20s 30s 40s oh I came in right now right yeah well for fun our C’s is 90s right no that no there’s a 90s then there’s the naughties no the Nazis are the zeros right yeah like the jess2010 yeah right I’m all right yes cuz we don’t use the term not for zero I mean so when they say Conte’s I just think about naughty things we’ve done naughty things yeah this took a time thing is like thinking people people grow up and suddenly they become way more analytical if the things I laughing it and they kind of I want to say hi they get high standards but in a way it’s more they just they don’t they’ve won whereas when you’re a kid you you so desperately want to be entertained like you will read the back of a cereal box for like just gonna read this and maybe something will be interesting on it you you know you definitely want anything to be funny anything to be interesting and you’ll just laugh at anything when you when you kind of you hit this cynicism when you’re about 18 years you get self-confidence suddenly you’re just like I know Here I am you be funny and I will dissect you and I will run you through your paces and a lot of kids decide that they’re no longer gonna find what I do funny and that’s kind of understandable because I you know I I obviously have that with a lot of you she was that I watch no I was a huge fan of Smosh growing up but you know I think now I’ve kind of reached a point where it’s like they’re still entertaining the same kind of demographic and I have growing it’s not absolutely not that job to to grow with me they’ve got their thing and that’s that’s great but it’s yeah it’s no longer my thing and I think a lot of kids do grow out of it hmm something you enjoy at the start and it’s a lot of fun some people still have fun with it and that’s great and I and I love meeting those people it’s strange when they invite me to their weddings and name their kids after me that’s happened one child it has the middle name of TomSka which is bizarre the whole middle name is name is Thomas go OK telling about the S is capitalized how does this work I have no idea someone just came up to me one day and and said oh yeah my–like my sister named her child his middle name is Tom scar and then she was off into the night and I’m still left wondering if that was true and you’ve seen no pictures I’ve seen no birth certificate but I’m gonna take her word for it we’ve had we’ve had pets named after us people who have like two cats maybe some sort of child support I hope no I think you’re at risk probably not mine I mean but yeah the whole game franchise that’s true but I mean an entire human at least middle name that for you you know I don’t know how much that counts sometimes people have named Tom after me that’s very presumptuous yeah right there’s a lot of times very popular well it’s interesting you talk about your fans out growing your content and you’re just backfilling with younger fans I guess is what you’re saying and because they get more analytical or they start to look down on maybe the just the tone of it but I think he’s that he his content has grown down I kind of I think it’s I think it’s very common for all of us to throw what we used to love under the bus like oh that’s good stuff no I don’t like that and then yeah when we then we hit our 20s and we’re like oh maybe I shouldn’t been so hard in it but then sometimes we don’t make that realization so are you this angsty teenage phase where it’s like all those things that you used to love you’re like oh this is lame now I would never know I’m not just no you know what you’re saying your work is is aging up as you get older and as your comedic tastes change that’s what you’re saying do both you know like you’ve got my my animations like a stop maybe which stays a kind of a constant level and when I make that I am making it for myself aged 12 to 15 that’s who I know would like that video and I’m gonna keep aiming for that specific kid turns out there are a lot of that kid out there in the world which is weird because I don’t have any friends when I was that age so I wish I could’ve met any of these guys yeah these like these like adventure these Adventure Time invader zim loving catchphrase screaming pie is the funniest thing in the world haha cheese kids it’s right I guess that’s what I was that’s absolutely who I was and yeah you’re still targeting that but you’ve got other things you’re saying like basically basically everything I make is is for me at a different age that’s kind of how I figure it so you know I do like the estimate was yeah that that’s for me at certain ages but then I do the action videos and that’s kind of more when I was what I was looking for when I was eighteen nineteen when I was very until you know Freddie Wong in that and and not that I’m not still into Freddie Wong in a romantic way but but yeah I mean and i even did you know i did a video called the sex talk which was aimed at must again myself aged kind of more around fourteen because I never got the sex talk and and and so I was like I needed to have seen this yeah awful lesser like so hopefully other kids well okay so that’s your motivation because we were just talking about that it’s interesting because someone sure of your work is just strict to comedy now not that the sex talk wasn’t funny and at its moments but I thought okay when I sit down and watch that video this might be a parody but then I’m like oh no there’s no penis and that’s how it works it’s not even got a smiley face on it it’s a legitimate sex education video I just kind of went a surprise BAM there’s some dicks but I mean what went into deciding to make that I know the mindset and how you made it because you just told us that you were targeting yourself but was it I can get a lot of views with this was it there’s a legitimate need for sex education I had no idea if I was getting a lot of use for it um I thought it could potentially be a real a real channel killer and I think and I made enough redraft to it that it wasn’t a channel killer but it could really have done a lot of damage if I just been like oh I’ll just I was out in an afternoon shoot it’ll be fine I went through a lot of different stages and I actually ran the whole script past hundreds of people online to be like what am I saying that’s wrong in this video and luckily I made make loads of mistakes in the original version so what was your motive in my in making a legitimate sex education video t’v I don’t get to doc really but you know the fact is I was looking up statistics online and of you know just like terrible things like sexual abuse and I’m like wow that’s you know one in like maybe one in three women are sexually abused and simply it it’s not dissimilar statistics for men but then you know one in three women are sexually abused and I look at my own in his audience is one-third women and two-thirds men and and I’m thinking you know yeah how many other people watching my videos right now are either you know gonna be abused have been abused will or will be abusers and I just kind of had this little panic and I just I had I felt like I had to do something and Wow and my therapist is called this a bit of a Messiah Complex but but no I just felt so much like I just needed to do something to give something back more than just just comedy and and it was and it was it was great you know I read drafted this video and and and I think I did a lot of a lot of good and apparently it’s played in schools now