The Sweaty Column | Two Of These People Are Lying 2x03 | The Technical Difficulties 

Woa ive never been this early

@@Mistish Me too. Haha.

its called Ah-gee-ah sophia

@@staberas is that Ah jee ah or Ah ghee ah?

So many people commenting on how Tom should've known the Hagia Sophia... and they're right. Well I guess it's something you might not have known.

@@felixc543 It's just one of those things everyone sort of vaguely knows of, like the Louvre in France, or the Eiffel tower, or Venice

@@felixc543 I know about it because of Civilization V

@@felixc543 Personally, I probably know it from playing civ, but it's a very famous building, so it seems like the type of thing Tom would know.

Felix C the Civilization games, or the severely underrated Age of Empires 3

@@felixc543 most gamers know it from assasins creed medieval 2 or civ V

Big Ben is the clock, the tower is the Elizabeth tower

@@sundhaug92 yea but everyone just refers to it by its clock name i hope your not the sort to say oh im going to see the elizabeth tower because if you are its pretentious

sundhaug92 Big Ben is the bell...

Big Ben is the nickname for the bell, ackthually.

Big ben's the whole tower, tomatoes are a vegetable. If enough people believe a lie and it's not a massive one that fundamentally is a gap in education then let's just make that the truth

I would even go as far as to say it's one of the most iconic buildings in the world!

Love W I I would say that it is not. Never heard of it and i would say that atleast as a europian something like eiffel tower is more famous.

@@lassius5464 More famous sure. But that might be THE most famous building in Europe so...

Yeah but it's also in Istanbul

@@Dezomm Nah, well known, with a lot better reasons to be known, but Eiffel-Tower, ElizabethTower (holding big ben), Golden Gate bridge, Statue of liberty, Taj Mahal - there are quit a few buildings i would say are more iconic.

Literally this is how weird him not knowing what the Hagia Sophia is

These are exactly the sort of responses they'd give.

The… Ay-feel? Ee-fl? Matt, how do you pronounce that?

@@StichyWichy21 It’s iee-fille

@@kf10147 ikr! It’s literally one of the most famous religious/cultural sites in the world! It was built by Justinian! It’s also called the blue mosque, and in order to describe how beautiful it is, we invented a new color (turquoise-as in Turkish).

Same really

Me too! It's world famous, and Tom is not exactly ignorant about these things usually.

I'm surprised he hasn't done a video there yet.

yeah! was about to comment this

Thank Civ 5 for teaching this to me

That's Gary's whole charm, isn't it?

Tbh. That is just the way Gary plays this game...

It's a combination of having trouble remembering from a quick read of the article, and trying to forcibly project sounding confidence in what he's saying even as he clearly struggles to recall.

I think that's the best take on "How come Tom Scott doesn't know what the Hagia Sofia is?!" :D

@crsmit Ah, don't worry, people won't get it straight away

I don't understand how Tom didn't know what the Hagia Sophia is.

To be fair i do not think that most people would think about the viking Graffiti when hearing about it.

ABaumstumpf I knew about the viking graffiti but didn’t remember where it was, nor can I say I knew about Hagia Sophia (though I’ve probably encountered it and just forgotten)

At least as of right now (or a few minutes ago by the time this comment posts) the "Halfdan was here" graffiti is only referred to indirectly in the Hagia Sophia article on Wikipedia; Halfdan himself is only mentioned in the article "Runic inscriptions in Hagia Sophia". So, technically, Chris was lying because he wasn't discussing the content of the Hagia Sophia article, but rather the content of a linked article...

trivia in a nutshell

Tom doesn't make videos about well-known landmarks, though. ... just the small rivers.

To be fair, people who know often only know it because of Civ.

100% that's the only reason I know of it. Tom has said at various times that he didn't/doesn't play a lot of video games ​@SomeThingOrMaybeAnother

perhaps not TURKEY ISNT THE BEST PLACE TO GO RIGHT NOW

...and call it "Things I might not know"

Amazing places - The Sweaty Column of the Hagia Sofia

@Öğrenci Sarp Eren Hangişi it is not about being safe, it is about supporting a regime that just happen to enjoy a bit of invasion and genocide. And if that seems familiar, practically every super power have done that.

