it feels like everyone's searching for the secret to living longer these days better health sharper minds stronger bodies this is the john t and the dog podcast i'm dr marcus rani and i'm joined by someone who understands performance and resilience better than most international cricketer john t rose in this show we explore the science of longevity from how our bodies age to the everyday habits that help us stay strong sharp and resilient as the years go by catch full episodes on the ibm podcast youtube channel and on all audio streaming platforms hello and welcome to yet another episode of simplified podcast that will make you sound smarter we're actually going through a couple of minutes of getting smart right so uh what's happening in the world now that uh now that donald trump has you know hopefully he can see it he hasn't but uh everyone is uh yeah that'd be amazing no if uh after we record this podcast suddenly he springs to power yeah everyone's immediately so this guy fari zakharia had gone into great uh detail about how donald trump can actually get away without considering yeah yeah everyone needs content so they're like okay now that this going away is almost imminent so he's gone we'll keep making it yeah you don't have to actually both sides of the content so the other thing that's uh big circus that has ended and now everyone's struggling to find news is uh the ipl right so surprise surprise and that's now because do you think it was a bigger ipl uh in terms of following this time than it was before i think it was it was at my house because yeah people like me i would never be bothered about ipl i find what it was this time but but that's also what and now um we need to look at other forms of content there's one teeny mini little thing that has happened which we are going to cover in this episode and the teeny mini thing is uh the censorship of otp platforms right do you think uh the censorship came about because they were called over the top platforms like they're way too over the top but what would if if these guys are over the top what do you call that now yeah my family uh watches a lot of these soap operas like between eight and nine it's it's a it's a string of soap they watch mostly marty so oh yeah i thought you were referring to new channels okay yeah the new channels come after that i think yeah but after nine is a new channel but even the soap operas are but they're far more bizarre than i remember them okay so yeah so this limits are being stretched anyway this uh the inconsequential thing that everyone's uh totally worried about is this otp censorship and uh what what actually happened is this on 11th of november uh the cabinet secretariat who is like the biggest bureaucratic office in the country they issued a notification under what is called the allocation of business rules and that stated that digital and online media falls within the jurisdiction of the ministry of information and broadcasting wow so earlier this used to fall under ministry of electronics and it okay and ministry of uh electronics and it didn't have the uh power to censor it didn't have uh it didn't have censorship powers and the ministry of information and broadcasting does it is important so it and electronics can basically talk about the tech specs of it and yeah it's uh yeah it's it's there is it's not it's not important to the censorship act so whatever else it might do i have no clue what any of the ministries do so they all you know this there's this uh so this whole thing um is about uh power to the bureaucrats no okay so i was uh uh i was reading about uh censorship in general and the earliest case of censorship was uh socrates earliest known case of censorship yeah so socrates said that everyone like all humans should find out truth for themselves okay that was his central message he said go out think for yourself and you take your own decisions things a lot and the uh uh athans government didn't like it and they said what nonsense and then they said either you recant your thing you drink emlock as i'll drink emlock anytime and plato is if you don't like socrates don't watch his stand music no one did that right like you know where was the matter that so yeah so no one said that and socrates at all yeah and uh plato said no no no and plato was a student and plato got famous by writing down socrates's hearts and publishing and he said yeah but his views were that only people who are of an intellectual caliber high enough to you know think should do the thinking rest of the people should just march up okay so it was a guy who was actually pro sensation yeah the first yeah and all all of bureaucrats are sincere followers of plato they all believe that okay they should make the decision everyone else should follow yeah it's like that no these industries grow and at a certain point they play too okay so yeah that was a digression yeah what we're saying is that uh these guys have you know they've they've a lot of a lot of people commenting on it have said uh that you know hang on don't don't panic all they've said is they've given jurisdiction they've just taken the jurisdiction from this finish to the other yeah and uh just because we have a stick doesn't mean we do things exactly yeah and uh he's the you know people are pointing out that just giving the powers doesn't empower them to do anything they need to be legislatively uh sort of armed right so somebody has to sit down draft a law pass it through parliament you know how difficult a lot of debate i'm sure yeah all that thing happens and uh then they will be empowered too and other people so i one thing i found out is a good number of institutions are really bravely battling uh you know for freedom of speech uh without actually being paid a time for it so one of them is something called software and freedom uh law center it's a donor-supported legal services organization that brings together lawyers policy analysts technologists and students to protect freedom in the digital world so what this these people say is that uh you know this is like the thin end of the way it's heavy-handed content regulation framework and this is what is exactly what is favored by the government and uh the mere fact that there is lack of clarity is that it enables different types of intermediates and uh you know it portends a regime with more interference from the ministry of ib and uh less reliance on self-regulation by the OTT platform because before all this happened they were self-regulating and actually you know the biggest problem in india is nudity and sex right i mean uh you know there are two ways of reproduction as most as you and i know one is uh like most dpns you can just reproduce vegetatively without flowers kissing but so yeah the western people have to go and have sex