which is really really cool there was one whole section of the video which was kind of a how-to which I cut out and then put on my second channel because it was like this I don’t I don’t need this they don’t need this part of the video well you can figure it out once you present the part yeah it’s like okay but now gonna make your own mistakes but web protection my normal or click to my second change cry like please don’t watch this video I was all I was so cuz yeah like obviously I’m a bit kind of the moment and I met this little group of kids and they couldn’t have been older than five and it was just like oh oh you’ve seen that video they mentioned it they didn’t mention it but they must have seen that video and it’s it’s so awful because it’s in there like I like what I write and one thing I really don’t like about YouTube is that there is an age restriction but it’s 18 plus and that’s right whereas I want there to be like a 13 yeah year-old restrict so anyone under the age of 13 but be YouTube would likes to pretend that no one under the age of 13 is on their website because that’s obviously why Justin Bieber is the biggest thing ever is you know no one under the age of 13 use of YouTube but I would really wished like an age restrict that video because while I do think it’s important that younger people see it especially in this age of the Internet because if I don’t make that video someone else is gonna they’re gonna fall you’re gonna figure it out right well it was the sex talk video the most unusual video you ever put on your channel even in your channel trailer where you kind of orient people to the fact that you make three different categories of videos you make animations you make action and then you make comedy sketch videos and you made a comment in there you said and I’m to try things so I’m not freaked out don’t freak out and unsubscribe because I’m gonna experiment and come back with things that you love that knowing that the sex talk was not gonna be the only time I was gonna try something like that you know I have a few things that I want to try such as I wanted a video on how to YouTube for example for a casual just like who’s everything I think you know people might want to know if they’re going into making YouTube videos but then I also want to do other videos like I wanna do a video on you know sexism but I just kind of want to know gradually you know be like here’s some company company company company by here the way here’s something that’s kind of important and then what jokes haha I want to I want to mix things up and I want to present them in the game the way that I would have wanted to see them when I was that age and in a way that hopefully it’s gonna do some good because the fact is yeah there are loads of channels doing great things you know like Laci green you’re doing great you know sexual education videos and other people doing create social awareness stuff but the fact is their audience it’s kind of a preaching to the choir situation their audience is already there their audience is already interesting everybody’s going yeah that’s your trick but whereas my audience typically is like I said your average kind of halo playing I slept with your mother last night kids sometimes and sometimes and and so these are the kind of people it’s pretty insulting you’re like I sleep with your mother sometimes no you know when you’re not even exclusive right it’s just like occasion but you’ve got your audience and you’ve gathered them around a certain brand of humor across three different types of videos but then you’re like but I’ve got things I want to say to them and I’m not gonna leave that up to somebody else that’s it’s interesting inspiring yeah that’s why the end of my like sex book video I cuz I never plan I make another one because I feel like I’ll do more videos like the on sex and like no that’s fine but that’s why the end of it I was like I’m gonna link to Laci green Laci take it from here uh-huh and just yet just hopefully she got like a nice influx of kids being like what does this button do we haven’t talked about violence I mean that’s a big part of yes even across genres mm-hmm I don’t know if it’s in the sex talk suicide it’s awful I mean people may just casually look at your work and said well that’s why that’s why so successful again we we know better but what what how do you view it and and how do you bake in violence what’s your what’s your thought processes there I love violence as a comedic tool I just I love explosions blood and mic yeah and and stuff like that Mike my goal is to one day flip a car you know I’ve been going when I was younger I was raised quite religious but even you know in charge I was still making guns out of plasticine and getting them confiscated and drawing stickmen you know blowing up and that’s just always been a part of me when I when I was about 8 years old my mum would every week buy me a pack of toy cars which I would take to the garden and destroy with a shovel a shovel and I would do this every week and like hakkim yeah just smash them just break him pretend they’re crashing and just I’ve just been always been a very destructive child but it was like basically I’m saying and I’m kind of like dexta whereas I had these tendencies but my parents just kind of let me hone them in and in it they just they kind of just like let me control them and now that now I make them on YouTube but yeah I think some peer not like horse from that video you just really know that video that video was the darkest the weirdest thing I’ve ever made when I explained it okay I have this one character where and it’s me wearing a horse mask running around in a dress murdering people and that’s oddly enough that’s one of the least problematic videos I think I’ve ever made that video is just very much like it doesn’t come from a dark place it’s just I find it very funny and it seems very happy because of the music the music is it’s a creepy horse mask you’ll ever see which floats around the internet we own one no we ghosts they’re so funny but um yeah what’s funny is the midway through shooting that video I had a therapy appointment so midway through shooting that video I got in the cab went to therapy with the Taurus and horse head-on not with the horse Muslim but then I came I came back and reviewed shooting that video and it was it miss a beat didn’t miss a single beat well yeah how much you pay in this therapist but yes a lot well she’s not doing it he’s like oh and you know what you should just continue to this take the knife with you and just get out whatever you in my office he’s terrifying man well let’s get let’s go back to the back story then I mean the crashing cars kid who eventually makes murderous horse videos where was this where were you born we know how you were made you made the video about it oh yes absolutely so we can skip that part yeah I wish my parents didn’t tell me isn’t in such excruciating detail my backstory visit no we’re not gonna start could ever visit Scotland or Loch Ness now but but yeah no I was you know I was born and raised in England I was a born I say born and raised I’m still there except about now I was born in Essex actually so my actual original action is more is which is so Essex is kind of like what I want to say scummy but you know it’s bill maybe you’re like youtubers like sarin pepper and stuff like that so Emma blackery as well that’s that’s the Essex accent okay I grew out of