@Öğrenci Sarp Eren Hangişi Yes I believe you friend.

gary just sounds like hes talking bollocks all the time

​@@hamishd8659 ironic how he's the archivist :)

Gary is fairly decent at lying, but when he states the truth, he is so bad at it everyone thinks he's lying. That's why it's so easy to spot when Gary is saying the truth, because he makes it sound absurd every time

I honestly thought they were all telling the truth and they set a trap for Tom.

@@hebl47 yeah because it’s possible someone also named their band after The Hagia Sophia

As soon as he said that I was like "wait, did Tom already do the research for his river video before they recorded this?" And yup.

Weird: I was just thinking that I hadn't seen a pen like that since I was a kid.

They're good pens. I've got them too.

@@MrMarkb68 which pen? Is that a jetstream?

@@thelastcube. Papermate Flexgrip Ultra

Why should we? It's only one of the most important and famous religious structures in the whole world.

@@GerackSerack "Important" is hard to gauge, especially with the number of Asian, African, and Native American religious structures I know I know little about...but it's definitely among the most famous. Not "Vatican City" famous, but definitely in the top ten. There's a reason it's consistently been a wonder in Civilization despite that game's superficial and inconsistent portrayal of history.

I need him to do a sweaty column now

@@timothymclean Its pretty Vatican City famous.

I mean, whats obscure or not is really subjective. The Ghost Festival last episode is really common to many people living in Asian countries and South China, but its obscure enough to Tom to not know about. I heard it and immediately got confused as to how its obscure its a major month long festival for us (though I didn't know the translation of the name was quite this literal).

@@ca-ke9493 Well, I mean, I was sure, Gary's Chinese festival was real or based on real Chinese traditions, but does it have that name and was it the article? Although Matt's pronunciation of the supposedly Croatian festival was complete bollocks, so I was like 75% Garry, 20% Chris, 5% Matt misspelled the name of the Croatian festival...

I think he thought that there was also a folk band

@@ca-ke9493 to be fair Gary’s really good at sounding *untrustworthy* rather than trustworthy

I mean, he also didn’t know what a ute muster was, soooo… *shrug*

VooDooTrois Like WarOwl’s “I still have no closer”

Or played Civ

Yeah my immediate thought was "oh, hey, I've climbed on that building.'

I've played Revelations ages ago, so I was just mildly confused because I didn't know where I've heard it before

I've played Revelations twice in the past 5 years and I had no clue what it was lmao

@@marcusalm7350 yup. Thank you Civilization IV.

Or AC Revelations

Yup :p

Or CK2

Or simply paid attention in history class.

Honestly I would be sad to discover that none of these guys play Civilization.

Its at the point where as a liar I would give actual facts but with the wrong years/names.

That's KIND OF what Chris was doing.

@@seanc6128 apparently Tom doesn't play Civ or know anything about the site (prior to recording at least), and evidently Matt either doesn't either or just chose something unrelated because he didn't want to get in the way of whoever's article it was.

An unspecified number of these people are lying

Also, none of these people are lying.

All of these people are only pretending to lie.

Would be interesting as a twist. Instead of three, there would be four. So a 25% chance that everyone is lying.

@@Septimus_ii 3.14159265359 of these people are lying

Apparently, Tom didn't know about it. Not everyone does. Although, this is unusual for Tom, seeing he's well traveled and well read. Just goes to show you how really big and wonderful our small blue marble truly is.

Eeeeyy... cue the mournful pun laughter

Well, better than what happened to Reach.

Er, river?

Anyone who plays the Civ games... TBH even before I'd played Civ I'd heard of it. Very strange that Tom's not heard of it given that he travels so much. I guess he's spent so long learning about other interesting things that he's had no time for this one.

It’s world famous really like probably as famous as the arc de triomphe

Yes, that's the joke.

it is like how Adam Savages, (and others) podcast is called "still untitled - the Adam Savage project" because the hosts couldn't pick a name.

I'm pretty sure Gary's self-assigned role in this game is chaos, points don't matter, the confusion and frustration on Tom's face does.

More people played the Sid Meier's Civilization games than Age of Empires. But, yeah, for once we have proof that games can be informative and/or educational and fun at the same time. As for me, I read about it in random articles, but most of my knowledge came from the Extra Credit's videos on Justinian.