so we don't want to do that right so we don't want to suggest that to our people so yeah our system has worked well and we are the largest population yeah just by flowers but uh early on like before in your youth days i think uh there was no censorship because i don't remember like bollywood movies used to be a little bit more they had a sense of support and there was this famous thing the there was for some reason no no kissing oh okay well the lips would know me so you have this frame and you know the little people just like uh you know nanometers apart but they would never actually other than the scene would change yeah and despite that we had a sort of year and year i think 3.1 percent increase of population rate so it clearly shows that uh you know there's a correlation between but uh yeah so that's one of the problem is they've also the biggest problem i think with all these nebulous regulations that they get into the act after something is there like for example our podcast is it's innocuous we think right maybe i or you said a word which is gravely objectionable and six months later somebody decides we can't undo what we said we might not have said it and we know it was objectionable right but yeah somebody is sitting somewhere besides and that is what people are uh you know wary of they don't want uh they don't want uh they don't want talk to these they don't want it right but what is the real need for censorship yeah so it's hard to say because all over the world at least on the content the censorship law basically is quite specific so it says you shouldn't have content which is i'm just paraphrasing if you shouldn't have something which uh which is you know which threatens the integrity and solidarity of your country you don't want that to happen if you don't want incitement to violence you don't want uh obscenity public or whatever you know uh decency offensive public decency so these are the specific grounds you can't uh you know you can't say that you know i don't like uh i don't you know i i don't like tall uh people when this you know this this can show a lot of tall people i'm short i'm conscious about actually those are not valid grounds so you can't make up grounds other than the ones but the grounds themselves are pretty broad and uh you can make anything fit into yeah and so it boils down to the whims of the person who is uh deciding what is yeah but the slight difference is that i mean if it's on let's say tv or cable channels you can stumble upon the content without intending to watch it right and therefore uh since it's a mass medium you basically need some probably laws around it but these ott platforms basically only if you a log into that platform and b then choose a particular show you watch it and it can come with like you know caveats and guidance right to say what is it therefore should you watch it they've also been uh so that's that's uh that's been followed in the u.s for movies as well uh they've been uh they've been self-censoring self not self-censoring self-regulating so if uh you know if they're putting out content which is not suitable for young children rate the movie like that so you don't accidentally and they've done that i think for uh for most shows as well including uh they've done that in india but there are shows like sacred games and a lot of really rough uh language of situation and um they've they've clearly put out disclaimers before and uh you know every show that is graphic and you know what you know and not just children even like in my house my mother is not comfortable with too much violence or she's just more the violence than anything she's she doesn't like to and uh yeah she shouldn't watch such uh such shows but as far as i can see they're clearly uh they're clearly labeled as such so i don't know what i need for articulation it's just power so it's like so many years when i was a kid i had seen a cartoon uh you know which we said what what's what's a dog's idea of it it's a mile full of trees and a belly full of you so what i found very funny at that time was that different people's ideas of paradise are different so for most of us you want to like garden and sort of angels singing songs and things like that but for a dog that doesn't mean anything all the dog wants is just to pee under a tree and uh so if by extending that logic what is a bureaucrat's idea of heaven is like a mile full of people standing in queue to take his permission which he can deny without giving any justification that guy is in paradise he just wants to deny permission it's lunch break now come after two hours i have to tell you i got this thing called domicile certificate for my children they're required after world standard to get admission into engineering colleges anyway and it is so arbitrary they keep sending you back for some random thing just randomly they tell you there is no electricity bill i mean you uh you have to provide uh evidence of continuous tape of 10 years or 10 years or something like that and you support it with the electricity bill so from september uh 1997 to november 1997 october there's no bill and he'll throw you out of the thing do you have to go at home but do you also need to show proof of how your children have actually used electricity in this much that's why it's not a power bill no because like actual power so what do these regulations mean now like uh well as of now there are no regulations uh so no one knows how much they don't know how much and they want from censorship to happen but they just know that they're empowered now the ministry is empowered to censor otp content and now to one of two things can happen that is all uh edgy content and just be you know just go away because no one wants trouble right okay as you're saying people who are making the shows will be well yeah they themselves will decide i mean yeah they just yeah and the other alternative uh is someone will bravely test the limit someone will make content and fight it out right now right so yeah that's basically uh it so it's my general message from simplified is be a little worried because all your favorite shows are like it just polish yeah this doesn't apply to a podcast though right i hope not yeah kind of uh you know obscene and uh evil thoughts that we have been purping yeah yeah we deserve to be banned absolutely the first people should be banned should be simplified if there's any justice in this world So just to sum up a little history of censorship, I told you about Socrates, that was the earliest that I could find, you know, the instance of censorship. Then there was a speech by John Milton of Paradise Lost and Paradise Again fame, called Elio Pagetica. And it's a prose polemical track, because it's not really a speech. It's supposed to be a speech to the parliament.