that when I was about six we moved to Cambridge which is actually a very posh part of England you know Cambridge University they they they wrote boats against Oxford a lot there’s a pretty incredible story of your birth right oh yeah no yeah it’s wild so I was originally a twin I I had a twin sister named Amelia at this point I was named Dudley which is fabulous Len Dudley yeah full on Harry Potter style and as a chubby kid they would have been hell at school that would have been like the worst yeah the worst ever of my life always I’ve never I have never met a real Dudley and it’s like I would’ve been the only one no solidarity would just been me I wouldn’t be popular on YouTube like I didn’t even like the name Thomas when I started making you know online videos but now I’m like why that’s stupid but if I’d been called Dudley I think I would never would have gotten over there but but yeah no but basically my mum my mother had a car accident coz some stupid person pulled out in front of her and caused her to an emergency brake and and sadly my mother lost my sister in this axon accident and this is why she was pregnant with me she was pregnant and and the doctor said like oh you know the child’s gone I’m sorry you don’t have children now and my mom you know went back to work for a couple months and was like no I think I’m pregnant the doctors like no no they did baby’s dead she’s like I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant and then they finally caved in and did a check and like there’s a Dudley in there there’s a mmm well yeah there is a Dudley in there and then my mom was like hey Tom’s dad you know how I had a child died I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna pull rank and I’m gonna be like I need a favor and it’s to not call my child Dudley cuz that’s awful and I got luckily named Thomas but yeah then my mom had to like you know just sleep with like she had to like basically lay down and this is so disturbingly graphic but because I basically would have fallen out I was so complicated and and I was born about a month premature you know in a little box lived in she did she carry your twin as well no no the the twin was lost kind of immediately after the crash but the twin basically is the reason I’m alive she took physically the impact of the crash it’s oh wow yeah it’s quite graphic to imagine but hey so that’s really weird but I get my files my plan is if I have a daughter I’m there’s no question like she’s named Amelia there’s like just no question about right what this future what if was this a story you knew from a young age or something that you found out later in life I kind of know it from a young age so your parents were open about kind of talking about those type of things it really hit me what it meant until quite later in life I was thinking as much but about 16 or something like oh I’m supposed to be a twin that’s weird you know that really kind of you know weirded me out especially the etymology of our names well the story about like as like Thomas actually means twin which is weird and Amelia comes from the Latin I belief of ameliorate which means to make better so basically I was totally the evil twin well mm which is fine I mean it’s kind of obvious but yeah that’s um that’s kind of a weird little backstory B I was B I was born and raised and we moved to Cambridge and what did your parents do my so my mom runs a hairdressing salon well that’s like extreme backup job clearly and and my dad co-owns the family business of landscape gardening so basically I’m moving very soon and I’m having my dad come and do my garden I’m hiring my father which is the strangest experience but yeah that’s my backup plan is is the family landscape gardening business now you said you grew up Jehovah’s Witness yeah so the were they devout devout Jehovah’s Witnesses are they still and what’s it like growing up in in that it’s difficult to speak on their behalf so I warrant but yeah I was I was raised at least for the first few years a devout Jehovah’s Witness you know full-on knocking on the doors kind of upbringing no birthdays no no no Christmases and and all that stuff and and then and what’s left over now is even though that’s not me anymore I actually have a lot of I have I have a lot of love for the people in my life but I have a lot of disdain for organized religion as a whole but you know I would I wouldn’t I don’t really want to inflict that on anyone maybe a video will come out of it one day but for now I’m okay just to let that sleeping dog lie what was the progression I mean the progression was was really just a we kind of slipped away I think the whole family kind of pulled back a bit over time and then like I spent my first 10 years very carefully indoctrinated into that but not enough that I became kind of brainwashed but then you know we kind of fell back for a few years and then I taught my parents tried to get me more back into it I’d already kind of slipped in there and then I went to uni and started meeting atheists and people from the world and and I came and and I kind of became very open-minded and and was there anyone in particular or any thing or that happened that kind of broke you out of the faith there’s a handful of a handful of things actually one of them is my friend Jacob who was a youtuber called Layton way and meeting him he was like an atheist ranty youtuber and meeting him and becoming friends with him I think definitely shaped me a lot but anyway when I was younger one of the most formative moments in my life was I could’ve been older than about 18 and I was waiting in town centre to hang out with my college friends then there was this this this man this a you know Jellicle christian fellow on a literal soapbox you know preaching to the crowd and he was he was killer it was so impressive to watch even if I didn’t necessarily agree with everything he was saying I was still you know kind of religious and he was just amazing like people were coming up to him asking him impossible questions like so two babies go to hell and and and so and crazy questions that like would stomp anyone and this man would still take them who say get a baby in and it was incredible and at the end of it I walked over to him I was like hey man I just like want to say even I don’t necessarily agree with everything you said that well you’re an incredible public speaker you know like Hitler and he was very polite and I said you know and then I said you know but I don’t necessarily kind of you know I don’t necessary agree with everything you said he’s like oh well you know that’s okay man and then when you know I was I’m actually raised a Jehovah’s Witness and then this man’s face just turned and he just got and they went well brother with a big smile on his face man well brother you’re going to help you’re gonna burn in hell realize yeah just with this this terrifying you know smile on his face just this of this you know fold love and I was like well you need your soul to be saved and stuff like this and the fact that he could say that to me you know but also still feel like he means well and and genuinely believe that just made me so terrified and angry towards you know religion that was kind of a very much a tipping point and being like oh okay this is off maybe maybe that maybe there maybe there is no right way and and that’s kind of what actually made to become more open mind and then I wrote a vlog called the day my faith died