It’s strange to me that most people know it from video games because I learned about it in history class. I guess British people have enough domestic history that they can’t fit that in.

@@mmilcz833 I think the fact that I was playing that game in Middle School helped. It beat my History Classes to the punch. :)

For me it was growing up watching James Burke's Connections. The Hagia Sophia is regularly featured in Connections 2, especially the New Harmony episode. An absolute must watch bunch of series. :-)

@@mmilcz833 In my case it was an online Humanities class (yes, during Covid) that consisted of quizzes based on informational videos. And the quiz questions were all like, multiple choice where all the answers are plausible but only one is worded the way the video worded it, meaning you had to watch the video AND take detailed notes if you wanted to get the right answers.

I'm honestly surprised Tom didn't know it..

Legitimately, I made casual reference to it just two days ago and I safely assumed the person I was talking with would know what it was. Very surprised Tom wouldn't know it...

So famous that most people in the world have probably never heard of it

@@shanematthews1985 To be fair, I'd say the majority of people haven't heard of the majority of famous things.

I honestly got confused for a minute b/c they were both saying true things. I figured one of them had worded it oddly to be technically false, but I couldn't pick out the lie.

But does he have an outline of 4x tinnies in his shadow?!

@@Tarantio1983 His raring body is there for two purposes only: tourism, and keeping tinnies cool in his enormous clawed shadow.

...drive through pie shop?

@@Shinela I mean, he released that video six months ago. Is this footage well over six months old?

@@ltjgambrose Maybe. If the color stuff needed less editing, as it's single person direct to camera interspersed with shots of objects. I imagine these take quite a bit of editing effort.

It just goes to show you that even really Smart people have gaps in their knowledge.

After seeing all these comments, I have no idea how *I* have never heard of it! Not saying I'm all that smart, just the sheer numbers, hahaha! (Although, as soon as Gary started his description I thought, yeah I can see that.)

We're in the comments section now, that makes us readers doesn't it!

@@Dappdude i read this in Gary's voice.

It's also subtle (and well-deserved!) praise for the person writing the subtitles.

I pictured a festival going from Thursday till Sunday, though. There's a folklore festival in Czechia that basically goes like that; although most of the public events are on the weekend, there are concerts and stuff in the villages around the village where it takes place on weekday evenings.

Also Thursdays are now really popular for events in general because either the upper middle class can afford to take Friday off or have flexi time, or it's aimed at older retirees.@@beth12svist

Two caveats: 1) it's more like Call My Bluff in that it's 3 definitions, only one of which is true (in WILTY only the guest section "This is My...." reflects that); and 2) I think it stems from Matt's idea in the TechDif Experiments Format Laboratory for "The Tail Wagging The Dog", hence why I think he's given the role of explaining the rules for this game in this series.

I did a couple rounds with my friends, it's a lot of fun.

Gotta do it in Matt’s kitchen. Integral part of the concept.

Hahahaha ikr, I vaguely knew it was some important structure in Europe

F

These books had a lot of interesting facts in them. I impressed my teacher by knowing about the Council of Nicaea

Whereas I've been there.

Karl Kastor To be fair if you based your knowledge of the council of Nicaea on Dan Brown you didn’t really know anything about it. Not to be a dick but that book had so many historical inaccuracies it’s not even funny.

@@qwertyTRiG lucky!

@@sitas9827 It is truly impressive.

Starting with drive-through booze.

It's some wee church in the Near East, innit

to be fair, Adonai probably gave a design that solomon could do, as opposed to what Jehovah's design for Justinian

Best Geoff Peterson impression: "Careful, Icarus"

The source that I learned about that graffiti from said that people thought the inscriptions were sacred until someone finally translated them, which is even funnier

I feel you, I feel you. Also I love the technicality of having two people actually say the truth about it in just a way that still sits within the rules of the game.

My thought on how id get through trying to lie about the freaking Hagia sophia. It was built by the emporer THEODORA in the 7TH century, then completely true facts. Get the lies out on 1 sentence.

Perhaps Tom has never studied the reign of justinian the great of the eastern roman empire.

It's a cross between Citation Needed and Call my Bluff.