So he wrote it on a pamphlet and said, it is an impassioned defense of freedom of speech. And it was pretty early. It was in the mid 1600s. And it was the first newsletter.
Yeah, first newsletter. And it was very influential. So it made up people's minds on the entire subject of whether you can regulate what other people want to, what you think other people would like to or not like to see. And then there was no like reply feature.
Where were you when Socrates was killed? Actually, that should be the next time. Very much soon, this will come up and it will be battled out in the background of Twitter and whatnot. At that time, we can definitely make a little bit of a deal around it.
Really, where were you now? It's pretty little bit. You shut up. Exactly.
You should have stopped me from that. And you don't get to see it now. In 1766, Sweden was the first country to introduce a constitutional law where censorship was abolished. They just abolished censorship.
In 1766. I find that amazing. They guaranteed the freedom of press. It's just incredible.
And well, the US has had its own struggle. So right now, they are big believers in freedom of speech. But that was not always so. In 1873, the US Congress enacted what is called the Comstock Laws.
It made it illegal to send any obscene, lewd, or lascivious books through the mail. So I think they got printed out and came right. But the books themselves can be mailed. You just can't mail them.
Yeah, you can't mail them. So actually, that was, you know, it was because US Postal Service belonged to the US government. And that was the problem. So they were, no one's sneaky, well-played.
They were trying to play it. Because they had a free speech thing. But it was pretty successful. Because that mail was the only way you could transmit materials.
And they had a prison term. And some interesting facts. The first film to be censored in the UK was a film by a guy named Charles Erwin. It was a 90-second long film.
90 seconds? Yeah, it was 90 seconds. It was censored. It was banned, actually.
It was made of horror after the censorship. And in 1898. And you won't guess what was on that film. It was a piece of cheese under a microscope.
That was the film. And why was it banned? Because the Microsoft showed active bacteria on the cheese. And the British cheesemaking industry was horrified.
They just ran full speed and got it back. But all scientists will testify that bacteria is part of culture, no? Yeah, but back in 1898, now bacteria is part of culture. And actually, that is the only culture that some people have.
And what else? Of course, the Catholic Church abolished its list of forbidden books on June 14, 1966. So the Catholic Church had a big list of books that had banned. It just abolished that.
So even for the Catholic Church, yeah, that's what it says. It abolished its list of forbidden books. That's tricky against the Catholic upbringing that I had. They're moving up in time, but not in a while.
Yeah, because I was already confused that Catholic actually in the dictionary means God-minded. And I'm like, which animal man? So there was a point in time there, all of these things. Orthodox.
There is something called Orthodox in Christianity and that is Catholic. Yeah. Maybe there's something. Orthodox is when you win a right-arm bowler, like Austin.
Yeah, Austin. A whole bunch of Russian bishops and all bowling right-arm Orthodox. And my two favorite facts about censorship. First is, there was a song called Louis Louis in the 50s, which was supposed to be, you know, had a lot of obscene lyrics.
And the FBI was assigned to investigate it. The FBI investigated it for three months and they abandoned the investigation because they couldn't make out the words. And my favorite, favorite fact about censorship is the Chinese government has censored the word censorship. That's totally meta.
How do they even do these things? So then if someone makes content and then like the authorities are like, no, you can't do it. Then you ask them why and then they can't say censorship. I'm like, what do you do?
Yeah, man. Actually, it's difficult. I mean, why do you do it? But yeah, you can't say censorship.
Anyway, that's all from me on this fascinating subject. Jolly good times ahead, I think. Yeah. Let's hope that all this is tempered with reason and we don't have a complete clampdown on everything sensible.
And yeah, so. Stay over the top. Huh? Stay over the top.
Yeah, stay over the top. Stay simplified. Stay safe, stay over the top. Bye.
Bye.