about this this moment and and I never really made it because I don’t want to start that conversation yet I don’t really have any answers I never really will I I guess I got the moment I die clamp I lost myself us at agnostic which is just young em is their God and so you wrote a vlog you scripted it but you never filmed it no because you don’t want to have that dialog on your channel yeah yeah it’s just like all the things I want to stand for at the moment that’s not one of them I don’t really have anything to say yet you know I feel like well well I mean it’s already quite it’s already quite you know out of line in a way of me to give my audience the sex talk I took a million children maybe that who whose parents had maybe even decided not to tell their kids about this yet and gave them the sexually prematurely an and so I can understand wait as a parent you’d be very upset about that and so if I’m gonna be like hey maybe religions kind of crappy that’s not that’s just not my place yet unless I get something that’s really a unless I have something that’s really powerful to say but no I know I feel this kind of a because it’s true that I’m still a bit angry and I kind of want to be coming from a place of actual understanding and well you know it seems like even if that’s what you’ve gone through personally from what I can see you you you don’t bring that particular thing into your comedy you don’t make fun of I have I have two rules to rules when I started making YouTube which I still adhere to and that is no swearing and no blasphemy for some reason and I guess I guess when I started it was always because you know it’s making the question that was you know would I be I kept my parents watching this and that was it or would more so would I be okay with my parents friends watching this the parents from the religion and that write those bridges along burned now long burned but still there was a and you stuck with that yeah I still I still don’t swear because I actually kind of liked the challenge of making comedy without swear words I don’t think it makes me better than anyone in any way but I like do like the challenge and it does make it harder it doesn’t make some drugs not funny sometimes I’ve replaced the f-word with screw or something and it’s just not as funny right but it is because you know I do want my comedy to be accessible to little younglings and and while I think it’s okay for kids to know swear words just I don’t know I just like I do have a bit of a problem with with with comp with swearing in comedy sometimes and a lot of the bit the bigger you know the like a crutch the bigger youtubers yeah like sometimes I just I feel like your joke was literally that someone just swore there was no mm-hmm that’s not a joke there’s no artistry to there this is just a shock and anything and I’ve tweet tweet about that yeah I still I still have to keep and check my tweeting habits it’s awful because the rule of drive line the Internet is anything you say about someone can and will be found and read by them I held against you and the first VidCon I went to back in 2012 I just I ran into the guys who make dick Figures yeah and after after I tweeted you know like about doing a Kickstarter and how much money they’d asked for and and then and they’d remember that and everyone in their office already knew who I was and I was like I can’t say mean things anymore such and yeah and like they’re like lately I actually did a tweet cuz you know obviously PewDiePie biggest youtuber in the world at the moment and I don’t know anything about him but you know because that big youtubers you dehumanize them you just tell yourself like oh they’re just a big youtuber yeah mmm but I was like I actually asked my audience I was like is he what is PewDiePie is he actually a nice guy and um I was like yeah actually done it’s like hundreds of thousands to charity and I’m like oh that’s really cool and then he messaged me like I’m a nice guy in your audience is he nice personally nice Felix is a lot like me which is that he’s will track down anything and everything said about him when when we you know we have the tag you know of our name saved on tumblr on Twitter it’s not because we’re looking for compliments for some reason we’re morbidly looking for that one person who said like I hate this person so we can reply going why what’s the worst thing that you singh’s been said about you and did you did you engage I have a awful habit of engaging I have a lot of people who don’t like me and most of it’s quite fair I was quite abrasive when I was younger and that’s left scars I di I there’s a small clique of people online that are very ready to call me out whenever I slip up in any way what do you like The Devil’s on my shoulder at basically any insecurity I have they will echo it very loudly and so basically if they if they’re ok with something I’ve done that I know that it must be alright but yeah that’s there’s critics there’s a lot of critics especially when you ESPE especially when you know what you make is so you know outward least simple and it gets the interviews a lot of people feel threatened by big successful YouTube videos people forget that actually the more popular a YouTube video is it means that there’s actually more traffic on the site and more chance for you to succeed right I genuinely believe that so that you should never be threatened by another youtuber you should never look at someone who’s made sketch-comedy and it’s got a million views and be like oh well now no one’s gonna see my sketch it’s not like it’s not like that it isn’t like a cinema screening and there’s one screening and then they’ve now missed you it’s mm-hmm there’s actually more likely that you will see but now you got involved in creating things comedic animations and I kind of think I really early right I mean how old are we talking about 10 I’d say so I back at the turn of the millennium so how did that happen so I was back in the old days of the internet before Google was really a thing and all that stuff as I’m sure you know the way we found websites was we would type in we would write a word and then put calm at the end and when you’re 9 10 years old that that goes as far as typing and words like fart calm watts calm and my father thought I was searching porn when I was younger because I would search rude words ted.com and he was like oh what are you doing you deviant it’s like no I just it’s a funny word I just need to go to fart kind I mean he was calm what was it fart sky I couldn’t tell you but I’m sure it’s still active well that part’s calm right now I’m gonna check I feel like there’s a good way to get a virus once it farts come it’s it seems to be anything that’s available that’s not true it’s it’s definitely parked like it’s running I’m sure cost you like 10,000 oh well I’m interested researching things like you know I went to stupid calm okay and I saw this animation called Maynard by a fellow called Tom des long Chomp who is this American artist fellow and and it was just just terrible it’s a stupid little animation of this man with a deformed head I think riding a skateboard and laughing it’s girls and but in that moment you know it must have been only one I’ve been about 10 years old and I said you that whatever this is I’m gonna do this for the rest of my life this is what I want to be and this this website is still up it’s amazing sounds like knickknacks and things and it’s still much the same I think it’s in the same redneck farting but neck pillow no equal 16.99 the intelligence owner would do the motor people of this site has not changed in the slightest but it’s not animation anymore button and when you saw that though what was the when you said I want to do this why why did you want to do I never thought like I want to make movies I want to make TV I thought I don’t know what this is but I’m sitting on a computer I’m watching a cartoon character if fall over on a skateboard I’m gonna do this whatever this is I’m gonna do it for the rest of my life and that day was the day I started lying to animate and I didn’t know what how kids animated so I thought you animated in PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint so I would make if she’s fly exactly slide in slides of PowerPoint and it’ll be like a do circle on one slide then move on the next slide you know no like hit spacebar we did this do you not remember this we did the same thing with that presentation software at school that wasn’t PowerPoint but was on the the high school computers I totally remember doing this there but you would do just a few frames and every time you hit the spacebar is something would change yeah or the arrow key how you do it and then I make things like had hundreds of frames until it crashed the you know school computers but eventually I learned although way people use flash and and I grew at that and I grew and grew and grew and then I was about 16 17 18 then I was like oh this I’m gonna hire people and heard this little twelve-year-old kid came up to me and was like hey TomSka I have 5,000 more subscribers than you on YouTube because I had to thousands kids at 8,000 and he said let’s collaborate and I said okay well can you kind of make this asked of movie thing for my channel and boom that was the first on yeah that was the first time I ever like you know produced or hired someone she’s hired animation you were 16 I was 18 or just an 18 and this kid was 12 13 I think it was 13 and you know he was a bigger youtuber than me like I had like I said I had two thousand subscribers and he just did it for free and because like I hoped he would be successful I had no idea really what would happen and then a few months later I felt bad so I gave him 20 pounds which is about $35 I was like I feel really bad so I gave him a hundred pounds the other ones no he did not but yeah that was that was kind of how it kicked off and that first one how quickly did it take off and was that all on YouTube or was yeah that was that was all YouTube yeah the first ask to movie you know it’s uploaded August 10th 2008 and you know it immediately did pretty well like it was like got like 40,000 views in its first day and then you know kind of next month went up to 700,000 views and then I’m at a month later it broke a million if I was if you tried before then I just tried little sketches you know little things I would make to make stuff at school you know whenever I did like a meteor and then film Holly and I mean she’s not know how to make snow live-action III did I did I did live action I was a couple animations and they were just awful I have an animation called Pokemon extreme which kind of is is the highlight of my animating capabilities it’s waffle and yeah and that just that just I really really took off and now has like 15 million views and that’s weird to think oh well every single yeah one of those has that at this point which is just strange and terrifying it’s such an it’s such a terrifying number to imagine like you know like I come to here like VidCon it’s like oh 16,000 people that’s a lot of people if a video I made got that in at that in a day I’d be like well this is the worst failure I’ve ever made yeah so you were an adopter of internet Ament really before there was YouTube you were putting stuff on Smosh comments stupid calm and everywhere else you can find it I remember when it was Google Video and I mean now is Google video again but still right yeah so you were living it you were living at home up until the age of 18 and just kind of doing this for fun at some what did you do after 18 I went to university like I already kind of figured that I didn’t really care about university I just wanted to do this and that took me but I went to university and I still got my degree but really it was what I did that was mostly grow as a youtuber okay and you know I’ve never had to use my degree to get a job I had to turn down jobs whilst at university well tell us about the minsum thing oh the Mensa thing oh goodness I mean that was that’s like yeah like that’s a really weird thing that I just didn’t pretty much never talked about that because it’s much like talking about religion for some reason it starts a fight every time I do because they’re ones like oh you figured genius was like no I don’t like it I have a piece of paper leave me alone so but when I was nine years old I I went a bit loopy because I had a teacher that was bullying me and that they are the just how so emotional like you know torment you know being like oh I’m gonna make this one child because I was a fidgeter I was a nuisance but parents teacher was very abusive and since since then has actually been like fired and like sued and I believe in all this stuff but but like you know you’re like make like when in the assembly or whatever it’s called here you know when it’s all the kids in the room like she just make me stand up all like she’d bring me to the front and do start over put my hands in my pockets should pin the pockets but basically you know just really awful teacher but I went a bit loopy and II just couldn’t figure out why and that’s actually where I developed an eating problem cake is just delicious only to IHOP today oh my International House pancakes is a big lie though it’s only here in America anyway so it draws an international crowd it really really really really does um so as a coping mechanism you would start eating would start coming a genius not so much but they they took me to the shrink and the shrink was like hey there’s something strange about this kid we think he has Asperger’s and then he took me to do an IQ test like oh we were wrong no he actually has a genius-level IQ and I can’t say that I can’t speak for what I have now but when I was nine I had a genius-level IQ and and they will be in münster and that was just a nice little thing what is it I don’t know what explain that after commencer is just a I’m sure it stands for something but it’s a just an honorary title for smart people and just you have to go to meetings no everyone mentor is short-sighted turn your head no you didn’t work when you say hi my name is Tom and I am a genius never really hasn’t really had any effect on my life but um yeah everyone hoots like in it is some kind of like scientist or something and I’m like I’m gonna make cartoons online but people do get your what you’re getting at – as people are really sensitive about anytime you say anything about yourself yeah immediately compare that you any pride you’re like I’m gonna destroy you so it is it’s not the British Way you know the British way you have to you know be like hey I’m and then they love so I just don’t really mention the good things I don’t really reply to the nice people or talk about the good stuff because when I do it just seeing people are like oh look at you boasting about you face so this job keeps you humble yeah it depending on what you read and you just have to read it all I know how it is so at uni as you call it University you were still very much focused on YouTube is what she said yeah as a business model kind of it yeah it was very fortunately yeah the YouTube Partner Program came in just as I turned 18 near enough and that meant that I never had to get a real job I’m doing air quotes you can’t see but I never had to get a real job so luckily I just started making a living off that and in my first year university I got to tell my parents you know what I don’t need my pocket money this this month I cut this okay well tell us about eddsworld and how that comes in all this okay so as well um back in the old Smosh calm days there’s a website called stick suicide which actually is now cyanide and Happiness the the very popular web comic but it was stick suicide where I met at this kid called EDD Gould who was this you know some reason very physically underdeveloped man he was about 15 years old his voice didn’t break so his 18 which is very questionable how and he was 15 he was a couple years older than me so I’ve got like 13 hear them in about 15 and and he made these just awful looking back now animations but you know I as a kid who loved online cartoons I was like you are God and I spammed him and I spammed him until eventually he was like okay you can hear in the background of one of my really good cartoons and then you know and then as time went by it was like okay you can do a voice okay yo character has a name and then there this show grew and over the course of you know nearly eight years the show eddsworld grew and became this kind of big thing that the people really really loved and it’s just this is this cartoon series about you know ed and and Tom and and his friend man and the wacky adventures that these you know three straight white males get on in your table I was Tom and it was kind of a longer form mmm yeah like they were always about 10 minutes because Edie had awful pacing and what could’ve been five minutes was always about ten just lots of pause if he’d spent a long time drawing a background he we had to make sure everyone saw it but you know it’s sad he develops near cancer of the blood leukemia and passed away in 2012 I mean but you were there from a 13 year old going through this whole process with them I mean I actually what’s really funny is funny actually this is the saddest thing I want to say what’s really sad is you know I compared you know our relationship to your guys relationship you know when when he passed I was like well great I am you know I’m linked without my Rhett or Brett without my link whichever I owe you know or other YouTube you know duos I mean without Anthony John without Hank right I mean let’s see wins without beretta oh wait that happened to play well let’s build into it a little bit more up to that point I mean you guys are you working remotely you didn’t yeah he lived in London I was you know I was around in different places we would hang out here and there but you know ultimately we made the cartoon online and how successful was it it was you know it was pretty successful it’s got a really it’s held a really weird place in a lot of people’s hearts it’s a source of nostalgia and inspiration for a lot of people and that’s that’s wicked nice and and saying you were doing your own videos yeah it was parallel I was doing my own things but they were always smaller than Ed’s I only overtook him in subscribers when he had cancer which didn’t really feel like a fair game it was like he was told us in the hair it was like oh come on at least get up on your feet soldier so your main thing was being yeah I think the most impressive thing I did with it was Ed’s world which I gradually kind of took over as a co-writer co-producer co-director and and stuff and and by the time that before had passed I’d already kind of moved on to being the lead you know writer and director and producer and and you’ve said online that Ed was instrumental it being the kind of the first critic of your oh yeah miserable bugger like he would yeah anything you presented him with he’d be the first to criticize it he hated ass to movie despite animating animating the most popular one and playing the most popular character the I like trains kid and what was his criticism same as everyone else’s same as all the other animators in the world just like it’s really simple and it’s not very funny but you know this is that said he was a miserable man that’s what part of his charm right looking at quotes again and you became business partners working remotely were you also best friends best friends is a very strong what I say his best friend was a fella called mat or Baldy cube mat lobster whatever username he’s going by at the moment and and yet there they were definitely best friend because they know that they lived together at uni and they’d put in friends for a very long time but the thing was I moved down to London in 2011 to live with Ed and to like now and finished university finally now I’m gonna move to London I’m gonna be your best friend we’re gonna live together and we’re gonna take this show on the road yeah and then he died he had leukemia and then there was a remission he had leukemia when he was younger and the problem you know with leukemia and before you met him he had developed it and yeah and the horrible thing about in a battle is that when you know when it went away the doctors didn’t tell him like oh it’s gone it’s it was more of a well it it’ll come back and yeah it’s not a matter of will it kill you it’s when it’ll kill you with with hit with his diagnosis which was awful but he but yeah he was on track to be there which is really weird the doctors like yeah a 70/30 chance he’ll live nope and that was really awful but yeah when he passed I and how much did you talk about it I mean was it a very kindly like that’s the thing is that I never once I I tried to be very strong I never once played into the like the sad you know like Oh buddy how you doing you know I would every time I visit him in the hospital first thing I pretty much say what happened and I just make jokes immediately and then he was always be so sad in the hospital you know because like either his parents or someone be there being very heavy sad mm-hmm and I’d show up and I’d feel like get out of bed and and I think that was that was very helpful to to him to have someone who you know just treated it like it was normal like because that he truly just kind of felt it as an inconvenience you know it stopped him from making cartoons which he wanted to do and so I you know I was stable but I didn’t altum Utley I didn’t emotionally prepare myself in any way for the chance that I was wrong so I was in denial for quite a while when he passed was there a struggle and having left the faith that you were raised in at this point you know the rubber meets the road was there a an increased bitterness of that or a temptation to go back to it or did you hi how did your thankful I guess I was just very kind of I didn’t blame anyone like the last thing is you know like kind of its oddly freeing to be like well there’s no one to blame it’s just it is you know happens and and it was you know but then but then yes a java’s witness did knock on my door a few weeks later I was like hey I wanna have booked and I’m like brother just don’t and you know because yeah but yeah was very hard to get you know because the first time I had got cancer I don’t know how and what you want this in your podcast but the first time I did get cancer I blamed myself realize of religious upbringing and this is we connect those dots I don’t get it yep this is a fun story and this is a whole vlogs worth of content I’m just gonna pile into you know one sentence by okay did just let have it so I think there’s another reason why I definitely felt like I needed to make the sex talk was because of my religious background I genuinely believed when I was a child that masturbation was such a sin that it caused bad things to happen and every time I did it something bad would happen and be my fault so Edie went to the doctors and you know they were like oh you might have cancer and he told me on MSN those were the days and I was like oh no no I sure have been doing that a lot maybe it’s my fault I really shouldn’t touch my I’m gonna do it and then the next day it was like oh well I have cancer and I felt alright guilty and so responsible we don’t have the results yet yeah well no the next day and I was like well I really shouldn’t tempt fate but I am 14 and and yeah and I felt sure I felt responsible and I prayed and prayed and prayed and I you know I made it I struck I struck up a deal with God and I said I will not touch myself if ever again if Ed gets to live and I didn’t for two years until cancer went into remission and did you kinda went back on my deal but you felt when you when it went into remission did you feel like that you had paid your penance and away I kind of yeah like it’s very arrogant to believe like oh yeah I lived his life but I know it was yeah I felt it was well not happening you caused it I felt like I caused it and so I was like I’m sorry I’ll never do that again but and I did that again but yeah that was that was very strange and these are other reasons why I need needed to make the sex talk and write and tell people to touch themselves and it’s not weird and it doesn’t give people cancer and kill your cat and then how long until return three years I’d say so you know basically the entirety of me being at Union it was just when I’d finish uni and I was planning the move where it’s pretty much like oh it’s back at that point you’re you had relinquished your faith yeah well yeah I kind of just been like yeah this isn’t for me and then stuff so so there was no struggle when it came back for there to be a personal driving you I wasn’t I wasn’t like okay I did it again sorry girlfriend you’re out but I actually did break up my girlfriend around about that time but I was different reasons yeah no there wasn’t there wasn’t a a religious struggle there it was just kind of like a I was definitely a more than mindset of you know not everything happens for a reason you mentioned it in a vlog that you kind of took it upon yourself to continue eddsworld tell us about how that came about that was a hasty decision so you know what’s what’s really most about the situation is that the day had died or the day before had died I was joking around with with Paul who would become the animator of the show the you know like oh here’s what I’m gonna do if it ever gets like a terminal diagnosis it’s like just joking around you know it because other thing is that we played it like we played like oh it’s never gonna happen let’s make it a source of comedy and I was like saying like oh would be like you know like chef from South Park with uh we’d record loads of extra lines and then just still keep the show going and all this stuff and like seven hours later ed was dead so it was it was very sudden it was so sudden like the the doctors like it was just like he was ill but then suddenly everything has failed in the space of hours and I was asleep when it all happened I I woke up to the phone call which was bizarre but I had talked to Ed briefly about we know what would happen if he died but it’s not like the kind of conversation if you croak it what am I gonna do with that show but you know Ed’s mum’s told me the you know before he died he’d said that he wanted me to continue the show and I just have to kind of take her word on it hope she wasn’t lying but the way I went about it I regret massively though III know I know YouTube and I know commenters and I was really afraid that if I kept the show going people would be like oh you’re profiting off Ed’s death so I said I won’t give everything the show makes to charity but I think the only way I can do that as if I ask people if I if I did a fundraiser to fund the show and the support was amazing you know we raised eighty three thousand dollars I believe and that was crazy um wish I hadn’t done that I wish that I had actually either paid for the show out of its own profits because we still would have donated a lot of charity all paid for it myself because I’d say to say that I’d say that the amount of money I’ve lost from the stress of that obligation has been greater than the savings of not paying for it myself and suddenly become making into an obligation was terrifying and just not something that I think we should have done they turned it into a job rather than an honoring of a friendship and internal obligation so we still have a lot to do we know we have like four and a bit more episodes to go before we’ve met those obligations but yeah that was before you’ve met the obligations that you promised and of the initial go campaign yeah and how long after he what he died in well he died in early 2012 and here we are in mid 2014 that’s still we’re still not done like we really thought like oh it’ll take us a year no you know that that was very wishful thinking and yeah we made promises that we couldn’t keep and that was dumb in retrospect do you believe that this is still honoring his memory and your friendship I absolutely do I think it’s honoring his memory it’s friendship for the wrong reasons now it’s because they’re like I said it’d be kind of obligation of obligation not out of you know love I think that it would have been it would have done a lot better and people would have worked you know people would probably work for free if money hadn’t even got involved people would have done it for love we could run at her own pace and and maybe stopped whenever we wanted to but how does it end I mean do you know how it’s gonna end because I think a lot of question is well does the character pass away is there some so we have two episodes two big episodes planned called the end part 1 and part 2 which are these massive fun episodes where we’re gonna try and tie up a lot of narratives not and and not with the intention of ending the show per se but just bringing it to a satisfactory point where if we didn’t continue no one’s gonna be going but what happened you know we have plans and and maybe maybe once we have finished it suddenly we’ll feel free and like Oh actually I do want to keep going but we’re giving ourselves the option to maybe go like okay we did it and we keep we can’t keep doing this it’s it ultimately it isn’t our show it was his show and we need to move on with our lives but we’re giving ourselves the option but maybe we weren’t then was the conversation with its mom like about this at this point it’s very strange she’s a little big fan of the show but yeah I mean I think it is she yeah like I haven’t definitively and I probably haven’t offensively told her that you know like oh yeah by the way we’re gonna end the show because the fact is we don’t know but she would understand at this point I think she wouldn’t be like oh well it sounds like there’s lots of lessons that you’ve learned specifically related to that but overall in this whole experience of losing a business partner a creative collaborator and a close friend I mean what’s your perspective on that and what you’ve learned and how how does that impact how you live your life it’s changed absolutely everything really I’m you know I mean can you guys imagine it without the other of you it would just be well I just spent a lifetime building up a thing with this person that’s done now so it’s just kind of it’s there is no point to it there’s and that’s what I hate about as a storyteller as it as a film lover there’s no twist there’s no no there’s no point to this this is just chaos it’s just it’s just happened and the any replaceable part of my life is gone and it’s like a South Korean movie you ever seen the South Korean movie they always end so sad I haven’t I’m not interested at this point hey that’s like that’s how they always like it film like the host and it’s just oh okay well I was all for nothing but it’s interesting you say as a filmmaker maybe it’s as a human we want our lives and certainly the tragedies and the heartache to be redeemed with meaning the only thing I’ve really truly learned from losing it edie is the importance of legacy I guess then this sounds very pretentious but I guess if anything I feel like I’ve had an insight into the meaning of life which and in my opinion it is a legacy it’s what we leave behind it’s the amount of people that we touch and an effect and and yeah and and inspire and when I’d passed what came out of the woodwork was the thousands and thousands of people that he had brought joy to and inspired to become animators and and that was in that was incredible and I think I decided that point that what I care the most about is my legacy is how many people I can inspire and how much good I can do and how much joy I can bring to the world I mean that mostly on YouTube in real life I’m quite a you know contemptuous person but online at least two strangers I’d like to bring joy and I want it you know I want to do good and I want to make videos like the sex talk and I want to do videos you know I wanted to a video on you know on self-harm and help people and affect people and and do good and leave behind a legacy because you know it will it does have a ripple effect and it will pass through time it’s not just you know like without YouTube I would be able to only affect my you know my friends and my immediate family and and that’s a few generations and then maybe that’s all gone but hopefully you know I can change things and make people happy you know that’s that’s what I at least believe is the point of my life but at the end of your heart-wrenching vlog where you processed Ed’s death the last thing you said was I could say I may be getting this wrong but you said something to the effect of I could say that I don’t know what I’m gonna do where I go from here but the truth is I do um and it’s just what it’d be as fun anymore and it’s not gonna be as fun anymore yeah as you know in the last couple of years a has that proven to be true have things have you found the ability to have fun more than you thought and what is it that you know you’re doing without him yeah well you know like uh so if you really if you watch mate if you watch the numbers if you watch my channel right around the point that I’d died I had like a bunch of videos written and it was actually the summer of kind of like my but the best content on my channel of my successful stuff videos I’d made and you know but then as soon as I had to start making things after he’d passed I did I did just like massively fall off and sank into a big hole for at least two years which I am now I can comfortably say now I’m getting out of and yeah that yeah I do I do know what I’m doing but it isn’t as finally more it did cost me about you know two years of my life like I still made videos and I made a lot I think I made a lot of really good videos but I you know like it did really stick a thorn in everything and and that was lame but yeah it’s getting better it’s getting a lot better and I’m starting to actually enjoy my job again for the first time in a while I’m excited to do things and that’s killer for me like I haven’t been the video like I was getting a bit sad before I died and I just kind of like feeling like this is just my job and my hobby is gone it’s just the obligation now and but like now I’m finally feeling that love again and I’m feeling excited again which is really great it’s just at the point when the numbers are getting awful on YouTube and I’m really struggling to like maintain my audience but maybe now I’m gonna have that excitement that love that I need to bring it back you know all the people can get you know ten million views on every video they make than damage so can i I’m coming back this is 2014 let’s go we won’t hold you up anymore you got to get back to right in that next video I have I’ve actually load on the plane over here which is which is great and very exciting well listen we are you know you’re we love everything that you’ve done and this time just hanging out with you has been it’s been fun so thank you thank you so much for having me like it you know like yeah we’re like when I came in this room the first thing I did was I brought up laptops and checked and and yeah I’ve been falling here since 2007 and then it’s it’s really really means a lot to beyond me you guys it’s it’s wicked thank you so much for everything you do as well yeah no applause for you that’s silent silent I got an impost okay well we don’t do that but you know what we can’t in spirit thanks Thomas TomSka thank you and there you have it our ear biscuit with Tom Scott incredibly thoughtful guy and I don’t mean like the thoughtful guy song that we wrote a guy just thinks about a lot of weird stuff I mean a thoughtful guy who has been through a lot of things and is processing and has processed a lot of things that you mayn’t you just don’t know that you just can’t look at somebody’s YouTube channel especially somebody who’s such an artist as him is making sketch videos and animations and know just how much has transpired over the past few years yeah and I mean so I’m truly appreciative of his his honesty I think it you know I certainly have many takeaways and things that I continue to think about from that conversation I’m sure you do too let Tom know what you think on Twitter his Twitter handle is V Tom Scavo Tom Scott I don’t care how you pronounce that that’s how you say it you know the guy’s been through the wringer he’s coming out on the other side of it where he can be excited about being creative and I’m excited you know I love every conversation we have on your biscuits but there are the certain people that we talk to that I get especially excited about what they have yet to do and when you talk to a guy like Tom you see the work that he’s done I’m excited about this guy’s he’s young he’s got so much stuff that he’s gonna create I’m I’ve loved everything that he’s done I’m excited about what he’s going to do in the future yeah so thanks Tom you can again tweet at him the TomSka and also hash tag ear biscuits to let us know what you think of this show leave a review on iTunes that’s always helpful and you can count on us to be here next week for another one of these yes indeed [Music] [Music]